Isadora

by Charlotte McConaghy

  Thorne looked pained, his eyes dropping. ‘No.’

  An idea had been forming throughout my long walk, with the film sitting between my fingers and the singing of the dead in my ears. I wasn’t ready to share it with him because I didn’t know if it was possible, but this idea continued to fixate me.

  ‘Things got very bad in Vjort,’ Thorne admitted, looking haunted. ‘I had to −’ He cut himself off abruptly.

  ‘What?’ I asked, but his jaw remained clenched. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘With you,’ he answered bluntly, lifting his eyes to mine. ‘I’ve been with you this whole time.’ Then he amended, almost angrily, ‘I’ve needed to be.’

  ‘Why? What’s going on?’

  ‘I’m … balanced with you. Alone I’m just …’ He shuddered. I waited for him to explain, could see how much he was struggling with the words. ‘I can barely recognise my −’

  ‘Thorne!’ someone’s voice sliced through his sentence, and I sighed.

  ‘This conversation isn’t finished,’ I warned him. ‘You look awful, and I’ll get to the bottom of it.’

  I turned, but he snatched my hand and pressed his lips to the inside of my palm. Eyes closed, he breathed in the scent of my skin. ‘I’m lost without you.’

  I ran my free hand through his short hair. ‘No, you aren’t, my darling.’ After pressing a kiss to his temple, we reluctantly rejoined the rest of the world.

  ‘Meeting,’ Falco informed us after giving me a kiss on the cheek.

  ‘You look rough, Fal!’ I exclaimed, touching his short hair and prodding at his crooked nose hard enough to make him wince and knock my hand away. It was too much fun antagonising him.

  The others had grouped together at the head of the massive expanse of people spread out over the plain. I took the Emperor’s hand, stalling him. ‘Are you alright?’

  Falco’s unchanging eyes shone clear in the sunlight. He nodded.

  ‘But was it … the right thing to do?’ Breaking the bond.

  He hesitated, then shook his head. ‘I honestly don’t know, Finn. But either way, it’s over. It’s all over, and we’re both still alive, so there’s that to be thankful for.’ The words sounded distinctly hollow.

  I had yet to greet Rose or Ella and Sadie, and I didn’t know where Jonah and Penn had got to, but it seemed we were launching right into a discussion about things I was now abruptly involved in, because of what they’d seen me do to poor Os.

  ‘Finn and Osric will go through the tunnel with Isadora and her contingent of soldiers,’ Ambrose said. ‘It’s a great gift that we now have your powers on our side.’

  Noooooooo. Not the bloody tunnel again. I did my best to contain my complete irritation.

  ‘Try not to look too happy about it, Finn,’ Ambrose added.

  ‘Trust me, if you’d been in that tunnel, you’d know,’ I muttered.

  ‘Thorne and Ava,’ the king said, ‘along with the berserkers and the second half of Isadora’s soldiers, will lead the attack on the west gate, distracting them from your infiltration.’ He was speaking mostly to me, I realised, as I was the only one here who didn’t yet know the plan. My eyes, flooded with a pale azure made entirely of horror, shifted to Thorne. He was the distraction, meaning he was the bait, meaning he was the most likely to die of any of us. Awash with nausea, I felt him take my hand.

  ‘Because the civilians have been delivered to us,’ Ambrose said, ‘I will escort them to Pirenti, with my soldiers as guards. Falco, you can come with me. You need to be protected to take up your throne when this is over.’

  It was obvious what Ambrose didn’t say: Falco also needed to be out of harm’s way since he couldn’t protect himself.

  Falco shook his head once. ‘I will fight with Thorne, and the men and women from the warder prison will stand at my back.’

  There was an uncomfortable silence.

  ‘Falco –’ Thorne started.

  ‘He will do more than fight,’ a voice said. ‘He will lead the attack.’

  We all turned to where Isadora stood, a little apart from the rest of us, idly spinning a blade in her fingertips. The conversation seemed almost to bore her. She was painful to look upon in the sunlight, and the glinting blade sent a beam of light into my eyes every time it flicked my way.

