Writers of the Future, Volume 30 Page 4

  She eased out those scraps left behind, and began to soak them in her tea.

  When he returned on the third morning, she had been dozing. She lifted her head, and for once since her captivity began did not feel the slosh of liquid in an empty stomach. He sat the teapot down and surveyed what she had drawn on the pages he’d given her. Lacra knew that he would hope for her to slip up, to edge in some tiny detail that might give away the prince’s linchpin imprint. She had been meticulous in avoiding such a mistake.

  Each scene was a representation of a moment in her life before that terrible day. It was safe for her to sketch with the charcoal, only scenes drawn in color could take away or replace a person’s memories. And they weren’t true memories anyway, just drawings. They were scenes which included her, not taken directly from her point of view.

  All her time at court she laid out in whorls and cross-hatching. Most of it spent with the prince. With Alfon. She drew him as she had seen him; as she had known him. Always smiling, laughing. Larger than life and yet sweet and humble. The hawk-man picked up one sheet, and she saw him touch the surface in the place where a fallen tear had marred the image. It was still clear enough.

  Alfon, ring in hand.

  Lacra lay back down on her cot and pulled the blanket to her chin. The hawk-man left without asking her the questions. She let her tea grow cold.

  The next morning, he brought her gruel. She sat cross-legged on the floor of her cell, blankets wrapped high around her shoulders, the images of her life scattered around her like downed leaves. He cleared a small spot before her and sat the bowl between them. He rested his forearms on his knees and leaned back.

  “Eat.”

  “Why?”

  “Just eat.”

  She reached for the bowl, unable to help herself. More than anything she dreaded that he would take it back, that he would laugh at her for being so foolish as to think he would offer her sustenance. Lacra cradled the bowl in one hand and shoveled the food into her mouth with two fingers. It was the most marvelous thing she had ever tasted.

  “Slowly,” he warned, “or you will throw it up.”

  It pained her to do so, but she rested the bowl in her lap and began to dip out smaller portions. So very, very small.

  “You loved him?”

  She coughed, choking, and he handed her tea without the too-sweet aroma of the somal leaf. She drank, taking the time to smooth her mind as well as her throat. “Yes.”

  “Then why withhold the truth from him?”

  “That I cannot say.”

  She saw him dig his fingers into his knees, but his face stayed placid. “Not knowing is killing him.”

  “It would kill him to know.”

  “Can you be so sure?”

  “Yes.”

  She saw his hesitation, his fear. She had painted a thousand faces; she knew the configurations of them all. Just as he did, she felt sure of that. He could read her just as easily, and know that she was telling him the truth, insofar as she believed it herself.

  “We are two mirrorpainters. A great deal could be accomplished between us.”

  Her flesh prickled and her stomach protested its food. She let her gruel-coated fingers rest on the inner edge of the bowl and licked her lips. “He’s here, isn’t he? That is why you haven’t moved me back to the coast. He will not let you leave until he knows.… He was the man. With Tatya. I had wondered.”

  The hawk-man hesitated before nodding, no doubt trying to work out how he could fool her into thinking Prince Alfon—no, King Alfon—was safely back in his coastal palace. Apparently, he decided he couldn’t slip it past her. It was a good choice, because it was correct. She could see the shape of Alfon in the man with Tatya clearly now. How had she not noticed before?

  Well, it had been so long. How could she be sure?

  “He should not be here. It is dangerous for him to be without his Honor Guard.”

  The hawk-man waved a dismissive hand, “The chancellor oversees Alrayani in his absence. Alfon is said to be on a hunting expedition on the south coast. His cousins there know the truth. He could not be waylaid from chasing down the rumor of a mirrorpainter in the north. Believe me, I tried. Which is why I want to get this over with quickly. You will show him?”

  “If I am correct that knowing will be worse than not, will you help me reconstruct matters?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you had better bring me very, very good paint.”

  “You did not save the linchpin?”

  She shook her head. “I burned it that very night.”

  He flinched. To burn a painted linchpin of the human eye was sacrilege, but she no longer cared whom she offended. At the time, she had felt it was the only way to secure Alfon’s blanket of ignorance. She was just as sure of that now.

  “I will return with what you need.”

  He left her there, huddled over her cup and her gruel, struggling to push aside her misgivings. This man, the hawk-man, cared for Alfon. She could see it in his eyes, in the way he set his lips and shoulders as he talked about his king. She had not known the hawk-man during her time at the palace, but she felt certain he was loyal unto death. That level of devotion could not be faked, which was why he had seen the same sentiment within her.

  It was not the hawk-man who entered her cell next.

  She did not recognize him at first, though on an instinctual level she knew who he must be. The king had grown gaunt, his cheeks hollow and his shoulders stiff with bone. His eyes were dull and bloodshot, his beard left wild. His movements were halting as he came to sit beside her on the cot. They did not look at each other, but stared at the floor between their feet. He pretended not to notice the sketches of him scattered around.

  He smelled the same: cedar and lamp smoke. He always did stay up late, huddled too close to the light to better see his books. “I just need to know.”

  “You will. I will paint it.”

  “Can’t you just tell me?”

