A Song for Orphans

by Morgan Rice

  It was hard not to feel disgusted at what Siobhan had commanded her to do then, and at what Kate had become under her tutelage. How could Siobhan want her dead? How could she demand that Kate do this thing? Was she really asking it just to see if Kate had it in her to kill on command? Kate hated that thought. She couldn’t, she wouldn’t, do such a thing.

  But she had no choice, and she hated that even more.

  She had to be sure, though, so she slipped back to the merchant’s house ahead of her prey, slipping over the wall in a moment when she could feel that the guards weren’t watching and sprinting to the shadows of the wall. She waited another few heartbeats, making sure that everything was still, then clambered up to the balcony to Gertrude Illiard’s room. There was a latch on the balcony, but that was an easy thing to lift using a slender knife, letting her pad inside.

  The room was empty, and Kate couldn’t sense anyone nearby, so she quickly searched it. She didn’t know what she was hoping to find. A vial of poison saved for a rival, perhaps. A diary detailing all the tortures she planned to inflict on someone. There was a diary, but even at a glance, Kate could see that it simply detailed the other young woman’s dreams and hopes for the future, her meetings with friends, her brief flash of feelings for a young player she’d met in the market.

  The truth was that Kate couldn’t find a single reason why Gertrude Illiard deserved to die, and even though she’d killed before, Kate found the thought of murdering someone for no reason abhorrent. It made her sick just to think about doing it.

  She felt the flicker of an approaching mind and swiftly hid under the bed, trying to think, trying to decide what she would do. It wasn’t that this young woman reminded Kate of herself, because Kate couldn’t imagine this merchant’s daughter ever truly knowing suffering, or wanting to pick up a blade. She wasn’t even like Sophia, because Kate’s sister had a deceptive streak when she needed it, and the kind of hard practicality that came from having to live with nothing. This girl would never have spent weeks pretending to be something she wasn’t, and would never have seduced a prince.

  While a servant went around the room, tidying it in preparation for her mistress’s return, Kate put her hand to the locket at her neck, thinking of the picture of a woman inside. Maybe that was it. Maybe Gertrude Illiard fit with the picture of well-born innocence Kate had when it came to her parents. What did that mean, though? Did it mean that she couldn’t kill her? She touched the ring that sat beside the locket, intended for Sophia. She knew what her sister would say, but this wasn’t a choice that Sophia would ever be in a position to have to make.

  Then Gertrude came into the room, and Kate knew that she would have to make her choice soon. Siobhan was waiting, and Kate doubted that her teacher’s patience would last forever.

  “Thank you, Milly,” Gertrude said. “Is my father home?”

  “He isn’t expected back for a couple of hours, miss.”

  “In that case, I think I will take a nap. I woke too early today.”

  “Of course, miss. I’ll see that you aren’t disturbed.”

  The servant walked off, shutting the door to the room behind her with a click. Kate saw embroidered boots pulled off and set down next to her hiding place, felt the shifting of the bed above her as Gertrude Illiard sat down on it. The timbers creaked as she lay down, and still Kate waited.

  She had to do this. She’d seen what would happen to her if she didn’t. Siobhan had made it clear: Kate was hers now, to do with as she wished. Kate was as tightly bound to her as she would have been if her debt had been sold to another. More tightly, because now it wasn’t just the law of the land giving Siobhan power over Kate, but the magic of her fountain.

  If she failed Siobhan in this, at best, she would find herself sent off into some living hell, forced to endure things that would make the House of the Unclaimed look like a palace. At worst… Kate had seen the ghosts of those who had betrayed Siobhan. She had seen what they suffered. Kate wouldn’t join them, whatever it took.

  She just had to keep reminding herself that this was a test.

  She watched Gertrude’s thoughts as she fell asleep, noting their changing rhythms as she slid into slumber. There was silence around the room now, as servants kept away to let their mistress get her rest. It was the perfect moment. Kate knew she had to act now, or not at all.

  She slid out from under the bed without making a sound, rising back to her feet and looking down at Gertrude Illiard. In sleep, she looked even more innocent, mouth slightly open as she lay with her head on one of a pair of goose down pillows.

  It’s a test, Kate told herself, only a test. Siobhan will stop this before I kill her.

  It was the only thing that made sense. The woman of the fountain had no reason to want this girl dead, and Kate wouldn’t believe that even she could be that capricious. Yet how did she pass the test? The only way that she could see was to actually try to murder this girl.

  Kate stood there contemplating her options. She didn’t have any poisons, and wouldn’t know the best way to administer them if she did, so that was out. There was no way to engineer an accident here, the way she might have on the street. She could take out a dagger and cut Gertrude’s throat, but would that leave enough of an opportunity for Siobhan to intervene? What if she stabbed or cut so fast that there was no saving the target of this test?

  There was one obvious answer, and Kate contemplated it, lifting one of the silken pillows. It had a river scene from some far-off land woven into it, the raised threads rough under her fingers. She held it between her hands, stepping so that she stood over Gertrude Illiard, the pillow poised.

  Kate felt the shift in the young woman’s thoughts as she heard something, and saw her eyes snap open.

