“Fine. Ow.”
Emilia holds a hand out to help her off the wall. “I am sorry. Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
“You are not the only one who loves her, you know.”
“I’ve known Jules for my entire memorable life. You’ve known her less than a year. How can you already love her so much?”
Emilia lowers her eyes. It is the first time Arsinoe has ever seen her blush, and blush furiously. “Because I love her in a different way. A way that doesn’t take so long.”
Arsinoe blinks at the warrior’s reddened cheeks. “Oh.”
“How long did it take you to realize what you felt for Billy? Not your whole life.”
“Billy,” Arsinoe says. “Oh!”
“You keep saying, ‘Oh.’”
“I know. I’m sorry.” She watches as Emilia’s cheeks gradually regain their normal deep shade. “Does . . . Jules know? Does she feel the same?”
“No, and I don’t know,” Emilia says, and flashes her most confident smile. “But she will, if we can make her well enough to consider it.” She steps close to Arsinoe and takes her by the arm. “Let me carry the tether. I won’t fail her. I promise.”
INDRID DOWN
Mirabella stands at a window in the king-consort’s apartment, fingers drumming against the sill as she looks over the city. Indrid Down is ugly in winter. Dark and gray and full of smoke. And it smells. Stale almost, as if it does not get enough wind off Bardon Harbor to clear it out. It is nothing like Rolanth, where the winds smell of evergreen and the thin ice that forms along railings and on the white stone is crisp and clear as crystal.
It is almost sunset. She is to face the mist tonight, in the dark, with Katharine and the Black Council watching from a safe distance at the top of the hill. The port at Bardon Harbor will be cleared of people. So no one but the Queen Crowned and her council would know whether Mirabella succeeded or failed.
That morning, she watched from that same window as a line of carriages brought the elementals Katharine had summoned from Rolanth. Her brave “volunteers” who have the gift of wind and weather. Katharine will launch them on the same barge as Mirabella. Challengers, she calls them, when they are truly more like sacrifices.
“Come,” says Bree from behind her. “It is nearly time. We should get you into your gown.”
“Why dress me at all? Only to push me out into the dark before nothing and no one?” She turns and lets Bree do what she will. But she holds her hand up at the corset. “For this, I will need to breathe.”
Bree nods. “A poisoner contraption, anyway,” she says as she tosses it back into the trunk. “Though it does do nice things for the breasts.”
Mirabella smiles despite her dark mood. At least Bree will be there. One friendly face upon the shore.
She raises her arms as Bree slips the simple black dress over her head. It is light and unadorned, no fancy embroidery or lace, and the cloak she layers on top of it is similarly plain. Nothing expensive, in case she is dragged to the bottom of the harbor in it.
Outside the door, the guards announce that the queen is coming, and Bree steps aside. Katharine sweeps into the room, followed by two servants carrying trays of tea.
“Good. You are nearly ready.” Katharine stands before her with her gloved hands clasped demurely at her waist. She gestures to the tea. “Something to settle your nerves?”
“No thank you.”
“A little something in the stomach can sometimes help. I have brought tarts. Made with dried fruit and preserves, which we must all get used to if you cannot banish the mist by the summer.”
“That is very kind of you.”
“I wanted you to have something worthy, in case it is the last thing you ever eat.” She smiles sweetly, and behind her, the lamps flare so hot that they char the surface of the glass. “Now, now.” Katharine wags a finger. Mirabella’s eyes narrow. There is something odd about the way she is using her hands. Only one of them moves. Like there is something wrong with the other. “Save your gift for the mist.”
“I am.” Mirabella smiles, equally sweetly. “That fire was from Bree.”
Bree clears her throat and leaves. “I did not expect to be tattled upon,” she whispers as she passes, and Mirabella chuckles.
“I would have rathered it be Elizabeth here with you,” Katharine says after Bree is gone. “I am fond of her little woodpecker. I brought a small loaf of nut bread for him.”
“That is very kind.”
