“Voice Golden-Finch has known since Iron Town, but there were always suspicions,” Alabaster said. “Hand Usher kept you from the executioner’s grasp. He saw a way to use you. I will be honest, I worried you might not earn the windcallers’ trust, but you surpassed my expectations. Do you know what the penalty for treason is, Alder?”
“Let me out, Alabaster,” I said, grasping desperately at his words, trying to make sense of them. “This is a mistake.”
“You thought we believed that shattered porcelain made all those intricate little marks, so carefully arranged around the seams of your palm?” Alabaster went on. “Do you think we are blind?”
“Take me to Voice Rill,” I said, reaching for any chance I might have. “I can explain. We will sort through this misunderstanding.”
“Do you think the Emperor would give such power as sorcery to his Hands, without knowing how they use it?” Alabaster said with venom in his voice. “He has been with you, all along, in the palm of your left hand. He might not know your every thought, as he does his voices, but he feels every ripple and wake of magic you wield--whether drawn from the canon or no.
“You don’t know what you are talking—”
“When you used Easterling magic at Iron Town--and again here in An-Zabat--it stood out to the Emperor and his Voices like a clot flowing through the veins and arteries of transmission. We had little use for the magic of Nayen, but Hand Usher saw that your curiosity and foolishness might be a tool of benefit to the Empire. And he was right. We did not know how you would manage it, but you did. Rill came to us, last night, the moment you wielded An-Zabati magic, the moment the Emperor added it to the canon, and we all drank to your success. Soon, windships will sail under the imperial tetragram, and An-Zabat will be ours in truth.
“Cinder is sharpening his sword even as we speak. He has a reputation for keeping his victims alive until the last scrap of their skin comes free.” His eye appeared in the gap. I stumbled backward, and he laughed. “Goodbye, Easterling. I will see you at dawn, when your suffering reaches its peak and, at last, an ending.”
Only then, sitting stunned on the floor, Alabaster’s laughter ringing in my ears, did I feel the weight of my mistake. The rumor Clear-River had used to threaten me had been only a rumor, but one that struck at the truth. I had thought myself careful in my gamble, and hoped to win the truths of magic, or at the very least acceptance, and understanding, and love. But the dice had been loaded from the moment Usher sealed my hand.
There was no time for the paralysis of self-hatred, the mulling over the connections I should have made, the conclusions I should have drawn. I had to warn Atar, Katiz, and the other windshapers. The city was forfeit, but they might still escape.
I scrambled to my feet and sought the black chest with three iron locks that I had brought from Nayen. I pressed the obsidian blade of my grandmother’s knife to my left palm. I would need magic, but so long as I wore the tetragram Voice Rill and the Emperor himself would know every spell I cast even as I cast it and add it to the canon as they had added windcalling. I had conjured fire while wearing the tetragram, and in so doing betrayed one of Nayen’s deep-held secrets. Thankfully, the memory of twisted limbs and brittle bones had frightened me away from veering. There were some secrets yet kept safe.
I bit back my pain and cut the canon away with my branded flesh. Blood spilled from my palm where my tetragram had been, and the well of power I had felt since Hand Usher branded me vanished at once. I stared at the ruin of my hand, the ruin of so many dreams--Koro Ha’s, my father’s, my own. No time for self-pity, either. I wrapped my hand in a scrap of linen, cradled it to my chest, and began searching for a way out of my rooms.
The door was locked, chained, and barred. The windows were shuttered and bolted from the outside. Through the slats I caught sight of Jhin, just on the other side of the bamboo grove with a bundle of laundry in his arms.
“Jhin!” I called out and pounded on the window with my good hand. He nearly dropped his burden in surprise. The steward glanced around, checking for prying eyes and ears, then crept around the bamboo grove to my window.
“I shouldn’t speak to you,” he whispered. “Please, Hand Alder, let me be.”
“What do they say I’ve done, Jhin?” I said.
“They say you’ve betrayed the Empire.”
“How? By hiding the fact that I was marked as a witch before I understood what that would mean? By trying to learn about this city and help its people? Where is the treason, Jhin?”
He shied away, and I worried that he would abandon me.
