“What are you looking for?” Helmi demanded, and Emma smiled. She had thought Helmi very like a young Amy Snitman at one point.
Only people with a death wish lied to Amy. “I’m not sure.”
“Maybe you should be sure.”
“Helmi. Enough,” the magar said, although her pinched expression implied strong agreement with her youngest daughter’s sentiment.
“But she needs to know—”
“We don’t know what she needs to know.”
“We do know some of what she needs to know, and she’s not going to learn it here!”
Emma, however, stopped walking. The lantern wobbled briefly, its light dimming as she knelt at the side of one of the sleepers.
“What are you looking at?” Helmi demanded. The magar said, or asked, nothing, but she released Emma’s hand. She must have released it; Emma reached out with her left hand, and the magar didn’t automatically come with it.
She recognized the child’s face, although she had only seen it twisted in pain or fear. Just beyond the girl, another child slept; they were side-by-side, although the younger child had an arm flung across the chest of the older one. “How—how did you find these girls?”
The magar nodded. Emma couldn’t see her and didn’t look back, but she felt the nod. It should have been more disturbing than it was. “Scoros found them before the Queen did. He bound them, and he kept them.”
Emma felt a sickening, visceral fury; not all of it was her own, but the part that wasn’t was the weaker part.
“It is not what you think, child. Had he not killed them—had he not murdered them—perhaps it would have been. But he did. He set the fire. He watched them die. The death of their father hardly troubled his sleep. The death of the children broke something in him.”
“He served for a long time after that.”
“Yes. But he was aware that the children were blameless. He had been that child, as I think you must be aware. Vengeance against the man had some rough symmetry, some justice. Burning the children to death did not. And again, you know this. If you have found Scoros, you know.
“He found the children before the Queen did. I do not know if she would have searched them out deliberately—nor did he. But he wished to protect them in some small measure. He wished to atone. It was the start of his discontent, because he wanted absolution, and the only way he could have given it to himself was to open the door and usher the two children to what lay beyond it. And you are aware of how impossible that would be.”
“If they were bound to him, how are they here?”
“He died. Before he died, he called me.”
“But I thought—”
“I can hear my daughter calling me, even now,” the magar said. “But I can choose my response. I could hear Scoros, and I chose to take the risk; it was a small risk. He did not and does not have my daughter’s power. He has her experience. He called, and he asked me to protect the children. I almost refused.”
“Why? They were blameless.”
“He was not. I am not a forgiving woman. But he convinced me, in the end. He had kept the girls safe. He had bound them, but he had only seldom called upon their power; there were others he used in that fashion. He was not—he was never—a kind man. I think he was, in his youth, very like your Chase.”
“Chase would never murder little girls.”
“You are so certain that none of the Necromancers he found and killed were children?” The question was sharp, pointed.
Emma wasn’t.
“He would have killed you if Eric had not intervened. He would have done it without regret or pain. He would have killed you had you been twelve or thirteen, boy or girl. And Emma, Eric would have killed them as well. What you know of them is true, but it is not the whole of the truth.
“Scoros released the children into my keeping, and I brought them here, and here they slept. And sleep. What are you doing?”
Emma cupped the older child’s cheek in her hand. She heard the magar’s question as if it came at a great remove. She whispered a name. Anne.
Movement returned to the girl’s face; her eyelids fluttered, as if she were dreaming. They opened before Emma could withdraw her hand—although she hadn’t even tried. She heard the magar’s consternation and even understood it, because part of her wondered the same thing. The child was at peace. She was safe.
But her eyes did open, and they met Emma’s. Emma thought the girl might scream or flinch, but she did neither. Instead, she sat up, stretched—very much as if she were alive. She then turned to the younger girl beside her and shook her gently.
She didn’t wake. Emma reached out and touched the arm that was still draped across the older sister. Rose. The younger girl’s eyes opened in a squint. Where Anne had turned to her sister, Rose turned toward the light.
Emma wanted to set the lantern down, to offer a hand to each child.
Anne, however, stood, and Rose joined her; their faces were turned toward the lantern’s light, and the light was brilliant, now. Warm. “Are we leaving?” the younger girl asked.
Emma didn’t answer. The magar did.
“Yes.”
Rose seemed terrified of the magar—which was just sensible, all things considered. Anne forced her eyes away from the lantern to the face of the person holding it. “Are we going with you?”
“Only if you want to. I think—I think you’ve been safe here. It’s quiet. It’s peaceful. Where I’m going, it’s not.”
Anne nodded, and Emma felt her throat constrict. She’d told them the choice was theirs, and she meant it—but she realized that for these two, there was no choice. Offering one was just a sop to her own conscience; it wouldn’t change the outcome at all for either girl.
“Yes,” the magar said. “But conscience is necessary. They have been waiting. It is time. You must return to the Queen’s circle, now. There is one thing you must do if you are to have any hope of using it.”
“I don’t need to use it.”