“Do not sound so surprised. I am kind. When I can be.”
The tone of Katharine’s voice makes Mirabella wither. Youngest triplet or not, the crown has settled upon Katharine and made her more substantial, and cast Mirabella and Arsinoe off as ghosts.
“For what it is worth,” Katharine says, “I was reluctant to agree to Rho’s suggestion of other elementals.”
“It is worth nothing,” says Mirabella, “if they die.”
“Do not make it seem simple. Being the Queen Crowned is not as easy as right or wrong. What would you do if you were to face what I face? I have spoken to the priestesses since the Ascension, Mirabella. You have done your share of sacrificing.”
Mirabella’s stomach twists, remembering the priestess she buried beneath the rocks in practice for the Quickening.
“The elementals you summoned . . . are they willing at least?”
“Of course. They have been promised rich rewards simply for making the attempt.” Katharine reaches for a tart, again with the same hand. “To be honest, they are not even afraid. Not with you there.”
“And you resent me for that. That they think I am so strong. But who knows how strong I really am? You were there at Innisfuil; you saw how the mist tore through your soldiers and all of the people I could not save.”
Katharine nods. “Pressure,” she says thoughtfully. “True, there is always pressure. But just once, I would like to be given the benefit of belief rather than the expectation that I will fail. Perhaps we are worrying for nothing. Perhaps with you there, the mist will not even rise.”
“You do not really think that.”
“No,” Katharine says. “The mist has risen for every ship that tries to leave the port. But nor do I hope that you fail.” She rubs at the black band tattooed across her forehead, perhaps unconsciously, her other hand dangling near her waist. “They want me to kill you, you know. The Black Council. If the elementals are successful and we do not need you to fight the mist. Since no one really knows you are here, it will be an easy enough thing to hide. They say you are another queen, and it is the natural solution. But do not worry. Once again, the High Priestess saved you. ‘You cannot kill her,’ she said. ‘For even if you find elementals who are strong enough to face the mist, their gifts grow stronger with an elemental queen.’”
“That is a very fine imitation of Luca.”
Katharine chuckles. “Good old Luca. Forever at your back. Even finding a way to attribute the entire elemental gift to you. But it worked. Not even Lucian could say a word. So I suppose I get to keep you, at least until both wars are over.”
“Luca is not always at my back. She would have overseen my execution. In the end, I failed her, and she chose you.” Mirabella swallows. She hates the thickness that comes into her voice at the mention of Luca’s betrayal. She is still too softhearted.
“If it makes you feel better, she did not really choose me,” says Katharine. “She chose the one she always chooses.”
“The Goddess,” says Mirabella. “The island. Like we all do.”
“Like we all do.” Katharine casts a look to the window, all shadows now, the only points of light in the city from fires and lamps. “Are you ready?” she asks without looking at Mirabella. “It is time.”
Bardon Harbor is eerily quiet as Mirabella and the elementals are loaded onto the barge. Even though it would naturally be subdued, the fishers and dockworkers gone home and the seabirds back in their nests, the silence hangs like a pall. There is not a
soul out tonight, and no faces peek from the windows. There are only the queensguard and the Black Council and Queen Katharine herself upon the shore.
Beneath Mirabella’s feet, the barge rocks gently back and forth. Normally, she finds waves soothing, but these only make her sick to her stomach.
The elementals who responded to the summons line up on her left and right. Before they boarded the barge, Katharine draped a medallion around each of their necks: a silver circle, like a coin, bearing the queen’s seal. A mark of favor, from Katharine the Undead, hung from a length of braided black cord.
“It is heavy,” says the boy next to her as he cups it in his hands. “I know she meant it as a blessing, but just now it feels like—”
“An anchor,” says a woman on her left, and they laugh.
