“And you’re not trying to defeat Minya. Remember that. You’re trying to help her defeat her nightmare.”
When he put it like that, it sounded less impossible. And those were the words she went armed with when she reached for Minya’s hand and traveled, by touch, into the landscape of her mind.
She found herself standing in the nursery, and was unsurprised. After the last time, she had a feeling that this was Minya’s cage. Again there were babies in the cribs and children playing on mats on the floor. There was no skip or blur by the door this time, but neither were the Ellens to be seen. This seemed wrong. Whenever Sarai had imagined what it was like in here before the Carnage, she had pictured it how it was in the citadel after, only in this smaller space and with more godspawn. Her childhood memories were full of the ghost women—their good sense and good cheer, their scoldings and teachings, their jokes and stories, their singing voices and their ever-changing manifestations. Great Ellen’s hawk face compelling them to tell the truth with its unblinking avian stare. Or Less Ellen helping Sparrow come up with whimsical names for her orchid hybrids, things like “Dolorous Wolf Maid” and “Frolicking Cricket in Lace Pantaloons.”
So she had to wonder at their being absent from Minya’s memory or imagining.
She saw Minya, looking as she had last time: clean and long-haired in a tidy smock. The pall of dread was absent, or at least greatly reduced. When Sarai closed her eyes and felt for the dream’s aura, there was a low, steady thrum of fear, like blood moving under skin, and she had the impression it was a constant here, as much as the air, the metal, the babies, and that it had been Minya’s reality.
Last time, Minya had been the biggest of the children, but now there was another girl her size. She was dark-haired as nearly all of them were, and half dark-eyed as well. Her left eye, though, was green as a sage leaf—a startling pop of color in an otherwise plain face.
They were playing together. They’d taken one of the blankets and turned it into a hammock. Each girl was holding an end, and they were swinging the little ones in it, one or two at a time. There were squeals, bright eyes. Minya and the other girl kept time with a chant. It was familiar—a sort of bright twin to the chant Sarai had heard last time:
Dizzy little godspawn, Swing them in a blanket, Don’t let them fly out, Whizzing like a comet.
And more in that vein, all innocent fun until Sarai began to notice that the low, steady blood-thrum of fear was bubbling to the surface. The girls were raising their voices so as not to be drowned out by it, and speeding their game to keep pace with it, the words coming faster and louder, smiles turning to grimaces as their eyes went flat and grim with the knowledge of what was coming.
Sarai thought she knew what it was, but when the figure appeared in the doorway, it wasn’t the Godslayer, or any other man or human.
It was Korako, the goddess of secrets.
Sarai knew what Korako looked like primarily from witnessing her murder in Eril-Fane’s dreams. He had slain her with the rest of the Mesarthim: a punch with a knife, right to the heart. Her eyes had lost life in an instant. She was fair-haired and brown-eyed, and Sarai knew her up close: her dying face, pale brows arced high in surprised contrast against the azure of her skin. It was practically her only vision of her. She had none at all from Weep. Alone of the Mesarthim, Korako had never gone into the city. The only ones who knew what she looked like were those who’d been in the citadel when Eril-Fane slew the gods, because only they had returned home with their memories intact.
The goddess of secrets had been a mystery. None ever knew what her gift even was. She hadn’t sown torment, like Isagol, tangling emotions for the fun of it, or eaten memories like Letha, who sometimes went door to door for them, like a caroler on Midwinter’s Eve. Vanth and Ikirok had made their powers known, and Skathis was Skathis: god of beasts, king of horrors, daughter-stealer, city-crusher, monster of monsters, madman.
But Korako was a phantom. There were no horrors to pin to her, save this one, and there was no one left to tell of it but Minya. Here it was, playing out: the goddess of secrets come to the nursery.
She was the one who tested them. She sensed when the children’s gifts stirred and coaxed them forth. And then she led them away with her and they never came back.
She stood in the doorway now, and dread pounded like drums. Sarai understood that Minya’s unconscious was layering in some retrospective knowledge. The girls in the room didn’t know the goddess was there. She watched them for a moment, and her face was a mask. She spoke, or did she? Her lips didn’t move, but her voice was soft and clear. She said, with a questioning lilt, “Kiska?”
And the little girl who was Minya’s playmate turned, unthinking, toward her. In the next instant, she froze, and just like that she was caught. Her name was Kiska, and her gift had come. For weeks, she’d kept it hidden, but all was undone just like that when reflex betrayed her. Korako had only thought her name, but Kiska had heard her. She was a telepath. Korako had suspected and now she knew.
She said—was she sorry?—“Come with me, now.”
Hundreds of times she’d done this before. Hundreds she expected to do it again. She little imagined, did she, that this was the very last time? That little Kiska with her one green eye was the last child she’d take from the nursery. Eril-Fane would rise up only three weeks later, and kill the gods and the children, too. But Kiska would be gone by then. Today was her farewell. She shrank with fear, and showed no defiance.
Minya did. Sharply, she said, “No.”
Sarai, a spectator, saw what Korako must have seen: a small, ferocious, burning girl with a presence ten times her size. “You can’t have her!” She was shrill, afraid but also furious. You could see her father in her—if, that is, the god of beasts would have used his power to protect children. “GO. AWAY!”
Korako didn’t argue.
It occurred to Sarai, watching, how easy she might have made it all. Whatever was in store for the children, why had she not simply lied? Why not pretend she was taking them to a lovely new life, with homes and grazing spectrals and the feel of grass beneath bare feet— with mothers, even. They’d have gone with her, willing, and been eager for their turn. But she didn’t say a word. She seemed almost to steel herself. Her spine got a little stiffer, her face a little blanker, and she didn’t meet Minya’s eyes.
Sarai saw something she’d never noticed before: There was a mesarthium collar around Korako’s neck. A collar, like an animal might wear. She searched her small cache of memories of the goddess. Had she really worn such a thing? Sarai tried to remember her death from Eril-Fane’s dreams. Had it been there? She couldn’t be sure.
Then, in the doorway, Korako made a gesture—a signal to someone—and. ..
…the skip reappeared. The anomaly, the blur. It reasserted itself in that instant. Again, Sarai had the impression that something was being obscured. She tried to look and saw only shadows. There was an ache in the aura, like pressing on a bruise. Was it Korako’s doing? Was she hiding something? But that didn’t make any sense.
This was Minya’s dream. If it was keeping a secret, it was her secret, and her mind keeping it.