  ‘Iz,’ I said, shielding my vision. ‘Come on.’

  ‘The bulk of the force will be made of my soldiers,’ she said calmly. ‘I leave them under Falco’s leadership, as this is his land we stand upon, his city we are about to attack. He will also lead Thorne and his berserkers, whom he outranks.’

  My eyebrows arched. When had Izzy become so audacious? There were a few uncomfortable movements and mutterings. The huge berserker man beside Thorne looked ready to attack.

  ‘They’re here to help us,’ Ava pointed out.

  ‘And we thank them for that,’ she replied, unruffled. ‘But there are many voices in this circle, many leaders with their own right to authority. This happens one way, with one leader, or we fall to chaos and conflict, and die.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Ambrose told her. ‘You’re exactly right. We do need one leader. But …’ His eyes moved to Falco. To Emperor Feckless.

  ‘But it shouldn’t be me,’ Falco finished for him.

  There was an awkward silence.

  I watched Falco look at Isadora, watched their eyes meet and I heard her say, softly, ‘Find the version who was born to lead us, and don his cloak until this is over.’

  Falco’s eyes shifted red. He looked at the rest of us. ‘We’ll attack in the dark, three nights from now when the moon is at its thinnest.’

  ‘We won’t make it there in three nights,’ Ava pointed out.

  ‘We will if we go straight through the marshes.’

  ‘How are we meant to do that? There’s no way to find a path through.’

  ‘We don’t need a path. We’re going to swim.’

  It was clever, as it turned out. Those guarding the city walls would have no visual warning of our approach, the marshes opening out right on the edge of Sancia. We’d get there quickly, which gave us the element of surprise. Dren and Galia knew of our approach, but couldn’t assume we’d reach them so fast. And we would be coated in mud, making us difficult to spot at night. Falco explained all of this and then went on to describe how best to use the warders in his team of prisoners, having spent the last weeks learning how to break through wards and walls made of stone. By his reckoning, he would have an entire western portion of the wall destroyed by dawn of that first night of attack. It was a bold statement, but something had come over him, a certainty that made a mockery of everything we’d known about him. I didn’t know about the others, but I couldn’t help believing him. He seemed an entirely different man.

  He finished by saying, ‘Without Thorne’s advantage we will take heavy casualties, but that was always to be expected. Essentially, the more power we force the Mad Ones to send at us, the better, because every piece they use takes a piece of their own soul and draws them nearer to death. We just have to be able to withstand that power, like your brother could.’

  I was confused. But, as my Thorne turned and strode away from the group, so raw at even the mention of his father, I understood.

  ‘What is it that you don’t know?’ I asked.

  ‘My brother had a way to withstand a warder’s powers,’ Ambrose said, then turned to Falco: ‘Only we don’t know what it is so we should stop bringing it up.’

  Falco shook his head, obviously frustrated. ‘It’s got to be within our grasp. They haven’t always had this much power over us – the warders weren’t originally undeniable.’

  ‘They’ve grown stronger.’ Ava shrugged.

  Falco didn’t buy it. ‘It must have to do with what we know about them. They’ve been building their power base for decades now, in preparation for when they might take over. But once upon a time they were less of a threat to normal folk. Thorne taught you to withstand their mental powers, Ambrose, but
if he was torturing them he must have also understood how to withstand their physical powers, and that is no small feat.’

  My eyebrows arched. Since when did Falco spend time thinking so strategically? A slow curl of excitement snaked around my heart. I’d known he wasn’t what he seemed. I’d felt it in his touch, in the weight of his beautiful heart. Some part of me had been waiting since that day, waiting for the reveal, and now I savoured the moment, watching him in the sunlight.

  ‘With Thorne’s knowledge we could have won this war,’ Falco muttered.

  Alright. A thrill ran through me and I grinned. With a quick check to make sure my husband was out of earshot, I said, ‘Well, then. Why don’t we ask him?’

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Finn

  Nobody understood how difficult it was to bring someone back from the dead. The effort had killed my mother, and could very well kill me, but that wasn’t the issue. It was about finding him. Stepping between the veil was easy enough, listening to the screams become songs was a pleasure with which I grew more fascinated by the day. But recognising one soul over millions of others was no simple feat, given I couldn’t actually see anyone behind the veil. I could only hear them, and sense a shadow of them.

