Only to wanderers can come
Ever new the shock of beauty,
Of white cloud and red cloud dawning from the sea,
Of spring in the wild-plum and river-willow...
I watch a yellow oriole dart in the warm air,
And a green water- plant reflected by the sun.
Suddenly an old song fills
My heart with home, my eyes with tears.
Du Shenyan
The prison that rose from the ground as though it had been carved from the very rock of the cliffs, hard and jagged and solid, was utterly without windows, without doors, without so much as a breath escaping it. Truth be told, from the outside it was difficult to discern that it was a building at all, so featureless was its façade – just smooth grey stone, and four sharp corners, a box of rock in which were held all the mad and bad Illea had to offer. Rarely were they held guests of his Majesty for long between arrest and execution – the gallows were well-frequented on this side of the world.
Cappie had laughed when Yegor asked her if she could find a way in.
Of course a ghost could find a way in.
Who did he think she was?
She was Cappie Achterkamp.
His gloved hand was quite large compared to hers, which was bare, fingernails uneven and speckled with chipped pastel polish in the national colours, a pale yellow approximating the deep golden hue of the Illean flag. When she spoke, she always addressed his collarbone. Cappie was small and somehow perpetually seemed smaller, as though each time she faded from this world she came back somewhat incomplete, having lost something intangible between whatever was here and wherever there was. Yegor wasn't quite accustomed to being larger than other people - even Taja was within an inch of his height.
Men like Yegor didn't need to be tall. He didn't think he liked the feeling.
Cappie took a light step forward, cautious rather than uncertain, and breathed cold ghostlight before her as she stared down the tunnel. It led, one presumed, into the ground beneath the prison; after about a metre, it disappeared into dense darkness, so one could not be entirely certain. Underfoot, the soil was smooth and undisturbed – look closer still, and it was unnaturally so. "Are you sure?"
Of course Yegor was sure. Oh, the devil's daughter was wrong plenty, at least according to those unfortunate revolutionaries who had cause to speak to her more regularly than anyone was fully comfortable with, but Yegor had his suspicions that the arsonist was less inclined to making mistakes and more accustomed to allowing lies drip from her lips like wine. On this occasion, however, he thought she was probably familiar enough with the workings of prisons not to make a mistake, and wise enough not to lie to a man like Yegor Corbeau.
"Of course," he said, and Cappie looked at him with eyes heavy-lidded with wariness, but nodded and tightened her fingers over his, and all of the light began to drain from the world, colour by colour. Blue went first, at least for Yegor – suddenly the sky above him was ash and charcoal, and the air was very, very cold. Nothing retained its crisp edge when Cappie did her work – they faded and blurred, like the chaotic edge of a moving figure caught in a daguerreotype. A bird crossing the grey vastness overhead moved jerkily, flashing from one spot to another, less a shape than it was a blur with talons.
There were few kinds of magic that Yegor enjoyed. Cappie's particular brand of legerdemain was no exception. The world faded to nothingness.
She was a grey-gold mess beside him, the silhouette of a girl, all of her edges melting into the background, her shape apparent only when she moved as she moved now, towards the tunnel. "Ready?" she whispered, although it wasn't a whisper when all the world reverberated with it, and Yegor said nothing as they set off into the tunnel.
The tunnel had been devoid of light before, so there was little difference to be detected now. The guards of the prison needed some way to access the jail, of course, and he rather doubted they had traps planted along the path of their daily commute - but Yegor could not shake the rather unpleasant feeling that he was walking directly into a place he had done his best to avoid for the past twenty odd years, a fox aiming for the gin.
It was like walking into a world composed entirely of ink. Cappie was a shadow in front of him, their hands clasped tightly as though the sky itself might attempt to swallow one of them whole, and down they went beneath the world.
He could remember a poem that had started like this. Hadn't Orpheus lost the sky trying to reclaim a woman from certain death?
They walked.
They walked.
They walked.
"Shh," echoed Cappie's shadow, and they stopped walking.
A faint silvery ripple moved through the greyness to his left, a figure passing them in the corridor, and then Cappie darted off to the right and Yegor followed, and found himself believing that they were moving gradually upwards once more, into the heart of the prison. Another pause, to allow another shadow waver obliviously beside them. "Nearly there," the world said with Cappie's voice.
