The Hollow Heart by Marie Rutkoski

SID

THE WAY WAS ROUGH. The ropes were encased in ice. Sails had to be stowed for every storm, for fear the wind would rip them, and my crew cursed me night and day. Sailing in winter was a reckless idea, but I am full of reckless ideas. There have been enough signs from the gods lately to suggest that I lie to myself a little less, and be the person I am, so I didn’t mind the waves slopping over the deck, because Roshar trusted me not to sink this ship. I didn’t mind the fear that squiggled up my spine, because it made me forget my fear of what would happen when I faced Nirrim.

Eventually, we slid out of the wintry seas and into the balmy waters near Herrath. It was strange, even stranger than the first time I sailed here, because the contrast in climate was so extreme. It was as though a velvet cloak fell down on all our shoulders. The night sky cleared, the stars like specks of shattered glass. When day came, the sun rose as juicy as a yellow plum. My crew didn’t hate me quite so much anymore, at least until they wearied of the heat.

Then the horizon shifted, its indigo line revealing Herrath and its shallow violet waters. We anchored in the bay. I stowed my gun in the captain’s quarters and dressed in my finest, changing one sleeveless jacket for the next, tugging on linen trousers and then deciding they were too loose, too informal, so I put on a different, tightly woven pair that I thought gave me more swagger, never mind the heat. I wanted to look sharp: crisp and new, like fresh paper. My fingers trembled as they fumbled with buttons. So what if it was too hot for boots? I liked that they gave me yet more height, and that when I walked, everyone could hear me coming. I yanked them on and belted my dagger at my hip. Would Nirrim like the way I looked? My hair was shorter than ever. In a fit of impatience during the journey, I had cut it into a more severe style. I wasn’t sure why, except that Nirrim had often accused me of being serious about nothing, and I wanted to show her I was serious about her. There was no logic to that. If anything, I was acting out of fitful anxiety. Afterward, though, I could see in the mirror how clean my face looked, how the bones of it were more prominent, and grew calmer to see reflected a face that matched the one in my mind. It was a comfort to know that I looked on the outside exactly how I saw myself on the inside.

I took one last look in the mirror before I left the ship. What kind of face was this? A boylike girl with dark eyes. Tight expression. Anticipatory. I felt my father’s hand on my cheek. It is a brave face, he said, and it didn’t matter that those words weren’t real, that I was imagining them, because I knew that what I imagined was real. What I imagined was exactly what he would say.

“Oh, it’s you,” says the boy on the pier. My apprentice spy, Killian, has grown at least an inch since I left. “From the green flags on that odd, narrow ship, I thought that scary friend of yours had returned.”

“Roshar is not scary.” I climb out of the launch I rowed from where the ship lies anchored in deeper waters.

“He looks like he’d gut you with a sword if you insulted him.”

“Now, that is true.” I have slipped easily into Killian’s language, and it is nice to speak it again, to feel its quick pace, how the m’s are shorter, so that Amma, in my language, becomes Ama in Herrath. I hand Killian a gold coin. It is stamped with the sign of the god of death, but it never mattered that Herrani currency isn’t the same as the local one. Gold is gold, and mine was always welcome here. Killian once readily accepted my coins, but now he hesitates, and when I say, “Any news from my young spy?” he hands the gold coin back and says, “I don’t think I should tell you.”

I straighten my collar, fidgeting in surprise. “Why not?” Sudden worry rushes into me. “Did something happen to Nirrim?”

“Um …”

“Tell me.”

“I might get in trouble.”

“Why?” My pulse riots in my throat. Nirrim wanted to stage a revolution against Herrath’s ruling class. I didn’t consider that she might have actually tried, that revolution could come so quickly—which was stupid of me, given my own background. The revolution might not have been of Nirrim’s doing. Maybe the rumors of the cruel black-haired queen are true, and Nirrim has fallen victim to her. Has she been imprisoned? Hurt? My mind swallows the next question, refusing to let me even consider it.

No, not dead. Nirrim cannot be dead.

“You must tell me,” I say. “Is Nirrim all right?”

“I guess?”

Somewhat reassured, I say, “Take me to my house. You can explain along the way.”

