The Other Side of the Sky - Amie Kaufman Page 0,148
finger toward me.
“Insha,” Jezara says softly.
“Do you not see what I’ve done?” Inshara pleads, her eyes lighting, her gaze desperate. “I’ve made them choose me, Mother, these people and this faith. I’ve made them choose us both.”
“They didn’t choose you,” Jezara replies quietly. “They’re afraid of you. You mistake terror for loyalty.”
“No. Don’t you see?” Inshara whispers, stretching a hand back toward the priests and guards still raggedly arrayed around her. “I’ve made them love me.”
“Insha,” Jezara says, her voice soft. “I know who you are. I am begging you now—stop this. You still have my love. You don’t need theirs.”
Inshara’s face flickers, something softer responding to her mother’s voice. Then her expression hardens. “I have his love,” Inshara blurts, clutching at her chest—no, at the chrono she wears strung on a necklace that hangs there. “The Lightbringer’s. And when I am ready, he will manifest his power in me.”
“You hear his voice from that?” Jezara’s voice is high with surprise. “From that necklace I gave you?”
Inshara cradles it in both hands, curling over it like she’s protecting something precious. “From as early as I can remember.”
Realization dawns like a cold sweat, prickling all over. Unable to resist, my hand slides down my arm to touch my own chrono. If I’d known that the chrono was where Inshara was hearing that voice … But who could be speaking to her through it?
“It can’t be,” Jezara mutters, confusion swamping her realization. “He was banished. He never spoke to me. I gave up on him. I presumed …”
Her head lifts, eyes finding Techeki’s. The Master of Spectacle is watching her with a grief-stricken expression.
“Forgive me, Divine One,” he whispers. “I feared you would waste your life trying to follow him.”
“You found a way to send him back to the sky?” Jezara’s voice stretches into a wail. Her eyes bright with tears, she takes a step forward. “I thought—I thought he chose to abandon me. That chronometer was all I had, and it never worked. That’s why I gave it to—”
Inshara’s voice cuts across her mother’s. “What are you talking about?” she demands.
Jezara passes a shaking hand over her eyes. “Oh, child—that voice you hear. It doesn’t belong to a god, just a man. I made that necklace from a device your father gave me before we were separated. He must have found a way to get it working, but only after I gave it to you.”
Inshara’s hand closes around the chrono amulet. Her face has gone still, its color draining, her eyes flat and hard. “You lie,” she whispers.
“Did he never ask about me?” Jezara asks, taking another step toward her daughter, half lifting a hand in entreaty. “Never ask to speak with me?”
Inshara stands stock-still, one hand curled into a white-knuckled fist around the chrono. “I … I wanted to keep him for myself,” she whispers. “I was only a child when I told him you were dead.”
Jezara’s eyes widen. “You what? Insha—”
“This is all some trick!” Inshara blurts, her eyes filling with tears. “He is divine. A god. The Lightbringer. He told me that this world should burn… .”
Her mother chokes back a sob. “Oh, Insha … come home, my dear.” She lifts her arms in an offered embrace as Inshara stares at her. “You and I have so much to talk about. I wish—”
With a scream, Inshara stoops to retrieve her spear. In one motion she drives it home with a grunt of rage and effort. Jezara’s voice cuts out as she stares down at the haft of the spear protruding from her chest.
For an instant, no one moves. No one speaks. Horror holds us all captive—even Jezara’s daughter, who stares at her mother’s face, her eyes round.
Then a scream rises up as if from the ground itself. It’s a heartbeat before I realize where the sound is coming from:
Nimh.
The figure struggling inside the dense tangle of mist gives a jerk and curls in on itself—then, in a wave of force that knocks me clean off my feet, the mist explodes.
I roll down half a flight of steps as I hit the stone, my battered head aching, my palms scraped raw. With an effort, I manage to get my dazzled eyes to focus again. I can’t see what’s happening up above, but beyond the terrace … My breath catches.
Sweeping like a wave, the spellfire lights are coming back on again. Dazed, I look past the city to the river—and then drop to my hands and knees in shock.