I didn’t know what to do. She wouldn’t fit. I might not even fit. Could I press myself over them, and protect them from the worst? Radha snorted, nudging me with towards the ditch. I turned to look at her, realising. As the flames leapt closer my heart broke. It was in her deep eyes, her knowing eyes. I took one too-short moment to press my forehead to hers, thinking I would die before I let her do this for me, but for the children – anything.
‘Forgive me, love.’
She tossed her head and lowered herself onto her front knees. I curled myself over Ella and Sadie, and then Radha lay close that she might spread her wings over us. The glorious feathers cocooned us tenderly in a tiny inferno.
I heard her give a whinny as the flames rushed closer, and I prayed to the old gods, the gods with enough power to give life to a piece of driftwood, I prayed that they find enough power now to make this cursed fire pass.
Isadora
Was I dreaming?
Around me everything burned. Run, people screamed. Had I dreamt this before? It felt like I had. There was a woman with hair of fire shaking me and screaming at me to run, run, but she was not real, surely. Too lovely to be real. All of this too nightmarish to be real. Someone was carrying me because I hadn’t thought to run and I couldn’t see Falco anywhere −
The heat. The heat was real enough to burn, and I found clarity like a blister upon my skin. ‘Put me down!’ I ordered. It was Erik, the man who’d tried to kill me beside the lake. He set me on the curling crackling bark and we took off once more, faster now. The woman, though – Roselyn – she was so slow. As the fire chased us, ever gaining, she stumbled awkwardly again and again, until Erik gathered her over his shoulder and ran with her as he’d done me.
We made it free, gasping for breath. My lungs were on fire, scorched by the heat of the air. I still couldn’t see Falco.
Spinning around, I ran through the expanse of people who’d made it to the plain. Flames spread through the long grass but were beaten back, more manageable here. I couldn’t find him anywhere and couldn’t spot Radha either, who should have been plain to see.
I turned back to the forest. The fire was eating its way through, moving west.
‘Wait,’ Erik said, appearing beside me. ‘Wait for it to pass.’
I shook my head. If he was in there with the children I would find them. But Erik said, ‘You’re very much awake, girl. You kept asking and asking, so I’m telling you. You go in there, you won’t wake up – you’ll die.’
It stalled me. I couldn’t remember asking if I was awake. All my memories were slipping together, my realities blending. I didn’t know what I had dreamt and what I hadn’t. This is real, I told myself. All too real.
Falco
I prayed for it to pass and it did, quickly due to the force of the wind. But so extreme was its heat that when we emerged from the cocoon it was to see the ravaged remains of the forest, a burnt out husk of blackened skeletal waste in every direction.
And Radha.
I sank to my knees beside her. She had covered herself as best she could, curling beneath the feathery shield, and so her body was relatively undamaged, a little singed. But her wings … her wings were burnt to ruin, the feathers disintegrated, tissue and muscle scoured away leaving only the fine bones and tendons. She bore the skeletons of wings, the ghosts, and she was in so much pain. She tried to stand but her legs wouldn’t hold her and she sank back down.
My throat was thick as I tried to soothe her, stroking her and pressing my face to her neck. She was trembling and hot to the touch.
‘Falco?’ Sadie asked, in tears. She had been crying since we climbed into the ditch, but Ella was solemn-faced and silent.
‘It’s alright,’ I managed to tell them, though it wasn’t, it wasn’t.
Abstractly, I remembered Ella’s words to me from months ago. You’re a chrysalis. It seemed she’d been right, but the world I had emerged into was a macabre kind of underworld indeed, and I less of a man than ever.
‘Shh,’ I whispered to Radha. ‘I’ll find you a healer, my darling, and you’ll be well, I promise.’
Distant shouts rang out. People searching for us, for any survivors.
It was Isadora who found us first, perhaps pulled by the feel of her pegasis. She sprinted through the coals of the forest and stopped dead. Her eyes landed on Radha and even over the distance I could see her red gaze disappear, shifting instead to something grey and faded, something halfway between black and white. Pain, I thought, her colour for deepest pain.
