The Soul of Power

by Callie Bates

My jealousy, and my frustration, are shrinking down into sad, flat things. I say, feeling awkward, “No one expects that of you, El.”

  “Of course they do!” she exclaims. “That’s what the Caveadear does! I can still do small things. I’m sure,” she adds rather bitterly, “I can manage an army of walking trees, if you’d like. It might take some effort, but I can do it.”

  Rhia’s slipped out of the cave and is standing behind El, watching us. I pretend I don’t notice her.

  “That’s not what I meant,” I say, fumbling with the words. “People respect you as a leader, you know. It was your plan that won our first rebellion. It’s just—it’s not enough, now, to simply use force to win.”

  “I grew up in Eren. I know how deep the divisions go.” Her gaze cuts away from me. “I should have guessed about Rambaud. If I hadn’t been captured…”

  “It’s not your fault that you were. I shouldn’t have let it happen.”

  She holds up her hand for silence. “No, Sophy. I did know. I saw how they looked at you, the Ereni, particularly the nobles. I thought it didn’t matter because—because I was there. I thought it would heal over time. I was so wrong.”

  “We all hoped it would,” I say quietly.

  “You both need to stop feeling sorry for yourselves,” Rhia announces suddenly. She steps beside us, making a circle. “It’s not your fault, either of you. El, you didn’t mean to get captured. And Sophy, you didn’t mean to lose your throne in a coup.”

  I wince, and El glances at me with a little grimace.

  “El, you shouldn’t have tramped in here and stepped on Sophy’s toes by assuming we didn’t have a plan already. Sophy, you shouldn’t have embarrassed El in front of everyone. So.” Rhia looks between us. “Are you done?”

  El sighs. “I am.”

  “And so am I,” I say, managing a smile at her.

  She returns the smile, but there’s a frown between her brows. “Why didn’t you tell me you’re pregnant?”

  All the gods. “I wasn’t sure…”

  “You’re a terrible liar, Sophy Dunbarron.” El’s temper is flaring up again. “What are you, four months along? Five? You must have known months ago, and you kept it from me.”

  “She kept it from everyone,” Rhia volunteers.

  El puts her hands on her hips, staring me down. “What did you think I’d do if I knew?”

  “You’d have thought I was irresponsible.” I can’t quite meet her eyes. “Worse than that, probably.”

  “It is irresponsible—not to tell anyone!” She huffs a sigh. “And then I come back and look a fool for not knowing—and that makes you look bad, too. In the future, when a serious political scandal is brewing, we tell each other. All right?”

  “Yes.” I grimace. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

  She shakes her head. “I suppose with Rambaud and Euan Dromahair seizing power, a child born out of wedlock is the least of our concerns. It must be Alistar’s?”

  “Well…” I begin, and Elanna exchanges a speaking glance with Rhia.

  “Where is Alistar?” El asks. “And where’s my mother?”

  “Alistar’s gone to spy on Rambaud.” I think of the pulse of distress and pain I felt from him earlier, and bite my lip. “And Teofila’s in Baedon—or she should be soon. It wasn’t my idea,” I say quickly, when El’s jaw tightens. “She volunteered to go.”

  “I’m certain she did.” Elanna gives her head a quick shake. Awkwardly, she says, “I’m glad at least one of us was here with her.”

  My lips twitch. “She’s been practicing magic.”

  Elanna’s mouth opens. “She has?”

  “She was certain you were alive.” And maybe, I realize, Teofila did know, in the same way I sensed Alistar’s panic when I called to him. “She’s convinced if she gave birth to a sorceress, she should be able to do magic herself. She’s made the mirrors work—”

  “I have to talk to her!” El exclaims. “I could have talked to her all along!” Then she catches herself. “I’m sure we have more important things to do, of course—”

  “No, go talk to her.” I draw in a breath. “I need to look for Alistar—I’m afraid something’s happened to him. In the meantime, El, after you talk to Teofila, you can start letting everyone know you’re back. A lot of people still think you’re dead. And once I track Alistar down…” And meet with Rambaud, if I can. “…we’ll make a plan for how to deal with my father.”

  “Sophy…” El starts toward me, catches my elbow. “Do you want me to come with you?”

