There was a ballad-singer in the alehouse, beating time with his feet on the fetid, rush-strewn floor. Jocatta didn’t know him, but she knew his song: The Seelie Silver Maid. In any other circumstances, she would probably have enjoyed it, since it dealt, not with romance, but with the faithful friendship between a young woman and her cousin.

But, since she was in it, she couldn’t like it very much.

She held her breath as she passed the ballad-singer, as if that would help to shut him out. People would only stare if she tried to cover her ears. Fortunately, Arla had chosen a table in the far corner, well away from him. The shouts of servers and the chatter of customers soon swallowed him up, but not before a few of his words had lodged in her head like shrapnel. 

“—on which the fearless maiden stood amaz’d” 

Fearless maiden. Stood. 

She had been lying down, as far as she could remember. And the fear had been too much for one body to contain. It had pushed out things she had thought were essential parts of herself, things she had thought she could never lose—her own name, her father’s. 

And what did she have instead? Just a jumble of images. She remembered blood staining his white beard. She remembered the click of claws on her breastplate. And the creature’s probing, lascivious tongue, sliding in between the joints of her armour. 

Her fists were clenched by the time she reached Arla’s table. She couldn’t hear his greeting over the pounding of her heart. But then, she didn’t need to. He always said the same thing. 

“God have mercy on my master’s child.” 

It was a standard salutation, especially in the North, but it always made her feel as though she had done something awful. 

“What have you brought me?” she said. Under the table, she tried to unclench her fists. 

“News from Illica, your Highness. The little Empress is safely delivered of her child.”

Jocatta’s hands curled up again. 

“It’s born?” 

“She is born, your Highness. A girl.” He coughed delicately and said, “A child named Jocatta.” 

She felt a wave of nausea sweep over her. The new fashion of naming children after the heroes of the Reconquest. And though there were many heroes of the Reconquest—public speakers, silent resisters, surgeons and soldiers and farriers—the three who had shepherded the little Empress back to the Fair Isle were particularly popular. Boys were called Tarquin or Guyon. Girls were called Jocatta. 

But for the Empress herself to choose one of those names—it would start a wave, an epidemic, but that was the least of it. The Empress had been there. She knew the truth. 

No, nobody knew the truth except Jocatta and the dragon. Those wings had formed a kind of dome around them, as if the creature had wanted her death to be private. She had heard people hammering, as on the canvas roof of a tent, desperately trying to get in—Guyon’s voice, maybe. 

And what else? What else? 

Jocatta stood up so suddenly that a few people looked round, startled by the scraping of her chair. She took a deep, shaky breath and sat down again. 

“What about the item I asked you to sell?” 

Arla shrugged. “As to that, I have good news and bad. I was able to find a buyer, but his offer was… insulting.” 

Jocatta leaned across the table. “I thought I made it clear to you that I needed a sale.”

Arla picked up his purse and began counting out coins.

“Your Highness had made it so clear that, whatever my feelings of abhorrence on parting with the treasures of my master’s house for a handful of crowns, I repressed those feelings and took the offer.” 

He had taken out five crowns. Jocatta waited for more, but nothing was forthcoming.

“For my mother’s broche? It’s worth more than that!”  

It had been gold, and shaped like a sprig of heather, studded with amethysts and spinel rubies to represent the blossom. Her mother had used it to fasten her green cloak and boasted playfully about wearing the glens and valleys of home wherever she went.

Jocatta didn’t miss the broche, but she missed the heather. It was all lavender and sun-baked earth down here. It hadn’t rained for three months, and the shortest of strolls along the roads could drench you in dust up to the knee. 

Arla smiled smugly and spread his hands. “The market is flooded, your Highness. Too many items of value left abandoned by refugees or prized off the fingers of the dead.” 

“Fine,” said Jocatta, gritting her teeth. “Five crowns it is, then.”

She didn’t need much. Food held no pleasure anymore—it all tasted of blood or dust or rusty armour, frequently all three—but she needed clothes and books, and the occasional drink. The last two were crucial distractions whenever her memories ambushed her. 

