Nova went to the balustrade. Sarai followed her. The others hung back.
She stood looking out, one hand on the railing. She spoke, but her words didn’t filter into sense as they had in the dream. They made an impenetrable thatch of syllables. Sarai, uneasy, glanced back over her shoulder and saw Kiska take a half step forward. She caught Sarai’s eye, gave a little nod, and then spoke into her mind.
It was all for nothing, she translated. She says the sea tried to warn her. She didn’t listen.
“The sea?” Sarai queried, looking at Nova and hearing Kiska’s voice in her mind.
When Nova answered, Kiska’s translation came simultaneously. It always knew.
“How could it have known?” Sarai asked gently. She thought of the cold black water in the dream, and feared Nova was again losing her grip on reality.
But when Nova turned to face her, she looked more sane than Sarai had yet seen her. She spoke, and Kiska translated. It knew my name, Nova said. She was calm. The sea always knew my name.
And then she took a step back.
The balustrade was there. But then it wasn’t. She hadn’t given back Lazlo’s gift yet. For a moment her eyes locked on Sarai’s. All the ice was gone from them. They were brown and tired and sad. Just as Sarai realized, just as she reached, Nova leaned back.
And fell.
Chapter 62
The Ones Who Know
Once upon a time, a sister made a vow she didn’t know how to break, and it broke her instead.
Once upon a time, a girl did the impossible, but she did it just a little too late.
Once upon a time, a woman finally gave up, and the sea was waiting. It was the wrong sea—red as blood and just as warm—but falling felt like freedom, like letting go of trying, and on the way down she took her first full breath in centuries.
Then it was all over.
Or maybe it wasn’t.
The ones who know can’t tell us, and the ones who tell us don’t know.
Part V
Amezrou (ah·may·zroo) noun
When something deeply precious, long lost and despaired of, is found and restored, against all expectation.
New; not yet in common usage.
Chapter 63
It Would Be Stranger If There Weren’t Dragons
Lazlo did not bring the citadel back through the portal. The last thing Weep needed was the hated metal angel pouring back into its sky. Weep would never again live in shadow.
It would also never again be Weep.
Kiska, Rook, and Werran remembered its real name. When Letha, goddess of oblivion, had eaten Weep’s true name, her power had not reached past the sealed portal into Var Elient. And so, three godspawn born in the citadel to be sold as slaves to fight other worlds’ wars restored what had been devoured.
Amezrou.
Once upon a time, a little boy in a frost-rimed orchard had roared it out like thunder, like an avalanche, like the war cry of the seraphim who had cleansed the world of demons, only to have it stolen from his mind between one slash of his apple bough sword and the next. Now it was back, and it felt, as it ever had, like calligraphy, if calligraphy were written in honey.
Though Lazlo let the citadel remain above the red sea, he and Sarai and the others went back and forth between worlds often over the next few weeks, making preparations for their journey. They had no shortage of transportation for the short trip through the portal. They returned the silk sleighs to Soulzeren, which left them with the entire fleet of vessels seized over the years by Nova and her pirate crew, as well as Lazlo’s metal creatures—Rasalas and the others— and the pair of wasp ships, which were no longer wasps.
Mesarthium skyships are shaped by the mind of their captain, and Lazlo transformed these into moths, in homage to those that had brought Sarai into his dreams, his mind, his hearts, his life.
He transformed the citadel, too.
“You have to admit, it’s magnificent,” said Calixte from the small airship she had commandeered for her own and christened Lady Spider.
“Fine,” drawled Ruza, peevish. “It’s magnificent.”
They had just come through the portal for the last time in the knowable future. The citadel was before them, looking quite different now that it was no longer in seraph form. They had all discussed what new shape it might take, and offered suggestions, though the ultimate decision had been Lazlo’s. He needn’t have consulted anyone, but, being Lazlo, he had. Anyway, he had made the only obvious choice, and no one disagreed except Ruza. “A dragon would be more magnificent,” he said, not letting it go.
“You and your dragons,” remarked Tzara. “Don’t worry. I’m sure Lazlo will let you have a dragon to ride.”
Thyon kept thinking he was through being surprised by statements like, “I’m sure Lazlo will let you have a dragon to ride,” but no. It just didn’t seem to sink in. The scope of Strange’s power defied normalization. Maybe the day would come when Thyon was no longer gobsmacked by the fact that the meek junior librarian who used to walk into walls while reading was now in possession of a massive, impregnable, interdimensional skyship that he controlled with his mind. But that day was not today.
Ruza was wondering aloud how it would work—whether Lazlo alone was able to control the metal beasts, or if they could be made to obey other riders. “It wouldn’t be any fun if it was like a pony at the fair just being led around by the bridle,” he said.
Thyon could easily imagine Ruza as a little boy on a pony. He looked at him and saw the child he’d been, and he saw the man he was—warrior, prankster, friend—and he felt a warmth that he had never felt before for any other person. It was affection, and something that frightened him, too, that he could feel in his knees and fingertips and face. It made him unsure what to do with his hands. He noticed things like knuckles and eyelashes that he didn’t notice on other people, and sometimes he had to look away and pretend to be thinking of something else.
He said, “I’m sure there are real dragons out there somewhere. You can hatch one from an egg and raise it to be your loyal steed.”
Ruza’s whole face lit up. “Do you really think so?”
“Out of hundreds of worlds?” said Thyon. “It would be stranger if there weren’t dragons.”
Hundreds of worlds. Hundreds of worlds, and they would see them, because they were leaving Zeru, and he, Thyon Nero, was going with them. He would never go back to Zosma, where the queen wore a necklace woven of his golden hair, and some blurry outline of a future wife awaited his return. Instead he was joining a crew of gods and pirates for a mission straight out of a myth. It wasn’t even an alternate version of his life. He hadn’t gone back in time and done everything differently to get to this place. It turned out that sometimes it’s enough to start doing things differently now.
“You’ll hatch one, too, of course,” Ruza informed him, as though they had already found their dragon eggs and it was only a matter of divvying them up.
“Yes, I will,” agreed Thyon, “and mine will be faster than yours.”
Ruza was affronted. “It will not.” For his part, he could not have imagined Thyon as a boy on a pony. For all that he was less untouchable than he had been, the golden godson still looked as though he’d been made by a god in a dreamy mood and delivered in a velvet-lined box.
“Will too,” said Thyon.
Calixte, with her fingers to her temples and eyes closed, said, “I’m seeing a vision of the future in which you’re both eaten like idiots trying to steal dragon eggs in some weird world.”
But they hardly heard her, because a breeze had caused the Lady Spider to yaw just enough that Thyon’s shoulder came to rest against Ruza’s, and he left it there, and that took all their focus as Calixte navigated into the new skyship hangar that Lazlo had integrated into the citadel’s magnificent new form.