“But Saska was only missing for twelve years!”
“Indeed.” His voice was grim. “It would seem that whoever held them treated them as little more than incubators.”
But for what darker purpose? And where were those poor children now? What was being done to them? I scrubbed a hand across my face. “This situation just seems to be getting darker and darker.”
“Yes.”
I cursed under my breath and studied the bracelet on the table for a minute. “And what about those things?”
He glanced at the one he was holding. “What about them?”
“They need to be kept somewhere safe. It’s possible they’re what the voices are looking for.”
He rose and picked up the second one from the table. “Then perhaps you need to take them to Saska before the masque, and ask her about them.”
I frowned. “Pyra very nearly succeeded in killing me. Saska is a far stronger air witch.”
“And yet, Pyra said you’re the reason for Saska’s resistance, that you’re somehow a touchstone for her.” He frowned. “Why do you think that is?”
“I honestly don’t know.”
“Perhaps that’s another question you should ask.” He put both the bracelets down on the table. “I’ll organize something to eat. You’d best be getting ready.”
I nodded, flicked off the fur, and rose. His gaze skimmed me again. “Celibacy,” he muttered, “has never been so hard.”
“Celibacy,” I replied, amused, “is rather overrated.”
“At this point, I’m tending to agree.” He held up a hand as I stepped toward him. “The mission comes first, whatever the cost.”
“That cost,” I said, my amusement growing as my gaze skimmed down to what his towel wasn’t hiding, “is, as you said, probably going to be very hard to bear.”
“Don’t I know it.” He waved me past. “Go get dressed. I’ll arrange everything else.”
I deliberately walked close enough that my arm brushed his. He groaned softly, but made no move to touch me, to stop me. The damn man might not be made of stone, but there was certainly a whole lot of steel in his makeup.
Saska’s maidservant once again led me toward the outside balcony. The wind was bitter, and the rain fell in thick sheets that would drown me the minute I stepped out. I hesitated, eyeing the wild night warily. The wind whipped around me, chilling my bare stomach and tugging at the scarf-like layers of my skirt. I felt no threat in her touch, but I wasn’t hearing her voice, either.
“I have a coat, if you wish it, Lady N,” the maidservant said.
“Thanks, that would be great.”
As the maidservant hurried off, I brushed my fingers against the knife strapped to my left thigh, feeling safer for its presence as I studied the shadows. Saska was once again standing in the far corner of the balcony. Her dark blue dress was plastered to her body, and she looked decidedly frailer than she had out in the desert. The weight loss made the small bulge of her belly look huge by comparison to the rest of her, even though the scanner had said she was little more than eleven weeks pregnant a week ago.
The maid came back with a long, fur-lined coat. I gave her my mask and the bracelets to hold while I donned it. Once I’d zipped it up and securely tied on the hood, I reclaimed the bracelets and stepped out into the storm. The rain hit me hard, instantly freezing my unprotected face and feet. The wind was a little more reticent in its attack, preferring to scoot around me rather than forcing me to battle against it.
I walked across to Saska and once again leaned on the capstone beside her. Far below, the sea crashed against the ragged cliffs, its force such that I could feel the shudder through the stones under my toes. Thunder rumbled overhead, an ominous warning that worse was to come. A heartbeat later, lightning streaked across the sky, a display of power that was at once beautiful and threatening.
“Nights like this are inspiring, are they not?” she said eventually.
“Yes, they are.”
She raised her face to the sky. Silvery droplets clung to her lashes and water sluiced down her cheeks, but she didn’t seem to care. “My mother used to tell me the firestorm that followed thunder was nothing more than the gods disagreeing, and that there was little to fear in such fierceness.”
“So what do you think the gods might be arguing about tonight?”
She smiled, but it was a hollow thing. “Perhaps that is a question you should ask my mother. She’s the one communing with them, not I.”
“Is it the gods she talks to, or merely a queen?” I asked softly.
“They are one and the same.”
“And where does this queen reside, Saska?”
She shrugged. “She is everywhere and nowhere. In our thoughts, and in the ground; she sees all, she hears all.”
“But is she flesh and blood?”
“Yes.” Her gaze came to mine, haunted and desperate. “But her desire for revenge has all but consumed her.”
“What does she want to avenge?”
“Death.”
I frowned. “Whose death?”
“Everyone’s.”
Which made no sense. I placed the bracelets between us. “What can you tell me about these?”
She didn’t even glance down at them. “They were Pyra’s.”
“Do you know what happened to her?”
“No. Nor do I want to. I fear her fate is what awaits me if I do not obey their wishes.”
“If their wishes are to retrieve the bracelets, then you have them right here beside you.”
“That is not what they command of me, but rather my mother.” Her gaze came to me briefly, her silvery-white eyes distant and stormy. “Your presence mutes their voices and gives me strength.”
So in that, Pyra was right. “Why do you think that is?”
She shrugged. “Perhaps it’s nothing more than a kinship born of air. You can hear her, I know.”
“But not control,” I said, as alarm surged. The last thing I need was someone like Hedra—who appeared to be the main force behind whatever was happening here in Winterborne—spreading rumors in the wrong ears.
“She likes you.”
“Who?”
“The wind. That’s why she saved you, and why she whispers not in the ears of the others.”
I briefly closed my eyes and thanked the wind and the collective consciousness of all those who resided within her. “So what are the whisperers asking of you that they are not asking your mother?”
“Something far darker.” She paused and picked up one of the bracelets. “But they are very desperate to get these back.”
“Why? What is so special about them?”
She twirled one around her fingers. Its silver surface reflected the power and the beauty of the storm around us, seeming to glow with a white-blue fire that oddly reminded me of the glow the knife sometimes had.
“They are limited in supply, and not made by the queen’s people but rather those of Versona.”
Communications between Versona and Winterborne had been irrevocably shattered after the war, though why that should remain the case in this day and age, with all the technology we now had, I couldn’t say. All I knew was what the history books said—that their efforts to protect their lands had, like ours, seriously disrupted the weather patterns close to their shores. To this day, our ships couldn’t find a way through the constant storms and waterspouts that battered the seas between us. Even the few ships that did make it through the first barrier then had to battle the fierce wind that drove them onto the jagged rocks that had risen like a wall after the Versona earth witches had severed the connection between our lands and theirs to stop the Irkallan. To my knowledge, no shipmaster bothered with the Versona trade route these days. Not when easier trading was to be found in Elprin and Cannamore.
“Are you saying the queen has somehow found a way to do what the rest of Winterborne can’t?”
“No. Indeed, any communication remains impossible given the wide trench that divides and the shadows that conceal.”
“Then where did the bracelets come from?”