The Five Daughters of the Moon

Chapter 4: Elise

As I undress in the dim-lit room, a thought crosses my mind. I never asked to be born a Daughter of the Moon, to be placed on a pedestal, to be admired as pristine and white. But that’s a lame excuse. The poor never asked to be hungry and cold either.

Ever since I met my love, I knew I had to change. I knew it to be true like a toddler who knows that her first wavering steps are just the beginning, like a child who realizes that letters form words that unfold into countless stories, like a sailor who upon stepping on a foreign shore realizes that even if he were to ever return home, it wouldn’t be the same place he left behind.

“Shawl,” Lily, my governess, hums as she holds her right arm out for me. Hers is a voice that comforts me, the buzzing of bees collecting honey.

I swirl and unwrap the fur-trimmed cashmere from around my shoulders. And although the fair hair on my arms jumps up instantly, I fold it on her arms. It’s chilly in this room that isn’t mine, but which I have started to think of as belonging to me. Hidden somewhere under the vast garden, reachable only by servants’ corridors—no one will see me enter or leave. There’s no stove here, no fireplace, only a few candles of the rougher sort on the rickety table accompanied by two equally forgotten chairs. The air smells of tallow and burning hair.

“Gloves.” Lily’s tune veers toward the melancholy paths that I have grown so accustomed to. Perhaps it was as much my darker moods as it was her family’s tragedy that shaped her such as she is. A woman twice my age. Wiry, but kind. Though she has been told to keep her gaze down her whole life, her angular chin always points up. Her gaze is sharp, and she sees everything. Sometimes this frightens me a little.

I pull off my white satin gloves, first the left one, then the right. I never complained of how unhappy I felt, but it could hardly have escaped my governess. For the longest time, I tried to bury my darker feelings and feign that I only knew joy. For everyone wanted to see and know the sparkling, giggling Elise. And so I practiced before my mirrors how to hide my anxiety until no one, not even dear Sibs, could see through the mask I had so carefully crafted.

“The dress.”

Lily and I go through this ritual every night, but lately it has meant more to me. One garment, now one button at a time, I cease to be an obsolete leftover from an age that’s about to come to an end. It’s all because of him, the captain of my heart.

The undusted, crooked floorboards creak as I step out of the dress, the white chiffon creation draped to resemble a midsummer rose in bloom. Lily swoops the dress up and pauses her humming. “What shall I do with this one?”

Without hesitation I answer, “Sell it and donate the funds for the cause.”

Lily nods, her lips pressing into a timid smile. The cause, whatever it turns out to be in the end, is important to her, too. She was born into a noble bloodline, but her family lost its fortune. At ten, she was sent away and brought up to serve. To me, she’s a servant only in name. She’s my confidante.

“Jewelry.”

Dressed only in my silk undergarments, I hold my hair bundled atop my head. Lily unclips the necklace with one practiced move. The dove pearls and diamonds shine in the flickering light, as if to mock me for wanting to leave my privileged life behind. If it were up to me, I would be very glad to never see the wretched thing again. But as it is, I’m already tiptoeing on thin ice.

Lily’s beady eyes glint with longing, anger even, as she holds the glittering arc of the necklace. She doesn’t yearn to wear such once more, doesn’t grieve after her lost life, of that I’m sure. She dreams of a world where people are equal and not burdened by their parents’ mistakes. “And this one?”

I don’t know what to say, and so I stroll to the closest chair. I pick up the simple dress folded there. Thin black and blue stripes with a wild floral pattern run down the front of the dress. The frayed hem has worn smooth. The smell of root cellar fills my nostrils. I was nervous the first time I abandoned white in favor of the colors of my people. I’m more nervous now. “I…”

Lily pads to stand behind me, so close that I feel her breath against my shoulder blades. She hums an encouraging little tune. She means well, but…

“Please stop.” I clutch the dress against my chest. Every lie I tell to Sibs adds more weight on my shoulders. She suspects already that I’m up to something more than a simple romance, and it’s just a matter of time until I plunge through the shards into a coldness that will never leave my bones. “I can’t do it.”

Lily clicks her tongue, in sympathy I hope, for she has never disapproved of me. Not even when I led a life of leisure, wasting what could have been cherished. The veins on her sinewy arms seem more pronounced as she places the necklace on the table. She straightens it out of old habit.

As I step into the simple dress, I shiver, but not from cold. A Daughter of the Moon should only ever wear white. That’s her right. That’s her duty. If my celestial father could see me now, he might curse me or merely laugh at me. But he can’t, and he won’t. I can’t go to where I need to go as a Daughter of the Moon.

