The Bone Palace

chapter 9

Isyllt’s bruised skull healed, and the ringing in her ears faded in the next few days—all the better for Kiril and the Arcanost physicians to harangue her about the poor care she took with herself. She reported to Nikos and saw the stolen goods returned quietly to the Alexios crypt. The prince praised her speed and discretion, and rewarded her from his personal coffers. The silver griffins lay in a warded box beside her bed, winking whenever she lifted the lid—not the most she’d ever been paid for her service, but the first time the money hadn’t come through Kiril and the royal accountants. She spent the first coin on a box of expensive sweets and had them delivered to Khelséa.
The matter was closed, as far as Nikos and Kiril were concerned. Not that either of them were happy not knowing the hows and whys of the theft, or what else the wayward vrykoloi might have done before Isyllt found them, but silence and discretion were too important to risk with further inquiry and exploration. Isyllt didn’t speak of her desire to investigate Forsythia’s death, because she knew she would be refused. Her oath to the Crown allowed her the leeway to do her job as she saw fit, but a direct order from the heir couldn’t be easily ignored.
She had other duties besides those of a Crown Investigator, as well. Her loyalty was first and always to Kiril and the Crown, but she was also an alumna of the Arcanost, and the regents believed in using their students as long and as often as they could. So in between any government work she taught necromancy and entropomancy to small advanced classes, and picked up stray lectures for the beginning courses.
On the eighteenth of Hekate she spent the last two hours of the morning in a frigid lecture room that reeked of brine and squid. Several dozen squid lay on slabs of ice all around her, and one unlucky specimen on the dissecting table in front of her, next to knives and bowls and vials. Glass and steel and pale flesh glistened under her witchlight.
“As I hope you’ve already learned in lyceum, squid use their ink to confuse and escape predators. Scribes, cooks, and alchemists all have different uses for it. In spellcraft, the ink is a valuable component in charms of illusion, distraction, and obfuscation.” Had she been in a happier mood, she might have dragged answers out of the students, amusing herself with their wide eyes and stammering, but her head was still tender and the stink and cold weren’t helping.
“Squid ink can be purchased at any alchemist’s, but you never know when you may need to harvest your own.”
Her voice carried to the top of the narrow amphitheater, over the rough susurrus of a hundred students breathing and coughing and sniffling, and the rasp of pens and charcoal against paper. Teaching wasn’t the worst profession she could imagine; had any other mage but Kiril trained her, it might have been hers. Exorcists and ghost-whisperers were eight for an obol in Erisín, but true entropomancers were rare and much coveted by the Arcanost. It might still become her profession, if she crippled herself doing something stupid. She kept her left hand—ungloved for fine control on the dissection knives—from twitching, but couldn’t stop the wry twist of her mouth.
“The squid must be fresh,” she said, lifting her forearm-length specimen carefully by the mantle and shaking it so the spotted flesh rippled. Her magic spread through the corpse, lending shape and animation where it would otherwise be limp and gelatinous. One tentacle twitched, groping cold and wet for her fingers, and someone in the upper tier hissed in revulsion; Isyllt didn’t try to control that smile. “If the meat has turned pink or smells like a fishmonger’s gutter, throw it out.” Half the class leaned back in their seats, grimacing, while a few leaned forward. Some days her purpose was to mark those with strong stomachs and curiosities, but today she wasn’t hunting baby spies.
“There are two places from which to extract ink—the main sac in the body, and smaller deposits behind the eyes. To reach the primary sac, pull the tentacles and head away from the body cavity—the intestines will come with them. You’re looking for a narrow silvery bag.” The squid came apart in her hands, easier for her than it would for the students. With the tip of a knife, she teased the brighter piece out of the gelid white guts and held it up.
Movement at the top of the room caught her eye. There were always stragglers slipping in late, and students from the University or Lyceum trying to sneak glimpses of sorcery—rarely finding it as exciting as they hoped—but this thin, dark-clad skulker was familiar. Isyllt didn’t comment as Dahlia eased the door shut and slipped into the shadows of the farthest row, or even give the girl a second glance. The school employed runners, most of whom were children, but in theory any urchin shouldn’t be able to walk in from the street.
