The Weight That Walks

The city did not wait for the palace to decide what it deserved.

Alina left without announcement.

No banners. No escort. No bell.

Only a cloak and the weight of a promise that had not yet been spoken aloud.

At the gate, the guards straightened too quickly, caught between protocol and unease. One of them opened his mouth as if to ask permission, then thought better of it. Alina gave a small nod. It was not dismissal. It was simplicity. The gate swung open with a sound that felt too final for such a quiet decision.

Outside, the air changed.

Not cleaner. Not softer. Just real. Smoke from cooking fires drifted over rooftops. A cart wheel rattled against uneven stone. A woman laughed at something her friend said, then stopped laughing too quickly when she noticed who had passed. Alina felt eyes on her the way one feels heat from a hearth, not painful, just present. People watched her and pretended they were not.

She kept walking.

Near the palace, the street was wide. The stones were fitted neatly, the edges cared for. Further down, the city became itself. Alleys narrowed. Stalls leaned toward one another as if listening. The market smelled of ripe fruit, oil, sweat, and bread baked too quickly to stretch into enough.

Alina’s steps slowed. Not from hesitation, but from attention. She had been raised to read people the way others read scripture, but it was different when you met them at eye level. Different when your name did not protect you from their hunger.

A vendor selling dried herbs paused as Alina passed. The woman’s fingers tightened around a bundle of bitterleaf.

“Your Highness,” she whispered.

Alina stopped. “Good evening.”

The woman blinked as if surprised by a greeting. “Is it true?”

Alina had learned to ask what people meant before answering what they asked.

“What have you heard?” she said.

The woman swallowed. “That the Crown warmed for you.”

Alina felt the memory rise in her skin, the lingering heat beneath her fingertips. She did not show it on her face.

“It stirred,” she said carefully.

The woman’s eyes darted around, as if the Crown might be hiding behind a stall. “Then it will fix this, yes?”

Alina looked past her, past the herbs, past the neat bundles tied in twine. She saw the woman’s hands. Rough. Cracked. The hands of someone who worked even when work did not reward her.

“I do not know,” Alina said.

The woman’s mouth tightened. Not anger. Disappointment that tried to look like acceptance.

Alina reached for the only honest thing she could give. “But I am listening.”

The woman nodded once, as if that was a kindness she did not trust. Then she returned to her herbs, already withdrawing into the survival of selling.

Alina moved on.

The market thickened ahead. More people. More noise. The flow of bodies felt almost normal until she noticed the gaps, the small absences. Fewer sacks of grain. Smaller piles of vegetables. A butcher’s stall with hooks that held nothing.

She passed a man arguing with a merchant over a handful of beans. She passed a boy trying to hide bruises under his sleeve. She passed a mother soothing a child with a song that sounded more like prayer than lullaby.

The city breathed. It did not breathe easily.

And then she heard the sharpness, the rising edge of a commotion. A voice that had reached the point where politeness had stopped working.

Alina turned toward it.

A baker stood in the doorway of his shop, arms spread wide, blocking the entrance. Flour dusted his forearms. Sweat darkened his shirt. His face was flushed, the look of a man who had been saying no for hours.

“There’s nothing left,” he said. “I told you.”

A woman pressed forward, clutching a child against her hip. The child’s face was thin, eyes too large. “You said yesterday you would hold some,” she said.

“I said I would try.”

“You always say that.”

More people gathered. Not a crowd yet. A shape that could become one. Voices rose and overlapped. The baker’s hands lifted higher, defensive now, not cruel.

Alina stepped closer.

The baker noticed her. His expression shifted from frustration to fear, then settled into a guarded neutrality. He did not bow. He did not shout.

“Your Highness,” he said.

The woman turned, confusion crossing her face before recognition dawned. She stiffened, pulling her child closer, as if royalty could steal what little she had left.

Alina stopped a few steps away. Close enough to be present. Far enough not to provoke.

“What is the trouble?” she asked.

The baker’s voice lowered. “There isn’t enough flour. The delivery never came.”

“Why?” Alina asked.

He hesitated. His eyes flicked toward the guards at the end of the street. “The road was closed. Or so they said.”

“Who said?”

He swallowed. “The guards.”

