by Laini Taylor
“Can you?” Sarai asked. “Please?” There was a note of desperation in her voice as she thought of Lazlo, caged, and Rook, Kiska, and Werran trapped, and all the others as good as trapped, too, all of them at Nova’s mercy, and all depending on her. Nova heard the note in her voice, too, and understood it—and the reason for it. Here, in the dream, she’d been lost in the past. Now, suddenly, she recollected the present, and the dream split in half and spilled them both out.
Nova lurched awake and came upright, twisting free of Sarai’s light touch and turning, rising, all in one movement to face her. They were both breathing fast. The truth ached between them like a heart, but things were different in the waking world. Their communion had evaporated, that had allowed them to feel what the other was feeling, and understand each other, beyond all language barriers. Sarai couldn’t tell what Nova was thinking.
She held very still, as though she were facing a wounded predator, unpredictable in its pain and its power. She was conscious that Tzara’s arrow must be trained on Nova, ready to fly, and she was desperate that it not. She wanted to turn her head or call out, but she was afraid to take her eyes off Nova, or to alert her to the others’ presence if she hadn’t already noticed them. So she only turned one hand toward the arcade, palm out, and silently willed them: Hold.
Her gaze flickered to Lazlo in his cage, and Nova’s followed. Nova winced when she beheld the tableau and had to reckon with what she’d done, then she flicked out a hand to open the loop. The iridescent bubble evaporated and Kiska and Rook were free. They stumbled, disoriented. Rook’s hand was still raised, ready to draw a loop of his own, but he stopped when he saw Sarai, and blinked.
Next, the serpent’s jaws opened and spilled Werran out before the creature collapsed back into the floor, leaving nothing but smooth mesarthium.
And then Lazlo.
The cage swelled as it sank, releasing him slowly as it melted away and set him down on the floor. Sarai flew to him. She caught him in her arms. His face was a rictus of pain, his limbs cramped in the position they’d held for so long. She helped him lift his head, and she set her brow against his and breathed his breath and kissed his perfect imperfect nose that stories had left their mark on, as they had left their mark in him.
“You’re still here,” he whispered like a prayer. His voice was ravaged. It sounded like he’d screamed until he wore his throat bloody, and Sarai realized he had believed she’d evanesced. He touched her face as though to make sure he wasn’t imagining her. “Are you all right?” He looked at her and looked as though he couldn’t get enough of looking, as though he’d been saving all his witchlight, and then he was crying, and she was crying, and he was smiling and he was slowly unfolding his limbs, wincing, and Sarai’s hearts felt as though all her moths and Wraith were living inside her chest, and a sweet wind had caught them and sent them all spinning.
Rook and Kiska were helping Werran to sit up. He was drawing deep, heaving breaths into his lungs. In the archway, the others were wary, glancing back and forth between Sarai and Lazlo, Kiska, Rook, and Werran, and Nova, who stood alone. Tzara had not lowered her bow.
Nova seemed aware of no one. Sarai saw her turn, moving slowly, her gaze unfixed, and take a step toward the arcade. There were a half-dozen open archways. Minya and the others were in the center. She didn’t look at them, but went around them to the right. Sarai helped Lazlo to stand, and they followed her into the garden.
Out there it was all flowers and metal creatures, their own familiar garden until you looked out past the plum trees, where the massive white stalks rose up and disappeared into the mist. There was no Wraith flying circles, and there never would be again. The bird had vanished for the last time.
Nova went to the balustrade. Sarai followed her. The others hung back.
She stood looking out, one hand on the railing. She spoke, but her words didn’t filter into sense as they had in the dream. They made an impenetrable thatch of syllables. Sarai, uneasy, glanced back over her shoulder and saw Kiska take a half step forward. She caught Sarai’s eye, gave a little nod, and then spoke into her mind.
It was all for nothing, she translated. She says the sea tried to warn her. She didn’t listen.
“The sea?” Sarai queried, looking at Nova and hearing Kiska’s voice in her mind.
When Nova answered, Kiska’s translation came simultaneously. It always knew.
