by Evie Manieri
asked Lahlil.
Cyrrin’s anger hardened into a diamond.
Cyrrin’s words had the same blunt force she used when, knife already in hand, she explained to her patients what she was about to do to them.
The wind blew; the snow fell. Ice floes bobbed in the dark sea far beyond the rails and the silent spout of a selkwhale plumed up. Silence invaded her, pushing back the words she needed to say.
Lahlil went to Cyrrin and offered her shoulder and together they navigated the obstacles at an infuriatingly slow pace until they reached the ladder to the upper deck. Lahlil lifted her up, one step at a time.
They didn’t speak again as they made their way to Nisha’s cabin. The door opened at Lahlil’s knock and Mala, the Argent’s healer, rushed over and led Cyrrin to the table where she’d hastily laid out some supplies. Lahlil handed her the jar. Nisha had pulled up a stool beside her bunk so she could hold Jachad’s hand and stroke his hair. A tall woman Lahlil didn’t recognize stood behind Nisha with her hands on the captain’s shoulders and Grentha stood in the shadows by the door.
Lahlil stepped back outside and closed the door, shutting herself out. She shut her eyes, letting the falling snow sting the cuts made by Nisha’s assault while she listened to them talking inside.
Cyrrin said,
There was a pause, then Mala said,
said Nisha.
Lahlil heard the floorboards creak as Mala jumped up.
“Sweet Amai,” Mala breathed in Nomas. “She’s talking about killing him on purpose.”
Nisha was silent for a long time. Then she said, “Either way, I’ll lose my son.”
The door cracked open beside her and Lahlil jumped as Grentha’s lined face poked out.
“He’s asking for you.”
She went inside and knelt down beside Jachad’s bunk. Nisha said nothing, lost somewhere no one else could follow. No one made a sound except for a spoon clinking against the jar of medicine as Cyrrin measured out the dosage. The quiet was unnatural; it was the absence of all the anguished words Nisha and her women were choking back for Jachad’s sake.
Jachad’s mouth moved and he said her name.
“Jachi.” She moved closer to him, but she couldn’t take his hand. Nisha had claimed it and she wasn’t letting go. Lahlil swallowed. “Jachi, I have to go to Ravindal.”
Jachad stared up at the carved ceiling over the bunk for such a long time that she fixed her eye on the subtle rise and fall of his chest to make sure he was still breathing. His eyes closed, but she saw his free hand curl into a fist and clutch at the blanket.
“Why?”
“Isa went there on her own. I need to go after her.”
“You swore,” he said. “You swore we’d stay together. That’s the only reason I came. I came for you.”
She felt something wet slide down her cheek. “Jachi—”
“There’s blood on your face.”
She wiped away what she had thought was a tear, then looked at the dark smear on her gloves. Blood was the one thing she always brought with her, wherever she went; it was her gift. Beside her, Nisha made a soft noise that contained an impossible amount of pain.
“I have to go.” She couldn’t say it any louder than a whisper.
“Just go, then,” said Jachad.
She stood up and walked across the cabin, all of her senses as numbed as if she’d spent a night sleeping in the snow. She could feel the Nomas waiting for her to leave. When she opened the door and stepped across the threshold, she heard everyone inside take a breath, as if she had fouled the air just by being in the room.
By coming to Norland, Lahlil had pushed a snowball up to the top of a hill and now it was about to roll down the other side. She didn’t know how big it would get, or where it would end up; the only thing she knew for certain was that she would be rolling down with it. At dusk, her gods-ridden attack would come again, and if she hadn’t found Trey by then, she was as good as dead. She needed Savion for one last stride.
Something wet trailed down her cheek again and she took a moment to wipe away another droplet from the cut over her eye. Still no tears; only more blood.
Chapter 33
Rho shifted in the corner of the little room where he and Kira had been imprisoned. He’d been hoping to discover what was happening in the throne room on the other side of the door but all he could hear was the clicking sound of Kira nervously tapping her fingernails together. He tried to focus on what they were going to do next and not on whether or not Vrinna had found Trey. No one had come to ask them any questions or take them away—maybe they were going to be left here to die of hunger and thirst. Rho could think of worse deaths; he had seen plenty of them with his own eyes.
asked Kira. She still had that silvery stuff all over her, and in the half-light she looked as if she’d been dusted with ground glass.
He examined the wedge of light on the floor, but it didn’t help. Telling time had been easy in the Shadar, where light was bright and shadows were dark. Here, everything was always the same shade of gray.
