The Bone Palace

chapter 10

Savedra woke to a soft, insistent tap on the door. She had a moment of disorientation at the unfamiliar bed and the different echo of knuckles on wood. Annoyance chased confusion when she realized the sky beyond the window was still a dull pre-dawn grey. By the time she’d stumbled out of bed and found a robe, she recognized the rhythm of the knock as Ashlin’s.
“What is it?” she asked, tugging the door open. Her mouth was dry and sour with last night’s wine, her head thick—she should remember to stick to brandy. Her back still ached, and her limbs were as stiff as Ashlin had promised.
Ashlin was already dressed and moving much too quickly. She paced a quick circuit of the room while Savedra shut and relatched the door. “How far is it to the Sarken border?”
“What?” She rubbed her eyes and sank onto the edge of the bed. “I don’t know. A day’s ride, maybe, or less. Why?”
“Your missing relative married a march-lord, didn’t she? So maybe that’s where we’ll find news of her.”
Savedra blinked. “This couldn’t have waited till dawn?”
“Not if it’s a day’s ride. You’ve had your paper chase, now let’s try something more tangible.”
She wanted to argue, or simply crawl back into bed, but there was a logic in it, and Ashlin’s bright-eyed enthusiasm was beginning to penetrate her wine-fogged wits. “You have a lot of border-riding experience, don’t you, Sorcha?”
Ashlin grinned. “I may have stolen some Vallish honey in my misspent youth. And I could hardly do that under my own name, could I? It would be indiscreet.”
Savedra snorted. “Cahal said you were self-destructive.”
Dyed eyebrows quirked. “Did he now? Well, not that destructive, at least. Not so much as to make my father go to war to ransom me. Come on—you might be dressed before noon if you hurry.”
In spite of Ashlin’s teasing and her own preference for leisurely mornings, Savedra stamped on her riding boots as the sun crested the lowest slopes of the Varagas. Her face stung from harsh alchemical depilatory powder, and her hair was an unhappy tangle of braids and pins without a maid and an hour of combing, but she was dressed.
Iancu awaited them in the kitchen. The lines on his face seemed to have deepened overnight, which tied a hard knot of guilt behind her breastbone. But despite the fatigue shadows, his eyes were sharp with interest. He wore riding clothes as well.
“This may well gain us nothing,” he warned, though the speed with which he packed bread and apples and jerky belied the caution. “But it’s worth investigating. We can reach Valcov well before dusk with a steady pace.”
They rode wide-chested, sure-footed trail horses with dark liver chestnut hides and striking flaxen manes. Ashlin was smitten with her mare as soon as she mounted, and spent much of the ride crooning to the beast in Celanoran. Cahal rode rear guard, his dark eyes moving constantly and a bow ready at his back.
East of Arachne the hills rose wild. The lower slopes of the Varagas were thick with silver firs and sun-hungry oaks and beeches decked in brilliant autumn copper; beneath the canopy ferns and fungus carpeted the ground, and moss cloaked falls of dead wood. A green twilight held the underbrush, broken by stray shafts of light. Woodpeckers drummed the grey bark of snags, a sharp tattoo to accompany the horses’ rhythmic four-beat gait and the dry-bone crunch of leaves. Wind swept the upper branches with a hollow rush, dancing spears of light across the ground and stirring the heavy scent of loam and pine and leaf must with the more immediate pungency of warm horse.
Lovely and scenic, a welcome relief from the city’s smells and sounds and narrow streets. It ought to have been, at least. Instead Savedra could only watch the shadows for any flicker of movement. Too early for wolves to grow bold, but there were always bandits, and today her head was full of witches and spirits and things hungry for living blood, despite the reassurance of the wards that lined the road. Sometimes she thought she heard a soft tinkle of bells, and remembered the dancing wood nymphs of Iancu’s stories. Not the deadliest of forest spirits by far, but she was just as glad she saw no further sign of them.
The horses navigated the steep trails easily and by early afternoon they were in the highest hills. The chill in the air sharpened, and soon they heard the rush and froth of the Ardos?, which split from the Herodis and flowed into the Zaratan Sea. The river’s deep-carven chasm marked the border between Selafai and Sarkany.
The village of Valcov straddled the divide, comfortable in the centuries of peace between its parent nations. Sarkany was more concerned with the Ordozh raiders in the north and Iskar to the south, and Selafai’s longest grudge was with Assar across the sea.
Townsfolk eyed them curiously as they rode past the sprawling stone-and-timber wall that enfolded the clustered stone-and-timber buildings. They passed fields of turnips and cabbage and winter wheat, and smelled sheep and goats before they neared the pens. When the wind shifted Savedra caught the greater stench of a tannery and mill smoke; the clatter and rasp of lumber-working echoed in the distance.
The center of town smelled more invitingly of a bakery and cooking from the tavern. They watered the horses and tethered them in front of the inn; Savedra, Ashlin, and Cahal went in while Iancu vanished quietly to search for information. As quietly as a stranger in a small town could ask questions, anyway.
“Try not to steal any honey,” Savedra told Ashlin as they entered the tavern.
Her stomach rumbled at the smell of meat and herbs, and she ordered ale and venison pies in badly accented Sarken, pretending not to notice how the conversation in the low dim-lit room faltered around them. She paid with a silver griffin and received Sarken pennies in change. Dull silver glinted amid the copper—a thin, uneven coin engraved with an owl on one side and crude letters on the other. She knew it from Iancu’s stories, too—a striga, or witch-coin. If she were a sorceress or a disguised spirit the silver would burn her fingers or glow at her touch. It stayed cool and slick, and she caught the tavern keeper’s eye as she sorted it from the rest of the change, thanking him and tucking it into her inner breast pocket. Courtesy for offered luck, instead of outrage at the implied insult. The man had the grace to blush, and was very solicitous in refilling their mugs afterward.
