by Grace Martin
I’d seen them dancing together once. Gwydion was bubbling over with joy because he’d just discovered he had a sister. He grabbed Andras and waltzed around the room while Aine sobbed into her long-lost father’s shoulder. I stood distant from them all and felt out of place.
Those days seemed so far away, it was like they were a dream. For Gwydion, that was twenty years ago, and he looked old now, old and haggard. For me, it was barely a week ago and it seemed like a lifetime away.
When the dance was over, Aoife rang her little bell again and all eyes turned to her. The little featherskin gasped quietly, but Cuchulainn turned her around to face Aoife, keeping her beside him.
‘Just like proper lords and ladies,’ Aoife drawled. ‘Do you think you’re as good as us, my captives?’
They looked down, even Rhiannon, and murmured ‘No, Your Majesty,’ all except Cuchulainn who said quite clearly, ‘As good as you? No, indeed!’ which brought on another ring from Aoife’s little bell and a frown.
‘Rhiannon, come with me.’ Aoife stood up abruptly, taking her wand from where it sat beside her plate. Rhiannon followed Aoife as she stalked from the room. The pair of guards followed behind.
Aoife led Rhiannon to a grand room where the walls were made of mirrors. All around us, multiplied and faceted by my insect eyes, were reflections upon reflections until it was difficult to see what was real and what was not. Aoife reached out to one of the mirrors and pressed her hand flat against the glass. Her proud reflection shimmered and the mirror dissolved before our eyes, leading to a dark staircase beyond. The Queen didn’t wait for us to wonder at this marvel, just stalked ahead of us, sure that Rhiannon would follow.
The stairs curled up and up around a central pillar. Eventually we came to a room at the top that must be near the summit of the fortress. At last, this was the White Queen’s Sanctuary.
Chapter Thirteen
It wasn’t all white as I’d expected. In fact, it was nearly the opposite. It was like being inside a room that was painted with blood. The walls were red and covered with paintings depicting people in chariots fighting horses and giants and mythical monsters. The floors were dark stone and the columns that held up the roof were purple marble.
The queen strode straight through the room and looked back. ‘Come, Rhiannon. Onto the altar.’
It was a solid block, carved from porphyry, adding to the dark, bloody layers of colour in the room.
Rhiannon hesitated. I felt her shift from foot to foot. ‘Aunt, please.’ I felt her tremble. ‘Please don’t make me do this.’
‘Do as you are told!’
Her voice cracked like a whip and suddenly long ropes were flailing out towards Rhiannon. They snaked through the air as though they were alive, rope as thick as my arm and strangely coloured. They looped themselves around Rhiannon, but she ducked out of them. A sneaky tendril came around her ankle and pulled tight, another coming from behind to loop around both her shoulders at once. It tightened suddenly and she cried out in pain as her shoulders were jerked sharply backwards. Rhiannon tried to bring her hands up to move the ropes, but they were too tight already, squeezing, pulling her back towards the altar.
‘Please, Aunt, you’re hurting me!’
Aoife laughed, then shivered, as though the knowledge that Rhiannon was in pain gave her pleasure.
‘Please, no!’
For her trouble, another loop of rope dropped over her head. She managed to get her fingers under it before it choked the life out of her. It writhed before her face and her fingers wrapped around it before I realised what it was. It wasn’t rope; it was hair! Human hair, brown and black, red and blonde, spun together into a thick rope that moved at the will of the Queen.
With a bounding sense of horror, I realised that this is what the slaves’ tethers were made of – the hair of the Queen’s victims, braided together and bound to her will.
The bands of hair tightened around Rhiannon and she was dragged and lifted until she lay flat on the porphyry altar. Aoife took out her wand, the diamond as big as an egg, like a chunk of ice at the end of the heavily engraved silver shaft and placed the tip against Rhiannon’s chest.
