I looked back at the Academy before I joined the line.
I had not done so before. There had been no occasion. I had walked into this place under guard and under bracers, and my marks made into colors that were not mine, and I had not left it since. I left it now with my forearms bare. The black ran down my right and the white ran down my left, plain for any eye that cared to look, and most eyes that passed cared to look.
Days, the old man had said. You may have only days now.
A Queen does not count days. I counted them regardless. This was the first.
I turned from the large central building. Sol rode between my horns, her head turning in quick abrupt motions as she surveyed the courtyard and found it, I was certain, wanting. She let out a small chirp. Through the bond came something bright and grasping. Curiosity. She wished to see what lay beyond these walls that had comprised the entirety of her short life.
The line at the gate was long. Students filed toward it in twos and threes, and at its front two guards stood checking small silver medallions before waving each group through. The line moved slowly, too slowly. It was not the first line I had ever stood in, but it was certainly the most annoying.
"Why," I said, "does the strongest not simply move first?"
Ash looked at me. "What?"
"It is a matter of simple sense. My time is worth more than the whole of everyone ahead of me, summed together. It follows that I should stand at the front. That anyone should stand ahead of me at all is an offense against reason." Sol chirped from atop my head. At least she understood the natural order.
"That's not really how any lines work, Lys," Ash said. "You stood in the mess hall just fine."
"There was a purpose to that waiting."
Edda glanced back at us. "You don't all need one of those, if that's what you're wondering," she said, nodding at a girl who flashed a medallion at the gate and passed through. "It's for groups. Unless you plan to go out alone, one is enough for a really big group. Course they have to go and come back together then."
Ren was currently spinning one of the silver medallions around her finger. "Then why do you have two?" I asked, pointing at Ren.
Ren’s face flushed. Her spinning stopped. "It’s backup, obviously!"
Ash looked from the medallion to Ren. She had been frowning at it since we joined the line. "And you're sure this was the Archon's idea?"
"It was my idea," Ren said, jabbing a thumb at her own chest. "I just went and asked him first, since y’know. You did that thing yesterday." Ren pointed a finger at me. "He said it was probably fine. We just had to stay in the inner ring." She paused. Her brow furrowed. "He said it kind of weird though. Never know what that old man is thinking."
Probably fine. I had not thought the Archon a man who dealt in probablies.
Corin was looking at my forearms. "Still can't believe you were hiding the color," he said quietly.
Edda elbowed him. "Hey," she hissed, low enough that she likely believed I could not hear. I might not have, if we had not been standing so close. "We said we wouldn't ask her."
Corin flushed. "I wasn't asking. I just said I couldn't believe it." The boy protested a touch more loudly.
I turned my arms, watching white and black catch the light. They knew enough to know the colors were not ordinary. The Archon had said that few knew the significance of these colors, but even a fool could see that any color worth hiding had a certain significance. They had questions. Many, judging from the looks that passed between them, and they had decided among themselves not to ask those questions yet. Retainers who pried into their Queen’s secrets were no retainers at all. Perhaps these demonbloods had more sense than I had initially assumed.
An Inker across the courtyard had stopped to stare at my arms. She stared for so long, and so without motion, that for a moment I took her for a statue erected in poor taste. It seemed some people did know the significance, and for them the hiding had only made it worse. How strange, that the qualities of all the looks change yet again in the span of a single day.
The long line inched forward.
"And just where do you five presume to be going?"
I turned. Alisa Wulfram stood a few paces off with her arms folded and her chin raised. She met my gaze, huffed, and looked pointedly away, at nothing, as though she had merely happened to be standing here and the question had escaped her by accident.
"Where we are going," I said, "is none of your concern."
"I did not say it was. I only happened to observe a suspicious gathering of students leaving the Academy with no apparent supervision."
"I do not require your supervision, girl," I said. The concept was so baffling I wondered if this Alisa wanted a place as my court jester.
Ash leaned in close to me. "I think she wants to come along," she murmured.