‘She saved us,’ I rasped. ‘Get help.’
Sadie draped herself over Radha’s neck, holding her tightly and whispering to her. Ella reached to place her hands on the horse’s hind, stroking her gently. But Isadora didn’t touch her pegasis. She seemed frozen, locked.
‘Izzy – we have to get her to a healer!’ I said. ‘Find someone!’
But she didn’t move.
More people were arriving, the Sparrow’s soldiers crowding around. Roselyn appeared at a run, scooping her nieces into her arms and kissing them repeatedly. There were tears in her eyes. Her companion was nearby, and seemed almost as relieved to see them safe.
But I didn’t have space for relief in my chest. It was pounding pounding pounding because I could see the look on Izzy’s face and I thought I knew what it was for, but I couldn’t believe it, I wouldn’t.
She drew a dagger.
‘Don’t you dare!’ I snarled.
Her eyes were that awful grey as she looked at me. Ashen, I realised, like the forest around her. ‘Step aside.’
I shook my head. She couldn’t be serious. She couldn’t think I’d ever step aside.
Her eyes flicked to whoever was behind me and I was too slow, unforgivably slow, shock and grief making me stupid. Hands took me, several sets, all strong and rough enough to pull me from my pegasis. I grunted and struggled, but there were at least four of her soldiers.
‘Bind his hands,’ Isadora said. ‘He’s more dangerous than he looks.’
I struggled, screamed. ‘Get away from her! It’s only her wings – the rest of her is fine!’
Isadora walked a few paces closer to where I had been dragged. ‘How could you be so cruel?’ she asked me softly. ‘She’s in agony. Half of her has been destroyed.’
‘I know the feeling,’ I exclaimed. ‘Would you slaughter me too?’
Her eyes flickered scarlet, black, back to grey.
‘I’ll do what I must,’ Isadora said, ‘for it seems you are, as always, too weak.’
A scream left me as she turned back to Radha. ‘Don’t. Isadora.’
‘Take the children away,’ she ordered Roselyn, who hurriedly did so. I heard Sadie’s crying grow softer and softer.
‘Don’t,’ I begged again, over and over. ‘Don’t, don’t –’
Isadora
I sank to the ground beside her. Her agonised eyes pleaded with me. ‘Yes,’ I whispered. ‘I will. I’m coming.’
Running my hands over her nose and forehead, pressing my cheek to hers – these were the little things I had not done enough. These were the small acts of affection I had never allowed myself, too frightened of what they might open within me.
But now I let all the fear leak out my cracked edges, all the brittle and sharp thorns grow dull and then smooth. ‘I love you,’ I said. ‘I love you, I love you.’ True love, chosen freely and given completely. Stronger than any magic.
I looked into Radha’s brown eyes, with Falco in my ears – ‘don’t, don’t, don’t’– and I said ‘thank you’ and I sliced my knife straight into her carotid artery and I killed her. Her blood poured free, all over my hands and arms. She slumped against me and I sat still for long minutes, feeling the weight and warmth of her pressed to my body. I didn’t think I could move, didn’t think I was capable.
But I was and I did. I climbed out from under her and without looking towards Falco, I walked through the burnt forest all the way to the river. Alone now, I waded in an
d lost my footing, sinking awkwardly to sit in the water.
Wind still blew through the charcoal trees. Ash floated in the air, landing on my face, my eyes and my lips, on the surface of the river. I watched it floating, making patterns in the ripples. The world was grey.
Someone stepped into the water beside me.
I looked up to see the red-haired woman. Roselyn. She sank to her knees and with the ends of her skirt she began to gently scrub the blood from my arms and hands.
I dropped my head and wept, great heaving sobs that had been building all my life. She cleaned my skin and then smoothed her hand over my head, tenderly stroking my hair as I sobbed.
When finally my tears came to an end I wiped my eyes and nose with the back of my hand and rested my head on my raised knees. ‘I always have to do the ugly things,’ I said.
‘They take the most courage,’ Roselyn replied.