“Do you know where he’ll take me tonight?” I ask Lily. I never know the destination my love has in mind beforehand, but I suspect Lily knows the details. Every time he shows me more. I feel akin to a novice in a cloister who is tested to see if she’s really devoted enough to take the vows. Perhaps my love and Lily still doubt my commitment to the cause or fear my tongue might slip. I can only continue to strive to show my worth to them.

“All in good time,” Lily replies.

Though I have practiced, I’m still slow at dressing on my own. Who could believe two full-length sleeves and a few buttons can pose such a challenge to me? It embarrasses me how useless I was. Still am. The captain of my heart, he knows this, and yet he loves me.

“How do I look?” I ask as I finally finish fumbling with the dress.

“Hmh…” Lily eyes me from head to toe. She pulls my sleeves straight and nods at the buttons I had forgotten to do. I’m not used to long sleeves. “The cause has come to rely on your contribution.”

I lick my lips and taste tallow. I think of those who would be glad of these candles, who must live in darkness through the cruel winter months because they need their meager coins for rye bread and salted herring. The necklace, lounging lazily on the table, dares to glitter.

How many mouths could one feed with its cost? Many. So many, and I wouldn’t even miss it. There would be a new one to replace it before too long. Some nobleman would send one as a token of love that would never be. Or worse, a poor town might spend what they can’t afford to send me a gift to gain my favor. All the same, both useless acts doomed to fail. I don’t want an aristocratic lover. Political favors are not for me to grant.

“There won’t be more if I get caught,” I reply at last. This isn’t about the superstition that I should look after the beads gifted to me. No, not about that. If Celestia or my mother or anyone else were to ever learn that I conspire to change the empire, I would… I have often thought of it. I would be sentenced to death or exile. And yet, I have never felt more alive than I do now.

“Sell the dress”—I nudge my fine slippers off my feet and step into the borrowed sabots—“Sell the shoes. Sell the shawl and gloves. But we must find some other way to milk money from the empire than selling my jewelry.”

Lily nods, the veins on her neck tight and taut. I think that sometimes she fears I’m not fully dedicated. That this is just a phase for me.

But it’s not. I—my kind—can’t exist with the cause. But I can’t exist without it anymore. It has brought an end to my ennui. It fuels me and gives my existence a purpose.

I button my sleeves around my wrists. It’s time to become what I was meant to be.

A knock on the door—short and short, long and short—means that my love is here at last. I give my woolen scarf one last tug. Tied tight under my chin, the poppy petals shift, but the scarf itself won’t budge. Good. For if my true identity were revealed, if I were caught unprotected outside the palace grounds… How curious it is that I’m risking so much, and both sides would wish ill for me if they knew.

Lily strides to slide off the bolt. Her low heels clack against the floorboards. The bolt squeals. These sounds, no matter how normal, itch my nerves. Yet at the same time my heart pangs with indecipherable joy. Even a moment apart from my love feels too much for me to bear. A day is pure torture.

The door opens, and I see my love at last.

Captain Janlav is handsome, though he’s no longer dressed in his midnight blue uniform with silver epaulets and gleaming crescent buttons. A black newsboy hat, with flaps tied under his strong chin, hides his loosened topknot and the shaved sides of his head. He has pulled up the collar of his factory-woven coat. It has a stained, murky brown hem, and it stinks of wet lambs. A knitted red scarf bulges out from the front. He wears workman’s leather gloves, likewise red. He doesn’t look at all like an imperial soldier, which is good. A disguise is almost as important to him as it is to me.

My love meets my gaze from across the room, and a ripple of tingles runs through my body. His brown eyes—the shade of young pines—are bright and full of love. As he smiles at me, his glorious brown moustache rises with the curve of his lips. His is uniquely the boyish mischief mixed with a grown man’s seriousness.

“Are you ready?” he asks with a lopsided grin, as if he were truly a railway man courting a factory girl.

I cant my head in a somewhat coquettish fashion before I can stop myself. He shouldn’t have needed to even ask. I will follow him wherever he leads me. For ever since our gazes met at Alina’s name day ball three months ago, I knew, I simply knew he was the one. My destiny.

“I am,” I reply, even as I dash to him. I fling my arms around his neck and rise on my toes. Our lips touch, and we breathe the same air. But only shortly, for romantics come later. First we shall make the world a better place.

As we leave the room, he doesn’t say where he’s taking me, and I don’t ask. I simply follow behind him, never glancing back. It drizzles in the tunnels, and I can’t keep track of the turns. We are somewhere under the palace garden, in the tunnels between the canals. That is all I know.

