Page 67 of Skysong

Andala sat carefully on the edge of the bed, so as not to wake her. It was easier to be around Amie now. Was it because she was asleep? Or because Andala knew she would be leaving soon, and therefore would not be a danger to her daughter anymore? It didn’t matter. She felt as if her chest had been freed from a vice. She could breathe in her daughter’s presence, just sit there and watch Amie breathe, too, the blankets rising and falling with that delicate rhythm.238

It was strange. Andala didn’t feel like a mother, nor would she ever think to claim that title; she did not deserve it, after what she had done. But suddenly, with a fierceness that set her eyes to burning, she hoped Amie would know that, in some other world, Andala would have loved to have been her mother, in the proper sense of the word.

She looked out the window. Black upon black outside, a faint smattering of stars. Cold. Empty. The same as it would always be if she did not go soon.

Andala drew in a deep breath, let it out. Amie fidgeted in her sleep, and Andala froze, expecting her eyes to flutter open at any moment. But she only smiled a little, as if she were dreaming.

‘I’m glad you never had to know me,’ Andala whispered, so quietly that the words seemed to fade in the still air. ‘I would only have been a disappointment.’ She paused, a tiny mirror smile etching itself across her lips. ‘But I would have liked to have known you.’

Amie rolled over, nestling herself deeper into the blankets. She looked the picture of peace in that moment: innocent, content. But Andala did not stay to watch her. She opened the window and climbed out onto the sturdy trellis that scaled the side of the house. Then she slid the window closed behind her, sealing her daughter in the safe, warm house and stealing off into the endless night.

239

Chapter 32

This figure moved differently to the ones before it.

It did not shout at her, like some had. It did not brandish flame before her face or poke and prod her with its instruments. In her haze, her black cocoon, she dimly registered the change, observing as if through a long tunnel, at the end of which shone a faint and fragile light.

The figure approached her slowly, silently, almost reverently, like a mourner in a churchyard. A flicker of gold in its hand. A silk standard of sorrow on its shoulders. Cold grey mist seemed to seep around its form. And that was when she knew who it was – what it was – and what it must be here to do.

She closed her eyes again. She waited. In the depths of her eidolon soul, perhaps she even smiled.

She welcomed the shade, and the place to which it would sweep her away.

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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 youbeen?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—’

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