Vai stiffened, going so tense that I thought he had woken, but he was still asleep. He murmured words in the village dialect he had spoken as a child. Most of the words slipped past, too thickly patois for me to understand. Then he spoke almost desperately. “Don’t touch me!”
He jolted awake and shoved me away so roughly that he almost pushed me off the edge.
I grabbed his arms, dragging myself to a stop with his weight. “Vai! It’s me. It’s Catherine.”
He sucked in air. For an instant I was frighteningly certain he did not recognize me. Then all the air went out of him. He pulled an arm out of my grasp and rubbed his eyes.
“What were you dreaming?”
He looked away, jaw clenched. “Nothing.”
I pressed a hand on his chest. He flinched.
I sat back, withdrawing my hand. He curled his hands into fists, and I watched him climb the pinnacle of disdain as his expression settled into the scornful arrogance that had so scalded me when we had first been thrown together. One wrong word and he would lash out. Not with his fists—as Auntie Djeneba had once said, “He don’ seem like that kind”—but with words meant to cut and intimidate.
“I don’t understand how you can see through the illusion,” I said soothingly. “I still see the city. The ziggurat is quite splendid if you don’t mind knowing you’re meant to be the main course at the feast. I’m ready to go on, if you are. You know I trust you, my love.”
“We can’t get out of this foul pit quickly enough.” His voice was harsh, but I understood the anger was not directed at me.
I took a swallow of water and offered him the rest.
He wiped his mouth, his lips so dry they were cracking. “I hear them. They’re following us again. There’s one gap we have to clear. That gap is the one you described as a moat. But I have a plan for that. If you’re sure, Catherine, utterly sure the creatures can’t harm you.”
“I’m sure,” I lied. I could have become an actress in the theater after all, because he did not guess how my heart trembled. “Remember, I was bitten by a salter and not infested. The teeth of the plague can’t take hold in my blood.”
But even though it was true I could not be harmed by the bite of a human infested with the salt plague, the bite of a ghoul was rumored to be far more potent and virulent. I had to take the chance. Nothing mattered except that we escape, and this was the way we had to do it.
We climbed, sometimes a little up or a little down but always transverse. Once I thought I was moving through a fall of water, only there was no pressure and no current, only grit sifting into my face, the dust and salt of the mortal world. Was this place pitted with gates into salt mines all across the mortal world? Now was not the time to find out.
He had plotted our route well. Had we not had so many narrow ledges on which to take quick rests, I would never have made it, for my arms were beginning to feel they were being squeezed in a vise. Naturally he spoke no word of complaint, just massaged my forearms whenever we halted, although his, too, had become as hard as the rock we clung to. My legs trembled from fatigue, and my buttocks ached from all the pushing up and down and sideways.
He whispered. “Look, love. Look. We’ve made it to the edge.”
Below us a path paved with gems meandered alongside the moat. On its far side rose the outer wall, looking to my eyes like the forbidding face of an ice cliff. On the path roamed the personages of the courts, resplendent in their vivid robes and changeable aspects. Groups flashed along more distant bridges and ramps toward us, as if gathering to hear a poet sing.
Vai unwound the kerchief he’d knotted around his neck. Easing his sword partway out of the sheath, he cut his skin for the first time.
Red blood welled up.
A cry shivered through the air. Dust spattered from the walls.
Vai pressed the kerchief to his wound to sop up the blood. The greedy whispering of the courts scraped the air like fingernails down a chalkboard. Hadn’t they had enough blood? Could they ever be satisfied?
“Catherine.” He handed me the kerchief, then clambered to where the moat ran narrowest. The liquid in the moat was churned into a froth of pinkish foam like spume bubbling from the mouth of a dying man. I probed with a foot down a wall I could feel but not see, and found a toehold. Easing myself down, I settled my weight on one aching foot; my calf cramped but I had to grit my teeth and endure it. I let go with my upper hand and groped for a lower place to grab. A hand, or claw, slammed up, dislodging my boot.
So I leaped down among them. Cats always land on their feet. I plunged forward, smearing the blood that stained the kerchief onto any surface I could find: their robes, their outstretched hands. I rubbed a speck of blood on the path, feeling dirt beneath my fingers instead of the smooth silver walkway I saw with my eyes.
The fine, elegant people turned on each other in a frenzy. I jammed the kerchief into the gaping jaw of a being wearing the face of a distinguished elderly man and dressed in the formal court clothes a man would have worn a hundred years earlier, all silk and gold-threaded embroidery.
I shoved my way out of the clawing, jibbering crowd as they converged to tear at the one who was suckling on the cloth. A few had enough sense to smell Vai’s escape. I raced out in front of them.
The interior maze ended without touching the outer wall. It was this gap we had to cross. He dashed across the moat as if there were no liquid in it and started climbing the outer wall, but he was still within reach of their teeth as he tested a grip. I followed him into the steaming waters, but the molten fire in the moat was an illusion. It was all grainy dirt.
A creature glided toward me. She had the seeming of a woman whose coiled hair was laden with gold coins. I thrust. My sword pierced her. Pain shivered up my arm, but I pushed, leaning my full weight into her.
She shattered, coming apart like a pouch of sand when it is ripped open.
Where the grains soaked into the ground, the veil of illusion cleared. As if through glass, I saw the dusty surface of salt. I smelled the sun of the mortal world, and heard the shrill whistle of wind blowing beneath an empty sky.
“Catherine!”
The exhalation of their breath iced my neck. To climb I had to sheathe my sword. Fear propelled me. I swarmed up the face of the cliff as he hoarsely called directions so I need not pause and look, for if I had hesitated, they would have grabbed me.
“Up three hands, now right, another hand farther, so you see it? There! Your foot to where your knee is. In a half step. There, that’s right. Push up, it’s wide enough to hold you. See my left foot? Let go with your left hand. You grab where my foot was…”
So we climbed, me sweating from the pain that flamed in my arms and hands. I was so exhausted I was shaking, but I was not going to lose him.
He disappeared over the rim, then reappeared to haul me up beside him. I shrugged out of the pack. We lay panting side by side. The length of my blade was pressed into me by the weight of his leg alongside mine. I rested on my back, staring at the pewter bowl of the sky and what appeared to me now as the high white wall of the palace rising behind my head exactly as I had seen it before I had entered. Vai lay on his stomach, and he appeared to be looking over the edge of an escarpment as he stared into the pit we had escaped. I had to shut my eyes because I could not tell which direction was up. I felt dizzy. His ragged breathing was all the sign I needed to know that he, too, was fighting the toll taken by our exertions.
“We’ve got to keep moving,” I said. “We’ve got to reach the jade doors and retrieve Queen Anacaona’s head. Someone is sure to come after us.”
“We need to retrieve
I opened my eyes. “I’ll explain later. There’s a jade door with warded ground somewhere along this exterior. We can cross there.”
We stumbled to our feet as I hoisted the pack. Vai stowed the tools and slung on the carpenter’s apron. His face was gray with exhaustion, but he trudged forward stubbornly. My entire body hurt as we staggered along the rim of the palace.
I wanted to ask Vai if he saw the white stone walls rising beside us, if he saw a plaza stretching to all sides like a sheep-mown pasture, but the effort of forming words was too great. All I could do was look ahead, hoping