“How could it have known?” Sarai asked gently. She thought of the cold black water in the dream, and feared Nova was again losing her grip on reality.
But when Nova turned to face her, she looked more sane than Sarai had yet seen her. She spoke, and Kiska translated. It knew my name, Nova said. She was calm. The sea always knew my name.
And then she took a step back.
The balustrade was there. But then it wasn’t. She hadn’t given back Lazlo’s gift yet. For a moment her eyes locked on Sarai’s. All the ice was gone from them. They were brown and tired and sad. Just as Sarai realized, just as she reached, Nova leaned back.
And fell.
62
THE ONES WHO KNOW
Once upon a time, a sister made a vow she didn’t know how to break, and it broke her instead.
Once upon a time, a girl did the impossible, but she did it just a little too late.
Once upon a time, a woman finally gave up, and the sea was waiting. It was the wrong sea—red as blood and just as warm—but falling felt like freedom, like letting go of trying, and on the way down she took her first full breath in centuries.
Then it was all over.
Or maybe it wasn’t.
The ones who know can’t tell us, and the ones who tell us don’t know.
PART V
Amezrou (AH·may·zroo) noun
When something deeply precious, long lost and despaired of, is found and restored, against all expectation.
New; not yet in common usage.
63
IT WOULD BE STRANGER IF THERE WEREN’T DRAGONS
Lazlo did not bring the citadel back through the portal. The last thing Weep needed was the hated metal angel pouring back into its sky. Weep would never again live in shadow.
It would also never again be Weep.
Kiska, Rook, and Werran remembered its real name. When Letha, goddess of oblivion, had eaten Weep’s true name, her power had not reached past the sealed portal into Var Elient. And so, three godspawn born in the citadel to be sold as slaves to fight other worlds’ wars restored what had been devoured.
Amezrou.
Once upon a time, a little boy in a frost-rimed orchard had roared it out like thunder, like an avalanche, like the war cry of the seraphim who had cleansed the world of demons, only to have it stolen from his mind between one slash of his apple bough sword and the next. Now it was back, and it felt, as it ever had, like calligraphy, if calligraphy were written in honey.
Though Lazlo let the citadel remain above the red sea, he and Sarai and the others went back and forth between worlds often over the next few weeks, making preparations for their journey. They had no shortage of transportation for the short trip through the portal. They returned the silk sleighs to Soulzeren, which left them with the entire fleet of vessels seized over the years by Nova and her pirate crew, as well as Lazlo’s metal creatures—Rasalas and the others—and the pair of wasp ships, which were no longer wasps.
Mesarthium skyships are shaped by the mind of their captain, and Lazlo transformed these into moths, in homage to those that had brought Sarai into his dreams, his mind, his hearts, his life.
He transformed the citadel, too.
“You have to admit, it’s magnificent,” said Calixte from the small airship she had commandeered for her own and christened Lady Spider.
“Fine,” drawled Ruza, peevish. “It’s magnificent.”
They had just come through the portal for the last time in the knowable future. The citadel was before them, looking quite different now that it was no longer in seraph form. They had all discussed what
new shape it might take, and offered suggestions, though the ultimate decision had been Lazlo’s. He needn’t have consulted anyone, but, being Lazlo, he had. Anyway, he had made the only obvious choice, and no one disagreed except Ruza. “A dragon would be more magnificent,” he said, not letting it go.
“You and your dragons,” remarked Tzara. “Don’t worry. I’m sure Lazlo will let you have a dragon to ride.”
Thyon kept thinking he was through being surprised by statements like, “I’m sure Lazlo will let you have a dragon to ride,” but no. It just didn’t seem to sink in. The scope of Strange’s power defied normalization. Maybe the day would come when Thyon was no longer gobsmacked by the fact that the meek junior librarian who used to walk into walls while reading was now in possession of a massive, impregnable, interdimensional skyship that he controlled with his mind. But that day was not today.
Ruza was wondering aloud how it would work—whether Lazlo alone was able to control the metal beasts, or if they could be made to obey other riders. “It wouldn’t be any fun if it was like a pony at the fair just being led around by the bridle,” he said.
