I shrugged. ‘I’ll improvise.’
‘Gods almighty.’ Ava rubbed her eyes wearily. ‘Are we going to talk about the fact that your own argument excludes you from the task? You asked Osric if he could fight, which he can’t. But Falco – neither can you.’
I folded my arms, resting my throbbing skull against the wall. My headache was getting worse. ‘I have a few tricks up my sleeve, cousin.’
Her eyebrows furrowed. She was at her wits end.
‘And if she’s dead?’ Osric asked.
‘She’s not dead.’
‘You won’t feel it if she –’
‘She’s not dead.’
‘How do you know?’ Ava demanded.
I nearly said it. Because Isadora is the Sparrow, and when they learn that there’s no way in this world that Dren and Galia will kill such a powerful tool. But my tongue stayed. Why? I didn’t owe her anything. I had certainly never agreed to keep this secret for her. It was a matter of national security – Isadora was an enemy to Kaya. Still, I didn’t tell them. ‘You’ll have to trust me.’
My cousin stared at me and then shook her head. ‘Fine. Do as you will. But remember one thing for me, and remember it with every decision you make.’
I waited.
Ava leaned forward and held my eyes. ‘Your life is more important than hers, every time. Understood?’
I let out a breath. And nodded.
Isadora
The royal hall was unusually full. Dozens of servants and guards lined the walls, while warders and nobles who had once belonged to Falco’s court mingled and drank. It was not one of the grotesque parties enjoyed in the pool rooms, rather it seemed I was interrupting a more formal celebration. Dren and Galia sat on their thrones covered neck-to-toe in richly woven gold. Hundreds of birdcages had been brought in from the smaller entertaining chambers and hung from the high ceiling and marble pillars. Their coloured feathers glittered unnaturally and I struggled to look away from the captive creatures, their chirps and flutters and squawks echoing in my ears. The enormous room was filled with noise, colour and expectation.
How disappointed the courtiers would be when they discovered it was just little old me who’d been captured.
I did not come before Dren and Galia as I had many times before, cowering and carrying drinks, hair and skin tanned to make me acceptable. No, today I was brought forward by six well-trained palace guards – who, unlike the warders, knew very well how to fight – and by Gwendolyn the Viper. Today I was brought forward in all my freakish splendour, skin and hair white for my hatred, eyes the red of my fury, which lived in me always.
Our arrival caused a stir. Everyone in the room turned to see me being paraded through the parting crowd. I heard gasps and whispers at my appearance: how dare I even exist here among the perfect people? It made me smile. Because with the bond gone from me, I was at last able to determine what remained.
Perfect clarity: I was the gods-cursed Sparrow of Kaya, leader of the southern rebels and ruler of three hard-earned southern realms, and I would destroy this palace and all in it – whether they be warder or soldier, servant or noble – just as I had always planned. The bond had made me soft; its absence made me brutal.
The world created its monsters, so here I stood.
We stopped directly before the thrones. ‘Did you contain whoever used such power?’ Galia asked. ‘Where are they?’
‘I’m afraid they had already fled by the time we followed the trail to their residence, Majesty.’
A storm of fury crossed Galia’s face and she lashed out at the nearest servant, snapping the poor man’s neck with a burst of pressure. A flicker of fear passed through the nobles in the crowd. I felt no pity for them. Not for those whose loyalty could be bought and traded.
‘And did you follow them?’
‘No, Majesty. They were cloaked.’
‘Who could possibly have enough power to cloak against you?’
‘Osric.’
Dren and Galia both froze. I might have missed it. But I was different now, intimately acquainted with pain and terror. So see it I did. Their fear.
‘Osric is here?’ Dren demanded.
‘He is.’
‘And you let him get away.’
Gwendolyn was the picture of detached calm; in her there was no fear whatsoever. ‘We were detained, Majesty.’
‘Detained. What exactly was it that detained you from tracking down the only disloyal first-tier warder in the world?’ Galia asked. ‘And you’d better pray you have a good enough answer, Gwendolyn.’