His gray eyes widen. “Oh no. I’m trying to escape her notice. She said she wanted me to visit and tell her all about you. No, thank you. I am hoping she has forgotten about me. Has bigger fish to fry, and all that. She likes your house. She goes there sometimes. I say we avoid it, because the gods only know what she thinks about you right now. Maybe you want to get back on that ship of yours. This city has changed a lot.”

“Whose notice? Who are we talking about?”

“Nirrim. Uh, Queen Nirrim.”

“Queen?”

He winces, his mouth somewhere between a grimace and a smile as he peers up at me. “Yes?”

“Why are you making your answers into questions? Either she is all right, or she isn’t. Either she is queen, or she is not.” I now wholly doubt the accuracy of the gossip I read in the Valorian ambassador’s secret letter about the black-haired Herrath queen who invaded the Cayn Saratu. If that was Nirrim—though how can it be? How could she have become queen?—she would never do such a thing. I am very confused.

Killian holds up his hands in mock surrender. “I don’t want to make anyone mad. I’m just trying to avoid a short trip to the red agora.” This makes no sense at all to me. I think maybe he has used an idiom in his language that I haven’t yet learned. “If you want to see her, go to what used to be the Keepers Hall. It’s her palace now. But I don’t think that’s so smart. No, I don’t want your gold. And no, I’m not going to explain anything else. Let Nirrim do the talking.”

I suspect that Killian must be playing a prank on me. He was a wonderful, natural-born spy, but sometimes he passed me information that was pure invention, just to fool me and laugh when I found out the truth. He is a boy after my own heart. I can’t imagine that Nirrim is queen, but I also believe he would tell me if she was in danger. It occurs to me that maybe Nirrim has told him to warn me away from her if I returned. I feel myself deflate, my posture sag. “She is probably angry with me. I left suddenly. She expected I would stay longer.”

Killian makes that grimace again. “She’s mad? Sid, remember when I said you should get back on your boat? Remember how recognizable you are? No one here looks like you. The moment you step into the city, everybody is going to gossip, and then she will find out, and—”

“Thanks, Killian,” I call over my shoulder, already walking toward the city. Of course Nirrim is angry with me. She should be. But maybe I can make things right.

What Killian said is true.

At least, it seems to be true.

Ethin has changed. In the distance, where the wall should be, there is nothing. Several High-Kith mansions lie in ruins. People notice me as my pace quickens through the High quarter. Whispers carry on the warm breeze. I hasten to the Keepers Hall, and when I arrive outside its doors I am stopped by guards—not Council guards, but men dressed in new livery, in red with a green chevron on each shoulder. Above the hall, a white flag snaps, an Elysium bird emblazoned on its standard.

“Princess Sidarine of Herran?” the guard asks.

“I’m here to see Nirrim. Is she here?”

“The queen said to bring you straight to her.”

I still can’t quite believe that Nirrim would be queen. It is not that I doubt Nirrim’s ability to foment the revolution she wanted, or to gain power if she wished it, but … she was not power hungry. She was ambitious on behalf of her people, not herself. Such ambition would not be wrong, necessarily, and I could see why someone who had grown up without power would want it. Nirrim would rule wisely, gently. But I am surprised, even wary. Questing to govern wasn’t in Nirrim’s character. Did someone force her into this position? Who attacked the Cayn Saratu?

I am led into a reception chamber where, at the end of a long, shining, echoing floor that seems covered invisibly with my shock, as though by a cloak of cold water, is Nirrim. She sits on a pink marble throne, her dress a torrent of green silk, her hair braided into a black crown. She wears jewelry: diamonds earrings and a matching crescent necklace, though at second glance I wonder if the jewels are indeed diamonds. They seem to have a slight glow, the way a full moon has a hazy halo. Her manner is one of ease, even amusement. She looks perfectly at home on her throne. “Leave us,” she says, and the guards disappear, shutting the tall double doors behind them. We are alone, and everything Killian said is true.

“Nirrim?” My voice is incredulous. I am far away, but I think I see her full mouth twitch in a smile. “Only you may call me that,” she says. “I have always loved the sound of my name on your lips. Did you know I was named after a rose-colored cloud, the kind that brings good fortune? My good fortune has come to pass.”

