Page 24

Two Years Ago

Daeros—Tenebris

I crouch above the false ceiling of the king’s council room, muscles tense. I rarely sneak around during the day—it’s far too risky—but I’m always a little braver during Gods’ Fall. Plus, an envoy of Aeronans arrived this morning, and I want to know what they’re here for.

I peer down through a knot in the wood. The king sits at the head of the table with his general, Eirenaios, on his right hand, five Aeronan dignitaries seated all in a row, sipping wine from crystal goblets.

Princess Aelia isn’t here, to my disappointment.

I’ve looked for her every time an envoy arrives from Aerona, twice a year or so, but she’s never returned.

Ballast isn’t here, either. I’m not sure what reason he would have had to flee to Aerona or, if he had, why on the Green Goddess’s earth he would come back, but I still find myself searching for him. I shove away the familiar pulse of loss that his absence has carved out of me.

An Aeronan man who introduces himself as Talan stands to address the king.

He’s tall and holds himself well, his eyes dark, his sharp jaw smoothly shaven while his hair curls a bit at the nape of his neck.

He can’t be more than twenty, and the medallion he wears on a chain at his breast marks him as someone of high social status.

“We’ve been more than patient with you, Kallias,” Talan says, his tone brisk and cool.

“All the food Daeros can eat to fill your soldiers’ bellies and allow your ridiculous war to continue, in exchange for the designs for your lamps and the materials to make them—but my emperor grows weary.

The lamps are not what you originally promised him, you ask for more and more food, and the war drags on.

Make peace with Skaanda, Kallias. Establish trade with them , and stop draining the empire—or is that your plan? ”

The king bristles, knuckles straining white around his wineglass. “Wars take time, Your Grace. I understand that the lamps have been more than useful in Aerona—and you misrepresent that they are all we have given you.”

“Drills,” says Talan shortly, “a box that gives heat without fire, time-glasses that do not need to be wound—they are trinkets. Party tricks. A decade ago, you promised us something else, and I will be plain with you, Kallias: If the Iljaria weapon is not in Aeronan hands by the end of next Winter Dark, the food shipments will stop, and my emperor will send his army to seize Tenebris and look for it himself.”

I go numb, heart slamming in my throat. The Iljaria weapon.

I haven’t heard even a whisper of it all the time I’ve been here.

It’s an old story, little more than a half-forgotten myth, claiming that before the Iljaria fled from the mountain, they buried something in the heart of it: an ancient weapon with the power to split the world in two.

I never thought the king was the sort to put much stock in stories.

The king clenches his jaw and waves one hand at the Daerosian man who hovers near the sideboard: Basileious, the king’s engineer.

He’s short and pudgy, neither young nor old, his skin more pink than pale.

Limp hair curls above his too-broad forehead, and a pair of spectacles seem to be squeezing the very breath out of his nose.

“Give your report,” the king snaps at him.

Basileious clears his throat. “As I was explaining to His Majesty earlier, we’ve hit a vein.”

“A vein?” Talan’s brows go up, his eyes fixing intently on the engineer.

Basileious nods. “A vein of iron, mixed with silver. We believe it will lead us, at last, to the mountain’s heart.”

“Why this vein in particular?” Talan presses. “You have found them before, and they led nowhere.”

The king smirks and waves at Basileious to go on.

“We have, Your Grace,” the engineer says to Talan. “But this vein glows .”

Above the ceiling, I stifle a gasp. Magic. They’ve found a vein of Iljaria magic. Where else could it lead but to the mythical weapon?

“How deep does this vein run?” asks Talan. “How long until you reach the mountain’s heart?”

“I am not certain, Your Grace. Our drills and axes shatter every few feet—”

“Give us two years,” says Kallias. “We can reach the mountain’s heart in two years, can’t we, Basileious?”

“Probably,” says Basileious, and then, at Kallias’s sharp look, corrects himself hastily. “We can.”

Talan frowns. “That is not the timeline my emperor requests.”

“That is the timeline I can offer you.” The king’s eyes lock on the Aeronan’s. “And when it is found, the weapon will first be used to obliterate Skaanda.”

