Godfire

by Cara Witter

  She turned to Kenton and Perchaya and began to speak.

  Once the first Mortichean words left her lips, the rest came easily. Kenton nodded and Perchaya smiled, and Rakal smiled back as his servants hefted the trunks, leaving a relieved-looking Nikaenor carrying only a hatbox containing some of Sayvil’s ingredients—slightly dangerous if the vials were broken, but extremely dangerous if these products were seen in their possession.

  Fortunately, Nikaenor seemed more than capable of managing the box without dropping it, and Daniella was able to focus her attention back on Rakal as he led them off the boat and onto the street—wider than she would have guessed from her view on the river—at the base of the cliff face.

  Rakal chatted amiably as they walked, passing people loading and unloading cargo from boats. Translating his questions about the comfort of their journey and their responses wasn’t difficult, though keeping her mind focused on the task when all she wanted to do was take in the city around her was more of a challenge.

  The swirl of bright clothing and cadence of Tirostaari around her was the same as Pendarth, but the very feel of Tir Neren was different somehow. Grander and bolder, every color made somehow brighter by contrast to the carved stone around it, the spicy scents of perfumes stronger against the smell of fish and the common city smell of too many bodies packed too closely together.

  She wanted to take it all in, craning her neck to see up to the top of the cliffs, though most of her view was blocked by the balconies and silk banners of the many levels above her.

  When they turned a corner around a jutting edge of the cliff, it wasn’t Daniella alone who gasped.

  The entrance to the palace was several stories tall, and wider than the group of them standing together. Two huge statues carved into the stone face flanked the opening, one of which was a man—no, a god; Nerendal, with beams of light framing his head like a crown—and the other a woman, the first queen of Tirostaar, her stone face majestically surveying her city.

  Guards—all female, as was the custom in Tirostaar—stood in neat rows at the entrance, their stance firm, their eyes taking in the newcomers and, Daniella feared, missing very little.

  Wicked-looking hooked blades jutted from their belts.

  Rakal exchanged some words Daniella couldn’t hear with the guard at the head of the row closest, then turned back to face the group. “I will show you to your rooms while you await your audience with Her Majesty,” he said in Tirostaari, which Daniella translated quietly after him. “But let me officially welcome you now, honored guests, to the palace of Tir Neren, the very seat of Nerendal himself.”

  Forty-four

  Saara stood on a low balcony, her face sheltered beneath a head scarf, more common in Tirostaar by day than by night, but which hid her from scrutiny nonetheless. She looked out at the city of Tir Neren, lit by torches and light charms and the bright beaming light of the full moon. If she’d believed in help from the gods, Saara might have thought that Arkista was shining down upon them, blessing their quest. Or Sayvil’s part in it, at least.

  Saara focused on the edge of a cliff a mile or two off, on the inside of a bend in the river. Just beyond it was the entrance to the palace, and above it, a balcony that Kenton and Perchaya should even now be preparing to secure.

  And deep within the cliff was the godstone, which had already begun to whisper in her mind again, now that she was near.

  Told you, the god said.

  Yes, Saara thought back. And if you’d explained yourself a bit better, we wouldn’t be in this mess.

  If the god could respond, he chose not to.

  Saara drew a deep breath, then turned back to the stairs leading above them. Jaeme—wearing a head scarf as well, though his was to keep his blond hair and pale face hidden—sat at the bottom of the stairs, one shoulder pressed against the stone wall, which had been smoothed over the years by wind and rain and the occasional flood waters. Those sometimes reached high enough to engulf the lower levels of the city, washing the slums clean, both figuratively through evacuation, and literally with churning, fresh snowmelt from the mountain.

  “Come on,” Saara said, stepping carefully past him at the edge of the stairs and beginning the ascent. “Don’t want to keep Kenton waiting.”

