Portraits of the Forsaken

by E. E. Holmes

  We are rising, Jessica Ballard. We are rising again, and this time there will be no limit to the scope of our powers.

  “We definitely can’t afford to be careful,” I agreed.

  “Too right we can’t,” Catriona said. “The official investigation has already been opened, but we are going to expand it. It’s going to take a lot of boots on the ground. You will likely be asked to do things you’ve never done before. It might require learning some new skills, ignoring a fair number of rules, and flying under the Council radar. What do you say?”

  I didn’t really have to think about it. Even if she hadn’t been asking me to do everything I could to stop the Necromancers from gaining power again, wouldn’t I have been doing it anyway?

  “I’m in,” I told her.

  Catriona smiled. It was the first time she’d ever smiled at me without a trace of mockery behind her eyes. I wouldn’t exactly call it “friendly”—I don’t think Catriona was emotionally capable of “friendly.” But there was definitely something there; it might even have been respect. “Excellent,” she said, standing up. “I’ll start the paperwork.”

  “My attitude will require its own paperwork,” I called after her.

  “That’s for bloody sure,” she replied, as the door swung shut behind her.

  §

  I woke to the sounds of muttering and scurrying feet. In my disorientation, the sound reminded me of mice and dark basements, and my heart began to pound as I scrambled up into a sitting position, blinking wildly around at me as my eyes adjusted to the dim half-light.

  No basement.

  No bonds.

  I was at Fairhaven. Everything was fine.

  I exhaled slowly, and made a conscious decision not to chide myself, as I might normally have done. It would take time, I reasoned, to move past the events at Pickwick’s museum, and I needed to give myself that time.

  I glanced over at the clock on the wall; it was just after two o’clock in the morning. Hannah, Milo, Savvy, and Tia had stayed with me until nearly eleven o’clock, until Tia quite literally nodded off onto Savvy’s shoulder and I ordered them all to bed, grateful for an excuse to kick them all out without admitting to my own exhaustion, which I succumbed to almost at once. It felt like I’d only been asleep for moments, rather than hours. The sounds that had woken me had not been mice, but Mrs. Mistlemoore and the Scribes, who were moving around in the lamplight in Flavia’s bed space, their forms silhouetted against the screen like a display of shadow puppetry.

  I pulled my legs up in a crisscrossed posture and watched for several minutes. Once or twice, a little plume of smoke would rise like a smoke signal, and then, after a few moments, the scent would waft its way across the room and tickle my nostrils. Some scents were familiar—the warm, rich scent of sage, the heady perfume of lilac—but others were unidentifiable. At one point, I watched as a Scribe took a paint brush to the inside of the screen and painted a large, triskele upon the fabric. I stared at it and found myself praying and pleading—to whom, I wasn’t entirely sure—that this Casting would work, and that Flavia would find her way out of the twisted prison Charlie had left her in.

  Please. Please let her be all right. Please. Help her.

  Suddenly there was a swell of excited murmuring, and a flurry of activity behind the screen. I watched, barely daring to breathe, as someone blew out a candle, and stepped around the metal frame of the partition.

  It was Mrs. Mistlemoore. She looked exhausted, and was wiping a wad of white fabric across her forehead. She looked up and caught my eye from across the ward.

  She smiled wanly. My heart lifted.

  She shuffled across the stone floor, dabbing at her neck and face as she came. Finally, she sat herself heavily on the end of my bed.

  “We’ve made some progress,” she said.

  “Really?” I felt the tears springing into my eyes. “You think she’ll be okay?”

  “There are hopeful signs,” Mrs. Mistlemoore said cautiously. “We’ve released the hold of the original Casting, and the Sight has begun to… unravel itself. Flavia’s body has relaxed, and she seems to be truly resting for the first time since you brought her here. You and Catriona brought us the missing piece of the puzzle.”

  “We did?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes. We found this amongst Mr. Wright’s possessions.”

  She held out a handkerchief, which had been balled up in her hand. As she opened her fingers, the edges of the handkerchief fell away like petals to reveal the charred remains of a daguerreotype in the center.

