he looked up, seeing the entire world through a curtain of tiny droplets that fell from the darkness above.
“What is that?” he asked Webb, and Webb looked at him as though he were an idiot.
“Rain. First fall in months.”
It’s real, Christian thought, looking around him, seeing more new sights: the long straight street, not lined with cobbles but simply a vat of mud. Several beasts were hitched in front of a nearby structure, their long tails swishing, and Christian realized that these must be horses. The structure was lit with bright lights, but above it stretched a dark canvas: the sky. In all of Christian’s imaginings, the sky had been blue, but now it was a swirling black.
“Here,” Webb said, and offered him a tiny purse. “Take it.”
Unable to think of a reason not to, Christian took the purse and shoved it into his pocket.
“The boss said to get you gone from here,” Webb said. “Go on.”
“Where do I go?”
“How the fuck should I know? Just get gone.”
Christian stepped down from the stoop, wandering forward. After a few steps, he stopped, his legs shaking beneath him. He meant to turn around, to ask again where he should go, but Webb must have sensed it coming, because Christian found the door slammed in his face.
He turned and began wandering, unsure of his direction, his eyes drinking in the wide world as though it were water. The rain sprinkled lightly on Christian’s face, and he thought that nothing had ever felt so good. So clean.
But all the buildings had strange, oblong openings that allowed him to see through the walls, and as he walked he saw men drinking, women with tight bodices showing off their wares, brutes fighting each other. For a few minutes Christian wondered whether topside had anything new to show him at all. Then he rounded a corner and emerged onto a street wider than anything he could ever have imagined, even in his dreams. Every inch seemed to be lined with banners and awnings and windows, and an ocean of movement lay before him: people and horses, dogs and wagons, all of it gleaming with glass and color and torchlight. In that moment it became too much, and Christian was forced to close his eyes, seeking the cool dark.
Where do I go? he thought helplessly. Arlen Thorne wanted him dead, and Arlen Thorne’s witch was in the Keep . . . in the Keep, where Christian had to go, if he meant to find Maura. He closed his eyes and saw her lying on the bed, her bright smile dulled with poppy; saw Mrs. Evans, her eyes gleaming with coin; saw boys without number, their mouths wide in agony as they died in the ring. All of them, none of them, swept away into the past. What happened next would depend entirely upon Christian. He would have to make a choice, and then live with the consequences.
Do not waste it.
The rain abruptly ceased, leaving the air damp and clear. Looking upward, Christian saw tiny pinpricks of light above his head. Stars . . . he had heard of them, but had not pictured them this way at all: bright but limited, their brilliance trapped in black night.
That was me, Christian thought, staring up at the twinkling points. But what will I be now, in the light?
The stars did not answer.
Chapter 17
THE EDGE ON THE BLADE
When we speak of Queen Elyssa, we never talk about Queen Arla. The relationship with the mother undoubtedly lies at the heart of the Shipper Queen’s destiny, yet no one wishes to examine that relationship. Are we lazy? No, we are unwilling . . . for Queen Arla had her own mother, and that mother her own as well. If the Raleigh Dynasty was a pyramid, building toward the Glynn Queen, then there was plenty of rotten stone as the ziggurat ascended.
—The Raleighs: A Comprehensive Analysis, Sofie Hawkins and Violet Fisher
Elyssa was terrified.
She sat on the low sofa outside her mother’s chamber, crossing and uncrossing her feet. It had taken more than a week for her mother to summon her, and in that time Elyssa had felt like nothing so much as a hermit hiding in her room, avoiding even her guards. They had all seen her naked, but that was only part of it. They had seen her in a moment of weakness, one that would never be forgotten. Each day that her mother’s summons did not come only served to underline Elyssa’s