by Lori M. Lee
Her reaction reminded me of the people huddled beneath the awnings of the North District, their eyes dull and red-rimmed as they sucked down whatever latest street tonic was making its rounds. More often than not, the Watchmen found them curled up in the gutters, dead, a few days later. Reev said that’s what happened when people lost hope.
Those people didn’t get farewell ceremonies.
“What is the Dust, then?” I asked. “I’m guessing you think it’s what gave you magic.”
Maybe it had. But I couldn’t rule out Irra’s theory about the sepulcher, which would present a much bigger problem.
“The magic is a gift from the goddess,” Cassia said, turning her focus on me with visible effort.
My lip curled. “Your drekking goddess. Can’t you see what that stuff is doing to you? The reason it takes such a physical toll is because it’s not natural. You’re not meant to have magic anymore.”
“And you are?” Her face twisted with sudden venom. “You hold time at your command. How are you able to do this and not suffer like I have?”
I’d suffered plenty. But that was between me and Kronos.
Seeing her now, where was the woman with whom I’d joked and laughed? The friend who’d convinced me to attend a party so she wouldn’t be alone?
“How could you kill all those people, Cassia?” I asked. “We trusted you.”
For an instant, her veil of cold arrogance fell, and the look in her eyes was anguished and raw. But it vanished as quickly as the clouds swallowing up the light on the last Day of Sun.
“I have kept my promise,” she said. “Mason is unharmed. You will allow us to take you prisoner as well, or he will be left in the dungeons to rot.”
I held my breath as the knife at my throat inched closer. While I was pretty confident I could grasp the threads before the blade pierced skin, I gave her a short nod to indicate I was cooperating. The knife fell to the rug with a thump as her soldiers flooded the room, grabbing me.
I let them. I still had questions, and I had a feeling the answers would come only from Emryn.
This prison cell was nowhere near as hospitable as Ninu’s.
Beneath the citadel, the dungeons weren’t constructed of the same gleaming shadow glass. The dreary cells had been chipped out of the mountain.
Matted straw was piled in the corner along with a tattered blanket. Stains discolored the stone floor and walls, and everything smelled like the sewers beneath Ninurta. Metal bars separated me from the corridor, where the only light was from two glimmer glass torches sitting farther down the hall. The tap-tap-tap of the fidgeting guard kept my thoughts company.
In the cell across from me, Mason was sitting against the wall, scowling, his eyes unfocused. Like me, he was shackled to a metal anchor in the floor. I had filled him in on everything that had happened while he was out: how Gret, Winnifer, Aylis, and Dennyl were all gone, their bodies lost in the Fields; how he was the only hollow to survive the massacre. He hadn’t spoken a word since. We couldn’t really talk anyway because of the guard, but I imagined he was plotting his vengeance. That’s what I would be doing.
In the Fields, it had been so easy to imagine killing them all. I shuddered. I could understand now what Avan meant about having a darkness inside him. I could feel it there, that shadowy, violent anger.
Mason’s chains clanked together as he shifted his position against the wall. The soldiers were afraid of him. The shackles restricted his reach, but they were still wary about getting too close to the bars. I found it both amusing and irritating that, even now, I was always the one underestimated. I supposed in this instance, it might work in my favor.
We’d been fed only once so far, but I didn’t think we’d been in here long. No more than a couple of days. The cut in my side had begun to ache. I’d barely felt it when I was storming around the citadel in search of answers. Any healing tonic was beyond my reach now—likely seized along with our scouts and weapons—and I doubted any medical assistance was coming, or that they were even aware I’d been injured. Fortunately, the wound wasn’t serious, but it stung when I moved too suddenly.
A door down the corridor opened with a metallic clang. Mason and I exchanged a look.
Emryn stepped into view, dressed in his training gear. His hair was freshly trimmed, but a bit mussed. He must have come from the courtyard. It was so normal. The fact he seemed able to carry on as if he hadn’t ordered the deaths of a hundred hollows and my sentinel companions made that sinister fury simmering in my gut churn and boil. He looked first at Mason and then dismissed him, turning to face me instead.
