watching Mother die. Only sorrow binds us, and now she’s been corrupted. This nameless child has been wrought into some terror, a terror that needs to kill me to escape into the living world and keep its place there…
I hold my bleeding sword and watch the thing before me, pink, ugly, wet and raw. Snorri stands beside me and says nothing. A cry escapes me, a harsh noise, as short and sharp as the arc of my blade. Steel slices. The unborn drops, and where she hits the ground there is only dust and small dry bones.
‘Jal.’ Snorri reaches for my shoulder. I shake him off.
Above the dust something intangible is rising, ghost-pale, changing, growing, shifting swiftly through many forms. All of them her. My sister. A sleeping baby, a tiny child staggering as they do when taking first steps, a young girl, long-haired, pretty, a tall woman, slender and beautiful with Mother’s looks, dark locks coiled about her shoulders. The images change more swiftly – a mother holding tiny hands, a woman, stern-faced, a power behind her eyes, an old woman on a tall throne. Gone.
I’m left standing there, tingles up and down my arms, across my cheeks, breath sharp and shallow, a pain in my chest. Why does this hurt me? Might-have-beens are lost every second of every day. Might-have-beens, plans that come to naught, pipe-dreams, they pour into nothing, swifter than the Slidr plunging over its cliff. I stand looking down at the tiny bones as they blacken and go to dust. Not might-have-beens: should-have-beens.
Marco laughs at me. An ugly sound, tight and full of pain, but laughter none the less, and from a man I never once saw smile in the living world. ‘It’s not finished, prince. Not over.’ He groans, struggling to move but pinned by his extremities. ‘The tree bears what the lichkin leave behind.’
‘Lichkin?’ I’ve heard of them, monsters from the deadlands, things the Dead King brought into the world to serve his purpose.
‘What do you think rides the children taken from the womb? What moulds their potential and uses that power? It is fair exchange.’ He watches me dead-eyed. He could be talking of bargains made on the floors of Umbertide’s exchanges for all the emotion he shows. ‘Where is the crime? The child that would not have lived gets to live, and the lichkin that has never lived gets to quicken and walk in the world of men where it may feed its hunger.’
I look up into the distance above us, at the flesh-mottled trunk, tented by innumerable willow-like branches, each dangling its stolen life. Is Marco the worst man pinned there? It seems unlikely. I should hate him more fiercely. I should rush at him and hack him down. But this place burns emotion from you. In place of rage I feel hollow, sad. I turn and walk away.
‘Wait! Get me down!’
‘Get you down?’ I turn back, the flame of anger guttering somewhere deep within. ‘Why?’
‘I told you. I gave you information. You owe me.’ Marco heaves each word out over a chest being compressed by his own weight.
‘This tree will not stand long enough for me to owe you, banker. Not if it stands ten thousand years and you save my life every day.’
He coughs, black blood on his lips. ‘They’ll hunt you now – the lichkin and what parts of your sister it has taken. A brother’s death would open a door for them and let them emerge together, unborn, a new evil in the world. Your death would seal them into the lands above.’
The thought of being tracked through Hell by some monster bound about my sister’s soul scares me silly but I’m damned if I’ll let Marco see it. ‘If this … thing … seeks me out I shall just have to end it. With cold steel!’ I draw my sword for good measure – the thing has, after all, been enchanted to end dead creatures as effectively as live ones.
‘I can tell you how to save her.’ He holds my gaze, eyes dark and glittering.
‘My sister?’ Saving her hadn’t been on my list – that’s Snorri’s forte. I want to walk away but something won’t let me. ‘How?’
‘It can be done now that you’ve freed her futures from the tree.’ His pain is clear in his face for once, his desperation. ‘You’ll get me down? You promise.’
‘By my honour.’
‘When you meet them in the living world, your sister and whichever lichkin wears her skin, any sufficiently holy thing will part them.’
‘And my sister will … live?’
Marco makes that ugly sound again, his laughter. ‘She’ll die. But properly. Cleanly.’
‘Sufficiently holy?’ Snorri, rumbles the words beside me.
‘Something of importance. It’s the faith of all those believers that will make it work. A focus. Not some church cross. Not holy water from a cathedral font. Some true symbol, some—’
‘A cardinal’s seal?’ I ask.
Marco nods, face lined with the pain and the effort of it. ‘Yes. Probably.’
I turn to go again.
‘Wait!’ I hear Marco gasp as he tries to reach for me.
‘What?’ I glance back.
‘Release me! We made a bargain.’
‘Do you have the paperwork, Marco Onstantos Evenaline of the House Gold? The correct forms? Are they signed? Witnessed? Do they bear the proper marks?’
‘You promised! On your honour, Prince Jalan. Your honour.’
‘Oh.’ I turn away again. ‘That.’ And start to walk. ‘If you find it, let me know.’
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