And, if she didn’t mean to steal from her neighbours, she needed money. That was the only reason she was here, braving the ballad-singers and the curious stares. She supposed she could have met Arla at the cottage in Wolf-Pit Wood which had been doing shaky service as her home for the past year and a half, but she didn’t want him to know how to find her. At least this way, she was in control—as much as she ever was, now.

“Tell me,” said Arla, as if he’d read her mind, “does nobody recognize you here?” 

Jocatta shrugged. “What’s the Seelie Silver Maid without her armour?” 

She hadn’t worn it in a year. She was comfortable enough in the linen gowns and aprons of Amatha Province, with her distinctive, frizzled red hair tucked under a headscarf, but she could never get used to how light it felt. She walked through crowds of people and felt as though she had no substance, as if their hands would pass straight through her if they reached out. But thank god, they didn’t reach out.

She saw Arla’s eyes flick behind her, and she turned, stomach heavy with dread. There was some kind of commotion going on at the front door. She heard the nerve-jangling sound of a dozen chairs being drawn back, as their occupants stood and took off their hats—some of them even kneeled amongst the rushes. 

A young man in livery was standing in the doorway. He had a tunic so wide and ornate that it made him look like a playing card. She heard him say, “Presenting his Grace, the Duke of Illica, General of the Imperial Army, veteran of Amatha Plain, Sextus Tarquinius the Younger.” 

He entered, as always, with a great deal of ceremony—with a woman on each arm and a pair of those sleek, blonde greyhounds he was so fond of. There would be attendants wielding peacock-feather fans, and others wielding clubs with nails hammered in, because he made enemies as fast as he spent money. 

But Jocatta didn’t stay to see them. She headed straight for the back door. 

She felt her thoughts slide into their well-worn grooves. The others were just the same as they’d always been. They could cope with it—they were normal—and she was not. 

It was as though they belonged in a different story—a different type of story. Theirs was all swashbuckling adventure, with monsters galore and a drinking song at the end. Hers was a sordid little tragedy. 

She hurried through the door and onto the dirt track that led up to Wolf-Pit Wood, but she hadn’t gone two steps before a voice said, “You’ve lost weight.” 

It was Guyon. Of course, they had sent the loud one in to flush her out, and stationed Guyon round the back, like the experienced poachers they were. Jocatta would have been angry, but she was too busy taking him in. 

He was greyer now, but he still had those autumnal flecks in his hair and eyes which had made him such an intriguing sight in the time before. He belonged to a sect that was sworn to celibacy, and she had often thought those fiery flecks were his passionate nature coming through in spite of everything. 

Jocatta could feel herself losing her temper. She tightened her arms, but she knew her face was turning red. 

“They say I roared with defiance and made stirring speeches,” she snapped. “Over my father’s body!” 

He winced calmly—he really could wince calmly. The lines around his eyes deepened, but his mouth didn’t budge. 

“What did you really do?” 

“What you taught me to do,” said Jocatta. “I stood my ground.” She didn’t want to tell him how little she remembered. “I’d say I was lucky but—” 

She gestured around, trying to convey what she’d come to, what life was like now, but it was hopeless. How could he ever understand it? They weren’t just separate people, they were in separate stories. 

He took a step forwards and lowered his voice, as he always did when he was upset. 

“None of us were in control, Jo-Jo. We were fighting incarnated nightmares. We were all falling—it’s just that some of us landed somewhere soft, and others didn’t.” 

Jocatta didn’t answer, but she didn’t have the strength to storm off either. She just pressed her back against the whitewashed wall of the alehouse, in the hope that she could become as blank and cool and smooth as it was. 

“I can have the ballad-singers move on if you like,” said Guyon. 

She smiled sourly. “What are you now, the Master of the Revels?” 

He inclined his head. “A mere privy councillor. I advise Her Excellency on matters of war.” 

“Then you must have nothing to do all day.” 

“I abide.” 

“You always do,” she said, half-laughing and half-sullen. “It’s good to see you, Guyon.” 

She took a step onto the forest-track, knowing that this feeble goodbye wouldn’t be enough for him, but desperate to get away before he noticed the sullenness—or before it turned into anything worse. 

“Jo-Jo, the Empress has summoned you.” 

She turned round in dismay, but Guyon had the decency to be looking elsewhere. He was stirring the dust with the toe of his boot, teasing it into loops and swirls, as if he was trying to construct a garden of tranquillity in this least-tranquil of all places. 

