7.

The guard who had let Eilona into the house lay crumpled on the floor. A dozen soldiers, their faces wrapped in dark cloth, pushed through the doorway over him.

She felt oddly calm, though she knew she should have turned and run back up the stairs, to whatever safety she could find. Instead, Eilona remained still. Whereas before she had been defined by the moment, by her emotional reaction to her stepfather’s words, to Sinae dragging his knife over Alahn’s throat, she now felt an odd detachment, as if the world had become unreal. The gaze of the first soldier fell on her, but it wavered, as if he was separated from her by a thick pane of glass. It added to the sense of dislocation from what was happening around her. As if she was floating above herself, she saw Caeli drive her elbow into the side of Captain Oake’s head, saw her sword spike down, saw Sinae’s guard step in front of her master as he took a step backwards, away from Olcea. She saw the witch, still sitting, and appearing to shimmer, and the Faithful rising at the sight of her. She saw Nymar shouting to his father, his father who was lost to her sight by Faje, who rose, throwing back his chair, crying out to his god.

As if in answer, a faint outline began to materialize in the centre of the room, but the sight of it did not cause rejoicing in the Faithful.

They shouted at each other – ‘The witch—’ ‘—first this, first—’ ‘—control!’ – but before any of them could do anything, the figure drove its hand into the back of the closest Faithful.

The figure’s hand grabbed the woman’s spine and hooked its other hand on her neck. As if her flesh and bone were nothing more than paper, it broke both, shattering the bone in her back, and snapping her neck.

The attack was so brutal that it caused the soldiers in the door to recoil, to stop their advance. The Faithful scattered towards them, but there was no passage out of the door.

Eilona turned towards Olcea. The witch had not moved from the table. Rather, she sat with a stillness that was unnerving, her unbound hands wet with her own blood. Eilona could see no knife, no way that she had cut into her skin, but she did not doubt that the wounds were self-inflicted. She had only to meet the hard, calm eyes of the witch to know that she was in control of the figure in the room, the figure Eilona realized that she knew. The figure who had piloted The Frozen Shackle from Zalhan. The figure who had sat inside Olcea’s bag from Pitak.

Hien.

The ghost became more and more visible to her as he mercilessly killed the Faithful in the room, his acts of violence so horrific they broke the courage of the soldiers who had come on Lian Alahn’s command, and who tried to flee themselves.

Eilona understood why. Hien was not just terrifying in his violence, but his appearance was pure dread. With each death, with each bit of blood that appeared to seep into his being, the ghost’s face revealed its decayed and bloated visage. His right eye was a milky white and rolled back, while his left was brown, but focused downwards. Yet, for all the horror of his face, she knew that he was a young man, that he had once been a soldier in the Marble Palaces of Tinalan, a well-to-do youth, to judge by the fine, intricate work on the armour he wore.

That style of armour was not worn much, now, she knew. Thirty years ago, it had been worn by the soldiers of Emperor J’kl, who had built horrific camps to purify the country. Eilona’s gaze drifted back to Olcea, imagining the woman thirty or so years ago with children around her, children who would have never grown old.

What kind of witch are you? Unbidden, Eilona recalled Tinh Tu’s words in Zalhan. She had said them casually, then, as if the answer did not truly matter, but Eilona saw now that there had been a respect in her tone. Very few people lie to me. Eilona knew that. Knew it intimately. But even though she had ridden beside Olcea on The Frozen Shackle, had watched her pilot the ship with no one but Hien, she had not understood the kind of power she had. She saw Olcea in the large, rundown house she had kept in Mireea, the house where she had taught orphan girls herbalism, healing and even witchcraft. She remembered her mother telling her stepfather that Olcea was a war witch. At the time, Eilona had been unable to connect the two, but now, she could. She could see how the violence and tragedy of Olcea’s youth bled together into her future self, how she became capable of such coldness that she could take the killer of her family and bond him to her, to be used as she saw fit. Saw how in doing so, Olcea isolated herself, drove away the people with whom she could have rebuilt her life, but remained, performing acts of charity for children who would leave her as they made their own lives. She saw how every act of violence, every death Olcea and Hien were part of, created a cycle of violence and repentance binding the two tighter and tighter, until they were the only family each other had.

‘Enough!’ Faje Metura grabbed Eilona, pressing a knife against her neck. ‘Stop this!’

At the door of the room, Hien paused. He was so defined now that the stitches in his armour could be seen. Behind him, the doorway was empty, and the last of the sun was like a thumbprint of dried blood.

Faje’s breath was hot on her ear. ‘Se’Saera,’ he whispered. ‘You promised that it would not be this way.’

‘You’re not important to her.’ Eilona still felt detached from what was happening to her. The sharp edge of the blade did not really feel as if it was against her skin. ‘You’re just another to be used.’

‘You don’t know!’ He tightened his grip. ‘You can’t know.’

‘She is right,’ her mother said, walking around the table, leaving Olcea, Caeli, Sinae and his guard. ‘Your Faithful are dead. Nymar hides beneath the table. Lian is dead. His soldiers are dead, or gone.’

‘It was supposed to be you,’ Faje hissed. ‘He was supposed to betray you.’ He pointed at Sinae with his knife. ‘Se’Saera said he would.’

Across the room, Sinae Al’tor looked confused.

‘You speak to her, every night. You ask her questions. She told me that!’

‘She doesn’t answer,’ he said. ‘I ask her how she can trap the dead, how she can demand so much from humanity yet give so little. I ask her about the War of the Gods. I ask her, just as many others ask her. But if she thought for a moment that I would betray Muriel Wagan, then she was not listening to me. Beatrice?’

Eilona did not even see the hand of Sinae’s guard move: she only heard the thin blade of the dagger pierce Faje’s left eye, heard it strike deep in his skull with an awful, intimate sound she did not believe she would ever forget.

Faje fell, and as he did, Eilona felt his dagger slice shallowly along her neck – felt herself take a breath as the reality of the room came rushing back to her and she found herself standing in the middle of such violence that the next breath she took was one that choked within her. Her hands began to shake, but as she went to clasp them together, her mother took them and took her. Her mother with her hard hands, with her hard life, her hard thoughts. Her mother, who had never once allowed a gilded cage into a child’s fantasy, drew Eilona into an embrace she had not felt in over a decade.