The Bone Palace

chapter 22

It was warm in the darkness, warm and still and soothing, save for the occasional interruption of voices and hands. Isyllt would have floated there forever, but nothing so peaceful could ever last. Black gave way to red, and then to brilliant gold as her crusted eyes cracked open. Tears blinded her and she tried to sink into the dark again. The voices returned, calling her out. A warm hand brushed her brow and she flinched.
“She’s waking up.”
“Isyllt?”
Her mouth was dry and chapped, sour with thirst and sleep. Her tongue peeled free from the roof of her mouth, but the only sound she could manage was a croak.
“Water,” someone called. Wet cloth swabbed her lips. Tepid moisture leaked between her lips, the sweetest she’d ever tasted. “Careful,” the voice said, and the rim of a cup touched her lower lip, clicked against her teeth as she tried to move. Water sloshed down her chin and across her chest, just enough spilling into her mouth to make her choke. The cup vanished and she nearly sobbed; she’d never been so thirsty.
A shadow moved in front of the blinding light and she had a heartbeat’s impression of a small room, and walls that rippled dizzyingly. The walls became curtains with another glimpse, the light a lantern hanging from the ceiling.
St. Alia’s. It had been a long time since she’d woken up in a hospital bed.
“What happened?” It took two tries to shape the sounds properly.
“You did something stupid.”
She tried to laugh at Khelséa’s dry voice, but it turned into a rasping cough, which gave way in turn to tears.
“Careful,” the inspector said, “or they’ll make me leave. Ciaran won’t be back for an hour.”
Isyllt wiped her eyes, alarmed at the heaviness of her limbs. The halo around the lamp slowly faded till she could make out Khelséa and the rest of the room. “He’s been already?”
“We’ve taken turns watching you, he and Dahlia and I.”
She tried to sit up and quickly abandoned the idea. “How long have I been here?”
“The better part of a decad. It’s the fourth of Ganymedos.”
“Saints.” Then she noticed the white armband on Khelséa’s orange coat. The woman’s skin was dull with fatigue, cheeks hollow and circles carved beneath her eyes. “The riots?”
“Burnt out, with half of Elysia. The city is calming, slowly. The king went to Little Kiva himself, to talk to the people and see the damage.”
That gave her a start, till she realized that “the king” meant Nikos now.
“Is he—”
“He seems well. Exhausted. Grieving. No one understands what happened in the ruins, though, except you and him and the pallakis.” Khelséa held out the cup and Isyllt took another greedy sip of water. “She was here too, the pallakis Savedra. She didn’t stay long, but she was grateful that you were alive.”
A nurse came soon to shoo Khelséa away, bringing lukewarm beef broth. Isyllt would have eaten the wooden bowl for last drops of salt and liquid. Her hands were shockingly white, veins stark blue through transparent skin. Her nails were blue as well, and she shivered despite the weight of blankets and glowing brazier.
Ciaran came soon after. He joked and teased and flattered her, but she saw her reflection in his dark eyes and knew she looked like death. Maybe she was.
She flinched away when he reached for her hand, remembering Phaedra’s skin cracking, Kiril’s heart slowing beneath her touch. She was death—she could never let herself forget that.
The nurses chased Ciaran off in turn and doused the light above Isyllt’s bed. She lay in the darkness surrounded by the breath of her fellow patients, their coughs and snores and whispered prayers. She was wrung dry, but tired of sleeping.
She stirred from a doze when the bells tolled a lonely hour. Eyes closed, she touched her ring, picking at the layer of grime that crusted the curve of the diamond. She could feel the difference in the stone already, the lightness. She tried anyway.
“Forsythia.”
There was no answer. She remembered a whispered goodbye. She hadn’t said one of her own.
She cried herself to sleep.
Two days later, she went before the king.
Nikos wore mourning white, which didn’t suit him, and no jewelry but his nose ring and sapphire signet. He’d cut his hair; for the first time Isyllt saw his father in the bones of his face.
“Lady Iskaldur.” They met again in his study, but no tea or informality this time, no clutter on his desk. The room was nearly bare—he would move to the king’s suites soon. “I’m glad you’re well.”
“Likewise, Your Hi—Your Majesty.”
His mouth twisted. “Awkward, isn’t it? No one quite has it memorized yet. Least of all me.”
“What happened, Your Majesty?”
