The Sky Weaver

by Kristen Ciccarelli

  Safire stared at the shapes. They look like . . . rocks.

  “They’re from older times,” said Dagan, who drew up beside her. Safire glanced up into his face to find it sun darkened and weathered from years of grappling with the wind and sea. “When people still worshipped the Shadow God.”

  Safire frowned at that. “I didn’t know people worshipped him.”

  “Neither did we,” said Torwin, watching Asha set down the lantern and walk out past the circle, toward the edge of the head. Beyond Asha, the moon rose over the sea, its white reflection rippling on the black water below.

  Lured like a dragon to a story, Torwin walked out to meet her.

  As he did, Safire breathed in the smell of this place: salt and juniper and moss. Just for a moment, despite her chattering fears and conflicted feelings, Safire felt a presence. Not like Sorrow waiting in the mist, or Eris following her through the halls. This was something else. Something far older and deeper. It was as if the spirit of these islands had come to brush up against her.

  Safire lifted her palm to one of the giant stones.

  From beside her, Dagan said very quietly, “I thought I recognized that dress.”

  It wasn’t the words he said so much as the way he said them that made Safire turn. The fisherman stared at the left wrist of her raised hand, to the silver star embroidered there. At the sight of it, his dark brown eyes shone with sorrow.

  “That’s the mark of the scrin.”

  Safire lifted the embroidered sleeve closer, squinting through the lantern light.

  “I used to trade with them for fish,” he whispered, his eyes seeing something else. “They’d give me garments in exchange.” He blinked, then peered down to Safire’s wrist once more, staring at the mark. “They sold for a near fortune in Axis’s market. People would come from all over to buy them, just because of that star.”

  He looked up, suddenly. “Where did you get it?”

  “It . . . was a gift,” she said.

  He nodded once, and she could see in his eyes that he was finished talking about this, that there was pain here and he was ready to change the subject.

  Safire couldn’t let him do that. Here before her stood someone who might know things: about the scrin, about the night it burned. She couldn’t let this chance to find out the truth escape her.

  “Actually,” she said, knowing the risk and taking it anyway, “it was a gift from the empress’s fugitive. A girl named Eris.”

  His face jerked back to hers. “What did you say?”

  “Eris.” Safire touched the silver star. “She left it in my room tonight.”

  He swallowed and when she looked up, his eyes were staring at her the way a hungry man stared into a bowl of rice.

  “Is that true?” he whispered, looking into the darkness around him, as if fearing he might be overheard. “Is she alive?”

  Safire felt her pulse speed up. She nodded, wanting to keep him talking, needing to know what he knew. “Did you know her?”

  He reached for the stone next to him, then missed it, losing his balance and stumbling. Safire caught him before he fell.

  “I need to sit.”

  She found him a low stone and helped him down onto it, then sank into the grass next to him. The lantern burned between them, lighting up their faces.

  “No one beyond the scrin knew of her existence—not even I,” he murmured, looking out to sea. “But there was an accident one day. I’d made a delivery and was preparing my boat to leave, when this little girl with a nest of white hair came tearing down to the scrin’s wharf, demanding my help. She and another weaver had been gathering scarp thistles for dyeing when her friend fell from one of the cliffs. Her friend was stuck on an outcropping, his leg broken. Grabbing a coil of rope, I went with her, and together we pulled him up. I helped her get him safely back to the scrin, and the moment we stepped through the door, the Weaving Master took me aside. He begged me not to speak of what I’d seen. To never tell a soul about Eris.”

  Safire rested her chin on her knees, frowning hard. “Why?”

  Dagan shook his head. “They were giving her sanctuary. Someone wanted to harm her, he said, and if her existence was made known beyond the scrin, it would put her in grave danger.”

  “But who would want to harm a child?”

  “I don’t know.” Dagan shook his head. “We quickly became friends, Eris and I. She’d help me unload the fish, talking all the while. She never stopped talking, that child. It’s how I found out that whenever there were visitors, she was confined to her room—an old cellar behind the kitchens—or sent up into the cliffs to collect plants for dyeing.

