“We were never going to save them,” Serel said, softly, and the calm resignation in his voice twisted a knife within me.
“We could have tried,” another man said, and Serel answered, “She did try.”
Filias shook his head, jaw set. “Trying would not have been enough.”
Gods. That was the truth. Trying was not enough.
I had to force the words up my throat.
“When I told you we would save them, I believed it. I wanted to believe it.” I pressed my hand to my heart, and for a moment, my lips parted and no sounds came out.
Everything was too close to the surface. Too raw. And this terrified me, because I lived my life carefully guarding what I presented to the world.
“Those lives,” I choked out, “are my family just as much as they are yours. There is nothing I wouldn’t have sacrificed to save them. Nothing. Because they deserved better. They deserved so much better.”
The crowd had gone silent. They stared at me expectantly, as if waiting for me to answer for my mistakes or tell them what we would do next. Both their trust and their disappointment weighed just as heavily.
I was dizzy. And before I realized what I was doing, I was on my knees.
“I have nothing to say for myself,” I said. “I wish that I could tell you that I had a secret plan or enough power to will this away. But the truth is, I have no performances left. No tricks. No magic shows. No red dresses. Not even promises. Their lifespan is too short. And I know that many of you likely look at me and see a Nyzrenese witch. That is fair. Perhaps we have nothing in common but the name of the man who chained us.” I let out a humorless scoff. “What a thing to bind us. I’d rather that we be tied together by a shared dream for the future rather than a shared terrible past. And I so wanted to give us that future. I still want to give us that future. But…”
My throat closed, but perhaps they heard the words I couldn’t say:
But I don’t know how.
My palms were pressed to the ground. Here, there weren’t even cobblestones. Instead the road was simply made from earth packed down beneath thousands of boot soles and cart wheels, pounded down so many times that it was nearly stone.
I saw a pair of shoes enter my vision. I looked up to see Riasha before me, lowering to her knees. Tears streaked her weathered cheeks, but her voice was steady when she asked, “Do you know how to sing the Drifting Songs?”
I shook my head, unable to speak. I wished my answer was different. The Drifting Songs were an intricate series of hymns sung at funerals. But only priests knew all the words, and we had none in our dwindling village of escapees. Perhaps once, long ago, I had heard them sung. But it was a part of my Nyzrenese blood that had been lost forever. One of the countless, priceless things that the Threllians had taken away from us — even the ability to mourn.
Riasha pressed her palms to the earth, her hands settling on either side of mine.
“You must have been so young when we all fell. A child raised in the remnants of nations, like so many. But it is good to root ourselves in what we once were. The Drifting Songs were not just Nyzrenese, you know. All of our gods lived beneath the earth, and we all sang our versions of the Drifting Songs to send our dead to them.”
Then Riasha opened her mouth and began to sing. Her voice was raspy and unpracticed, words off-key, and yet they were the most beautiful thing I had ever heard.
In the beginning, you tethered us.
Our feet are tied to your earth,
Our food borne of your gifts,
Our lives lived ‘neath your shelter.
I have nothing to give you but a weary soul.
I have nothing to give you but imperfection.
Let it be enough.
I felt a hand fall over mine on my left side. Then my right. I didn’t have to look — couldn’t, even if I wanted to, because my vision was so blurred from unfallen tears. Max was kneeling beside me on one side, fingers intertwined with mine, and Serel on the other. And I didn’t need to look up to know that the others were there, too, all pressing their hands to the earth, the world gone silent except for Riasha’s voice singing our lost songs.
Oh, my gods who flourish beneath our feet,
How very far I have wandered.
I have searched for you in my victories and my mistakes
In my love and my hatred.
I have crossed seas and mountains.
I am so very far from home.
But let me return to you.
My fingers curled, handfuls of dirt ground against my palm. I could almost feel them — feel something, even if it was not the gods. Perhaps there was something deeper still that bound us all, not in the aspirational hope of the sky, but the grounding constance of the earth.
Beneath us, this unfamiliar land swallowed up our grief.
I had nothing to give them but my hope.
But gods, let it be enough. Let it be enough.
I have nothing to give you but my life, Riasha sang.
I have nothing to give you but scars and heartbreak.
But let me return to you.
I have nothing to give you but my love and piety.
But let me return to you.
Let it be enough.
Chapter Seventy-Four
Max
Tisaanah’s eyes were red-rimmed by the time we left the apartments. Night had fallen. We would need to return to the Towers at some point — we now had nowhere else to go. But neither of us were in a rush to get there, so we walked back through the city, taking in the silence of the winter night.
The
