[Sin Eater's Daughter 3] The Scarecrow Queen Read online

  Also by Melinda Salisbury

  For my best friend, Emilie Lyons

  Bem, bem, bem

  God hates happy children.

  Contents

  Cover

  Dedication

  The Tower of Honour

  Part One: Twylla

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  The Tower of Wisdom

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  The Tower of Truth

  Part Two: Errin

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Part Three: Twylla

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  The Tower of Honour

  The apothecary sits in the lap of the prince. Her hands are in his hair, her fingers working meticulously, filling his silken locks with dozens of braids. She’d like to put bells on the ends, she thinks. Silver bells to match the silver tresses. His hair reminds her of water, the softness and coldness of a stream flowing over her palms. The prince’s eyes are closed as she works; white lashes brush his cheeks, a sleek smile on his full lips, his breathing deep and even. As her knuckles brush against his neck, a low rumbling sounds in the back of his throat: a purr, or perhaps a growl. The apothecary swallows.

  The dancing light from the candles makes the prince’s eyes look the colour of topaz when he opens them and turns his gaze on the apothecary. She feels something inside her stomach twist: a snake inside her, coiled and waiting.

  Then a rattling, warning her. The prince raises a hand and she flinches, but he only tilts her chin upwards, his smile widening.

  “This brings back old, old memories, sweetling. I used to have girls do this, in Tallith,” he says. His voice is musical, soothing, and as he speaks the apothecary continues braiding. “I liked very much to bathe, and I’d have the girls braid my hair to keep it out of the water. In the Tower of Honour, the entire lower floor was one large, grand bath, carved out of marble, and at its deepest, twice my height. We held gatherings in there sometimes, when we had very important guests. The water was pumped in from the springs beneath the ground. It smelled a little strange, sulphurous, but it wasn’t unpleasant. Though it would turn my and my sister’s hair an unbecoming yellow tint if we soaked it in it.”

  He pauses and leans forward, lifting a glass of wine to his mouth. He offers none to the apothecary, instead draining it and dropping it to the floor carelessly, smiling at her with purple-stained lips.

  “I believe there’s a pool with the same properties in the mountains here. Perhaps I shall take you, when the weather warms. You can braid my hair there, and we can swim together. If you are good.”

  The apothecary’s fingers are deft in the prince’s hair; years of plucking leaves and pinching powders make her movements sure. But the room is cold, the stone walls bare, and the fire burning in the grate is small. When she exhales, her breath lingers on the air before her, and there is a dull ache in her bones that never seems to fade. The prince doesn’t seem to feel the cold, but the apothecary does. It’s colder in this land than in her home. Her hands tremble, and the prince pulls her closer, stroking her back through her hand-me-down gown. She’s no warmer pressed against him; his form does not seem to hold any heat.

  “There were private baths too, on the second floor,” the prince continues softly. “More intimate ones, for those who desired them. Did I ever tell you about the towers of Tallith castle?” The prince does not pause to allow the apothecary to answer. “Seven, in total. Each one named for a virtue. My own was the Tower of Love. Perhaps I should rename the towers here, to honour it. What do you think?” He caresses the side of her face and her jaw tightens. “Oh, Errin. . .” he begins.

  But he’s interrupted by a knock at the door.

  “Enter,” he calls.

  A servant with salt-and-pepper hair and a grizzled face pushes the door open. Like the apothecary, he appears to be cold, wrapped in a fur-lined cloak even inside the castle walls. Indifferent blue eyes skim over the apothecary, paying her no more mind than he would the other furniture in the room, before he bows to the prince.

  “Well?” the prince says.

  “Word from the Silver Knight, my liege,” the servant says, his head still lowered as he pulls a roll of sealed parchment from inside his cloak.

  The prince holds out a hand for it, and then the servant raises his head, just a fraction, to step forward and hand it over. The prince waves him back once he has the message, and breaks the seal.

  The apothecary tries to look at what her brother has written to the prince. But the prince shifts, moving the parchment so she cannot see.

  The apothecary is still plaiting his hair, now twining the ends that are still within her reach. Her fingers are numb with cold and stiff from the small, repetitive movements, but she cannot stop.

  Without warning the prince rises with a jubilant shout, upending the apothecary on to the floor at the foot of his chair. He steps over her, turning back briefly. “Your brother is a miracle, sweetling. An absolute miracle.” Then, to the servant: “Have someone saddle my horse and those of four men. We’re going into Lortune.”

  With that he strides from the room, the servant scurrying after him, leaving the apothecary where she has fallen, lying on her side, her left cheek and ear against the frigid stone floor. She has landed badly, one arm caught beneath her, one knee pressing into the leg of the chair. She feels her fingers still moving, even those crushed beneath her own weight. Still seeking invisible locks of moonlight hair, still trying to cross them over each other. If she had bells for them, she’d hear him coming, she thinks. She’d be warned.

  Not that it would help her at all.

