The earth shook under Sarai. A dull roar sounded from all directions. What was happening? Was the city coming down? She couldn’t see over the walls of the amphitheater, but only up at the sky, where the seraph was moving like a creature of mercury, rippling in the sun.
She saw its right hand attenuate, fingers stretching, thinning. It was a moment before she understood what it was doing. It was feeding itself through the gash in the sky. It was leaving the world. It was leaving them behind. It was going fast, pulsing like blood through a tube. In a matter of seconds it had vanished to the wrist, just like Lazlo’s when he thrust his hand through the warp. Sarai realized that her terrace, where she had paced every night, must now be above the ghastly red sea. Soon all the rest would follow, and Lazlo with it.
Lazlo.
She couldn’t catch her breath. It was all too much. Her father was dead. Azareen too. Her home was stolen, and Lazlo was taken. The rest of them had been jettisoned here. She could hardly process this basic fact: She was in Weep.
A thought hit her like a sobering slap. Everything else went quiet, all other fears blurring to background. She was in Weep, yes. But more to the point, Minya was.
Minya was in Weep.
This was just what the little girl had wanted, what she’d threatened Sarai’s soul for, what they’d all tried so hard to prevent. Minya was in Weep with her army. Sarai turned slowly to face her. She had been on her hands and knees, her head hanging down. Not now. She’d gotten to her feet. Her stance was wide. Her hands were fists. She was still shaking, almost shuddering, her thin little chest heaving under her ragged shift. Her ghosts were fanning out to form a protective ring around the strewn godspawn and humans. They were just closing the circle when the Tizerkane warriors came pouring into the amphitheater and had them surrounded in seconds.
There were scores of them. Their movements were fluid and seemed too quiet for such imposing figures as they. Their armor was bronze, their helms tusked. They carried swords and spears. The spectral-mounted towered over the rest, and the creatures’ branching antlers shone in the late-day sun.
There were men and women, both young and not. Their faces were hard, their color high. They were hiding their terror as best they could, but Sarai knew their fear as well as her own. She had nurtured it with nightmares, never letting it fade. Their hate they didn’t even try to hide. It was etched into every line of their faces. They breathed through bared teeth. Their eyes were slits. The way they looked at the godspawn, it was brutally clear: It wasn’t young people they saw, survivors, half human, afraid. They beheld abominations.
No. It was worse than that. They beheld abominations with blood on their hands.
Sarai saw the scene as they would see it. Ghosts and godspawn would have been bad enough, even without the corpses. But there were Eril-Fane and Azareen, laid out so still, limbs askew, and Sparrow—sweet Sparrow who would never hurt anyone—was kneeling between them, ashen-pale, eyes closed, her arms red to her elbows as though she were wearing blood gloves.
Gentle Sparrow looked like a ghoul who fed on the hearts of heroes.
Shock ripped through the warriors. At a barked command, they raised their spears. A hundred arms cocked back as one. There was such power in the motion—the collective strength of a people who had borne so much and would risk no more, forgive nothing, and show no mercy. Their hate, already blazing, burned hotter.
A movement from above drew Sarai’s eye upward to the tiered heights of the amphitheater. Archers had taken up positions, and were sighting down their arrows straight at them.
Dread lanced through her. It looked as though Minya was getting her fight.
But could anyone survive it?
Chapter 49
Good Little Girls Don’t Kill. They Die.
Minya was reeling. She was not herself. To have felt that lightness— the weight of souls lifted—even for a minute, had stunned her. And the hate-fear-despair. She hadn’t known how pernicious it was until it ceased.
For a moment she’d known lightness and silence, and then it all slammed back—the souls and their despair, crushing her once more, all the heavier now that she knew. She was staggering, aware for the first time of the toll she paid every second for her magic.
It was so much. And there was more. There was just so much, all spinning and crashing around in her head:
She was aching at the betrayal of waking up on the floor, discarded by her own people.
She was aghast at the invasion, and gutted, gasping with disbelief, to find herself defeated, cast out, dispossessed.
When Minya won at quell, she upended the game board and sent the pieces flying, so the loser had to crawl around on hands and knees to gather them up. Now, down on the ground for the first time in her life, her bare feet not on metal but stone—she felt keenly: She was the loser. Nova had upended the board, and she was one of the scattered pieces.
But who would gather her up?
She had a flash memory of Lazlo grabbing her and holding her against him to shield her from her own ghosts’ knives, and it joined the crashing, spinning whirl in her head. He’d saved her. He’d risked himself. He’d held her. No one had touched Minya on purpose for a long, long time, let alone held her, and even now, after the fact and in the midst of all this, the feeling of arms and strength and safety overwhelmed her.
Of course, she told herself, he’d done it for Sarai’s sake, not hers. Who would ever save her for her own sake?
And anyway, Lazlo wasn’t here now. It was up to her to save them. It always had been. But how? The air pulsed with tension. You could feel the drawn bowstrings, the flex of scarred knuckles, the warriors’ hissed breath, and their sharp desire to let go, to let fly.
To kill.
Minya felt it all. The humans’ hate spoke and hers answered.
When a hundred sets of eyes pin you in place, and all of them see the same thing, how can you not be that thing? The Tizerkane looked at children and saw monsters, and Minya’s darkest self rose to the challenge. It was her oldest, truest reflex:
Have an enemy, be an enemy.
The Tizerkane captain barked out a command. “Lay down your weapons. Now!”
The ghosts were gripping kitchen knives, cleavers. They were paltry weapons against spears, swords, and bows, but Minya knew her army’s strength, and it wasn’t in their steel. “Lay down yours!”
she hollered back, and her high bell voice was absurd after the low, rough depths of his. “And I might let you live.”
A rough murmur rumbled through the Tizerkane troops.
“Minya,” Sarai said, frantic. “Don’t. Please.”
Minya turned to her sharply. “Don’t what? Keep us alive? You want me to be a good little girl like you, Sarai? Let me tell you something. If I was a good little girl, we’d have died in the nursery with all the rest!”
Sarai swallowed hard. Now that she’d been in Minya’s dreams, those words had a meaning they wouldn’t have before. She didn’t know if she was right about the Ellens, but if she was, it was true what Minya said. Good little girls don’t stab their nurses and drag toddlers over their corpses in order to save their lives. Good little girls don’t kill. They die.
And Minya was not a good little girl.
“I know what you did for us,” said Sarai. “And I’m grateful—”
“Spare me your gratitude. This is all your fault!”
“Now, pet,” said Great Ellen, coming between them. “You know that’s not fair. We’re caught up in something older than ourselves and bigger than our world. How could it be all Sarai’s fault?” “Because she chose them and left me on the floor,” said Minya, her anger only thinly covering her hurt. “And now look where we are.”
Sarai did look, and she did wonder: Was it her fault? Maybe. But what happened now depended on Minya. “We’re stranded and we’re surrounded,” she said. “We can’t hide or retreat. Our only hope is to not fight. You must see that.”
“Let me guess. You want to beg.”
“Not beg, just talk.”