He could see the yellow on her nails again. The colour was leeching slowly back into the world, just as slowly as it had left him - yellow came first, the faint gold of Cappie's hair and the glow of dim, flickering lights overhead, and red came last, the blood on the floor and the fiery inferno of Andromeda's hair.
They had put Andromeda in a cage. Yegor hadn't expected anything else. She leaned against its bars, forearms crossed, posed lazily, carelessly, teeth bared in a laugh as she caught sight of Yegor. "Hello, captain," she said. "It's about time. You've kept me waiting."
"Well," he said. "You weren't needed until now."
Cappie moved towards the lock, her edges out of focus and hazy, like all of her colours hadn't returned yet, like she was still half in that grey, dark world. "Good to see you alive and well, Andie. I heard you were due for the squad tomorrow."
Andromeda's smirk lengthened, Cheshire-cat style. "Chopping block, actually," she said. "Shooting me would be too honourable. The guards want to see my head bounce."
Yegor knew that they weren't the only ones, and Cappie knew better than to dally in her picking of the lock, and Andromeda knew not to wait for Yegor to ask before she said, "It was a success, by the way. My mission."
Yegor did not look at her. He was watching the corridor. The place seemed empty - the cages as far as was visible in either direction were empty but for Andromeda's. There was only one path out of this labyrinth; a small door-shaped slit cut into the stone that formed the walls and floor and ceiling of this hollow hallway.
"I swear," Andromeda was saying to Cappie. "The gratitude the rebellion shows its footsoldiers is simply heartwarming, don't you think?"
Cappie looked as though she were about to reply when there was a tock tock tock and she said, rather gleefully, "Got it! I think..."
"Cappie," Yegor said abruptly, and held out his hand. The younger girl looked rather taken aback but took it, and stretched her other to grasp Andromeda by the wrist.
"Give me a second," she said, and then, taken aback - "No. No. No."
The world retained its colours and its edges. Cappie dropped their hands to stare at her own, turning them over as though in search of some invisible cuffs or shackles which might have restricted her abilities, and then turned to watch the door with a fearful look.
"They're going to..."
" Achterkamp," Andromeda said urgently. "My cuffs."
"Yegor," Cappie said. "I'm sorry, I don't..."
" Achterkamp. If they're coming, I need to be able to fight -"
"Cappie," Yegor said. "Get Andromeda out." They would need to be quick.
They had been relying on slipping in and out, ghosts lost in a grey world, but that, it seemed, was no longer an option. Could they still escape? Probably. Could they escape undetected? Debatable. Would Andromeda enjoy stretching her limbs a little after so long cooped up? Almost certainly.
As Cappie worked at the lock, Andromeda looked at Yegor expectantly. "Do you have my spear?"
"No," he said. "I don't have your spear."
"For fuck's sake, Corbeau..."
"Language," Yegor said mildly, and suddenly shadows were writ large upon the doorway - guards approaching. The gin had been baited; the trap had been sprung. "How are those shackles coming, Cappie?"
Her voice was tense. "I can't..."
"Hurry up," Andromeda snapped impatiently, and then there were voices approaching, fast, echoing and reverberating off the bare grey rock until the room was full of sound and noise and the red-haired warrior turned with a narrowing of her eyes towards the door.
"Leave it, Cappie - with me."
Yegor began to move back, away from the doorway, towards one of the empty cages, far enough down the corridor that when he stepped inside he would not be visible from Andromeda's. He held the little iron door open for Cappie, who gave him an uncertain look, but stepped inside gamely enough, her step ginger, her expression cautious, and then Yegor locked her in.
Andromeda was fuming when he returned to her. He reached her cage just as the guards reached the door, and he stepped in to join her little personal prison just as a bullet shrieked past him and flattened itself against the far wall. "What," Andromeda said tightly, trying to turn with her hands still shackled to the front of the cage, seeing Yegor move to the farthest corner of the cell and put his back against the wall. "Are you doing..."
Yegor gave her a smile. "If they want me," he said. "They have to go through you."
"I'm still cuffed," Andromeda said, rather unnecessarily. "There's five of them."
"Makes it fair, then."
