The Book of Snow & Silence Read online

  THE BOOK

  OF

  SNOW & SILENCE

  By

  Zoë Marriott

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © Zoë Marriott 2020

  All rights reserved. The moral rights of the author have been asserted. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review.

  FIRST EDITION

  www.zoemarriott.com

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  Found in the ruins of the great library at the Ice Palace of Silingana, after the thaw.

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  Found in the ruins of the great library at the Ice Palace of Silingana, after the thaw.

  7

  8

  Found in the ruins of the great library at the Ice Palace of Silingana, after the thaw.

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  Found in the ruins of the great library at the Ice Palace of Silingana, after the thaw.

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  Found in the ruins of the great library at the Ice Palace of Silingana, after the thaw.

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  Found in the ruins of the great library at the Ice Palace of Silingana, after the thaw.

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  Found in the ruins of the great library at the Ice Palace of Silingana, after the thaw.

  EPILOGUE

  Found in the ruins of the great library at the Ice Palace of Silingana, after the thaw

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  PROLOGUE

  There is light in the Above. Different from the day star that turns the Above blue, different from the White Mother. It is red and gold, bright, dancing and alive like the anemones that sway in the current – but bigger, much bigger. She has never seen anything like it before. She turns, allowing the storm’s wild wake to wash around and through her, flipping her over onto her back with a flurry of bubbles so that she can stare up at it, spellbound. It is beautiful.

  And then – great ripples above her. Not as far above as the red light, but on the very surface. Black things falling through the light, great silver crashes as they hit the water. She dodges with a curl of her fin as a jagged, pitted curve of metal spins past her. Pieces of wood and iron. Pieces of a ship. She has seen shipwrecks before, and the aftermath of shipwrecks on the sand at the very bottom – but never from such a short distance. Never from directly beneath. The storm has brought her almost to the land.

  She is too close. She knows what she is supposed to do.

  But it is so beautiful, and so strange. She stays, just a moment longer.

  And then something falls into the water that she has never seen before. Not wood or iron or even a glittering stream of falling gold and jewels – but something that moves. Something almost like a person except...

  Except it has no tail.

  The poor, strange feelers that the thing has on its bottom half are thrashing – almost like arms, almost like claws, but misshapen and wrong. It can’t swim. She feels her gills stiffen as she realises: it is a Creature of the Air.

  A human.

  The storm is driving them together, drawing her toward the surface as it drags the human down. It is forbidden to show a human this form. She and her sisters danced around the boats earlier today to warn the humans to flee and they did not heed the warning. This human’s fate is its own choice.

  She knows she should shift back to her hunting form, pull in her fins, twist downward and propel herself away, but... She can see the strange, pale blur of its face, the odd, webless hands – so weak and bony – and the drifting hair, red-gold-brown like the soft fronds of ralana ferns. See the desperate clouds of bubbles frothing from its mouth. Like the light, it is different. Strange.

  She’s never seen a human in the water before. So close.

  And then the human is close enough to touch. With a tingling surge of shock she is looking into its eyes. It stares back.

  He – he? He stares back.

  It is a he.

  It is human but she can see, see – his – fear. His despair. There are thoughts in those eyes. A person. He is not Selkoh, but... he is a person. He is different to her, but he is a person and he is dying.

  She is too close. She knows what she is supposed to do.

  But she does something else instead.

  Found in the ruins of the great library at the Ice Palace of Silingana, after the thaw

  I was born Her Royal Highness Theoai Herim. Senior daughter of Queen Theoan. Crown Princess of Yamarr.

  For seventeen years I was the future Queen of Yamarr. For seventeen years I was trained, taught and tested as only a prospective monarch can be, proving myself again and again against the standard of my Mother, and her Mother, and hers before her. I was the hope of my nation. The future of my line. The cool blood of the great warrior rulers of the Yellow Desert flowed in my veins, and the wisdom of the scholar consorts of Emenessa informed my every word and action.

  Now?

  I am Theoai of nowhere. Broken one. Worthless. Forsaken daughter, exile of Yamarr. After spending all my strength to cling to it, it took only a single moment – one moment of happiness, of trust – for the crown to be dashed from my grasp.

  But that was not the end of my disgrace.

  It was only the beginning.

  1

  I was home again. Soaring weightless on the desert wind, as if borne up by the wings of some silent nightbird, high above the black and yellow rippled dunes. On the eastern horizon, the moon – wearing the sharp horns of her warrior’s crescent – rose to greet the icy glint of the guardian stars that would ride with her through the night sky. Below me, the welcoming lights of Segemassa. The city where I was born.

