The Bitter Twins Read online

  Copyright © 2018 Jen Williams

  The right of Jen Williams to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2018

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  eISBN: 978 1 4722 3519 0

  Cover illustration by Patrick Insole incorporating images © TheWorst/Shutterstock and Golden Shrimp/Shutterstock

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  An Hachette UK Company

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  www.headline.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  About Jen Williams

  About the Book

  By Jen Williams and available from Headline

  Praise

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Read More . . .

  Acknowledgements

  About Jen Williams

  Jen Williams started writing about pirates and dragons as a young girl and hasn’t ever stopped. Her short stories have featured in numerous anthologies and her debut novel, The Copper Promise, was published in 2014 to huge acclaim. Jen was nominated in the Best Newcomer category at the 2015 British Fantasy Awards and all the novels in the Copper Cat Trilogy, The Copper Promise, The Iron Ghost and The Silver Tide, have been shortlisted for British Fantasy Awards in the ‘Best Novel’ category, and are available from Headline in the UK. The Bitter Twins is the second epic novel in The Winnowing Flame Trilogy, following on from the much-praised The Ninth Rain. Jen lives in London with her partner and their cat.

  About the Book

  The Ninth Rain has fallen. The Jure’lia are awake. Nothing can be the same again.

  Tormalin the Oathless and the fell-witch Noon have their work cut out rallying the first war-beasts to be born in Ebora for three centuries. But these are not the great winged warriors of old. Hatched too soon and with no memory of their past incarnations, these onetime defenders of Sarn can barely stop bickering, let alone face an ancient enemy who grow stronger each day.

  The key to uniting them, according to the scholar Vintage, may lie in a part of Sarn no one really believes exists – a distant island, mysteriously connected to the fate of two legendary Eborans who disappeared long ago.

  But finding it will mean a perilous journey in a time of war, while new monsters lie in wait for those left behind.

  By Jen Williams and available from Headline

  The Copper Cat Trilogy

  The Copper Promise

  The Iron Ghost

  The Silver Tide

  Sorrow’s Isle (digital short story)

  The Winnowing Flame Trilogy

  The Ninth Rain

  The Bitter Twins

  Praise for the Winnowing Flame Trilogy:

  ‘There is so much to praise about The Ninth Rain: the world-building is top-notch, the plot is gripping and the characters just get better and better. A sublime read’

  SFX

  ‘Absolutely phenomenal fantasy – a definite must-read’

  Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘Williams portrays her characters as flawed but humane, propels the plot with expert pace, and excels at eldritch world-building’

  Guardian

  ‘The Ninth Rain is a fast-paced and vibrant fantasy romp through a new world, full of people you want to spend time with and enemies you’d happily run from’

  SciFiNow

  ‘A cracking story that grips you by the heart and doesn’t let go’

  Edward Cox

  ‘Jen Williams takes us on another great adventure. Fresh, engaging, and full of heart’

  Peter Newman

  ‘The setting is diverse, different and intriguing. The characters feel real and you want to know more about their lives with every turn of the page. This is fantasy adventure at its very best’

  Starburst

  ‘A gem of a book with overtones of the new weird and dashes of horror. I loved it from cover to cover’

  Den Patrick

  ‘A great read with heart and soul and epic beasties’

  www.raptureinbooks.com

  ‘Great pacing, top-notch writing, quality characterisation, plenty of action . . . all make The Ninth Rain a truly enjoyable and absorbing read’

  www.thetattooedbookgeek.wordpress.com

  ‘Brilliantly creative fantasy’

  www.thisnortherngal.co.uk

  ‘My only grievance with the trilogy is this: it’s not published in full yet! . . . the wait will likely kill me’

  www.liisthinks.blog

  Praise for the Copper Cat Trilogy:

  ‘A fresh take on classic tropes . . . 21st century fantasy at its best’

  SFX magazine

  ‘A highly inventive, vibrant high fantasy with a cast you can care about . . . There is never a dull moment’

  The British Fantasy Society

  ‘Williams has thrown out the rulebook and injected a fun tone into epic fantasy without lightening or watering down the excitement and adventure . . . Highly recommended’

  Independent

  ‘A fast-paced and original new voice in heroic fantasy’

  Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘Expect dead gods, mad magic, piracy on the high seas, peculiar turns and pure fantasy fun’

  Starburst magazine

  ‘Absolutely stuffed with ghoulish action. There is never a dull page’

  SciFiNow

  ‘An enthralling adventure’

