Chapter Five
The Red Room

Roja stalked the halls of the castle, which was made to feel significantly less transgressive by the fact that the Queen had explicitly given him permission to go wherever he liked — within reason. That hadn’t stopped Roja, though, and he thought that perhaps, if he acted suspiciously enough, a guard would try to apprehend him, giving him something to protest and struggle against. 

So far, no luck. The best he’d managed was a raised eyebrow from the manservant Galladio. Roja had thought him to be an easy target for mischief and devilment, but Galladio had given him a sweet pastry and told him he’d never find “the Red Room” in his life, and then left with a smirk. Roja was, of course, stumped. 

Was it a challenge? Was it a threat? Maybe some sort of “Do Not Go There, It Is Prohibited”? Or, alternatively, “Do Not Go There, It Is Forbidden, If You Know What I Mean, No Nothing Is Wrong With My Eye, It Just Does That”? He simply didn’t know if he was or wasn’t supposed to look for this Red Room, if it even existed. 

So stalk the halls he did, chewing on a piece of pastry with more layers than a godsmaid in Winter. The Castle, he had to admit, was beautiful. Its ornate halls filled with frescoes and mosaics, and gorgeous vistas where they weren’t. 

But he was uncomfortable. Uncomfortable at how comfortable they were being made to feel. At first he’d thought his comrades would have stood by him in defiance, but they’d both been lost to the Royal Court’s Evil Machinations in just one day. Maria was currently on her sixth rematch against the Queen, who had beaten her handily each time, with every kind of mock weapon under the sun. 

The first two matches, Roja had sat in for, watching Maria blunder around with a spear or swing a wooden axe around like it was a piece of driftwood, but he’d grown tired after the third time. Maria seemed to be enjoying herself, too, which only added insult to already copious injury. 

Selico had been shown the library and told where to make himself tea, and he’d been buried under paper ever since. So Roja was on his own, ducking in and out of rooms when he found most of them to not have much of interest in them. He felt he’d been lied to. Palaces were supposed to be filled with treasure but most of the rooms in this one, at least, were either living rooms where important-looking people smoked expensive-smelling herbs and talked about boring-sounding matters of state. That, or bedrooms. Which made sense when he thought about it, but Roja never had before. He’d never considered how many people lived in a palace, and where all of those stayed. In the palace, apparently. 

And sure, there were the kitchens, but kitchens were the same all over, and he knew he’d get wet dishrags thrown at him — or worse, orders — if he tried to get one over on the cooking staff. So he decided to look for this Red Room, in the higher halls of the Palace. There were lots of towers and spires, and each and every one of them had stairs. He was starting to understand how the Queen was in such good shape, if she had to go up and down those staircases each and every day. 

He found himself in a hallway that was strangely familiar. It was a lot more sparse, but not less comfortable. The walls were more sober, and the windows weren’t made of painted glass. It didn’t feel like something was skimped on but more like an evocation of style and place. These felt more like the kind of halls he grew up in than the fancy and colorful rich inner districts of the city. 

There was a noise behind him, and he instinctively tried to take up as little space as possible, crouching low. Someone was coming up the stairs, and he’d be damned if he was going to let himself get caught. He ducked into a door and pushed it closed behind him. On the other side of the door, he heard the giggling of gossiping maidservants or debutantes. He carefully waited for them to walk past and—

“Hello,” a soft voice said behind him. Roja froze. He hadn’t really taken the time to look around the room he’d hidden in, sort of assuming that it’d be empty this time of day. He slowly turned around. The girl sitting in front of a polished brass mirror appeared to have been in the middle of brushing her hair. It wasn’t very long, but it was a beautiful gold that you didn’t see very often. The only person he’d seen with hair like that had been in the orphanage, a few years ago. 

“Uh, um, uh, hi,” he stammered. “I—I didn’t mean to, uh, I was only attempting—”

The girl giggled, and Roja felt his face go red. He’d always felt uncomfortable around girls, they made him feel like he had to act a certain way and he always seemed to get it wrong. Maria was the exception, of course, because she treated him like a fellow streetrat and wiped her nose on his clothes and kicked his ass as often as he kicked hers. “Roja?” the girl said, shaking him out of his thoughts. 

“Huh?” How did she know his… “Iacobus?” Roja hadn’t seen the friend in years, but then again, disappearances were not uncommon for kids in the orphanage. 

The girl looked at him for a second, bit her lip, then nodded. “Not anymore. Not quite. It’s Iana now,” she said, emphasising the “ia” at the start of her name while looking him in the eyes, like that was the most important part of this revelation.

“I… I thought you’d, I don’t know, been kidnapped or ran away or something,” Roja said, looking at the girl in confusion. The ‘boy’ he’d known back at the orphanage was still there, technically, in the same way a child could be seen in its mother’s face. Her shoulder-length golden hair framed a face with eyes that were larger than they’d ever been, a small nose piercing on her aquiline nose, and dark red lips. All of it features he recognized, and yet the woman at the mirror looked like a stranger. 

“Well,” Iana said, raising her hands, “I can happily say neither.”

“You’re not being held against your will?!” Roja said. “But… Look at you! What happened?!” If she wasn’t going to address the fact that she seemed to be a woman any time soon, he was going to scream. 