“You betrayed the Empire’s trust, Alder. You hid things--”
“They betrayed mine as well,” I said. “For two years they have planned to use me to steal the windcallers’ magic. They might have given me a chance to cooperate, but they hid it all from me. Even the Emperor himself, when I stood at the foot of his throne.”
He grimaced but leaned closer to the window. I pressed on.
“What happened in Toa Alon, Jhin?” I said. “I’ve read volumes of imperial history, but there is a gap there. You spoke of lessons hard learned. What did the Empire do?”
Jhin shuddered and pressed his face close to the slats. A fire lit in his eyes. “If not for the Empire’s mercy, we would all be dead, buried with the Stone Speakers in the ruin of Sor Cala. Things were hidden. Truths the Stone Speakers kept from their people and from the Empire, though they performed surrender and claimed that they had shared all their arts. When the Empire found out…” he shook his head. “The Hands, even the Voices…your power is nothing like the Emperor’s. He is a god-man out of the deep-cave legends, their names forgotten but their faces carved in stone. The Empire did not conquer Sor Cala. It surrendered, its rulers lied, and the Emperor himself buried it.”
“And you do not hate the Emperor for this?” I said. “For causing such death and destruction?”
Jhin took a deep breath. “We were warned. The city was emptied. Only the Stone Speakers and those who refused to leave were killed.”
“So, they killed a few instead of all. I would not call it mercy if I were forced to watch my home destroyed.”
“Is deception not a crime?”Jhin said.
“One deserving of death?”
He shrugged. “Am I a stone-carved god, that I should condemn?”
“Is the Emperor? Is Voice Rill?”
That gave him pause. I lunged for the gap in his defenses.
“What crime have the windcallers committed? They never deceived the Empire, they only protect the secret of their magic to protect their own lives. The Empire destroyed Sor Cala but saved the Toa Aloni; here, they will destroy the An-Zabati but save An-Zabat. Not to punish a crime, not to avenge a slight, but only to control trade across the waste. Is that a thing worth killing for?”
“Why should I believe you?” he said. “I have only your word, and you are a traitor.”
“At the very least, you know that they will kill me,” I said. “If you do nothing, then by your actions you agree that I should die. Are you a stone-carved god, that you should condemn?”
“And what would you have me do, Hand Alder?” he said, glaring through the window slat. “Fight to free you, and condemn us both?”
“No,” I said. “Just open the window.”
Jhin measured the opening with his eyes and frowned. “It is too small.”
“I have my ways,” I said. “Please, Jhin. I deceived the Empire, but I was deceived in turn. If I did wrong, so did they. Why should I be punished while the Empire does what it wills? Only because the Empire is strong, and I am weak?”
His gaze drifted from mine and settled on the bar that held the shutters closed. Away from the discursive field of Sienese philosophy--a familiar battleground--I could only hope that my arguments appealed to Jhin’s sense of justice, complicated as it was by a mixture of Toa Aloni and Sienese sensibilities.
“These drapes need to be hung out to dry, or they will mold,” he said
, and left the window.
“Jhin!” I shouted after him. “Do what you know is right!”
He paused mid-stride and looked over his shoulder, his brow deeply furrowed in thought, his eyes searching, his body taught with anguish.
“I…need to think,” he said at last, and left me.
I paced my floor and fought down nausea. Even if Jhin chose to open the window, I would have to become much, much smaller to fit through it.
Sometime later--perhaps an hour, perhaps longer--I heard commotion outside my window. The sound of feet and clattering steel. A squadron of guards, armed and in their battle harness, marched toward the main gate of the citadel. I felt as though I had swallowed a stone. Atar, Katiz, and the other windshapers would be hunted down and slaughtered because of me, and they would think that I had betrayed them.
There was no time to wait for Jhin. Again, I cast about the room. They had left my piles of books, my wall hangings, my brush, inkstone, and paperweights. I hefted one of the paperweights and bashed it against the window shutter. A few of the slats splintered, but the bar across the shutter held. At the fourth blow the paperweight cracked--a cheap piece--and at the fifth it broke in two.
