I had every intention of obeying Atrius’s command—though I admit I chafed at it a bit, on principle. But I also liked staying alive, and his advice to stay away from his horde of vampire warriors on a night dedicated to drunken, delirious feasting seemed objectively wise.
I was, however, going to take a quick detour.
I wouldn’t have much time now that Atrius had caught me, and I was convinced that he would certainly have Erekkus guarding me during the daytime, so I had to be fast. I had spotted a pond not far from here when we arrived in this area—actually, it seemed more like a collection of murky standing water collected from a rainstorm, but I’d take what I could get. I could reach the Arachessen through stone if I had to, but that was a much more stubborn, unworkable element, and I’d never quite mastered it the way many of my Sisters had. The Keep was designed to sit at an apex of several powerful collections of threads throughout Glaea, stringing across key elements throughout the country. This way, a Sister could communicate with the Keep from virtually anywhere, so long as those veins of energy ran there.
I came to the pond quickly and knelt beside it, water lapping at my knees through my skirts. I hastily drew several sigils in the sand and pressed my hands into the muck, letting the cloudy water cover them.
I let myself fall forward. Forward.
Forward…
The threads collected here. Through the water, I could feel them extending in all directions. It was always easy to find the one that would lead me to my home—it always felt close and warm, as if vibrating at a higher frequency.
I reached for that thread, and pulled…
One second passed, then two. I waited. I could feel the Keep, but it was possible no one there would be able to talk to me. I resisted the urge to bite down on a curse as seconds became a minute. I wasn’t sure when I would next be able to get away like this.
But I breathed an exhale of relief when the Sightmother’s face appeared before me, as if projected on the surface of the water.
“Sylina,” she said. “Tell me what you see.”
The Sightmother was kind and warm in person, but while we were on missions, she had no time for pleasantries. That was fine. Neither did I.
“I’ve made it into the conqueror’s army,” I told her. “I’ve been taken as his seer.”
Normally, the means through which I accomplished this task would not be relevant to the Keep. But this detail was important to the Arachessen.
“It was difficult to get him to accept me,” I went on. “He recognized me as an Arachessen, and I told him that I was an escaped Sister. He offered me protection from the Arachessen in exchange for my loyalty during his war.”
The Sightmother said nothing. It was impossible to read presences through a thread this distant, but the silence held a strange tinge to it—something I couldn’t read even if I had tried to.
“Good,” she said, at last. “Wise. So long as he believes you.”
“He believes me.”
“Make sure it stays that way.”
“Yes, Sightmother. He had me seer for him once already. His next target is Alka, and my Threadwalk was to help him strategize his attack.”
“And did you?”
I paused, coming up with the best answer to this question. “Yes and no,” I said. “I had a productive Walk. But I changed the information I gave him. Just enough.”
Again, a beat of silence that I did not know how to decode.
“Why, child?” the Sightmother asked, a question that left me stunned.
Why?
“Because—of course, I can’t actually help him conquer Alka,” I said.
“Alka has few resources. It’s drug infested and weak. He can have it.”
She said it so dismissively. As if she was sacrificing marbles on a game board.
Words evaded me. Or… no, the words were there. They were just not appropriate to say to my Sightmother.
“Sylina?”
“I—” I collected myself, choosing my response carefully. “There is a human cost to allowing him to conquer them, Sightmother.”
“The state is ruled by warlords. Inhabited by a drug-addled populace. It is not our place to judge the morality of an individual act. We are playing a bigger game.”
Hypocrite.
The word shot through my mind before I could stop it—a word I never thought I would think of the Arachessen. With one sentence, she damned a city-state to death as punishment for their crimes. In the next, she told us we aren’t arbitrators of morality.
I kept my temper close, filtered through decades of careful training.
“I’ll shed no tears for the warlords either,” I said. “But thousands of people live in that city. Many of them innocent. Children.”
It was the last word that betrayed me. I knew it right away.
The Sightmother’s face shifted into understanding. It was a little pitying—the way one looks at a well-meaning dog who is prone to peeing in the plants because it mistakes them for the outdoors.
I cursed myself. I hated that look. That look was the rift between me and my Arachessen Sisters. That look was directed at the gap of time that made me different from all of them.
“You will never be free, Sylina, until you let go of the hold your past has on you,” she said. “The past cannot dictate the future.”
“I know, Sightmother.”
“We fight for what it is Right. What is Right goes beyond good or evil.”
I hated being lectured like this. I didn’t show it. I kept my face placid. My presence calm.
“I understand, Sightmother. I’ll choose differently in the future.”
I glanced over my shoulder. Commotion stirred in the distance. Probably just the festival debauchery going on too long—but I was still conscious of how long I’d been gone.
“Go,” the Sightmother said, as if sensing my concern. “You have our faith and our Sisterhood, Sylina.”
She paused at that sentence, as if to let it sink in—as if she knew, even over this distance, that I needed to hear it. I would never admit that I did, never show her that insecurity. But of course, she saw it anyway.
I bowed my head. “Yes, Sightmother. May the threads guide you.”
I severed my connection to the Keep, rose, shook off my now dirty, wet skirt, and retreated back to the camp.
12
The next night, the vampires were sluggish and slow to rise. Erekkus looked like a corpse when he dragged himself into my tent not long past nightfall.
I laughed the moment he revealed himself. In response, he shot me an acidic glare, punctuated with a sarcastic sneer.
“I can see that face,” I said. “Don’t you know that by now?”
“Oh, I know, Sister. Just like you can see my shame, too, apparently.”
I made an exaggerated sound of sympathy. “Poor little thing. Overindulged? Is it the blood that makes you look like that, or the wine?”
He grumbled something wordless, then jabbed a finger at me. “You got me in a hell of a lot of trouble with Atrius, you know that? I told you to stay put.”