The Bone Palace - Amanda Downum [88]
Kiril sank into a chair across from Phaedra and rubbed his temples against a growing pressure there. His eyes felt as though they’d been scraped out with a spoon and shoved back into his sockets. “Of course he didn’t,” he said, forcing his thoughts to different history. “He has a heart, you know, under all that velvet gaud. And he’s never handed it away for the breaking.”
Which was why their own affair had been so brief. Or perhaps Varis had simply been unable to love someone already sworn to the Alexioi. Whatever the reason, he had broken with Kiril publicly and melodramatically before he left for Iskar, before Kiril had to do the leaving. It had been a kindness, just as his leaving Isyllt had been; that never seemed to make it easier for anyone.
The raven croaked and Phaedra stood, shaking out her wrinkled skirts as she crossed the room. “I know, darling,” she murmured, stroking its cheek with one knuckle. “Such a long way you’ve flown for me. And I’ll ask another journey of you still.” She slipped a knife from a skirt pocket and nicked the soft brown skin of her wrist. Blood welled, slow and dark and heavy. The bird bobbed its head to the wound, drinking till the edge of its beak glistened crimson.
The creation of familiars was an old practice, but Phaedra’s birds were closer to her than that. She had been them, and they her, until she had found a new body to claim. Kiril could scarcely imagine what that had been like—it was a wonder she had any remnants of sanity left.
Phaedra glanced up to find Kiril watching. Her eyebrows rose. “Care for a taste?”
“And become one of your pets as well? No thank you.”
“I don’t think you would,” she said after a thoughtful pause. “Not easily, at least, or from such a small amount.”
“But it would start the process. The spread of your power and will and consciousness into me. I did read your articles when you were at the Arcanost, you know.”
She smiled. “Then you know how much a taste could benefit you. Haematurgy can heal as well as harm, unlike your necromancy. My power can make you strong again.” She wiped a bead of blood off her wrist with one finger, and raised the finger to his lips.
He caught her arm before she touched him, staring at the slick crimson stain seeping along the whorls of her fingertip. “The cost is not one I feel like paying today.” Even with the headaches, the weariness and aching joints, the tender, bruised feeling that still accompanied any use of magic? No, he told himself firmly. Even so, her offer wasn’t worth it.
“But some day. You will.” She swayed against him and he held her carefully away.
“We’ll see.” He removed his hand and stepped back.
She smiled again, then licked her finger clean and turned back to her bird. After a few more coos and caresses she opened the window, through which it vanished with a flurry of black wings. When she sat her movements were unusually heavy—almost clumsy.
“Are you all right?” Kiril asked. As much as her demon grace unnerved him, its absence was more unsettling.
“Weak,” she admitted. “Tired. I had thought to postpone it, but I need to hunt tonight.”
“Hunt?”
“Living blood regenerates. Dead blood doesn’t. I need a living source every so often, and I didn’t imagine you wanted to bleed for me.”
“So you hunt, like a vrykola. With them?” Her silence was answer enough. Her quiet journeys into the underground had intrigued him when they were at the Arcanost together. Without her work, he would never have formed his own fragile ties to the catacombs. But now her renewed involvement brought only trouble, and his unease hadn’t faded. Varis’s schemes were dangerous enough—who knew what plots the vrykoloi whispered in her ear?
“Do you stalk the slums like they do,” he asked, his voice inflectionless, “taking those who won’t be missed, or whose families have no recourse to search for them?”
“You wanted me to be discreet. Would you rather I stalk the Octagon Court?”
“I didn’t realize you were making such a habit of murder.”
She flinched, then stiffened. “Will you play games of conscience with me, spymaster? How