The Bone Palace - Amanda Downum [144]
“The princess commands me,” the soldier said, pulling his scarf aside to bare a lean, chill-reddened face. “But in fact I believe it’s the pallakis Savedra who sends for you. I came because we heathens don’t have a healthy fear of your dead days.” He grinned, baring a chipped eyetooth. Isyllt smiled back, though the expression felt clumsy and stiff. “Although,” the man said, cocking his head, “I don’t like the sound of the wind.”
“You shouldn’t. However much superstition surrounds these days by now, the dangers at night are real. Most of the spirits you’ll see tonight are harmless, wildling things and tricksters, but they’re still hungry, and enough of them together may try more than tricks.”
He touched a charm nestled in the hollow of his throat—a bead painted with a red eye. The sign of Andraste, Celanor’s warrior goddess, if Isyllt remembered their legends aright. Saint Andraste, the politic would call her now—only years ago the Celanorans were spirit-worshiping heretics.
The soldier frowned, and she realized he’d said something. “I’m sorry?” she said, pressing her shoulders against the padded seat.
“I asked if you were well, Lady.”
“Underslept, is all.” Underslept, overextended. All the scars on her heart ripped fresh. But she had no time to indulge in grief. After the New Year, after Erisín was safe and this demon dead and her ashes salted.
The soldier—in fact a lieutenant, and named Cahal—led her not into the palace proper, but to the Gallery of Pearls. She’d never been inside before, and would have paused to study the portraits and busts that lined the broad hall had she not had to hurry to keep pace with her escort.
In Savedra’s rooms she also found the princess, and Hekaterin Denaris, the captain of Nikos’s private guard. The grim cast of their faces was identical. The air was heavy with sandalwood—incense burned on the altar across the room, shedding smoke in lazy coils.
“Nikos has been taken,” Savedra said when the door was safely locked and Cahal guarding the hall. “Snatched from the palace crypts. Whoever grabbed him wasn’t human.”
“Black Mother.” After months of creeping, Phaedra moved quickly enough now. But she had to, if she wished to see all her plans realized in the next four days.
“We have to get him back,” Savedra went on. “We have to stop her.”
“Does Mathiros know?”
“He does,” Ashlin said, “though not the details. But he’s closing us out, and I won’t sit by helpless.” Her hand closed on Savedra’s shoulder. “We won’t.”
Isyllt nodded. “Phaedra has him. And while she’s thwarted my attempts to scry her, I might have more luck with the prince.”
The casting would have been stronger in Nikos’s own quarters, but also more likely to draw attention. So they rolled up the fine carpets and pushed furniture aside till they had space to work. Captain Denaris brought a map of the city, and Savedra found an earring that Nikos had left in her room, a raw emerald caged in gold. Isyllt stationed one woman at each corner of the map—wife, lover, guard, and sworn agent. The earring she set in the center.
Hands clasped, pink and pale, olive and brown. Isyllt took Ashlin’s sword-calloused hand in her left, Savedra’s soft one in her right, and fixed the prince’s image in her mind.
A shiver traced a circuit through the four of them, pricking gooseflesh as the magic rose. Isyllt didn’t often practice spellcraft on the demon days—the power sharper, clearer, as if a veil had been drawn away. The cost, of course, was that they shone like a beacon to every spirit for miles around.
The red fog of Phaedra’s obfuscation answered at once, choking them with blood and cinnamon. Hands tightened as they shuddered against it, bones grinding through flesh.
“Hold on,” Isyllt whispered, gathering her power, imagining a blade to cut away the shroud, cold and clean. She couldn’t match Phaedra strength for strength, but it wasn’t Phaedra the spell was meant to find. And unlike Phaedra, Nikos wanted to be found. The earring began to rattle against the map, gold and stone scraping across parchment. Isyllt pressed against