Two Lives
By autumn, Zarina no longer needed to think about the route.
She could leave her rooms, cross the old music corridor, take the narrow service stairs and reach the eastern court without once slowing to remember where to turn.
That ease brought its own problems.
At first she had prepared carefully for every night outside. She chose what to wear hours beforehand. She counted the coins she carried. She made certain nothing in her room looked disturbed.
Now she sometimes decided to leave only after everyone else had gone to bed.
She kept two dresses folded beneath blankets in an old chest nobody used. A pair of worn shoes sat behind a row of ceremonial gowns. She had hidden a small purse in the hollow beneath the window seat.
The habits had become ordinary.
So had lying.
Not large lies.
She still thought of them that way.
If an attendant asked why she was tired, she had been reading.
If someone found mud on her shoes, she had walked in the palace gardens.
If she did not want company in the evening, she had a headache.
Usually nobody questioned her.
That made it easier the next time.
The courtyard behind the boarding house had become one of her favourite places.
There was almost nothing remarkable about it.
A crooked tree grew near one wall. Laundry lines hung between the upper windows during the day and had to be taken down before gatherings because people kept walking into them. Half the paving stones were cracked.
Someone had dragged an old table outside and left it there permanently.
People brought chairs when they could find them. When they could not, they sat on crates or on the ground.
Sera could arrive late and nobody demanded an explanation.
Sometimes she arrived and found Tessa already there.
Sometimes she waited alone until someone else appeared.
One evening she came to find only Rike sitting near the wall, repairing the bridge of an old instrument.
“Where is everyone?”
Rike shrugged.
“Not here.”
“I can see that.”
He continued working.
Zarina sat opposite him.
After a few minutes she asked, “Are they coming?”
“Probably.”
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
That would once have annoyed her.
Now she leaned back and waited.
Tessa arrived nearly an hour later.
Leni did not come at all.
Oren appeared after midnight and complained that everyone had started without him.
Nobody had started anything.
They stayed until almost dawn.
The more comfortable Zarina became, the less carefully she watched herself.
She spoke without thinking.
She complained.
She told Tessa that she hated formal dinners without mentioning why she attended so many of them.
She admitted she had spent most of a morning listening to a man discuss irrigation canals.
Tessa looked over from the fabric she was cutting.
“Why?”
“I had to.”
“Why did you have to?”
Zarina paused.
“Family.”
Tessa accepted the answer.
Another night Zarina complained that she had spent two hours standing while people she barely knew spoke to her about their children.
Oren frowned.
“Why would they do that?”
“I don’t know.”
“You could leave.”
“No, I couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
Zarina opened her mouth.
Then stopped.
Oren waited for a moment.
When no answer came, he went back to his drink.
She had become good at conversations ending that way.
Sometimes she wondered what they thought of her.
Sera had money, but not enough to seem rich.
She knew things she should not know and lacked knowledge everyone else considered basic.
She spoke too formally when she was tired.
She had never worked for wages.
She did not understand rent.
She had once asked Leni why her landlord did not simply repair a leaking roof, and Leni had stared at her for so long that Zarina wished she could withdraw the question.
There were gaps in Sera.
But nobody seemed particularly interested in filling them.
Not yet.
Her life at the palace continued beside it.
There were mornings when she woke after barely three hours of sleep and spent the day regretting the previous night.
Her attendant, Nalia, began having difficulty waking her.
“Your Highness.”
Zarina pulled the blanket higher.
“Your Highness.”
“I heard you.”
“You have to be downstairs.”
“What time is it?”
Nalia told her.
Zarina opened her eyes.
“Why didn’t you wake me?”
“I’ve been trying.”
Zarina sat up too quickly.
Her head hurt.
Nalia went to the wardrobe.
“The blue or the cream?”
“Whichever.”
“Your father asked for the blue.”
“Then why did you ask?”
Nalia stopped.
Zarina heard the sharpness in her own voice.
The attendant lowered her eyes.
“I’m sorry, Your Highness.”
Zarina rubbed her face.
“No. I’m sorry.”
