There was a slit in the front of the cart between its walls and its roof. Peering through this, Corliss saw a half-dozen Gillemar guards approaching the cart at a jog. She pulled the heat from half of them and shoved it into the others. Three guards froze solid, limbs stiffening. Their inertia carried them forward, tipping them onto the ground. They were dead before they were horizontal. The other three died with agonizing screams, their bodies charred and their armor melted.
Not all of the Gillemar guards had seen a Bound’s work. Certainly none of them had fought a Bound before. The guards on the shore stopped, uncertain whether to fight or to run. Training stopped them from retreating. Fear stopped them from advancing. Only the archers on top of the palace walls were unaffected. They kept shooting as Finian’s troops left the cart, Murdoc and Corliss with them. The first upturned boat reached the shore and common born emerged from the lake, rushing up the slope with wordless screams and battle cries. The arrows slowed as the rebels pushed their way into the Gillemar lines, making each shot a risk between hitting enemy and friend.
“We did it,” said Telon with wonder. “We’re taking Gillemar palace. Finian, we’re doing it.”
“I know,” he said, his voice fierce. “This is it.”
Unseen by either of them, a new figure emerged on the rooftop wielding a hooked sword. It was no ordinary weapon. The blade itself had not been used for centuries.
Perhaps things would have gone differently, if they had reached Gillemar a few days before. But with Ogden’s coronation, there was a new Gillemar heir. The relic sword had been returned to the proper, and to him. Gillemar’s bound was home.
Ulla and Corliss were next to Murdoc. They heard him screech, a terrified and inhuman wail; he heard the sword awaken, and knew who had come. Corliss turned to look at Murdoc in horror, and then could not look away.
Across the battlefield, from the shoreline to the lip of the palace, nobody moved. They stood with weapons raised, faces agonized or blank, knives half-submerged or blocking a strike.
On top of the castle wall, the archers once again took aim.
CHAPTER
“Hey, Yedda,” said Anluan softly, necking his horse up towards hers. “Are you alright? You look halfway to death.”
“I’m fine,” she said.
“Are you sure?”
“I didn’t sleep well, is all. Leave it be.”
“Nervous about going to battle?”
“I said leave it, Anluan. I’m fine.”
“There’s no need to snap,” he muttered, and fell back into line.
They headed in a southerly way from the Proper. The surviving witnesses of the attack had seen the rebels leave in that direction. Yedda wondered if they’d been executed after divulging the information, or if some had been allowed to live. Slade and the Duitiel guards rode in front, since they knew the land and its people best. Yedda was happy to give Slade command. Her head ached. She could barely think straight.
By mid-morning they’d reached a sparse village. Most of the houses were ramshackle and in disrepair. The people were worryingly thin and bug-eyed. They wore old clothes, holey or patched a dozen times.
“What happened here?” Yedda asked Anluan softly. “They look like they’re starving.”
“I thought you were born in the lowland,” said Anluan, looking at her with surprise. Anluan was a lowlander by birth as well, but not lesser born. His clan family oversaw a large swath of Aiteach farmland.
“I lived in Duitiel Proper. I was born on a farm, but I don't remember much.”
“The Propers are different. Clans live there. Monarchs.”
“You mean this is normal? Doesn’t that bother you?”
He shrugged. “Sure. But it can’t be helped.”
The head invited them into her house. Only Yedda and Slade went inside. They were offered cups of mint water. Two young children sat against the wall, watching them with wide eyes.
With a little questioning, Yedda discovered a large band of armed strangers had passed through, headed south. The guards were traveling in the right direction.
“I said not to go,” the head explained nervously. “I said it was asking trouble, to join up with the likes of them, talking treason and what not. But I couldn’t stop them, could I?”
“Thank you for your time,” said Yedda. They left the house.
“How do you want them treated?” Slade asked Yedda.
“Who, the villagers?”
“Aye,” he said. “They harbored rebels. If many of them joined, you can bet the rest are treason-minded, too.”
“Lay off. We don’t have time for that. We’ll keep moving.”
