by Laini Taylor
The last thing she wanted to do was fight for her own oblivion.
She tried to tell herself it would be all right. The city had emptied. The citizens were safe, and the Tizerkane could take care of themselves.
But these were all lies, and they festered inside her: her hearts, her whole self felt corrupt, like a plum gone soft with rot. It would ruin Lazlo to do this. It would break Weep, and ruin him, and she would wish for oblivion then, which Minya would not grant. Sarai would still be her puppet, with bloody teeth and ineluctable strings, after everything else was gone.
Lazlo said, “I love you, too,” and it was so wrong that he should say it now, with Minya’s will crammed in Sarai’s soul, and murder to be done. He bent down and softly brushed the unbitten side of his mouth over hers, and rested his face, cheek to cheek, against hers. His jaw was rough, his skin too warm. He shuddered lightly against her. Sarai breathed his sandalwood smell, and remembered her first discovery of him, through her moths in the Godslayer’s house. She’d thought him a brute at first glance. The idea amazed her now. There had been so many moments of wonder, but her mind leapt somewhere quite different: to the last minutes of her own life. It was just before the blast ripped the city—deep night and silent, all the streets empty. Lazlo had been walking through Weep. Sarai had been with him by way of a moth perched on his wrist, and she’d had no inkling of all that was about to occur.
It was a funny thing to think of. At first, she didn’t know why she had. But then… she thought maybe she did, and a strange kind of shiver ran through her.
She had never been able to enter the minds of those who were awake. As a girl, testing her powers, she had tried and learned: The conscious mind was closed to her. And so it had been that night as well. Her moth had ridden on Lazlo’s wrist as he paced through the silent city, and she’d been shut out of his mind, with no idea what he was thinking.
But… she’d sensed what he was feeling. With her moth perched on his skin, she had felt as though she were pressed against the closed door of his consciousness. Emotion had radiated through it, as clear and strong as music through a wall. And now, her face against his, she felt again the music of emotion. It was discordant and miserable, uncertain, desperate, and jagged.
Sarai couldn’t speak, beyond Minya’s false words, but her thoughts and feelings were her own. She pressed her cheek even harder against Lazlo’s, felt the burn of his stubbled jaw. And then she poured out her own jagged music. At least, she hoped she did.
It was a howling wind in her mind, a storm of knives, a blood-soaked hurricane of the word NO!
He tensed against her. Had he felt it? Was it real? He drew back and searched her eyes. She wanted to pull him against her again. She had no power over her eyes. Minya possessed more subtlety than they’d known. All he could see was what she put there. He squinted in consternation. Then his gaze seemed to clear—to clear and darken. He turned to Minya and said, in a voice like the chew of gravel, “I can’t take you to Weep. I made a promise.”
And Minya was… displeased.
15
TEA BREAK FROM THE END OF THE WORLD
As soon as she was out of the gallery, Ruby raced up the dexter arm to her room, hurtling through her doorway without pausing to part the curtain, so that it tangled round her and ripped right off its rigging. Still in motion, she thrashed it away and disappeared into her dressing room, which had once belonged to Letha, goddess of oblivion. She was in there less than five seconds, then raced out and up the corridor to slip again amongst the ghosts crowding the gallery.
This time she made her way to the kitchen door, where the Ellens stood, hands covering their mouths, eyes wet and wide with dread.
“What’s happening?” she asked in an overloud whisper, which carried in the sudden hush that followed Lazlo’s words. “I made a promise,” he told Minya, who radiated fury.
“Then break it,” she hissed through her teeth.
And Lazlo didn’t say anything. He just held Sarai close and, anguished, shook his head.
Ruby met eyes with Sparrow across the room. Her sister was pale and frantic, and gave her a hurry up gesture. Ruby turned to Less Ellen and said…
It was ridiculous. She knew how it sounded—as though she were unhinged from reality. “Ellens,” she said, “might we have some tea?”
They stared at her, their dread momentarily overwhelmed by surprise. “Tea?” repeated Great Ellen.