  “I was happy to keep her secret. I swore an oath to never speak of her beyond the scrin. It’s an oath I’ve kept all these years.” He looked to the star on the wrist of Safire’s dress. “Until now.”

  Safire felt hungry for more. She wanted to learn everything she could about Eris from someone who had truly cared about her. But Dagan had fallen silent again, staring into his weathered hands.

  “Do you think she burned it?”

  His face darkened like a storm. “What?” he hissed.

  Safire drew back. “The scrin, I mean. They say she burned it down.”

  “A child who loved nothing more than to weave and run wild and help the groundskeeper in the dye room? Do I think she burned down a temple with the only family she’d ever known inside?” He scowled as he said it, balling his hands into fists. “The Lumina came and questioned all of us. Everyone who’d ever supplied the scrin with goods. They were looking for the one who started the fire—a dangerous criminal who escaped in the night. An enemy of the Skyweaver, they called her.” He glanced at Safire. “That’s the highest form of treason in the Star Isles.”

  Safire leaned over the lantern, needing more. “If it wasn’t Eris, then who did it?”

  He shook his head and kept his voice low. “All I know is if that girl is the Skyweaver’s enemy, so am I. Skyweaver is supposed to be a god of hope, lighting our way through the dark. But I have no use for a god who does nothing while her servants are slaughtered.”

  Dagan turned his face up to the dark sky, as if to scowl at the stars—which were hidden now behind the clouds that had gathered.

  “Some say the Shadow God is coming,” he whispered. “I say: let him come.”

  Safire felt a drop of rain on her face, then lifted a hand to find several more. Soon the sound of hundreds of thousands of raindrops echoed all around them, clinking on the rocks.

  “Who says the Shadow God is coming?” asked Asha.

  They both started at the sound of her voice. Asha stepped into the light of the lantern, her black hair wet with rain, her fingers laced with Torwin’s. Safire wondered how long they’d been there.

  “The islands,” said Dagan. “The wind and the sea and rock all whisper his name. Just listen and you’ll hear it.”

  As the others fell silent, listening, Safire’s thoughts were loud in her mind.

  Just who was Eris? More important, if Eris was telling the truth, was there a way to prove her innocence?

  Safire rose to her feet and stepped toward Asha.

  “If I leave you here,” she said, not liking the words at all, only saying them because she knew she would not be convincing her cousin tonight, “will you promise to watch your back?”

  Asha smiled. “I always watch my back.” Eight years of hunting dragons would do that to a girl. “Dagan lives in the yellow house on the point. You can find us there.”

  “Don’t do anything reckless,” Safire said, reaching for the Namsara and pulling her into a hug.

  “When have I ever?” Asha whispered, holding her tight.

  “Every day of your life,” Safire whispered back.

  Mounting Sorrow, Safire said good-bye, then flew through the rain to the scrin, taking Asha’s lantern with her.

  She arrived just before dawn. The rain had stopped and the twilight soaked everything in blue. As Safire stepped
inside, Sorrow waited at the charred entrance, watching the cavernous doorway swallow her rider.

  Safire’s footsteps echoed off the walls of the empty ruin as she thought of what Dagan told her.

  Whenever there were visitors, she was confined to her room—an old cellar behind the kitchens. . . .

  Safire searched the main floor of the scrin, but what the flames hadn’t eaten, years of rot and decay had destroyed, making it hard to decipher what each room was. She found a stairway leading down into the dark, though, and took it.

  The floor below was damp, and it was clear the fire hadn’t burned quite so savagely here. Beneath the blackened soot, she could still see the star patterns in the tiles beneath her feet.

  She opened the first door she came to and found the room inside almost completely preserved. There was a rusted wood stove to her right and a rotting wooden table before it. Copper pots and pans hung from the ceiling, and on the far side, in the corner, stood a door with peeling green paint.

  Safire crossed the room and opened the door.