No. There had been one less tranquil even than this. 

“She expects you within the month,” said Guyon. He didn’t say ‘She’s your sovereign and you’re sworn to obey her’. He didn’t say ‘She’s your cousin and you grew up with her’. He would have been quite within his rights to say either of these things, but he knew her too well. 

“We’re returning today, if you’d like to-” He saw her flinch, and he stopped. “Well. We’ll see you there, perhaps.” 

To her horror, he raised his hand, as if to clap her on the shoulder. As if it were the old days. 

Jocatta backed off, trying to look natural. 

“Perhaps. Take care of yourself, old friend.” 

She turned and walked up the dirt-track to Wolf-Pit Wood, without stopping to see whether he watched her. When she reached the trees, and they enfolded her like a dragon’s wing, she was almost relieved. 

She told herself there had been no reason to squirm back from his hands. She knew she was solid enough. She could sit on chairs, tap her fingers on the table-top, stir up irritable clouds of dust on the road to the alehouse. 

But somehow a person’s touch was different. It filled her with panic. She couldn’t shake the feeling that their hands would pass through her. 

It wasn’t just the lack of armour, it was…well, this, whatever it was. The sickness that the dragon had left her with. 

She could barely remember the battle, and yet she was always slipping back there. It was in her dreams—it was a taste in her mouth, a tension in her shoulders. It really felt as if she had died—or left some crucial part of herself behind, in the worst moment of her life, and was only haunting the present. 

She took the long route to Illica, to avoid passing the fields of thistledown and bone where she had lain beneath the dragon’s claws. She didn’t even know if dragon was the right word. The ballad-singers called it that, but then they had also called Jocatta a hero. 

There had been a head and wings, but several sets of arms—dark and bony and many-jointed. It had scuttled and clicked like a scorpion. 

She took the coast road, through the sand dunes and pine-woods known as Echo Forest, and she delighted in producing no echoes. There was no one to talk to and nothing to say, and even her horse’s hoof-beats were swallowed by the sandy ground. 

But silence wasn’t always her friend. In her father’s castle, there had been a place called the oubliette—a dark, funnel-shaped room with a floor that sloped down to a hole at its centre. No one knew where the hole led to—it was rumoured to be bottomless—but any step you took within the oubliette would send you tumbling down there. 

That was what it was like inside her head these days. The slightest wrong move, the slightest unguarded thought, and she would be back on the plains of thistledown, under the leathery sky. 

She would think of her horse, and her mind would drift into recollections of that other horse, the one that had whinnied madly and slumped beneath her. Birdsong made her think of the way the birds had whipped past her like cannon-shot in their efforts to get away from the dragon. Her mother’s broche was no longer heather, but blood-spattered grass. 

She reached the cliff overlooking the Fair Isle at dusk—not really an isle, but a large hill in a sea of grass, on which the city of Illica towered across the plain. There were farmsteads up here, and she found a dry copse outside a barn to bed down in for the night.

Even practical things, like making the pit for her fire, were fraught with associations. It reminded her of the dismal practicalities of those last days—how they hadn’t known what to do with the gigantic dead body. Everyone had been exhausted, wounded, grieving, but the creature’s body couldn’t just be left outside the city to fester. It would cause disease—maybe even a return of the plague of nightmares which had given rise to such creatures in the first place. 

Jocatta remembered standing on the battlements, the hymns from her father’s funeral service still ringing in her ears, watching hundreds of diggers on the plain as they excavated a fifty-foot pit—attached ropes and pulleys to the dragon’s many limbs, to drag it into its grave.

Now it was a long mound outside the Fair Isle—another isle, but not so fair—on which the grass would never grow again. 

She awoke to a gentle breeze on her face, like the draught of wing-beats, and sat bolt-upright, fumbling for her sword. By the time she realized it was a flock of geese, her teeth were gritted, and there were tears leaking out of the corners of her eyes. 

She wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep. She might as well enter the city early, before the streets had time to fill up with peddlers and preachers and market-day crowds. There would be fewer people to recognize her, fewer people to walk through her if she really turned out to be insubstantial. 

Of course, she probably wasn’t insubstantial. But she kept her elbows tucked in, just in case.

