Forsythia shook now, a deep bone-wracking shudder; Isyllt shook too, from shared horror and chill. Mekaran leaned close, his painted mask cracking with grief, but either fear or sense kept him from interrupting.
“They bent me over a table. Hands on my arms and hands in my hair, and I couldn’t tell who held me and who held the knife. The blade was cold for an instant, and then hot—the blood was hot and then cold where it soaked my dress. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t scream, couldn’t get the stink of blood and bile out of my nose. Everything grew colder and colder—”
As she spoke, the white skin of her throat parted and tenebrous black blood spooled down her chest. Her mouth worked but her voice faded to a wet hiccupping gasp. Panic twisted her face and the darkness in her eyes spilled free as well. The temperature plummeted as terror and pain gave her strength.
The last of her restraint broke and Isyllt pulled the dead woman into her arms, held her as she shook and whispered to her low and fast. “It’s all right. It’s over. They can’t hurt you anymore. You’re free of them, and you don’t have to wear their shackles.” She wrapped a hand over the wound, pressing icy flesh together. Her ring blazed so fiercely the shadow of her bones showed through.
“Rest,” she murmured, each breath a frosted plume. “Rest, Forsythia, Ilora. Stay with me. I’ll keep you safe. I’ll find them, I swear. I’ll stop them.” Madness, to make vows to the dead, madness and folly, but the woman wept like a child in her lap and the words tumbled past her lips before she could stop them. “I’ll stop them.”
With one last sob, Forsythia faded. The diamond flared once as a new soul entered, then dimmed. The room was black without its light.
Isyllt’s pulse roared in her ears, drowning the song and voices below, dulling the closer sounds of weeping. She tried to move, but her limbs were frozen and useless. She
tumbled off the edge of the bed, landed hard on one hand and hip. Her wounded hand—the pain of that cut through pins-and-needles numbness.
Something scratched and chattered in the darkness; glass rattled against wood. A tiny opportunistic spirit trying to slip through an unguarded mirror. Isyllt pressed her bleeding hand to the cold surface and banished it with a word. She fumbled the silk cover over the glass and shoved it back into her kit as the lamp glowed to life again.
Mekaran and Dahlia both wept. The thorn had fallen to his knees, while the girl pressed a fist against her mouth hard enough to split skin.
“What happened?” he asked, stopping before he scrubbed his cheeks. “Where is she?”
“Safe,” Isyllt rasped. The cold had stolen her voice. “Resting.” Her teeth began to chatter. She stumbled twice as she stood. She needed to rest, to get warm, but she couldn’t stay in this narrow coffin of a room any longer. Mekaran called her back as she fumbled with the door, but she only shook her head.
The warmer air of the hall dizzied her, the smells of beer and food and sweat. She tripped on an uneven floorboard, staggered into the wall hard enough to send a sharp shock down her right arm, and fell to her knees in a tangle of skirts.
A worn pair of boots stopped in front of her and a familiar voice spoke her name.
“C—Ciaran?” She could hardly raise her head. The chill in her bones curved her spine into a fetal hunch.
“Saints and shadows,” he whispered. “What have you done to yourself this time?”
Footsteps shivered through the floor as Mekaran and
Dahlia followed. Ciaran cut off Mekaran’s stammered explanation. “Later. I’ll take care of her.”
He crouched beside her and wound an arm under hers; his flesh burned. She barely kept her legs from buckling as he hauled her to her feet. “You have to walk,” he told her. “My room is another flight up and you’re too tall to carry up these stairs.”
“I’m not staying.”
“You’re not leaving—there’s rioting outside the Garden. Besides, you’d stay in this hall all night if I dropped you. I’d like to think my bed is the more pleasant option.”
She gave up arguing and concentrated on moving her feet. And, when she finally collapsed on to Ciaran’s bed and breathed in the musk and spices that lingered in his pillow, she was forced to agree. He piled blankets on top of her and kindled the brazier. Light glowed through cut brass, tracing filigree patterns across the walls and ceiling. Isyllt closed her eyes and curled tighter. Feeling returned to her extremities, but the ice settled thick and deep in her core.