Though this isn’t my first time in the tunnels, I would get lost without my love, for we always take a different route, always go to a different destination. It’s warmer here than outside, and yet my toes go numb in the slightly-too-small sabots. Algae and mold cling to the rough walls. My eyes water and nose dribbles. My sisters and I, we have always known of the existence of these tunnels, but not about their true extent. I suspect my sisters don’t know the truth about many things, my younger sisters even less.

I fell in love with my captain upon first laying eyes on him. In the beginning, when our romance was merely budding, we slipped out of concerts and balls, into balconies and courtyards, just to talk and gaze at the stars. Gradually we grew bolder. We sneaked into the forgotten parts of the garden and sought shelter from abandoned pavilions. He could see straight into my lonely heart, how I longed to be more than beautiful, how I yearned to do more than just exist, to see what lay behind the palace grounds. He listened to me, and then after a month or so, on one starlit night, he promised to show me the world as it truly was. And though he warned me that there would be no turning back, I didn’t hesitate.

The very next night he kept his word.

The orphanage was located at what can only be called the bad part of this city. There decaying houses leaned against each other, leaving between them gaps so narrow that we could barely walk side by side. The lanes were aflood with mud and offal. He would have carried me the whole way, but I refused. That would have gathered too much attention.

My love had smuggled a breadbasket with him, throwaway pieces from the palace. Someone in the kitchen, a scullery maid or boy, had collected them during the week. Some pieces had a bite nibbled out, others sauce stains. I was embarrassed of that. Had I only asked I could have brought a cartful of loaves fresh out of the oven!

At the rusting gates of the orphanage a country gagargi greeted us. He didn’t recognize either one of us, disguised as we were as a working-class couple. He led us into the unlit house, there to meet the children.

The orphanage was like no other institution I have ever visited. Instead of timidly smiling children in starched black shirts and dresses, this house was full of scrawny creatures that I couldn’t tell apart from each other. With heads shaved bare to prevent vermin, with big staring eyes and hollow cheeks, with stick arms and legs poking out from the sheets and blankets they had drawn over their bent shoulders, they didn’t look like children at all, but prisoners most poorly handled. Creatures who wouldn’t live long enough to name themselves, for their souls to anchor to their bodies.

But there, in a hall with a low ceiling, at the end of a wobbly table, an equally scrawny woman stood behind a cracked ceramic pot filled with watery beetroot soup. As the children sat on the rickety benches, the country gagargi read a sermon. All who can should share. So be praised the Moon. I wondered then, had my family forgotten something along the way? Something very important? Why did we live apart from our people in a palace guarded by soldiers? Why did we waste so much when others had next to nothing?

The scrawny woman motioned my love and me to come and help her. At first I hesitated, but my love, he obeyed at once. As he revealed the contents of his basket, the children cheered and the woman cried. It was the first time in my life that I did something good. I swore then it wouldn’t be my last.

“Stop,” my love whispers.

I chastise myself for getting so lost in my thoughts. He holds his fist up, unable to shake off his military habits even when he pretends to be someone else than a man devoted to serve the empire.

I hear it then, too. Faint, regular thumps from right above us. Faded note of a horn. My heart beats faster, and the air, colder now, pinches my nostrils. We are in a tunnel much narrower than those right under the palace. How far have we come already? How far is there still left to go? When my love escorts me to the opera or theater, we can sneak out together, and all there will be is a scandal of a Daughter of the Moon embarking upon a fling. But now that we are both disguised, the guards would shoot us before asking for our names.

“Do not fear.” My love squeezes my hand and presses a kiss on my forehead. “It’s just the guard change at the gates. Now I know where everyone is.”

He continues to lead the way. I follow my love, him who opened my eyes and showed me how the people of our empire really fare. Though I step lightly, echoes follow me. Echoes always follow me. The age of my kind is running out. Soon I’ll be but an echo, too.

I refuse to feel pity for myself. It’s a terrible burden to know too much, and I have known too much for years. I was younger than Alina now is when I first realized that under the glitter the world is but a dark place. Perhaps my sister has realized this, too. Perhaps the visions that haunt her are but reality. I should talk to her and find out. I will talk to her.

The tunnel narrows even more, and I must fall behind my love. I seek comfort from the wideness of his shoulders, his steady gait. He must have sensed this, for he glances over his shoulder and smiles reassuringly. “Almost there.”

A part of me doesn’t even care where he’s leading me. I trust him, and Lily trusts him, too. And I trust her. After my visit to the orphanage, I asked her to tell me what really went on in my mother’s empire. She did so, honestly and without protecting my sensibilities. She told me that while we danced and feasted, the people worked long, hard days and starved. Starved as thanks for their servitude, and that hadn’t escaped the people either.

My love halts before an iron-reinforced door. The metal seeps coldness; I can feel it drifting past him. Though I hearken my senses, I can’t hear any sounds, hints of what awaits us.

