As She Ascends

by Jodi Meadows

  Why?

  The tapped conversations spilled around the floor, and though it was my job to put everyone back to work, I wanted to join them. I hadn’t realized that anyone else had these thoughts and ached with the unfairness.

  Maybe I should have.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  ONE WORD.

  Yes.

  It would have been the end of my innocence, if that hadn’t already been stripped away and smothered in the darkness of the Pit.

  Yes.

  The Mira Treaty was a lie. Arguably the most important document in the Fallen Isles, and definitely the defining document of my lifetime—it was a lie.

  Yes.

  It was one thing to suspect such a betrayal, because it might be untrue. From the moment after Altan declared the treaty a lie, to the moment right before Father confirmed it, I hadn’t truly believed. Even seeing the shipping order for dragons and noorestones, and witnessing the black ship sailing through our waters, there’d been a part of me that clung to denial. But now, I couldn’t ignore the truth.

  Yes.

  One word.

  A thousand questions.

  “I think you’d better explain.” My voice didn’t sound like mine. It was too calm. Too focused. I’d locked my knees to keep me upright, but heat pulsed through my body and black fog crept at the corners of my vision.

  Carefully, as I’d been trained to do when making speeches, I shifted my weight to one leg, then the other. The black fog retreated.

  “It was with the best of intentions,” Father said. “It isn’t as bad as you think.”

  Anger kindled inside me. “Oh?” At once, I became aware of exactly how many noorestones were in the house.

  I’d known, of course, because I’d counted them hundreds of times. But suddenly, I could feel them all. One hundred and fifty-seven.

  There were twenty-five in the parlor alone.

  ::Mira.:: Aaru’s tapping came like warning. ::Let go of them.::

  Our eyes met, and I exhaled. The noorestones behind him brightened a hair as I released my awareness of them.

  ::No one else noticed,:: he said, and I thanked him with a thin smile.

  “Tell me, Father.” I looked at him again. “How bad do I think it is?”

  My parents just glanced at each other, as though they were trying to decide how much to admit.

  “Well?” I crossed my arms.

  “Without the Mira Treaty,” Father said, “the empire would have swept across the Fallen Isles.”

  “That’s not an answer to my question.”

  He leaned forward in his chair, elbows on his knees, palms up in supplication. “It is, though. You think we just gave in without consideration, that we’re all somehow enriching ourselves, and that we’ve betrayed the Fallen Gods. But none of those things are true. We were avoiding war, Mira.

  “Without the treaty, we’d have resisted the empire, of course, but it would have been a long, bloody war. Expensive in lives and lumes. Hundreds of thousands of our people would have perished. And it would have ended with the empire ruling over the Fallen Isles anyway. Not one of the island governments believed we could win, so the treaty was proposed. It would be bloodless.”

  “The other governments knew.”

  Father nodded. “Everyone who signed the document knew what it was.”

  Every single island was culpable.

  Every single government had sold their people to the Algotti Empire.

  “With the treaty,” he said, “we were able to influence the terms. Most people will never know that the Fallen Isles belong to the Algotti Empire.” Again, he whispered, “It was bloodless.”

  He was trying so hard to justify it—so hard to make anyone believe he’d done the right thing, but especially himself. But he was a fool if he thought most people would never know. People would. It was just a matter of time before the empress made herself heard here.

  “Bloodless doesn’t mean the price wasn’t unbearably high.” I lowered myself to my chair again, breathing through the anxiety simmering just under the surface of my thoughts. I could feel it in me, writhing, and again I wished I’d taken one of the calming pills, now that I had them. But I didn’t want to take one in front of everyone.

  No, that wasn’t true. I didn’t want to take one in front of Mother.

  Twenty-five noorestones.

  Ten people.

  Eight columns.

  Twenty-eight steps on two staircases.

  Mother narrowed her eyes at me, ever observant. Not even our world crumbling apart could prevent her from judging me. “Stop.”

  Counting. She meant stop counting.

