Mehmet’s trying to convince them to launch an attack on Angel Crater. Another khavan is stuck on the theological implications of me. Jazala says little, though I strain for her quiet voice amongst all the rest.
No one’s talking about the most important thing. No one’s talking about the salt.
I can’t stand it anymore. Guards—two of Mehmet’s baradari and two eilendi from the small but martial Akstar school—block the doorway.
They never learned how to deal with someone like me.
I leap for the wall next to the meeting chamber’s entrance. A flicker of movement on my periphery as the guards startle, then I’m misting through the rock, my particles finding miniscule gaps to scrape through.
In the half-light of this neither-here-nor-there state, I brush across a sparkling something that tingles through me.
The pattern of the world? A Seeing, here?
Then I’m through on the other side, gathering myself together. There’s no time for cosmetic adjustments, for shading eyes from faceted dark to human brown, for forcing my voice low and mellow. It emerges thin and high and buzzed.
“Gather seven Circles, go to the salt valley. Cast a Seeing and mend the rift between worlds. The demons are rising again.”
They’re on their feet, Mehmet with a knife in his hand he’s not supposed to have, half the khavanum mouthing incantations.
An Akstar eilendi rolls through the doorway, hand blurring. Poison-tipped needles hurtle through the air. I half-turn, the left side of my body vaporizes, the needles pass harmlessly through.
“Use the Raksharan prayers and a nine-strong diamonded pattern, nested. The strings are out of alignment. Containment might be all you can do.”
Eilendi hiss, shock and anger registering on their faces. A baradari charges me, slashes his blade at my face, to stop the spill of my words. I wrap my wings around his arms, holding him in place. Chill spreads into his skin and muscles and veins.
Satisfaction flickers in my heart. For a moment, it’s so natural to have and use this power. The next, my stomach lurches, sickened.
My wings whip back, tuck around my body like armor.
“Leave the crater to Kato Vorsok and Daral Shaldur,” I continue. “The eilendi are needed at the salt.”
They’re all staring at me, frozen still. The baradari I touched stumbles, and Mehmet steadies him with a hand on his shoulder. The man trembles, head down, confused.
“How do you know such things?” breathes Jazala. “How do you know the ways of the eilendi?”
You taught them to me. But the words are lumps in my throat. I cannot stand there and tell them what I was and have them see what I’ve become. I hate my long pale hands and the ever-whispering black wings. I hate my buzzing voice that betrays me when I chant the prayers, and I hate the weight trailing from my shoulders as I dance the Rakayas.
It was different, back in Highwind, when I was so desperate to be known. Here, I’m glad that Toro is hundreds of miles away and Kato keeps my secret.
I am ashamed.
Mehmet scoffs. “Isn’t it obvious? That thing ingested the minds and souls of all the people who’ve been lost to us. All the ones who were kidnapped by Highwind. All the eilendi who disappeared.”
They look at me, waiting.
I lift my chin, and let the cloak part of me take over, protecting me from hurt. Thin and cold is my own voice, saying, “That is so.”
I wake to pain.
That, in and of itself, is not unusual.
I’m chained to the wall of some building, an awning over my head. My limbs feel heavy and my eyelids like sandpaper. I recognize the feeling.
It’s the same as after the injection Sera gave me, which kept my spiders from transforming and freeing me.
No, not quite the same. Spiders still move slowly through my body, drifting in blood, clinging to bone. They’re being careful, gathering strength, setting up ambushes and traps for the enemy in my bloodstream.
They’ve learned to fight.
The spiders are adaptable. The Director doesn’t understand that. A smile twitches my lips, but the effort of it hurts my face.
I squint at the crumbling, broken landscape outside the shade. Brown cliffs form a bow shape in front of me. Rubber tubing and small machinery litter the damp ground. Wide track marks are sunken deep into soil saturated with holy water.
Malaki Crater. I’m looking at the remnants of the Angel Eye Lake.
I made it here. Did Daral?
Three Highwind soldiers walk by, sloshing through puddles, guarding a group of eerie men bent double under heavy loads. The soldiers are unknown, but I can name every one of the eerie men: Bound, Gash, Sleek, Jaws. I wince, expecting them all to fall writhing to the ground, but they don’t.
The water of the punctured lake doesn’t zap them or eat their flesh or rise up in tentacles and strangle them.
Why doesn’t Taurin defend His holy places? I mentally catalog all of Taurin’s failings: the misconception that for centuries had us fighting the golems instead of figuring out how to lead them, the unpunished kidnapping of his eilendi, picking me to be his Chosen.
Flutter’s transformation, Sera’s betrayal.
And still, even after all this, here I am at this place. Doing his will again. I feel hounded, as if I’ve been driven on to a narrow path with a hunter fast on my heels. That whatever I do is already known by my pursuer, one I cannot outrun or outwit. That someone knows me better than myself, to know what I will do before I do it myself.
Or perhaps this is what destiny feels like when you’re not on parade, but in the hands of the enemy.
“Good, he’s awake.” Soldiers crowd under the awning, grab my arms, unshackle me from the wall. They half-drag, half-carry me into the brightness. I squint, eyes watering. One of the soldiers has pity on me, wipes a sweat-stained cloth across my cheeks, then blindfolds me.
My spiders slip-slide across my eyes, pinprick along my ears and skin. My senses sharpen. The soldiers’
