“Entropomancy. The essence of death and decay.” Isyllt’s voice cracked. “I don’t like to use it. It hurts.”
It also worked. She set her shoulder against the door and pushed, and it scraped inward. Savedra touched the ruin of the lock and her fingers came away red with rust.
Isyllt turned her attention to the queen’s coffin and Savedra’s stomach twisted. “I thought Nikos said the seal on the sarcophagus was intact.” Her skin crawled, ears straining for the sound of footsteps. Mathiros would send them to the headsman for this.
“It is.” Isyllt’s eyes met hers across the carven lid, cold and pale as the marble. “Whatever we find here, swear to me you won’t speak of it until I do.”
“All right. I swear.”
Isyllt laid her hands on the queen’s stone breast and frowned. She stood like that for long moments. Finally blue sparks crackled from her fingers and she straightened. “Help me move the lid.”
Savedra thought she would be sick. She fought it down, forcing herself to take the last steps across the room and set her hands on the coffin.
On the count of three she and Isyllt pushed. Muscles corded and her still-healing arm burned fiercely from the effort. Stone gave way with a terrible scrape, inch by inch until the head of the sarcophagus was open. Wan and sweating, Isyllt summoned the light closer, filling the interior with its opalescent glow.
Empty.
False dawn lit the sky when Isyllt finally left the palace, chasing the Hounds into the west; the Dragon’s breath did nothing against the cold. The palace guards had found nothing, and had finally released the guests. Dancing away the longest night was one thing, but no one wanted to face the dawn of the demon days.
Isyllt imagined she would be seeing all too much of the demons this year.
Kiril joined her in front of the palace gates as she waited through the line of angry and frightened courtiers. More of them had already begun to cough and sniffle, which might merely be chill and fatigue, or the influenza’s touch.
She didn’t look at him for several moments, though she didn’t pull away from the line of warmth he offered, either. A scream coiled in her throat and she feared to let it loose.
“Let me see you home,” he said.
“Afraid your blood witch will come for me?”
“Yes.”
The honesty of it knocked the acerbity out of her. She let him help her into a carriage, and didn’t speak again. The things she had to say couldn’t be spoken in the open. She wasn’t sure she could speak them at all.
When they stepped onto the frost-rimed stones of Calderon Court, she knew she had to try. “Come inside.”
She didn’t take his cloak when she shot the bolt behind them, or offer tea. Familiar ritual was no comfort now, and he knew where she kept the cups. She went straight to that cupboard and poured herself a shot of ouzo. Its anise-and-coriander fire numbed her throat enough to let the words free.
“I checked the wards on the queen’s coffin, when first we investigated the stolen jewels. They were intact, as strong as if they’d just been cast. Too strong, though of course I never thought of it. You opened the coffin, stole her body for a demon, and sealed it again.”
“You see why I didn’t want you investigating this.” His humor was fleeting. “Yes. That was the act that broke my oath, and my power. Listening to conspirators is one thing-that was more than Mathiros would ever forgive.”
She poured herself another shot and downed it. “Why? What possibly justifies such a violation?”
Kiril sighed, and moved past her to pour himself a drink. Cradling it, he sank into a chair. “Had you ever heard of Phaedra Severos, before you found that girl’s body?”
She shook her head, sitting opposite him.
“You should have. You would have, if not for Mathiros and me. She was a powerful mage and a brilliant scholar. The things she could do with haematurgy were a marvel.” He sipped his drink, grimacing as he always did at the taste. “She was also mad. Not like she is now, but bad enough-she spent days in frenzies of research, creating wondrous things, only to burn her notes in black despair because nothing she wrought was as flawless as it should be. She went from mania to despair without warning. And more rarely and worse yet, she fell into a sort of fierce nihilism, like a phoenix who meant to take the whole world with her when she burned. That fire, I think, is what drew Mathiros.”
“They were lovers?”
Kiril knocked back the rest of his drink. “There was nothing of love between them, no matter how loosely one defines the term. But yes. She was already married. I met her husband once, before all that began. He reminded me of Mathiros, actually, but older and wiser and far calmer. Ferenz weathered Phaedra’s moods like a mountain. Mathiros couldn’t offer that-he was little more than a boy when they met, cocky with his rank and the strength of youth. He wanted her because she was beautiful, and because-” He stared into the bottom of his empty glass. “Because he has always been searching for that fire that will consume him, ever since he was a child. And in each other, they found the means to destroy themselves.
“I couldn’t stop it. I was already Mathiros’s closest advisor, but nothing would keep him from Phaedra. It was ugly and brutal-not the brutality of fists, though possibly that too, but of words and heart. And eventually it went too far. Perhaps he struck her, or merely said the wrong hurtful thing. Whatever it was, she responded with magic, and drew his blood. And then it was treason.
“That might have been the end of it. She fled the palace and returned to Sarkany, and without her presence to goad him I think I could have calmed him. But the palace maids thought Phaedra was pregnant, and the rumor reached Mathiros. I silenced it, but too late.” His mouth was a grim line, and Isyllt didn’t ask what measures he’d taken for that silence.
“Now we had a royal bastard to deal with, who would be raised by a Severos blood mage and a Sarken noble. The possibilities were… unpleasant. Mathiros was determined to deal with it, and I couldn’t dissuade him from doing so personally. We rode to Carnavas in all the stealth my magic and lies could give us. I still hoped that we could solve this reasonably.” His smile was humorless. “The folly of youth.
“It began with discussion, but quickly degenerated. Mathiros and Ferenz fought, while I pursued Phaedra to her tower. Then Ferenz fell, and all the fight went out of her. She threw herself off the tower.” His eyes closed, fingers tightening on the arm of the chair.
“But she didn’t die,” Isyllt said. “Not permanently.” Her jaw ached from the effort of keeping her teeth from chattering. She hadn’t lit a fire, and the room was nearly as cold as the dawn.
“No. Though I didn’t know that at the time. And so we were left with a castle full of corpses and the makings of an international incident.”
“What did you do?”
“I killed all the castle servants, to start, and used their deaths to cover our tracks at Carnavas. But that did nothing about the city full of people who knew and would miss Phaedra. Hushing up a bastard is one thing, but murdering a scion of a great house would mean open revolt from the Octagon Court. So I erased her.”
Isyllt swallowed, her throat gone dry. Erasing a moment’s memory was one thing, but a lifetime-“How?”
“With more murder, of course.” His voice was harsher than the winter outside. “I carried the souls I collected to the labyrinth beneath Erishal’s cathedral and offered them to her, along with three years of my life. She took my offering-she does so enjoy watching secular mages prostrate themselves. And slowly everyone who had ever known Phaedra began to forget her. The physical evidence-her papers and research-I stole from the Arcanost, so no one would be reminded.”
“Does that mean Mathiros?”
Kiril nodded. “Also has no memory of her. He couldn’t remember, or he would have spent the rest of his life a butcher. I took the burden from him to give him another chance. When he found Lychandra, I thought it had worked.”
“But you bore the burden.”
“I did. Phaedra was due that much. But I wasn’t alone, it turned out. Varis loved her, and was in Iskar when she died, beyond Erishal’s reach. He searched for years, and finally found her.”
“How did she survive?”
