The Bone Palace (45 page)

The soldier frowned, and she realized he’d said something. “I’m sorry?” she said, pressing her shoulders against the padded seat.

“I asked if you were well, Lady.”

“Underslept, is all.” Underslept, overextended. All the scars on her heart ripped fresh. But she had no time to indulge in grief. After the New Year, after Erisín was safe and this demon dead and her ashes salted.

The soldier—in fact a lieutenant, and named Cahal—led her not into the palace proper, but to the Gallery of Pearls. She’d never been inside before, and would have paused to study the portraits and busts that lined the broad hall had she not had to hurry to keep pace with her escort.

In Savedra’s rooms she also found the princess, and Hekaterin Denaris, the captain of Nikos’s private guard. The grim cast of their faces was identical. The air was heavy with sandalwood—incense burned on the altar across the room, shedding smoke in lazy coils.

“Nikos has been taken,” Savedra said when the door was safely locked and Cahal guarding the hall. “Snatched from the palace crypts. Whoever grabbed him wasn’t human.”

“Black Mother.” After months of creeping, Phaedra moved quickly enough now. But she had to, if she wished to see all her plans realized in the next four days.

“We have to get him back,” Savedra went on. “We have to stop her.”

“Does Mathiros know?”

“He does,” Ashlin said, “though not the details. But he’s closing us out, and I won’t sit by helpless.” Her hand closed on Savedra’s shoulder. “We won’t.”

Isyllt nodded. “Phaedra has him. And while she’s thwarted my attempts to scry her, I might have more luck with the prince.”

The casting would have been stronger in Nikos’s own quarters, but also more likely to draw attention. So they rolled up the fine carpets and pushed furniture aside till they had space to work. Captain Denaris brought a map of the city, and Savedra found an earring that Nikos had left in her room, a raw emerald caged in gold. Isyllt stationed one woman at each corner of the map—wife, lover, guard, and sworn agent. The earring she set in the center.

Hands clasped, pink and pale, olive and brown. Isyllt took Ashlin’s sword-calloused hand in her left, Savedra’s soft one in her right, and fixed the prince’s image in her mind.

A shiver traced a circuit through the four of them, pricking gooseflesh as the magic rose. Isyllt didn’t often practice spellcraft on the demon days—the power sharper, clearer, as if a veil had been drawn away. The cost, of course, was that they shone like a beacon to every spirit for miles around.

The red fog of Phaedra’s obfuscation answered at once, choking them with blood and cinnamon. Hands tightened as they shuddered against it, bones grinding through flesh.

“Hold on,” Isyllt whispered, gathering her power, imagining
a blade to cut away the shroud, cold and clean. She couldn’t match Phaedra strength for strength, but it wasn’t Phaedra the spell was meant to find. And unlike Phaedra, Nikos wanted to be found. The earring began to rattle against the map, gold and stone scraping across parchment. Isyllt pressed against the weak spot in the fog, felt it give like skin beneath a knife’s edge.

She opened her eyes to see the earring spinning across the map, spiraling tighter and tighter till it chose a spot and stayed there, shivering in the lamplight.

Directly over the ruined palace.

Kiril stood in his library as dusk settled against the windows, trying to decide which books he couldn’t bear to leave behind, trying to think of nothing beyond that choice. Everything else could be left, or sent for. He couldn’t afford to delay for possessions, no matter how dear. He couldn’t delay till sunrise, either, not if he truly meant to leave. He didn’t relish the thought of traveling during the dead days, but it wouldn’t be the first time he’d done so.

Isyllt no longer needed him. She hadn’t for a very long time. He couldn’t let himself need her.

He had told himself he was rescuing her, fifteen years ago, from misery and poverty and an untimely death. It was likely true, but he had still known all the other dangers he was exposing her to. And if she thrived under them, an orchid blossoming at the threat of death, that did nothing to lessen the cruelty of his choice.

He had also known since the beginning how dangerous she might become, but he hadn’t truly appreciated it until the first morning he woke to her weight in his arms. Her
magic and cunning made her a weapon without him, but he had honed her and guided her. And turned her to his own heart.

