The Bone Palace (48 page)

“We
are
the darkness, little fledgling.” Humor and sadness veined her voice, a warmer current amidst the cold tide. “We are darkness and dust. It may be our nature to hunger for warmth and light, but we must extinguish them or be seared. We are hunters, teeth in the night, not shepherds to keep humans for chattel. The kingdoms of men mean nothing to us.”

“Rot in your ossuaries, then. I want something more, and I’m not alone.”

“Really?” Again the humor, sharper now. “You seem quite alone to me, little one.”

Which is why,
Isyllt thought,
you don’t use allies as scapegoats
. She didn’t say it, though—she didn’t feel like attracting more of Tenebris’s attention.

“I, on the other hand,” the vrykola continued, “am not.”

A pale shape moved in the shadows and Spider recoiled. “Aphra!”

The elder vrykola was slight and fine-boned. She wore grey velvet, yellowed with age and rotting at the seams. Lace snagged and tattered on the broken flagstones. Her hair was the color of old ivory, her skin dull and grey until the light kissed her—then she glittered like raw marble, a statue brought to life.

“Spider.” Her voice was the whisper of dust across cathedral floors, the sound of stone dissolving in the relentless flow of time.

“You’re awake.”

Isyllt had never heard his voice sound so human, threaded with fear and longing and anger.

“Azarné came to us, told us what you’ve done.” She advanced on him slowly, inexorably, one long grey hand rising. “Oh, child. I thought you would fare better than this.”

“I only wanted—” His voice cracked and died. His shoulders slumped, legs wavering as he struggled to stand.

“You wanted the world. And that is no longer ours.” She touched his hair, and he fell to his knees as if she’d cut his strings. Black tears tracked his cheeks.

Stone scraped against Isyllt’s palms as she crawled forward. She hadn’t meant to move, but his weakness and misery were unbearable. He should die fighting—

“Hush, child.” Tenebris’s icy hands closed on her arms, drawing her gently up. “It’s better this way. She is his maker—the unmaking is also hers.” Shadow fingers stroked Isyllt’s bruised cheek, wiped a drop of blood from her split lip. “I’m sorry he hurt you.”

The vampire draped an arm across Isyllt’s shoulders, turning her away from Aphra and Spider. He was crying now, low keening sobs. The sound twisted Isyllt’s stomach. She tried to look back, but Tenebris held her, wrapped her in shadows like liquid silk.

“It’s better if you don’t watch.”

She was wrong—the wet sounds that followed were worse by themselves, mingled with Spider’s soft gasps.

Finally they stopped, and Tenebris drew her shadow-draperies away.

Isyllt turned to see Aphra bending over Spider. Blood shone black on the vrykola’s colorless mouth as she straightened, and on the ruin of Spider’s throat. His head hung against his chest, his hair a spiderweb shroud.
He was too pale to show the petrification that took the vrykolos in death, but Isyllt watched his limbs tremble and grow still. Her vision blurred, and she scrubbed away a glaze of foolish tears.

Aphra laid a hand on Spider’s head again, a final caress. Then she twisted. His spine cracked like crushed gravel and his head fell and shattered on the ground. The rest of him toppled slowly after, disintegrating into a glittering drift of dust.

Aphra turned to Isyllt, fixing her with colorless crystalline eyes. “He did care for you,” the vrykola whispered. “As much as he was able.” She turned and vanished into the fog before Isyllt could think of anything to say.

Tenebris lifted the shadow of her face toward the sky. “We will return to the catacombs and take our wayward children with us. They won’t bother you again, at least tonight. The demon in the tower, though, is not of our doing, and none of our concern. Good luck, necromancer.”

And she was gone.

The wind chilled Isyllt’s face; she was crying again. She wiped her cheeks and began searching for her knife.

The climb might have lasted a year, but Savedra knew the tower had no more than four or five stories. Spirits crowded the stairs, scuttling and chirping, but didn’t touch her. The only light was the spark of her rings, orange and blood red. That glow drew her upward, though her heart pounded to break her ribs and queasy sweat greased her palms. The darkness changed as she climbed, greying with the promise of light.