A survey of my progress left me with little hope. The window would give way eventually, but by then I would attract attention, and it would be too late to save Atar. I could conjure a flame to burn my way out, but fire could be more dangerous to me than helpful. If I had battle-sorcery, I might have blasted the window apart. I felt foolish and impulsive. Cutting away the canon had left me without a valuable tool.
But of course, the canon was not magic itself. I had cut away the bit and bridle, but the horse was still there, if I could master it.
As once I reached blindly for the power to veer, now I reached for battle-sorcery. It was like stepping into an empty plain where once a vast palace had been. The pattern of the world was there, as it had been when I knelt in the Temple of the Flame, but it appeared to me only as shadows of sensation, as timid wakes in the world, dulled by my witch-marks and long acclimation to the canon. I felt my way forward, toward the faint feeling of warmth on my skin, of a cool breeze filling my lungs.
And then I was upon it, grasping the magic I knew as battle-sorcery, and at once the warmth on my skin became the heat of a bonfire; the breeze in my lungs a bitter winter chill. My teeth chattered, clipping my tongue, as magic rushed through me. Lightning crackled from the tips of my fingers. Bolts tore through my table, my chair, a bookcase. Everything but the window.
I panicked as flames licked at stacks of paper and smoke filled the room. The wake of my sorcery was overwhelming--like I was pressed between two iron plates, one frozen and the other white-hot. A vision rose in my mind’s eye of Hand Cinder cackling as he felt this absurd wake and saw the smoke rising from my rooms.
I choked on a lungful of smoke. Gritted my teeth to keep them from chattering. I shut my eyes and focused on the pattern of the world around me. Felt the wakes of the battle-sorcery I wielded. Grasped them, like the mane of a bucking steed. This was my power. Not the Empire’s. Not my grandmother’s. And I would do with it what I willed.
Flames licked the walls around me. I squinted through the heat, smoke, and light, fixed my gaze on the window, and bore down with all my will, all my intent--all my desire to avenge myself, to warn Atar, to beg her forgiveness--as I had when I tried to bring Oriole back from the dead.
Now, no walls of the canon constrained me.
A bolt of lightning speared the window. The iron bar shattered into molten droplets; the shutters burst to cinders.
For the first time since the most terrifying moment of my life, I reached for the power to veer. Every muscle in my body clenched at once, then relaxed as I settled into my new form. I had no time to bask in this success, long-in-coming though it was.
In a flurry of feathers, I leaped to the windowsill, then dragged myself out of the smoke and into the sky.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The Obelisks of An-Zabat
I rode desert thermals out into the Batir waste and soared well beyond the Valley of Rulers before landing. If Cinder or Alabaster followed the wake of my magic, they would be led out into the open sands. Twilight had fallen when I landed and released the spell. I stood on wobbly, cramping legs, and recalled the memory of carrying my grandmother back from the Temple of the Flame with a sympathy I’d never imagined feeling. With no one to carry me, I set off at a flagging jog toward the Valley of Rulers.
Though the sun had set, heat clung to the sand. I sucked my cheeks for saliva--anything to wet my throat--and wished that I had Katiz’s bronze and silver bowl. I had seen him draw water from the sands half a dozen times and thought I could recreate the spell, though neither he nor Atar had taught me how.
My cramping only worsened by the time I reached the Valley. I followed the path to the sandstone cliff, watched all the while by the dark gaze of the countless tombs. My left hand was a useless club of bandages and blood, but I managed to pull the heavy brass door open and shut it behind me. Without a lantern, I conjured flame for light. Just a finger-wide tongue of fire, leaving little more wake than a water-walker on the surface of a puddle.
I moved as quickly as I could, often bracing a shoulder against the wall when a spasm shook me. The carved walls of the tunnel scraped my shoulder, and the heavy shadows cast by the thin light of my flame made the carvings a menagerie of shrouded demons, snarling at me from the dark.
Were these the old, cruel gods of An-Zabat, I wondered? Would they, too, invade my dreams, speaking in tortured riddles and goading me down fraught and unknown paths? I was delirious from thirst, I decided, and my mind was addled by Jhin’s talk of stone-carved gods.
