Sarai had to persuade her to let it.
For years she’d stifled her own empathy and kept it in for fear of Minya’s wrath. But now so much depended on it—not just her love, but all their lives. She took a deep breath. “Minya,” she said, “you have to listen to me. Please. I know you’re angry with me, but please try to open your mind.”
“Why? So you can put things in it? I’m not forgiving your humans, if that’s what you think.”
Your humans. And they were her humans, Sarai thought. Not just Eril-Fane and Lazlo, but all of them. Because her gift had forced her—and allowed her—to know them. “Please, Min,” she said. Her voice fluttered as though it were trying to fly away, as she herself wished she could do. “Eril-Fane didn’t tell anyone what happened yesterday. He didn’t tell them about me, or the ghosts.”
“So you have seen him,” Minya said with vindication. “You used to be a terrible liar, you know. I could always tell. But you seem to be improving.”
“I wasn’t lying,” said Sarai. “I hadn’t seen him, and now I have.”
“And is he well, our great hero?”
“No, Minya. He’s never been well. Not since Isagol.”
“Oh stop,” protested Minya, pressing a hand to her chest. “You’re breaking my hearts.”
“What hearts?” asked Sarai. “The hearts you tarnish with miserable ghosts so that you can hold on to your hate?”
“The hearts I tarnish with miserable ghosts? That’s good, Sarai. That’s really poetic.”
Sarai squeezed her eyes shut. Talking to Minya was like getting slapped in the face. “The point is, he didn’t tell anyone. What if he’s sick about what he did, and wants to make amends?”
“If he can bring them all back to life, then I’ll certainly consider it.”
“You know he can’t! But just because the past is blood doesn’t mean the future must be, too. Couldn’t we try talking to him? If we promise him safe conduct—”
“Safe conduct! You’re worrying about his safety? Will Weep promise us safe conduct? Or don’t you need us anymore? Maybe we aren’t a good enough family for you now. You have to yearn for the man who killed our kind.”
Sarai swallowed. Of course she needed them. Of course they were her real family and always would be. As for the rest, she wanted to deny it out of hand. When Minya put it like that, it appalled even her. “That’s ridiculous,” she said. “This isn’t even about him. It’s about us, and our future.”
“Do you really think he could ever love you?” the little girl asked. “Do you really think a human could ever stand the sight of you?”
Until a week ago, Sarai would have said no. Or she wouldn’t have said anything, but only felt the no as shame, wilting and withering her like an unwatered flower. But the answer had changed, and it had changed her. “Yes,” she said, soft but resolute. “I know a human could stand the sight of me, Minya, because there is one who can see me.”
The words were out. She couldn’t take them back. A flush spread up her chest and neck. “And he stands the sight of me quite well.”
Minya stared. Sarai had never seen her gobsmacked before. For an instant, even her anger was wiped clean away.
It came back. “Who?” she asked in a deadly seethe of a voice.
Sarai felt a tremor of misgiving for having opened the door to her secret. But she didn’t see that Lazlo could be kept secret much longer, not if there was to be any chance of the future that she hoped for. “He’s one of the faranji,” she said, trying to sound strong for his sake. Lazlo deserved to be spoken of with pride. “You’ve never seen such dreams, Min. The beauty he sees in the world, and in me. It can change things. I can feel it.”
Did she think she could sway her? Did she imagine Minya would ever listen?
“So that’s it,” said the girl. “A man makes eyes at you, and just like that you’re ready to turn your back on us and go play house in Weep. Are you so hungry for love? I might expect as much of Ruby, but not of you.”
Oh, that bright little treacherous voice. “I’m not turning my back on anyone,” said Sarai. “The point is that humans don’t have to despise us. If we could just talk to them, then we would see if there might be a chance—a chance for us to live, and not merely exist. Minya, I can bring a message for Eril-Fane. He could come up tomorrow, and then we’d know—”
“By all means,” said Minya. “Bring him, and your lover, too. Bring all the faranji, why don’t you. How convenient if we could take them all out at once. That would be a big help, actually. Thank you, Sarai.”
“Take them all out,” she repeated, dull.
“Was I not clear? Any human who sets foot in the citadel will die.”
Tears of futility burned Sarai’s eyes. Minya’s mind, like her body, was immutable. Whatever accounted for the unnatural stasis that had kept her a child for fifteen years, it was beyond the reach of reason or persuasion. She would have her carnage and her vengeance and drag everyone into it with her.
“You could give Minya a nice warm hug,” Sparrow had said to Ruby in the garden. She hadn’t meant it, and the poisonous thought—the shocking, inconceivable, unthinkable notion of the five of them doing harm to one another—had made Sarai ill. She felt ill now, too, looking into the burning eyes of the little girl who’d given her a life, and asking herself how . . . how she could just stand by and let her start a war.
She wanted to scream.
She wanted to scream her moths. “You were quite clear,” she spat. Her moths were burgeoning. They wanted out. She wanted out. The sun had set. The sky was not full dark, but it was dark enough. She faced the small tyrant, heir to Skathis in cruelty at least, if not in gift. Her fists clenched. Her teeth clenched. The scream built in her, as violent as the first one, years ago, that she’d held in for weeks, so certain it was bad.
“Bad would be good,” Minya had said then. “We need bad.”
And thus had the Muse of Nightmares been born, and Sarai’s fate decided in those few words.
“Go on, then,” said Minya now. Her fists, too, were clenched, and her face was wild, half mad with rage and resentment. “I can see you want to. Go down to your humans if that’s all you care about! Your lover must be waiting. Go to him, Sarai.” She bared her small white teeth. “Tell him I can’t wait to meet him!”
Sarai was trembling. Her arms were stiff at her sides. Leaning toward Minya, she opened her mouth, and screamed. No sound came out. Only moths. All at Minya, right at Minya. A torrent of darkness, frantic wings, and fury. They spewed at her. They poured at her. They flew in her face and she gave a cry, trying to duck out of their path. They dipped when she did. She couldn’t escape them. They beat their wings at her face and hair, the stream of them parting around her like a river around a rock. Past her, out of the alcove, over the heads of the ghosts standing guard, and out into the twilight.
Sarai stood where she was, still screaming, and though no sound came out—her voice having gone—her lips shaped the words Get out! Get out! Get out! until Minya picked herself up from her cower, and, with a terrible look, turned and fled.
Sarai collapsed onto her bed, heaving with silent sobs, and her moths winged down and down. They didn’t divide, because her mind would not divide. She thought only of Lazlo, so that was where they flew, straight to the house and the window she knew so well, into the room where she hoped to find him sleeping.
But it was early yet. His bed was empty and his boots gone, so the moths, fluttering with agitation, had no choice but to settle down and wait.
54
Too Lovely Not to Devour