Encouraged, I draw closer. She doesn’t seem angry, and I am so relieved that she is whole and unharmed, even smiling. “Are you truly a queen? How?” I stand right before her now, but she does not stir from her throne.

“My people needed me. They wanted me.”

“You were—” I don’t know the Herrath word for elected, the way Valorians choose their magister. “Chosen?”

“Yes.” She has always been luminous, but now her beauty radiates from her. I can tell she is no longer shy about it, that she knows now exactly how she can enchant someone. Me. And I am happy for her, even as fear grows within me that maybe I was right all along, that I was not enough. Look at her. She is how I’ve always imagined the gods.

Her jade-colored eyes narrow. “You left me.”

“I’m sorry. I had to. But I came back. I’m here.”

“To be with me?”

“Yes, Nirrim, if you will let me.”

“You said you loved me, that final night.”

“I meant it. I mean it.” I bite my lip so hard I taste blood. I am ready to beg, I want so badly to hear her say that she feels the same way, but she lifts her palm, silk sleeve cascading down to her elbow. The words catch in my throat. She rises and leaves her throne to stand before me. Relief flows into my bones, because her eyes hold something I recognize well: desire.

“Do you want me?” she says.

“Yes,” I whisper.

“Will you take me?”

I reach for her, my fingers spanning her soft face, thumb pressed against her mouth. “I will do anything for you.”

Her mouth parts beneath my thumb, and she leans into me. “Will you give yourself to me?” she murmurs into my ear. “Are you mine?”

“Yes,” I say, and she kisses me, fingers skidding down my back, pressing me down, eager.

The marble floor is cold beneath me. It rings, the whole room echoing, as she kisses me again, and I cry out at the pleasure she gives me.

Afterward, when I lift the puddle of green silk from the glossy white floor, to help Nirrim into her dress, something crackles within the fabric. Having already witnessed a dangerous surprise hidden in one dress, I carefully reach into the folds until I find the source of the sound: a folded sheet of paper. From the floor, Nirrim watches me, eyes heavy-lidded. “You are taking liberties,” she says, but in a throaty way, a mock warning that really means, I think, that I have made her happy, that she is luxuriating in what has just happened, and is proposing a kind of game. I don’t unfold the paper, but lean down to kiss her neck. “Should I make it up to you?” I murmur against her throat.

“Yes.”

I continue to kiss her. “How?”

She grasps the collar of my undone tunic. “Never leave me.” Her voice has gone suddenly clear and hard. I pull away to study her. “I won’t,” I say gently. “I’m sorry I did. I had to see my mother, but I should have promised to return.”

“Yes, we need to talk about your mother.”

I frown, surprised at her brusque tone. Perhaps she just wants to make certain my mother is well. I am about to reply when she takes the dress from my hand and the fabric knocks the folded page from my loose grasp onto the floor. I stoop for it, and see that it bears my handwriting in Herrani. “It’s the letter I wrote to you, long ago.” I am touched that she has kept it, even though, with her perfect memory, she would have been able to see the page in her mind’s eye, despite not being able to understand a language she had never learned. “Would you like me to translate it for you?”

“No, that’s not necessary.” She has pulled on the dress. “Fasten the buttons in the back.”

I do as she asks, a little hurt that she isn’t interested in the letter’s contents. I would have liked to read it to her, to let her know how tormented I was by my desire for her, and the certainty that she didn’t return it. It would have been nice to relish, with her, how different things are now. “Why did you keep the letter?” I neaten my clothes, too, pulling on my trousers, tucking in my tunic.

She considers the question briefly, her expression uncertain, then shrugs. “Habit, I suppose.”

“Nirrim, are you still angry with me?”

“No. You have proven yourself worthy of me.”

I think she must be making an odd sort of joke, and decide to go along. “I am relieved.”

“You should be.” She settles back on her throne.

“You know, there isn’t actually a place for me to sit.”

“Well, you can’t sit beside me. The tree said that I must rule alone.” She pauses after this strange statement, anxiety flickering across her face. “Maybe the tree is wrong. You may sit on the floor, across from me, while we talk.”

