Chapter 33

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Chapter 33

Andala pushed Cricket hard on the ride back to the palace. So long as she stopped to feed and water him regularly, and rest him occasionally, he seemed happy to fly the rest of the time, his hooves beating an earthshaking rhythm in the silence of the steady dark.

For the first part of the journey Andala's thoughts were all of her family. She had come to think of them as such again – her mother, Girard, Amie – with all the clarity one gains on a walk to the gallows. It felt strange to be thinking of them at all. For years she had pushed them from her head, pretended they did not exist. Andala had no family. That was what she had told people when they'd asked – Kitt, Oriane. That was what she had told herself, for long enough that she'd grown to believe it.

How quickly things like belief could change, in times like these.

It was only now that she allowed herself to think of the people to whom she belonged, and who belonged to her, through love or blood or both. Now, when she was riding away from them, and would never see them again.

Andala eased her grip, which had become painfully tight on the reins. The cold night air whipped a tear from her eye before it fell. She took a steadying breath. Instead of thinking of everything she was riding away from, she tried to think about who she was riding towards. 241

Oriane.

The name felt like part of her. It was hard to believe she had only known the skylark for – was it weeks? Months? Time seemed to slip when Andala thought about her. Of course she had always known there was a lark to her nightingale. Of course it had always been Oriane.

What luck, what fate, that they had found each other.

What luck, what fate, that they would lose one another again so soon.

She and Cricket rode on. Landscapes rushed past them, etched in a hundred shades of night black and starlit white. Before long they were almost there.

Andala felt as if she must have slept some of the way, without really sleeping. Her body should have been aching for rest, but she felt strangely alert, her blood sparking and her heartbeat matching Cricket's pace. Of all the places her mind had been on the journey, she had not yet allowed herself to feel afraid. She wouldn't. This was the way things had to be done.

The palace appeared in the distance: a blaze of light, a flaming beacon. But beneath that bright facade was the same fear that crept throughout every other dwelling in Cielore. Every cottage and rowhome and farmhouse held people who were just as afraid of this nightmare as the nobles, and the king himself.

She walked Cricket around to the stables, rubbed him down hastily, made sure he had enough food and water. Then she raced inside, taking the servants' entrance as she always did.

The servants' quarters were eerily quiet and empty. She almost made it through them without crossing paths with anyone – almost. She swore under her breath as Ildrie emerged from the cellar and spotted her. The girl was everywhere, all the time. 242

‘Andala!' she cried. ‘Where have you been? You're back just in time, though – come out to the gardens, we've all just headed out there, we thought we'd make a little bonfire—'

‘No, thanks, Ildrie,' Andala said, forcing her tone and her expression to stay neutral. ‘I'm just heading back to my room.'

‘Suit yourself.' Ildrie shrugged, holding up the bottles of liquor she carried. ‘Almost forgot these. Figured no one would notice right now if we did some drinking on the job, not with everything going on in there.' She jerked her head towards the palace proper.

Andala's stomach plummeted. ‘Why? What's going on?'

Ildrie blew out a breath. ‘It's madness! The king and his men, and the seneschal … Well, let's just say they're not exactly seeing eye to eye on what to do about the skylark.'

‘The skylark?' Andala's heart had ascended to her throat. Tendrils of panic were creeping through her blood like curling vines. ‘What have they done with the skylark?'

But Ildrie was shaking her head. ‘I don't know the ins and outs of it, only what I've heard here and there. But what I did hear seems like a nasty business. That creepy old seneschal – they think he …' She paused, looking uncomfortable for the first time Andala had ever seen. ‘It seems like he wants to do something with the lark's heart.'

It took a moment for the words to sink in. If Ildrie was right, it wasn't the lark herself Terault wanted. It was her heart. And that meant …

‘Oriane,' Andala breathed, her vision clouding with panic now.

In the space of a heartbeat, she was gone.

243 Her feet pounded on the stone floors like Cricket's had back on the road. This was not the way Andala had planned to do what she had to do. She had hoped to at least see Kitt first, to say goodbye, to explain herself. But there was no time for that now. She had to get to them, before they got to Oriane. Before—

Thud. Andala collided with a body as she rounded a corner. ‘Watch where you're going, girl!' someone shouted, but she didn't stop to speak to them, or even to see who they were. She had to get to the ballroom.

Ildrie had been right; the atmosphere in the palace was charged and unpleasant. People had emerged from the rooms they'd been holing up in, congregating in the hallways to mutter anxiously to one another. Andala charged between them, not caring who she bumped or pushed aside. ‘Move!' she shouted at one densely clustered group of noblemen who took up the width of a hallway. They dispersed to let her through, frowning, no doubt galled by the audacity of a servant to speak to her betters in such a way, even here at the end of the world.

Finally, finally, the doors to the ballroom appeared. Breathing heavily, heart bruising against her ribs, Andala weaved her way towards them. Rather than nobles, there were guards here – dozens of them. And other people, too, who held themselves like guards but were not uniformed as such. Instead, they wore strange, matching garments, a kind of sky-blue robe that Andala had never seen before. She began to push past them, but one of the real guards soon stopped her.

