Distant tales of the Dichotomy

The velvet envelope was waiting on Fel’s bunk.

It lay on the blanket, black and heavy, its silver wax unbroken, as if it had been there for six months. The same fat crow. The same crown and dagger. There were two more on the neighboring beds, one for Loria and one for Vili, and none of them had been touched.

He did not open his. He only sat beside it on the bed and looked at it for a very long time.

“Six months,” said Vili quietly, from the doorway. He had his own envelope in his hand. “I had hoped, somehow, for a little longer.”

“So did I.”

“Shall we?”

They read the letters together, standing in the corridor. They were identical. You are summoned to the Court of Doors, at first bell, on the morrow, for the instruction of the Final Trial of the Rising Crow. At the bottom, in Kirn’s tired script: Come rested.

None of them slept.

The Court of Doors had changed.

The three iron doors were gone, or rather they had been pushed against the walls and covered with black cloth. In the center of the great circular floor, where the white ring had been painted, there now stood an immense table of dark stone, thirty feet across. On it lay a city.

It was a model, and it was exquisite. Every street was carved in miniature, every tower and bridge, every alley and stair. It rose in three great tiers of pale stone: a low, cramped, crooked district at the bottom, crowded with narrow houses and tiny sewers; a wider, cleaner ring above it, walled and gated; and above that, on the crest, a shining district of towers and courtyards, crowned by a vast black keep whose windows glittered like coins.

Fel knew what it was before anyone said a word.

He knew because he was looking at the Shallow Gallows.

He knew the crooked lane. The Round Market of Flies, the little bridge over the canal, the shaky wooden path leading up to the iron gate of Catacombs Pass. He knew the bend in the road where the sewer-gas rose warm on winter mornings. And at the corner of the third lane, on a low, crooked, familiar street, he saw a tiny building with a sagging roof and a sign the size of a fingernail.

The Willow’s Drip.

His mouth went dry.

“They built it from the surveyors’ maps,” said Kirn, from across the table. “Every stone, every gutter. It has been used for the final trial since the Sanctum was founded.” He did not look at Fel. “It is called the Hollow Citadel.”

There were people in the room already. Fel had noticed them, and had refused to notice them, the way a man refuses to notice a knife on the table. Three of them stood on the far side of the model, in the shadow of the black-draped doors. Boru stood beside them, beaming. Isharv leaned against the wall with his halberd, looking bored.

The middle one stepped into the light.

He was seventeen, perhaps, tall and lean, with a long, easy, almost lazy way of moving. He wore a charcoal coat with silver buttons, and a white shirt with a high collar, and a plain silver ring on every finger. His hair was pale as dust, cut short, and swept back from a high forehead. His skin was the color of moonlight on glass, and beneath it, running from throat to wrist, ran fine, faint, shining veins of silver.

His eyes were mirrors.

That was the only word for them. They had no irises, no pupils, no whites. Each was a perfect, polished, silver disc, and in each disc, small and clear and perfectly reflected, Fel saw himself.

“Felanor TeneDente,” said the boy. His voice was gentle. It sounded like a man greeting an old friend at a funeral. “I have been waiting a long time to meet you.”

“Who are you?”

“Saladin Silverine. Number fifty-six.” A small, courteous bow. “Of the Argent Court. My people are called the Silverblooded, though I am told we are extinct, which is a kind of relief.” He smiled. “I read about you in the records. The last TeneDente. The Fallen Heir.”

“I’m not anybody’s heir.”

“Everyone is somebody’s heir,” said Saladin. “It is only a question of what they choose to inherit.”

He turned, and Fel felt the tension in the room shift, the way the air changes before a storm. Boru had gone very still. Isharv had stopped leaning on the wall.

Behind Saladin stood the other two.

