Happiness. Sorrow. Hope. Despair.

Lan stood in the snow at the gates of Morr Town, looking up at the walls.

She who had seen Sorlost in the golden desert, the White City of Alborn rising on five hills above the Iannet marsh, she should not now find Morr Town imposing. And the last time she had been here, they had all been alive. But still it caught in her heart, to see the high stone walls, the open gateway, the red cloaks of the guards, the central tower of Malth Elelane shining, Eltheia’s diamond blazing at its height to call the ships of the Altrersyr kings to their home. The Tower of Joy and Despair indeed. Unchanging. Unchanged.

The snow was heavy, thick piled against the city walls. The guards stamped in the snow. A blue tinge to their faces. At least they had furs. Looked bored, also, stamping and eying the road. Very few people about, in heavy snow, a day after the end of Sunreturn. No reason to be coming or going. Nothing grew. Nothing was alive. One of the guards yawned, showing a red mouth. Steam on his breath huffing out. He stamped again, shaking his head. The snow at his feet was trampled down brown hard muddy ice. The same men who had been there yesterday, and the day before.

Three days, she’d come to the gate, steeled herself to go through, failed. She was sleeping in a broken-down barn an hour’s walk outside the town. The snow had come two days after she left Ru, blowing up out of nowhere, such a long walk ahead of her, icy fingers and frozen toes, crawling on through the cold. She should have turned back. Gone back to shelter, and she worried about Ru in the snow with the village girl supposed to be tending her. The winter was a cruel mother, devouring her own children; the poor folk left out offerings, in the hope she would be contented in her hunger and let them and theirs be. Lan had stopped in a farmstead where they had let her sleep in a hayloft and eat their bread in exchange for scrubbing the floors of the place clean, until she could bear the work no longer, set out again. So cold. Such slow going, step after painful step. Bent double sometimes, like an old crippled woman, snow stabbing her face. A battle. She could have gone back to Ru, and she worried about Ru. But if she went back, she would never leave. It was horribly cold in the barn, snow blowing in through the broken walls, frost creeping up the floor and the walls, Lan burned the timbers of the barn for warmth, starved in the cold, her hands shook. Red open sores on her hands with the cold. She could not go back. But she could not go into the town. She reached the gates and could not enter. She began to walk back again towards the barn. I am dying, she thought. She thought of Ru without her skin. Proud.

The guards moved aside as a party came out through the gateway. Great beautiful horses, rich furs, armed men around a woman on a cream and gold horse. They came closer. Lan stopped. Without thinking she stepped up towards the horses. Thalia in black furs stared down. A guardsman shouted at her to get out of the queen’s way. Kneel in the snow. The horses came on. Lan stepped backwards again, afraid of the horses and the guardsmen.

For the first time, afraid of horses and armed men. She began to edge back off the road into the snow.

Thalia said, “Halt.” The horses stopped. Lan sighed with relief, began walking again back to her barn.

A man’s voice shouted, “Halt, the queen says! You! Halt. Kneel.” Lan started. Held still and rigid, then went down on her knees in the snow. Cold. Oh, so cold. She began to shake.

Thalia rode the horse up carefully. Looked down with her sad, lovely face, white snow in the dark tendrils of hair. Some kind of joke in it, remembering the first time they met, Lady Landra on horseback looking down at this desperate pitiful thing. Saw and felt that Thalia remembered too.

“Get up.”

Lan rose, trembling. I broke you, she thought. I hurt you. I took your skin away.

But he loved you. He shouldn’t love you. He loved Carin.

Thalia said, “She’s frozen. Garet, give her your cloak.”

Confusion. Someone not particularly happy at the order. But a thick fur was folded round her, warm and soft as weeping, fragrant with wood smoke. She stood staring. Thalia stared back. All this a reversal of how things had once been.

“We cannot stay standing here,” said Thalia. She looked around at the guardsmen. “Someone take her up on their horse. You, Brychan.” The man nodded, unhappy and confused. They rode on, turned the horses off onto a track leading down to woodland white with snow. Lan sat wallowing in the smell of horse and fur. So very painfully, afraid. But impossible to her mind that Thalia should harm her. All this is a dream, she thought. Nothing real. Nothing had been real since Malth Salene burned. Or since her brother died. The smell of horse and fur and the movement of the horse’s shoulders was real.

They came into a little clearing in the woods. Very still and silent: the woods all around Morr Town were king’s land where no one came. A bower of beech limbs had been built in the centre of the clearing. Young trees, brilliant copper leaves still clinging to the branches, rimed in silver-white frost. The trees around the clearing were white birches, trunks whiter than the white snow, white enough to make the skin on Lan’s hands itch they looked so dry. Painful as bone.

“Here.” A man helped Thalia dismount. Went to help Lan too. Lan slid off easily with a snort of disdain she knew was foolish.