  Jaeme grumbled something behind her, but she heard the soft scuff of his boots on the stairs as he followed her. Saara’s calf muscles ached from the climb, which didn’t bode well. She’d grown weak from the long weeks on the boat and hadn’t had a good climb up the staircases of Tir Neren in months.

  Saara had chosen a residential neighborhood for their ascent, and this late in the night, the tunnels that led into the stone were quiet. Above them, guard kites swooped through the chasm, keeping an eye on the river and on external balconies. These kites were red in color—cleared to fly in the airspace along the civilian parts of the city, but not cleared to land in the palace.

  Above them, high up on the cliff, Saara could see the dark shape of a guard station, hewn into an outcropping on the edge of the cliff above. More guards would be stationed on the top of the cliff, waiting for signals from the kites that flew through the chasm—long drapes of fabric that the pilots could unwind and fly behind them, color-coded to the action they wanted taken by the guards above.

  Tonight, Saara saw no signal flags flying from the kites. The guards weren’t on high alert. They’d certainly all know to look for her—as evidenced by the printed hand-bills she’d seen affixed to walls with a carved-stamp image of her likeness, obviously copied from her official portrait. But with so few guards over the river, they must not know she was in the city now, which meant Kenton and the others had gotten inside without incident.

  Saara could only hope they’d followed through with the other parts of the plan.

  Twenty yards from the top of the cliff, they came to the landing at the top of the last stairwell. Jaeme, fit as he was, panted beside her. “You’re fast,” he said.

  Saara shrugged. “My cousins and I used to run races up the channel narrows. It’s the steepest set of stairs in the city, near the harbor entrance. Two hundred and fifteen steps. Switchbacks all the way to the top.” She smiled. “I sometimes won.”

  Jaeme puffed a few breaths. “I believe it.” He looked down at the river, now a thick black line below them, punctuated by the colorful drifting strips of the top of the kites. Only one or two flew above them.

  They were going to have to time this very, very carefully. The night was bright enough for the rock above to be illuminated far more than Saara would have liked.

  Which affirmed her theory. Arkista wasn’t blessing them. If she had, she would have blessed them with darkness.

  “All right,” Saara said. “Your turn.” She gestured at the cliff—the sheer, smooth stone they’d have to scale to reach the kite hangar above them.

  The wall guards would watch the chasm, but not the sheer wall beneath them. With a lot of climbing and a little luck, they should be able to safely reach the kite hangar and snag one of the high-clearance kites—the ones stretched with green silk that wouldn’t draw immediate attention for landing on a palace balcony.

  Jaeme pressed his fingers against the stone, pushing them in and making a small dent, barely deep enough to hide his first knuckles. He pressed outward, able to shape the stone about twice as wide as that, but the hole that resulted took the term “toe hold” a bit literally for Saara’s comfort.

  “Can’t you make them any bigger?” she asked.

  Jaeme threw his hands in the air. “What I just did there is damn well miraculous, I’ll have you know. I told you I can’t burrow through walls at a moment’s notice. I don’t see you spawning any bonfires yourself.”

  Saara sighed. She could insist that Jaeme make the holes bigger, but the more time it took him to make them, the longer they’d have to spend hanging off the side of the cliff. Instead, she reache
d down and unlaced her boots. “If that’s all you can muster,” Saara said, “we’re going to have to do this barefoot.”

  Saara removed her boots and tied the laces together, then affixed them to her belt so she would have her hands free for the climb. Jaeme did the same, but once he had, Saara caught him standing still, staring nervously down at the river, his eyes locked in place, not even scanning for guards.

  “What?” Saara asked.

  “It’s just,” Jaeme said, still not wrenching his eyes away “. . . it’s a long way down.”

  Saara stared at him. “Yes,” she said slowly. “That happens when you climb to the top of a cliff.”

  Jaeme didn’t move a muscle to nod.

  Saara sighed. “You’re afraid of heights and you didn’t think to mention it before now?”

  “I didn’t want to say anything in front of Kenton.”

