by Rae Carson
Her weight shifts as she notches the bow and draws. I’m as still as a statue lest I throw off her aim. The bow twangs, and the glass cracks with the impact, and shards of glass fall like water and crash onto the floor.
Belén steadies Mara as she climbs down from my shoulders.
Mula holds the oil lamp aloft, a question in her eyes.
“Try it,” I say.
She pulls the still-burning wick from the clay base, then upends the contents onto the thick wooden door. Sassafras scent fills the room as slick oil drips down the wood grain. The drips never reach the floor; the thirsty wood soaks it up.
Mula steps back as far as her reach will allow. Turning her face away, she touches the burning wick to the oil slick on the door.
I hold my breath.
Nothing happens, and I reach for another lamp sitting in a nearby alcove—maybe we need more oil. But all of a sudden it does catch, in a great whoosh of air and heat.
Mula jumps up into the air. “Did you see that?” she asks, grinning wildly.
The flames licking at the door are near invisible, as wavering and insubstantial as a desert mirage, save for the occasional flame tip of orange or blue. The heat singes my face. I order everyone against the far wall. We raise our cloaks to cover our noses, and together we watch the door burn.
The fire weakens and dies.
It leaves a shiny black crater, but it’s shallow and small. I glance around the room, refusing to give up. Three oil lamps left. In my barracks, anyone caught with four oil lamps in a single room would have served double watches for excess and recklessness. Now I’d give my best sword for ten more.
Mula grabs the nearest and repeats the process of removing the wick, pouring out the contents, and lighting it.
Again, we step back to watch, growing chilly now that the window is open to the winter air. Again, the fire dies.
Mula’s shoulders slump.
I finally realize what’s taking so long. “We need to scrape off the char,” I say.
“Aaah,” says Mara. “Because the fire has nowhere to go.”
I nod. “We need to reveal fresh wood. Quietly.”
Belén steps forward, knife in hand. The blackened area is huge, and it shimmers like cold embers. He scrapes at it with the blade; huge chunks of black fall away, accompanied by finer ash that chokes the air.
“Quieter!” Mara whispers.
“I’m trying!” he answers. But he pauses every few scrapes to listen for footsteps.
When he has revealed a section of gray-brown wood, Mula steps forward and pours more oil into the crater. It’s concave enough that she has to fling it forward to coat the wood.
This time when she lights it, the room flashes as bright as day and the door burns just a little longer before fading.
“Should we test it?” comes Belén’s voice.
But I’m already there, my short sword drawn. I put the tip of the blade to the deepest part of the crater.
“Careful!” Mara says. “It might be hot.”
Mindful of her warning, I press the blade into the wood. Nothing happens.
I switch my grip, and using the cross guard for leverage, I lean my weight into it and push with all my might. I worry about the blade snapping, but all of a sudden something gives, the blade bursts through, my footing slips, and my shoulder slams into the door.
“Quiet!” everyone whispers at once.
I listen for footsteps, a cry of alarm. But there is nothing.
Warm air and weak torchlight sneak in through the hole we created. We need to widen it. I bend closer.
The torchlight reveals another crack. If I can pry it . . .
“I need my gloves,” I mutter, and a moment later they are in my hand. “Thank you, Mula,” I say, slipping them on. I pry at the crack with my sword until it’s wide enough for my hand. Then I slip my fingers through, grip as best I can, and yank. When that doesn’t work, I try pushing, then twisting side to side until something budges. Moments later, I triumphantly hold up a piece of shattered, blackened wood, as sharp as a spear at both ends.
I wipe sweat from my forehead with the back of my gloved hand and reach in for another try. “It would be faster,” I grumble, “if we could just pound it.”
“Also noisier,” Mara points out.
I pry out another chunk. The wood is old and dry, and the charred area widens with relative ease, but not enough for me to reach around and lift the latch.
Belén says, “It might be wide enough for a skinny girl.”
