by Morgan Rice
Her uncle held up a hand. “There was a boy child. I thought… they told me, even me, that he died.”
Lucas stepped forward. “I didn’t die. I was hidden.”
“In the Silk Lands?”
“With Official Ko,” Lucas said.
The name seemed to be enough for Sophia’s uncle. He stepped forward and treated Lucas to the same crushing, all-encompassing hug that he’d given Sophia when he’d recognized her.
“I thought I’d been blessed enough with my nieces coming back,” he said. “I hadn’t thought that I might have a nephew too. We must celebrate!”
It seemed obvious that there should be a banquet, and just as obvious that there was no time in which to prepare one, which meant that almost at once, there were servants running in almost every direction, trying to prepare things. It seemed almost that Sophia and Lucas became the still point at the heart of it all, standing there while even her cousins ran around trying to prepare things.
Are things always this chaotic? Lucas asked, as a half dozen servants ran past with platters.
Only when there’s a new family member, I think, Sophia sent back. She stood there, wondering if she should ask the next question.
“Whatever it is, ask it,” Lucas said. “I know there must be many things that you need to know.”
“You said before that you were raised by tutors,” Sophia said. “Does that mean… are my, our, parents not in the Silk Lands?”
Lucas shook his head. “At least, not that I could find. I’ve been looking since I came of age.”
“You’ve been searching for them as well? Your tutors didn’t know where they were?” Sophia asked. She sighed. “I’m sorry. I sound as though I’m not happy to have gained a brother. I am. I’m so happy you’re here.”
“But it would be perfect if it were all of us?” Lucas guessed. “I understand, Sophia. I have gained two sisters, and cousins… but I am greedy enough to want parents too.”
“I don’t think that counts as greed,” Sophia said with a smile.
“Perhaps, perhaps not. Official Ko said that things are as they are, and pain comes from wishing otherwise. To be fair, he usually said it while drinking wine and being massaged with the finest oils.”
“Do you know anything about our parents and where they went?” Sophia asked.
Lucas nodded. “I don’t know where they went,” he said. “But I know how to find them.”
CHAPTER TWO
Kate opened her eyes as the blinding light faded, trying to make sense of where she was and what had happened. The last thing she remembered, she’d been fighting her way through to an image of Siobhan’s fountain, plunging her blade into the ball of energy that had bound her to the witch as an apprentice. She’d severed the link. She’d won.
Now, it seemed that she was out in the open air, with no sign of Haxa’s cottage or the caves that lay behind it. It looked only a little like the parts of Ishjemme’s landscape that she had seen, but the flat meadows and bursts of woodland could have been there. Kate hoped so. The alternative was that the magic had transported her to some corner of the world she didn’t know.
In spite of the strangeness of being in a place she didn’t know, Kate felt free for the first time in a long time. She’d done it. She’d fought through everything that Siobhan, and her own mind, had put in the way, and she’d broken from the witch’s grasp. Next to that, finding her way back to Ishjemme’s castle seemed like an easy thing.
Kate picked a direction at random and set off, walking with steady steps.
She marched along, trying to think of what she would do with her newfound freedom. She would protect Sophia, obviously. That part went without saying. She would help to bring up her little niece or nephew when they arrived. Perhaps she would be able to send for Will, although with the war that might be difficult. And she would find their parents. Yes, that seemed like a good thing to do. Sophia wasn’t going to be able to wander the world looking for them as her pregnancy progressed, but Kate could.
“First, I have to find where I am,” she said. She looked around, but there were still no landmarks that she recognized. There was, however, a woman working a little ways away in a field, bent over a rake as she scraped away weeds. Perhaps she would be able to help.
“Hello!” Kate called out.
The woman looked up. She was old, her face lined with many seasons out there working. To her, Kate probably looked like some kind of bandit or thief, armed as she was. Even so, she smiled as Kate approached. People were friendly in Ishjemme.
