.
Anathi waited until halfway through sunset to make her preparations. She should have started them when the Queen gave her command that morning, but the day had been too peaceful, and peaceful days too rare of late, so she had basked in it instead. Could she call it indulging? Did she remember how? Well, she had no mouth to smile with, but there was a... lightness to her spirit.
There was tension in the manse still -- the Queen's day-long talks with the elders would continue tomorrow, the Inner Plainers grew restless waiting for their leader, and a determined quiet hung over the Princess' room -- but one of the cleaner boys had "spotted" three barrels of beer with broken corks. They would have gone bad in two days. And how serendipitous, a trail musician had wandered in from a neighbouring villa, looking for a room in exchange for song. And what was that? He knew Inner Plainer chants! And so the General's men had done the brewers a favour and drunk the endangered beer, and with song and a hot sun to put them on their backs, the rest of the manse had breathed easier.
Anathi, in her clay avatar, rolled a chunk of broken cork across her knuckles. She sat on her eastermost roof, directly above the Queen's library, and watched her shadow stretch across the patio below. Her spirit self had no need for temporal understanding, but she had been a girl once, one who understood the sadness of a good day passing.
Even as the evening stars opened their eyes high above her many thatched roofs, the air was still thick with the afternoon heat. In the outside kitchens behind the grainhouse, hearty legume soups bubbled in fat-bellied pots. (There would be many drunk men in need of hearty, salty food and a good night's sleep soon.) Barrels of beer stood in neat in the cooling pantries dug deep into the earth. After the three compromised barrels had been removed, there had been fifty-one, now there were forty-five. Even Third Hillers got thirst, after all.
But the day had also taken its toll.
Anathi shifted part of her consciousness to the Queen's bedroom. She watched the Queen kneel in the middle of the room light her prayer herbs. Her basin was still full of sud-grey bathwater, her dense hair soft and heavy with moisture that made it curl wildly about her head. It hung over her face when she leaned forward and struck a shard of flint over the stone bowl packed down with roots and twigs and grasses that Anathi had little need to know the significance of. Sweet smoke drifted up, high, high, high, until it licked the clay ceiling. Across the manse, above the library, her avatar wriggled its nose as though it itched.
When the Queen began drawing her ancestors near, Anathi left. As far as ancestors went, the Queen's were powerful and capable of great omens and greater violence, but it was their stares she hated most. They judged her not as a capable and (mostly) dutiful spirit, but as the girl she had been in life: eager to please, afraid, and dying. When they looked at her, she did not see Anathi the Keeper of Third Hill in their eyes' reflection. To them, she was a broken body by the river, gasping for air as she was pulled out of the water.
She was a thing indebted to a Spirit Peddlar, who had not saved her body for humanity's sake, but so he could steal her spirit and sell it.
She was a thing bought by a King and given to his young bride.
Those that did not look down on her looked at her with pity, and she hated that almost as much.
Still, the Queen's ancestors tolerated her, because they needed her, more than they needed anything else in their existence. Was that the source of their anger? Those of royal birth weren't built to feel like they needed broken girls. Only the Queen saw her as anything more than a thing. Only the Queen had offered her freedom after her own passing. Until that mournful day, Anathi would protect, and she would do her best to enjoy days like these.
In her foreyard, a girl carried a heavy drinking urn across the lawn, sloshing beer over the rim as she went. The hot earth drank greedily. If the sunlight could have cut across the shadows of Anathi's face, it would have found a small, cheeky smile on her lips -- the kind young girls had when they snuck a sip of their father's beer when he wasn't looking. Then the sun disappeared behind the western grasslands and the Inner Plains beyond.
When the crickets announced the night's coming and the twin half-moons burned the dimmest stars away, Anathi pulled most of her consciousness towards her avatar. She left just enough drifting through the manse's clay ceilings to alert her of any danger. In truth, she didn't need to centre herself so drastically for what she had to do now, but it was a small comfort, like pulling a blanket over cold shoulders.
She stood, waited an hour for a cumulus to drift over the moons, then dropped silently to the patio. She didn't want Sian's twins to see her shudder when she landed on the mountainstone.
The runes carved onto the underside of the tiles were expertly carved. Mountainstone was a strange rock -- beautiful to the human eye with its swirling ochres and desert reds and opal veins, but easily worn by wind or water. But, most importantly, its minerals were highly receptive to rune magic. Anathi felt them pulse against the bottom of her feet as she walked to the edge of the patio.
Do not break.
Do not break.
Do not break.
