The Hollow Heart by Marie Rutkoski

NIRRIM

I STAND IN THE GREATdining hall of the orphanage where I grew up, where Raven abandoned me after the death of my mother, her sister. Considering how fuzzy memories are for normal humans—fragmented, half imagined, colored by the emotions of the current moment—I assume that humans do not experience the vertigo I sometimes feel when a memory rises within me, sharp and real, just as though it were still happening, and lives alongside the present. Once, I sat on that wooden stool at that long wooden table—my body small, my eyes big, my limbs as quiet as possible so that I would not get in trouble. Once, I reached across that table for my tin bowl full of rice—and, on special days, fish. A High-Kith girl sits there now, just as quietly as I did … and even more afraid.

Even though all the girls are dressed in the same sand-colored wincey dresses, it is easy to tell the orphaned High-Kith children from the orphans who have lived here since being abandoned, as I was abandoned, in one of the baby boxes outside the orphanage’s door. My children have wise faces. My children look at me with fascination and hope, because they have already heard of my great feats.

The other children look upon me with dread, because they have heard the same thing. They study me warily. Their gazes dart over Aden and a few godling children I have personally selected for this event. We are stunning: I in my Elysium-colored silks, the bird resting on my shoulder, Aden in cloth-of-gold, and the children in shades of the sea, to represent our triumph over the islands we have conquered to the west of Herrath.

The headmistress claps her hands. “Children, kneel before your benefactor, our savior: Queen Nirrim.”

They do, dropping from their stools to kneel upon the gray stone floor.

I walk down the aisle, my silk dress hissing over the stones, Aden beside me, the godling children fanning behind. With pleasure, I note the Half-Kith children who turn worshipful eyes to me. I understand that not all the children gathered here do the same. Some of them stare at the floor. Of course they are ashamed. Their parents were traitors to our divine blood. Their parents were criminals, descendants of the acolytes of the god of thieves, who employed them to build the wall around my people and make them forget their power. These children are lucky they have been spared by my people—more, they are lucky that they have been taken from their old lives, where they would have been ignorant of their own privilege. Now, they have the chance to be part of my new world.

I stop and place a hand on the shoulder of Tarah, the plain girl who can create beauty. Her oval face is serious, her gray eyes so pale they look like water. One might not think she would be useful in our conquest of the first island of an archipelago we learned was called the Cayn Saratu. But when our ships landed on the shore, she painted all of us with awe-inspiring splendor, so that the Caynish soldiers who had come to beat us back faltered, suddenly loath to attack. Those who would easily crush a spider will not kill a butterfly. “Show the children,” I say, and her power spins radiantly from her, casting rainbows. She turns tin bowls into gold, transforms the wincey dresses into silks. It is all an illusion, and will fade, but the orphans gasp. Aden casts a shower of light over the hall, golden droplets sprinkling over everyone.

I say, “My children—for you are all my children now, no matter how you were born—we have come with a message of hope. Would you like to be able to wield the power we do? My Elysium will discover who among you has been blessed by the gods.”

“Oh,” a brown-haired girl says, her word a little cry of disappointment. “I wish it could be me!”

“But it could be,” I say gently.

“I would know if I could do something like this.” She trails her fingers through a veil of Aden’s sunshine.

“I didn’t know,” Aden says, and although he is playing his role perfectly, his handsome face encouraging, I don’t like that he has stepped into a conversation that was mine.

Smoothly, I say, “The ability to use magic seems to rely on you knowing that you can.”

A small High-Kith girl places a tentative hand over her heart, the gesture all of us in the orphanage were trained to use if we wished to ask a question.

She is not to blame for her parents, Other Nirrim says.

I know that.

Be kind to her.

I have already been kind to her.

By having her parents executed?

For crimes they committed against us, I remind Other Nirrim. I tell her, It is a kindness to raise the girl in a new way: with the right guidance, the right ideals.

Other Nirrim says, You sound like Raven.

This makes me so angry that I frighten the girl by the expression that must twist across my face. It is unfair for Other Nirrim to suggest that I am manipulating truths to make everything the way I wish it to be—that I, like Raven, would punish anyone who might interfere with those lies.

Isit unfair?

I wipe my expression clean and smile brightly. “Yes?” I say to the High-Kith girl who wishes to ask a question.

“When can I go home?”

“You are home. These are your sisters. Your teachers are your mothers. And I am a very special mother to you, as your queen.”

“But I miss my old home,” the girl whispers.

“Your new one is better.”

Another girl pats her chest, eager to speak. She looks typically High Kith, in that way we call Old Herrath, with thick black hair and silvery eyes. When I call upon her, she says, “Will your Elysium try me? Please? I want to see if I have magic!”