The girl was tall, taller than Fel, with a body all sharp angles and a rangy, restless grace. She wore a coat of black leather stitched with yellow thread. Her skin was tawny, her hair a crop of glossy black spikes, and along her jaw and forearms grew plates of glossy chitin, banded in black and amber, like a beetle’s shell. Two pairs of translucent wings lay folded flat against her back. Her eyes were faceted amber, like the eyes of a wasp, and they flickered over the room with quick, curious malice.

“Knoxia Lunore,” she said. She had a rough, cheerful, throaty voice, and she leaned on every word as if it were funny. “Number thirteen. Of the Vespid. The Lunore Hive, if you care, and you don’t.” A curved black stinger slid halfway out of her right forearm, glistened, and withdrew. “I heard about the fight with the ink boy. Nice sand. Bad sportsmanship.”

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“He wrote a bad hand,” said Vili, coolly.

“He did!” Knoxia threw back her head and laughed, delighted. “Oh, I like you. I’m going to enjoy breaking every finger.”

“You are welcome to try.”

“I will.”

The last of them stood a little behind, half hidden, and it took Fel a moment to realize why he had not seen him at first.

He was enormous.

He must have stood seven and a half feet, and yet he seemed to stoop, as if trying to take up less room. His skin was the color of pale beeswax, with a faint, warm sheen, and a heavy pale-yellow fall of hair hung across his brow. He wore a long, patched grey coat that did not fit. His hands were vast and soft and slightly drippy at the fingertips, where tiny beads of wax gathered and fell, one at a time, onto the floor. There was a faint smell about him, honey and smoke and warm tallow.

He looked at Loria. Loria looked back. Her hand, without her seeming to notice, had moved to the butt of the gun.

The big boy flinched.

“Pegoris of Flatin,” he said. His voice was small and slow and anxious. “Number forty-one. I am Waxen, from the Flatin kilns.” He swallowed. “I was made to light the crypts in the Lower Monastery, and to burn until I was needed. I’m sorry. I don’t like fire. Please don’t shoot me.”

For a moment nobody spoke.

“I have no intention of shooting you,” said Loria, at last, in a voice a little rougher than usual. “Yet.”

“Thank you,” said Pegoris. Then, in a tiny voice: “I like your hair.”

Loria stared at him with an expression of profound bafflement.

Knoxia snorted. Saladin smiled. Vili muttered something under his breath in an unpleasantly amused tone, and Fel realized, with a sudden chill, that everything about the last two minutes had been Saladin’s doing. He had let them look. He had let them decide. He had arranged them like pieces on a board, and the board was already set.

“If everyone has finished admiring each other,” said Kirn Mayfell, “I would like to explain the trial.”

The Court fell silent.

Kirn stood at the edge of the great model, with a scroll in his hand, and did not open it. He had never needed to. He spoke in his flat, tired, hawk-eyed voice, and he did not stop.

“This is the Trial of the Hollow Crown. It lasts three days and three nights. It is fought in the Hollow Citadel, which you see before you, at full scale, in the Mirror Deep beneath this Sanctum. Two squads take part. Team B, by virtue of the standings, begins at the Keep. Team D, by virtue of the standings, begins in the Gallows.”

Fel felt Vili go rigid beside him. The bottom of the city. The lowest tier. The place where nobody starts unless they’ve been pushed.

“Each squad will name a King,” Kirn continued. “The King of Team D shall be chosen by Team B. The King of Team B shall be chosen by Team D. Each King will wear the Hollow Crown, an iron circlet that cannot be removed until the trial is ended. The Crown weeps silver light. You will know your enemy’s King by it.”

He paused.

“The Kings cannot die before the Third Bell. The Crowns will not permit it. A blow that would kill a King will turn aside, and the King will be wounded, exhausted, and hunted, but not slain. The retainers, however, may die. Every retainer whose sealed medallion is broken by the enemy adds a Toll to his King’s Crown. The Crown grows heavier with each Toll. By the third, no man can stand beneath it.”

Boru raised a finger. “Which is a very good reason,” he said, “not to lose your friends.”

