When they were little, they’d thought he made the clouds, and why wouldn’t they? There was no one to explain it to them, or Sarai’s gift to her, or the girls’ gifts to them. The gods had died and left them to their own devices.
Feral wished, and clouds appeared. Even before he’d known to wish for them, they’d come, tied to his moods and terribly inconvenient, to hear Great Ellen tell it. How many times had the nursery flooded because when this little boy was angry or excited, clouds filled the air around him? Now he could control it, more or less, and called them on purpose. Sometimes they were rain clouds, heavy and dark, and sometimes airy tufts of white that cast delicate shade and twisted into shapes like hunting ravids or castles in the air. There was snow from time to time, always a treat, and hail, less of a treat, and sometimes sultry, muggy vapors that smelled of growth and decay. Occasionally, perilously, there was lightning. Sarai and Feral were ten or eleven when a paper kite appeared with some fog, and they realized he didn’t make the clouds. He ripped them out of faraway skies. He stole them.
Cloud Thief, they called him now, and this was his part to play in keeping them alive. The river was out of their reach and rain was seasonal. Their only source of water for much of the year was Feral’s clouds.
Ruby’s riot of hair had gone otter-pelt sleek, still sluicing off the remnants of rain. Her white slip was plastered to her body and quite transparent, her small nipples and the divot of her navel plainly visible. She made no move to cover herself. Feral averted his eyes.
Ruby turned to Sparrow and conceded, with evident surprise, “You know, you’re right. It’s not like kissing ghosts. It’s warmer. And… wetter.” She laughed and shook her head, fountaining spumes of rain from the ends of her hair. “A lot wetter.”
Sparrow didn’t share her laughter. Stricken, the girl spun on one bare heel and darted back out to the garden.
Ruby turned to Sarai. “What’s wrong with her?” she asked, perfectly oblivious to what had been clear to Sarai for months now: that Sparrow’s affection for Feral had changed from the sisterly feelings they all had for him into something… well, to use Ruby’s words… warmer. Sarai wasn’t going to explain it to Ruby—or to Feral, who was equally oblivious. It was just one of the ways life was getting more complicated as they grew up.
She slapped at her wet slip and sighed. At least hers was dark gray, and so hadn’t gone see-through like Ruby’s, but she would still have to change. “It’s almost dinnertime,” she said to Ruby. “I suggest you get dry.”
Ruby looked down at herself, then back up at Sarai. “All right,” she said, and Sarai saw the telltale spark in her eye.
“Not like that—” she said, but it was too late.
Ruby burst into flames. Sarai had to lurch back from the blast of heat as Ruby was engulfed in a crackling, deep-orange column of fire. It kindled in an instant, like lamp oil kissed by a spark, but died more slowly, the flames receding until her form was visible within them, her flesh absorbing each lick of fire one by one. Her eyes were the last reservoir of flame, burning as red as her name so that she looked, for a second, like a temple icon to an evil goddess, and then she was just herself again—herself and only herself, nary a shred or ashen tatter remaining of her dress.
They called her Bonfire, for obvious reasons. While a baby Feral might have caused inconvenience, a baby Ruby had had a more dangerous effect, compounded by the volatility of her nature. It was a good thing, then, that their nursemaids had been dead already. Ghosts were not combustible, and neither was mesarthium, so there had been no risk of her setting the citadel alight.
“All dry,” said the girl, and so she was. Her hair, unburned, was wild once more, still crackling with the fire’s kinesis, and Sarai knew that if she touched it, it would feel like a bed of coals, and so would her bare skin. She shook her head, glad Sparrow had missed this display.
Feral was still standing with his back turned. “Tell me when it’s safe to look,” he said, bored.
Sarai told Ruby, “That was a waste of a dress.”
Ruby shrugged. “What does it matter? We won’t live long enough to run out of dresses.”
Her voice was so casual, so matter-of-fact, that her words swept past all of Sarai’s defenses and pierced her. It was more of a shock than the rain.
Won’t live long enough…
“Ruby!” said Sarai.
Feral, equally shocked, turned back around, naked girl or not. “Is that really what you think?” he asked her.
“What, you don’t?” Ruby looked genuinely amazed, standing there fire-dried and beautiful, naked, at ease with herself, and blue. Blue as opals, pale blue. Blue as cornflowers, or dragonfly wings, or a spring—not summer—sky. Just like the rest of them.
Blue as five murders waiting to happen.
“You think we’re going to grow old here?” she asked, looking back and forth between them, gesturing to the walls around them. “You must be joking. Is that really a future you can picture?”
Sarai blinked. It wasn’t a question she allowed herself to ask. They did their best. They obeyed The Rule. Sometimes she almost believed it would be enough. “A lot of things could happen,” she said, and heard how half her voice was carved away by uncertainty, and how utterly weak she sounded.
“Like what?” Ruby asked. “Besides dying, I mean.”
And Sarai couldn’t think of a single thing.
13
PURGATORY SOUP
Sarai stepped out of her clammy, wet slip and let it fall to the floor of her dressing room. Puddled gray silk on the blue metal floor. Blue toes, blue legs, blue self reflected in the blue mirror, which wasn’t glass but only more mesarthium, polished to a high gloss. The only thing that wasn’t blue was her hair—which was the red-brown of cinnamon—and the whites of her eyes. The whites of her teeth, too, if she were smiling, but she very much wasn’t.
“We won’t live long enough to run out of dresses,” Ruby had said.
Sarai regarded the row of slips hanging from the slim mesarthium dowel. There were so many, and all so fine. And yes, they were underclothes, but she and Ruby and Sparrow preferred them to the alternative: the gowns.