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CHAPTER

Thirty-Two

H AVE YOU FORGOTTEN ABOUT US ? We have been magnificently still and silent, perched out here in Yasila’s courtyard. Really, we should have followed Neema down to the Festival Square to watch her fight the Ox contender Tala Talaka. But we are a curious bird and we would like to poke our beak through that door for a moment. You know the one. The one set into the bookshelves. The one Yasila kept glancing at throughout her interview, when she thought no one was looking.

We cannot leave our friend Neema unguarded, so we peel a fragment from ourself to join her in the contender line. Anxious Raven with Piercing Alarm Call will let us know if she is in trouble, it misses nothing. You may creep up on the Hound, you may creep up on the Ox (that one’s easy), you may even creep up on the Tiger. But you cannot creep up on us.

(Does our anxious friend’s name sound cumbersome, by the way? Please bear in mind we have already shortened it for you. We are all the ravens that were, all the ravens that are, all the ravens that will be. Extreme specificity is required to distinguish between us. We would need an entire morning to recite a single fragment’s full name. Not a problem in the Hidden Realm, where time holds no dominion. Here, we shorten, because we are a compassionate bird.)

Yasila takes a key from her pocket and unlocks the door. We swoop down and fly through before she closes and locks it again. We could of course simply pass through the walls, but that would not be pleasing to us, it would make our feathers puff up and some of our more agitated aspects might start screeching and pecking each other. This can set off something of a cascade of panic, next thing you know we’re swirling around in a mad frenzy.

We decide to walk at Yasila’s feet, we look like a very short advisor strutting beside her, wings folded behind our back, yaffling opinions on the concerns of the day. She does not sense us there, although she is a perceptive woman. She is preoccupied, thinking of her daughters, one alive, and one dead.

Yana knew where the Dragonscale was kept; Yasila had trusted her daughter with the secret. Could she have told someone the location, before she died? Yasila wonders—about Yana, and revenge. She wonders.

She does not think of her son. She can think of Ruko as a problem. A scenario. What will happen if he wins the Festival, what will happen if he doesn’t. What will happen if Pyke kills him, which is her deep desire. Yasila very much hopes that the Visitor will kill Ruko on the fight platform. It is why she invited him here, why she made her deal with the Dragons. Kill my son and I shall return to Helia with your precious oil. Kill him before he wins the throne, and I am yours.

She thinks often of Ruko’s death. But she never thinks of him as a person. He is exiled from her heart.

In the square, outside the contenders’ pavilion, Anxious Raven with Piercing Alarm Call has taken the bold move of sitting on Neema’s shoulder. The Raven choir is opening the day with the song they have been practising so diligently for months. Their harmonies are good thanks to Riff Ankalla’s late intervention, but to Neema’s horror they have come up with little hand movements to go with the words. The song is about Yasthala’s Five Rules, and as they reach the part that goes, “no child of an emperor may take the throne,” they rock their arms in unison, as if they are cradling a baby.

Neema is so mortified she makes a noise in the back of her throat as if she is in pain. (She is in pain.) Anxious Raven calls out in alarm, and for a moment we are distracted. This is the problem with this particular aspect, always screeching and flapping about everything and nothing. We tell it not to bother us again unless something is actually happening , and it says sorry, sorry, sorry, I’m just very anxious , and to be fair, the clue is in the name, it can only be what it is.

Yasila unlocks another door with a different key and takes a breath. As she opens the door, a wave of heat escapes into the hallway. The air shimmers in front of her.

“Nistha?” she calls softly, from the doorway.

From a bed heaped with patchwork quilts and blankets, comes a voice thick with sleep. “The door, Mama…”

Yasila steps into the room. We hop in with her, just before she seals the door tight. We are very interested; this room is new to us. If Dragon found out we were here without its permission it would say THERE ARE OTHER BIRDS, RAVEN and burn us to ash, as it often does when it is in a temper. But we happen to know that it is sleeping, coiled up in its cave, so really what harm could it do to stay here for a brief spell and learn something new?

We bounce across the room to the bed. It is very hot in here, hotter than the mangrove swamps of Fever Bay, hotter than the arid plateaus of Helia. A fire crackles in the hearth, suffusing the room with an orange glow. Dense curtains and shutters cover the windows, trapping in the heat.

The girl in the bed is shivering with cold.

The walls that surround her are covered with pictures of Mount Pyrrh, Helia’s semi-dormant volcano, suddenly erupting with orange-white lava. Nisthala has painted them herself, her style improving over the years of her internment. The most recent is an ambitious canvas that covers an entire wall. Tiny figures stand at the base of the volcano, some fighting, some running.

Yasila sits down on the bed and places a hand on her daughter’s shoulder. Nisthala remains buried under layers of blankets, only the top of her head visible on the pillow. Her hair is grey, though she is not yet sixteen. She murmurs something vague under her breath and snuggles deeper into her nest of blankets.

“Darling you must get up…”

“No…” A moan from under the blankets. It is clear this is a daily battle between them.