Nalia said nothing.
That was worse.
At breakfast, Zarina barely ate.
By midday she was expected to receive the daughters of two provincial governors.
She forgot one of their names.
The girl noticed.
Zarina saw it in her face.
She apologized afterward, but the embarrassment remained with her long after the visitors had left.
That evening she stayed inside.
The following night she went out again.
There were times when the two lives touched unexpectedly.
At a harvest celebration in the capital, Zarina stood beside her father on a raised platform overlooking the main square.
Below them, thousands of people crowded between banners and lanterns.
Guild delegations had come from across the realm. Musicians played near the fountains. Merchants had been granted space along the streets.
The Supreme Ruler spoke.
Zarina had heard parts of the speech beforehand.
She stood where she had been instructed and watched the crowd.
Then she saw Oren.
He was far below, beside one of the temporary stalls.
For a moment she thought she had mistaken someone else for him.
Then he turned.
It was him.
He was carrying a bundle of wooden boards over one shoulder.
Zarina went still.
Oren looked toward the platform.
His eyes moved across the royal household without stopping.
He did not recognize her.
Of course he did not.
Her hair had been arranged differently. She wore ceremonial gold and white. Jewels rested at her throat. Palace guards stood behind her.
Even her posture was different.
Zarina watched him disappear into the crowd.
“Sera?”
Her father had leaned slightly toward her.
She nearly turned at the name.
Then realized he had not spoken it.
He had said something else.
“Zarina.”
Her heart lurched.
“Sorry.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
He looked toward the crowd, following the direction she had been staring.
“What were you looking at?”
“Nothing.”
Her father looked at her for another moment.
Then someone approached him from the council delegation, and his attention moved elsewhere.
Zarina kept her eyes forward.
The rest of the ceremony felt strangely unreal.
That night she went to the curtained room.
Oren was there.
He was complaining about the festival.
“They kept closing streets. Took us twice as long to move everything.”
Tessa was eating from a bowl beside him.
“You got paid.”
“Not enough.”
“You always say that.”
“Because it’s usually true.”
Zarina sat down.
Oren looked at her.
“You go?”
“To the festival?”
“Yes.”
“For a while.”
“See the Ruler?”
Zarina’s fingers tightened around her cup.
“From a distance.”
“What did you think?”
She had no answer ready.
Oren seemed to notice her hesitation.
“Too far away?”
“Something like that.”
Tessa looked up.
“I saw the daughter once.”
Zarina turned toward her.
“When?”
“Years ago.”
“Where?”
“I don’t remember. Some procession.”
Tessa took another bite.
“She was younger.”
“What was she like?”
Tessa gave her a puzzled look.
“I don’t know. She went past in a carriage.”
Zarina felt foolish immediately.
“Right.”
Oren said, “I heard she’s quiet.”
“From who?”
“My uncle.”
“Has your uncle met her?”
“No.”
Zarina looked down at her drink.
That should have ended it.
Instead she asked, “Do people talk about her?”
Oren shrugged.
“Sometimes.”
“What do they say?”
Tessa glanced at Zarina.
“Why do you care?”
The question was simple.
Zarina could not think of an equally simple answer.
“I was curious.”
Tessa considered that and returned to her food.
“Mostly they talk about her father.”
The conversation drifted away soon afterward.
Zarina said very little for the rest of the evening.
After that, she began noticing how often her own name appeared outside the palace.
Not constantly.
That surprised her.
At court, the ruling family seemed to occupy the centre of everything.
Outside it, people could spend hours discussing their lives without mentioning them once.
But the name appeared sometimes.
A newspaper left on a table.
A passing remark about some ceremony.
A complaint about the cost of a royal celebration.
A shopkeeper proud that Zarina had once passed his street during a procession.
Most people knew almost nothing about her.
They knew what she looked like.
They knew whose daughter she was.
Some had opinions anyway.
A man at one gathering said she was probably spoiled.
Someone else said she seemed harmless.
Another said he did not care.
Zarina sat nearby and listened.
Nobody knew Sera was listening.