I rounded a corner and, to my relief, saw the dull gleam of brass. I pushed through the second door and out into the alleyway behind Katiz’s temple. The first stars pierced a thin veil that I took for clouds, until I smelled the fire and saw the orange glow to the south, above the elevated harbor.
I was too late. The second conquest of An-Zabat had already begun.
“Atar!” My tongue felt thick. Dizzy though I was, I oriented myself toward the obelisk that rose from Katiz’s temple and ran, stumbling, bumping into walls and kicking through piles of refuse. “Katiz!”
The doors of the temple stood open. Atar and the blade-of-the-wind Shazir were on either side, shepherding people into the shelter. A wake of sorcery--hot, then cold--washed over me from the south, followed by the bright burst of a lightning strike and a rumble of thunder.
“Atar!” A cramp spasmed my leg. I stumbled. She caught me, lowered me to sit against the temple wall. “Atar! Thank the sages--the gods--Naphena! Thank Naphena you’re alright!”
She glanced at my wounded hand, then searched my face and felt my cheeks.
“You’re hurt. And feverish.”
“I came from the desert,” I said, clutching her arm. “I had to warn you.”
“Shazir! Bring water!”
The blade-of-the-wind scowled. “Winddancer, he--”
“Water, now.” Atar glared up at Shazir, who did as Atar had said.
“I had…” I swallowed, trying to work moisture into my throat.
“Quiet now, Firecaller,” Atar said. She reached up to stroke my brow and comfort me, but hesitated, and I felt a piercing dread.
“I’m sorry,” I croaked.
Atar studied me, as though my eyes could testify to my guilt or innocence. I wanted to explain everything, but my voice refused.
Shazir returned with a copper cup, and Katiz in tow. Atar pressed the rim of the cup to my lips. The water stung my chapped mouth but was blessedly wet and cool.
“What is this?” Katiz said, his face a thundercloud.
“We should lock him up and question him,” Shazir said. “The storage room--"
“Why would he come back if he betrayed us?” Atar challenged them. “When he can speak, he will explain.”
Desperate to prove her right, I dr
ank the last of the water in a rush.
“They knew every magic that I worked,” I said, my voice regaining strength. “They knew I was marked as a witch. And they knew my curiosity about magic was boundless. They brought me here as a gamble to steal windcalling for their canon.”
“And you did not know this?” Shazir snapped. “How? You are schooled in their magic, are you not, Hand of the Emperor?”
“I was never one of them,” I said, meeting her stare. “They gave me power only to use me.”
“They made you a fool,” Shazir said. “That is, if what you say is true. Why should we believe you?”
“Because he came to warn us,” Atar said.
“Too late,” Shazir said. She turned to Katiz. “Whether he betrayed us wittingly or no, we cannot trust him.”
“His hand,” Atar said. She cradled my left hand and began to unwrap it. When the bandage fell away, her eyes widened at the ruin of my palm.
“I cut the canon away,” I said. “They no longer know what magic I work, unless they are near enough to feel its wake. I am their tool no longer.”
“Another layer of deception, for all we know!” Shazir pressed on. “Katiz, be reasonable! Trusting this man may have cost us the city.”
“The city may be lost,” Katiz said. “But we are not. The Empire knows how to call the wind, but Firecaller never learned to draw water. We can deny them their victory.”
Atar’s eyes widened. “Naphena’s urn has poured for hundreds of years.”
“It can be made dry,” Katiz said. “And there are enough among the people who have kept their cistern bowls and know the art. We can slip into the desert and leave the dried-out husk of this city to the Empire. But once we begin they will realize what we do, and they will stop us. The Sienese have weapons that could destroy an obelisk in an instant, as they destroyed this temple years ago, and even now destroy homes throughout this city.”
“Weapons we do not have,” Shazir said. “This is not a plan, but a dream as transient as a dewdrop!”
“I can get them for you,” I said, piecing Katiz’s plan together. I remembered the bowl in the Valley of Rulers, and its silver filigree, so like the decoration on the obelisk that loomed above us. And I remembered the citadel armory, a squat building next to Cinder’s archery range. “I know where the grenades are kept. With my grandmother’s magic I can disguise myself and steal them, if we hurry.”
The Hand of the Sun King Page 27