“The ink can be mixed with any number of media, depending on your purpose. Linseed for writing or painting, vinegar for cooking, blood, wine, ashes, grease or oil for unguents, and so forth. For today’s purposes, we can simply puncture the sac and squeeze it into a dish.” Blue-black ink seeped under her fingernail as she did so, and the pungent ocean-smell of iodine cut through the air.
She had the attention of the whole class, but she still felt Dahlia’s gaze, interest sharp as needles on her skin. Whatever reason had brought the girl here, curiosity held her now. Isyllt remembered being in the girl’s place all too well, and found herself standing a little straighter and brightening her witchlight.
“Next, the ink behind the eyes. First squeeze the head to remove the beak. Perhaps I could find a volunteer?”
After her demonstration, Isyllt summoned the students down to the floor and set them on a squid of their own. When they were engrossed with the task—or slumped in chairs breathing shallowly and trying not to vomit—she scrubbed her hands on a towel and waited by the lower door for Dahlia to join her. The girl moved soft as a mouse, not taking her eyes off the dissections in progress. Isyllt studied her torn stockings and tattered gloves out of the corner of her eye and tried not to frown.
“You said to find you if I learned anything about Forsythia,” Dahlia murmured, her lips hardly moving. Now she looked at Isyllt, and her wide slate-blue eyes were hard and serious. “Do you still want to know?”
The citizens of Elysia were long used to Vigils nosing around and quickly losing interest in deaths and disappearances. Isyllt imagined that Forsythia’s body had already been shipped to a pauper’s grave on the edge of the city, to free the slab for someone with family to miss them.
“I do,” she said, just as quietly. “Walk with me.” The girl lingered for a moment on the threshold, staring almost wistfully at the slabs of ice and dead squid and softly cursing students.
“Do you enjoy dissections?” Isyllt asked as they maneuvered through the halls, already clogging as instructors released their students to lunch.
Dahlia gave her another measuring look. “I enjoy learning how things work,” she said. “And what they’re good for.”
An underclassman stumbled out of their way, wide eyes trained on Isyllt’s ring, and held the door for them. She gave him a smile for his attentiveness and nearly laughed as he blanched and scurried away.
The day’s chill was pleasant after the bite of refrigeration spells. Brown leaves rattled over the lawns and cobbled walks, and the sun was a pale disk behind a low vault of clouds. Starlings and swallows clustered on the domes and spires, occasionally scattered by an encroaching hawk or raven. Voices rose up all around as students crowded the paths and converged on vendors’ carts for their noon meals. A protest gathered across the square.
“Let’s find something to eat,” Isyllt said, “and you can tell me your news. What do you want?”
Dahlia shot her a sideways glance. “Calamari?”
Isyllt snorted. “You missed the first part of my lecture, about the uses of the ink.”
The girl’s eyes glinted with a repressed smile. Sandy olive skin and black curls were common enough in Selafai, but her long-lashed blue eyes were striking. “No I didn’t. I listened at the door. Illusion. Distraction. Obfuscation.” She stumbled a little over the last.
“Confusion,” Isyllt supplied, “obscuration. Hiding. Sometimes hiding in plain sight.” She licked her ink-stained finger and smeared a faint grey smudge on Dahlia’s forehead, like a temple’s ashen benediction. Her own look-away charms worked well enough, but to divert attention from two people in a busy place she was glad for the ink’s extra focus.
Dahlia let Isyllt take her hand and didn’t flinch from the touch of her crippled fingers. After a few steps, it became apparent that the spell was working very well indeed. Some of the more perceptive pedestrians stepped around them, even as their eyes slid past, but more were entirely oblivious, and would have run them over had they not dodged. Dahlia had the grace and slightness of youth, if not a decade and more of practice, and they passed the worst of the crowd without collisions.
Isyllt knew she was showing off, and shook her head at her own folly. From the directions she caught the girl’s gaze wending, she was also encouraging a young pickpocket.
