I see my land below me. It passes underneath, as if I am flying. High ridges and misty, tangled valleys. Occasional fields, even rarer towns and cities. Darr is so green. I saw many lands as I traveled across High North and Senm on the way to Sky, and none of them seemed half as green as my beautiful Darr. Now I know why.
I slept again. When I woke, Sieh still had not returned, and it was night. I did not expect an answer from the Enefadeh anytime soon. I had probably annoyed them by my refusal to trudge obediently to death. If I were them, I would keep me waiting awhile.
Almost as soon as I woke, there was a knock at the door. When I went to answer, a bony-faced servant boy stood very straight and said, with painful formality, “Lady Yeine. I bear a message.”
Rubbing sleep from my eyes, I nodded permission for him to continue, and he said, “Your grandsire requests your presence.”
And suddenly I was very, very awake.
The audience chamber was empty this time. Just me and Dekarta. I knelt as I had that first afternoon, and laid my knife on the floor as was customary. I did not, to my own surprise, contemplate using it to kill him. Much as I hated him, his blood was not what I wanted.
“Well,” he said from his throne. His voice sounded softer than before, though that may have been a trick of perception on my part. “Have you enjoyed your week as an Arameri, Granddaughter?”
Had it been only a week?
“No, Grandfather,” I said. “I have not.”
He uttered a single laugh. “But now, perhaps, you understand us better. What do you think?”
This I had not expected. I looked at him from where I knelt, and wondered what he was up to.
“I think,” I said slowly, “the same thing that I thought before I came here: that the Arameri are evil. All that has changed is that now I believe most of you are mad as well.”
He grinned, wide and partially toothless. “Kinneth said much the same thing to me once. She included herself, however.”
I resisted the immediate urge to deny this. “Maybe that’s why she left. Maybe, if I stay long enough, I’ll become as evil and mad as the rest of you.”
“Maybe.” There was a curious gentleness in the way he said this that threw me. I could never read his face. Too many lines.
Silence rose between us for the next several breaths. It plateaued; stalled; broke.
“Tell me why you killed my mother,” I said.
His smile faded. “I am not one of the Enefadeh, Granddaughter. You cannot command answers from me.”
Heat washed through me, followed by cold. I rose slowly to my feet. “You loved her. If you had hated her, feared her, that I could have understood. But you loved her.”
He nodded. “I loved her.”
“She was crying when she died. We had to wet her eyelids to get them open—”
“You will be silent.”
In the empty chamber, his voice echoed. The edge of it sawed against my temper like a dull knife.
“And you love her
By this point I stood before Dekarta, bent down, my hands on the armrests of his chair. I was close enough to see the color of his eyes at last—a blue so pale that it was barely a color at all. He was a small, frail man now, whatever he’d been in his prime. If I blew hard, I might break his bones.
But I did not touch him. Dekarta did not deserve mere physical pain any more than he deserved a swift death.
“Such hate,” he whispered. Then, to my shock, he smiled. It looked like a death rictus. “Perhaps you are more like her than I thought.”
I stood up straight and told myself that I was not drawing back.
“Very well,” said Dekarta, as if we’d just exchanged pleasant small talk. “We should get down to business, Granddaughter. In seven days’ time, on the night of the fourteenth, there will be a ball here in Sky. It will be in your honor, to celebrate your elevation to heir, and some of the most noteworthy citizens of the world will join us as guests. Is there anyone in particular you’d like invited?”
I stared at him and heard an entirely different conversation.
His question hovered unanswered in the air between us.
“No,” I said softly. “No one.”
Dekarta inclined his head. “Then you are dismissed, Granddaughter.”
I stared at him for a long moment. I might never again have the chance to speak with him like this, in private. He had not told me why he’d killed my mother, but there were other secrets that he might be willing to divulge. He might even know the secret of how I might save myself.
But in the long silence I could think of no questions to ask, no way to get at those secrets. So at last I picked up my knife and walked out of the room, and tried not to feel a sense of shame as the guards closed the door behind me.
This turned out to be the start of a very bad night.
I stepped inside my apartment and found that I had visitors.
Kurue had appropriated the chair, where she sat with her fingers steepled, a hard look in her eyes. Sieh, perched on the edge of my parlor’s couch, sat with his knees drawn up and his eyes downcast. Zhakkarn stood sentinel near the window, impassive as ever. Nahadoth—
I felt his presence behind me an instant before he put his hand through my chest.
“Tell me,” he said into my ear, “why I should not kill you.”
I stared at the hand through my chest. There was no blood, and as far as I could tell there was no wound. I fumbled for his hand and found that it was immaterial, like a shadow. My fingers passed through his flesh and waggled in the translucence of his fist. It did not hurt exactly, but it felt as though I’d plunged my fingers into an icy stream. There was a deep, aching coldness between my breasts.
He could withdraw his hand and tear out my heart. He could leave his hand in place but make it tangible, and kill me as surely as if he’d punched through blood and bone.
“Nahadoth,” Kurue said in a warning tone.
Sieh jumped up and came to my side, his eyes wide and frightened. “Please don’t kill her. Please.”
“She’s one of them,” he hissed in my ear. His breath was cold as well, making the flesh of my neck prickle in goose bumps. “Just another Arameri convinced of her own superiority. We
