Isadora

by Charlotte McConaghy

  It fell into place suddenly, the last nails in a coffin.

  The fog around us was clearing, falling back. My mind was whirling too hard to notice. The cage was not because of how I looked, not because I was a demon baby, but because my parents were rebels. They were the ones who had chosen the path of my life when they irrevocably harmed Falco’s family. I bore the punishment of that. And now I had become just as bloodthirsty. Blood begat blood, death begat death.

  ‘Isadora …’ Falco said, almost desperately. ‘All this pain we’ve caused each other – it dates even further back than our lifetimes. It’s my fault – directly – that you were born into such horrific brutality. I finally, finally think you were right. Whatever brought us together and bound our lives was nothing more than a cruel joke. Let it go now. Let it be over, that we might not punish ourselves for it any longer.’

  I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

  ‘Wasted lives,’ he whispered. ‘Two utterly wasted lives.’

  At that moment the fog cleared enough to reveal that we were not the only two people left in the world, nor had we moved as far as I thought. We were right beside the recently warring camp, now filled with at least fifty staring faces, all of whom had overheard our argument. Including Ava, Ambrose and Thorne. They gazed at us and I had a vague thought that at least our embarrassing conversation had stopped the fighting.

  But I didn’t feel any embarrassment for the weaknesses I had just revealed. I felt only a terrible heartache as I watched Falco walk away from me. I wished there was some way to tell him that I didn’t care about our parents, I didn’t care what his warders had done to me or to my family. I didn’t care about the cage or the brutality – I was so far beyond it because of him. I cared only for him, I loved only him, desperately and endlessly, no magic and no bond needed to make it true.

  We marched west for several days until we arrived at the edge of the marshlands. The question now was which way to skirt them, and as we stopped for a quick lunch break I joined Thorne, Ambrose and Ava to figure it out.

  ‘Well hello, stranger,’ Thorne greeted me pointedly. I lowered my eyes, not wanting to discuss why I’d avoided the lot of them for the past few days, travelling ensconced in groups of my own people.

  None of the Sparrow’s soldiers were particularly surprised to learn my true name. I had always been known as the Sparrow’s right hand, and I got the feeling many of them had suspected the truth. Ava had been watching me with cold suspicion ever since, whereas Thorne had yet to make his opinion clear.

  ‘A little white sparrow,’ Thorne mused now.

  ‘It’s wonderful,’ Ambrose said blithely.

  ‘How do you figure that?’ Ava demanded.

  ‘The Sparrow was an unknown before. We didn’t know if he could be trusted. Now that “he” is a “she”, and one we happen to know and love, we have a powerful new ally we can count on.’

  I tried not to blush at his use of the word love, astonished that he would throw it around so lightly. He had met me mere days ago and since witnessed me slice off the finger of one of his men.

  ‘The Sparrow is an enemy rebel who started civil war in my country, rose up against my cousin, the rightful ruler of Kaya, and incited untold bloodshed,’ Ava said coldly.

  I lifted my chin, letting her see no regret. I would not reveal myself as the ruler of three realms only to cower before a foreign woman, no matter who she was or how respected. ‘The subjugation of my people by yours,’ I said, ‘the unforgivable misconduct shown by Kaya’s rulers, and the constant, insidious hand of the warders in any and every decision of state merited intervention.’ I paused, holding her violet eyes, watching them slip to a bright fuchsia. ‘I did ask first. I asked for Sanra’s freedom, I asked for new laws to be placed on warder use of power, then I warned what would happen if I continued to be ignored. And then I acted. Emperor Feckless has only himself to blame.’ I sat back, uneasy about how much I had spoken.

  ‘You mean your bondmate?’ Ava asked pointedly.

  And I replied, ‘No, Majesty, I don’t.’

  She sighed, and I could hear her sadness.

  ‘I never would have guessed, but I should have,’ Thorne offered with a shake of his head. ‘Why didn’t you tell us, Iz?’

  ‘I never told anyone. That was the point.’

  ‘But Falco knew?’ Ambrose asked.

  I nodded.

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘Since we bonded,’ I replied.