The pies were filled with meat and berries and thyme, sharp and bittersweet and rich with iron. They ate quickly, and Savedra sopped the last of the sauce off the notched wooden plates. With her stomach quiet, the ache in her thighs and back became more noticeable—another mug of ale might have helped, but she had to get back on the horse eventually.
The light spilling across the threshold changed before Iancu returned, deepening to a watery honey. The bartender had begun shooting them pointed glances, and Savedra was about to succumb to a third mug of ale to placate him when Iancu’s shadow fell through the doorway. A young woman waited for him outside, and another awkward stillness rippled through the room as the patrons saw her.
“I’ve found someone to help us,” Iancu said, stooping over the table to speak softly. “Apparently there’s only one woman left in Valcov who can.”
They left Cahal behind to watch the horses and followed the dark-eyed woman. She didn’t offer her name or any other conversation as she led them to the far side of town. Her black braids were held back in a kerchief, but beads still rattled as she walked; her embroidered skirts rasped with her purposeful stride. She must have been years younger than Savedra, perhaps no more than twenty, but the villagers stepped aside for her in the street with hasty nods. Was she a witch like Varis’s mystery guest?
They stopped at a small house on the outskirts of town, where buildings gave way to fields. Smoke trickled from the chimney and the shutters were open to the breeze. The woman stopped in front of the open door, waving them in and saying something to Iancu that sounded like a warning. Her voice rasped, as with long disuse.
“Her grandmother may help us,” Iancu said. “We are bid be solicitous of her poor health.”
The house was a single open room, the curtained bed the only privacy it offered. A spinning wheel stood beneath one window, surrounded by brushes and baskets of uncarded wool and a fat butter-colored cat who eyed a coil of yarn. Charms hung from the rafters, strings of leaves and beads and coins that rustled and chimed in the breeze. The room smelled of herbs and wool and camphor. In a much-mended rocking chair beside the hearth sat an old woman.
She was frail and stooped, skin creased and thin over once-strong bones and cheeks sunken with missing teeth. One side of her face drooped like hot wax, and her left arm folded unmoving in her lap. A cane leaned against the wall within reach of her chair.
She studied them with one canny dark eye—the other veiled by its creased-paper lid—while Iancu asked his questions. Savedra knew enough Sarken for courtesies and bad directions, but not enough to follow his low urgent tone. When the woman replied her voice was slurred and slow and even less comprehensible. She dabbed her mouth constantly with a handkerchief to keep from drooling. They spoke for several moments, not quite an argument. The woman tried to shake her head, but it was more a feeble twitch.
“Vau roc,” Iancu said, several times. Please.
Finally the woman made an angry slashing gesture with her right hand. At first Savedra feared she was throwing them out, but then she began to speak.
“I remember,” Iancu translated softly, keeping pace with her muttered Sarken. “I remember Phaedra Darvulia, and sometimes I think remembering is what broke my body and my magic. I would trade these memories for my health, but not even gods make such bargains.”
Ashlin sank to her knees and Savedra followed, sitting cross-legged on the creaking floorboards like children.
“It was like a minstrel’s story,” Iancu continued. “A beautiful girl went riding in the woods and became lost. A handsome hunter rescued her and took her home, and they fell in love. Bells rang in the castle and the village on their wedding day, and bright ribbons flew from the battlements of Carnavas. The women wore flowers in their hair as the bride and groom rode by.
“The girl was a witch, and perhaps a little mad—prone to black moods and wild frenzies—but she and her march-lord husband loved each other, and the village loved her in turn. She often spent the winters in the south with her own people, and the mountains were all the colder without her.
“What happened next no one can say for certain. Raiders came. Some say from the north, some from the east; some say they were demons of the frozen wind. I say they came from the south, but I’m the only one who remembers it so. Wherever they came from, whatever they were, their weapons were sharp enough. When villagers came to the castle days later they found only frozen corpses. The lord lay dead in his hall, stabbed through the heart and his sword in his hand. The servants had been rounded up and slaughtered like sheep. Of the lady there was no sign, but her library and workrooms were destroyed. The villagers searched the woods and riverbanks for her but found no trace, though some claimed to have seen blood on the rocks below the castle ramparts.
“We buried the lord and his people, but the castle became home to ghosts and hungry spirits, more than the village witchwives could dispel. Demon birds circled the towers, and many thought them the lady’s pets driven mad by her death. The Sarken king sent no new lord to hold it, and the Selafa?ns staked no claim, so villagers circled it with salt and wards and left it to molder in its grief.”
She fell silent, mopping her chin and frowning lopsidedly. Her chair creaked and clacked as she rocked, and wood fell in the hearth with a flurry of sparks. Dust motes danced and settled in the slanting light. After a long moment she spoke again, the words even more muffled now by the handkerchief.
“The forgetting came not long after, like a fog over the mountains. The castle stands, and everyone remembers the lord, but no one remembers the name of his wife.”
Her gaze, distant with memory, sharpened again as she squinted at Iancu. He nodded to her question, then glanced at Savedra. “She asks if we mean to go there. I assume we do.”
Visiting a haunted ruin at twilight didn’t seem the best idea, but Savedra nodded anyway. She reached for her purse, but the woman made another dismissive gesture.
“She says that she’s done us no favors,” Iancu said. “But her granddaughter will show us the trail. And that we should hurry.”
“Thank you,” Savedra said, scrambling to her feet. The woman only shook her head.
The sun hovered a finger’s width over the serrated teeth of the Varagas, already peach-red and swollen. The young witch pointed them toward the road that led to the castle and turned away when their feet were on it, vanishing back into the village.
Valcov lay on a small plateau; past the edge of town the road dropped away and valleys and ridges fell like wrinkled cloth, the tangled skirts of the mountains soaring sharp and cold to their right. Somewhere north and west the Varagas gave way to gentle hills and fields which in turn rolled toward the sea, but from this vantage there was only stone and trees and snow high on the peaks, and the wide crush of sky.