“Queen Vera,” she said, confirming his suspicions. “I almost crashed into her in the marketplace.” Roja blushed as he remembered doing almost the exact same thing to her yesterday. “She asked if she could ask me some questions.” She stood up, the stola she wore flowing around her as she walked over to the balcony. Roja carefully followed her. He’d never had a room with a view that allowed him to look over the top of a building, let alone the entire city. 

“About being touched?” Roja asked. The Queen had drilled Maria, Selico and him about the book they’d found, but they’d all kept quiet about it. 

“Huh?” Iana turned to face him as she leaned on the wood banister, confused. Her hair whipped slightly in the wind, and he tried to ignore the little pang in his stomach. It was deeply uncomfortable to think of an old acquaintance the way he did now. “No. She asked me about what I wanted in life, and if I ever wanted things to be different. Then questions about who I was and so on.” She closed her eyes and let the afternoon sun glow on her skin. Roja looked away. “I came to some… realizations, as you can see.”

“So… what? Magic?” Roja demanded. People didn’t just turn into… into women! That didn’t happen outside of campfire stories and the occasional legend. “Did she perform experiments on you? She mentioned experiments!”

“The questions were the experiment,” Iana said with a little shrug. “Apparently, everything else is work for the apothecary. Though Vera has asked me to work with the royal magecraft to see if magic could perhaps intensify the effects.” She giggled slightly and tucked her hair behind her ear. “It’s all going far too slow for my liking.”

“Oh,” Roja said. “I didn’t know that was even… possible.” Iana flashed him a glittering smile that made him deeply uncomfortable. He balled his fists and turned to her. “Why do you think this is okay?!”

Iana reeled back, clearly shocked at his response. “I… I’m happier this way, Roja. I can genuinely be myself now, and Iana is who—”

“Not that,” Roja waved his hand. “I mean being forced to stay at the Palace, taken away from your friends!”

Iana stared at him for a few seconds, and then burst out laughing, steadying herself on the bannister. Roja tried not to be too offended, but he felt his cheeks glowing. She put a hand on his shoulder, tears of laughter in the corners of his eyes. 

“I apologise,” she said, “I promise I’m not mocking you. It’s just… I misjudged your reaction is all.” She stood up straight and looked out at the city again. Its concentric walls stood tall and proud, their gates closing at night. “I like it here, Roja. At least once a month, Vera reassures me I can go home if I like, that I will still receive her help, but…” She looked at him. “I don’t want to live in an orphanage my whole life. And look at me!” She twirled in her dress. “I’m like a damned princess here, Roja!”

He smirked. Iana did look like a princess. She jingled. And he couldn’t blame her. There was a kind of understanding, of course. Kids like them, they stuck together. But also, an opportunity to get out of the gutter like that, each of them would be tempted to take it. She hadn’t been abducted. She’d been offered and she’d said yes. “Yes,” Roja said. “You are.”

“So why are you here?” Iana asked. “Are you also…” She cocked her head and raised her eyebrows, but Roja shook his head. 

“I haven’t been asked any questions about my identity, no,” Roja said. “Maria, Sel and I were all picked up because we saw something magical, and now she wants to know more.” To his surprise, Iana nodded with understanding. 

“Yes, Vera has a… singular focus, at times,” she said. “Magic and people like us seem to be what drives her. She gets a look in her eye sometimes…” She frowned and looked at Roja. “Were your eyes always green?” Roja looked away quickly. 

“Yes,” he lied. “Of course they were. But speaking of the Queen, she has told us to go see her and I have to—” He scrambled to get away. Iana didn’t stop him, looking like a vision in the afternoon sun with a hand on her hip and a sceptical look on her face. “I’m sorry for the intrusion. Iana.” Roja mumbled as he made his way out and practically ran for the door. 

He didn’t want her to think, well, anything about him and what happened to his eyes. It was becoming increasingly clear that the Queen wanted something from him and his friends, and whatever had happened had not gone away, which meant that there was still something magical going on, something he didn’t understand and—

On his way down, he’d sort of let his feet do the thinking for him, his head full of thoughts. Why hadn’t the Queen asked him and his friends any questions about the kind of people they were, like she’d done with Iana? Was whatever had caused Iana to be Iana so obvious? 

He smacked forehead-first into Maria. An insultingly hollow ‘thwock’ rang through his head, and both of them fell backwards, and if they hadn’t just been knocked over the head, both of them might have learned the new expletives the other had recently picked up. 

“Watch where you’re going, you cow,” Maria groaned as she picked herself up. 

“You’re one to talk,” Roja groaned. “Done playing soldier with your new best friend?”

“Eat my entire—” Maria said, cutting herself off when an extremely large man stepped past her and lifted Roja up from the ground with one hand. Even with his hair white, he was larger than almost anyone Maria had ever seen. He looked like he’d swallowed a door. Roja was too stunned to say anything. Two days in a row, someone had picked him up with one hand like it was nothing. 

“You ought to watch where you go,” the man laughed, a wide smile across his wide face. He slapped Roja on the back, almost sending him flying again. “You could get hurt!” Roja coughed and shielded himself with a hand to keep the big man from smacking him again. 

“Rubicus!” the Queen shouted, running past Roja and throwing her arms around the large mercenary.