by Morgan Rice
“This one should have been indentured days ago!” the masked nun said, pointing. “Well, tomorrow, she will be. She will be sold as the ungrateful wretch that she is, and there will be no easy time for her now. There will be no kind men looking for a bought wife, or nobles looking for a servant.”
That was what passed for a fine life, an easy life, in this place. Sophia hated that fact almost as much as she hated the people there. She hated the thought of what might happen to her too. She’d been about to become the wife of a prince, and now…
“The only ones who will want a wicked thing like this,” Sister O’Venn said, “are cruel men with crueler aims. This girl brought it upon herself, and now she will go where she must.”
“Where you choose to send me!” Sophia countered, because she could see from the masked nun’s thoughts that she had sent for the worst people she could think of. There was a kind of torment just in being able to see that. She looked around again at each of the masked nuns there, trying to stare through the veils to reach the women beneath.
“I’m only going to people like that because you choose to send me. You choose to indenture us. You sell us as though we’re nothing!”
“You are nothing,” Sister O’Venn said, shoving the dowel back into Sophia’s mouth.
Sophia glared at her, reaching out to try to find some speck of humanity somewhere in there. There was nothing that she could find, only cruelty masquerading as necessary firmness, and evil pretending to be duty, without even real belief behind it. Sister O’Venn just liked to hurt the weak.
She hurt Sophia then, and there was nothing Sophia could do except scream.
She threw herself against the ropes, trying to tear free, or at least find some iota of room in which to escape the scourge ripping out penitence from her. There was nothing she could do, though, except scream, begging mutely into the wood she bit into while her power sent her screams out into the city, hoping that her sister would hear them somewhere in Ashton.
There was no reply except the steady whistle of braided leather through the air and the slap of it against her bloodied back. The masked nun beat her with a seemingly interminable strength, long past the point where Sophia’s legs could hold her up, and past the point where she even had the strength left to scream.
At some point after that, she must have passed out, but that made no difference. By that point, even Sophia’s nightmares were things of violence, bringing back old dreams of a burning house and men she had to outrun. When she came back to herself, they were done, the others long gone.
Still tied in place, Sophia wept while the rain washed away the blood of her beating. It would have been easy to believe that it couldn’t get worse, except that it could.
It could get so much worse.
And tomorrow, it would.
CHAPTER TWO
Kate stood above Ashton and watched it burn. She had thought that she would be happy to see it gone, but this wasn’t just the House of the Unclaimed or the spaces where the dock workers kept their barges.
This was everything.
Wood and thatch caught light, and Kate could feel the terror of the people there within the wide circle of houses. Cannon roared over the screams of the dying, and Kate saw swathes of buildings falling as easily as if they were made from paper. Blunderbusses sounded, while arrows filled the air so thickly it was hard to see the sky beyond them. They fell, and Kate walked through the rain of them with the strange, detached calm that could only come from being in a dream.
No, not a dream. This was more than that.
Whatever the powers of Siobhan’s fountain, they ran through Kate now, and she saw death all around her. Horses ran through the streets, riders cutting downward with sabers and backswords. Screams came from all around her until they seemed to fill the city as surely as the fire did. Even the river appeared to be on fire now, although as Kate looked, she saw that it was the barges that filled the broad expanse of it, fire leaping from one to another as men fought to get clear. Kate had been on a barge, and she could guess at how terrifying those flames must be.
There were figures running through the streets, and it was easy to tell the difference between the panicked citizens of the city and the figures in ochre-colored uniforms who followed with blades, hacking at them as they ran. Kate had never seen the sack of a city before, but this was something awful. It was violence for the sake of it, with no sign of stopping.
There were lines of refugees beyond the city now, heading out with whatever possessions they could carry in long rows heading out into the rest of the country. Would they seek refuge in the Ridings or go further, out to towns like Treford or Barriston?
Then Kate saw the riders bearing down on them, and she knew that they wouldn’t make it that far. There was fire at the back of them, though, so there was nowhere to run. What would it be like to be caught like that?
She knew, though, didn’t she?
The scene shifted, and now Kate knew that she wasn’t looking at something that might be, but something that had been. She knew this dream, because it was one that she had far too often. She was in an old house, a grand house, and there was danger coming.
There was something different this time though. There were people there, and Kate looked up at them from so far below that she knew she must have been tiny. There was a man there, looking worried but strong in a nobleman’s velvet, hastily thrown on, and a curled black wig discarded in his rush to deal with the situation, revealing cropped gray hair below. The woman with him was lovely but disheveled, as if it normally took her an hour to dress with the aid of servants and now she’d done it in minutes. She had a kind look to her, and Kate reached out to her, not understanding why the woman didn’t pick her up, when that was what she usually did.
“There’s no time,” the man said. “And if we all try to break free, they will just follow. We need to go separately.”
“But the children—” the woman began. Kate knew now without being told that this was her mother.
“They will be safer away from us,” her father said. He turned to a servant, and Kate recognized her nurse. “You need to get them out, Anora. Take them somewhere safe, where no one will know them. We will find them when this madness is done.”