The city had recovered from its pummelling the year before, but not everything had been rebuilt. Here and there, the ruins had been left standing, and turned into gardens. There were yellow poppies growing in the gaps between the stones. There were knee-deep drifts of rosemary—to walk in them was to stir up great clouds of butterflies, blue as the rosemary flowers themselves. 

It was depressingly easy to get near the Empress. Jocatta did not go through the official channels. She didn’t want to be announced like Tarquin had been. She didn’t want to be called ‘a veteran of Amatha Plain’.

She found the entrance used by the laundresses, picked up a wicker basket, and made a few detours, keeping her eyes fixed on the veiny marble floor. She knew the Imperial Palace well. She had spent three days there after the battle, while heads were bandaged, dressings were changed, and funerals were arranged. And though the battle itself was murky in her memory, the days afterwards were marked by a horrible clarity, especially her father’s funeral service. She could hear every toll of the bell, every swing of the priest’s censer.

The Palace had been remodelled by the Deusae during the occupation, but beautifully. There were pillars of bulging white marble and latticework screens. The guard was light, and though Jocatta had skills, it was too easy to penetrate their defenses. She would have to upbraid Guyon about it when next she saw him.

She found the Empress in one of these bright, shiny chambers, snoozing in a chair beside a crib that presumably contained her baby. She was a picture of peace and serenity: dark-skinned, as the Emperor had been, with a few freckles testifying to her Northern heritage. Her hair was a lovely gold-black.

She was getting on to twenty now, but she would always be ‘the little Empress’. That had been the magic formula on everyone’s lips during the time of the invasion, four words that could summon up a future for those who had been brought as low as slaves: “The little Empress lives.” 

Everyone knew, in those dark days, that the Emperor and all his family had been murdered by the Deusae—except for one little daughter who had been visiting her kin in the North. They didn’t know that she had been sent there to undergo exorcism, because she had been plagued by dark, prophetic visions. They didn’t know that these visions continued, through the long years of the occupation, while the little girl was growing up, and were used to communicate messages of hope to her followers. 

They didn’t know that the girl’s cousin, who had always been too strong and sturdy to be a princess—who had trained as a warrior in the forlorn hope that she could be of some use to the world that way—had agreed, against her father’s wishes, to transport the little Empress back to her rightful throne on the Fair Isle. 

They knew now, of course. They couldn’t shut up about it. 

Jocatta stared at her, trying to feel something other than panic. All this peace and prosperity—the white marble, the child, the swathes of rosemary in the city ruins—when it didn’t feel like a slap in the face, it felt like a delusion, like the sort of dream someone would feed you if they desperately didn’t want you to wake up. 

She was sure it couldn’t be right. She was sure something horrible was about to happen. 

The Empress made a sound in her sleep but didn’t wake.

That was the pinnacle of getting on with your life, Jocatta thought: creating new life. Tarquin might swagger and Guyon might smile—and she might hate them both for it—but the only one who seemed truly untouched by the things they’d been through was the little Empress. 

Jocatta wanted to run—or possibly to be sick—but the child caught her attention then. It was stirring in its crib. It opened its mouth when it saw her, and squirmed its arms and legs around, but she didn’t know whether this was anxiety or approbation. 

She thought of what she must look like to a little child—dour and looming as a dragon—and tried to smile. 

“So you’re Jocatta, are you?” she muttered. “You wait till people tell you to stop being so Jo-catty. They’ll think it’s really funny. For ages.” 

“Are you saying I’m mad?” 

For a moment, she was taken aback. 

“Why… would you think that?” 

Jocatta tried to shrug, but her shoulders were too heavy for it. 

“That’s what madness is, isn’t it? Not having control over your own mind?” 

The Empress laughed sharply; the closest she ever came to anger. 

“I heartily dispute your definition!” she said. “None of us have control over our minds all the time. That which we can control is only a tiny part of what the mind is.” 

Jocatta shook her head again. “You didn’t answer my question. Can you see a future in which I’m free of this?” 

“I have faith in you.” 

“I don’t want your faith, I want your prediction.” 

The Empress sighed and got up from her stool. She put the baby down, swept a hand through her hair, picked the baby up again, paced over the white marble. Perhaps this was the closest she could get to anger. 

