Page 49

Twenty-One Months Ago

Skaanda

We walk without speaking, heading west, always west, across the snow.

It’s strange, feeling the sunlight again.

I forgot how bright it is, how fiercely hot, even out here on the tundra.

I tell myself that’s what makes my eyes blur as my feet take me farther and farther from the mountains.

I try to push Ballast out of my head, but I can’t do it.

He’s always there, the memory of him pulsing through me like my own heartbeat.

The tension eases out of Saga, bit by bit, as we walk.

Her foot is fully healed now and she takes long strides—I nearly have to trot to keep up with her.

My legs burn and my breath comes short, but I understand her desire for speed.

The day will be brief this close to Gods’ Fall; the light won’t last very long.

We will have to find shelter. Plot our course.

A few hours’ walking sees the sun dipping down to the horizon again, and we glimpse a blur of dark in the distance I hope to the gods is a copse of trees. Without discussion, we both break into a jog.

It is indeed a copse of trees, and we reach it as the last of the light fades. I gather wood for a fire while Saga spreads out our blankets and unpacks the last of Ballast’s smoked fish. We will have to go hunting tomorrow if we want to fill our bellies again.

I try not to think about Ballast. I can think of nothing else. The taste of his kiss resounds within me, the bright fiery burst of his magic. I want more. I crave it.

“What were you doing?” says Saga, low and tight. “What were you doing with him in the dark?”

The fire leaps high into a night alive with stars. By the twelve gods, I forgot the glory of stars. I take a breath, thinking of the underground river and the bright-blue pebbles, the feel of Ballast’s mouth on mine. I don’t know why I answer her honestly, but I do. “I kissed him. He kissed me.”

She curses, turning her face away so I don’t see her tears. “I’m glad you’re free of him now,” she says in a strangled voice. “Free of his magic, of whatever spell of seduction he used on you.”

The fish turns to ash in my belly. “He didn’t use his magic on me, Saga.”

“Really?” She wheels on me, vicious. “Because that is the only reason I can think of that you would let a murderer, a monster, Kallias’s son , touch you.”

Her jaw works and I feel sick, sick. “I’m sorry, Saga. I didn’t mean—”

“Didn’t mean what ? To kiss him? To look at him? To fall in love with him?”

“I’m not in love with him.” My heart is beating frantic and wild. I tell it to be still but it doesn’t obey me. “I’m not sure I’ve ever loved anyone besides my sister.”

Saga lays her head on my shoulder, and I hold her while she weeps, bitterly, grief in every cell of her.

“I was so afraid,” she says, later, when we’re both lying on either side of the fire, staring up at multicolored stars.

“I was so afraid Kallias would kill me. That I would end lost and forgotten in the glacier sea, reduced to a pile of bones. That I would never see my parents or my brother again. That I would die forgetting I had ever been anything but a girl in a cage.”

My chest is tight. “I was afraid of that, too.”

We’re quiet for a while, listening to the pop of the fire, to the hoot of an owl in the trees. I forgot about things like owls, and I am glad beyond measure to hear its voice.

“I know he saved us,” she goes on. “I know he healed me and led us faithfully through the tunnels, and I am—I am grateful. I am. But I wish the gods had sent us a different savior. Because when I looked at him, all I saw was Kallias. All I saw was Hilf dying, over and over and over. I was helpless. Trapped. At his mercy.”

“I know,” I say.

“I am so glad you are free of him. So glad we never have to see him again.”

I don’t answer, shutting my eyes and watching him turn a blue pebble over and over in his hands. I see the child version of him, laying out cards on his bed, turning the pages of his beloved Iljaria book. I feel his fingers in my hair, his cheek against mine, his lips hot as fire.

“He was my friend,” I tell her softly, longing for her to understand. “Before the tunnels, and—and Hilf—before all that, when we were children, he was my friend. I was a girl alone in a cage, and he was kind to me.”

“He grew up to be a monster, just like his father.”

My gut wrenches.

“You can’t love Kallias’s son,” says Saga.

“I don’t.”

She takes a breath. I’m not sure she believes me. I’m not sure I believe me, either.

She says, “Tell me about your sister.”

My eyes prick with tears, and I do.

The days run into each other, but not like they did in the caves. Out here the sun rises and sets, the light lasting a little longer every day. The terrain changes constantly, the tundra melting into rolling hills and stretches of seemingly endless plains.

We hunt rabbits and squirrels and, once, a deer. I’m the one who kills and skins and cleans them. Saga can’t bear to watch. I don’t tell her it makes me sick, that I can hardly force myself to eat the meat, and wouldn’t at all if my body didn’t demand it.

We are perpetually in motion, which leaves little time for contemplation: eating, walking, hunting, climbing.

We cross the Saadone River on an ancient, unmanned ferry—we’re north of any of the river towns and their larger ferries, but praise gods this one is serviceable.

We are so, so close now, to Staltoria City, and the end of our journey.

One evening, as we feast on roasted wild pheasant and handfuls of purple berries Saga swears up and down aren’t poisonous, I stretch out my legs and groan.

I ache everywhere, my back and arms and shoulders, but especially my legs.

I rub them gingerly while Saga laughs at me from across the fire.

Our company has become easier the farther west we’ve journeyed.

I might even say we’re friends. As long as we don’t talk about Ballast.

I shoot her an irritated look. “Why are you laughing?”

She smiles. “You don’t realize what’s happening, do you.”

I keep rubbing my legs. “What are you talking about?”

