The search of the Hall of Communication’s ruins led them to a storeroom full of the antennae. They were all made of obsidian. They looked like slender shafts of smoky black the thickness of two of her digits.
“Look at them all,” Dualayn said after giving her the first one. “They are beautiful. Their shape is extraordinary. See the minute detail of their construction. The one I made for you is such a crude thing in comparison. My deepest apologies, Avena.”
“That’s what you’re apologizing for?” grunted Fingers. She still thought of her father as Fingers. He continued to keep his distance, perhaps unwilling to face that he had abandoned her that day.
The hardest thing to do is forgive yourself, she thought. It was something Daughter Heana had told her as a child during her many attempts to coach Avena to speak again. Back then, she’d had trouble accepting it wasn’t her fault that Evane had died. She didn’t even need forgiveness yet couldn’t give it to herself for so long.
She would be patient with her father.
“Look at the craftsmanship,” Dualayn said, picking up a second. “If I can figure out how to grow the crystals like the ancients di—”
Ōbhin’s sword whipped from his sheath and activated. Before Dualayn could react, the blade sliced through the antenna. The tip fell to the floor and shattered. Obsidian was the most brittle of the eight gems.
Proof of its corrupted nature, she thought. In that second dream, though, obsidian had seemed like the other gems until it had melted during the catastrophe.
“Why did you do that?” Dualayn roared. He glared at Ōbhin, but the easterner was already moving. His sword slashed across the shelves, cutting through the stockpile of antennae. Dualayn went to grab Ōbhin.
She seized the man’s wrist and yanked him back. “You are not going to butcher another person like you did me.”
“He’s going to give you the immortality speech,” Ōbhin growled. His blade sliced again. “He thinks you’ll find it acceptable to hop from body to body, living forever by stealing from others.”
Avena shook her head. The words didn’t shock her. Nothing about Dualayn would ever again. They only saddened her. How did we work so close these last few years since Chames’s death and completely misunderstand the other? Maybe we just wanted to see ourselves in the other, a mirror to our own desires? We’d interpreted everything through our own bias.
“This is a travesty,” groaned Dualayn. “These could be used for other purposes, Avena, and he’s destroying them. We could communicate across the world. Instead of taking months for messages to travel from here to Ala’i”—the capital of the Empire of Democh lay on the far side of the world—“it would be as fast as you could snap your fingers. Don’t you see what you’re allowing him to destroy? Progress!”
“Why would I want your ideas to spread?”
She watched as Ōbhin went through the storeroom, destroying every last one. Her mind drifted to other problems. She had to tell Joayne and Jilly about their loved ones’ deaths. Then there was the dread the Brotherhood’s meddling in Lothon’s politics churned in her. War loomed on the horizon . . .
Something Dualayn had said when she’d encountered him in the Crystal Sheriff Hall resonated in her mind. When she’d found him by the artificial mind, he’d asked if Bran was with her. It was like Dualayn had only cared about the youth. Not Fingers. Bran. She stared at Dualayn and realized he knew that Bran had been replaced by No One.
Her loathing swelled.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Three or four days after Avena had climbed down the ropes into the ruins, she pulled herself up and out of them. Her body ached. Her stomach rumbled. Food had grown tight on their journey out of the ruins. They’d had trouble retracing their steps. Dualayn’s plan of leaving markers behind had fallen apart after the carriage house.
They found the exit. Eventually. They made a few false starts, but when they rediscovered the large carriage house where they’d almost died, they’d found their easy trail back. Now, as Avena emerged into what felt like midday, summer sunlight, she whooped for joy.
She staggered and sank down onto the red grass, careful not to fall on her backpack and break the delicate antenna. Their camp was still here. The wagon was secure, the food they’d hung from a tree out of reach of predators looked unmolested. The one thing they feared was the horses, but they were still hobbled by the pool of water at the far end and looked healthy.
The red grass had not harmed them.
“I want to take a bath,” she groaned to Ōbhin. Grime coated his hair and streaked his face. His gloves looked more gray than black save in cracks at the joints where they had creased. He nodded to her as he stumbled out and fell to his knees.
One by one, they climbed up until only Dualayn remained. With grumbling, they hauled the old man out of the ruins. The scholar spilled over and panted on his back. He lay there for a few minutes before he stumbled off to the water, fell to his knees, and dunked his face into it.
Ōbhin stood by the hole as he pulled up the rope. He stared down into the dark. “I doubt he’ll be stopped by this,” he said, “but why make it easier for No One?”
Nobody objected.
In the dark, there hadn’t been much chance for a private conversation. She hadn’t had a chance to confront Dualayn on her suspicions of No One nor had she found the privacy to tell Ōbhin about her dreams. But most of all, she wanted to speak with her father. To let him know she didn’t hate him.
She glanced at her father who was sitting