Finally. I’d been waiting for this conversation since I’d glimpsed him fleeing the scene of his crimes.
“Kai,” he said. His expression was unreadable, his voice deliberately flat.
I tipped my head and spread my arms in a mocking bow. “Your Eminence Kahl Emryn.”
“The goddess’s song didn’t affect you.”
“Good of you to notice.”
His lips tightened. “I know you won’t believe me, but I’m glad you’re alive.”
“You’re right,” I said, letting my anger bleed into my voice. “I don’t believe you.”
He simply nodded, accepting the futility of trying to convince me. “I have questions.”
“Oh good,” I said. “So do I.”
“What are you?” It wasn’t a question. It was a Kahl demanding an answer from his subject.
I wasn’t his subject. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“With the goddess’s blessing, Lanathrill will march on Ninurta at dawn. We’ll see how arrogant you are then.”
“What do you want with Ninurta?”
He clasped his hands behind his back, the side of his face limned in the light of glimmer glass, accenting the slight offset of his jaw. I wondered vaguely if he’d been born that way or if it was a war injury. “An answer for an answer. What do you say?”
I leaned against the cold stone. The warmth from Hiyamun didn’t reach the air down here. Scratching my nail against the flaking rust of my shackles, I pretended to consider it.
When his face grew taut with impatience, I smiled and said, “Okay. Me first. Why Ninurta?”
“Originally, I wanted only the secrets to Kahl Ninurta’s power. I’d seen his sentinels patrolling the borders with their creatures of metal and magic. That sort of power might have been what Lanathrill needed to raise us back to glory.”
“But the chimera stood in your way,” I said.
“During his rule, my father tried to penetrate the Yellow Wastes. After his death, I, too, tried to follow the sentinels back to your city, but the chimera have always been quick to stop us.”
Ninu had stationed the chimera at our borders to isolate us, as I’d initially presumed, but I couldn’t have imagined that the chimera had also been meant to protect us from Lanathrill. I turned this revelation over in my mind.
“I’ve told you before: the chimera are intelligent. Once they learned to fear us, they’d leave us alone. And thanks to you, we have taught them fear. Before, they would have seen our army as a feast. Now, we are a horde descending on the Yellow Wastes, and they will flee before us.”
My heartbeat quickened. I pressed my sweaty palms together. He was right. We had taught the chimera fear by decimating their nest and forcing them back into the Outlands. Regret sat heavily on my chest.
“My turn,” Emryn said. “What are the sentinels and the hollows?”
“Mahjo.” At the skeptical lift of his brows, I added, “They’re faster, stronger, and heal more rapidly than the rest of us because of their bloodline, but they don’t have any actual physical magic.”
Mason and the sentinels had kept their collars hidden behind starched tunics in order to stave off questions, but the hollows from Etu Gahl had left their collars bare. Whether Emryn had noticed the tattoos or not, he didn’t mention them.
He gestured to Mason without actually looking at him. “So he’s mahjo. Lik
e me. Like the Council.”
“Yes. My turn again. You said ‘originally,’ you wanted only Ninu’s secrets. What do you want with Ninurta now?”
“To expand our kingdom,” he said, as though I was an idiot for not seeing this.
“But that can’t be all of it,” I said. “You wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble to deceive us just for a little more land, especially considering Ninurta isn’t exactly a paradise.”
His lips twitched as if fighting a smile. There was a glint of approval in his eyes. “The goddess has promised us immortality and limitless magic if I prove myself a Kahl and a conqueror worthy of her gifts. Yara was supposed to bring back Ninurta’s sentinels so that when the goddess sang, we could dispose of them and cripple Ninurta’s forces.”
The way he spoke of “disposing” made my fingers flex, nearly reaching for the threads. I might not be armed, but time was weapon enough in my hands.
