Lin blood for the tree and take a piece of its wood in return. Shaiyung will be able to leave the walls, and to find you if you’re ever in need.”
“All right.” Xinai drew her knife, tested the edge with her thumb; it wanted honing but would serve for the moment. She touched a young tendril that hadn’t reached the ground and glanced a question at Selei. The old woman nodded.
“That will do.”
She pushed back her sleeve and nicked the smaller vein running down her left thumb—the first mercenary witch she’d met in the north had laughed her out of the habit of taking blood from her palm. Pressure, then the flash of pain, then beads of blood welling black in the darkness. She tilted her arm, let the drops trace a dark rivulet into her palm.
Harder to pierce the tree’s skin, and by the time she’d sawed through the tendril tip the last of the edge was gone from her blade. Sap smeared sticky on steel. She pressed her palm against the root, mingling her blood with the tree’s.
Shaiyung sighed like wind in the reeds.
“Is that all?” Xinai’s bloody hand tightened around the sliver of banyan root.
Selei smiled. “Welcome to the Ki Dai, child.”
Part II
Downpour
Chapter 9
On her eighth day in Symir, Isyllt woke in the ash-gray dawn to thunder and the hiss and rattle of rain on the leaves.
That morning the normally quiet neighborhood echoed with splashes and laughter as children scrambled outside to play in the puddles. Adults showed more restraint, but many descended their steps and lifted their faces to the rain. Marat’s gray scarf was spotted with damp as she laid out breakfast dishes.
After the meal Zhirin went to the temple district for her devotions and Isyllt and Adam went with her. They’d spent the last two days sorting out arrangements for the supply ship; Isyllt thought they’d earned another day’s vacation. Vasilios—whose discomfort in the increased damp was plain to see—retired to his study.
The sky hung low and dark over the city, the rain gentle but steady. Despite the umbrella she carried, the hems of Isyllt’s trousers were sopping by the time they crossed the first bridge, and the back of her shirt damp. The canals had already risen, flowing faster and cleaner. Tiny wooden boats and garlands of flowers rushed toward the bay, the blossoms filling the air with their bruised-wet sweetness. Mask-sellers hawked their wares in the streets, cheap last-minute choices nothing like the elaborate creations she’d seen in shops.
The temple district was in the southern half of Jadewater, facing Lioncourt across the wide expanse of water called the Floating Garden. Today the Garden swarmed with barges and workers. The smell of incense mingled with the rain, and coils of smoke rose from the domed and pillared churches.
Adam lifted his head as they neared the temples, nostrils flaring in the shadow of his hood. “Xinai is here,” he said when she cocked a brow. “I’m going to look for her. I’m not feeling especially pious today anyway.”
Isyllt nodded and he melted into the eddying crowds. Zhirin watched him go out of the corner of her eye.
“Is he as dangerous as he looks?” the girl asked quietly.
“I hope so. It’s what I’m paying him for.” She tilted her head. “Are you fond of dangerous men?”
Zhirin blushed. “Only Jabbor. And it’s not the danger, so much as his…”
Isyllt swallowed several teasing responses. “His passion? His conviction?”
“Yes. Ever since I met him I’ve wanted to be…more. Cleverer, more useful. I want to help. Do you know what I mean?”
“All too well.” She smiled and shook her head at Zhirin’s curious glance. “But that’s over now,” she lied. She looked away, turned her eyes toward the churches instead.
A half-dozen or so temples stood in a wide horseshoe around a fountained courtyard. Some she recognized—the Ninayan sea lady Mariah, the Assari Sun King, Selafai’s dreaming saint Serebus—others not. In the center of the half-circle rose a tall, domed cathedral of blue-green marble. Vines trailed from high eyelet windows, spreading wild and green across the walls. Water flowed down either side of the wide steps and disappeared below them, perhaps back into the canals from which it came. It was toward this temple that Zhirin led them.
“Whose house is this?” Isyllt asked.
“The River Mother’s. The Mir’s.”
They climbed the rain-slick steps and left their dripping umbrellas and mud-grimed shoes on a rack in the care of a young acolyte. The floor was cold underfoot.
Inside was nearly as damp as the