My love pulls out a jingling key ring from inside his coat. “Ready?”

Suddenly, despite all my apparent altruism and determination, I’m not sure. My love has taken me to many desolate places. Places where sounds are harsh and loud, where there’s no escaping the stink of offal and sweat and dust and tar and crushed bone. Places where families are broken apart, to never see each other again, orphanages and workhouses. Hospitals, where wounded soldiers are out of sight, out of mind. Proud men sobbing in crammed rooms, on filthy straw mattresses, unable to serve the empire, simply waiting to die.

“Elise?” The brightness of my love’s voice brings me back, into the tunnel, before the iron-bound door. He has turned the key in the lock already. He is only waiting for me. “Are you ready?”

I tug my scarf tighter. I secure my red mittens under my coat sleeves. Wherever he is leading me, I will follow, no matter how the reality may frighten me. “Yes.”

We step through the door.

The stink of urine assaults us. It’s dim in the room, which has pale blue walls and a bare concrete floor. I blink to prevent my eyes from watering as Janlav locks the door behind us. It feels to me as if we are being watched.

Janlav secures the key ring back inside his coat. He takes hold of my hand. “Come.”

I can’t make myself move. For I can see that we aren’t actually in a room, but in a short corridor. Steep stairs lead out into the night, but even the icy wind can’t chase away the incredibly strong stink of urine. Two rooms flank the corridor. In the doorway to our right, an old woman clutches a shawl around her bony shoulders.

Janlav follows my gaze. But rather than tensing, he smiles at the woman. As he leads me past her, he nods at her. “Evening, little mother.”

The old woman smirks at us. Her cheeks are red either from the cold or liquor. “Evening, young lovers.”

I turn my gaze down as if embarrassed. She has no idea of who I am or that the door we closed hides a tunnel that goes all the way from the palace to a… public latrine. She just thinks that my love and I are a young couple embarked on mischief that might result in babies. Though that we aren’t—Celestia has yet to announce the name of her first lover.

Resisting the urge to laugh at the absurdness of it, I climb up the stairs, into the night that awaits us.

The main street stretches before us, as empty as I have ever seen it. It’s so late that not many carriages or carts brave the low temperatures. Wind swirls light snow above the wide flagstones and iron tracks of the trolleys. The air is full of pinprick flakes, and soon my cheeks and nose glow red.

“Is that the railway station?” I ask, unable to believe my eyes, that the tunnels could really lead this far.

“It is.”

The railway station stands right before us, an imposing building with an elaborate stucco facade, complete with carvings honoring my father. I glance at the sky, all too aware of how I’m betraying my sacred family. But the night is cloudy, and I can’t catch even a glimpse of my father. I pray this means that he can’t see me either.

“Come,” my love urges.

My sabots slip on the frozen pavement as he leads me toward the station. Are we going to leave by train? Do trains still go this late? Will we make it back in time, before I’m missed? A thousand questions bud in my mind, but I can’t ask them, lest I break my disguise.

We don’t enter the railway station, but halt at the trolley stop before it. It’s nothing more than a slightly wider stretch of pavement with a sign hanging from an iron arch and a pen made of planks painted gray. The pen is full already, full of people wrapped up from head to toe in factory-woven coats and shawls and blankets. A few sport lamb furs, tattered things showing decades of stains. My love greets these people with a nod. They nod back at him. I don’t know what to do, but it doesn’t matter. When I’m with him, I belong everywhere.

“Are we going to take a trolley?” The mere thought of doing so sends my heart pounding. Whenever I travel farther than I can walk, it’s either with the imperial train or in a comfortable carriage with a platoon of soldiers escorting me.

My love draws me into an embrace that smells of wood smoke and cigarettes. He places his chin on my shoulder, and I can feel his warm breath through the floral scarf shielding my cheeks. “I love you.”

I cling to him more desperately than I care to admit. The night around us is cold, but at that moment it doesn’t matter. He loves me, and I love him.

It’s a new experience for me to wait for the trolley. For a Daughter of the Moon, everything always happens at once. When I’m her, I don’t wait—others wait for me. But I’m not myself tonight.

More people gather at the trolley stop. A group of railway men huddle right next to us. The biggest and burliest of them sips from a dented flask and offers it to my love. “Care to wager a bet, man? I bet that on a night like this the imperial family drinks mulled wine as they roast deer before a roaring fire. All wrapped in their nice white furs, sipping nice hot drinks, while we ordinary people chill our arses off.”

I tense and cringe despite myself. Though the railway man masks his displeasure with jokes, the undercurrent of anger runs so strong that eventually it will flood. For he’s right, even as ashamed as I am to admit that.