  ‘That little cheek,’ Thorne muttered. ‘Lying through his teeth this whole time. Finn will die when she finds out.’ I couldn’t help smiling as he laughed at the thought.

  ‘Ambrose, could I have a word with you?’

  We turned to see Falco a few paces away. His crystal eyes glittered in the sunlight.

  ‘Of course you can, my short-haired, broken-nosed cousin,’ Ambrose said cheerfully. ‘Take a seat.’

  Falco hesitated with a glance at me, but sat beside Thorne.

  ‘We were just talking about you,’ Ambrose said. ‘Who’s on wine duty this afternoon?’

  ‘I’ve got it,’ Thorne offered, lifting a bottle to the King’s lips and wiping away a trickle down his chin. I watched, thinking Ambrose might be embarrassed, but he didn’t look it. He just swallowed and thanked his nephew, finally turning back to Falco. ‘I’ve been hearing some fairly wild rumours about you.’

  Falco flapped his hand flamboyantly and with a droll sigh said, ‘Lies, all.’

  ‘Drop it, Fal,’ Thorne growled.

  Falco looked at him and I watched the colour leech from his cheeks, along with any pretense. He suddenly seemed tired and dead-eyed. ‘Do you know anything about your brother’s ability to torture and kill warders?’ he asked Ambrose.

  The air was sucked from the space.

  Ava glanced at her husband protectively. Thorne clenched and unclenched his fists. But Ambrose smiled a lovely smile as he thought about his brother for a few long seconds. With a shake of his head he replied, ‘No. His actions under the ice mountain were always a mystery to me.’

  ‘Might his wife know?’

  ‘You’re not to ask her,’ Ava ordered him. ‘She’s been through enough lately without remembering her husband’s violence.’

  Thorne’s jaw clenched. Falco looked like he might argue with Ava, but let it go. I could see the two halves of him battling for power, could see his own certainties and opinions vying for space, but all of it was cowed by his need to be ignorable.

  We did the same thing, he and I, always seeking to make ourselves smaller – to make ourselves invisible. He had a showy, beautiful way of being invisible, but it made him invisible in the ways that mattered. How in the world the two of us had found ourselves leading half a country each was utterly beyond me.

  You’re a butcher! The words walked with me, ran and breathed and slept with me. They hadn’t stopped racing around in my mind since he’d said them.

  It was what I’d believed, was it not? For as long as I could remember? The butcher or the meat. But the way he said it – with such repulsion – made the very idea vile. The truth became something else entirely: I still believed in being the butcher or the meat, but now I thought I would much rather be the meat.

  ‘How then?’ Falco asked. ‘How do we face them when they can render us immobile with a look, and we have no access to the one man who understood how to beat them?’

  Ava looked at me. ‘I’ve been waiting months to ask the Sparrow how she’s been leaving warder corpses all over the city.’

  I swallowed, unsure how to explain. My eyes darted to Falco. He said, ‘Isadora has a peculiar talent for lucid dreaming. She can control her body while her mind sleeps, and the warders have no power over her in that state.’

  ‘Of course,’ Ava sighed. ‘Sleepwalking to get Penn free.’

  ‘Since the night we broke our bond,’ Falco forged on, ‘she’s been unable to.’

  ‘Did you learn the skill?’ Ambrose asked him.

/>   Falco shook his head.

  I remembered acutely the beauty of that night and its strangeness, remembered how infinitely lovely it was to share the dream instead of always walking it alone. I cleared my throat a little.

  ‘Who taught you, Iz?’ Thorne asked.

  ‘No one.’

  ‘How did you teach yourself?’

  I didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t that I minded them knowing, it was simply that if I explained they would pity me, and I couldn’t stand the thought of that. Rupturing my heart, Falco reached to take my hand. His eyes shifted but I couldn’t tell what colour they were in the glare of the sun. He said, ‘With courage, boredom and practice.’

  My lips quirked. I considered removing my hand, but decided pity was marginally better than hatred.

  Falco reached for the bottle of wine, exchanged a very pointed look with Thorne, and then took a small sip. ‘Happy?’

  Thorne nodded.

