Shadows of the Scriptures

FIFTEEN: Speeches of Figure

First time Sterya had stepped into the royal library, she had not been a queen. And her breath had been snatched impolitely from her lungs.

The sight of it did not cease to impress her still. There were colonnades upon colonnades upon shelves upon shelves of books old and new. The place was richly lit also, as places of such nature are wont to be, assisted in this matter by several tens of windows framed with iridescent stones and green-flamed lanterns. Alchemically speaking, green fire only illuminated and did not burn. Fire that was white, while it did not burn it did give the sensation of burning if smitten by – therefore none of the lanterns glowed white here.

Tables shaped like cockatrices and basilisks and dragons were littered about the floor at calculated distances. Crystal sculptures and vases were critically placed. The carpeting was silk, as supple a silk as used for livery, such that walking would be a noiseless conduct.

A concierge in a mustard uniform showed her in, then retreated to his desk. Another male attendant followed her around as she admired the smell of age and preservative the place detained. Sterya told the attendant what texts she intended to read to-day, and away he scampered.

From the table-and-chair Sterya chose, she had a crescent view of the sub-landing filled with even more shelves and ladders. Very few people were seated down there, certainly not more than she could count on the fingers of her hands, and even those were largely the attendants. One or two ladies and one or two lords in their fine loose frocks and coats and frock coats, most of them young as her, none of them recognizable. The library was as good a venue for such young nobles to flirt in as any.

Then Sterya spotted a face that seemed familiar. Her mother-in-law’s handmaiden. Interesting. The queen squinted her eyes and watched the girl collect two heavy, lanolin-jacketed tomes in her arms and scramble up the stairs. Sterya pushed back her chair and put a couple feet under her heels to meet the maiden at the head of the double-staircase.

The girl was rather startled. For a beat Sterya thought she would fall the tomes and fall herself down the stairs too, but Minair held her ground. Rather, her stair. Tried she to bob a curtsy but failed under the weight of words scribbled on parchment.

Sterya clapped her hands and a uniformed attendant appeared. On Sterya’s gesture he relieved the maiden of her burden despite her meek dissent. “Walk with me, sweet thing,” said Sterya, so walk they did. The attendant hobbled behind them delicately holding the books.

“Is your father doing better?” said she to the maiden, remembering when on Ozl Minair had interrupted their game of Penva. How she had been distressed due to her father’s illness.

The handmaiden was focused intently on her feet. Her eyes had a blank sheen to them, and her cheekbones were more pronounced than would appear fashionable, or, indeed, healthy. “He passed away, your Majesty,” Minair responded in a small voice.

“Oh, sweetie!” Sterya dove into a sideways hug with the girl. “I do hope the gods judge his soul well to rest and comfort. Come sit.”

They sat themselves down in an alcove, whilst the attendant sat the books on the table in their front. Then away he scampered like to his colleague who was off finding the queen her text of choice. Sterya did lay a hand on her mother-in-law’s handmaiden, who was clearly abundantly broken. Less a rose – Rosy – than nectarless lavender.

“Brackwhisp, was it, if my memory does me justice?”

Minair nodded. What a sad little nod it was.

Hasheem had been an admiral at the Muscale Keep, where Sterya had spent her childhood. Where her grandfather and guardian Aleth Sanghon oft found himself unable to provide his little princess much-needed embraces, Admiral Hasheem had always been there with his arms spread aloft. Hasheem had been struck by troteye a maes preceding Sterya’s Reddening, the juncture which marks every girl’s becoming into a woman. Sterya had wept as much at the pain and horror of her body’s decisions as at the dreadful fate of such a comely man. There were no known cures to troteye.