She dropped the spell in front of a kiosk at the edge of the quadrant, startling two young men enough to claim their place in line. The vendor hardly blinked, inured to sorcerers’ tricks. Isyllt bought two trenchers of fried calamari and dolmathes, and found a seat on a low wall beneath an alder tree.
They ate in silence for a while, punctuated by the crunch of breaded rings. “What information do you have?” Isyllt finally asked, licking spiced salt and lemon off her fingers.
Dahlia looked up from her nearly empty trencher, muscles working along the curve of her jaw. She scrubbed a sheen of oil off her mouth with the back of one hand. “I found someone who knew her. Who knows her name.”
A true name, along with the lock of hair now safely tucked into her kit, might be enough to conjure with. “Will your contact talk to me?”
“He will. But he wants to know that you’ll do something.”
The protesters—Rosian and natives both—were yelling about justice and wrongs, about the law’s disregard; she didn’t appreciate the reminder. Some onlookers shouted encouragement, others heckled and jeered. Go home, some called, and the increasingly familiar cabbage-eaters.
Isyllt frowned at the grease-stained bread in her hands, breaking off chunks and tossing them across the cobbles. Brown clouds of birds descended on the morsels. “I want to find Forsythia’s killer. I want to stop him. But I can’t promise you justice.”
Dahlia laughed bitterly. “If you did, I’d know you were lying.” She devoured her bread in quick, methodical bites and dusted her hands on her skirt. “Meet me at the Briar Patch tonight, after the Evensong bells.”
She vanished well enough without sorcery.
The protests in Archlight weren’t the only ones. Isyllt passed more crowds on her way through Elysia—angry Rosians demanding attention, and locals trying to ignore them or shout them down. Of Vigils she saw very few.
Civil unrest wasn’t enough to scare away the Briar Patch’s custom. The tavern was packed, and a wall of noise and heat rolled over Isyllt as she opened the door. Ciaran played elsewhere, replaced onstage by a trio of hennaed women singing bawdy songs and dancing with pantomimed drunkenness. The crowd knew all the words, or invented new ones with enough conviction that it hardly mattered.
Isyllt slipped in just before the cathedral bells tolled. She wore a plain grey dress and dark cloak instead of her usual leathers, with soft knit gloves to hide her hands. It was a guise that would avoid certain kinds of attention, but might attract others. Luckily the drunks were far more interested in the charms of the performers than in a skinny woman lurking in the corner. Even Isyllt couldn’t look away when one dancer teetered on the edge of the stage, pinwheeling her arms and leaning so far forward that only a scrap of lace kept her breasts from spilling out of her bodice. A dozen hands stretched out to steady or grope her, but she twisted away with an almost accidental grace, stumbling into her nearest companion instead and sprawling them both across the boards in a tangle of curls and petticoats.
Amidst the shouts and laughter she heard coughing and sneezes, sniffles drowned in sleeves and handkerchiefs. Sickness had its seasons, as with everything. Cholera and bronze fever in the warm months, influenza in the cold. Influenza had claimed the lives of more than one childhood acquaintance, but she had never loathed and dreaded it like the summer plagues. From the cholera that took her mother to the fever that claimed Lychandra and nearly Kiril with her, illness was the one thing that left Isyllt helpless and useless—she would face vampires and murderers over that any day.
A quarter-hour after the Evensong faded, Dahlia emerged from the kitchens. Catching Isyllt’s eye, she nodded toward the back stairs. Isyllt followed, narrowly avoiding being soaked with beer when a table toasted too enthusiastically. Someone groped at her skirt and she was hard pressed not to break his wrist as she dodged.
Dahlia unlocked a room on the second floor and kindled a lamp on a narrow table. A hard wooden chair and an equally narrow bed were the only other furniture, all grey with age. A cheap room for the night, not the sort of place to bring clients. Isyllt put her back to the unwindowed wall and waited for her contact.
She wasn’t particularly surprised when Mekaran walked in. The peacock wore black tonight, snug leather trousers and a long silk jacket. His bootheels tapped softly on the hollow boards, nearly lost in the clamor rising from below. His face was stark and beautiful under white powder and kohl, and the lamplight glowed in his sunset hair. He closed the door behind him and turned the lock.