My love, he just chuckles, declining the flask with a jovial shake of his head. When he speaks, his voice is different from what I know. Rough around the edges, as if he, too, worked at the railways, day after day. “You’ve got the wrong man. I’m not much of a betting man.”

The railway man shrugs. He sways toward us and halts right before me. He peers down at me, as if trying to see what my scarf hides. “What do you think, young lass?”

“Ah, don’t tease her.” Janlav nudges him on the shoulder, just a friendly reminder that I’m with him, not someone to be bothered with unwanted attention. “My love, she’s a shy one.”

The railway man snorts, mucus frosting under his nose. His bushy beard glistens with snowflakes. His breath smells of rye liquor. “What sort of rebels are we if we don’t listen to what our little misses have to say?”

He squats down and stares at me with such unrelenting interest that I can’t bring myself to turn my face away. How does he see me? As I am or as I pretend to be?

Every day I see my face a thousand times in the mirrors scattered around the palace. My skin is pale as porcelain, kept more so by cream and powder. My cheeks are freckled, stubbornly so. My eyes are gray, rimmed by blackened lashes. Mine isn’t a face that belongs to a factory girl.

Be that as it may, I can but try. I lift my chin up and meet the man’s stare, not with defiance, but with a smile as luminous as a flame first summoned to life. I should be afraid. But I like this world, the world without ranks. Where people are what they are and nothing more or less. I say, “The cause is right. The cause is just. That is what I think.”

In my ears, my trained voice is akin to a nightingale’s song. True enough, the railway man staggers up as if I had cursed at him. I hold my breath. Behind me, Janlav’s pose has changed. He’s a soldier dressed in plain clothes now.

A screech of metal on metal tears through the night. Neighs and clicking of iron-shod hooves scatter against the ice-laced flagstones. The people crammed into the pen swarm out. I dash to my love before I realize it’s just the trolley arriving.

The trolley draws to a halt, and people surround us. The railway man still stares at me in wonder, for he hasn’t—I know it for sure—ever before seen or heard one like me.

“You.” The railway man points a trembling finger squarely at my love’s chest. “You are one very lucky man. Never let go of her. Never let her go.”

My love’s pose eases. He swoops an arm around my waist and pulls me against him. I shiver out of sheer exhilaration of being so close to him. “Never! I swear as the Moon is my witness. I will never let go of her.”

The railway man chuckles, and then he’s already boarding the trolley. He pushes people around him aside to make space for us. “Hop in, friends!”

My love smiles wildly at him, and we board the trolley. As the trolley jerks onward, my love whispers in my ear, “You did good.”

I don’t reply a word. I truly am one amongst many. This is the future.

It’s silent in the trolley, almost as if we were in a church, listening to a gagargi speak. As the trolley rattles over the stone bridge that arches over the Navna River, I stare through the window fogged by the breath of dozens of people. The train bridge runs alongside this bridge, but no locomotive steams through the night. Was it just this spring when I leaned out of the imperial train’s window, so overjoyed to arrive in the Summer City? This bridge was then crammed with people waving white handkerchiefs at us.

“Or perhaps it was just pieces of cloth, ripped from old sheets and shirts,” I mutter under my breath before I can stop myself.

The trolley screeches as it changes tracks. The people gripping the poles or holding on to each other sway. My love bumps into me, but not by accident. “What was that you said?”

“Oh, nothing important,” I say as I realize something I was too blind to see earlier. All the people in the trolley wear red gloves or mittens.

The trolley rattles through the city for a good hour or so before it draws to a halt before a massive warehouse. The red-brown bricks bear a white veil. Snow rests on the slanted roof.

Sensing that I can’t place us on the map, my love says, “We are at the train depot.”

People disembark the trolley in an orderly, even jolly manner. The current carries my love and me out, toward the sliding doors that yawn wide open.

“Stay close.” My love squeezes my hand.

“I will,” I reply, though he wouldn’t have needed to remind me. Even if he isn’t wearing the imperial uniform, he radiates such confidence, bears such an air of command around him, that people shuffle out of our way without even noticing that they are doing so. I clutch his hand as people close in behind us. For if I were to lose him, I would never find him again in this crowd, and I might not be able to navigate my way back to the Summer Palace without risking revealing my identity.

The train depot is a vast steel structure with a large lattice of windows as a ceiling. Thin snow covers the glass panes, piled by wind into waves. Huge lanterns hang from the iron bars spanning across the whole hall. The tiny lights flicker, too weak to chase away this many shadows. I think they are powered by chicken souls, but it might be another cheap soul that’s in use.

