Vesper

In the Night Court, no one is called by the name they were born with. The Night Court is the order of blades on Hesperra's shadow side. A child chosen to become a blade receives a new name. The name is given in one of the slate manors of the eastern side. Those manors stand inside shadows four hundred years old. Vesper got this name when she was eleven. For a while she kept her old name. She whispered it to a friend, wrote it in a letter, and burned the letter. Then she entered the Arena. A champion who dies in the Arena is rewound into a pool. One day, at the edge of that pool, Vesper tried to remember her old name. She found only a gap where it had been.

She grew up on the Dusk Line. As a child she played hide-and-seek in the shadows with a girl from the Light Side. The girl smelled of lantern oil. Vesper was good at hiding, and the other girl was good at finding. One day, at the foot of a long shadow, they lit a lantern. Vesper told her her true name. That girl's name was Orenna. She may be the only person in the world who still knows the name Vesper forgot. But Vesper can never ask her.

The Court's creed is simple and bitter. In 842 AS the sun froze as it set. AS means After Stillness; it is how Devran counts its years. At that moment, everyone caught in the open stopped where they stood. Whoever was in the fields, on the roads, or on the shore stayed that way. The Dusk Dead are still there. They stand mid-step, their faces turned to the sun. The Court holds that they cannot rest until the day ends. Night must be completed. The Court calls this the Closing. Every blade gives their life to the Closing.

On the night of her vow, every blade chooses one of the Dusk Dead. Vesper chose a young woman standing in the Long Field. One of her hands reaches for the sun, and one foot is lifted from the ground. Her hair has blown in the same wind for four hundred years. Vesper visits her every month. She brushes the dust from a skirt that looks like stone. She tells her news from the Arena. She expects no answer. The Court taught her not to.

The shadows of the eastern side are not ordinary. They have stretched in the same direction for four hundred years. Stopped time has thickened inside them. Court blades learn to step into these shadows. A shadow is the gap between two moments. The clock does not tick there. Vesper can take three steps there without breathing. On the fourth step, the shadow spits her back out. Then her nose bleeds.

The Court also keeps a list. It names those of the blood of the Kurran Dam's owners. The Kurran Dam is the dam that cut the Hesperra Arm. The Court holds that the hand that stopped the sun must be cut off, with its line. Otherwise the day will not close. Hegemon Ardash Kurran's name is on the list. In recent years one more name was added, and its ink is still fresh. That name is Kaedra, standard-bearer of the Ninth Banner. Vesper did not ask why that name was there. She knew she would get no answer.

She entered the Arena under the Court's oath. An oath is the pledge of loyalty a champion gives to a patron. Vesper earns Dem with each victory. Dem is time in solid form in Devran. This Dem flows into the Hesperra Arm. So, indirectly, it also feeds the Order's lanterns. Vesper does not enjoy the irony. She buys her poisons from Ravel, Olumre's exiled doctor. The masked man asks her no questions, and she asks him none. One night she stopped a Zahreth courier carrying an Askaran letter. She took the letter, and the courier's life too. The courier was only doing his job. That month, Vesper did not go to the Long Field.

When she sees Orenna on the enemy team in the Arena, her hands loosen on her daggers for a moment. Seeing her on the same team is worse. Then the lantern's light shortens her shadows. Vesper feels naked. The two have never spoken in the Arena. If they did, neither knows whose vow would crack first.

Lately, every time she visits the woman in the Long Field, she thinks the same thing. The Court says the Dusk Dead are dead. But the dead do not feel cold. Yet the fine hairs on the woman's arm stand up in the chill wind. There is something else too. The fingers of her hand, reaching for the sun, seem a little more open. They seem to have opened by a hair since the night of Vesper's vow.