  Saara rolled her eyes. Jaeme could have mentioned this on their two day boat ride to her alone, but she supposed by that point he’d been committed and hadn’t wanted to think on it.

  “Look at me,” she said.

  Jaeme still stared at the river.

  “Gods damn it, Jaeme,” she said, “look at me.”

  Jaeme finally tore his eyes away, looking at her with the expression of a man who’d just stared through the multiple levels of hell.

  She supposed to someone who feared heights, Tir Neren would be a good approximation, on the cliff face at least. Saara held his gaze. “No more looking down.”

  Jaeme swallowed. “Too late. I’ve seen it and—”

  “Look up,” Saara said. “Look at where you’re going to put the next handhold.”

  Jaeme looked up at the sheer face of the cliff, but he didn’t appear at all sure of himself.

  “Okay,” Saara said. “Make as many holds as you can reach. I’ll let you know when it’s time to climb.”

  Behind her, Jaeme pressed himself to the face of the cliff, reaching far above his head and making more holes in the stone. As they climbed, he’d be able to space them better, reaching a comfortable distance, forming the hole and holding onto it while stepping into the one he’d reached previously. The first few, from the look of it, were going to be a bit hit or miss.

  But that was Jaeme’s job. Saara’s was to watch the guards. She waited as a single guard soared across the chasm in the direction of the palace. She counted the seconds until that guard used her wind charm to steer the red kite around the curve of the rock, heading further up-river. They should have until that guard completed a lap of the city or landed on the other end and passed off her kite, and shift, to another.

  “Now,” she said to Jaeme. “Now we climb.”

  To his credit, Jaeme reached immediately for the first handhold, boosting himself up on shaking arms and balancing with all four limbs gripping the holes he’d created. He reached above his head, making another rest for his hand, then pulled up, transferring his weight to the next hold.

  Up they went, Saara following behind, barely resting her big toe and the ball of her foot in each of Jaeme’s holes. Her muscles ached, screaming for relief, and she rested her weight on one foot, then the next, trying to keep her muscles from giving out.

  “Keep your weight on your feet,” she said to Jaeme, and he grunted in reply. Saara stepped over a particularly large crevice in the stone. The top was jagged, such that she could have rested her whole foot on it, but judging by the tiny, crumbling particles that flaked away as they climbed, she couldn’t trust it.

  Despite her advice to Jaeme, Saara’s forearms were beginning to burn. “More to the right,” she said, craning her neck to get a look at the guard house above. The hangar was housed below it, and if they moved straight for it, they should be able to get there before they were both too weak to hold on.

  Jaeme took another step up, and Saara put her hand where his foot had been, boosting herself up another few feet. Her toe searched for the hold, and she had to look down to find it.

  They were out over the river now, and gods.

  It was a long way down.

  Saara looked back up, expecting to be able to take another step, but Jaeme’s foot was still lodged in the next hold, and he was staring past her, at the river. Shaking.

  “Jaeme,” Saara said. “Look up.”

  His eyes had gone glassy, and he only shook his head.

  Saara drew a deep breath. She was having a hard enough time keeping her own mind off the fall—and the fact that only her aching toes were even now preventing her from taking the plunge.

  She had to distract him.

  “Jaeme,” she said again. “Tell me about your family.”

  That was enough to get him to look down at her, if only for a second. “Your family,” she said. “You never talk about them, not all the time we’ve been traveling together, except to say that your uncle must be wondering where you are. Look up, damn it. And tell me about them.”

  It was a reach, but everyone had a family, and it was one of the few subjects she was confident he’d be able to recall, even given the height. One might forget many things when hanging hundreds of feet over a chasm, but one didn’t forget one’s mother.

  “My father’s dead,” Jaeme said. And, to Saara’s relief, he looked up, and reached above him to make another hold.

  They proceeded upward a few more feet, and Saara leaned back, judging the distance above him.

  Nearly halfway.

  “How did he die?” Saara asked.