A hammering at the door roused him, sharpening his pulse. His wards showed him the unhappy soldiers gathered on his doorstep. Adrastos Agyros was with them, stooped and huddled in his winter cloak. Kiril’s smile felt cold and ugly on his face; Mathiros was finally finished ignoring him.

He might have ignored the summons, but the guards were clearly prepared to break down the door, and violence was unlucky on the demon days. So he descended the stairs and opened the door, smiling benignly as if they delivered an invitation to tea.

Adrastos’s frown didn’t lessen as they walked to the waiting carriage. He was only ten years Kiril’s senior, but time and worry had stooped him and worn his bones fragile as a bird’s. A hawk once, now his wrinkled neck and bald head made him a vulture. His eyes were sharp as ever, though.

“What’s the matter, Adras?” Kiril asked. The man had never liked him much, having a healthy distrust for sorcery and spies, but they had always respected each other’s efficiency.

“Trouble in the palace. I’ll let the king explain—he knows more than he’s telling me.” He was quiet for a moment as the carriage wheels clattered over stone. “You shouldn’t have left him.”

Kiril’s lips thinned in something that was almost a smile. “One might argue that it was he who did the leaving.”

“He was a fool. A grieving fool. But we swore to defend him, and I always took that to mean even from himself.”

“We all have our limits, Adras. I’m glad you haven’t yet found yours.”

He tugged a window open and watched the darkened streets flash by. The city was silent, muffled beneath low clouds that promised snow, but its peace was a ruse. He felt the tension, tasted it on the wind, stretched taut and waiting. And in that tension he smelled the conflagrant spice of Phaedra’s perfume.

The strain he sensed waiting in the city was manifest in the palace. They passed patrols of soldiers, and worried servants lurked in corners. More than one tried to question Adrastos, but the seneschal waved them away, unflagging as he delivered Kiril to the king.

Mathiros waited in his study, hands laced white-knuckled in front of his face. He didn’t stir until the door was shut, and when he did his joints popped loudly. Kiril fought a sympathetic wince; they were neither of them young anymore.

“You summoned me?”

The full weight of Mathiros’s black eyes turned on him, burning with rage and revelation. “What did you do, Kiril?” He stood, hands flat on his desk. His sword lay across the paper-strewn surface—still sheathed, but an eloquent promise all the same.

“For months I’ve had dreams. Black, murderous dreams of a woman I didn’t know. I thought I was going mad. Even now I can barely remember her real face. The night of the ball she was screaming at me to remember, and I still didn’t understand.”

“But you remember now.”

“Yes. Why did I ever forget?”

Little point in keeping secrets now, when all their old scars were being ripped open.

“I took the memories from you,” Kiril said. “From everyone. It was the only way I could think to keep your secrets. To keep you safe.”

Mathiros laughed, cold and harsh. “It didn’t work. And now she’s taken Lychandra’s face to taunt me. She’s taken
my son
.”

That drew Kiril’s head up. But of course Phaedra wouldn’t abandon her plans just because he wasn’t there to help her. She was stubborn as Mathiros when she chose to be.

“I’m sorry,” Kiril said with a sigh. The honesty of it surprised him. “I’m sorry that Lychandra’s memory is tangled in this mess. And I’m sorry for Nikos. It’s you Phaedra means to destroy—Nikos merely has the misfortune of being too close.”

The king flinched at the sound of her name. “And isn’t that an irony, that Nikos and I might ever be too close. How long have you known?”

“Long enough.”

“This is treason. I could have you killed.”

“It is, and you can certainly try.”

Their eyes met, and it was Mathiros who broke. The king had never been one for cowardice, so he must still have a sense of shame. He stepped around the desk, leaving the sword where it lay. “Where is she?”

All Kiril’s anger was spent, only the bitter lees remaining. Just as he’d promised Isyllt, there was no satisfaction in any of this. “She lairs in the ruined palace. I imagine she’s waiting for you already.” He turned, infinitely weary.

“You can’t leave,” Mathiros said, entreaty threading the words. “Me, perhaps, but not Nikos. This isn’t his doing.”

