Chapter Thirty-Nine Simran
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Simran
I know you don’t like to talk about it. Maybe a letter will be easier.
Galath, when I’m dead and gone, I know you won’t stay in the cottage. That’s okay. But take Mal with you, won’t you? She won’t do well on her own. She’s been a cat so long that she’s forgotten how to be a spirit. She’ll need you.
I’m not afraid of dying first. I just don’t want you her to be alone.
Source: Letter from Hari Patel to Galath Patel
Adder was gone. Simran rose on unsteady legs and took one step, two, three—infinite, awful steps until her knees gave out again, and she was on the ground by Galath, who was bleeding heavily, eyes closed. He was breathing, but so shallowly.
Vina kneeled across from her, with a just-as-hollow-eyed Hari at her side.
Simran heard running footsteps. Oliver was there, leaning down, Ella biting back curses.
“You can help him,” Simran said, clutching Oliver’s arm. Cunning folk could bless, could heal. “Please, please. If there’s one thing witching can’t do it’s heal. I—I can’t.”
“But we can,” said Ella. “We can do it. Oliver, darling?”
He nodded. “I’m with you. All of Lydia’s circle—we’ll always stand by you, Simran. If there’s any way under the stars to save him, we’ll do it.”
She scrambled back and let the cunning folk take her place. They moved, drawing out their blessings and their tonics, their bundles of herbs—and looked more and more worried as the seconds passed.
“We can’t heal him,” Oliver said, baffled. “We cannot clean the wound, or stanch the blood. It is as if magic is killing him.”
“A tale,” Simran said thinly. “It’s a tale.”
“Exactly so,” a voice said. “His own power kills him. As long as he wears limni ink on his skin, no mortal healing can spare his life.”
Simran whirled. There, walking from the gate, was a woman in a long hooded robe of midnight blue.
Her incarnate scent, of incense and stone, reminded Simran distinctly of Lady Tristesse.
As if she were just as old as the fae maiden, just as ink-made and ink-born.
There was something threatening about her.
Perhaps it was the darkness of her hood, concealing all of her face but the grayish shadow of her mouth, her chin.
Or perhaps it was something to do with her magic.
It carried the feel of witchcraft—maleficence and enchantment alike.
“Peace,” she said. Her voice was melodious: the deep rippling stillness of lake water disturbed by a curious hand. “I am the Lady, and I come for him.”
The woman in all the paintings and carvings of the Eternal Prince. Dark-haired, an enchantress, carrying his body on a barge to the distant abbey where apples grow, on water like glass.
“You freed my tale,” said the hooded lady.
“And how strange, as you did so, I felt his call—the Prince I carry across the waters to his long rest. He should not die for many decades. But he has passed now. That cannot be changed.” She kneeled by him, brushing a white and delicate hand against his forehead.
“But he will return again, and I hope to a kinder fate,” she said.
She gathered him up, as if he were light as a feather.
Simran remembered the thin blue volume she’d freed first. She had freed this woman—this faceless Lady, with the scent of deep water upon her.
“And what is your tale, Lady?” Simran asked, voice soft.
Though she couldn’t see beneath the hood, she was oddly sure the incarnate woman was smiling.
“You need not know,” she said. “You must simply allow me to fulfill my role and carry the Eternal King to his resting place, so he may rise again. But you have done me a kindness, so I will offer you this: The waters that lie at the abbey are rich with limni ink, with tale-magic, from broken chains and the Prince alike. Bring your dying one with you, and see if the tales may gift you his life.”
“How will we get him there before he dies?” Hari was the one who asked, grim but determined, cradling Galath’s head with his hands.
“All waters carry me back to the abbey where the Eternal Prince sleeps and heals and lives again,” she said. “Travel with me, and we will see if your own eternal one can be saved.”
The barge waiting on the Thames was tale-wrought. It was a plain barge of wood, but its rowers were veiled, dripping water, their skin a silvery blue. Nymphs. They climbed onto the raft: witches and cunning folk, wounded Galath and his family around him.
As they drifted through the Thames, some instinct urged Simran to turn her head.
She saw the Spymaster on the embankment, a silent and ageless figure, magic still eddying in the air around him.
Some nameless emotion filled his eyes. He bowed his head as they passed; then turned, to be swallowed swiftly by the smog of London.
The barge moved, with a blur and breath, crossing the waters of the Isle until they came to near-open sea.