Isyllt raised her eyebrows. “So you could have answered my questions when I first came round, and saved us all some time?”
“I don’t hand out my friends’ names to necromancers, even when they’re dead. Especially when they’re dead. I’ve heard enough empty promises from the marigolds. But Dahlia thinks you really mean to help.”
“I mean to catch Forsythia’s killer, and make sure he doesn’t do it again.”
“Ilora,” he said after a long silence. “Her name was Ilora, though she tried hard enough to forget it. What is it you think you can do with that?”
“Find her ghost, I hope. She didn’t linger with her body, nor where we found it. But since she was killed elsewhere, she may not be lost beyond the mirror yet. And if I can find her, perhaps I can find her killer.”
He cocked a painted eyebrow. “So it wasn’t that demon lover of hers? The vrykolos?”
“No. He didn’t know who did it, either.”
“Didn’t?”
“He’s dead now too.”
Mekaran’s lip curled, then tightened in a frown. “I want to say good. But perhaps I shouldn’t. Lori cared for him, as repulsive as I thought it.”
Isyllt sank onto the edge of the bed. The sheets were clean, but still musty from a succession of too many bodies. “Tell me about her.”
The wariness returned. “Why do you care?”
“The more I know, the easier it will be to find her.”
He began to pace, lithe as a caged cat. “She was Ilora Lizveteva once. From Gamayun.” Grey eyes gleamed as he glanced at Isyllt. “My mother was from Sirin—different provinces, but both sacked by the Ordozh. They met when Lori first came to Erisín. My mother asked me to watch out for her. I tried.”
He hesitated, with the pained look of one on the verge of breaking a confidence. Isyllt waited silently, trying not to fidget as the bed frame ground into her sacrum through the narrow mattress.
“Lori was raped on her way to Selafai. Not by the Ordozh, but by other refugees. My mother always told me how the Rosians set great store on virginity. It has power, whether kept or given freely, and hers was stolen in exchange for blood and bruises. I tried to help her, but it marked her deep. When she learned how the flowers give up their old names and take new ones…” He shook his head. “She wanted to be Daffodil, like me—thank the saints someone else was already using it. I don’t think I could have stomached that. I tried to talk her out of coming to the Garden at all, but so many of her people—of our people—end up here. The lucky ones, at least, who don’t sell themselves in filthy alleys in Harrowgate. And Lori was beautiful—all her scars on the inside. I tried to look after her.” He folded his arms across his stomach as if he could ward off his failure.
“You’re more than an innkeeper,” Isyllt said.
Mekaran unbuttoned one sleeve and rolled it up. Sinew and lean muscle flexed under pale skin. He held out his arm to show her the underside, and the black mark branded there: a rose, with barbed vines twining beneath it. “Do you know what this means?”
She’d never seen the mark before, but anyone from Elysia had heard the stories. “You’re a thorn. An enforcer for the Rose Council.”
“I thought I could help her. Keep her safe.”
Raucous laughter rose to fill the silence.
“Is that enough for you?” Mekaran asked. He straightened his sleeve with precise, exaggerated movements.
“I think so. Thank you.” She stood, careful of her elbows in the narrow corner.
Mekaran shifted his hips, planting himself squarely in front of the door. “You’re not doing this without me.”
Isyllt’s lips tightened. “This is an investigation, not a public spectacle.” She withheld the word Crown, and so kept it from being a lie.
“This is Rose Council business. The Roses don’t like it when their flowers are murdered, and they know better than to trust your authorities. And,” he said with a narrow smile, “if I understand your sorcery, you’ll have better luck with me here. I knew her, after all.”
Isyllt snorted, but couldn’t dispute the truth of that. “Here?” A wave of her hand encompassed the narrow room, the noise and stink of spilled beer rising through the floorboards. “You want me summoning ghosts in your inn?”
He didn’t budge. “You’re a professional, aren’t you?”
