The words tore through her and she despised them, because a part of her wanted to say them, to beg and be saved, no matter what the cost. She was held in the world by such a fine thread. The void hovered—the ether, the tide of unmaking—and she was terrified.
Her words sank claws into Lazlo’s hearts, whether they came from Sarai or not. Tears burst from his eyes, thick and full, plashing drops onto his cheekbones, his lashes dark and clumped. The midday light glazed his eyes and they shone like rising suns. He took a step toward Minya, searching her face for some hint of kinship or humanity.
But he found none.
“So that’s it?” Minya asked him, both astonished and disgusted. “You would destroy her to save them?” She had the uneasy sensation of losing her grip, of rope reeling out of her hands. It wasn’t supposed to go like this. They were supposed to do as she said.
Lazlo shook his head. It was all so wrong. “No,” he said. “I would destroy no one.”
Minya’s teeth were gritted. Her eyes were slits. “That isn’t one of your choices. It’s simple: Choose Sarai and the killers die. Choose the killers and lose Sarai.”
In her childish voice, it sounded like a nursery song, and Lazlo knew that, whatever happened and however long he lived, he would never be able to cleanse it from his mind. It was maddening, this black and white choice: One must die for the other to live. But… how could it not seem so to her? Whoever Minya might have been without the Carnage, Lazlo would never know. She’d been forged that day when the Godslayer slew babies so humans could live. He’d killed them against a future threat, because of what they were. It was he who’d set the rules of the game that Minya was still playing. Was it fair to change them now that she finally had the advantage?
Bleakly he glimpsed the world as she must see it, made simple by righteousness and fury. Could he ask her to be better than those whose hate had forged her? He knew what she would say to that, but still he had to try. “It can all end right here. You just have to let it. We’re not murderers.” He held Sarai and spoke to Minya. “And neither are you.”
The words were out, and he thought he saw her flinch as though they struck her. She seemed to shrink and then catch herself and thrust back her shoulders, her expression turning even darker. “Don’t presume to know what I am. Let’s be perfectly clear. Are you refusing me? I won’t ask you again.”
“I .. .I.. .”
But he couldn’t say it. Promise or not, Lazlo could not speak the words that would seal Sarai’s fate. He turned to her. Her eyes were so wide, blue like skies, her honey-red lashes beaded with tears. She was innocent, and Minya was right: There were those in Weep, Eril-Fane included, who were guilty. Why should Sarai pay for their lives with her soul?
She whispered, “I love you,” and he was lost. No one had ever said those words to him, not once in all his life. He wasn’t even conscious of summoning Rasalas, but then the creature was beside him, come in from the garden, its huge metal wings at the ready. Minya mounted from the tabletop, triumphant, and sat astride her father’s beast, ready to fly down to Weep.
Many a choice is made in this way: by pretending it makes itself.
And many a fate is decided by those who cannot decide.
She’ll find a way to break you, Sarai had warned Lazlo. Now she saw that Minya had, and so many feelings tore through her: despair, relief, self-loathing. Still possessed by Minya’s will, she could do nothing, say nothing, but the worst part of all was that something insidious within her relished her own helplessness, because it freed her from having to fight.
The last thing she wanted to do was fight for her own oblivion.
She tried to tell herself it would be all right. The city had emptied. The citizens were safe, and the Tizerkane could take care of themselves.
But these were all lies, and they festered inside her: her hearts, her whole self felt corrupt, like a plum gone soft with rot. It would ruin Lazlo to do this. It would break Weep, and ruin him, and she would wish for oblivion then, which Minya would not grant. Sarai would still be her puppet, with bloody teeth and ineluctable strings, after everything else was gone.
Lazlo said, “I love you, too,” and it was so wrong that he should say it now, with Minya’s will crammed in Sarai’s soul, and murder to be done. He bent down and softly brushed the unbitten side of his mouth over hers, and rested his face, cheek to cheek, against hers. His jaw was rough, his skin too warm. He shuddered lightly against her. Sarai breathed his sandalwood smell, and remembered her first discovery of him, through her moths in the Godslayer’s house. She’d thought him a brute at first glance. The idea amazed her now. There had been so many moments of wonder, but her mind leapt somewhere quite different: to the last minutes of her own life. It was just before the blast ripped the city—deep night and silent, all the streets empty. Lazlo had been walking through Weep. Sarai had been with him by way of a moth perched on his wrist, and she’d had no inkling of all that was about to occur.
It was a funny thing to think of. At first, she didn’t know why she had. But then…she thought maybe she did, and a strange kind of shiver ran through her.
She had never been able to enter the minds of those who were awake. As a girl, testing her powers, she had tried and learned: The conscious mind was closed to her. And so it had been that night as well. Her moth had ridden on Lazlo’s wrist as he paced through the silent city, and she’d been shut out of his mind, with no idea what he was thinking.
But…she’d sensed what he was feeling. With her moth perched on his skin, she had felt as though she were pressed against the closed door of his consciousness. Emotion had radiated through it, as clear and strong as music through a wall. And now, her face against his, she felt again the music of emotion. It was discordant and miserable, uncertain, desperate, and jagged.
Sarai couldn’t speak, beyond Minya’s false words, but her thoughts and feelings were her own. She pressed her cheek even harder against Lazlo’s, felt the burn of his stubbled jaw. And then she poured out her own jagged music. At least, she hoped she did.
It was a howling wind in her mind, a storm of knives, a blood-soaked hurricane of the word NO!
He tensed against her. Had he felt it? Was it real? He drew back and searched her eyes. She wanted to pull him against her again.
She had no power over her eyes. Minya possessed more subtlety than they’d known. All he could see was what she put there. He squinted in consternation. Then his gaze seemed to clear—to clear and darken. He turned to Minya and said, in a voice like the chew of gravel, “I can’t take you to Weep. I made a promise.”
And Minya was…displeased.
Chapter 15
Tea Break from the End of the World
As soon as she was out of the gallery, Ruby raced up the dexter arm to her room, hurtling through her doorway without pausing to part the curtain, so that it tangled round her and ripped right off its rigging. Still in motion, she thrashed it away and disappeared into her dressing room, which had once belonged to Letha, goddess of oblivion. She was in there less than five seconds, then raced out and up the corridor to slip again amongst the ghosts crowding the gallery.
This time she made her way to the kitchen door, where the Ellens stood, hands covering their mouths, eyes wet and wide with dread.
“What’s happening?” she asked in an overloud whisper, which carried in the sudden hush that followed Lazlo’s words. “I made a promise,” he told Minya, who radiated fury.
“Then break it,” she hissed through her teeth.
And Lazlo didn’t say anything. He just held Sarai close and, anguished, shook his head.
Ruby met eyes with Sparrow across the room. Her sister was pale and frantic, and gave her a hurry up gesture. Ruby turned to Less Ellen and said…
It was ridiculous. She knew how it sounded—as though she were unhinged from reality. “Ellens,” she said, “might we have some tea?”