“Hello, dear,” she said. “Will you give me your name?”
“I’m Kate.” And, because that didn’t seem enough, because she could claim it now, “Kate Danse, daughter of Alfred and Christina Danse.”
“A good name,” the woman said. “What brings you out here?”
“I… don’t know,” Kate admitted. “I’m a bit lost. I was hoping you could help me to find my way.”
“Of course,” the woman said. “It is an honor that you have put your path into my hands. You are doing that, aren’t you?”
That seemed an odd way to put it, but Kate didn’t know where they were. Perhaps it was just how people spoke here.
“Yes, I suppose so,” she said. “I’m trying to find my way back to Ishjemme.”
“Of course,” the woman said. “I know ways everywhere. Still, I feel that one turn deserves another.” She hefted the rake. “I don’t have much strength left these days. Will you give me your strength, Kate?”
If that was what it took to get back, Kate would work on a dozen fields. It couldn’t be any harder than the tasks set in the House of the Unclaimed, or the more enjoyable work at Thomas’s forge.
“Yes,” Kate said, holding out her hand for the rake.
The other woman laughed and stepped back, pulling at the cloak she wore. It came away, and as it did so, everything about her seemed to shift. Siobhan stood there in front of her, and now the landscape around them changed, shifting to something far too familiar.
She was still in the dream space of the ritual.
Kate flung herself forward, knowing that her only chance lay in killing Siobhan now, but the woman of the fountain was faster. She flung her cloak, and somehow it became a bubble of raw power, whose walls held Kate as tightly as any prison cell.
“You can’t do this,” Kate yelled. “You have no power over me anymore!”
“I had no power,” Siobhan said. “But you have just given me your path, your name, and your strength. Here, in this place, those things mean something.”
Kate slammed her fist against the wall of the bubble. It held.
“You wouldn’t want to weaken that bubble, Kate dear,” Siobhan said. “You’re a long way from the silver path now.”
“You won’t force me to be your apprentice again,” Kate said. “You won’t force me to kill for you.”
“Oh, we’re past that,” Siobhan said. “Had I known that you would cause such trouble, I would never have made you my apprentice in the first place, but some things can’t be foreseen, even by me.”
“If I’m such trouble, why not let me go?” Kate tried. Even as she said it, she knew it wouldn’t work like that. Pride would compel Siobhan to more, even if nothing else did.
“Let you go?” Siobhan said. “Do you know what you did, when you plunged a blade forged with my own runes into my fountain? When you carved apart our link, with no care for the consequences?”
“You didn’t give me a choice,” Kate said. “You—”
“You destroyed the heart of my power,” Siobhan said. “So much of it, wiped out in an instant. I barely had the strength to hold to this. But I am not without knowledge, not without ways to survive.”
She gestured, and the scene beyond the bubble shimmered. Now Kate recognized the interior of Haxa’s cottage, carved on every surface with runes and figures. The rune witch sat on a chair, watching over Kate’s still form. She’d obviously dragged or carried it up from
the ritual space deeper in the caves.
“My fountain sustained me,” Siobhan said. “Now I need a vessel to do the same. And there happens to be a conveniently empty one.”
“No!” Kate shouted, slamming her hand against the bubble again.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Siobhan said. “I won’t be there long. Just long enough to kill your sister, I think.”
Kate went cold at the thought of that. “Why? Why do you want Sophia dead? Just to hurt me? Kill me instead. Please.”
Siobhan considered her. “You really would give your life for her, wouldn’t you? You’d kill for her. You’d die for her. And now none of that is enough.”
“Please, Siobhan, I’m begging you!” Kate called out.
“If you didn’t want this, you should have done as I required,” Siobhan said. “With your help, I could have set things on a path where my home would have been safe forever. Where I would have had power. Now, you have taken that away, and I need to live.”
Kate still didn’t see why that meant Sophia had to die.