The longer a rune worked, the warmer it became. As it was, the tiles reflected the day, with a rare Autumn heat still locked in their minerals. But even in winter, when mist from the Wayfarer would frost over the grass, the house dogs would trot over to the patio to enjoy a warm sleep pad. Asanda would have to replace the runes this year or risk an overheating tile cracking in half. That one crack would compromise the floor (ceiling?), and the entire Hundred Hills with it.
Anathi hopped over the edge of the patio and landed on the grass below. She didn't frown or click her tongue, but the windows of the manse rattled a little at her annoyance. She hated getting dirt on her feet. It was the only substance that she couldn't keep from clinging to her clay. If an observant human had stood where she stood now with that piece of knowledge, they might have noticed that a thin line running down the patio foundation had a fine layer of dust on it, dust that didn't cling to anywhere else on the rockface. That line was Wayfarer clay. Using it as a bridge, Asanda transferred her avatar from the outside lawn to the cairn hidden under the patio.
The cairn was dark, but when your eyes were moulded from clay, that hardly mattered. Anathi knew every contour of this hidden room, which was empty but for two chests against the far wall and the stone shelf behind them. All the same, she flicked her hand over the ignition rune between her feet. It flashed white under her touch, bright enough to blind human eyes. Five rune lights along the ceiling absorbed the flash and converted it into a soft golden glow. The ignition rune faded and Anathi walked to the lefthand chest.
"Prepare yourself," the Queen had said that morning as she washed bread dough out of her fingernails. "If worst occurs and I am unable, you must protect my children above all else. Please."
Anathi had listened from the ceiling. The Queen was one of those sensitive humans who could sense the spiritual plane without trying too hard. Perhaps it was a second-hand sensitivity acquired from the ball of violence sleeping inside her. Perhaps, like the Diviner, she was simply called to listen. In any case, she knew Anathi had listened in on her conversation with her daughter. She was oddly comfortable with it, the Queen. Even in marriage times when she lay with her husband, knowing Anathi was bound to the ceiling above her head, she had never offended Anathi by being offended. As for others in the manse... well, there was a reason Anathi was known only to the royal family, and why the royal children refused to have clay fitted in their bedroom ceilings.
But one didn't shy away from the secret moments in their lives just because they knew their ancestors were watching. And the Queen did not shy away from Anathi's watchful but indifferent gaze. In that sense, she offered Anathi as much respect as she showed her own ancestors.
Long after they were clean, the Queen had kept scrubbing her hands. "Let us not forget our duties to one another."
The day had been too good to end with her here, in the dark, knelt in front of a heavy citruswood chest that had not been opened in fifteen years. Though she could vaguely feel the wind curving over her roofs and the cool soil packed down against her foundations, most of Anathi's spirit was here, churning inside a body of clay as dense as iron. At the sight of the clay latch that locked the chest, that flicker of fear sparked again, a little brighter this time, a little longer in burning.
"And when the weakness comes, Anathi, let us also remember our promises."
Anathi absorbed the latch into her hand. She opened the chest.
Light could not touch Wayfarer clay, but by Holle's womb, nothing reflected it like fireglass. The cache of it inside the chest took the golden runelight and spun rainbow threads of light that shot off in every direction. Those that reflected towards Anathi curved around her as though fearing her touch. A foolish, human thought. Wayfarer clay did not ward off the light, it drank it.
The fireglass was haphazardly stored. Not that it mattered. Only pig glass formed from mere heat and sand feared breakage. Anathi picked up a scale of glass shaped like a curved serpent scale. As soon as she did, all light stopped reflecting on it. She twirled it between her fingers. Deceptively light, though weight was relative. Her avatar, modelled after a young girl broaching womanhood, could be made dense enough to outweigh a bull elephant if the need arose. If.
Anathi held the fireglass scale against her shoulder. A perfect mould. She willed the clay to absorb the shoulder guard so that it rested just beneath the surface.
"But over and above duty and promises," the Queen had said, leaning over the basin as a tear dropped onto her raw hands, "All I ask is that you keep my children safe, at all costs."
By making it a request, she had given Anathi room to refuse. It was cruel and weak of her, both as a ruler and a friend, to pass that responsibility on. Anathi didn't hold it against her, not fully anyway. Even the strongest tile cracked, and, when it did, one did not get angry at the stone that made it before scorning the wind and the rain. And this was Autumn, the season of storms.
Silently, Anathi picked up a fireglass breastplate and absorbed it into her chest. Autumn was also a season of change, and she was not so far removed from her own silly human paranoia to think that they had spent their last good day before the coming cold.