Chapter Text
I was set to work in the kitchens. That was how I spent my younger days at Dunwall Tower, dough under my fingernails, flour caked to my clothes. It was a decent enough life, and I rather enjoyed the labor. At the very least, it gave me something to do with my hands. For the most part it was a fair childhood.
With one great exception. I often peeked around corners before entering a hallway. I didn't want to run into the Emperor in all his brilliant, golden-haired glory and iron composure.
Today, he found me.
“This isn’t funny. It's past time for her lessons. Where is she?”
“I told you, I don’t know where Jessie is,” I said, on the verge of tears before the might of Lord Euhorn Kaldwin’s slashing, oppressive gaze.
“Don’t lie to me. You’ve always caused such trouble for me.”
“I’m not lying! I haven’t seen her since this morning!”
Of course he wouldn’t believe me. He was the Emperor, and his word was law. I was just the daughter of a kitchen wench.
Fortunately for me, the Empress came to my rescue. Lady Beatrix Kaldwin was beautifully slim and pale, with silky black hair. Unlike her husband, she was offset by a simple kindness that rather reminded me of my own mother.
“Leave the poor child alone, dear,” she said. “She’s done nothing wrong.”
His anger melted as he turned and saw the forlorn-looking Jessamine clinging to his wife’s side. “Where have you been?” he asked in an altogether more gentle tone.
“She was found locked in the storage room.”
It was only a brief moment of relief before he turned back to face me. “I don’t suppose that you were the one who locked it on her, were you?”
“Delilah wouldn’t do that,” Jessie asserted. “I found the door open and wanted to see what was inside. One of the servants came and locked it without realizing I was in there. I’m sorry, daddy.”
As always, his anger abated for her, his sweet, precious daughter and heir to the Empire of the Isles. “That’s alright, as long as you’re unharmed. Now run along to your lessons,” said the glorious and icy man who sometimes smiled, but almost never in front of me.
***
Jessie was about a year my junior. When neither of us had any duties to attend to, we ran and frolicked through the gardens on the southern side of the Tower, looking over the Wrenhaven. Anyone would have said we were close as sisters. Back then, it didn’t matter that Jessamine’s dresses were elegantly tailored and mine were hand-me-downs altered to fit a child by my mother or some other member of the Tower staff. We both returned from the gardens with our knees equally grass-stained. Jessie was inevitably gently berated by her father. The head gardener, on the other hand, did not pick favorites and made a point of berating both of us. At first I thought his talk of being given the opportunity to experiment with new, hardier varieties of flowers was serious. Later, I discovered what sarcasm is. Eventually, I learned to appreciate the beautiful plants he cared for as well. I began making a conscious effort not to trample them.
In return, that kind, old gardener taught me about the various trees, shrubs, and flowers, and how to care for them. He cornered off a small section of the garden near the walls where no one would notice an empty bed, and provided me with a variety of seeds to plant there. But I was still a child. I asked him if any of them would grow into those toothed pitcher-shaped flowers from Pandyssia that could eat full grown rats. We planted pansies instead.
“Jessie, you’re standing on the flowers!”
She glanced down. “Yeah, I guess I am.”
“So, get off of them!”
“They’re just flowers.”
“They’re not ‘just flowers!’ It took a lot to grow even this little flower here,” I echoed the gardener’s words. The flower I was pointing to had been mangled and bent to the side under the heel of Jessie’s boot. “It had to be planted in just the right soil, not too heavy, and not too sandy. If the sun stayed on this spot too long, it would bake it. If there wasn’t enough sun light, it couldn’t grow at all. Same with water. Did you know you can actually drown a plant by watering it too much?”
“No. I thought plants loved water.”
“Even if they don’t drown, wet soil can make the plants sick.”
“Plants can get sick?”
“Yes, but it’s not like when we get sick. They don’t sniffle or cough. They can’t tell us how they’re feeling, so we have to take extra good care of them, and watch out when they’re getting sick.”
Jessie pondered this for a moment. “I never thought of them like that.”
“That’s because you don’t talk to the gardener. You should. He’s so nice to me.”
“Jessamine!” one of the maids called out across the yard.
She responded immediately, leaping from the flower bed to hurry across the yard. I followed a few paces after.
A stranger stood beside the maid at the Tower steps. He wore a well-fitted vest lined with pockets of all sizes. Needles, measuring tapes, scissors, and other little tools protruded from them.