  ‘Has anyone told you that you look like shit?’ Falco asked him bluntly.

  ‘We have more tact,’ Ava said.

  ‘Honestly, why do you look like shit?’ Falco pressed.

  Thorne shrugged.

  ‘Ambrose looks like shit too, but we all know why that is.’

  ‘Cheers to that,’ Ambrose announced, jutting his chin pointedly until he was fed more wine. ‘So which way do we go?’ He looked at Falco and me, whose country we found ourselves in.

  We glanced at each other and he seemed to remember that he was still holding my hand, quickly removing it. ‘South.’

  ‘And when we get there?’ Thorne asked.

  Falco used a stick to draw a map of the city in the dirt. ‘The wall is impenetrable and covers all but the ocean side. This western gate here is the largest, and will be most heavily guarded. Just inside this southern wall are the palace buildings and the warder compound – the magic here will be thick.’

  ‘Can we use the cliffs?’

  ‘They’re too steep to climb without significant casualties.’

  ‘What about the tunnel you built?’ I asked Falco.

  He marked it on the drawing. ‘We could potentially feed soldiers into the city slowly, if they don’t catch us in the act.’

  ‘Meaning we need to occupy the warders with a sustained diversion to give the infiltration time to work,’ Ambrose said.

  We all peered at the drawing.

  ‘The berserkers and I could attack this western gate with enough force to draw the bulk of the warder defenses,’ Thorne said.

  ‘You want to take all the heat on one hundred men?’ Falco demanded. ‘You’ll be annihilated.’

  The prince shook his head. ‘Warders don’t have the same kind of power over berserkers. Can’t get into their heads as easily.’

  ‘Why?’ Falco asked. This was really getting under his skin. But Thorne just shrugged.

  ‘We can distract them long enough to give you a shot. We’re probably the only ones who could.’

  I was the first to nod, but I was silently making my own plans.

  I peered into the marshlands. Hundreds of rivers snaked through the swamp and it was impossible to follow their banks through the expanse, as more often than not they became thick, sticky mud. The air was humid, mosquitoes and other insects appearing to feast upon our flesh. There was a sweet, rotten fruit scent; Thorne and the berserkers had to tie cloth over their noses, and looked ready to vomit from the pungency of it.

  Just as the call to move was about to be announced, I heard, all too clearly, a few sniggers. Lade and a group of my soldiers had lined up behind a berserker and were wafting horse dung through the air to irritate his sense of smell. The enormous man was almost double their size, and whirled around with an angry growl, clearly about to lose his temper. Not again.

  I kicked my horse into their path and levelled them with a look. The Kayan men were instantly contrite, while the berserker struggled to contain his temper with deep, long breaths. ‘Your immaturity would tear us apart before the warders get a chance,’ I said softly, directing the words to Lade.

  ‘Forgive me, Sparrow,’ Lade said quickly.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ a voice said from behind me. A voice I had come to know well.

  I rounded my horse, but found myself staring at nothing. Literally, the space before me was empty of anything except the long grass of the plain.

  ‘What did that man just call you?’ the voice asked.

  Gods, I’d lost it. Or I was dreaming.

  ‘The veil, Inney,’ a second voice said, a boy’s voice.

  Several things happened very fast.

  First the air before me flickered, shimmered, and instead of nothing I was abruptly staring at a bedraggled group of several hundred people. My eyes widened. What? Standing at their head were Finn, Jonah and Penn, gazing at me in shock, and −

  And then I was lifted right into the air, an invisible hand around my throat.

  Voices shouted below me, chaos breaking out at both the appearance of the invisible people and the fact that I was dangling by my neck at least ten feet in the air, choking.

  ‘Let her down, Osric!’ I heard Falco roar.

  But I was not let down. There was magic in the air, a thick crackle of it sizzling against my skin and hair, singing just as the fire had done. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t get anything into my lungs and my vision was starting to cloud −

  With a great whoomph I fell through the air to land heavily on my ankles, crashing sideways onto the hip I had recently dislocated. I blacked out for a second or two and it couldn’t have been any longer than that, because when my eyes opened, it was to see Finn of Limontae standing before Osric, first-tier warder of Kaya, her hand outstretched towards him.

