I’m surprised to find the food hall is full the next morning. On closer inspection, though, it becomes apparent the Bruma just haven’t been to bed yet. Most of the men are half naked, the ladies now wearing their tunics. I sit at my usual table and look around the sorry looking group. I’m still feeling sorry for myself. But I cannot help a grin at their misery.
“Get rid of her, she’s laughing at us. I can feel it,” Jacqueline says to Roman, stabbing a finger into his eye.
“Yes, m’love,” he slurs, resting his head on top of hers, appearing to fall asleep instantly. I giggle and go to retrieve my morning pear. Rhone approaches as I am contemplating whether to add a biscuit to my meal.
“You look like you feel better than the rest,” I say.
He nods. “Couldn’t drink too much last night. We’re leaving soon.”
“Who? Me?” I ask, turning to face him.
Rhone snorts. “No. Me and the King. I’m taking him on his tour of the sectors. Won’t be back for a month.” I blink twice at the length of Rhone’s speech.
“A whole month,” I say, and get a more typical grunt from him in reply. “Is that wise, considering what is happening with my world?”
Rhone looks at me, weighing what to say. “Negotiations are ongoing, they take a long time. Perhaps the King wants to keep up appearances.”
I nod. The last war between our worlds had taken six years to be declared and it had only been six months so far. Still, I don’t know if the King’s decision to go is particularly wise.
Rhone looks sideways at me as I reach for a biscuit. “The King has just sent another response. He will be back from his tour before the reply from Osolis arrives,” he says softly.
Without turning to him, I nod and speak just as quietly. “Thank you.”
I’m intercepted by Fiona on my way back to the table. She looks like she has been dragged under a sled backwards. She leans her head on my shoulder and the smell of sweat and the sweet aroma of the goblet drink floods my senses.
“I heard what happened with Arla,” she mumbles and straightens to look at me through blood-shot eyes. I stiffen.
“Yes, Arla was being a …bitch,” I say.
“Not hard f’her,” she mumbles. “Listen. When we sleep with other people here, it doesn’t mean anything. It feels good sometimes, and it’s fun, but it doesn’t mean anything. Marrying someone and telling them you love them. That’s what counts.”
“Kedrick said he loved me,” I say, hope tinges my words. I desperately want her to say he never said it to anyone else.
She nods, then winces as though the movement hurts her head and stops. “He never said that to any of the woman here, I can assure you. Ignore Arla. Everyone else does.”
I am so happy with her answer, I hug her. What Kedrick and I had was real. I’d known it deep down, I had just needed the reassurance.
“Oh, and Greta said to tell you sorry,” she adds.
“If you see her before I do, please tell her she has no need to apologise.”
I help Fiona back to the table and eat my meal, laughing at the still-intoxicated Bruma around me. There is a flash of a shining sword and the swirl of a fur cape as the King moves past the archway. Standing from the table, I hurry after him, hoping I can catch up.
I reach him as he is swinging one of the massive entrance doors open with one hand. It takes me two hands and all my strength to do the same. Rhone stands waiting outside, covered from head to toe in overlapping fur garments.
“King Jovan,” I say, raising my voice over the howl of the wind as the door opens.
He looks over his shoulder. “Yes, Tatuma,” he says, voice brusque. Maybe he is eager to be on his way. I shiver as the chill reaches me.
“Have you heard anything more from Osolis?” I ask.
He opens his mouth and closes it again. There is a pause of a few seconds.
“No, there has been no further reply.” He nods to me and stalks past Rhone. Rhone waits for the King to pass before sharing a look with me and turning to follow him.
We both know he was lying, unless Rhone had been misinformed and he was not the kind of person to talks without being certain. Why was the King lying? If war had been declared, he surely would not be leaving the castle for a month. He had seemed uncomfortable, like he had wanted to avoid the answer. Did the news involve me?
It takes two days for the castle to recover its normal bustle. Everybody is readying themselves for the shift to the first sector. Not having much to pack, I spend the time with the children who are the only Bruma who look half alive. I’m delivering my usual reply to a young girl’s inquiry about my veil, when Cameron looks up at me.
“Is your mum still on the fire world?” he asks. I nod.
“Then why do you still need to wear your veil? She won’t know. We won’t tell her.”
The other children erupt into a chorus of promises.
For the rest of the visit and, indeed over the next two days, I think on his innocent and quite profound words. The deep parts of my mind have been whispering the same words to me since the confrontation with the mirror. What was to stop me looking at my reflection, apart from my own fear? No one had to know. The King appeared to have defrosted towards me, but this would disappear fast if I were to cross him on the matter of showing my face.
With Cameron’s innocent words came a swift resolve. This small defiance had, I believe, always been present in the back of my mind. My fear had shrivelled it into dormancy. With the opportunity now presented to me with the mirror and the awakening question from Cameron, this resolve was now the only thought in my mind.