Other girls cry out, eager for the same. I smile indulgently, and begin to speak when Aden says, “Of course, little one.” He lifts the Elysium from my shoulder, which, although it squawks, lets him handle it. Maybe the bird is attracted to his god-blood. Maybe the bird cannot help this betrayal of me, but I fume at Aden. He is supposed to be here as my second-in-command, as my loyal officer, not to speak and act as though he were my equal.

As though he were king, Other Nirrim warns.

In the midst of girls crying out to be first, the shy brown-haired girl, still sitting on her stool although others have leapt to their feet, places her hand again over her heart. She says, “Where are my parents?”

I do not know, but before I can speak, Aden says, “You will see them one day.”

This is a midnight lie, because even if her parents are dead, the girl will one day see them in the realm of the gods.

Reassured, the girl touches a spoon, her fingers passing through the rainbow puddle that sits in its bowl, and smiles.

I feel a twinge in my chest. The sensation is strange, because I do not think I am affected by a real feeling. Why should I care if Aden lied and the girl believed it, beyond caring that he has overstepped with me? No, it feels as though I have a muscle memory of an emotion I would have felt if I were Other Nirrim. The emotion steals over me like a phantom. My memory is so perfect that it seems able to conjure an emotion I did feel in the past, and would have felt, if I were the person I once was.

There it is again: a squeeze between my ribs.

Guilt.

Abruptly, I leave the dining hall, my godlings stumbling after me as I hurry, surprised. The Elysium bird flies ahead.

I don’t actually feel guilty. I have been tricked—worse, tricked by myself. Why must I be haunted by a shadow emotion, a guilt that isn’t even real, but only a memory of insipid Other Nirrim?

Outside, in the courtyard that separates the girls’ wing of the orphanage from the boys’, I tell my godlings—Aden, too—to leave me alone. But while the gifted children I rescued from the Keepers Hall obey, Aden steps in front of me, his blue eyes bright—probably because he senses he has gained some advantage.

“Stop getting in my way,” I tell him.

“We need to go back. We are here to recruit more children to our cause. We have a job to finish.”

“You do not command me.”

“Because you are queen?” He draws the last word out in a sneering tone. His eyes are bright with something else now, something that looks like vengeance. “You are queen only because you say so, and enough people in Ethin agree. But not everyone does. Some people think that we would be better ruled by a king.”

I should not have brought him to Cayn Saratu. His ability to create fire from the heat of sunlight was useful in beating back the Caynish defenses, but I am well aware of the whispers that it was he who won the battle. I should have guessed that my people, so starved of agency throughout most of their lives, would be drawn to the showy nature of his power. They do not realize how it fades quickly and leaves him exhausted, far more tired than I feel when I use my magic. If anything, I grow less tired the more I practice the skill, building my strength as though it were a muscle. But the Ward adored Aden even before I revealed the city’s past. Everyone thought he was special just because of how he looked.

He says, “I did everything you asked, even when you treated me like your servant. I have been patient. I have helped you.”

“Because helping me served you. Who would you be, without me?”

“A lot happier, probably. Nirrim, you once loved me.”

“I assure you I did not.”

“We had something special,” he says doggedly. “You let yourself be fooled by that foreign girl, but where is she now?”

The memory of sugar and perfume burns my tongue. Sid’s skin sliding over mine. The buttons on her jacket, her trousers. My serious little moonbeam, she called me.

“Here I am, right by your side,” Aden says. “I have always been here for you.”

“Yes, like a barnacle on a boat.”

“You should reconsider how cold you are to me. How disdainful. There is something wrong with you, that you would treat me like this. No one else does.”

“I am not to blame for the stupidity of others.”

“Marry me, Nirrim.”

I laugh, the sound sharp, echoing around the stone courtyard.

He says, “I won’t ask you again.”

“Thank the gods.”

He seizes my wrist, his hand hot.

“You asked me before,” I say, my voice deliberately bored. “I said no. My answer is still no, and will always be no.”

“Because I’m not a woman?”

“That is one of many very good reasons.”

“It’s not normal.”

“Well, it should be.”

“It is against the will of the gods.”

“The original gods are gone, and you have no idea what the pantheon believed. I am a god, and you must let me go. Find another girl to love.”

“Oh, I don’t love you. Not anymore. I just think we should give our people what they want. You have even encouraged them to want it.”

“A pretty tale of the perfect king and queen? That was all for show. Too bad, Aden, that I have no interest in sharing power with you.”

His hand grows hotter. Soon, I know, he will burn like a brand. “You have no choice. Marry me, or I will rise up against you.”

He thinks he threatens me, but he has forgotten that my skin has a power of its own. I push my magic to where he touches me, and make him remember, as though it were freshly happening, all the times he kissed me and I did not like it, when I went to bed with him out of obligation, when I resented his possessiveness. His expression tightens. Then, because I feel I have not hurt him enough, I make him remember how his mother abandoned him, how she tried to leave Ethin and was executed for it. I used to console Aden, saying she probably chose not to take him with her out of fear that if she were caught, he would be punished along with her, but now I make him remember that I was not sure this was true, and that I wondered if in fact she sought to escape the burden of him.