Andromeda looked as if she would answer, but by then the guards were at the door and she was forced into quick, fluid motion by necessity - with both hands otherwise occupied, it required a little more creativity than Yegor thought she was probably accustomed to. As the first man entered, she swayed backwards a little, so that he would have to turn to reach at her and then rocketed forward to meet his nose with her forehead. "Unbelievable," she spat, blood that was not her own dripping from her teeth, and the second guard into the cage grabbed her throat and pinned her to the wall of the cell.
The third man was crossing the threshold. Yegor pulled his gun from his coat, and shot him twice - shoulder and cheek. The guards on that side of the cage didn't dare loose their weapons for fear of hitting one of their own men - Yegor Corbeau had no such compunctions.
Andromeda had sunk her teeth into the hand of the man strangling her, furious and tenacious as a bulldog, and while he thrashed another of his comrades did his best to enter the fray. Here, then, was a man with magic to him - where he touched the bars of the cells they warped and bent underhand like clay beneath the fingers of a sculptor. He reached for Andromeda's face, and she brought her hands up, wrists facing outwards, to block him - his fingernails brushed the surface of the shackles and shattered them, and Andromeda thanked him for his helpfulness with a punch to the face so fast and so brutal Yegor heard bone break.
She turned her attention to the man she had bitten, just as he pulled his gun from his belt and shot her. She didn't make a sound, even as the blood began to spill; only caught the hand holding the gun and twisted him over her hip in a flip that snapped his wrist and brought him crashing to the ground. She wrested the gun from his hand and kicked him in the head until he stopped moving.
There was no sign of the fifth guard. Andromeda wiped blood from her mouth and then stared down at the crimson spread quickly across her chest. Yegor thought that the bullet had probably hit a rib, somewhere close to her shoulder.
He knew men who had died from less. And there would be more violence to come - they were, after all, still in a cage.
Andromeda closed her eyes and swore. "You were wrong," she said, her voice laced with pain.
Yegor wasn't accustomed to being wrong. He arched an eyebrow.
"It still wasn't fair," she said, rather defiantly, and he gave her another smile. It was not quite kind.
"Come on," he said. "We'd better let Cappie out of that cage."
Kasha had never found a bridge she didn't want to burn.
You burned the things you loved; that was how you survived. Kasha had learned that early, and she had learned that well. After a while you tired of the first part, so you didn't bother with the second. A girl could only swallow so much smoke.
Burn the things you love, lock your wrist when you punch, and never be too proud to run.
Kasha ran now. Screams in her hair and smoke in her throat as the town burned behind her, Kasha ran.
She was lost.
Corbeau.
"Someone call Nithya."
Demetrios.
She couldn't remember closing her eyes.
Anais.
Had she closed her eyes?
Darius.
"Taja." Yegor."Save your tears. We have to go."
Go go go go go go ...
Go?
Cappie. "Without me?"
Don't go.
Andromeda tried to
Don't go.
spit with all
Don't go.
of her accustomed venom,.
Don't go.
but the sound came out
Don't go.
rather less harsh than she intended
Don't go.
as a bloodless, soundless sound.
Corbeau.
Yegor again. "I don't need you. I need Taja."
Demetrios.
The devil spoke: "Keep her alive until I get back."
Demetrios. Anais. Darius. Corbeau. Motherfatherbrothersoldier.
And Andromeda was lost once more.
Mara Morosova was waiting, as promised, by the wrought-iron railing of the cemetery nearest where one river met another, her pale face bright as a meteorite despite the shadows cast by the oak foliage canvas overhead, her big eyes even bigger than usual. She was a fearless one, Mara, but this kind of a night - the air cold and full of nothing - could unsettle the bravest of bones in the steeliest of skins, and she was clearly not at her ease. She had picked a hole in the too-large cardigan that draped about a bird-like frame, and looked disinclined to act maganimous to either Yegor or Taja as the pair approached. Not that Taja could blame her - revolutionaries could be difficult to work with at the best of time.
True revolutionaries burnt their bridges, and learned to savour the taste of smoke on the air.
"Masha," she said. The twice-orphan regarded her suspiciously, but said nothing. Taja didn't blame her. Beautiful girls, such as Taja was, were always regarded with abject chariness around the time of the Selection, as the world and its mother tried to discern exactly which devil they had dealt with to avoid being chosen.
Well, Taja stood beside hers.
