Priya is dead because I led her into danger.
Set is dead because I ran off on my own.
Nethys is dead because I lost control.
Priya is dead…
And for all I know, everyone else in this city could die soon because of something I’ll do, or won’t do, or maybe something that I’ve already done.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Just a little tired.”
Wren laughed. “Does everyone in your country lie as badly as you?” Her expression softened and she touched Asha’s arm. “I can see the pain in your eyes, in the way you stare at the wall. More like you’re trying not to think, not to feel. Trying to be numb, trying to get away from the demons inside.”
“You can see that, can you?”
“Even without all that, I can feel the sorrow in you,” the northern girl said. “I can feel it in the aether curling off you like smoke. Full of darkness and emptiness. Death and suffering hover around you like a shadow. I can help you with that, if you want.”
Asha managed a wry smile. “I don’t think I need any help. No more lessons, or sermons, or sutras, or whatever you call them in your country. I’ve heard more than my share, believe me. Priya never stopped… Priya did more than any person could ever hope to do to enlighten me about death and life. It never really took. I’ve never learned how to let go of the things I’ve seen. The things I’ve done. The people I’ve lost.”
Wren moved a little closer and rested her head on Asha’s shoulder. Her tall vulpine ears flicked and gently batted against Asha’s black locks. The girl said, “In my country, we don’t solve problems by talking about them. Valas don’t give sermons. We heal. And when called to, we fight, too.” She held out her arm to display four of her silver bracelets, each one with a slender golden wire wrapping around it. “These are all rinegold. Sun-steel. Or whatever you call it in your land. They hold the souls of dead valas and witches, shamans and healers, bonesaws and alchemists, from all over the north. Mostly, they teach me things about plants and aether. I can also use the bracelets to stir the aether, the way I did to capture our poor Isis here.”
She pulled off her right glove to reveal a slender sun-steel ring on her finger. “And I can also use my ring to dream-dive. To visit your soul, to see what you’re feeling and to help you confront it, or master it, or dispel it. Whatever you need. I can do this for you. Right now, if you want.”
Asha paused, wondering what exactly the girl meant. She understood that a person could speak to the souls trapped in sun-steel, and she had seen the girl bending the aether to her will, but dream-diving?
I’ve never even heard of anything like that before.
Maybe I should. Maybe it will help.
Or maybe I’ll hurt her, or the dragon will hurt her, if there’s still any difference between it and me anymore.
“Maybe another time,” Asha said softly. “But thank you.”
Wren shrugged, and leaned away again. She peered off to the side and whispered in a sing-songy voice, “Jagdish? Oh, Jagdish? Where are you, little one?”
The mongoose scampered out of the deep shadows and leapt up into the girl’s lap where he promptly curled up in her pleated black skirts and closed his eyes.
“He likes you,” Asha said. “More than he ever liked me, at least. Would you like to keep him? A mongoose can be a very useful thing to have around, you know.”
Wren smiled up at her, a bright and cheerful smile that almost glowed in the evening darkness. “I’d love to, thank you.”
Asha sighed. “Are you hungry? Maybe I should go find us some supper. I have a little money. And I can stop by Jiro’s place to see whether Taziri is back yet with the sun-steel.”
“Sure, I can eat.”
Asha stood up and set her medicine bag on her shoulder and glanced up at their prisoner. “Will you be all right here by yourself? With her?”
Wren smiled. “It’s night time. The air is cool, and the sunlight is gone. The aether is only going to grow thicker for the next few hours. I don’t mean to brag, but right now, I’m probably stronger than you are.”
Asha smiled in spite of herself. “You think so?”
Wren nodded. “Mm hm.”
Asha turned to leave. “Well, maybe when this is all over, you and I will have a little contest to…” She stopped and shook her head.
I can’t believe I would even think such a thing, let alone suggest it.
“I’ll get us something to eat,” she said quickly. “I’ll be back soon.”
Wren waved and leaned back on the crate, petting the balled up mongoose in her lap. Asha headed down the shadowed alleys between the stacked boxes, wondering what was in them, and who owned them, and why they were just locked away inside a huge house for boxes in the first place.
These people are all mad.
She stepped out into the street and fell the cool evening breeze in her hair and smelled the nearby harbor full of fish, oil, smoke, and salt. She turned left, pointing back toward the lighthouse and Jiro’s home, and started walking. As she reached the corner of the warehouse, she heard a sudden crash of wood breaking, and an avian monster screamed inside the building.
Asha turned and bolted back to the doors and down the narrow paths through the warehouse to the open space in the back where she found a bright pool of starlight falling through a large, ragged hole in the roof. Wren was on her feet, hands raised, bracelets gleaming. The pale light fell across Isis’s face and the immortal squinted up at the night sky. And in the shadows behind the prisoner, a large shadow moved.
“Wren, get back!” Asha curled her hands into fists, searching through the confusion and panic of the moment for one of her memories, one of her triggers, something to give her the dragon. But she couldn’t focus because there was nothing to focus on. Only a shadow, and a girl she was worried about.
“I have him,” Wren said softly. She lifted her hands and a thin white wall of vapor rose up from the dirt floor. Then she shoved her hands forward and the wall swept across the room, smacking Isis in the side and crashing through the shadow behind her. Something large and heavy fell against a pile of crates, which clattered but did not fall.
“Is it Horus?” Asha asked. “Is it one of Lilith’s creatures?”
“If it isn’t, then I feel sorry for the woman who gave birth to him.” Wren swept her empty hands through the air, bracelets ringing as they slipped up to her elbows and back down to her wrists. The aether raced across the floor again, and a voice cried out in the darkness, screeching as fists and feet beat upon the crates. Then Wren drew her hands back toward her chest and the aether rushed back toward her like a tide and pulled the creature into the moonlight.
Horus lay on his back, legs kicking and clawing at the dirt floor, his talon-hands grappling with the intangible aether wrapped around his soul and dragging it along with his body. His sleek feathered head rolled back and forth as his falcon’s beak snapped at the air and his huge falcon eyes blinked white-in-white in the dim evening light.
“I have him,” Wren said. Her face was lined with concentration and she never took her eyes off the man on the floor.
“All right, just hold him there while I get those chains back there.” Asha pointed as she dashed across the warehouse floor to the far wall where the rest of the chains hung, along with coils of rope, balls of twine, and various pry bars and hammers and other tools for opening and closing crates.
She pulled loose a length of chain and ran back to the open space where the girl in black held Horus prisoner on the ground with nothing more than a thin white cloud that writhed and swam across the man’s body like a living thing.
Asha held up the chain, trying to figure out how she might lash the man’s hands with the chains and hoist him up onto the rafters like his mother.
Do I throw them over the top first? Or bind him first and then lift him up?
How did Gideon do it with Isis? I can’t remember. Maybe I’ll have to strike him unconscious before we can…
Oh, no, I remember now…