At first it bothered her.
Then, strangely, it became interesting.
The Zarina they discussed felt like another person.
Sometimes she disagreed with them.
Sometimes she thought they were right.
Tessa brought her somewhere new near the end of autumn.
It was not far from the original gathering place, but the building was finer.
An old townhouse stood behind a high wall, its courtyard filled with lanterns. There were perhaps fifty people inside.
“Whose house is this?” Zarina asked.
Tessa shrugged.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know whose house you’ve come into?”
“I know Karel.”
“Who is Karel?”
“The man who told me to come.”
Zarina stared at her.
Tessa was already walking toward the entrance.
Zarina followed.
The gathering inside was different from the places they usually visited.
Not entirely.
There was still music. Food stood on long tables. People drank and moved freely between rooms.
But the clothes were better.
There were more servants.
A few guests wore masks, though most carried them or had pushed them up onto their heads.
Nobody asked Zarina for her name at the door.
She remained close to Tessa at first.
“Do you come here often?”
“First time.”
That did not reassure her.
Tessa noticed.
“We can leave.”
Zarina looked around.
A woman was reciting poetry in the next room. Somewhere upstairs, people were arguing loudly enough that several guests had gathered at the foot of the stairs to listen.
“No.”
Tessa waited.
Zarina shook her head.
“It’s fine.”
And after a while, it was.
They found Oren.
They ate.
Tessa disappeared with someone she knew from the theatre.
Zarina wandered through the rooms alone.
Paintings covered the walls, some beautiful, some strange enough that she had to stand in front of them for several minutes before deciding she still did not understand them.
In one room, a group had gathered around an actor performing a scene from a new play.
Zarina recognized the subject halfway through.
A noble minister was trying to explain away an obvious theft from the public treasury.
The actor played him as vain, frightened and stupid.
The audience laughed.
Zarina did not.
She knew which minister the character was meant to resemble.
The resemblance was unfair.
It was also not entirely wrong.
She stayed until the scene ended.
When she returned to the main room, Tessa handed her another drink.
“All right?”
Zarina nodded.
“Yes.”
“You looked worried before.”
“I wasn’t.”
Tessa did not argue.
Zarina drank.
Similar invitations followed.
Not many.
Enough.
Some were ordinary parties.
Others were stranger.
A painter opened his workshop for an entire night and allowed people to draw over unfinished canvases.
A singer held a performance in a bathhouse because she claimed the acoustics were better.
A group of actors staged a play that had been refused permission at several respectable theatres.
Zarina did not like everything.
Sometimes she left early.
Sometimes she stood at the edge of a room and wondered what she was doing there.
But every time she thought she had reached the edge of this other world, another door seemed to appear.
Tessa never spoke of it as anything unusual.
Neither did Oren.
They simply knew people.
Those people knew other people.
Zarina stopped asking who organized things.
Most of the time, nobody seemed to know.
Balif, meanwhile, had stopped believing the poetry.
He did not confront her.
He watched.
Zarina began cancelling morning lessons more often.
Her excuses changed.
Headaches.
Poor sleep.
Responsibilities with her father.
Once she simply did not appear.
Balif waited in the study for nearly half an hour before going to her rooms.
Nalia was outside.
“Is she ill?”
The attendant hesitated.
“I don’t think so.”
“Is she awake?”
Another hesitation.
“I haven’t been able to wake her.”
Balif looked at the closed door.
“When did she go to bed?”
“I don’t know.”
“You attended her last night.”
“Until eleven.”
“And after?”
“Her Highness asked to be alone.”
Balif nodded.
He did not enter.
Later that afternoon Zarina found him in the palace gardens.
She had expected irritation.
Instead he was feeding pieces of bread to a pair of birds near the fountain.
“You missed your lesson.”
“I know.”
Balif dropped another piece.
“I waited.”
“I’m sorry.”
“All right.”
Zarina stood beside him.
“That’s it?”
“What would you like me to say?”
“I don’t know.”
“Neither do I.”
He brushed crumbs from his fingers.