“Yes, child, you do. And there is only one way to use it safely.”
EMMA RETURNED to the Queen’s resurrection chamber. She held two hands: Anne’s and Rose’s. The lantern was gone; the magar was gone. Helmi, however, remained. She wasn’t attached at the elbow; Emma wasn’t certain that she could still be seen by anyone else in the room.
The girls were silent; they seemed almost sleepy. Emma looked at them because she wanted a memory of their faces that was not pain and horrible, slow death. She’d never quite understood the idea of mercy killing before, although she’d heard all the arguments. She understood it now.
Had she had a gun, she would have shot them both to end a misery she couldn’t otherwise prevent. But it wouldn’t have mattered; they had died centuries ago. The deaths she had witnessed, she could do nothing to ease.
She stood on the edge of the Queen’s engraved circle.
Michael approached her. Or rather, he approached the two girls. He stepped over the circle’s boundary so he could face them, and he smiled. He had—he had always had—an open, unfettered smile, especially when dealing with children.
Anne stiffened. Rose, however, smiled back. It was a tentative expression that Emma caught in profile.
“I’m Michael,” he said.
“I’m Rose. That’s my sister. She’s Anne. Your clothes are funny.”
“They won’t let me wear dresses,” Michael replied.
Rose laughed at the idea of Michael in a dress. Anne hesitated, but her lips twitched in an involuntary smile. She didn’t speak to Michael, though. She turned her head to look up at Emma.
“He’s not like you.” It wasn’t a question, but there was a thread of doubt in the statement.
“He’s not like me,” Emma agreed. “There’s nothing he can do to harm you.”
Anne nodded. Her expression twi
sted briefly, but her face remained the same: a child’s face. Emma’s hand tightened around Anne’s, a brief pressure, meant to comfort.
“Are you the new Queen?” the girl asked.
Emma inhaled slowly. “I really, really hope not.”
“You look like her.”
“Do I?”
Anne nodded.
“I don’t think the dead need a Queen.”
“But we have one, whether we want her or not.” The last few words were lost to Rose’s sudden laughter. “Why did you bring us here?”
Emma had no answer, and Anne seemed to expect one. “I don’t know.”
“You did bring us here?”
“Yes. I’m sorry. I—I saw you and your sister, and I woke you.” She struggled with the rest of the truth but couldn’t quite force it to leave her lips. She had wanted to see them, to touch them, to know that they were not trapped in fire for the rest of eternity. She had wanted to see them at peace, to quiet the memories she was certain would never leave her. She had recognized them instantly, had reached for them without thought.
It hadn’t been for their sake.
Why, a familiar voice said, did you bring them here?
Ah, yes. Scoros.
• • •
Anne turned at the sound of his voice. Rose, absorbed in Michael’s antics—he was on his knees in front of her making unfortunate noises—did not. The older girl didn’t flinch or stiffen at the sound of his voice. She seemed—to Emma’s eye—to relax. She didn’t release Emma’s hand.
For the first time since she had come back with whatever she could gather of Scoros, he seemed to emerge. He was not solid—Emma doubted he could achieve that—but he was clearly visible; he looked like a shadow, and as the seconds passed, the lines of that shadow hardened, as if the light casting it had grown sharper and brighter.
Emma felt his question as if she had asked it. She had no better answer than the one she’d offered Anne, but Scoros was not a child—and he wasn’t the only one who demanded an answer.
“I need their help.”
Anne glanced up at her. Rose did not. Michael was probably the most amusing thing she’d seen since she’d died. It hadn’t occurred to Emma to do what Michael was now doing, and it wouldn’t have; this was not the time for play.
Not for Emma.
She could feel Scoros staring at Michael and reminded herself forcefully that Scoros could do nothing to her friends. Nothing.
“You’re dead,” Anne surprised her by saying.
Yes.
“Did it hurt you too?”
Yes. But not as much as I deserved. Emma Hall, what do you intend to do with the children?
“Free them.”
How?
Emma looked down at the circle’s engraving. “Helmi?”
Helmi drifted toward her, passing through Rose; Rose didn’t notice. Neither did Michael.
“It’s these characters, right?”
Helmi nodded. “This is her name.”
“What would my name be in this alphabet?”
Helmi snorted. There was no other word for the sound she made. “It doesn’t matter. You don’t have a name in our writing. But you do have a name in your own. If you wrote out the whole circle, you’d be using your own language. I think,” she added, lowering her voice, “that the magar is wrong.”
“Wrong?”
“I think the words my sister chose and the words that you would choose are different. She thinks you’re both young girls—her words, not mine. She thinks young girls can be described in the same words because they lack experience.” Helmi shrugged. “But I wasn’t magar. These two are Reyna’s name.”
Emma nodded. “Anne, I’m going to have to let go of your hand.”
“What about Rose?”
“I might need to let go of Rose, too.” But not yet. Not quite yet.
“What are you going to do?”
