by Morgan Rice
Kate tiptoed through caves that seemed to glow with their own light, not sure if they were reflections of Haxa’s home, some strange imaginary place unlocked by the ritual, or something else entirely. Kate only knew that she had to find the piece of her that sealed her pact with Siobhan, if she wanted to be able to undo it.
Haxa had made it sound as if it would be easy to find, yet the corridors branched in every direction, and Kate wasn’t sure which of them she was supposed to take. She passed by cave entrances and carefully carved doorways, barred gates and tears that seemed more suited to fabric than to cloth. There were even spaces where the walls gave way to leaves, arches of trees opening onto spaces beyond.
She was walking through one of those spaces now, along a path that seemed to glimmer with silver, while around her the world opened out and shifted, becoming all too familiar. Kate recognized the courtyard of the House of the Unclaimed, although the scale seemed wrong, the space too large. It took her a moment to realize that it stood as she remembered it from the earliest days she’d been there.
There were girls there, in the gray smocks that they were all forced to wear. They moved closer, shouting taunts.
“Look at Kate, thinks she’s a boy.”
“You’re too short, and too ugly for anyone to want you.”
“No wonder your parents abandoned you.”
Even now, with the distance of memory, the insults hurt. A part of her wanted to rush forward to stop it, but as she took that first step, she saw the faces turning toward her, saw the hunger in the eyes there.
There was a trap in this; Kate was sure of it. If she threw herself into what lay beyond the glittering path, would she be able to step out again? Would the things beyond attack her? Would she find herself trapped in some dark recess of her own memory?
Kate couldn’t take that risk. She pressed on, keeping carefully to the path, and around her, the scene shifted.
There were masked nuns there now, standing tall and disapproving, some bleeding from the wounds that Kate had inflicted on them when she’d killed them. They held whips, canes, straps, and more creative instruments of torture. They started toward her, hissing in voices that had nothing to do with humanity.
“You are a thing of evil. You have no place in the world. You deserve punishment for what you are, and for the things that you’ve done.”
They came forward, swinging their weapons, and although it seemed that they couldn’t set foot on the path, their implements could still swing across its boundary. Kate made a sound of pain as a cane struck her, and had to resist the urge to fling herself at the nuns. Instead she dodged, moving along the path, forcing herself to keep going even when they called her vile.
The nuns flickered and faded, the House of the Unclaimed going with them. The things that replaced it weren’t any better though. Kate recognized the beachfront battlefield at once, complete with shimmering images of both Lord Cranston’s men and the invaders. Both sides looked at her with hatred.
“You abandoned us,” Lord Cranston said. “You rowed away and left us to fight the war without you.”
“You hid what you were,” one of his men said. “Until you left us, you lied to us.”
Will was there, or an image of him at least. Kate had to remind herself that it wasn’t real. “We kissed, and you still left. I could be dead in the war now, and you don’t know. You don’t care.”
They came for the path, while the New Army converged from the other side, forming a deadly gauntlet of blades and spears. Kate ran and dodged, throwing herself flat when she heard musket fire and the screams of the dying. Around her, fog rose as it had during that deadly battle, and now she couldn’t see the path clearly ahead of her. She had to pick her way along it one faltering step at a time.
“You murdered me.”
Gertrude Illiard walked just a step away, not on the path but beside it, as casually as if they’d both been going for a stroll. Her features were purple with the rigor of death, though, her expression fixed into the shock and hurt Kate remembered from the moment when she’d put the pillow over her face.
“I didn’t mean to,” Kate said.
“You didn’t mean to?” Gertrude shot back. “You were the one holding down the pillow. You were the one who pressed down until I stopped struggling.”
“I had no choice,” Kate said. “Siobhan made me.”
“Siobhan made me,” Gertrude said, in a parody of Kate’s voice. “You sound like a child. If you want to make it better, step off the path. Get what you deserve. You know you deserve it, don’t you, Kate?”
Kate didn’t reply, pressing onward. The image of Gertrude Illiard was just a reminder of how much she needed to do this, before Siobhan forced her to do anything else.
“Kate, help me!”
Kate spun at the sound of her sister’s voice. It came from off the path, and Kate saw her there, bound in place at a post like the one they’d kept at the orphanage.
“Save me, Kate, please!”
Kate almost, almost stepped off the path to help her.
“You aren’t the real Sophia,” she said with a shake of her head. “You’re just an image.”
“How can you say that?” Sophia demanded. “I’m your sister. You saved me from the boys at the House of the Unclaimed. We escaped the fire together.”
There were figures around her now, pressing in from all sides. There were the masked nuns, and shorter figures Kate recognized as the boys she’d fought off. There were shadowy figures half remembered from the night of the fire, and a version of Prince Sebastian, knife still dripping with her sister’s blood.
They converged on the image of Sophia, and Kate couldn’t stop herself. Even though she knew this wasn’t real, even though she knew that the real Sophia was safe back in Ishjemme, she couldn’t stand by and watch this happen. She stepped off the path toward them.