  “No, it’s better for you to remember.”

  “I cannot understand how, how you could … He was my father, Lacra. My father.”

  “I know. You will understand.”

  “His last words … Promise me I’ll remember those.”

  “I promise.”

  He squeezed her knee when he got up, an old habit, and placed a sack of supplies by the door as he left. She crawled to them and spilled the tiny pots and brushes out upon the floor. The hawk-man had done as promised. These were richly pigmented, a hard thing to find in the shadow of the Katharnians.

  Lacra laid the bit of stretched canvas on the floor and dipped some of her wash water into an empty teacup. Closing her eyes, she drew up the moment she had stolen from Alfon, the linchpin memory that would spark his recalling all that had happened between that moment, and the moment she took it from him.

  It had been a warm day on the southern coast. The sky had been blue and clear, a hard thing to remember in the north. She recalled the feel of sun on her exposed arms, the warmth of the horse beneath her, the animal smell. She dipped her brush in the water, and opened the first paint pot.

  The hawk-man returned in the morning and found her dozing on the floor, sketches tangled in her hair. She pushed herself upright and rubbed at her eyes, feeling dry grit behind them. He handed her tea and gruel, and she ate while he examined her work. “This is it?”

  She understood his confusion. It was an innocuous scene, just before disaster had struck. From Alfon’s point of view, the painting showed only Lacra and his father mounted side-by-side, setting out on the trail north to the oak forest.

  “It is. I was in a hurry, and I wound back too far. Do you still hold to our agreement?”

  She kept the lamp near to hand just in case. It would be messy, but if she timed it just right, she could set the painting ablaze, and then, just
maybe, make her escape. As silence expanded between them, her fingers crept toward the light.

  “If he gets worse, I will help you correct it.” He passed his hand before his eyes, the mirrorpainter sign of trust, and she let her hand go slack.

  “Bring him here.”

  He handed the painting to her and left again. While he was gone, she cleared a place for Alfon to sit and covered the painting with a corner of her blanket. He would have to reveal it to himself. Asking her to force that day upon him was just too much.

  Alfon sat in the spot prepared for him and leaned over the covered painting. He licked his lips, pale hands clasped tightly. The hawk-man came and sat beside her, both directly across from the king so that they could view the return of his memories. The hawk-man to make sure it was done, Lacra to witness what her decisions wrought.

  “Do I just …” He held up the corner of the blanket and mimed pulling it back. She nodded. He uncovered her work, and his pupils dilated. She unfocused her eyes and witnessed the return of his memories.

  They’d ridden up to the oak forest on a high jetty of earth overlooking the bay. It was a wide strip of land, and as the summer air warmed, the great stags of the Alrayani forests congregated there to claim the land for the rearing of their herds.

  Alfon had been bored—this she had not known at the time, but felt through his recalling—and circled back on the hunting trail, hoping to flush out a stag or doe and bring it down quickly so that they could return to the palace for his evening dram of port.

  He spotted Lacra to the north, and assumed the king was with her. They had been together when he left them, after all. Movement in the brush, quick and furtive. He fired.

  The king hadn’t seen it coming—he turned his head away.

  Lacra cried out a warning. Too late.

  The arrow thunked into the side of the king’s neck and tore out again. Crimson spray arced through the clear summer air and the king looked up, wonder and confusion in his eyes. He put his hand to his neck and took it away, red all over. Numb shock fled before reality and he fell forward, landing hard on his knees. Lacra and Alfon rushed to his side, and the king put his hand back to hold the wound together. Blood spilled. Pooled. Spurted.

  Alfon grabbed up his father, weeping. The old king patted him on the back with his unencumbered hand.

  “It’s not your fault,” he said before pink foam filled his mouth.

  Lacra pushed Alfon aside, spilling cloth bandages from her pack, and tried to staunch the bleeding. It was no use. Each of the king’s fearful heartbeats hastened his death.

  Alfon had been delirious, inconsolable. The next memories to flow through were a torrent of rage, guilt, pain. Reality shifted into smears of color and then he was standing, so clearly, on the edge of the cliffside, staring at the rocky beach below. Lacra grabbed him, forced him to the ground. She was smaller, but he was incapable of any real resistance. She spilled her pouch of colored chalks upon the ground and forced the prince to look at her. He saw his memories unwind as she ran them backward.

  On a clean bandage laid flat in the grass, she drew.

  Alfon wept. He sat in their little room, huddled over himself, face buried in his hands, and rocked back and forth with each sob. With all the weight of a bird’s wing, she touched her fingers to his shoulder. He let out a low moan and uncoiled, only to wrap himself around her.

  “I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry I ever thought you could …”

  “Hush, now.”

  She stroked his hair and held him as he trembled. Over the head of the sobbing king, she locked eyes with the hawk-man. He nodded, once, and passed his hand before his eyes. Then he took the painting, and burnt it.

  Lacra had freedom after that. Her room was still her own, but the whole of what she now knew was a hunting cabin was open to her. In the dead of night she stood on a wide balcony overlooking the valley below. They had chosen a good place for secrecy; this stretch of land was rarely visited save during the prime hunting days of springtime. Below her not a single campfire burned, and above her the sky was hung with diamond-bright stars.

