During those nights, those dreams, I saw through a thousand eyes. Bakers, blacksmiths, scholars, kings— ordinary and extraordinary, I lived their lives every night. But as with all dreams, I now remember only the most special.
In one, I see a darkened, empty room. There is almost no furniture. An old table. A messy, half-ragged pile of bedding in one corner. A marble beside the bedding. No, not a marble; a tiny, mostly blue globe, its nearer face a mosaic of brown and white. I know whose room this is.
“Shhh,” says a new voice, and abruptly there are people in the room. A slight figure, half-draped across the lap of another body that is larger. And darker. “Shhh. Shall I tell you a story?”
“Mmm,” says the smaller one. A child. “Yes. More beautiful lies, Papa, please.”
“Now, now. Children are not so cynical. Be a proper child, or you will never grow big and strong like me.”
“I will never be like you, Papa. That is one of your favorite lies.”
I see tousled brown hair. A hand strokes it, long-fingered and graceful. The father? “I have watched you grow these long ages. In ten thousand years, a hundred thousand…”
“And will my sun-bright father open his arms when I have grown so great, and welcome me to his side?”
A sigh. “If he is lonely enough, he might.”
“I don’t want him!” Fitfully, the child moves away from the stroking hand and looks up. His eyes reflect the light like those of some nocturnal beast. “I will never betray you, Papa. Never!”
“Shhh.” The father bends, laying a gentle kiss on the child’s forehead. “I know.”
And the child flings himself forward then, burying his face in soft darkness, weeping. The father holds him, rocking him gently, and begins to sing. In his voice I hear echoes of every mother who has ever comforted her child in the small hours, and every father who has ever whispered hopes into an infant’s ear. I do not understand the pain I perceive, wrapped around both of them like chains, but I can tell that love is their defense against it.
It is a private moment; I am an intruder. I loosen invisible fingers, and let this dream slip through them and away.
I felt the poor sleep keenly when I dragged myself awake well into the next day. The inside of my head felt muddy, congealed. I sat on the edge of the bed with my knees drawn up, gazing through the windows at a bright, clear noon sky and thinking,
I am ashamed to admit that this litany went on for some time. The seriousness of my situation had not sunk in before; impending death had taken second place to Darr’s jeopardy and a celestial conspiracy. But now I had no one yanking on my soul to distract me, and all I could think of was death. I was not yet twenty years old. I had never been in love. I had not mastered the nine forms of the knife. I had never—gods. I had never really
Because if the Arameri did not kill me, I had no illusions about the Enefadeh. I was the sheath for the sword they hoped to draw against Itempas, their sole means of escape. If the succession ceremony was postponed, or if by some miracle I succeeded in becoming Dekarta’s heir, I was certain the Enefadeh would simply kill me. Clearly, unlike other Arameri, I had no protection against harm by them; doubtless that was one of the alterations they had applied to my blood sigil. And killing me might be the easiest way for them to free Enefa’s soul with minimal harm. Sieh might mourn the necessity of my death, but no one else in Sky would.
So I lay on the bed and trembled and wept and might have continued to do so for the rest of the day—one- sixth of my remaining life—if there had not come a knock at the door.
That pulled me back to myself, more or less. I was still wearing the clothes I’d slept in from the day before; my hair was mussed; my face was puffy and my eyes red. I hadn’t bathed. I opened the door a crack to see T’vril, to my great dismay, with a tray of food in one hand.
“Greetings, Cousin—” He paused, took a second look at me, and scowled. “What in demons happened to you?”
“N-nothing,” I mumbled, then tried to close the door. He slapped it open with his free hand, pushing me back and stepping inside. I would have protested, but the words died in my throat as he looked me up and down with an expression that would have made my grandmother proud.
“You’re letting them win, aren’t you?” he asked.
I think my mouth might have dropped open. He sighed. “Sit down.”
I closed my mouth. “How do you—”
“I know nearly everything that happens in this place, Yeine. The upcoming ball, for example, and what will happen afterward. Halfbloods usually aren’t told, but I have connections.” He gently took me by the shoulders. “You’ve found out, too, I suspect, which is why you’re sitting here going to rot.”
On another occasion I would have been pleased that he’d finally called me by my name. Now I shook my head dumbly and rubbed my temples where a weary ache had settled. “T’vril, you don’t—”
“Sit
“I came because they told me you hadn’t ordered breakfast or a midday meal, and I thought you might be starving yourself again.” Sitting me and the tray down, he picked up a dish of some sort of sectioned fruit, speared a piece on a fork, and thrust this at my face until I ate it. “You seemed a sensible girl when you first came here. Gods know this place has a way of knocking the sense out of a person, but I never expected you to yield so easily. Aren’t you a warrior, or something like that? The rumors have you swinging through trees half-naked with a spear.”
I glared at him, affront cutting through my muddle. “That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“So you’re not dead yet. Good.” He took my chin between his fingers, peering into my eyes. “And they haven’t defeated you yet. Do you understand?”
I jerked away from him, clinging to my anger. It was better than despair, if just as useless. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. My people… I came here to help them, and instead they’re in
“Yes, so I’ve heard. You do realize that both Relad and Scimina are consummate liars, don’t you? Nothing you’ve done caused this. Scimina’s plans were set in motion long before you ever arrived in Sky. That’s how this family does things.” He held a hunk of cheese to my mouth. I had to bite off a piece, chew it, and swallow just to get his hand out of the way.
“If that’s—” He pushed more fruit at me; I batted the fork aside and the fruit flew off somewhere near my bookcases. “If that’s true, then you know there’s nothing I can do! Darr’s enemies are preparing to attack. My land is weak; we can’t fight off one army, let alone however many are gathering against us!”
He nodded, sober, and held up a new chunk of fruit for me. “That sounds like Relad. Scimina is usually more subtle. But it could be either of them, frankly. Dekarta hasn’t given them much time to work, and they both get clumsy under pressure.”
The fruit tasted like salt in my mouth. “Then tell me—” I blinked back tears. “What am I supposed to do, T’vril? You say I’m letting them win, but
T’vril set down the dish and took my hands, leaning forward. I realized suddenly that his eyes were green, though a deeper shade than my own. I had never before considered the fact that we were relatives. So few of the Arameri felt human to me, much less like family.
“You fight,” he said, his voice low and intent. His hands gripped my own fiercely enough to hurt. “You fight in whatever way you can.”
It might have been the strength of his grip, or the urgency of his voice, but abruptly I realized something. “You want to be heir yourself, don’t you?”
He blinked in surprise, and then a rueful smile crossed his face. “No,” he said. “Not really. No one would want