They came to the islet surrounded by water, the broken abbey a scar on its surface.
The Lady lifted the Eternal Prince up in her arms, and with her nymphs trailing her walked through the high waters toward the abbey.
The waters parted for her, silk cut through by the blade of her body.
Vina and Hari carried Galath across the sinking sand in her wake.
It was a long walk, endless. But he was breathing, and that was enough. Simran followed, her legs leaden.
They laid him on the sand at the base of the great ruin, as Simran instructed. Simran kneeled with him for a while, staring at his slack face. It had all begun here, with Elayne and Galath. Perhaps it would end here today too.
“Step back,” Simran said to the others.
Hari was the one who hesitated; who looked down at Galath with a blank look on his face.
“I thought it would be me first,” he said. “It had to be me first. I can’t. If he dies here—I can’t walk away and leave him alone when I could be here. If he doesn’t hear my voice, feel my hand on his hand and I could have…” He shook his head, eyes unblinking. “Sim,” he said. “I can’t leave him.”
“Hari, if I can save him you know I will.” She clutched his hand. Looked into his eyes. “You know I’ll try.”
He nodded. He wasn’t weeping, but she could see the emotions wound tight in him—anticipatory grief, the great cresting tide threatening to blot him out. “I know,” he said. “Sim. I know.”
Vina grasped his shoulder.
“Come with me,” she said. “Hari. Papa. Come with me.”
He sagged into that grip. Followed her.
Then there was Simran—alone, with Galath’s still-breathing body. The cunning folk were waiting. In the distance, the King was being laid gently to rest. She could hear the singing of nymphs—a liquid, sweet music, mournful and loving.
“Oh, Galath,” she murmured. Tears stung her eyes. “You can’t die here. I’d never forgive you.”
The scar of ink still lay on the horizon—the wound she’d made when she’d freed the Eternal Prince, at the end of her last life. This was a place of pure tale-magic. But there was no tale that could save him, nothing she could beg for.
“I don’t know if it’s enough that I want you back,” Simran murmured. The tears began to fall. Strange. She couldn’t stop them. “I don’t know. I…” She bowed over him. She could manipulate ink, break the power of the archivists, free a Beast of pure ancient tales, but she could not save Galath.
The Lady’s voice moved through her, a sinuous ribbon, a river.
As long as he wears limni ink on his skin, no mortal healing can spare his life.
She looked at his forehead. His limni mark, that endless circle, stood out livid and red.
She swallowed. To remove his ink—could it be done? There was only one way to find out.
“You have a family. If you live, you’ll have a future. You can grow old. You won’t have to die alone.” She brushed his hair back from his face. “So try to live, Galath,” she said. “Please.”
She pressed her hand to his forehead—to the circle of limni ink that made him what he was.
She’d learned to manipulate ink over lifetimes. She’d learned to scribe it into skin. She’d never taken it away.
But now, she pressed her thumb to the ink on his forehead—that deep, squirming magic drawn from the deep bones of the Isle.
“Come,” she whispered, firm and coaxing.
“Come away from him. A scribe made you. A witch holds you now. Come away from this man, and let him be what he must be without you. There is ink here to welcome you. Leave him be.”
If it worked… Maybe he would die in a heartbeat. Maybe her touch would do nothing. But once, a fae had told Vina that Simran would be the end of the assassin’s immortality. Simran had thought that meant she would kill him. And now she hoped, desperately hoped, that she and Vina had misunderstood.
The ink burned as hot as a star beneath her touch. She bit her lip. Pulled.
It gave way, a ribbon that lifted from his skin and sank into the waiting sand, leaving nothing but a scar behind.
Simran breathed fast, shallow. She’d done it. She’d done it. She sucked in a breath, and found her voice.
“Help him!”
The cunning folk swept across the sand at Simran’s yell.
They crouched by him, drawing on magic, feeding it into his body, the wound at his side, the mortal pain in his mortal flesh.
Simran stepped back, clutching her arms around her body, shivering violently as she watched him lie there, unmoving, silent as the grave.
Vina moved to stand beside her, face gray, rooted to the spot, as if she could not bear to touch him, to feel his death, to know.
It was Hari who was brave. Hari, who kneeled down on the mirror-bright sand. Hari who was cupping his face as dawn filled the sky, rising with a pale glow.
“Wake up, love,” he said, and pressed his lips to Galath’s.
And Galath’s eyes opened.