Kate saw Sophia then, looking far too young, but also looking ready to argue. Kate knew that look far too well.
“No,” their mother said. “You have to go, both of you. There is no time. Run, my darlings.” There was a crash from somewhere else in the house. “Run.”
Kate was running then, her hand held firmly in Sophia’s. There was a crash, but she didn’t look back. She just kept going, out along corridors, pausing only to hide as shadowy figures passed. They ran until they found an open set of windows, heading out of the house, out into the darkness…
Kate blinked, coming back to herself. The morning light above her seemed too bright, the shine of it dazzling. She tried to grab for the dream as she woke, tried to see what had happened next, but it was already fleeing faster than she could hold to it. Kate groaned at that, because she knew that the last part hadn’t been a dream. It had been a memory, and it was one memory that Kate wanted to be able to see more than all the others.
Still, she had her parents’ faces in her mind now. She held them there, forcing herself not to forget. She sat up slowly, her head swimming with the aftermath of what she’d seen.
“You should take it slowly,” Siobhan said. “The fountain’s waters can have aftereffects.”
She was sitting on the edge of the fountain, which looked ruined again now, not bright and fresh as it had been when Siobhan had drawn water from it for Kate to drink. She looked exactly the same as she had what must have been a night ago, even the flowers twined into her hair looking untouched, as though she hadn’t moved in all that time. She was watching Kate with an expression that said nothing about what she was thinking, and the walls that she kept around her mind meant that she was a total blank, even to Kate’s power.
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br /> Kate tried to stand simply because she wouldn’t be stopped from it by this woman. The forest around her seemed to swim as she did, and Kate saw a haze of colors around the edges of trees, stones, branches. Kate stumbled, having to rest her hand against a broken column to steady herself.
“You will have to learn to listen to me if you’re to be my apprentice,” Siobhan said. “You can’t expect to be able to simply stand up after that many changes in your body.”
Kate gritted her teeth and waited for the sensation of dizziness to pass. It didn’t take long. Judging by her expression, even Siobhan was surprised when Kate stepped away from the support of the column.
“Not bad,” she said. “You’re adjusting quicker than I might have thought. How do you feel?”
Kate shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Then take the time to think,” Siobhan snapped back with just a hint of annoyance. “I want a student who thinks about the world, rather than just reacting to it. I think that’s you. Do you want to prove me wrong?”
Kate shook her head again. “I’m getting… the world seems different when I look at it.”
“You’re starting to see it as it is, with the currents of life,” Siobhan said. “You will get used to it. Try moving.”
Kate took a faltering step, then another.
“You can do better than that,” Siobhan said. “Run!”
That was a little too close to Kate’s dreams for comfort, and she found herself wondering how much of it Siobhan had seen. She had said that she and Kate weren’t the same, but if they were close enough for the other woman to want to teach her, then maybe they were close enough for Siobhan to see into her dreams.
There was no time to think about that right then, because Kate was too busy running. She sprinted through the woods, her feet skimming over the moss and the mud, the fallen leaves and the broken branches. It was only as she saw the trees whipping by that she realized just how fast she was moving.
Kate leapt, and suddenly she was springing into the lower branches of one of the trees around her, as easily as if she’d stepped up from a boat to a dock. Kate balanced on the branch, seeming to feel every breath of wind that moved it before it could shake her off. She hopped back down to the ground and, on impulse, moved to a heavy fallen branch that she could never have hoped to lift before. Kate felt the roughness of the bark against her hands as she gripped it, and she lifted it smoothly, hoisting it above her head like one of the strongmen at the fairs that came to Ashton every so often. She threw it, watching the branch disappear into the trees to land with a crash.
Kate heard it, and for a moment, she heard every other sound around her in the forest. She heard the rustle of leaves as small things moved under them, the chirp of birds up in the branches. She heard the scuff of tiny feet against the ground, and knew the spot where a hare would appear before it came. The sheer panoply of sounds was too much at first. Kate had to clamp her hands to her ears to keep out the drip of water from leaves, the movement of insects along bark. She clamped down on it the way she’d learned to with her talent for hearing thoughts.
She returned to the spot where the ruined fountain stood, and Siobhan was there, smiling with what seemed to be a hint of pride.
“What is happening to me?” Kate asked.
“Only what you asked for,” Siobhan said. “You wanted strength to defeat your enemies.”
“But all of this…” Kate began. The truth was that she’d never believed so much could happen to her.
“There are many forms that magic can take,” Siobhan said. “You will not curse your enemies or scry on them from a distance. You will not call down lightning or summon the spirits of the restless dead. Those are paths for others.”
Kate raised an eyebrow. “Is any of that even possible?”
She saw Siobhan shrug. “It doesn’t matter. You have the strength of the fountain running in you now. You will be faster and stronger, your senses will be sharper. You will see things that most people cannot. Combined with your own talents, you will be formidable. I will teach you to strike in battle or from the shadows. I will make you deadly.”