I ignore this—another joke?—and remain standing, belting on my dagger. Apprehension rustles through me, and I’m glad for the heavy, reassuring weight of my dagger at my hip. I feel at sea, unable to understand Nirrim’s mood, her words. “Tree?”

“Now: your parents.” Her left palm folds around her right fist. “I have decided to avenge you.”

“For … what?”

“For how your parents treated you.” The fingertips of her left hand ripple along the knuckles of her other hand. The hazy delight from a few moments ago has vanished from her face, which seems tighter, full of tense, hard lines. Her eyes are livid jewels. “You told me exactly how it was. They wanted to force you to marry a man, simply for their own benefit. I assume it was a political decision. Well, we don’t need kings and queens like that in this world.”

“That’s not actually how it was,” I hastily say, unsettled by the word avenge. “I misunderstood them. And I … made them misunderstand me. I claimed to want the engagement. I lied.”

“That makes no sense.”

“I was afraid.”

“You are never afraid.”

“Nirrim, I am.”

“Of what?”

“Of you. That you will turn from me.”

She smiles. “That, I understand.”

“Are you still angry with me?”

“You have never earned my anger.”

Reassured, I say, “I was afraid that my parents wouldn’t love me as I am.”

“Yet you defend them?”

“It was my fear. I created it.”

“Impossible. This was their doing.”

I struggle to explain. Nirrim’s fierce protectiveness feels good, but I can’t seem to make her see that it is unnecessary. “What they did, they did not mean.”

“How convenient. You sound like Other Nirrim.”

“Other Nirrim?”

“Who I was when you met me. The way I used to explain away what Raven did to me.”

“She abused you. This is different.”

“I understand. You want too badly to excuse them. Let me help you, Sid. They can never be forgiven for how they made you feel. And if they treat you, their only child, this way, how must they be to their subjects? Tyrants, I am sure.”

While in more resentful moments I have blamed my parents for becoming the monarchs my country wanted them to be, they have always ruled wisely and well. “Herran loves them.”

She cocks her head, looking strangely disappointed. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.” There is an oddness to Nirrim, something hard and locked in tight, like a dog’s jaws around someone’s hand. Before, she was not so quick to leap to judgment or condemnation. I try to be as clear as I can. “Nirrim, the engagement is over. My parents want my happiness. It is all they have ever wanted.”

“Oh.”

“They wish to meet you.”

“Of course. But will I wish to meet with them? A king and queen they may be, but they are still mere mortals. Sid, you must tell me all you know about Herran: its agriculture, its exports, the fortifications of its city.”

My building unease suddenly solidifies into a cold stone in my belly. I don’t understand what is wrong with Nirrim, but something is. I recognize full well that she seeks the information someone would use to mount an invasion. I glance around the sleek throne room, looking for an exit, but the doors are closed, and it feels like I am trapped inside a white egg. A sickening dread unspools inside me. I remember Killian’s warning to return to my ship. There was no mistake in the Valorian ambassador’s letter about the Cayn Saratu. The confusion I experienced earlier falls away, showing that I was confused only because I had not wanted to understand. The cruel black-haired queen who had captured the islands was Nirrim, and no one else.

“I could make you remember,” Nirrim says.

My hand wants to close around the hilt of my dagger, but I know a little about Nirrim’s magic. She could manipulate my memories so that I would believe that I had dropped my weapon, and then would drop it. She can present a liar’s version of the past, and make people believe it so securely that it becomes the present.

Even if she couldn’t, how could I ever use my dagger against her? Carefully, I say, “May I tell you later? My journey was hard.”

“I could taste the salt of the sea on you,” she acknowledges, and the memory of what we did moments ago feels so far away, so disjointed from my vision of her now, that it hurts. There she is, high up on her throne, eyes as green as snakeskin. Again choosing my words as though handling blackpowder near fire, I say, “I need to rest. My mind isn’t clear. I will tell you all you want to know after I sleep. Even if you, ah, helped me remember, I am so weary that I don’t think the information I could share would be accurate.”

Her hands shift to rest upon the arms of her pink throne. “I hadn’t considered that.”