Ruby licked her lips and tried her best to be the picture of clueless nonchalance. “What?” she said, defensive. “Am I not allowed to be thirsty?” Her hearts hammered. There was sweat in the small of her back. “Tea’s never a bad idea. You’ve said so yourself often enough.”
“Well, you’ve just disproved the adage,” said Great Ellen, while Less Ellen gasped out, “Oh!”
It wasn’t to do with tea, that gasp. One glance, and Ruby saw: Sarai was gone. Lazlo was left holding air.
Too late, she thought, wild. Too late. But she still had to try. What else could she do? “I’ll make it myself,” she told the Ellens, and shoved between them through the door.
Sarai was anchored, and then she wasn’t. She had substance, and then she didn’t. The fragile filament that connected her soul to the world all at once fell slack.
To Lazlo, it was sathaz all over again: His arms were empty, curved around nothing. Where Sarai had been, so sweet and smooth, he now held nothing but air. He reached out as though he could find her, but she wasn’t invisible. She was gone. “No!” A gasp, a terrible echo of the word that had torn through his thoughts. He spun toward Minya, wild-eyed.
“I hope you said your good-byes!” she screamed. Her voice was shrill, her face empurpled. If any could have felt her music then, “jagged” wouldn’t have begun to cover it. This was all Lazlo’s fault, as she saw it. He was making her do it, and she wanted him punished.
“Bring her back!” he gasped out.
“You bring her back! You know what you have to do!”
Lazlo didn’t hear the pleading in her voice. The horrific NO! was still carving its hurricane path through his mind, driving out all else. Where had it come from? The others were screaming, crying, and Sarai wasn’t there.
She just wasn’t there.
Minya was still astride Rasalas. She scrambled to a stand, feeling the metal shift beneath her. She tried to leap back to the table, but the beast twisted, and a clawed metal paw flashed up and grabbed her out of the air. It tossed her to the floor. Lazlo loomed above her. He seized her with his own hands, clenching her rags in his fists. He lifted her up in front of him, her toes dangling, and looked her right in the eyes.
All around them, her army shifted. You could see her will flow into them, rippling them like wind over grass. Row after row, the ghosts raised up their knives, their meat hooks and mallets, gleaming-edged and fresh-sharpened. Even the Ellens held weapons. Their eyes went wide with horror as their own hands lifted, cocked back, released.
Knives flew. Someone screamed.
Lazlo didn’t shift his gaze from Minya, whom he still held off the floor. Mesarthium responded, whiplash-fast. For every flung weapon, a ripple of metal disengaged from the walls to intercept it. It looked like magnetism. It looked like magic. All around the room there was a shink shink shink as silver metal met blue and clattered to the floor.
One blade hit the wall. Instead of bouncing off, it embedded there and stayed. All the others, too: The floor drew them down till only their handles protruded. It happened in seconds. Minya’s ghosts were disarmed—of ordinary weapons, anyway. At once, their fingernails and teeth lengthened and sharpened into claws and fangs.
Lazlo didn’t see. His eyes were locked on Minya’s. “Listen to me,” he said, savage. He wouldn’t have known his own voice. “There’s something you’ve failed to consider. Sarai is the only thing keeping you safe. Gods help you, if you let her soul go. There will be nothing to stop me from ending you.”
The space after his words was heavy with gasp
ed breaths and a low, steady rumble up Rasalas’s throat. Minya and Lazlo stared at each other: rage against rage, will against will.
Minya, in some deep place, was grasping at the chance that Lazlo’s threat offered. It was true, what he said. She might hold Sarai’s soul in the balance, but she also held her own, because the minute she made good on her threat, she would lose her only leverage—and lose Sarai, too.
Here was a reason to back down, and her hearts cried out to take it, but… she couldn’t. Minya’s will was a blade forged by the screams of two dozen dying children—forged by screams and tempered in blood, like a red-hot sword plunged hissing into water. Back was not a direction she was able to go. If she conceded now, she would have nothing, and be no one. If they didn’t believe that she would do it—that she would end Sarai—what reason would they have to ever listen to her again? She would lose not just this game, but every one that came after. Lazlo had to concede. She just couldn’t. She bared her little teeth in a grimace. He’d told her himself that he wasn’t a killer. She’d just have to trust him on that. “Do your worst, brother,” she snarled, and saw in an instant that he already had.