Ren must have caught it, for her head whipped around. "You can't be serious. She sure doesn't look like it and we just got to the gate."
I looked at Alisa again. She was watching us out of the corner of her eye, and pretending very hard that she was not. "And how would you know the workings of her mind?" I asked Ash.
Ash looked from Alisa to me then back to Alisa. "Experience helps."
I did not understand what she meant by that, and she did not explain it. The line moved, and a guard raised one impatient hand.
"Very well," I said, turning back to Alisa. "If you wish to accompany me on this excursion, then you may. I permit it."
"Accompany you? Permit it?" Alisa's neck went pink. "I intend no such thing. I merely find myself walking in the same direction, and might find myself walking in said direction for a while longer and-"
"You better not be too annoying, Princess!" Ren called, shaking a fist.
"I am not a Princess-"
We finally reached the end of the line. The guard glanced at the medallion Ren held out, gave each of us a long, discerning look. Mine and Sol's were the longest. We stepped out of the gate and into Koralis, while Alisa was still left protesting a few paces behind us.
The upper ring of Koralis was as I remembered it, and it was not. The near-white stone was the same. The masterwork fountain was the same, though someone had wound flowered wreaths through its tiers. What had changed was the quantity of people. There were almost more of them than the wide streets were built to hold. Many were students, clad in the same grey uniforms we ourselves wore. Many were not.
Music came from everywhere at once, from strings and from drums and from voices lifted in songs I did not know. Banners hung between the rooftops in insignias I could not recognize. The air smelled of smoke, sweet fruit, roasting meat, and entirely too many people. It was more pleasant than I would have expected.
People wore painted wooden masks pushed atop their heads. Children ran past with cloth dragons on sticks, their wings flapping when the children pulled a cord. Lanterns were strung everywhere, some of them already lit as the daylight had slowly started to give in. We had spent some time in the resonance chamber today.
The first time I had come to this place, I had come with my arms hidden, and an egg hidden away inside a satchel. I walked it now bare-armed, with a phoenix on my crown.
"This is Koralis," I told Sol. "The city in which we currently reside. You have not seen these sights before. They are not, I think, worth committing to memory. Perhaps commit something of them anyway."
Sol let out a considering chirp. I reached through the bond and found curiosity flooding back at me, as she craned to take in a juggler tossing knives that trailed sparks. The man had a light-blue line running down his left forearm.
"Does she always talk to Solara like this?" Alisa asked.
"Always," Ash said. "Sol talks back, too."
I ignored them both. A pair of small children had stopped in the middle of the street to point up at Sol, and I heard the smaller one ask his mother something I could not hear over the noise. The mother pointed at me, and I felt she was pointing at my horns. The smaller one’s eyes widened, and his smile faded. He was wise enough to stay where he was, and Sol chirped at him from a distance.
I did not notice, at first, the way Ash drifted a half-step to my side whenever a stranger's gaze lingered too long on my arms. Or on Sol. I only noticed when she made it so obvious she stood directly in front of me and a man whose strange song seemed pointed in my direction. The man’s song had cracked, and he had hurriedly looked away. What the song itself had been was lost to the noise. Ash might have heard, with her senses.
"So what exactly is this a festival for?" Ash asked, as Ren led us deeper in.
"It's to celebrate the first Great Hunt," Corin began. "And to prepare for this year's, so-"
"Nine hundred years ago," Ren cut in, "the Divine killed this enormous dragon that was going to eat the whole world."
Edda frowned. "It wasn't going to eat it. It was going to unmake it."
"How do you know? Were you there?" Ren asked. "If it took the Divine to kill it, it probably was trying to eat the world or something."
"Ren, I know you took the same classes I am right now." Corin sighed. "And it was nine hundred and five years ago."
Alisa made a sharp sound of disgust. "If the two of you are finished murdering the account between you, I shall provide it properly."
Ren pointed at her. "Hey, We were answering!"