The castle Carnavas brooded on the edge of a cliff, overlooking Valcov from one side and the icy rush of the Ardos? from the other. It would have been a forbidding place in any light, but as dusk crawled from the roots of the mountains, it was all too easy to imagine the specters stirring in empty halls. Dark shapes wheeled against the sky, vanishing into the towers; birds home to roost for the night.
“This is as close as we go tonight,” Iancu said. Not even Ashlin argued. But they stood and stared, shivering as the evening chill chewed through layers of cloth, caught in the ruin’s spell. The last of the daylight lined the western sky with apricot.
“Tomorrow,” Savedra said. The steadiness of her voice surprised her. But they’d come this far, and they certainly weren’t about to ride back to Evharis in the dark.
With a glance between them they turned away, hurrying back to the warmth and walls of the inn.
That night Savedra and Ashlin lay back to back in their shared bed. It was a small inn, and they could forsake luxuries for a night. Iancu and Cahal shared the room across the hall.
“What do you think?” Savedra asked, the words muffled by the pillow. The bedding smelled of down must, and the pungent straw beneath the featherbed.
“It’s an interesting puzzle. Your whole family is interesting.” The last she said so dryly that Savedra elbowed her in the ribs.
“None of that,” the princess said with a laugh. “They’ll charge us extra if we have a pillow fight.”
Savedra chuckled. She’d never shared a bed with anyone but Nikos, not since she was too old to sleep with her mother or her nurse after a bad dream. Lovers, yes, but not the quiet—or in this case creaking with every shifted arm—warmth of another body. Ashlin had no sisters, and Savedra wondered if she’d ever had to share. After a drowsing moment, she asked.
“My brother used to crawl into bed with me when he was scared, in case monsters snuck into the room,” said the princess. “I had more weapons at hand than our nurse.” The bed frame creaked as she rolled over and her breath brushed warm across Savedra’s shoulder. “On cold nights my riders and I would sleep like puppies, as many in the tent as would fit. Cahal, by the way, snores like a pig and steals the blankets besides. You smell nicer than any of them. And there was one season—” Her voice broke. “I had a lover.”
Savedra had known it, of course, but the words were so soft and rushed, so stripped of all Ashlin’s usual prickles and armor, that her breath caught in her throat.
“Only for the autumn. Then I was called back to Yselin, and the betrothal moved forward, and…. Well, you know the rest of that.” She sighed. “It was nice while it lasted.”
Fabric rustled and Savedra felt a gentle tug on her hair—Ashlin’s fingers twining in her braids. The sensation prickled her skin. When Savedra raised her face from the pillow she smelled her: garlic and wine from supper, herbal soap and weapon oil, and under that the sweeter musk of her skin.
“I envy you, you know. The bond, if not the man.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Bedding rustled and she imagined Ashlin’s shrug. “It’s not your fault. I could have run away and become a mercenary. It isn’t all bad—I do like Erisinian food.” She tugged gently on one braid. “How did you end up with hair like this, anyway? I’ve seen your parents.”
Savedra accepted the graceless change of subject gladly. “My mother likes to blame the Iskari on my father’s side of the family.” She smiled into the dark, remembering her mother’s quiet profanity as yet another delicate sandalwood comb broke in her hair. “My father always reminds her of her own Assari grandmother.”
They lay in silence while wind whispered around the eaves and the inn creaked and sighed softly to itself. Finally Ashlin’s breath roughened and her hands rested, still tangled in Savedra’s hair. By the time Savedra slept, the princess was curled warm against her back.
She woke the next morning huddled in a ball and stinging with gooseflesh. Ashlin stood before the open window, silhouetted against a lead-and-rose sky. She turned when Savedra stirred, grinning like a child. “Get up,” she said. “It’s snowing.”
They left for the castle at daybreak. No one warned them away or tried to stop them, though from the way the innkeeper shook his head he thought the mission was folly. He pressed charms on them as they left—cords strung with beads of wood and tarnished silver—and a small pouch that settled like sand against Savedra’s palm. Salt, from the smell, and anise or fennel. She thanked the man in mangled Sarken.
Folly or not, their mission was certainly trespass, and on foreign soil no less. Ashlin might be used to such things, but Savedra’s head was crowded with visions of Sarken warlords riding down on them and demanding explanations. The hills were empty, though, save for the usual skitter and scurry of wildlife and birds wheeling overhead.
Snow fell in slow fat flakes that melted when they hit the ground. The sky hung low against the mountains, clouds shredding on their peaks, while sunrise pink and gold cooled to grey. The snow was soft but the wind cut like a razor, mocking Savedra’s autumn clothing.
The road became overgrown the closer they rode to the castle. In better light Savedra saw grey crystals glittering amid dirt and pebbles only a few yards past where they had turned back the night before; the salt of the villagers’ wards. She touched the bag of herbs and salt in her coat pocket. Despite the fabled mystic senses of the hijra, all she felt was cloth and rasping grains. Likewise the cord around her neck felt no more powerful than the pearls she wore at court.
At the foot of the steep, tree-choked slope they found a long ruin that must have once been a stable. The roof had collapsed, and all it housed now were weeds. A rabbit burst from cover when they drew too close, vanishing into the undergrowth with a white flash of tail. In the shadows behind the building, stone steps led up the hill.
After scouting the area, they left the horses tethered in the dubious shelter of the stable, unconcernedly cropping grass. The animals’ calm was reassuring—beasts, unlike most humans, could sense ghosts or strong spirits.
