Though the drifts were knee-high in places, Lusha plowed her way through them as if she were made of fire. A few paces from where River and I crouched, she stopped.
“Kamzin, get away from him.” She didn’t look at Lurker’s motionless body. Her voice was quiet, so quiet you almost had to strain to hear it. Lusha didn’t yell when she was truly angry. Her anger condensed inside her to a silent, glittering heat, like a cloud brewing with lightning. “Now.”
I was still holding River’s arm. “What are you talking about?”
Tem went to stand behind her. Mara lurked by the cave, his eyes darting from one person to another.
“Please listen to her,” Tem said. He was holding the kinnika—he must have retrieved them from my pack, which I had left in the cave last night. He held them before him now, as if to be ready to sound them at any moment. The scorched bell rang faintly, for no apparent reason.
I let out a disbelieving laugh. “Have you all gone insane? Tem, are you going to cast a spell on River?”
“Only if I have to.” His face was grim.
“You really don’t have to,” River muttered, his expression a grimace of pain. I turned away from the others to examine him. His hand was bleeding freely, as were the three deep scratches that had just missed his eye. His ear was bleeding again too, the one that Ragtooth had bitten. I scooped up a chunk of snow and pressed it against his forehead. The blood had already trickled onto his chuba.
“Kamzin.” Tem’s voice had a plea in it.
“Mara, I have some bandages in my pack,” I said, pressing more snow against the wound. “Can you fetch them?”
“If you’d just listen to me,” Lusha snapped, “for once in your life.”
“You’ve gone mad, Lusha,” River said. He drew himself to his full height. “You may be in the habit of setting your ridiculous pets on people you don’t like, but you’ve gone too far this time. You know who I am.”
“That’s the problem,” Lusha said. “I don’t.”
“What are you talking about?” I said. I took the bundle of cloth Mara handed me, and used it to bind River’s hand.
“There is no River Shara,” Lusha said. “He doesn’t exist.”
I stared at her. Then I let out a sharp laugh.
“He’s right here,” I said. “Are you saying he’s a ghost?”
“No,” she said calmly. “I’m saying there is no River Shara. Not according to the stars.”
“Spirits,” I muttered. River was right. She had gone mad.
“She may need more of an explanation than that,” Mara said. He moved closer to the fire—which also happened to be farther from River—and rubbed his hands over the flames.
Lusha sighed, rubbing her eyes. The weariness I had seen in her face seemed, for a moment, to overtake her. But then she straightened, forcing her shoulders back. “As you know, Kamzin, or you should know, the stars can’t predict every event. Not everyone’s birth can be read in the patterns of the constellations and the paths of shooting stars. But many can—the Sharas, for example, are an ancient and powerful family. Their births are always foretold—you can see them. It isn’t easy to read the past in the stars, much harder than it is to read the future, but I managed it. I found the story of every Shara since the Empire’s founding—their births, their lives, and in many cases, their deaths. All but one. River. He simply isn’t there.”
Biter croaked, and Lusha, in an absent gesture, touched her finger to his beak. “I don’t know who he is,” she said, “but he isn’t the emperor’s cousin. I puzzled over it for days before River came to Azmiri, but it wasn’t until I met Mara that I knew I had to take matters into my own hands.”
“Mara?” I stared at him. “What does he have to do with this?”
“Once I realized that there was something strange about River, I began searching the stars for those who I knew were close to him,” she said. She paced before us—three steps one way, three steps the other. “Mara, for example. I studied the events of his life. After speaking with him, I discovered that he had no memory of things that are written about him in the stars.”
“Like what?”
“The time he drowned in Nageni Lake, for one. And another occasion, when he was taken prisoner by witches in the Nightwood.”
My head was spinning. “Why would he have lost his memories?”
“The only explanation I could come up with,” Lusha said, “is that someone took them. Someone with an extraordinary magical gift.”
Everyone, suddenly, was staring at River. He gave a short laugh.
“I can assure you that Azar-at and I have better things to do than muddle around in Mara’s head.”
“Lusha.” My voice was low. “You’re wrong. You read the stars wrong.”
“No.”
“Of course you did.” My anger was rising. “Did that possibility never occur to you?”
“Yonden verified my findings,” she snapped. “I’m not wrong.”
“No,” I muttered. “You never are, are you?”
Lusha’s expression closed, but not before I saw a flash of pain. My words echoed with an old argument, sharp and bitter as bile. I had shouted something similar at her after our mother died. When I had been angry at everyone, but especially Lusha. For she should have known. She could read the future in the stars. How could she not have known? How could she not have prevented what had happened?
But the simple truth, as I had finally realized when my anger faded and was replaced by cold grief, was that Lusha could not see everything. The messages woven in the stars were imperfect, flawed.
And so was my sister.
I turned to Tem. “And you believe this?”
“Some of Mara’s memories have been stolen,” Tem said quietly. “At some point, he was enspelled. I used the finder’s incantation—there are traces of magic all over him, like cobwebs. I don’t know the spell that was used, but I’m trying to find out.”
I threw my hands up. “And you assume it was River?”
River touched my shoulder. “It’s all right.”
“No, it’s not,” I said, shaking him off. “How can you say that?”
“I don’t see the point in arguing with them.”
“Of course he doesn’t,” Lusha snapped. “He wants us to step aside and let him continue to the summit. That isn’t going to happen.”
River’s expression became flat and cold. “Isn’t it?”
“No.”
They stared at each other, and I was surprised that the snowdrifts surrounding us didn’t melt into vapor. Hastily, I stepped between them. I wasn’t certain whose safety I was more concerned for, but it didn’t matter. This was ridiculous.