The Other Side of the Sky - Amie Kaufman Page 0,136

Daoman to tell him about the new stanza that had come to her in a vision,” Inshara says. “That girl really should be more careful about who guards her door.”

Elkisa turns her face away, jaw squaring, and I think she tries to tug her hand free of Inshara’s, but the other woman holds it too tightly.

“Did you help the cultists that first night?” I demand. “You were the only other person to get away from the camp—did you …” My stomach turns, queasiness replacing my rage.

Color floods Elkisa’s face, enough to show against the light brown of her skin. “Of course not. Inshara can’t control everything done in her name any more than Nimh can. She doesn’t want bloodshed, not if it can be avoided.”

“I don’t,” Inshara agrees. “I sent them there because the Lightbringer told me where you would be, when you would fall. If they’d managed to take you and Nimh, things would have gone very differently. I don’t want to hurt my people; I want to lead them.”

“You killed the closest thing Nimh ever had to a father.”

Elkisa’s hands ball into fists, but not before I can see the tremor in her fingers. “It had to be done!” she blurts, heat in her voice. “Daoman never would have let Nimh surrender herself peacefully.”

“So you stabbed him in the heart?”

Unbidden, an image of Elkisa the night of Inshara’s takeover looms before me. Wild-eyed, shaking, desperately trying to fight as her knife struck home at Daoman’s chest. Except she was going along with Inshara’s plan.

The only thing Elkisa was fighting was her own conscience.

“Nimh calls you her friend,” I say quietly. “And you betrayed her.”

The heat drains from Elkisa’s face and voice, and the look she turns on me is hollow and cold. “I’ve always been honest with Inshara,” she says quietly, her voice steel. “I love her, and she knows that. I love Nimh too. Insha accepts that what I do, I do for both of them. You know nothing about this world, or Nimh. You could never understand. This is what she wants, cloudlander—she is brave and strong and devoted, but she doesn’t want this life. She lives it because she must, because it was forced upon her. But if none of it’s true—when the Lightbringer infuses Inshara and she becomes the living divine, then Nimh can live any life she wants. She can do everything that has been denied her for so long.” There’s a determination about the way she speaks that catches me off guard. She believes what she’s saying.

Which means there’s nothing I can say that will convince her to stop.

Inshara seems to sense my moment of weakness and presses it, her voice hard now. “The way up to the sky, North.”

I clench my jaw. “No,” I whisper. “Even if I knew, I’d never tell you. Not even to get myself home.”

Inshara lets her breath out in a long, slow whisper of air. “One way or another, I will find a way to reach the cloudlands. If you won’t help me, then my best scholars will be only too happy to serve their goddess and be the ones to solve an ancient mystery.” She pauses, glancing at Elkisa. “Have the guards secure him. We have a journey ahead.”

Elkisa nods, no longer willing to meet my eyes.

“And then,” Inshara continues, “El, you can head up the search for Nimh. I don’t want to count on her showing up in the name of true love—not for this boy—and we’ll need her if we’re going to convince him to help.”

I’m held in place by the ice suddenly running through my veins.

If there was something I could tell Inshara about how to get up to the sky, in this moment, I’d do it, and damn the consequences.

Danger’s heading for Nimh in the form of her best friend, and she’s not going to suspect a thing until it’s far too late.

I’m moving before I can think, lunging to my left and between two guards. Behind me I hear the cat yowl, and then someone’s seizing my arm, spinning me around.

It’s Elkisa. Our eyes meet as she grabs the front of my shirt, yanking me in close. An instant later, pain explodes along my temple, and I catch a hazy glimpse of her shaking out her fist as I hit the ground, the world vanishing in a whirl of darkness.

THIRTY-ONE

NIMH

I swim up out of my thoughts, pulled by the realization that I’m no longer alone with the dead cultist boy.