by Laini Taylor
Mesarthium rearranged itself, and the length of walkway upon which they all stood disengaged from the wall to swing outward and form a bridge to the orb. He crossed it. The others followed. There was no railing. He made one. The span grew ahead of him, and broadened, so that at the end they could all stand abreast. Though it had seemed small, dwarfed by the chamber, once they reached it, it no longer did. It was twenty feet in diameter, its surface egg-smooth, unadorned.
“There’s a door,” said Lazlo, sensing it.
“Maybe we should leave it alone,” said Azareen.
Sarai was thinking of Minya, who would have been the next child taken. And if Eril-Fane hadn’t risen up and killed the gods, eventually all of them would have met this fate, whatever this fate was. “Open it,” she said. She couldn’t stand not knowing.
“Yes,” added Suheyla, who was thinking of another child—boy or girl, she didn’t know. A phantom child born a long time ago. Her hand brushing unconsciously over her belly, she said, “Open it.”
So Lazlo did. A hair-fine line appeared on its surface like a single line of longitude on a globe. It split and melted apart, opening the orb. It was hollow, and it was empty.
A confusion of disappointment and relief washed over them all. They’d been braced for answers, and expecting them to be wrenching, but here was...“Nothing,” said Sarai.
“Nothing,” echoed Lazlo.
“Wait.” Suheyla was squinting, leaning forward and looking up, her brow creased with confusion. “What is that?”
It was over their heads. Their feet were level with the bottom of the orb. In the middle, some ten feet up, was a kind of warp. It took them a moment to catch sight of it. They all shared the same impulse to blink, as though it were only a disturbance in their vision. It reminded Sarai of the anomaly in Minya’s dream—a place where something was hidden.
It looked like a wrinkle, or a seam in the air, extending the width of the orb. They all leaned forward, squinting up at it.
“What is it?” asked Sparrow.
Lazlo raised the walkway to bring them up even with it. Then he reached out to it, and the hairs on the backs of his fingers stirred. “There’s a breeze,” he said.
“A breeze?” repeated Feral. “How can there be? From where?”
Lazlo stretched his hand closer.
“Don’t,” said Sarai.
But he did, and they all gasped as his hand... vanished, right off the end of his wrist. He yanked his arm back and his hand reappeared, whole and unharmed. They all stared at it, then at one another, trying to grasp what they’d just seen.
Lazlo was transfixed. There had been no pain, just the breeze, and a feeling like cobwebs brushing over his skin. He reached out again, only this time, instead of simply thrusting his hand forward, he felt along the gossamer edge of the seam, inserting his fingers so they winked out of sight, and then he grasped the invisible edge and lifted it.
An impossible aperture opened in the air. They all saw through it, and what was there was not the curved inner surface of the orb, or the heart of the citadel, and it was not Weep or the Uzumark canyon, or anywhere else in all of Zeru. You didn’t have to have seen the whole world to know that this wasn’t in it.
They couldn’t process it, this landscape. It was an ocean, but it bore little resemblance to the sea Lazlo had crossed with Eril-Fane and Azareen. That had been gray-green and mild, with glassy swells and a shimmer like foil. This was red.
It lay far below them. They were peering through a slash in the sky at a rampant crimson sea. It was brighter than fresh blood, livid pink where it churned and frothed. And rising out of it, as far as the eye could see, were huge white... things. They looked like stalks, like the stems of vast pale flowers, or else like pigmentless hairs seen magnified. They appeared to grow out of the wild red sea, each one as great in breadth as the whole of the citadel, their tops lost from sight in a brew of dark mist that concealed the sky.
In their shock they all stood gaping, unable to grasp what they were seeing through this small window that Lazlo held open with one hand. If, after the sight of Weep’s floating metal angel, he had believed himself gone beyond shock, he’d been wrong. This was a whole new level of shock.
As for Sarai, Sparrow, Feral, Ruby, they had no context. Their minds felt like doors blown open in a storm.