  I hesitate. Part of me does, and yet the other part still needs some space away from her. “You should stay here,” I say at last. “So the people at least have one of us, should anything happen to me.”

  She studies my face, and then she gives me a brief, hard hug. I hug her back.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” I whisper. “I really am.”

  “I know,” she whispers back. “And I’m glad you’re here, and you’re safe. I really am, Soph.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Rhia tags after me as I make my way toward the crest of the ridge. “You’re tired,” I tell her. “You’re grieving. You’re wounded. You need to rest.”

  “Resting won’t bring my father back,” she points out, as stubborn as a bull. “Besides, you’re pregnant.”

  I open my mouth to protest, even though she has a fair point, but just then Victoire comes up the path from the cave. “There you are! El said you were haring off on some secret mission, all noble and self-sacrificing.”

  “I…” I look from Victoire’s flushed, stubborn face to Rhia’s equally obstinate one. Absurdly, I feel like smiling. It feels so damned good to have friends. “All right, then. I’ll show you what we’re going to do.” I tell myself Alistar wouldn’t have gotten caught, but the panic that mirrored itself in my body is too powerful to ignore. He’s careful—but is he careful enough?

  I take the bone flute and walk up on the path, Rhia and Victoire trailing me. The city hums behind us, a knot of colors and emotion so intertwined at first it seems like nothing more than noise. But I think of how Demetra said that everyone has a note they hum at.

  If Alistar were a song…

  I put the bone flute to my lips. A soft, low note. I think of him. Of the gentleness with which he holds me. Of the way his hair droops after he’s pomaded it into spikes. Of his smile. His bold, flashing anger, and his tenderness.

  “Sophy,” Victoire begins, but I keep on playing. The song rises to a high note, skirls down low and dangerous, then back up, wild and free. I play until I forget that I’m controlling my breath. Until the music is simply pouring out of me in skeins of sound, weaving an almost tangible impression on the night air—an afterimage like the memory of his presence. Until he seems so real I think I can smell him, feel his warmth heating me. The baby flutters in my belly.

  But something isn’t right. Beneath the shining threads of him, there’s a web of grasping darkness. It’s clawing up through him, reaching for his heart.

  I lower the flute. I can’t let myself panic; I have to keep calm, hold on to the music. “Guide me to you,” I whisper through numb lips.

  He—the Alistar I’ve made of sound and air—ripples. Moves. As if he’s no longer the recollection of a person, but a current twining through the countryside. A silver thread that arrows from his heart to mine.

  I tuck the flute away and pull on my gloves, still feeling the shivering spread of dark threads inside him. “Let’s go.”

  The silver thread leads us north, over the ridge, away from the caves and the city. As the last lights dwindle behind us, rain begins to fall, a thin drizzle wetting my face. The silver current pulls me forward. We tramp through the muddy dark, past silent farms, through another darkened town. The land around here is soft and fertile, nourished by the river
and the rain.

  Finally, as my lower back begins to ache, the silver current pulls me sideways. I almost walk straight into a hedge. Rhia pulls me free, and she and Victoire start to giggle, and soon I’m laughing, too, the three of us sodden and desperate in the dark.

  A few paces ahead, there’s a gap in the hedge. We blunder through, sliding in cow pies through a farm field, and stumbling over the sudden rocks of a brook. The silver thread tugs me through a copse of trees, dense and forbidding in the night. I’m well and truly lost now, and my ankles have begun to ache.

  But then Rhia points to it—a farmhouse, little more than a smear in the night. A ghost through the dark trees. Closer to, it appears deserted. Boards cover two windows; another is shattered. The place has an air of gloom and neglect.

  I’d pass it by, except the current doesn’t pour on beyond it. It eddies around the house, anxious as a tide.

  The baby kicks.

  I approach the door, though Rhia shoulders me aside and steps in first. It’s pitch black within. Victoire fumbles for her candle, and Rhia for her tinderbox.

  I call softly, “Alistar?”

  A thin mumble comes from the back of the house. My heart thumps.

  I move toward the sound, placing my feet cautiously. The weathered floorboards creak, and the mumble comes again. “S…soph?”

