Isadora

by Charlotte McConaghy

  ‘I wish I had more.’

  ‘The debt will be repaid, I give you my word.’

  Elsa rushed off to prepare Falco, and then Garth carried him out to the stable. I paused only long enough to pull on my boots and ask Elsa if she might have a blade of some kind. She gave me a blunt and unbalanced hulk of a carving knife.

  ‘Will that do?’

  ‘It’s perfect,’ I lied, stowing the weapon in my waistband. I would have been better off with sewing needles. She also gave me a hooded cloak to travel in, which would come in handy.

  Spotting Davin carrying a saddlebag, I surprised myself by pulling him into a hug. ‘Thank you,’ I whispered, kissing him on the forehead. I didn’t know how to express that he had shown me something I’d never known: true generosity of spirit, given without agenda. The touch was incredibly strange to me, as was the sudden wash of affection I felt. Had I ever shared a hug like this? Made of nothing but a sweet, true fondness?

  Davin returned the embrace tightly. ‘The goddess gave in to the hunt and the ice because she wasn’t strong.’

  I pulled away and searched his face, unsure what he meant. His dark eyes gazed back at me and then he grew abruptly shy, smiling and pulling away.

  Garth helped me swing onto the mighty black horse. Its white fetlocks were shaggy and almost bigger than my head. Garth stroked the animal’s muzzle – this was a truly beloved creature.

  ‘Talk to him,’ Garth said. ‘He will understand you. He’ll need water and food each day, but not much rest.’

  Falco was bound tightly in a sheet and propped against me, his padded head lolling back onto my shoulder. Without warning Garth slapped Hallr and the horse plodded forward. I almost lost hold of Falco, and clutched him against me.

  ‘Good fortune!’ Garth boomed. ‘The Sword be with you!’

  I twisted my neck to look back at the three of them, lifting my hand. All three raised theirs in return and I kept my eyes trained on them, refusing to turn back around until they had completely vanished from sight.

  Falco was so big I felt I would suffocate any second now, or collapse under his weight. Poor Hallr was doing exceptionally well, unrelenting at a rapid trot, which seemed to be his quickest pace. But this was not going to get us to the prison in time to save Falco. His breathing was slowing and rivulets of sweat drenched me.

  I ran my hands through Hallr’s mane, trying to think of something to say to him. Speak to him, Garth had said, as though it was that easy.

  ‘I … could you …’ I cleared my throat, feeling infinitely stupid. ‘He’s fading, Hallr. Please hurry.’

  The horse broke into a big, heavy canter. Brilliant creature.

  We rode without stopping for eighteen hours and came to the first village on our path. Hallr brought us into the stables and I called for the horse master. A small man emerged and peered up at us.

  ‘I need to trade this horse for something faster. He has unrivalled stamina and strength.’

  ‘I’ve no need of a carthorse in these parts. Sparrow wants us on warhorses.’

  I removed my hood and let him see me. ‘I am Sparrow-sent. Get me the fastest horse you have.’

  He jumped to do my bidding. Not because he knew I was the Sparrow – few knew that except the man lying across the front of this horse – but because the Sparrow’s people were notoriously ugly, and because no one dared use my name in these parts unless they had truly been sent by me. I’d made sure of it.

  The stable master brought out a huge white stallion, and he was glorious. ‘He’s called Elof.’ A true warhorse, a creature of impeccable breeding and speed. He stamped his hoof and tossed his head, barely contained by his master. I smiled at the wild spirit in him. He’d be keen to run.

  ‘Are you able to ride him, lady?’ the man asked worriedly. I wasn’t surprised – the creature was barely broken.

  I nodded and swung up onto the enormous stallion and got my knees in tight around his flanks. He tossed and stamped and almost bucked me free, but I held my seat with tight knees and soft nonsensical murmurs. I took a few moments to settle him, leaning low over his neck and stroking his mane. He trembled with adrenalin and I held him firmly, not giving him any room to step out of line. When I was sure I had him under control I called for Falco to be mounted. It was not a good idea to load a horse like this with so much dead weight – he would chafe under it – but I had no choice, and soon I would be riding him hard enough that he wouldn’t care what was atop him.