  “What… what is this?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry,” Kate said, and bore down with the pillow.

  Gertrude fought, but she wasn’t strong enough to dislodge Kate. With the strength the fountain had unlocked, Kate could hold the pillow in place easily. She could feel the young woman struggling to find any space in which to breathe, or scream, or fight, but Kate kept her weight down over the pillow, not allowing the least crack of air to sneak through.

  She wanted to reassure Gertrude that it would be all right; tell her that in a minute, Siobhan would stop this. She wanted to tell her that as bad as it felt now, it would all be fine. She couldn’t, though. If she said it, there was too much of a risk that Siobhan would know that she wasn’t treating this as real, and force her to go through with it. There was too much of a risk that Siobhan would throw her soul into the hellish depths of the fountain.

  She had to be strong. She had to keep going.

  Kate kept the pillow in place while Gertrude thrashed and clawed at her. She kept it in place even when her struggles started to weaken. When she went still, Kate looked around, half expecting Siobhan to appear from nowhere to congratulate her, revive Gertrude Illiard, and declare this done.

  Instead, there was only silence.

  Kate pulled the pillow away from the young woman’s face, and astonishingly, she still looked peaceful, despite the violence of the seconds before that moment. There was no life there in that expression, none of the animation that there had been while Kate had been following her around the city.

  She could feel that there were no thoughts there to sense, but even so, she put her fingers to the pulse at Gertrude Illiard’s throat. There was nothing. The young woman was gone, and Kate…

  “I killed her,” Kate said. She stuffed the pillow back into place beneath the merchant’s daughter, beneath her victim, and stumbled back from the bed as if she’d been shoved. Her feet caught the boots that Gertrude had kicked off, and Kate fell, scrambling back to her feet in a hurry. “I killed her.”

  She hadn’t believed that it would happen, not really. She hated herself in that moment. She’d killed before, but never like this. Never someone so helpless, so innocent.

  “Miss, is everything all right?”
the servant’s voice called from the other side of the door.

  Kate wanted to stand there, to let the ground swallow her up, to let people find her and kill her for what she’d done. She deserved it, and more than that. The full horror of what she’d just done started to dawn on her. She’d stood over an innocent woman and smothered her to death, with nothing quick or clean or gentle about it.

  She deserved death for that. She should just stand there and let the merchant’s guards give her it. She didn’t, though. Woodenly, stumbling, Kate made her way back to the balcony. Around her, she could sense the guards springing into life as they started to understand that something was wrong.

  A few more seconds, and there would be no way to escape. The guards would be hunting for intruders, and then Kate would have to fight to get clear. She would have to kill again, too, because if anyone recognized her later, she wouldn’t be able to go back to the forge, or to Lord Cranston’s company.

  That thought was enough to drive her forward, sending her into a leap from the balcony that ended in a roll across the hard ground. Kate was up and running then, sprinting for the outer wall even as she pushed the dogs away from her with a burst of fear. She planted her feet on the wall, running up it and then leaping to catch the top. Kate hauled herself over, the way she might have pulled herself into a tree back in the forest. She leapt again, landing lightly on the other side and quickly losing herself in the crowds of the city’s streets.

  As she did it, Kate couldn’t work out who she hated more, Siobhan or herself. Maybe she didn’t need to choose. Maybe, after what she’d just done, there was enough hatred to be found for both of them. Kate knew one thing—she was going to find Siobhan, and she was going to get answers.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Sophia was running around the halls of a great house, and there was joy there, not flames. She and Kate were laughing, her sister’s smaller hands reaching up for the bronze figurine of a horse, the edge of a tablecloth.

  “Be careful, girls,” Anora called from behind them, the nanny following along in their wake. “You mustn’t disturb your father.”

  But I want Daddy, Kate sent over to Sophia. I want to play soldiers.

  We could find Mother, Sophia sent back. She could tell us a story.

  Sophia loved listening to old stories told in that beautiful, peaceful-sounding voice: Bren and the Giant, The Seven Sisters of the Island; it seemed that their mother knew more stories than there were stars in the sky, telling them about all the old creatures of magic that were now so rare they barely touched the world.

  They laughed again and ran on, a conversation only they could hear whispering between them. They ran and hid, playing hide and seek while men and women brought in barrels and boxes and chests and sacks. They didn’t talk about the possibility of a siege, but Sophia knew anyway. She and Kate always knew.

  In spite of Anora’s words, she found Kate heading toward her father’s study. Sophia followed, and now she could hear her father arguing with a man who looked too much like Sebastian for it to be a coincidence. She frowned, wondering who Sebastian was, and why it should matter.

  “I told you, Henry, I have no interest in your throne, whatever your spies say.”

  “But you still side with the rebels.”

  “Agreeing that there should be some kind of assembly is not the same thing as fighting against you.”

  “It is exactly the same!”

  Sophia wanted to stay and hear the rest, but she was standing in a hall of mirrors now, and it seemed that every mirror held a scene of her parents’ lives. It was only as she saw it that she realized she was dreaming, not there in truth. She saw them first meeting, falling in love in a way that reminded her heartbreakingly of her and Sebastian. She saw them riding through their lands dispensing justice and helping people who had nothing.

