The Pale Blue Light

Solaia did not sleep.

She lay on top of the covers in her boots with her hands folded on her stomach like a corpse laid out for burial, and watched the ceiling of the pavilion turn from black to charcoal to a thin, sour gray. Twice she got up and pressed her palm flat against the window glass. Twice the cold bit into her skin and nothing happened, nothing at all, and she stood there in the dark feeling like a fool.

It was the orange blossoms, she told herself. The Emperor said so.

She did not believe it. She had seen his veins go quiet.

By the time the first servants came in with the morning light, her mouth was dry as paper and she had decided on a single guiding principle. If the Stone was going to show what she was, she would find out at the same moment as everyone else. If it was not, she would be bored. She would be extremely, magnificently bored. She would be so bored that people would think she had never in her life felt anything at all.

It was the only trick she had. She was prepared to use it until it killed her.

"The gray silk," said Berylla at the door.

"No."

"My lady, the court will be watching."

"I know. That's why." She dragged the black wool gown down over her head and tugged at the collar until it sat straight. "If I go in dressed like a doll, they'll look for the string. If I go in like this, they'll look for the knife."

Berylla's mouth did the odd little thing again. "And you wish them to look for the knife."

"I want them to find it," Solaia said. "And be wrong."

…

The Hall of Measure was the oldest chamber in the palace, and it had been built to make people feel small.

It was a perfect circle, carved straight out of the living rock beneath the east wing, with a domed ceiling so high that the rows of lamps hung in it looked like stars. Eighty pillars of white marble ringed the walls. Between them, on tiered benches of black stone, sat what appeared to be every noble in the Ice Kingdom. Furs and velvets and glittering jewels. Powdered faces, painted mouths. The whisper of a thousand whispers rising and breaking against the dome like surf.

And at the center, on a low dais of silver, stood a single pillar of crystal as tall as a man.

The Measuring Stone.

She had imagined something grander. It was almost plain, a long clear prism with smooth sides, faintly clouded at its heart like a frozen lake. Five bands of color had been etched into its length, one above the other, from the base to the tip. Pale blue at the bottom. Then deeper blue, then gold, then a dark, bloody red. And at the very top, thin as a hair, white.

Strong people light the top, she thought. And I am meant to light the bottom.

Her stomach turned over.

"Chin up," said a voice at her shoulder. It was barely more than a breath.

Kieran had not looked at her. He walked beside her down the long aisle in his formal black, gold thread glittering at his collar, with the whole hall on its feet and bowing as he passed. His expression was one of faint, aristocratic weariness. He might have been strolling through a menagerie on a rainy afternoon. But she was close enough to see the slight, rigid tension along his jaw, and she knew exactly how many hours he had slept.

She kept her chin up.

They stopped at the foot of the dais. Before it, in a long row of carved ivory chairs, sat the Church.

She had thought she was prepared for it. She had not been prepared for how white it was. A dozen cardinals in robes of snow and silver, hands folded in their laps like a line of carved saints. Behind them stood Hester, wrapped in gray, with her ruined fingers in splints and a look on her old wrinkled face of such concentrated hatred that Solaia nearly smiled.

And in the center of the row, in a chair that was not quite a throne, sat a tall figure in robes of pure white, with a face of beaten silver.

It was a mask. It covered him from brow to chin, smooth and featureless except for two narrow slits for the eyes, and in the lamplight it shone like a mirror. His hands, resting on the arms of his chair, were gloved. His shoulders were narrow. He might have been a young man or an old one. There was no way to tell.

The High Pontiff.

She felt the cold of him from forty feet away.

It was not the cold of the Dark Magic. This was a thin, clean, whispering chill, like a blade drawn slowly out of ice, and it made every hair on her arms stand on end. It had a smell, too, faintly sweet. Like honey. Like the poison she had drunk.

"Your Majesty," said the Pontiff.

His voice was soft. It was beautiful, actually, warm and rich and unhurried, the voice of a kindly old confessor. It filled the great hall without any effort at all.