  Sci-Fi Bulletin

  ‘An utterly outstanding and thrilling ride’

  www.brizzlelassbooks.wordpress.com

  ‘I’ve loved every min
ute of this story’

  www.overtheeffingrainbow.co.uk

  ‘If only all fantasy was as addictive as this’

  www.theeloquentpage.co.uk

  ‘Just as magical, just as action packed, just as clever and just as much fun as its predecessor . . . You’ll find a great deal to enjoy here’

  www.fantasy-faction.com

  ‘Atmospheric and vivid . . . with a rich history and mythology and colourful, well-written and complex characters, that all combine to suck you in to the world and keep you enchanted up until the very last page’

  www.realitysabore.blogspot.co.uk

  ‘A wonderful sword and sorcery novel with some very memorable characters and a dragon to boot. If you enjoy full-throttle action, awesome monsters, and fun, snarky dialogues then The Copper Promise is definitely a story you won’t want to miss’

  www.afantasticallibrarian.com

  ‘The Copper Promise is dark, often bloody, frequently frightening, but there’s also bucket loads of camaraderie, sarcasm, and an unashamed love of fantasy and the fantastic’

  Den Patrick, author of The Boy with the Porcelain Blade

  ‘The characterisation is second to none, and there are some great new innovations and interesting reworkings of old tropes . . . This book may have been based on the promise of copper but it delivers gold’

  Quicksilver on Goodreads

  ‘It is a killer of a fantasy novel that is indicative of how the classic genre of sword and sorcery is not only still very much alive, but also still the best the genre has to offer’

  www.leocristea.wordpress.com

  For Dad,

  with Love.

  1

  ‘What to do with all the flesh, and all the bone? That was the question no one had considered, of course.

  ‘Human beings are not, after all, simple bags of blood. At the end of all the fighting, the battlefields of the Carrion Wars were heaped with bodies – actual hills of bodies, corpses so numerous that they dammed rivers and caused floods. The crows and the ravens and the other scavenging birds turned the sky black. It was quite a sight. I made many drawings, many paintings.

  ‘Obviously, once we had taken what we needed, we left them there – it was not Ebora’s problem, what became of those bloodless bodies, and the plains people were, quite understandably, reluctant to come and collect them, so the human corpses stayed right where they were and rotted into the ground. The animals had their feed, and the bones were left to litter the battlefields like grains of rice cast onto the floor. Sometimes, when it is quiet here in my rooms, I listen and I think I can hear the ghosts calling me, crying out in their hundreds, their thousands. I want to get up and sketch them, but I sit with the charcoal in my hand and do nothing. There is no imagining their multitudes, and no way to capture it on canvas.

  ‘I did not fight in the Carrion Wars, but I was there to witness the horror. Arnia curls her lip at me and says nothing, but it is clear enough what she thinks of that. I think it is important someone is here to witness these things, or at least, I used to think so. Perhaps if I hadn’t been there to witness the slaughter and carry those heavy images in my head, I would have made different decisions and we wouldn’t be where we are now, with the burdens we now carry.

  ‘I still hear the ghosts sometimes, and they call me unto death, where I belong.’

  The words of Micanal the Clearsighted, taken directly from what I must assume is his most personal journal. Quite the gloomy sod, but I cannot deny there is real poetry in his writing – which is not surprising, given that he was Ebora’s most celebrated artist: a genius in a nation of masters. And whatever I might think about his tendency towards melodrama, there are clues here – to the reality of the Carrion Wars and the devastation the crimson flux wrought on the Eboran people – that are without doubt, a staggering gift to my own studies.

  Extract from the private journals of Lady Vincenza ‘Vintage’ de Grazon

  ‘What have I done?’

  Hestillion clung to the silver pod, hugging it to her chest as though it were the only solid thing in existence. There was a yawning sensation in the pit of her stomach.

  ‘What is wrong, Hestillion Eskt, born in the year of the green bird?’

  Hestillion looked up. She was kneeling on the floor of a room unlike anything she’d seen before. The walls were a soft, fleshy grey, punctured here and there with odd fibrous growths, small lights hanging at the end of each. The ceiling above her was a shifting mass of black liquid: the same black liquid that had reached down for them from the corpse moon. She could still feel the strange prickly sensation it had left against her skin – it had been obscenely hot, like the hand of a person wracked with fever. With a jolt, she remembered where she was.

  ‘I am inside the corpse moon.’

  The queen moved into sight, then, moving languidly on legs of the shifting black liquid. Her face, a white mask resting on a bed of the stuff, seemed to grow more certain as she looked at Hestillion: the features a little stronger, a little more distinct. She smiled, an uncanny stretching of her lips.

  ‘The corpse moon? That is what you call it?’

  Hestillion took a breath. ‘No, not truly. It’s what the humans called it. They never saw it alive, after all. Not the ones that are around now, anyway.’