  “Alistar! I’m here.”

  Light flares behind me—just enough for me to make him out. He’s mashed up against the far wall, in a moldering bed. I run across the final distance, throwing myself onto my knees beside him. He’s tucked himself under a moth-eaten blanket, and he’s shivering. Hardly any sound resonates from him. The darkness I felt from a distance has wound itself through him, tangling the essence that is Alistar. Squeezing it out. My magic was right; something is wrong. Worse than wrong.

  Swallowing my fear, I reach for his hand. It’s cold—so cold and clammy to the touch. Dread creeps through my belly.

  “Alistar…” I crouch closer. “What happened?”

  He’s breathing hot little puffs of breath against my cheek. “How’d you—find me? I heard—music.”

  “I played your song. I let it lead me to you.”

  A small smile cracks his lips. “That’s my…Soph.”

  The floorboards creak; Victoire and Rhia are standing behind me now, looking down at him. Even in the warm lantern-light, his skin seems too pale. Dark circles mark his eyes. He seems to have stripped off his coat, or lost it. His shirt is filthy, gray with mud and dirt, as if he crawled here.

  I reach toward him, and he flinches. His hand closes over my wrist, but it’s weak, his fingers slack. “I found…Rambaud. I found him. Sophy. It’s not—he didn’t buy…a sorcerer. It’s—a stone—he has.”

  “A witch stone?” I guess.

  Alistar shakes his head. “Yes—no. More powerful. Older, maybe. In their family. The girl found it. He told—supporters. Not that it was magic—but that—she discovered it.”

  My heartbeat is thudding dully at the back of my mouth, but I clear my throat and say, “What girl?”

  “His—his daughter. Land must have—woken magic—in her. She woke—the stone.”

  I put my other hand over his, then touch his forehead. It, too, is freezing, covered in a thin cold sweat. “They hurt you.”

  “Outran them.” He flashes a grin. “Except—that one—gun.”

  The hair rises on the back of my neck. I reach for the moth-eaten blanket. He just blinks, breathing fast, almost panting. “My Soph,” he says.

  I lift the blanket back, and press a hand to my mouth. I’ve found his coat. It’s wrapped around his left leg, tightly. Dark blood has seeped through it. The darkness I sense swallowing him, made real.

  An arm steadies my back. Victoire has knelt down beside me. Without a word, she reaches past my shaking hands. “Alistar, I’m going to take this off.” He doesn’t reply; simply looks at her, with a bemused almost-smile.

  Rhia takes up station by his head, holding the lantern high. “If you die, so help me, Connell, I’ll never forgive you.”

  “I’ll live…just to spite you…Knoll.”

  Victoire tugs the coat gently from Alistar’s thigh. He didn’t do a very good job of wrapping it, but the blood is sticky and it’s slow to come free. Alistar hisses in pain, and the dark threads tangle tighter around him. The coat pulls loose at last. Rhia brings the lantern lower. I shudder, and Victoire squeezes my arm. The wound is larger than my fist. Either the bullet or Alistar tore his trouser away, revealing deep-purple bruises marring his skin. Dried blood cakes the wound, except for a thin, fresh crimson trickle caused by the coat’s removal. I look closer and wish I hadn’t. The wound gapes, revealing his raw pink flesh, and deep within, the white, splintered gleam of bone.

  “It’s all right,” Victoire says in a high brittle voice. None of us believe it, but we don’t contradict her. “I—I feel like Demetra would check your pulse.”

  I’m still holding Alistar’s hand. I press my fingertips to his wrist and send Victoire a panicked glance. I can’t feel anything.

  She leans over, feeling up along the inside of his elbow, her lip caught in her teeth. My heart’s skirling. A wound like this—and we can hardly feel his pulse—and his skin is so cold…with the dark threads winding through him…I inhale. There’s no odor to the wound, at least. Not yet.

  I don’t know if we can move him. I don’t know how on earth we’ll get him back to Laon in time to save him, much less to Demetra.

  Victoire is feeling at Alistar’s neck. She turns to me. “His pulse is very fast,” she whispers.

  “Soph!” Alistar exclaims, as if he’s just remembered something. His eyes are wild. Staring.