  The inside was cool and small and smelled like old vegetables. Lifting the lantern Asha leant her, Safire saw that in the corner lay a musty pallet. It was too small for an adult but just large enough for a child. The small wooden frame of a loom leaned against the wall and on the floor beside it lay several baskets, each of them piled with dusty skeins of yarn.

  Safire stepped into the room. A jar full of dried scarp thistles sat beside the pallet, and on the mattress lay a ragged cloth doll, with beads for eyes and thick yarn for hair.

  Safire crouched down and picked up the doll.

  “This was your room,” she whispered, pulling the doll to her chest.

  From behind her, a soft voice answered, “Aye, princess.”

  Thirty-Three

  The sight of Safire standing in her childhood bedroom, clutching her doll to her chest, made Eris go silent and still.

  “I’m so sorry,” Safire burst out.

  Eris heard the words, but she no longer saw the girl before her, only the room she’d left behind. It was exactly as she’d left it, untouched by the fire. Her bed. Her loom. The wool she’d dyed and spun herself.

  The smell of it made her think of happier times. Of when she had a place to call home and people to call family.

  “I should have believed you.” The words trembled, as if Safire was about to cry.

  Safire came back into sharp focus. She was drenched from the storm. Her long black lashes clustered like stars and the blue dress clung to her frame.

  “I never should have called the guards.” Her forehead crinkled in a severe frown. “And those things I said . . .”

  “Like telling the empress you’d kill me on sight?”

  Safire looked sharply away, her shoulders sagging with shame. She looked wretched and small and not at all like the proud, brave girl Eris so admired.

  Eris couldn’t help but go to her.

  “Hey,” she said softly, watching a warm tear spill down Safire’s cheek, wanting to brush it away but not quite daring to. Why was she crying over this? Over Eris? “I wouldn’t have believed me either.”

  She reached for the doll in Safire’s hand—a doll Day had brought back from the market one summer. A doll she’d simply called Doll, because she thought it was clever. She pressed her face into the doll’s dress, breathing in. But it smelled only of dust and damp, and nothing of her life before this one. So she set it back down where Safire found it.

  “I want to show you something,” she said, looking up into bright blue eyes. “Will you come?”

  Safire nodded, swiping at her tears.

  Taking her hand, Eris pulled her from the room.

  She led Safire back through the scrin, then down a pine path through the woods, away from the cliffs. As she did, she ran her thumb along Safire’s skin, gentle and slow, wondering if it had the same heart-skittering effect as it did on her.

  She didn’t look to find out. Because the sky was lightening now, and dawn would be here soon. She wanted to get there before sunrise.

  Finally, the trees broke and the path ended. All that lay before them was a creamy ribbon of sand encircling a small, shallow bay. Letting go of Safire’s hand, Eris grinned as she said, “So you see, Raif isn’t the only one with a secret beach.”

  Bending over, she tugged off her boots. After rolling her trousers up to her knees, she headed in. The sea rushed up her ankles, smelling of brine, welcoming her back. Eris closed her eyes and breathed it in.

  A heartbeat later, she heard splashing behind her and looked to find the hem of the blue dress knotted up over Safire’s hips.

  Side by side, they watched the red sun rise.

  “Well?” Eris glanced over, wanting to know if she’d pleased her, and found Safire staring back in a way that made her breath catch. “Are you the kind of girl who likes sunrises?”

  A blush of color rose in Safire’s cheeks, and she ducked her eyes.

  “Eris?” she asked, dodging the question. “Did you mean what you said on the empress’s balcony?”

  Eris remembered the shock in Safire’s eyes when she’d carelessly made her confession. To think I fancied myself in love with you. She should deny it. Or better yet: make a joke of it. Save herself the humiliation.

  “I . . .” It was Eris’s turn to look away. “The first time I ever saw you, I wanted to despise you.” She kept her eyes on the sea frothing around them. “A commander who’d been given her position simply because her cousin was king? A princess who lived a privileged, comfortable life without ever knowing a day of hardship? You represented everything I hated . . . or so I thought.” Eris bit her lip. Was she really admitting this out loud? “I saw what I wanted to see. Mostly because the first time we met, you injured my pride.”