  As though my counting were the most troubling thing happening here.

  ::Strength through silence.:: I tapped it again and again. They were Idris’s holy words, yes, but it was Aaru’s wisdom I held to right now: There is strength, he’d said months ago, in knowing when to speak, and when to listen. And when to say nothing at all.

  What I hadn’t understood then was that those moments could overlap. Mother was still stinging from earlier, and now she was trying to provoke me again. Maybe to distract from the discussion of the treaty, or maybe because she always did this. But now was the time to use silence against her.

  It would bother her more than anything else.

  Slowly, deliberately, I looked away from her. Silence for Mother. Questions for Father. “You betrayed the Fallen Isles, Father. You and the rest of the Luminary Council. And the other island governments. Everyone who signed the treaty, everyone who knew what it was, betrayed us.” I made my voice into flame. “And you put my name on it.”

  Panic flickered in his eyes. “That isn’t true.”

  “You put my name on the treaty, knowing it was a false promise to the people of the Fallen Isles.”

  “Mira—”

  “Why was I sent to the Pit, Father?”

  He glanced around the room, weighing his words, but I didn’t give him a chance to use them.

  I used mine instead. “The Luminary Council banished me to the Pit because I’d discovered someone was taking dragons from the Crescent Prominence sanctuary and sending them to the Algotti Empire.”

  Ilina cleared her throat. “Hristo and I were there, too. The only reason we weren’t imprisoned or worse was because Mira protected us.”

  Hristo and his father looked at each other, the latter in question. “It’s true,” Hristo said. “That’s why Mira disappeared that day, and why Ilina and I went after her.”

  “I had no idea.” Hristo’s father had a soft voice. Kind, I’d always thought. And now it was sad, bearing a heavier burden than I’d ever heard in him.

  “You weren’t supposed to.” Hristo bent toward his father, and whatever he said next, I couldn’t hear it.

  I just turned back to my own father. “Answer this: Is the Luminary Council sending dragons and noorestones to the Algotti Empire in payment?”

  His face was ashen, and Mother looked a little sick. She clearly wanted this line of questioning to end, but if they refused to answer, they wouldn’t be able to control how I heard the truth.

  “It’s a necessary part of the bargain,” Father said at last. “I don’t like it, but better dragons than people, don’t you think?”

  Beside me, Ilina was shaking with rage, her tone a barely contained fury. “They are the children of the gods.”

  “It seems to me”—Hristo looked up from his father—“that Mira was imprisoned because of the very treaty you named after her. You enabled the Luminary Council to send dragons to the Algotti Empire, and when we discovered that fact, they sought to silence her in the Pit.”

  Mother straightened herself. “That—”

  “Is true,” I said. “Ilina, Hristo, and I noticed dragons missing from the Crescent Prominence sanctuary, but later I found out that dragons had also been taken from the Heart of the Great Warrior. They might even have been the very first victims. And just days ago, we discovered yet more dragon
s had been taken from the First Harta Dragon Sanctuary, under the pretense of helping them because they’re sick.”

  “They are sick.” Father glanced at Ilina. “That’s why your parents were taken. Because the dragons began acting strangely, violently, and three people already died trying to contain them.”

  “So my parents have been kidnapped.” Ilina’s lips curled in a snarl. “Someone kidnapped dragons, was shocked when those dragons got sick, and kidnapped my parents to try to fix it. Have they stopped kidnapping dragons yet?”

  Father shook his head. “No. The dragons that have been taken are still in the Fallen Isles, tucked away on Anahera until they’re healthy. The empire only wants living dragons.”

  The blood seemed to drain from Ilina’s face. “They’re on Anahera?”

  I reached for Ilina’s hand and squeezed. Anahera. That was good. We could use it. “But they haven’t stopped taking dragons in the meantime.”

  Father’s voice was flat now. Defeated. “The Summerill Sky Sanctuary is next. Thirteen large dragons will be taken to Anahera to join the others.”

  My anger was lightning, lashing out in every direction.

