The Sky Weaver

by Kristen Ciccarelli

  Eris glanced up. He’d never spoken her name before. She didn’t think he knew it.

  “Help me,” he said, his eyes shifting from gray to silver and back, “and you will never have to run again.”

  As she studied the man before her, Eris thought of the way Kadenze drew back in fear of him. She’d never seen Kadenze afraid of anything before.

  “What are you?” she asked him.

  “Nothing good,” he said simply.

  If Eris ran, Kadenze would find her. But if Crow was telling the truth, if he really could help her, she wouldn’t just ensure her own safety. She would ensure that the one who’d burned the scrin and taken the lives of everyone she loved was stopped from doing the same thing again.

  “What do you need me to do?” she asked.

  “Climb the Skyweaver’s tower. Take back my soul. Then bring it here, to me.”

  “Your soul?” Eris shivered. Is that what they took from you?

  “I cannot escape this prison without it.” He looked around him at the labyrinth walls. “It’s the condition of the curse she placed on me.”

  “But how do I find such a thing?”

  He seemed to flicker before her, as if straining to keep his solid form. Very softly, he said, “Skye was an expert weaver.”

  Eris frowned. Skye? It was the name on the spindle Day gave her. She’d asked about it once, but all Day would say was that it belonged to someone he loved.

  “She was good at taking things and turning them into something else.” His silver eyes flashed as they met Eris’s. “Just like you.”

  Like me?

  He meant the tapestries, she realized. The ones she turned into doors.

  But I just weave them. The labyrinth changes them . . . doesn’t it?

  “She will have disguised it,” said Crow. “And she will have kept it close.” Turning, he headed deeper into the maze. “Come. We must act quickly.”

  Eris followed, gripping the straps of her pack. Crow seemed to glide rather than walk as he led her down a hallway Eris had trained herself never to go down—because it always turned her about, sending her back to the beginning. She followed him now into a part of the labyrinth where she’d never been before, to a door she’d never seen. It was the blue-black of midnight, its handle carved of ivory, and there were familiar words inscribed into the wood.

  When the night descends . . .

  I look to those who’ve gone before me

  lighting my path through the dark.

  It was part of Day’s prayer. She could almost hear him speaking the words over her bed every night.

  What would she find on the other side?

  She forced herself to reach for the knob. Her skin sparked at the contact. Despite the chill of the labyrinth’s air, the smooth curve of it was warm against her palm. Almost comforting.

  “Where does it lead?”

  “To her,” said Crow. “You’ll need to hurry.”

  Nodding, she turned the knob. The moment she pulled it open, silvery mist flooded in.

  Eris didn’t look back. Just stepped across the threshold and into the mist beyond.

  Remembered

  Dreams are for mortals, not gods. And yet, as the child grew within her, Skyweaver dreamed.

  They were insubstantial, fleeting things at first. Like flashes of fish underwater. But the bigger the baby grew, the clearer they became. Dreams of a blustery cove. Of a father’s weathered hands and nets of flickering fish. Of a boy who stood at the edge of things. A boy made of shadows.

  Why did it feel so familiar?

  As her belly swelled, Skyweaver struggled to weave. Souls slipped through her fingers. The night sky refused to bend to her will.

  What’s happening to me?

  Fearful of being found out, she dismissed all but one loyal servant: a devout man named Day, who swore to keep her secrets.

  The dreams began to come in the daytime. Vivid, insistent. Until Skyweaver could smell the piney scent of juniper berries and taste the tender flesh of cod and feel the sting of the northeast wind on her cheeks.

  The more she dreamed, the more the baby grew, and the more she changed. Until one day she looked to find that her hands were not those of a god but of a human. Callused and coarse.

  Skyweaver locked herself in her tower until Skye’s Night. On that night, Skyweaver had no choice but to descend the steps and join the empress of the Star Isles for Leandra’s yearly celebration of her defeat of the Shadow God.

