Eril-Fane laughed. “Not to my mother,” he said.
Lazlo blinked. Of every improbability packed into that moment, this struck him the most forcefully. He had crossed the Elmuthaleth at the Godslayer’s side and now carried, in his pocket, the tooth of a creature from the world’s oldest myth. But myth was the ordinary terrain of his mind, whereas it had never occurred to him that the Godslayer might have a mother.
Because he was a hero. Because he seemed cast from bronze, not born like a mortal man. Because Lazlo, lacking one himself, tended to forget about mothers. It occurred to him that he might not ever have met one, or at least never exchanged more than a word or two with one. It hardly seemed possible, but there it was.
“She’s looking forward to meeting you,” said Eril-Fane.
Lazlo looked at him, blank. “Me,” he said. “But how could she know . . . ?” He trailed off, a lump forming in his throat. The Godslayer had a mother waiting for him in Weep. He had sent her word of his imminent arrival, and in his note he had seen fit to mention Lazlo.
“You’ll stay with her when you reach the city.”
“Oh,” said Lazlo, surprised. The faranji were to be hosted at the Merchants’ Guildhall; he had assumed he would be, too.
“She insists, I’m afraid. I hope you don’t mind. It won’t be as grand as the guild. Comfortable, though.” And Lazlo hardly knew what was more extraordinary: that Eril-Fane was subject to his mother’s insistence, or that he imagined Lazlo might mind.
“No,” he said. “Comfortable is good.” Those were the words his mind served up to him. Comfortable is good. “Wait.” Eril-Fane’s word choice struck him. “You said when I reach the city. Aren’t you coming?”
“Not tonight.”
“What? Why?”
Eril-Fane looked weary. The vitality that usually radiated from him was all but gone. Averting his eyes as though ashamed, he said, “I don’t sleep well in Weep.”
It was the only time Lazlo had heard him use that name, and it chilled him.
“So you see,” said Eril-Fane, trying to smile, “I’m offering you up to my mother as proxy. I hope you can endure a fuss. She’s had no one to look after for some time, so I expect she’ll make the most of it.”
“It will be the first fuss I have ever endured,” said Lazlo, hearing something raw in his voice that could not be put down to a dry throat. “But I imagine I’ll do all right.”
The Godslayer smiled, eyes warm and crinkling, and reached out to thump him on the shoulder. And Lazlo, who lacked not only a mother but a father, too, thought that having one might feel something like this.
“Well then,” said the great man. “Here we are.” He looked across to the far gate and seemed to steel himself. “Are you ready?”
Lazlo nodded.
“Then let’s go.”
19
The Shadow of Our Dark Time Eril-Fane led the party to the far gate. He didn’t go through it, but turned his spectral around to face them. He didn’t speak at once. There was a weight to his silence. There was tension and resignation in his face, even a hint of dread.
“Two hundred years ago, there was a storm.” He paused. They all hung on the word storm. The twin metallurgists exchanged a hopeful glance, because one of their theories had involved a hurricane.
“It wasn’t like other storms,” Eril-Fane continued. “There was no rain, only wind and lightning, and the lightning was like nothing that had come before. It was directly above the city, furious. It formed a sphere . . . as though some great hands had skimmed the sky and gathered a world’s worth of lightning into a ball.” He acted this out, his great shoulders bunching as his hands dragged the specter of lightning and shaped it, and held it.
“It stopped.” He dropped his hands. “The night fell dark. There was no moon, no stars. The people could see nothing, but they felt a change in the atmosphere, a pressure. And when the sun rose, they saw why. As you will see.”
And with that, he turned his mount and led them through the gate. The path was carved deep through the demonglass, and narrow, so that they had to go in single file. It curved and rose, gradually widening. Onward and upward they rode. The sky grew larger, a deep and cloudless blue.
And then, quite suddenly, they came to an edge and it was all before them.
The Elmuthaleth had been high desert plateau, flat and sere. On this side of the Cusp, the world fell away into a deep canyon. It was long and curving, carved by a river—such a river as made the Eder look like a dribble, its catastrophic rush audible even from here. But no amazement could be spared for a river, no matter how epic. There just wasn’t enough amazement in the world.
“The shadow of our dark time still haunts us,” the Godslayer had said. And Lazlo had fixed on dark time, and he had wondered at the word haunts, but he had never thought to consider shadow.
It was a literal shadow.
There was the city—fabled Weep, unseen no longer—and the day was bright, but it lay dark.
Lazlo felt as though the top of his head were open and the universe had dropped a lit match in. He understood in that moment that he was smaller than he had ever known, and the realm of the unknowable was bigger. So much bigger. Because there could be no question: That which cast Weep in shadow was not of this world.
“Strange,” said Calixte, and she didn’t mean the adjective strange, which fell immensely short of the sight before them. No, she was addressing Lazlo. She weighed the theory purse on her palm and said, in a bright, stunned whisper, “I think you win.”
20
Dead Man’s News
There were ghosts in the room. Sarai heard them whispering before she opened her eyes, and the golden daylight wavered—light, shadow, light, shadow—as they moved back and forth between the window and her bed. At first she thought it must be Less Ellen, along with perhaps Awyss and Feyzi, the chambermaids, and she felt a flicker of annoyance that they had entered unbidden. It wasn’t time yet to wake. She could feel it in the heaviness of her limbs and eyelids: The lull had not yet spent its thick gray spell.
The whispers sharpened. “The hearts, go for the hearts.”
“Not the hearts. You might hit a rib. The throat’s better.”
“Here, let me.”
Sarai’s eyes flew open. It was not Less Ellen or Awyss or Feyzi or any of the servants. It was a cluster of old women, and they startled and skittered back from the bedside, clinging together. “It’s awake!” one of them cried.
“Do it now!” shrieked another.
And before Sarai could process what was happening, one of the ghosts lunged toward her and raised a knife, her face savage with hate and intent, and Sarai couldn’t get out of the way. She just couldn’t move fast enough, not through the lull fog. The knife blade flashed and all her borrowed memories of the Carnage came spilling out—knifeshine and babies screaming—and she was screaming, and the old women were screaming, but not the one with the knife. She was sobbing with rage, and the knife was still upraised, her arm trembling wildly as it fought to complete the arc it had begun and bring the blade down on Sarai’s throat.
“I can’t,” she keened with pure frustration. Tears streaked her face. She tried with all her will, but her arm would not obey her, and the knife fell from her grip to embed itself tip down in the mattress, just beside Sarai’s hip.