“Phaedra… disintegrated. I was a bit cloudy at the time, but Savedra tells me it was spectacular. You passed out. We thought you were dead too, but when we came back with the guards you were breathing.”
“And—” Her throat closed. “And Kiril?”
His hand twitched against the desk. “We didn’t find his body. We searched, but there were spirits everywhere, and the riots—I’m sorry. He’ll have a tomb in the royal crypts for his service.”
She closed her eyes, too tired to care if he saw her pain. He didn’t know—that was obvious from his helpless misery—about Kiril’s betrayal or just what the missing corpse might mean. It would be a mercy if he never knew. “I understand. Thank you.”
Silence stretched for a time. “Savedra tells me how you helped her,” he said at last. “Before and after I was captured. Thank you. And thank you for stopping Phaedra. But…” He couldn’t meet her eyes.
“But I forswore myself,” she said softly.
Nikos nodded. “I would have done the same, I think, had it been Vedra hurt. But you broke your oath.” You let my father die, said the catch in his voice. “It’s—” Again he stopped short. This time, she imagined, the unspoken word was treason. “Not something that can be known. I can’t ask you to return to my employ.”
He was right, of course. That didn’t stop her cheeks from stinging, or help the hollow sensation in the pit of her stomach. “I understand, Your Majesty.”
“You’ll be compensated for your service, of course.” His hands curled against polished wood. “I am sorry.”
“So am I,” she whispered. She straightened her shoulders. “Thank you, Your Majesty. Is that all you need of me?”
“Yes.” He stood, awkwardly, and she did the same. “Thank you for all your service, Lady Iskaldur.”
She bowed farewell. There was nothing else to say.
Savedra Severos met her in the halls. Mourning white suited her no better this time than it had when the queen died. She wrung her hands when she saw Isyllt, then forced them to her sides.
“I’m sorry,” she said, voice rough. “Nikos told me—and after all you did—I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right.” Savedra flinched from her smile; she knew how ghastly she looked. “I understand the need. One can hardly make a habit of forgiving traitors.”
Savedra flinched again, and color rose in her cheeks. “Even so. Oh, here.” She tugged at her left hand, and Isyllt swallowed as she recognized the ruby glitter. “I don’t need this anymore.” Her right hand glittered too, a magnificent orange sapphire that Isyllt had last seen on Lord Varis.
“You can keep it,” she said, not reaching for the offered jewel. “You should. She was your relative.”
“I don’t want it! Please. It’s a mage stone.”
Isyllt lifted a reluctant hand. The ring was warm from Savedra’s skin. No echo of magic stirred as she closed her fingers around it.
“Thank you.”
“If there’s anything you need,” the pallakis whispered.
“There’s nothing.” Too harsh—she tried to smile. “But thank you all the same.”
She had inherited all of Kiril’s estate that did not revert to the Crown. The thought of walking through his house, of touching his books and his clothes, made her gag. She knew that would fade; she still regretted parting with mementos of her mother, though the sight of them had brought only pain at the time. But for the moment she couldn’t leave her apartment without seeing streets they’d walked together, shops they’d visited.
Staying in was no better—she heard his footstep on her stairs as she tried to sleep, felt the touch of phantom magic at her wards. Once she leapt from bed and flung open the door, but the hall was cold and empty.
Khelséa visited her, bringing food every time. Ciaran came with wine and flowers. Isyllt invited them in each time, but had no heart for pleasant conversation, or the pretense of it. She wasn’t entirely sure she had a heart at all.
On the seventh night, she opened the door to find Varis Severos on her doorstep. He wore white as well; it suited him better than it did Savedra.
“I imagine I’m not someone you most want to see right now,” he said, “but may I come in?”
“Of course,” she said after a pause, stepping aside. “Would you like tea, or wine?”
He grimaced. “Do you have anything stronger?”
She poured them both ouzo while he claimed a chair, and prodded the fire to life before she sat in turn. “How can I help you, my lord?”
He didn’t speak for a long moment, watching the embers fall instead. Behind him, city lights blurred through the windowpane. Finally he emptied his glass in one neat swallow.
“You know they never found Kiril’s body,” he said at last.
She couldn’t stop a wince. “I know.”
“That’s because I took it from the tower.”
That broke through her fugue. Ouzo splashed her fingers as she startled, chilling as it evaporated. She drained the glass before she could spill the rest. “What?” She coughed on the fumes. “Why?”