“Nirrim,” he gasps.

And then, because he has threatened the only thing I care about—my rule, my mission to make the world fair for all—I torment him with a false memory of his skin so hot that it burns like flame. I turn his power against him. He cries out in agony, and drops my hand.

“Only fools warn their enemies they are ready to strike,” I tell him, and leave the courtyard, my wide-eyed train of god-blooded children scuttling behind.

“My queen?”

It is Mere, my loyal handmaiden, hands folded neatly as she waits. Other queens might have ordered their handmaidens to wear no finery, but I allow her the dresses I know she enjoys, the styling of her hair in the fashion to which she is accustomed. After all, we are friends.

My Elysium chirps from its perch on a bedpost. This bedchamber used to belong to the god of thieves. I find it fitting to sleep here, in what used to be the Keepers Hall. If this bed was good enough for an old god, it is good enough for a new one.

“Morah wishes to see you,” Mere says.

I sigh impatiently. These relics of Other Nirrim’s life are bothersome. Still, I have decided—and announced—that even those with no god-blood have an honored place in Ethin. I must, since the ordinary humans outnumber the god-blooded. Morah could be useful, if she decides to show her loyalty to me. I tell Mere to send her in.

When Morah enters, Mere leaves the two of us alone, aside from the Elysium, who trills at her appearance. “Sister,” I say, and kiss her cheek. “Have you come to live at the palace with me?”

She pulls away. “No.”

“Don’t be shy. You are always welcome, you and Annin. The Ward knows that we love one another. Everyone will be happy to see us together again. Our little family.”

“Except Raven,” Morah says, “whom you murdered.”

“I did not do that. An angry mob did.” The Elysium flies to my shoulder, digging in its little green claws. “Don’t forget what she did to you.”

“Nirrim, you are not yourself.”

“I am better than myself.”

“Tell me what has made you like this. You are … some horrible copy of Nirrim. The Nirrim I know never would have hurt Raven, no matter what Raven had done.”

“Is that why you are here? To try to turn me back into a weak girl everyone treated badly?”

“I didn’t.”

The Elysium cocks its head, peering at her.

“I know,” I say, “which is why I am ready to give you a place of honor by my side. You and Annin. All you must do is swear your loyalty.”

“I am being loyal, by telling you that there is something wrong with you. I want to help you.”

I smirk at the idea that I need help. Then the Elysium launches from my shoulder with such suddenness that I feel its claws slice my skin. The bird flies to Morah’s shoulder, singing.

Suddenly, I realize that the Elysium has never been in Morah’s close presence before.

I have never tested her with the bird.

The Elysium, who tasted the blood of Discovery, the god who could sense the divine gift lurking in the bodies of the half-gods, sees something immortal in Morah. Her gray eyes widen. “Morah,” I say, delighted, heedless of the blood dampening my shoulder and the pain from the bird’s talons, “you are one of us!”

She backs away.

“What is your gift?” I ask. “Usually, once the awareness that we are gifted fills us, we know exactly what we can do. Tell me.”

She shakes her head, her expression filled with wonder and alarm. She knows. I know she knows. She has felt the knowledge well up inside her.

“Don’t be afraid,” I say, annoyed now. “You are late to the knowledge, but that is fine. The important thing is that you can truly join our cause now. Just tell me what you can do.”

“No.”

“This is foolish. Why not?”

“I don’t want to be used by you.”

Some people cannot seize an opportunity when it is right in front of their faces. I touch her hand. When she doesn’t pull away, I slip a little of my power into her. False memories always take more energy, but I strengthen my gift and push it through her mind. “Morah, you wanted to tell me. In fact, you have already told me.”

“I did not.”

I frown. No one has resisted me before. I must be more tired, my energy lower than I thought. “Morah, you were so excited by the awareness of your god-blooded gift that after you told me, you decided to tell me again, for the sheer joy of it. Go ahead, and tell me again now.”

She wrenches away. “No,” she says, and runs from the room.

I run after her. We were never wild girls, growing up together. A few years older than me, she always held herself sternly, which made me feel that I had to do the same. We never played games, for fear that Raven would punish us. We never ran, so I do not know who is the swiftest. But as I careen down the palace halls, never quite catching up with the flag of her black hair, my jeweled slippers slapping against the marble floor, I push myself to my limit and it is not enough, even though the distance between us narrows.

What is her gift? What could make her impervious to me? How could she resist me?

I must know.

I call to the Middling guards to stop her, but in a fresh burst of speed, she plunges outside. I am ready to follow, satisfied now, because surely she will be stopped on the street.

A heavy hand falls upon my bleeding shoulder. I am spun around as though I were a toy, a little rag doll.

It is Aden. One of his hands still grips me. In the other, he holds a knife. “Only fools don’t heed warnings,” he says, and brings the knife down.