“Careful, Kallias. You overstep yourself. I will make your case to the emperor for the two years, but when the weapon is breached, it will belong to the emperor. He is the one who will decide how to wield it.”

“Your emperor does not rule me,” says the king coldly.

“My emperor owns you. Do not think to turn him into your enemy—you could not bear the cost of it.”

The king laughs. “I can do what I’ve always done, Talan. Whatever the hell I want.”

He stalks from the room, and fear jolts through me—I’ve lingered far too long.

I scurry back through the vents and slip into my cage a heartbeat before Kallias bursts into the great hall and takes his fury out on one of the poor bastards from his Collection.

I don’t know who it is, and I don’t want to.

I turn my back and shut my eyes, but I can’t close my ears, and I can’t stop my mind from wheeling over all I heard in the council chamber.

After dinner we’re made to perform for the Aeronan dignitaries.

Talan sits in his chair with his arms folded tight across his chest, his lips pressed into a thin line.

The other Aeronans seem equally unimpressed and uncomfortable with the king’s Collection, though none of them move to stop it.

So the king parades us out, one after another.

I perch in my parrot’s cage, waiting for my turn to be called.

It’s been a little over a year since Ballast disappeared from Tenebris.

The king seems to have forgotten him. Everyone seems to have forgotten him, except, of course, Gulla, who is constantly watching the door of any room she’s in, spelling out his name with her fingers like a prayer.

Rhode and Xenia miss Ballast, too, I think, though Rhode is old enough to know not to say anything about her half brother and quick enough to hush Xenia before she says anything, either.

I dread the day when Rhode and Xenia begin to emulate their older siblings, who sneak into the great hall and torment their father’s captives, poking hot irons between the bars or slinging in sacks of excrement.

Theron and Alcaeus like to practice knife throwing in here, which means not even my elevated cage exempts me from their cruelty.

Once, they brought a crossbow in, sent quarrels hurtling up toward me.

I dodged most of them, though one grazed my shin before Nicanor discovered what they were about and hauled them from the room.

He didn’t send the physician in to tend to me—it was Gulla who came, later that night, after I had already performed for the king with a gash in my leg.

She spread salve on the wound, bound it up.

And she brought me a book to read, which she had done sporadically in the years after Ballast ordered me away from his room.

Before Ballast fled from Tenebris, I liked to imagine that she did all those things on his behalf, that he asked her to do them because he still considered me his friend.

That was nonsense, of course. A hope to cling to in the long Winter Dark.

It was Gulla, and Gulla alone, who offered me these kindnesses.

But that doesn’t keep me from wondering where he is now, if he’s well, if he ever thinks about all the things he left behind. If he’s even alive.

My mind jolts back to the present when the Skaandan singer is brought from her glass cage.

The king takes one look at her, frowns, and waves her away before she even opens her mouth.

She must be eighteen now, or near it. That’s the age when the king loses interest in us, when we are no longer children, no longer deemed remarkable.

I’m five months past my own eighteenth birthday, and though I’m still scrawny and small—thank the gods—I know it’s only a matter of time before the king checks his records, sees my true age, and surrenders me to the Sea of Bones.

He calls me to perform next and I do, leaping from ropes to chains, doing a complicated tumbling passage on the wire that stretches the length of the hall: cartwheels and flips, handstands and somersaults, my stomach lurching as the room tilts upside down and then rights itself again.

Then an intricate routine on the aerial silks, followed by a series of swinging bars.

Sweat pours down my shaved head and runs into my eyes.

Last is a series of dizzying leaps onto impossibly small platforms. I throw myself across the gaps, vision narrowing to those tiny squares of wood.

One, two, three, four, five. Another leap, and my sweaty palms seize the last chain.

I slide down it and let go, jerking my body sideways to land on a nearly invisible wire.

I teeter for a moment and then tuck my head down and run along the wire as fast as I can.

A heartbeat before the wire ends, I hurl myself forward, fingers stretching, stretching, to one last lonely silk.

For an instant there is nothing beneath me but air and a plummeting drop to my death.

But then the silk tangles in my hand. I grasp it and let go, allowing myself to fall. I count heartbeats. There’s no time for breath.

