Northlight by Deborah Wheeler Page A

Gatekeeper of the South and a dozen other archaic titles, knifed down in the open plaza and lying bloodstained at his feet.
o0o
    Terricel rummaged in the pile of clothing on the floor of his closet and extracted a shirt and trousers that looked reasonably clean. In the washing alcove adjacent to his bedroom, he bent over the sink and splashed cold water on his face. He wet his hair and ran his fingers through it, not that it would make much difference in the way the cowlick swirled out from the back of his head. These ordinary tasks, usually performed without thought, now felt unnatural, as if some part of him comprehended that life went on, but some other part could not.
    Downstairs, the house lay quiet, undisturbed. Although there was no sign of Annelys, the house steward, Terricel caught the aroma of her breakfast bread. She was probably tending to the opal-eyed house snakes, rounding up the mated pair. They were turned loose each night to forage for rats and cockroaches. Their world of hunter and prey remained untouched by yesterday’s events.
    Esmelda’s everyday cloak of gray wool still hung on its peg by the front door. Terricel took an apple from the bowl on the table and made his way down the corridor.
    He cracked open the door. Inside, directly beneath Esmelda’s bedroom, lay the cave of a room that served as her home office. Behind the overflowing bookshelves lay walls that were once a soft peach color, the sole relic of the time before she’d painted everything eggshell white. Years of candle smoke had darkened them.
    Candles, beeswax candles, as costly as steel — the corners of the room reeked of them, even though Esmelda rarely actually burned them any more. The smell always made Terricel uneasy, as if some inarticulate longing within him, roused by memory, stirred fitfully in its sleep.
    Esmelda, on the other hand, drew the smoky darkness of the room around her like a protective cloak. She sat at the desk, its blotter-covered surface piled with history books, notes, and a tray of bread and ripened cheese. Ashes smoldered in the ceramic crucible she used to burn letters. She’d turned her chair toward the uncurtained windows, and when Terricel entered, she was gazing over the garden, pen raised in mid-stroke.
    â€œOrelia says the dagger was norther.” She put the pen down and jabbed a forefinger at a sheet of yellow message paper.
    â€œNorther...” Terricel repeated. Saying the word aloud brought a shock of its own. He remembered Esmelda’s words from the day before: “...only the beginning...”
    But no, she hadn’t said the dagger was norther, she’d said Orelia said it was. He tilted his head, one eyebrow lifted questioningly.
    She got to her feet. “Let’s have a look at it.”
    Terricel took a slice of bread, smeared it with the soft cheese, and followed his mother down the corridor. She lifted her cloak from its peg and settled it around her shoulders. The heavy woolen folds enveloped her, leaving her looking shrunken, frail.
    For a moment Terricel’s vision shifted. He saw her as he’d so often imagined her — for he’d been an infant at the time — standing on a dais in the plaza where she gave her famous speech. Her shoulders were thin and angular under her cloak of purple mourning, her eyes half-feverish as she studied the anxious faces below. She seemed more desolate and yet more resolute than he’d ever seen her. Rain slicked her black hair to her skull, as if leading the city through the epidemic had pared her to the core.
    Give us hope, they cried to her in his vision. Give us strength.
    â€œIt will be our measure as a nation how we conduct ourselves in the days to come. It is not enough to merely survive.” He wasn’t sure if he’d ever heard her speak those words or only imagined what she’d said.
    â€œWe must remember who we are.”
    He blinked and saw her again, one image overlaid on