Thalia said, “Take the horses. Wait on the track.” Brychan looked at her, uncertain; he is half in love and in lust with her, Lan thought, he worships her. The blue eyes widened. Brychan nodded. The men left them alone. Thalia gestured to the bower.

Warmer, for a moment, relief at being out of the wind. The strange metallic rustle of the leaves. Shadows. White snow light on the fur of Thalia’s cloak.

“You survived,” said Thalia.

“Will you tell him?”

A sigh. “No. I will not tell him.”

“He killed Tiothlyn.” The rumours had run along the roads, the prince and the queen dead after torture, nailed up alive on Malth Elelane’s walls, sacrificed like horses on the old king’s grave. Even without the rumours, Lan would have been certain. If Marith was alive, Ti must now be dead.

Thalia’s face narrowed. Cold sad fear. Grief. A faint, ghost smell of blood.

“He … That was Selerie’s doing. He … He did not want that to happen. Not as it did.”

“He got drunk and cried about it, I suppose?” A harsh attempt at mockery in Lan’s voice croaking out strangled. Lan thought: I do not fear you, woman, whatever you are, any more than I fear him, whatever he is. See how much I scorn him? But she shivered. The blue eyes flickered, all the hairs on the back of Lan’s neck rose up like she heard a hawk scream.

“He calls their names sometimes, in his sleep. Tiothlyn’s. Illyn’s. Your brother’s.” A pause, Lan went to speak, then Thalia sighed and said, “He did get drunk and cry about it.” She seemed almost to laugh.

“And Queen Elayne?”

“She … He calls her name also. ‘Mother,’ he calls her. Then he tries to correct himself. But she … she was dying anyway. She tried to kill herself when she knew it was lost.”

A pause. Thalia said in the voice of the priestess of the death god of Sorlost, “She killed his real mother.”

Ah, gods. Not that. Lan said hotly, “No, she didn’t.”

The blue eyes flickered again. “She made his father do it, then.”

“No, she didn’t.”

“Everyone knows it.”

“Everyone knows it’s not true!” The old rumour, that had so quickly soured King Illyn’s marriage to Queen Elayne. Flickered up, was silenced, flickered up again. Then Marith had stood up and screamed it at his father’s face. Drunk out of his mind, Carin had said afterwards he’d been taking hatha for three days beforehand, crawling in and out of consciousness, weeping, swaying on his feet, spitting out the words. The king his father had struck him. Would have killed him, Carin had said, had Queen Elayne not grabbed hold of the drawn sword with her bare hand.

Landra had watched the penance King Illyn had ordered the next morning, Marith white and shaking, swearing he had no memory of what he’d said, knew it to be lies. So it had been settled again. Silenced. They all knew it was lies. They all knew Marith was mad. A friend of Ti’s had set up a game shortly after, betting on how long before he either died or completely lost his mind. His white shaking hands and his red-ringed empty eyes.

“He told me himself. And Selerie. That was why they did it. For vengeance. Elayne killed his mother so that she could be queen in her stead.”

“His mother died of a baby gone wrong inside her. Of course people talked of poison. They always do, when a king or queen dies. But she died of a baby. As Altrersyr women often do.”

Thalia stood silent. They built this place for her, Lan thought. For him and her to be king and queen in the snow. He loves the snow.

“My father was at court when it happened. She bled. Died. The king brought every healer on Seneth to try to help her. Old selkie wise women, a mage, village witches with god charms who’d saved peasant girls from dying the same way. But she died. Too soon after her first child, they said, her body was too weak. The king was close to my father then. He would have known, he said, if anything had been wrong. It is common. Queen Elayne almost died, birthing Ti. King Illyn’s own mother died.”

No answer. Thalia’s hands danced birds’ wings, folding over her stomach as if she was clutching a stab wound, the long fingers weaving into the fur.

“My father told me all this. The Relasts and the Murades, the queen’s family, we are old enemies: my father had no reason to love Queen Elayne.”

“I—” The radiance in Thalia’s face seemed lessened. Looked around the bower, her hands still folded over her stomach kneading the fur. “It does not matter. It is over now. He is king and I am queen and his father and mother and all are dead and gone.”

“He killed them,” Lan said.

Thalia said, “He did.”

“Come away,” Lan said. Found herself saying. “Come away now with me. We can get away, there are people who can help us, we can go to Immish, to Alborn, or take you back to Sorlost. You can leave him.” She thought: you are more alone even than I am, Queen Thalia of the White Isles, is that why you cling to him? You know nothing and are nothing, without him. But I can help you. She thought, madly, bitterly, of taking Thalia to Ru’s cottage, the two women weaving stinking gold cloth together the long dull skein of their lives. “I can help you,” Lan said.

Cold sad fear. Grief. A faint, ghost smell of blood. The snow outside came more heavily. Thalia shivered and pulled at her cloak.

“Is that what you think? That I want to be free of him?”

How can you not want it? Lan thought. Look at you! Look at him!