“You must be little Jessamine Kaldwin,” he said as we approached.
His word were clearly directed towards Jessie, despite the fact that we had arrived at almost the same time. It must have been her clothes, the thought occurred to me. I suddenly felt embarrassed, clad as I was in my slightly baggy rags.
“You’re the new dressmaker, right? Are you going to make me a fancy new dress?”
He chuckled. “Of course, my dear. You’ll just have to sit still for a moment while I take your measurements. And who’s this young lady?” he asked, gesturing toward me.
“Her? Her name’s Delilah. She’s just the daughter of one of the serving girls in the kitchen,” the maid answered dismissively. “The Emperor keeps her around to provide some company for Jessamine.”
“She’s cute. They’re quite a pair. If they had matching outfits and haircuts, I’d imagine they’d be hard to tell apart.”
The maid coughed. “Delilah, don’t you think it’s about time to start preparing supper?”
“Nope. Mother said she wouldn’t need me for another hour.”
She shot me a look. The dressmaker, on the other hand proved himself to be much more tactful.
“I believe she means that she, Jessamine and I need to be alone so we can work out the design for this new dress.”
“Oh,” I breathed, and with nothing else to do, slunk up the stairs and back to the kitchen.
***
Carefully, I positioned the open end of the frosting bag just above the center of the sponge cake. It was just four inches in diameter, perfect for an individual serving. I had already covered it in an even coating of lovely, light blue frosting, and now I drew the bag filled with bright yellow frosting backwards, squeezing gently at first, then moderately harder, then gently again to taper the shape off. The result was a single petal of the sunflower design that took up the entirety of the top of the sponge cake. I finished it all off with a series of dabs of darker frosting in the center, then set that particular cake aside.
My mother laid down the ladle on the side of the boiling pot of stew and came over to have a look at my work.
“Delilah, did you make all those decorations yourself?”
“Yes. Marie’s been teaching me. They’re all flowers from the gardens here. The old gardener showed me them.”
Each individual sponge cake was decorated with a different type of flower. Irises, pansies, lilies, and now my sunflower among them. All but three of them I had set aside as finished.
“You’re so talented Delilah. If you ever decide you don’t want to be a baker, then you could be an artist.”
“Mommy, have you seen what I drew in my sketchbook yesterday? Wait here!”
I dashed off toward the stairs that led up to the servants' quarters, nearly running into one of the guards on the way. He yelled something about scuffing the floor that I was running too fast make out precisely.
I rushed to the side of my assigned bunk and dislodged the pillow. Jessie kept a diary, but I found drawing about my life was much more fun and interesting than writing about it. Besides, no one could read all my secrets. Sketchbook in hand, I scurried back down to the kitchen, where my mother had returned to ensuring the stew wouldn’t form a skin.
“Look! This one’s of you.” She barely had time to see it before I excitedly flipped to another page. “And this is me out in the gardens. I even labeled all the plants.”
She laughed. “And if you decide you don’t want to be an artist, you could be a natural philosopher.” She ruffled my hair affectionately.
“Stop. You know they don’t allow women into the academy.”
“Yes, of course, dear. Now, you better hurry up and finish the last few cakes. I wonder what flowers you’ll put on the last ones? Roses?”
“Oh, I hadn’t thought of that,” I said, eyes lighting up. “Roses are so pretty!”
“You have three cakes left to decorate. Why don’t you finish the others off with different colors of roses?”
“Okay.” I set the sketchbook aside and set to painting a white rose on a green-frosted sponge cake.
“Mommy, why do men give roses to women they like?”
“I’d assume because they’re pretty, and they want to tell the girl they like that she’s pretty.”
“But that makes no sense! They’ve got all those thorns on their stems! You don’t want to hurt someone you love, right?”
“I’m sure they remove the thorns before they give them as a gift.”
“What if they forget?”
“Well, they do say love hurts.” She was starting to sound a little exasperated.
“Why? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“You’re still young, and love is confusing. You’ll understand it better when you’re older.” She noticed I had finished with the white rose, and added, “Why don’t you make the next one pink?” in an attempt to distract me.
I complied, picking up a bag of nice, light pink frosting. “That just leaves red for the last one. It’s like a set. Do you think I should give them to the Imperial family? Red for the Emperor. White for the Empress because she always looks sickly--”
“Now, now, it’s not nice to make light of her poor health.”
