Sisters of Sword and Song

by Rebecca Ross

  She wanted to give Selene a knowing smile, to touch the relic hiding beneath her clothes. To rise up on sightless wings and kick every single one of their chalices over, until the wine sprayed over their perfect clothes and ran like blood along their perfect floor.

  But Evadne would have to be wise, as Halcyon had begged. She would have to be careful, as her parents admonished. She could not let these high-ranked people anger her. She must earn their trust. So she held her position and breathed, waiting with a placid expression.

  “You must love your sister very much to take her place here,” Selene stated.

  “Yes, Lady.”

  At last, Selene looked away, and Evadne was released. She quietly stepped back to make her rounds to the other chalices, refilling them. Cosima began to speak of the illness she was treating in the infirmary, mentioning how wonderful it would be to possess Magda’s Sunstone Ring of Healing at a time like this, and Evadne felt the tension ease, the attention drifting away from her. Until she came to Damon’s side. He stopped her without a word, laying his hand over the mouth of his cup, the silver on his finger glittering like a warning.

  Evadne returned to the embrace of pillar shadows.

  This time, she did not let herself become distracted by the family’s conversations. She kept her gaze on them, watching their chalices. They soon forgot about her again, a girl in the shadows.

  Save for one.

  Damon did not eat; he did not drink. He hardly spoke again. But he looked at Evadne, meeting her gaze from across the room, and there his eyes remained. Directly on hers.

  She looked away first, unable to hold that uncanny stare of his, brown and blue, like sky meeting earth.

  And she knew that he had been aware of her the entire night, no matter what she had previously believed. He had kept track of her, as one does the height of wine in a chalice.

  Or as one does a viper.

  XIII

  Halcyon

  Miles from Straton’s villa, down the winding streets of Mithra and beyond the western gates, through the moonlit barley fields, Halcyon finally arrived at the quarry outpost. She was chained in the back of an iron caged wagon, and she was alone, the only prisoner to be brought to the quarry that night. She could hear the howl of the wind in the foothills, and she stared at the distant fires of Mithra, a city that never slept. The queen’s palace blazed on the summit, and Halcyon could hardly stand to look at it, to be reminded of how she had failed.

  Evadne.

  She breathed her sister’s name, hoping the wind would carry it east, to where Evadne now dwelled in the commander’s villa.

  The guards unlocked Halcyon from the wagon and escorted her into the outpost. Torches were pegged along the walls, casting uneven light on the rough-hewn walls, and Halcyon walked mindfully, her back still tender. She was brought into a chamber. It looked to be some sort of workroom; there was a desk lit by a lamp, and a lonely chair positioned in the center of the floor. Shelves lined one of the walls, laden with scrolls and stacks of papyrus.

  She was instructed to sit in the lonely chair. Halcyon obeyed, and the guards chained her to iron rings in the floor. As if she could run anywhere.

  They left her in the workroom, and she sat in the quiet, listening. She must have sat there for hours, whoever she was to meet purposefully delaying to make her feel forgotten and inconsequential. She watched the moonlight drift across the floor at her feet; she watched the oil lamp almost extinguish. She counted the number of scrolls on the shelves. And then, at last, just when she was about to doze in the chair, the door opened.

  She expected the quarry lord, imagining him to be a burly, weathered individual who would be overseeing her the next five years.

  But a slender young man greeted her, dressed impeccably in the garments of a mage. A silver ring gleamed on his forefinger, his eyes probing as he stared at her. His hair was long, sleek and fair as corn silk.

  He did not belong here any more than Halcyon did.

  Mages were forbidden from overseeing or even visiting common prisons and convict quarries. For the mages who committed crimes . . . there was a special prison for them, on the eastern coast of Corisande.

  But this mage was not a prisoner. And as he walked across the floor to settle behind the desk, dread pooled in Halcyon’s stomach.