The devil spoke now. "How long do we have?" As though he didn't already know - as though he didn't feel the tick-tick-tick of his pocket watch in his ribs and his throat, the same way Taja always did.
He didn't have to ask Mara if she had completed her task accordingly. That was a given.
With a slightly sly softening of her scowl, the smaller girl reached into her jacket and pulled out a black brass key, hanging on a chain almost thicker than her forearm. "Second watch starts in ten minutes," she said. "Where's Cappie?"
"I don't need Cappie," Yegor said, and Taja had to suppress a smile.
Mara looked doubtful - the girl was quick and quiet, but the girl could only be so quick and so quiet before she got caught, and there was always a first time - but Yegor's grey, grey eyes could be persuasive and tonight he was in fine form, so towards the gate Mara turned and pushed it open to allow Taja and Yegor enter.
Yegor went first, and did not bother to wait, but Taja hesitated at the threshold of the cemetery, the border between the quick and the dead, to turn to Mara. The girl was looking, not at Taja, but beyond, at Yegor's lean shape as he moved purposefully between dappled moonlight and shade. What he was looking for, Taja wasn't certain - it was difficult, sometimes, to try and understand the way Yegor's mind worked, the rapidity at which he planned and unravelled and planned anew, the games of chess he seemed to be constantly winning and losing against his own self. She couldn't imagine it was any easier for the young thief to try and discern what was what. She didn't know Yegor like Taja did.
The rebel spoke softly now: "You'd better get home, Masha. It's a full moon, after all."
Mara regarded Taja with that same gaze. Her eyes were lilies-of-the-Nile; they burned, despite the gloom creeping close with the assurance of the night. She did not say what both girls were thinking - that she had no home to get to, not anymore - but instead she nodded, rather reluctantly. Reaching into her pocket, she withdrew a small black stone, about the size of an eye, and handed it to Taja. Her hands were warm. She said, "Right again, Sweeney. I hear these days wolves tend to prowl at night."
"I think they always did," Taja said. She didn't bother to say goodbye to the girl - Yegor was moving away, lost somewhere in that mercury-and-silver mind of his and she didn't want to lose him. She turned, and did not run, but moved quickly from the gates and was distantly aware that Mara had pulled the chains tightly around them and was busily locking them into the graveyard.
If Yegor hadn't mentioned that this was a cemetery for royal bones, it would have, Taja thought, been easy enough to guess: in an era when the typical fate for a corpse was to join its brethren in a wide, deep pit that remained uncovered until the carcasses reached the surface once more, or to burn on a pyre with the rest of the detritus of the world, to inter a body in wood and stone was a luxury indeed. Each grave was set down into the ground, iron bars like those of a cell barring them from the sky; the palace were superstitious, if anyone was, and went to lengths to keep the vultures and the crows from settling upon the graves. The cemetery was a series of cages, as though the dead might wake and attempt to flee.
Yegor was standing between two of the tombs, looking at the stone plaques in front of each. There was no name, only a number written there: on the left, twenty-three; on the right, twenty four. He said nothing as Taja joined him, standing at his shoulder and studying the pale angles of his face as he studied the dark shape of the graves. He looked tired, more tired than usual - his skin was drawn tight over the surface of his bones, like they had grown sharp without him noticing. The collar of his coat was speckled with dust.
The stone Mara had handed her was smooth and dark - purple, she noted now, rather than the black she had initially assumed. Reaching into her pocket, she withdrew it and handed it to Yegor. His hands, as always, were gloved.
One hundred years, and the same king kept the throne - these graves were not for his benefit.
Yegor said, quite certainly, "Twenty-three," and Taja nodded.
There was a little iron catch on the iron gate barring the coffin from the air, and she knelt now to undo it, her fingers sure and steady despite the chill in the air and the shriek of a vixen somewhere in the forest beyond the city's edges. If she looked left, above the walls of the cemetery, she could see the auburn glow of Honduragua, alight as though the city was burning, burning, burning; if she looked right, she could see the edge of Illea, the edge of the world, and the darkness, starless and moonless, beyond.
The gate swung upwards, so Taja pushed it as high as she could without rising, and Yegor caught it for her and laid it softly on the grass. His grey eyes were determined - they had a spark to them that told Taja this strange, esoteric task of theirs was an important one indeed, no matter how stoic and languid he appeared. She had seen that look before.