“I’m skinny!” says Mula. I step aside, and she pokes her head through the hole to size up the corridor. Then squeezes an arm through, a leg, and disappears.
I wince at the echoing scrape of the latch being lifted, but then the door swings open and Mula stands there, backlit by torchlight.
I charge outside, glance up and down the corridor, then beckon Mara and Belén to follow. Odd that no one guards our door. They must be very confident that we could never escape the city.
“Anyone remember which way we came?” Mara says.
“This way,” I say, and I hurry them north, toward the tunnel that will take us to the Temple of Morning.
We move quietly, but not quietly enough. I’m not outfitted for stealth, and the joints of my leather armor creak with each step. I should remove it. As we creep along the corridor, I peer into crevices, behind statues, hoping for a place to stash it where it won’t be noticed.
Something tickles at my consciousness, and I hold up a fist to halt everyone. Did I just hear footsteps? If so, they were faint. Slippers instead of boots. Maybe the swish of a cloak.
It sounds again—soft footfalls that barely echo.
“Back!” I whisper. “The other way. Quickly!”
We scurry back in the direction we came. Mula breaks into a panicked sprint, and I almost holler at her to stop, that running blindly down the corridor is a very bad idea, but yelling would be even worse. She disappears around the corner.
More footsteps—boots this time. They step in time, like my own men on watch. This corridor is guarded after all.
An exclamation of surprise. Mula has collided with someone.
“What are you doing here, slave girl?” comes a male voice. “This area is off limits.”
“I . . . I got lost.”
The voices are coming closer. We’re trapped. Mara swings her bow from her shoulder as Belén grabs a dagger.
Four Inviernos with soldiers’ braids and rawhide armor appear around the corner. They keep formation even as they back Mula toward us. I whisk my sword from its scabbard as the soldiers’ eyes go wide.
“Joyans!” one shouts. As one, they draw their weapons.
“Run, fight, or surrender?” Belén asks under his breath. “Your call.”
If we surrender, we might not get to Elisa in time. If we run, we’ll probably have to fight anyway. And if we fight, we’re likely to sustain injury. Maybe even a loss. Probably that loss would be Mula.
My hand tightens around my sword grip. “We fight.”
Tears fill Mara’s eyes, even as she nods once, sharply.
The soldiers advance. One raises his sword toward Mula’s cowering form.
“I’ll take it from here,” says someone behind us. Without turning, I know it’s Storm, his voice as full of arrogant condescension as always.
I grit my teeth. I don’t care which enemy I kill, so long as I get to Elisa. But maybe the Invierno turncoat will buy us some time.
“Your Honor, these are Joyans,” says one of the soldiers.
“Yes. Which is why my father will be most eager to handle them himself.”
“But they could be—”
Something washes the corridor in soft blue light and makes the soldier’s eyes fly wide with terror.
“You will release these prisoners into my custody,” Storm says in a soft but lethal voice. “You will not speak of them to anyone, not even your commander, until His Eminence the Deciregus has examined them him
self. You will return to your rounds as if nothing has happened.”
“Yes, Your Honor,” they mutter, bowing and backing away. Mula runs to Mara’s side and clutches at her sleeve.
After the soldiers disappear around the corner, Storm says, “Elisa is this way. Quickly; we don’t have much time. She has been trying to escape. I can sense it. And if I can sense it, the others can too. We need rope. There should be some in—”
“Wait.” I whirl and clamp the Invierno’s thin shoulder. My thumb digs in below his collarbone, hard enough to cause pain, but Storm is as impassive as ever. “You said your first loyalty is to Crooked Sequoia House,” I say. “I heard you. Are you leading us into another trap?”
The Godstone swinging from his amulet still glows from whatever magic he used to intimidate the soldiers, but Storm makes no effort to call on it. Neither does he try to break away from my grip. Instead his lips turn up into a sad, slanted smile, and he says, “I lied.”
We stare at him.
“You always speak for true,” Mula whispers. “Always.”
“Not this time.”