I would never have imagined the afternoon could turn cold in the wake of such a blaze, but it did. The clouds hung heavy over the sun and though the wind had lessened, it grew frigid. My teeth chattered and all the submerged parts of me went numb and wrinkly as a prune.
‘Where did you come from?’ I asked her.
‘Vjort. It was violent there. We stole a boat and sailed it downriver.’ She sighed a little, as though the whole thing was wearying. ‘We grew lost, swept up in the current. We came too far, I imagine, because now it seems we are in Kaya.’
I shrugged bleakly. ‘Who knows where we are. Yurtt, Sanra, Kaya, Pirenti – it’s all the same when it burns.’ I glanced at her face and was struck by how pretty she was, how prominent her cheekbones. ‘I thought it was always violent in Vjort.’
Roselyn nodded. She seemed lost in thought, before realising I was waiting for further explanation. ‘The men of Pirenti fight always for power. I’m not sure who rules there now.’
I straightened, studying her. ‘Your brother-in-law. Your son.’
‘Perhaps not.’ There was an ocean of fear in her brown eyes. And something else. Something darker. ‘They didn’t come for us. But the Jarl’s men did.’
‘Did they harm you?’ My skin prickled at the thought of anyone raising a hand to such a fragile creature.
She took her time answering. Tendrils of her burnt-ochre hair blew across her face, catching in her eyelashes and against her lips. Roselyn brushed them away and met my gaze. ‘There are worse things than being harmed.’
At first I didn’t understand, thinking of my cage and imagining that she mustn’t know a great deal about harm. But as we sat hip deep in the river I considered the words, and realised she was right: watching someone you loved being harmed was worse. Committing the harm yourself worst of all.
I looked at Roselyn, seeing her for what she was. Not fragile after all, but quite the opposite.
‘And you?’ she asked. ‘Where have you come from?’
The answer was so clear, suddenly. Not the cage. That was not where I had been born or raised or forged. I had been forged in this forest, and on the road with her son, and in the city with Falco. Pressed flat to Radha’s back, her heartbeat thumping against my ribcage. Not by cruelty, but with kindness. I didn’t know how to explain that, so I said nothing.
We rose to our feet and waded onto the bank, both of us soaked through. As we began the walk back, dread filled my stomach.
‘What is your name?’ Roselyn asked me.
The time for secrets was over. The time for truth had come. I needed to bear my name with pride and use it to win this war. ‘My soldiers name me Sparrow.’
But she shook her head. ‘What is your true name?’
My heart thumped. I garnered my courage and told her. ‘Isadora.’
I found Falco digging a grave, alone in the graveyard forest. Her body had been wrapped in a singed tent cloth. I hoisted a second shovel salvaged from the camp wreckage, and I dug alongside him, and neither of us spoke a word. This time the silence was not chosen by me, but by him.
Sometime in the night the ash beneath my feet started creeping up over my boots and wrapping itself around my ankles, my legs, my hips. It snaked up, covering me in a fine, stinging layer, covering my hands and arms and throat and mouth and eyes. My entire body became a burnt-out husk and I called for help, shouted it as loudly as I could, but Falco couldn’t hear me or didn’t care, and without looking at me he finished burying Radha and walked away, leaving me to suffocate in ash.
Chapter Twenty-five
Finn
There was a film between life and death; I could feel it so easily now, that I often took to slipping my fingers beneath it as we walked. A veil, something entirely insubstantial, a sensation more than anything else. The delicacy of a moth wing or the gossamer of a dragonfly. It had the same texture as sticky, trickling sap, the finest sheen of it. How little the living knew of the truth: they moved so close to death that the only thing between was as thin and ethereal as a shadow. It was probably a good thing they knew so little – the truth was terrifying. So I didn’t tell them how I was manipulating it: we survived the journey to the marshes only because I was able to feel that film and stretch it a little, molding it over all three hundred of us, coating us in the invisibility of death that we might not be spotted by warders.
After all, warders were unable to glimpse the dead.
Well, unless they were me.