‘The girl before you did.’
Dren and Galia’s eyes swivelled to me. A long silence filled the crowded hall.
‘She’s hideous,’ Dren muttered, his silver gaze fixed on me as though he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
‘What is she?’ Galia asked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘She must have done something quite terrible to have crossed paths with you, Viper,’ Galia said.
‘Not only did we discover her entering the residence where the resistance had been hiding, but she attacked my team and harmed several of my warders. She is most certainly an insurgent.’
Dren was frowning. ‘Harmed several warders? Why did you let her do that?’
I heard Gwendolyn hesitate for the first time. ‘She is impervious to our magic.’
The Mad Ones’ eyes whipped back to me. I smiled. And for the first time in my life it was an easy expression.
A rustle of unease moved through the hall. The birds flapped nervously in their cages, the echoing sound lifted by the dream to wrap me in protection. I could feel their feathers against my face.
Galia crossed to stand very close to me; in the dream she smelled rank and true. ‘How?’ she wondered aloud. I knew she was trying and failing to enter my mind. I could feel her poisonous tap tap tap to get in. ‘What is your name?’
‘You know my name.’
‘Not blocked from your mind as we are,’ Dren snapped.
I kept my eyes on Galia and saw anger spark. She didn’t like my lack of fear, didn’t like how much power I seemed to hold over her. She slapped me across the face and I was grateful for the pain as I used it to hone the edges of the dream realm.
‘There’s more, Majesty,’ Gwendolyn said. I might have marvelled – she was as calm as I’d ever been. ‘She was not the only one we found at the rebel house.’ The Mad Ones shifted their attention back to the Viper. ‘Hiding in a cupboard was Penn of Limontae. Your son.’
Dead silence. Into it Galia asked, ‘Excuse me?’
To her credit, Gwendolyn held her ground. ‘He’s clearly in league with the insurgent. She risked her life to free him.’
Any anger I had seen Dren and Galia display previously was as nothing to what came over them now. Both sets of eyes shifted white and Gwendolyn hit the floor, writhing in pain. The birds screeched; some of them dropped dead. Fear pressed the guests back as they urgently tried to escape the violence.
On the ground before me the Viper was screaming and clawing at her head. I watched without an ounce of sympathy. Try having your bond severed, you bitch.
The grips of the guards holding my arms tightened. Gwendolyn’s scream finally cut off and she sagged in relief as the pain stopped. Slowly she climbed to her feet and straightened her shoulders. I could see a trickle of blood in her ear.
Galia was trembling with rage. ‘What is the first law of our rule?’
The Viper replied and still, still she was without fear. ‘That your son is to be found at all costs.’
Interesting.
‘You will be punished. Make your way to the dungeon until I have decided by which means.’
Gwendolyn bowed her head and strode from the hall, shoulders and spine straight. I didn’t have time to admire her strength – something wasn’t sitting right. If Penn’s capture was the most important rule of the warders, then why had Gwendolyn let him get away? I was impervious to her magic, yes, but Penn wasn’t. She
could have wrapped him in a ward so I couldn’t touch him and then dealt with me separately. I had trouble believing she was foolish enough for it not to have occurred to her – she was the Viper for a reason.
‘You are acquainted with our son,’ Dren said, interrupting my thoughts.
Silence.
‘Answer me!’
‘You didn’t ask a question.’
He visibly restrained himself from flying into another rage. I restrained myself from grinning. Some part of me had snapped. I’d gone so far beyond pain that nothing was registering anymore, and frankly I just wanted to hurt people. Watching Dren and Galia squirm was a steady thrill to my pulse. It was the point of it all.
‘How do you know Penn?’ Galia asked. ‘Is he working with your insurgence group?’
I tilted my head slightly. Did they really think I’d just tell them?
‘Are you manipulating or controlling him to help you?’
When I didn’t answer, Dren turned to his partner. ‘She must know of his power. Why else risk her life for him?’