  “Halcyon of Isaura,” he greeted with an unsettling smile. “I must say, I never expected to meet you here.” He unrolled a scroll with a flick of his fingers, dark words resting on the papyrus. It was a record of her trial, freshly inked. “You are convicted of accidentally slaying your lover and shield mate, and have been sentenced to only five years of work here, with five years of imprisonment to follow and . . . what is this? Your little sister took a portion of your punishment. Evadne of Isaura, correct?”

  She hated the way he spoke Evadne’s name, how it drawled in his voice. As if he had tasted it before.

  “Come to think of it, I do believe I have met your sister,” he continued. “On the road here. I shared a fire with her and your parents. She is a little shorter than you, but curvier. Long brown hair in dire need of a combing, big doe eyes, a dusting of freckles on her face. She might have been pretty, had she been raised in the upper class.”

  “You are fortunate I am chained,” Halcyon said. Her voice was calm, but her blood was pounding. “Or else I would kill you.”

  The mage laughed. “You could try, Halcyon. In fact, I would welcome it. I am not at all intimidated by you, even though you were once considered Lord Straton’s most favored of warriors. There was a rumor, even, that he was about to promote you to the rank of captain in his legion. Of course, this was before you killed his son.”

  Halcyon struggled to control her fury. But she could not stop imagining it: Evadne and her parents traveling to Abacus and coming across this mage, who oozed of deceit and wickedness. Had he harmed them? Had he said or done anything to Evadne?

  “Do not worry, Halcyon. I would never dream of hurting your sister, or your rustic parents, for that matter. They might have been hungry and thirsty, but trials like that build character. As you should know.”

  “What are you doing here, mage?” she countered, to halt his words of her family before she lost her composure. “It is forbidden for your ilk to be here.”

  “You will address me as lord, for that is what I am to you. Do you understand, Convict 8651?”

  Convict 8651. Halcyon was now the one to laugh. She laughed until she knew she had irritated him, until he pounded his fist on the table.

  “Do you understand, 8651?”

  She quieted. But she did not speak her agreement and was not planning to until she heard him utter a charm and she felt his magic gathering in the room. The flame from the oil lamp grew into a creature made of heat and rancor. It began to shift toward her, its fiery maw open and hungry, and she could feel the blistering temperature of it. The chimera was one moment from taking hold of her ankle, melting her skin in its white light, when she spoke, “Yes, I understand, Lord.”

  The mage relaxed. His fiery chimera faded, flickering back to the lamp wick, returning to a solitary flame.

  Halcyon also appeared relaxed, but her panic was thrumming, just beneath her skin. A mage had somehow wormed his way into this common quarry as lord. He was powerful and seemed to have no qualms with using his charms for violence.

  This was going to bode very badly for her.

  For the first time since her sentence had been announced, Halcyon realized she might not survive the quarry.

  “What is it you want from me?” she whispered.

  He tapped his fingers on the table. The guards returned to unchain her from the floor.

  But the mage delayed in answering, waited until she was on the threshold, about to be dragged to her holding cell.

  “I suppose we will soon find out, won’t we, 8651?”

  XIV

  Evadne

  Here. You are scrubbing the floors today. And I do not want to see a smudge of dir
t on them,” Toula said, handing a bucket, lye, and bristle brush to Evadne the next morning.

  Evadne accepted the task without a word, drawing water from the servants’ well. She began on the southern side of the villa, slowly inching her way across the marble floor, one stroke at a time. She was not intimidated by this sort of work, as Toula no doubt had hoped. It gave her time to think of what she had overheard the night before, of Damon’s need for a scribe. She also learned the layout of the villa, particularly where Straton’s office was located, behind locked doors.

  But soon the lye had turned her hands red, her skin itching and burning, and Evadne stopped to rest, sprawled in the center of the empty dining room. She groaned, drawing her right ankle closer to rub the stiffness away. That was when she noticed the dog, lying a few paces away in a patch of sunlight, watching her.

  Evadne froze.

  The dog blinked, raised his head as if he smelled her fear. His fur was long and copper brown, a few patches of white on his chest and paws. He did not have a malicious gleam in his eyes as the shepherd’s dog had, but all the same, Evadne was terrified.

