My Twin’s Shadow Wants My Crown

On the night her reflection came to claim her crown, Mira was trying to keep her sleeve out of the barley order.

The queen's sleeves had been designed for waving, not signing warehouse orders. Her right cuff dragged through the ink and left a black stripe across three hundred sacks of barley.

Sella caught the silk before it reached the sand tray. “Keep your elbow up.”

“For the whole reign?”

“Until I shorten this. You insisted on having hands.”

Mira held her elbow aloft. At twenty-nine she had finally reached the evening for which tutors, councillors and her father had been preparing her, and she was being defeated by clothing. Beyond the robing chamber windows, rain silvered the courtyard paving. The horses bringing the last guests wore dark blankets; the drivers wore nothing so warm. She could see one man rubbing his hands beneath his armpits while a footman argued about where his cart might stand.

“That driver needs the covered yard,” she said.

The youngest attendant looked toward the window. Sella put a pin between her lips, then removed it to speak. “He needs someone who isn't changing into seven yards of embroidery to tell the footman.”

Mira sent the attendant. It was a small use of power, readily performed. Opening the east granary appeared to require the cooperation of everyone in Lethryn who had never unloaded a sack.

Chancellor Odran stood by the hearth with the release order tucked beneath his presentation folio. He had placed it there upon entering, as if proximity to the coronation address might improve its manners.

“The warehouse tally is incomplete,” he said.

“The tally is complete. The inspection isn't. They're separate documents.”

“An unfortunate distinction to explain before an assembly.”

“An excellent distinction to explain to a hungry person.”

Sella tugged the sleeve away from the ink stain and exposed the narrow linen wrist lining. Mira rested her hand on the table. The room smelled of hot iron, beeswax and damp wool from Odran's cloak. Two attendants knelt over the hem; another counted the fastenings on the ceremonial mantle.

Mira had reviewed the east warehouse accounts that afternoon. Barges delayed at the lower lock meant the market price had risen again. The oldest barley had to move before another wet week spoiled it. She wanted inspection, release and a posted price ceiling at the borough distribution tables. Odran wanted an announcement of royal generosity with quantities to follow.

“You may sign tomorrow,” he said. “Tonight the city sees continuity.”

“Tonight the city sees supper served to four hundred guests. It will notice if I ask everyone else to wait.”

She slid a clean sheet from beneath the blotter and copied the quantity without putting her cuff on the table. Three hundred sacks, subject to inspection; first distribution at the morning bell; receipts retained by the borough clerks. She left space for the warehouse keeper's actual weights. No clerk could turn that blank into a promise of sound grain.

Odran watched the nib. “Your father has approved the address.”

“He approved my accession too. I understood that involved decisions.”

“Decisions supported by counsel.”

She turned the sheet toward him. “Here is your opportunity.”

He did not take the pen. The attendants became elaborately occupied with stitches that had already been checked. Mira regretted making them witness the dispute, but less than she would regret letting the evening swallow the order.

Someone knocked twice. Kael's voice came through the door. “The procession is twelve minutes behind schedule.”

“Only twelve?” Sella asked. “I've earned at least twenty.”

Mira told him to enter. He opened the door far enough to see her, checked that she was dressed, then stepped inside with a folded message. Water spotted the shoulders of his dark uniform. He had been on the courtyard detail before taking her escort; she knew because the heel of his left boot carried a pale clot of yard mud.

“The west delegates' carriage lost a wheel,” he said. “They're coming across on foot.”

“In this rain?”

“Their carriage is having a worse evening.”

She smiled before she could remember that Odran preferred her grave. Kael was thirty-three and had spent enough years near her to know which kinds of bad news deserved a small ridiculous remark. He handed over the message without touching her inked fingers.

“Could you have the west entrance opened? They shouldn't have to walk around to the front.”

“Already done. There are towels.”

“You anticipated my first royal command.”

“You haven't received the crown yet. It was an ordinary request for towels.”

His face had the composed expression he wore on duty, but there was warmth at the corners of his eyes. She wanted, suddenly and inconveniently, to ask him to remain after everyone left. No crown, no chancellor, no message between them. Just the chance to finish a conversation without a servant announcing the next thing she ought to be.

Sella held up the loosened sleeve. “I need the bodice unfastened at the side.”

Mira met Kael's eyes. “Would you wait outside?”

“Of course.”

He turned immediately. Odran gathered his folio with a sigh that suggested the dressmaker had invented women's bodies to obstruct government.

“The signed order,” Mira reminded him.