She couldn’t argue with that either. “Fine. But you’ll not breathe a word of anything we hear to anyone. Not even the Roses. Neither of you,” she added, glancing at Dahlia, who had curled into the shadows of the opposite corner. The girl was very good at staying silent and still.
Mekaran nodded slowly. “My oaths don’t require me to report all the details. If it will help find Lori’s killer.”
Isyllt studied the room. She could cast a circle and go for theatrics, but it would be ridiculous given how the floorboards gapped. Instead she shed her cloak, leaving it puddled across the foot of the bed, and removed the exorcist’s kit from her skirt pocket. It served just as well for summonings.
“Latch the shutters,” she told Dahlia, sinking cross-legged onto the floor between the bed and table, “and douse the lamp.” A tiny bit of theatrics never hurt.
Darkness filled the room as the flame died, broken only by the light slivering between the floorboards and through the shutters. It retreated again as she conjured witchlight, settling in the corners thick as tar.
“Sit facing me,” Isyllt told Mekaran. “Since you’re so eager to be my focus.” She opened the kit and drew out the scrap of silk tied around the lock of yellow hair. The cold light didn’t flatter Forsythia’s shade of blonde.
He sank to the floor, the creases on his brow drawn stark and black. “What do I need to do?”
“Keep still, and hold this.” She set the lock of hair on his palm, and his fingers convulsed around it. Next she laid her mirror between them, directly under the floating light.
“Ilora Lizveteva. By flesh and memory I call you, and by the name of your birth.”
A shiver answered; the woman’s soul wasn’t yet lost. But neither did she respond. Isyllt repeated the invocation. This time the shiver was stronger, a wordless denial. Something opposed her, something that smelled of sorcery and cinnamon, rust and copper. Blood, and blood magic.
Despite many superstitions, necromancy and haematurgy had little in common. Blood had just as much to do with life; Isyllt’s magic began when the last red pulse slowed and cooled. But any street witch or charmwife knew how powerful blood was in spellcasting. She slipped a scalpel from her kit and stripped her gloves off with her teeth.
The blade traced a cold line down her palm, beside the scar of the wound that had broken bone and severed tendon. Heat followed a heartbeat later, and crimson raveled across the creases of her palm.
“Ilora Lizveteva, I call you with blood, with flesh and memory and the name of your birth.”
She shuddered with the force of the conjury, and still Forsythia resisted. The magic and her recalcitrance were separate—the former weakened while the latter grew.
Isyllt realized her error then, and bit back a disruptive curse. She clenched her bleeding hand and hissed as pain spread up her arm. “Forsythia. With blood and pain and the name of your heart, I call you.”
The magic stretched like a wire and snapped. Isyllt’s head whipped back with the force of it and Mekaran hissed. The light in the mirror splintered and scattered as the ghost burst through the glass with a wail. Isyllt’s ring pulsed bright as a star.
In the echoing silence that followed, Isyllt heard the chaos below still, imagined the cold chill that rushed down a dozen spines simultaneously. Then the song resumed, louder than ever.
Forsythia stood in front of Isyllt, arms folded miserably across her stomach. Her ethereal form shimmered softly, pale and drained of color. Death dulled her brazen hair and turned her low-cut dress a drab shade of grey. Her slender throat was unmarred, but when she spoke it was a ragged whisper.
“What do you want?”
“L—Lori?” The steel had left Mekaran’s voice, replaced by grief and fear. “Is it really you?”
The wraith turned, and the brush of her skirts chilled Isyllt’s legs to the bone. “Meka?”
Mekaran scrambled to his feet, one hand reaching for his friend. He recoiled before Isyllt could warn him away—the embraces of the dead offered no comfort, only a sepulchral chill. “It’s me, Lori.” Tears shimmered silver in the ghostlight and left streaks of kohl down his cheeks.
“I told you not to call me that.” She twisted away, hair coiling around her face as she tilted her head.
Isyllt pushed herself backward and onto the bed. “Forsythia.” Now that she knew its power, the name rang in the air. The ghost turned to her, and her eyes were puddles of shadow threatening to spill down her cheeks.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Isyllt. I’m trying to find the person who killed you.”