“It’s your command,” he said with a shrug, evidently not agreeing. “Listen, captain, I don’t know how things are in the city, but you should be tougher with these lowland lesser born. They’ll lie blind to you if they can, and spit on any good you do them.”
“Thank you, captain Slade,” Yedda said. “I’ll take that under advisement.”
They rode on, a line of horses and leather-armed warriors with swords and loose-strung bows to hand.
When they stopped for lunch, Slade started them on a lively song. None of the city guards knew it; it was a Duitiel folk tune. They all picked up the chorus quickly enough, though Yedda barely mumbled along. Her tongue felt leaden, and her mind like mush.
“Not a singer?” Slade asked her, friendly, a handful of dried figs in his outstretched hand.
“Not really,” said Yedda, taking one of them with a shrug. “We should mount up. I want to get further before we stop.”
“All a-horse,” Slade shouted to his guard. “You heard the captain. Break is over.”
CHAPTER
Murdoc. MURDOC!
Corliss couldn’t look away from the pale Bound. An arrow sliced through the air and buried itself deep into his shoulder. He could have been a statue, if it weren’t for the light wind tossing the ends of his hair.
Murdoc, wake up. You have to move. You have to end this.
Murdoc. Brother whisper.
Wake up.
His eyes flickered. Hers did not, but stayed frozen on his face, on the long twig sprouting from his collar with blood slow blooming around it.
Calm down, Fire-heart. We are too tired to reach so far. You must burn. We will help you.
He stopped speaking and closed his eyes. Another arrow flew past Corliss’ vision. If it hit him, it was too low for her locked eyes to see.
An arrow bit into her side, but in her unmoving state pain had no meaning. She felt the metal tip cut between her hard scales, pushing her insides apart as it entered her torso. Her parted skin closed around the thin arrow shaft.
Her mind was clearer than it had ever been. That was Murdoc’s doing.
She had to do something about the archers. She could not move, but she could still burn. She would have to do it without seeing her target. Lucky she had gained power since the attack on Duitiel proper. She had transformed, come into herself. Become more spirit than human, given herself to the ancient power that ruled her body. And that power was made of heat, controlled the cold, owned the energy like a limb.
If she concentrated, really concentrated, she could feel the warm presence of the bodies on the roof-top. They were hotter than the air around them. Hotter than the sun-warmed stone. Little parcels of warmth. Little unlit fires, ready to burn, ready to ignite.
She didn’t have the strength. It was too much power, from the ground to the unseen rooftop. There were a dozen archers, all scattered, and the hottest thing around them the stones. And nothing colder than the spring air. There was no yawning cavern to tuck the heat away in, and no blistering presence to pull it from.
But the ancient spirit inside of her, the power made of heat—that was strong enough, if it wasn’t being shackled by the girl.
Her eyes were still stuck on Murdoc. An arrow ripped through his ear closest to her, leaving nothing behind it but a bloody mess on the side of his head. She knew what she had to do.
The human named Corliss was dead. Staring at Murdoc was Dol, the ancient spirit, the father of fire, living in a body that once belonged to a child.
On top of the Gillemar palace, eleven archers danced, their bodies burning in unimaginable pain. As it died, the twelfth body dropped the sword it had held.
The battlefield came back to life. Rebels dropped dead, bled out from arrows. Murdoc slumped onto the ground.
The ground crackled as it froze. Ice misted over the top of the lake.
Eleven of them, including Finian and Telon, had remained on the far side of the lake. Those eleven were the only ones unharmed.
Fewer than half the rebels died in the battle itself, but over half were dead within a few hours of the fighting’s end, their wounds too serious to be fixed. Those who had little more than bruises or shallow scrapes worked hard to clean and bandage the more severely wounded. Finian felt relieved to see Ulla up and around (her arm was bandaged, but she was lively), though he couldn't share the same joy for Corliss or Finian, nor many of his other folk.
They quickly realized the arrowheads were not well attached to the shafts. The only way to remove the bolts was to first widen the wound, twisting the arrow inside of the flesh or prodding around it with a knife. The Gillemar servants helped wordlessly. Finian couldn’t tell if they did so out of fear or gratitude. He was too exhausted to puzzle it out, and accepted the bandages and medicinal ointments they provided without question. Many of the wounds were quickly infected. Corliss healed the fastest. Its body burned out infection and the scales sealed themselves back together.