“Live in my body then,” she said. “But don’t hurt Sophia. You’ve no reason to.”
“I’ve every reason,” Siobhan said. “You think masquerading as the younger sister of a ruler is enough? You think dying in a single human lifetime is enough? Your sister carries a child. A child who will rule. I will shape it as an unborn thing. I will kill her and rip the child clear. I will take it and grow with it. I will become all I need to be.”
“No,” Kate said as she realized the full horror of it. “No.”
Siobhan laughed, and there was cruelty in it. “They will kill your body when I kill Sophia,” she said. “And you will be left here, between worlds. I hope you enjoy your freedom from me, apprentice.”
She murmured words and it seemed that she faded. The image of Haxa’s cottage didn’t, though, and Kate found herself screaming as she saw her own body take a breath.
“Haxa, no, it isn’t me!” she yelled, and then tried to send the same message with her power. Nothing happened.
On the other side of that slender divide, though, plenty happened. Siobhan gasped with her lungs, opened her eyes, and sat up with Kate’s body.
“Easy, Kate,” Haxa said, not rising. “You’ve had a long ordeal.”
Kate watched her body feel around itself unsteadily, as if trying to work out where it was. To Haxa, it must have looked as though Kate was still disoriented by her experience, but Kate could see that Siobhan was testing out her limbs, working out what they could and couldn’t do.
She finally stood, rising unsteadily. Her first step had her staggering, but her second was more confident. She drew Kate’s sword, swishing it through the air as if testing the balance. Haxa looked a little worried at that, but didn’t back away. Probably she thought it was the kind of thing Kate might do to test her balance and coordination.
“Do you know where you are?” Haxa asked.
Siobhan stared over at her using Kate’s eyes. “Yes, I know.”
“And you know who I am?”
“You are the one who calls herself Haxa to try to hide her name. You are the keeper of runes, and were no foe of mine until you decided to help my apprentice.”
From where she stood trapped, Kate saw Haxa’s expression shift to one of horror.
“You aren’t Kate.”
“No,” Siobhan said, “I’m not.”
She moved then, with all the speed and power of Kate’s body, lunging with the light sword so that it was barely more than a flicker as it lanced into Haxa’s chest. It protruded from the other side, transfixing her.
“The problem with names,” Siobhan said, “is that they only work when you have breath to use them. You shouldn’t have stood against me, rune witch.”
She let Haxa fall, and then looked up, as if knowing where Kate’s vantage point lay.
“She died because of you. Sophia will die because of you. Her child, and this kingdom, will be mine because of you. I want you to think about that, Kate. Think about it when the bubble fades and your fears come for you.”
She waved a hand, and the image faded. Kate threw herself at the bubble, trying to get to her, trying to get out of there and find a way to stop Siobhan.
She paused as things around her shifted, becoming a kind of gray, misty landscape now that Siobhan wasn’t shaping it to fool her. There was a faint glimmer of silver in the distance that might have been the safe path, but it was so far away it might as well not have been there.
Figures started to come from the mist. Kate recognized the faces of people she’d killed: nuns and soldiers, Lord Cranston’s training master and the Master of Crows’ men. She knew they were just images rather than ghosts, but that did nothing to reduce the fear that threaded through her, making her hand shake and the sword she carried seem useless.
Gertrude Illiard was there again, holding a pillow.
“I’m going to be first,” she promised. “I’m going to smother you as you smothered me, but you won’t die. Not here. No matter what we do to you, you won’t die, even if you beg for it.”
Kate looked around at them, and each of them held some kind of implement, whether it was a knife or a whip, a sword or a strangling rope. Each of them seemed to hunger with the need to hurt her, and Kate knew that they would fall upon her without mercy as soon as they could.
She could see the shield fading now, becoming more translucent. Kate gripped her sword tighter and braced herself for what was going to come.