Overwhelmed as they were, the details seeped in slowly: the way the stalks swayed when great waves smashed against them, sending up spray like detonations. Or the shapes in the water: great, gliding shadows beneath the red surface that made leviathans look dainty. And finally: the place in the middle distance where one of the stalks appeared to have been cut, forming a plateau out of reach of the sea spray.
Atop it were shapes, hard to make out but too regular to be natural.
“Are those...buildings?” asked Sarai, the hairs rising on her neck.
This snapped them out of their dumb shock. They had been poised on the very verge of thakrar—that point on the spectrum of awe where wonder becomes dread, or dread wonder—and the acknowledgment of something man-made—or at least something made—sent them spinning hard to dread.
“Close it,” snapped Azareen. “We have no idea what’s—”
—out there, she was going to say, but she never got the chance. A shriek blasted through the gap and a shape appeared, hurtling straight at them. It was a vast white eagle.
Wraith!
The bird hung an instant before them, obscuring the landscape beyond. Another shriek ripped from its throat, and it dove for the portal. Lazlo let go of its edge. “Get back!” he cried out to the others. The air collapsed shut, but it was no more protection than a curtain across a doorway, and Wraith tore right through.
They had to duck, and felt phantom feathers drub them as the eagle sailed over their heads. Lazlo’s railing kept them from pitching off the walkway, which he was moving, rapidly retracting. And the orb, he was closing it, its edges melting toward each other, ready to fuse.
But it was too late.
Wraith was not alone. It dragged a rush of wind behind it, and another voice came with it, twining round the bird’s shriek to make a savage harmony. The warp in the air belled in and gaped open, disclosing limbs, figures, weapons.
Onslaught.
Chapter 36
Nothing Special
Once upon a time, Nova had been half a name. Koraandnova was musical, complete. Nova by itself was a brittle, sharp-edged fragment. Every time she heard it, she broke in half all over again.
“Nova! Girl. Work faster.”
The Slaughter had come round again. Kora had been gone for a year. Nova had heard nothing from her in all that time. She was sure she must have written. She suspected her father or Skoyë of intercepting her letters.
Gaff in one hand, knife in the other, she hacked at the carcass before her.
This is not my life.
But I am stuck in it forever.
Minus Kora and the dream, it wasn’t a life at all. In the days after Nova awoke to find herself left behind, the grief had been like a winter storm—the killing kind that blinds you and freezes you where you stand. Every thought was a stab, every memory a slash, until numbness finally descended. Walking through the village, besieged by stares and whispers, she’d felt dead already, and even less than a corpse. She’d felt like a carcass when the cyrs are done, nothing left over but bones.
“I always knew you were nothing special,” Skoyë had said right after, her eyes brighter than Nova had ever seen them. “All your lives, the pair of you lording around here like princesses waiting to be fetched for the ball, and look at you now. You’re no princess.” She’d clucked her tongue. “You’re pathetic.”
Lorded around? Their whole lives, Kora and Nova had worked. They’d done more than their share. Skoyë had made sure of that. She had nothing to complain of; nobody did. It was never idleness that had set the sisters apart. It wasn’t even airs. It was their simple belief that they were worthy of more. Hope was
luster, and they had shone with it like twin pearls in an oyster.
But only one of them was a pearl, as it turned out. The other was naught but a bit of bone polished up by the crashing surf.
Suddenly, Skoyë appeared at Nova’s shoulder. She surveyed her work, and barked, “Is this all you’ve done all morning?”
Nova blinked. She hadn’t been properly present. She lost focus these days, and forgot what she was doing. Now she saw what Skoyë saw. The uul’s hide was crosshatched with ineffectual cuts. She’d just been...chopping at it. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“You’re sorry is right. You’re paltry. What Shergesh wants you for, I’ll never know, but I’ll not be sorry to be rid of you.”
Nova stiffened at the mention of the village elder. At the mention of her almost-husband. She said, her voice shaking, “I think we all know what he wants me for.”