  I backed away from the thing, as though it were poisonous, or about to explode. “Is… is that one of the portraits?” I asked, breathlessly.

  “Oh, yes,” Mrs. Mistlemoore said, and she gazed down at the thing with utter disgust. “It was discovered at Mr. Wright’s apartment, protected in a glass display case. We were able to determine it was the portrait with which Flavia’s gift was distorted by recognizing her image overlaid upon it.”

  When we had first arrived back at Fairhaven, Catriona and I had explained about the double images in the portraits even as I clenched my teeth through the agony of my arm being set. I shuddered to think what expression must have been captured upon Flavia’s face, what pain had been memorialized upon the copper plate before the Scribes had burned it away. I decided I did not want to ask. But I did remember something that Charlie had told us, when Catriona asked what would happen if the portraits were destroyed:

  “The Necromancer would lose the Sight. That is why the portraits have been so carefully preserved.”

  “So, somewhere some Necromancer guinea pig just lost the Sight, if he ever even possessed it,” I said, digging deep through my anger to find half a smile.

  “As to that, I cannot say,” Mrs. Mistlemoore replied. “But with this portrait, we were able to work through the details of the Castings Mr. Wright concocted and devise a counter-Casting. Time will tell if it will restore Flavia completely, but, as I have said, there are good signs already.”

  “That’s wonderful,” I said earnestly. “Thank you so much for everything. Honestly, I don’t know if anyone ever tells you this, but you are a rock star. I don’t know what the Durupinen would do without you.”

  Mrs. Mistlemoore looked a bit flustered, and I realized, from her expression, that her work must go largely unacknowledged. “Well, now… I… I hardly think… that is to say… you are most welcome.”

  “Would it be okay for me to visit Flavia now?” I asked tentatively. “I don’t want to mess up her recovery or anything, obviously. I just thought a familiar voice couldn’t hurt.”

  Mrs. Mistlemoore considered this for a moment, then gave me a gentle smile. “Yes, of course you can. I think you may be right.”

  “Oh, wow, really?” I asked. I hadn’t expected her to allow any such thing. “Thank you. I won’t bother her. I just want to sit with her for a few minutes.”

  “Yes, I think I can allow that,” Mrs. Mistlemoore said. “I’ve got a report to write up. Why don’t you go sit with her now? But mind you, remember you’ve got your own healing to do,” she said, with a sudden return to her brisk manner. “It’s important for you to get your rest, so just a short visit. You can see her again after a good night’s sleep.”

  “Absolutely,” I assured her, in my most responsible voice. “I’ll keep it quick.”

  She eyed me suspiciously, as though she thought I may be placating her just to get rid of her. I wasn’t, but I could forgive the suspicion. Then she gave my dressings a quick look and then rose from my bed and headed off in the direction of her office in the far corner of the ward. Her steps looked weary.

  I slid from my bed and padded across the room. The moonlight was still bright, though the full moon had passed a few days ago. Wide beams of it slanted across the floor and the walls, filtering in through the mullioned glass of the high, narrow windows and infusing the entire space with an unearthly glow. It would have been easy, standing silently in the swath of that moon
light, to believe that I was the only soul left alive in the universe.

  I peered around the partition and released a breath I didn’t realize I had been holding. It was a relief to see Flavia lying still and quiet, her hands folded together on her stomach, her face calm and peaceful as she slept.

  I dragged a chair to the edge of her bed, wincing at the sound of the chair legs grating against the stone, but Flavia seemed undisturbed. I dropped onto it, realizing that even the short walk across the ward had worn me out. I took a moment to gather my thoughts, looking around the crowded space.

  A lingering scent of herbs and candle wax hung around us like a curtain. The bedside table was crowded with scrolls, pencils, stubs of candles, a bowl full of amethyst and quartz crystals, and what looked like a long black feather. The runes Charlie had marked upon Flavia’s skin were but faded shadows, having been scrubbed away to make space for new runes applied by the meticulous hands of the Scribes.