Yasila strokes her daughter’s hair. Her expression is soft, loving, endlessly patient. She has learned from her mistakes with Yana and Ruko, and now she makes new ones. “I know it’s hard. I know. You have been so brave for so long. But it is almost over now. Just a few more days.”

Slowly, Nisthala drags herself up into a seated position, clutching her blankets around her. Her eyelids droop, too heavy to lift.

What ails the child? The flu? A wasting sickness? We sidle up to get a better view. We try her from every angle, tilting our head this way and that, fixing her first with one beady eye and then the other. She looks frail, listless. Her cheeks are hollow and her skin—the same sand-brown as her mother’s—is dull.

“… just want to sleep…” she mumbles. But she makes the effort and opens her eyes wide. They are a pale, dusty grey, the colour of wood ash. There is no light to them, no lustre. Her pupils are large and fixed.

We have not seen eyes like this before. They are disturbing to us. Some of us start flapping and puffing up our feathers and making distress calls. With intense effort, we hold ourself together.

Nisthala yawns without covering her mouth.

“Let’s see to your skin,” her mother says. She pulls a leather box from under the bed and takes out a glass tub filled with ointment. As she unscrews the lid we catch the scent of roses, and something sharp and bitter beneath. Dragonscale oil.

A few of our more nervous fragments peel off and start to flap at the curtains. They want to leave, melt through the shutters and the glass and escape.

We don’t like this.

We should not be here .

We are used to arguing with ourself. We drag them back to the fold, peck a few heads.

Wait. We want to see.

“How is it today?” Yasila asks.

Nisthala rolls her eyes, bored by this daily routine. Those strange, dull-grey eyes. “Same as yesterday, Mama.” She shuffles out of the blankets. She is sulking and we like her better for it. She is fifteen, she should be sulking, this at least is natural. She is wearing a woollen shawl and beneath that a sleeveless tunic. Some plain wooden beads around her neck, strung on to a piece of wire. She shrugs off the shawl and we see that her arm…

… we see that her arm…

We break apart into countless fragments. All of us shrieking:

No!

No!

No!

We panic, feathers flying, clawing and scrambling over each other to get away from this child. The calmest of us try to restore order, but it’s no use. We are lost to the chaos.

“No new marks?” Yasila asks.

Nisthala huffs, as if this is the most boring question in the world, and stretches out her arm for inspection.

Around them, invisible, we are shrieking.

This is bad.

This is wrong.

This cannot be.

There are burn marks on Nisthala’s left arm, as if she has been branded. Some look fresh, others are healing in a perpetual cycle. They begin on the underside of her wrist and continue up her arm and over her shoulder, forming a pattern like scales. But each individual mark is an eight, resting on its side. An eternal eight. A spiralling dragon, eating its tale. Upon this turn of the Eternal Path, you are mine . You belong to the Dragon.

Nisthala is a Chosen child.

She should be on Helia. As soon as that first mark appeared on her wrist, a Visitor should have come and taken her away. Years ago! Years!

Ah, but Yasila has control of their precious Dragonscale. She can do what no one else has ever done. She can defy them.

We want to leave (shouldn’t have come, shouldn’t have come) , but we need to gather ourself back together first. Impossible! We are scattered into chaos—batting against the walls, smacking against the walls, pecking at the walls, why are we pecking at the walls, that’s not helping, none of this is helping.

“I think there is a new one here,” Yasila says, touching a raised mark at the base of Nisthala’s neck.

Nisthala sucks in her breath. It hurts. It burns.

Yasila winces in sympathy. “Let me—”

“I can do it myself.” Nisthala snatches the jar and massages the cream into her skin. As the Dragonscale deadens the pain, she softens, and sighs. “Sorry Mama, you know how I am first thing.”

They talk about breakfast, normal things.

“A few more days,” Yasila says, again.

“I know. You need to leave now Mama.”

Yasila is sweating hard under her tunic, strands of hair stuck to her skin. “I can stay a little longer.”

“You’ll faint,” Nisthala laughs. She has already picked up a book from the floor—there are piles of them around the bed.

Yasila’s face is filled with love and pride. She kisses the top of her daughter’s head, her grey hair. “I’ll be back in an hour.”

“Bring some fresh coal for the fire.”

“I will.” Yasila is moving to the door. “My darling girl.”

“And some hot chocolate. Please.”

Our desire to leave this room with Yasila pulls us back together. We stop flapping and shrieking. We are one.

As we settle, we realise that one of us is still shrieking. Has been shrieking louder than the rest of us, for some time now.

Anxious Raven with Piercing Alarm Call.

Neema! Neema is in trouble! Neema! Trouble! Neema is in trouble! Neema!

We cannot wait for Yasila and her keys and her doors. We fly straight up the chimney and out, shaking the soot from our feathers as we soar up over the Dragon palace and down towards the Festival Square.

We are late, we are late!

The fight platform looms up below us. Kindry Rok, holding the bell, is arguing with Tala Talaka, the Ox contender. He holds up his finger to stop her complaints, he will not hear them.

Neema has collapsed on the canvas. She is not moving. Is she unconscious? Is she dead?

Neema, hold on!

We are coming!

We are here!