reach for the demonifuge under her shirt when Sena’s voice interrupted.
“Here. Take this.”
Taelin tried to answer but the air was too thin. Thinner than in Sandren. She started wheezing, which led her to realize that she couldn’t be dead.
A small, tacky block pushed itself into her palm. She could feel Sena’s fingers behind the delivery but the connection didn’t register until half a second later, when Sena’s hand withdrew. Only then did Taelin panic. In the almighty darkness, losing her physical link to another person—even if that person was Sena Iilool—felt like desertion. Then the brown smudge disappeared.
Without its point of reference she lost her balance and sat back down.
She started to adjust to the thin, dead air. “Sena?”
“It’s all right,” said Sena. “Just don’t take out your necklace.”
The witch’s voice gathered numbers that roasted a cotton cord. Taelin could smell it. A sickly yellow flame touched off right in front of her face, wagging on the block-shaped candle Sena had pushed into her hand.
Sena was crouched a short distance away, blue eyes rolling with the flame. It unnerved Taelin that the witch was staring at her. Her guilt became too much to bear. “I’m sorry,” Taelin said. “I didn’t mean for it to happen—I didn’t mean for it to go so far … with Caliph.”
Sena was smiling like something that wanted to eat her.
Taelin moved the candle’s orange glow toward her butt in an effort to learn something about her surroundings. The ground she was sitting on seemed to be a hill of buckled or broken masonry. There were dripping noises all around but the ground here, at least, was dry.
“It’s all right, Taelin.”
“But I—”
Sena stood up and took a step in the direction of the flinty voice, which had spoken again.
Taelin felt too out of her depth to argue or even ask questions. All she could do was listen to the strange voice and the echoes of the underground space. She smelled mud. Not the normal gaminess of river mud but the putrefaction of salt-ooze ripened beneath the black bottom of the world. It was a stink suggestive of spoiled shrimp, sewage and gods knew what else.
Taelin buried her nose in the crook of her elbow while Sena talked to the voice in the dark. The language sounded difficult. Sena was stuttering. Or were those simply the phonics of an alphabet she had never heard? Taelin lifted her candle above her head, hoping for a glimpse of the other speaker.
“Sena?” She spoke into her sleeve.
“Just a minute.”
The High King’s witch stood in the extreme limits of her light. Taelin set the candle down and reached into her pocket. She pulled out her little tin and opened it. Inside were some of the beggary seeds Palmer had given her. She rationed five onto a sheet of rice paper along with a little of the fuzz. She quickly licked the paper. It crackled reassuringly between her fingers as she rolled it. Tincture, pill and smoke. Was that bad? She didn’t care.
She picked up the candle. The flame happily shared itself with the bent little package hanging from her lips. She inhaled deeply. It helped with the stink of this place.
A crunch in the stone-strewn dust did not sound like Sena’s graceful footsteps; Taelin lifted her candle again. Light spilled across a second person. A little cry escaped Taelin’s mouth and the cigarette almost fell out.
Rusted metal and rotting leather encased a body encumbered with archaic weapons. Dust filmed her. The woman’s hair was tangled. Despite her eyes, which had calcified into something like white stone, Taelin thought—in that timeless moment while the beggary smoke circled her head—that the woman stepping out of the darkness was even more beautiful than Sena Iilool.
The woman’s eyes were smaller, her body longer and exquisitely thin. All of her, from her triangular face to her slender limbs conferred a horrible but lovely gauntness. She was perfect.
The woman was paying close attention to Sena, who was motioning with her hands as she tried to communicate.
“What is she saying?” asked Taelin.
Sena ignored the question. She and the pale woman seemed to be agreeing, deciding on something—without her.
“What’s going on?” Taelin felt excluded. “I want some answers.”
“Arrian’s taking us to her room,” said Sena.
“Her room? Why? Who’s Arrian?” Taelin looked around at the darkness wondering how they would find their way.
“This is where the Ublisi … made her mistake.”
“Ublisi?” said Taelin.
“The being that called down the Rain of Fire on Soth.”
“Rain of Fire? That’s just a legend. I don’t understand why we’re here.” Taelin’s voice echoed. She reached into her shirt for her necklace and took another drag.
“Don’t—” said Sena. But it was too late. The molten aperture was already out in the open. It did not illuminate the darkness, but it
Arrian’s face twisted. She sprang at Taelin wildly and brought her weapon down like a hammer. Taelin felt the metal. The pain was exquisite. Only a moment later did she realize that the blade had shattered. It had not cut her, but her arm was certainly fractured.
Arrian straddled her waist and raised the jagged shard. The candle tumbled away but thankfully did not go out. Taelin held her cigarette tightly between her lips and put her hands up as Arrian plunged the rusted shaft toward her.
The only thing that arrested the fatal blow was a trademark grip: cradled head, a razor-edged choker wrapped beneath Arrian’s chin.
Sena saved her. One moment the shard of rust had been her future. The next, Sena was in control, leaning back. Muscles cabled her slender arms as she threw her body into counterpoise. Arrian growled under the subdual, face fractured into discrete regions of bared teeth and white eyes.
Her fingers reached for the knife that was lifting her off the ground.
As Arrian’s weight came up, Taelin propelled herself backward, recovered the candle and scrambled to her feet. She watched Sena pull the blade hard against Arrian’s throat. But there was no cut. No bleeding.
Arrian’s fingers worked their way between the blade and her neck. She roared with a sound that traveled through bone. The candle nearly dropped again from Taelin’s hand.
Sena struck Arrian on the crown of her head with a sudden muscular blow.
Arrian twisted violently and bucked Sena off.
At that moment, Taelin looked away from the two fighting women. She thought she had heard something enormous sidle in the darkness. A sigh. It disturbed the whole sky that encompassed this black empty place. After that, a dull wet impact—as of mucus or falling blood—filled the universe.
For a moment, she imagined inconceivable shapes packed in the dark.
Then Sena burst back into the light and babbled fiercely at Arrian, drawing Taelin’s eyes once more to the battle.
Arrian’s body came fully up off the piles of broken masonry, twisting in midair, wild and impossible, like a rabbit in a snare. She gurgled as her arms and legs thrashed. Boneless it seemed. Her neck was bent back at what should have been an unachievable angle. When she landed, she landed hard, limbs whipping, churning up dust.
Sena spoke again and Arrian stopped.
Taelin coughed on the swirling particles and backed away. She blew out a stream of smoke. The pain in her arm where the sword had hit her was throbbing.
“What are we doing here?” She shrieked.
Sena was too busy to answer.
The sound of Taelin’s yell echoed back to her. Angry at everything, it sounded like there was a copy of herself out there in the darkness, screaming at her for getting herself into this mess.
As the echo faded, Taelin realized the fight was over. Sena spoke in soothing syllables, talking as if to an injured pet. The unruly animal had been pinned to the ground and keened under the stress.