The stairs were cracked and crooked, flagstones washed away and pushed aside by tree roots. Savedra lost count after seven hundred, and they were no more than halfway up. Leaves and fallen pine needles crunched and skittered with every step, sometimes obscuring broken stones and ankle-turning holes. Before long she could hardly hear the crackle of leaves beneath boots over the wheeze of her breath. Sweat soaked her back and her legs and lungs ached to burning. Even Ashlin was winded, and she took some satisfaction in that.
Near the summit, the path cleared the tangled trees, wrapping around the edge of the cliff for several yards before climbing again. To the left, only a few feet of rocks and weeds and scrubby grass separated their feet from a long drop. Far below the Ardos? snaked around the cliff, and pine-thick hills rose on the other side. Snowflakes swirled and spiraled and vanished into grey haze; Savedra regretted her downward glance immediately. The right-hand view was safer, but still breathtaking in its height. And ahead of them the fortress rose, a towering weight of age-stained stone. After a moment’s rest they kept walking, into its shadow.
By the time they reached the final landing, Savedra had no more strength to admire the view. Instead she sat with her back to the hulking gate, laying her head on her knees and waiting for her breath and heart to slow. Her side ached like a knife between her ribs and her racing pulse made her nauseous. Ghosts or demons were welcome to eat her, if it meant she didn’t have to get up again.
“Here.” Ashlin crouched beside her, passing a water skin and a wedge of oily cheese. “Slowly,” she cautioned as Savedra lifted the bag.
When her stomach ceased its seasick roil and the pain in her side faded, she rose to face the castle.
Carnavas was a fortress, not a palace like those in Erisín. The hulk that loomed above them was solid, heavy walls and arrow-slit windows, built for defense. Built to last for centuries, but twenty-seven years of neglect had taken their toll all the same. Moss and vines webbed the stones, and saplings pressed against the walls like an invading army.
The portcullis was raised, and unlikely to lower again. Corroded iron spikes bled rust down the narrow walls and the bird nests clogged the lattice. The ground below was crusted grey with droppings. The great ironbound double doors beyond were in no better condition, the wood dry and splintering. One side stood ajar, a handspan gap leading into shadows. The only sound was the rustle of dry leaves and the mournful sigh of the wind.
Cahal crouched to study the filthy ground. “No one has passed this way recently,” he said, voice hushed either in caution or out of respect for the stillness. “And no large animals.”
“That’s something, at least. I’d rather not walk into a bandit nest.” Ashlin adjusted her sword, and Savedra checked her own dagger hanging at her waist.
“If there is anyone inside,” Iancu said, “they’ve likely heard us coming by now.”
“Yes.” Ashlin raked a hand through her sweat-stiffened hair. “No use dithering on the doorstep.” She started forward, but Cahal intercepted her with a glare.
“Wait your turn, Captain.” His sword rasped free of its scabbard; the steel gathered pale daylight and cast a watery shimmer against the wall. He braced his free arm against the door, and Savedra held her breath.
Wood creaked and groaned, then swung inward with a shriek of rusted hinges. The sound echoed like a scream. A flock of birds burst from a nearby tree with a rattle of branches, croaking disapproval. Savedra flinched, and Ashlin grimaced. Cahal ducked and crouched behind the other half of the door, waiting for a response.
None came, and the echoes faded into the sighing wind. The birds settled in another tree, glaring indignantly at the clumsy humans.
“Well,” Cahal said at last, uncoiling from his crouch. “Now the ghosts really know we’re here.”
The old witch’s story had filled Savedra’s head with visions of corpse-strewn halls, skeletons clutching rusted weapons or ghosts wailing and screaming for revenge; the ghosts in her imagination looked suspiciously like stage specters in artfully tattered shrouds and greasepaint. None of that confronted them as they stepped into the narrow courtyard.
The stones were fouled with dead weeds and leaves and bird droppings, and feathers drifted like dark snow in the corners. Vines cocooned the well and the wooden cover was broken and half fallen away. The yard smelled of stone and damp and mildew, shit and the sharper pungency of cat urine. Savedra pinched her nose against a sneeze. The ground was littered with bones—they crunched alarmingly as she stepped farther in—but they were tiny fragile things. Mice and fallen birds, not the castle’s slain guardians.
Despite the stink and ominous doors and hallways and broken-shuttered windows that stared down at them, an ache spread behind Savedra’s breastbone. It must have been a pleasant place once—empty flower boxes hung beneath windows, and rotten trellises climbed the walls, tangled with browned roses. Drifting snow and the slanting morning light lent the yard a ruined, antique beauty. Like yellowed lace, or funeral art.
Something hissed in the shadows and Savedra yelped. Eyes flashed copper-green in the gloom of a doorway and Ashlin’s hand closed on her sword hilt. A heartbeat later Cahal laughed at both of them as a scruffy striped cat bolted up a flight of stairs and vanished down a gallery. Ashlin laughed too, but touched her shoulder to Savedra’s in mutual reassurance.
They startled a few mice and feral cats as they explored the ground floor, and one sleepy owl, but found no other signs of life or unlife. Signs of the previous inhabitants were all around them, though. Beans spilled out of rotted bags in the pantries, and jars of preserves encased in dust lined the shelves. Dishes still littered the kitchen counters, and drawers held crumbling receipts and recipes and lists of stores. The altar in the narrow chapel was spotted with wax, the candles toppled and chewed by rodents. A few tarnished silver sconces still clung to the walls, while others had fallen to reveal cleaner stone beneath. The icons of whatever saints or gods the Sarkens prayed to were darkened and unrecognizable. Moth-eaten clothes and linens filled chests in the servants’ quarters, and hints of lives littered the rooms: a shelf of moldering books; a carven box filled with needles and buttons and an ivory thimble; a pair of shoes heavy with once-bright embroidery, much too fine to be worn for daily chores. Paintings hung in flaking frames, long-faded portraits or hunting scenes.
The second story was much the same—no corpses, no waiting monsters, but memories thick as cobwebs everywhere. No one spoke as they searched the rooms, and Iancu’s face grew sadder and more strained with each vanished life they found.