“At least it’s warm here.” A man in a peasant’s baggy shirt nudges his mate with his elbow. His shirt is cinched at the waist with a leather belt re-holed too many times. “Eh?”

“Now, if there only were a piece of bread to be had, then we’d know what it feels like to live in the palace!”

I glue my gaze down, on the oil-stained concrete. If these two men only knew how much goes to waste in the palace! We nibble and sample and taste for fun, only to send away practically untouched plates because some minor detail didn’t quite please us. Or because we have changed our minds about what we want for breakfast or lunch or brunch or dinner. I can’t plead innocence, having committed those crimes too many times to count. My sisters and I, we are as guilty as any who dwell in the world that these men can’t even imagine.

Because I gaze down, I happen to lock eyes with an elderly woman whose head comes only up to my knees; she’s standing in a longitudinal depression that runs all the way to the end of the hall. A railway track, I realize. I stare back at the woman, impressed by her boldness. People don’t often meet my eyes, not when I’m a Daughter of the Moon. The woman presses her fist tight against her heart. She, too, wears a red mitten.

I repeat the gesture, though I don’t know what it means. The gloves and mittens and rags around hands, they must signify something. But what, I can only guess. All these people in the train depot, they are connected by the same concerns and goals. And there are enough of them, in the small towns and cities, spread across the whole empire, to make a difference at last.

“Come.”

I let my love lead me farther into the hall, where the crowd gets thicker and louder. Even the railway depressions are packed with people. Railroad workers in their loose trousers and boots that have seen too many feet, faces black with oil and coal, stuck in permanent grimaces carved by the harsh winters. There’s militia, too, men whose coats and trousers bear silver stripes, huddling in groups of two and three, mainly footmen. Women stand proud alongside these men, floral scarves tied around their heads, with furs on their shoulders, lamb and fox and wolf, with aprons peeking from under their long coats. Some don’t have coats, but many dresses layered for warmth. There are too many children to count, the scruffy sort that live on the streets.

A thought occurs to me, one that I try to push aside, but that’s too sharp for me to touch. These pits with rails, they are full of people, thousand-eyed trains. Smoke, it’s from their breath. The hoots, from their mouths. And once these trains roll into motion, they will be unstoppable.

I hear a snippet of conversation, but can’t pinpoint the person talking. The words are no less impactful. “How can the Moon watch over us when the empire has tripled in size? Perhaps he simply doesn’t see our plight. Perhaps that’s why he lets us suffer.”

I glance up out of reflex. A thicker layer of snow covers the ceiling now. I can’t see out through the windows, and ask my father if it’s really him who has failed our people, or only my family.

I stumble in my sabots; my toes are solidly frozen. A flicker of concern crosses my love’s proud forehead, and he guides me toward the side of the hall, where the pressure of the crowd isn’t as intense. Once there, he places himself firmly behind me, wraps his arms around me. “This is far enough, I think.”

I smile despite myself. No matter what will happen in this world, with him I will be safe. I’m privileged in more than one way. I plant a kiss on his clean-shaven chin.

But his attention is elsewhere. He’s craning over the crowd, looking intently toward the back of the hall. Ah, there, a narrow stairway leads from the ground level to what must be the foreman’s office. Men with shoulders so wide that they must no doubt walk through doors sideways stand guard at the bottom of the stairs and on the platform midway up. They remind me of the railway man I talked with earlier. So full of uncontrolled anger and power. Ready to beat even metal into submission.

Whatever is going to happen tonight, I realize, is going to take place at the platform. For gradually everyone in the crowd turns to stare in that direction. I chew the inside of my lips as my heart pounds faster, with vigor. This is altogether different from the other places my love has taken me. This is a gathering of unhappy souls, of people who yearn for change. People like me. And people not at all like me. I want to know one thing above everything else. Whom are we waiting to see? Whom are we waiting to hear speak?

I glance over my shoulder at Janlav. He must have known what I’m about to ask, but he just places his red-gloved hand against my heart. I place my red-mittened hand atop his. He won’t tell me. He wants me to listen to my heart.

At last, the door of the foreman’s office slowly opens. I rise on my toes to catch the first glimpse of the person all these people have come to hear speak. The sabots press painfully against my toes, and though my ankles threaten to twist, I rise higher. I want to know this person’s name, for he or she is the one to whom I must offer my help if I’m to change this empire for the better.

A man emerges through the doorway and halts at the first step of the iron staircase. He is tall and his dark hair is braided. He wears the black robes of a gagargi. I know this man, though his presence here is very much impossible. He’s a man of the empire as much as I’m its daughter.

But I’m not mistaken, for the crowd knows him too.

“Prataslav! Prataslav!” The rising roar slams breath from my lungs. The crowd punches their right fists in the air, and above their heads red spreads like blood spilled. “Our great Gagargi Prataslav. The gagargi of the people!”

