Isadora

by Charlotte McConaghy

  I jerked in fright. ‘Ugh. Are you trying to be creepy, Os?’

  The warder nodded his head towards the mouth of the cave and made his way over to it. I grumbled sleepily and picked my way through the bodies, stumbling clumsily over several and receiving curses for my efforts.

  ‘You have a particular talent for being annoying,’ I told Osric as I joined him on the moonlit shore.

  ‘I often think the same of you,’ he muttered.

  ‘We must make a good pair then. What’s wrong?’

  The sea lapped against the rocks at our feet. Its black reaches smudged into the black of the sky in the distance, distinguishable by its smattered silver stars. The smuggled people of Sancia were scattered throughout caves along this coastline, sleeping as well as they could after having left loved ones and homes behind. It felt vulnerable out here, despite the shroud of stone and night we hid beneath.

  ‘We can’t stay here.’

  ‘I thought Falco told us to wait for a Pirenti entourage.’

  ‘And will we wait ourselves into the grave? They have a long way to travel to reach us and we don’t even know if they’re coming – we should move to meet them.’

  I shivered, though the night was warm. I didn’t know how it had happened, but suddenly without either the Emperor of Kaya or the Queen of Pirenti in our retinue, the leadership and protection of three hundred hunted souls had fallen to Osric and me. It was rather horrid.

  ‘The road follows the coast and will be riddled with warders.’

  ‘We won’t take the road. We’ll go around the marshes.’

  ‘And if we’re spotted?’

  ‘We won’t be. You and I are going to erect a cloak,’ Os said.

  A flicker of fear found me. ‘Cloak three hundred people over a distance of hundreds of miles, for a length of time spanning weeks?’ I gave panicked laugh. ‘I’m flattered by your assumption, Os, but you’re a first-tier warder. I’m a no-tier warder. I can tell you right now, you won’t be getting much help from me.’

  Osric turned his head. His eyes were very pale in the moonlight, his hair glowing a little. In this light he reminded me of Izzy, and I wondered yet again where she was. Falco hadn’t returned with her, which meant he’d failed in his rescue mission. And which of us had believed he wouldn’t, anyway? It was a steady gut-sickness, thinking about the two of them and what I had done to them, thinking how even now they might be dead and separated for all eternity because of the power in my bondmate’s blood.

  ‘Who is the corrupted warder?’ Osric asked.

  I sighed – this was the way he finished every one of our lessons. ‘The powerless warder.’

  ‘Don’t just say it, Finn. Understand it.’

  ‘How? I ask you and ask you what you can possibly mean by such a backwards statement, but you never tell me, Os! Power is what corrupts, not the other way around.’

  ‘You’re clever, kid,’ he said. ‘At least you’re meant to be.’

  I rolled my eyes, irritated. He never bloody well explained himself.

  ‘Do you know how many warders are born with power over the dead?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Almost none. You are a very rare creature, Finn of Limontae. So let me tell you a secret, but don’t mistake it for a compliment.’

  ‘From you? Don’t worry, I won’t,’ I muttered.

  ‘Whatever that deep, rare thing inside you is, it’s exponentially stronger than anything that exists in me.’

  I frowned. His words disturbed me more than I wanted him to know. ‘That’s ridiculous.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘So if I’m apparently so powerful then doesn’t that mean, according to your logic, that I’m incorruptible?’

  Osric gave a sigh of long suffering. ‘What is power?’

  ‘Magic, but –’

  ‘Gods almighty, Finn! That’s exactly what Dren and Galia believe! Magic is not power.’ He grabbed my shoulders and shook me a little, and I was shocked – I’d never before seen him anywhere close to this animated. Osric’s perpetual state of being was boredom and mild annoyance. But now I could see ferocity in his gaze, in the twist of his mouth.

  ‘Power,’ he said, ‘is strength of spirit. It is kindness. Generosity. Loyalty. Love. The second you start thinking that power is magic is the second you surrender to it, the second you give it control, the second it begins its corruption. Instead, you must control the magic.’