In some ways, Emryn held more capacity for cruelty than Ninu ever had. Ninu had been motivated by the obsession to reclaim his human past. He had built Ninurta to spite the laws of his kind; he had cared little for the outside world. But Emryn was human, with a human’s range of emotion—both kindness and cruelty—and he wouldn’t stop at Ninurta.
“Immortality isn’t a gift,” I said. Ninu had been proof of that.
“My father died before he could see Lanathrill rebuilt. I will not suffer the same injustice.”
“Injustice? Tell that to the hollows you had killed while they were helpless to defend themselves.”
“A necessary sacrifice.” He spoke quietly, as if even he wasn’t sure he believed this. “How is it you can control time and not suffer the effects of magic?”
“Because my magic is real, not a poor imitation of whatever remains in the Void.” With luck, Irra and Kalla might have discovered by now that the sepulcher was secure and returned to Ninurta. As long as they were there, Ninurta would be safe.
Unless the Dust had nothing to do with Emryn’s magic, and it was as he’d said of Peshtigo—that the Dust rotted their minds and turned them into madmen. I had no doubt, however, their “goddess” was Infinite, and that she’d directed them to consume the Dust. The black earth in Cassia’s room wasn’t dirt scooped out from the Void. It had been refined into a powder, its traces of magic amplified. Whether those miniscule traces were enough to restore their magic was still questionable to me. Regardless, no one but the Infinite could have taught them to do that, and I was willing to bet those pages of foreign script had held the instructions.
Then there was the song from the Fields of Ishta. That slithering, invasive kind of power was something only an Infinite would possess.
“That’s why the goddess’s song didn’t work on you,” he said. He hadn’t posed it as a question, so I didn’t answer. “As her servants, the Council and I were granted immunity, but we couldn’t explain why you were able to resist. How can—”
“It’s my turn,” I pointed out. “Was anything you and Cassia told me about Peshtigo true?”
He rubbed his hand over his beard. “My people are content to view Peshtigo as an intrusion that must be expelled. I’m sure you’ve gathered the truth, though.”
“You attacked Peshtigo first.”
Emryn’s cold gaze remained firm. “We have pushed them back almost to the ruins of Westlin. Soon enough, Peshtigo will be ours.”
There it was, the real reason they’d kept their conflict with Peshtigo a secret. I should have listened to my instincts and known that they couldn’t be trusted. If I had, Jain and the others might still be alive.
“Why does it matter to you so much?” I asked, genuinely baffled by his fervor to expand and “restore” Lanathrill’s glory. The world had changed. It was time to move on. “Your great-grandmother built this amazing city to protect her people and established a working system to support them—why can’t that be enough?”
His jaw tightened. He shifted on his feet, his fingers flexing. “Do you know what we do with our dead?”
“Should I?”
“We bury them in the mountains,” he said. “We dig a hole into the stone, and enclose their bodies inside. Do you understand?” He leaned forward, eyes gleaming. “Vethe is a tomb. A magnificent one, perhaps, but a tomb nonetheless, and I will not see us buried alive in the mountain.”
He straightened up again, eyes closing. When he opened them, his face held a note of weariness.
“Last question,” he said. “Answer me truthfully. What are you?”
Remembering the way Irra had danced around an answer when I’d asked him that same question, I replied, “I’m a conundrum.”
His eyes flashed a warning. “Explain.”
“Not much to explain. I’m not mahjo, but I’m not entirely human, either. Maybe your goddess can figure it out for you.”
“Do not joke with me.”
“You want the truth? Tell me what you know about your goddess—who she is and how you communicate with her—and maybe I’ll share the same about myself.”
I’d been mulling over the identity of Lanathrill’s “goddess” ever since they locked me in here. In the story Cassia had told us about the Fields of Ishta, she had said the warriors fought “as if crazed,” their bloodlust driving them to turn their weapons on one another. The story was too similar to what I’d witnessed in Emryn’s soldiers to be mere coincidence.
Ishta. At least I had a name, even if this Ishta was just another Infinite I had yet to meet. Kalla had told me that there were seventy of them.