“Oh, maybe red then, so she gets better, and Jessie can have the white one. Wait, no that means the Emperor would have pink. He wouldn’t like pink. So if I give him the white one...”
My mother clearly wasn’t paying much attention to the very important matters over which I was fretting, but I continued on anyway. I only stopped when Marie came into the kitchen to ask about when the desserts would be ready.
“Just a minute! I only have one left.” I picked up a red frosting bag, then added, “Say, can I serve it this time?”
“It’s an official dinner,” my mother interjected. “The Emperor has asked that you remain unseen during business.”
“Aw. Jessie always get to go to these things.”
“That’s because she’s the heir. It’s her duty to attend.”
“You wouldn’t like them anyway,” Marie, said, floating into the room. “Lots of politics, finances. Such a bore. But don’t worry, just tell me who gets which one, and I’ll make sure they get them.”
This was why I liked Marie. Not everyone did, and some of the other members of the staff kept referring to her as a tart. I never did see what she had in common with a pastry. All I knew was that Marie was always very kind to me, even if she could be a little overbearing at times. I hurried to finish the last cake as she loaded the finished ones onto a serving platter.
***
Over the past few weeks, Jessamine and I had kept busy collecting little things we found in the garden. Together we assembled a little fleet of boats with hulls made from discarded bark and rigging made from twigs, stems, and leaves.
“It’s like the best of both of us. Plants for you, and ships for me,” she commented, when we had finished. Her tutor had been going over the importance of the Empire’s fleet, and Jessie had taken a fascination to it. As one would expect for the future ruler of an Isle that relied so heavily on its navy.
“Yeah, but how are we going to get to the river to launch them? They always keep the gate to the stairs locked unless there are visitors.”
“Put them in here, and I’ll show you!” She held the mouth of a backpack open, and I placed the scrap wood boats in side by side so the masts would be less likely to snap off. When it was loaded up, Jessie pulled the bulky sack on to her back and took off toward the southern wall where the heavy iron gate was shut firmly.
“Father says I shouldn’t show this to anyone, but we’re friends, so promise you won’t tell, okay?”
“I promise.”
Jessie nodded, and held her hand up, reaching it out toward the hefty lock. Her lip curled in concentration, as if she were attempting something physically strenuous.
“What are you doing, Jessie?”
“Wait for it… there!”
She lowered her hands and pushed against the iron gate, and it opened with a groan.
My jaw hung partially open in shock and disbelief before I checked myself. “Jessie, was that magic?”
“I don’t really know. Remember that one day when I got locked in the storage room when it was time for one of my lessons?”
We started down the stairs. It was a long way to the bottom.
“Yes, I remember. How could I forget?”
“There was a bunch of old maps and other neat things in there, I found it open, so I just wandered in to have a look around. It was really interesting. There was even this singing object in a back corner. I was just looking at it when everything went dark. Somebody must have shut the door. I managed to crawl back using the light from under the doorway, but it was locked when I got there. I kept banging on it and screaming until someone came by and let me out.”
“That must have been scary.”
“It was. I even had a dream about it that night. More like a nightmare. That singing object I found was there, and I kept feeling like it was trying to tell me something. Then I came to a locked door, and it just opened. I woke up after that, of course, but I tried it on a lock and it really worked!”
“No way! I wish I could do that.”
“Yeah, but mom and dad didn’t like it when I showed them. They got very quiet all of the sudden and said that I shouldn’t show it to anyone.”
Something told me that if I had been the one to show the Emperor that, I would have gotten quite a bit more than a few urgently hushed words. The thought stung as it passed through my mind.
“But I’ve been practicing when no one is looking. I can do more things,” she continued. Jessie unslung the backpack and handed it over to me. “Watch this.”
It almost appeared as if a shadow reached out from nowhere and enveloped her. I could still see her when I looked straight at her, but she was somehow fainter, less noticeable. When I looked slightly to the side, she disappeared entirely, as if there was nothing there except a shadow cast by one of the rocks.
She returned into my field of vision with a slight puff of light. “That’s a fun one. I can’t do that for long though. It make me tired.”
The power intrigued me. With something like that, maybe it would be possible to even avoid the Emperor when he came charging down on of the Tower hallways.
“Why didn’t you tell me you had powers?” We started down the stairs again.