“I will sleep on my ship, and then return to discuss everything with you.”

“No, you will sleep here, in my royal suite.”

“I need to fetch things from my ship. Gold, my clothes—”

“Gold? Clothes?” She laughs. “I will give you gold. I will give you clothes. My handmaiden will personally see to your wardrobe. Never worry, Sid. You shall want for nothing as my consort.”

“All right,” I say, because at least this buys me time to discover what has happened to Nirrim—and what kind of danger faces me. Nirrim runs her fingertips along the arms of her throne, stroking it as if it were a cat. She so clearly enjoys being seen as regal, so demanding of honor and attention, that I decide it is best to give her what she wants. I make my voice as humble as possible. “May I crave a favor?”

She likes this. “You may.”

“I ask that you not use your magic on me.”

She purses her lips. “I might have to. For your own good, you understand.”

“Let me prove myself to you. If you force me to do your will, how can I show you my true devotion?”

“If you don’t do what I want, I can make you.”

This threat is just another method of force, but I let that slide. “Will you promise not to manipulate my memory?”

Nirrim’s hand lifts to caress my cheek. It is hard not to flinch, to fight my rising nausea, to see all of my hopes twisted beyond recognition. “I promise,” she says. “I remember how generous you were to me. How lucky I felt. You understand me like no one else does.” Wistfulness lingers in her voice. “I won’t alter your mind, so long as you remain loyal to me. Only you really know who I am.”

But I don’t, not anymore, not at all.

Guards show me to what must be Nirrim’s suite, which houses an assemblage of High-Kith furniture from different eras and styles. The furniture has been flung into an arrangement that is sumptuous but makes no aesthetic sense. I am locked inside by the guards. My first move is toward the windows, which are high enough off the ground that I would break my legs if I shattered the glass and jumped.

I wish I hadn’t left my gun on the ship. Using it to threaten my way free might work, though then this martial technology would be known in the city, and I really didn’t like that gleam in Nirrim’s eye when she asked about Herran.

I wish I had Roshar’s ring. But then I imagine pricking Nirrim with it, and making her sleep. I almost feel her slump in my arms, and shudder. How can I use anything against her? Even as I recoil from the idea, I’m not sure what haunts me more: the thought of treating her like an enemy, or that I might need to do so. Guilt wells up inside me. Was what I did, in leaving, so wrong as to wound her beyond repair, to twist her so fully against me?

No. The manner in which I left wasn’t perfect, and I could have done more not to be ruled by my hurt then, which led to misunderstandings. I won’t let that happen again. This time, I need to know what is truly happening.

The door opens, and my hand goes to my dagger, but it is not a guard. It is not Nirrim. It is Madame Mere, the dressmaker, and behind her, Annin, dressed in shimmering pink silk, ribbons in her reddish hair.

“Thank the gods you’re here.” Madame Mere shuts the door behind her.

“Nirrim needs your help,” Annin says.

“We all do,” Mere says. “Nirrim might be treating Annin as her favorite doll for now, dressing her in fine things and calling her a little princess, but that’s only because she is determined to drag information from her—or hopes that Morah will return for Annin.”

“But Nirrim also wants me by her side,” Annin says. “She still needs people’s company, even if she doesn’t understand them.”

“It is a fine thing she does not,” Mere says, “or my blood would paint the agora.”

I remember Killian referring, with a shudder of dread, to the red agora. I saw that meeting place, in the center of the Ward, when I first came to Ethin. The agora was paved with black-and-white marble. I was born of revolution, which never comes without a price. Now I understand what Killian meant, and what Mere means: execution. “What has Nirrim done?”

They tell me, pouring out tales of more blood than I know how to swallow: the murder of hundreds of High Kith, of Raven and Aden, of Caynish trying to defend their shores. Bile rises in my throat.

“You have to help Nirrim,” Annin says again.

“No,” I say, revolted. “I will never be party to what she has done. If I need to lead a rebellion against her, that is what I will do. I have a ship and I have a crew.” I also have thirty-pound cannons aboard that ship, hidden behind closed portholes, but Annin and Mere don’t need to know that. “Get me out of here, and I will see what I can do.”