  As the stable boys secured Falco I gave a few quick orders. ‘Treat Hallr with care. Deliver him to Jarl Garth just across the border.’

  I didn’t give them time to be shocked by such an order, but kicked Elof forward, thrilled at the power that surged through his body. It was difficult to get low over his neck with Falco in the way, and it took Elof a few moments to find his stride, but soon he was blazing across the earth with breathtaking speed.

  We rode like this for a long time before he began to slow. I could feel him labouring and it killed me to press at him, to urge him faster. The unbearable truth dawned: I would have to ride this horse to death. I’d been opened, somehow, to things like fish in the hands of children. The death of this magnificent creature beneath me would hurt. It was not a good omen for the kind of strength I needed.

  ‘Keep going,’ I whispered desperately. I could feel Falco fading in my arms; his breaths were so few now. The horse flagged beneath me, trying with all his might to continue. I kicked him harder, felt his need to keep running even as his heart floundered. There were no more villages. We were drawing near the dead forest – we were so close.

  Without warning something moved in the corner of my eye – the flap of a snowy wing – there and then gone. A bloom of sudden, belated clarity.

  I pulled Elof to a halt and felt him tremble beneath me. Carefully, I dismounted and the great warhorse lowered both his front legs so I could gently pull Falco from his back. I soothed the stallion to the ground and cut off the top half of my canteen to let him drink from it. I laid my hand on his sweaty neck and felt him slowly start to calm. He would be alright, if he could let himself rest.

  Falco would not. So I turned to the sky and prayed that my idea might work, that I had not entirely severed the connection when I severed the bond. With two fingers I whistled as loudly as I could, sent all of my need with that note of sound.

  I waited. Would she forgive me for sending her away? Would she even feel me? I surely didn’t deserve for her to, but Falco did. I sank to my knees beside him, keeping my fingers pressed to his neck to be certain he was alive. I let my eyes travel over the lines of his face as I hadn’t done since before we’d broken the bond. Let myself remember those final moments when he’d looked inside me and known me, his eyes so gold. Gone were all the facades, the pretenses. I wasn’t sure what he’d seen, but I knew it had been true. Just as I had seen the truth of him. The real truth, at last. When first we bonded I’d known he was more than he seemed, I had known of his masks and his faces and his names. I had known of the versions of himself that he drew about him as cloaks of protection, as means of survival. But I had not known the depth or extent of these until the night I died. I’d looked into his eyes and felt myself uncurl like a bloom, and felt him do the same. As though our souls were trying desperately to stop what was about to occur by giving us a glimpse of the infinity of each other. And in those moments I heard his mind, just as he’d heard mine – with an incomparable sweetness.

  Farewell, little Sparrow. In dreams we will find each other once more.

  And then he’d kissed me and pressed a blade into my heart.

  I watched him now, allowing my fingers to trace the shape of his face. The angled jaw and cheeks. His eyelids and brows, his lips. I searched my heart for what remained, trying to understand the urgency in me. My terror at his death.

  I feared the guilt of having brought it about. That was certainly part of it. My own fear of the cages had seen us imprisoned, resulting in his head wound. W
as fear of adding to my shame all this was? I didn’t have the same blind madness for him. I wasn’t sick with love, or mad with it. Wasn’t on fire with the thought of his touch.

  But I … there was something subtler snaking itself through my veins. And perhaps it was simply the seduction of a life other than the one I lived. Perhaps in my mind he represented the idea of a life in which I was not a monster.

  ‘That’s weak,’ said a voice, and I looked up to see Quillane. She was on her own today, her black hair swaying silkily. ‘You are free of your cage.’

  Something gave way inside me. ‘Am I?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I swallowed. ‘The monster doesn’t need to be caged to be a monster.’

  ‘Just as the monster may cease to be a monster if she so chooses.’

  My heart hurt.

  ‘Are you not compelled by the very idea that choice matters above all else?’ the dead Empress of Kaya asked me softly, gently. And for the first time I started to feel frightened of her ghost.