Alisa continued over her. "Today marks nine hundred and five years since the Divine slew the great dragon Azael, who would have unmade the world. In her honor, one of the Divine's Three Hands selects a monster infested land each year, and the mark-bearers of the Covenant go forth to cleanse it of whatever evil has taken root. That is the Great Hunt. The festival commemorates the first."
Ren lowered her finger. "Yeah…basically that."
Ash glanced at me. I said nothing. Nine hundred and five years. I had crossed nine hundred and eighty four of them with my mad gambit. Which places the slaying of this Azael some eight decades after my own fall. It was also almost the exact period where the Athenaeum's histories no longer stretched. How convenient, that the world's memory starts so close to this Divine’s great deeds.
From the legend, this Azael must have been an [Elder Dragon], but I knew every Elder Dragon that had ever drawn breath in my age. Many of them had been the direct servants of the Gods, and I had reason to remember which, for I had killed one and wounded others. Ozriel I had slain myself. There had been no Azael. There had never been an Azael. Was this just some fanciful creation myth, or something more? It was impossible to say.
I had lived for a very long time, but I had not been around whenever this supposed great battle had taken place. Still, it would not surprise me to find yet another calling themself holy who was anything but.
Ash was watching my face. I met her eyes, and she gave the smallest of nods. Doubtless she had thought of everything I had. Doubtless she had no more answers than I did.
The street narrowed toward a square where a crowd had gathered before a raised wooden stage. Or what passed for one. Painted cloth hung behind it, showing a palace beneath a white sun.
Upon it stood two figures. The first was a woman painted so white she seemed to shine, in robes of white and gold. The second was a man in resplendent green armor. Or armor that was meant to be resplendent. A determined child with a kitchen knife could have ended him. I had buried better armor beneath an oak in Hamel.
"Hassa," the painted woman cried. Her golden sword shook in her hands. "Would you swing your blade even at me?"
The man staggered. He held a wooden sword in both hands, though his grip had no strength in it. "I did not wish it to be this way, but it has to be so!"
Beside me, Ash went rigid.
"I see," the shining woman said, and her voice was made sad. "So you have made your choice. So hubris has claimed even my most beloved."
The man staggered forward. The woman ran him through with a sword painted gold, and he fell, and the crowd let out a long sigh. Applause broke over the square. Some in the audience cheered. A few openly wept.
Somewhere between one moving body and the next, Ash's hand found mine. Or perhaps mine found hers. Our fingers closed once, briefly. Then the crowd shifted, and our hands were apart.
"Who was Hassa?" Ash asked when the actors rose to bow. Her voice was strained.
Alisa looked genuinely startled. "You do not even know the myths of the founding?"
"Do you always answer a question with a question, girl?" I asked.
Her face reddened. "Hassa was among the Divine's most beloved companions. He fought beside her in the first age of the Covenant. Then pride took him. He turned his sword upon her, and she was forced to slay him herself. It is said she mourned alone for a full year before she returned to the world."
I looked at the painted woman accepting flowers from a child. If we kept asking, Alisa would give me more of this canon. There would be more beloved companions, more betrayals, and likely more sorrow upon which this world was supposedly built. And Ash and I would recognize none of it.
We left the square when the next performance began. The crowd thickened as the sun lowered. Lantern-tenders moved along the streets with hooked poles, touching flame to one colored lantern after another. More and more golden lights lit above us.
Ren had just begun to demand food when I felt a gaze. I had been stared at since we passed the gates. Curiosity had a lightness to it. Fear recoiled even as it looked. Both looks were doubtless for my twin horns. Perhaps some were for Sol, whose small chirping was often lost in the crowd. This did not feel like that.
Atop my head, Sol had gone silent. Her feathers had flattened. Through the bond came a low and wary hum. It was the first true note of threat I had ever felt from her.
I turned. There was the festival crowd, and none of it looked out of place. I saw no face turned too quickly away. I scanned the square once, slowly, and found nothing at all.
"Lys. What is it?" Ash asked by my side.
