House of Rage and Sorrow

by Sangu Mandanna

  Kirrin bows his head and presses his hands together. He closes his eyes and his mouth moves quickly and silently as if in prayer. When he opens his eyes, there’s a golden dagger in his cupped hands.

  “Take it,” he says to Amba, “Like Valin did. When you fell, you were cursed to live a mortal life, but you needn’t live it like this. You can be reborn with no memory of what you once were. You can have love, friendship, and family. A life where you won’t ever miss the stars.”

  She puts her hand on the hilt of the dagger. I swallow hard. Don’t go, I want to say. Please don’t leave me.

  “Take it,” I say instead. “Go while you can.”

  Amba gives me a long look, then slowly moves her hand away. “No,” she says to Kirrin. “I cannot go.”

  “Amba, you can’t be serious,” Kirrin protests. “You can’t exactly change your mind next week! Once the last of the stardust in your skin fades, you won’t be able to use the dagger. You know that. You know you’re running out of time!”

  “Everyone feels the need to tell me about the consequences of my choices as if I am not entirely aware of them already,” she snaps at him, “And I am frankly tired of it. Put the dagger away, Kirrin. I will not be using it.” She sighs, looks at both of her brothers’ faces, and then says more gently, “This is not like when Valin fell. I cannot just go in peace. I have done too much harm to leave before I have a chance to put it right. I have too much to make amends for, too much still to see and too much life left to live.”

  Kirrin and I glance at each other, on the same side for once. Neither of us wants her to go, but we both know she’ll never be whole without the stars if she stays.

  But Max, who knows how she feels better than either of us, doesn’t argue with her. Still holding my hand, his white knuckles the only sign of his grief, he looks his sister in the eye and says only, “Are you sure?”

  “I am.”

  “Then that’s that,” he says.

  Kirrin closes his fists and the golden dagger disappears.

  “One day they will both be gone for good,” he says. “And I will never see either of them ever again.”

  Amba and Max don’t react to this at all, and I realize belatedly that only I could hear him. It was a lament he needed to give voice to, but he didn’t want to burden them with it. I give him a slight nod, the only way I can show him I heard him. I understood.

  “Let’s get into the ship,” says Max. “We can’t stay here.”

  “I’ll keep everyone away from the palace until you’re gone,” says Kirrin. “It’s the least I can do.”

  He vanishes.

  I stand up carefully and let go of Max’s hand. I’m unsteady on my feet, probably from blood loss and shock, but I take a few shaky steps to the mango tree and suck in a few breaths of cold, sharp air.

  As they make their way to the wall, I hear Max ask Amba, almost conversationally, “So where are you going to live now that you have a mortal life ahead of you?”

  “You’re a crown prince with a palace, aren’t you?” Amba replies. “Do you not have a suitably luxurious room for me?”

  “It’s customary in the mortal world to wait for an invitation.”

  “An invitation? Need I remind you of the time I killed our father to save your life?”

  “I was wondering when that would come up,” says Max. “It’s been at least an hour since you last mentioned it.”

  “That is an outrageous exaggeration!”

  Their voices fade in and out, almost in time with the throb of my hand. I look down at the pale scar. It feels like every horror is in that scar. The gaping wound where my thumb should be. My brother’s betrayal. My mother’s secrets. Rama’s death. Amba’s fall. A teacher, a betrayal, a king, an arrow, a crown, a spaceship, a curse, a queen, a wish, a flower, a knife. A cycle that never, ever ends.

  I am more like you than you know, Mother.

  In the sky, I see a glimmer of light that I know so well. A small smile lifts the corner of my mouth.

  “Go without me,” I say.

  Max and Amba both stop in their tracks. “No,” they say at the same time.

  “You heard what he said,” I say, deliberately not saying Kirrin’s name in case it gets his attention. “He’s keeping everyone away. This is my chance to go back into the palace and find the generator without anyone interfering.”

  Amba, ever the war goddess, cocks her head. “That’s actually an excellent strategy,” she says.

  “It is, but it’s more important that we get out of here,” says Max. “We don’t know how long he’ll be able to keep Alex away.”

  I shake my head. “I came here to deactivate the shield. If I leave without doing that, it’ll be because my mother broke me. I can’t let her have that.”

  “Then we’ll wait for you in the ship.”

  “No. I’ll follow you. I promise. Look.” I point up into the sky. “That’s Titania. She’s coming. I’ll get out of here with her, but I need you both to get out of Arcadia now. Please.”

