A skyship.
A jolt went through her. She tried to say Kora’s name. It came out a croak, and Kora did not come. She tried again, louder. Still a croak, and still no Kora.
Nova sat up—and she nearly collapsed when it seemed the contents of her head did not sit up with her. She swayed forward, palms spread out over the rush mats to keep her from tipping over. When the room stopped spinning, she peeled her aching eyes open and found herself staring at her hands.
Which were not blue.
It was only when she saw them as they were—pale as they had ever been—that she was hit by a powerful memory of staring at them blue, the one shining in its godsmetal glove, the other her own skin. She blinked at them through the haze of her vision, and tried to understand what was real. It seemed a dream, images coming in flashes. Kora’s eagle. The flung godsmetal ball. The buzz in her skin. And…what happened after. It was hazy. It would always be hazy. The flashes sorted themselves into a picture, and a terrible sick dread welled up in her.
Where was Kora?
Footsteps, child-quick, and then Aoki, her half brother, ran inside, saw her sitting up, spun, and ran back out. He was shouting, “Ma! She’s awake!”
And so Skoy?’s silhouette filled the doorway. Her hands were on her hips. There was triumph in the pose. “Still alive?” she asked,
disappointed.
“Where’s Kora?” Nova croaked.
“Oh, don’t you remember?” Make no mistake: Skoy? delighted in reminding her. “They took her.” She came forward, and Nova could see her homely face, fierce with vindication. “You they threw out like garbage.” She loomed. “What happened inside that ship, Novali?”
Kora was gone. Nova could think of nothing beyond that. She felt the truth of it. Kora’s absence was a pulsing void that nothing could ever fill. “When?”
“Three days ago,” said her stepmother. “They’re long gone. She’ll be in Aqa by now. Maybe she’s found your mother, and they’re together without you. Maybe they’ll have a house and live together,” she went on cruelly, but Nova didn’t hear. It was as though a patch of reality had been torn out, leaving a hole that swallowed all sound, all thought.
Kora was gone, and she was still here.
Unchosen.
“Now, get up,” said Skoy?. “You’re in luck. The Slaughter’s not over. Get down to the beach. The uuls won’t butcher themselves.”
Chapter 29
Warp
Sarai did give Minya the lull, a small dose with plum syrup to cut the bitterness, in case she could taste it in her sleep. She touched the little girl’s hand and, full of dread, reentered both dream and nursery, to wait beside her prone form as the gray descended and erased all pain, guilt, and fear—and everything else, too. It was better, Sarai knew from her own experience: Sometimes nothing was better than something. It all depended on the something.
She left Minya’s mind, but not her side. She sat with her and took the next watch. She told Lazlo he didn’t have to stay.
“Well, that’s a relief,” he said. “I was wondering when I’d get a break from the woman I love, who is the first and only person I’ve ever loved, and who I would happily sit beside under literally any circumstances forever.”
Sarai fought a little smile, but not very hard. And Lazlo would have stayed sitting beside her on the floor, his shoulder the perfect height to rest her head against, but Feral spoke up then. “Actually, do you think you could see about making the doors work now?” He studiously avoided looking at Ruby as he made the request, and Sarai couldn’t tell if his motive was to keep her out, or to give them privacy. She wondered if he even knew.
“Go on,” she told Lazlo when he looked to her, and he kissed her on top of the head and went out with the others, leaving her on her own with Minya.
She watched the little sleeping girl—so much threat all put on hold by a few drops from a green glass bottle—and wondered what was hidden in the labyrinth of her memories. Could it be true, her dark surmise: that the Ellens had been puppets all along? It didn’t seem possible. But neither could Sarai retreat into her old, comfortable belief in their love, not after what she’d seen in the dream.
She knew she wasn’t finished with the nursery or the Carnage, and that she would have to go back there, and keep going back until she found a way to make a difference—to help Minya, and create a chance for a future, for all of them. But she couldn’t do it right now. She needed a rest from nightmares and she wanted to give Minya one, too. Maybe the lull would let her mind calm itself, and break the terrible loop. She didn’t know, but she was so grateful that the urgency was gone. They had time now. At least they had that.
…
Ever since he got here, Lazlo had felt the mesarthium holding its breath, waiting to claim and be claimed. There had been so much else going on—heavenly, hellish, and in-between—that he hadn’t been able to focus on it, but now he was eager to give himself over to it.
They went to the dexter arm—himself, Feral, Ruby, and Sparrow—and Feral repeated what he’d told Lazlo before: that the doors used to respond to touch.
Lazlo put his hands to the wall. The sense of connection was instantaneous, and profound. The citadel was more than an enormous statue. It was a network of systems put in place by a god, all fallen dormant since his death. For Lazlo, they woke.
Energies rippled and stretched.
They absorbed him, even as he absorbed them. Nothing outwardly changed, but something crucial did: the metal, its signature, its being, all of it was translated. What had been Skathis’s now became his. Earlier, Lazlo had told himself that this whole vast, otherworldly citadel could not possibly belong to him, but it did, and it went even deeper and stranger than that: It wasn’t merely his. It was him, a part of him now in a way that felt almost as though it were alive.
He let his perception flow outward. The energies felt like ornate musical staves, weaving in and out of each other, dense with information and commands. There was a whole language at work, but it was nothing that could ever be explained or taught. Lazlo knew what it was like to learn languages. It was work. This wasn’t. It simply gave itself to his mind, making sense to him in a wordless way that could only be described as magic.
Feral was right, he found. The doors could be keyed to fingerprints, so they would open only at the touch of those authorized to enter.
He keyed Feral’s door to him, and there was a fraught moment of silence where they might have gone on to the next door, but neither Ruby nor Feral moved. Finally Ruby cleared her throat, and Feral asked Lazlo sheepishly, “Can you make it so she can open it, too?”
He did. And he keyed Ruby’s door to the pair of them as well, and had a premonition that he would many times be asked to change them back and then back again.