  She clenched her hand as if squeezing, and he fell heavily to one knee, trying to gasp air, but unable to. ‘That doesn’t feel too nice, does it, Os?’ she demanded, squeezing tighter.

  ‘She’s the Sparrow!’ Osric managed to cough, and with a burst of power he rose to his feet and shook off Finn’s ward. ‘I vowed to kill the bloodthirsty Sparrow and so I shall.’

  I rose to my feet despite the pain. ‘Let him try,’ I growled, flicking free two of my daggers and spinning them between my fingers.

  ‘Are you out of your minds?’ Finn snapped, and then she did what should have been impossible: she contained the first-tier warder, froze his body and his power with a burst of her own.

  ‘Finn!’ he roared. ‘Let me go! She must die!’

  ‘Stand down, Osric!’ Falco ordered again.

  ‘Majesty,’ the warder gasped. ‘She has sought your death for years! You cannot trust her, no matter who she is to you!’

  Falco glanced at Finn, whose eyes were completely white, hair floating around her with the force of her power. It was sending the berserkers mad – I could hear them growling in fury, chafing to get at her, to destroy the magic they could scent. Things had become very dangerous.

  ‘Knock him out, if you can,’ Falco ordered Finn.

  Finn sent a burst of power so intense that Osric slumped unconscious to the ground. She lowered her hand, breathing slowly. Her yellow hair fell back into place and her white eyes regained some of their colour. Disturbingly, they didn’t return to their normal brightness. They were faded – a much fainter shade of yellow, making her look sapped or tired.

  ‘Finn,’ a voice said.

  I watched as she turned, her eyes moving over me as though I barely existed – in that moment no one in this world existed, only Thorne. She spotted him and twin expressions lit their faces. I felt the love that breached the distance between them more intensely than I had felt the heat of the fire or the wind of the storm. Their eyes were gold as we watched them cross and melt into each other. A warder and a berserker.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Finn

  While everyone else was dealing with serious things, Thorne and I crept away to the edge of the marshes. We hid ourselves behind the gnarled roots of a mangrove tree, kissing k
issing kissing until we couldn’t breathe. There was a lot to deal with – Isadora was the Sparrow and Ambrose had no hands – but it could all wait. I needed my husband.

  I didn’t realise at first that he was trembling. ‘What?’ I whispered. ‘What is it?’ I searched him, running my hands over his face and arms and chest. He looked gods-awful. ‘Are you sick?’

  Thorne shook his head. I’d never seen him so exhausted. His face was gaunt, eyes hollow. ‘I’ve missed you,’ was all he said, but the way he said it made me frightened of how much. I kissed him again, tasting his lips and remembering the feel of him with a pleasure so intense it was almost painful.

  ‘Your eyes, Finn,’ Thorne said. ‘How much power have you been using?’

  ‘Magic,’ I corrected.

  ‘What’s the difference?’

  I shook my head, almost overcome with weariness. ‘I had to get them here and there were warders everywhere. The north-west is crawling with them, Thorne.’

  ‘How did you do it?’

  ‘I cloaked them.’

  He frowned, studying the colour of my eyes. ‘Well, don’t do it anymore, alright? Don’t use any more power for a while.’

  ‘On the eve of war?’

  ‘You go with Ambrose and the twins – you get to safety and don’t look back. You’ve done enough.’

  I pulled away from him, my boots squelching in the thick earth. ‘I’ve no wish to fight, but in what world do you think I’d leave you to face them alone?’

  ‘I won’t be alone −’

  ‘It’s done, Thorne. You’re going to need my help.’ Because one thing had become clear this morning: if I could contain Osric, then I might be the only one with a chance against Dren and Galia. It did not sit well with me – my control over magic was rudimentary at best; the only real skill I had was in manipulating the fabric between life and death – but I had spent most of my life being frightened of my magic and I was tired of it. I would use it for good, one way or another, or there was no point in it at all.

  I swallowed, running my fingers over his clammy skin. ‘Are you wounded?’ He shook his head, so I asked, ‘Is it your da? Are you still seeing him?’