Lazlo.
He was in a cage far too small for his long frame, his head bent and his legs shoved into an agonizing crouch. Sarai longed to run to him, to wrench the cage open, but there was no chance of that. The mesarthium cage would yield only to Lazlo’s gift—whoever possessed it—and anyway, she wouldn’t be able to get to him.
A faint iridescent bubble enclosed him, like the one that had held Eril-Fane and Azareen as they endured their deaths over and over. Kiska and Rook were trapped inside it, too, and this was the movement Sarai had glimpsed. Lazlo, in his cage, was still. It was Kiska and Rook who were in motion—the same motion, the same few seconds repeated, so that Sarai and the others were witness to the moment of their mutiny.
It could only be that.
Kiska was in profile. Sarai saw her hand clench into a fist as she lowered her chin. There was intense focus in her one visible eye— the green one—and then it was gone as her head snapped back and she was thrown off her feet to collide with Rook, who caught her with one arm, the other reaching out in the same spell-casting gesture Nova had made earlier, as though he had tried—and clearly failed—to create a loop of his own.
His target was still right where she must have been then: at the head of the table.
“She’s in my chair,” Minya whispered with stiff displeasure.
And she was. She was asleep in it, slumped forward over the table with her head cradled in one arm and the other hanging limp, as though she had finally succumbed to an exhaustion so profound she could do nothing but sink down where she was and lay down her head.
After neutralizing the threat of her own people who had turned against her.
Werran too. He wasn’t caught in the time loop. He was just outside it, the worse for wear, because he was caught in a serpent’s mouth.
The beast was mesarthium, like Rasalas and the others in the garden, but it was inchoate, half formed out of the metal of the floor, from which it appeared to emerge, like a breaching sea creature, to capture its prey in massive jaws. Werran’s feet hung out one side of the beast’s mouth, his head and shoulders from the other. One arm was free and had fallen still, as limp as Nova’s, and blood-encrusted from an earlier wound. When he caught sight of them in the arch, he renewed struggling, though feebly.
Sarai remembered what his gift was—that terrible, soul-scouring scream—and tensed, but he made no sound.
He couldn’t, of course. She saw that that was the point. The serpent’s mouth was crushing his chest. He could barely breathe, let alone draw enough air to scream.
“They must have tried to help Lazlo,” Sarai whispered, and she was so glad. She’d hated believing they’d been betrayed by their own kind.
“They’d better,” Minya said, grim. “To take the side of Korako’s blood over their own? I would be very disappointed.”
Sarai experienced a flutter of sympathy for the three of them, to be torn between loyalties to Nova and Minya, two terrifying forces of nature. The scenario in the gallery suggested they’d chosen sides.
It also suggested that they’d been effortlessly thwarted, and didn’t stand a chance against Nova.
Did anyone?
She was asleep, or more like passed out, which could be counted a distinct advantage on the part of those crouched in the archway, but for one thing: Wraith.
The bird was perched on the back of Nova’s chair, huge and white and very much awake, watching them with its gleaming dark eyes.
Eril-Fane had told them the truth about Wraith, and it was so strange to think that all these years, the ghostly white bird had been…what, exactly? Not Korako, but some shred of her, some echo? Did the bird even have a consciousness, or was it just acting out a set of old patterns, old hopes, without comprehension?
Sarai wondered if the bird was naught but a dying wish, flying endless spirals, just waiting and watching for an avenue to open that would allow it to fulfill its purpose. Had it been, all this time, just trying to get to Nova? Would it act to protect her?
She had to assume it would. “What do we do?” she breathed.
“Kill her,” Minya said, but she didn’t say it with relish the way she might have before, and Sarai saw that her hands were fists, her fingers moving over the slickness of blood on her hands.
Sarai had to admit that was the obvious answer. And yet, through no love loss for the woman who had wreaked such havoc, nearly cost Sarai her own soul, and trapped Lazlo like that, it still felt wrong. She hoped that killing would always feel wrong. “I don’t think Wraith will let us near her,” she ventured.
“We don’t have to be near her,” said Minya, gesturing to Tzara, who held a bow at the ready. “Are you good with that?”
Tzara’s affronted look said that yes, she was.
“Would she die instantaneously?” asked Feral. “Because if she takes even a few seconds, we could all end up in snakes’ mouths like him.” He gestured to Werran, and they all noticed that he seemed to be gesturing to them.
His free arm, which had been hanging limp and bloody, was now making a frantic beckoning gesture. Sarai, exchanging a quick look with the others, said, “I’ll go. You all stay here.”
With a look at Wraith, she took her first tentative step. Immediately the bird deepened its protective hunch over Nova, its wings fanning out at its sides. Sarai froze.
She gave up walking, and simply floated, venturing very slowly into the room. When Wraith just watched her, she continued, slow and steady. It was so hard to see Lazlo frozen in that agonizing pose. She wanted to pop the shimmering time loop like a soap bubble and pull the cage apart with her hands. What a power was Nova’s, to be able to do that and more.
Wraith followed her with its eyes, but made no further move as Sarai, with ghosts’ grace, approached Werran.
Up close, she could hear the wheeze of quick, shallow breaths as he struggled to draw enough air into his compressed lungs to keep himself alive. There was desperation in his eyes as though he was fighting a losing battle. Sarai’s hands fluttered uselessly toward him with the urge to help him, but there was nothing she could do. He was wedged deep in the broad metal mouth, the serpent’s fangs curved and interlocked around him. The serpent, at least, was inanimate, no more than a statue. Sarai didn’t think she could have stood it if it was watching her with its slit-pupil eyes.
Werran was trying to say something to her, but he couldn’t do much more than shape sounds with his lips. He had so little breath to work with he could barely whisper. Sarai leaned close and made out the words “…don’t…kill her…”
She was chastened. Planning to kill somebody was what Minya did, and she hated the feel of it in her mind. “I don’t want to,” she whispered back, defensive. “But if she wakes up, we’re all finished. If she were dead, Lazlo would get his gift back and free you from this thing.”
With urgent impatience, he shook his head. “… loop…” It took him a few wheezes to be able to form the next whispered words. “…only…she…can break…”
It took a moment for Sarai to understand what he was telling her. “Are you saying that if she dies, they’ll be trapped like that? But…their gifts will go back to them. Rook…”
But Werran was shaking his head. “… loop…” was all he could say.
Sarai turned to watch the loop play out another iteration. Kiska’s fist clenched. Her head lowered. She was thrown backward. Rook caught her, raised his arm. He was trying to use his magic and failing. And as long as he was caught in the loop, he would keep on failing, just like Eril-Fane and Azareen had kept on dying. These were the seconds that were preserved. And all the while, Lazlo was motionless, powerless, cramped in his cage. Would he stay that way forever? Or would he die slowly of dehydration, starvation, while Sarai was just steps away, unable to reach him? Either thought was unbearable.