Thyon could easily imagine Ruza as a little boy on a pony. He looked at him and saw the child he’d been, and he saw the man he was—warrior, prankster, friend—and he felt a warmth that he had never felt before for any other person. It was affection, and something that frightened him, too, that he could feel in his knees and fingertips and face. It made him unsure what to do with his hands. He noticed things like knuckles and eyelashes that he didn’t notice on other people, and sometimes he had to look away and pretend to be thinking of something else.
He said, “I’m sure there are real dragons out there somewhere. You can hatch one from an egg and raise it to be your loyal steed.”
Ruza’s whole face lit up. “Do you really think so?”
“Out of hundreds of worlds?” said Thyon. “It would be stranger if there weren’t dragons.”
Hundreds of worlds. Hundreds of worlds, and they would see them, because they were leaving Zeru, and he, Thyon Nero, was going with them. He would never go back to Zosma, where the queen wore a necklace woven of his golden hair, and some blurry outline of a future wife awaited his return. Instead he was joining a crew of gods and pirates for a mission straight out of a myth. It wasn’t even an alternate version of his life. He hadn’t gone back in time and done everything differently to get to this place. It turned out that sometimes it’s enough to start doing things differently now.
“You’ll hatch one, too, of course,” Ruza informed him, as though they had already found their dragon eggs and it was only a matter of divvying them up.
“Yes, I will,” agreed Thyon, “and mine will be faster than yours.”
Ruza was affronted. “It will not.” For his part, he could not have imagined Thyon as a boy on a pony. For all that he was less untouchable than he had been, the golden godson still looked as though he’d been made by a god in a dreamy mood and delivered in a velvet-lined box.
“Will too,” said Thyon.
Calixte, with her fingers to her temples and eyes closed, said, “I’m seeing a vision of the future in which you’re both eaten like idiots trying to steal dragon eggs in some weird world.”
But they hardly heard her, because a breeze had caused the Lady Spider to yaw just enough that Thyon’s shoulder came to rest against Ruza’s, and he left it there, and that took all their focus as Calixte navigated into the new skyship hangar that Lazlo had integrated into the citadel’s magnificent new form.
It was an eagle, of course.
There had been no real question. Ruza’s dragon arguments aside, the only other option had been leaving the citadel as a seraph, and nobody wanted that. Their feelings for seraphim in general were complex. The angels’ hubris, in cutting the portals, had resulted in strife across the Continuum. And yet, if they’d never done it, there would be no godspawn and none of them would even be here to debate the shape of skyships.
As a practical matter, it would have been easiest to leave it as it was. As an emotional one, they couldn’t purge off the taint of Skathis fast enough, so Lazlo had set to work transforming it.
Everything was shifted. In seraph form, it had been vertical and long. Now it was condensed, broadened. Gone were the dexter and sinister arms, replaced by the eagle’s wings. The nursery was no more, and the small, barren rooms that had once held human mothers were likewise erased, much as the memory of what had happened in them had been erased. Their own large chambers, once the gods’, were replaced by more modest ones, and more of them. Minya no longer claimed a whole palace she didn’t need.
The gardens had quadrupled in size, in their new location between the eagle’s wings, and were growing quantities of new vegetables and fruits. Sparrow glowed with purpose and pleasure. She had even brought up some ferns from the forest and planted a shady glade just for them. Feral, too, retained his purpose. Water would always be essential, and he was keen to work on developing other dimensions of his gift. Perhaps, one day, he would be more than a cloud thief, able to strike with lightning.
As for Ruby, she was feeling a little obsolete, now that nonmagical systems were in place for cooking and heating up bathwater. She did not respond with grace to Feral’s suggestion that she take up a hobby.
“I know just the thing,” she said, and flicked a look at Werran, who was minding his own business in one of the new deep chairs in the gallery.
As one might imagine, the introduction of four new young men into their circle had made Ruby rather giddy.
