Is she coming? she asked it. You should know. I bet you can see everything from there. Will you give her a message for me? I don’t know how much longer I’ll last. Tell her that. Tell her the sea knows our name. Tell her I’m waiting. Tell her I’m dying. Tell her I love her.
The rim of the sun appeared. It had never seemed so flimsy: That rind of light was all that stood between her and a month of darkness. She knew better than to look right at it—it was slim, but it was the sun—but she couldn’t help herself. She looked. She must have looked too long. A white aura bloomed in her vision. She blinked but couldn’t look away. Something about it…
The sun vanished but not the white aura. It must have burned into her eyes. It was dead center and growing. She blinked again. It was getting bigger. She squinted. It had a shape.
And then she saw what it was—if she dared to trust her sun—
struck, wondering eyes.
She would ever after believe the star had passed her message to Kora. Because the shape gliding toward her was the huge white eagle that had effused from her sister’s chest. How was it here? Was Kora here, too?
Nova was filled with lightning—the brilliant flare, the thunder’s peal. She opened her arms to the bird. She wept. Her tears froze on her lashes. Kora had come to save her.
But where was she?
There was only the bird. There had been no vessels in the harbor for weeks, and wouldn’t be now for months. The ice was closing. Winter was upon them, and the sea around Rieva became a treacherous wilderness of tide-borne ice shelves crashing together, buckling, heaving open into narrow straits only to smash shut again and splinter any ships caught in between. No one could approach. No one could escape. Kora couldn’t be nearby. There was only the bird, but the bird was Kora. Wasn’t that what the Servant had said?
It’s not an ‘it.’ It’s you, Korako. That eagle is you, as much as your flesh and blood is you.
Its wingbeats stirred a wind. Huge as it was, it seemed weightless, coming to hover in front of Nova. Its eyes pierced her and she wondered if her sister was really looking at her through them. She tried to smile and be brave. “Kora,” she said. “Can you hear me? Can you see me?” Her voice sounded strange to her own ears, and she realized only then that it had been weeks since she’d said anything out loud. Shergesh preferred her silence, and whom else did she have to talk to? All her conversations happened only in her head.
“I miss you,” she choked out. “I can’t…” She started to say what she’d told the star. I can’t bear it. I’m dying. Save me.
But the words wouldn’t come. They filled her with shame. The bird made no sound but Nova felt Kora’s presence, and she wanted to be strong for her. She summoned a smile. “It’s Deepwinter’s Eve. I don’t suppose you have that in Aqa. Well, let me tell you,” she said, and tried to hide her desperation under a thin veil of chatter. “The Slaughter was a fine time this year. I’ll bet you’re sorry you missed out….”
The bird was fading. Nova blinked. It was luminous in the starlight, but it was dimming like a dying lamp. Nova wondered with a lurch of her heart: Was it really here at all? What if she was only imagining it, some thread of sanity snapped? But then it clicked its beak and shifted in the air, its great taloned raptor foot thrusting a bundle at her. It was small. She clutched it to her chest with her mittened hands and gasped as the bird vanished before her.
“Don’t leave me,” she whispered, but it was already gone.
She thrust the bundle down the front of her coat; she couldn’t open it with her mittens on, and didn’t dare take them off in this cold. She went back down the ridge trail to her husband’s house. No one paid her any heed. She crept in quietly and built up the fire before removing her outer layers. Shergesh was snoring. She hated the sound, but hated it less than his querulous voice snapping orders at her unceasing.
With shaking hands, still numb from the cold, she opened the eagle’s bundle. A part of her mind still thought she’d imagined it, bird and bundle and all. Maybe even now it was all hallucination, however real it seemed in the firelight of the house.
It was a length of cloth finer than anything she’d touched— slippery as water, the light gliding over it, dancing like the aurora. It was patterned with tiny flowers in a hundred different colors. She thought she’d weep, it was so lovely. But that was just the wrapping. She unwound it.
There was a letter. It said:
My sister, half of my own self. I am not free to come for you, as our mother could not come for us. It is not as we imagined here. The empire is failing.
Nova blinked. The words were senseless. The Mesaret Empire was everything, and always had been. It could not fail. What did that even mean? The letter did not say. It went on: I send you this with deep misgiving. I don’t know what else to do. I know you know this, Novali: The punishment is death.
For what it’s worth, I heard the Mesarthim talking. They said that when you stole their gifts, you made them stronger—the way a lighthouse lens amplifies light. Nova, my heart. You are stronger than Rieva. You are stronger than the sea. Find me.
Find me. I am not free.
Nova’s heart stuttered, then it raced. I am not free. Twice Kora had written those words. All this time, Nova had imagined her sister training, growing strong, living the life they’d dreamed of. It had been so real in their minds. How foolish it seemed now. It hadn’t even occurred to her that they’d invented it whole cloth. She’d been so deep in her own self-pity, she’d never even considered…What was Aqa really like? What was Kora’s life, if it was not the one they’d imagined?
And the empire… failing?
Nova would have been less stunned to see the sky shatter like a sheet of ice.
There was an object in the bundle. She saw it and stopped breathing. She knew better than to touch it. Through the wall, she heard Shergesh’s snores falter into the snorts that heralded his waking. Her hands were shaking so badly she almost dropped the thing several times trying to wrap it back up. She shoved the bundle into the back of a cupboard, but the letter, it was still in her hand. She heard Shergesh’s sitting-up grunt, then thump-thump as he swung his feet out of bed, and she panicked and threw the letter in the fire.
No no no no no. She tried to grab it out. It was Kora’s writing, and she didn’t want to lose it as they had lost their mother’s. Too late. It crisped and curled, and then Shergesh was in the doorway, scratching himself and wanting things, as was his way.
Nova didn’t dare take the bundle back out till the next night’s snores settled into rhythm. She crept out of bed and unwrapped the floral cloth with trembling hands.
The punishment is death.
It was a nothing less than a godsmetal diadem, as fine and perfect as the ring made by a raindrop fallen on still water. She couldn’t fathom how Kora had gotten ahold of such a treasure. Every gram of godsmetal mined in all of Mesaret was accounted for in multiple ledgers and guarded by imperial soldiers. Only Servants sanctioned by the crown were granted the use of it, under strictest oaths and oversight. People killed for it, fought wars for it, wasted fortunes mining for it.
And what was Nova even supposed to do with it?
If she touched it, her skin would turn blue and give her away, and what good was her gift to her, anyway? Pirate. Skathis had spat out the word like a bite of rotten meat, as though there were nothing more contemptible in the world. She hadn’t understood it then, but she’d had a lot of time to think, and now she thought she did. Her power was to steal power, but there was none on Rieva worth stealing. On her own, she was helpless, godsmetal or not, trapped on an island at the bottom of the world.
But Kora knew all that, and still she’d sent it, with the message:
Find me. I am not free.
Which could only mean that Kora was even more trapped than she was.