The Severed Sun

She is wearing white. She always wears white in autumn, like the season belongs to her more than the other three.

Sunlight comes down gold through the orchard branches, scattering across the grass in moving coins of light. She laughs at something he doesn’t quite catch, head tipped back, and the wind takes a strand of her hair loose from its braid and lifts it, copper-bright, against the gold of the leaves.

He reaches for her hand. She lets him take it without looking, like she already knew it was coming.

They walk like that for a while. No words needed. Just her hand in his, warm, and the apples hanging heavy and red overhead, and somewhere far off the sound of water moving over stone.

Then the wind stops.

Not slows. Stops, all at once, mid-breath, the way a held note cuts off.

Her hand is cold.

The leaves underfoot have gone from gold to grey, though he couldn’t say when. The trees are taller. The light is thinner. He looks up and the canopy has closed overhead into something with no gaps in it at all.

He looks at her.

She is already looking at him, and her eyes are black.

Her fingers tighten. Something shifts beneath her skin, small and wet and wrong, and her smile is still there, still hers, stretched too wide now over teeth gone the color of old bone.

Her jaw drops further than a jaw should go.

What comes out of her is not a voice. It’s three voices, woven together, and underneath them, fainter, something else — low, patient, not speaking to her at all.

He tears his hand free.

“GWEN!”

He wakes already shouting it.

The dark of the room is flat and ordinary around him, his sheets damp through, his heart still slamming against his ribs like it hasn’t caught up. He presses both palms against the mattress and breathes.

Just a dream.

He says it out loud. It doesn’t make it true.

His left hand is still curled into the shape of someone else’s fingers, and no matter how many times he opens it, it doesn’t quite want to stay open.

He fills a cup from the basin by the window and drinks it down too fast, like that might wash something out of him. He lies back down. He stares at the ceiling until the ceiling stops meaning anything. Sleep doesn’t come back. It isn’t going to.

So he gets up, pulls on his boots, and goes out to walk it off instead.

The city doesn’t care that it’s the middle of the night. Lanterns strung between the homes burn gold all the way down to the second ring, and somewhere near the orchard a fiddle is going, fast and a little drunk on itself, and people are laughing in that loose, unguarded way they only laugh once every five years. It’s the Irregular Year — the seven days the calendar grants the city when its count finally overruns itself by a single extra day, a thing that happens so rarely most children only see it twice before they’re grown. The whole city throws itself at the occasion like it might not come again. Stalls selling spiced cider. Children chasing each other between the legs of dancing adults. Somewhere, somebody is definitely going to fall in the water ring before the night’s out, and somebody always does.

He’s halfway down toward the fare, half a thought away from turning back, when a voice catches him from behind.

“Fancy seeing you here, Lord Erin.”

He doesn’t have to turn around to know who it is. He does anyway.

“I can say the same for you, jester Quintus.”

“Jester?” Quintus presses a hand to his chest like he’s been run through. “Did you just call me a jester? I pity the fool who can’t see my greatness.”

Erin laughs despite himself, and that’s enough — the dream loosens its grip on his chest by a few degrees, just from having someone else’s voice in his ears. They fall into step together without either of them quite deciding to.

“What are you even doing out here,” Erin asks.

Quintus shrugs, too easy, the kind of easy that’s doing some work to look that way. “All my brothers and sisters are coming for the fare tonight. Figured I’d come see them.”

Erin doesn’t answer right away. He puts a hand on Quintus’s shoulder, half to steady him, half because he doesn’t know what else to do with it.

“You want a reason good enough to actually go talk to them,” he says, “or are you just going to watch from over here all night.”

Quintus laughs, but it doesn’t quite reach all the way up. “Can you imagine the horror of it? Me just walking up. Mother, Father, I’m your long-lost seventh son, surprise.” He shakes his head. “They’d call the Enforcers on me before I got the sentence out.”

They don’t talk about it after that. They don’t have to. They just stay there at the edge of the fare a while, close enough to watch, far enough not to be seen, until the lanterns start burning low and the sky out past the dome’s false dark begins, almost imperceptibly, to lighten. By the time they head back up toward the Towers, the festival noise behind them has thinned into nothing but a few stubborn fiddles and the smell of spent firecrackers.

They’re barely through the arch when someone’s already waiting for them.

“There you are. I’ve been looking for you everywhere.” Emilia plants herself directly in Erin’s path, arms crossed, looking entirely unimpressed with both of them. “Not you,” she adds, before Quintus can even open his mouth. “Him. Erin.”

“What did I do this time,” Erin says.

“Nothing yet, which is the problem — Halcyon’s been asking for you. Warden of the Space Tower wants you, and she does not sound like she wants to wait.” Emilia is already turning him by the sleeve, pointing him back the way he came. “So hurry up and go.”

He finds Halcyon waiting at the base of the spire, already dressed for the procession, a stack of bound scrolls balanced against one hip like she’s been standing there counting the minutes since she sent for him.

“You’re late,” she says, which isn’t quite true, but he doesn’t argue it.

“I came as fast as Emilia could drag me.”

That earns him the faintest twitch of a smile, gone again before it can settle. “For the procession, one high novice is chosen from each Elemental Tower to walk with the mages. Carry the scrolls. Stay close enough to hand off what’s needed without being asked twice.” She holds his eyes a moment longer than the instruction requires. “I’ve chosen you.”

Erin bows his head. “Yes, Warden.”

“Stay close,” she says again, already turning, already walking, leaving him to fall into step half a pace behind her — which is, he suspects, exactly where she means to keep him for the rest of the morning.