Skoyë’s hand flashed out, palm flat, and connected with Nova’s cheek at just the right angle for a perfect, practiced crack. Skoyë knew how to slap, and Kora wasn’t here anymore to catch her wrist in the air. The sting was fire. Nova’s hand flew to her face. Heat glowed off it like a kettle.
“You’ll show respect,” hissed Skoyë. “I’ve tried to teach you, Thakra only knows. If you haven’t learned it yet, I can’t slap it into you now.”
Still holding her cheek, Nova straightened and said, “Maybe it’s your methods that are faulty.”
“My methods are what you deserve. You think Shergesh will stand your backtalk?” Skoyë gestured to the unbutchered uul. “Do you imagine he’ll abide your shirking? He’ll do worse than slap, I can tell you that.” The prospect seemed to please her.
How people love to see a dream shatter, thought Nova from far away. To see the dreamer hobbled and lamed, foundering in the shards of their broken hopes. This is what you get for believing that you could have more. You’re no better than us.
You’re nothing special.
Nova hadn’t bothered begging her stepmother for mercy in the matter of her marriage. She knew that was hopeless. She’d pleaded with her father, though. He’d said she should be honored to marry the village elder. He’d said, “I have to give you to someone.”
“Sell me, you mean.”
Zyak didn’t slap. That remark had earned Nova a backhand. At least it wasn’t a fist—though even a fist would be kinder than what he’d said next. “He would have paid more for Kora.”
Nova had laughed in his face. “Is that what he told you? The old fool could never tell us apart! He was only haggling, and you fell for it.”
Zyak had been furious, because it was true, but it was Nova, not Shergesh, who’d caught the ice of his displeasure, as she had a year ago when the Mesarthim took Kora without compensating him. Somehow, Zyak was sure—though Nova had never told what had happened in the wasp ship—it was all her fault. Every time he looked at her, she was reminded what his gift had been. He’d turned things to ice, though not very well. It was funny. He didn’t even need his gift to freeze her to her core.
Anyway, it was done. Shergesh had paid in full—not in sheep or hides or dried fish, but actual imperial coin. Nova knew where Zyak kept them. Last week, in the night, when everyone was sleeping, she’d gotten them out and held them: five bronze coins engraved with the emperor’s face. How strange to hold her value on the palm of her own hand.
Men have decided between them that this is what my body and labor are worth for life.
The only reason she wasn’t married already was that Skoyë had bargained to keep her through the Slaughter, and get one last season’s worth of work out of her. Not that she was getting much. “If this is the best you can do,” she said now, leaning close with her fishy breath, and prodding at Nova with her gaff, “I’ll hand you over to him now. Let him beat the work out of you, or get his money’s worth how he pleases.”
She turned to go. Nova was shaking. She stared out to sea. Sharks thrashed in the shallows, mad with bloodreek, all that meat just out of their reach. If she waded out and kept walking, how long would it take? How much would it hurt? Would the frigid water numb her before they began to feed? Could she drown first? Did it even matter? At most it would take a few minutes. Surely shark teeth were a cleaner pain than what was devouring her now.
And what then? What came next? Was there anything after death, or only nothingness forever? It was a mystery. As the saying went, the ones who know can’t tell us, and the ones who tell us don’t know.
A little flare burst in Nova’s heart. A curious lightness overcame her. She saw herself do it, one step, then another into the killing water. She felt the cold around her ankles, then her calves. She thought it was real until Skoyë’s voice rang out. “Thakra help me, are you really still standing there? Did they do something to your brain inside that skyship?”
Nova blinked. She was still on the beach. She was almost sorry. Dully, she turned to face her stepmother. Other women had paused to listen. One shook her head in sympathy—for Skoyë, not Nova. “I don’t know how you stand her,” said another.
“I don’t stand her,” said Skoyë. “I never have.”
“Look at her,” said someone else. “It’s no wonder they didn’t take her.”
“She thought she’d be so strong,” scoffed Skoyë, “and they spat her out like gristle.”
They thought her gift was weak, like all of theirs. They thought she was like them.