With nothing else to do, I had time to think of what I have overcome in the past year. Kedrick’s death, climbing the Oscala, the hostility of the Bruma, my various broken bones. The thought of taking it off would have never entered my mind a year ago. In fact, I would have done anything to prevent its removal. Having someone else see my face had been terrifying to the point of crippling fear. But to see my own face. To never be able to go back to what I knew before. That fear was indescribable. Unspeakable. I think of one of the court members on Osolis who has a fear of water. He will not wash in the springs at all, and once I saw him scream in terror when someone spilt water on the table in front of him. That is how I felt when I thought about removing my veil.
But whether by choice or not, the veil had been removed several times now and with every removal the terror had lessened. Maybe it would be the same if I practised looking at my face.
On the third morning after the King’s departure, I wake knowing it’s time to be rid of my mother’s oppression. I drag myself down to the food hall ignoring my mind’s attempt to convince me to abandon this plan. I grab a pear and approach my friends.
“Fiona, what are you doing today?” I ask. I cannot be sure she has a mirror in her bathroom, but I was unable to think of a good excuse to go to Jacqueline’s. There isn’t one in my room, I assume it’s because it could be used as a weapon. They would have been worried about this in the beginning.
“I haven’t got any plans. Did you have something in mind?” she asks. This needs to be done today, I do not know when I will find my resolve again.
“I was wondering if you could start teaching me how to sew,” I say. My stomach lurches at her reply.
“Sure, it will be fun. You will have to excuse the mess, though,” she says. All the assembly households are being packed for the shift to the first sector in two days’ time. Sanjay looks at her fondly. I nod at her, unable to speak. It’s going to happen. This is it.
I am filled with nervous tension on our walk to Fiona’s. Sadra and Jacky are joining us, too. I try to act normal, but I know the three ladies notice. My senses are in overdrive. My body tingles as it does when I’m in the middle of fighting Olandon. I hope they put it down to excitement over Fiona teaching me to sew.
Fiona lays out material over the parlour floor. She takes me through the measuring, cutting and threading process. Jacky and Sadra are not at all interested and play cards, sitting on top of wooden chests because the chairs and other furniture have been covered and put away now. They chat amongst themselves about the shift to the first sector. The journey will take three days. Most of it is done on the sleds and then the last day is done by wagon or on foot. They make it sound like all they do is drink for three days. Sadra is complaining about riding in a sled with a hangover.
Fiona looks over my shoulder at intervals and, during her next assessment, exclaims over my erratic stitching. She grabs it to unpick my poor work. The thudding in my stomach comes back, this is my moment. I have been procrastinating all morning. If I wait any longer I will talk myself out of it.
I excuse myself from the room and make my way to the bathroom. The hallway seems to narrow as I get there. The walls throb in time with the heartbeat lodged in my throat.
I hurry into the bathroom and press the door closed, sinking to the ground. I lower my head between my knees in an attempt to regulate my breathing and clear my head, knowing if I take too long the others will come to check on me.
Pushing back against the wall, I stand and start towards the mirror.
My movements are heavy, weary, and memories peck at my mind making each step feel like a hundred. Cassius hacking off my hair, mother laughing as guards whip me, her screams as she hits my head against the ground, a five-year-old Olandon crying as they break my leg.
Bile surfaces. I hold a shaking hand over my mouth and swallow several times before turning to face the mirror.
I take in the small covered girl before me. She looks afraid and helpless. A sudden conviction that I won’t be able to remove the veil, settles over me. I don’t have the strength. I’m too weak - not good enough.
I’m the girl who lies on the floor and gets beaten.
Tears sting my eyes. I lean forward onto the table beneath the mirror. I know what I have to do, why can’t I just do it? Mother is right, I will never be strong enough to rule.
A thought steals through my churning panic. I lift my head to look at the girl again. Maybe I can pretend Kedrick is taking it off, like he did in the forest. My sweating hand barely twitches at my side. My head falls back down.
Then I think of Jovan and the night he burst into my room demanding to hear about his brother. My back had been to the wall and he had snatched off my veil as you would rip off a bandage stuck to the skin.
Quickly, boldly, without thought.
I straighten, and look at the heavy black veil over my face once more. Underneath this pathetic bit of material is a face I have both longed and dreaded to know. This cloth is just like the tower I was locked away in for ten years of my life.
It’s time to be free.
Lifting a shaking hand, I grasp the edge of the coarse fabric and with a deep breath, I rip the veil off.
The world is timeless as I take in the impossible sight before me.
My eyes are blue.
My sluggish mind is trying to understand what they mean. Kedrick had blue eyes, so does Jovan, Fiona, Jacky, all the delegates. All of the assembly have them.
On Glacium everyone has blue eyes, but Solati… they have brown eyes, green eyes, grey eyes. Never blue. My mother’s eyes were brown, and my father’s eyes were brown too.
I stare at them and will them to change, to turn brown like my brothers. They stay the same. A vivid, devastating, damning blue.
The sluggish part of my mind catches up and in an instant everything I have known, the truths of my life - that I have brothers, that I am Solati - evaporate like a drop of water on the hot ground.
My eyes belong to a Bruma.
I am Bruma.