  Skyweaver wove herself a flowing gray gown for the occasion. One that would hide the bump of her belly.

  The Shadow God was supposed to be dead. She wasn’t supposed to be carrying his child.

  Skyweaver descended her tower and entered the citadel. She sat at the queen’s table and smiled when they toasted her. She clapped when they reenacted her defeat of the Shadow God. But on the inside, she wondered: Can they see my lie?

  It started when they brought out the wine: a sharp pain in her belly that came like the tide. Ebbing and flowing. Contracting, releasing.

  She knew what it meant.

  The baby was coming.

  Pain stabbed her like knife. She reached for the table to steady herself, gripping it hard, waiting for the ache to subside.

  It didn’t. Instead, it gave her one last dream.

  Leandra’s citadel disappeared. Skyweaver could taste the salt of the sea on her lips. Could feel the wet wooden oars blistering her palms. Could hear the crack of thunder.

  You remind me of her, the Shadow God’s voice rang through her mind.

  They weren’t dreams, she realized, clutching the bump of her belly. They were memories.

  I am the fisherman’s daughter.

  And this was a memory of the day she died.

  Skyweaver saw the wave crash down on the boat—her boat—turning it over, pushing her out. She felt the shock of the ice-cold sea, the force with which it sucked her under. Chest burning. Lungs filling.

  And dragging her down were the hands of the one who’d come for her.

  Just before she drowned, Skye opened her eyes. And there in the water’s dark depths, staring back at her, was the face of her murderer.

  Leandra, god of tides.

  Thirty-Nine

  When the mist cleared, Eris stood before a black tower rising high enough to pierce the sky.

  The Skyweaver’s tower.

  Its base was a raised platform where a locked door barred the citizens of Axis from entering. Not that anyone ever dared. The platform was guarded by Lumina, who were currently doing their rounds.

  All Eris had to do was elude the guards, climb the tower, and steal Crow’s soul from under the Skyweaver’s nose.

  Easy, she thought with a confidence she didn’t feel, studying the steps from the ground to a wide platform. Bits of grass and moss were pushing up through the cracks, gently reclaiming the stairs for themselves. Stealing is what I do best.

  She watched the guards circle it twice, counting heartbeats each time they disappeared until they reemerged from the other side. When they disappeared a third time, Eris bolted for the steps, took them quickly to the top, then tugged the pin from her hair and used it to pick the door’s lock—all the while keeping count in her head.

  Her hands were so slick with sweat, she nearly dropped the pin.

  Finally, the lock clicked and the door swung in.

  The moment it did, the guards came into view.

  “Hey!” said the first, spotting her. “You there!”

  “Halt!” called the second. “What are you doing?”

  With her heart drumming in her chest, Eris stepped into the tower, shut the door behind her, and jammed the lock with her pin. It wasn’t a matter of whether or not it would hold—she knew it wouldn’t. It was whether it would hold long enough for her to climb the steps, steal back Crow’s soul, and step across.

  There was only one way to find out.

  The only light here came from the stars, flooding through the windows. Be
fore her stood a black spiral stairway that disappeared out of sight. Behind the door at her back, she heard the rushing footsteps and shouting voices of the guards.

  Eris darted for the steps.

  She climbed fast. Every ten stairs, a narrow window showed the view of Axis below. Soon, she could see the citadel. Then the harbor. Then the cliffs to the east beyond the city.

  The higher she rose and the farther the city fell beneath her, the heavier her legs grew. Soon her breath came in quick, burning gasps. By the time she neared the top, her heart pumped hard and the air felt thick in her lungs. Looking out the next window, the lights of the city seemed as far away as the stars.

  When the stairs abruptly stopped, a door stood before her. A steel one this time. For a moment, Eris wondered if it, too, would be locked, but it wasn’t even shut. The door stood a little ajar, letting pale light spill onto the stair where she stood.

  She heard shouts from below.

  Peering down through the window, she saw several black shapes swarming at the base of the tower. Lumina soldiers.

