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Leilyn nodded slowly. ‘Where is she?’
‘The palace.’221
Her mother’s gaze sharpened. ‘So the king has her.’
‘Yes.’
Silence again. Faintly, Andala could hear the crackle of flames in the sitting room. It had been her favourite place in the house, all those years ago.
‘Does he know about you?’ There was a note of worry in Leilyn’s calm, measured voice that no one but Andala would have heard. She shook her head, and Leilyn nodded again. ‘Good. Good.’
There was another agonisingly quiet moment. Then: ‘I need your help,’ Andala burst out. Sitting here, in her old home, in the chair she’d sat on for fifteen years, was pushing her towards the edge. She needed to get this done and leave, before she fell apart entirely. ‘The king – he’s going to start hurting her to try to get her to sing. We need a way to stop him from doing that.’
Leilyn sat back in her chair, regarding Andala with new interest. ‘So you know her.’
‘I … What?’
‘You know the skylark. Care for her, too, I’d wager, if you’ve come all this way.’
Andala had always hated how Leilyn could read her. Old, long-dormant anger began to awaken in her chest. She pushed it down. Ignoring her mother’s words, she pressed on.
‘Youknow things about the skylark. You used to talk to me about her. So we need your help – not just to save her, but to make the sun rise again. Will you help us?’
‘Have you transformed, since it happened?’ Leilyn asked, disregarding the question.
Andala clenched her fists beneath the table. It was so like her mother, to talk around the point this way. ‘No,’ she ground out. ‘Of course I haven’t. I’ve no need to.’222
‘But you could still transform, if you wished.’ Leilyn cocked her head to the side. ‘Or have you not yet mastered transforming at will?’
Andala stood. The scrape of chair legs on wood was abrasive in the quiet. Her anger flared now, bright and hot, like a flame fed with paper. ‘Why in the skies would I want to master that? Why would Iwantto change other than when I have to?’
Her mother gave her a look. Pitying. Infuriating. ‘So you are still fighting against your nature. Oh, Andala. After all this time …’
‘My nature? It was not my nature untilyouforced it upon me.’
Leilyn opened her mouth, but Andala cut her off. They had had this conversation before. She had not come here to have it again.
She sat back down. Briefly, she explained what she and Kitt hoped to do with the mechanical bird. ‘If you know anything about her song,’ Andala finished, ‘or some way we might recreate it … we would be grateful for your help.’ The last she said through gritted teeth, but meant it nonetheless.
Leilyn sat for a while, seemingly lost in thought. ‘I don’t know the skylark’s song,’ she said eventually. ‘I have never heard it. I fear it will be … impossible to recreate.’
Andala’s heart sank to the soles of her feet. Some part of her had expected to hear as much, but the words sent her reeling with disappointment just the same.
‘It’s our last hope,’ she said faintly, almost to herself. ‘It’s our last hope and it’s not going to work.’
Leilyn moved her chair closer to Andala, inclining her body towards her. Andala was vaguely aware that Leilyn had reached out a hand as if to touch hers, and then withdrawn it.
‘Could you not speak to her? Surely she would listen to you, if you explained to her what was at stake?’
Andala shook her head. ‘She’s not herself. Or she is, but …’223She forced herself to look up at her mother. ‘They killed her father. The king was keeping her confined to the palace, and she escaped. His soldiers went to her home to retrieve her, and …’
Leilyn’s eyes had gone wide, a hand flying to her mouth. ‘The poor girl. How can we blame her, then, for doing what she’s done?’
‘I don’t blame her,’ Andala murmured. ‘I don’t even know why I came here. Perhaps I should just leave her to do what she’s doing, and take the world with her.’
Leilyn frowned. ‘You mustn’t talk like that. You mustn’t give up hope—’
But Andala was shaking her head. She rose, ready to leave. ‘I don’t know why I came here. Why I thought—’ She cut herself off with an odd, humourless laugh. ‘I suppose I was desperate.’