Nova was nothing like them. “You’re wrong,” she said, and there was a snarl in her voice. “They might have spat me out, but not because I’m weak. They left me behind because I’m too strong. Do you hear me?” She looked around. “They left me because they were afraid of me. And you should be, too.”
Brows furrowed. Laughter mocked. No one feared her. She sounded mad. Skoyë shook her head in disgust. “You’re becoming a tragedy, girl. You thought you were something and you’re not. Time to get over it, like everybody else.”
Nova looked around at the gloating, gore-smeared women, and pulled a smile out of some deep place inside her. It was the smile of a girl backed up to the world’s edge, ready to spread her arms like wings and fly or fall. “I am something,” she said with a fervor dredged up from those same depths. “And one day you will know it.”
The words felt like a vow, and she wanted to make them true. There would always be the sea, cold and sure and full of teeth. It was there for her if she needed it. But not today.
Chapter 37
The Punishment Is Death
After the Slaughter, while the cyrs picked the uul bones and the year’s crop of flies died in winter’s first frost, Nova married Shergesh—or was married to him; the ceremony did not require her consent. That morning, beforehand, she went down to the beach. In bride’s garb, amid the skeletons and the swirling contemptuous carrion birds, she stood and considered the sea.
The sharks had left the shallows. She could probably drown before they got her. If she breathed water in, it would be over quite fast, with hardly any pain at all.
Such thoughts were only playthings, though. She wasn’t going to do it, but it helped. It still helped every day to remember that she could.
She went back up the switchback path, and walked alone to her own wedding. No one worried that she wouldn’t turn up. After all, where could she go? For the whole of the ceremony, which had not space in it for her to utter so much as a single word, she stared at the old man who’d bought her for five coins. She stared without expression, hardly blinking, never smiling, and spoke to him with her mind, as though it were a conversation.
There are things you can’t own, old man, not for five coins or five thousand.
And:
I am not what you think. I’m a pirate. What do you say to that? Did you know I stole power from the Mesarthim smith?
He feared me.
I saw it.
He struck me.
I remember.
I hate him.
I hate you.
I’m not afraid of h
im.
And I am not afraid of you.
If she said it enough, would it become true?
I’m not afraid of you, I’m not afraid.
I. Am not. Afraid.
Shergesh didn’t care for the weight of her stare. Later, he made sure it was dark, so he couldn’t see if her eyes were open. They were open, the whole time, and he felt their weight as she felt his, crushing her flat in their sleeping furs, his rancid breath on her face.
Weeks passed. Days shortened, which, perversely, meant nights lengthened. Nova still went, while she could, to play her game with the sea. This, too, became a conversation. With Kora by her side, she’d always had someone to talk to. Now that she had no one, she talked to everything, but only inside her head.
Good morning, sea, still here?
She imagined its voice, seductive. It knew her by her old name only, and she didn’t correct its mistake. Koraandnova, it called her, beckoning, and she closed her eyes and smiled. Are you coming to me today?
No, thank you. I think I’ll stay ashore. You see, I’m expecting my sister.
It’s too late, said the sea, but Nova didn’t listen. She knew—she knew, she knew—that Kora would not desert her. So each day she turned her back on the sea, and mounted the path that would take her back up to the village and the labor and the old-man husband that were what passed for a life. And every day, morning came later and dimmer, until the sun clung sluggish to the horizon, barely peering up at all before subsiding. Deepwinter’s Eve dawned—the day when Kora and Nova had always climbed the ridge trail to bid the sun farewell for an entire month.
This year Nova went alone. The trail was treacherous with ice, and sunless but not dark. Cold starlight lit her path. She stopped at the ridge, toes inches from the edge, looked up, and chose a star. She chose it of the thousands and, as was now her way, she talked to it.
Is she coming? she asked it. You should know. I bet you can see everything from there. Will you give her a message for me? I don’t know how much longer I’ll last. Tell her that. Tell her the sea knows our name. Tell her I’m waiting. Tell her I’m dying. Tell her I love her.