“Do you know what it was like facing childbirth without you?” she said. “Knowing how quickly you would have turned those idiot midwives out of the room when they frightened me? Knowing that I could die without—?”

Jocatta blinked hard, trying to get her thoughts in order. “Does it ever…? Can you see a future in which I’m free of this?” 

“I don’t know what ‘this’ is,” said the Empress quietly. 

“Yes, you do!” 

She stopped, and clamped her lips shut. Jocatta saw her turn away, saw her shoulders slump as she gradually calmed. She didn’t know what to do. 

“Well, never mind,” said the Empress, without turning back. “You should understand what my faith is before you scorn it, that’s all. And my patience. Guyon is the epitome of patience, and I outlasted him. As regards your question, you do understand that I can’t summon visions of the future at will? And I can never see the whole context of an event in a way that makes it intelligible.” 

There was a hesitation to that last sentence which made Jocatta suspect there was more. 

“But?” 

“But yes. I have seen you laughing.” 

Jocatta took a step forwards. “Laughing how? At what? What kind of a laugh?” 

“I believe,” said the Empress, in a voice of strained patience, “you have not understood my preceding remarks on the subject.” 

“It was a real laugh?” 

“Yes. You were happy.” 

“I don’t believe you.” 

“Then what, may I ask, was the point of consulting me?” 

Jocatta stepped back again, shaky and confused. What was a laugh? Even more ephemeral than a bloody butterfly. Was that all she had to hold on to? And yet it seemed unthinkable at the moment. She wasn’t sure she understood the mechanics of laughter anymore. 

When the Empress turned back, she was herself again—mild, polite, and unflappable. “Will you stay here tonight?” she said, hoisting the child onto her other hip. “The weather’s about to break, you’ll need a dry place to sleep. And I could do with some help with the baby.” 

“Don’t you have a nursemaid?” 

She shook her head. “I’m nursing her myself. I wanted to.” 

Jocatta rolled her eyes. “You’re the ruler of five kingdoms—you’ve only just got rid of the invaders.” 

“My privy councillors are quite capable. Guyon’s one of them, remember.” 

Jocatta snorted. “He was careless enough to let me get close to you tonight.” 

“I don’t think that was carelessness.” She saw Jocatta flinch, and added: “Don’t be too hard on them, Jo-Jo. They love you.”

“A funny kind of love,” she retorted. 

“There are all kinds.” 

Jocatta’s stomach plummeted. It was something her father had said. She felt as if she was back in the oubliette, tumbling towards the black hole at its centre—only, instead of taking a wrong step, this time she had been pushed. 

The Empress watched her, pale behind the freckles. Did she know? But, of course, he had said it to both of them, when they’d been children. For the first time, it occurred to Jocatta that the Empress had lost him too.

“You blame yourself,” she said, when there was no color left to drain from Jocatta’s face, “for his death.” 

Jocatta gave a surly shrug. “He never wanted to be there. It wasn’t his war, he said so. I forced his hand when I ran off with you, and he died for it.” 

“You couldn’t have known that was going to happen.” 

“I could have taken an educated guess.” 

“So now you’re tormenting yourself for not being psychic? With the information available to you at the time, you made a perfectly reasonable choice. Nobody can see the future.” 

“Except you,” said Jocatta, without looking up at her. 

“I thought,” said the Empress gently, “we’d already discussed that.” 

Jocatta chewed her lip for a moment, and then looked up. Her vision was wobbling, and her voice was raspy when she spoke. 

“It wasn’t like war. Or, anyway, not like I’d been taught to expect war would be. This was cruel—it was personal.” 

“Yes,” said the little Empress. 

“I don’t know how to get past it,” she whispered. 

“Neither do I,” said the Empress, and her voice was strained, as if she, too, was fighting off tears. “Time? Coming here and talking?” 

Jocatta snorted, but the Empress ignored her. 

“Can you just hold on to the fact that you will feel differently one day, if only for a moment? After all, you felt differently before.” 

“That was before!” 

“Exactly. Things change, that’s the only constant in life. And if they can change from good to bad, why can’t they change from bad to good?” 

“What if they don’t?” 

The Empress gave her a beleaguered smile. “I’ll still be here,” she said.