‘Where are you going?' he asked roughly, fingers tight around Andala's arm.

‘In there,' Andala said as confidently as she could, nodding towards the ballroom doors. 244

The guard laughed. ‘Like hell you are.'

‘I'm her maid.' Andala tried to wrench out of his grip, failed. ‘The skylark – I'm her lady's maid.'

A nasty sneer crawled across the man's face. ‘A fussy, useless job when she was a person. Even more useless now she's a songless little bird.'

Heat flooded Andala's body in an angry wave. ‘Let me go,' she growled.

The guard's smirk dropped, a dangerous look replacing it. His grip tightened painfully. ‘Are you going to be a problem, maid? Do I need to—'

‘Andala!'

She spun around at the familiar voice. Kitt . Thank the skies, it was Kitt. He was pushing his way through the crowd – Andala noted that they parted a lot more willingly for him than they had for her. When he reached them, he looked down at the guard's hand on Andala, then back at the guard himself. His expression was enough for the man to let go, scowling as he moved away.

‘Are you all right?' Kitt asked.

‘I'm fine.'

His eyes lit suddenly with desperate hope. ‘And did you—'

But he stopped talking at the look on her face. Andala shook her head. ‘I can't go into it now, Kitt, there's something I need to do. You need to get me in there.'

‘Into the ballroom?' It was Kitt's turn to shake his head. ‘You can't go in there. Tomas, Terault – they're—'

‘Get me in there,' she repeated. ‘Trust me, Kitt. It's what has to happen.'

Something about her tone must have given him pause. He sighed. ‘Fine. But before we go in—' 245

‘No time,' Andala said, already turning away. ‘We have to go now.' And before he could protest, she had begun to fight her way once more through the press of bodies, leaving Kitt to tail after her and head off anyone who tried to stand in her way.

The crowd grew to a bottleneck before the ballroom entrance. After much negotiation on Kitt's part, and more than a little shoving on Andala's, they made it to the doors. Andala waited impatiently while Kitt and a large, burly guard, their final obstacle, conversed in low voices. And then, at last, the guard clapped Kitt on the shoulder, heaved open the doors and let them through.

The ballroom was lit up like the rest of the palace, in stark contrast to the miserable darkness in which it had lain on Andala's last visit. The first thing she looked for was the cage. It had not moved – and it seemed that Oriane had not moved inside it. She was there, huddled, statue-still, the same as she had been when Andala had last seen her. But as Andala watched, Oriane's feathered body twitched – her wings lifting slightly and then lowering, before she hunched down and bowed her head again.

Miserable as she looked, a rush of relief sent warmth through Andala's body at the sight of her.

The rest of the ballroom was a less welcome sight. It put Andala in mind of a battlefield, like the kind she had seen illustrated in books. On one side of the cavernous room stood a group of the king's guards. Across from them, at a distance, as if toeing some invisible line, stood more of the blue-robed people Andala had seen out in the hall. Who were they? Andala had never seen them before. Why were they here now?

Out in front of each group, like leaders of opposing factions addressing one another in a ceasefire, stood King Tomas and his seneschal, Terault. 246

They were talking, but Andala couldn't make out their words. Both sets of guards behind them were talking, too, as was a group Andala recognised as the men who had been with Tomas the last time she'd seen him here. The effect of all the voices was chaotic. In some places it had risen to shouting.

Andala looked at Kitt, who shook his head as if to say I told you , and at Oriane, who seemed unaware or uncaring. Bracing herself, she began to inch closer to the seneschal and the king, trying to blend in with the crowd. Kitt followed.

‘—belongs to us,' Terault was saying, with his usual coolness.

King Tomas, on the other hand, looked quite deranged. His eyes were popping with rage, and his complexion had reddened, veins standing out at his temples. ‘To you ?' he burst out incredulously. ‘She doesn't belong to you, Terault! You—'

‘Not to me,' Terault interrupted, speaking slowly and calmly, as if explaining something to an aggravated child. ‘To us.' He gestured to the blue-clad group behind him. ‘To the Order of the Sky.'

The Order of the Sky? Andala had no clue what those fools from the city were doing here, or why Terault seemed to speak as if he were their leader. What was he doing ? What did they want with Oriane?

‘I will explain it again,' the seneschal said patiently. His voice had picked up slightly, so that it carried through the hall. ‘The skylark needs worship – real worship – to reinstate her to her position as the goddess the lark once was, and to restore our country's faith the way it must be restored. But I fear now that such worship is not enough. That it is too late. The girl has fallen too far.' He cast a disdainful glance in the direction of the cage, and the barely moving bird within. ‘She is no god, not any longer. But Cielore has been without faith, without light , too long. So perhaps it needs a new god.' 247

What? Andala's mind whirled, trying to make sense of what the seneschal was saying, what he meant to do. Heart racing to the point of pain, she looked desperately to the king, hoping he would put a stop to this. But Tomas's red face had gone suddenly pale, and he was staring at the seneschal as if he had never seen him before.

