A Song for Orphans. Морган Райс

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      “Do you think you get to?” she asked. “You are my apprentice, sworn to me. I may do as I wish with you.”

      Plants sprang up around Kate then, sharp thorns turning them into weapons. They didn’t touch her, but the threat was obvious. It seemed that Siobhan wasn’t done yet. She gestured over the water of the fountain again, and the scene it showed shifted.

      “I could take you and give you over to one of the pleasure gardens of Southern Issettia,” Siobhan said. “There is a king there who might be inclined to be cooperative in exchange for the gift.”

      Kate had a brief glimpse of silk-clad girls running around ahead of a man twice their age.

      “I could take you and put you in the slave lines of the Near Colonies,” Siobhan continued, gesturing so that the scene showed long lines of workers working with picks and shovels in an open mine. “Perhaps I will tell you where to find the finest stones for merchants who do what I wish.”

      The scene shifted another time, showing what was obviously a torture chamber. Men and women screamed as masked figures worked with hot irons.

      “Or perhaps I will give you to the priests of the Masked Goddess, to earn repentance for your crimes.”

      “You wouldn’t,” Kate said.

      Siobhan reached out, grabbing her so fast that Kate barely had time to think before the other woman was forcing her head down under the water of the fountain. She cried out, but that just meant that she had no time to take a breath as she plunged into it. The cold of the water surrounded her, and though Kate fought, it felt as though her strength had abandoned her in those moments.

      “You don’t know what I would do, and what I wouldn’t,” Siobhan said, her voice seeming to come from a long way away. “You think that I think about the world as you do. You think that I will stop short, or be kind, or ignore your insults. I could send you to do any of the things I wanted, and you would still be mine. Mine to do with as I wished.”

      Kate saw things in the water then. She saw screaming figures wracked with agony. She saw a space filled with pain and violence, terror and helplessness. She recognized some of them, because she’d killed them, or their ghosts, at least. She’d seen their images as they’d chased her through the forest. They were warriors who had been sworn to Siobhan.

      “They betrayed me,” Siobhan said, “and they paid for their betrayal. You will keep your word to me, or I will make you into something more useful. Do as I want, or you will join them, and serve me as they do.”

      She released Kate then, and Kate came up, spluttering as she fought for air. The fountain was gone now, and they were standing in the yard of the smithy once more. Siobhan was a little way from her now, standing as if nothing had happened.

      “I want to be your friend, Kate,” she said. “You wouldn’t want me for an enemy. But I will do what I must.”

      “What you must?” Kate shot back. “You think that you have to threaten me, or have people killed?”

      Siobhan spread her hands. “As I said, it is the curse of the powerful. You have potential to be very useful in what is to come, and I will make the most of that.”

      “I won’t do it,” Kate said. “I won’t kill some girl for no reason.”

      Kate lashed out then, not physically, but with her powers. She drew her strength together and threw it like a stone at the walls that sat around Siobhan’s mind. It bounced off, the power flickering away.

      “You don’t have the power to fight me,” Siobhan said, “and you don’t get to make that choice. Let me make this simpler for you.”

      She gestured, and the fountain appeared again, the waters shifting. This time, when the image settled, she didn’t have to ask who she was looking at.

      “Sophia?” Kate said. “Leave her alone, Siobhan, I’m warning you – ”

      Siobhan grabbed her again, forcing her to look at that image with the awful strength she seemed to possess here.

      “Someone is going to die,” Siobhan said. “You can choose who, simply by choosing whether you kill Gertrude Illiard. You can kill her, or your sister can die. It is your choice.”

      Kate stared at her. She knew that it wasn’t a choice, not really. Not when it came to her sister. “All right,” she said. “I’ll do it. I’ll do what you want.”

      She turned, heading for Ashton. She didn’t go to say goodbye to Will, Thomas, or Winifred, partly because she didn’t want to risk bringing Siobhan that close to them, and partly because she was sure that they would somehow see what it was she had to do next, and they would be ashamed of her for it.

      Kate was ashamed. She hated the thought of what she was about to do, and the fact that she had so little choice in it. She just had to hope that it was all a test, and that Siobhan would stop her in time.

      “I have to do this,” she said to herself as she walked. “I have to.”

      Yes, Siobhan’s voice whispered to her, you do.

      CHAPTER TWO

      Sophia walked back toward the camp she’d made with the others, not knowing what to do, what to think, even what to feel. She had to concentrate on every step in the dark, but the truth was that she couldn’t concentrate, not after everything she’d just found out. She stumbled over roots, holding onto trees for support as she tried to make sense of the news. She felt leaves tangle in her long red hair, bark brushing stripes of moss against her dress.

      Sienne’s presence steadied her. The forest cat pushed against her legs, guiding the way back to the spot where the wagon stood, the circle of light from the campfire seeming like the only point of safety in a world that suddenly had no foundations. Cora and Emeline were there, the former indentured servant at the palace and the waif with a talent for touching minds looking at Sophia as if she’d turned into a ghost.

      Right then, Sophia wasn’t sure she hadn’t. She felt insubstantial; unreal, as though the least breath of air might blow her in a dozen different directions, never to fit back together again. Sophia knew the trip back through the trees would have left her looking like a wild thing. She sat against one of the wheels of the wagon, staring blankly ahead while Sienne curled up against her, almost the way a domestic cat would have rather than the large predator she was.

      “What is it?” Emeline asked. Did something happen? she added mentally.

      Cora went to her too, reaching out to touch Sophia’s shoulder. “Is something wrong?”

      “I…” Sophia laughed, even though laughing was anything but the appropriate response to what she was feeling. “I think I’m pregnant.”

      Somewhere in the middle of saying it, the laughter turned into tears, and once they started, Sophia couldn’t stop them. They just poured from her, and even she couldn’t tell whether they were tears of happiness or despair, tension at the thought of everything that might be coming for her or something else entirely.

      The others moved in to hold her, wrapping their arms around Sophia while the world blurred through the haze of it all.

      “It will be all right,” Cora said. “We’ll make it all work.”

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