  I swallowed, holding his unblinking eyes. ‘I understand,’ I told him. But it was easier to conceive of than make real. Easier to want strength of spirit, harder to have it. Osric returned to the cave but I sat on the rocks to listen to the waves a little longer. Crash, crash, sway, they went. Whisper, whisper, hiss went the voices in my ears. And Thorne, Thorne, Thorne went my heart, not knowing what else to do.

  Thorne

  I sat on the edge of my bed in Vjort’s castle, dizzy with exhaustion and refusing to sleep … not yet, not until they are found. I tried to reach out to Finn, willing it to work, desperate desperate desperate for her voice. But there was nothing. I couldn’t feel her, could barely feel myself.

  A sound left me, some breathless noise of pain. I looked for Da, but couldn’t find him either. He hadn’t appeared to me since the moment I cast him off, and I was terrified I’d lost him forever. Lost him to my own shadow, this shadow I had stepped into and cloaked myself beneath.

  I struggled to my feet and paused before the mirror. Carefully I lifted my tunic and then the soggy bandage to see the swollen, puss-infected wound between my ribs. It looked bad, felt worse.

  Grimacing, I pressed the bandage back down and straightened my tunic. No time to show weakness. The deep night needed its berserker king. For a moment I caught my reflection in the mirror. Beads of sweat rolled down my forehead and over the clammy skin. My eyes were hollow and bruised, but worse than that, they looked empty.

  I hardly recognised myself.

  Ava

  The search of the city produced one conclusion: Roselyn, Ella and Sadie were no longer in Vjort. We had parties sent south, east and west, though we sent no one north. To send someone north would be to kill them.

  Thorne went into the streets and forcibly contained the violence. He sent people to their homes, reined in his berserkers and set tasks for the soldiers. It would not hold Vjort for long – something within its walls had snapped, some piece of sanity, some sense of calm. The city was bent on destroying itself with a determination not even the King of the Ice could halt. When he’d finally returned home he was exhausted to the point of illness and could no longer argue about needing sleep. I saw him to bed and ordered guards to keep watch over him.

  I circled back to one of the castle’s central living rooms. The space was large and had unusually high ceilings. Maps hung on each of the walls, and ornamental weaponry was mounted in every conceivable spot. It felt at once busy and cold: I hated this room. My husband was sitting in a low velvet chair, looking relaxed with both his arms in slings. The stubs had been seen by multiple physicians who had cleaned and tended the wounds, and now his arms were heavily wrapped. I was far from used to seeing him this way – the absences at the ends of his wrists were like a trick of the light, or a dream you were supposed to be able to blink away. He masked it well, but I knew he was in a great deal of pain.

  Goran, once king of the berserkers, stood before a roaring fireplace and stared into the flames. Danger lingered in the air; there was no easy relationship between berserkers and the Kings of Pirenti. I had no patience for male rivalry. It was boring.

  Maisy was perched at the end of a side table, watching over Ambrose as she had been since the second she woke. I suspected she was easing his pain.

  ‘So,’ I announced as I strode in, ‘where will our search begin?’

  ‘The search,’ Goran growled, ‘is a waste of time. Two girls and a woman? The concern now is war.’

  ‘Say that again, you dumb brute,’ I snarled, about ready to draw my whip a
gainst him.

  ‘Settle,’ Ambrose told me. I paced the room to get a hold on my temper.. ‘We’ll all move south. We can’t leave Falco and the Kayan people without help – they’re waiting for us even now.’ To me he said, ‘We can search on the way. It’s the most likely path they will have taken, in any case.’

  I nodded.

  ‘And you?’ Goran asked, turning to face Ambrose. ‘You can’t think it will be you who leads us south to war?’

  ‘Watch your mouth,’ I ordered him coldly.

  ‘I said south,’ Ambrose replied. ‘I said nothing about war.’

  Goran and I both stilled.

  ‘You don’t mean for us to fight the warders?’ Goran demanded.

  ‘I’ve yet to decide, and won’t until I know more.’