They are afraid. Whether or not they chose to come does not change that. Mirabella looks at each of them in the torchlight. She has seen them all before—their faces glowing in the lit candles of the temple or receiving blessings on a festival day—but she does not know them well. The boy on her right is even a Westwood, one of the cousins who would sometimes visit the house with his sisters. She should have expected to see a Westwood there. Their gifts are among the strongest in the city. She remembers the boy’s name: Eamon Westwood. He had a fierce gift of wind. But she never saw him call a storm.
At a nod from Katharine, they send the barge out into the bay. They must propel themselves, using their gifts to control the currents, as not a single member of the queensguard could be compelled to row. As they go farther and farther from shore, their nerves start to betray them: gusts of wind come in sudden blusters, uncalled for and uncontrolled. When they arrived, they looked so sadly hopeful, dressed in their best as if they expected a grand ceremony.
“The queen tells me you have come of your own free will,” Mirabella says.
“We have,” says Eamon. “We were there when the mist rose in Rolanth. When it devoured the Midsummer Festival. We should have done more then, but . . .” He lowers his eyes, shakes his head.
They have seen what the mist can do. They know what to expect. That should make her feel better, but it does not.
Do not hate the mist, Luca whispered to her before they set off. It is still our protector. We still have need of it. We must only hold it at bay. Discover what will appease it.
Appease it, Mirabella thinks. Train it, like a dog.
She has always thought of the mist as an embodiment of the Goddess. An extension of her, just as the blood that runs through her own veins.
We can try to know the Goddess’s will, she thinks as if she were speaking to Luca. We can fumble about and try to please her. Or we can fight.
In Mirabella’s experience, fighting has worked better.
They are close now, close enough to see it in the distance: a barrier of fog, stretched out in both directions and straight into the sky, much farther than their torchlight can show. The barge beneath them slows as a few of their gifts slacken and hesitate. But it is too late now to turn back.
“In Moorgate Park, I saw it reach down a girl’s throat and tear out her insides,” Eamon says.
Mirabella nods. “At Innisfuil, I saw the same.”
“What are we doing? Are we mad?”
“Do not think about that now!” shouts the woman to Mirabella’s left. “Call your wind. Push it back!”
Mirabella takes a breath and feels her gift rise alongside the others’. Their courage makes her proud. As does their strength. The wind they call must be felt all the way back onshore. It must tear through the tents of the marketplace. The waves that rise will send the moored boats crashing against their docks.
But they were not fast enough. In the space of a blink, the mist has surrounded the barge. Thick arms of it creep over the side, moving so slowly and gently that not even Mirabella tries to evade it. Which is, of course, what it wants.
“Call your storms,” Mirabella says. But she does not know if she is heard. The mist has swamped the barge. She can no longer see the rear of it, and the light from the torches has been swallowed, rendering the air a sickening shade of orange. In mute horror, she watches as the mist slips over the first elemental like a shroud. When it draws back, the space where the girl stood only a breath before is empty.
“Where did she go?” Eamon screams.
“I don’t know!”
They search, turning in all directions, their wind whipping around them like a tornado.
“Oh, Goddess,” the woman to Mirabella’s left moans. “The blood.”
Where the elemental girl had stood, the deck is splashed with bright red blood, as if someone had thrown out a butcher’s bucket.
“Storms!” Mirabella shouts as they start to panic. “Stay together!” Her own storm rises, but it is fractured; she is distracted by the noise and the sight of what remains of the girl. The woman to her left wanders toward the blood, and the mist flows over her. One second she is there, and the next all is white, and a sickening scream rings out, cutting off abruptly at the sound of popping, as a hand of clenched knuckles. Worse still is the ripping noise that follows.
“I can’t . . . ,” Eamon sputters. He falls to the deck and grabs hold of Mirabella’s skirt. “I can’t!”
“You can! Focus!” She calls her storm again, eyes to the sky where thunderheads gather beside the moon. Crackles of lightning give them their eyes back, showing the strange shadows that move through the mist. “Wind,” she whispers. And the wind obeys. The elementals who remain still fight beside her; she feels their push added to her own. Their wind cuts through the gray, the diseased whiteness that surrounds them. But it is not enough. It flows through the mist like a sieve, and the mist keeps advancing.
