The Cerulean Page 6

  “There is much power in you,” the High Priestess said. “Mother Sun could not have chosen a worthier candidate.” She lowered her voice and, to Sera’s shock, knelt before her. “I know you are frightened. But Mother Sun chose you for a reason. This is your destiny. This is who you were meant to be.”

  Then she stood and turned to Sera’s mothers. “For devotion,” she said, kissing her orange mother on the cheek. “For wisdom,” she said, kissing her green mother. “And for love,” she finished, planting the lightest of kisses on her purple mother’s forehead.

  Sera’s legs were trembling like a newborn seresheep as she climbed the steps of the dais behind the High Priestess.

  “Today is a momentous day!” the High Priestess cried. “The beginning of a new chapter for our beloved City, at long last. This ceremony will free us from the bonds to this planet as Mother Sun will guide us to our new home. All praise her everlasting light!”

  “Praise her!” the crowd cried back. Sera searched for Leela and found her off to the right, near a cluster of silvery white moonflowers. She touched the place where the star hung beneath her dress and Leela nodded, tears falling thick and fast down her cheeks.

  As the High Priestess continued, Sera wondered why she herself wasn’t crying. Perhaps because right now, this moment did not seem real to her. She felt as though she were inside another’s skin, as if she were watching this ceremony happen but was not a part of it.

  The High Priestess anointed Sera’s wrists and temples with dots of lilac perfume. Then she drew an ancient iron knife from her belt. Sera tried to consider how Wyllin had felt in this moment, when the knife was drawn. But Wyllin held no comfort now. She was long dead, and Sera was very much alive and afraid.

  The echoing wail of a horn filled the air; sad, like a dying star, like the emptiness of space. Tears were falling freely down the faces of all three of her mothers as the High Priestess’s knife bit into Sera’s skin, just below the elbow, releasing brilliant blue blood.

  Pain. Sera had never truly felt it before. Her skin burned where it had been cut. The pain seemed to sharpen everything around her. Suddenly her fear was everywhere. It was climbing her rib cage, it was crushing her shoulders, it was choking her, strangling her. She could not do this.

  The cut did not heal itself instantly, as all other cuts had throughout her life. The knife was imbued with a magic to keep her blood flowing. Sera felt nauseous as she watched the blood trickle down her arm. Her tongue felt swollen, making it hard to breathe. Her head swam, and when the High Priestess spoke again, she sounded very far away.

  “For our City,” she said, making the same mark on the other elbow. “May Mother Sun embrace you and cherish you for all time.”

  Then she waved a hand and Sera could sense the barrier part behind her, letting in a gust of air colder than anything she had ever felt in her life, a cold that gnawed at her skin and ate right through to her bones.

  The Night Gardens were silent. Sera knew what she had to do, but she didn’t know how to do it. Her hummingbird heart was throwing itself against her chest as though trying to fly away. Everyone was watching her. It felt like an eternity passed before she could even form the intent to move her legs to step out onto the jutting glass.

  Beyond the barrier, the cold enveloped her and everything felt impossibly still. How strange that only a few steps could make such an overwhelming difference. The trickle of blood was hot as it made a slow path down her arms. She gazed up at the stars for the last time and prayed for strength. She could not look back, not even for one last glimpse of her mothers or Leela. If she looked back, she would never look away again.

  Sera opened her arms wide, squeezed her eyes shut, and fell from the balcony, so that her blood could help her people.

  Part Two

  Old Port City, Kaolin

  7

  Leo

  LEO WAS SICK OF OLD PORT CITY.

  No, not sick. Bored. Bored to death.

  No, even death would be less boring.

  The air was thick with heat and humidity, so thick you could put it in a bowl and serve it up as soup. Sweat soup. Kaolin’s finest delicacy.

  Maybe there was a place far to the north, in the Crag Mountains, where it was breezy and cool and some goatherd was enjoying a glass of lemonade and savoring the smell of goat crap. Though if what the papers were saying was true, it wasn’t cool anywhere in Kaolin at the moment. The heat wave was setting records, with reports of droughts in the Knottle Plains and wildfires raging in the forests around Lake Looten.