The bed creaked as Ciaran wedged himself between her and the wall and held her close. It wasn’t wide enough for two, but that had never stopped them before.
“You push yourself too hard.” His beard tickled her neck, but she couldn’t pull away. “You’ll die if you don’t stop this.”
“Maybe not even then.”
“What do you mean?”
It was not the sort of thing to be spoken of, but she was too numb to care. “You know the old stories of necromancers being beheaded and burned when they die? They aren’t just superstition. We have the choice, at the end—or
so I’m told. We can let our souls depart for the other side of the mirror, or we can stay. Either as powerful specters, or as the undead.” Necrophants, the risen mages were called, and even the Arcanostoi said the word softly or not at all.
This must be what it felt like to die, Isyllt thought, cold and aching and hollow. She couldn’t imagine an eternity of this, no matter how powerful it might make her.
Ciaran stilled, his breath rough. Then he squeezed her and kissed her neck. “I prefer living women.”
She laughed, and the ice began to crack. As it melted, she began to sob. For Forsythia, for all the dead flowers whom no one mourned, for all the cold and hollow dead. Tears scalded her cheeks and soaked the pillow until, finally warm again, she slept.
She woke later to stuffy heat and the fire died to embers. Blankets tangled around her legs and sweat stuck her dress to her back. She grimaced at the taste of salt thick in her mouth.
Ciaran sat on a chest by the window, rolling a wine bottle between his palms and frowning at the night-black glass. A draft rolled over the cracked-open casement, and the single candle flame danced with it. The earlier ruckus had faded, and from the depth of the silence she guessed it must be the final terce. Release, Selafaïns called this hour, for all the deaths and births that it witnessed. Her mother had called it the wolf’s hour. The night smelled faintly of smoke.
“The riots have stopped,” Ciaran said, not turning from the window. “The Vigils finally came, after a few shop windows were broken and fires started.” He glanced back at her. “Feeling better?”
“Mostly. I think that wine might help the rest.”
He uncoiled from his perch and hopped lightly from chest to bed without touching the floor or spilling the bottle. He’d been a wire-thin sneak thief when they’d met fifteen years ago—food and wine and less sneaking had thickened his waist since, and put more flesh over his ribs, but he still had a tumbler’s grace.
Isyllt took the offered bottle as he settled beside her. Syrah, thick and sweet and well-fortified; she rolled a mouthful over her tongue to wash away the taste of sleep and tears. She handed it back after another long pull. “Thank you.” She trusted him to know she meant for more than the wine.
The liquor brought a flush to her cheeks, which worsened the discomfort of her clinging dress. She rose to undo the laces, kicking the gown away when it puddled around her feet. It reminded her too much of Forsythia’s pale fragility. Gooseflesh crawled over her limbs as she moved in front of the draft. She expected Ciaran to flirt or tease, but he stayed quiet, still frowning at his wine. She waited, lifting her hair to let the breeze cool her sticky neck.
“Azarné came to watch me play tonight,” he said at last.
“Oh,” she said, and marveled at her own wit. “I thought you preferred living women.”
His mouth quirked. “I do.” Finally he looked at her and set the wine aside. She took the invitation and sat beside him again. “Even ones half-starved and pale as you.” He dropped a kiss on her shoulder, but his heart wasn’t in it. “But—”
“But she’s beautiful anyway,” she finished. “Do mice find cats beautiful, before the kill? Or owls?”
“If mice have poets, I think they must. I understand how Forsythia could have been seduced.”
Isyllt thought of the lure of Whisper’s eyes, the shiver Spider’s touch gave her. “Yes.” She ran her fingers across Ciaran’s shoulders, over the sensitive place at the nape of his neck to watch him shudder. “Will you be safe?”
“Are any of us?” He kissed her shoulder again, lingeringly this time. “This room is warded, though, and I always watch where I walk at night. Will you?”
She pressed her face against his neck to hide her frown, but imagined he felt it anyway. She couldn’t turn aside from Forsythia now, and that meant hunting vampires and blood-sorcerers. She laid a hand on his chest. “As safe as I ever am.”
Ciaran’s chuckle reverberated beneath her palm. “I don’t find myself comforted.” He eased the straps of her shift off her shoulders and her skin roughened in the wake of his touch.