They attended the living before they attended the dead. The great hall had been turned into an infirmary, since it was the only room large enough—besides, perhaps, the kitchen—on the ground floor of the palace. It was a cavernous space. Tall hearths alternated with structural sculpted columns down the center of the room. It was so long it would take a minute to walk the length of it. They put the wounded on the tables and laid the dead on the ground by the walls, covered by blankets.
“Do you have a graveyard?” Finian asked at last, his voice flat with exhaustion. “We need to put them somewhere else.”
“We give them to the marsh,” the woman he’d asked answered. There was blood on her hands from the wounds she’d been washing. “A cart can take them out. The ground swallows ‘em. How it's always been done.”
“No.” The voice was faint, but clearly Murdoc’s. He lay on his side a few bodies down, wounded ear up, head propped by a bundle of fabric. There was a bandage around his head, a thick wad of cloth covering where his ear had been. His shirt had been removed to cut the arrow from his collar; his shoulder was covered in bandages as well. Though the bandages were thick, he was beginning to bleed through.
“Someone has to deal with Corliss,” said Murdoc. “Don’t waste bodies in the marsh. Feed it.”
“’Feed it?’” Finian echoed, moving closer so the wounded Bound didn’t have to speak as loudly.
“It needs something to burn,” said Murdoc. “Before it starts to burn the living.”
“Where is she?” asked Finian.
“Under the kitchens,” said Murdoc.
The ovens of the kitchen were all lit. An open door revealed a staircase downwards.
“Corliss?” Finian called. There was no answer. There was a light somewhere at the end of the stairs, and the passage was warm, warmer than the kitchens themselves. Birch wouldn't go any further, but growled at the top of the steps.
Finian descended alone. Sweat beaded under his arms and in the small of his back.
The storeroom was large and windowless, lined with shelves. Corliss was a torch. The Bound's body glowed.
“It’s like an oven,” Finian said when he entered, but the Bound didn’t turn to face him. On the floor beside it were glass bottles and wooden casks. Finian thought he knew what had been in them. The stone floor gleamed slick against the red light Corliss cast. Cooking oil, or animal fat.
“We could use you out there,” said Finian again.
“Our job is done,” said Corliss. It took a swig from the bottle in its hand, and when it exhaled its breath came out in fire. A bundle of dried chamomile, hanging from the ceiling, lit. Red fire traced along its stems like poison coursing through a vein, leaving nothing behind but crisp char and soft ash.
“There are bodies,” said Finian. “They deserve a funeral. Won’t you burn them for us?”
“Yes,” said Corliss. “We will burn.”
“Come upstairs, then,” said Finian. “We’ll gather them together for you. The dead. The living are off-limits.” He could taste the smoke in the air. He struggled to breathe.
The Bound didn’t answer. It pawed for a bottle at the back of the shelf. A bag of pea flour hit the ground and rose in a cloud.
“I’ll see you up there, then,” said Finian.
CHAPTER
“They weren’t human, not all of them,” said master Croswin. He entertained the guards in his front parlor. A servant offered Yedda, Slade, and Anluan honey-drizzled oat rolls and water. “The leader kept saying I had to choose sides. Little man. More like a snake than a fighter.”
“So you helped them?” Slade asked, disgust on his face. Yedda and Anluan ate; he did not. “You’ve got guards, fences—you didn’t even fight?”
“You didn’t listen,” said Croswin. “There were Bound with them. I didn’t have a choice. They robbed me blind.”
“Bound? With the rebels?” Slade asked.
“Aye. A sickly lad who nearly made my guards turn against me, and a… a girl, I suppose, as lizard as human. She lit fires with nothing more than a flick of her eye.”
Something tickled at the back of Yedda’s mind. A loose fire spirit, lost or Bound to a young child—a young child gone missing—Yedda herself, imprisoned for releasing a spirit—a bodiless voice that had called out to her, told her what to do, commanded her. A hand lightly touched her shoulder snapped her back to reality. She looked over. The hand was Anluan’s. She shook her head.
