“I had no choice, Twylla. I am the Sin Eater—”
“Yes, yes, your precious role. I hope it takes good care of you when you’re old, because Gods know where my brothers are, Maryl is dead, and I will not aid you.”
The Sin Eater sits back, visibly stunned at the venom in her daughter’s voice, and I reel too. I have already seen the Goddess in Twylla, but this is a different kind of awesome. This is vengeance, and cruelty: a war Goddess. Fighting the High Priestess of Næht. I shiver again, caught between these two women who seem to have forgotten I’m here.
“I tried to tell you, many times, that our role was more than it seemed.”
“You fed me riddles in a room like a furnace. I was a child,” Twylla says, in a voice that’s deep and raw and broken. “How could I possibly have understood what you were telling me? How could I have guessed what the queen was truly like? Did you know the maids at the castle wouldn’t bring my meals to me in case I poisoned them? They wouldn’t touch my used plates and knives until they’d seen my guards hold them and not die. Throughout it all, my only friends – my only comfort – were your Gods. I lived like that, every day for four harvests, to find out that everything I believed was a lie.”
Twylla stands as though to leave but the Sin Eater grips her wrist, moving surprisingly fast, and holds her firm.
“Let me give you some truths. Decide after that if you can fight your war without my knowledge. Then if you want to walk away, I will not stop you. But you are the last of us and I have to try.”
“If you hadn’t let Maryl die, you’d have her.” There is an edge to Twylla’s voice, one I recognize. Grief. Tucked away tightly.
“I tried,” the Sin Eater says, letting go of Twylla’s wrist.
Twylla turns and I see her profile in the light, carved and cruel. “Am I supposed to believe you? I remember, Mother, a time when she was a baby, burning up in that awful room. And you left her to die. And when I saved her, you killed the goat. So do not tell me that you tried.”
The Sin Eater looks up sharply. “Do you think me so cold? I knew you’d save her. I knew the moment I left that house that you would run to the village and beg for herbs. Why do you think I left you with her? I couldn’t ask the withwoman for the herbs, because I am the Sin Eater – I cannot intervene. But you could. And I hoped in my secret heart that you would.”
Twylla’s eyebrows rise. “Then why kill the goat?”
“A life for a life, that is the rule. The withwoman knew what you’d done. Everyone she told would have known too. So I had to make a sacrifice. I had to obey my own laws.”
Twylla blinks, turning to look out into the ossuary at the bone murals. Without a word she sits back down. The relief on her mother’s face is naked.
“Forgive us, Errin,” she says. “I’ll come to your part in this.” She looks back to her daughter. “You never asked why we were the ones who Ate sin. I thought of anyone you would, yet you never did.”
“You told me why. I was perhaps six; you summoned me and you told me that we existed before Gods and kings, but it wasn’t for them that we did it. That someone had to do it, because there had always been sins.”
“You remember that?”
“I had cause to, recently. When I discovered the Gods were a lie. Now you say they’re not a lie, but a twisting of truth.”
“When we came to Lormere, there were no Gods, no kings or queens.”
“When we came there?”
“From across the sea.”
Twylla leans forward, as though to better hear what her mother has said, and I stare at the Sin Eater of Lormere, a tickling at the back of my neck as the skin there tightens. When the Sin Eater leans forward too, I do the same, three points of a triangle curving in.
“The truth of it is that the poison in the wine that the prince and his family drank, the poison that made him sleep, that killed his father and later his lover … our ancestor made that poison. Our ancestor was betrothed to the rat catcher’s son. When he learned the Sleeping Prince had defiled his daughter, he sent for his son’s bride-to-be to come with her skills, and her draughts, and kill them all for the shame they had wrought. Under the light of the solaris she did, brewing a deadly poison.”
I look at Twylla, who is staring at her mother, open-mouthed. “That’s impossible.”