Falco
I was attempting to get as drunk as humanly possible. It made for an interesting walk through the long grassy plains of Querida. I had walked here before, but with Ava, Finn and Osric, whom I loved, instead of with an army of enemy soldiers I’d spent the last ten years trying to kill. The Sparrow was at their head, composed and unreadable. She was the ice queen, the snow goddess, a statue made of granite. I finished my bottle of rum, stumbling as I smashed it on the ground. People looked at me, but what did that matter? What did any of it matter?
Isadora
Emperor Feckless had returned with a vengeance.
Roselyn and Erik were keeping the twins away, even though anyone could see how desperate they were to be near him. Greer told me to pull him into line, but I ignored her. Falco was none of my concern. The final thread tying us together had died at my blade.
A scout appeared in the distance, sprinting back to us. As I waited for her I glanced at my army – we were fifteen-hundred strong after the casualties of the fire. Plus two children, a Pirenti hirðmenn, a Pirenti woman, and one drunken fool.
The scout arrived and took a moment to catch her breath. ‘A group of people, lady. Very large people – they look Pirenti. Some on foot, some on horseback. Heading towards the marshes as we are.’
‘How many?’
‘Maybe two hundred.’
I cursed inwardly. Two hundred was too few.
I called for my army to make camp and then I waited for nightfall. The darker it grew the louder Falco’s drunken singing became. When I could stand it no longer I donned a black, hooded cloak and drew it over my hair, then I crept silently through the dark hills. Every shadow seemed a dream; I kept thinking I must have slipped into sleep at some point.
Hold it together, I urged myself. Keep control of your senses, at least for tonight.
It took me several hours to reach the group and I tracked their movements for some time longer as they seemed disinclined to stop for the night. Eventually they paused, most of the enormous men taking a knee, some water, a little rest but no sleep. It wouldn’t be long before they took off again and at this pace they’d reach Ava and Osric’s group of Sancians within days. It occurred to me to let them continue on their mission to protect the fleeing citizens, but no – I would need even these two hundred on my side of the battle. The best way to protect the people was to destroy the warders.
Flattening myself over the crest of a hill, I peered down on the group, searching for its leader. I’d never met King Ambrose and it was hard to distinguish any of the men in the dark – they all looked similar. Huge bodies, shaved heads, heavily armed.
Something snapped behind me and I whirled too late. How had I not heard him? This was turning into a habit: dropping my guard and letting men sneak up on me.
He was a giant. I had never witnessed a human so large. He plucked me by the back of the neck and lifted me from the ground. It hurt the base of my skull and my first instinct was to slash him to ribbons, but I held my temper and remained still, hanging like a ragdoll in his grip.
‘Well, well,’ he growled. ‘Forgetting the simplest rule: you can’t sneak up on someone who can smell you from a hundred miles away.’
I felt a chill run through me. All my animal instincts were screaming at me to get away from this thing, whatever it was. Hardly a man as I knew them. He carried me down the hill and I schooled myself to be calm. I wanted to talk to them. I just hadn’t counted on being apprehended and carried in like both an enemy spy and a helpless child.
As we drew near I realised that the larger soldiers were berserkers, and my skin crawled. I was carried through and they crowded around, sniffing at me. I was thrown roughly to the hard earth, where I sprawled and quickly righted myself.
‘He reeks of blood and emptiness,’ my captor reported.
Sitting on a log on the other side of a fire was a handsome man with no hands. I blinked, confused by the bandaged stumps. This helpless man was no berserker, so why was he here?
‘Who are you?’ the handless man asked.
The berserker snarled, ‘He’s a warder. Only ones who have that empty, cold scent. Let me kill him.’
‘Are you a warder, kid?’
I lifted my hands to my hood and lowered it. There was a collective growl from the men around me. Some called me names – monster, witch, demon. I straightened my shoulders, streaked through with rage. For being caught, for being called a man, a child, a warder, and all those other fucking names, for this cursed prejudice, these fools, and the endless, endless assumption that I was exactly what I looked like. I’d had enough.
Twisting low and fast, I took hold of the berserker’s wrist and used it to swing up behind his mighty shoulders, snaking my legs around them and pressing the blade of my dagger against his throat. He froze.