The Hollow Heart by Marie Rutkoski
NIRRIM
I WAKE UP SANDY-EYED, a fresh breeze silky on my skin. It tastes like salt. Before sleep, I left the balcony doors open so the sea air could come in, just as Sid liked it. The memory of her stretches out next to me in bed and finds me. She is a slow riser, the way people with soft lives are, but I never resented it in her, not when she would nuzzle her face against my back and wake up wanting me.
Enough.
I am starting to think that my gift might be a curse, the way my memory conjures ghosts to stalk and distract me. I must be careful. The quiet floating in from the windows in this house as I move through it, searching, tells me that the chaos and destruction of last night has died down. I need to renew it, yet focus it in my name, according to my goals, my rule. I will re-create Ethin. The purge of High Kith has already begun. The agora is wet with their blood. But the Middlings need to know they answer to me.
I open drawers and find little. The wardrobes hold clothes she could not be bothered to take. Shirts fitted perfectly. Jackets with neat, sharp lines. Floating dresses that have no reason to look so smug in their beauty. Sid never liked them.
Downstairs, I scan the slick tiles of the kitchen. I find a muslin sack filled with what seems like fragrant earth—the brown, granular substance that, mixed with boiled water, made the bitter eastern drink Sid liked so much. The brown grit pours like sugar, but more slowly, densely. I drag a finger through the sack’s contents and lick it clean. The bitter taste shocks my tongue, but I like it. I can’t help but like it. It tastes like her deep morning kiss. I close the bag and shove it back on its shelf hurriedly, as though it is dangerous.
In the sitting room, there are books, some open and facedown—Sid, like a true noble, had little reverence for valuable objects. A worn deck of Pantheon cards rests on a spindly table.
My Elysium bird chitters in the sitting room’s corner, iridescent talons clinging to the back of a chair, and launches through the air to alight upon my shoulder. Annoyed, I brush it off. It squawks, fixes me with a green, reproachful eye, and flits back to its chair, watching me with a cagey, almost feline look as I continue my search.
I do not need things the way a human does, as vessels for lost moments, yet greed courses through me. I don’t even know what I want until I find it: a vial of her perfume. It smells of citrus and wood roasted to the point of crumbling into the fire. I inhale it. I can practically taste it. I bring the scent of her inside me and make it mine. Then I stopper the vial and go out into the city, so that I can make the city mine, too.
The old paved stones of the agora are slippery in places, sticky in others. My sandals stain red. The executions have not stopped. A crowd still fills the agora, the morning light delicate on their sleepless, entranced faces. As smoke from last night’s fires lingers in the air, Aden’s friends, who have no magic of their own and so must be good for something, bring the next High Kith to the gory chopping block. She is a woman my age. She wails, bare heels scrubbing the marble pavement as she resists being brought forward by two men who clamp a grip on her arms and drag her when she sags, silk dress ripping along a seam, hem drinking the spilled blood. Headless bodies lie stacked around the broad, flat wooden block. Aden, who glances up and sees me, says something to his friends that I am too far away to hear, and they pause, too, which must give the woman some hope. She follows their gaze to me. As I approach, I hear the begging tone of her voice long before the words become clear. “Please,” she says when I am close. She must intuit that these men will do what I demand. “I have done nothing to deserve this.”
Did she not live her life at the expense of mine? Did she not drink elixirs made from my people’s blood, and delight in the magic it gave her? She knew hundreds of Half Kith were locked behind the wall, where artisans made goods for which they were paid the smallest of coins. Those mirrors, those beautifully carved cedar boxes that smelled like the trees they came from, once decorated her home. A tortoiseshell earring dangles like congealed honey from one ear.
She pleads again. The crowd watches me.
No, says my old self. You can’t do this.
But Other Nirrim was always too kind. She should understand that the god of thieves did her a service by stealing her heart. I must show her that. I want to pass the crowd’s test, to impress them and make them loyal to me, but most of all I want to let myself feel how good it is not to forgive. Other Nirrim always explained away the harm that people caused. I will never make that mistake.
A watchful quiet grows over the crowd like a sheet of ice. The woman’s cries echo against the stone walls of the buildings that surround the agora. The Half Kith watch me. They know what I am, but not what I am capable of. What will be the limits of what I will do for them? they wonder. If I am to be their leader, what work will I do on their behalf?