  Leo could hear the clip-clop of horses’ hooves mixed with the puttering of car engines as they passed by on the street outside. The curtains in the library were closed. The curtains in the entire house were closed. It was supposed to keep out the heat, but all it did was make the air more stifling. Leo’s thick black curls were plastered to his forehead, and his shirt stuck to his chest in places. Even lounging on his favorite leather sofa was uncomfortable, the material sucking at his exposed skin. So instead he was sprawled across an overstuffed armchair, tossing a squash ball against the floor so that it bounced off the wall and back into his hand.

  Thud, thump, smack. Thud, thump, smack.

  He should be in his family’s summerhouse in the south, near Pearl Beach, having parties with his friends, swimming in the cool waters of the Adronic Ocean, and convincing the local girls to show him what was under their skirts. Not stuck in the brownstone on Creekwater Row, dying of heat and bored to tears. When his father announced that they would not be vacationing this summer, he had hoped it was because at long last, Xavier McLellan was going to bestow upon his only son the one thing Leo had wanted since he was a child—a place in the family business. But the days had stretched into weeks. August was nearly over, and Xavier showed no signs of including Leo in anything, business decisions or otherwise. Perhaps Leo should have expressed a desire to go to college, like Robert and his other friends. But he’d always thought—or maybe assumed—that Xavier was simply waiting until he was old enough, and now that Leo was eighteen, shouldn’t he be learning the ins and outs of the McLellan empire?

  The ball ricocheted off a piece of molding and bounced out of Leo’s reach. It rolled under the couch, and he was too hot to get up and look for it. There was an open book on the table beside him—A Complete History of the Wars of the Islands, by Edward G. Bates. Leo skimmed a few pages. It was all politics, the trade deals that fell through and prices on imported goods from Pelago being jacked up as demand spiked—there had been droughts in Kaolin back then too, like there were now, and famine in the south, where overfishing had depleted the food supply from the Gulf of Windsor. Pelago had never suffered from the weather like Kaolin did; their waters were always plentiful, their soil always fruitful. Threats had been tossed back and forth between the president of Kaolin and the Triumvirate of Pelago until the inevitable breaking point, when Kaolin sent its fleet to attack the Pelagan armada. But it was the Pelagans who had won in the end.

  Agnes had probably left the book out. It seemed like the boring sort of thing his sister would enjoy reading. And she was far more interested in the Pelagan side of their family than he was—too interested, if you asked him. It was almost as if she didn’t notice that their father, in addition to his famous freak shows, ran a chain of the most successful anti-Talman theaters in the country, producing plays that railed against the goddesses of Pelago. Xavier McLellan had only married their Pelagan mother for her money, and since she had died in childbirth, Leo felt that he was barely Pelagan at all. Even though, according to their Pelagan chauffeur, Eneas, he was her “spitting image,” with his fair skin and turquoise eyes. Well, Leo didn’t want to be her spitting image. The only comfort he got out of it was how much it clearly rankled Agnes, who looked like a female version of their father—brown skin, chestnut hair, eyes the color of cinnamon. For twins, they didn’t seem to have anything in common, from appearance to sensibility.

  “Studying in the summer, are we?”<
br />
  Leo jumped at the sound of his sister’s voice. She leaned in the doorway, a half-eaten apple in hand, her hair pulled up in a messy knot on the crown of her head. Leo closed the book with a dull thud.

  “The Wars of the Islands, huh?” he said. “Better not let Father catch you reading about a Pelagan victory over Kaolin.”

  Agnes shrugged and tried to look nonchalant, but Leo knew better. If there was one thing he and his sister had in common, it was a healthy fear of their father.

  “It’s his book,” she said. “It’s not like I bought it.”

  “What are you doing here anyway?” Leo grumbled. “Don’t you have a frog to dissect or something?”

  “It was a rat,” Agnes said, taking a bite of apple. “And I’ve already finished.”

  “Ugh.”

  Agnes loved science. Although upper-class women weren’t allowed professions in Kaolin, their father indulged her privately, something Leo envied and also never quite understood. It was so out of character for him. He’d even built her a little lab out of the walk-in closet in her bedroom. Leo found it macabre—who would want to sleep with frog corpses and snakes suspended in formaldehyde next door?

