Roses (31 page)

She spent the next hour turning the cottage inside out searching for it, but it was nowhere. Panic mixed with grief made her angry and she began breaking things in her haste: smashing plates, knocking over chests, and splitting tools. Her brow was damp and her vision blurring. Suddenly, she felt the wooziness of a vision. She glanced down at her glittering skin and let it wash over her.

She saw her amulet held in olive, manly hands. A thumb with a ragged nail smoothed across the engraved rose and a voice whispered, “Beauty.”

Abruptly, the vision left her and she gasped at the figure in the door.

“Beauty? Be that yur, child?”

It was Hally, and he surveyed the shimmering, silver woman before him and the destruction of the room with a gaping mouth.

“Yes,” she breathed. “It is I.”

“W-where have you been?”

“Away. I returned to be with my father when he died.”

“Owaine be dead? I been checking on him every day though he always tells me to leave.”

“Yes, he is dead, and the preacher helped me send him on. It was on the peak of the next hill if you wish to anoint him.”

“That I do.”

Beauty grabbed the saddlebags that were packed and waiting on the table. She was suddenly anxious to leave.

“Where is Sable?” she asked.

“She died a season back, child. I never seen such a change in a horse so quick.”

Beauty bit her lip, feeling weary of death.

“Yur went so sudden,” said Hally. “Them State men came and then that eve yur were gone and they be hunting all the houses for yur.”

“I am sorry.”

“When they found we did not have yur they left.”

Beauty wondered if she should ask about Eli, but she thought it best if she did not.

“Now I must go again,” she said and she hurried past him out of the cottage.

“Will yur return?” called Hally.

“I do not know.”

She ran up the hillside and found Champ grazing beside the temple where she had left him. If she looked across at the next hill, she could still see tendrils of smoke leaking into the pale blue sky. She pressed her hand to her chest and muttered another prayer for Owaine before vaulting onto Champ’s back. As she turned him in the direction of town, she saw that a crowd had gathered in the valley below and they shielded their eyes against the springtime sun and waved to her.

They saw a shining, silver woman astride a warhorse, and they made the sign of the gods as she disappeared.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY
-F
IVE

The Return

B
eauty rode Champ at a gallop through the Hillands and into the Forest Villages. They did not stop—they did not need to. Champ’s hooves barely touched the ground as they galloped faster and faster until they were moving at an impossible speed. Nobody saw them. Occasionally a lonely walker would blink and think that a silver shadow flew by, but he could never be sure.

Beauty’s skin shimmered as they ran. She knew that she was doing something with her gift, but she did not know what it was or how she was doing it.

“What have I done to us?” she whispered to Champ that night, when she finally stopped to rest in a shepherd’s hut.

She had brought Champ into the hut with her for fear that someone might see them, and they were tight for space. She had laid here once before, many seasons ago, when Owaine rescued her from Sago and changed her life for the better.

“Goodnight, boy.”

Champ snorted.

“Goodnight, Beast,” she whispered, hoping that he was watching in the corridor of mirrors.

Beauty set out her bedroll by Champ’s feet and lay on the cold, hard floor. She barely needed to sleep, for she did not feel at all tired, but she made herself lay there out of habit, recounting memories of Owaine until dawn.

Seeing Champ as invigorated as she was the next morning, Beauty wondered if she should bother stopping at all the next night, and when it came to it, she did not. Neither of them ate or drank much—it was as if they did not need to. Nor did they sleep over the next three days. They were preoccupied with just one thing: getting to Sago—and they would not be distracted with anything else.

They passed the Strap cities and then Beauty would not stop for fear of catching unwanted attention. Sensing her anxiousness, Champ picked up the pace and the crowded, bustling cities became a haze of colors and loud noises. They charged onward into Sago, dodging travelers on the streets and catching glimpses of ruined mountains of rubble and homeless, starving people. Beauty remembered how afraid of the shantytowns she had been in her childhood and how terrifying Sago had looked in her dreams, but she would not turn back. Though she longed to run back to the hills, she knew that she must go on.

