myself in that position. I am no use to anyone in a dungeon.”
“Is that why you told Inshara she was right, that she could use Nimh’s crown to get to the cloudlands?” I demand. “You know what she’ll do up there.”
“She already knew she was right,” he replies. “I don’t know how she knew—you heard her; she claims the Lightbringer told her—but denying the truth would only have proven to her she couldn’t trust me. So I confirmed what she already knew, and stayed in the game a little longer.”
“And your next move is to come see me,” I say slowly. I’m scrambling to collect myself—of all the possibilities I imagined, Techeki telling me he’s my ally just wasn’t one.
“My next move was to come and see you,” he agrees. “Sit up, and I’ll tell you why. And drink—you have been unconscious for nearly a full day.”
Dazed, I let him take my hand, and I swing my legs off the couch it turns out I’m lying on. I’ve been here before—it’s the same room I waited in when I first came to the temple. Only one thing has changed—the statue of Nimh I wanted to shout a million questions at has been smashed from the ankles up, and it lies in piles of rubble on the carpet.
“Go on,” I say to Techeki, as the cat jumps up onto the newly vacated place on the couch beside me. The Master of Spectacle nods politely to the cat, and reaches down to produce a large cup of water from the ground near my feet.
“I’m here,” he says quietly, “because I know more than I have told her. I’ve seen the crown used to send a man to the sky. I have seen a cloudlander return to Alciel.”
Hearing the name of my home on his lips steals my breath, and I nearly choke on my water. “You’ve what?”
“It was years ago, when Jezara was … evicted from the temple,” he replies quietly. “I lacked the influence then that I have now. What I could do to serve her was keep her cloudlander from getting himself killed, as someone almost certainly would have done once Jezara’s banishment was complete.”
“Her cloudlander?” I echo, but an instant later, the memory arrives.
Jezara knew I was from Alciel when she met me. My speech, my manner must have given me away—but that could only happen if she knew what to look for.
Are you so arrogant as to think that you’re the only cloudlander ever to have come to our world?
“When she decided to take a lover, she didn’t do it by halves,” Techeki says, dry. “But to the point, he used the crown to return home—I saw it myself.”
“How?”
“The cloudlander used an amulet I provided to him. It came—which is to say I stole it—from the relic stores in the archives. It was rumored to have once belonged to a Sentinel.”
“Sentinels aren’t real,” I point out. “Everybody says they’re a myth. Matias offered to get me a book of bedtime stories for children when I asked about them.”
“And no doubt he was right that there is no other trace,” he agrees. “But the amulet was a way to the sky, and the Sentinels were said to guard the passage between worlds. I imagine that’s how the myth came to be attached to it. The cloudlander told me he was sure the crown was the key, and so I … borrowed it for him. He broke the amulet against it, and in a moment, he was simply gone, leaving only the crown behind.”
My heart stutters with hope. “The amulet, what was it?”
“I cannot say, but it was believed to contain the blood of an ancient king. I cannot say what made it work.”
I feel a bit sick as realization overtakes me. “He broke it, you said—you don’t have another one, do you?”
“I do not.”
I try to ignore the sick feeling in my gut, turning his words over for any hint of a clue as to what really happened. The blood of an ancient king. Could he be talking about a … a DNA lock?
Nimh’s scroll certainly unlocked itself when touched by blood. Could the crown be the same?
I repeat the words again in my head.
The blood of an ancient king.
Slowly, the barest seed of an idea starting to take root, I say, “Nimh told me once that you haven’t had kings here for a long time … since before the Ascension—the Exodus?”
Techeki raises an eyebrow at me. “Around that