“She didn’t know there was a child. She laced the food for the feast with her poison. As it was carried up the stairs, she overheard the kitchen maids gossiping about the rat catcher’s daughter and her condition. Her family creed was to harm no innocent. So she went to Aurelia and confessed. By the time Aurelia got to them with the Elixir, the king was dead, Aurek and his lover a breath away from dying too. Aurelia tried to save them. But the poison contained blood – her own blood – and had an alchemy all of its own. The battle between Aurelia’s blood and the witch princess’s raged inside both lovers, until childbirth weakened the rat catcher’s daughter and she died.”
At some point during this tale I’ve covered my face with my hands, desperate to block it out. Alchemy, poison, magic. Lormerian superstition. Yet real. I feel a pang at the base of my spine, a reminder of how real it is.
“The rat catcher fled with the child, which lived a normal life, but was cursed to rise from the grave every century to feed his father a heart. The Sleeping Prince lay locked inside himself, the battle ever-waging. And our ancestor threw herself on the mercy of Aurelia for her crime. It is in her name – Næht’s name – that we live as outcasts, burdened openly with sin to shame us, so we never forget what our blood did. We who will always carry the sins of others, piling on more each generation.”
Her tale ends. The ringing silence that follows her words makes me feel as though the walls are closing in around me; I’m suddenly terrifyingly aware that I’m underground, under tons of rock and earth. If the ceiling caved in now, this would be our tomb, and none would know it. I’m consumed by the need for sky, the need for air. The need for sound.
“The queen knew all of this, didn’t she?” Twylla asks. “That’s where she got the idea to make me poisonous. From that. From our past. She was laughing at us. At them. Make the descendant of the poisoner the sanctioned killer of traitors.”
Amara nods. “Helewys was known for her cravings for tales of alchemy and lore. It was a slight, to them, to the people who wouldn’t bow to her. To openly make you a poisoner, given your ancestry. Perhaps she hoped to draw them out through you.”
Again they fall silent. A faint rumbling in the distance reminds me that somewhere above us battle still rages.
“So that’s why he wants Twylla?” I ask. “Because he knows her ancestors tried to kill him? He wants revenge.”
Amara looks at me and then turns to her daughter. “And because she could do it again,” she says.
Twylla stares at her mother. “What are you…?” But she doesn’t finish her sentence. Instead she begins to laugh. I turn to Amara and she shakes her head slightly, looking back at her daughter. Twylla tilts her chin towards the ceiling and laughs, the sound echoing off the bones. “I can’t escape it, can I? I have renounced two destinies. I tried to hide behind the skirts of a queen, and then I fled across a whole kingdom, and yet it still will not let me go. They’re the same thing. And I can’t run from it.”
“Twylla…” Amara says.
“They told me I held poison in my skin.” Twylla looks at me, her tone now dreamy, her gaze unfocused as she remembers. “They gave me a potion each moon and told me it was poison. That it made me poisonous to the touch. It was my job to kill traitors by laying my hands on them. Of course, it wasn’t me. They were poisoned before I got anywhere near them. It was your brother who proved it a lie, when he…” She stops, and her face clears. “Yet it was true all along, in a different way. Not my skin, but my blood is poison. My blood.” Her laughter dies away and silence rings in its place. “So I am to exe
cute him, with poison,” Twylla says. “I almost wish the queen were here to see this. She, I think, would enjoy this.”
“Not just your blood,” Amara says swiftly. “Your blood is part of the poison. Not all of it.”
“What poison could work on him now?”
I make a sound of surprise. Of realization. “I think I know,” I say. “The potion Silas made – the base that all alchemists use – it’s the reversal of the one used to put Aurek to sleep. His children used what was left of the poison and broke it down. They believed if they could reverse it, they could wake him. In apothecary, like cures like, you see. In alchemy too.” I pause, trying to put my thoughts in order. “So if we reverse the reversed potion, we’ll have the original one used to poison him.”
“And we have my blood to add,” Twylla says, her voice still distant.
Like when Silas adds his blood to the Opus Magnum. Twylla’s blood must react with it too, but not alchemically. Fatally. “We can poison him again,” I say. “Add new strength to the poison already in him.”