  The hawk-man came to stand beside her and rested his forearms against the railing. They stood in silence a long while, looking out over nothing at all.

  “You were right. He can’t go on like this. He’s determined to turn himself in to clear your name.”

  “They’ll hang him for it. His uncles will be happy to. It will mean an opening on the throne.”

  “We have to correct this, but we cannot just take it out again or this will start all over. He would run himself into the ground, searching for you, hoping to discover the truth.”

  “Then we will give him a different truth,” Lacra said. “Come with me.”

  She led him back into her room. Alfon was deep in the sleep of grief, and she felt sure he could not be stirred. They had returned her wooden case to her, and from it she produced her favorite notepad.

  “What do you know about reprinting?”

  “Only what I’ve demonstrated to you. I can remove a mundane imprint with charcoal or an eye imprint with color, and stage a new one with color to be brought out later. It’s a crude thing, when rushed.

  “I have been thinking, what if we were to deconstruct an event? Take it moment by moment and change things just slightly.”

  He swallowed. “Insert another person, a new killer? Then how would we explain your running, your memory theft?”

  “No, no.” She shook her head. “I was thinking we could make the accident mine, in his truth. Put the bow in my hand.”

  “He would still hunt for you. He would want to prove it was an accident to the council, and such a thing would not hold up under a mirrorpainter-led investigation. It would all fall apart, and he would hang anyway.”

  She gave him a small, tight smile. “It is difficult to chase a dead woman.”

  “I see.”

  “Shall we begin?”

  They removed the lids from the pots, and two sets of brushes began to move. When they reached the last set of images, Lacra reached out to stay the hawk-man’s hand. “These stay the same. I will paint them.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “These are his father’s last words. He needs this. I promised.”

  The next morning she woke beside the king, her fingers stiff and curled from having drawn and painted all night. It was impossible to capture every minuscule moment, but she had managed to sketch all of the key events of that fateful day. Together, she and the hawk-man painted them, shifted them. Twisted tiny little details until the narrative fit just right.

  Beside her, Alfon stirred into wakefulness. She held her breath, waiting, crossing her fingers beneath the thick blankets. She dared to turn her head just enough to make out his movements, and saw him rub his eyes, then stare straight ahead. The first of the painted images was tacked to the wall directly across from where he lay. Lacra had gambled he would not shift position in his sleep.

  He shook his head and stood, stretching. Lacra closed her eyes in relief. He had seen the painting, she was sure of it, but mirrorpaintings were moments in time, not artwork. He had seen the painting as a random memory bubbling to the surface of his thoughts, nothing more. This just might work.

  When he had gone from the room, she burnt it.

  The next few days progressed much the same. Each morning the king laid his eyes on a new sequence, and sometimes she and the hawk-man managed to place more paintings about the cabin for him to find, always in order. The sequence was key to keeping him ignorant of their conceit. After awhile, he began to seem less gloomy, and his glances toward her became more and more worrisome.

  On the fifth day, he slipped up behind her and rested his chin on her shoulder. “It’s okay, Lacra. It was an accident.”

  She closed her eyes and leaned against his chest, trying to keep the tension in her body fro
m relaying what she felt to him. But what did she feel? She was the murderer now, in his eyes at least, but she carried no guilt, only a slight tinge of pride that came with manipulating her skill to the best of her abilities. Pride and sadness. Her time in the cabin with Alfon was over.

  “I know,” she said, “I know.”

  That night the hawk-man found her on the balcony after the king had gone to rest.

  “Well?”

  “He believes.”

  The hawk-man rubbed at his face with both hands and then shook his head. His eyes were a little wild, his lips turned up. “I can’t believe it worked. I don’t think anyone has done anything like this before.”

  “And no one will ever know. If someone even begins to suspect such a thing is possible …”

  “You’re right, I know. It’s just—” he shrugged. “I wish you could take the credit you deserve.”

  “You’ll know. That’s enough. I’m counting on you to look after him. I’ve compiled sketches of what really happened, so that you can reference them if you need to fill in any blanks. Keep them secret, and burn them if exposure is imminent.”

  “I will. Will it be tonight?”

  “In the morning. There are some preparations I need your help with.”

  “Name them.”

  When next the sun rose, Lacra watched from her hiding place in the craggy valley as a deer carcass wrapped in her cloak plummeted from the balcony to the jagged terrain below. She was too far away to hear or see any of the details, but she knew the hawk-man would have cried out, gotten Alfon’s attention right before the bundle gave way to gravity and tipped forward toward certain death. They would then find the suicide note on the balcony floor, penned in her own hand, spelling out her grief and her guilt. Alfon would never go searching for her again.

  She stayed in the valley through the day, unwilling to leave that place until she felt certain that Alfon was back on the road to the south. The hawk-man had provided her a good horse, saddlebags laden with supplies. She could afford to linger.

  In the night she saw them burn her, or what scraps the hawk-man had found of “her,” on a pyre near the river. When she heard Alfon’s weeping, she knew it was past time for her to go.