I’m about to protest, but Storm cuts me off.
“Lord-Commander, I won’t pretend to love her the way you do. But I do owe her my life and my honor. I am Joyan now. And we are, all of us, filthy liars.”
“Well, if he wasn’t lying then,” Mara says,” he’s lying now. Which means he’s telling the truth. So let’s go!”
I’m not sure that makes sense, but I release my grip and order, “Take us to her.”
Storm heads down the corridor at a fast jog. It’s a relief to run freely, knowing Storm can talk or intimidate our way out of any encounters.
We’re coming, Elisa.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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21
MY consciousness explodes into a world of pain.
I’m dying. I know it with certainty. Blood pours from my mouth, and I choke, then cough, which sends more knife pain into my side. My rib has punctured a lung. I will drown in my own blood.
I lie on my back in total darkness. My right leg is cricked beneath me in a way it shouldn’t be. My left shoulder sits oddly, and I make a tiny attempt to move it, but fire shoots up my neck and into my spine.
I take a deep breath to calm myself, bringing another fit of choking. Tears leak from my eyes. I don’t have much time.
My skull seems intact, and I cling to the thought. If I have my mind, I have everything I need. And just maybe . . . I can heal myself.
Doctor Enzo thinks I’ve healed myself instinctively, though more slowly than I’ve healed others. But I’m not sure what to do. I can’t heal my leg in its current position. I would just have to rebreak it later.
Maybe healing is like all the other powers drawn from the zafira. Maybe it can be focused. Deliberate.
I’ll start with my rib, since that is what’s killing me. If it works, I’ll probably pass out again. And once I wake up, I’ll have to straighten my leg and shoulder before healing them. It will be awful. Maybe the most awful thing I’ve ever done.
Coughs spasm through my chest, and I turn my head to the side to let more blood pour out.
Don’t think, Elisa. Just do.
I close my eyes and open myself to the zafira. It rushes in like a flood, filling me with warmth and light. I imagine that I sense Lucero holding the floodgates wide for me. I imagine his toothless smile, his voice whispering “I will help.”
How close to death must I be, to hallucinate so?
I think hard about my broken rib. I make the pain in my side my whole existence, embracing it, understanding it. I imagine the bone moving back into place, the tissue inside knitting together.
But it’s too much—too much effort, too much sensation. The world spins, and unconsciousness creeps up—too soon.
“Let go and let me,” comes a voice.
“Lucero?” I whisper.
“Promise me. If I do this, you will kill me.”
I hesitate.
“We don’t have much time. I can only draw the zafira when no one else is using me.”
“I promise.”
Pain reaches its fingers inside me and pries me open. My back arches off the ground, and I scream.
Coughing, choking, gagging . . . I wake, and turn over just fast enough to vomit all over the ground. I spit to clear my mouth. Cough a few more times. Spit again.
And I take a deep, glorious breath. My lungs are clear.
I clamber to my feet, trying my best in the dark to avoid the mess I just made. I stretch out my right leg and test it by flexing my foot back and forth. Perfect. A bit of stiffness, but no pain. Lucero must have straightened my leg before healing me, though I’ve no idea how he accomplished such a thing. I roll my shoulder. It twinges a little; I’ll have to be careful with it for a while.
But I’m alive. And healthy. Thanks to the man who is determined to die.
I reach out with my awareness for him, the same way I would reach for the Godstone’s power: “Lucero?” But there is nothing. It’s like shouting into an empty cave, my only response a faint mental echo.
I call the zafira and form tiny candle flames at my fingertips. It’s effortless now, either from practice or from being in a place of power. I use the light to explore my surroundings.
The walls are round and made of impenetrable stone. The floor is different—not dirt, exactly, and not stone. Bedrock, maybe. A pile of bloody vomit shimmers off to the side, and I move my glowing hand away to avoid looking. There are no windows. No doors. Just rounded walls that stretch up into darkness. I fell a very long way.
It’s a pit.