“Can you make it?” Twylla asks, suddenly keen as a hawk.
I try to remember what I saw. “Yes, I think so.”
“I believe the Sisters have a plan in place to try and replicate the poison,” Amara says.
“No,” Twylla shakes her head dismissively. “I want Errin to work with me. Not them.”
Amara sits back, crossing her arms. I swallow. “Of course.” I say, then turn to Amara. “I might be the best choice anyway. Silas told me the alchemists are lacking in the apothecary arts. They’ve never really needed them; it would mean them learning techniques from scratch. But to me, deconstructing a potion is child’s play. I can deconstruct the Opus Magnum if I know what’s in it. I can remake the poison from it.”
Amara gives a curt nod, and I look back at her daughter. “I’ll need Silas’s help with some of it, or any alchemists, I suppose; I can’t remember it all. But I could do it. I could deconstruct the potion and we can remake the original poison from that. Give it to him. Flood him with it. Overcome whatever effects of Aurelia’s Elixir are left.”
Amara cuts across our excitement. “He must not get hold of any more Elixir.” She looks at me pointedly. “You’ll have to keep Silas far from him. He must never know a philtresmith still lives.”
I wonder how she knows about Silas, and a strange cold fills my insides, making me gasp.
“What is it?” Amara asks.
I shake it off. “Just a chill. He’s up there fighting,” I say. “We should get him away. You two and he are too valuable. We have to get out of here. There has to be a way, a secret back door or something. Silas will know. We can head back to Scarron.” I turn to Twylla, who is already standing. “It’s far enough away to buy us some time.”
We’ve taken no more than three steps when there is rumbling directly above us. Stones and dust trickle down from the ceiling and we stop, turning uncertainly towards Amara. On the left wall, a lone pelvis falls to the floor and shatters.
For a long moment the three of us look at one another. Then the rumbling comes again, louder now, more dust falling, the chunks of rock larger. The chandelier shakes and we all look up at it; the rattling of the bones is deafening, and there’s something hypnotic in watching them tremble.
Then it stops; a split second of peace.
“Run,” Amara says, and we need no further instruction. We fly down the aisle towards the door as the chandelier falls from the ceiling with an earth-shattering crash.
Shards of bone fly at us, stinging my back as I yank the door open. Without the muffling of the thick door, we can hear screams echoing, booming, rolling like wheels through every corridor in the Conclave, finally reaching us down here.
Two alchemists round the corner, each gripping one end of a large wooden box, forcing us to flatten ourselves against the wall as they make for the ossuary. Their faces are blank with terror. I grab Twylla’s arm and we race blindly back along the warren-like passages, retracing our steps, my right hand on the right wall this time. Behind us the Sin Eater’s breath is laboured, her footsteps slow and thudding, and I feel a stab of concern.
When we reach a wide, brightly lit passage that I hope is the same one we walked down earlier, I start to throw curtains aside, hoping to find people, or weapons, or a way out. The grating echo continues, like underground thunder. It seems to follow us and I’m flooded with the conviction that the ceiling really is going to come down and kill us.
A figure appears ahead of us. “This way!” it beckons, and we run towards it, to find ourselves back in the Great Hall. Nia and Sister Hope stand beside the table, both armed with short swords. Another woman, white-haired and fierce, is swinging a mace.
“You have to go,” Sister Hope says, herding us towards the curtain at the other end. “Silas is on his way; he’ll go with you.”
When the curtain is thrown back, both Sister Hope and I move towards it, but it’s Amara who stumbles in. Her face is bright red with exertion, her hand pressing into her side.
Twylla turns her back on her. “What’s happening?” she asks Nia.
“They’re inside. We’ve sent all the children and the elderly out through a bolthole; everyone else has gone to fight.”
“Is he here?” She doesn’t need to name him.
Nia nods and my blood runs cold. “With his golems. And his son. He’s here to conquer, like in Lortune.”
“Gods…” Twylla says, and my stomach clenches. “We need weapons.”