The first time she had met him, he had worn that look in his eyes. He had looked at her, and he had held out his hand, and he had invited her to make a choice she had known she would regret.
Well, she hadn't regretted it yet.
Yegor held out his hand to Taja now again. She took it, very gingerly, to steady herself as she jumped into the grave.
There was a small pile of stones on the wooden surface of the grave. Three, just like the one Mara had handed to her, smooth and faultless, piled in a very neat triangle over the royal seal on the coffin. Was it so easy to stifle the dead? For her part, Taja brushed the stones away without a second thought and hoisted the coffin up. It was light, lighter than she could have anticipated and for a moment Taja was worried that it would continue nothing but bones, but Yegor seemed confident so she levered it up and pushed it high enough that he could catch it and keep it steady while she climbed out.
Then, together, they pulled the coffin out of the ground and set it by the edge of the grave. Yegor, Taja noticed now, had brought a crowbar - she shouldn't have expected anything else. He offered it to her, the corner of his mouth lifting in a charming smile. "My lady," he said softly and Taja could only roll her eyes and try not to laugh out loud as she took it from him.
The nails were sharp, the wood was strong, but Yegor's smile was sharper and Taja was stronger and soon the lid was pried off and thrown to the side and the two revolutionaries were staring into the coffin at the face of the girl who lay within: pale and perfect and very, very dead.
"Who is she?" Taja asked softly.
Yegor raised his eyes. He watched her from under his lashes - and then, he said, "does it matter?"
Taja felt her heart sink a little. Trusted more than the rest, perhaps, but that didn't mean he trusted her much at all. She shook her head. "I guess not," she said.
Yegor knelt by the corpse and Taja addressed her gaze to the tiny pinpricks of aureate light which had begun to speckle the night sky. "I guess not," she said again.
Silence for a moment. Silences, with Yegor, could last a long time indeed, she knew from experience. But he broke this one himself, and rather quickly - his voice remained as level and cool as ever. He said, "Her name was Adelaide."
Taja looked at him quietly.
Yegor said, "Help me carry it out of here, will you?"
The lights did not come back on. Oliver waited until the daylight had begun to illuminate the edges of the palace, set the gold and marble alight in a kind of ersatz flame, and he saw that the windows were dark and that the balcony was empty. The Selection had retreated once more out of the reach of the stars and the sky.
Had the girl jumped?
He didn't think she had.
He slid his spyglass shut and slipped from his vantage point without being seen or remembered, offering a few pretty words to those that would have barred his path and disappearing back into the city's mazescape, utterly anonymous in the chaos of people and action and movement that was Angeles at this early hour.
When he had first joined the rebellion, he had often wondered at those around him, those flashes of face or uniform he would catch in the corner of his eye as he walked down the street. How many of them were collaborators to the resistance, hidden as he was within plain sight, and how many would be willing to see him hung from the palace walls, head on a spike, and family slaughtered?
He didn't need to worry about that last one anymore, of course. He didn't think he really cared about the other two either.
There was a message waiting for him in the bare room he had rented from a woman with more scars than teeth. It was still an unfamiliar place to him, despite the long months he had spent in this city, waiting, biding his time, watching as the liar prince Calau put together his little collection of pretty poison girls, his Selected. Written in an untidy hand on a scrap of lined grey paper, it was sitting on the kitchen table that made up one of three pieces of furniture decorating the space - a chair and bed completed the ensemble. There was little trace as to how it had arrived - the windows were shut, the door locked, nothing disturbed. The Y at the bottom of the note rather looked as though it had been burned there.
Oliver picked it up, and glanced at it only briefly. There wasn't much to read - just enough to quicken his pulse and ready him for vengeance.
Pieces in place. Take your position. We begin in three days.
- Y
Thank you all so much for your wondrously kind reviews; I am grateful indeed, you guys are absolutely the best - you wouldn't believe how motivating they are! I loved seeing your thoughts and theories - some of you seem to be psychic, I swear.
There are still characters to be introduced, so progress may be slow for the next chapter or so, and then we can really get into the swing of things. As always, I welcome whatever criticism you may have, as I am always looking to improve. Thanks for reading!
