Five of them dot the room like watery paint. That means there are four Royals here besides Esther. Amid the furniture I spot three fancy hats and a head of stylized hair. Esther leads me to the staircase.
“Were you close to your father?” I ask after a while. An ache grinds between my ribs as I sense the pain and loss in her aura.
“Yes and no,” Esther says. “I was his daughter, and he taught me how to use my abilities discreetly. Yet, as I grew older, he kept me at arm’s length. In the end, we were nearly strangers.”
“You seem…” I don’t know how to finish. I don’t know how to have this conversation. I’ve never lost a parent. I’ve never even had one to lose.
Her aura pulses like a heartbeat. “Angry. Of course I am. You can love a person, lose them, and still be angry with them.”
“Do you know why he kept you at arm’s length?”
Esther stops on the stairs and turns to face me. “You tell me.” She puts out her hand, palm up, as if asking for coins on the street.
I hesitate, fingers curling at my side.
“Tell me what I’m afraid of,” Esther clarifies.
Cautiously, I uncurl my fingers and touch her hand. The rush and silk of sadness and resentment slips over me, and then her fear makes its way through my skin. It pulls at the bones of my hand as if to dismantle me.
“You’re afraid of disappointing him,” I say slowly, as images of Fallow’s downcast, disappointed eyes flash through my mind. “Of failing Seriden and never living up to his expectations.” Her fear clings to my bones like metal cobwebs.
She withdraws her hand, and the stiff cobwebs rust and fall away.
“My fear: failing as a ruler, and failing my father,” Esther says. “My father saw that every time he touched me. And after a while, I sensed that same fear in him. Then he passed the crown to you. You tell me what I’m supposed to feel.”
We share a silence that slowly soothes her aura.
“One of my fears?” I offer quietly, like a truce. “I’m afraid the city will never care. And worse, I’m afraid that at some point I’ll stop caring.”
Esther tilts her head in question.
I explain what Hat saw at the prison, how a Nameless boy was taken from his cell and wasn’t executed, but just disappeared. I explain what it means to vanish from a place that doesn’t even recognize you to begin with. I tell her about Nameless families and Marcher’s crew and rumors of forced labor in other cities, about the Nameless who have been going missing more frequently in the past months, about the Nameless who showed up dead just before Fallow died. I tell her about the slaughter Belrosa showed me during the first council meeting.
We reach a small landing the width of three steps, and Esther yanks aside a blue curtain. Behind it, I find that this entire level of the tower is a single room, and it stretches as high as twenty feet. We are near the top of the tower. On the outer wall, there’s a heavy stone door.
I examine the room. There’s a bed, several identical wardrobes lined along the curving wall, and two low tables scattered with maps.
“Where are we, exactly?” I ask.
“This is where I live,” Esther says. “This is where I come to escape the auras.”
I don’t know how high we are, but I can no longer sense the auras of the Royals in the common area on the first floor of the tower.
“Sometimes I can ignore the auras, and sometimes they overwhelm me,” she explains. “I go days at a time without making any skin contact with people so that their memories or thoughts don’t have a chance to force their way into my mind. In fact, it’s dangerous for me to do that. If things go properly, I shake their hand and I’m glimpsing their thoughts or memories. If I make a mistake, though, then suddenly I’m showing them my memories.”
“What?” I say, taken aback. “You can show your thoughts to others? Instead of just seeing theirs?”
“Yes,” she says. “I can witness their thoughts without them knowing it. But if they see my memories, that’s impossible to explain.”
“Did anyone ever find out about your tattoo?” I ask.
“I don’t think so,” she says. “You can never be sure, of course. When I was learning as a child—and still making mistakes—my father was always with me. It was easy enough for them to assume it was him. Then, as I got older, we drifted apart. I learned enough on my own, but it was never easy. And that’s why I live up here in the Fallow tower, high above the city and out of its reach.”
A draft of cold air rushes into the small room as Esther heaves the door open. She’s so close, I feel her aura like a halo of humidity.
The door is smooth peach-colored stone, the same as the outside of the towers. It opens to a bright blue sky, clean and clear. There’s a small ledge outside but nothing else. No railing or balcony, nothing but empty space all the way down to the roof of the palace.
I step out onto the ledge. We’re nearly at the top of the center tower, and Seriden opens up before me. Far below are the eastern and northern quadrants. East Market crumbles into the harbor, which in turn disintegrates into the ocean. From so far away, the ocean is slow and calm. Whitecaps crest near the coast, and the surface crinkles with waves farther than I’ve ever seen before.
I lean outward. Wind rushes past me as if to pull me out into the open space. A laugh bubbles in my chest.
Esther comes up behind me, and I realize I’ve put myself in quite a bad position if she wants to push me. But I don’t sense anything cold from her aura, only alarm, like the taste of lemons—sudden and sharp.
She eases herself down into a sitting position, letting her legs dangle out in the open air.
“I have one more memory to show you,” she says. “And before I do, I want you to know that any time you want to escape the auras of the city, to have a few precious moments alone, you can come here. You’re always welcome.”
Her offer reminds me of when Hat and I were in Glenquartz’s house and he said that we’d always have a home there. When she extends her hand to me once again, I take it, and her memory rushes into me like air.
It starts with a lullaby. The notes are distant and slow and beautiful. A woman hums a careful melody. It fills my entire body and resonates inside my chest.
The room is blurry, as though Esther’s memories are melting at the edges. She’s still quite young, and I feel the presence of the tattoo on her arm.
Then the lullaby stops abruptly, replaced by the discordant sound of two voices arguing. Esther peers around a door, and we’re staring into the king’s quarters again, except this time, he isn’t alone.