“He’s telling the truth,” said Yedda. “Come on, let’s go.”
“Captain Yedda,” said Slade. “May I speak to you? Alone?”
They left Anluan with Croswin in the room, retiring to the empty hall.
“You’re young. I understand this is your first command,” said Slade, not unkindly.
“What of it?”
“You’re far too lax,” said Slade. “First the village. Now here. It’s your woman’s heart, likely. But I’ve seen you spar; you have the makings of a great guard. You need to toughen up.”
“Toughen up? Slade, we’re wasting time. We know which way they went.”
“There’s a gashed wound all across the lowland! You want to run along without sewing it up.”
“We’ll return his property if we find it. There’s nothing else we can do.”
Slade pounded his fist against the wall of the hallway.
“Return it? Captain, this is ridiculous. He did nothing to stop the rebels. He should be punished.”
“You heard him, Slade. There were Bound. You saw what the rebels did to the Proper.”
“You can't tell me you believe that? He didn’t even send a messenger to the city or the proper. Croswin was complicit. It's a lie!”
“He didn’t take their side.”
“He didn’t take ours, either. This man should be arrested, at best. Put before a court.”
“You’re barbaric,” said Yedda. “All you know is power, Slade. You wouldn’t recognize justice if it slapped you in the face. What are you going to do, kill all the farmers?”
“If we need to, yes. I’ll do what it takes.”
“Then who will farm? Get your head out of your dung hole! A country is made up of more than the people who rule it. We have bigger things to worry about than this man.”
“It is our sworn duty to uphold the law of the clans,” said Slade. “Where does your allegiance lie, guardsperson?”
“I was sent from the morning city to see this mess set to rights. You were assigned to follow me and to follow my orders.”
“These are Duitiel lands. This is not your territory.”
“Are you a traitor? Even Duitiel bows to the Sovereign. I serve a master superior to yours, if that’s all the reason you’ll listen to. You’d better ready your horse, Slade. Whether you like it or not, we’re moving on.”
For a moment all she heard was Slade’s breathing, heavy and angry. His lips were drawn tight.
“I’m keeping my eye on you,” he said. He turned on his heel and strode past her, out of the house. Yedda took a moment to herself in the hallway, letting her anger burn down a little before she returned to the parlor.
“Thank you for your time, master Croswin,” said Yedda. “If we can return your property, we will. Anluan, let’s go. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”
Yedda stopped on the front porch for a half second, squinting in confusion. All the horses were tacked, and all of them mounted except for Anluan and hers. They pointed to the gate as if leaving. The exit was blocked by Bosimun, spreading its enormous feathered wings.
“What’s going on?” Yedda asked, raising her voice the same way she’d heard Chilton and Dalton do so many times before. “Bosimun, what’s wrong?”
“This person tries to leave without you,” the Bound said. “He says you will catch up. That your guards should follow him now.”
“You said we were in a hurry,” Slade said. “I was trying to speed things up.”
“Our current pace was fine,” said Yedda, making her way slowly and deliberately down the steps and towards her horse. Anluan followed. “Thank you, Bosimun. You’ve saved me the trouble of having to chase down my own guards, as well as the rebels. Captain Slade, I appreciate your ambition. In the future, you have my permission to be a little less ambitious.”
There was a scattering of chuckles from the city guards.
Yedda took hold of her gelding’s mane, planted a foot in the stirrup, and swung herself into the saddle. She moved her horse to the gate, where Bosimun folded its wings, and tossed it the remains of one of her salt-pouches. It jumped up and caught the bag in mid-air, wheeling above them. Slade’s horse startled. Yedda was prepared, and kept a steady seat on hers, keeping him moving with his feet close to ground.
“Move out,” said Yedda, and pressed her mount into a trot down the southern-pointing road. Slade was still struggling to regain control of his horse. Yedda was at the front of the line: nobody could see her face. She allowed herself a triumphant smile, even unprofessional as it was.
CHAPTER
Bonfire rose to swallow the piled bodies. The blaze swept to half the height of Gillemar proper, then died down, its fuel gone. A chill blew through all of them, the lake-top cracking frozen once again. Finian shivered and rubbed his arms to warm them, teeth chattering.