He expected a sardonic remark in return, but she didn’t say anything.
Rho could also hear the sounds of people running in the throne room, and he sensed a sudden spike in the emotions of the people on the other side of the door.
Rho decided not to tell Kira about their swords, abandoned so close to them. They might be able to push past the single guard in front of the door, but neither of them were in any shape to fight their way out of the room, much less out of the castle itself.
said Kira.
Then the door swung open and Rho looked up with his heart pounding, expecting to see guards coming to haul them to their execution, but instead they ushered in a muscular man with his hands tied behind his back and impotent rage hanging like a noose around his neck.
The jolt of recognition pushed Rho back into the wall, and he reached behind him to keep himself from falling. The guards turned and shut the door behind them. They had not said a word.
Kira breathed out a name.
Trey pulled away and waited while Rho fumbled with the knots tying his hands together until the rope fell to the floor. He could feel the effort it was taking for Trey not to try to hide his scars, even in the near-darkness, and choked on his helpless anger. This was his perfect little brother, torn up by a tree and left to die: the hero of Redland, or at least what was left of him.
Rho didn’t realize his unfortunate choice of words until he felt Kira’s mortification freeze her to the ground. He swallowed, struggling to keep his footing as an avalanche of feelings swept toward him.
Trey told her.
The table legs squealed over the stone floor as Trey backed away, pushing it into the wall.
Rho pressed his fingers into his temples. The pain in his side was nothing now compared to the throbbing in his head. He was mildly surprised to find that he was sweating, even though the room was freezing cold. No one spoke, and as Kira retreated into miserable bewilderment Rho began to fear he was on the verge of going mad. He didn’t know what he was supposed to say; he didn’t know how to argue with Trey. In his world, Trey was always right and he was always wrong.
Kira had shut her eyes while he was talking as if she couldn’t bear to look at him.
Rho’s body was so stiff that he had a hard time moving, but he struggled into the far corner to give them at least the illusion of privacy.
After a long while, Trey called out to him,
said Rho.
Kira’s confusion floated toward them.
He went back to the door and nudged it open like before, only this time a cold wind ruffled his hair and he could see the maps and papers skidding off the edges of the tables. Everyone he could see had left their posts except for a pair of frustrated guards at the throne room doors, but they were still in the room; they were all at the end straining to see over each others’ heads out onto the terrace. Rho caught the briefest possible glimpse of a figure on the green-glass outside, but one glimpse was enough.
Rho told them, burying the truth away so deep that Lord Valrig himself would never find it,
Chapter 34
The soldiers pushed Isa toward the castle as her brother and the emperor began to fight. As they brought her under the shining green-glass terrace she raised her head and tried to see what was happening, but the glass was too thick and she could make out nothing more than the dark streaks of their coats as they circled and darted at each other. She could still hear the clanging of their swords, though, and feel the swelling emotions of the spectators as she was marched ever closer to the black stone cas
tle that might once have been her home.
Trey had been taken in ahead of her while they tried to figure out how to bind her with only one arm. They had eventually given up and now one man walked beside her holding her single arm twisted behind her back, while the other carried Blood’s Pride. She could feel the man holding her grimacing in distaste at being forced to touch her.
The great castle doors were shut, but the guards brought them around instead to a small, unadorned door that Isa guessed was used mainly by the servants. When she looked up, she saw the castle’s towers looming above her, so tall from this angle that they appeared to poke up into the After-realm. Isa stumbled over the threshold on her wounded leg and fell, breaking the guard’s hold on her arm. He swore at her and prodded her with his boot, but she curled up into a ball when they came to get her, forcing the man carrying her sword to put it under one arm so he could help his comrade drag her along the hallway.
But instead, she swept her leg back and knocked the guard behind her off his feet, then leaped up and slammed the one carrying Blood’s Pride into the wall. She made a grab for his knife and they grappled for a moment, but all his training was no match for the horror of finding the stump of her arm so close to his face. She wrenched the knife from him and stabbed at his neck, missing the first time but driving the blade deep with her second blow.
Isa had Blood’s Pride in her hand and the swordbelt over her head before the first soldier had got back up to his knees. He reached behind him to draw his own sword, but she drove her heel into his back and knocked him down again. She snapped her sword up between his shoulder blades and pricked him to make sure he knew it was there.
said the man, shrinking away from her. He was scrawny for a Norlander, particularly a soldier.