  Hours pass and the prince does not return. The apothecary’s bladder fills, paining her. Her legs and arms cramp, and release, and cramp again. She feels bruises begin to bloom along her body from the fall; the edges of her lips and the skin beneath her fingernails turns blue from the cold. Tears leak unchecked from her eyes, pooling on the floor beneath her ear, and when the meagre flames in the fireplace finally die, her body begins to tremble almost immediately. The room grows darker as the daylight fades.

  And all the while her fingers still work, work, work at hair that is not there.

  Finally the pressure in her bladder is too much and she lets go, soaking herself and the ground beneath her. The initial warmth is a grim moment of respite from the relentless cold, but soon the pool of urine cools too, and soaks into her thin gown. She wonders if she will die there.

  But then the prince returns.

  He glances down at the apothecary, his brows rising. He appears puzzled for a moment; then realization causes his features to slacken. He steps past the apothecary and to a table by his chair. He lifts the small clay doll that lies there, a twist of brown hair over its head, two green glass beads to approximate eyes. Around its waist is a strip of paper, and he peels it away from the clay.

  At once the girl can move. She feels the supernatural hold over her body vanish and she rolls on to her back.

  The prince stands over
her, his beautiful face warped by the disgust now etched upon it.

  “Did you piss yourself? You little beast. I was barely gone a few hours.”

  When the apothecary doesn’t answer, he nudges her shoulder with the tip of a boot.

  “I’m talking to you. Answer me.” She does not, and he kicks her again, harder this time. “You’re disgusting.”

  He calls for a servant to come and collect her, and a man enters the room, different to the one who came before. This man’s shoulders are slumped, and his dark-eyed gaze stays fixed on the floor; everything about him begs to be ignored. The prince obliges, barely glancing at him as he demands the apothecary be removed from his sight, and that someone else come and clean the mess she’s made. The servant says nothing, not flinching when he helps the apothecary to her feet. He might as well be one of the prince’s clay creatures for all the expression he betrays as he supports the wet and weeping apothecary from the prince’s chamber.

  The prince watches them leave, sinking into his chair. He peers down at the doll of the girl he still holds. A vicious scowl flashes across his features and he crushes the doll in his hand, dropping it to the ground. But as soon as he’s done so, he bends to pick it up. He pulls the hair out from the mess and finds the glass beads too, setting them aside. Then his fingers are the ones to move swiftly, teasing the clay out into the form of a girl once more. He wraps the hair back around her head, refits the eyes, and rises, striding from the room.

  He finds the apothecary and the servant at the foot of the tower he’s assigned to her, starting up the stairs. The servant steps away as he hears his master’s boots approaching, and the girl staggers. She turns in time to see the prince draw his knife and reach for her hand. He slashes her palm, waiting till the second her blood spills, and then presses the doll into the wound.

  The apothecary cries out and tries to pull away, but it’s too late. The clay has absorbed her blood. She watches as the prince pricks his own finger with the same knife, and allows a drop of his own blood to fall on to the simulacrum’s form. It, too, is absorbed, and the prince smiles. He strokes the clay poppet before placing it gently inside his pocket. Then, without a word, he turns and walks away, leaving the girl bleeding and sobbing, and the servant staring after him.

  Part One

  Twylla

  Chapter 1

  Somewhere to the left of the alcove I’m still crammed inside, water drips steadily to the floor. Other than those rhythmic taps, the bone temple is silent. I’ve counted over three thousand drops when I hear something out in the passageway. I tense, my already-stiff muscles aching, as I strain to catch any other sound: muffled footfalls, soft sighs, the whispering of fabric. Moments pass like lifetimes, the dripping continues, and I hold my breath until my lungs burn.

  I hear a thud, then another, and then a sort of rustling, and I exhale with a dizzying rush. I know those sounds: just more debris falling from the ceiling. Really, that alone should be enough to make me move: the realization the roof could cave in and bury me. The echoes of boots have long since faded, and the lanterns on the walls are burning low. I need to go.

  I start counting again.

  When I get to four thousand, I pause, shifting my weight. My foot immediately cramps and I flex it, squeezing my eyes shut at the pain. When I open them the room seems darker, and I peer out through a sliver of a gap in the screen that conceals me, trying to determine if any of the torches have blown out. Through that small gap I watched Errin scream at the Sleeping Prince, saw her look him in the eye and lie to his face. I watched him stroke her, bend his head to her hair and smell her, threaten to murder her, and still she held her nerve. Even when she knelt to him, she did it with the air of someone granting a favour, not someone obeying a command. I have to wonder if Errin would have hidden from him at all, if our situations had been reversed. I can’t imagine she would have stayed wedged in a crevice, her fist stuffed in her mouth, the taste of her own blood on her tongue.

  No, I decide. She’s not the hiding type. Even if she had at first agreed to hide, she would have emerged and tried to fight. She could never have stayed concealed. Or if she had managed it, it would have been because she was thinking of the bigger picture, and she’d have left the moment they did. Stalked them through the passageways, eavesdropping to learn what she could, forming a plan. Either way, she wouldn’t still be here, counting water droplets.