  A rush in the trees above us caused me to jerk in shock, and then I felt the great whoosh of power in my chest and I knew, I knew it was Radha. She flew through the sky and circled down to the grass, the feathers of her wings glinting in the sunlight. She had the most beautiful brown eyes and these I knew to be beautiful.

  I pressed my forehead to hers and gave her every scrap of myself, every tiny piece I had left. I didn’t know if she could forgive me, or if I would ever look at her without remembering the lives I had taken, but she was here when I needed her and that meant everything.

  She lowered herself flat so I could drag Falco onto her back. I sent Elof back to civilisation with a light whack to his rump, then quickly mounted Radha. Her powerful body leapt forward and the muscles in her enormous wings stretched and contracted. She trembled with the adrenalin and the effort of getting into the air, but once we were up, with a lurching struggle, the pockets of wind helped us rise. The ground fall away beneath me as she worked to gain height, angling us up over the trees.

  ‘Hold on,’ I whispered to Falco. ‘Please hold on.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  Isadora

  The sap of the magic in the dead forest was no less grievous when I was in the air than on the ground. I had walked this forest once before, though Thorne and I had hung back and waited for Penn and the twins to reach the prison. I had been ill from the effects then, and I was doubly so now as we flew deeper into the heart of it. A brutal nausea overtook me and my limbs trembled with fatigue. I worried about Radha, though her wingbeats remained steady, and worried about Falco, though he continued to breathe.

  I spotted the building in the distance and saw that it had no guards and no roof. Radha angled down and into the guts of the prison. The moment we moved within the sphere of the walls, the magic in the air ceased to drain me and I felt bizarrely energised.

  We landed in a large central space, around which seemed to be levels of cells. People flocked from these cells to circle the pegasis and I looked down at them warily, leaving my hand on her neck to calm her. Equally men and women, many looked normal, but there were several pale-eyed warders. With a wave of repulsion I angled Radha away from them, though none seemed to want to hurt us – not yet, at least.

  ‘Move aside!’ a voice hollered and a figure pressed through the crowd to Radha’s side. He was bald and scarred and staring at Falco with dawning horror.

  I drew my poor carving knife and held it where he could see it. My eyes didn’t stop moving; I didn’t like being surrounded by potential threats. All these people crowding in so close, wanting to touch my horse –

  ‘Get back!’ I snarled, and Radha stamped her hoof.

  ‘Give them some room,’ the bald man shouted. The press of bodies eased a little.

  ‘Your name?’ I asked him, getting a better look at the scars in his skull – they gouged brutally deep.

  ‘Brathe. Once general of Kaya’s army. Imprisoned by the Mad Ones, as we all are.’

  I let out a breath. ‘Then you can help. With me is Falco, Emperor of Kaya. He needs medical treatment.’

  There was a variety of responses to that. Some gasped in delight, others in worry. Some swore in anger. I locked eyes with Brathe, allowing the question in my gaze to be clear.

  ‘I would die for this man,’ came his response, and he lifted Falco from the pegasis.

  I dismounted and looked around. None of the cells were locked – rather the whole place had an atmosphere of unruliness. There didn’t seem to be anyone guarding it, so I had no idea why anyone would remain here.

  I followed Brathe and his entourage, leading Radha inside. They took Falco into a cell and laid him on the bed. There were people hovering – three warders – so I kept my hand protectively on Radha’s flank, and on my single knife.

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’ Brathe asked me.

  ‘Cracked skull.’

  The general turned to the warders. Two women and a man. They moved to stand over Falco, their eyes rolling back in their heads. I fought a wave of panic at the sight of them near him.

  ‘He’s too far gone,’ one of the women said through tightly gritted teeth. She had dozens of elaborate braids in her hair and a ring through her nose. ‘We cannot …’ She groaned. Brathe was there to catch her limp body.

  ‘Find more,’ he urged her. ‘Please, love. Take mine.’

  My blood was rushing in my ears as I heard myself speak. The voice was barely recognisable to me. ‘And mine. Have all of it.’