When they’d finally, properly had a chance to meet Kiska, Rook, and Werran, she had eschewed all the obvious questions, such as what their life had been like for the past fifteen years, and wanted only to know which god had been their parent.
When Rook revealed that he was the son of Ikirok, she’d gasped with dismay, “You’re my brother?” before adding, insincerely, “I mean, oh, good, a brother,” and turning to Werran to ask, hopefully, “What about you?”
Werran’s resemblance to Lazlo was no accident. He was Skathis’s son, and Lazlo greeted the news of a brother with much more enthusiasm than Ruby did.
Feral found himself disposed to like Rook, while standing up taller and casting his voice deeper whenever Werran was around. He’d have thought the golden faranji would be his primary rival—the fellow was just ridiculous—but the degree of wariness he showed around Ruby suggested otherwise. He seemed almost to take refuge behind his Tizerkane friend when she approached him with that hungry look in her eyes, and she gave up eventually and left him in peace. “He must have something against blue skin,” she reasoned, piqued, and tossed her wild hair. “His loss.”
As to whose, if anyone’s, gain, that remained to be seen.
In the new configuration of bedrooms, there was no question of keying doors to touch. Lazlo, determined that no one should ever be trapped if something happened to him, reconceived all the doors to open and close, lock and unlock like normal ones—with keys or crossbars.
He also made medallions for them all to wear, like the ones Kiska, Rook, and Werran had, so that they wouldn’t have to worry about losing their magic, no matter where they were.
There were discoveries to be made in the citadel, notably inside the seraph’s head, where they found Skathis’s treasure chamber. It was a flat-out marvel: a museum of alien currencies, with coins and gems and vials of curious dusts, whole barrels of eyes, from what creature they had no way of knowing, and crystals that gave off glints of amber light, and strands of pearls that floated like air bubbles. There were feathers and geodes, fabrics and maps, contraptions of arcane technology. It wasn’t terrible to find themselves in possession of an enormous otherworldly fortune.
There were new rooms, too: one for games, and not just quell; a full alchemical laboratory; and a library with books of actual ink on paper. Most were donated by the people of Weep—Amezrou—but there was one that had come from much farther away—though even that distance s
eemed humble now. Thyon, returning from a supply run, had approached Lazlo, stiff and shy, and thrust a book at his chest. “This is yours,” he’d said, half swallowing the word sorry.
Lazlo, taking the book, had discovered it to be none other than Miracles for Breakfast, the volume of tales he’d brought to the Chrysopoesium in what seemed quite another lifetime. His eyebrows shot up. “It’s not mine,” he said, flipping to the first page, where it was stamped Property of the Great Library of Zosma. “What would Master Hyrrokkin say if he knew the golden godson was stealing library books?”
“I didn’t bring the rest of your books,” Thyon said. “I’m sorry.” He did a better job with the word this time. “I had no right to take them.”
But Lazlo held no grudge. “Do you realize, Nero, that if you hadn’t come to my window in Weep that night with your shard of mesarthium, I’d never have stopped the citadel from falling, and we would all be dead?”
“Do you know, Strange,” returned Thyon, who was not about to take any credit, “that if you hadn’t given me the spirit from your veins, I wouldn’t have had a shard to begin with?”
“Well then,” said Lazlo, wry. “It’s a good thing we were always such excellent friends, working together for the good of all.”
It mightn’t have been true before, but perhaps it could be.
It took all their efforts to make the citadel a home that could shelter and sustain them. All trace of the gods was now gone—including their hideous clothing, left to molder down on the island, in the very cells that had once held the children they sired and sold—save this one: the ship’s new form, an homage to Korako, who may have been the one to take them from the nursery but had saved them, too, in more ways than they’d realized.
The eagle had dropped the kimril tubers that saved them from starvation, and for that they’d always been grateful. (Except Ruby, who declared she’d have preferred to starve.) But now they knew that Korako had also saved Lazlo as a baby. Skathis would have murdered him, as he had all babies with his gift, but Korako had gotten to him first, and, by way of Wraith, spirited him to Zosma—a sort of hidden key with which she’d hoped to one day unlock her prison.