  “For a big strong man, you’re awfully squeamish.”

  “For a delicate lady, you’re awfully disgusting.” He gave her a cursory once-over. “I assume Father isn’t home yet.” Leo could imagine the fallout from Xavier seeing Agnes walking about the house in her lab attire.

  She was wearing an old shirt of Eneas’s—he was always spoiling her, giving her whatever she wanted—and a pair of pants that had once belonged to Leo. By the time he realized she’d stolen them, they were covered in all sorts of disgusting stains.

  “No, so I don’t have to wear a stupid dress until dinner,” she said. “Which reminds me—Eneas said it’s to be quite the affair tonight. That Pelagan man Father has been working with all year has finally arrived in Old Port. He’s coming to dinner, and I think Father has invited some single Kaolin society women to entice him.”

  Leo smirked. His father was such a clever man. After living in Pelago his whole life, this man was sure to be pleased with the way proper Kaolin women behaved around men.

  A thought occurred to him. This was his chance! He would impress the Pelagan and show Father that he was capable of handling international affairs. He knew nothing about this new project (his father was incredibly secretive), but he would do some light research on his other shows—the one with the two-headed man and the bearded ladies in Pearl Beach was doing quite well, he seemed to remember, and The Great Picando had just closed at his father’s renowned theater, the Maribelle, in Central Square. Leo had seen it several times—he liked that it had women actors in it, unlike some of the plays in Old Port that cast young men to play women. But it was quite stuffy as far as the writing went. Your basic save-the-Kaolin-woman-from-the-evil-sins-of-polytheism. The Great Picando had been played by James Roth, a rising star in the theater scene. Leo had asked his father to introduce him, but he must have forgotten. Which was understandable—his father was a very busy man.

  This was Leo’s moment to prove he was important. He was a McLellan.

  Agnes groaned. “Whatever thought is behind that smug look on your face, keep it to yourself. I don’t want to know. Dinner’s at eight. You better look sharp.”

  “I always do,” he said, and it was true. No one knew how to put an outfit together better than Leo did. All his friends said so. “Do let me know if you need any assistance with your wardrobe. I’m sure you must have something from the current century in there somewhere.”

  Agnes smiled at him sweetly. “Thank you, dear brother, but I’d rather take fashion advice from the dissected rat.”

  Then she turned on her heel and slammed the door behind her.

  By seven forty-five, Leo was dressed and ready and had even had Janderson, his manservant, get him some figures on the business to look over.

  It seemed that the anti-Talman plays were doing very well in the rural areas around the Knottle Plains and on the coast of the Gulf of Windsor. The Points, the three peninsulas that jutted out from Kaolin’s southwestern edge, seemed to prefer Xavier’s more outrageous theater, dancing bears and men with flippers instead of feet. Old Port enjoyed a healthy mix of the two. Leo was surprised to find that The Great Picando hadn’t done quite as well as he’d imagined—ticket sales had declined over the course of the run.

  He studied his reflection in the large, gilt-framed mirror over his vanity and had to admit, he looked rather dashing.

  The blue-green tie matched his eyes perfectly, setting off the crisp ivory shirt, and his beige linen waistcoat and slacks completed the outfit. Leo didn’t usually play up his eyes but thought perhaps it would help with another Pelagan in the room. The only thing missing was a beard. It was some genetic quirk of his mother’s, he was sure, but Leo could not grow a beard, and it caused him everlasting shame. A few sparse whiskers would sprout on his upper lip but nothing more. A Kaolin man’s beard was his pride—Xavier McLellan’s was practically a work of art.

  Leo turned away from his reflection and held out his wrists so Janderson could do his cuff links.

  “No, not tonight,” he said, when the man reached for his favorites, light blue encircled with diamonds. “Bring the Solit triangles.”

  He was impressed that Janderson had chosen the blue, as they were what Leo would have wanted to wear otherwise. He didn’t say anything, though—he’d never once heard his father praise a maid or a servant. Not even Swansea, the old butler who had been around since the dawn of time, received a kind word. His father was meticulous and he maintained respect at all cost. Leo would follow his example.