  “I’m here.” Tears threaten to start, but I swallow them viciously back. I press my cheek to his hand. He turns his head, blinking at me. Cold pricks my neck. There’s so much confusion in his eyes.

  “Rambaud,” he says.

  I close my eyes. “Alistar, your life is more important than Aristide damned Rambaud!”

  “No!” He’s flailing now, trying to sit up. We all push him back down. Rhia’s lantern clips him in the head—lightly, but enough to confuse him. He blinks owlishly at us, regains focus. He grabs my sleeve, the sound of his own self valiantly pushing aside the dark threads. “Soph. You have—you have to go. Rambaud’s house. Across the field. He’s—he’s there tonight. Girl will—be asleep. His window faces—woodshed. No guards at back.” A faint smile. “Watch the dogs.”

  I shake my head. “I’m not leaving you.”

  “You have to go!” he practically shouts, and I startle back. “Bargain with him! Tonight!”

  I glance at Victoire, who stares back, wide-eyed. “Alistar, if I leave you—”

  His fingers dig into my sleeve. Weakly but inexorably, he pulls me closer. “Make it for something, Soph,” he whispers. His gaze is clear, lucid. Pleading. He says again, “Make it for something.”

  I swallow hard.

  “I’ll stay with him,” Victoire says, suddenly firm. “I can bandage the wound. You can’t go alone, Sophy—you’ll need Rhia’s help.”

  “But—” I protest.

  “Go!” Alistar says, gesturing toward the door.

  I rise, tugging Victoire after me, and pull her into a huddle a few paces from the bed. “We should get him back to the city,” I whisper fiercely. “Rambaud can wait.”

  “Soph, he’s right. This is your chance. You have the bargaining chip you need, and you can get to Rambaud directly. You need to go.” Victoire glances over her shoulder at Alistar and Rhia, who are arguing weakly. “He’s still cogent. I don’t know if anything can be done for that wound, but I promise you, I will keep him alive until you get back. I swear it, Sophy.”

  Rhia turns to us, lantern swinging. “Are you ready, Dunbarron?”

 
I close my eyes. Those long afternoons with Ruadan come back to me; his instructions always to put the good of the people first. Even above my own heart. Even when it matters the most.

  I blow a breath out through my mouth. “Very well.”

  I cross back to the bed, leaning over Alistar. I kiss his clammy forehead and lift his cold hands to my cheeks. “I love you,” I tell him. “And when this is all over, I will marry you, at Cerid Aven in the summer, and we will raise this child together. I swear it, Alistar Connell.”

  He blinks at me. His smile is sweet, and vacant. The pulse of him is fading. “Love it when…you’re all…riled up…”

  I kiss his hands, then set them down. I cover his chest with the moth-eaten blanket, and he sighs, settling like a child beneath my touch. I turn away before my heart can shatter.

  “Keep him alive,” I order Victoire. And I stride from the farmhouse, Rhia at my heels, without looking back.

  * * *

  —

  OUTSIDE THE FARMHOUSE, I pause. Rain is still falling. A frog chirrups from a pond. We seem far from anywhere.

  Rhia stops beside me. “I grant you Connell’s injured, but usually he’s better with directions than that.”

  “We don’t need directions.” I pull out the bone flute again and play a high, clear note. This time, I build the image of Aristide Rambaud in my mind, from his long gathered-back hair to the smirk in the corner of his mouth. So many things I loathe, packed into one man. But though the notes leap and dance, and I see him clear in my mind’s eye, the silver thread won’t settle. It pulses into existence and vanishes.

  “His daughter’s doing?” Rhia wonders.

  I curse as the thread dissolves again. There’s no difference between this and the song I played for Alistar. I’ve conjured their images, my memories of them, my feelings—

  My feelings. When I summoned the thread for Alistar, it came out of love and it guided me out of love.

  But I hate Aristide Rambaud. Hate is what I’ve been pouring into this song.

  My nostrils flare. There’s no love in me to pour into that bastard! But I have to find something—only real compassion, a true sense of understanding, will be enough to create the thread. Yet all I can see are the ways in which he has obstructed and hurt me, all the small, selfish acts—