Summary
In a kingdom where the air itself seems to curdle with suspicion, the Sidi sect—silver-skinned mystics who chant in ultraviolet—learn that the iron-willed Chancellor will hand the Prince a parchment inked in their extinction. Judith Hurst, gem-blooded heiress to a subterranean fortune of sapphires that pulse like hearts, loves the very crown that seeks to crush her people; her father Samuel, lapidary patriarch, brands her longing a treason against memory. Into this crucible steps Gregory, a clerk whose pupils carry the tremble of unpaid rent; he intercepts a perfumed summons from the Chancellor, waves it like a black flag at the sect’s candle-lit synod, and ignites a riot that howls through the crooked lanes until the Prince himself arrives—cloak swirling like spilled indigo—to scatter the mob with a single syllable. That midnight, while wolves embroider the silence, Judith slips from her father’s marble cage and elopes with the ruler who both covets and condemns her; Gregory, hidden in the thorn-hedge, witnesses the lovers vanish into starlight. Samuel, branded apostate, is offered absolution on the condition that his vanished daughter bend the Prince toward mercy; through invisible correspondence she obliges, the bill is eviscerated, and the jeweler walks free—yet the Chancellor, tasting iron in his mouth, rallies every loyal blade. On the roof of the world the Prince and Judith, draped in auroral silk, toast the dawn with crystal tears, then step into the abyss hand-in-hand, their fall a silent comet. At dusk the expulsion horns thunder, and among the exodus Samuel finds the intertwined corpses, their hair already fossilized into strands of white gold by the mountain frost.
Synopsis
The members of the "Sidi" sect are informed that the Chancellor of State intends to submit to the Prince a bill calling for their persecution. Judith, the daughter of Samuel Hurst, a wealthy jeweler and member of the sect, is in love with the Prince, but is rebuked by her father for being in love with their persecutor. Gregory, a clerk in the employ of Hurst, whose infatuation with Judith is not reciprocated, discovers a letter from the Chancellor asking Hurst to call to do some work for him, and brands him a traitor at the meeting of the sect. A frenzied mob storms the old man's house, but the Prince himself appears and quickly disperses the crowd. That night, observed only by Gregory, Judith elopes with the Prince. Though ignorant of the fact, Samuel Hurst is denounced, but is promised exoneration if, through his daughter, he can influence the Prince to reject the bill. In this he succeeds and is exonerated. But the Chancellor orders his henchmen to gather all the soldiers they can rely upon. The Prince and Judith, realizing that the joy of life for them is ended, ascend the highest mountain peak, bid "Fare-Well" to the world, and leap to Eternity. The order for the expulsion is put into the effect that night, and as the vast numbers of the sect leave the country, Samuel Hurst comes upon the lifeless bodies of his daughter and her royal sweetheart.