  She crawled away backward, keeping her eyes on the dog, dragging her bucket with her.

  “By the gods, girl, what are you doing?”

  Evadne whirled to see Toula standing in the dining room, bearing a tray of silver plates.

  “Th-there’s a dog.”

  Toula frowned, glancing to where the dog still rested in the sun.

  “Arcalos is old and gentle. No need to be afraid of him.”

  Evadne still hesitated, and Toula hefted a sigh. “Go on, girl. Finish the floor.”

  Toula departed, and Evadne worked and silently cried, washing the floor with her tears. Arcalos did not move, but he reached his head out as if to nuzzle her.

  She looked at the dog and saw nothing but gentleness in his eyes, his muzzle gray with age.

  “You do not understand,” she whispered to him.

  Arcalos only blinked, drowsy from the sun.

  Evadne finished the floor in the dining room and moved down the corridor. She heard the clicking of nails and turned to see, in horror, Arcalos was following her, leaving a trail of paw prints on her drying floor.

  “No, stop,” she pleaded.

  Arcalos paused, smile-panting at her.

  She would have to rescrub the floor again, to wash away his prints, and her back was aching and her skin felt like it would crack and peel away, and she knew she was one breath from sobbing. Evadne leaned against the wall. Arcalos approached her and lay down at her side, his fur warm against her legs. She had nowhere to go and was too exhausted to flee from him, and so she remained there in the shadows of the corridor, weeping quietly, with her worst nightmare curled up against her.

  A whistle sounded down the hallway.

  Arcalos’s ears perked, but he remained next to Evadne. Evadne did not move, did not breathe, praying that whoever it was did not stray down the corridor to find her so unraveled.

  “Arcalos? Arcalos, come,” Damon called, and the dog instantly obeyed, struggling to rise as if he was just as stiff as Evadne.

  Of course you would be Damon’s dog! Evadne thought, hurrying to her knees. She plunged her brush into the bucket and began to clean the paw prints.

  “Is he bothering you, Evadne?”

  For the second time that day, she startled. She had not heard Damon approach, but now that she knew he stood behind her, she sensed his presence.

  “No,” she said, continuing to scrub. She kept her face angled away, her braid falling over her shoulder, to hide her tears.

  He stood there a moment longer, watching her. And then he was gone, taking the old dog with him.

  She worked until sundown, when it was time for her to serve the wine. And Evadne had discovered that every time she lifted the wine to her lips to taste it for poison, her desires sharpened. She felt cut by her own longings for life, for escape. To return home with Halcyon. Her desires bled as she waited to see if she would die for a man like Straton. But the wine was clean that night, as it had been all the nights before.

  Evadne moved to Straton’s side, doing her best to conceal her limp, which had flared with all the crawling and crouching she had done.

  His chalice was half-full when he noticed it. “What has happened to your hands, Evadne?”

  She paused, feeling Cosima, Lyra, and Damon look at her raw fingers.

  “It is from the lye I cleaned with today, Lord,” she replied, moving to the lady’s cup.

  “You need to wear gloves, then. Toula should be able to provide a pair for you,” the commander said, and Evadne nodded, knowing she did not have the courage to ask Toula.

  She arrived at Damon’s side, but he covered his chalice, and she did not know if it was because he was abstaining from wine or he mistrusted her. But what did she care? That was one less cup for her to watch.

  When Evadne returned to her chamber that night, she found Amara folding tunics one-handed on her bed, her wounded arm held steady by a sling.

  “Toula delivered that for you,” Amara said, indicating a small jar on Evadne’s shelf.

  Evadne opened its lid and found a fragrant healing salve inside. She was stunned at first, wondering who had made it for her.

  “You should also wear these on your hands,” Amara said, tossing leather mitts onto Evadne’s bed. “When I first began my time here, I had to scrub the floors, too. You will eventually progress to other tasks.”

