The world spun. His muscles ached. Merik yanked at that lock—yanked and yanked again.
“That will not work.”
So distracted was Merik, he had not noticed the singer had stopped her singing. He had not noticed her approaching from behind. Only now that her words hung in the air beside him did he realize he was no longer alone.
He whirled toward the sound, chain scraping. Distantly, he realized that the walls were curved, that the whole space was rounded, and he was in a small alcove. A tower, he decided. Then he found the speaker’s face, and all time, all panic trickled to a stop like the final grains of sand in an hourglass.
She was as beautiful as her voice. Nomatsi, he thought, for she was too unnaturally pale to be Fareastern, but unlike most Nomatsi women, her hair ran down to her waist and was plaited through with bright bits of colorful felt, glistening beads, and even stalks of dried purple heather tucked behind her ear.
“Only I can remove the collar,” she said, sweeping into a crouch before him. Her spruce gown swished, the mortar and pestle clanked as she set them beside her feet, and for several endless moments, Merik was caught up in her burning golden eyes. They were not a young woman’s eyes.
Ancient things made new again.
It took Merik a moment to realize she spoke in Arithuanian. He wasn’t good with that tongue. He could understand it well enough, thanks to Kullen’s mother using it when they were young, but actually finding words and forming sentences …
“Where?” he wheezed out. It was the best he could do.
But the young woman understood. “You are in my home, Prince Merik Nihar. In Poznin.”
Poznin. Impossible. He had been on the other side of the Witchlands only … yesterday? Or had it been longer? And what about Cam and Ryber—were they safe?
At Merik’s gathering distress, the young woman laughed. A beautiful sound, but … wrong. Like a shark shouting or a fish crying, this was not meant to tumble from her throat. And the dimple in her right cheek only made it worse.
“I do not need my Loom to read your thoughts, Prince Merik. I can see them as easily as if they were written in your Threads. You are wondering how you got here, yes? That is easily answered.” She pushed to her feet, sweeping up the mortar and pestle as she rose. A plume of pale dust trailed behind. “Your friend brought you here. The one who used to be called Kullen before I awoke the Fury inside.” Another laugh, another chill down Merik’s spine.
“The bond you share with him is so strong that you were pulled into the same Cleaved half-life as him—and now, like him, you are very hard to kill … Though it is not impossible. Which is why you must remain here, Prince. We need the Fury to lead raiders inside the Sleeper’s mountain, and we cannot risk you suddenly dying and ruining everything.”
That sounded vaguely familiar. On the journey to the Convent, Ryber had said something about a Sleeper … and a mountain … And something about doors and different ways inside.
By the Hagfishes, Merik prayed Ryber was all right. Cam too. Please, Noden. Please.
“You,” Merik tried to say. “Who?”
“My name is Esme, and it is thanks to me that you are still alive. And this…” She bent forward to tap at the wood screwed around his neck. More dust puffed from the mortar’s bowl. “It blocks your magic, so there is no need to try your witchery. On me, or on anyone else.”
At those words, the hourglass of Merik’s panic snapped around. Sand toppled and spun. He inhaled as deeply as he could, lungs bowing against screaming ribs, and he pulled at the power that always lived there. At the air, at the winds, at the currents in the world around him.
He came back with nothing. Nothing but dust from the mortar wafting up his nose. He coughed—which earned more laughter as the young woman skipped away. She returned with a porcelain cup three coughs later.
“Drink,” she commanded, and Merik obeyed.
The water, though strongly sulfuric, was perfection against his spasming throat. While he drank, Esme sauntered across the room to a desk heaped with books. Unlit candles in varying states of decay slouched on every available space: the desk, the floor, on stones pushing free from the wall, and on the sill of a larger window overlooking the cloud-spun sky.
An evening sky, he guessed. Still, though, he summoned the words from his thick skull: “What … day is it?”