  “Why?”

  I look at him, into those dark eyes that have always seen me. “You know why.” And he does. I can see he does.

  He’s quiet for a moment and then he lets out a sharp breath. He reaches up to his ear, pulls out his earpiece, and hands it to me. “You’ll need a way to talk to Titania.” I had to give mine up before we got here. Our ruse wouldn’t have worked if Kirrin had seen it. “Esmae—”

  “I know,” I say quickly. I don’t think I can bear to hear it right now. “Me too.”

  I watch them go over the wall. Then I turn back to the palace.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  My brother’s palace is eerily quiet when I go back inside. I stay very still and listen. Beyond the silence, beyond the sound of the wind outside, I can hear something.

  It’s the hum of a generator.

  I track the sound until I reach a set of steps leading down into what is most likely some kind of cellar. Before I head down to take a closer look, I double back to a window to make sure Max’s ship actually takes off. My chest loosens a little as I watch it vanish into the sky. They’re safe.

  At the bottom of the steps is a kitchen. Clean, a little chaotic. Pots, pans, and dough on the counters, like dinner is under way.

  There’s also a maid standing by the counter with a rolling pin. She stares at me in horror. I can only imagine what I must look like.

  “Where is everyone?”

  “It’s just me on duty tonight,” she squeaks, her wide eyes darting past me as if she’s wondering if she stands any chance at fleeing. I don’t blame her. With all the blood on me, I probably look like I’ve killed half a dozen people.

  I step aside. “The princes are at the city gates. You’d better go tell them their sister is in the palace.”

  She doesn’t need telling twice. She drops the rolling pin and runs. Good. She’ll be outside the gates by the time I’m done.

  There’s no sign of the generator in the kitchen, but I can still hear it. There’s a locked door on the other side of the room. I break the lock with the discarded rolling pin and pull open the door.

  The generator is little more than a metal box on a table, with a single green light and a screen split into several windows, each showing me footage in real time of how the illusion looks from outside the shield. Just as Maya Sura said, there’s nothing fancy about this generator. My brother didn’t bother to protect it because he never expected an enemy to get close to it.

  The rolling pin is still in my left hand. I stare at it for a moment, at my left hand where I should be seeing my right. Then I activate the earpiece Max gave me.

  “Esmae!” Titania sounds frantic as her voice crackles to life over my earpiece. “There you are! Are you okay?”

  “Are you?” I ask. “Is Sybilla safe?”

  “Yes, we’re fine. She’s here with me. We were chasing Sorsha, but we came back when Amba fell. I think the helmet has lost all hold on her, Esmae. I don’t thin
k it’s going to be long before she starts devouring stars.”

  And with Amba now mortal, there’s no way to take Sorsha back to Anga and reactivate the helmet.

  “Esmae, if she starts eating the stars—”

  She doesn’t need to finish. I know. If Sorsha starts devouring the stars, it will only be a matter of time before she swallows our sun.

  After a moment of silence, Titania speaks again. “We just passed Max’s ship. He says you’re still in the palace. Where do you want us to meet you?”

  “Are you cloaked?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then hover right above the shield. I need you to tell me if this works.”

  I tighten my grip on the rolling pin once again and smash the generator to pieces. It’s unnecessarily violent, but the hurt needs somewhere to go. As the screen shatters and goes dark, I catch a glimpse of the green light. It’s red now.

  “The shield is down!” Titania crows in my ear. “You did it! I did it! We all did it!” In the background, I can hear Sybilla whooping. “Come to top of the tower and we’ll pick you up. You need to get out of there!”

  I don’t say anything.

  “Esmae?”

  “What’s going on at the gates?” I ask her, making my way back up the kitchen steps. It’s a few twists and turns from there to the palace doors. “Can you see?”

  “Chaos,” says Titania, with a certain gleeful satisfaction. “There was already some unrest after Sorsha took off, but now the formations have completely broken. Soldiers are spilling past the gates and spreading out into the city. I suspect Alexi’s allies have had something of a shock and are now trying to see for themselves if the city that just vanished before their eyes is really gone.”

  I step out of the palace. Far away, beyond the palace wall and the wood piles and unfinished rooftops, I see dark specks moving against the white snow. Soldiers, just like she said.

  I move in the opposite direction. Some distance behind the palace is the forest of yellow trees that stretch all the way out of the city. With the shield down, that’s my best way out. The trees will give me some cover.