“Your pants don’t fit, you had what you informed me was your first monthly cycle ever —you’re welcome, by the way, for explaining that you weren’t dying—and it’s too warm these days, so you haven’t realized, but you can’t button your coat anymore.”

I blink at her, not comprehending.

“Brynja, you have become a woman,” she informs me.

“What?”

Saga holds up her hand and ticks items off her fingers as she talks. “Breasts. Hips. Cycle. And I think you might’ve grown a couple inches, too, since we left Tenebris. How can you not have noticed?”

I look down at myself and realize Saga is right.

The shapeless shirt I pilfered from the laundry so long ago is way too tight around my chest, and my leggings are stretched out so much they’re beginning to rip in half a dozen places.

And I’m still trying not to think about the fact that I have to suffer a monthly cycle .

.. monthly. “But I’m eighteen. I’m too old for this. ”

Saga shrugs. “You’re not trapped in a cage anymore, Brynja, not putting yourself through rigorous training and acrobatic routines. And you’re eating properly. Your body finally has room and time and the fuel it needs to develop as it should have years ago.”

“Slaying endless cave demons was fairly rigorous,” I grumble.

She gives another bark of laughter. “In any case, you’ve changed so much I’m not sure even Kallias would recognize you.” She sobers at the name we seldom speak, and I stare into the fire, trying not to think about the things that will forever haunt us both.

I am glad I’m transforming into a wholly new creature, one who cannot be caged. One who tells herself she is not afraid of the dark, and almost believes it.

We sit in silence for a while after that.

The owl calls from his tree, and the wind stirs through the branches.

Stars pierce the sky over our heads, blue and gold and green.

I haven’t worn my headscarf since Ballast tugged it off me, and I like feeling the wind in my short hair, prickling along my scalp, whispering of freedom.

I lie on my back and stare up at the sky. “Are you glad,” I ask her, “that our journey is almost over?”

“Everyone thinks I’m dead. I’m not sure of my homecoming.”

I think of my own home with a pang, and I shut my eyes, try to picture my sister’s face. I can’t see her clearly anymore. “They will be overjoyed to have you back with them.”

“I hope so. I hope my brother won’t resent me for it. He’ll be acting heir now, with me gone. I’ve felt guilty ever since the oracle chose me and not him. He was always meant to be king.”

“Tell me about the oracle,” I murmur, the owl and the wind lulling me to sleep. “I’ve never met one.”

“You’re very strange, Brynja Sindri. Everyone knows the oracle.

She lives in a white temple on the top of the hill in the middle of Staltoria City.

People go to her for prophecies. For any sort of serious decisions, really.

Even my parents. Because it isn’t the right of birth that chooses the next ruler of Skaanda.

It’s the word of the gods. And the oracle is their mouth. ”

“What’s she like?”

“She’s ...” Saga lies back, too, arms behind her head. “Hard to describe. Young but not. Beautiful but ... not. She has threads of white in her hair and wears a medallion that is—I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like every color, and no color at all.”

I prop myself up on one elbow, staring over at Saga. “She sounds like ... Saga, she sounds like ...”

“Like the Prism Goddess,” Saga says. “I know.”

“A goddess wouldn’t live in a temple and answer questions from mortals.”

“Perhaps she would. Perhaps she wouldn’t.”

I digest this information. “You spoke with her?”

“We all did. My parents brought Vil and me up the hill to her temple, past the gates to a garden in an inner courtyard. We sat there, by the pool, and she knelt on a white pillow and turned to look at us. Her eyes, too, were every color, and no color at all. She beckoned Vil and me over to her, and we both went, me shaking all over and him very still. We held out our hands to her, and she dipped both of hers in the water, then grasped Vil and me by our wrists. I felt a searing, awful pain for half a moment, and I cried out. Then the pain was gone, and she released us. She looked me in the eye and said, ‘The White Goddess blesses you, you who will rule Skaanda.’”

Saga takes a breath and lifts her right arm into my view so I can once more see the white, eight-pointed star—the mark of the White Goddess.

“I was haughty, for a while,” she says, drawing her arm back again.

“I thought nothing could touch me, that I could win the war with Daeros, be a hero praised in stories and songs for centuries to come. So I went to battle, with a sword in my hand and triumph on my lips. But I got Njala killed, and Hilf killed, and myself—” She shuts her mouth, turns her head away, and doesn’t finish.

I drift to sleep and dream I am back in the mountain again, locked in Kallias’s cage. Then I am falling, falling, I smash all to pieces at the bottom of the Sea of Bones. And Kallias laughs.

We wake to the ringing of trumpets. Saga sits bolt upright on the opposite side of our dying fire, her eyes bright. “Skaandan war horns,” she breathes.

They sound again, sharp and piercing in the cool morning air, accompanied by the dull thud of hooves on soft earth. Saga shouts in happiness, then pulls on her boots and practically tumbles down our hill to the plain.

I rise more slowly, dousing the fire and scattering the ashes. This is my moment, my chance to slip away and no longer be embroiled in the fates of Skaandan royalty.

Perhaps it is because I am weary, or perhaps it is because after all this time I do not wish to be alone, but I don’t go.

I wait for Saga and her army. And when they come, I swing up onto the horse they give me and I ride with them, dark and swift across the plain, chasing the sun as it climbs the arch of the sky and falls down again toward the horizon.

And in the afternoon of the second day with the army, we arrive, at long last, in Staltoria City.