“On the Nomatsi calendar, it is the twenty-seventh day beneath the Eight Moon. On the first peoples’ calendar—the ones who lived here a thousand years ago—we are on the twenty-seventh day of Storms.” Esme peeked back at Merik, a sly smile on her lips. “But I imagine, simple as you are, Prince, that you wish to know the day on the ‘common’ calendar.” She rolled her eyes. “Such a word implies ease and choice, doesn’t it? But in truth the common calendar was forced upon us with whips and chains.”
Throughout this long speech, Merik said nothing. Showed nothing on his face beyond the truth of pain in his ribs and spine. Even his unfocused gaze he kept pointed toward Esme, so that she would not sense how he took note of every space in the tower, every possible weapon or potential tool. She had referred to Threads, so she must be some kind of Threadwitch—which would also explain the assortment of stones piled on a low table beneath the main window.
She had also mentioned awakening the Fury inside Kullen. That was a question Merik would have to poke at later, though.
“On the common calendar,” Esme finished, “we are on the two hundred and forty-third day in the nineteenth year since the signing of the Twenty Year Truce.”
So Merik had lost only a few hours, then. Kullen must have flown his unconscious body directly here after destroying that stone, which meant he had not attempted to hunt down Ryber or Cam. One small boon amidst this maddening storm.
After draining the final sips of water, Merik cleared his throat. “They … will have to start again.”
At Esme’s puzzled look, Merik wondered if perhaps he had chosen the wrong words or conjugated improperly. But then the young woman’s expression cleared, and her delighted, spine-twisting laugh skipped out once more. She even plunked down her mortar and pestle to clap her hands.
“You mean the calendar! They will have to start it again—yes, yes, they will, for the Truce has ended. Oh, how fun. You actually have a brain, Prince. I would never have guessed it to look at you, but you are not like my other Cleaved, are you?” Another clap, and this time she hopped to her feet to prance toward a stack of books at the opposite wall.
My other Cleaved. With that phrase, a thousand questions clamored to life in Merik’s brain. Who this woman was, why she possessed Cleaved—or for that matter, how she possessed Cleaved … And why she’d spoken of Merik as if he were one of them.
More troubling, though, was the fact that Merik felt no alarm. No panic like before. Only a gathering warmth behind his lungs and a slow dissipation of the pain.
“It makes sense, I suppose,” she went on, snagging a worn tome off the pile. “You are not directly bound to my Loom, and I did not cleave you intentionally like the rest of my servants. Nor did I fully cleave your Threadbrother. I tried to.” She flipped open the book, her sigh brushing atop flapping pages. “But he is made of so many people and so many ancient Threads, it was not as simple as I had thought it would be. Ah, but now that you are here, Prince…”
She spun toward Merik, eyes wide and finger tapping at some page he could not see. Though he thought he should be able to. She was not so far away. He blinked. The room blurred.
“Now that you are here, Prince, I shall fill in all the gaps that this diary failed to explain. Magic is not what it was when Eridysi first ran her experiments. Your collar, my Loom—I have had to modify and adjust everything. But now that you are here … Ah, there is so much for us to explore. I wish I had not added the sleeping draught to your water! For then we could have started right away.”
Ah, Merik thought as cozy sleep charged in, pulling him to the ground in a clank of wood and chains. She drugged me.
How nice.
ELEVEN
Never had Vivia seen a city so large.
Though tens of leagues away, Azmir consumed the horizon like wildfire across the plains. City of the Golden Spires, City of Eternal Flame. This city—and the enormous, expanding canyon around it—had as many absurd titles as its empress. And all of them, she had to admit, were deserved. From the striped canyon walls that ascended into the Kendura Hills to the whitecapped Sirmayans beyond, from the crowded wharves that clustered halfway across Lake Scarza to the Floating Palace on its red-earthed island at the center, Vivia had never seen or imagined any place like this.
As the six Windwitches carried Vivia ever closer to the imperial capital, the hard angles of its towers came into bright focus under the sun. It was ten times the size of Lovats—twenty times, even, and with a hundred smaller villages to dot the surrounding hills. Yet it was not the scale that stunned Vivia. Fresh, clean, standing, Azmir looked as if it had been built only a year before, even though she knew it to be centuries old.