  The tributaries of the river Sege which ran through and beneath the city like veins glittered with the lights of slow-moving pleasure barges as they passed beneath the spreading thorn trees and between the reed beds. Buildings, roads and parks spread across the lush lands my ancestors had reclaimed from the sand, a rumpled green velvet cloak scattered with jewels. Lamplight glowed in the windows. Torches bobbed briskly along the shadowed streets.

  In the Southern Quarter, the night market filled the air with raucous music and laughter, its colourful drifts of paper lanterns rocking in the same wind that carried spicy scents – roasting kid and honeyed figs, rosewater, cassia and ambergris – up to me.

  And above it all the golden towers of the Palace stood sentinel, watching over the city from the apex of the river delta as they had done for five centuries.

  The cool, sand-gritty wind gusted again. I circled the Palace, eyes hungrily examining the shadowed gardens and fountains, the tiled courtyards and pools. But something was wrong. Something was different.

  No. I don’t want to see this place again.

  The wind did not listen. It carried more laughter to my ears – a memory this time. The merry chime of Aramin’s a
musement as she ran from room to room in the sun drenched afternoon, hiding from her nursemaid beneath my bed and begging for my silence even as her giggles gave her away. “Sssh, Theo! Don’t tell...”

  I don’t want to see this. I don’t want to remember.

  Thunder clapped. Lightning lit the sky above the Palace. Suddenly I was falling. Seeing again my Mother’s face, sorrowful, resolute – pitying. The lightning flashed from the glittering facets of the rubies in her crown.

  “We can hide the truth no longer, my daughter. You are unfit. You are broken.”

  Stop! Stop it!

  I hurtled toward the ground, screaming – and woke with a choked off gasp, biting my lip hard enough to taste blood.

  The thin planked walls of my cabin shuddered and creaked, transmitting the relentless churning of the water outside directly to my uneasy guts. It was daylight already – cold blue light spilled through the frost-rimmed porthole. I checked the corners of the small room to ensure none of my maids were present before I permitted myself a small groan, pulling the thick layers of fur Mother had sent with me up over my head. The books and papers which I had been queasily studying last night before my lamp burned through its oil fell to the floor with a variety of thumps and bangs.

  Almost immediately there was a tentative knock at the door. “Your Highness? Are you awake?”

  Well, I am now, I thought pettishly. Did they take turns hovering outside my door so that one of them was available to prod me at all times?

  “Yes, Elo – what is it?” I called back, making the required effort to sound composed and gracious.

  The answer almost trembled with eagerness. “They’ve sighted land at last, Princess! The Captain says we’ll arrive today. Do you want to get dressed?”

  My teeth found the sore place on my lip again. I had known this was coming. I refused to let my hands shake or my breath speed up. Too late to go back. “Wait a moment!”

  I heaved myself out of the small cubbyhole where I made my bed. Shivers racked my body – Triple Gods, it was so cold here, why did it have to be so cold? – as I wrapped the golden pelt of a desert lion tightly around myself, sending more books thumping to the floor. If my fingers fumbled as they prised open the small, secret compartment in the lid of my personal trunk and removed a vial of greenish-grey dust, then that was a result of the temperature, not a failure in my control.

  It took me less than a minute to mix a precisely measured amount of the powder in a small cup and swallow it down. I grimaced at the bitter, metallic flavour of the precious ration of fresh water, and the chalky texture the medicine left on my tongue. I had tasted little else for days. It seemed the only mouthful of liquid or other sustenance I could keep down aboard this accursed vessel was the one I dosed with my medicine each day. I had enough willpower for that.

  There would not be an episode here.

  I stopped up and tided away the vial, then tipped a sheaf of scribbled notes from the folding chair by my make-shift desk and sat before I called out. “You may enter.”

  The door thudded open and I was engulfed. Books and papers were swept aside and replaced by colourful drifts of fabric, winking embroidery, and jewels. I was pulled briskly to my feet, my fur stripped away, and patted and frisked all over by eager little hands.

  “Oh Princess, you have lost weight!” The plump one tutted sorrowfully. “And you missed breakfast and the midday meal today as well, are you sure you won’t take something to eat?”

  “Don’t go on about it, Ane! There’s nothing worse than people reminding you all the time of how sick you’ve been. We have that garnet belt – we’ll cinch it in and it will look fine. No man ever complained that his wife’s waist was too tiny,” said the oldest one, Sereh.

  “The garnets? But surely she must wear the ermine to meet the Prince?” the third – Elo, the youngest – protested. “Red and white together? Oh no!”

  I swayed in place, unsure if my body was rocking with the movement of the ship or my sudden desperate longing for Enesis, my old maid, stern and solemn and, most important, usually silent. She had broken her customary quiet when I began preparing to leave. She had begged, tears in her eyes, to come with me. I had refused.

  Yamarr was her home and I knew she loved it as fiercely as I did. I would not exile her, even if I must exile myself.