The door at the top of the stairs stood open, lined in
gentle lamplight. Savedra stood before it, pressing a sweat-and-blood-slick hand against the stitch in her side. She heard nothing from the other side; she heard nothing at all but the sick pounding of her heart. When her pulse slowed and the pain in her ribs dulled, she drew a breath and stepped across the threshold.

She didn’t know what a haematurge’s lair should look like, but whatever she expected, it wasn’t the disrepair she walked into. No blood or filth, but scattered books and rugs and missing furniture, like a half-vacated house. After the frozen night, the warmth of braziers stifled.

Her breath left in a deflated rush. No Nikos, no demons—where were they? Then a red lump in the corner that she’d taken for cushions stirred, and she jumped.

Ginevra lay in a heap against the wall, her hands bound behind her with heavy rope. The crimson dress was black with grime, the hem snagged and bleeding beads. Her lustrous copper skin was dull and ashen, her eyes hollow, but save for a rust-colored smear across her mouth she seemed unharmed.

Bruised eyelids fluttered as Savedra whispered her name. “Vedra.” The hope in her smile was terrible. “You came.”

Savedra dropped to her knees beside the girl, touching her face with trembling fingers. No fever, at least, and no more chilled than one would expect from sitting on frigid stone. Someone had given her a blanket, but it had slid aside and become trapped under her legs.

“Are you hurt?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I’m so tired, though—”

“Yes,” a voice said behind them. “Better if you rest.”

Savedra’s nerves snapped and she leapt like a startled
cat. She fetched up crouched against the wall beside Ginevra, her knife flashing in her hand.

Lychandra Alexios stood before her, still gowned in white. Savedra had thought herself prepared, but she moaned at the sight, eyes squeezing shut and the knife falling from numb fingers.

Fabric rustled as Lychandra—
Phaedra
, she told herself,
Phaedra
—knelt beside Ginevra. “Sleep. It’s easier that way.”

Now Savedra understood why Phaedra’s voice had chilled her when they met at Varis’s house. Lychandra’s throat, Lychandra’s lips shaping the words, but the tone and inflection were wrong. She forced herself to look again.

Phaedra smiled, and that too was familiar and all the more terrible for it. “Startling, isn’t it? I still catch myself off guard in mirrors. Varis spoke of your cleverness, but I admit I didn’t think you’d make it this far. But not unscathed.” One cold finger touched Savedra’s face, came away pink and sticky.

She held out a long brown hand. Seeing no safer option, Savedra took it, letting the demon draw her to her feet. Her dagger slid from the folds of her skirts and clattered against the floor.

“What are you doing to her?” she asked, looking down at Ginevra.

“Keeping her safe. If she were awake she would only wear herself out with panic.” The sorceress hadn’t let go of Savedra’s hand; she raised it now to study the ruby ring. Identical stones shone on her fingers. Savedra tensed for wrath, but all Phaedra said was, “Wherever did you find this?”

“In Carnavas,” she answered, her mouth dry and sticky. “In your workroom.” At least Phaedra’s demon birds weren’t here now—that was something to be thankful for.

“Ah. I always wondered what happened to it.” Luminous orange eyes moved from Savedra to Ginevra and back again. “Would you like her?”

Savedra blinked stupidly. “What?”

“This body. I thought at first to wear it myself, but we came up with a better plan.” Her gaze softened, the dead woman’s face ghastly with sympathy. “I understand what it’s like to be trapped in the wrong flesh. Varis explained it to me—the cruel trick of your birth. I could fix it. It’s the least I can do for him. I’m not entirely sure how the process would work between two anixeroi,” she said, frowning, “but it would be a fascinating experiment.”

Savedra’s mouth opened and closed again on an unspoken denial. She stared at Ginevra’s slender limbs, her smooth cheeks, the rise and fall of her breast. Beautiful and graceful and feminine, even bound and filthy. Everything Savedra had ever wanted to be, everything she was in her dreams until waking returned her to the truth.

“Is it so simple?” she asked. Would the hijra call it miraculous, or abhorrent?