Both sets of eyes returned to me, but now the Mad Ones watched me with a different kind of wariness. As if I were a creature who possessed the key to their undoing. It didn’t once occur to them that I might save their son out of love.
A commotion sounded at the back of the hall, murmured voices and shuffling footsteps.
‘What’s wrong?’ Dren called.
One of the guards answered. ‘A guest. He’s … unconscious, Majesties.’
‘Did he drink too much?’ Galia rolled her eyes.
‘I don’t think so –’
A second commotion started on the other side of the room and I craned my neck to see that another body had dropped. A third went down amid gasps of fear, then a fourth, all unconscious for no apparent reason.
‘Warders will immediately extinguish all use of magic,’ Galia ordered.
A fifth body hit the floor.
‘It’s no ward,’ Dren told Galia softly.
‘Then someone is here,’ she muttered, eyes darting around.
I peered through the crowds. The guards were patrolling with weapons at the ready, looking for any sign of disruption.
‘Warders to the edges of the room,’ Galia called.
The warders moved back so that Dren and Galia could study those who remained – the guests. But no one was studying the servants. The pretty, dumb servants, overlooked every time. Among them I saw a flash of golden hair – not unusual in a land of golden-haired beauties. But I had not been bonded to any of the other golden-haired beauties.
It was the shock of seeing him that made it happen.
I woke.
Galia’s gaze snapped directly to me and a terrible smile curled her lips. We both knew that I was no longer the hunter.
‘Hello, pet.’
Falco
It was easier than I’d thought to get in. I didn’t have a work pass but the guards took one look at me and waved me through. I understood now why Isadora made herself look the way she had – all the people around me were golden-haired and tan-skinned copies of each other. It repulsed me that I looked like them. But I was no stranger to it: these were the kinds of people with whom I had taken my pleasure as Emperor Feckless, ever weary of their endless sameness. Beauty lived in imperfection, in difference, and if I knew nothing else at least I had always known this. For a moment I saw Quill’s incredible black hair, so unusual for a Kayan, and felt the loss of it in my chest. I wouldn’t see her glorious raven hair again, or any part of her, thanks to the ruthlessness of the woman I was now forced to rescue.
I swallowed the nauseating bitterness – now wasn’t the time for it. I was dressed in loose white pants and no shirt, and then ushered to the kitchen area for serving duty.
It will look like a brown leaf in a bunch, Sara had told me before I left, for I’d noticed she knew a little of such things. Combined with valerian root, it will drop them like flies.
Becoming a servant reminded me – ironically – of becoming an Emperor. Both were acts. Both required attention to detail. To be Emperor was to manifest arrogance and elegance. For a servant my body would need to shift. Turned-in shoulders, shuffling feet, head lowered. Erased was all trace of privilege or arrogance. And as different as the two men were, I now felt the same kind of invisibility I’d felt as Feckless. As an Emperor, I was forbidden to be looked upon. As a servant, nobody bothered. Lucky, too, for although no one had ever seen them, rumours of my strange eyes had been circulating for years. I could will them and will them to shift until the world burnt out, but I had no control and never had. So it suited me just fine to be utterly ignored.
The trouble was getting access to the food, but I knew the palace like the back of my hand. I tracked around to the back entrance and moved through rushing cooks and their assistants, passed roaring fires and industrial stoves. Servants ran trays in and out. One of them shoved me roughly out of the way, but the poor boy looked petrified with fear. A couple of guards were watching over the staff so I moved with purpose straight for the food stores. It took too long to find the herbs, but I managed to spot the brown leaves and stuff a few into my pocket.
‘I haven’t seen you before.’ I turned to the guard watching me. ‘Where’s your kitchen pass?’
My eyes moved to his weapon – a baton at his belt. I could take it from him so easily, use it against him before he’d taken breath. A young man dressed as a servant appeared behind him. He looked at me irritably. ‘Not in here, idiot,’ he chided. To the guard he muttered, ‘He’s new. I sent him for drinks.’
‘I didn’t know where …’ I blustered.
‘Deal with him,’ the guard snapped.