As the Floating Palace rushed in closer, a white wonder of towers broken up by bursts of green, Vivia’s stomach snagged. She tried to blame her spinning vision and wobbling knees on the descent, but once she landed, she still felt like hurling. Like charging for the nearest cypress trees and hiding far from sight.
For there was nothing, nothing that this lush, vibrant empire could possibly want from Vivia or Nubrevna. When it came to trade or treaties, Marstok had all of the advantages and none of the shames.
No regrets. Keep moving. She was here; she had power; she would not waste this trip.
Vivia smoothed at her silver coat before yanking off her goggles and attempting to tame her hair. It did not comply.
Meanwhile, sixteen women and men in green uniforms now marched toward her. None carried more than a single sword at their hips, and most carried no weapon at all. Which meant these guards were purely ceremonial—no show of threat, nor even a show of power. This was a polite welcoming party, and the Empress did not wish to scare Vivia away.
It wasn’t working.
“Your Highness,” said a woman at the fore, and in absolute coordination, the soldiers bowed low. “Her Imperial Majesty awaits you in her personal quarters.”
Personal quarters, Vivia thought as she beckoned for her own people to follow. The Empress was truly going out of her way to keep Vivia at ease.
And Vivia truly did not like it. She felt like the crab lured into the kitchen pot. The waters might start out cool and blissful, but outside the copper, flames were cranking higher.
Vivia’s sense of unease only increased as she followed the soldiers through a garden brimming with rhododendron (that should have stopped blooming months ago), between two marble columns delicately carved to look like tree trunks, and finally into the actual palace.
They encountered none of the imperial bodyguards known as Adders in the stark, marble halls, nor any more soldiers than the ones leading Vivia. Only servants passed by, and they were quick to duck aside and bow.
Perhaps most unsettling of all were the frequent clay basins filled with water. Twelve of them, actually, at every turn in the hall or every intersection. There were no lilies or fish within the basins, and the clay did not match the iron decor everywhere else—the iron planters for the lemon trees, the iron sconces for Firewitched flame, the iron wind chimes with no wind to ever hit them.
Once again, it was as if Empress Vaness were saying, Look! I have given you water for your witchery. You are safe! Relax!
Vivia did not think she could be any less relaxed, and as a curved doorway appeared at the end of the hall, framed with Adders and two more clay basins, Vivia had to concentrate on simply keeping her feet moving forward.
She should not have come here. Oh, Noden, why had she come here? This was a terrible idea, and those sad little buckets of water were not enough to save her from anything.
Ten paces before the door, the welcome guard split into two perfect rows. They said nothing as Vivia and her Windwitches strode past, so Vivia did not slow.
Clack, clack, clack. Her boots drummed out a funeral dirge. Though the Marstoks watched her, she couldn’t help but brush at her coat, tug at her cuffs, and lastly, pat along the edges of her face until the Nihar frown that Merik wore so easily had settled into place.
When Vivia was almost to the Empress’s door, it swung open, so silently it must have been oiled yesterday. Or maybe it was oiled every day in a place as wealthy as this one.
Beyond, afternoon sunlight streamed. Beyond, waited the Empress of Marstok. And beyond, Vivia prayed, was not proof that she should never have come here.
She crossed the threshold.
Once, as a child, Vivia’s aunt had shown her a music box. From Dalmotti, the thing had been bewitched to only open at Evrane’s touch. At the time, it was the most beautiful thing Vivia had ever seen—white with gold edges—and when the box’s lid had cranked up and the tune had twinkled out, she’d felt transported to another world. A world where she did not need masks, and where no one would ever try to hurt her or steal what wasn’t theirs.
For a brief instant, as the sunlight caressed her, as the white simplicity of the space settled into her vision and wind chimes rang from a terrace across the room, Vivia felt that same sense of beauty. Of safety and peace. Here the little fox could be the little fox forever.
