Page 93 of A Sorceress Comes to Call
She led Cordelia down the hall, to a narrow door set unobtrusively in the wall. It led down an equally narrow set of steps, and though the walls had clearly been whitewashed recently, they were covered in scratches and dark smudges from heavy use.
Halfway down, they passed one of the footmen, who was yawning. “You’re up late,” he said to Alice.
“So’re you,” she replied, while Cordelia huddled in her shadow.
“Ah, well. We’re all at sixes and sevens, trying to chase down this monster horse in the woods.” He scowled. “Tell the truth, I didn’t half believe in it until I saw what happened to Gamekeeper Ross. Don’t you be going outside alone. That thing’s a killer.”
“Hadn’t planned to,” said Alice. Cordelia tried not to look horribly guilty. She flattened against the wall to let him pass and he winked at her, which only made things worse.
Alice led them through the darkened kitchen. The fire was banked down to coals and cast an orange glow across the floor. “Be glad it’s not a baking day,” she murmured over her shoulder. “Someone’d be in to start the bread rising before long.”
The kitchen led onto the kitchen garden, with its high stone walls to shelter the plants. At the gate, Alice stopped. “You sure it’s safe to go alone?” she asked.
“Safer for me than it would be for anyone else,” Cordelia said, which was true.
“Mmm.” The older girl gnawed on a fingernail. “Thinking maybe I should go with you, for all that.”
“No!” Cordelia bit back panic. The space in her chest was so full that any moment she would start shrieking like a steam kettle just to relieve the pressure. “You’ll be in terrible danger. He won’t hurt me, but he doesn’t know you at all.”
Alice sighed. “All right.” Cordelia nearly wilted with relief when she added, “If you’re not back by first light, though, I’m telling Lady Hester. So don’t be gone long.”
“I won’t,” promised Cordelia fervently, even though she had no idea how long it would take to get Falada away. For all she knew, she’d have to ride him clear to Little Haw, or worse, to the north where her mother was. Still, none of that mattered as long as she got the familiar away from anyone he could hurt. “At least, I’ll try not to. And Alice…” She darted forward and hugged the other girl. “Thank you.”
Before Alice could react, Cordelia opened the gate and slipped through it, into the night.
She’d worried that it would be hard to find Falada. It seemed like it was easy for him to vanish when people went looking. But either she was lucky or he was looking for her, because she was barely halfway to the tree line when she saw the glowing shape coming toward her.
“Oh god,” she said, involuntarily, and bit the side of her hand to keep from yelling.
She almost didn’t recognize him. She had known him her entire life, and would have sworn that she could identify him from a single hoof glimpsed under a stall door. But he moved wrong now, all his grace lost, his stride gone scrabbling and uneven. She didn’t know if it was because his balance had changed, without the mass of his head, or if the severed neck muscles no longer flexed with each stride, but he was no longer a thing she understood.
Of course it’s him, she thought, high and hysterical. It’s not like there could be two headless white horses walking the grounds.
He galloped toward her and she flinched back and closed her eyes. She could hear his hooves on the ground and the crackle of twigs and her own breath going in and out like a bellows.
The geese were still watching him, she realized, hearing a low noise in the distance. Apparently they had learned not to get too close. Falada was no longer pretending to be polite. Now he meant to kill.
The noises stopped. She cracked her eyes open, and there he was, standing in front of her. She could see directly into the wound that gaped bloodlessly open at eye level. A single vertebra sprouted from the stump, splintered and broken from the axe wound.
He could not look at her any longer, but she still felt the weight of his regard bearing down on her, full of duty and mockery and rage.
“You have to stop,” Cordelia said. Her voice sounded very small and thin in her own ears. “It’s me you want. You have to stop hurting people.”
Falada danced in place for a moment, side to side, then slowly extended one front leg. The other curled up and he bowed to her, a mockingly theatrical gesture, the meaning clear.
“Oh no,” breathed Cordelia. “Oh no, no.”
He stayed bowed before her, waiting. She swallowed around the lump in her throat. “Is that the deal, then? I get on your back and you take me away?”
He could no longer nod, but his whole body shuddered up and down.
You have to do it. It’s the only way.
She bit the side of her hand again and muffled a scream with it. It relieved the pressure a little, like lancing a wound, but no more.
“All right,” she whispered. “All right.” She wiped her hands on her skirt. “We’ll go, then.”
She hated the ease with which she mounted. Years of muscle memory could not be so easily forgotten. She hiked up her skirts and flung herself up onto the familiar’s back and for an instant, it was all exactly as it used to be.