Rhiannon screamed, her body arching in agony, writhing in pain as a golden stream of energy swirled from her body to Aoife’s wand. ‘Let me take it all,’ Aoife crooned, patting Rhiannon’s arm like she was soothing a child to sleep. I’d seen Aoife do this before, to the dying Camiri children in the Halls of Youth. They’d been vulnerable and she’d used their vulnerability to take everything they had. Last time I’d been in the past she had killed Elisabeth when she was Empress. She’d killed Caradoc. She’d killed Elisabeth, my Sparrow, just a few days ago. She’d left me with nothing.
Rhiannon kept screaming. The golden stream was diminishing, and Rhiannon’s screams were getting quieter, but they weren’t quieter because she wasn’t in as much pain. They were growing quieter because she didn’t have the energy to scream anymore. I couldn’t bear it. And that thought made the decision for me.
I leapt from Rhiannon’s head and changed shape as I went. Aoife wasn’t ready for me and by the time I was upon her, I was in the shape of a bear. I no longer wanted any kind of poetic justice. I didn’t think any thought more complicated than the bear shape I wore. I didn’t even think of murder. All I thought of was predator and prey.
I ripped her to pieces. Bits of her face hung from my claws and I tasted her blood as I clamped my jaws tight against her neck to swallow her screams.
I was bowed over her, holding her tight in a deadly, bloody embrace, my claws ripping her open from the top of her head to as far down her thighs as I could reach. She stopped screaming. She started to bubble.
The first bolt of lightning me in the centre of my back. I arched away from the limp Queen, dropping her at my feet as I screamed. Another bolt hit me at the base of my neck and I screamed again. I turned. A dozen magi had entered the sanctuary and were walking together, advancing on me, wands out, and even as I took a stumbling step towards them, they hit me with more magic and I fell to all fours.
Rhiannon was on her knees beside Aoife. Even if I was going to die, I was glad, savagely, passionately glad, that someone had a chance to bathe her hands in my enemy’s blood.
As the magi cast glowing ropes of pure magic to encircle all my limbs, I caught a last glance of Rhiannon as she knelt beside Aoife’s body. Aoife was still making that little bubbling sound, but there was very little blood left in her body. I turned my head to watch as the magi changed me back into my human form. And then ‒ I couldn’t believe it. Rhiannon still bent beside Aoife, every vertebrae in her slender back visible beneath her ragged grey gown as she bent over the dying Queen. From Rhiannon’s hands came a faint golden glow.
Rhiannon was healing Aoife.
#
They put us into a cage again, the bars singing with an enchantment that would stop me from performing any more magic. Rhiannon was unconscious again. They’d been none too gentle about stuffing us into the cage. I held Rhiannon as I’d always held Sparrow, with her head on my lap, smoothing her hair. I didn’t understand why she’d healed Aoife, but I knew that she was empty. Rhiannon had given Aoife everything, one way and another. All she wanted was family and she’d sacrificed herself, over and over again for it. Well, I understood that. So, I sat there, my back against the singing bars of the cage, and tried to give what comfort I could.
‘So, you made it all the way to Cairastel, did you? What would possess you to come here?’
I looked over my shoulder. Aoife was there, all the blood washed away, her face intact as though I hadn’t recently ripped it off. Her magi must be good healers, although they’d taken their time about it. The morning sun was already shining on the marble floor.
‘I came here to rip your face off, clamp my jaws in your bubbling blood.’ I shrugged. ‘I’m a simple woman. I have simple goals. Why didn’t you kill me?’
‘Oh, I will, Emer.’ She came closer. ‘And I’m going to en
joy it. But first, I want Umbra. Where is she?’
‘Buried in the Library of Cairnagorn,’ I lied.
‘You wouldn’t leave her behind. Where is she?’
I still had Rhiannon’s head in my lap, so I couldn’t cling to the bars and scream at her. ‘I buried her in Cairnagorn so you couldn’t get to her.’
‘Where in Cairnagorn?’
I sighed. I didn’t want to lead her too far down this path because I was afraid I would be dead when she thought she got to the end of it. ‘Umbra won’t do you any good, Aoife. She doesn’t like you.’
‘I don’t care if she likes me! I want her! And if I can’t have her power, then I’m going to take yours.’
‘I’m afraid your magi got there before you. I spent what little I had left turning myself into a form that could rip your face off.’