  Goran took several lumbering strides – it was like a hurricane forcing its way through the room, or a maddened bear attacking. I wasn’t quick enough to get between him and my husband before Goran leaned in with bristling threat. He was seconds from losing it, and then we’d have a wild berserker in the room with us. ‘No man comes between my kind and war with the warder filth,’ he breathed. ‘We’ll have their blood, regardless of what the handless king says.’

  Maisy stood, and I could see she meant to use her power. I motioned sharply for her to stop and the girl lowered her hands slowly. Her boldness impressed me.

  We all looked at Ambrose.

  He hadn’t moved, hadn’t replied to the threat. His face was calm as he slowly rose to his feet. No easy task without arms to balance, or push him out of his deep seat. But his strong legs lifted him until he stood face to face with the berserker. Goran was far larger, and he had one of his meaty fists clenched around the hilt of his enormous axe.

  ‘Stand down,’ Ambrose said softly.

  Goran chafed with anger and disbelief. I couldn’t imagine a berserker king had ever been given an order by someone so extraordinarily disabled before.

  ‘Your King is my loyal prince and second,’ Ambrose said. ‘It is by his grace that you live to kneel before him. And just as he kneels before me, so too will you.’

  The silence in the room was palpable. The eyes of the two men were locked together. Goran was a rabid mess of fury and bloodlust. But in Ambrose there was no animosity, no ferocity – no violence whatsoever. There was only certainty, and that turned out to be worth more, in the end.

  ‘Kneel,’ he said.

  And Goran did.

  After the berserker had gone, Maisy pulled me to the side, her voice dropping low. ‘I offered to try, but he refused me.’

  ‘Did you tell him you could do it?’

  ‘I won’t lie to him,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if I can. But for him I would have tried.’

  My gaze traced the girl’s face. She was tired – I could see the hollows under her eyes and the drawn pinch of her mouth. But she was fierce, and no doubt a little in love with the man she’d shared a tomb with. She would try, and he was willing to throw that generosity away.

  ‘Thank you, Maisy. Get some rest.’

  ‘I’ll stay with him, Majesty.’

  ‘Am I permitted to be alone with my husband?’

  She flushed pink and dropped her eyes. ‘Of course. Goodnight.’

  When she’d gone I warmed myself before the fire and Ambrose reclined once more in his chair. There was silence between us. I thought of our daughters, and I’d never known such deep, resounding worry; it ate at my insides, gnawing and chewing me hollow.

  ‘Get some sleep, darling,’ Ambrose said. ‘You’ve been awake for days.’

  ‘Why won’t you do it?’ I asked, no longer able to hold the anger at bay.

  ‘It isn’t possible.’

  ‘At least try,’ I begged. ‘It might work!’

  ‘I no longer need hands to wield weapons.’

  I gave an aching gasp of betrayal. ‘And what else have you no need of? Holding your daughters? Protecting them? Holding me? Do you not wish to touch my body again?’ I shook my head, turning away from him. ‘I don’t know how you could do this. How you could choose it.’

  I heard him climb out of the chair again, and this time he struggled a little more, wearier and in more pain. ‘Ava.’

  I didn’t turn, didn’t offer to help. ‘You would lie down and die. You would give in and leave us to face the danger alone. Like a coward. If you do this, I’ll never forgive you.’

  ‘Ava,’ he repeated, and there was so much fire in his voice that I spun to look at him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Women being raped!’ he exclaimed, his words flung out into the gaping dark, furious and sure. ‘Violated and abused because in this place that is normal.’ Ambrose shook his head. ‘I will not have it. Not in a land I rule.’

  I swallowed. Clenched my trembling fists. ‘Of course. Of course. But your hands. How will you stop it without your hands, my darling?’

  ‘You’re the only one,’ he said. ‘The only one who might understand: you were the first to live when you shouldn’t have. You forged a new path, an entirely new existence, through sheer force of will. And look how the world has changed for you. Someone must always be first. For this, in this, I will be the first. No matter what it costs me. I will forge a new path for this nation, a path that will stop us from destroying ourselves. I will do it without weapons, without bloodshed, without hands, because the time for those is past now. I will show our people that strength has nothing to do with fists.’

  My skin was on fire and my pulse was racing, swooning, intoxicated. After twenty years together he could still do this to me.

