What is that? What was that? Marra looked around, panicking, because such a thing could not be normal, but the midwives were calm and acted as if it were every day that a woman’s body writhed like a dying snake on the bed.
The queen returned. Kania gave Marra a last, searching look before dropping her hand. The queen tipped water into her daughter’s mouth and made soothing noises, and the midwives circled like jackals, waiting for the babe to come.
Chapter 4
The babe, when it came, was a girl. Kania took this news with her lips white and set. She had screamed terribly through labor, but she was strong and healthy and the babe was strong and healthy and perhaps only Marra thought it strange that her sister took this news like a blow.
The queen lifted her granddaughter and smiled down at her, the broadest smile that Marra had ever seen. The prince did not come to visit. Marra had still never seen him. In her mind, he had become something other than human, a creature like a dragon, something large and powerful and uncertain.
The Northern Kingdom’s palace certainly seemed as much like a dragon’s domain as a human’s. It was huge and rich and there were a hundred corridors and a hundred tapestries on every corridor and a hundred courtiers lurking, watching for signs of weakness. Even after Kania’s babe was delivered, there was no privacy. She could not ask Kania what she had meant, or if she had meant anything at all.
Marra did not like the courtiers. She was, in truth, a little intimidated by them. The Northern palace was so much larger than the small, shabby one that she had grown up in, and that palace itself was so much larger than the convent. Had it truly only been five years since she had walked among them? It seemed like far longer, like an entire life had passed. She was glad that she had not chosen to wear the dresses that her mother had offered.
The courtiers bothered Marra, but for the most part, they did not bother with her. She was too minor a player to be worth cultivating. When they spoke to her, they were polite and careful, and after two days, she realized they thought she was simple.
Well, as far as they are concerned, I might as well be. These machinations are beyond me. I would rather look at tapestries and try to work out the stitches.
She met the king, who was very old. He had false teeth made of walrus ivory, and his mind wandered. Sometimes he was very sharp and sometimes very vague. When he had vague days, he wandered the halls of the palace and called Marra by her grandmother’s name. The guards with him pretended that nothing strange was happening, and Marra pretended as well.
They stayed for a week, until the christening. The palace seemed very cold to Marra, even with all the tapestries on the walls. There were drafts in unexpected places, even in her room, and no matter how she tried, she could not seem to find out where they were coming from.
“That’s the dead kings, I expect,” said her maid matter-of-factly.
“Dead kings?” Marra sought her eyes in the mirror.
The maid nodded. She was younger than Marra, but she had lived in the Northern palace for most of her life and had taken pity on the princess’s sister for her lack of worldliness. Marra rather liked her. She never stopped talking, but her chatter was a combination of harmless gossip and acute political commentary. When she told Marra, on the first day after the birth, that she must wear her hair in a particular arrangement, Marra bowed her head and allowed the maid to braid it as she saw fit. She was glad of it later, too, when she saw the way that the other women wore theirs. A simpler style would have called attention to itself by its very simplicity, and Marra preferred to simply fade from notice.
She had not, however, realized that the maid might be superstitious. “What dead kings?” she asked.
“Under the palace,” said the maid. “That’s where the crypts are. You have to keep them down there deep so that the frost doesn’t heave them back up, but it means they’re all cold and dry and they don’t really go to bones as quick as they should. Tuck your chin, ma’am, so I can get this bit here…”
Marra tucked her chin obediently. In the mirror, her neck vanished into a plump roll. She wondered if the maid was going to continue on her own or if she needed to ask for more information. Fortunately, this was apparently a favored topic.
“All the dead kings are down there, and the dead princes, too. They say it’s a whole palace of the dead down there. Each king got a room, you see, and the queen got her room next to his. If she had any babies who died, they put them in her room, and in his room…” She gave a small, pleased shudder. “In his room, they’d put the royal concubines, back in the days when they had them, yes? And if the concubines weren’t dead when they buried him, why, they’d strangle them with a silken cord and put them down there beside him.”