“It’s not
simple,
” Phaedra said, sculpted brows pulling together in indignation. “It’s a delicate and complex thaumaturgical process. It’s been my life’s work. But it is
possible
.”

“It would make me a demon.”

“That’s a broad, clumsy word that the Arcanost relies on too heavily. But strictly speaking, a demon is created from the merging of flesh—living or dead—and a spirit
or a ghost. I’m not sure what you would call the transfer of a living soul into a different living body.”

Madness, Savedra would call it. Abomination. Temptation.

Nikos had always said he loved her, not the flesh she wore. Did he really mean that?

“No,” she said at last. “I can’t.”

Phaedra frowned. “You could if you were desperate enough. But never mind. I can certainly find a use for her myself.”

“Please. Where is Nikos? I need to see him.”

“You came to rescue him? How sweet.” Phaedra gestured toward another doorway. “He’s here.”

The adjoining room looked like a mad sorcerer’s laboratory ought—vials and bottles and dishes, books lining the walls and lamps and candles cluttered on tables. In the center of the room on a stone bench lay Nikos. His shirt and jacket were gone, revealing hand-shaped bruises on his shoulders and short, scabbed cuts tracking the vein down one forearm. Savedra’s heart clenched, but he still breathed.

“What are you doing to him?”

“Transfusion. I drain his blood—slowly, of course—and replace it with my own. When enough is replaced, I can transfer my mind and my power with it. I balked at first, about wearing a man’s flesh, but Spider convinced me that was foolish. It’s just another experiment, after all, not to mention the quickest means to our end.”

“And what happens to Nikos?”

Phaedra paused. “He’ll be consumed. Subsumed. Some memories may linger—I collect more every time I do this.” She touched her temple as if they pained her.

“You can’t,” Savedra said. “Please, you can’t. Let him go.”

Phaedra’s eyes flickered toward her. “Can’t I?” she snapped. But her temper died. “Is he anything like his father?”

Savedra shook her head. It took her two tries to manage “No.”

“A pity, then.” She brushed a stray curl off his brow; his eyes flickered beneath pale lids. “Speaking of his father—” She smiled, and it looked nothing like Lychandra. This was a predator’s smile. “I think I hear him coming now.”

Isyllt met Mathiros Alexios at the base of the tower, and came perilously close to regicide when he materialized out of the fog beside her.

“Majesty.” She lowered her knife. His face was ashen and wild-eyed; scratches dripped blood down his cheek and brow, and more blood glistened on his drawn sword. Demon or mortal she couldn’t say.

She thought he might attack her, but his gaze focused. “Iskaldur. What are you doing here?”

“Looking for your son, Majesty, and for the woman responsible.”

“Phaedra.” A whisper, more to himself than to her. She couldn’t keep the surprise from her face. “Yes,” he said with a harsh laugh. “I know her name. I remember her.” His eyes narrowed. “You know.”

No point in dissembling now. “I’ve heard the story.”

Black brows pulled together. “And do you think I deserve whatever fate she has in mind for me?”

“Yes. But she’s a madwoman who’s already tearing the
city apart, and Nikos doesn’t deserve to suffer because you were an idiot. Your Majesty.”

Mathiros’s scowl broke and he laughed, harsh and raw. “I should have taken you to the Steppes after all. The horselords would like you.”

“I’ll bear that in mind when this is over.” She gestured toward the tower. “Phaedra is up there, somewhere, and likely Nikos too. Shall we go up?”

She expected tricks and traps, but the way was clear. Past the dizzying taint of the stones, she felt power gathering at the top of the stairs.

Phaedra waited for them, still clothed in white and stolen flesh. Not the gown she’d worn to the masque, but a new one of silver-trimmed velvet. Not a practical color for a haematurge. It didn’t flatter her complexion, but was striking all the same.

Mathiros stumbled on the last step. “Lychandra—”

“No.”

“No.” He dragged a hand across his face; blood smeared from his cuts, welled fresh. “No. Phaedra.”

Isyllt shuddered at her smile. “Yes. You do remember.”