  ‘I killed both my parents for the dishonour of my throne,’ he said, voice dropping low and dark to match the expression in his eyes. ‘Even if nobody else ever understands this, I need you to be the one person who does: to give that same throne honour, I will kill no more.’

  Every part of me was rushing towards every part of him, in love, in awe. But I stalled, just for a moment, a moment enough to whisper, ‘They’ll come for you. Like they did the last time they thought you weak.’

  Ambrose drew himself to his full height, tilting his chin with unyielding certainty. He removed his arms from the slings and let them drop to his sides, determination thrumming through every inch of his remaining muscles. His eyes blazed a blue fire.

  He asked, ‘Do I look weak to you?’

  I shook my head, a heady breath leaving me. ‘No,’ I told him. ‘No, my love. You look very far from it.’

  Roselyn

  Three hundred and ninety-eight, three hundred and ninety-nine, four hundred.

  I stopped with an ache, unable to go on.

  My arms tightened around Ella and Sadie. They were sleeping restlessly on either side of me, just as we slept each night. I didn’t let my grip falter on them, I would never let it falter.

  ‘What is it that you count?’ a resonant voice asked me over the gentle lapping water.

  I peered out from under my furs to look at Erik sitting at the prow of the tiny boat. He was armed heavily, and held himself with complete alertness; this was the punishment he would bestow upon himself for the rest of his days, never resting, never sleeping, never lowering his guard. The unendurable guilt he felt for having been trapped behind a locked door.

  It made me as sad as anything did.

  ‘Many things,’ I replied softly, not wanting to wake the girls.

  The night was very cold. But we four had become used to cold. Cold, Ella said this morning, was a joke.

  One night when we sheltered from a storm so frigid it made our bones tremble, Erik told us the story of the gargoyles – monstrous creatures who’d been fashioned out of stone as decoration for the wealthy, hideously designed and sculpted to scare away attackers. Much to the consternation of the wealthy, the monsters had come to life and spread their terrible, glorious wings, as desirous of the cold air of the north as any berserker could ever be. The wealthy men and women had gathered their armies and hunted the monsters, seeking to destr
oy them, though the creatures had harmed or frightened no one on their journey north. In their haste, the people followed them into the ice and froze solid. Now it was said that the gargoyles perched on the frozen corpses of their hunters, the better to admire the beautiful world around them.

  Both girls were rapt by this story, and finding a tale they’d never heard was quite a feat. But that was what Erik did – he told stories. Like Finn, he wove them with skill and emotion, sweeping us away from reality. In reality things were simple. We were just four bodies, searching day to day for shelter and sustenance. My own body was a little different, of course: it was a thing waiting to be removed and discarded. It was an old cloak that didn’t fit me any longer, a thing that had been sullied. I would keep it until I didn’t need it, and then I would shed it, hang it up and leave it forever.

  Except …

  Except that Erik kept asking. ‘What do you count now, my lady? What do you count tonight?’

  I swallowed, tightening my arms around Ella’s shoulders. ‘Stars.’

  ‘Why?’ I could hear in his voice the burden of what had happened, the self-loathing he bore.

  ‘Because my husband bid me to, moments before he died,’ I admitted. It was the first time I’d mentioned any part of those final moments to anyone.

  ‘Even though it’s impossible?’

  ‘I think probably because it is.’

  ‘So then why?’

  ‘He knew the counting would ease me.’

  Erik was silent and I watched the side of his face, trying not to live in that moment, that most brutal moment of Thorne’s death. His smile, when I told him I was pregnant. A smile to end all smiles.

  I rolled onto my back, struggling to draw breath.

  ‘Would you …’ Erik cleared his throat. ‘Would you like help?’

  Air filled my lungs. ‘Yes, thank you.’

  So he helped me to count the stars, for no other reason than that it calmed the painful edges and nudged us quietly into sleep.

  Life had become about tiny generosities, as many as the four of us could find to give each other. Life had become simple enough to make three wishes in the dark, even though wishes weren’t allowed anymore. Wishes were fool’s hope and fate’s curse.