Snowmancer

Chapter 1, Part 2: Jem

Jem

I left Ilyas to stew in the cellar and climbed into the palace proper, dropping off my overly-warm coat and scarf in the tower room. Only then, standing in my abandoned and dust-coated room, did I feel the cold permeating the castle. When I descended, most of the fireplaces I passed were left empty. Fuel was too dear.

The first fire I encountered came from the royal family's shared bedroom, the light spilling out the open door onto the white flagstone. The royal children giggled inside, and I stopped.

Like Ilyas' father, the last Lumian king had been too fertile. Every year, the queen delivered more mouths to feed, some dying within months and others surviving, and the villagers had watched in concern. Shouldn't the king take a male lover instead to prevent more children? They already had more than anyone else. But the king had always sworn he'd loved his queen, and that was the problem.

I backed away from the shared bedroom. The six royal children had been tiny when I'd left, most of them too young to grasp what I was, but they'd still burst into tears in my presence. The intervening years couldn't have changed that.

I slipped down the stairs, finding an alternate route through the maze of corridors to head to another bedroom. In Nuriya, the king gave each prince their own set of rooms, but Lumians lived and slept in the same beds, some with their families and others with friends and lovers, huddling together for warmth. All except for the prince regent.

A fire had been lit in Prince Hemi's room, a waste, but nobody had asked me. I averted my eyes from the shrine against the wall, slipping inside to stand next to the door, eyes downcast, waiting for Her Majesty to acknowledge me.

One flick of my eyes made me feel all the more the strange foreigner. In Nuriya, I'd been slim and delicate, my white hair and skin prized as exotic by everyone but Ilyas. But here, I appeared hale and hearty compared to Her Majesty, whose shawl and dress hung loosely over her bones, and her cheeks and eye sockets were hollowed.

An equally frail boy sat in the chair next to her, his hollow cheeks stealing the boyish charm from him. A boy of eight or nine, one of the royal children, but I couldn't remember the name. No one introduced me to the children, and I had to glean everything by eavesdropping.

The boy bubbled out of his seat as he retold a story about his and his friend Ari's adventures in a mine shaft, where after much blushing and demurring, he admitted this Ari had kissed him on the lips. I had to glance up again and sucked in a breath. I'd travelled through more prosperous kingdoms for so long, I'd grown used to their standards. He wasn't a boy of eight or nine. That's how old he'd been when I'd last seen him. He was only six years younger than me. He had to be thirteen now.

Prince Hemi's younger brother and the prince heir, Prince Haori.

The prince heir noticed me first, his hazel eyes screwing up in confusion as he stared at my white hair and my pale skin bleached of every bit of colour. I folded my hands behind my back and held my breath, waiting for him to scream. When Her Majesty had seen me off on my search, Prince Haori had huddled behind his mother's skirts.

He broke into a grin, and after I blinked, I found him suddenly in front of me. "You're back!"

I glanced at Her Majesty, who only stiffened then nodded.

"Where did you go? What did you see? Ari said they have Oliphant in the southern continent, but I think they're just a myth, and is it true? Are they there? Did you see sand? Ooh, is it really made of glass? Is it?"

His mother shushed him. "Go back to the others."

"But Mother," he whined, his voice cracking. He jerked, as if shocked his voice had betrayed him.