I motion for the men to press the woman’s neck against the wooden block. They hold her down. A rusty stain has made the rings in the wood sharply clear. The tree rings circle the woman’s flattened face. The ax handle is slippery. Her eyes squeeze shut.
It takes me a few tries for the ax blade to bite deep enough, but my arm is strong from a life of hard work, and eventually I cut through.
I am not sure how much time passes, but the sun has shifted in the sky, so bright it eats a hole into my vision, when the Elysium bird trills, swooping over the agora. I had shut the door of Sid’s home behind me, locking it in. It must have gotten out through the open balcony doors. Pestering thing. But I enjoy its loyalty to me, and lift my bloody fist for a perch.
A leader must have icons. A queen cannot be everywhere at once. Symbols of power must take her place sometimes. We will make a new flag for Herrath, I decide, one that shows my bird in pink and red and green. The bird’s talons bite into my knuckles and it hops discontentedly to my shoulder, clucking at me like a glamorous chicken. It did not like being left alone. It takes my earlobe gently in its beak, just above my starlike earring, and gives me a scolding nibble.
The sharpness shakes me out of a daze. The executions, taken over by others in the crowd, the ax handed from one to another, have grown monotonous, and then they end. The High-Kith tithe of ten percent of its people has been paid. I worry that the crowd might grow bored, but a murmur runs through it, and I notice that something different is happening.
The person brought wriggling to the block is not High Kith. He wears Middling clothes. He is the first Middling to be brought out for death. I lift a staying hand. “No.” Other Nirrim agrees silently inside me, though our reasons are different. She would excuse everyone from a just punishment. I, on the other hand, have a vision based on strategy, not syrupy emotion. A queen, after all, must show mercy sometimes. The satisfaction of punishment can grow tedious, and everyone likes the thought that someone’s sins might be forgiven, that a person could be born anew, their crimes forgotten. It makes for a good story. Stories, too, will help me rule. “The Middlings will be spared.”
“They lorded over us!” someone shouts.
“They served the High Kith!”
“Yes,” I say, “but they know what it was like to be forced to do the High Kith’s bidding. We must open our hands to them. The old gods left this city long ago. We are the new gods, and must show our divinity. Let us offer the Middlings the chance to prove themselves, and join us.”
The crowd does not like this. I wonder if my power is strong enough to push a false memory into everyone’s mind, and make them do what I want. I was able to make the entire city remember its past, but it was a true memory, not a false one. It takes more of an effort to bend a memory out of shape and turn it into a lie. Anyway, I find that I do not want to force them to do what I will. I want them to choose what I want because they want it. They should admire me, and count themselves lucky that I rule. An idea occurs to me, one that I enjoy. “The Middlings shall live … all but one.”
The dullness of the crowd, how easily they adapted to the repeated executions and even grew bored, sharpens with interest.
“You know who I mean,” I say. “The one who lived among us. Who pretended to be our friend. Did you trust her, like I once trusted her? She stole from you. She milked you like a goat. It is high time that you show her your teeth.”
Someone calls her name. Then another person. It grows into a chant, and follows us as we abandon the agora, and the Middling man who wavers on his feet with relief.
Chanting fills the air.
Raven. Raven. Raven.
My people break through her freshly painted green door, tearing the splintered wood off its hinges. They wiggle loose stones from her sweet garden wall. They survey her Middling home, decorated with the finest touches a Middling was allowed—nice but not too elegant, not too luxurious. Raven, though, made sure to have the best she could. All the time I forged passports for Half Kith to appear Middling and escape beyond the wall, I risked my life believing that it was for something pure and good. Raven led me to believe she was helping people, that we gave our work freely to them.
She took their money, and enriched herself, and made me a fool. Rage flickers in my throat. It burns in my belly.
Half Kith funnel into the house as I wait outside. Muffled screams split the darkening sky.
Raven is dragged from the house. Her dress, made from good, dark green cloth with a grosgrain belt and touches of embroidery, tangles about her legs as she stumbles forward, her gray hair spilling wildly out of what was once an elegant hairstyle. I catch the glint of a familiar necklace around her neck, its pendant tucked beneath the bodice of her dress. Her eyes dart everywhere. Only when someone shoves her to her knees before me does she glance into my face. Shocked recognition flashes.