He’d gotten through half the words he wanted to say, thanking the dead and honoring their passing, before Corliss decided it was enough and lit them ablaze. The Gillemar survivors and his own troops—those well enough to join them outside—stood and watched without a word.
The Bound was feral, spoiled, gone rotten like fruit. He’d always known that she would, one day, but he’d never brought himself to imagine it. He had never separated the spirit from the child. He’d never looked at her and really imagined what it would be like to know she wasn’t there. But it had happened. Unarguably, it had happened.
It was an abominable truth. If only Rowena never came to the city, if she’d just stayed at Dorchalt Proper, none of this would have happened. Finian would probably still be in the city, running Sileas’ black market and plotting a distant revolution. He would not have so many dead to burn.
It was convenient they were saying farewell to the dead. Nobody looked twice at the tears on his face. They could be falling for anyone.
We do not think she has to die.
Once Finian would have startled at Murdoc’s voice in his head. Now he simply closed his eyes and imagined the sick Bound lying in the great hall, slowly bleeding out his bandages.
It’s going to kill everyone, Finian thought. You know it’s true, Murdoc. I love her as much as you do, but there’s no other choice. Don’t warn her. It.
No. Give us a chance to fix it. Let us try.
And what if you fail, and it knows? None of us will be able to do it then. It’s too strong. All I have is surprise.
Have you forgotten what we are? What we can do? Do you trust your human wisdom over the endless spaces we hold to command?
Bring it to us, Finian. Let us do what we can to set this right.
“We want to speak to it alone, Bound to Bound,” said Murdoc, when Finian finally got Corliss into the great hall turned infirmary. Murdoc's breath was short and rapid.
“We can hardly ask all the wounded to move,” Finian protested.
“You carry us, Finian. Take us somewhere private. One of the upstairs chambers.”
Telon was sitting in the infirmary with Ena, one of those wounded in the fighting.
“A hand?” Finian begged. Telon nodded and helped Finian lift Murdoc. They carried him on a sheet turned into a litter.
Corliss trailed behind. They brought him up the first flight of stairs, and insisted on stopping there. They were both out of breath.
There was a bedchamber. They propped Murdoc up in the silk-shrouded bed, his back against the headboard. He had chills, and shook from it.
“Fine,” said Murdoc. “Leave us.”
Telon and Finian hurried away, closing the door behind them.
“What do you want, brother whisper? Why have you called us here?”
“To talk.”
We do not need closed doors to speak.
“Stop that,” Murdoc wheezed. “We’re going to talk, like people do.”
People? “We are more than people.”
“You cheated that human out of her body,” said Murdoc.
“No more than you stole from the boy.”
“We’ve lived here an age. It’s time for us to go.”
The bed began to smolder.
“What will you do? Kill us? You’ll be alone.”
The bed cooled.
“Thought not,” said Murdoc, smugly. “So, you still have something to live for. That’s good.”
“We have many things to live for,” said Corliss.
“Like what?”
“Rowena. All these fires burn for her.”
“Rowena’s dead.”
“But not avenged.”
“What do you care? You aren’t Corliss anymore.”
“So long as we wear her body, a little of her is still us.”
“Is it? Then it’s time to tell you: they lied about Rowena’s death.”
“They? Who?”
“You know Rowena was a guard. Finian had you taken captive so he could make demands of her. She fought to protect you. She died. This isn’t Rowena’s revolution. You’re just a puppet. They killed your family and stole you away, and raised you alone in the mountains, telling you what you needed to hear. You didn’t have to be alone.”
Corliss howled, its yellow eyes gone red. Smoke billowed from its mouth.
“Easy,” said Murdoc. Easy. “Are you Corliss, or aren’t you? What does a spirit care for a human life?”
“We care,” said Corliss, “that we have been tricked.”
“Fire-heart,” said Murdoc, “It was we who gave you that body in the first place. Now give it back.”
“We do not answer to you.”
All answer to us in time. Leave the human. Go home. This world is not for you.
“I am owed. My true body has been stolen from me, by humans. The debt is not repaid.”