  Eris’s pulse pounded in her ears.

  They hadn’t broken in yet. She still had time.

  When she pressed her palm to the door, it stung like a jellyfish bite. She flinched away, hissing through her teeth.

  Stardust steel, she realized, recognizing the pale silvery sheen.

  So, using the sole of her boot, she kicked the door open. It was only when she stepped inside that she realized something was wrong.

  The room was . . . deserted.

  A broken loom stood directly across from Eris. Smashed in three places, it caved in on itself like a wounded spider. She could see the cobwebs that had formed over it, glittering in the starlight.

  The weaving bench was toppled. The windows were cracked. And Eris saw spots of blood where the glass webbed.

  There’s no one here.

  Everything was coated in a thin layer of dust, as if there hadn’t been anyone here in years. Perhaps decades.

  It smelled like wood and dust and something else. Juniper berries, she thought. The scent brought a strange and sudden dizziness.

  More shouts broke out from far below. Eris ignored them. She had her spindle. Even if they broke into the tower right now, she would be gone long before they climbed the stairs.

  Eris walked quickly over to the smashed loom, her footsteps sending up dust clouds. Standing before the massive wooden frame, she reached to touch the broken pieces, and as she did, an image from the past rose up in her mind.

  For her entire life at the scrin, a tapestry hung at the foot of her bed in that small, dark room behind the kitchens. Woven by Day, it depicted a small, knobby woman with meadow-green eyes set a little too far apart. The woman hunched at her loom, pausing in her work to look down at the tools in her hands, as if forgetting why she’d picked them up in the first place. Eris fell asleep every night wondering why she looked so sad.

  She knew the woman was supposed to be Skyweaver. But all the other scrin tapestries depicted her as a faceless god crowned with stars. This was a mortal woman.

  Eris stepped quickly away from the loom. Shaking off the memory, she looked to the wreckage around her.

  What happened here?

  Some kind of struggle, that was certain. One that happened a long time ago. But if Skyweaver wasn’t here—hadn’t been here in years—where was she?

  Sudden shouts echoed up the stairs, breaking her concentration.

  Eris strode to the narrow window, looking down. The black shapes of the Lumina were swarming into the tower now.

  They were inside, and they were coming.

  Eris wanted to take out her spindle and cross, now, but there was something she’d come for. She’d made Crow a promise, and if she didn’t come through on it, he couldn’t help her.

  She was good at taking things and turning them into something else, he’d said.

  Quickly, Eris moved through the room, scanning the floor in the starlight, turning overturned furniture upright. Forcing herself to be calm.

  She will have disguised it. And she will have kept it close.

  But if that were true—if Skyweaver kept it on her—then Crow’s soul wasn’t here. Because the god of souls wasn’t here.

  The voices got louder. Nearer. Soon Eris could hear their sprinting footsteps. She went to the door she’d come through and shut it. But there was no lock on this door. So she dragged the only unsmashed piece of furniture in the room—a heavy dyeing table—against it, needing to buy herself time.

  There was a shelf full of empty jars and she searched this, too. She checked the floor beneath the loom. She checked everywhere. But there was no sign of anything harboring a soul.

  Thud, thud, thud!

  Fists rained down on the door, making Eris jump.

  “Who’s in there?”

  Eris stared at the door, watching it shake with each pound of a fist. The table wouldn’t hold it shut for long.

  She was out of time.

  Eris drew out her spindle and crouched down. Drawing a line across the floor, she waited for it to flare silver. Waited for the mists to rise.

  Nothing happened.

  The door inched open.

  Eris drew a second line, and then a third. The mists didn’t come. The way across didn’t open for her.

  She looked to the walls around her. They shone silvery in the starlight. Like steel.

  Stardust steel, she realized, her panicked thoughts humming like bees.

  She remembered the cuffs Kor had locked around her wrists.

  Stardust steel prevented her from crossing.