  1.At my parents, for hiding the truth for so long.

  2.At the Luminary Council, for betraying me yet again.

  3.At all the island governments, because they’d colluded to sell our freedom, our dragons, and our noorestones.

  “We are so vulnerable,” I whispered to no one. Everyone.

  Aaru looked at me.

  “The Mira Treaty is a lie.” My heart pounded at the thought, aching against my ribs. “The peace we’ve had these last seventeen years has been a false peace.”

  Father shook his head. “The problems of the Mira Treaty don’t negate all the good it does. Remember that it’s united us.”

  “Another lie.” I pressed my fingertips against my temples, trying to squeeze out a headache growing there. “It united the governments in their conspiracy to sell our freedom. It claims to protect dragons, while giving them away to our enemies.”

  “But Harta—”

  I glared at him. “Does one good, loving act nullify the abhorrent nature of the others? Don’t pretend this was done for Harta and her people. We can’t accept multiple atrocities because of the independence our ancestors should have granted Hartans centuries ago. The fact that we waited until the Algotti Empire was upon us before taking that action is just as heinous.” My hands were shaking, so I twisted the hem of my shirt around them as though my rage might be muffled. “And given that the Twilight Senate is doing everything possible to blame Hartans for the trouble on Bopha, going as far as to deport Hartans who live there legally—well, the argument of helping Harta would hold more water if other governments weren’t constantly chipping away at those newly granted freedoms.”

  Father said nothing as golden morning light shone warmer through the windows, creeping across the floor. No one else said anything, either. And my heart was racing, like it was struggling to catch up to all the words I’d said. To my father. To my mother. I’d never been given these kinds of opinions before, so where had they come from?

  “The empire technically rules us now,” Father said, “but we’ve hardly felt their influence these last seventeen years. The empress has asked nothing of us—”

  “Except for our dragons.” Ilina’s tone was all steel.

  “And our noorestones,” I added. “Why would we give up our largest noorestones? We could have used them to power more ships like the Star-Touched.” Or, like the stones that had exploded the Infinity . . .

  “That’s the empress’s way of keeping us contained here,” Father said. “Without the giant noorestones, we’ll be mostly unable to cross the sea and get to them. But they could come to us.”

  “They’ve trapped us here,” I whispered.

  “What do you mean?” Mother scowled at me, as though she couldn’t see it already. “Why would we want to leave?”

  Ilina answered for me. “While we were on Khulan, Gerel told me a story. She said that while she was a trainee, she and the others would often go hunting, making a game out of who could catch the most of whatever quarry they were after that day. During one hunt, they’d been told to capture seagulls—alive. So dozens of children jumped after seagulls on the beach. It didn’t go well, because seagulls are fast and can fly.

  “A few trainees found bits of food, luring the birds to them. They were more successful than those jumping, swinging their arms. But there was another trainee who didn’t bother to jump or lure. Instead, she built a small dome out of rocks and driftwood and sea grass, with only a small opening in the top. Inside the dome, she dropped scraps of food.

  “By the end of the hunt, she had twenty seagulls trapped. They could get in, but not out. She trapped them by giving them exactly what they wanted, and even making it seem like a protected space, away from other greedy birds. But ultimately, they could not leave to save themselves.”

  “We’re the seagulls,” Hristo muttered. “And the empire is the clever trainee.”

  Ilina nodded. “But that’s not the only problem Mira was worried about.” She looked at me.

  “You’re right.” I faced my parents again. “Not only has the empire trapped us here to pick off in their own time, but we may soon experience the greatest calamity of all.”

  “What is that?” Mother asked.

  “The Great Abandonment.” Fury grew sharp within me, cutting through to the bones of my words. “The treaty solves the short-term problem of a potential war, but you’ve created a long-term problem for us”—I gestured around at my friends—“in the threat of the Great Abandonment.”

  “We don’t believe in the Great Abandonment,” Father said. “You know that.”