I can’t say his name, for my tongue has gone numb; not even as I feel my love’s chest expand, hear his voice joining the cheer. I was expecting the leader of the insurgence to be of high position, one of the generals perhaps, or a high-ranking court official. Never even in my darkest dreams did I imagine him to be Gagargi Prataslav.

Gagargi Prataslav, my mother’s closest advisor, openly placing himself against the empire. This is as pure a treason as can ever be. It’s almost worse than what I’m up to, for I’m only the second daughter!

A gust of warmth touches my left cheek. I flinch before I realize it’s just my love about to whisper in my ear. “You are surprised?”

I don’t dare to let him see my expression. For I’m shocked more than surprised. I was ready to offer my help for the insurgence movement. But now that I know that it’s led by Gagargi Prataslav… There’s something odd, even frightening about him. Both Alina and Merile openly fear him, and not only because they saw something not meant for their eyes, I suspect. I cautiously study the frenzied crowd. A mere moment earlier, I considered myself a part of it. But now… now I want to run away as fast as my feet can carry me.

Before I can form the words that would surely drive my love away from me, the crowd stills. Even my love stills, forgetting he asked me a question. My gaze is drawn toward the balcony of its own accord. For it’s not possible for this many people to be this quiet, this unrelentingly focused, but I swear, I swear I could hear a feather drift, set against the floor. It’s that quiet.

“Thank you,” Gagargi Prataslav says as he floats down the steps to the platform, or that’s how it seems. His black robes hide the movement of his legs, and his boots don’t make a sound. Apart from his voice, nothing exists. “Thank you for gathering here to hear what a man has to say to his equals.”

My jaw slackens as the numbness of my tongue spreads through my body. For him to act so boldly, so openly to step down from his podium… Myself, I can imagine living a life much simpler, but he’s supposed to be the sacred messenger of the Moon!

With an effort that cramps my cold-tensed muscles, I manage to crane my neck and glance at the ceiling. My father can’t see us. Not with the snowfall thickening. Not with all the windows being just dark panes of dirty glass tonight.

Gagargi Prataslav halts exactly in the middle of the narrow platform and spreads his arms wide. His black sleeves are like the wings of a crow, the bearer of bad news and ill tidings. He leans toward the crowd, toward us, as he always does. Though he’s on the platform, he’s still too close for comfort. His gaze searches the crowd, and he smiles to himself as if he knew the name and lineage of everyone present. “I know why you have come here tonight.”

And it’s as if he’s speaking to me! My urge to flee strengthens, and I stumble backward, tread on my love’s toes. The gagargi can’t know I’m present. He mustn’t learn that I’m here. For if he did…

“The time of change is upon us. Soon we will all be what we were meant to be, regardless of our birth and origin.”

The crowd listens to the gagargi’s words in utter silence, with faces carved from stone. No eye blinks. No nostril flares. I have never witnessed such before. Not even in the churches during the holiest of ceremonies devoted to my father. Always, always someone has coughed in his fist or a baby has burst into tears. But now… even the unsteady beat of my heart is too loud in the confines of my shrinking ribcage.

“Very soon,” Gagargi Prataslav says, and lifts his right hand in the air, extends his long, bony forefinger. He, too, wears red gloves. His voice is low and mellow, and everyone in the hall must surely strain their ears to hear the words. “The Great Thinking Machine will make everyone equal.”

The machine? I have just enough time for that one frightening thought.

“Aya!” The crowd bursts into a reply so strong that it feels as if the very air were vibrating. My love joins the ear-shattering chorus. People lift their right fists in the air again, and the sea of red spreads over them. I wonder—wherever this thought came from—if eventually we are all going to drown in our own blood. “Aya! Aya, at last!”

I frown in open puzzlement. The crowd knows more than I do. What does the gagargi’s machine have to do with anything? How can the people know more than I, who have seen the thing with my own eyes? I who know what it requires for fuel!

“No more starving children.” Gagargi Prataslav’s words ring loud and clear, as though every word was produced by a smith’s hammer against an anvil. “No more soldiers sent to certain death. The machine knows everything. The machine cares for every single one of us. This is the end of injustice.”

Injustice? I shiver despite the multitude of layers hiding my identity. But, yes. My mother thinks her rule just, but that it is not. She has been so focused on expanding the empire that she has forgotten those she is supposed to shelter. She sends men to faraway countries, while their families slave in the fields. And to fund these excursions, she has increased taxes, so that the families have nothing to show for their hard work but debts.

