The servants stepped back, and Kosika swayed a little side to side, watching the white cloak pool and swish across the floor.
By the end of the day, she knew, it would be red.
Kosika started to smile, but then Nasi poked a pin too hard into her scalp, and she hissed, a small feral sound that the other girl simply ignored.
“You know,” muttered Kosika, “it is a crime to hurt the queen.”
Nasi plucked another gem-tipped pin from between her teeth. “Then the queen should stand still.”
Kosika scowled, and Nasi scowled back, the only one bold enough to meet her gaze and hold it. The servants kept their heads bowed. The Vir did, too. Even Lark would look away first. But Nasi didn’t even blink, and soon Kosika gave up the contest, and turned her attention back to the window.
She could feel the city coming to life. Could see the streets rippling with motion as every citizen answered the call of the drums.
It was a tithing day.
The ritual had been her idea, a chance for the city to give thanks—thanks for the seasons, for their blessing, and their cost. And as needs of the city rose, so did the need for the citizens to make their offerings.
Now, the drums rang four times a year—when winter gave way to spring, and spring to summer, and summer to fall, and fall to winter. Four times a year, but secretly, Kosika loved this one the most—the third tithe. The day when summer gave way to fall. She loved it for the color of the leaves on the trees, a blushing red, a golden yellow, shades she’d only dreamed of when she was small. She loved it for the changing skies, and the way they reflected on the Sijlt each morning and each night.
And she loved it—selfishly—because it was her birthday （a bad omen, her mother had said, to come into the world when the life was going out, but standing in her castle chamber, Kosika hardly felt that she’d been cursed）。 And while she would never let the occasion of her birth overshadow the importance of the tithe, she still took some secret pleasure in it.
This year more than most.
Today, Kosika turned fourteen. An age that mattered to her in one way and one alone. She’d been on the throne for seven years—seven years marked by peace, and power—which meant she’d now spent half her life as queen.
And every day from this one forward, she could say she’d ruled longer than she hadn’t.
Nasi slid the last pin into her hair, and Kosika moved away from the window, and toward the silver ash tree that grew in the center of her room. Its roots drove down between the stones, its branches up toward the vaulted ceiling. Kosika stopped before it, and touched the bark as if for luck.
Then, only then, did she feel ready.
Nasi held out the silver blade, and Kosika fastened it at her hip as the drums echoed on through the city, calling everyone to bleed.
* * *
The castle doors swung open onto a waiting world.
Dozens of royal guards flanked the pale steps, and halfway down, Kosika saw Lark. He stood out—he always did. Only seventeen, but already taller than most, his silver-blond head tipped back, dark eyes on the sky instead of the ground, the scar that wrapped like a chain around his throat on full display, as it always was. He wore it with such pride.
At the base of the stairs, the Vir stood waiting. All twelve members of her council, adorned in their silver half-cloaks, Serak at the front, his dark head bowed, his gauze-wrapped hand resting on the Saint’s seal at his shoulder.
Beyond them, the courtyard brimmed with citizens and soldiers, and all those who lingered hoping to catch a glimpse of their queen as she set out on the tithing road.
And yet, for a moment, Kosika didn’t move. She stood at the top of the castle steps, and felt the sigh of morning on her skin, felt the crispness on the air, one season tipping into the next, the balance of it all, and the change, the rise and fall of her breath, in time with the drums, and she felt small and vast at once, a single drop in the Sijlt, and all the water in the world coursing through her veins. She felt beyond the edges of her narrow frame, and knew that she stood in the blessed place, in the center of the current, and let it draw her forward, over the edge and down the stairs.
Kosika descended, the white cloak rippling around her, as to every side, the heads bowed and the voices rose to greet their queen.
* * *
SEVEN YEARS AGO
The day the world changed, Kosika was trying to take a nap.
She and Lark were sitting on top of the Votkas Mar, the Fifth Wall, which was her favorite one because it was the highest, and from there she could see the river snaking through the center of the city, and the castle, jutting up like a piece of shattered slate. Usually she’d make a game out of counting market stalls or passing carts, but today, she was stretched out along the top of the wall, one arm thrown across her eyes. She was tired, but that was probably because she hadn’t gone home, not since the incident with the collectors in her mother’s kitchen the day before.