And, as Sarai had slowly come to understand—or rather, for years refused to understand until finally there was no denying it—because of what he himself had done. What he had forced himself to do to ensure the future freedom of his people: killing children, and, with them, his own soul.
That was what had finally broken through her blindness. Her father had saved his people and destroyed himself. As strong as he looked, inside he was a ruin, or perhaps a funeral pyre, like the Cusp—only instead of the melted bones of ijji, he was made up of the skeletons of babies and children, including, as he had always believed, his own child: her. This was his remorse. It choked him like weeds and rot and colonies of vermin, clogging and staining him, stagnant and fetid, so that nothing so noble as love, or—gods above—forgiveness, could ever claim space in him.
He was even denied the relief of tears. Here was something else that Sarai knew better than anyone: The Godslayer was incapable of crying. The city’s name was a taunt. In all these years, he had been unable to weep. When Sarai was young and cruel, she had tried to make him, ever without success.
Poor Azareen. To see her curled up like that and skinned of all her armor was like seeing a heart flayed from a body, laid raw on a slab, and labeled Grief.
And Eril-Fane, savior of Weep, three years’ plaything of the goddess of despair? What label for him, but Shame.
And so Grief and Shame abided in adjoining rooms with the door shut between them, holding their pain in their arms instead of each other. Sarai watched them, waiting for her father to fall asleep so that she might send her sentinel to him—if she dared—and know what he was hiding in his hearts as he hid his face in his great hands. She couldn’t forget his look of horror when he had seen her in the doorway, but nor could she understand why he’d kept her secret.
Now that he knew she was alive, what did he plan to do about it?
And so here were the four who had flown to the citadel and lived to tell the tale—though they apparently hadn’t told it. Sarai watched them all, the sleeping and the sleepless. She was many other places, too, but most of her focus was split between her father and the dreamer.
When she was certain that Lazlo had at last subsided into dreams—and he had finally moved his arm so that she could see his face—she detached her moth from the casement and went to him. She couldn’t quite bring herself to touch him, though, and hovered in the air above him. It would be different now. That much she knew. Up in the citadel, pacing, she felt as jumpy as though she were really there in the room with him, ready to spook at his slightest movement.
Through the moth’s senses she smelled his sandalwood and clean musk scent. His breathing was deep and even. She could tell that he was dreaming. His eyes moved under his lids, and his lashes, resting closed—as dense and glossy as the fur of rivercats—fluttered gently. Finally, she couldn’t stay out one moment more. With a feeling of surrender, and anticipation, and apprehension, she crossed the small distance to his brow, settled on his warm skin, and entered his world.
He was waiting for her.
He was right there, standing straight and expectant as though he’d known she would come.
Her breath caught. No, she thought. Not as though he’d known. As though he’d hoped.
Her moth spooked from him and broke contact. He was too near; she wasn’t prepared. But that single strobe of an instant caught the moment that his worry became relief.
Relief. At the sight of her.
It was only then, aflutter in the air above him, her hearts in her own far-off body drumming up a wild cadence, that Sarai realized she’d been braced for the worst, certain that today, finally, he must have learned proper disgust for her. But in that glimpse she had seen no sign of it. She took courage, and returned to his brow.
There he still was, and she beheld again the transformation from worry to relief. “I’m sorry,” he said in his woodsmoke voice. He was farther away now. He hadn’t moved, exactly, but rather shifted the conception of space in the dream so as not to crowd her at its threshold. They weren’t in any version of Weep, she saw, or in the library, either. They were standing on the bank of a river, and it wasn’t the tumultuous Uzumark but a gentler stream. Not Weep nor the Cusp nor the citadel were visible, but a great deal of pale-rose sky, and, beneath it, this broad path of smooth green water plied by birds with long, curved necks. Along the banks, leaning out as though to catch their own reflections, were rows of rough stone houses with their shutters painted blue.
“I frightened you,” said Lazlo. “Please stay.”
It was funny, the notion that he could frighten her. The Muse of Nightmares, tormentor of Weep, spooked from a dream by a sweet librarian?
“You only startled me,” she said, self-conscious. “I’m not used to being greeted.” She didn’t explain that she wasn’t used to being seen, that all this was new to her, or that her heartbeats were tangling together, falling in and out of rhythm like children learning how to dance.
“I didn’t want to miss you, if you came,” said Lazlo. “I hoped you would.” There it was, the witchlight in his eyes, sparkling like sun on water. It does something to a person to be looked at like that—especially someone so accustomed to disgust. Sarai had a new, disconcerting awareness of herself, as though she’d never realized how many moving parts she had, all to be coordinated with some semblance of grace. It worked itself out so long as you didn’t think about it. Start worrying, though, and it all goes wrong. How had she gone her entire life without noticing the awkwardness of arms, the way they just hang there from your shoulders like links of meat in a shop window? She crossed them—artlessly, she felt, like some arm amateur taking the easy way out.
“Why?” she asked him. “What do you want?”
“I… I don’t want anything,” he rushed to say. Of course, it was an unfair question. After all, it was she trespassing in his dream, not the other way around. He had more right to ask what she wanted here. Instead, he said, “Well, I do want to know if you’re all right. What happened to you up there? Were you hurt?”
Sarai blinked. Was she hurt? After what he had seen and survived, he was asking if she was all right? “I’m fine,” she said, a bit gruff due to an unaccountable ache in her throat. Up in her room she cradled her injured arm. No one in the citadel even cared that she was hurt. “You should have listened to me. I tried to warn you.”
“Yes, well. I thought you were a dream. But apparently you’re not.” He paused, uncertain. “You’re not, are you? Though of course if you were, and told me you weren’t, how would I know?”
“I’m not a dream,” said Sarai. There was bitterness in her voice. “I’m a nightmare.”