This was Lazlo’s worst. He could hold her up like a doll, her rags bunched in his fists, but he couldn’t hurt her. His eyes lost their rage, the muscles around them going slack with surprise, which quickly turned to distress. He could hide nothing. His eyes revealed all. He didn’t have it in him to hurt anyone.
The thought of Ruza flashed through his mind—his Tizerkane friend who’d despaired of ever making him a warrior. Well, he’d be disgusted now to see this little girl shrug and push at his hands until he dropped her to her feet.
“There’s only one way to save her,” she said, stepping back onto her chair and up onto the table so her eyes were level with his.
Lazlo felt like he was drowning. Minya saw right through him. Where was Sarai? Could she still be saved? Please, he thought. It felt like prayer, but who was there to pray to? The seraphim might have been real, once upon a time, but that didn’t mean they were listening.
In that moment, Lazlo felt sure: In all the great and star-bedecked universe, nothing at all was listening.
And then, in the blank, gasping gnaw of his panic, he caught sight of the Ellens in the doorway. The two weren’t stoic like the rest of the ghosts, frozen stiff but for wild, rolling eyes. Their hands were clasped as though pleading; their faces wore all the desperation he felt. As he made eye contact with Great Ellen, she actually said, “Please.”
A small, sharp thought pricked him like a thorn: Was it possible… could it be that some part of Minya wanted him to stop her? How, though?
She won’t give up, Sarai had said earlier. She never does. I don’t think she can.
Minya couldn’t give up. It was how she was made, and the Carnage had made her. Giving up meant dying. It meant small bodies in red puddles.
He was grasping at straws. His thoughts leapt around. He felt as though his soul were straining away from his body, trying to get to Sarai, to hold her in the ether so she wouldn’t be alone. But he couldn’t reach her. Only Minya could, if he could find a way to let her.
“I’ll bring him here,” he blurted. “Eril-Fane. I’ll bring him here.”
Minya’s look grew sharp. She said nothing, waiting for him to go on.
Lazlo licked his lips. She was listening. She wants to be persuaded. He didn’t know if it was true, but if it wasn’t, there was no hope. “I’ll bring him to you.” He said it to buy time, to get Sarai out of danger and think of another way. It didn’t mean he would really do it. But maybe he would, if there was no other way. He was sick with it. Was he this kind of hero, who would sacrifice one soul for another?
“Do it,” said Minya.
A wave of her hand, and Sarai’s shape was returned to the air. What started as a silhouette slowly filled in to reveal her, eyes rolled back to whites, lips parted in a silent scream. For minutes she had wavered on the edge of unmaking, and felt the cold all through her. Now she collapsed. Lazlo rushed to her. They all did, save Minya. She stood right where she was, a tiny, dirty goddess, and no one noticed the way her hands moved, fingers rubbing over her palms as though they were slick with sweat and little hands kept slipping from her grasp.
As though she might lose everything, all that she had left.
And then Ruby was there with a tray. It clattered as she carried it. Cups sloshed when she set it down on the table. Her voice was neutral, the desperation so slight that only Sparrow perceived it. She asked, “Would anyone like tea?”
Tea.
It was absurd. What was it she had thought out in the garden earlier? That waiting for Minya’s wrath to descend was like a tea break from the end of the world? Well, here was literal tea. No one else could have gotten away with so totally tone-deaf a gesture, but Ruby was always blurting things out, heedless of what was going on around her. Still, Feral stared at her as though she’d grown another head. Lazlo didn’t even hear. He was holding a shivering Sarai, and murmuring to her, “I’ve got you.”