On the next floor a painting watched them as they climbed the stairs. A woman sat in the foreground, white-skinned and sable-haired, with dark eyes and beautiful cheekbones still visible beneath the web of cracks that marred the oils. A man stood behind her chair, one hand on her shoulder. He was tall and lean and well-dressed, but his face was too chipped and shadowed to make out.
Ferenz III Darvulesti, the tiny plaque read, Margrave of Carnavas, and the Margravine Phaedra.
“Who are you?” Savedra murmured, raising a hand to the painting and pulling back before she touched the canvas. The frame was grey with dust, but her hands were worse. Her nose had long since closed off in self-defense.
“Who indeed?” Iancu asked softly, standing beside her. Savedra studied his face for any hint of recognition, but his frown only deepened.
“Here,” Cahal called. He kindled a lantern and held it aloft. Their own footprints showed stark against the pale drifting dust, but other, fainter prints were visible beneath it. Like tracks in trampled snow clear beneath a fresh fall. Short, narrow feet—a woman or a small man.
“How old are these?” Savedra asked.
Cahal shrugged, sending orange light swaying across the walls. “Hard to say.”
The tracks led down the corridor to a bedroom that must have belonged to the Margrave, and crisscrossed the floor there. Bed hangings pulled free of the great oaken frame, and the lantern cast their shadows like great tattered wings across the walls.
Savedra and Ashlin tugged back the curtains and pried the shutters open. The windows facing the cliffside were wider than those overlooking the path; anyone who could scale the cliff and the walls deserved to take the castle. The panes were glass—warped, leaded diamonds. A great extravagance, no doubt, whenever Carnavas had first been built.
Savedra studied the room and the footprints. They led to all the places one might expect in a bedroom: the bed; the wardrobe; the dresser, whose mirror was shattered and turned toward the wall. The dust blanketing the sagging mattress was disturbed as well, as if someone had curled against the pillow. She touched the dimpled cloth, almost expecting some ghost of warmth there. Her fingertips left shadows behind, and she rubbed the silk-soft grime onto her coat. She brushed against the velvet hangings as she turned, and a panel tore free of the bed frame with a snarl. The cloth fell with a muffled whump and a billow of grey. She sneezed until her eyes and nose ran. Her hands were grey as well, and every inch of exposed skin itched.
Behind the carven doors of the wardrobe she found dresses, rotten as the bed curtains, fur and jeweled trim pulling free of fragile cloth. Dark, striking colors, garnet and crimson and deep forest green, the sort the woman in the portrait would have worn well. A tall woman, with a narrow waist and a bosom that Savedra could only envy. Mostly heavy, tight-laced gowns suitable for mountain weather, with a few looser high-waisted designs hung to one side.
“Vedra.”
Ashlin’s voice, unusually soft, distracted her from inspecting the dressing table. The princess stood in the doorway of one of the adjoining rooms. A bathroom, Savedra had assumed, or perhaps a connecting bedroom if the margrave and margravine hadn’t shared a bed.
Instead she peered around Ashlin’s shoulder into a nursery. The shutters stood open and daylight poured like weak tea over a table and rocking chair, a clothing chest, and a cradle. The faint draft of the door opening sent motes spiraling through the slanting light.
“They had a child,” Savedra said, soft as a whisper.
“No.” Again that queer hush in Ashlin’s voice. Her hand twitched toward the blanketless cradle, toward the table and the half-knitted cap there, stitches still on the needles. “They were expecting one.” Fingers clenched, and her fist fell hard against her thigh.
Savedra’s mouth opened, closed again on the princess’s name. “Sorcha—” Not very convincing, but it drew a humorless laugh from Ashlin.
“It’s nothing.”
Savedra caught the other woman’s arm as she strode toward the bedroom; her fingers smeared grey on Ashlin’s sleeve. “It isn’t—”
“It is.” She twitched her arm free. “Leave it be. It doesn’t matter.”
Bootheels clacked on stone as she vanished into the hall, leaving Savedra to turn away before Iancu noticed her prickling eyes, or her filthy hands clenching helplessly in her coat pockets. But concern and anger wouldn’t let the matter lie. She blinked her eyes dry and followed, leaving Iancu and Cahal exchanging glances in her wake. Ashlin’s trail was easy to follow; booted footprints led up the stairs, past the fourth story and up again, to an open trapdoor.
The wind caught at Savedra’s clothes and hair as she stepped onto the tower, belled her coat-skirts and tugged at her loose trousers. Her eyes watered in earnest with the force of it, rinsing away lingering grains of dust. Ashlin stood by the crenellations, silhouetted against the pewter-bright sky. Her arms were crossed tight, cupping her elbows with opposite hands.
“I’m sorry,” Savedra said after a moment of staring at the princess’s back. She crossed the weathered floor to stand beside Ashlin, the span of a wide stone block between them, and peered over the edge. She regretted it before she truly realized the height, the length of the sheer plunge below. The Ardos? unwound like a grey ribbon, something delicate and ornamental, not the murderous icy rush she knew to be the truth. Not, she imagined, that the cold and current would matter by the time you reached them.
She put her back to the terrible view and sucked a calming breath through her nose. Clean air was a blessing after the stifling must below, even if it numbed her fingers and toes. She gathered her scattered thoughts and raised her voice against the wind. “It’s not my place—”
That drew Ashlin around like the jerk of a chain. Snowflakes landed on her face and hair, melting to leave cleaner spots in the grime. Her eyes glittered, the green of her irises all the fiercer against bloodshot whites. “Not your place?” She barked a laugh. “To tell me when I’m being a fool, and a termagant besides? If you won’t do that for me I don’t know who will.” Her arms snapped open. “You’re my friend, Vedra. You can say whatever you want to me.