“I will have the keeper attend after the ceremony.”

“Before. I'll put the release in my address. He should hear the actual conditions from me.”

Odran paused beside Kael. Mira could have let that pause become compromise. Her father was waiting, the guests were wet, and a stained cuff was hardly the right garment for an argument. Instead she added the release paragraph to her address and sanded both sheets.

“Please send him.”

The chancellor bowed. Kael closed the door behind them.

Sella loosened the side hooks. “That cost you something.”

“Probably three pages of advice.”

“More. He left without complaining about my bill.”

Mira laughed, then lifted her hand so the dressmaker could draw the sleeve free. In the tall dressing mirror opposite, her reflected hand rose with hers. The glass showed her dark hair pinned back, the little crease between her brows, the embroidered leaves climbing the pale bodice. Behind her, Sella bent over the seam.

Mira lowered her arm.

The woman in the mirror did not.

For a moment Mira assumed the position was her own and the sensation of her hand at her waist was the mistake. She looked down. Ink marked her actual forefinger. She lifted it again, slowly, then dropped it to the table.

The reflected palm remained pressed outward at shoulder height.

“Sella.”

The dressmaker glanced up. Her pin fell from her fingers onto the rug.

Mira stayed still. The attendants were behind her, busy with the mantle. She did not want shrieking, or someone throwing a stool at a pane before they knew what it was doing.

“Leave the mantle on the chair,” she told them. “Wait in the outer room. Sella will finish.”

One attendant hesitated. “Your Highness, the hair jewels—”

“Will survive five minutes without supervision. Thank you.”

They went. The latch clicked. Sella straightened without taking her eyes off the glass.

“Your hand is down,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Mine isn't doing that.”

In the mirror Sella's image moved precisely with her. Mira's remained apart, palm raised. It was almost worse to see the rest of the room behaving properly. She had used this glass since childhood. Its frame bore carved reeds and a repaired corner where a maid's ladder had struck it years ago.

The reflected woman's lips moved. Mira heard nothing. She shook her head, unable to understand, and the woman pressed her palm harder. Pale finger marks spread against the inner surface.

Mira reached for a clean sheet.

“What are you doing?” Sella asked.

“Writing it while it's happening.”

She noted the robing-room clock, eleven minutes before eight; her lowered hand; Sella's ordinary reflection. She described the moving lips without trying to supply words. Her handwriting looked embarrassingly unsteady.

“Will you sign what you saw?”

Sella took the pen. “Don't let anyone turn this into me leaving a pin in your sleeve.”

She signed beneath Mira's account, then crouched at the frame. A bright bead rested on the stone below its lower edge, scarcely larger than a split pea. She lifted it with the flattened end of her seam gauge and recoiled.

“Cold. Through the metal.”

Mira fetched an empty pin tin. Sella tipped the bead inside without touching it, shut the lid, and wrapped the tin in a scrap of linen. Mira added the discovery to their note. They left both on the table beneath the unused sand tray.

The reflected woman lowered her palm at last. Then she pointed to her left.

Mira looked behind herself. The chamber's left wall had a tapestry, a stool and the passage leading toward the assembly hall. In the mirror the woman's finger traced an arch, then a tall rectangle. She repeated it, urgently.

“The assembly mirror?” Mira said.

The woman nodded.

Sella pulled the side hooks shut with brisk, trembling fingers. “We get Captain Renn.”

“Lieutenant,” Mira corrected automatically, and then felt foolish.

“Whatever his button count. We get him.”

Kael listened through the opened door without smiling. Mira described the raised hand and showed him the glass. By then the image was obedient again. He looked from her fingers to the reflection, then toward the table where their note lay.

“Stay away from the surface,” he said. “I'll walk ahead.”

“I'm taking the address.”

He gave her a brief look. “Yes. We can't have a mirror emergency without the barley.”

She almost smiled. She took the signed release too.

They crossed the short gallery with Sella carrying the abandoned mantle. Musicians beyond the assembly doors stumbled through a transition while someone hissed instructions at them. Mira entered by the side aisle, where her father stood waiting beside the dais. Odran was speaking to the warehouse keeper. At least one request had survived.

The assembly mirror rose behind the crown stand, twice a person's height, its silver border polished for the ceremony. Mira saw herself approach in its dark surface. Her reflection turned its head before she did.

She stopped three paces short. Kael moved to her right. Across the hall the last west delegates shook water from their cuffs, and the clock's long hand reached the hour.

The first coronation bell sounded over the city.

A narrow seam opened down the middle of the glass.