In the citadel and in the city, Sarai and Lazlo each felt the tug of the other, like a string fixed between their hearts. Another between their lips, where their kiss had barely begun. And a third from the pit of her belly to his, where new enticements stirred. Soft, insistent, delirious, the tug. If only they could gather up the strings and wind themselves nearer, nearer, until finally meeting in the middle.
But there was the whole day to get through before it was time, again, for dreams.
Waking from her first kiss, still flush with the magic of the extraordinary night, Sarai had been buoyant, and alive with new hope. The world seemed more beautiful, less brutal—and so did the future—because Lazlo was in it. She lay warm in her bed, her fingers playing over her own smile as though encountering it for the first time. She felt new to herself—not an obscene thing that made ghosts recoil, but a poem. A fairy tale.
In the wake of the dream, anything seemed possible. Even freedom.
Even love.
But it was hard to hold on to that feeling as reality reasserted itself.
She was still a prisoner, for starters, with Minya’s army preventing her from leaving her room. When she tried to shoulder through them to the door, they gripped her arms—right over the bruises they’d made the day before—and hauled her back. Less Ellen never came with her morning tray, nor did Feyzi or Awyss with the fresh pitcher of water they always brought first thing. Sarai had used the last of her water yesterday to clean the wound on her arm, and woke dehydrated—no doubt her weeping in the night hadn’t helped—with nothing to drink.
She was thirsty. She was hungry. Did Minya mean to starve her?
She had nothing at all until Great Ellen came in sometime in early afternoon with her apron full of plums.
“Oh, thank goodness,” said Sarai. But when she looked at Great Ellen, she was disturbed by what she saw. It was the ghost’s beloved face, matronly and broad, with her round red “happiness cheeks,” but there was nothing happy to be found in her affect, as flat as all the ghosts in Minya’s army. And when she spoke, the rhythm of her voice was not her own, but recognizably Minya’s. “Even traitors must be fed,” she said, and then she dropped the hem of her apron and dumped the plums onto the floor.
“What . . . ?” asked Sarai, jumping back as they went rolling every way. As the ghost turned away, Sarai saw how her eyeballs strained to stay fixed for as long as possible on her, and she read pain in them, and apology.
Her hands shook as she picked up the plums. The first few she ate still crouched there. Her mouth and throat were so dry. The juice was heavenly, but it was tainted by the manner of its delivery, and by the horror of Minya using Great Ellen in such a way. Sarai ate five plums, then crawled around on the floor until she had gathered up all the rest of them and shoved them into the pockets of her robe. She could have eaten more, but she didn’t know how long they’d have to last her.
Yesterday, trapped alone in her room, she’d felt despair. Today, she didn’t reprise it. Instead, she got mad. At Minya, of course, but the others, too. The ghosts had no free will, but what about Feral and Ruby and Sparrow? Where were they? If it were one of them being punished, she wouldn’t just accept it and go about her day. She would fight for them, even against Minya.
Did they really believe she had betrayed them? She hadn’t chosen humans over godspawn, but life over death—for all their sakes. Couldn’t they see that?
Under the influence of lull, Sarai’s days had been nothing but dreamless gray moments between one night and the next. This day was the opposite. It would not end.
She watched the squares of sunlight that her windows threw on the floor. They ought to have moved with the angle of the sun, but she was sure they were frozen in place. Of course today would be the day the sun got stuck in the sky. The gears of the heavens had gotten gummed up, and now it would be daytime forever.
Why not nighttime forever?
Lazlo and nighttime forever. Sarai’s belly fluttered, and she yearned for the escape that nightfall would bring—if indeed it ever came.
Sleep would help pass the time, if she dared.
She certainly needed it. The little rest she’d gotten, asleep in Lazlo’s dream, hadn’t even begun to allay her fatigue. These past days, hunted by nightmares, she’d felt their presence even while she was awake. She felt them now, too, and she was still afraid. She just wasn’t terrified anymore, and that was rather wonderful.
She considered her options. She could pace, bitter and frantic and feeling every second of her deprivation and frustration as the sun dawdled its way across the sky.
Or she could go to the door, stand in front of her ghost guards, and scream down the corridor until Minya came.
And then what?
Or she could fall asleep, and maybe fight nightmares—and maybe win—and hurry the day on its way.
It wasn’t a choice, really. Sarai was tired and she wasn’t terrified, so she lay down in her bed, tucked her hands under her cheek, and slept.
Lazlo looked up at the citadel and wondered, for the hundredth time that day, what Sarai was doing. Was she sleeping? If she was, was she fending off nightmares on her own? He stared at the metal angel and focused his mind, as though by doing so he could give her strength.
Also for the hundredth time that day, he remembered the kiss.
It might have been brief, but so much of a kiss—a first kiss, especially—is the moment before your lips touch, and before your eyes close, when you’re filled with the sight of each other, and with the compulsion, the pull, and it’s like . . . it’s like . . . finding a book inside another book. A small treasure of a book hidden inside a big common one—like . . . spells printed on dragonfly wings, discovered tucked inside a cookery book, right between the recipes for cabbages and corn. That’s what a kiss is like, he thought, no matter how brief: It’s a tiny, magical story, and a miraculous interruption of the mundane.
Lazlo was more than ready for the mundane to be interrupted again. “What time is it?” he asked Ruza, glaring at the sky. Where it showed around the citadel’s edges, it was damnably bright and blue. He’d never felt anger at the sky before. Even the interminable days of the Elmuthaleth crossing had passed more quickly than this one.
“Do I look like a clock?” inquired the warrior. “Is my face round? Are there numbers on it?”
“If your face were a clock,” Lazlo reasoned slowly, “I wouldn’t ask you what time it was. I’d just look at you.”
“Fair point,” admitted Ruza.
It was an ordinary day, if at least ten times longer than it ought to have been. Soulzeren and Ozwin did as asked and produced a credible reason to delay a second launch. No one questioned it. The citizens were relieved, while the faranji were simply occupied.
Thyon Nero wasn’t the only one exhausting himself—though he was the only one siphoning off his own vital essence to do it. They were all deeply engaged, hard at work, and competitive. Well, they were all deeply engaged and competitive, and all with the exception of Drave were also hard at work—though, to be fair, this wasn’t his fault. He’d have liked nothing better than to blow something up, but it was clear to everyone, himself included, that he and his powder were on hand as a last resort.
When all else fails: explosions.
This did not sit well with him. “How am I supposed to win the reward if I’m not allowed to do anything?” he demanded of Lazlo that afternoon, waylaying him outside the Tizerkane guard station where he’d stopped to talk with Ruza and Tzara and some of the other warriors.
Lazlo was unsympathetic. Drave was being compensated for his time, just like everyone else. And as for the reward, Drave’s personal fortune wasn’t high on his list of priorities. “I don’t know,” he answered. “You might come up with a solution to the problem that doesn’t involve destruction.”
Drave scoffed. “Doesn’t involve destruction? That’s like me asking you not to be a mealy-mouthed poltroon.”
Lazlo’s eyebrows shot up. “Poltroon?”
“Look it up,” snapped Drave.
Lazlo turned to Ruza. “Do you think I’m a poltroon?” he asked, the way a young girl might ask whether her dress was unflattering.