Emryn studied me, his gaze searching. Predictably, he didn’t push me further. He looked down and combed his fingers through his hair. “I’m sorry it had to come to this, Kai.”
“No, you’re not.”
Without another word, he turned and disappeared back down the corridor. A moment later, I heard the metal door shutting behind him. I sighed and slumped back against the wall.
Across the corridor, Mason watched me with a slight curve of his mouth.
“That was informative,” he said, his first words in two days. His voice was soft. The sound of it washed over me.
“Now we just need to get out of here so we can actually use the information. We have to warn Miraya,” I said.
Ninurta was already vulnerable with the rebel sentinels. Without Irra or Kalla to stop the goddess’s song, Lanathrill would easily overwhelm the city.
Unless Avan had chosen to stay in Ninurta. Hope kindled inside me. With Avan’s help, Ninurta might stand a chance.
CHAPTER 28
“KAI.”
My eyes opened. I was lying on my side, my back against the wall. I had curled up in my sleep, my body chilled from the stone and the cool air.
A tall figure stood in my cell.
I gasped, jolting upright. The links on my shackles clanked loudly. My gaze darted across the corridor to Mason. He was still asleep, curled into the corner of his cell.
“Who . . .” I paused. The threads were still, but I hadn’t touched them. I squinted up at the man standing over me. Kronos.
“Good to see you.” Light from the glimmer glass torches lit the back of his head, burnishing the liquid strands of his hair and shrouding his face.
“I wish I could say the same,” I muttered. I brushed at my tousled hair where it stuck to my cheek. “You have really bad timing.” The irony would have been funny had I not been shackled to the floor. “I’m not leaving yet.”
“I’m not here for my heir.” He sounded amused.
“Then why?”
“Can’t a father check in on his daughter?”
I snorted. Kronos turned so that the glimmer glass lit his profile. His cloak swayed around his long legs, moving in an invisible current. Pale blue eyes, so much like my own, surveyed my cell.
“Humans are such undisciplined creatures.” There was no disdain in his voice, as if he was merely stating a fact. “I can’t imagine why you want to stay with them. Look at what they’ve done to you. To your
friends.”
“Not all humans are alike. If you spent more time with them, you’d know.” Not that I wanted him around more.
“Can the same not be said for you? You believe all the Infinite are as self-serving and callous as Ninu.”
I pursed my lips, annoyed by the truth in his words. “You’re not exactly a brilliant example of altruism.”
“I never said I was.” His voice resonated. I shivered. His feet were whisper silent as he stepped closer. “If you embraced the River, you could escape these human walls in a blink. Time and space are as water to us.”
That place inside me, warm from the presence of my powers, reached for the promise in his words. But I shook my head. “And leave behind everyone I care about? I’ll pass.”
He crouched forward in one smooth motion that had me squeezing back against the wall. “I’m not here to collect you. Only to help you help yourself.”
The angles of his face were too sharp, which meant he still wasn’t fully recovered from his long-ago battle with Ninu. Although I didn’t want to admit it, I understood why he’d hidden me with the humans. It was the best way to protect me at the time, and keeping family safe was something we could agree on. But that didn’t mean I trusted him, or that I would ever forgive him for what he’d done to Avan.
“How?” I asked.
“You’ve broken through the wall you erected to block your powers. I’m glad. The threads have missed you. But now you must forget whatever boundary you think exists and step into the River.”
My mind brushed against the threads, and they vibrated in response, beckoning. “Tell me how.”
“Close your eyes.”
Frowning, I did as he said.
“Listen to the threads, not the way they connect everything around you—but how they flow through you. Tell me what you feel.”
I imagined the threads as they felt against my hands—spider-silk thin but strong as wire, humming with magic. The threads twined through my fingers and looped around my wrists. Magic passed from the threads into me, warmth riding my veins straight to my heart where we became inseparable, one and the same. Then the magic emerged again, darting through my fingertips and back into the threads, leaving us both changed but stronger for it.