Alina turned slightly. One guard met her gaze and shifted, uncomfortable, already preparing an explanation he did not want to give.

“Go,” Alina said quietly. “I will speak with him later.”

The guard hesitated, then obeyed, relief and fear mixing on his face as he retreated.

The woman’s grip on her child loosened a fraction. “They said the palace would fix it,” she said. “They said the Crown would fix it.”

Alina met her gaze. “Who told you that?”

The woman’s laugh was short and humorless. “Everyone. No one.”

Alina nodded. “How much bread do you need?”

The baker stared at her as if she had asked him to conjure grain from air. “For her?”

“For today,” Alina said.

He hesitated, then disappeared inside. A moment later he returned with a small loaf, barely enough to justify the exchange. He placed it in the woman’s hands as if ashamed of its size.

The child reached immediately, fingers grabbing, hungry and impatient.

The woman stared at the bread, then at Alina. “Is this because of you?” she asked. “The Crown?”

Alina felt the question like a bruise.

“Not yet,” Alina said.

The woman’s mouth tightened. “Then why did it warm?”

Alina looked around. At the street. At the people pretending not to listen. At the way hunger had turned everyone into witnesses.

“Because it listens,” Alina said at last.

“To what?” the woman asked.

Alina’s throat tightened. She could not give them causation. Not without lying. Not without pretending she understood what the Crown wanted.

“To truth,” Alina said.

The woman nodded slowly, as if filing the answer away. “Then listen to this,” she said. “My son has not eaten properly in three days.”

The sentence landed with a quiet violence.

Alina reached into her cloak and pressed a coin into the woman’s hand. Not charity. Provision. A small interruption in a cycle that should not exist.

“Go,” Alina said. “Eat.”

The woman hesitated, then turned away, the child already tearing into the bread. The loaf was gone in seconds, the kind of speed that made adults look away.

The baker watched them go. His voice was low. “It won’t be enough.”

“I know,” Alina replied.

She did not try to comfort him. Comfort without change was another kind of lie.

She moved on, and as she did, she felt the eyes return to her. Not the sharp ones. The soft ones. The ones that carried questions people were afraid to ask aloud.

She walked until the market thinned into side streets where the city showed its bones.

A potter sat beside cracked bowls, hands grey with clay. When he saw her, he did not rise. He simply lifted his chin.

“They say you will save us,” he said.

Alina stopped. “Who says that?”

He shrugged. “Those who need it to be true.”

“And you?” she asked.

His laugh was quiet. “I say no one saves anyone here. We just endure until we cannot.”

Alina felt the bitter honesty in her chest. “How many days have you gone without proper trade?”

He held up three fingers. Then hesitated, lowering one. “Two. The third day I lied to my children and told them I had already eaten.”

Alina’s stomach tightened. “And did they believe you?”

He looked at her for a long moment. “Children believe what they must.”

Alina left him with a coin he tried to refuse and a nod he did not return. As she walked away, she realized she was carrying these stories like stones.

Not to weigh herself down.

To keep herself from floating into palace thinking again.

Further on, near a narrow bridge, she found a girl no older than twelve selling ribbons from a basket. The ribbons were bright, too bright for the day’s mood.

The girl spotted Alina and grinned, bold in the way children sometimes were when fear had become normal. “Princess.”

Alina stopped. “Hello.”

The girl held up a ribbon. “This one is red. Like fire.”

Alina felt her chest tighten. “You like fire?”

The girl shrugged. “Fire is honest. It burns what it touches. People do worse and pretend they don’t.”

Alina stared. “Who taught you to speak like that?”

The girl’s smile faltered. “No one. I listen.”

Alina glanced around. “Where are your parents?”

The girl pointed toward a doorway. “My mother is sick. My father is gone. The river took him.”

Alina’s throat tightened. “I am sorry.”

The girl nodded as if sorry was something she had heard many times. “Will the Vigil stop the fighting near the river?”

Alina’s head lifted. “What fighting?”

The girl blinked. “You didn’t know?”

Alina shook her head.

“They say the north hoards and the south starves,” the girl said. “They say someone will make it fair.”

“Who?” Alina asked.

The girl’s smile returned, thin and sharp. “Whoever the Crown chooses.”

