Vessel

not so different,” she repeated.

He held her gaze. “Help me save my people, Liyana.”

“At the cost of my people’s freedom?”

“Do you and your people value freedom more than your lives?” he asked. His eyes were as endless as the night sky. Intense, they nearly blazed. “You cannot survive without the empire.”

He said it with such surety that her breath caught in her throat. He knows, she thought. Her hands began to shake, and she held tight to the glass statue, her clan’s totem animal, Bayla’s totem. . . . Oh, sweet goddess.

There was one sculpture for every clan.

One for every deity.

Vessels of glass.

“The desert people would have the full rights of every citizen of the empire—access to all of our resources,” the emperor said. “In exchange, we ask only a fair contribution to our economy, obedience to our laws, participation in mutually beneficial trade, and assistance in matters of concern to our combined people.”

She peered into the depths of the statue. It looked to be hollow. Inside, colors caught the light and swirled. Turning the statue in her hand, she thought the colors spun more than they should have, as if they spun on their own. She saw markings on the base that matched her tattoos. She bet each statue had similar markings, transforming each of them into false vessels.

“Of course, we would not interfere with your culture or traditions.”

Liyana clutched the statue to her chest. “Except to imprison our gods.”

“Except to free you!” He placed his hands on her shoulders so that she could not turn away. “Don’t you want to save yourself, as well as your people, Liyana? If you had another option, a way to have both, wouldn’t you at least consider it? You could return to your clan. You could see your brother again, see him grow up!”

She closed her eyes, trying to grasp an inner calmness that was slipping away with the emperor’s proximity. Opening her eyes and looking directly into his, she said, “I am my people’s King of the Fields.”

“You aren’t anymore,” he said quietly. “You are free.” Releasing her shoulders, he folded his hands around hers—around Bayla’s statue, the false vessel—and they held Liyana’s goddess together.

She heard the flap open, and a man’s voice cut across the tent. “Your Imperial Majesty.” She tried to pull back, but the emperor continued to hold her hands. “An urgent matter has arisen in the east camp,” the soldier said.

“I must attend to this,” the emperor said to Liyana, “but I will return and ask you one more time. Join me. Be my ambassador. Save your people and mine.”

Liyana blinked. “You’re leaving me with her?” she blurted out before she had thought. She bit her lip and wished she could recall the words. She didn’t want to be forced to relinquish Bayla.

“You cannot break the statue,” he said. “Besides, I know my stories. Even if your goddess were free, you could not summon her without a magician. The chant must be infused with magic.” He rose. “Hold your goddess in your hands, Liyana. Think about your life. Think about your future.”

He swept out of the tent, and Liyana was alone with the trapped deities.

Her hands shook. “My goddess,” she whispered. Could Bayla hear her? She looked at the statue of a raven, Korbyn’s intended prison. She shouldn’t have kissed him. She’d stolen that kiss from her goddess. It was not right.

And no matter what the emperor said or what pretty promises he made, it was not right for her to sacrifice her clan’s freedom to save her own life.

She wasn’t supposed to have a life anymore. She had said good-bye to her family, to everything she knew and loved. She was not supposed to see them again or sleep in their tent or see the stars with them or share a meal with them or . . . All the moments she had had since the ceremony were stolen, just like Bayla had been stolen from the Dreaming. She had to fix it and restore everything to the way it was supposed to be.

This was her chance.

Steeling herself, she brought the statue down hard on the corner of the desk. She expected it to shatter into a thousand pieces. Instead, it only dented the wood. She bashed it again and again. It didn’t chip.

It’s not glass, she realized.

She held it up, turning it so that it caught the light. “Diamond,” she said out loud. This was why the deities hadn’t broken out themselves. There was no natural process to speed or slow. Magic could not break diamond.

Liyana drew the sky serpent knife out of her sash. Knives couldn’t slice a sky serpent scale. Arrows couldn’t pierce it. She laid the blade against the statue. Taking a deep breath, she pressed down.

In her hands, the statue cracked.

Quickly she concentrated and pictured her lake. Pulling on the magic, she chanted the words that Talu had spoken so long ago. “Bayla, Bayla, Bayla. Ebuci o nanda wadi, Bayla, Bayla, Bayla. Ebuci o yenda, Bayla, Bayla, Bayla. Vessa oenda nasa we.” She sent the summoning words wrapped in magic into the fractured statue as she carried it to the center of the tent. She laid the shards down on the silk cloths. She thought of magic and of emperors and of kisses.

And she danced.

Chapter Twenty-Two The Emperor

The emperor surveyed the expanse between the encampment and the border hills. Brittle grasses filled the slope. On the other side of that rise was the desert. “Tell me about the prisoners who escaped,” he said.

“Two women,” one of his lieutenants said. Several other lieutenants stood silently at attention. “One of them was blind. The other needed to be subdued. They claimed to be from the Silk Clan and Scorpion Clan—”

Hairs on the back of the emperor’s neck prickled. Mulaf had stolen the deities from both of those clans. They slept in their diamond statues inside the emperor’s tent. “Did either of them have tattoos on their arms?”

“I do not know. Your Imperial Majesty, please accept my apologies. Interrogation of a blind woman and her companion was not a priority.” Fist over his heart, he bowed low.

“I should have been informed of their capture immediately,” the emperor said. The prisoners had been taken only a few hours before Liyana walked into his camp. He didn’t believe in coincidences. “Why was this not brought to my attention?”

The lieutenant fell to his knees. “Forgive—”

“Stand,” the emperor said crisply. “Answer my question.”

“We often apprehend desert men who stray too close to the border,” he said, rising. His head hung low like a dog who had been struck. “We did not think it warranted Your Imperial Majesty’s attention—”

“You were mistaken.”

The lieutenant cringed and began to babble. “Until their escape, there did not seem to be anything unusual . . .”

The emperor breathed deeply and pictured the lake as the soldier continued to rattle through excuses. As always, the lake calmed him. “Demote this man. Devote resources to recapturing these women. Alive. Bring them directly to me when you have found them.”

Another lieutenant saluted. “Yes, Your Imperial Majesty.”

The emperor strode back toward his tent. Everything inside him shouted to run, but his people could not see their emperor afraid. Compromising, he lengthened his stride. It had been a strategic move to leave Liyana alone. She valued her independence, and he wanted to demonstrate that he would not seek to control or force her, or her clans. He pushed open the tent flap and halted.

She lay alone in the center of the tent. Beautiful and peaceful, she could have been asleep. “Summon a doctor,” he ordered his guards. He felt his heart beat painfully in his chest. In two strides he was beside her. He knelt and pressed his fingers to the pulse in her neck.

She moaned. Alive.

“Stay back, Your Imperial Majesty,” one of his guards said. “We don’t know the cause.”