  I looked across to the other partition. I knew that Phoebe lay behind it, still trapped in the torturous state Charlie had left her in. I wondered, once the Scribes had healed her, if she would ever be able to remember the attack—to tell us exactly what had happened. Then I wondered, with a lump in my throat, if she’d ever be able to tell anyone anything ever again.

  I sniffed as the guilt began to creep in. They’d both been attacked as guinea pigs in a vicious experiment, but I was the real target. Would I have to walk around for the rest of my life with a bullseye on my back, endangering everyone who dared to get too close to me? And poor Tia. How presumptuous of me to drag her here, to pull her into my orbit for my own selfish reasons. I could reason with myself until I was blue in the face that I was trying to rescue her from her own heartbreak, but it was just as true that I wanted my best friend beside me to help me recover from mine. And now, instead of healing, her heart had been stomped to a pulp all over again. At this rate, she would never open up to another guy ever again, and it was entirely my fault.

  I looked down at Flavia’s slumbering face. “I’m sorry,” I whispered to her, as quietly as I could. “I’m sorry I got you caught up in this mess.”

  She did not move. I hadn’t expected her to. I wondered if she had heard a single word anyone had said to her since the attack. No one would know what she was experiencing until she came out of it—if she came out of it.

  I reached my hand down and laid it on top of hers. It felt cool to the touch under mine.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I whispered, praying it wasn’t a lie. “You’re going to be well soon. That bastard Charlie’s been caught, and his whole plan has fallen apart. There’s nothing else to worry ab—”

  Flavia’s hand twitched, flipped suddenly over, and clutched at my hand. I gasped, and tried instinctively to pull my hand away, but her grip was like stone, numbing my fingers.

  “Flavia, can you hear—”

  With a single flexing movement of her arm, Flavia yanked me toward her, so that my face was barely a few inches from hers when her eyes flew open. The silvery quality of them had faded, but they were still misted and strange, the colors swirling like clouds as she locked gazes with me.

  And then I was falling—falling into her eyes like pits with no bottoms, and everything was darkness and howling and swirling, silvery clouds. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t think through my panic. I lost all sense of time, of space, of everything.

  And then it was over. I was staring down at Flavia, and her eyes were closed, her face peaceful. Her hand has folded over her chest again, utterly still. I blinked. Had I imagined it? Had I nodded off and had a crazy, drug-induced hallucination? I looked down at my own hand, which was throbbing. I could still see the white marks against my flesh where she had grasped my fingers, and the tiny crescent-shaped indentations—a few of them bleeding—where her fingernails had dug into my skin.

  Then I felt a familiar aching sensation in my other hand—the hand which ought to have been in a sling, but which instead, I realized, was outstretched and reaching behind me. With a mounting sense of dread, I turned.

  My sling lay discarded on the floor at my feet. My arm was extended, and little eddies of plaster dust were drifting down from my cast, which had crumbled to pieces at the end around my fingers—fingers that were still grasping the long black feather from Flavia’s bedside table. Ink was dripping from the end of it onto the floor. Ink spattered my hand and the smooth white surface of my cast. An inkwell lay overturned on the stones, and a small puddle of black ink seeped from it, like blood from a wound.

  “What the hell…?”

  Slowly my eyes traveled up to the white screen of the partition, and for a fleeting moment, I knew what I would see before I actually saw it.

  The stark outline of a prison fortress, perched upon a rocky seaside cliff like a crown upon a king. Waves crashed up around it, and ominous dark clouds swirled in the air high above. Rows of figures, with weapons raised, stood upon the battlements, crowded the ramparts, and stood sentinel before the doors. But the most chilling detail was in the air around the fortress: hundreds of spirits floated around it in formation—an army of the dead. All of this was glimpsed as though peering through the curving lines of the triskele the Scribe had drawn, as though the triskele itself were a camera lens through which the image must be filtered.