The man who’d chided me ushered me out into a hallway. His annoyance dropped the moment we were alone. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked softly, glancing left and right. He looked like the others – tall, well-muscled, blond and tan. He also had whip scars all over his shoulders.
I didn’t have time to be suspicious of him. ‘Thank you for your assistance.’ I was about to push past him when he laid a hand on my arm.
‘You’re good. You look right. I wouldn’t have picked it if I hadn’t noticed you watching. I watch, but I’m not meant to. So when I see someone doing the same I get curious.’ His fingers tightened and I looked into his wide azure eyes as they shifted lilac. ‘Whatever you’re doing, let me help.’
I studied his face, turning the idea over in my head. ‘Why?’
‘I hate them.’
‘Don’t they know if you hate them?’
‘They know it well,’ he bit out. ‘Everyone in here hates them. They don’t care.’
This was reckless, but so was the whole bloody thing, and I was pressed for time. ‘I need valerian root. And a needle. Two, if you really want to help.’
He nodded and turned back to the kitchen, pausing only to say, ‘I’m Ryan.’
‘Pleasure, Ryan. If we survive this I’ll tell you my name.’
I waited for him under a set of stairs I’d hidden under as a child. It was just as dusty as it had been then. My brothers and I had coughed and giggled and waited to see how long we could stand it before bursting out for a gasp of clean air. Later, I had come here alone to hide from the servants, nobles, informants, assistants, chancellors and warders who all wanted more and more and more from their new emperor, forgetting he was but a ten-year-old boy.
Ryan returned and I whistled to get his attention. When he was safely squashed under the stairs he showed me his loot. ‘Why’d you get four needles?’
‘There are a couple of others who’ll help, if you want.’
I nearly smiled. This was looking more and more like a suicide mission by the minute. ‘Why not?’
As I mushed the root and leaves together I explained to Ryan what I needed. We dipped the tips of the needle into the paste and he took the extras to pass onto his friends. ‘Whatever you do, don’t accidentally prick yourself.’
We emerged from t
he stairs and ran headlong into two guards. I slammed my elbow into a temple and swung a fist into a jaw. Both guards dropped unconscious to the ground. The simple physical movements exhausted me and I blinked woozily against the spots in my eyes. I started dragging one of them to the alcove beneath the stairs.
Ryan stared at me.
‘Help, kid,’ I urged, and he jumped into action, dragging the second body.
‘I had this ridiculous notion that you were the Emperor,’ he said with a laugh. ‘What an idiot.’
I almost laughed too.
We split up and made our ways separately to the main hall. I managed to convince a server that she was required back at the kitchen so I could pinch her tray of delicacies. Holding it high to cover my face, I moved into the hall and was met by the sight of hundreds of people, and at their center, Isadora.
Six guards held her prostrate before Dren and Galia. They were on my thrones, the thrones that had once belonged to my ma and da, and to my own Empress Quillane.
The rage in my heart was unquenchable.
I remembered their faces from long ago, from the day I had them captured and sent to the prison, the day they screamed their threats and vowed to return. I had laughed, arrogant and humiliating. Quill hadn’t, though. She’d taken it as seriously as she took everything.
‘You are acquainted with our son,’ Dren said to Isadora.
I moved swiftly through the crowd of onlookers, keeping my face turned away from the thrones.
‘Answer me!’
‘You didn’t ask a question.’
My lips twitched. The Mad Ones continued to question her but she remained silent. She had to be asleep, if they couldn’t force her to answer. Which was good – if I freed her from the guards she’d be able to get herself out.
Keeping the needle hidden within my sleeve, I pricked it into the back of a man’s hand and kept moving past him. It only took a minute for him to drop to the floor, asleep. Across the room Ryan and his friends were doing the same, and more people dropped. Fear rippled through the hall. People weren’t sure what to do. Dren and Galia ordered all magic to cease, which was exactly what I wanted. I pricked a few more people, trying to drive the crowd to panic, but their fear of Dren and Galia outweighed even the threat of being rendered unconscious. I would have to spill some blood.
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