“Because I know the choice that death brings for the likes of you. And I believe in the freedom to make such choices.”
Her lips peeled back from her teeth, and she wanted to say something vitriolic about his choices and their consequences. She couldn’t find the right words.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because if you’re anything like him, you’ll find out eventually.” He smiled wryly. “And I know you are. I left him in a safe place, warded from opportunistic spirits. I returned after the demon days, and he was gone.”
She had understood the possibility since Nikos had told her of the missing body, but it wasn’t any easier to hear again. Her left hand clenched till her scars ached.
“I thought you should know,” Varis said after a long silence. “Now, while you have time to think on it. I know how much you meant to each other.”
“Yes.” Her lips shaped the word but no sound followed. She drew a breath and tried again. “Thank you, my lord.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. The pain in his voice made her flinch. She preferred him glib and mocking. “So very sorry.”
“Yes, well.” She rose, less gracefully than she might have wished, and led him to the door. “We knew the risks when we took the job.”
She didn’t answer the door for the next two days. She wept, raged, flung books and muffled her sobs and curses in pillows. Her magic was still burned to the root, or she might have wrought worse destruction.
The second night she sat down in the ruin of her bedroom and knew she couldn’t stay. Kiril had asked if she could stand to see him as a demon. She knew she could. Even now her hands ached at the thought of touching him. If he came to her now, cold and lifeless, she would run to him as she always had. Nothing, it seemed, could burn her need for him so deep that it wouldn’t grow back.
She couldn’t go on like this, not with the wounds so fresh.
*   *   *
Dahlia came the following day, when Isyllt had stopped crying long enough to clean up some of the wreckage. She wouldn’t have answered that knock either, but the latch clicked anyway.
“I took your spare key when you were sick,” the girl said, lingering in the doorway. “I thought it might be useful.”
Isyllt snorted. “I suppose I’m lucky you didn’t steal the dishes while I was in St. Alia’s. Though the glasses might have fared better if you had.” She nudged a shattered wine stem with one toe and set the broom aside.
“I would have come sooner,” Dahlia said, closing the door behind her, “but I needed to think.” Her face was still sallow, thinner than it had been two decads ago. The effect aged her, made the androgyne clearer in her bones.
Isyllt waited, leaning against the cupboard.
“I want to be your apprentice,” the girl said in a rush. “If you’ll still have me. I don’t want to—to end up like my mother, or Forsythia, or any of those other girls. I want…” Her hands traced shapes in the air as she searched for words.
“Choices?” Isyllt suggested.
“Yes.”
She laughed softly; it made her chest ache. “I understand. And I would teach you, though I won’t be fit to anytime soon, nor fit company, but—”
Dahlia’s face was already closing. She raised her eyebrows as her jaw tightened. “But?”
Isyllt sighed. “I’m leaving Erisín.”
“Oh. Why?”
Her mouth twisted. “I’m running away. There are ghosts here I can’t face. Decisions I can’t make. I need distance.”
“Oh.” Dahlia folded her arms across her chest. “I could go with you,” she said quietly.
Isyllt frowned, running her tongue over her teeth as she tasted the idea. “I suppose you could.” It was a bad idea; that was probably why she found herself considering it. “People have the habit of dying in my company.”
Dahlia laughed, as scathingly as only an adolescent could manage. “People have a habit of dying in Oldtown, too. I’d like to see something different before my turn comes.”
Coward, she named herself, to take a child into danger because she didn’t want to go alone.
She met Dahlia’s eyes, already narrowed against the threat of rejection. Not quite a child, and no stranger to risk. Old enough to make her own decisions, perhaps.
Isyllt knew exactly how well making those decisions for her would go.
“Something different.” She pressed her tongue against her teeth thoughtfully. “I think we can manage that.”



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I could never have finished this book without the help and support of so many people. These include but aren’t limited to: Elizabeth Bear, Jodi Meadows, Jaime Lee Moyer, Leah Bobet, Celia Marsh, Liz Bourke, and everyone in the drowwzoo chat, for endless brainstorming and commiserations; the Partners in Climb, for moral support and getting me out of the house on a regular basis, and for never dropping me on my head; all my blog readers who listen to me bitch and look interested and sympathetic; my fabulous agent Jenn Jackson and equally fabulous editor DongWon Song, and everyone at Orbit.
Thank you!