  What are you doing?

  The warders reached for me and I felt the repulsive drain of my soul. It was all I hated of the world, all the power I condemned. I had gone from being a monster who at least had principles to a creature who threw them away for a man who’d been her next kill. None of it made sense – I didn’t make sense, but I didn’t tell them to stop. They stole from me, took the guts of me, and that was strange, too, for how could they want the use of such a desolate soul?

  There was a mighty wrench on my inside and I heard a gasp from the bed. I managed to stay conscious long enough to see him wake, to see his eyes open, and then I let the world disappear.

  Falco

  In dreams we will find each other again.

  She has salt skin. Her eyes drip blood, as her knives do. Her corpses litter the ground beneath her feet. The bars of her cage blot out the sun and the moon; they make it very dark, very cold.

  She is tiny, no more than two years old, shivering in the cage.

  She is older, maybe ten, sharpening the bones of birds into weapons.

  She is being jeered at, ridiculed, beaten and abused. She is a sea of bones. Wolves howl in agony from their mountains. Her heart is made of ice and I reach into her chest and crush it with my hand.

  But now there are more hearts, and these are not made of ice. They are made of flesh and blood and they beat even when I take them in my hands. One of them belongs to Thorne, my Thorne. One of them to Finn. One belongs to Ava, another to Ambrose. There are more hearts in my hands, these belong to my family, all five of them. They are precious, and I destroy them. Another for Penn. One for Quillane. And two that are made of moth’s wings and spiderwebs. Two that belong to Ella and Sadie. These I clench hard enough to make sure they cannot flutter any longer.

  Watching me all the while are red eyes, my own and Isadora’s. Her fingers are made of blades and I take one of them to sheathe in her heart, but before I can do this she looks into my eyes, into my soul, and she says, Don’t wake up, Emperor Feckless.

  My chest was wrenched upwards and I felt a great gush of air fill my lungs. The nightmares fled and I was pulled bodily into reality. I lurched awake to a very strange sight. General Brathe stared down at me, flanked by three unknown warders. And behind them Isadora collapsed at Radha’s hooves.

  I scrambled to my feet.

  ‘Majesty! Please –’

  But I crawled to where she had slumped and scooped her into my arms. As gently as I could I ca
rried her to the bed and laid her out.

  ‘You are unwell –’

  ‘I’m fine!’ It was true. I felt as healthy as I ever had in my life. ‘What’s wrong with her?’

  ‘She’s only drained.’

  ‘You took her energy?’

  ‘She gave it freely.’

  I breathed out. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘In the warder prison, Majesty.’

  My head swivelled to look at Brathe, properly taking in his presence. ‘Why did she bring me here?’

  ‘Your head wound.’

  The last thing I remembered was the Pirenti house, a bed beside Isadora’s. This would have cost her a great deal, bringing me here. To the people she hated most.

  I sat on the bed. ‘We’ll talk when she wakes. Have my pegasis taken care of until then.’

  ‘Falco,’ Brathe said as the others left the cell, ‘it is dangerous here.’

  I nodded, meeting his eyes. ‘Have you access to a weapon I might use?’

  I saw concern and pity. ‘What will you do with a weapon, Majesty?’

  ‘I will use it.’

  He nodded and retreated, sliding the bars closed behind him. To his credit, he hid at least some of his doubt.

  I sat with Isadora for an hour before she woke. She slept soundly, but her eyelids flickered with dreams and I wondered if she was conscious in that head of hers, lucid within the walls of those dreams. I wondered if I would ever walk the dream world again, or if that had been a single miraculous night of beauty. How strange, to walk such a place each night. How glorious. Did she know the fortune she had in stepping through the fold and seeing a world no others were able to? Or was it as normal to her as breathing after twenty-five years of it? It didn’t seem right that someone who was capable of seeing the bizarre loveliness of the world was also capable of such hatred and violence. Then again, that was hardly her fault.

  Eventually, her red eyes opened.

  ‘I know nothing more than you. Are you ready to face them?’

  She nodded. Then, ‘Radha?’