“Nirrim!” she says. “Darling girl! Help me, please. Everyone has gone mad!”
“Have they?” I say coolly. “Or have they finally come to their senses?”
“The entire Ward knows what I did for them. You and I, Nirrim. We helped them. Explain it.”
“They already know exactly how you helped them.”
Understanding wriggles across her expression. It looks just like fear. I see her realize that she must look guilty. I see her hide the guilt behind her fear, which she decides to perform for all she is worth. Her fingers tremble. I am impressed. I truly cannot tell, now, how much of her fear is real and how much is layered on, like icing on a cake. “Nirrim, they said—in my house, my very own home, which I have worked so hard to have, saved every bit of gold to make a nice home for you and me to share—they said that I must beg their queen for mercy.”
“Correct.”
“You—you—are their queen?” She gives a breathy, disbelieving laugh.
“All true.” I nod at the people holding her. They release their grips. She gets to her feet, wobbles a little, then regains her balance, brushing at her skirts.
“Well, you have come up in the world.” Her tone is approving, yet laced with something snide. More certain of herself, she settles calmly into her bones. “I always knew you would.” She examines my torn, bloodied clothes. “Not quite the outfit I would wear, were I queen. Never worry, my lamb. I will help you choose all the right ensembles.”
I feel the habit of listening to her. I remember excusing her cruelties. Every time she showed me affection again, I believed that the real Raven had returned. She had a temper, true, but she was a good person, one who gave me a home when I had none, and caressed my forehead when I worried. If I were her true daughter, wouldn’t I forgive the sting of her slap? The unkind words?
Other Nirrim always forgave her. Other Nirrim always believed Raven’s lies—worse, Other Nirrim believed her own lies.
Raven’s gaze, traveling over my face, suddenly stops. “Those are mine.”
She means the earrings, shining like stars. “They are mine now.”
She bites her lip in displeasure. The crowd notices. Someone hefts a garden wall stone, a threat that makes her school her expression into a smile. She touches the glinting silvery chain around her neck. “Of course, Nirrim, if you want them. After all, they were your mother’s. A gift. Don’t you want to know from whom? Let’s go inside, into our home, darling, and I will tell you how I came by them.”
“That is not my home.”
“What a thing to say! We are family. My home is your home. I am your ama.”
“You are not.”
“I am as good as your mother. I am your mother’s sister, after all, and I raised you.”
“After you abandoned me in the orphanage, and let me grow up, ignorant of any knowledge of my parents, believing I was alone in the world.”
“But then I took you in! Really, I don’t think it’s necessary to go over this personal history in front of so many unruly people. Come inside.”
“You took me in, and then pretended I was nothing to you. For years, you kept it secret that I was kin to you.”
“But then I explained. Honestly, Nirrim. I am sorry I didn’t tell you earlier.” Her lip quivers. “It was too painful. My beautiful sister died so young. Let’s go inside. I will tell you all about her. She looked much like you.”
Other Nirrim used to long for family. I have no use for it. My mother is dead. My father, whoever he was, vanished at my birth. One of my parents, perhaps both, was descended from a god. I am alone in the world. That is all I need to know.
“Nirrim, I don’t think you understand how an angry crowd gets. I believe”—her voice drops to a whisper, her words just for me—“they mean to damage my home.”
“It is not your home. It is theirs.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It belongs to them.”
“What nonsense. I bought it with my own money.”
“That you took from them.”
“For services rendered! No one forced people to buy our passports. Anyway, those people are long gone. They left Ethin. Who knows where they are now. This rabble has nothing to do with them, you, or me. Now be sensible.”
I smile. My smile must be as bright as the blade of a knife, because she shrinks away. However, she does not believe, not yet, that she has lost her power over me.
Otherwise, she would run.
“My people,” I call, “you have no reason to damage this house.”
“That’s right,” Raven says, satisfied.
“Instead, consider what she truly took from the Half Kith. Your pride. How often did you set aside coins you could have used to clothe your children, in the hopes that one day you could have enough to pay Raven for a way out of the Ward? Remember,” I say, and my magic enters my voice. The word delves down deep inside them. “Did you swallow your bitterness?” I call the name of the Ward’s mirror maker. “Terrin, you gave her a handheld mirror once. Was it a heartfelt gift?”