Her fingers tightened in his hair, baring the line of his throat. “I’ll distract you from your discomfort.” Her tongue flicked across his collarbone, and his breath caught.
The bed was still too narrow, but that had never stopped them before.
S
avedra woke to a soft, insistent tap on the door. She had a moment of disorientation at the unfamiliar bed and the different echo of knuckles on wood. Annoyance chased confusion when she realized the sky beyond the window was still a dull pre-dawn grey. By the time she’d stumbled out of bed and found a robe, she recognized the rhythm of the knock as Ashlin’s.
“What is it?” she asked, tugging the door open. Her mouth was dry and sour with last night’s wine, her head thick—she should remember to stick to brandy. Her back still ached, and her limbs were as stiff as Ashlin had promised.
Ashlin was already dressed and moving much too quickly. She paced a quick circuit of the room while Savedra shut and relatched the door. “How far is it to the Sarken border?”
“What?” She rubbed her eyes and sank onto the edge of the bed. “I don’t know. A day’s ride, maybe, or less. Why?”
“Your missing relative married a march-lord, didn’t she? So maybe that’s where we’ll find news of her.”
Savedra blinked. “This couldn’t have waited till dawn?”
“Not if it’s a day’s ride. You’ve had your paper chase, now let’s try something more tangible.”
She wanted to argue, or simply crawl back into bed, but there was a logic in it, and Ashlin’s bright-eyed enthusiasm was beginning to penetrate her wine-fogged wits. “You have a lot of border-riding experience, don’t you,
Sorcha
?”
Ashlin grinned. “I may have stolen some Vallish honey in my misspent youth. And I could hardly do that under my own name, could I? It would be indiscreet.”
Savedra snorted. “Cahal said you were self-destructive.”
Dyed eyebrows quirked. “Did he now? Well, not that destructive, at least. Not so much as to make my father go to war to ransom me. Come on—you might be dressed before noon if you hurry.”
In spite of Ashlin’s teasing and her own preference for leisurely mornings, Savedra stamped on her riding boots as the sun crested the lowest slopes of the Varagas. Her face stung from harsh alchemical depilatory powder, and her hair was an unhappy tangle of braids and pins without a maid and an hour of combing, but she was dressed.
Iancu awaited them in the kitchen. The lines on his face seemed to have deepened overnight, which tied a hard knot of guilt behind her breastbone. But despite the fatigue shadows, his eyes were sharp with interest. He wore riding clothes as well.
“This may well gain us nothing,” he warned, though
the speed with which he packed bread and apples and jerky belied the caution. “But it’s worth investigating. We can reach Valcov well before dusk with a steady pace.”
They rode wide-chested, sure-footed trail horses with dark liver chestnut hides and striking flaxen manes. Ashlin was smitten with her mare as soon as she mounted, and spent much of the ride crooning to the beast in Celanoran. Cahal rode rear guard, his dark eyes moving constantly and a bow ready at his back.
East of Arachne the hills rose wild. The lower slopes of the Varagas were thick with silver firs and sun-hungry oaks and beeches decked in brilliant autumn copper; beneath the canopy ferns and fungus carpeted the ground, and moss cloaked falls of dead wood. A green twilight held the underbrush, broken by stray shafts of light. Woodpeckers drummed the grey bark of snags, a sharp tattoo to accompany the horses’ rhythmic four-beat gait and the dry-bone crunch of leaves. Wind swept the upper branches with a hollow rush, dancing spears of light across the ground and stirring the heavy scent of loam and pine and leaf must with the more immediate pungency of warm horse.
Lovely and scenic, a welcome relief from the city’s smells and sounds and narrow streets. It ought to have been, at least. Instead Savedra could only watch the shadows for any flicker of movement. Too early for wolves to grow bold, but there were always bandits, and today her head was full of witches and spirits and things hungry for living blood, despite the reassurance of the wards that lined the road. Sometimes she thought she heard a soft tinkle of bells, and remembered the dancing wood nymphs of Iancu’s stories. Not the deadliest of
forest spirits by far, but she was just as glad she saw no further sign of them.