Her amulet seemed to shine like a beacon above Sago, and she thought of nothing else as they neared the capital. It was somewhere there, she could feel it, but Sago was a huge, dangerous place and she worried if she would ever find it. She knew not what situation she was rushing into—were there still rebels in Sago? Was the city deserted? She could be sure of nothing.

She was over its borders before she knew it and suddenly she pulled Champ to a halt. They had arrived. As soon as they stopped, the heat hit them with a stifling punch. Champ began to pant immediately and his coat darkened with sweat for the first time.
Beauty threw back the hood of her cloak and laid a shimmering palm on his neck to reassure him.

The air smelled thick and salty as it always had, with a new tang of smoke that warned of death and despair. The sun was orange and blistering, the heat muggy and humid, and the sea beside them was a calm stretch of azure. In the distance, Beauty could hear gunshots and screams, but there was no one around that she could see.

She turned to look at Rose Herm in all its ruined glory. The boulevard was a wreck of remains. There were shells of houses, blackened from within, and flattened mansions that showed the deep scars of war. Beauty remembered the grandeur and the splendor of Rose Herm. She remembered once when carriages had flocked to Ma Dane’s doors and guests had sipped syrupy tea in her drawing room, and something-se-something and someone-se-someone had marveled at the magnificence of it all. She bowed her head.

There were smashed windows, broken doors, destroyed gardens, and dark shapes hanging from trees that she did not wish to look at. Rioters had come here, she could tell that much, and they had pillaged and raided the mansions. They had been angry and desperate—drawn to cruelty by the brutality of the time.

Beauty slid from Champ’s back and pushed open the rusty gate of Rose Herm. It creaked and she held it open for Champ to follow behind her. Together they trudged across the dead, yellow gardens that were dried to dust, and as they passed a broken fountain, Beauty remembered hiding from Nan in it. She remembered leading Comrade from the stables to whisper her secrets to him all afternoon, and she remembered the time that she had counted all the zouba trees in the grounds and carved a “B” on each of them. She paused as she reached the stone steps to the front door and she looked up at the mansion that had once been her whole realm. She had been to many places and seen many things since she left it.

I was not happy here, but I never wished it like this
, she thought to herself.
I never wanted to see it destroyed.

She was about to enter Rose Herm when a flash of gray caught her eye. She gasped, thinking that a State official had discovered her, but instead she saw a woman walking through the rubble.

“Hello,” said the woman, straightening out the gray folds of her dress as she approached.

Beauty glanced around, worried that this was an ambush, and Champ pressed himself close to her side in case she wished to flee.

“I warn you, I have no sticks,” she said as the woman came closer. “I have nothing of value to give you.”

The woman was but a step from her now and Beauty could see her dark brown hair flecked with streaks of gray and her large, brown eyes. She had a strange expression on her face; it was a mixture of joy and awe.

“You look so like him,” she whispered and her voice was almost familiar.

“Like who?”

“Like your father.”

The woman reached out a hand, but Beauty flinched away from her.

“What do you know of my father?” she snapped.

But the woman seemed barely to hear her.

“I dreamt that you would be here,” she murmured fervently. “But I did not know you would be so powerful. I never guessed that things would turn out this way. He did not tell me that it would be like this.”

Beauty looked around her once more, afraid.

“I do not understand you,” she said, taking a hasty step back. She wished that she had thought to bring some kind of weapon with her—she had no way of defending herself.

“You must come with me,” said the woman. “It is not safe here and we have much to speak of. You must come with me.”

“Who are you?”

The woman blinked as if she did not understand.

“My name is Asha,” she said. “I am your mother.”

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY
-S
IX

The Attack

B
eauty looked around the dark, dusty room. They were beneath a pile of rubble in what used to be one of Sago’s thriving squares, and Asha was lighting an oil lamp.