One white hand flew to her throat, then knotted in the neck of her gown. She shook her head, and her other hand clenched in her skirts. “I can’t. I can’t.”
“You can,” Isyllt said. “I have to stop them, and you’re the only one who can help me.”
Even the dead could be coaxed. Forsythia drifted closer. “I was—I was waiting for Whisper.” Her hands kept fretting with her dress, and she lowered her face and hid behind the veil of her hair. “I can’t. It’s gone.”
“You were waiting for Whisper,” Isyllt said, low and soft. “In the alley off the Street of Thistles. It was sunset, and the sky glowed. Birds flew past the rooftops.” If the witness had been alive, she might have taken her hands and sat her down, but this memory-walk would have to be done without a soothing touch.
“Birds,” Forsythia whispered, fingers twitching. “Birds watching me, following me for days. Whisper promised to meet me. We were going to disappear, leave the Garden and the tunnels and find somewhere safe. But he didn’t come.”
“What happened next?” Isyllt prompted when the silence stretched.
“Someone else came. Another vampire—his hands so cold and strong. I couldn’t see, and then he pressed a rag to my face.” She shook her head, hugging her shoulders. “It smelled awful, sharp and sickly sweet, and then there was nothing.”
“Sweet vitriol,” Isyllt muttered. A physician’s drug, or a slaver’s. “This other vampire—you’re sure it wasn’t Whisper?”
“Of course! He would never hurt me. And when this one grabbed me, he was taller than Whisper.”
“Do you remember anything else?”
The ghost nodded miserably. “I woke again later. I don’t know how long. My eyes were still covered.”
“What else did you notice?”
“It was cold. The air was stale and I could still smell the stink of the drug. I lay on stone—my leg was numb from it. They were talking. Arguing.”
“They?”
“The vampire and a woman.”
“What did they say?”
“He said… I was a distraction, and I had to be dealt with. That Whisper was endangering the tunnels with his visits and gifts.” Her hand rose to the neck of her dress again, and Isyllt wondered if that was where the ring had been sewn. “She said—” She shook her head again. “I don’t know. I was cold and scared and confused, and I couldn’t concentrate. I’m not remembering it right.”
“You’re doing fine.” Isyllt stood and took Forsythia’s cold ephemeral hands in hers after all. Her bones ached by the time she eased the dead woman onto the edge of the bed. “Everything you can think of will help me.” Behind them, Dahlia scrambled away from the spreading chill. The room was too small for four people, even if one was less substantial than the rest.
“I couldn’t concentrate,” the woman said again, calmer now. “I felt sick, and I was sure if I moved I would vomit. My head ached. And even worse, my skin crawled like I was covered in insects. Everything felt… wrong. Not only me, but the air, the stones under me. I couldn’t even be frightened, it was so terrible. I’ve never felt anything like it.”
Isyllt frowned; she had, only days ago. But she couldn’t trust too much in the memories of a woman blind and sick with drugs. “What did the woman say?”
“I don’t remember.” She sounded regretful now, not defensive. “I was too busy trying not to be sick. But at first I thought she didn’t want to kill me. Then she was standing over me and she was angry. You let them use you, she said, and now you’ll die for it, and no one will save you or mourn for you. You’ll be forgotten. I was terrified then, and crying, and she knelt and caught my face in her hands. None of us are innocent, she said. Her hands were cold and strong as the vampire’s, but all I could smell was her perfume—orange and cinnamon. Then they hauled me up. I vomited, and they swore but didn’t let go. I was screaming and choking. I tried to fight but they were both too strong.”
Forsythia shook now, a deep bone-wracking shudder; Isyllt shook too, from shared horror and chill. Mekaran leaned close, his painted mask cracking with grief, but either fear or sense kept him from interrupting.