“You are not twelve anymore. I cannot drag you into a chair and make you study.”
“You never did that when I was twelve.”
“I considered it.”
Zarina looked at him.
Balif’s face remained serious.
She looked away.
“I said I’m sorry.”
“I heard you.”
There was a long pause.
Then Balif asked, “Are you unhappy?”
The question caught her completely unprepared.
“What?”
“Here.”
Zarina frowned.
“Why would you ask that?”
“Because you’ve changed.”
She felt herself becoming defensive.
“I’m tired.”
“Yes.”
“That’s all.”
Balif looked toward the fountain.
“I don’t think it is.”
Zarina said nothing.
He continued more carefully.
“You have always wanted more room than people give you. I know that.”
“Do you?”
“I think so.”
“You helped teach me half the rules.”
“I did.”
That answer took some of the force out of her anger.
Balif folded his hands behind his back.
“I also watched you grow up inside them.”
For a moment Zarina considered telling him.
Not everything.
Just enough.
There were people in the city.
Friends.
Places she went.
Nothing terrible had happened.
She could almost hear herself saying it.
Then she imagined what would follow.
Questions.
Names.
Where?
When?
Who else knows?
Does your father know?
What if someone recognizes you?
The secret would stop being hers the moment she gave it away.
“I’m fine,” she said.
Balif looked at her.
Zarina held his gaze.
Finally he nodded.
“All right.”
He walked back toward the palace.
She stayed by the fountain.
For the first time, lying to Balif did not feel small.
She avoided him for several days afterward.
Not deliberately, she told herself.
There was simply a great deal happening.
A diplomatic dinner.
An afternoon receiving petitioners beside her father.
A performance she had promised Tessa she would attend.
Another gathering afterward.
It was easy to remain busy.
Then one evening, as Zarina was preparing to leave, someone knocked on her chamber door.
She froze.
Her plain dress was already on beneath her robe.
Her hair had been tied back.
The shoes were beside the bed.
Another knock.
“Zarina?”
Balif.
She pulled the robe closed and opened the door only partway.
“What?”
He held a book beneath one arm.
“I found the western travel account.”
Zarina stared at him.
“The what?”
“The one you told your father you were reading.”
Her stomach tightened.
Balif raised the book slightly.
“He mentioned it.”
“Oh.”
“I thought you might want it.”
Zarina took the book.
“Thank you.”
He did not leave.
She waited.
“What?”
Balif looked past her.
Not obviously.
Just enough.
Zarina shifted so that the door blocked more of the room.
His eyes returned to her face.
“It’s late.”
“I know.”
“You dressed for bed?”
“Almost.”
Balif nodded.
For several seconds neither spoke.
Then he said, “Good night.”
“Good night.”
Zarina closed the door.
She stood there listening to his footsteps recede along the corridor.
Only when she could no longer hear them did she breathe normally.
She looked at the book in her hands.
A travel account from the western coast.
She had never seen it before.
Zarina placed it on the table.
Then she sat on the edge of the bed.
For several minutes she considered staying.
Balif knew something.
Perhaps not what.
But something.
Going out tonight would be foolish.
She removed one shoe.
Then stopped.
Tessa had said there was a performance in an old hall near the river.
Rike was playing.
Several people she had met at the townhouse would be there.
Zarina stared at the shoe in her hands.
Slowly, she put it back on.
The old hall was already crowded when she arrived.
She was late.
Tessa found her near the door.
“I thought you weren’t coming.”
“Neither did I.”
Tessa frowned slightly but did not ask.
They moved deeper into the room.
The performance had already begun.
Zarina stood at the back.
Her heart was still beating too quickly from leaving the palace.
She should have felt guilty.
Instead, as the music filled the room and the palace seemed to fall farther behind her, the tension slowly left her shoulders.
Someone passed her a cup.
She took it.
Someone moved aside so she could see.
Sera settled into the crowd.
By the end of the first song, Zarina had stopped thinking about the book waiting on the table in her bedroom.
And when she returned to the palace just before dawn, she hid it beneath several others without opening it.