Annin catches my hand. “It’s not her fault. Not exactly. She is not herself. A god stole her compassion.”

This sounds like a children’s tale. “There are no gods. At least not here, in this realm.”

“It was the god of thieves,” Mere says. “He lived here for centuries, posing as the Lord Protector. He ruled Ethin, pretending to be human, and every time he pretended to die, he would steal the city’s memory from itself, and be elected again by the Council, who believed he was an entirely different person.”

“How do you know this?”

“Some of it, Nirrim told me herself,” Annin says, “and I told Mere. But it was Morah who explained to me exactly what the god took. Nirrim’s magic doesn’t affect Morah, because Morah’s gift is truth. She is descended from the god of foresight, so Morah simply knows things. You cannot lie to her. She said she had a vision of how to help Nirrim, and left the city in search of it.”

“Where?”

Annin wrings her hands. “I don’t know. Morah told me I couldn’t know, or Nirrim would force the information from me. But she said if I could find someone I trusted enough to overthrow Nirrim because that person loved her, and didn’t want to destroy her, I should say what I do know: Morah left a map that will lead you to where she is now. The map is hidden in the kitchen of the tavern, below a tile painted with the god of hospitality. Will you find Morah? Will you save Nirrim?”

How can I do that, when Nirrim’s hands drip with blood? She is not the person I once knew, once loved.

Mere says, “I saw Nirrim, after you left Ethin. She came to me.”

What does that matter, a visit, when weighed against so much wrong, such violence, such revenge? Why does Mere speak of it?

“Sid, you broke her heart.”

“Nirrim told me,” Annin says quietly, “that she felt better without her heart. She let the god of thieves take what he wanted for the sake of Ethin, because he promised to return the city’s stolen memory to it in exchange. So that we would never say It is as it is anymore, but would know why our world looks the way it does, what our history is, and how the Half Kith were treated badly for so long. She wanted to give us that knowledge.”

“The price the god demanded must have seemed, to her, easy to pay after you left,” Mere says. “What good is a heart when it hurts so much?”

I remember the letter in Nirrim’s dress pocket, how she kept it. How she wanted me, in her throne room, and tugged me to her. One never bargains with a god—any Herrani child knows that. We have all been told the stories. To win against a god is always also to lose. Whatever price a god demands will be more than you can pay.

Yet I can understand why Nirrim would have felt desperate, ready to agree to anything. Didn’t my father feel that way, when he poisoned the Valorian nobility during the Firstwinter Rebellion? Didn’t my mother, when she told the Valorian emperor she would marry his son if he lifted his siege against Herran’s city? Roshar, when he was enslaved by the Empire, tried to run away even when he knew the punishment, and suffered it, his face mutilated by his captor. What of my nurse, who made a bargain within herself to devote her life to ruining Kestrel’s?

I was desperate, too. I made a bad bargain. Desperate to secure my parents’ love, afraid that if they really knew me, they would no longer like me, I agreed to a betrothal that would be a loveless lie. I was ready to betray myself.

Nirrim willingly surrendered a part of herself to a god—an extraordinary mistake. But while the circumstances were unusual, maybe what Nirrim did was, in a way, perfectly ordinary.

It was what we are all tempted to do: trade something precious for any chance to claw our way out of despair.

Is it possible that Nirrim could be made whole again?

I remember my father’s palm against my cheek. If you love her, he said, fight for her.

I remember how bloody his hands were, and my mother’s. I remember how Emmah let herself be twisted by a thirst for revenge, yet had always cherished me. I think of my monstrous grandfather, locked in his prison, searching my face to find traces of his daughter. I think about the wrong that people do for the sake of love, and how it is possible to love a villain. I wonder what my father would do, or my mother, or Roshar.

Oh, you’re asking me? my godfather whispers in my mind. Little lion, you know full well what to do.

And what is that?

Be the damn hero.

“All right,” I say. “I’ll try. But I have no idea what I’m doing.”

That much is obvious, Roshar says.

“For starters,” I say, “can you get me out of here?”

Annin takes a red feather from her pocket. “Maybe you can use this.”