CHAPTER THREE
Emeline followed Asha, Vincente, and the others across the moors beyond Strand, keeping hold of Cora’s forearm so that they wouldn’t lose one another in the mists that rose up off the moors.
“We did it,” Emeline said. “We found Stonehome.”
“I think Stonehome found us,” Cora pointed out.
That was a fair point, given that the place’s inhabitants had rescued them from execution. Emeline could still remember the burning heat of the pyres if she closed her eyes, the acrid stink of the smoke. She didn’t want to.
“Also,” Cora said, “I think that to find somewhere, you have to be able to see it.”
I like your pet, Asha sent back, ahead of them. Does she always talk this much?
The woman who seemed to be one of Stonehome’s leaders strode forward, her long coat trailing, her broad hat keeping off the damp.
She isn’t my pet, Emeline sent over to her. She thought about saying it aloud for Cora’s sake, but it was for her sake that she didn’t.
Why else would someone keep one of the Normal around? Asha asked.
“Ignore Asha,” Vincente said, aloud. He was tall enough to loom over them, but in spite of that, and the cleaver-like blade he carried, he seemed the friendlier of the two. “She has trouble believing that those without our gifts can be part of our community. Thankfully, not all of us feel that way. As for the mist, it is one of our protections. Those who seek Stonehome to harm it wander without finding it. They become lost.”
“And we can hunt the ones who came to hurt us,” Asha said, with a smile that wasn’t entirely reassuring. “Still, we’re nearly there. It will lift soon.”
It did, and it was like stepping onto a broad island hemmed in by the mist, the land rising up out of it in a broad expanse that was easily bigger than Ashton had been. Not that it was packed with houses the way the city was. Instead, most of it seemed to be grazing land, or plots where people were working to grow vegetables. Within that perimeter of growing land sat a dry stone wall as high as someone’s shoulder, sitting in front of a ditch in a way that made it into a defensive structure rather than just a marker. Emeline felt a faint flicker of power and wondered if there was more to it than that.
Within it, there sat a series of stone and peat houses: low cottages with peat and turf roofs, round houses that looked as though they had been there forever. At the heart of it was a stone circle similar to the others on the plain, except that this was larger, and filled with peop
le.
They’d found Stonehome at last.
“Come on,” Asha said, walking briskly toward it. “We’ll get you settled in. I’ll make sure no one mistakes you for an invader and kills you.”
Emeline watched her, then looked over to Vincente.
“Is she always like this?” she asked.
“Usually she’s worse,” Vincente said. “But she helps to protect us. Come on, you should both see your new home.”
They went down toward the stone-built village, the others following in their wake or breaking off to run to the fields to talk to friends.
“This seems such a beautiful place,” Cora said. Emeline was glad she liked it. She wasn’t sure what she would have done if her friend had decided that Stonehome wasn’t the sanctuary she had been hoping for.
“It is,” Vincente agreed. “I am not sure who founded it, but it quickly became a place for those like us.”
“Those with powers,” Emeline said.
Vincente shrugged. “That is what Asha says. Personally, I prefer to think of it as a place for all the dispossessed. You are both welcome here.”
“As simply as that?” Cora asked.
Emeline guessed that her suspicions had a lot to do with the things they’d encountered on the road. It had seemed that almost everyone they’d met had been determined to rob them, enslave them, or worse. She had to admit that she might have shared a lot of them, except that these were people like her in so many ways. She wanted to be able to trust them.
“Your friend’s powers make it obvious that she is one of us, while you… you were one of the indentured?”
Cora nodded.
“I know what that was like,” Vincente said. “I grew up in a place where they told me I had to pay for my freedom. So did Asha. She paid for it in blood. It is why she is careful about trusting others.”
Emeline found herself thinking about Kate at that. She wondered what had become of Sophia’s sister. Had she managed to find Sophia? Was she on the way to Stonehome too, or trying to find her way to Ishjemme to be with her? There was no way of knowing, but Emeline could hope.
