The Other Side of the Sky - Amie Kaufman Page 0,154

robes—so plain I can’t remember what color they were, only that he was nearly indistinguishable from the texts he guarded in his archives. Now he’s in a coat of dark turquoise velvet, gold braiding decorating the shoulders and running down his arms. Around his neck, he has necklace after necklace slung one atop the other, so that most of his chest is a mass of gleaming beads that clicks and shifts when he moves.

“Y-You are the Fisher King?” I blurt.

Matias, Master of Archives, flashes me a grim smile. “Sometimes. I am always a protector of ancient secrets, cloudlander. Nimhara called me Master of Archives, charged me with protecting the temple’s written words. The riverstriders call me Fisher King, keeper of their stories.”

I tangle my fingers in the cat’s fur, still uncertain why he’s chosen this moment to find me—surrounded by the rubble, still reeling from having lost Nimh and my home in one terrible instant.

Matias stoops, twitching one velvet sleeve back. “You, no doubt, will call me Sentinel, guardian of the secret ways between the worlds.”

With a quiet incantation, he passes his other hand across his outstretched arm—a spot of black appears, and then, like ink dropped into water, it spreads to reveal an image tattooed on his palm: the image of a staring eye ringed by two circles. The same symbol marked on the secret passageway from the temple archives that Nimh and I used to escape together the night Inshara killed the high priest and took hold of this place.

It was there the whole time—if only Nimh or I had known what that symbol meant.

Sentinel.

Matias’s eyes are soft and sympathetic, but beneath that warmth I can see a glint of something harder, sterner. “We will get her back, cloudlander,” he tells me. “And save your people too.”

I swallow hard and turn away, my heart too full of conflicting emotions. On the horizon are the Lovers, Miella and Danna, locked in their eternal dance as they vanish into the dawn. Above them, no more than an inky spot in the still lightening sky, is the underside of Alciel.

How many times since falling did I look up and wonder if I’d ever get home? Now the question eats at me in a way it never has before, because Nimh is up there, and she’s all alone with a woman twisted into monstrosity who wants her dead, who wants us all dead. I can only pray that I have enough time.

Time to stop Inshara. Time to find a way between worlds. Time to find a way back to Nimh.

Hold on, Nimh. The thought burns in me like a beacon—perhaps if I wish it hard enough, she might feel it, might know she isn’t as alone as she seems. Hold on … I’m coming.

SOMEWHERE ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SKY....

The transit conductor sighed, glanced down at his chrono, and then released the hand brake, allowing the current flowing through the city’s patchwork of rails to propel the carriage forward. The last of his passengers, a tipsy boy with glittery blue lipstick, had disembarked two stops ago. Few people ventured out during these quiet hours before dawn, but the king—long may he be remembered—had demanded safe, free transportation throughout the city for all Alciel’s citizens.

As the carriage gathered speed, the conductor let his mind wander. He fretted about his son, whose quarterly evaluation marks at the Royal Academy were still growing worse, not better, despite the sizable part of his paycheck that went to a private tutor. He wondered if any of his public transit colleagues had ever seen his son sneaking back late at night like the boy with the electric blue lips—wondered if they’d seen and not known him, or worse, seen and not told the conductor about it.

A spotlight above the conductor’s viewscreen illuminated a meager stretch of track ahead of the carriage, and the conductor idly watched the ties and seams in the rails go shooting past.

I ought to bring him on shift some night after one of the prince’s parties—if anything will make him work harder at the academy, it will be seeing his father cleaning up after drunk rich kids.

Then the conductor remembered about the prince. And he remembered how there would be no more of his parties, not ever again.

He barely had time to feel a flare of sorrow for the loss of the queen’s son, followed so swiftly by the death of her father, for there, just beyond the hedges lining the track, rose