“Don’t joke,” she said, shaken. “What if I had?”
“You didn’t.” He reached for her, but she stepped back, appalled now to realize that she’d been insufficiently afraid, and put him in danger just by being near him. She was a tool now, a weapon, and, with the taste of blood in her mouth, she had an awful new apprehension of how Minya could wield her. Was there anything she wouldn’t make her do? Any line she wouldn’t cross? The thought made Sarai sick and light-headed—and ashamed, too, that she wasn’t strong enough to resist her.
“Come here,” coaxed Lazlo. “If she wants to use you to hurt me, she will, whether you happen to be kissing me or not. And I’d rather you’re kissing me, if I have any say in the matter.”
“You’re in no state for kissing now.”
It was true. His lip throbbed and stung. He could feel it swelling.
But he didn’t want it to be over. She was too far away, standing out of reach, naked and blue and so beautiful it hurt. His hands were still full of the feel of her. He wanted her back in his arms. “I’m not afraid of you,” he said.
“I’m afraid of me.”
She knew their reprieve was ended, that Minya had restarted the “game,” so she whispered, urgent, “Lazlo, remember your promise, no matter what.” And just in time, because no sooner were those words out of her mouth than others followed in a wholly different tone. They were dulcet and insincere, and she could do nothing to stop them. “If you’re done rubbing your passion all over each other, come out to the gallery for a chat.”
…
Minya picked herself up off the ledge where her little legs had been dangling. Sarai’s tether felt like all the rest now, heavy with helpless despair. The tenderness was gone, and good riddance. It had felt like being cracked open, hearts served up on a platter. Why anyone would want that, seek that, she would never know.
She stretched and rolled her head side to side, savoring her small win. She’d thought to wait till their defenses were down. This was perfect. Leave them sloppy with want, unfulfilled, aching with desire and devotion. What wouldn’t they do for each other now? It was time to play this game to its end, and have her way at last.
Chapter 14
Pieces on a Game Board
“She wouldn’t really let Sarai’s soul go, would she?” Ruby wondered, fretful and distracted. She was with Sparrow in the garden. Sparrow was working, or trying to. Ruby was just fidgeting. They could feel time ticking by. The seconds seemed to pile up and teeter. Sooner or later they would spill, and this fraught waiting would come to an end—with havoc, and screaming, and loss.
It was a little like being on tea break from the end of the world. What was Minya doing? How much longer did they have?
They spoke in hushed voices so the ghosts couldn’t hear them. “I would never have thought so before,” said Sparrow. “But now I’m not so sure.”
“Something’s gone wrong with her.” Ruby was bleak. “She wasn’t always this bad. Was she?”
Sparrow shook her head. She sat back on her heels. Her fingers were dark with soil, her hair neatly braided. She was sixteen, and Ruby would be soon. They were half sisters by Ikirok, god of revelry. Their temperaments were so different: Ruby was bold and easily bored. She no sooner thought a thing than said it, or wanted a thing than she tried to get it. Sparrow was quieter. She watched and wished and kept her hopes to herself, but, however sweet her nature, she was not soft. Just the other day, she’d shocked Sarai and Ruby by suggesting that Ruby could give Minya “a nice warm hug”—by which she’d meant that she could burn her alive.
She hadn’t wanted it, of course, but she’d seen the darkness in Minya and worried what it would come to. And now here they were, on the brink of war. “I wonder,” she said, “if it’s the ghosts that have made her so dark. We thought it was bad for us, when she’d catch a soul now and then—the ones we knew about—and we’d feel obscene because of how they looked at us. You can’t help but see yourself through their eyes.”
“I can,” Ruby claimed. “I know I’m beautiful.”
But Sparrow knew this was only bravado and that Ruby hated it, too. She even tried to win the ghosts over sometimes, to show them they weren’t like their parents, not that it did any good. “And all that time, we had no idea how many ghosts—hundreds of them, with all their hate, and Minya’s been steeping in it.”
“It’s her own fault. What was she thinking?”
“She was thinking about keeping us safe,” said Sparrow. That much was obvious. “Keeping us alive.”
Ruby huffed a half laugh. “It sounds like you’re on her side.”
“Don’t be simple,” said Sparrow. It was so easy to call sides, and so unhelpful. “We’re all on the same side. Even her. You can be on the same side and have different ideas.”
“So what do we do?” asked Ruby.
What could they do? At a loss, Sparrow shook her head. She sank her fingers back into the soil and felt the soft throb of life it conducted through the branching roots it embraced. This was the bed of flowers where they’d cremated Sarai. Ruby’s pyre had burned hot and fast. It had eaten only the body and the orchids they’d adorned it with. The living bower upon which it had lain was astonishingly unscorched. It was only crushed down a little in the shape of a body, and Sparrow had been coaxing the stalks upright, wanting to erase the image of what they’d done here.
She fingered a flower. It was little and white—insubstantial, yet it pulsed with life. It struck her as such a mysterious force that flowed in one direction only, and, once gone, could never return. She plucked the flower. The force did not immediately snuff out. It waned. The bloom took a few seconds to die.
She was thinking of life and death, but another thought tiptoed between them. It was guileful and sly. It waited to be noticed. Sparrow noticed, and dropped the flower. She looked up at Ruby. An idea lit her eyes. A question creased her brow. She asked it.
Ruby stared. And then she smiled.
And then she answered.
…
Feral slouched through the sinister arm, dragging two mattresses behind him. He’d fetched them from the rooms they never liked to go in—the little rooms that were like cells with nothing in them but beds. The mattresses were just pallets, really, not at all like the thick, comfortable bedding in the chambers of the gods. That was why he’d taken two, but they would still be a poor substitute.
He thought Ruby should have them, and he should have hers. She’d burned his, after all. At the time he hadn’t minded. He’d thought…Well, he was a fool. He’d thought he’d just sleep in her room from now on, as though there was something between them.
It wasn’t stupid to have thought it. What they’d been doing together wasn’t nothing. It might have begun that way, but…he liked it. A lot. And, much to his surprise, he liked her. Even if she was utterly unreasonable. To get mad that he’d never spied on her naked!
All right, he might once or twice have passed by the rain room when one or another of the girls was bathing, but he’d never peeped through the curtain.
Unless there was a gap in it already, and even then he hadn’t slowed down too much, or gotten more than a glimpse.
Anyway, he hadn’t gone out of his way, and that was what upset her.
What did she want, anyway?