That same face flushed with anger. ‘When I have Umbra in my hand, I swear I will destroy you, Emer, for all you have taken from me.’
‘All I’ve taken from you!’ I got up so quickly I would have thumped Rhiannon’s head onto the floor if she wasn’t already starting to stir. ‘I have nothing, Aoife, nothing. If I have taken anything from you, show me what I have that you want. I don’t have anything. I don’t have a name, I don’t have a family, I don’t have a home.’ I gripped the edge of the ragged shift the quarantine men had given me. ‘I don’t even have any clothes of my own, these are rags left behind in my tomb. I have nothing, because you’ve been hunting me my entire life. You have destroyed me. And still, you want more!’
‘I will have more!’ Aoife raged. ‘I will have everything, Bach Chwaer!’
She stormed from the room. So that was it. Bach Chwaer. Her mother, the Empress had named me her heir. What Aoife didn’t know was that her mother, the Empress, had been Elisabeth, thrown three hundred years into the past to grow old and bitter. Still, she’d loved me, so when she saw me again, she’d named me her heir. Aoife had never and would never forgive me for it.
Guards came later and took us to another room. I’d expected a dungeon, or a worse cage than the one we were already in. Instead, it was a plain, but comfortable room. Rhiannon had started to rouse by now and gave me a thin smile when I looked around the room.
‘These are my quarters for the days before and after the Harvesting,’ she explained. ‘My Aunt likes to make me feel like I’m a part of the household when she takes my magic. Otherwise, I dwell among the tombs on Solastel. There is a small room beyond here, where I bathe.’ She looked me up and down. ‘You might want to get that blood off you, too.’
I refrained from pointing out that Rhiannon was up to the elbows in blood, but that would mean asking why she’d tried to heal Aoife in the first place, and I was feeling too sore inside to hear the answer.
The small bathing room was as plain as the other room, but very clean. There were clean towels and washcloths on a shelf. Rhiannon handed me one and I reflected that she wasn’t nearly as downtrodden as I’d been led to believe. Sparrow and I had always washed ourselves with a bucket of water, warm if we were lucky, and a rag. The towels and washcloths Rhiannon gave me were a long way from being rags. They were what rags were before they became rags.
I digress. I do that.
She drew me over to the sink and turned on a tap. The water was clean and steaming warm in the cool evening air. ‘You might wash your hands first,’ she recommended. ‘You don’t want to be covered in blood when you get into the bath.’
I drew my head back in outraged dignity. ‘Your hands are just as dirty as mine!’
‘Yes. And I’m going to wash them before I bathe, too.’ She turned off the tap and swirled her hands in the water that filled the sink. The water turned orange.
That made me feel sick. I already felt sick, with Aoife’s blood all over my hands and on my dress and in my hair. I couldn’t take much more before I actually threw up, and since I hadn’t eaten much for a while, I couldn’t afford to lose it.
I let Rhiannon wash her hands. She dried them on a towel, still leaving bloody marks on the fresh linen. ‘I’ll let you have the tub first,’ she said.
She withdrew. I drew some more water and stuck my hands in it. It was absolute heaven. The blood was sticky and crusted on my skin. I needed to change the water a few times even before my hands were clean. Then I tried to get the worst of the blood off me, putting the ends of my hair in the water, too, to try and get the blood out of it. I felt like I’d bathed in the stuff.
I started to heave. I couldn’t change the water fast enough to keep the tint from staining it. I started to rip at my hands to try and get the blood off them, but there was too much of it. It was too much. I’d been sickened one time too often. I crouched by the bucket and threw up, holding my hair back. The last time I’d vomited, Sparrow had held my hair back for me. I started to sob as I vomited, squatting on the floor in my grave dress while I held my own hair back.
Rhiannon opened the door without asking. She must have heard me. Her face was impassive, but her hands were gentle as she wiped my face with a cloth. I dropped to sit on the floor, my back up against the wall, my legs drawn up close to my body. I crossed my arms over my knees and lowered my head into their cradle and kept crying.
