“Where did you get all of this?” she asked.
“Here and there, what is mine. But much of it is yours and collected before I ever set foot inside the mountain.”
Nothing whirled. “None of this is mine. Your demon is gone, and so, as its wife, it all belongs to you now.”
“Yes, it—”
“No.” Nothing shook her head and stood her ground as the sorceress stepped close. “No matter what I might have been before, I am no longer that. I was reborn. I was born. I was a child and grew up, and I am not your demon consort.”
“Your heart, though, is half of mine,” the sorceress murmured.
Nothing couldn’t dream of how to answer that. She stared, wide-eyed.
The sorceress studied Nothing, standing so near Nothing could see hints of gray and yellow in her bone-white eye, like ancient cracks in old ivory. The green eye had gray in it too, like cemetery stones overgrown by the rain forest. Long-forgotten dead. The sorceress said, “Very well.”
Then, politely, she stepped back. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Nothing of the Great Palace—or is it Nothing Dark-Smile?”
Nothing swallowed nerves and nodded firmly. “ ‘Nothing’ will suffice.”
“Nothing will suffice!” The sorceress laughed three times, ha ha ha. Each sound was a deliberate choice.
“It has my entire life.”
“Then welcome to my mountain. I am the Sorceress Who Eats Girls.”
“Why not Sudden Spring Frost?”
The sorceress let her face fall into a gentler expression. She said, very softly, “That has not been my name in quite some time.”
Nothing turned away to hide her feelings, picking a book at random. It was thick, bound with a soft dyed-blue leather. She dragged it out and had to use both arms to hold its weight. The cover was blank, offering no clues as to the insides.
“That is a complete journal of King Lithex of the Hintermarsh, one of the out-kingdoms the empire conquered centuries ago,” the sorceress said. “Before the Fifth Mountain died and the empire’s boundaries withdrew inside the circle of mountains.”
“Heavy to write in.” Nothing balanced the corner of the book on the edge of the shelf so she could use one hand to swing open the cover. The front page was yellowing and illustrated with several scepter-like objects.
“Collected works, put together after his death. There are translation notes in most margins, but if you cannot read Feril characters you won’t get far. Let me show you the shelves in our tongue and those based in Old Gaulix that you might sound out.”
Nothing turned a thick page and touched the lines of Feril characters in columns down the page. She slammed the book closed and hefted it back into place. The sorceress led her to the next row of shelves and said, “Here are histories and biographies of the empire. Many you’ll be able to read, though there are a few externally sourced. I find such perspectives relieving sometimes. And next”—she gestured on—“books about places and people outside the mountains, but written for the empire. Those are the shelves with the highest volume of texts you’ll be able to read right now, though there are many throughout the library. I don’t divide by language in the other sections, for magical studies or philosophy, flora science, and the study of spirits, demons, and living creatures.”
With each term the sorceress pointed in a general direction, and Nothing marked what she could, though didn’t think in three mere days she’d have much time for reading. “Do you read Feril?” she asked.
“I was learning and have kept up my studies, though they are more tedious than they had been.”
Nothing began to ask why but realized: the demon. The demon had been teaching the sorceress languages, history, and anything she’d liked to know. When the demon disappeared, she’d lost more than a consort.
The sorceress had moved on, toward the far wall where something like a hearth was cut into the stone. It gaped empty like an arched mouth, tall as the sorceress and without a grate for wood or any iron stove. She touched a protruding crystal and the hearth began to glow soft yellow, lighting up the smoky quartz coins and jagged crystal teeth inside. “This is where I like to read,” she said, glancing back. A single chair waited beside her, low and plushly cushioned, wide enough to curl her legs up with her or to share between two.
Staring at the chair, Nothing imagined falling asleep there, book in her lap, head snug against her own arm. She had a pile of pillows in her abandoned bath in the fifth circle of the palace and two books all her own. One was filled with spirit fables; the other told the tale of a long-dead princess, Heir to the Moon, who went on a quest to each of the then–Five Living Mountains. Kirin had given them both to her and had insisted she could borrow anything from the empress’s library. But Nothing usually read only snippets hiding in corners of the library itself, rather than bring books into the damp old bath. Besides, what were books when she could listen to Kirin tell stories, Kirin recite what he’d learned from his own reading, from his tutors?
Would Nothing have liked books better if she hadn’t been bound to her prince?
The sorceress was watching her patiently.
“Is knowing my name all it will take?” she asked. “To be free?”
“No, but it is a necessary piece. Your name is merely the key to the bond. You must know it, deep inside you, or it would not bind you together; it could not command you. You must remember the name—the key—in order to unlock yourself. For like a key, it has the power to lock and unlock under the right circumstances. If you are strong enough to fight him.” The sorceress spoke as if it did not matter to either of them.
“Why do names even matter?”
“We use names, some words of power, to manipulate the aether. Our voices are the most powerful tool any of us have. What is something if it does not have a name? The stronger the name, the more true it is, the stronger the thing it names. Priests can send ghosts to Heaven with true-name amulets because the amulet focuses the name better than the poor ghost possibly can. Sometimes a name’s meaning can change, especially with complicated creatures like humans or demons or sorcerers. Witches bond with their familiars by their names, or master demons with the same.” The sorceress licked her lips thoughtfully, making Nothing’s pulse pick up, and she said, “A name is the ultimate house—it is where our essence lives.”
“That is why demons can be mastered by their names, because they don’t have real houses of their own? And ghosts, too?” Nothing guessed. “But spirits choose their own names, and… greater demons, too? That is why spirits and great demons must agree to be mastered.”
“You let them make you into nothing,” the sorceress said gently.
“It protected me more than it hurt me,” Nothing said, and when the sorceress’s mouth dipped grimly, Nothing realized she’d said it like it was over. That name had protected her in the past, but no more.
“Names can change,” the sorceress said gently. “If a person chooses to become something new, to transform. That is a magic we all share.”
“If you won’t tell me your name, will you tell me what the demon called you?” Nothing asked.
Surprise flashed through the sorceress’s eyes, more in her green than in the bone white. Then she pressed her lips together in an amused, flat line. “My demon called me child and impetuous creature and finally, sweetheart.”