Has it grown stronger since she last faced it? Has it taken her measure and learned new tricks?
“Ah! Help me!”
She looks down and sees Eamon half swallowed. She grasps his arm and pulls him closer as he screams.
She cannot save them. She will watch them all torn apart, turned inside out, one by one.
“Into the water!” She drags Eamon to the side and throws him overboard. “Dive! Swim for shore!”
Above, the storm bears down upon the mist. She grits her teeth, sends it coursing through the center of the blemished gray whorl. She sends lightning to crack it from the inside. Gusts to churn the waves and force the mist back to sea. Her blood sings with the rage of the weather, rage this time, not joy or freedom; she is not running on the cliffs of Shannon’s Blackway or singing a sailor safe. Her rage is blacker than the clouds that pummel the mist, louder than the wind that screams in her ears. And before it, the mist recoils. It comes apart. It turns tail and runs.
Mirabella holds the storm high long after she could let it rest. She holds it until the last weak wisps of white disappear back into the darkness.
Katharine and the Black Council watch the battle from the safety of shore, gathered before their torches, dark clothing and cloaks giving them the appearance of a murder of crows. When the elementals had cast themselves out to sea, it had taken so long for the barge to reach its destination that Cousin Lucian and Paola Vend had grown bored and started to idly complain about the state of the docks. But since the mist rose, Katharine has heard nothing aside from faint, fast breaths.
She sees them in her periphery, watching, their sight extended by spyglasses. Katharine does not bother with one. The mist is vast. She sees it swallow the barge easily enough. And her sister’s storm is impossible to miss booming out over the water.
They feel it, too: as the wind flaps through their clothing, and the rain, stinging cold and miserable, sticks their cloaks to their bodies.
“They are ditching into the water,” Antonin says. “They have failed.”
“How many are left?” asks Rho. “We should have had launches ready to retrieve any who made their escape.” She turns and barks to the queensguard, giving orders without waiting for Katharine to agree. But that is all right. She wo
uld have agreed, anyway.
“There’s blood,” Bree says, and gasps. “So much blood, on the deck.”
“Come on, sister,” Katharine whispers. “Save them.”
And as if she heard, Mirabella’s storm twists down upon the mist, joining the battle like lines of fresh cavalry. It batters the white down into the water and tears bits of it off to disappear. Just below her skin, Katharine feels the dead queens stretching toward Mirabella in awe. She cannot blame them. More than once she has wished that she were born the elemental. A storm like that would be a very useful pet to have. She watches the lightning strike and crackle across the sky in bright veins. She can see just when Mirabella tells it to attack and just what she asks it to do.
When the storm weakens, the torches on the barge relight, signaling that it is over, and that the elementals live.
“Launch the boats, Rho, like you said.” She turns to the stunned queensguard and claps her hands at them. “Now! Hurry! Make sure that they have aid!”
They go, and Rho goes with them. Katharine faces the rest of her Black Council. Bree looks so relieved that she may weep, and Luca’s lips curl in a small pleased smile. The others bow their heads, shivering in the winter wet.
“I do not need you to say that I was right to bring her here,” Katharine says. “But are you satisfied?” She cranes her neck to the men at the rear. “Lucian? Antonin? Are you satisfied?”
“Yes, Queen Katharine,” they mumble, and nod contritely.
She turns back toward the water. They will be safe now. Her port, and her people, will have nothing to fear. If she has to send Mirabella out as an escort to every fleet of ships, if she has to lash her to the prow like a living figurehead—then so be it. She will gift her sister jewels and the finest gowns. People say that she is small and vindictive, but they are wrong. She is willing to bury the past as long as the island is safe.
“But it is only a temporary solution,” Antonin adds. “Only a stalemate. And perhaps not even that. There is only one of her; she cannot protect the entire island.”
Five Dark Fates Page 6