  “He was stoned. As a traitor.” Jaeme paused, his face tilting down again. “I watched.”

  Saara wondered if she was going to have to tell him again to avert his eyes from the drop, but Jaeme jerked his chin upward.

  “How old were you?” Saara asked.

  Jaeme boosted himself up another step. “Six.”

  Saara cringed. That was a young age to watch any man be stoned to death, let alone his own father. Still, at this moment, that was an asset. A bloody memory might be painful enough to get his mind off the drop.

  “And your mother?” Saara asked.

  “She was there,” Jaeme said, grunting as he took another step up. Saara found her toe hold without looking and followed, flexing the screaming muscles of her right arm as she reached for the next hole in the stone. She took a sweeping look behind her, but saw no guards high enough to spot them.

  Yet.

  “So she raised you alone then?” Saara asked.

  Jaeme shook his head, quiet as they climbed the next few yards. “No,” he said finally. “She was never the same after that. She has an estate on the other side of our duchy, far from her memories of my father.” He groaned as he took another step, and Saara bit her own tongue, refusing to let herself do the same despite the pain in her arms and legs, lest he look down and fixate again on the river below.

  “I visit her occasionally,” Jaeme said. “But less often, now that I’m older. She says—she says I look like him. Sometimes, she seems to think I am him.”

  That was awful. Saara’s own mother was a general and traveled about the island, training troops. Her father was with the priesthood in Tir Neren—Saara had seen him fairly often, though it clearly wasn’t safe to visit him now that she was wanted. Even if she could have been certain he would help her, her aunt would obviously have him watched. She hadn’t lived with her parents since she was very young—too young even to remember.

  But still, that was a far cry from watching them be murdered or go mad.

  Jaeme hauled himself up another several feet, and Saara could see the lip edge of the kite hangar above them. “Not much farther,” she said. “Veer right a bit more.”

  Jaeme reached up and to the side, doing as she said, and Saara lowered her voice, whispering in case there were guards near the edge of the hangar above.

  “So your uncle raised you, then?”
>
  “Yes,” Jaeme said. “Technically he inherited when my father was disgraced.” Jaeme groaned again, speaking as he formed the holes and pausing as he lifted himself higher. “But he has no sons, so he’s made me his heir . . . which is why I was able to become a knight when I came of age. He made sure I’ll inherit my birthright from him . . . even though some of the other dukes opposed it. I owe him everything.”

  The hangar was close now, mere feet away. Saara didn’t dare let the story continue. “Make me a set of holds beside you,” she whispered. “Let me pull myself up for a look.”

  Jaeme did as she asked, and as he did, she caught him steal another glance down at the chasm. His knees quaked.

  “Up,” she whispered.

  He did as told.

  Saara climbed up beside Jaeme, craning her neck to peer into the hangar, keeping her head tilted as far back as possible, minimizing how much of her would be visible to anyone who might be waiting there.

  But she found the hangar empty except for the racks and racks of kites and the shelves of wind charms. On the end were three kites that even in the moonlight were clearly a royal shade of green. “Done,” Saara said, hauling herself up onto her knees and reaching behind her to take Jaeme’s hand and pull him up beside her.

  Jaeme panted, pressing his palms to his knees and scurrying away from the edge with an expression of unbridled relief. Which was probably unwarranted, given that next he was going to have to fly over the chasm, facing down into the river no less. But Saara felt infinitely safer in a kite than she did hanging over the edge of the cliff from a toe hold.

  “Let’s hope Kenton and Perchaya are ready for us,” she said, reaching for one of the palace guard kites. “Because we’re about to be ready for them.”

  Forty-five

  Of all the things Perchaya had been through—imprisoned in Diamis’ dungeons, fighting an actual blood mage, traveling with the chosen ones of prophecy—somehow, staying in the lavish guest chambers of the palace of Tir Neren was the one that served to make her old life on the farm seem a distant memory.