The walls are too smooth to climb. I kick at the floor—too hard to dig. There must be a way out. If they want me for their living sacrifice, then they must have a means of retrieving me. Maybe with a rope, lowered from the trapdoor above.
If they want me alive, that means they have to feed me, give me water to drink. It means . . .
No, it doesn’t mean anything. What was it Pine said? Something about the living sacrifice existing perpetually at the point of death?
I sink onto the ground, my flames winking out. They will starve me until I can no longer defy them. No, I’ll be mad with dehydration long before that. Or suffocation, if this pit is airtight. Already the air feels thin and damp from my own exhaled breath. Or do I imagine it?
I hug my knees to my chest and rest my forehead on them, determined to think, think, think, until I’ve figured out how to escape. I don’t lift my head from my knees until I’ve thought of several possibilities.
The trapdoor I fell through is too high for the light of my meager candle flames to reach. But maybe it’s made of wood. If so, I can burn through it.
I unsheathe my daggers, glad for their reassuring weight in my hands. Odd that they never bothered to disarm us. Or maybe not so odd. The weapons of Joya d’Arena are little use in a place of magic.
Unless, like me, one uses them to do magic.
I draw in the zafira until I buzz with power, until my whole body glows. I spin in place, using the momentum to swing a fireball upward with my dagger. It flies high, explodes against the ceiling, rains golden sparks onto my hair and shoulders.
I wilt with disappointment. I caught only the merest glimpse, but it was enough to see that the ceiling is made of pure stone. There is a slight indention marking the trapdoor, but neither is it made of wood. It’s a marvel of engineering, really, to have a door of solid stone that slides so smoothly.
I let myself rest before trying my next idea, knowing things will be easier if I use the zafira’s power in strategic increments. I will not exhaust myself. I will not allow myself to be brought to the point of death. So I sit on the ground and close my eyes. I take slow, deep breaths, as if I were going through the warm-up exercises of the Royal Guard.
Nothing will stop Hector from t
rying to get to me. And if I can’t figure a way out of this pit for myself, I need to think of a way to make it easier for him to find me—like he did when I was searching for him.
When calm has again settled over my body, I rise, summoning flames to the fingertips of my left hand, and begin a thorough inspection of the walls and floor. It seems too much to hope that there is a hidden door somewhere, but I look for one just the same.
The walls are made of huge stone blocks. If they are as thick as they are wide and tall, then no dagger will pry them loose, and it is unlikely that any cry for help will filter through. But I do not give up until every block, every mortar-filled crease, has suffered the scrutiny of my probing fingers.
The wall is impenetrable, all the way around.
One section, though, feels a little cooler than the rest. And when I’m done inspecting the pit’s entire girth, I return to it and lay my ear against it.
Definitely cold. And I hear something, even through the thick stone. A hum, as unceasing and relentless as rushing water.
Maybe it is water. The balcony where the altar stood looked out over a great cliff and the river below. I fell a very long way. I am probably halfway to the river. Maybe closer. And the cold part of the wall is undoubtedly the part that is exposed to wind and water, on the very outskirts of the city.
I begin to pace, worrying my thumbnail with my teeth. The first time I trained with Storm, I blew a small crater into the granite cliff. My firebolt was so powerful that the rock melted, like fired glass. I was exhausted afterward. Storm teased me for being so clumsy.
But could I blow a hole through this stone wall? Nothing for it except to try.
I back away from the cold section, as far as the pit will allow. The last time I did this, shards flew in every direction, drawing blood. A risk I’ll have to take.
Once again, I draw on the zafira. It fills me slowly this time—I have not rested long enough—but it comes. I draw in as much as I can take, until my skin itches and my fingers shudder with the need to release it.
No careful control, this time. No strategic rationing of power. I grasp hold of every vestige of energy within me and fling it forward in a bolt of ice-blue fire. It crashes into the wall, sprays sparks and slivers of stone in all directions. Pain slices into my left cheek, and warm liquid slips down to my jaw.