Runajo grimaced. “Not long. We’d better start.”
Then she heard footsteps echoing through the doorway: many footsteps, a whole crowd of people. Runajo whirled, heart thudding with the fearful thought: The High Priestess changed her mind. She’s going to stop us.
It was indeed the High Priestess who strode into the room, all the high-ranking Sisters of the order behind her. But there was no anger on her face; she did not call out for them to stop, and the women behind her did not rush forward to seize them.
Instead, the High Priestess halted a respectful few strides away and said, “If the blood of the gods is to be shed tonight, it is fitting for us to shed our blood as well.”
Beside her, Miryo, the novice mistress, glowered at Runajo. “You’ll need all the help you can get.”
“Hush,” said the High Priestess. “Take your places.”
At her command, the Sisters spread out around the room in a ring, one stopping at each of the mouths of the city: the little stone bowls carved into the white stone floor of the chamber. And Runajo understood. They were here to offer penance, granting the walls what little extra strength they could.
The Sisters dropped to their knees. Runajo’s stomach turned as she watched Miryo draw her knife and cut a thin line into her forearm—as the Sisters did the same, and all of them dripped blood into the mouths of the city.
The rims of the mouths were carved from solid white stone. But here at the center of the Sisterhood’s power, the very stone was alive; as Runajo watched, the rims uncoiled into little tendrils of stone that curled up through the air, searching for the source of the blood.
Then she had to turn away and stare at the sacred stone, her stomach churning—because she knew what was happening now, to Miryo and all the Sisters in the room. The little strands had burrowed into their wounds, and the white stone was blushing pink as it sucked out the blood from their arms.
Runajo had offered penance only once, and the cold, foreign tendrils jammed into her arms had terrified her as knives never could.
“Time to start,” she said, hoping her voice didn’t shake, and drew her own knife.
She didn’t hesitate making the cut in her own arm: she’d gotten plenty used to that in the year she’d spent as a novice. The pain was a strangely comforting thing, because it reminded her that she had trained for this. Once, she had been one of the best at weaving the walls, and she had sat in a room above this chamber every day.
There were three Sisters sitting in that room right now, still weaving. It was time for Runajo to change the walls they wove.
She reached into the stream of light—shivered at the cold, bubbling sensation across her skin—and let her blood drip onto the sacred stone. Sunjai and Inyaan did likewise.
Light sparked around the drops of blood. Runajo looked at Sunjai and Inyaan, saw them nod in readiness.
She reached into the pillar of light. It parted easily into strands, curled around her fingers like the tail of an affectionate cat.
Runajo started weaving.
The problem was not just constructing a smaller version of the wall. It was also killing as few people as possible while they constructed it. If they simply undid the former walls and then built new ones, there would be a time—however brief—when all Viyara was completely unprotected.
It might be that the white fog of the Ruining would not move fast enough, that the city could survive a few minutes naked before the power of living death.
None of them had been willing to take that risk. The pattern that Runajo and Sunjai had hit upon would shrink the walls in stages, surrendering more and more of the Lower City to death.
It had been a clever plan when they worked it out on paper. It was simple, now, to weave the strands of light in the rhythms they had planned.
But Runajo couldn’t help remembering when she had walked through the Lower City with Juliet, seen the bustle in the marketplaces, heard the musicians on the street corners.
There had been so many people. They couldn’t all make it into the Upper City. She tried not to think of it, because regrets changed nothing, and this was a bargain she had to make—but each time the walls shrank, the light shuddered between her fingers, and she wondered who was dying. Who was screaming as the white fog wound between the buildings, and a heartbeat later would be silent ever after.
They were not any of her kin, dying down there in the Lower City. But that didn’t matter. They were all of them as infinitely precious as Juliet. She had seen that once, had understood it, and the knowledge haunted her as she wove their deaths.
They would die anyway, she reminded herself. I am buying life for the rest.
But she couldn’t stop the cold trickle of doubt, that this bargain might be as horrible and unclean as all the sacrifices of the Sisterhood.
They wove the walls. They brought them down to the width they had planned, tightly girdling the base of the city spire. It only remained to make the walls take their new form and keep it.
They wouldn’t.
The pattern shuddered in Runajo’s hands, striving to be larger and smaller at the same time. She was weaving as fast as she could, but it wasn’t fast enough.
“It’s not strong enough,” said Sunjai.
“No,” said Runajo. “We can make it work.” Her hands moved faster, twisting the light into the new pattern, but it kept sliding out of her grasp, returning to its old form. They were, all three of them, twisting the new shape into the walls as fast as they could, but it was too eager to keep its old pattern.
“We need blood,” said Sunjai.
“We’ve got blood,” Runajo snapped. “We need”—she lunged to catch a strand—“another pair of hands—”
But all the hands in the room except theirs were held in place by the greedy stone tongues of the city.
“You promised me,” said Sunjai, and Runajo was about to ask when she had promised Sunjai anything, but then she realized that Sunjai was looking at Inyaan.
And she knew. She knew what was going to happen, and she couldn’t stop it. Because the spell had to be maintained. When Sunjai lowered her hands, Runajo lunged forward to grab the strands of light that she had dropped. When Inyaan also lowered her hands from the light—Runajo couldn’t grab any more strands.
She could only weave as fast as she could and watch.
Watch as Inyaan drew her knife, as Sunjai threw herself back onto the stone, dark hair fanning out, eyes closing. It was the same position as the sacrifices at the Great Offering, but Sunjai wasn’t drugged; the dazed smile on her face was sheer, idiot reverence, and Runajo’s heart was helplessly beating faster and faster—
“No,” Runajo said desperately. “Don’t.”
Inyaan was expressionless as she touched Sunjai’s cheek gently, briefly. Then her knife flashed with the reflected light of the walls as it struck.
Runajo had attended the Great Offering every year of her life. She had seen many throats cut before. But she had never—even as a novice—been so close. She had seen the spray of blood, but she had never felt any of the warm droplets spatter across her face and hands. She had never heard the strange, gurgling gasp of the air escaping from the torn throat, and she hadn’t realized how long the body would shudder and twitch.
She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think. Her throat was clenched and her body was numb with horror. But her hands kept moving, weaving the new pattern into the walls, because if she stopped now they were all dead.
Inyaan laid the knife down on the stone beside Sunjai’s still-twitching body. The neat little thunk it made against the stone sent a shudder through Runajo. Then Inyaan put her bloody hands back into the light and started to weave it again.
Suddenly the light shivered around them, and Runajo felt a wave of power sear over her skin. The color of the light changed from a dull yellow to a pure white-blue.
Runajo thought, Sunjai bought this, and she hated the thought, utterly hated it.