Kate had always wanted to be strong, but even so, she found herself a little scared by it all. Siobhan had already told her that there would be a price for all of this, and the more wonderful it seemed, the greater she suspected that price was going to be. She thought back to what she’d dreamed, and she hoped that it wasn’t a warning.
“I saw something,” Kate said. “I dreamed it, but it didn’t feel like a dream.”
“What did it feel like?” Siobhan asked.
Kate was about to say that she didn’t know, but she caught Siobhan’s expression and thought better of it. “It felt like the truth. I hope not, though. In my dream, Ashton was in the middle of being razed. It was on fire, and the people were being slaughtered.”
She half expected Siobhan to laugh at her for even mentioning it, or maybe she hoped for it. Instead, Siobhan looked thoughtful, nodding to herself.
“I should have expected it,” the woman said. “Things are moving faster than I thought they would, but time is one thing even I cannot do anything about. Well, not permanently.”
“You know what’s happening?” Kate asked.
That earned her a smile that she couldn’t decipher. “Let’s just say that I have been expecting events,” Siobhan replied. “There are things that I have anticipated, and things that must be done in only a short amount of time.”
“And you aren’t going to tell me what’s going on, are you?” Kate said. She tried to keep the frustration out of her voice by focusing on everything that she had gained. She was stronger now, and faster, so should it matter that she didn’t know everything? It did though.
“Already, you’re learning,” Siobhan replied. “I knew I didn’t make a mistake in choosing you for an apprentice.”
In choosing her? Kate had been the one to seek out the fountain, not once, but twice. She’d been the one to ask for power, and the one to decide to accept Siobhan’s terms. She wasn’t going to let the other woman persuade her that it had been any other way.
“I came here,” Kate said. “I chose this.”
Siobhan shrugged. “Yes, you did. And now, it is time for you to begin to learn.”
Kate looked around. This wasn’t a library like the one in the city. It wasn’t a training field with fencing masters like the one where Will’s regiment had humiliated her. What could she learn, here in this wild place?
Even so, she prepared herself, standing in front of Siobhan and waiting. “I’m ready. What do I have to do?”
Siobhan cocked her head to one side. “Wait.”
She went to a spot where a small fire had been laid in a pit, ready to light. Siobhan tossed a flicker of flame into it without bothering with a flint and steel, then whispered words Kate couldn’t catch as smoke rose from it.
The smoke started to twist and writhe, forming itself into shapes as Siobhan directed it the way a conductor might have directed musicians. The smoke coalesced in a shape that was vaguely human, finally burning away to leave something that looked like a warrior from some long gone age. He stood holding a sword that looked wickedly sharp.
So sharp, in fact, that Kate had no time to even react when he thrust it through her heart.
CHAPTER THREE
They left Sophia to dangle in place for the night, held up only by the ropes they’d used to tie her to the punishment post. The sheer immobility of it was almost as much of a torture as her ravaged back, as her limbs burned with the lack of movement. She couldn’t do anything to ease the pain of her beating, or the shame of being left out there in the rain as a kind of warning to the others there.
Sophia hated them then, with the kind of hatred she had always chided Kate for holding too close. She wanted to watch them die, and the wanting of it was a kind of pain too, because there was no way that Sophia would ever be in a position to make it happen. She couldn’t even free herself now.<
br />
She couldn’t sleep either. The pain and the awkward position saw to that. The closest Sophia could come was a kind of half-dreaming delirium, the past mixing with the present while the rain continued to plaster her hair to her head.
She dreamed of the cruelty she’d seen in Ashton, and not just in the living hell of the orphanage. The streets had been almost as bad with their predators and their callous lack of care for those who ended up on them. Even in the palace, for every kindly soul, there had been another like Milady d’Angelica who seemed to revel in the power her position gave her to be cruel to others. She thought of a world that was filled with wars and human-wrought cruelty, wondering how it could have turned into such a heartless place.
Sophia tried to turn her thoughts to kinder things, but that wasn’t easy. She started to think about Sebastian, but the truth was that it hurt too much. Things had seemed so perfect between them, and then, when he’d found out what she was… it had fallen apart so quickly that now Sophia’s heart felt like ash. He hadn’t even tried to stand up to his mother or to stay with Sophia. He’d just sent her away.
Sophia thought about Kate instead, and thoughts of her brought with them the need to cry for help once more. She sent another call into the first glimmers of the dawn light, but still, there was nothing. Worse, thinking about her sister mostly brought with it memories of hard times in the orphanage, or other, earlier things.
Sophia thought about the fire. The attack. She’d been so young when it had happened that she barely remembered any of it. She could recall her mother’s and father’s faces, but not what they had sounded like outside of those few instructions to run. She could remember having to flee, but could only pull together the faintest glimpses of the time before that. There had been a wooden rocking horse, a large house where it had been easy to play at getting lost, a nanny…
Sophia couldn’t dredge up more than that from her memory. The House of the Unclaimed had covered it almost completely with a miasma made from pain, so that it was hard to think past the beatings and the grinding wheels, the enforced subservience and the dread that came from knowing what it all led to.