“You need to leave!” Sister Hope commands. “Nia, take the girls and get them out.”
“I want to fight,” Nia protests. “This is my home!”
“It might end up being your grave,” Amara pants, her hand now clutching her arm. “Get my daughter and Errin out. And the boy if he arrives in time.”
“But—”
“There’s no time to argue—” She’s cut off by a huge chunk of stone crashing to the ground three feet from where we stand.
A piercing scream rings out from beyond the hall, and we spin to face it. A second later Silas runs in, his face pale, a dark stain on his tunic.
“Silas,” I cry, running to him, relieved when I realize it’s not his blood.
“They’re almost here,” he tells his mother, then looks down at me, one arm reaching around my waist even as he says, “You have to go.”
“You need to come too,” I say. “If he captures you, if he sees your hand…”
“She’s right,” Sister Hope orders, clasping him on his sword arm. “And you, Amara, go. Out of the snake passage.”
“I won’t make it,” Amara says. “Leave me.”
“Amara, you can’t—”
“I said leave me,” she demands. Her face is crumpling, her breath sharp. Silas and his mother exchange a loaded look. “Twylla, you know everything now. I’ve told you all of it. What you do next is up to you. It always has been.” Amara’s eyes bore into her daughter’s.
There are more screams and shouts from outside, the sound of footsteps, of metal ringing, but none of us moves, all of us locked in this moment.
“I did love you,” Amara says. “I tried.”
Twylla’s face is blank as she looks at her mother.
Then the curtain is pulled down, and two men dressed in black tabards and clutching bloodstained swords lurch into the room.
“Go!” Amara bellows, and the spell breaks. Silas dives in front of us with his sword extended, and I scrabble for my knife, realizing too late I don’t have it, that I lost it in Tremayne.
I start to back away, pushing Twylla behind me. Silas is in front of us, sword ready. The alchemist swings her mace, whirling it into the skull of one of the men, killing him instantly. Sister Hope lunges at his comrade and the two begin to fight. I stand mesmerized, watching Silas’s mother wielding a sword better than any man, the
steel a blur, her robes flaring out behind her as she turns and parries and lunges. When she cuts the man down with a single sweep, Silas turns to me and smiles proudly.
“Go!” Sister Hope roars, as more men pour into the room. She raises her sword again and charges towards them.
We turn from the fight; my hands reach for Silas’s and Twylla’s. Then the curtain promising our escape route opens and a man enters, dressed head to toe in gleaming armour. We stop and Silas pulls both Twylla and me behind him, shielding us from the Silver Knight. He draws his sword and swings it in an arrogant, easy loop, and I hear Twylla breathe “No.”
Silas tenses. “When I start to fight, run,” he murmurs.
“No—”
“I’ll be right behind you.”
“Si—” But I don’t get to finish, because the Silver Knight lunges and Silas has to raise his sword to keep from being cut down. The sound of steel against steel is deafening as it echoes off the rocks, and to the left a cluster of stalactites falls, barely missing the alchemist as she swings her mace.
I grab Twylla’s hand, but before we can get to the door, the Silver Knight realizes what I’m doing and moves to block us. Behind us Sister Hope, Nia, and her wife are somehow holding their own against the other men, forcing them to bottleneck in the doorway while they lash out, Sister Hope with evident skill, and the others with sheer dumb luck.
I drop Twylla’s hand and run to the table, grabbing at one of the benches. Twylla looks at me as though I’m mad, and screams something, but I can’t hear her over the noise. I push it across the floor with all my might. It ploughs into the Silver Knight’s legs, sending him stumbling away from the door. At the same time, Silas crows in triumph as his sword makes contact with an open joint on the knight’s sword arm. “Now!” I hear him shout, and I seize Twylla’s hand again, jerking to a halt when a golem reels into the room, clay hands reaching out blindly. It’s smaller than the one that broke me, but still as bone-chilling with its blank face. My back gives a twinge and I’m frozen to the spot.
Sin Eater's Daughter 2 - The Sleeping Prince Page 26