  “The gods don’t care what we believe.” I twisted my fingers in my shirt. “You’ve felt the tremors. Heard about the storms. There’s even been talk that the fields going fallow on Bopha is another sign of the gods’ displeasure with us. Either way,” I went on, my voice rising in pitch as anger built upon anger, “what you did with the Mira Treaty was wrong, and you know it. Or you wouldn’t have hidden it from everyone.”

  “That’s enough, Mira.” Father pushed himself to his feet, and Mother went with him. The two of them. Facing me. “I’ve listened to enough from you.”

  I stood, too, and just under the thunder of my heartbeat in my ears, I heard my friends rising to their feet as well. Behind me, Ilina placed her hand on my shoulder.

  “You don’t have to like what I say, but you can’t prevent me from saying it. You ceded control of my voice when you chose to protect that hollow treaty over me.”

  Surprise gasped through the parlor, and Ilina’s fingertips dug into my shoulder. Even I hadn’t realized the strength of my hurt until just now, those words falling from my mouth like I’d just expelled poison.

  “That’s not what happened,” Father said.

  But it was. Couldn’t he see that?

  And after everything, the first thing Mother wanted to know, upon my return, was what happened to my face. Not whether I was well, or how I’d escaped the Pit, or if I needed to rest. No, she cared about my face most of all.

  I turned to Hristo and his father. “You should go spend time together. And pack whatever you need. We’re expected at dusk.” It was midmorning now, which gave us just enough time.

  “You’re leaving again?” his father asked, looking between us.

  “It isn’t safe for us here.” The Chance Encounter could stay in the harbor for a few days, waiting for Chenda and Gerel to reach us—if they decided to come, of course—but for me to stay in the city was too much of a risk, no matter how much I wanted to soak up my home. “Go,” I said to Hristo again.

  My guard studied me, a faint question in his eyes; he wanted to make sure I wouldn’t need him.

  “I’ll be fine.” My heart was pounding, but he should get to visit his father. If I needed help, I had Ilina.

  Hristo and his father l
eft the parlor, moving toward the servants’ quarters.

  Mother’s tone was warning as she said, “Mira—”

  “I have one more question.” I faced Mother and Father again. “When the truth about the Mira Treaty becomes public, and the legitimacy of the Luminary Council and every other island government is called into question, will you stand with me?”

  Aching quiet followed, and I imagined that we could end this discussion the same way we’d begun it—with a yes—but when my father spoke again, it was with a sigh.

  “I will think about it.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  HE HADN’T REFUSED ME, EXACTLY.

  But he hadn’t sided with me, either.

  It was strange how much that hurt—worse than if he’d simply said no. At least if he’d said no, I would have understood what that meant. Instead, he had to think about it. He had to weigh his affection for me against his commitment to the treaty and council.

  And this—this told me that he’d never thought about it before. He’d never separated me from the treaty.

  Ten years ago, when that man had tried to kidnap me from my room, Father had told me there were people who hated the Mira Treaty, and therefore hated me as well. There’d been others who loved me without knowing a thing about me. Because to them, I was the Mira Treaty.

  It just hadn’t occurred to me that Father felt the same way.

  Mother grabbed Father’s forearm, and her tone was all venom. “May I speak with you? Privately?”

  It wasn’t actually a question. As she began dragging him toward the dining room, Mother held a finger at me, silently instructing me to stay. But the moment my parents closed the door behind them, I motioned Ilina and Aaru upstairs.

  “I heard what you said.” Zara was on her feet now, her eyes sharp with anger, though I couldn’t tell whether it was directed at me or the world in general. “I guess Mother and Father are going to assign five more guards to you.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” I brushed past her, leading Ilina and Aaru to my room.

  At first, everything seemed the same, light and airy, with pale curtains and a hardwood floor made of golden rain tree wood. A braided rug ran down the center of the room, woven from talopus down, imported from Anahera; the walls held paintings of ships and dragons and mountains, probably created by famous artists, but those had all been Mother’s requirements for the room, because as the Hopebearer, I needed culture and class.