  The queen tipped her head to one side. ‘We like it. The corpse moon.’

  There was a hum, and the room shook faintly, a soft vibration that travelled up through Hestillion’s slippers and into her bones. Seeing her look of surprise, the queen stepped over to her – the movement strange and elongated – and, leaning down, pressed a narrow finger to the floor. Immediately, the soft grey material grew translucent, bleeding outwards like grease on thin paper until, to Hestillion’s horror, she could see the landscape speeding away below them. She gave a little cry, almost falling backwards.

  ‘We travel up and away now, you see,’ said the queen. ‘We are worn and broken and old, but we can do that.’

  Hestillion swallowed hard. They were so high in the sky she could barely fathom it. Her beloved Ebora was there below, recognisable from its marble and its wide streets, but as she watched, a white shape moved in front of the impromptu window. A cloud. They were above the clouds. This must be what it is to fly with the war-beasts, she thought, and she gripped the pod a little tighter. It was cold.

  ‘This makes you uncomfortable.’ It wasn’t a question as such, and when Hestillion looked back up at the queen she saw that the creature was peering at her in genuine curiosity. More alarmingly, the ceiling above her was moving, and long glistening appendages began to ooze out of the black liquid: seven of them, like long multiple-jointed fingers. As she watched, pale orbs began to push through at the end of each, rolling wetly to clear themselves of the black mucus.

  Hestillion scrambled to her feet and drew herself up to her full height. She very deliberately did not look at the eyes in the ceiling.

  ‘What is this? Why have you brought me here?’ Before she could stop it, another question leapt on the tail of the last. ‘What are you?’

  ‘You are interesting to us, Hestillion Eskt, born in the year of the green bird. And you helped us. We shall help you.’ The patch of translucence suddenly grew, racing away beneath Hestillion’s feet; it was as if she stood on thin air, a terrible drop yawning away below. Her stomach tried to climb out of her throat, and summoning every bit of willpower she had, Hestillion made herself look directly at the queen’s face.

  ‘Stop it. This is not . . . helping me.’

  The queen shrugged, and once again the floor was a solid thing. The eyes in the ceiling retreated too, oozing back into the shifting wetness.

  When she trusted herself to speak again, Hestillion kept her voice low. ‘You do not owe me anything, Queen of the Jure’lia.’

  ‘Queen . . . of the . . . worm people. What interesting words you have. It is to be savoured. Besides which, we owe you very much. You spoke to us, sought us out and roused us from the chill
death of the roots. If you had not done that, we would have slept forever, trapped, and might not even have woken when your stinking tree-god crawled back to life. You interest us, very much, and we would not leave you behind. We have said this.’

  Hestillion blinked. This was the first example of emotion she had seen from the Jure’lia queen, aside from mild amusement or curiosity. It was easier, and better, to focus on that than the wave of guilt the creature’s words had prompted. Carefully, she placed the war-beast pod on the floor, letting it lean against her legs. She could not quite bear to be out of contact with it, but her arms were beginning to shake – a war-beast pod was not light.

  ‘I am not a prisoner here, then?’ Hestillion lifted her chin, aware that even standing as tall as she was the queen towered a good three feet over her. ‘I could leave?’

  ‘Leave? You are welcome to leave, yes.’ The queen gestured at the floor again, and this time, to Hestillion’s horror, it began to grow not only see-through, but soft. Her foot sank down into it, followed by the other, and there was a terrible sensation of something easing away beneath her.

  ‘Stop! Stop it, that’s not what I meant!’

  The floor grew solid again, and the queen smiled her cold smile. After a moment, she lifted her long arms to the ceiling and fibrous black tendrils came down to meet her. Rising from the floor, she sank into the pool of black liquid as though she were sinking into a bath, and then she was gone. Belatedly, Hestillion realised that there were no doors in the room, and no visible way out.

  ‘Leave, and go where?’ she said to the war-beast pod. Kneeling, she wrapped her arms around it and closed her eyes. ‘Back to the people I’ve helped to destroy? I would be better off falling through this floor, in that case.’

  Something was poking into her chest. She reached within her dress and pulled out a rectangular card about as long as her hand. It had been folded so many times it was slashed with creases, but she remembered the picture on the front of the tarla card well enough: green shapes like twisted fingers against a dark background. The Roots. Aldasair had given it to her years ago, and she had kept it, although she couldn’t have said why, and when they had prepared to pour the growth fluid on Ygseril’s roots, she had tucked it inside her gown. For luck, she supposed. Feeling a fresh surge of disgust at her own stupidity, she slid it back where she had found it and put her arms around the war-beast pod again. It remained cold under her touch, and she wondered why she had brought it.