  Evadne sat on the edge of her mattress, dipping her fingers into the salve. It burned at first, but then her skin went cold and numb, and she groaned as she spread it over her hands. She watched Amara fold by firelight for a moment, gradually building the courage to ask, “How long have you been here?”

  “Since I was eight. My mother brought me to the healer’s infirmary, to Lady Cosima, and begged her to take me on as one of their servants.” Amara’s voice held no emotion as she folded perfect thirds, smoothing wrinkles from servant tunics. “My father abandoned us when I was born, to hunt relics. I have not heard of him since. My mother worked the barley fields on the edge of Mithra. One year, the blight was so terrible we lost nearly everything. Every night when I lay down in my bed, I thought I would die of hunger in my sleep. But then one day, Queen Nerine came to our house and brought us two sacks of grain, jars of oil and wine, a pot of honey. She had heard about the blight and opened the royal storerooms, and she fed us when we had nothing. She saved us. I remember how warm and lovely she was, and she held me on her lap and told my mother and me that if we were ever hungry or needed aid that we should come to her at once. But the next year the blight was just as devastating, and when my mother went to the royal palace, to ask the queen for aid again . . . she was turned away by one of the court mages. That was the year my mother finally became too sick to work, to care for me. The year when I felt as if the Magical Court wanted to keep us common folk down and out of sight from our own queen. Since then, I have come to hate the mages, save for Damon.”

  Evadne was silent, aching as she listened.

  “Lady Cosima tried to heal my mother, but she was too ill. She died, and Lady Cosima kept me on as a servant. When I come of age next year, my term will be over, and I will have the choice of whether to stay or to leave.” Amara finished her folding. She stood and carried the laundry to the chest at the foot of her bed.

  “Will you remain here?” Evadne asked, slipping off her sandals to crawl beneath her blankets.

  Amara climbed into bed, careful of her arm. “Yes. What else is there for me? A barley field? Relic hunting? Hunger? I have no other family. Toula and the other servants are my family now. And here, as a servant, I am paid for my work and I never go hungry. Lady Cosima and Lord Straton are good to me. I am higher off than I was before.”

  She blew out the oil lamp; the darkness rushed in.

  “Amara?”

  “What?”

  Evadne hesitated. “Has the wine ever been poisoned?”

&nbs
p; “Yes. Once, years ago. I was still a girl scrubbing floors when it happened. Lord Straton discovered one of his former hoplites had poisoned his wine, in revenge for being dismissed from the legion.” Amara fell quiet. When she spoke again, her voice had softened. “Are you afraid, Evadne?”

  Evadne was tempted to lie. But the truth slipped out in a whisper. “Yes.”

  Amara shifted in her bed. Evadne could almost feel the girl’s gaze on her, even in the pitch darkness. “Lady Cosima has antidotes if you were poisoned.”

  “You truly believe she would try to save me with an antidote?”

  “To let you die would be foolish.”

  Soon, Amara’s snores filled the chamber. But all Evadne could hear was Halcyon’s voice, echoing in the deepest cracks of her soul.

  Do not be afraid, Little Sister.

  The days began to pass, one sunset bleeding into the next, Evadne repeating the cycle of her drudgery over and over. She scrubbed the floors, she tasted and poured the family’s wine, and she thought about Halcyon until it was hard to breathe. But Evadne counted the sunrises, scratching a tiny mark for each one into the stone floor with Halcyon’s kopis, just out of sight beneath her bed.

  The twelfth day of her service began as all the others. The villa was quiet; Cosima and Lyra were at the infirmary, and Straton had gone to the palace to meet with the queen’s advisors. Damon was the only family member to remain home, closed away in his chambers. The servants continued with their tasks: Toula washing and polishing silver, Amara folding laundry, Evadne scrubbing the floors.

  She was cleaning the courtyard beside the reflection pool when a guest arrived at the villa. A young man with the air of a scholar, tall and well-groomed, his clothes practical yet perfectly laundered. Evadne watched as Toula greeted him.

  “I have an appointment with Lord Damon,” the visitor said, glancing around at the glamour of the commander’s villa.