It should not have been so easy for me to stroll about, I mused as I continued to do so. I had reached the highblood levels by this point, where I did have to be a bit more careful. There were fewer servants here, but more guards, wearing the ugliest white livery I’d ever seen — and swords, and crossbows, and hidden daggers, if my fleshly eyes did not deceive me. There had always been guards in Sky, a small army of them, but they had taken pains to remain unobtrusive in the days when I’d lived here. They had dressed the same as the servants and had never worn weapons that could be seen. The Arameri preferred to believe that guards were unnecessary, and they hadn’t been, in truth, back then. Any significant threat to the palace’s highbloods would have forced us Enefadeh to transport ourselves to the site of danger, and that would’ve been the end of it.
So, I considered as I stepped through a wall to avoid an unusually attentive guard, it seemed the Arameri had been forced to protect themselves more conventionally. Understandable — but how did that account for the diminished number of servants?
A mystery. I resolved to find out, if I could.
Stepping through another wall, I found myself in a room that held a familiar scent. Following it — and tiptoeing past the nurse dozing on the sitting room couch — I found Shahar, asleep in a good-sized four-poster bed. Her perfect blonde curls spread prettily over half a dozen pillows, though I stifled a laugh at her face: mouth open, cheek mashed on one folded arm, and a line of drool down that arm forming a puddle on the pillow. She was snoring quite loudly and did not stir when I went over to examine her toy shelf.
One could learn a great deal about a child from her play. Naturally I ignored the toys on the highest shelves; she would want her favorites within easy reach. On the lower shelves, someone had been cleaning the things and keeping them in good order, so it was hard to spot the most worn of the items. Scents revealed much, however, and three things in particular drew me closer. The first was a large stuffed bird of some sort. I touched my tongue to it and tasted a toddler’s love, fading now. The second was a spyglass, light but solidly made so as to withstand being dropped by clumsy hands. Perhaps she used it to look down at the city or up at the stars. It had an air of wonder that made me smile.
The third item, which made me stop short, was a scepter.
It was beautiful, intricate, a graceful, twisting rod marbled with bright jewel tones down its length. A work of art. Not made of glass, though it appeared to be; glass would have been too fragile to give to a child. No, this was tinted daystone, the same substance as the palace’s walls — very difficult to shatter, among its other unique properties. (I knew that very well, since I and my siblings had created it.) Which was why, centuries ago, a family head had commissioned this and other such scepters from his First Scrivener, and had given it to the Arameri heir as a toy. To learn the feel of power, he had said. And since then, many little Arameri boys and girls had been given a scepter on their third birthday, which most of them promptly used to whack pets, other children, and servants into painful obedience.
The last time I had seen one of these scepters, it had been a modified, adult version of the thing on Shahar’s shelf. Fitted with a knife blade, the better to cut my skin to ribbons. The perversion of a child’s toy had made each slice burn like acid.
I glanced back at Shahar — fair Shahar, heir Shahar, someday Lady Shahar Arameri. A very few Arameri children would not have used the scepter, but Shahar, I felt certain, was not so gentle. She would have wielded it with glee at least once. Deka had probably been her first victim. Had her brother’s cry of pain cured her of the taste for sadism? So many Arameri learned to treasure the suffering of their loved ones.
I contemplated killing her.
I thought about it for a long time.
Then I turned and stepped through the wall into the adjoining room.
A suite, yes; that, too, was traditional for Arameri twins. Side-by-side apartments, connected by a door in the bedroom, ostensibly so that the children could sleep together or apart as they desired. More than one set of Arameri twins had been reduced to a singlet thanks to such doors. So easy for the stronger twin to creep into the weaker one’s room unnoticed, in the dark of the night while the nurses slept.
Deka’s room was darker than Shahar’s, as it was positioned on the side of the palace that did not get moonlight. It would get less sunlight, too, I realized, for through the window-wall I could see one of the massive, curling limbs of the World Tree stretching into the distance against the night horizon. Its spars and branches and million, million leaves did not completely obscure the view, but any sunlight that came in would be dappled, unsteady. Tainted, by Itempan standards.