51
Isangell sat on the edge of her floral sofa, fingertips pressed to her temples. ‘I can see it,’ she said. ‘The battle. All of it. I can’t unsee it.’
You might want to get used to that, Heliora advised her.
Kelpie had left her swords crossed on the floor. She sat on the window sill looking miserable, though there was no way she could see out through the blurred seal that covered the glass. ‘Hate this,’ she muttered. ‘I should be there. I should be fighting.’
‘What’s the point of me being the Seer if I’m separated from the rest of them?’ Isangell asked, and they looked at each other.
‘I don’t know,’ Kelpie said finally.
‘So open this nest of yours and let me out.’ Isangell didn’t know what to believe. But she could see soldiers with bright swords falling and dying, she could see her Forum awash with demons and angels, and there had to be something better to do than sit here and wait for it to be over.
Kelpie shifted a little and then shook her head. ‘I can’t. I don’t know if it was Rhian or that bitch you have in your head, but I can’t move. I don’t have a choice.’ She was furious, her hands clenched into fists. ‘I never have a f*cking choice. As if I might turn tail and run the second they test me. I’ve always been loyal!’ She was yelling at the ceiling now.
Isangell stood. She could move. She still had a choice. The voices in her head tried to interrupt her, but she pushed them swiftly aside. She had been ignoring meaningless chatter from inferiors all of her life.
‘We will make our own path,’ she told Kelpie firmly. ‘We will get out of here.’
She opened her mouth to say more, but was overwhelmed by the images of the battle, the taste of dust and the light in the sky, and something almost but not quite like that feeling in the air before snow fell.
She saw a boy in a brown cloak fall against the arch of the Forum, and she knew him. She could not hide her reaction from Kelpie, who sat up straight and stared at her.
‘What did you see?’
‘Crane,’ Isangell said softly.
He meant nothing to her, except that he was one of those who would have killed her that nox because the wrong person had been named Seer. But he meant something to Kelpie, she knew that much.
‘Dead,’ Kelpie said, to be certain of it. When Isangell nodded, she turned away and rubbed her sleeve roughly against her face. ‘Damn it. I promised this f*cking Court would never make me cry again.’
Isangell wanted to touch her, to say some words of comfort, but what was there to say? Nothing she knew anything about had any meaning in this new world.
The Palazzo shook from a direct blow, and she felt it break apart.
‘Saints, no!’
Be brave, Heliora told her, and then the voices in her head fell silent, though the images did not. She felt every blow, every bolt of fire and ice that struck the building. She heard the screams of the revellers at the Saturnalia ball, saw them running and burning and dying. She heard the servants wail in fear as the walls crumbled.
She saw every death.
Isangell beat her fists on the door until pain shot through her arms, and then she was sobbing, crying out. She felt Kelpie draw her away from the door and they hung on to each other as the Palazzo fell to pieces.
Her grandfather’s atrium. Her grandmama’s walled garden. The kitchens. The parlours. Room by room, it was destroyed, and the smell of death rose up through the cracks in the remaining walls.
‘This is what you saved me from,’ she whispered into Kelpie’s neck.
‘I’m sorry,’ Kelpie whispered, and there was nothing flippant about it. The demme sounded honestly sorry that she had saved Isangell like this, that they would know for the rest of their lives that they had survived while hundreds died.
It felt like hours, and then it was over.
Isangell raised her head and looked at Kelpie. ‘Now? Can you let me out now?’
‘I think so,’ said Kelpie.
She stood on shaky legs and placed her palms against the door that was not a door. It shimmered and came apart.
The first body they found was Armand, stretched across the hallway, crushed by a fallen beam. Isangell hardened her heart and stepped over him. There would be worse than this.
Half the Palazzo was too badly destroyed to even walk through. There was rubble everywhere, and charred furniture. Dead bodies, too many to count or to mourn. The nox sky gleamed through the gaps where ceilings and other floors used to be. Colours still flooded across it. The battle was not over, though no more blows fell on this particular hill.
The usual path to the main entrance was blocked, and they had to crawl and clamber their way through all manner of awkward spaces, slipping on blood-stained tiles and broken glass.
Of all places, Isangell found her mother in the librarion. She and Kelpie were wading through fallen leatherbound volumes and smashed shelves when she saw a familiar skirt sticking out from behind a chair at an awkward angle. When she looked closer, she saw a foot.
‘Who is it?’ Kelpie asked when she saw her reaction.
‘Mama.’ Isangell could not say anything else, because the tears were coming thick and fast, and how could she face this alone?
‘The sky won’t take Ashiol,’ Kelpie blurted, as if it was the closest thing she could find to comfort. ‘Seriously, it’s tried, so often he should be dead ten times over, but he has nine lives for each cat, and that’s a lot.’
Isangell could not feel anything but her own heart, beating too loudly. Two steps and she would see her mother’s dead body. Was she ready for that?
‘Let’s go find him then,’ she said abruptly, turning around and climbing over the mountain of books in the other direction. Thank the saints she was still wearing her Saturnalia costume. The gold trews and shirt might be foolish, but they were eminently more practical than what she usually wore.
‘I’ve never seen so many books,’ Kelpie said with a nervous laugh.
‘My grandfather collected them,’ said Isangell. ‘He loved to read about the history of the skywar and the early Ducs. The origins of festivals. That sort of thing.’
Kelpie’s hand slipped and she stared at Isangell. ‘People … daylight folk wrote histories of the skywar? Of the festivals?’
‘Of course,’ said Isangell. She thought she could hear laughter inside her head and firmly pushed Heliora deeper down. ‘Why?’
For the first time in hours, Kelpie did not look exhausted or miserable. Hope blazed out of her open face. ‘I think I know why we were supposed to survive here,’ she said. ‘We still have some use, after all.’
Isangell stood and watched while Kelpie rummaged through the piles of books, checking the titles and discarding those of no interest. She looked like a woman possessed.
Is this true? she asked the invader in her head. Is that what we’re here for? Can books make a difference?
There was a silence. Possibly, Heliora said finally.
Isangell frowned. Don’t you know? I thought you knew everything! Isn’t that what being a Seer is all about?
I, said Heliora, and then stopped. I don’t know. I’m only a piece of the Seer, and there isn’t much of me left. It’s getting dark.
Dark, no, not that. It was getting light. Isangell ran to the window and drew back the heavy velvet curtains, managing to keep her eyes turned away from the fallen body of her mother.
‘It’s dawn. That means it’s all over, doesn’t it?’
‘Until nox comes again,’ muttered Kelpie, still pawing through the books. ‘Gives us time to breathe. Regroup. Read.’
Isangell could not take her eyes off the city below. As the sky lightened, she could see straight down the hillside. There were fires in the Forum, and she could see damaged buildings from the River Verticordia all the way across to the Lucretine.
‘We can breathe,’ she said softly.
Bolts of blazing light streaked through the early morning sky and blasted the Church Bridge into pieces. Isangell gasped.
Kelpie dropped the books and came to join her at the window, her shoulder pressing firmly against Isangell’s. ‘Oh, hells,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Not that.’
They stood there for some time, watching the sky hurl bolt after bolt at the city as it faded from black to pale grey and then a soft winter blue.
Day was here, and the battle continued.