  Safire glanced up. “What?” Her brow knit in confusion. “How?”

  “I had just stolen a tapestry from your office. You ran straight into me, looked me over, and dismissed me in a single glance.”

  Safire jaw dropped in surprise. “I was responding to a security breach,” she said, a little defensively. “And you were dressed as a soldat. I make a point of not noticing my soldats—not like that. It’s unprofessional.”

  “Ah.” Eris smiled a little. “I see. Well, it irked me. More than irked me. Afterward, I made it my mission to ensure you not only noticed me, but couldn’t stop thinking about me.” More softly, she said, “I wanted to drive you as mad as you were driving me.”

  Safire looked away then, the color rushing back into her cheeks. “Well, you certainly succeeded.”

  “Did I?” asked Eris, studying her. Safire’s gaze lifted, catching hers. “I meant what I said on the balcony,” Eris whispered, stepping in close. “You are brave and noble and good.” She lifted hesitant fingers to gently trace Safire’s jaw, then her throat. “How could I not fall in love with you?”

  Safire sucked in a breath, blue eyes sparkling, letting Eris touch her. “I thought you didn’t go in for spoiled princess types.”

  Eris reached for the knife keeping Safire’s hair up. “I only said that to save your ass.” She tugged it out, spilling Safire’s hair down her neck, then buried her hands in it. “You are exactly my type.” She pressed her lips to the arch of Safire’s throat, feeling her pulse pound like tempest rain. “Soft and strong and oh so pretty,” she murmured. “When I’m with you, I want to be better. I want to be worthy of you.”

  This seemed to get through to Safire, whose hands slid up under Eris’s shirt and over her skin, skidding up her back. Eris’s hands trembled as they cupped Safire’s neck. Wanting this—wanting her—more than she’d ever wanted anything.

  When she captured Safire’s mouth with her own, Safire kissed her hungrily back.

  The tide came in, rushing against their legs. Safire and Eris ignored it. The waves came in faster and harder, until one of them nearly knocked them both over, dousing them in cold water.

  Safire sucked in a breath at the shock of it
. Eris laughed. “Come on,” she said, tugging Safire’s arm.

  Was this what happiness felt like?

  They stumbled back to the beach, where Eris dropped into the sand, bringing Safire down with her, both of them yearning to finish what they started as the sun rose over the sea.

  Thirty-Four

  Safire woke nestled beneath the blankets of a warm bed, with the memory of Eris on her skin. Candles burned in sconces around her, illuminating this room. If she could call it a room. The walls were made of brightly colored glass and the only thing within was a bed and a chest.

  Where am I?

  It felt like neither night nor day here, but something in between.

  Am I dreaming? she wondered.

  Somewhere in the distance, a noise made her turn her head and listen: clack, clack, clack.

  It drew her from the bed.

  Safire followed the soft and steady sound through this strange maze of stained-glass walls, the glow of the candle illuminating her path, which twisted and turned as she followed the clacking sound. Twice she was greeted by dead ends. A third time she took a turn only to end up back where she started.

  Finally, she found the source of the noise and stepped into a room lit by dozens of candles.

  Eris sat cross-legged on a white carpet. Before her was a loom.

  Safire knew she should announce herself instead of standing here spying, but she found herself immobilized by the haunting elegance of the girl at the loom. Eris’s sleeves were rolled to the elbows. Her hands were steady and sure as they moved the shuttle back and forth, back and forth, in a gentle rhythm that mesmerized Safire. The glow from the candles clustered all around Eris, catching in her pale hair, making it gleam.

  Safire thought of the beach. Of her fingers tangled in that hair. Of those hands and how they knew exactly what to do.

  Who are you? The question had been living inside her ever since the mysterious Death Dancer turned up in Firgaard.

  Eris’s voice broke through her thoughts. “Are you going to stand there all day?”

  Safire froze, caught.

  Eris didn’t turn around, just kept weaving. So Safire came to the carpet and sat down beside her.