The crowd stirs. The woman pushes through the crowd to make herself seen. “She asked for it,” Terrin says, “and offered to pay, but I knew what that meant. If I didn’t give it to her for free, I would never have a chance to buy the documents. She would make my life a misery by turning the Ward against me. People would listen to her, because if they didn’t, she could do the same thing to them.”
“Take your payment now,” I say.
“Now, what is that supposed to mean?” Raven says. “What kind of foolishness is this? Pay for a gift?”
Terrin comes close. She eyes Raven.
“Go on,” I say. Still, Terrin does nothing, so I reach for the thin chain around Raven’s neck and yank. Raven cries out. The necklace snaps and comes free in my hand. The pendant—the crescent moon I remember my mother wearing when I was a baby at her breast—glows on my palm.
“Nirrim, how dare you!”
Then Terrin’s hand strikes out and snatches the grosgrain belt from Raven’s waist.
“Thief! Give that back!”
I curl the moon necklace into my fist. “Everyone,” I call, “should receive fair pay.”
Someone in the crowd reaches out and rips a fistful of hair from Raven’s head. She screams. “Nirrim, stop them!”
A man holding a garden wall stone throws, and strikes Raven’s shoulder.
“Please! They listen to you. Help me, you ungrateful girl!”
Hands dive in. They tear at her. More rocks thunk into the center of the circle the crowd has formed around her. I step away. My people swarm her. I cannot see her anymore, but I hear screams as I walk away.
She curses me. She begs.
She claims she loves me, but I now know better than that.
Later, in the calm, when the crowd has dispersed to sleep, I wander back to the High quarter. The night is cool, its blue translucent. Debris litters the street, but the chaos of last night has dissolved into peace.
Other Nirrim is quiet within me—horrified, maybe, at Raven’s death. Spineless girl. Or maybe Other Nirrim doesn’t want to challenge me, since I gave orders that all the High-Kith children will be spared from execution.
I am too noble to punish the innocent, I tell her. Even if she is silent, Other Nirrim is still there, waiting and judging. Let the guilty fear me, I add.
Other Nirrim says nothing.
I laugh, the sound ringing against the colored glass pavements, the wrought-iron balconies that look like piping on a cake. I tease Other Nirrim, my disdain mixed with patience: Be glad, I tell her. I could do so much worse.
There is a park in the High quarter Sid brought me to once. I follow the path to it, remembering how I slept in a tree that told my fortune. You will lose her, the fortune read. It had come true. Sid was gone, and would never return.
Yet I had always known I would lose her. Even as I loved her, as she kissed me, as she made me hers, I knew it was only for a time, a moment she would give me. She would leave. She told me she would, and she did. My liar had told at least one truth. I had not needed a tree to make me know it.
Lush grass tickles my ankles. The earth exhales the heat of the day into the night. A breeze carries the scent of green things.
I wonder what Sid is doing now. I wonder if she thinks of me sometimes.
My feet carry me to the tree. It has no magic of its own, I understand now: only what it borrowed from an elixir made by councilmen of some Half Kith’s blood.
I must find the Council’s supply, I decide. I must go through the library in the Keepers Hall and search for records of arrests and tithes. Who knows how old the elixir that watered the tree was. Perhaps the blood came from an imprisoned Half Kith long dead. Our power was stolen from us for generations.
Still, it is not the tree’s fault. Pink glass lanterns light the park well enough for me to see how its branches spread wide above me, its leaves a dark, hissing blur. The trunk shows patches of gold, from where people tore strips of bark to read their fortunes, and gardeners painted the scars prettily to ward off infection. I lay a palm flat against the cool, rough trunk. The tree is like me, like any Half Kith. Yet I do not feel sorry for it. Why should I feel sorry for anything with power?
I remember what it was to feel pity. I try to feel it, to see if it is possible. I try, even, to feel pity for myself, for how I was used and left behind.
I feel nothing but the bark of the tree.
I wonder how long the tree will tell fortunes, now that no one will water it with my people’s blood. I dig my nails into the papery bark. As I tear it away, I think of Sid. Tell me, I ask the tree, about her.
Even though the sky has deepened in color, and the light from the lanterns flickers, I still can read the spidery writing that appears on the bark’s pale underside.
If you wish to rule alone, you must destroy her.