  “Why are you outside?” Titania demands. Her tone has sharpened. I look back at the sky above the palace, but she’s still cloaked so I can’t see her. “Where are you going? Why aren’t you coming to the top of the tower?”

  “I can’t,” I say softly. “I’ve lost too much blood to make it up all those stairs.”

  “Then we’ll come down there and pick you up.”

  “No. Not yet.” I close my eyes for a moment. “I need you to do something for me.”

  “Anything,” she says at once.

  I am more like you than you know, Mother.

  We could be happy here.

  You have no real power.

  You are so much like me.

  We can make this city something special. Arcadia will never be Kali, but I think it could be enough.

  We could be happy here.

  The last time I trained with General Khay, I told her I never stop screaming.

  And you never will, she said, not until you can let them go. You are not ready to hear this, Esmae, but one day you will be.

  Again and again, I have been told to let them go. I never did. I never could. And this is where it led me.

  We could be happy here.

  I have been screaming since Rama died and I think, at long last, it’s time to stop.

  “Turn Arcadia to ash,” I say to Titania.

  There is total silence for an instant and then I hear her shock. “The sun has gone down,” she protests. “And there are soldiers all over the city now. I can’t use my weapons against them. The laws of righteous warfare—”

  “I don’t care about the laws of righteous warfare.”

  “I do! You know what I am, Esmae. You know what I’m capable of. I’m a monster without those laws!”

  “No,” I remind her gently. “Never. You’re the arrow, remember? I’m the archer.”

  The woods are only about a hundred feet ahead of me when Titania speaks. “All of Arcadia?”

  “Leave my brothers and mother. Let them watch. Destroy the rest, from the gates to the edge of the yellow woods, every tile, every rock, every brick. Burn it all down.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll get to the woods.” I stumble on.

  “I’m the arrow,” she says.

  “And I’m the archer.”

  There’s a ripple in the sky as Titania deactivates her cloaking system and flickers into sight. I hear the shouts of soldiers as they see her. I even think, though it’s not possible from this far away, that I hear the sound of her five launchers clicking into place. Righteousness, Strength, Courage, Beauty, and Patience. They have never all been used at the same time before.

  “Run faster, Esmae,” Titania says.

  So I run. And the world behind me explodes in white fire.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Titania

  As ash settles quietly on the snow where Arcadia once was, the whole world watches. Until something even more terrible eclipses what we have done.

  In the sky, stars go out.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This was an incredibly hard book to write. Maybe it was because of how much pain Esmae is in, which only too closely mirrors my own depression. Maybe it was because I knew how many people loved the first book and couldn’t bear to let them down. Or maybe it was a harder book because some books just are.

  Whatever the reason, writing this book wouldn’t have been possible without the support of so many people. To my husband Steve, above all else, who never stops believing in me and who makes sure I have the time and space to disappear behind my laptop for as long as necessary. To Jem, Henry, and Juno, who may sometimes kick off when I have to leave them to get the words written, but who always forgive me. To my parents, who read this mere hours after I finished writing it and categorically assured me that it was not terrible. To my brother, who has a cute dog.

  To Eric Smith, who believed in this story before anyone else in publishing did. To Penny Moore, who carves new paths for me. To Alison Weiss, who fights so fiercely for me and for my books. To Nicole Frail, for pointing out all the ways this book shines and showing me how it can shine brighter. To Kate Gartner, Johanna Dickson, and the rest of the team at Skyhorse, for the gorgeous covers, interiors, and endless support.

  To Amina, Nipsi, Lindsey, Katy, and Gemma, who keep me firmly on the ground when I wander off into the clouds. To Sue, Anne, and Grace, for years of pretending to be interested when I talk about my books. And to the wonderful authors who make this journey seem so much less lonely: Natasha, Samira, Kati, Elsie, and so, so many others. Thank you. Thank you for every 2 a.m. tweet, every three-hour chat, every bit of gossip, every laugh, every time you saw me struggling and said, “You can do this.”

  To the bloggers who put their heart and soul into books and into this community, and especially to Shealea for all the support, enthusiasm, and for so passionately shouting to the world about A Spark of White Fire over the past year.

  And finally, to you. To the readers. Know that every time you send me a message to say you loved my book, every time you mention my books on your list of favorites, every time you write a review or tag me in a post or send me an email just to say hi, you make every moment I spend writing these stories worth it. Thank you.