  ‘What did he sound like?’ I asked.

  Ambrose was almost giddy with excitement, but I could see Ava was wary. I’d asked them not to tell Thorne what I was attempting because it was far more likely it wouldn’t work.

  ‘His voice was rough like gravel,’ the king said. ‘You’ll know it – you won’t have heard a voice like it.’

  ‘Alright. I’ll try. Keep Thorne and Rose away from me for a few hours.’ I walked far enough to not be distracted by the sounds of the massive camp. Then I lay on the grass and stared up at the cloudless blue sky.

  The veil was shrouding me, pulling me in, and this was never the hard part because it wanted me to walk within it. Death wanted more and more and always more. It was the leaving that grew harder each time. Voices reached me, screaming and shrieking, hissing and whispering. I concentrated on individual sounds, allowing them to disentangle. Moving through, it was hard to distinguish them, but souls pulled to each other, even through the veil. Love pulled souls together, which meant that the dead who loved, and were loved, by the people here on the plain should be closest to the divide.

  ‘Thorne,’ I whispered, and listened, listened. They were humming and the sound of the endless collective swelled to be addressed by me, by the living.

  And then I heard it. The rough edge, scratchier than the sounds around it. I reached for that shadow, feeling it between my fingers like I could feel the film of life coating the space.

  ‘I’m here,’ the shadow said in a voice unlike any other.

  I tugged at him, drawing him with me through the veil, but as I did so the surge of voices returned to screams and I felt a wave of pressure. More were following, trying to get through with us. This had never happened before and I didn’t know how to stop them. They flooded me, suffocated me, shoved at me, more substantial than I’d realised. Their wails grew so loud I thought they would burst my eardrums. A scream left my mouth, one of shock and pain. I lost hold of the veil.

  ‘Follow me,’ said the deep, rough voice in my ear. I latched onto the sound of it, reaching for his body as it grew fleshier with each second. He hummed through the screaming, hummed and hummed so I could follow his voice and know it from the rest, so I could use it to anchor me and reach to find the film of life and draw it over us.

  I gasped, utterly drained, staring at a dizzy, spinning sky. Someone else was breathing as I rolled over, onto my elbows and knees, struggling to rise. A sense of victory assailed me – I’d done it. I’d brought him back.

  A thud of pain struck my spine and I came down flat on my stomach, unsure what had happened. Someone rolled me over and I was looking up at a man. I blinked in confusion. This wasn’t how I had pictured the famous and feared Slaughterman of Pirenti. This was a small man with pitch black eyes and a cruel twist to his lips. This wasn’t Thorne – I had seen paintings of Thorne. So who in gods names had I brought back? I had been so sure …

  He placed his hand around my throat and started to squeeze, dousing my confusion. It didn’t matter who he was, only that he was about to kill me. Without thinking I sent an outraged burst of power from my hand into his body. He flew off me and landed in a crumpled heap. I tried to rise to check on him, but couldn’t seem to move my body, and then –

  The sky had turned to night. There were stars glittering and I was being lifted into a pair of large, strong arms and I sighed in relief. ‘It didn’t work,’ I tried to say.

  ‘Shh,’ my husband said. ‘It’s alright, sweetheart. Sleep now.’

  I could hear other voices and a name being spoken, a name I recognised but I couldn’t work out how. Vincent. Sleep was pulling my exhausted mind and body away, but I had a last moment of lucidity, and with it dread. Because I had distinctly felt others come through the veil with me, and I had no idea who or where they were.

  Isadora

  The dead man we found in the grass beside Finn’s unconscious body was called Vincent. Once upon a time, Ambrose had killed him in a dungeon cell for poisoning King Thorne. Prince Thorne didn’t even look at this snake of a man as he lifted his wife into his arms and carried her away.

  ‘Throw him in the swamp to rot,’ Ambrose said coldly, kicking the corpse with a heavy boot. An old fury had appeared in his demeanor for the first time since I’d met him. It said much about how formidable he had once been, and how disappointed he must be at Finn’s failed mission.