As for Minya, she saw the proffered cup from the corner of her eye. She took it without question. Her thoughts had come unstrung. She was at the edge of unmaking, where she’d almost sent Sarai. They were all I could carry ran through her mind, no matter how fierce she looked. “Bring me the Godslayer,” she said, to drown out the words in her head.
Lazlo’s jaw clenched. He faced Minya.
She held up her teacup in a toast. “To revenge,” she said in a voice like glass, and then she tipped up her cup and drank.
Ruby watched her. Sparrow watched her. Both girls held their breath. They couldn’t be sure. It was all hope and what if, but one didn’t inhabit the chamber of the goddess of oblivion without, at least once, sampling the potion in the little green glass bottle she’d kept on her bedside table.
Minya took a deep chug. She was thirsty. The tea wasn’t hot. The tea wasn’t tea. Their tea never was. They’d run out of leaves years ago. They drank brewed herbs and called it tea, but this wasn’t even that. It was just water at room temperature with a sour aftertaste. She looked at Ruby, critical but unsuspicious, and said, “That’s the worst tea I’ve ever had.”
And then her eyes lost focus. Her knees lost strength. She staggered, looked bewildered, dropped her teacup with a smash.
And then she fell.
Time seemed to slow as Minya, monster and savior, sister and tormentor, lost consciousness and collapsed on the long mesarthium table.
PART II
astral (AS·truhl)
adjective: Of, or relating to, or coming from, the stars.
noun: A rare category of Mesarthim gift; one whose soul or consciousness can leave the body and travel independently of it.
16
OF THE STARS
The punishment for unauthorized contact with godsmetal was death. Everyone knew that. The village children, sidling closer to the wasp ship, knew it. They would never dream of touching it, but were only daring one another nearer, at least to touch its shadow, bold now that the Servants had disappeared inside with Kora and Nova.
Some in the village thought it right that Nyoka’s girls should be tested first. Others grumbled. The men who’d been eyeing them of late—including old Shergesh, though the sisters did not know it—burned with the injustice of it, that outsiders could come down from the sky and carry off their girls. It would be a tremendous honor, of course, if another Rievan were made Servant, but better it be a young man. There were too many of them in the village, beginning to sniff after wives of their own, and the older men wouldn’t have minded a culling of that herd. The loss of one girl, though, let alone two, would be deeply felt. Life on Rieva was hard, especially for the women. Wives were often in need of replenishing.
The gathered crowd kept avid eyes on the ship, even as they milled about, gossiping. They knew that testing took time, and so it came as a surprise when, after only a few minutes, the door on the wasp’s thorax opened.
<
br /> Skoyë, watching through slit eyes, felt a surge of triumph that her stepdaughters should be rejected so swiftly. It could only be rejection. A strong gift would take time to gauge. But the girls did not emerge. It was the Servant with the ropes of white hair. Stiff-armed, he was holding out two uul-hide anoraks, his face curdled with revulsion. He pitched them out like garbage, then followed them with fur chamets and breeches, balled-up woolen longskins, and, finally, the girls’ hide boots.
The door closed again and the villagers were left eyeing the pile. What were Kora and Nova wearing, if their clothes were all lying there?
“There’s a woman in there with them,” said their father, Zyak, lest the specter of indecency bring their bride prices down.
Shergesh spat and crossed his arms. Zyak’s price was uncomfortable; he smelled an opportunity. “And that matters how? They’re from Aqa. You’ve heard the stories.”
The stories of depravity, yes. The fishing boats brought them, and they were as salt to the islanders’ bland fare: Rievan gossip could not compare to what went on—allegedly—in the capital.
“They’re good girls,” said Zyak, and Kora and Nova would have been surprised to hear him say so, at least until he followed it up with, “They have all their teeth and toes. You should be so lucky, old man.”
And the old man in question harrumphed but said no more. He had to be careful, he knew. Zyak was proud, and not above taking some other man’s offer, though it be lower, simply to spite him.
“Anyway,” said Zyak. “If the Mesarthim want them, it’s as well for me. They don’t haggle.” He should know. He had bought a new sledge and oven with what they paid him for his wife, and two skins of spirit besides.
