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Chapter Text

The tunic, Jasnah realised with dismay, no longer fit.

The doublet, too, came up short.

And the breeches gave up halfway down the shin.

If they had been knee-length breeches, perhaps the problem might have been ignorable. And the shirts she could have dealt with, if not for the fact that the cuffs stopped long before her arms did. But the doublet was obviously too small, and even her boots were starting to get ideas.

All in all, the situation was dire.

“You can’t go out to a feast dressed like that!” Adolin said, when she came out of her bedroom to consult his wisdom. Apparently it was one of his rituals with Elhokar: to show off to each other, like chickens conducting a courtship, before an event. She couldn’t see the point. “I’ll die of shame!”

It was laughterspren that were darting round his face, not shamespren, but she was forced to accept that he was right. There was simply no world in which these clothes could be described as fitting her. She was aware that she was growing, of course, but she hadn’t realised quite how quickly until now.

Damnation. She would have to go to the royal tailor. Not an unfamiliar experience; not something she would ordinarily be worried about, even if she had never enjoyed clothes fittings. And it wasn’t as if she would be asked to strip naked. Still, a shiver of fear went down her spine: what if the tailor could tell, beneath a flimsy shirt, the truth? What if this was it?

“The rest of my clothes will be just as bad,” she sighed. “You’ll have to live with me for the time being.”

“You mean I’ll have to die with it,” Adolin said, wiping his brow with his handkerchief as though he were some fainting romance heroine. “I shan’t live to see another dawn! I’m done for! The prince my cousin has killed me, with his crimes against fashion.”

“Your mother would be very upset if you died,” Jasnah said. She was sure she hadn’t been so dramatic when she was ten. “So don’t, if you know what’s good for you.”

“She’ll be even more upset when she discovers that Prince Elhokar brutally murdered her beloved son,” Adolin said. “Isn’t there anything you can do?”

Jasnah picked up a spare shirt. “Here, close your eyes. There is one thing I can do.”

“What is it?” Adolin said, foolishly obeying.

“Sit still, and you’ll see.” She wrapped the shirt around his head, tying it in place with the sleeves. “There we go.”

“Hey!” Adolin said. “Not fair!”

She scooped up his favourite doublet and raced away, before he could notice, flitting through the corridors of the palace until she was far out of Adolin’s reach. Short of breath, she paused in an alcove next to some soulcast statue of an ardent who had no doubt been very important on life. This was something she hadn’t done in years. The sort of thing that was entirely unbecoming of a princess. And yet she felt gleeful, exhilarated, suddenly alive. She hadn’t felt real in so long. She laughed, giddy with the thrill of childishness. That was what this was, after all. Deeply immature pranking. And yet she didn’t regret it for a moment.

Jasnah heard a distant clattering, and then a yell, and then:

“Elhokar Kholin is evil!”

That got the whole palace’s attention. It didn’t take long for their mothers to find them, with deserved annoyance—Mother, after all, was the one who planned these feasts.

“For Kelek’s sake, Elhokar!” Mother said, looking both annoyed and distracted. “If you’ve grown out of your clothes again, why don’t you just say so? Better that than going around stealing sweet Adolin’s, when you know they won’t fit you—” She shook her head. “I’ll see to it that you go to Relamav tomorrow. Talat’s crooked nails … well, at least I can be sure this isn’t Jasnah’s work.” Jasnah nearly fell over from laughter. She was feeling very unlike herself. All the stress of lying to her friends and family, she decided, had somehow come out as a moment of reckless behaviour. Otherwise she wouldn’t find any of this nearly so funny. “On the night of a feast, as well—oh, Chana save my soul…”

Mother led Jasnah back to a shamefaced Adolin, who had crossed his arms and was glowering at the floor.

“What do you have to say to Elhokar, Adolin?” Evi said lightly.

“Sorry for saying you should be disinherited, and blinded, and flayed alive, and sold into slavery, and fed to chulls,” Adolin said. “I didn’t really mean it.”

“And?” Evi said.

“And strung up in a highstorm, and run through with a shardblade, and exiled to Bavland,” Adolin muttered.

“And what do you have to say to Adolin, Elhokar?” Mother said.

“I’m sorry for stealing your clothes, Adolin,” Jasnah said. “It won’t happen again.”

This much was true. Mother and Evi gave each other a despairing look, the sort which all parents recognised as commiseration and which all parents assumed their children did not. Then Mother sighed and said, “I must go now, the amosztha won’t transport itself. Don’t kill each other whilst I’m gone, boys.”

“We won’t, Mashala,” Adolin said, truculent. When Mother was gone, he added: “Probably.”

“Come, Adolin,” Evi said, smiling serenely. “Renarin will want to see you before the feast, won’t he?”

“Yes, Mama,” he sighed, dragging his feet.

It was a shame that she wouldn’t get to see Renarin for herself. But Adolin wasn’t so bad as she had thought. He was of a very different nature to his brother—endlessly energetic, talkative, a born fighter—but that didn’t making him stupid or unkind. In fact in some ways he had a sharp mind than most of the court.

Unfortunately, he was still only ten years old.

“Stand up straight,” Relamav said. “Hands in the air … Kelek’s own truth, Your Grace, but you grow so fast! How a man’s supposed to keep up with you, I don’t know…”

Jasnah said nothing, silently willing the examination to be over as quickly as possible and for the tape measure to be soulcast into flames. Thankfully the tailor hasn’t asked her to undress beyond her shirt, but it still accentuated her chest and hips in ways that she would prefer not to think about. Standing here, in only her undergarments, she was bare in front of the world in a way she hadn’t been since…

Stop it. Relamav was not an ardent, only a tailor. Two years had passed since she had been—sequestered away. This was nothing like that. Most things were nothing like that, despite what her mind tried to tell her. This was a simple visit to a tailor to arrange some new clothes. Then she could go back to her breeches and doublets and not have to think about new clothes for at least another month.

It was curious how quickly she’d adjusted. Men’s food still burnt her mouth, she was no genius with the sword, but she was managing. She was surely managing. On the occasions that she had talked to ambassadors or generals, they’d seemed pleasantly surprised by her head for strategy. And even forgetting all that … it was comfortable, pleasantly so. Slipping on a shirt and not a shift, a doublet and not a havah, felt in a strange way like coming home.

This, she knew, was pure feeling, and not grounded in logic. The Almighty had created all things, so said the ardents, and in each thing He had created an equal opposite. First He had created men; and secondly He had created women, each bound in their place, so that they might know true completion in the other. Which implied, of course, that women were secondary in all ways; and perhaps that was why the safehand was to be covered up, to mar the perfect symmetry of the body, for symmetry was the holiest of things.

It was entirely possible that this was all nonsense. If the Almighty was all-loving, how could He have let her languish away in a cell for months? If the Almighty was all-powerful, why could He not have done something to protect her? Or perhaps the Almighty was not all-knowing, and could not have foreseen her isolation. Who could say? The Almighty certainly hadn’t.

For that matter, if the Almighty was all-seeing, why had He not had the foresight to craft her as a man? That would have saved everyone a lot of time.

But she had a sinking feeling that He had not done any of this. Some days she wondered if He even existed at all. Why curse a child? Her madness was no divine curse, no punishment from above; it was simply bad luck and a faulty mind. This, at any rate, was what she told the annoying apparition of a cremling crawling up her arm.

Not real. They rarely were.

Maybe, one of these days, her own reassurances would stick.