“Free of him!” Blue eyes huge as worlds. Lan felt her body shake. So much light in the bower, rainbows thrown in Lan’s vision, bronze leaves and white snow too vivid, the white trees beyond lit like mage glass, dry as bone. Thalia standing in her furs, remorseless, endless grief leeching out from her, beautiful as a beating heart. “I would have wished it to be different. But it is too late.” The blue eyes closed a moment. A swirl of snow. White fire danced on the bronze beech leaves, white as the bark of the white trees.

Nothing, Landra had thought this woman. A whore or a hatha eater Marith had picked up somewhere. Then, learning what she was, she had seemed pitiful. Marith’s victim, trapped beneath some yoke. Haltered. Hobbled. Maimed.

White light flickered on the dried leaves and the bare branches. Poured like water from the beautiful face.

This woman was not pitiful.

“I hold his life in my keeping. His life or his death. He lives because I chose it. Better perhaps to ask him if he wishes to be free of me.” The terrible voice softened. “For fifteen years, I killed men and women and children for the sake of a city I barely saw. A prisoner in a bronze cage. My only purpose to kill, so that others might live. Life for the living, death for the dead. A holy calling. Needful. Necessary. I do not regret. But … Out in the city, the city I shed blood for, there was nothing. Cruelty. Pain. Men who wanted to harm me. And you. And Tobias. Rate. Your father. All of you, you were cruel. You wanted things from us. Used us. Bought and sold us. Marith, alone, of all the people I have ever met in the world, Marith alone has been kind to me, for no reason, except that he cares for me.

“So yes, I choose to spare him. Despite knowing what he is. He will do terrible things,” said Thalia, “I know that. It would perhaps have been better if I were to choose to let him die. But I do not. And that is his grief, and mine. It is nothing to you.”

Gods. Gods. Eltheia, fairest one, keep safe.

“Leave us in peace,” said Thalia. “Leave me in peace. You and your family have done enough to him. To me.” She reached out, talking Lan’s hands, helping her up. “You are cold. Hungry.” A sudden thought seemed to strike her. “Where have you been living? You have no home. You must have come such a long way, did you walk all this way? You must be worn out. And here we are standing in the cold …”

Thalia called her guards back. The man who had given Lan his cloak looked blue-lipped and wretched. Lan mounted up with Brychan again; Thalia rode the honey-coloured horse Lan recognized now from Malth Elelane. She had, Lan saw, become a fair enough horsewoman in the few short months since she had screamed with fear on Jaerl’s horse. They rode back towards the town, stopped just beyond sight of the gates. Lan saw clearly that Brychan and the other two men looked unhappy at all that had occurred.

“I cannot take you into the town with me,” Thalia said. “I cannot give you any money, either: I went for a pleasure ride, the men have no coin with them.” Her face furrowed. “Wait …” She drew off her riding gloves, unfastened the necklace she wore. Gold floss-work, lace fine, set with amber. “Will this be enough? I do not … I do not know these things. The cost of things. But Garet will need his cloak back.”

“Won’t he … the king, won’t he see you’ve lost it?” Thalia had said she would not tell, but she would, she might, the guards would tell, Marith would come with vengeance, hang them both from Malth Elelane’s walls …

“He has given me more jewels than I could wear in a thousand years of living.” A sad inward smile, remembering something. “All the gold in his kingdom, he has laid at my feet. No one will miss this small thing.”

“And your guards—”

“They will not tell.” That Lan doubted, thinking of her father’s men. But Thalia seemed so very certain.

The horses started.

She was gone.

Back here again, Lan thought. What did she want with me? Why didn’t she kill me? What did she mean by any of this? She looked at the necklace in her hand. Warm metal, the amber warm rich deep orange, flower blossoms encased in its depths. She thinks I can go into the market and trade the queen’s jewels for a better cloak? Then Lan remembered giving the fisherman Ben her gold bracelet to buy bread.

Well, then. She steadied herself. This time she must go through the gates. She braced herself, walked around the bend in the road, there they were. Open. The guards stamping bored in the snow, a procession of sheep being herded through, a man on horseback waiting behind them. She took a deep breath, like a swimmer, followed the horseman in. Her steps through the gateway were heavy, as though she walked through thick mud or the beating snow-filled wind. A physical thing, a pressing on her, her body shaking.

Unchanging. Unchanged.

Sorrow and joy.

And then she was through, into the gatehouse square, surrounded by milling sheep.

It felt very strange walking there, knowing herself unknown. She went through the town up to the gates of Malth Elelane, to see what Marith and she herself had done. It was very silent, the banners and ribbons of Sunreturn were gone packed away in waxed cloth for another year, the snow had mounted up on the roofs. The narrow windows were almost all dark. Grey and cold, the stone of its walls, towers like bare trees, at its heart the golden tower of Eltheia rising, its jewel hidden in clouds. A thin, still beam of light reflected on the sea beyond.

A woman’s voice said, “Stop looking at them.”