stars, the …”
I press the point of the spear in again, and the rant turns into a gurgle. “She sent her people up the river—you saw this boat.” When the boy says nothing, glaring at me, I let my breath out slowly. “Why have you come to wait for me?”
“I am a messenger, but an arm of my goddess’s reach—”
“What is your message?” My voice cuts across his, surprising even me—ordinarily, such ceremony is my whole life. But now I have no patience for it.
The boy blinks at me, and then smiles slowly as his eyes unfocus and his gaze drifts upward. When he speaks again, his voice is different—higher, smoother, familiar somehow. “Sister,” he recites, “I bear you no ill will, for who alive can know the weight you carry but I? Let us not war against each other but come together to help the people and land we love so much.”
I recognize the familiar note in his voice. He sounds almost exactly like Inshara, his boy’s voice carrying her higher one without cracking or bending under the tension.
“Come back to me,” the boy continues. “Come home before the Vigil of the Rising, and I promise no one will harm you. Come home, and I will not harm your cloudlander. He cares for you very much, sister. Come home, and he is yours.”
I cannot speak, cannot move. The boy’s eyes roll back into place and he looks up at me, all at once drained and alight. I keep the spear where it is, though in this moment I could not stop him were he to reach up and wrest it from me.
Inshara has North.
Half a dozen images flicker through my mind, each more horrible than the last. North languishing in a cell, despairing of ever seeing his home again. North being tortured for information on my whereabouts. North, broken and bleeding somewhere, delirious with the approach of death, whispering about this boat and this place and the kiss we did not share, with his dying breath.
She could have killed him, rendering me powerless to carry out my destiny, but instead she keeps him. She knows how valuable he is.
He cares for you very much… .
North is still here.
I can’t help the trickle of relief that breathes life back into my hands, giving them strength again. I would rather see him safe with his people than held by my enemies, but … now I might see him one more time.
Hating myself for the flicker of happiness that thought brings, I jerk my thoughts away and focus on the boy. Inshara could have sent a whole team of agents here to kill me or capture me if she knew I would be here alone and unprotected—instead, she sent one boy, unthreatening, easily overpowered.
I shift my weight, sliding one foot closer to the boy, and he writhes, body twisting away from me as if I were surrounded by some invisible force.
Not only does she want me alive, she’s clearly given her messenger instructions not to touch me.
Why?
Does she want to strip me of my divinity publicly? To put on a show for my people, rip their faith away in such a manner that it could not be denied?
I gesture with the spear. “Move—put your back to that tree there. You are going to answer my questions.”
The boy’s eyes slide toward the place I’ve indicated, and then back. “The gods are dead,” he whispers, gazing at me with those glittering eyes. They hold me, so much so that I only dimly register movement at his side. “May the one god live forever… .”
Something flashes in the firelight, and my eyes make out the edge of a blade. Before I can so much as leap back in anticipation of an attack, the boy holds the knife to his own chin, his eyes still on mine.
“Wait!” My voice cracks with urgency and horror as I toss my spear aside. “Don’t—”
Another flash of the blade, and then it clatters to the stone. The eyes widen, blood falling in an inky curtain across the neck, spraying across my robe, my arms, pattering against my skin like a warm, wet rain.
I drop to my knees, caught between the need to act and the knowledge that I can’t, my whole body freezing. I sense the invisible mist in the air shifting, all coiled power and no finesse—I could use it to crush someone into dust, but not to heal the slightest scrape.
The boy’s breath gurgles, the blood still coming,