  We’d been waiting for Finn all afternoon, but as night fell Thorne wanted to know where his wife was.

  ‘How dare you?’ he demanded. ‘How dare you let her do this for you, knowing full well that it could kill her?’

  I’d never seen him so angry.

  ‘Thorne –’ Ambrose tried.

  ‘Neither her life, nor her magic, is to be used for our gain, and she certainly isn’t to be lost in favour of the long-dead,’ he snarled, then stormed off. We followed, discovering not a risen king of Pirenti but a very ugly creature in the night.

  I made my way back to one of the campfires, seeking a break from all their unwieldy desires and sorrows, from the memories they shared and were eternally connected by.

  I found Greer beside a fire, boiling water for tea, and I sank down beside her. I was grateful when she didn’t talk, but allowed me to quietly watch the flames.

  I thought of what one ought to do had she the skill. Was it arrogance to have a skill and not use it? And what if that skill was in killing? What was right?

  I stopped thinking of questions I couldn’t answer and thought instead of the plan I had been forming. Its pieces were yet to reveal themselves entirely, but the pieces mattered less than the result. Of that I was certain. There were people sitting around me with families. Husbands, wives and children, brothers, sisters and parents with whole lives of their own: people with an abundance of love, with true wealth. I hadn’t known that in my life, but perhaps that made me the best person to protect it.

  ‘Can I have a word alone with the Sparrow?’

  I looked up to see Ava.

  Greer waited for me to nod my permission, then left us alone. I looked at the wolf scar gouged into the Queen’s face.

  ‘Your faith in him is not surprising,’ Ava said, ‘but it’s also unfounded.’

  ‘Who needs enemies with family like you?’ I muttered, not in the mood to explain myself to a woman who still suspected me of treachery.

  That thought caused a shot of adrenalin to run through me – it crystallised another piece of the plan. If half these people didn’t trust me, perhaps I could use that.

  ‘I don’t say it to be disloyal or unkind to Falco. I love him. I only say it to be realistic at a time when fantasy will get us killed.’

  ‘Do I seem like a woman who lives in fantasy?’

  ‘No. You’re a woman w
ho hated your mate enough to want to sever the unbreakable bond between you. And now you’re a woman who has turned around and shown both political and personal support for that same man. What’s your game, Isadora? Or should I be talking to the Sparrow?’

  I didn’t reply, but I studied her. She was shrewd, far more suspicious of me than anyone else. I needed to stoke that mistrust for my plan to work. I had to be subtle – she was too clever to be manipulated. I would let her come to her own conclusions. And if I could see how it might benefit the Sparrow for Emperor Feckless to embarrass himself in the fight against warders, if I could see how easy it would be to take his throne in the wake of his people’s disappointment in him, then so could Ava. Indeed, if I could see how supporting Falco’s misguided desire to fight might just get him killed, then so could Ava.

  ‘The truth will reveal itself,’ I said, meeting her eyes and showing her not an ounce of emotion. That lack made people the most uncomfortable.

  Ava frowned. ‘That’s what I’m afraid of. Listen carefully, Sparrow. If you imagine yourself sweeping in during the chaos, unhindered and free to take what does not belong to you, you should expect a fight on your hands.’

  I allowed the very edges of my lips to twist. She left.

  Most had settled down to sleep.

  Food was becoming a problem – my stores weren’t going to support so many extra mouths for long. I would make my move tomorrow, when the army took to the marshes. The sooner this was over the better. And if there was a thorn in my heart at the thought of leaving, of proving Ava’s fears about me true – well, I knew how to put things in boxes.

  Two figures trickled their way through sleeping bodies and tents. I recognised his shape, of course, and the monkey-like way he moved. Penn flung himself on me, holding me so tightly. ‘You were taken,’ he said.

  ‘I’m here,’ I promised, clutching him in relief. With his touch, as always, I felt peaceful.

  ‘And a liar, as it turns out,’ Jonah said coldly.

  My eyes flicked to him, but I was uninterested in whatever he wanted to start.