  Xavier would like that he wore the Solit cuff links. The symbol, a triangle with its apex crossed by a crescent to represent the light the One True God shed on the people of Kaolin, shone as golden as the sun and was impossible to miss. Leo felt it declared: I am righteous. I belong.

  “How do I look?” he asked Janderson.

  “Very good, sir,” the young man replied. “Your father will be pleased.”

  Leo thought perhaps he should give some sort of order before he left. Xavier was always giving orders as he left a room. “Do clean up that mess before I’m back,” he said, waving a hand in the direction of the papers scattered across his desk. He left without waiting for a response.

  Agnes was already in the parlor when Leo arrived.

  True to form, she was wearing some hideously ancient thing; a dull-colored, high-collared dress with ruffles poking out of the sleeves. And it was maroon. In August! Leo honestly had no idea how they were related.

  Agnes was standing between two attractive women in their early twenties, a glass of champagne clutched in one hand and an unhappy expression on her face. Leo didn’t recognize one of the women, but the other was Elizabeth Conway, his best friend Robert’s sister. The Conways had built most of the railroads in Kaolin and had acquired a massive fortune over the years. Leo thought it highly unlikely that Elizabeth would be interested in marrying a Pelagan, though maybe his father had invited her as a show of strength, to prove to this man that he had important friends.

  To be honest, Leo was surprised Elizabeth was still eligible. She was far too attractive and far too rich.

  Agnes caught sight of him and gave him a grimace that he thought might have been intended as a smile. His sister hated social gatherings. And for good reason: she was terribly awkward. Elizabeth turned and her face lit up.

  “Leo!” she exclaimed. “Why, don’t you look handsome.” She glided over to kiss him on the cheek. Her jasmine scent clung to him when she pulled away. Her dress was pale pink with capped sleeves and a pretty bow on one shoulder. It fell to the floor in tiers of taffeta, and the color offset her dark brown skin. The front part of her thick black hair was pinned in elaborate curls, the back hanging loose around her shoulders in heavy spirals. “You must meet my friend Marianne. She’s visiting all the way from Lady’s Poi
nt.”

  “How do you do?” Leo said politely, taking Marianne’s hand and kissing it.

  She was not quite as pretty as Elizabeth, but still a good deal more fashionable than Agnes. Her dress was dark blue chiffon with golden roses set at intervals on the skirt, draping the fabric in pleasing curves, and her bodice was encrusted with tiny sapphires. Her corset was laced quite snugly, her breasts pushing up out of the square neckline. West coast girls weren’t quite as modest as east coast ones. Leo’s pants suddenly felt quite tight.

  “A pleasure to meet you, Mr. McLellan,” she said.

  “Please, call me Leo.”

  “I was just asking Agnes about this new project your father has been working on, but she doesn’t seem to know a thing about it!” Elizabeth exclaimed. “Perhaps you could shed some light on the matter.”

  “Well, you know Father,” he said. “He keeps his cards close to his chest.” His eyes strayed to Marianne’s cleavage, and he had to remind himself that she was not here for him.

  Girls never seemed to be here for him. Not the highest society ones, anyway. The daughters of local merchants or the waitresses at the clubs were another matter, but Leo would never actually marry one of them.

  “Leo doesn’t know anything,” Agnes said, speaking for the first time and, as usual, embarrassing everyone. Thankfully, the doorbell rang. Swansea was there in an instant, opening it and bowing low.

  “Good evening, sir. May I take your hat?”

  “You may indeed, my good man!” The voice was cheerful and more boisterous than Leo had expected for an associate of his father’s. The Pelagan stepped inside and passed his hat and cane off to the butler.

  He wore a suit, thank god, not the tight pants and billowing silk shirts that the upper-class Pelagan men were known for. His eyes were lined in kohl, though, another embarrassing Pelagan male fashion, and his hair was a mass of bright red curls, with a single seashell, a creamy white miniature conch, pinned on the left side. Leo was pleased he wasn’t wearing one of the ridiculous headdresses that most elite Pelagans (both men and women) favored. Agnes was obsessed with Pelagan fashion, and he could see her eyeing the conch shell with interest.