“They bent me over a table. Hands on my arms and hands in my hair, and I couldn’t tell who held me and who held the knife. The blade was cold for an instant, and then hot—the blood was hot and then cold where it soaked my dress. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t scream, couldn’t get the stink of blood and bile out of my nose. Everything grew colder and colder—”
As she spoke, the white skin of her throat parted and tenebrous black blood spooled down her chest. Her mouth worked but her voice faded to a wet hiccupping gasp. Panic twisted her face and the darkness in her eyes spilled free as well. The temperature plummeted as terror and pain gave her strength.
The last of her restraint broke and Isyllt pulled the dead woman into her arms, held her as she shook and whispered to her low and fast. “It’s all right. It’s over. They can’t hurt you anymore. You’re free of them, and you don’t have to wear their shackles.” She wrapped a hand over the wound, pressing icy flesh together. Her ring blazed so fiercely the shadow of her bones showed through.
“Rest,” she murmured, each breath a frosted plume. “Rest, Forsythia, Ilora. Stay with me. I’ll keep you safe. I’ll find them, I swear. I’ll stop them.” Madness, to make vows to the dead, madness and folly, but the woman wept like a child in her lap and the words tumbled past her lips before she could stop them. “I’ll stop them.”
With one last sob, Forsythia faded. The diamond flared once as a new soul entered, then dimmed. The room was black without its light.
Isyllt’s pulse roared in her ears, drowning the song and voices below, dulling the closer sounds of weeping. She tried to move, but her limbs were frozen and useless. She tumbled off the edge of the bed, landed hard on one hand and hip. Her wounded hand—the pain of that cut through pins-and-needles numbness.
Something scratched and chattered in the darkness; glass rattled against wood. A tiny opportunistic spirit trying to slip through an unguarded mirror. Isyllt pressed her bleeding hand to the cold surface and banished it with a word. She fumbled the silk cover over the glass and shoved it back into her kit as the lamp glowed to life again.
Mekaran and Dahlia both wept. The thorn had fallen to his knees, while the girl pressed a fist against her mouth hard enough to split skin.
“What happened?” he asked, stopping before he scrubbed his cheeks. “Where is she?”
“Safe,” Isyllt rasped. The cold had stolen her voice. “Resting.” Her teeth began to chatter. She stumbled twice as she stood. She needed to rest, to get warm, but she couldn’t stay in this narrow coffin of a room any longer. Mekaran called her back as she fumbled with the door, but she only shook her head.
The warmer air of the hall dizzied her, the smells of beer and food and sweat. She tripped on an uneven floorboard, staggered into the wall hard enough to send a sharp shock down her right arm, and fell to her knees in a tangle of skirts.
A worn pair of boots stopped in front of her and a familiar voice spoke her name.
“C—Ciaran?” She could hardly raise her head. The chill in her bones curved her spine into a fetal hunch.
“Saints and shadows,” he whispered. “What have you done to yourself this time?”
Footsteps shivered through the floor as Mekaran and Dahlia followed. Ciaran cut off Mekaran’s stammered explanation. “Later. I’ll take care of her.”
He crouched beside her and wound an arm under hers; his flesh burned. She barely kept her legs from buckling as he hauled her to her feet. “You have to walk,” he told her. “My room is another flight up and you’re too tall to carry up these stairs.”
“I’m not staying.”
“You’re not leaving—there’s rioting outside the Garden. Besides, you’d stay in this hall all night if I dropped you. I’d like to think my bed is the more pleasant option.”
She gave up arguing and concentrated on moving her feet. And, when she finally collapsed on to Ciaran’s bed and breathed in the musk and spices that lingered in his pillow, she was forced to agree. He piled blankets on top of her and kindled the brazier. Light glowed through cut brass, tracing filigree patterns across the walls and ceiling. Isyllt closed her eyes and curled tighter. Feeling returned to her extremities, but the ice settled thick and deep in her core.
The bed creaked as Ciaran wedged himself between her and the wall and held her close. It wasn’t wide enough for two, but that had never stopped them before.
“You push yourself too hard.” His beard tickled her neck, but she couldn’t pull away. “You’ll die if you don’t stop this.”
“Maybe not even then.”
“What do you mean?”