“Erase the Queen’s name.”
• • •
Emma knelt. Scoros came to stand behind her, or possibly on top of her; she felt his shadow fall. It was cold. The other shadow that joined him was natural and belonged to Chase. Emma glanced up at him; he was watching Michael and shaking his head, his own lips tugging up at the corners.
“I wouldn’t have believed he could exist if I hadn’t seen him myself. Michael, you do realize the Queen of the Dead could be here at any second, right?”
Michael answered Chase without looking at him. “Yes. But I can’t do anything about the Queen of the Dead. I don’t have weapons, and even if I did, I wouldn’t know how to use them. I can’t do anything to help Emma, because Emma doesn’t know how to do what she thinks has to be done. But I can talk to Rose.”
“Fine. You talk to Rose. I’ll help Emma. You ready?”
Emma nodded. “It’ll be like the floor in the townhouse. I think.”
The floor rumbled again. The dead didn’t seem to notice it. The living did. Emma placed her free palm against the two runes, which steadied her until the floor was once again still.
“She’s coming,” Helmi said. Emma didn’t ask who; she knew. She shook her head to clear it, although fear remained. She listened.
• • •
The voices she could hear were not, to her surprise, the distant and attenuated sobs she’d expected. They were clear, high voices that appeared to be lifted in . . . song. Two voices, one melody, one harmony. The song itself consisted of the same syllables, repeated over and over. A name.
“Anne, Rose, can you hear them?”
Rose ignored Emma in favor of Michael. Anne, however, whispered a yes. “Can you get them to change what they’re singing?”
It would be the best option, in Emma’s opinion. But before she could say so, the magar said, “No.” Just that. Her single word was thunderous; it reverberated. Even Rose looked up.
“They would not hear you, Emma Hall. They would not hear your request.” She glanced at Anne. “You hear singing?”
Anne nodded. “You don’t?”
“No. I hear nothing. Margaret?”
Margaret’s answer was wordless.
Emma surrendered the hope and concentrated instead on the voices. She could see the floor; she could see the engraved runes. When she closed her eyes, both were still clear. “I’m sorry, Rose,” she said quietly. “I need my hand back.”
Anne said something to her sister.
“Michael won’t be able to see you for now. I’m sorry,” she repeated. Rose was reluctant to surrender the hand—and why wouldn’t she be?—but Anne made it clear that it was necessary. Older sister clearly trumped Necromancer in Rose’s mind.
“Sorry, Michael.”
• • •
She could hear the voices clearly. She couldn’t see the singers. There were two; it would have made more sense to Emma if each name were held in place by a single ghost. That thought was followed, swiftly, by shame. These were people, not objects.
They were people, though, who couldn’t hear her. She tried to break into their song, to introduce herself, to somehow catch the attention of people she couldn’t see. She failed. There was no space between breaths, between notes. Her voice didn’t interrupt them at all.
How had she pulled one girl out of the floor she’d been made part of?
She’d reached. No, it wasn’t just that. The floor itself had become a sea of hands and arms when those trapped within had become aware of Emma. She needed to get the attention of these two singers. But this floor didn’t change in composition. She could see nothing to touch, nothing to grab—no one who was reaching out for her. She could hear no sadness, no tears, no wails of despair: just the words themselves. The names.
All of existence, for these two, had been reduced to that. There was nothing at all that Emma could touch.
She placed her second palm beside the first; the stone was cold, but it felt like a natural cold, not the chill of the dead. And yet the dead were here, just beyond her reach. Her palms flattened as she spread them, pushing against stone as if to find purchase. Except for the indents engraved there, the floor offered none.
This wasn’t working. Emma looked up and saw Michael and Chase. She thought she’d closed her eyes and couldn’t remember opening them; she closed them again. She needed to see the dead if she was to have any hope of unmaking what the Queen had made here.
And if she succeeded, what then?
She shook her head to clear it. She couldn’t afford to be afraid of success. She looked down at hands seen through closed eyes. She knew that the path she had walked when she sat in the circle attempting to locate Scoros was not a literal path; she knew that her body hadn’t moved. But she had nevertheless walked through so many landscapes and so many memories.
The floor here was not a floor in any normal sense of the word except one: It supported weight. It appeared to be stone. But if she had found Scoros—trapped in theory throughout the whole of the citadel, a complicated web that resembled nothing so much as echoes—it didn’t matter. She was looking at it the wrong way.
She needed to look at it the right way.
Or she needed not to look at it at all. Nathan’s body—the container into which he had been poured so that he might interact with the living—had not been difficult to unravel; she had done it while weeping. She had done it without thought. Intent? Yes, she’d had that. But she hadn’t felt for arms or legs or the component parts of the bodies that were melted together. She had just . . . caught them, held them, let them go. They had dissolved.
She needed to be able to do the same, here. Her hands covered the majority of the carved runes, which was as close as she could come to achieving the same effect—but she could not penetrate it. She could hear.