They were on her in an instant, striking at Kate with knives and hands and things that were closer to claws. Kate screamed as wounds opened in her flesh, but she didn’t stand still and let them strike at her. She charged them.
In an instant, her sword was in her hand, the runes laid into it glowing red as Kate cut and thrust, rolled and dodged. She thrust the blade through an image of a masked nun, and it flickered into nonexistence. She ducked under a soldier’s swing and cut him in half.
Everything was dark around Kate now. There was no sign of Sophia anymore, the image of her having faded in the heat of the battle. Even the path seemed so far distant that it might take an age to reach it. Even so, Kate ran for it.
Claws reached for her, spears thrust at her. Still, Kate ran, fighting as she went. She hacked down foes who wore the faces of friends and enemies alike, their features all twisted into a combination of hunger and hatred that made Kate shiver just to see it. Even the hands of the dead clutched at Kate, trying to slow her down. She ran for the path, plunging through the darkness until her feet found it.
Behind her, the images stopped short as if slamming into an invisible wall.
Kate pressed on, and now she had to stop her ears, because it was Sophia’s screams that came from every side. Sophia tortured in a hundred ways, burning alive in the fire that they’d escaped in reality, caught by Prince Rupert, torn apart by the masked nuns.
However, there was no saving what wasn’t real, no matter how hard she tried. All Kate could do was press forward, hoping that the silver thread of the path would take her where she needed to go. It felt as though she walked for hours, following the route that the path made her take, until finally, it gave way to grass.
There was no path here. Instead, Kate found herself treading on a carefully kept lawn, a fountain in the middle of it that she knew far too well. Something shined from within the fountain’s depths, and somehow Kate knew that it would be what she sought.
She wasn’t alone. There was no sign of Siobhan there, but two ghostly figures stood before the fountain, both dressed in fashions that proclaimed them long since de
ad. Kate thought she recognized them: they’d been among the ghosts Siobhan had sent to kill her, again and again, as she trained.
“This place is not for you,” one of the ghosts said, hefting a rapier.
“Turn and leave,” the other added, raising a longsword in both hands. “Our mistress has said that none may approach.”
“And I have to approach,” Kate said. “I need to break my deal with her, before she makes me do more things I’ll regret.”
The one with the rapier shrugged. “If you approach, we will strike. I will not be sent back to the place she keeps those who betray her.”
“Nor I,” the other man said. He took a defensive posture in front of the fountain.
Kate didn’t care. She needed to do this. She stepped forward, blade raised.
Instantly, the rapier wielder attacked, with all the speed and skill that one of those who had drunk from the fountain might possess. He feinted one way, then thrust the other, forcing Kate into a circling parry that barely caught his blade.
“You have skill,” he said. “Perhaps even enough to best me in earnest. I cannot allow that.”
He gestured and the longsword man came forward.
Kate knew immediately that she was outmatched. She could probably have beaten one of them as they were, maybe both if they’d been alive and susceptible to her powers. Facing two ghosts at once, though, both impervious to pain, both master swordsmen, was too much.
She gave ground, dodging the swings of the longsword, deflecting the rapier. She struck back on instinct, and although her weapon bit into the ghostly flesh thanks to its runes, that flesh healed almost as quickly. Nothing less than a killing blow would work here, and there seemed to be no way to get that.
The best Kate could do was give ground, trying to keep moving so that she never had to engage with more than one of the two at once. Even that didn’t give her a way to beat them, though, and she couldn’t just dance around forever, not achieving anything while the fountain glowed with power.
In that moment, Kate knew what she had to do.
She feinted right, started left, and then leapt forward as the others moved to intercept her. She ran past them, ignoring their attempt to turn to face her, knowing that she would have moments at most. She could already imagine the two ghosts closing in on her. She leapt up onto the edge of the fountain.
A sphere of energy glowed within, tendrils stretching out from it in waves that disappeared a moment later. It was the size of a closed fist, or a heart. Without hesitating, Kate grabbed it, snatching it up and spinning back toward her sword-wielding foes.
They were almost on her, blades raised for the killing blow. Hoping that she was doing the right thing, Kate raised the sphere of energy, then closed her hand, crushing it.
Around her, the energy exploded.
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
As soon as she woke the next morning, Sophia went searching for Rika. She had to know that her cousin was all right. Heading for her room, Sophia could see plenty of the others there too, obviously just as concerned with making sure that Rika was all right as Sophia was. The siblings crowded round, while Lars stood trying to mediate the effects of all of them in one place.
He looked over as Sophia approached.
“You, at least, should still be in bed. You need to recover as much as Rika does after an attack like that.” He looked around at the others. “I still don’t know how a thing like that could happen.”
“We were tricked,” Sophia said. “None of that matters now. Will Rika be all right?”
“She will recover,” her uncle said. “The physikers say that the scar will be very faint.”
Sophia winced at the thought that there would be any scar cutting across her cousin’s features. If she hadn’t been there, there wouldn’t have been.
“Maybe Kate can help, the way she helped me,” Sophia said. She looked around. “I’m surprised that she isn’t here.”