He thought of Nikolaos, and of his own father, nearly forgotten after so many years. “Sons should never suffer for their fathers’ sins, and yet they always do. I’m sorry for that as well, but I have no service left to offer you. Goodbye, Mathiros.”

The door shut behind him, and with its echo he felt the sundering of thirty years. Not even the moment he broke his vows had felt so final.

He wrapped a shadow around him to avoid the inquisitive staff and turned toward the stables. He hesitated for a moment, and nearly laughed at himself. After all his great betrayals, the thought of stealing a horse gave him pause. But he needed to be gone, and that was the fastest way to do so.

It had begun to snow. Fat flakes snagged on his cloak as he crossed the courtyard. The first snow of winter. If it didn’t melt, it might last clean and untrampled till the New Year, when children would build forts with it.

Then the wind changed, carrying whispers of rage and blood and distant torches, and he knew the city wouldn’t stay clean.

Kiril paused in front of the stables—he’d thought to beat Mathiros there, but others had beaten him in turn. The princess and the pallakis Savedra waited in the courtyard while Captain Denaris gathered horses. Isyllt was with them. Riding after Nikos, through whatever chaos Phaedra had wrought in the city.

Isyllt lifted her head, scenting the night, and glanced unerringly toward him. She stood straight and slender as
a blade, and the wind unraveled her braid in black ribbons. Through snow and shifting, torchlit shadows her eyes met his, and he felt the weight of her name on his lips.

She turned from him, the shape of her shoulders a shutting door.

I
syllt had no time to regret walking away from Kiril; as soon as they neared the palace gates she knew something was wrong. A moonless night, but snowlight washed the sky soft and grey as a mourning dove’s breast. Except to the east, where clouds seethed red and angry. Something was burning.

“Don’t go out there, ladies,” called a guard at the gates. “Oldtown is rioting.”

“What happened?” Isyllt asked, drawing rein. Her gelding, a compact warmblood, responded easily. These were the same sort of horses the Vigils used, bred to be nimble on city streets, and unflinchingly calm above all else.

“We’ve only rumors still,” another said, “but word is that some opera singer turned up dead, her throat slit. A Rosian girl. Now all of Cab—Little Kiva is up in arms.”

Some opera singer. A Rosian girl. Isyllt remembered Anika Sirota’s pale pretty face raised in song, remembered
the thunder of applause as the curtains fell. Oh yes, Little Kiva would rise to avenge her death, or to give her a pyre worthy of an opera.

“Shadows take them,” Isyllt swore. At the moment, she meant it for the murderers and the vengeful refugees alike.

“Thank you for the warning,” Savedra said, steering her black mare closer. “We’ll be careful.”

The guards looked at one another unhappily, but finally unbarred the gates and let the riders pass.

The city was dark and silent, though Isyllt glimpsed faces peering through shutters as they passed. The closer they grew to Oldtown, the more citizens left their homes to see what was happening. Spirits clustered too, shadows moving across rooftops, iridescent ripples in the air at the corners of Isyllt’s vision. Nothing that could challenge her, but she’d lay odds that more than one of the gawkers would come to harm before morning.

Snow caught and melted in her horse’s sorrel mane; it had begun to stick to the cobbles and eaves, softening the lines of houses. As they neared the city’s heart, the flakes that drifted over them were grey and unmelting—ash.

They passed Vigils and a few brave runners as they rode, and pieced the story together one scrap at a time. Sirota’s body had been found at sunset, sprawled on a street outside Little Kiva. The crowd that gathered ran to the nearest police station, only to be turned away because of the day and the hour. Shouting turned to thrown rocks; windows were smashed. It only worsened from there. Most hearths were cold on the dead days, but they still found fire for their torches. Now Oldtown was burning and Vigils and citizens alike were dead, but no one knew how many.

The last runner they met was a boy no older than fourteen, cocky with youth and the urgency of his news, blind to the grinning spirit perched on his shoulder. Skrals, her mother had called such, malicious spirits usually too weak to cause harm. This one bared ephemeral black teeth in a grin, daring Isyllt to challenge it.