Human lives are fragile things. That was lifetimes ago to them. How long can this body hold you? You are eating it from the inside out. And soon, you will start again, with a new human. How many lives have you swallowed already, yesterday or today?
And what of you, dream-whisper? Are you leaving with us? Will he have his body back?
Corliss walked to the bed and climbed onto it. It pulled Murdoc forward by the shoulders and lifted his hair to the side. He did not resist. For the first time, it saw the one part of him that was truly Bound, the one part of his body that had changed in answer to the spirit riding him.
Protruding from the base of his neck was a bug’s body, long and round as a tube. Hard, shiny black segments marched up his neck, pairs of thin legs arching out. At the top, where his hair began, there was a perfect human face. It was no larger than a thumbnail.
Have you seen enough?
The voice was in its head, but as the words sounded, the lips on the tiny face moved.
Corliss saw the stars wheeling in the sky, an endless space stretching out, out, out. Corliss felt currents of thought ripple across the Proper, across the clan land, across the valley.
It intimately understood why the boy's maid had drowned herself. The stars all rushed in, and it was come undone, but rather than unravel the person, what came undone were the clasps between spirit and human. The stars all sang and swallowed the embers. What had rose horribly inside the human plummeted back down, like a stone thrown into the air only to pause and return.
Corliss let go of Murdoc and slowly backed away from him. He fell against the headboard.
Corliss collapsed, too, onto the hard floor.
CHAPTER
“Murdoc?” Corliss asked. When he didn’t answer, Corliss reached out and touched his arm lightly. He groaned. “Murdoc, wake up.”
“Hm,” he said.
They were still alone in the bedchamber. It was morning of the next day. Nobody had come upstairs to check on them.
“Are you human?” Corliss asked, self-conscious of being hollow and strange, like a cup empty of water, uncertain now of what was meant to fill it.
“Yes,” he said. “I think I am.”
“Murdoc,” Corliss said. “The back of your neck…”
“That’s right,” he said in wonder. “You’re still alive. Did you see it?”
“I think so,” Corliss said. “Unless I was dreaming. It was odd enough to be a dream.”
“Do I want to know?” he asked.
“I’m not sure you’d believe me. May I?” Corliss extended a trembling arm to his head.
“Careful,” he said. “Slowly.”
He cried out softly when Corliss pulled him forward.
“It’s fine. Go ahead.”
The bug was still there, but smaller, as if it had died and dried out. When Corliss gently reached out, it crumbled to dust like a charred husk. There was a shallow hollow in his neck where the creature had grown from, wet with blood but not dripping.
Silently, Corliss lowered him back down to the bed.
“It’s gone. No more voice, Murdoc. You can go anywhere you want.”
“I want to go to the ocean,” he said.
Corliss laughed. “We can do that.”
“Right now,” said Murdoc. “I’ve never seen it.”
“Don’t you think you should rest? You aren’t well.”
“I’m not,” said Murdoc. “I’m going to die. I want to see the ocean first.”
“You’re not going to die,” said Corliss. “You’re going to rest, and get well, and live to old age.”
“I’ve got infections,” he said. “Those arrows poisoned my blood. Look at me, Corliss.”
“You’re wrong. You have to be.”
“I’m not,” he said. “I’ve known since it happened. I’ve known since I was more than human. It’s fine, Corliss. I don’t mind. I get to die human. Just take me to the ocean. It isn’t far from here.”
CHAPTER
The village was empty. The common born had moved inside the castle, tending to the wounded or simply claiming better quarters now that they were without a ruler. Others had left, fleeing the retribution they thought the clans would eventually bring.
Beside the main bridge to Gillemar island were turned-over carts. Arrows littered the ground and stuck out from the carts.
Behind Yedda, Slade cursed.
“Two Propers destroyed,” said Yedda. “That’s some power.”
“What do you wish of us?” Bosimun asked, lighting on the roof of a nearby house.
“Nothing,” said Yedda. She brought her guard’s horn to her lips and blew three long, steady blasts.
A figure emerged from the palace doors, across the lake.
“Do the Gillemars still hold power here?” Yedda shou