"You honor us. I confess I had not expected to see you with the lady so soon after her... illness."

"The lady has been in excellent health since she left the Church's care," Kieran said pleasantly.

A small dry rustle from the cardinals.

"Naturally." The silver mask turned. The narrow dark slits settled on Solaia, and she felt it again, that cold pressure sliding over her skin like a thumb. "Child. You are Solaia of Ashvale?"

"So I'm told."

"You do not remember?"

"No."

"A great pity. The old houses of the north kept such interesting records." The Pontiff folded his gloved hands. "I do not wish to frighten you. The Stone is only an instrument, and a gentle one. You will lay your hand upon it, and it will tell us what it finds. It has never been known to lie. That is why we trust it."

"How comforting," said Solaia.

Somewhere behind her, a woman gave a small, startled laugh and smothered it.

She did not look back. She did not need to. She had already found the girl in the second row of the nobles' benches, the girl who had arranged herself so that the whole hall could see her. Lady Ysolde Orloff was perhaps twenty, with hair like spun gold braided in a crown and a gown of ice-blue silk that probably cost more than the village where Solaia had been found. She was beautiful. She was exactly what a duke's daughter should be. And every line of her was turned toward Kieran like a flower toward the sun.

Her eyes, when they flicked to Solaia, were perfectly, glacially empty.

Oh, Solaia thought. That one.

"Whenever you are ready, my lady," said the Pontiff.

She stepped up onto the dais.

The silver floor was cold through the thin soles of her boots. The Stone loomed over her, plain and clear and awful, and for one moment her courage went out of her entirely. She looked up. Across the great, whispering hall, past the cardinals and the nobles and the endless ranks of white pillars, she found one pair of eyes.

Kieran was watching her.

He did not nod. He did not smile. He gave her nothing at all, the most perfect blank mask she had ever seen. But his hand, resting against his thigh where the court could not see it, was closed so tightly that the knuckles had gone white.

Look bored, said that hand. Look bored. Please.

She turned back to the Stone, drew a breath, and laid her palm against the crystal.

…

It was warm.

That was the first thing. She had expected cold. But the surface under her hand was warm as skin, and a faint thread of light began to uncurl inside it, not a flash but a slow blossoming, like ink in water. A dim bluish glow, spreading from the heart of the crystal toward the base.

Then everything inside her moved.

She had been wrong about the fire. It was not hiding in her hands. It was somewhere far below them, far deeper than flesh, and it had been waiting a long, long time. She could feel it rising now, a great slow wave of light climbing through her blood like the tide in a deep cave. A thousand years of heat. A thousand years of wanting. It filled her chest, and her throat, and the backs of her eyes, and she knew with perfect and terrible certainty that if she let it reach her palm, the Stone would not glow. It would scream.

And between the fire and the world stood a door.

She could not see it. But she felt it, as plainly as she felt the floor. An old, heavy, patient door, banded with something that was not iron, held shut by a thousand small hands pressing from the inside. They were not hers, quite. And yet they were. They pressed softly, tirelessly, in the old language of a woman singing a child to sleep. Hush, hush. Not yet. Not yet.

I don't understand, she thought.

Hush, said the door. Sleep.

And the fire, which had been climbing, hesitated.

It paused. She felt it turn, a slow vast turning, like an animal that has heard a familiar voice. It did not go out. It sank, quietly and obediently, back down into the dark, and the hot light that had been gathering behind her eyes went cool as a stream.

In the crystal, the pale blue glow rose and held.

It was dim. It was thin. It climbed barely a hand's breadth up the stone and stopped at the first etched line, exactly where it should have, a weak, trembling, ordinary little light. It was the light of a minor bloodline. A fading house. A girl whose family was dust.

For the space of three heartbeats no one in the Hall of Measure breathed.

"Pale blue," said a cardinal, at last. He sounded almost disappointed.