Alina felt the phrase echo in her skull. Whoever the Crown chooses. Not law. Not counsel. Not king. The Crown.

She thanked the girl and moved on, but the sentence followed her like a shadow.

She walked until the buildings grew older and poorer, until the street stones were more broken than whole. The outer districts had a quietness different from the palace. It was not reverence. It was exhaustion.

Near a well, a line of people waited with empty jars. No shouting. No anger. Just patience stretched thin. A mother rocked a sleeping child against her shoulder, moving in a slow rhythm as if motion could replace what was missing.

An old man recognized Alina and nodded, his eyes tired and steady.

“You came yourself,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Good,” he replied. “It’s harder to lie when you’re standing here.”

Alina felt that settle into her bones like a verdict.

She watched the line move. A young woman filled her jar, then poured a little back into the well as if offering something to the water itself. Another person whispered a prayer under their breath, lips moving quickly, almost desperate.

Alina turned to the old man. “Has the well been low long?”

He nodded. “The water comes slower. Like it is thinking.”

Alina’s fingers tightened on her cloak. “And the palace?”

He shrugged. “The palace thinks too. While we wait.”

The words were not angry. That was what made them sharper. Anger could be dismissed. Weariness could not.

A child at the end of the line stared at Alina openly. No fear. No politeness. Just direct curiosity.

“Are you the one the Crown likes?” the child asked.

A few heads turned.

Alina crouched so she was level with the child. “I do not know if the Crown likes anyone.”

The child frowned. “Then why does everyone talk about you?”

Alina hesitated, searching for a truth a child could hold.

“Because people are afraid,” she said. “And when people are afraid, they look for one face to hold all their hope.”

The child considered this, then asked, “Can you carry it?”

Alina’s breath caught.

She wanted to say yes. She wanted to say no. Both answers felt like lies.

“I am trying,” she said.

The child nodded as if that was the only honest response in the world. Then the line moved and the child was pulled forward by an adult hand.

Alina stood slowly.

She felt the city pressing in around her, not as crowd or noise, but as moral weight. The Crown’s warmth had been a mystery. Hunger was not.

She could not explain causation. She could not promise the Crown would open. She could not even promise the Vigil would end with mercy.

But she could no longer pretend the palace’s restraint was the same as righteousness.

As dusk deepened, the sky bruised purple and gold, Alina turned back toward the palace.

Her legs ached. Her throat felt dry. Her thoughts crowded too close.

On the way back, the streets seemed quieter, as if even the city was watching the sun set with caution. Shopkeepers pulled shutters down earlier than usual. A man extinguished his lamp and glanced over his shoulder twice before entering his home.

At the palace gate, the guards straightened again, startled by her return in dusted cloak and plain silence. One of them opened his mouth to speak, then closed it, unsure what words were safe.

Alina passed through without looking back.

Inside, the palace air felt colder than it had before. Not because it was, but because she now carried the city’s heat under her skin. Faces and voices. Bread disappearing in seconds. A child asking if she could carry hope.

The western corridor awaited.

Torches burned lower there, as if conserving themselves for what night would demand. Sound thinned. Servants moved quietly, eyes lowered. The walls felt like witnesses.

At the end of the passage stood the Chapel of Ash.

Its doors were closed now.

A thin line of light lay beneath the threshold, steady as a heartbeat.

Alina stopped a few paces away.

She did not touch the door.

Not yet.

The truth she carried felt heavier now, shaped by faces and names and hunger. The Crown had listened earlier, warm beneath her fingertips like a memory of fire.

Now it waited.

And she felt, with a clarity that made her stomach tighten, that the Vigil would not ask her what she believed.

It would ask her what she had seen.

A soft shift of movement in her peripheral vision made her turn her head slightly.

Down the corridor, a figure stood with disciplined stillness, positioned at a measured distance from the chapel doors. A guard, but not one of the palace’s usual men. The posture was different. The quiet was different.

Cael.

He had taken his post early.

He did not approach her. He did not speak. He simply watched the corridor the way one watches a storm you cannot stop.

Alina’s breath slowed.

She did not go to him.

Not yet.

She turned her attention back to the chapel doors, to the thin line of light beneath them.

Night was falling.

The Vigil was being prepared.

And Alina could no longer pretend that waiting was the same as faith.