Not that Minya believed her, but it was true, and she did look. She knew he was back in Weep, partly because Azareen would never have come back without him, and partly because he flickered through the dreams of all the others like a shimmering thread connecting them. But wherever he was sleeping, wherever he stayed at night, she never could find him.
Sarai laughed. “Me, stubborn,” she said, raising her eyebrows. “Have you met yourself?”
Minya made no denial. “I suppose the question is: Who’s more stubborn?”
It sounded like a challenge. “I guess we’ll find out,” Sarai replied.
Dinner was served and the others came in—Sparrow and Ruby from the garden; Feral, yawning, from the direction of his room. “Napping?” Sarai asked him. Everything had fallen to pieces lately. He used to at least attempt to oversee the girls during the day, and make sure they didn’t fall into chaos or break The Rule. Not that anything really mattered anymore.
He only shrugged. “Anything interesting?” he asked her.
He meant news from the night before. This was their routine now. It reminded her of their younger days, when she still told them all about her visits to the city and they all wanted to know different things: Sparrow, the glimpses of normal life; Ruby, the naughty bits; Minya, the screaming. Feral hadn’t really had a focus then, but he did now. He wanted to know everything about the faranji and their workshops—the diagrams on their drafting tables, the chemicals in their flasks, the dreams in their heads. Sarai told him what she could, and they tried to interpret the level of threat they posed. He claimed that his interest was defensive, but she saw a hunger in his eyes—for the books and papers she described, the instruments and bubbling beakers, the walls covered in a scrawl of numbers and symbols she couldn’t begin to make sense of.
It was his sweetshop window, the life he was missing, and she did her best to make it vivid for him. She could give him that at least. This evening, though, she bore bleak tidings.
“The flying machines,” she said. She’d been keeping an eye on them in a pavilion of the guildhall as they took shape in stages, day by day, until finally becoming the crafts she had seen in the faranji couple’s dreams. All her dread had at last caught up to her. “They seem to be ready.”
This drew a sharp intake of breath from Ruby and Sparrow. “When will they fly?” Minya asked coolly.
“I don’t know. Soon.”
“Well, I hope it’s soon. I’m getting bored. What’s the use of having an army if you don’t get to use it?”
Sarai didn’t rise to her bait. She’d been thinking of what she was going to say, and how she was going to say it. “It needn’t come to that,” she said, and turned to Feral. “The woman, she worries about the weather. I’ve seen it in her dreams. Wind is a problem. She won’t fly into clouds. I think the crafts must not be terribly stable.” She tried to sound calm, rational—not defensive or combative. She was simply making a reasonable suggestion to avoid bloodshed. “If you summon a storm, we can keep them from even getting close.”
Feral took this in, glancing with just his eyes toward Minya, who had her elbows on the table, chin in one hand, the other picking her kimril biscuit to bits. “Oh, Sarai,” she said. “What an idea.”
“It’s a good idea,” said Sparrow. “Why fight if we can avoid it?”
“Avoid it?” Minya snapped. “Do you think, if they knew we were here, they would be worrying about avoiding a fight?” She turned to Ari-Eil, standing behind her chair. “Well?” she asked him. “What do you think?”
Whether she gave him leave to answer, or produced his answer herself, Sarai didn’t doubt the truth of it. “They’ll slaughter you all,” he hissed, and Minya gave Sparrow an I told you so look.
“I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation,” she said. “When your enemy is coming, you don’t gather clouds. You gather knives.”
Sarai looked to Feral, but he wouldn’t meet her eye. There wasn’t much more to be said after that. She was loath to return to her tiny alcove, which she couldn’t help feeling was stuffed with all the nightmares she’d had in it of late, so she went out into the garden with Sparrow and Ruby. There were ghosts all around, but the vines and billows of flowers made nooks you could almost hide in. In fact, Sparrow, sinking her hand into the soil and concentrating for a moment, grew some spikes of purple liriope tall enough to screen them from sight.
“What will we do?” Sparrow asked in a low voice.
“What can we do?” Ruby asked, resigned.
“You could give Minya a nice warm hug,” suggested Sparrow with an unaccustomed edge to her voice. “What were her words?” she asked. “You might do more with your gift than heat bathwater and burn up your clothes?”
It took both Ruby and Sarai a moment to understand her. They were dumbfounded. “Sparrow!” Ruby cried. “Are you suggesting that I”—she cut herself off, glanced toward the ghosts, and finished in a whisper—“burn up Minya?”
“Of course not,” said Sparrow, though that was exactly what she’d meant. “I’m not her, am I? I don’t want anyone to die. Besides,” she said, proving that she’d actually given the matter some thought, “if Minya died, we’d lose the Ellens, too, and all the other ghosts.”
“And have to do all our own chores,” said Ruby.
Sparrow thwacked her shoulder. “That’s what you worry about?”
“No,” said Ruby, defensive. “Of course I’d miss them, too. But, you know, who would do the cooking?”
Sparrow shook her head and rubbed her face. “I’m not even certain Minya’s wrong,” she said. “Maybe it is the only way. But does she have to be so happy about it? It’s gruesome.”
“She’s gruesome,” said Ruby. “But she’s gruesome for us. Would you ever want to be against her?”
Ruby had been much preoccupied of late, and had not noticed the change in Sarai, let alone guessed its cause. Sparrow was a more empathetic soul. She looked at Sarai, taking in her drawn face and bruised eyes. “No,” she said softly. “I would not.”
“So we let her have her way in everything?” Sarai asked. “Can’t you see where it leads? She’d have us be our parents all over again.”
Ruby’s brow furrowed. “We could never be them.”
“No?” countered Sarai. “And how many humans can we kill before we are? Is there a number? Five? Fifty? Once you start, there’s no stopping. Kill one—harm one—and there is no hope for any kind of life. Ever. You see that, don’t you?”
Sarai knew Ruby didn’t want to harm anyone, either. But she parted the liriope spikes with her hands, revealing the ghosts that edged the garden. “What choice do we have, Sarai?”
One by one the stars came out. Ruby claimed she was tired, though she didn’t look it, and went in early to bed. Sparrow found a feather that could only have been Wraith’s, and tucked it behind Sarai’s ear.
She did Sarai’s hair for her, gently combing it out with her fingers and using her gift to make it lustrous. Sarai could feel it growing, and even sense it brightening, as though Sparrow were infusing it with light. She added inches; she made it full. She fixed her a crown of braids, leaving most of it tumbling long, and wove in vines and sprays of orchids, sprigs of fern, and the one white feather.
And when Sarai saw herself in the mirror again before sending out her moths, she thought that she looked more like a wild forest spirit than the goddess of despair.
36
Shopping for a Moon
Weep slept. Dreamers dreamed. A grand moon drifted, and the wings of the citadel cut the sky in two: light above, dark below.