But nothing in this world comes without a price. I have seen the Great Thinking Machine. And though I claimed otherwise to Alina and Merile, it runs on human souls. That’s the reason why Mother rejected it. How is the gagargi planning to solve that blasphemy?

“Equality is efficiency.” Gagargi Prataslav’s gaze brightens as if he were burning with passion inside. And perhaps he is. “No price is too great for such freedom. No price is too great for a better world.”

I wonder, do the people know the true price? Perhaps not. How will they react when they find out? Will they ever find out? What is the gagargi’s plan?

“The Moon has blessed our cause,” the gagargi says, his voice is so enchanting, so mellow. He turns sideways and gestures up the stairs, toward the foreman’s office.

A woman in a hooded cloak the color of a cherry sliced open stands in the gaping doorway. She’s almost as tall as he is. I can’t yet say anything else about her, but she must be of great importance to the gagargi.

The crowd holds their breath once more as the woman descends the stairs. Her movements are ethereal, beyond graceful. The edge of her cloak trails behind her, barely touching the floor.

There’s something familiar about the way she moves, commands the space to accommodate her movements. When she takes her place before the gagargi, I’m sure I have seen her before. When the gagargi whispers in her ear, she nods in reply, a curt, imperial gesture. I know her name then, even before she pushes the hood back and reveals her symmetrical face.

“Celestia…” I whisper before I can stop myself. What is my sister, the heir to the empire, doing up there, with the gagargi? My neck clicks as I turn to meet the man who brought me here. “Did you know about this?”

The crowd mills about in confusion, and my love’s gaze is wide with wonder. He might have known about the gagargi and hidden that from me until tonight, but… “No. I swear to the Moon, I didn’t. None of us did! But this is wonderful!”

Gagargi Prataslav and Celestia wait as if they had all the time in this world. My sister has a placid, almost dreamy expression on her face. Her silver hair is undecorated, merely curled. She wears a white dress with a high waistline, and white satin gloves envelop her svelte arms. As she places a hand on the railing, Gagargi Prataslav places his on top of hers.

I gasp, but there’s not enough air in the hall to fill my clenched lungs. I have suspected for some time already that my sister has a lover. But now it’s glaringly obvious. Her first lover is none other than Gagargi Prataslav. And for her to present this man to the common people before announcing her choice in the court… I don’t know what to think of it. For that matter, I don’t know what to think of anything anymore.

The sound is faint, a mere clatter of boots against metal. But it’s real, and it comforts me.

A guard has climbed up the stairway to the platform and brought with him a wooden tray. On the tray is a simple glass pitcher filled with dark liquid and an equally simple glass bowl. The guard holds it out before the gagargi. The gagargi picks up the pitcher and raises it over the railing. “Our hands have always been red with the blood we have bled for this empire.”

People cheer once more, and I wonder if they ever tire of shouting. If they have lost their mind in consensus. If I’m the only one really thinking of what lies under the surface.

For it’s not wine in the pitcher, but thick, clotted blood. I watch as one of the crowd as the gagargi pours the blood into the bowl, for what else can I do? Celestia, she just stares directly ahead of her. As if she really were not present. Or as if she existed only as a shadow in the world beyond this one.

The gagargi lowers the pitcher onto the tray and then accepts the whole tray from the guard. He turns to my sister. “This has not escaped the Moon. Tonight, next to me, stands his eldest, honored Celestia, the empress-to-be.”

Celestia turns her head slowly, her whole body. Hers is the most exquisite silhouette; slender, but round at bosom and hips. Her red cloak rests against her white gown, heavier than it should.

“I am here for you,” she says, and then… She sinks her hands into the bowl. “I am one of you.”

I gape in utter horror as Celestia raises her hands up in the air. Blood dribbles down her wrists, her arms, onto her dress, onto her pale neck, even onto her face. Her expression doesn’t flinch. No, it’s utterly serene as she faces the crowd once more.

“Celestia!” The crowd bursts into the loudest of shouts yet. “Prataslav! The age of equality!”

My mouth moves on its own, but no words come out. If I had thought I’d anger my father by wearing peasant clothes in public, Celestia… she has gone too far. In her scarlet cloak, in her bloodstained dress… I don’t understand the game she is playing. And yet I do. She means to overtake our mother with the help of the gagargi.

Gagargi Prataslav smiles, a self-satisfied smirk, visible for a moment only then gone so fast that I’m not sure I saw right. A thought occurs to me.

Perhaps it’s not Celestia who is behind the insurgence. Gagargi Prataslav has already won the heart of the people. With my sister by his side, he will have no trouble gaining the support of the nobles. Dizzy, I seek support from the man I thought I loved.

For a long time I had known that the time of my kind was coming to an end. Now I know this will happen very, very soon indeed.