My Sparrow was gone. I’d moved heaven and earth to get back to her, and I’d returned just in time to see Aoife kill her. I’d seen Aoife kill Caradoc. David was still with Maldwyn. I gripped my knees tighter. I wished I was dead. There was no life for me anymore ‒ how could life possibly go on after all I’d lost? I couldn’t bear it. I hadn’t had much before and now I’d lost it. In a rush I unfolded myself and reached for Rhiannon’s belt. There was a dagger hanging in a sheath on it, the kind people usually used to eat their meals.
I was going to slice my wrists open. I was really going to do it. It was none of this ‘cry for help’ nonsense. I was done with this world.
Rhiannon guessed my intention and lunged towards me, grabbing at the knife. I let her have it because she was so slow that if I’d wanted to, I could have had a fresh pool of blood on the floor for someone else to clean up. I’d already stopped myself by the time I gave her the knife.
I started to cry again, softer this time, my head thrown back against the wall.
Rhiannon stared at me, but I had no words to comfort her. She seemed to figure some of it out. She put the dagger far out of my reach, shoving it in the thin space where the bathtub slung over the floor on its little feet. She knelt in front of me and put her hands on mine where they cupped over my knees.
‘You saved me,’ she said.
I tried to get control of myself. ‘I’m not the nice one,’ I said. ‘I would have done it for anyone.’
‘Yes, but you did it for me. I won’t forget that Emer.’
‘Then do me a favour next time and let the bitch die.’
She flinched a little as I swore.
‘How could I not,’ Rhiannon replied, ‘when she is my family? She needed to be stopped, and you stopped her, but I couldn’t be responsible for her death. I couldn’t have that on my conscience.’
I squared my shoulders. ‘I guess I’m not the nice one, because it wouldn’t bother me at all.’
‘Why do you say that you’re not the nice one?’
‘I’m a twin. Elisabeth is the nice one.’
‘But you’re a hero, Emer. You didn’t hesitate to reveal yourself so that you could save me. Don’t put yourself down. I won’t have anyone maligning the person who saved my life, not even you.’ She sat back on her heels and let the emotional moment fall away into her usual blandness. ‘Let me help you wash.’
‘Thanks, I’d prefer privacy.’
Rhiannon snorted. ‘After what you just tried to do? I don’t think so!’ She gestured to the tub, or more specifically, what was beneath it. ‘Not with you saying destructive nonsense about you not being the nice one.’ She turned on the tap over the tub. ‘We’ll finish rinsing all this muck off you and get you into the bath. It will get cold if you’re
not quick.’
I’d been a damned fool to try it in front of her. Still, it wasn’t that I was worried about being naked. Water was a precious resource, warm water doubly so since some form of power or fire had been used to heat it. Most people washed in public bathhouses. Sparrow and I had often shared our bathwater.
‘Fine,’ I snapped. ‘You wash my hair first, though. It’s disgusting.’
Once I got into the bath I relaxed. The water was warm and wonderful. I sloshed around a little, for the sheer pleasure of feeling the water slip against my skin. I rested my head back.
After a few moments I asked for the soap. I looked down at the water and made a sound of disgust. I clearly hadn’t got all the blood off me. Maybe there was some on my back, I don’t know, but the water was orange with it. ‘Soap, for God’s sake,’ I demanded, my voice going a little shrill. ‘I don’t want to sit in this a moment longer than I have to.’
Rhiannon scrubbed my back for me. As well as the orange tint, there were little scabs of blood in the water. I got out as quick as I could. I wiped myself down with one towel then demanded another. The first one was a little stained with the residual blood that had come off in the water and I couldn’t bear to touch it.
There were fresh clothes for me to put on, clean underthings that didn’t look like anyone had ever touched them before, much less owned them, and a grey gown like the one Rhiannon wore. I dragged the garments over my skin before it was completely dry. I just wanted to forget about the whole thing. My hair was still wet, but I just rubbed it with a towel quickly and wrapped it straight into a knot, sticking the stick that had once been my wand through the loop of hair to secure it.
‘Is there food?’ I asked.
‘We are to dine with the Queen tonight. We always do, the night after a harvesting. She likes to celebrate before and after.’
That stopped me, and I wondered if I was going to be sick all over again.