They had hurried here from Rose Herm, scurrying down back-streets and darting through the safety of the smoky gloom of destruction. Beauty had been sure that someone would see her shimmering skin, but when they had come across a stream of bony, dirty people walking on the opposite side of the alleyway, they had seemed not to notice her. Their desperate, dull eyes had slid over the silver woman and her warhorse without surprise. There was some Magic involved, Beauty realized, and she wondered whether it was herself or Asha that was conjuring it.

They had reached a square and Asha had guided her to a decrepit building with scorched windows and bloody walls. It looked like every other building they had passed, but Champ had been placed in a stable at the back, where Asha had promised he would be safe, and
Beauty had followed her down a hidden flight of stairs at the side of the torn structure to a small basement full of boxes and tables.

“What is this?” she asked as the oil lamp’s dim light lit the room.

“This is where we meet. It is a safe house, and others will join us shortly.”

Beauty faced the woman who claimed to be her mother. She had nothing and everything to say to her at once, but right then, she could only stare. Asha looked like a typical Pervoroccian. There was something of Ma Dane about her features, but she could not be more different from Beauty.

“I suspect you are wondering why you have never met me before?”

“That and many other things.”

Asha’s brown eyes searched Beauty’s silvery face and there was sorrow in their depths.

“It . . . it takes my breath away to see you,” she admitted. “You look so much like your father; it is uncanny. I have not seen him since your birth.”

“And who is my father?” Beauty was surprised that she could speak at all. Her throat felt dry and tight.

“You have not met him? I was sure he would come to see you by now.”

“I have never met either of my parents. One stands before me now but—”

“You do not believe me?”

“It is hard to believe.”

Asha sat in a wooden chair, motioning for Beauty to join her, but she kept her distance instead.

“You are stubborn and you get that from him,” said Asha. “I know many things about you that only your mother would. I know that you dream at night and that your dreams come true. I know that you are a House of Rose by birth and that makes you strong and
proud. I know that you are the daughter of a sorcerer and a foreteller and that you can do extraordinary things.”

“That proves very little.”

“You have never dreamt of me?”

Beauty felt instinctively that she had. Asha’s voice was familiar to her and so was the outline of her face, but she would not admit it.

“I have no mother,” she said. “I was born in a paupers’ hospital and my mother was not there. She abandoned me.”

“It had to be that way, Beauty. That is how I dreamt it—you can understand that, surely? When you dream it, it has to happen.”

“And did I have to grow up in cruelty? Did I have to flee Sago for my life? Did Ma Dane have to die?”

At the mention of her sister, Asha’s face went pale.

“I do not see everything,” she whispered. “I am not as powerful as you.”

“What makes you think that I am so powerful?”

“It is your birthright and it is written in scripture, but I do not need to know it for I can see it. You are glowing before my eyes. He does that sometimes, when he has cast an enchantment.”

Beauty thought of the castle and Beast.

“I have . . . I have cast no enchantments,” she said.

“You will do it without realizing.”

Beauty remembered standing in the temple, struggling against Eli’s grasp. She remembered the rifle in her hands though she did not remember taking it from him.

“You have the power to do everything that I can do and more,” continued Asha. “You have the power of a sorcerer.”

Beauty placed her hand on a table to steady herself.

“Whatever is happening to me now, I did not cast it. I have come from a castle in a forest and this is not my enchantment, it is not something that I have—”

There was the sound of footsteps on the stairs and she stopped.

“Do not fear,” said Asha. “It is safe. Those are friends.”

The door opened and several men and women hurried into the room. They were of various ages and ethnicity and they regarded Beauty with interest.

“I did not think that she would really come,” said one.

“I did, I dreamt it,” said another.

Beauty fidgeted under their gazes and felt beads of sweat trickle down her back. It was even hotter down here than it was in the boiling streets. She wished that she could go to the stable and be with Champ.

“Let me explain,” said Asha, trying to take her hand, but Beauty would not let her.