I looked at her. The Hero’s senses were keener than my own. For her to not feel something that I did was unusual. "I thought I felt-"
"HEY!" Ren bellowed from a food stall, holding something aloft. "Are you two coming or what?!"
We looked at her, then at each other. "I’ll tell you later," I said. Ash gave me a small nod, and we began to walk back towards the small group.
The food was meat, wrapped in a soft bread that broke apart at a touch.
I regarded it with suspicion. I turned it in my hands. What manner of delivery mechanism was this, that folded its contents into a parcel one could carry in a single fist? I bit into it, prepared to find it adequate at best.
It was not adequate. It was among the finest things I had ever eaten. The bread yielded, and the meat within was rich and near to melting, and there were tastes folded through it that bloomed and faded and bloomed again, spiced in a way that delighted the tongue. I ate it, and then I ate another, and I did my best to eat both with the restraint befitting a Queen, and I am not certain I succeeded.
Ash was counting how many I ate. I saw her counting.
"It is good," I told the vendor, a broad woman with flour to her elbows. "I will grant you an honor I have granted few. I shall grant you a position at my court."
"At your what now?" The woman asked.
"My court." I repeated. I did not like repeating myself. I would for one who could be this useful. "It is an honor few have received."
The old woman’s brows furrowed. "She’s uh….she’s just getting into the festival spirit. But she means she likes it." Ash said beside me. The woman slowly nodded, looked at my horns for some reason, and then moved to serve another customer.
It was her loss. Sol had her own strip of meat, which I bathed in the Cradle's white fire. She took it from my hand with a satisfied trill and demanded a second.
Alisa tried to feed her a piece. Sol turned her back. Alisa's chin did not lower by so much as a fraction, though I saw the effort it cost her. Ren tried next, and received a wing across the knuckles for it.
Ren accused Solara bitterly of betrayal, though I was sure the two had sworn no oaths to each other. Ash laughed. Corin fed Sol, and this time she accepted the offering. Edda brushed her wing, and she trilled. They were all small things, I told myself. They did not quite feel it.
When the food was done, Ren approached Ash and pressed the second silver medallion into her hands.
Ash blinked down at it. "Why?"
Ren's face went the exact color of her hair. "So you two can go off on your own."
"Why would we do that?" I asked, genuinely at a loss. "It was your suggestion that I attend this festival at all. What manner of servant brings her Queen to a place and then abandons her there?"
"We are not your s-" Ren closed her mouth and sighed. She leaned in to whisper something in Ash’s ear. Whatever it was, I could not catch it. But the color climbed from Ash's collar to the tips of her ears in the span of a single breath.
"We should go, Lys," Ash said, not meeting my eyes. "They. They have something they need to take care of."
"I, for one, shall choose to accompany the half-demon-" Alisa began.
Ren seized her by the collar and hauled her backward mid-sentence. The four of them retreated into the crowd, Alisa protesting, and the other three all waving. Sol chirped back in farewell. Then they were gone and it was only the two of us.
"They are all very peculiar," I said, watching the place where they had been.
"Yeah," Ash said. "Not in a bad way, though."
"Not in a bad way, perhaps."
The sky had gone dark while we were not watching. The lanterns had all caught now, strung between the buildings in long warm lines, and above them the stars had come out, and the music had not stopped, and would not, it seemed, for hours yet.
Ash gestured at the streets that opened ahead of us "Shall we?" Then something in her went smaller. "It's just us now," she said. "Unless you want to go back. I know you probably don't like this kind of thing." She said it quietly, her shoulders hunching.
I never liked when Ash made herself small. I did not understand why she did it now, over a simple request. I reached out and took Ash's arm. Her arm was warm. It was solid in the way I had known before, and soft above the elbow in a way I had no reason to be noticing. Ash went very still. She looked at me, and her gaze was searching. What she was searching for, I could not say.
"Perhaps," I said, "an hour of indulgence would not be amiss."
Sol chirped approvingly.