Yet just as Evrane had snapped shut the music box and scolded Vivia for holding it too long, as soon as Vaness swept into Vivia’s view, the world—that perfect, untouchable world—gusted away.
“Your Highness,” Vaness said as she entered from the terrace. Her black silk gown floated around her, a simple dress with a high neck, capped sleeves, and skirts just short enough to expose slippered feet. She bobbed her head, and Vivia matched the movement, if awkwardly.
Hell-waters, the Empress was smaller than she remembered. Vivia suddenly felt as large as a sea fox and a hundred times less graceful.
“Your officers may wait here, if that is acceptable.” The Empress spoke in smooth, if thickly accented Nubrevnan. She motioned to several white-cushioned chairs against the wall. Orchids dangled between them, and at Vivia’s nod, her people stiffly took seats.
They looked absurd. Navy uniforms and wind-blustered hair against the gossamer elegance of the palace.
“Let us speak on the terrace,” the Empress suggested. Then she walked purposefully away, leaving Vivia time to murmur, “Wait here. You know what to do if anything goes wrong.”
Subtle salutes followed, and Vivia found her lips quirking. Good officers, these Windwitches. Though she missed having Stix at her side, she didn’t doubt for a second that each of these soldiers was reliable.
On the terrace, Vivia found two iron chairs and an iron table set with sugared figs and a pitcher of water. Nothing elaborate, and no servants or Adders in sight. In fact, the only view was of a tall clay wall around the terrace, and cypress trees clustered within an herb garden that filled the air with sage and lavender.
Vaness made no move to sit, and as the moments trickled by, she openly studied Vivia. Inspected her from top to bottom, no embarrassment in her gaze, and no judgment either.
Vivia let her. She even went so far as to clasp her hands behind her back and stare right back. The truth was that acting like two bitches sniffing bottoms in an alley was much easier than the polite diplomatic nothings Vivia’s mother had taught her.
“You have … grown,” Vaness said eventually. “I believe the last I saw you, you had not yet developed.”
“You had,” Vivia replied, and it was true. The single time she and Vaness had encountered each other—ten years ago—Vivia had still been a girl, but Vaness had been a woman grown.
She had been stunning, even at age seventeen, and she was even more stunning now. Especially as a slight smile toyed across her lips.
“Let us sit.” Vaness eased onto the iron chair, her posture perfect. “We have much to discuss.”
“Hy
e,” Vivia agreed, and for half a breath, she debated mimicking the Empress’s grace. Everything felt so soft, so dainty, so far removed from everything that Vivia was … and yet somehow, everything Vivia wanted to be.
But no, she was not here to be cowed. She was not here to be manipulated. She was here for Nubrevna, and nothing more. So as she sat with the same brusqueness she would use around any of her soldiers, and as she patted once more at the edges of her face, she summoned her inner bear. “We do have much to discuss,” she declared. “Such as, first and foremost, what exactly in Noden’s watery Hell am I doing here?”
* * *
Tucked within a hollowed-out wall, Safi watched the Empress of Marstok face off with the newly named Queen-in-Waiting of Nubrevna.
Until this morning, Safi had thought she preferred the throne room for this sort of work. Her legs might grow stiff from standing, but at least she was in the open. At least sunlight and fresh air could wash against her skin. Now she realized that darkness was better. The heat and the walls and the lack of anyone to look at her or await a declaration of true or false—that was better. That was safer.
Every day since arriving in Azmir, Safi had spent at least an hour in a stifling space somewhere. There was this one, a second in the imperial dining room, and a third in the vast amphitheater where the Sultanate met each day to handle the infrastructural and economic problems of the empire.
Normally, there were too many voices to keep up with. Normally, Safi had to rely on her gut to sense decay in the room. Of course, until today, there had been no decay, and although Bayrum of the Shards might have been the first, Safi was sure he wouldn’t be the last.
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