“Delilah, we almost always play in the garden or in the Tower. Someone would have seen us. I wanted to tell you, but I didn’t want anyone else to know.”
“Can you teach me how you do it?”
“I don’t know. I just sort think of it and it happens. Like moving my arm.”
“Maybe if I do the same thing…” I conjured up the idea of the enveloping shadow, and tried to picture it like a cloak around me.
“Anything?” I inquired.
“You don’t look any different. Except for the way you’re scrunching up your eyebrows. Maybe only I can do it.”
“Aw. that’s no fair. I want to be able to hide in shadows too.”
“You could try sneaking into the storage cabinet. I’d make sure no one would lock it on you.”
“It’s worth a try.”
“Okay, we’ll make plans for it when we get back to the top.”
Going down was easy enough, but I was starting to worry about the trip back up. Jessie read my thoughts.
“I wish one of my powers was to jump to the top of tall things. Or that there was some kind of device that lets me get up and down the stairs without having to walk whenever I want to go to the river. Or maybe I can bring the water up to the top.”
“Bring the river up to you? Jessie, you have such a wild imagination.”
“When I’m Empress, I’m going to have the natural philosophers build something like that. Empresses shouldn’t have to climb so many stairs.”
“I hope you don’t succeed. That would be bad for this fish,” I teased. “Look, we’re almost at the bottom.”
I placed the backpack on the gravelly shoreline ground and pulled it open. Despite my precautions, two of the masts had snapped in half, but the rest looked to be more or less in one piece. I took them out and tossed them aside before carefully removing the intact boats.
“You pick the first one,” I offered to Jessie. “After all, you’ll have a real fleet someday.”
“Hm. I’ll pick this one.” She pulled one of the larger ships from the ground, with three whole masts firmly glued to it. We took it over to the water and set it afloat.
“I dub thee the H.E.S. Dahlia.”
“That’s a type of flower. Have you been listening to what I tell you after all?”
“Sometimes. Mostly I just named it that because it sounds like your name.”
We giggled as we watched the makeshift boat haphazardly drift out over the water.
“Okay, my turn.” I chose a slimmer ship. “I’ll call this one the H.D.S. Stairwell.”
“H.D.S. Stairwell?”
“Her Delilah’s Ship the Stairwell. Because no Empress will be able to conquer it!”
“I know, but H.D.S.? That’s not a proper name for a ship.”
“I can’t be Empress, so it had to be named after something else. Like me.”
“Don’t look now, but I think the H.D.S. Stairwell has just been conquered.”
I gazed at where it was drifting to see she was right. The ship was still afloat, but it had fallen on its side, the leaf making up its sail half submerged.
“You won this battle, but there’s more where that came from!”
So we alternated launching ships. The Natural Philosopher, then the Columbine. The Leviathan, then the Harpooner. The Sunshine, then the Shadow. Our game was interrupted halfway through when the wake from a passing boat capsized most of our fleet and sent them splashing against the rocky shoreline. Jessie and I ran in opposite directions to try and save as many ships as we could. I had picked up two ships and cradled them in my left arm when Jessie called out to me. “Delilah, look what I found!”
I returned to where Jessie was standing, ankle deep in the murky waters. She wasn’t holding any of the ships, but instead and odd, thick disk that looked like it was made of bone. Rusted metal bolts had been stapled through its edges, and circular patterns etched on colored black on its flat sides.
“What is that?”
“I don’t know, but it looks and sounds like that singing object I told you about. That’s how I found this hidden under the water.”
I cocked my head to the side. I certainly didn’t hear anything. Wait, maybe there was something just barely perceptible -- no that was just the sound of the water sloshing against the shore. Still, Jessie looked transfixed by something.
“The one I found in the storage room was on a pedestal of some kind. I think this one wants us to make one for it as well.”
Jessie was the one who could hear it, so I decided she knew best. We unquestioningly broke off the masts from our little ships. I propped them up as to Jessie’s instruction, while she tied them together with the plant stems that had previously been rigging. It wobbled slightly as Jessie placed the strange, pale object in the top half of the structure, then we backed away with a sense of unspoken superstition. The object looked just right there. Transfixing, even. Our gazes lingered on it. I couldn’t be certain how long we were standing there.