“And don’t think,” she said, softer now, “that I don’t know your place, or that I’ve taken it from you.”
Savedra swallowed half a dozen responses, along with a lump in her throat. “If I can tell you not to be a fool, then I’ll do that now.” She closed the distance between them, till the hem of her coat whipped Ashlin’s legs. “I have always known how it had to be with me and Nikos. The only thing I didn’t expect was to care for the woman he married.”
Ashlin’s smile was wry and lopsided. “I’m glad you do, since we’re alone on a tower.” Her smile twisted and fell away, and she waved the bad joke aside. “I wish you could have had it, though. The throne, the prince. Children.” Her hand clenched on her belt buckle till her knuckles blanched. “My father could have married off my brother instead of me, if this is the best I can do at bearing heirs.”
Savedra caught the princess’s hand and eased it away before she could bruise her fingers on metal. “I’m sorry you’re unhappy, but there’s no sense in recriminations.”
Their fingers twined, cold and grimy, and Ashlin squeezed tight. “It’s not that I’m unhappy.” Her breath hitched, unraveling on the wind. “It’s that—”
Whatever she might have said was lost as black wings passed close enough to ruffle their hair and a raven alit on the merlon opposite them. Talons scraped rock as it regarded them with one dark, mirror-bright eye.
“Lady of Ravens,” Ashlin breathed. For all Savedra knew, it was. The bird on the tower was certainly large enough; she hadn’t realized ravens grew so big. Another bird wheeled overhead, its shadow staining the stones.
“Maybe we should go down,” Savedra said, straining to keep her voice calm. “The last thing I want is bird shit in my hair.”
“Good idea.” She steered Savedra down the steps first, her hand on her sword until she tugged the trapdoor shut behind them. The hollow thunk chased them down the staircase.
They found Iancu and Cahal in the library, past the bedroom at the end of the hall. They stood in the center of the room, surveying the disarray around them.
Books spilled off shelves and tables, lay open on the floor. A lamp had fallen, shards scattered across the once fine carpet. The hearth still overflowed with ashes and a few scraps of withered paper. It was the first true disarray Savedra had seen, the first sign that the inhabitants hadn’t simply vanished amid their daily tasks.
“There’s more than one set of footprints,” Cahal said, not glancing up from the span of floor he was studying. “It took me a moment to catch it through the dust. They’re nearly the same size.”
A woman or a small man. A woman and a small man.
You don’t know, she told herself. You can’t be sure it was Varis. But it was too late for that—wrong or not, she was sure. What had he done here, and why?
Savedra knelt by the hearth and picked delicately through the ashes, trying to find a clue as to what had been burned. The scraps were too old, though, too faded and filthy to be legible. Most crumbled when her fingers brushed them.
“What’s missing here?” she asked Iancu, but he wasn’t standing beside her anymore. She turned to find him examining the opposite wall, running his hands over a stretch of wall between two decorative panels.
“Here,” he murmured. His fingers paused, pressed, and something clicked. One of the panels swung outward with a creak and a silver flurry of shredded cobwebs.
Savedra closed her mouth before any more dust flew in. “Oh.”
“Clever,” Ashlin said. She shot a sideways glance at Savedra. “Do we have those?”
“The palace has spyholes, but no passages that I know of.” She took a step forward, even as the depth of the blackness in the opening prickled her nape. The opening was set high on the wall; an awkward step without a stool. The air that breathed from the black mouth was cool and stale, but a pleasant relief from the stirred dust and ash of the library. “Maybe Nikos will add some.” That careless we would have given the princess away to anyone paying attention, but it warmed her all the same.
Iancu lit the lamp again. The glow lined the angles of stone stairs and brushed a low curving ceiling. “Shall we?” he asked.
Savedra caught herself touching the pocket that held the striga coin; she swept her hand in a gesture of invitation instead. “Lead on.”
Tight spaces had never bothered her, unlike heights, but the chill closeness of the stairway was still oppressive. Her shoulders brushed the sides and she was glad she wasn’t any taller; Iancu stooped like a hunchback.
The panel at the top of the stairs took a moment of fumbling with, but finally opened to a thin wash of daylight. She hadn’t realized she’d been hoping till her hopes died—the room was a skeleton, bookshelves and tables picked clean. The old woman had mentioned a workroom, and she supposed this might have been that. But no sign of any sorcery remained now, nor any clues.
This room had the largest window in the castle, a paired casement that swung inward with a screech when Savedra tugged at the latch. Ice stung her face, falling harder now. A rusting balcony lined the outside ledge—nothing that would save anyone from a fall, but wide enough to become yet another home for birds. That was all that Carnavas was home to, it seemed—birds and rats and cats, and if Varis had come here maybe that was all he’d found as well.
A crimson glitter caught her eye amid the filth and feathers that clung to the railing. She stooped, grimacing as she flicked aside debris to retrieve something that gleamed red and gold.
She stumbled back at a raucous croak. The giant raven from the tower—or another just as big—wheeled past, so close she smelled the musk of his feathers. She retreated quickly, shoving the window shut behind her.
“Are all the birds in Sarkany that big?”
She asked it lightly, but Iancu frowned. “No,” he said. “And I don’t like the look of these.”
A sharp crack made them all jump. A black shape vanished from the other side of the window as Savedra looked up. The raven. Another shadow wheeled past, and another. Talons struck the glass again.
“Perhaps we’ve outstayed our welcome.” Iancu said, urging them back into the passage. As the panel swung shut behind them, they heard the sharp whine of splintering glass.
“Definitely time to go,” Ashlin said, taking Savedra’s arm for the long step back into the library.
Too late. The library windows burst inward with a howl of wind. Savedra threw up her arm to ward off splinters; it saved her life as a giant raven struck her.
