“I hardly think a plum would survive the fall,” Feral pointed out.
Ruby gave him the flattest look that had, perhaps, ever been given in all of time. Then, unexpectedly, she began to laugh. She clutched her middle and doubled over. “I hardly think a plum would survive the fall,” she repeated, laughing harder. “And how about me?” she asked. She flung a leg over the balustrade, and Sarai’s stomach dropped. “Do you think I’d survive the fall? Now, that would be breaking The Rule.”
Sparrow gasped. “Enough,” said Sarai, jerking Ruby back. “Don’t be stupid.” She could feel panic pulsing beneath the skin of the moment, and made an effort to smother it. “Feral’s right. It’s too soon to worry.”
“It’s never too soon to worry,” said Minya, who, unlike the rest of them, didn’t seem worried in the least. On the contrary, she seemed excited. “Worry spurs preparation.”
“What kind of preparation?” Sparrow asked, a quaver slipping into her voice. She looked around at her garden, and at the graceful arches of the gallery, through which the dining table could be seen, and the ghost, Ari-Eil, still standing rigid where Minya had left him. A breeze stirred the drapery of vines that were the only thing standing between outside and in. “We can’t hide,” she said. “If we could just shut the doors—”
“Doors” in the citadel were nothing like the hand-carved timber ones Sarai knew from the city. They didn’t swing open and shut. They didn’t latch or lock. They weren’t objects at all, but only apertures in the smooth mesarthium. The open ones were apertures, anyway. Closed, they weren’t doors at all, but only smooth expanses of wall, because back when the citadel was “alive,” the metal had simply melted open and shut, re-forming seamlessly.
“If we could shut the doors,” Minya reminded her slowly, “that would mean we could control mesarthium. And if we could control mesarthium, we could do a lot more than shut the doors.” There was an acid edge to her voice. Minya, being Skathis’s daughter, had always had a festering bitterness at the core of her, that she hadn’t inherited his power—the one power that could have set them free. It was the rarest of gifts, and Korako had monitored the babies closely for any sign of it. In all of Great Ellen’s years in the nursery it had manifested only once, and Korako had taken the baby away on the spot.
Mesarthium was no ordinary metal. It was perfectly adamant: impenetrable, unassailable. It could not be cut or pierced; no one had ever succeeded in making so much as a scratch in it. Nor did it melt. The hottest forge fire and the strongest blacksmith could make not the slightest dent in it. Even Ruby’s fire had no effect on it. At Skathis’s will, however, it had rippled, shifted, reshaping itself into new configurations with the fluidity of mercury. Hard and cool to the touch, it had, nevertheless, been molten to his mind, and the creatures who gave him his title—“god of beasts” instead of merely “god of metal”—had been, for all intents and purposes, living things.
They were four mesarthium monsters, one to each of the huge metal blocks positioned at the perimeter of the city. Rasalas had been his favorite, and though the citizens of Weep had understood that the beast was only metal animated by Skathis’s mind, the understanding was buried under their terror. Their fear of him was its own entity, and Sarai understood why. Thousands upon thousands of times she’d seen him in their dreams, and it was hard even for her not to believe he had been alive. The citadel in the sky had seemed alive, too. Back then, anyone looking up at it was likely to find it looking back with its immense, inscrutable eyes.
Such had been Skathis’s gift. If they’d had it, then the doors would be an afterthought. They could bring the whole citadel back to life and move it anywhere they wanted—though Sarai didn’t imagine there was anywhere in the world that would want them.
“Well, we can’t, can we?” said Sparrow. “And we can’t fight—”
“You can’t,” agreed Minya with scorn, as though Sparrow’s gift, which had kept them fed for years, had no worth because it had no dimension for violence. “And you,” she said to Feral with equal scorn. “If we wanted to frighten them with thunder, then you might be useful.” She had goaded him for years to learn to summon and aim lightning, with dismal results. It was beyond his control, and though this was due to the natural parameters of his gift and no personal failing, it didn’t spare him Minya’s judgment. Her eyes flicked to Sarai next, and here her gaze went beyond scorn to something more combative. Spite, frustration, venom. Sarai knew it all. She’d endured its sting ever since she stopped blindly doing everything Minya told her to do.
“And then there’s Bonfire,” Minya said, moving on to Ruby without scorn so much as cool consideration.
“What about me?” asked Ruby, wary.
Minya’s gaze focused in on her. “Well, I suppose you might do more with your gift than heat bathwater and burn up your clothes.”
Ruby paled to a bloodless cerulean. “You mean . . . burn people?”
Minya let out a little laugh. “You’re the only one of the five of us who’s actually a weapon and you’ve never even considered—”
Ruby cut her off. “I’m not a weapon.”
Minya’s mirth vanished. She said coolly, “When it comes to the defense of the citadel and our five lives . . . yes, you are.”
Sometimes you can glimpse a person’s soul in just a flicker of expression, and Sarai glimpsed Ruby’s then: the longing that was the core of her. Yesterday she’d had the thought that Ruby’s gift expressed her nature, and it did, but not the way Minya wanted it to. Ruby was heat and volatility, she was passion, but not violence. She wanted to kiss, not kill. It sounded silly but it wasn’t. She was fifteen years old and furiously alive, and in a glimmer of a moment, Sarai saw her hopes both exposed and destroyed, and felt in them the echo of her own. To be someone else.
To not be . . . this.
“Come on,” said Feral. “If it comes to fighting, what chance do you think we have? The Godslayer slew the Mesarthim, and they were far more powerful than we are.”
“He had the advantage of surprise,” said Minya, all but baring her teeth. “He had the advantage of treachery. Now we have it.”
A little sob escaped from Sparrow. Whatever calm they’d been pretending, it was slipping away. No, Minya was tearing it away deliberately. What’s wrong with you? Sarai wanted to demand, but she knew she would get no satisfaction. Instead, she said, with all the authority she could muster, “We don’t know anything yet. Feral’s right. It’s too soon to worry. I’ll find out what I can tonight, and tomorrow we’ll know if we need to have this conversation or not. For now, it’s dinnertime.”
“I’m not hungry,” said Ruby.
Neither was Sarai, but she thought if they could act normal, they might feel normal. A little bit, anyway. Though it was hard to feel normal with a ghost glaring at you from the head of the table. “Minya . . .” she said. It pained her to be gracious, but she forced herself. “Would you please send Ari-Eil away so that we can eat in peace?” She didn’t ask her to release him. She understood that Minya meant to keep him around, if only to torment Sarai.
“Certainly I will, since you ask so nicely,” said Minya, matching her gracious tone with just an edge of mockery. She gave no visible signal, but in the dining room, the ghost unfroze and pivoted toward the interior door. Minya was done toying with him, apparently, because he didn’t shuffle his steps or fight against her now, but virtually glided from their sight.