  These girls were volunteers, and of a different type: not true servants but ladies-in-waiting, younger sisters and poor cousins from good families happy to exchange their low-ranking lives at court for the promotion to royal handmaiden. I only hoped they wouldn’t come to regret their choice as much as I...

  Too late to go back. Too late to change your mind now.

  “I will wear the dark brown furs today,” I interrupted with forced calm. “And the ruby and gold circlet and bangles, and the matching ear-bobs. You may braid my hair, but leave it down.”

  “Surely you don’t mean that!” the youngest girl protested, clutching the snowy white ermine to her breast as if it were a treasured pet. “You must wear the ermine! It’s the finest, and the Prince will expect it – ” my stomach did a slow, greasy roll beneath my ribs and I breathed out slowly, suppressing the urge to retch, “ – and what will he think if you refuse his gift? Princess, really, I beg you to reconsider. You simply can’t – ”

  Her voice reminded me of a flock of buzzards fighting over a carcass. Abruptly I could stand it no longer. “Be silent, Elo!”

  She stepped back, as shocked as if I had slapped her. Wary, the other two hesitated. They were unused to my temper. I had never exchanged more than a pleasantry or two with any of them in my life before we boarded the ship, and during the worst of my sea-sickness – the vast majority of this endless eight week journey – I had locked the door of my cabin and refused to allow anyone entry, so that no one would witness my despair, my misery.

  My weakness.

  It wasn’t their fault that they didn’t know me. And near-strangers though they might be, they were all I had left of Yamarr.

  I am calm.

  I am calm.

  I am.

  Another deep, slow breath, as my Whisperer tutors had taught me, and I offered the girls a small smile, allowing my expression to warm with a facsimile of affection.

  “Come – let’s not squabble. Haven’t we work to do? Elo, you must fetch my gown. Ane can make a start on my hair, and Sereh, the rubies and garnets are on the second layer of my jewel case. Quickly now!”

  Reassured, they rushed into action.

  I kept the smile on my face as they tugged and rearranged and brushed and twisted. Kept it there, kept it there, until it felt like a piece of wood stretching my dry, cracked lips out of shape.

  Elo was right. The ermine was the finest fur. The most expensive and exotic. And I hated it. Hated the pure, cold, snowy whiteness of it, and the fact that it came, not from one of the familiar creatures of my homeland, but from the cold, snowy realm of Silinga itself. A gift, sent all the way across the freezing sea, from my future husband. A man I had never met.

  There would be enough of bleak whiteness and of cold in my future. For now, I would wear the soft fur of the brown mountain bear, and pretend it kept me warm.

  Ten minutes later I emerged on deck, not allowing myself to pause as the frigid air tightened the skin on my face, forcing all the warmth from my body in a single white plume of breath. My hands scrabbled inside their thick muff of dark fur, chafing, chafing at the dry skin to try and keep the cold away. I kept my face still.

  I had hardly ever ventured up here. Much easier to conceal my weakness in the confined space of my own cabin, from which I could exclude servants and crew at will. It wasn’t as if the sight of the lashing, iron-dark sea, or its overpowering rusty stink, or the constant squeak, snap and crack of the ropes and sails brought me any pleasure. Even the crew were a drab sight. They all possessed the pale skin of their people, and their neat uniforms were one shade or another of faded, nondescript dark blue.

  At least the sea
appeared calm for once today. It was an opaque, milky grey, disturbed by small, white-topped ripples. The sky was grey too. The low clouds that seemed to sit directly above the sails were a darker grey. And the air was faintly grey with mist. I shivered as I adjusted my balance on the shifting deck, sure I could feel the damp greyness seeping into the tiny porous holes in my bones.

  “If you keep moving, you get used to the cold,” Elo told me, appearing at my elbow with an eager little hop. The ladies-in-waiting surrounded me, propelling me forward and encircling me at the same time, serving as a barrier between me and the seamen that worked all around us.

  Not that the crew ever actually dared approach me. The Black Tern was a diplomatic ship – sleek and fast, relatively luxurious, even equipped with two pairs of the new repeating iron cannon, and sent for the sole purpose of transporting me. The men who ran it, I assumed, were well used to high status cargo. They averted their eyes respectfully and stayed out of my path, as if anxious to avoid giving offence. I wasn’t easily offended, but I did wonder how many foreign princesses they had hauled across the sea this way, and if they had possessed fiery and uncertain tempers.

  While I had feigned an affection for my ladies in the cabin, now I really felt it. Dressed warmly but in vivid shades – midnight blue, pistachio green and ochre yellow – and with their glowing brown skin and brown, brown-black and blue-black hair, they looked like the lovely tame birds that fluttered through the tree garden at the palace. Everything was colourless here. The ladies alone looked like home.