  All the air seemed to have been sucked out of the room. I could not look away from the drawing on the partition, which I now realized I had created. Even as I stared at the place I had never seen before, had never even imagined before, the name of it rose to my lips as though I had always known it—as though it had been sitting, tucked away in my memory, a remnant of a past life or a forgotten dream.

  “The Skye Príosún,” I whispered.

  It wasn’t a question. I knew what I was looking at, as surely as I knew my own name. I also knew, as my eyes pored over the details of the figures with torches and fists and staffs raised, that something was terribly wrong. And then Charlie Wright’s words echoed through my head again:

  We have allies, now. Allies you have lost through your neglect and your arrogance and your ingratitude. Soon your defenses shall be ours. And so shall your gifts.

  “This is a prophecy,” I whispered. “This… is a prophecy!”

  I whipped my head around and looked back at Flavia. She showed no signs of movement, no signs that she knew anything had just occurred.

  My blood was thundering in my ears. My first, overwhelming thought was that I could not let anyone see this drawing. I must hide it—must get it out of here before someone discovered it.

  I searched wildly around me and my eyes fell upon a pair of medical scissors. I snatched them up and lunged at the partition. The fabric was thin, and the point of the scissors pierced it easily. My hands shook like mad as I sliced in a downward motion, the taut fabric flapping free like a sail. In four swift cuts, all that was left of the partition was a metal frame and a few dangling tatters of cotton.

  My first instinct was to crumple it into a tight ball and shove it out of sight under my sweatshirt, but I quashed that impulse at once. I couldn’t run the risk of the ink smearing before it had dried and everything being ruined. As much as I wanted to keep it a secret, I did not want to destroy it. I would need more time to study it, to glean meaning from it, and I couldn’t do that if it was nothing more than an inky blob. It was two thirty in the morning. The castle was surely nearly deserted. I would have to take the chance that I could move the drawing through the halls without running into anyone.

  I glanced toward Mrs. Mistlemoore’s office door. The strip of light was still visible beneath it. She was still awake. If she came out here and found the partition destroyed, and me gone, she would know instantly that something was wrong and probably put half the castle on high alert. I needed to hide what I’d done. I scanned the room and spotted the supply room door in the back corner. I lay my drawing gingerly across a nearby bed, like the world’s most disturbing blanket. Then, as qui
ckly as I dared, I wheeled the bare partition frame toward it, silently cursing every squeak of a wheel. Then I eased the door open and peered inside. It was a large space full of shelving stuffed with boxes and crates and cartons, all neatly labeled. In the back corner I found what I was looking for: a row of extra partitions. I steered the empty partition through the door and tucked it, as completely as I could, behind the other partitions. Then, I rolled an undamaged partition through the door, and, making sure Mrs. Mistlemoore was still safe in her office, wheeled it carefully into place around Flavia’s bed space.

  Throwing Flavia one last, anxious look, I gripped the corners of the drawing and swung it behind me, like a superhero donning a cape. Then, my heart still racing, I crept across the hospital ward and out the door.

  The corridors were dark and deserted as I dashed through them, the drawing flying out behind me like the tail on a panicking comet. Occasionally, a floating form of a spirit drifted by me, but they took no more notice of me than I did of them as I pelted past door after door. I avoided the entrance hall, knowing there would be Caomhnóir guarding the front doors. I had to hide it. I had to get to my room where I could think, and…

  I skidded to a halt, still two corridors away from my room, panting.

  No.

  It wasn’t my own interpretation I needed now.

  It was Fiona’s. I needed Fiona.

  I turned on my heel and fled back in the other direction, charging up staircase after staircase, full of a kind of manic energy I’d never felt before. It pulsed through me like electricity, charging my blood, clearing my head. I was running on pure adrenaline, letting my feet propel me forward without conscious directions from my brain, and all the while, the image of the drawing hung before my eyes, as though seared into the very air.

  At last, I stumbled to a halt in front of Fiona’s tower door. I raised my hand to pound upon it but, at that very moment, it flew open. Fiona stood before me, her hair a tangled, disheveled mess, her eyes wild and dilated.