“A breeze?” repeated Feral. “How can there be? From where?”
Lazlo stretched his hand closer.
“Don’t,” said Sarai.
But he did, and they all gasped as his hand… vanished, right off the end of his wrist. He yanked his arm back and his hand reappeared, whole and unharmed. They all stared at it, then at one another, trying to grasp what they’d just seen.
Lazlo was transfixed. There had been no pain, just the breeze, and a feeling like cobwebs brushing over his skin. He reached out again, only this time, instead of simply thrusting his hand forward, he felt along the gossamer edge of the seam, inserting his fingers so they winked out of sight, and then he grasped the invisible edge and lifted it.
An impossible aperture opened in the air. They all saw through it, and what was there was not the curved inner surface of the orb, or the heart of the citadel, and it was not Weep or the Uzumark canyon, or anywhere else in all of Zeru. You didn’t have to have seen the whole world to know that this wasn’t in it.
They couldn’t process it, this landscape. It was an ocean, but it bore little resemblance to the sea Lazlo had crossed with Eril-Fane and Azareen. That had been gray-green and mild, with glassy swells and a shimmer like foil. This was red.
It lay far below them. They were peering through a slash in the sky at a rampant crimson sea. It was brighter than fresh blood, livid pink where it churned and frothed. And rising out of it, as far as the eye could see, were huge white… things. They looked like stalks, like the stems of vast pale flowers, or else like pigmentless hairs seen magnified. They appeared to grow out of the wild red sea, each one as great in breadth as the whole of the citadel, their tops lost from sight in a brew of dark mist that concealed the sky.
In their shock they all stood gaping, unable to grasp what they were seeing through this small window that Lazlo held open with one hand. If, after the sight of Weep’s floating metal angel, he had believed himself gone beyond shock, he’d been wrong. This was a whole new level of shock.
As for Sarai, Sparrow, Feral, Ruby, they had no context. Their minds felt like doors blown open in a storm.
Overwhelmed as they were, the details seeped in slowly: the way the stalks swayed when great waves smashed against them, sending up spray like detonations. Or the shapes in the water: great, gliding shadows beneath the red surface that made leviathans look dainty. And finally: the place in the middle distance where one of the stalks appeared to have been cut, forming a plateau out of reach of the sea spray.
Atop it were shapes, hard to make out but too regular to be natural.
“Are those…buildings?” asked Sarai, the hairs rising on her neck.
This snapped them out of their dumb shock. They had been poised on the very verge of thakrar—that point on the spectrum of awe where wonder becomes dread, or dread wonder—and the acknowledgment of something man-made—or at least something made—sent them spinning hard to dread.
“Close it,” snapped Azareen. “We have no idea what’s—”
—out there, she was going to say, but she never got the chance. A shriek blasted through the gap and a shape appeared, hurtling straight at them. It was a vast white eagle.
Wraith!
The bird hung an instant before them, obscuring the landscape beyond. Another shriek ripped from its throat, and it dove for the portal. Lazlo let go of its edge. “Get back!” he cried out to the others. The air collapsed shut, but it was no more protection than a curtain across a doorway, and Wraith tore right through.
They had to duck, and felt phantom feathers drub them as the eagle sailed over their heads. Lazlo’s railing kept them from pitching off the walkway, which he was moving, rapidly retracting. And the orb, he was closing it, its edges melting toward each other, ready to fuse.
But it was too late.
Wraith was not alone. It dragged a rush of wind behind it, and another voice came with it, twining round the bird’s shriek to make a savage harmony. The warp in the air belled in and gaped open, disclosing limbs, figures, weapons.
Onslaught.
Chapter 36
Nothing Special
Once upon a time, Nova had been half a name. Koraandnova was musical, complete. Nova by itself was a brittle, sharp-edged fragment. Every time she heard it, she broke in half all over again.
“Nova! Girl. Work faster.”
The Slaughter had come round again. Kora had been gone for a year. Nova had heard nothing from her in all that time. She was sure she must have written. She suspected her father or Skoy? of intercepting her letters.
Gaff in one hand, knife in the other, she hacked at the carcass before her.
This is not my life.
But I am stuck in it forever.
Minus Kora and the dream, it wasn’t a life at all. In the days after Nova awoke to find herself left behind, the grief had been like a winter storm—the killing kind that blinds you and freezes you where you stand. Every thought was a stab, every memory a slash, until numbness finally descended. Walking through the village, besieged by stares and whispers, she’d felt dead already, and even less than a corpse. She’d felt like a carcass when the cyrs are done, nothing left over but bones.
“I always knew you were nothing special,” Skoy? had said right after, her eyes brighter than Nova had ever seen them. “All your lives, the pair of you lording around here like princesses waiting to be fetched for the ball, and look at you now. You’re no princess.” She’d clucked her tongue. “You’re pathetic.”
Lorded around? Their whole lives, Kora and Nova had worked. They’d done more than their share. Skoy? had made sure of that. She had nothing to complain of; nobody did. It was never idleness that had set the sisters apart. It wasn’t even airs. It was their simple belief that they were worthy of more. Hope was luster, and they had shone with it like twin pearls in an oyster.
But only one of them was a pearl, as it turned out. The other was naught but a bit of bone polished up by the crashing surf.
Suddenly, Skoy? appeared at Nova’s shoulder. She surveyed her work, and barked, “Is this all you’ve done all morning?”
Nova blinked. She hadn’t been properly present. She lost focus these days, and forgot what she was doing. Now she saw what Skoy? saw. The uul’s hide was crosshatched with ineffectual cuts. She’d just been…chopping at it. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“You’re sorry is right. You’re paltry. What Shergesh wants you for, I’ll never know, but I’ll not be sorry to be rid of you.”
Nova stiffened at the mention of the village elder. At the mention of her almost-husband. She said, her voice shaking, “I think we all know what he wants me for.”
Skoy?’s hand flashed out, palm flat, and connected with Nova’s cheek at just the right angle for a perfect, practiced crack. Skoy? knew how to slap, and Kora wasn’t here anymore to catch her wrist in the air. The sting was fire. Nova’s hand flew to her face. Heat glowed off it like a kettle.
“You’ll show respect,” hissed Skoy?. “I’ve tried to teach you, Thakra only knows. If you haven’t learned it yet, I can’t slap it into you now.”
Still holding her cheek, Nova straightened and said, “Maybe it’s your methods that are faulty.”
“My methods are what you deserve. You think Shergesh will stand your backtalk?” Skoy? gestured to the unbutchered uul. “Do you imagine he’ll abide your shirking? He’ll do worse than slap, I can tell you that.” The prospect seemed to please her.
How people love to see a dream shatter, thought Nova from far away. To see the dreamer hobbled and lamed, foundering in the shards of their broken hopes. This is what you get for believing that you could have more. You’re no better than us.
You’re nothing special.
Nova hadn’t bothered begging her stepmother for mercy in the matter of her marriage. She knew that was hopeless. She’d pleaded with her father, though. He’d said she should be honored to marry the village elder. He’d said, “I have to give you to someone.”