The floor rushes up to shatter me. I grab the silk at the last moment, catching myself before I collide with the ground. The jolt of it jerks my shoulders so hard it feels like my arms are being ripped out of their sockets.

I hit the floor, ducking my head and somersaulting to land in a perfect bow at the king’s feet.

I’m breathing hard, my whole body shaking and pouring sweat. I don’t dare lift my eyes before the king acknowledges me, so I stare at his feet, slippered in silk and gleaming with diamonds.

I wish I could haul him up onto my wire, push him off, watch him fall. I wish I could give him the end that he deserves.

Fingers grasp my chin, tilt my face up.

“I grow weary with your routine, acrobat,” he says, his voice as brittle as the ice outside his mountain. “Same thing, every time. I’m always hoping you’ll fall, liven things up a bit.”

I swallow around his fingers, staring up into his colorless face, his piercing eyes. It’s not my right to say anything, and so I don’t.

The king studies me and drops my chin. “I’ve just acquired a new acrobat, as it happens. I saw her perform in Garran City yesterday.”

Fear pierces me. It feels like falling.

His eyes narrow. “How old are you, anyway?”

The fear boils over. My throat is dry. Words won’t come.

“Well?” demands the king, shaking my shoulders.

“I am—I am sixteen, Your Majesty,” I lie, hating the shake in my voice.

Humor lights his face. “I see little use for two acrobats, especially when one bores me so greatly. And it seems to me you have been sixteen for a while.” He releases me and waves his hands at Nicanor. “Put her back in her cage. For now.”

Nicanor grabs my arm and jerks me away from the king, shoving me into my cage and locking it before hoisting me back up to my parrot’s perch.

I huddle on my sleeping ledge, counting the beats of my heart until, below me, the room empties, and there is no sound in the great hall but the children’s quiet weeping.

I’ve seen the king murder children from his Collection more times than I want to think about. That will be me soon.

I’m out of time.

But I’m ready. I’ve been ready for a while. It’s a relief. A release.

I get up from my sleeping ledge and tuck my knife into my waistband.

I glance around the cage dispassionately, then let myself out the door and shimmy down the chain.

I find myself slipping past the Skaandan singer’s glass cage, bordered by orange trees. The scent of citrus is sharp in the air.

A hand grabs me by the wrist and yanks me against the glass. I jerk my head up and look into the singer’s dark eyes.

“Please,” she begs, her grip hard as iron. “Please, you have to help me. Kallias means to kill me in the morning.”

I stare at her through the glass bars of her cage. Tears streak her brown cheeks, and the skirt of her robe is torn and bloodied. What did they do to her, after her nonperformance? Pity twists in my gut and I hesitate.

“I can’t,” I say. “I’m sorry.” But I don’t move. Because I can see her twisted and broken on the floor, her blood pooling around her, her corpse tossed like so much refuse into the Sea.

“He said he’ll make me sing an aria,” she whispers, “that he’ll—that he’ll cut my throat while I’m doing it.”

Black God , I’m going to be sick. Behind me, the level in the time-glass rises.

“Please,” she says. “My family thinks I’m dead. I have to get home. I have to.” Something in her hardens, and all her being fixes on me. “Don’t leave me here to die. Please. I appeal—I appeal to the gods.”

I go still and cold. She’s invoked the Skaandan code of honor: An appeal to the gods is a life bargain, a binding oath.

My mind wheels as I frantically recalculate my escape plan.

I could still ignore her. I could turn without an answer, slip back up into the vent, leave this damn mountain behind forever, and go home, at long, long last.

But how can I do that? How can I leave her to join Hilf’s moldering bones at the bottom of the glacier sea? Her memory would haunt me forever.

And yet helping her would change everything .

Her jaw clenches. She shoves back her sleeve and shows me the underside of her wrist, where she rubs away a layer of dirt to reveal a white eight-pointed star. “I am Saga Stjornu, crown princess of Skaanda, and I command you to free me from this cage and take me home to Staltoria City.”

My mouth drops open. For a heartbeat more I just stare at her.

And then I pick the lock on her cage and do as she asked.

I take her with me.