It was not the sort of thing to be spoken of, but she was too numb to care. “You know the old stories of necromancers being beheaded and burned when they die? They aren’t just superstition. We have the choice, at the end—or so I’m told. We can let our souls depart for the other side of the mirror, or we can stay. Either as powerful specters, or as the undead.” Necrophants, the risen mages were called, and even the Arcanostoi said the word softly or not at all.
This must be what it felt like to die, Isyllt thought, cold and aching and hollow. She couldn’t imagine an eternity of this, no matter how powerful it might make her.
Ciaran stilled, his breath rough. Then he squeezed her and kissed her neck. “I prefer living women.”
She laughed, and the ice began to crack. As it melted, she began to sob. For Forsythia, for all the dead flowers whom no one mourned, for all the cold and hollow dead. Tears scalded her cheeks and soaked the pillow until, finally warm again, she slept.
She woke later to stuffy heat and the fire died to embers. Blankets tangled around her legs and sweat stuck her dress to her back. She grimaced at the taste of salt thick in her mouth.
Ciaran sat on a chest by the window, rolling a wine bottle between his palms and frowning at the night-black glass. A draft rolled over the cracked-open casement, and the single candle flame danced with it. The earlier ruckus had faded, and from the depth of the silence she guessed it must be the final terce. Release, Selafa?ns called this hour, for all the deaths and births that it witnessed. Her mother had called it the wolf’s hour. The night smelled faintly of smoke.
“The riots have stopped,” Ciaran said, not turning from the window. “The Vigils finally came, after a few shop windows were broken and fires started.” He glanced back at her. “Feeling better?”
“Mostly. I think that wine might help the rest.”
He uncoiled from his perch and hopped lightly from chest to bed without touching the floor or spilling the bottle. He’d been a wire-thin sneak thief when they’d met fifteen years ago—food and wine and less sneaking had thickened his waist since, and put more flesh over his ribs, but he still had a tumbler’s grace.
Isyllt took the offered bottle as he settled beside her. Syrah, thick and sweet and well-fortified; she rolled a mouthful over her tongue to wash away the taste of sleep and tears. She handed it back after another long pull. “Thank you.” She trusted him to know she meant for more than the wine.
The liquor brought a flush to her cheeks, which worsened the discomfort of her clinging dress. She rose to undo the laces, kicking the gown away when it puddled around her feet. It reminded her too much of Forsythia’s pale fragility. Gooseflesh crawled over her limbs as she moved in front of the draft. She expected Ciaran to flirt or tease, but he stayed quiet, still frowning at his wine. She waited, lifting her hair to let the breeze cool her sticky neck.
“Azarné came to watch me play tonight,” he said at last.
“Oh,” she said, and marveled at her own wit. “I thought you preferred living women.”
His mouth quirked. “I do.” Finally he looked at her and set the wine aside. She took the invitation and sat beside him again. “Even ones half-starved and pale as you.” He dropped a kiss on her shoulder, but his heart wasn’t in it. “But—”
“But she’s beautiful anyway,” she finished. “Do mice find cats beautiful, before the kill? Or owls?”
“If mice have poets, I think they must. I understand how Forsythia could have been seduced.”
Isyllt thought of the lure of Whisper’s eyes, the shiver Spider’s touch gave her. “Yes.” She ran her fingers across Ciaran’s shoulders, over the sensitive place at the nape of his neck to watch him shudder. “Will you be safe?”
“Are any of us?” He kissed her shoulder again, lingeringly this time. “This room is warded, though, and I always watch where I walk at night. Will you?”
She pressed her face against his neck to hide her frown, but imagined he felt it anyway. She couldn’t turn aside from Forsythia now, and that meant hunting vampires and blood-sorcerers. She laid a hand on his chest. “As safe as I ever am.”
Ciaran’s chuckle reverberated beneath her palm. “I don’t find myself comforted.” He eased the straps of her shift off her shoulders and her skin roughened in the wake of his touch.
Her fingers tightened in his hair, baring the line of his throat. “I’ll distract you from your discomfort.” Her tongue flicked across his collarbone, and his breath caught.
The bed was still too narrow, but that had never stopped them before.