“What in the world are you two doing?!!” boomed a terrifying voice from behind us. We spun around. As I feared, the horrible voice belonged to none other than the Emperor. He was accompanied by two of his harsh faced guards. They all looked furious, and, I thought, somewhat aghast.
“Where did you find that?!”
“It was on the beach, under the water,” I said quietly, shrinking under his iron gaze.
As much as I dreaded his presence, I knew that sometimes the Emperor had even smiled ever so slightly, usually when I had made an inventive new roll or pastry for him. It confused me. I wasn’t sure what to make of that gesture. But this was not one of those times. Why should I have hoped for anything different?
“It’s not her fault!” Jessie exclaimed. “It was me. I found it.”
“Jessamine, go back to your room in the Tower. You’re lucky the Overseers didn’t find you first.”
"But--"
“Jessamine, I told you to go to your room. Weston, see that she gets there.”
One of the guards stepped out from behind him and ushered her forward with a gentle push. When they had reached one of the stairway’s turn backs and faded from sight, the Emperor turned toward me again. I tried to call up that shadow that Jessie had shown me again, but to no avail. I was straight in his sights and helpless to do anything about it.
“As for you, Delilah, come with me.”
***
My back hurt, and whatever my mother was putting on it made it sting even more.
“There’s a bakery and apartment available in one of the lower middle class districts. You can start up a business there if you’d like. I’ve arranged for a coach to take you there in an hour’s time. Be certain you’re ready and waiting at the gate by then. That’s all I can offer you, and it's really more than I should be doing for you. Let me make it clear that when you leave, I expect never to hear from either of you again.”
“So that’s it?," asked my mother. "You’re finally getting rid of us? It took you so long I was beginning to think that we weren’t such a burden to you after all.”
I stopped crying for long enough to look at my mother. No one spoke to the Emperor that way. Yet here she was, standing up for an unfortunate child against the most powerful man in the Isles.
And he didn’t make a move to contradict her, or strike out at her as he had at me.
“I’m sorry,” he simply said in a tone too cold to be genuine, and too nuanced to be faked. “This is the way things must be.”
“Why are you always so cruel to me and not to Jessamine?” I whispered in one final protest. I didn't think he would hear it, but he did.
He just looked at me. Not angry, just simply stern and detached.
“Because you’re not my daughter, now, are you?”
With that, the Emperor turned and left the room. That was the last time I ever saw him.
I remained in my mother’s arms, sobbing silently as she continued to rub ointment over the raw lashes on my back.
“Does this mean we have to leave the Tower forever?” I finally inquired.
She answered slowly. “Yes, Delilah.”
“But this is my home! I was raised here.”
She stroked my hair a few times in silent remorse. “None of this is your fault. I’m so sorry for everything that’s happened to you.”
I sniffled, and my mother wiped my running nose.
“Can Jessie at least come with us?”
“No. Jessamine has to stay here.”
“Why?”
“She’s the future Empress. This is where she belongs, with her father.”
“But he’s so cruel! Wouldn’t Jessie be happier living with us, away from him?”
“Darling, she can’t. The Emperor always treats her well, so she’ll have a good life. I tried to give you the same thing, but in the end, it looks as if I was unable to. I’m sorry.”
I’m sorry. Why did grown-ups say that so often? They were just stupid words. They never meant anything.
“He hurt me so much, but Jessie just got sent to her room! It’s not fair! It’s not fair!” The words choked in my throat and I began another bout of painful sobbing. “How come she gets to stay here in the Tower without being punished because she’s the one who’s going to be Empress, and I get treated meanly by the Emperor, and kicked around, and beaten up, and now I have to leave forever, and everything hurts, and I don’t even know why? It’s not fair! It’s not fair! It’s NOT fair!”
My mother drew back to look me in the eyes. “Delilah, how I wish I could tell you something that would make this all better, but I can’t. Out there, in the world outside the Tower, things are even more unfair than they are in here. I can’t take the pain away, but I do need to prepare you for your new life.” She paused to find the right words. “The Emperor shouldn’t have done that to you. You’re right. It was cruel. But he is the Emperor, and he inherited the power to do a great many things, whether right or not, simply because he was lucky enough to be born into power. As was Jessamine. You see, Delilah, some people are born with a silver spoon in their mouth. And some people just… aren’t. None of this was your fault, remember that. You didn’t chose to be born who you were. Now, all I can do is ask you to be strong.”