  I’m trapped. Trapped a thousand steps into the sky, with nothing but a door between her and a pack of soldiers. Soldiers who were throwing all their weight into it now.

  The door shuddered, and held—but only barely. A loud crack was followed by several voices counting in unison. The next time they threw their weight against that door, it would not hold.

  Eris looked to the only other possible exit: the narrow window. She pushed her way through broken, toppled furniture until she stood before the cracked glass, looking out. The walls of the tower were perfectly smooth. There were no handholds to climb, and the fall would kill her.

  But even if she could somehow survive it: the window frame was too narrow. She couldn’t fit through it.

  Behind her, the door heaved with the weight of the soldiers throwing themselves against it, forcing the table to move enough to let them through.

  The Lumina crawled into the room.

  Before Eris could turn and face her enemies, they had her by the shoulders.

  This can’t be happening, she thought, staring at the broken loom, thinking of the dying words on Day’s lips.

  When the enemy surrounds me . . .

  They forced Eris to her knees, checking her for weapons. She felt the cold kiss of stardust steel as they locked her wrists in manacles.

  . . . I know your hands hold the threads of my soul . . .

  They growled an order. But Eris didn’t hear them.

  . . . and there is nothing to fear.

  Except the goddess of souls wasn’t here. She wasn’t where she should be: at her loom, spinning souls into stars.

  Day’s prayer was a lie.

  The Skyweaver had forsaken them all.

  Forty

  They dragged Eris down the citadel halls and up several sets of stairs, stopping sharply before a cylindrical room where two teak doors carved with frothing waves were thrown wide open.

  “Wait,” hissed the soldier who held Eris’s arm in his meaty grip, halting her before the doors.

  The walls of the room beyond them were deepest blue, like the depths of the sea, and painted with all manner of creatures: from crabs and spiny urchins to schools of shimmering fish to majestic humpback whales. In the center of the room, the slender white steps of a throne twisted upward like a conch shell, to where the empress sat on a cushion the color of seafoam.

  At th
e base of the throne stood a young man in a golden tunic, his back to Eris.

  “. . . I told her if she insisted on keeping company with fugitives, I couldn’t have her commanding my soldiers.”

  “And?” came the empress’s voice, cold as the sea. “Where is she, then?”

  “She fled,” he said. “I’m here to take her place. I accept full responsibility for Safire’s actions.”

  Eris’s heart thumped at that name. She knew who this was, suddenly recognizing his tall stature, broad shoulders, and dark curls. It was King Dax before the empress’s throne.

  “You’re here to take her place?” The empress’s voice trembled with barely restrained anger. “You had time to speak with her, demote her, but not detain her?”

  “My cousin doesn’t make errors in judgment, Empress. She has impeccable instincts. It’s why I made her my commandant. So perhaps you can help me understand why she would believe in Eris’s innocence so resolutely.” Dax’s voice was perfectly calm, belying the rising tension in the room. “Is it true that Eris was only a child when the scrin burned?”

  “That child was a danger to us all.” Leandra’s voice trembled through the room. “If you knew what she was, you would fear her. You would dread the thing she can unleash on the world.”

  “You didn’t answer my question,” he said softly.

  The empress rose to her feet, then slowly descended the steps of her white throne. A hush fell over the room as the sound of her boots echoed eerily through the silence.

  “I’m disappointed in you, King Dax,” she said, standing before the dragon king now. “I invite you into my home. I promise to help your people. I look the other way when your cousin flouts my laws and opposes my soldiers . . .”

  “Your soldiers were beating a civilian to death in an alley,” said Dax, his voice tightening with restraint. “If I had been there, I would have opposed them alongside her.”

  “I see,” she whispered, studying him. There was a sparkling silence. To her captain, she said: “Caspian? Arrest this man.”

  All of Dax’s guards drew their weapons in unison.

  “Detain them,” the empress ordered without looking away from the king, who said nothing. He made no move to fight her. Eris watched the Lumina descend on Dax’s soldiers, who were outnumbered and easily overpowered.