A ripple went through the nobles. Someone laughed, a rich, relieved, incredulous bark. Someone else began to clap, and was shushed, and began again. Lady Ysolde's lips curved in a small, sweet, deadly smile. From the benches the whispers rose in a tide, so weak, so pitiful, a border girl, did you see, I told you, and across the dais, Solaia saw Kieran's hand open.

It was only a little. Only a loosening of the fingers. But she saw how his shoulders came down, how the great weight he had been carrying lifted a single inch, and for a moment, to her utter confusion, the thing she felt was not triumph.

It was grief.

He's relieved, she thought. He's so relieved. And I just lied to a stone.

Then a gloved hand closed gently around her wrist.

…

"Forgive me, my child."

The Pontiff had risen. She had not seen him move. He stood beside her now, a head taller, silver mask glinting a few inches from her face, and his robes smelled of honey and cold stone.

"The Church has a custom," he said, gently, "for matters of some gravity. A blessed hand upon the vessel, to witness the reading. It will take only a moment."

"Your Holiness," said Kieran, from the foot of the dais. Very pleasantly. Very dangerously. "The test is concluded."

"Naturally, Majesty. I ask only an old man's indulgence."

He laid his other hand over hers, flat against the Stone.

It was like being touched by a leech. The glove was thin kid, but the touch beneath it was hungry. She felt it at once, a slow, soft, greedy tugging at the deep places inside her, as if a thousand little mouths had fastened to her blood and begun to drink. The warm light in the crystal flickered. Wavered. She felt the fire stir, far down, in something close to rage, and under it the great door groaned.

Hush, said the thousand hands. Hush, hush, hush.

She clenched her teeth and did not make a sound.

And then, so quietly that she was sure no one else in the hall could hear, so close that the silver mask almost brushed her ear, the Pontiff began to speak.

"You are a very good actress, child."

Her breath stopped.

"I have been looking for something that would burn," the warm voice murmured, "for a very long time. I am a patient man."

He took his hand away.

The tugging stopped. The glow in the Stone steadied at pale blue and held. And the High Pontiff of the Old Church stepped back from her with a bow so graceful it was nearly a caress, and turned to the hall, and spread his gloved hands.

"A very weak flame," he said, in his lovely, carrying voice. "The Stone has spoken. Let the Church give thanks."

Applause. Soft, scattered, and growing, spilling down the benches like breaking water. Kieran said something she did not hear. The room tilted. She took a step, and her knee gave out, and a hand caught her elbow, and it was not the Emperor's. It was Berylla's, firm and dry and cool, appearing from nowhere as if she had been waiting all morning. Which, Solaia understood dimly, she had.

"Walk," Berylla breathed. "Do not stop. Do not look back."

She walked.

She walked down the dais steps and along the long white aisle between the staring nobles, and the roar in her ears slowly became voices, and the voices became a murmur of relief and malice. At the edge of her vision, by the second pillar on the left, someone was not clapping.

An old man in a scribe's gray gown, with stooped shoulders and ink-stained fingers, sat at a little wooden desk set apart from the benches. He held a quill. He had been recording the measurement for the royal archive, as was his duty. The quill had stopped. A black drop of ink had gathered at the nib and fallen, unnoticed, across the page.

He was staring at her.

His eyes were wide and gray and brimming. Tears were running down his lined cheeks, quite openly, and he made no move to wipe them away. As she passed, he lifted one trembling hand and pressed it flat against his chest, over his heart, in a gesture that she did not recognize and that struck her like a blow.

Then the crowd shifted, and he was gone.

Why, she thought, dizzy, is a scribe crying over a pale blue stone?

Beside her, so close that his sleeve brushed hers, the Emperor of the Ice Kingdom walked in perfect, rigid silence. He did not look at her. He did not speak. But as they passed beneath the great arched doorway of the Hall and the cold, bright corridor opened ahead of them, he said one word, quietly, to no one at all.

"Well."

And she knew, as clearly as she knew her name, that he was not saying thank the gods.

He was saying: what have I done.