She saw Sparrow first, kneeling among her orchids, her face dreamy and her hands full of vines, which were visibly growing, slowly cascading out between her fingers to twine through those already in place and fill in gaps where mesarthium still showed through. At the table, Minya and Feral were faced off across the quell board, deep in a game. It was evident from Feral’s glower that he was losing, while Minya looked half bored, and stifled a yawn before moving her piece.
Sarai had never been so glad of the predictable monotony of life in the citadel as she was now. She would even welcome kimril soup in all its comforting dullness.
This evening, however, was to be neither comforting nor dull.
“Poor thing,” she heard Ruby croon, and, turning to look, saw her standing squarely in front of Ari-Eil. Sarai stopped in her tracks. It was jarring, seeing him again after seeing his corpse. Minya had promised to release him, but he was very much still with them, and if he had come to grips with the basic fact of his new existence—that they were alive and he was not—he had in no way softened in his attitude toward them. His confusion was gone, which only left more room in his expression for hostility. Minya had put him in the corner, the way one might lean a broom or umbrella when not using it, and he was, amazingly, still trying to resist her.
Or not so amazingly, perhaps. As Sarai watched, he managed, with incredible effort, to slide his foot a few inches, which could only mean that Minya was still toying with him, holding him imperfectly to allow him false hope.
Ruby was standing in front of him, demure—for her—in a knee-length black slip. Her hands were clasped behind her back, and one foot curled coyly around the ankle of the other. “I know it must be an awful shock,” she was saying to him. “But you’ll see we’re not really so bad. What happened before, none of that was us. We’re not like our parents.” She reached out to touch his cheek.
It was a tender gesture. Ruby was thoughtless, but she wasn’t toying with the ghost as Minya was. Sarai knew she meant to be consoling. The dead man was, however, in no mood for consolation. “Don’t touch me, godspawn,” he snarled, and snapped at her hand like an animal.
Ruby snatched it back. “Rude,” she said, and turned to Minya. “You let him do that.”
“No biting,” Minya told the ghost, though of course Ruby was right: He wouldn’t have been able to do it unless she’d let him. Knowing her, Sarai thought she probably made him do it. She used them like puppets sometimes. Sarai remembered her nightmare, and having no control over her own knife-wielding hand, and shuddered at the thought of being Minya’s toy.
“Minya,” she said, remonstrating. “You promised you’d let him go.”
Minya’s eyebrows shot up. “Did I? That doesn’t sound like me at all.”
Nor did it. Minya was many things—perverse, capricious, and obstinate among them. She was like a wild creature, by turns furtive and barging, ever unwashed, and with the staring lack of empathy that belongs to murderers and small children. Attempts at civilizing her rolled right off her. She was invulnerable to praise, reason, and shame, which meant she couldn’t be coaxed or persuaded, and she was cunning, which made her hard to trick. She was ungovernable, flawlessly selfish, resentful, and sly. One thing she was not—ever—was obliging.
“Well, you did,” Sarai persisted. “So . . . would you? Please?”
“What, now? But I’m right in the middle of a game.”
“I’m sure you’ll survive the inconvenience.”
Feral had been studying the game board, chin sunk in hand, but he looked up now with just his eyeballs, surprised to hear Sarai arguing with Minya. As a rule, that was something they avoided, but Sarai’s anger made her careless. She was in no mood for tiptoeing around the little girl’s whims right now. After the dream she’d had, the last thing she needed was another baleful ghost glaring at her.
“What’s the matter with you?” Minya asked. “I suppose you’re bleeding.”
It took Sarai a moment to understand what she meant, because she thought of the blood spurting up from the wound in the bed, and of the phantom pressure of the knifepoint against her breast. But it was her monthly bleeding that Minya meant, and the suggestion only made her angrier. “No, Minya. Unlike you, the rest of us experience a normal range of emotion, including but not limited to distress when forced to endure the disgust of the dead.” And it wasn’t Ari-Eil’s face in her mind when she said it, but the old women all crowded round her, and she knew that at least part of her anger at Minya was left over from the dream and was irrational—because Minya hadn’t actually turned old women loose to wander the citadel and attempt to murder her. But part of being irrational is not caring that you’re being irrational, and right now she just didn’t.
“Is he bothering you so much?” Minya asked. “I can make him face the wall, if it helps.”
“It doesn’t help,” said Sarai. “Just let him go.”
The others were watching, breath all but held, eyes overlarge. Minya’s eyes were always large, and now they glittered. “Are you sure?” she asked, and it felt like a trap.
But what kind of trap could it possibly be? “Of course I’m sure,” said Sarai.
“All right,” said Minya in a lilting tone that signified it went against her better judgment. “But it is strange you don’t want to hear his news first.”
News?
Sarai tried to match Minya’s feigned calm. “What news?”
“First you don’t want to hear and now you do.” She rolled her eyes. “Really, Sarai. Make up your mind.”
“I never didn’t want to hear,” Sarai snapped. “You never said there was anything to hear.”
“Touchy,” said Minya. “Are you sure you aren’t bleeding?”
What would you know about that? Sarai wanted to demand. If you ever decide to grow up, then maybe we’ll talk about it. But she wasn’t nearly angry enough—or foolish enough—to speak the words grow up to Minya. She just gritted her teeth and waited.
Minya turned to Ari-Eil. “Come over here,” she said, and he did, though she still asserted only partial control, allowing him to fight against her at every step so that he came lurching and stumbling. It was grotesque to watch, which was, of course, the point. She brought him to the opposite end of the long table from where she sat. “Go on, then,” she said. “Tell them what you told me.”
“Tell them yourself,” he spat.
And it wasn’t him she was toying with now by dragging out the suspense of it, but the rest of them. Minya paused to study the quell board, taking her time to move one of her game pieces, and Sarai could tell from Feral’s expression that it was a devastating move. Minya collected her captured piece with a look of smug satisfaction. A scream was building in Sarai’s mind, and, with it, an awful presentiment that the pall of doom of the past day had been leading to this moment.
What news?
“It’s lucky for us you happened to die,” Minya said, redirecting herself at the ghost. “Else we might have been taken entirely by surprise.”
“It doesn’t matter whether you’re surprised,” snarled the dead man. “He killed you once, he’ll do it again.”
A jolt went through Sarai. Sparrow gasped. Feral sat bolt upright. “Minya,” he said. “What is he talking about?”
“Tell them,” commanded Minya. Her voice was still bright, but not like a bell now. Like a knife. She rose to her feet, which were bare and dirty, and stepped from her chair onto the table. She prowled the length of it, until she was standing right in front of him. They were nearly eye-to-eye: he, an imposing grown man; she, a slight and messy child. No more suspense, and no more delusion of freedom. Her will clamped onto him and his words reeled out as though she’d reached down his throat and ripped them from him.
“The Godslayer is coming!” he cried out, gasping. That much Minya made him tell, but the rest he spoke freely. Savagely. “And he’s going to tear your world apart.”
Minya looked over her shoulder. Sarai saw Skathis in her eyes, as though the god of beasts were somehow alive in his small daughter. It was a chilling look: cold and accusing, full of blame and triumph. “Well, Sarai?” she asked. “What do you have to say about that? Your papa’s come back home.”
21
The Problem in Weep