  I thought I’d left my cowardice in Lormere.

  Along with all my feelings for Lief. All I can see is the cold look in his eyes when he told me to hide. The grudging way he offered me safety, as though to repay a debt. Calling what we had a friendship. . .

  I push it away, clenching my jaw, my hands curling into fists. I know exactly what kind of man he is; I know what he did to me, to Merek, to Lormere. To his own sister, while I watched. And yet the first thing I felt when I saw him there was joy. I forgot everything, all the death, all the pain; instead I remembered the way he smelled when I pressed my face into his neck, the feel of muscle beneath his skin as my fingers clutched his back. His hair falling into my face. The taste of his mouth. As though moons hadn’t passed, as though nothing had changed.

  All it took was my name on his lips to bring me to my knees again. Gods, I want so much to hate him. No – not even that. I want to think of him and feel nothing. I want him to be a stranger to me.

  Enough, Twylla, I tell myself, wishing I could score him from my heart. Go, now.

  Then one of the torches flickers and dies, adding a new patch of shadow to the room, and I realize it won’t be long until the others do the same. And it’s that – the thought of being alone here, deep underground, in the dark, surrounded by the dead – that finally makes me unlock my muscles, my legs trembling when I move. Even then I wait, staring into the darkness for any sign of life.

  The first step I take is a roll of thunder splitting apart the stillness. The crunching of bone and wood beneath my foot ricochets around the temple, echoing around me. In the shadows something falls, and all of the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. And when another torch splutters and dies, I pick up my skirts and run, stumbling over femurs and ribs and broken struts, terrified of being trapped here in the dark.

  As I push through the curtain into the passage I trip over something large and soft, and fly forward, raising my hands to break my fall. My hands sting as they strike the stone floor and I swear loudly, rolling immediately to stand.

  And see a figure, face down, white hair bloodied on one side. I can’t tell if it’s male or female until I crouch beside it – her – to press my fingers to her neck. I know immediately, from the coldness, from the way the skin feels unyielding, that she’s dead. When I gently roll her over, the only injury I can see is a wound to her left temple; it looks small, as though it ought not to have been enough to kill. But it did; her golden eyes are dull and staring, mouth open, all life well and truly fled. I close both eyes and mouth, and cross her arms over her chest.

  I’ve seen plenty of dead people in my life, and I know, deep in my soul, or my gut, that before this night is out I’m going to see a lot more.

  The next two hours of my life are the closest to hell that I’ve ever come. The corridors of the Conclave are a warren and there are no markings or signs to tell me where I am, or where to go. At first I’m cautious, still loosely gripped by the fear that kept me in the bone temple for so long, but with each dead end, each wrong turn, the panic rises, the terror I’ll never find my way out, that I’ll die down here in the dark, and eventually I’m running, dodging obstacles and vaulting over smashed furniture.

  On and on I go, stumbling past body after body, my whimpers reflected by the walls, haunting me with every step. In the back of my mind I know this means I’m truly alone down here. I’m making more than enough noise to give myself away, but I can’t stop. I sob and gasp; every single person I come across is a corpse, battered, broken and splayed. Clothing is askew where they’ve fallen, exposing breasts and groins,
the owners oblivious. Limbs are bent backwards, or sometimes not there at all. There has been no mercy here.

  I’m in a mass grave, I think, and laugh, immediately clapping my hands over my mouth at the sound. But it’s still there, the urge to giggle, bubbling up even as I tell myself this isn’t funny. I’m hysterical, I realize, but it doesn’t mean anything. I keep going, around and around.

  After a while I stop running, walking through the tunnels and rooms in a dreamlike state. I drift through chambers carpeted with the charred pages of books; I pick my way through smashed glass and ceramics, cross caverns where the air reeks of herbs and sulphur and myriad other things that litter the ground, crushed beneath the heels of boots. Mattresses have been shredded, bookcases overturned. Like Tremayne above, the Conclave has been explored, stripped and destroyed.

  I pass ever more bodies: alchemists with their luminous hair, normal men, women, even children, and now I stop beside each one, checking first to make sure they are truly dead, before I close their eyes and mouths if they’re open, neaten their limbs if they’re sprawled without dignity.

  This is new to me, this kind of death. The corpses I’ve seen before have been neatly laid out, their hair brushed, wearing their smartest clothes; sometimes even powders and pastes have been added to mask death. They lie in neat repose, waiting to be absolved. Not so down here.

  I rearrange clothing. I smooth hair back from foreheads. I find no survivors.

  I feel like a wraith, a Valkyrie, wandering a battlefield and counting the dead. Most of them have been stabbed, or had their throats cut, and my thoughts keep fighting their way back to Lief, in his suit of silver armour, his sword hanging at his side, and I keep wondering if any of these lives are on his conscience.

  Horribly, it’s the bodies that eventually begin to guide me. After a while I can tell where I’ve been, and where is new, based on how they lie. If I can see they’ve been tended I turn back and walk the other way; if not, I see to them, then walk on. The dead become my map.