“On the third night,” said Kirn, “the Keep will toll the Third Bell. When it sounds, the Crowns will draw both Kings to the Throne Hall at the summit of the Citadel, and the doors will seal. There will be no retainers. There will be no aid. The Kings shall fight, alone, in the Hall of the Empty Throne, until one yields or one dies. The result is the result of the trial.”

Silence.

“Every night at dusk,” Kirn added, “the bells will toll, and the Citadel will turn. Streets will shift. Gates will close and open. What you mapped by day will not be true by night. The Sanctum does not apologize for this.”

“And the stakes?” said Vili, his voice thin.

Kirn looked at him. For a moment his tired eyes were almost kind.

“The winning squad will be released from its numbers. Names restored. Rank restored. Every member will be entered into the Tournament of Undying Crows with the title of Crow Named, and the winning King shall be granted the right to decide the fate of the losing King.” He said it evenly. “Mercy or death. His choice.”

“And the losers?” Loria asked.

“Struck from the rolls. Stripped of their names. Sent to the Sorrow marches as Lanterns.” He paused. “That is a name given to expendable scouts. Most last a month.”

The room was very quiet. The model city lay on its dark table, pale and perfect and waiting.

“Naming will take place at the gate at dawn tomorrow,” said Kirn. “You may confer.”

“There is no need,” said Saladin.

They all turned.

He had stepped forward, one hand resting lightly on the edge of the great table, and there was something in the set of his shoulders that had not been there before. The courtesy was still on his face. Under it, something else had woken, patient and enormous and very, very old.

“We already know who our King will be,” said the boy with mirrors for eyes. “We name Felanor TeneDente.”

Fel didn’t move.

“He is the last of the House that founded the Dichotomy. He is the one the Empire has been waiting for, whether it will say so or not. He bled for a friend, and he speaks to trees, and he carries a sword that is older than this Sanctum.” Saladin’s mirrored gaze rested on him, quiet and warm and terrible. “I would like to be the one who takes the crown from him. I think it is only fitting.”

“Then we name you,” said Vili instantly.

Saladin turned his head, unhurried. “I am honored, Prince Vili.”

“You should be.” Vili’s voice was tight. “You will not be for long.”

“Perhaps.” The silver smile did not change. “But I think Felanor and I shall have a great deal to say to one another at the end.”

“You may say it now,” said Fel.

His own voice surprised him. It was quiet and level and hard. He had put his hand on Falling Star without thinking, and the ruby beneath his palm beat once against his fingers like a second heart.

“I’d like that,” said Saladin gently.

He held out his hand.

Fel took it. The silver ring on the boy’s third finger pressed cold against his palm, and just for a moment, in the polished black floor between their feet, he saw their reflections. His own stood where he stood. But Saladin’s did not. It stood a pace behind Vili with one finger raised to its lips, smiling, and it was looking straight at him.

When he blinked, it was gone.

Saladin let go. He stepped back, and his fingers trailed over the edge of the table, and at the touch of Kirn’s silver-edged scroll he drew a very small breath. A thin line appeared across his thumb. A single drop of liquid welled up, bright and heavy and impossibly silver, and rolled uphill along the back of his hand. It gathered in his palm. It shivered and rose and shaped itself into a tiny crowned figure, no bigger than a thimble, which bowed once, deeply, to Fel, and dissolved back into his skin.

“Quicksilver,” said Saladin softly. “I never bleed the same color twice.”

Knoxia laughed. Pegoris was staring at his own feet. Isharv had drawn his halberd a full inch from its sling.

Loria did not laugh. Her crimson eyes met Fel’s, and there was no flirtation in them, no teasing, only something cold and clear and very careful. She said one word, almost soundlessly, with her lips.

Plan Z.

Fel gave a tiny nod.

Above the great model of the Hollow Citadel, in the drifting shadow of the vaulted ceiling, the Keep of the little black city caught the torchlight and gleamed like a crown.

At first bell tomorrow, they would go down.