‘You have lied to me,' he said, so quietly that Andala barely heard it. ‘You have lied to us all.'

Terault considered the king for a moment. Then he held up a hand, and the blue-robed people behind him fell into formation as one, standing to attention like soldiers. The remaining noise in the hall tapered off. Both the king's guards and the other group of men were staring at the Order of the Sky in disbelief.

‘When I give the order,' Terault said to his followers, ‘seize the skylark. It is time for us to go.'

A ringing silence followed his proclamation. King Tomas stood frozen.

‘This is dangerous ground, Terault.' The king's voice was still low, his tone cautionary. ‘This is treason. I did not want it to come to violence, but I will have my guards step in, if I see the need.'

A smile, faint and dangerous as poison fumes, appeared on Terault's face. It scared Andala more than his usual blank countenance. She took a step closer to Kitt.

‘I do not seek violence, either, Tomas,' the seneschal said. The king's name, bare without its title, sounded like an insult. ‘But if you move against me, I, too, will have no choice.'

Andala could not quite comprehend what she was hearing. Neither, apparently, could Tomas. Andala was alarmed to see that he looked noticeably shaken now. A few of his guards, too, were passing nervous glances between themselves. The air was so charged it was as if storm clouds had gathered on the ballroom ceiling. 248

There was a long moment where nobody moved. Then the king let out an incongruous laugh. Terault's expression had returned to icy neutrality, but Andala saw his eyes narrow slightly, like a cat's.

‘What are we doing, Terault?' King Tomas asked incredulously, running a hand through his unkempt hair. ‘Standing here like battle commanders with our men at our backs? Come to my chambers. We'll talk this through, you and I, the way we've always done.'

For a moment, Andala thought Terault would accept the offer. He looked as if he were considering it, his head tilting as he stared unblinking at the king. Then that near-invisible smile returned. It changed his whole face somehow, turning it into something eldritch, skeletal.

‘No,' he said. ‘No, Tomas, I don't think that is how we'll do it at all.' His eyes drifted to the guards who stood behind their king. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, he nodded.

And the room descended into chaos.

A handful of the king's guards suddenly turned on their own compatriots. Swords were drawn in a chorus of singing blades. Guards were thrown to the ground or rendered immobile by their fellows. The blue-clad Order members swarmed across the invisible barrier and joined the fray, overpowering the king's true men entirely. And Terault himself drew a dagger from within his cloak, and held the thin, glinting blade a breath away from King Tomas's throat.

‘Skies above,' Kitt breathed. ‘Andala, you've got to go—'

‘We can't leave without Oriane,' Andala protested, gaze swinging wildly between the cage at one end of the hall and the madness unfolding at the other.

‘ You have to go, Andala.' Kitt seized her hand and held it tight, beginning to steer her towards the exit. ‘It isn't safe here. Oriane will be all right, just trust me—' 249

Andala planted her feet, staring at him. But before she could ask what he thought he was doing, someone seized her arms from behind, and Kitt's hand slipped out of hers as someone grabbed him, too.

Terault's people had filtered through the crowd. They were rounding everybody up.

‘Get off me,' Andala growled, thrashing against her captor, a tall, thin man with a vicelike grip. Kitt was struggling too, but the man who held him was much bigger. Panic was threatening to daze Andala now. She had come here to give herself over willingly, and to the king, not Terault. This could not be happening.

‘ Don't do this! ' bellowed King Tomas.

The fear in his voice sent Andala's own to a fever pitch. She gave an almighty wrench against the tall man's grip, and managed to catch a glimpse of the king. He was being restrained by two of his own guards now, and Terault's blade was still pointed directly at him. King Tomas's head was turned towards the front of the room, and as Andala followed his line of sight, her limbs went numb with terror.

Three people in blue robes were ascending the stairs to the dais, where Oriane sat in her cage. All Andala and Kitt could do was watch as they approached the gleaming prison. One stood on each side, and one reached down to open the cage door.

‘ No ,' Andala shouted, thrashing harder than ever against her captor. The man on the dais had thrust an arm into the cage. In a burst of fury and fear, Andala managed to free herself. She stumbled forward, trying to push through the mess of warring bodies, trying to get to Oriane—

But she soon slowed, staring in disbelief, along with everybody else in the suddenly frozen room. For the guard had withdrawn his hand from the cage, a puzzled look on his face as he stared down at what lay, still and wooden, within it. 250

‘My lord,' he called across the hall. His words were oddly loud in the silence. He looked up at Terault, the confusion on his face now mixed with alarm.

Terault had lowered the knife he'd been holding to the king's throat. ‘What is it, boy?' he called impatiently, taking a step forward.

‘It's not her,' the man called back, and he sounded downright fearful now. ‘This bird – it's not real. It's some sort of decoy.'

He paused, seeming to grasp the seriousness of his own words.

‘The skylark is gone.'