Talons closed on her forearm and she screamed. She’d felt the force of a falcon landing on a glove—this was worse. She stumbled and fell to one knee, her other hand rising against the blinding storm of air and feathers. Someone else cried out. Steel sang. She scrambled back, groped for a weapon and found a book. Leather and parchment blocked the striking beak that meant to take her eyes. She couldn’t reach her knife.
Bone and feathers crunched. Blood sprayed hot across her face and hands and the buffeting weight was gone. The bitter gamey taste of it filled her mouth as she sucked in a breath.
Ashlin stood over her, sword drawn and bloody, equally splattered with red. Her eyes were black and wild. “Out, out!” Savedra read the shape of the words on her lips—she couldn’t hear over the roar of wind and her own heart.
As she scrambled up she glimpsed the fallen bird, cleaved nearly in half by Ashlin’s blade, and another across the room that Cahal must have slain. Curtains billowed in the draft, and ash thickened the air. Beyond the splintered glass teeth in the window frame, more winged shadows circled. Her boots skidded in moisture as she ran; she didn’t know whose blood it was.
She felt the door slam shut behind them. After the brightness of sky the dim hall blinded her. When her vision adjusted she saw Cahal and Iancu leaning against the door. Both men were tousled and grime-streaked but seemed unharmed.
“Are you all right?”
Savedra hadn’t realized she’d fallen to her knees until Ashlin crouched beside her. She looked down, and regretted it as pain followed her glance. Her right sleeve was shredded and quickly soaking with blood. Her left hand was merely scratched, but stung like a fiercer wound.
“Shit.” Ashlin glanced down the length of the hall and swore again. “Everything here is filthy.”
“Here.” Iancu stripped off his coat, baring clean linen beneath. With a slit of his dagger and three sharp tugs, he ripped free one sleeve and passed it to the princess.
“There are bandages in the packs with the horses,” she said, crouching next to Savedra. “This will do till we reach them.” She tore the ruined sleeve away. Savedra closed her eyes against the sight of blood welling from deep claw wounds, and when she opened them again the princess was knotting the makeshift dressing. A drop of red splashed white cloth.
Not all the blood on Ashlin’s face came from the birds. A talon had gouged a furrow down her temple and onto the curve of her cheekbone. Rivulets of crimson tracked her cheek, feathering across her skin and dripping off her chin.
“What about you?”
“It’s nothing.” She snorted a laugh at Savedra’s expression. “This time I mean it. Just a scrape. I’ll clean it when we get out of here.”
“What now?” Cahal asked. Iancu resumed his place against the door so the lieutenant could wipe and sheathe his sword. Nothing struck the wood, but Savedra heard shuffling behind it.
“We get the hell out of here,” Ashlin said. “I’m not spending the night in this place.”
“There are more of them outside!”
“We have to chance it. Unless you want to stay.”
“No,” Savedra said instantly. “All right.”
More ravens wheeled over the courtyard, rasping voices echoing. A few dove as Savedra and the others raced for the gate, but no blows landed.
“They’re driving us off,” Cahal said as they paused in the shelter of the gate arch.
“They certainly are. And they can keep the place.”
Raucous shrieks followed them halfway down the mountain, finally dying away. Pain and fatigue gave way to fugue, and Savedra could remember nothing until Ashlin hoisted her into the saddle. She caught the pommel right-handed out of instinct and cried out as injured muscles flexed. Sweat soaked her, stinging in a dozen scrapes and scratches and chilling quickly now that she was still.
When they passed the salt circle they dared stop. Ashlin stripped away Savedra’s blood-soaked bandages and rinsed the wound, first with water and then with whiskey. Savedra sobbed at the latter. Ashlin’s hands shook by the time she wound the fresh bandages, and Cahal had to tie them off. He cleaned Ashlin’s wound too, eliciting an angry hiss. His ministrations left one side of her face clean, the other a half-mask of filth.
“We can stay the night in Valcov,” Iancu said. “Get you looked at by a physician.”
Savedra shook her head; her eyes ached with the threat of tears. “I want to go home.” It was foolish and childish, and she winced at the sound of the words. She waited for the others to talk sense into her, but instead they exchanged calculating glances.
“It will mean riding at night,” Iancu said at last, “but I admit I find the idea appealing.”
“Let’s go then,” Ashlin said. “The sooner we get under cover the happier I’ll be.”
Savedra glanced back as they urged the horses on, and saw winged shadows circling the towers of Carnavas.
It must have been a harrowing ride back to Evharis, but Savedra didn’t recall much of it. She had confused flashes of clinging to the saddle, and later slumping over her horse’s neck, and finally of Iancu carrying her up the steps into a confusion of light and warmth and concerned voices. She regained her senses inopportunely, as the physician appeared to clean and stitch her wound. Ashlin pressed a glass of brandy into her hand, and the world dulled once more.
It wasn’t till well past midnight, after an awkward one-armed bath that nearly lulled her into sleep and drowning, that she remembered the jewel she’d found in Carnavas. She picked up her ruined coat, meaning to drop the filthy thing in a rubbish bin, and something small and glittering fell out of the pocket and rattled across the floor.
Savedra crouched to retrieve it from the shadows under the bed. She’d drunk several glasses of medicinal brandy during the stitching, and the movement nearly toppled her.
A ring. A woman’s ring, a brilliant pigeon’s blood ruby in a delicate gold band. The setting was clogged with grime, the stone dull with it, but there was no mistaking its beauty or its worth. Such a ring would be costly anywhere, but in Selafai it would only grace the hand of a mage.
Was it hers? The mysterious missing Severos sorceress?
She staggered off her knees at a knock on the door, and the ring vanished into the pocket of her robe.
Ashlin entered before Savedra reached the door. The princess was freshly bathed as well, her hair and shirt both damp and clinging to her skin. She went straight for the brandy and poured herself a tall glass. From the smell of her skin, it wasn’t her first either. The talon scratches on her face had scabbed dark and angry red.