Her uncle shook his head. “We haven’t seen her this morning, but I will send men to look for her. I am confident that she will be safe.”
Sophia hoped so. She knew that Kate could protect herself, but even so, when there were assassins around, it was worrying that she was missing. What was she doing, leaving the castle alone like that?
“For now,” her uncle said, “there is news. A ship is approaching; one I think you might be interested in.”
Instantly, Sophia’s heart leapt with thoughts of Sebastian. Had he gotten her message? Had he finally come for her? Just as soon as that thought came, guilt followed on its heels. She’d sent a message telling anyone who read it where she was. Soon after, an assassin had tried to kill her, hurting her cousin in the process. Was it her fault that Rika had been wounded? Was it her need for Sebastian that had brought danger to them?
No, she realized, with a falling heart. It couldn’t be Sebastian. It was too soon, when she’d only just sent the message. Where was the ship from then?
She had her answer soon enough as her uncle smiled. “The vessel is from the Silk Lands.”
It took Sophia a moment to realize what he meant. The Silk Lands were where her parents had fled to, the last place that her uncle had heard of them. They’d sent out messages, more in hope than in any expectation that they might be received, yet now there was a ship approaching. Sophia wasn’t sure quite how far the Silk Lands were, but she suspected that the ship must have set off almost as soon as she arrived in Ishjemme for it to be here now.
“My parents,” she said.
Her uncle spread his hands. “I do not know for sure. There have been no messages, but we get few ships from there. For one to come now… it would be too much of a coincidence. Do you want to go down to meet it?”
Sophia nodded, unable to contain the excitement she felt at the potential the news held. She wanted to run down to the docks and stand there waving until the ship came in to the docks.
“Yes, I want to meet it,” she said.
In the end, it was a more sedate walk down to the docks, accompanied by Sienne, who was moving a little stiffly this morning after the fight last night. Sophia moved slowly for the forest cat. After she had saved Sophia’s life, the least that Sophia owed her was holding back enough that she didn’t make her wounds worse.
Jan came too, officially because there needed to be one of the Skyddars there to meet such far-off visitors, unofficially because after the events of the night before, no one wanted to take chances. He looked over to check on Sophia so often that she found herself blushing with the attentiveness of it all, or maybe not just with that.
She walked down with him through the city, to the space where the ocean spread out before them along the broad bank of the fjord that led out to sea, merchant ships and fishing vessels crowded into the space.
The incoming ship stood out, with its silk sails and its elegant lines. It was swanlike as it moved through the water, slender and serene, even as banks of oars on either side helped to guide it closer. Its woodwork was painted in bright reds and oranges, so that it looked like a flash of sunlight working its way closer to Ishjemme. Small boats moved near to it, obviously there to guide it in closer to shore, but it was clear that someone aboard already knew the best route past the rocks.
Sophia moved to the edge of the docks, waiting as the ship drew closer. Sophia had been to the docks enough times to know that normally, ships were noisy places, the constant yelling of instructions and information necessary to coordinate the actions of all those aboard. This one, though, approached in near silence. It moved up close to the docks, barely brushing them as men threw down slender ropes that nevertheless seemed as strong as steel.
“Are you all right?” Jan asked.
“I just hope that we’re not waiting here for a ship full of merchants,” Sophia said, trying to make a joke of it, but the truth was that she was worried. What if her parents weren’t aboard this ship? What if she was just standing there, ready for disappointment when the ship unloaded with no sign of
them? What if they’d sent out their messages, and all it had done was remind some Silk Lands noble that Ishjemme existed?
Sophia’s hand found Sienne’s fur, ruffling it as she waited. The forest cat pressed against her, and Sophia was grateful for her presence. It was a reminder of just how far she’d come, and that she wasn’t alone. Even if her parents weren’t on this ship, she had a whole family around her in the form of her sister, uncle, and cousins. She wasn’t the girl she had been, waiting in an orphanage with no one to rely on but Kate.
Even so, Sophia held her breath as sailors set a gangplank in place between the ship and the shore.
“Let them be there,” she whispered, then bit her lip, not wanting anyone to hear.
A figure stepped onto the gangplank, a slender man, swathed in a cloak whose inner lining shone with a dozen colors. He moved with the grace of a swordsman, and Sophia could see a light blade on his hip along with a curved knife. His clothes were strange, wrapping silks, hinting at foreign lands.
When he pulled back the hood of his cloak, though, his features were familiar ones, and the shock of red hair was a giveaway, even if it was strangely cut, shaved on one side and braided with gold strands on the other. He was younger than Sophia might have thought he was, though, certainly not old enough to be her father, probably younger than her.
Who was he then? Sophia could feel a sense of connection just looking at him, could feel the sense of power at the edges of her mind that said he was family. He looked back at her, and when he smiled, a broad and familiar smile, it took away all of the seriousness from his features.
He didn’t speak. He didn’t have to.
She heard his words as clearly in her mind as if he had just spoken them. That stunned her. There was no one else in the world who could send thoughts to her like that, so clearly, so naturally.
And what stunned her even more were the words he sent.
Hello, sister.
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