  There were darker scenes too. The civil wars came, in a swirl of blood and musket smoke. Sophia saw her father fighting in battle, heard her mother arguing with courtiers she didn’t recognize.

  “I don’t care if we do have the blood, trying to claim the throne now would just cost more lives.”

  Sophia saw more battles, and tense scenes around a great house she knew from a thousand other dreams. There was no context for it, and the images shifted too fast for Sophia to follow more than a few glimpses of each. As with so many of her dreams, she had the feeling that this was more, but she didn’t understand it, couldn’t place all the details.

  She drifted on to a fresh set of mirrors, and for a moment she thought that she was looking at herself. The deep red hair was the same, and so were the features, but there was something in the girl who stood there that reminded her of Sebastian as well. Somehow, Sophia knew that this was their daughter.

  The image flickered, then vanished.

  Sophia plunged deeper into the endless hall of mirrors, trying to see more of what might happen, trying to understand, but the mirrors seemed to open out onto every facet of the world, and it was hard to tell what was real and what was imaginary, what was happening now and what might still be to happen. There was too much of it. There was simply…

  Sophia woke with a gasp in the morning light, because the pressure of all those futures had felt so real, so immediate. She blinked, trying to make sense of it all and judge if anything she’d seen was real. It felt real. Sophia could still see the face of her daughter, and she wanted that to be real.

  She wanted it, but even so, she hesitated. This was such a dangerous world to bring a child into, and such a dangerous situation. She couldn’t offer the safety of a grand house, or the peace of a settled life. She couldn’t even offer her child a father, because Sebastian was out there somewhere, separated from her by distance and his family’s pressures.

  Even so, Sophia couldn’t think about the face she’d seen without feeling a deep wave of love. She wanted to see her daughter, watch her grow up into that.

  Of course, for that to happen, at least one thing had to happen first. Sophia took hold of the powder pouch Cora had given her, balancing it, staring at it. Then she stood and threw it, sending it as far from her as she could manage, away onto the mossy ground in the distance.

  ***

  It took even longer than it looked to reach the great house, because the hills and the trees of Monthys worked to stretch out the space around them, forcing the road to wind rather than proceeding in a straight line. There were moments when Sophia couldn’t see the house at all, and it was only guesswork whether they were going in the right direction.

  The roads were empty this morning, without the occasional travelers Sophia was used to passing. The whole space felt quiet, almost abandoned, or simply so remote that there was no one else to pass. Their cart rumbling along the road was the loudest thing around by far.

  Sophia had to admit that the landscape around them was beautiful. Monthys had rolling hills lined with moss-covered boulders, trees of shimmering green and red, and brooks that ran alongside the path, bubbling and foaming as they hit stones. Sophia could imagine… no, she could remember, those hills covered in snow in the winter, when the whole place turned into a thing of stark, beautiful white and no one could travel on the roads.

  Thankfully, there was no snow on the ground now, and the cart could still make its way along the road without any problems beyond the occasional windblown branch. Around them, birds twittered in the trees, and the wind blew through the gaps in the hills. Somewhere above, Sophia saw a buzzard circling, obviously on the hunt for the hares that crouched low among the moss. There were even a few sheep, with the wild look of things left to fend for themselves for most of the year.

  Sophia started to see other animal signs, too, more worrying ones. There were scratches on some of the trees they passed, obviously some kind of territorial marking, and prints by the side of the road that indicated an animal bigger than anything they’d seen so far.

  Somewhere in the distance, Sophia heard a howl, the sound of a wolf’s voice bouncing off the
sides of the hills around them. It was a high, piercing note that seemed to last longer than it should, sustained by its echoes as it claimed the space around it. There was no answering chorus from a pack, but maybe that just meant they were being quiet.

  Sophia could feel the nervousness of the others at that sound. Cora started looking around as if expecting a pack of wolves to leap out at any moment. Emeline was still, but she had a look that said she was stretching out her own powers, trying to find any sense of approaching danger. As for Sienne, the forest cat started, and then ran off the path, into a patch of trees.

  “Sienne, wait,” Sophia called after her, reinforcing the instruction with a pulse of her mental abilities. The forest cat ignored it, quickly disappearing from sight. Was she scared, or hungry, or just being wary?

  “She’ll be all right,” Emeline said. She looked around again. “It’s us I’m worried about. Whatever made that sound is close. We need to keep moving.”

  They kept going, pushing the horses forward faster now. Before, it had been easy to appreciate the beauty of the surrounding countryside, but now Sophia found herself watching it for signs of the creature that had made the sound they’d heard. She reached out with her powers, trying to pick out the minds of approaching creatures the way she was able to touch Sienne’s mind, but it was hard to differentiate between them, or to know if any of them posed a threat.

  At least one of them did, though, because a little way further on, they found a body.

  It took a moment to identify it as human, because large parts of it were missing. It lay at the side of the road, obviously pulled there by whatever had attacked it. The remains of rough-spun clothes hinted at a farmer or a herder, perhaps a shepherd to some of the sheep that Sophia had seen out on the hills. Whoever this person had been, they were long past any kind of help.