‘Don’t look at me like that. I don’t want you to pity me. At least I’m alive.’
He flushes. ‘I pity the child that you were, having to deal with something like this. But how could I pity you now? I already knew you were courageous, but truly …’ He lays a hand over mine. ‘No other Protector has undergone such a trial. I think that people should know how brave you are. I think you should show your scars.’
I shake my head, clutching the blanket tighter. ‘They’ll just see that I’m damaged. Broken.’
‘No. They’ll see that you’re strong.’
For the next couple of days, I keep to my rooms. The guest master informs me that Patrus has been ordered to leave court; apparently he is a man with plenty of enemies and few friends. No one seems to grieve for him. I also receive a note from the queen assuring me of her sympathy and goodwill and asking me to take supper with her once I am recovered. Aron, Odette and Lucien are all with me when this note arrives.
‘If I didn’t know you better, cousin,’ Aron says, twitching the letter out of my fingers and scanning it, ‘I’d almost suspect that this was a deliberate move on your part. You’ve disposed of Patrus very neatly.’
I laugh, but Odette wags a finger at her brother. ‘Aron, how can you speak so? Imagine if Patrus had succeeded in his aim …’
‘But he couldn’t have,’ I observe. ‘He couldn’t make me transform just by the force of his will. And he hadn’t taken the trouble to acquire any influence. If he’d turned up here with Letya and threatened to harm her, then I would have done whatever he asked.’
‘What if he’d turned up with Lucien instead?’ Aron asks, glancing sideways at my clerk. As I frown and tap my chin, as if the question is difficult, Lucien and Aron both laugh. Patrus’s attack seems to have broken down the last remaining reserve between them.
The next night, determined not to miss all of the star shower, I borrow a telescope from Aron, go to the top of the tower nearest my apartment and watch the silver light rain down from above, drawing bright threads across the Firebird’s Wake, the faint band of stars that bisects the night sky. It’s late when I finally to return to my rooms, and the corridors of the castle are empty, apart from the Dark Guards on their endless patrols. My mind is so full of the beauty of what I’ve seen that I’ve forgotten about Patrus, about Siegfried, about my continued inability to transform. The Silver Citadel itself seems almost insubstantial compared with the eternity of the heavens.
Until someone grabs me from behind and claps a hand over my mouth.
‘Aderyn, it’s me. Don’t make a sound.’
Siegfried. He lets me go.
‘You scared me,’ I whisper. ‘Why did you do that? And when did you get back?’
‘I’ll explain. But you need to come with me now.’
I hesitate. I have no desire to be alone with Siegfried, not until I’ve made him understand that he is wrong about my feelings for him.
‘Surely tomorrow would be –’
‘This cannot wait until morning.’ He takes my arms and draws me closer. ‘I’ve found him, Aderyn. I’ve found the man who murdered your mother.’
Eleven
I follow Siegfried back through the silent corridors. At first, I assume we are going to his apartment. But it soon becomes clear that I’m wrong. He’s leading me downward, away from the parts of the Citadel used by nobles, towards the realm of the flightless: offices, kitchens, sculleries, dungeons.
Finally, we reach an area that seems abandoned: rooms stacked with old furniture, firewood, piles of mildewed fabric that might once have been clothes. In the jaundiced light cast by Siegfried’s candle something gleams briefly in the shadows: a round shield, embossed with an eagle. We must be walking through the remnants of the House of Aquila, the previous royal dynasty. I suppose when Cygnus I took power, the castle was cleared, the belongings of the defeated inhabitants left down here to rot.
Siegfried hands me the candle while he unlocks a door to one side. I blink in the sudden brightness; there are lamps burning in the room we step into, and two men – guards, wearing the insignia of Olorys – are seated at a table, eating.
They get to their feet as we enter. ‘My lord.’
‘Bring him up.’
The guards pull on heavy leather gauntlets, go to a trapdoor in the corner of the room and heave it up. One takes a lamp, the other a pitchfork that is leaning against the wall, and they descend. I hear muffled voices, barked commands, swearing. The lamp-bearer reappears. Behind him, stumbling up the stairs, his arms bound behind his back and his upper torso covered with a leather cape, a grey-haired man; his face is swollen and disfigured with bruises. The second guard climbs through the trapdoor and shoves the man in the back with the pitchfork, sending him sprawling at Siegfried’s feet, where he lies groaning and twitching.
Siegfried gestures to the man. ‘A shape-shifter, and a surviving member of a goshawk family. Someone who, according to official histories, shouldn’t exist. Another gift for you, Aderyn.’
I peer at the man, but it doesn’t help: those who attacked my mother and me were transformed. This man could be one of them, but I can’t tell. ‘How do you know it was him?’
‘Tell her your name, filth.’ The man launches into a long, inarticulate string of snarls and curses, until Siegfried kicks him in the stomach. ‘Tell her your name.’
‘Deeks … Deeks Flayfeather.’
The name on the slip of paper. But still, I hesitate. There’s only one way I can be certain. ‘What did my mother say to you, just before she died?’
He ignores me. At a signal from Siegfried, one of the guards grabs him and hauls him up onto his knees; the other jabs the pitchfork against his neck.
‘Ask him again,’ Siegfried says.
‘What did my mother say to you before she died?’
‘What mother? My mother died.’ He begins to mumble something in a tuneless, sing-song tone.
Siegfried grabs his face, forcing him to look up at me. ‘Tell him who you are.’
‘I am Aderyn of Atratys. My mother was Diandra of Atratys. She died six years ago, in an attack by two hawks.’
Flayfeather’s left eye is swollen shut. But the sudden glare from the other, sharp and orange-irised, transfixes me.
‘I remember you now. My talons in your back. Red blood against white feathers.’
‘If you remember, tell me what my mother said to you before you killed her.’
‘She said, “Spare my daughter, I beg you.” And I said –’ he giggles, licking his lips – ‘I said, “Like the hawk I will fall upon them; I will rend their flesh from their bones.”’
A quotation from the Litanies, the line that haunted my dreams for months after the attack. As he speaks the words, his voice echoes through my memory, my heart races and I stumble, steadying myself against the wall.
‘Where …? Where did you find him?’
‘In the mountains not far from Deaufleur. His family were landowners there, once upon a time. The few that survived the war returned to a place where they knew they could hide. They continued the line for a while through inbreeding. But he is the last one left, as far as my people have been able to discover.’