“Are you all right?” Savedra asked, after watching the princess pace several circuits across the rug.
“I lied,” Ashlin said, jerking to a halt. She set down her half-empty glass and brandy splashed against her fingers. Her cheeks were flushed, eyes shining. “I don’t envy you. I envy Nikos.”
Savedra opened her mouth and closed it again. “What do you mean?”
Ashlin closed the space between them. The heat of her skin was a furnace, and the smell of brandy clinging to her reminded Savedra how much she’d drunk herself. It also reminded her that she wasn’t wearing anything beneath her robe; her good hand clenched at the collar.
“I watched you come to harm, and I couldn’t bear it.” She cupped Savedra’s cheek with one calloused hand. “It’s you I want, Vedra.” She took the last step, pressing the length of their bodies together. The princess was hard and lean against her, lips soft and demanding.
“I don’t like girls,” Savedra whispered when she could breathe again. But there was no denying the attraction, not with the sharp beat of her pulse, the heat and hardness of her traitorous flesh. She tried to pull away, but a bedpost trapped her.
Ashlin’s laugh caught in her throat. “Neither do I. But I like you.” She shifted her hips and Savedra gasped. Lips and tongue traced the line of her throat.
“Nikos will never forgive me,” Savedra whispered, even as she arched into the touch. Pins and combs fell away beneath Ashlin’s insistent fingers and the damp cloud of her hair enveloped both their faces.
“He will. He loves you. It’s me he won’t forgive, and I hardly care.” Teeth scraped her earlobe. “I want you, Vedra.”
A turn and gentle push and the edge of the bed met the back of Savedra’s knees. She sat, and Ashlin’s knee pressed between hers. With a scramble and shrug Ashlin cast her shirt aside and crawled forward, forcing Savedra back against the featherbed.
Curiosity and envy made Savedra raise her face to her breasts, but the shudder and moan that answered her only made the pressure at the base of her spine build all the more. “This is madness,” she murmured against clean soap-scented skin. A nipple brushed her mouth, taut and creased. “Not to mention adultery and treason.”
Ashlin pulled away, and she nearly whimpered with pain and relief, but the princess only stripped away her trousers, and then Savedra’s robe. The sour-sweet musk of her was alien but not unpleasant. Savedra slid a hand along the silken skin of her inner thigh, driven by curiosity and the insidious desire to feel Ashlin shudder again. This much she could trespass—
Ashlin knelt above her, one hand teasing her nipple rings while the other closed around her erection, calluses scraping tender skin. Savedra opened her mouth for a denial, a refusal, but all that came out was a groan. Not like this, she wanted to say, memories of the Black Orchid and the hijras’ temple house thick as opium smoke in her mind. But Ashlin was already taking her inside, all warmth and wet and rhythmic pressure, and she could only sob.
It was quick and awkward and drunken, and Ashlin swore in Celanoran when she came. It was enough to make Savedra laugh, which in turn became a breathless shuddering gasp as her own climax took her. She was crying, and both of them were slick with sweat and tears and fluids.
“I’m sorry, ma chrí,” Ashlin said when their trembling stilled, holding her close and stroking her sticky hair. She was soft and pliable now, all the hardness of bone and muscle melted away. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“You didn’t—”
She wiped away tears with her thumb. “Didn’t I? I shouldn’t have pressed.”
“We can’t do this again.” It might have sounded more convincing had her face not been pressed against Ashlin’s collarbone, her hand cupping her hip. “What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know,” Ashlin whispered into her hair. “I don’t know.”
They lay together in silence, until pain and fatigue and brandy rolled over Savedra like a wave, and sucked her down into the dark.
She dreams of black wings.
Wings spread wide to catch the wind, the dying sun warm on her back. Wings folded tight against night’s chill, pressed close to her mate in their nest. Wings shredding cold fog with every stroke, moisture beading on iridescent feathers. A dozen birds, a dozen images, all of them her.
The air is cold, but the last of the sunlight soaks her feathers. She has flown far and farther still, and the setting sun calls her to roost, to tuck her head and sleep, but her mistress’s will overrides those instincts. The light fades and she flies on.
By the time she reaches the human camp she is merely a darker shadow in the night, blotting the stars as she passes. The humans take no notice—the air is foul with their dust and smoke, their mammal sweat and waste, thick enough to clog even her dull nose. Death rolls off them in a cloud, visible to her carrion sympathy and the alien magic with which her mistress has infused her.
The latter sense leads her to her quarry, one tent among the hundreds sprouting like fungi from the field. A man sleeps within, his fire banked but heat still glowing from the coals. Gaunt-cheeked and sunken-eyed, hands gnarled and scarred. He twitches with restless dreams.
Another raven, still her. Now she glides above narrow alleys, searching the harsh stone streets below for prey. She is no owl meant for night flying, not made to fall ghost-silent from the sky. But it isn’t mice she hunts tonight, and humans are deaf and dull, blind to the skies above them. The one she follows now never looks up, though it twitches rabbit-wary at every sound. Pale, this one, and underfed, as are all those her mistress hunts. She doesn’t understand it—the streets are full of plumper quarry, slower and easy to catch. But hers is not to question, merely to stalk as she is bidden and wait for the scraps her mistress will share.
Another image—
Savedra woke dizzy and lost, hands clenched in the covers to stop her spiraling fall. Her wounded arm throbbed, and the taste of blood sickened her.
The images began to fracture. She had seen Mathiros, and a strange woman on a foggy street, and a dozen other things besides, but they were already unraveling like smoke through her fingers.
She rolled over, groping for warmth to reassure her, but found only cold sheets and rumpled covers. Evharis, she remembered, as the unfamiliar surroundings sank in. Ashlin.
She lay awake until dawn, sick and dizzy with dreams, and with the enormity of what they had done.