It was awkward and touching at the same time. It deeply disturbed Taelin. She took a long hit of beggary smoke and knelt down. Sena seemed to be asking a question in the horrible language, over and over, insisting on something.
Finally, Arrian pulled herself up slowly against Sena’s firm but gentle embrace and answered. After that— bizarrely, determinedly—Sena notched her sickle-knife into Arrian’s neck like a hot blade against tallow. It went easy at first but quickly turned to work. Arrian struggled occasionally but Sena kept talking, reassuring her. She brought her full weight to bear as she started sawing off the girl’s head.
Arrian didn’t move. Her arms hung by her sides. It took a while. Taelin remembered her cigarette and took another hit. She took several hits. The candle seemed to brighten.
No.
Instead of blood, light seeped from the wound. Taelin felt paralyzed.
Sena’s movements were brutal. She put her back into it. And then, all at once, in a gush of light, Arrian’s body crumpled onto the pile of masonry and Sena stood up, holding the head.
It seemed small.
Taelin felt sick and guilty. As if she had been party to murder. As if she had taken turns with Sena on the blade. Soft gauzy illumination gushed from both stumps. The light poured over the ground from where the body had fallen and likewise splashed from the swinging head. It spattered portions of a dusty black wall that Taelin had just noticed.
“We’re taking her with,” said Sena. She put her sickle away.
“But you killed her—”
“It’ll be okay,” said Sena.
“But you killed her.” Taelin, on the verge of tears began sinking to the floor. She couldn’t look at Sena. “How can it be okay?” She sucked as much beggary smoke into her lungs as she could.
And then, in the light that welled up from the carcass she saw a glitter at the edge of Arrian’s eye. Was the horrible thing crying? It made no sense. Taelin stayed where she was, sitting in the ashes. “You should take me back. I don’t understand any of this. I want to go home.”
“I’ll take you back after we’re done,” said Sena. “And we need to hurry now that you’ve brought that out for
“I don’t want to.”
“Get up.” Sena’s voice filled with power and a fierceness that shocked Taelin. It shocked her not only by virtue of its force but also because it contained a foil-thin undercurrent of compassion. That was how it felt. The compassion put her in a state where the fierceness was able to propel her.
She got up, staring at the gruesome trophy in Sena’s hands.
“That’s impossible!”
Taelin put a hand to her mouth and jerked the candlelight back from Arrian’s face, whose stone-white eyes had just blinked.
* * *
LIKE stammering picture shows that had opened on Isca Road and put fear into the owners of the Murkbell Opera House, events started clicking across the lamp of Arrian’s head. Taelin felt them in black and white.
She wanted another hit but her blunt was spent, which meant she could only look on nervously as Sena unslung a small pack. When the designer purse came off the witch’s back, a faint brown halo daubed the air behind her head as if a lantern had been strapped beneath Sena’s jacket.
Taelin took the bag mutely with her good arm. It jerked her wrist, heavier than expected.
“Come on,” said Sena.
“I can’t. Not with my hurt knee … and now my arm.”
“Where are your crutches, Taelin?”
“I—I don’t know.”
“Forgot them, did you?”
“I—”
“Come here.”
“My knee hurts. Dr. Baufent said—”
“Dr. Baufent let you take the crutches even though she knew you didn’t need them. Your arm is not broken. And your knee isn’t injured. You’re going to be fine.” Then, without another word, Sena shanked into the dark.
CHAPTER
35
The ambit of the Abominations was strong here but not as strong as it had been on the Stairs leading down to the Chamber.
There were noises in the dark. Sena knew she had to be vigilant. The “sky” was a great leaking slab. Epochs drained into a lake below the hill. It stank of the deep ocean. Huge walls of hewn basalt thrust themselves upward, strong enough to support the mile-thick chunk of sky. Despite the moisture, dust and porous husk-like stones muffled the landscape.
Sena could picture this rubble-strewn cyst as a garden where luminous moths fluttered over black pimplota under the moons. For a moment, she saw the fires erupting, the cinders and falling rock. She smelled the dead relatives and friends that had stunk for years before they turned to sludge beneath the piles.
She felt sorry for Arrian whose first question had been asked childlike, with cocked head, “Father? Is it you? Corwin?” Sena had been appalled by the antique weaponry strapped to her body, the rotten corslet cut from some mythic beast whose leather had outlasted the dark.
“I have never been to the Mainland,” Arrian had said stupidly. “It snows there but Father says I belong here, on the island.”
Sena had watched the ancient leather flake away from Arrian’s immortal skin. Nothing could cut that skin unless Arrian gave her permission. And that was why she had to be persuaded, like a child at the dentist. Sena had promised escape. She had soothed and bribed. She had been firm. She had been coddling. She had been vicious with the knife.
Sena looked at Taelin and pondered for a moment trying to explain. Not everything. Just the tiny parts that concerned her.
“Taelin?”
“What?”
“You need to keep your necklace safe. You need to keep it hidden.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s the key to an important door.”
“Oh. Well, I don’t need it anymore. Here. You take it.”
“Actually I need you to carry it. I’m not going to be around when the door is opened.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Your grandfather made it for a reason. With it, there’s a chance to do something good. To save people.” She could talk freely here, without fear of Nathaniel.
“That’s what I’ve always wanted to do,” said Taelin. “Help people. But I always … I always muck it up.” She was tearful again.
“I know,” said Sena. “But this is your chance. So keep the necklace safe.”
Sena watched Taelin’s fingers close over the demonifuge as Something shifted in the immense cavern, Something huge and ponderous slipping over stone.
