The Other Side of the Sky - Amie Kaufman Page 0,66

years older. I know I should be the one to speak, to find some healing words to offer her—but I cannot take my eyes from her. She looks so different without her braids. So different, now that her husband is dead.

Dead because of me.

“Hiret,” I manage. “I—”

“I came to ask the guard who survived if she would tell me where it happened.” Hiret’s voice is tightly controlled. “So I might retrieve their bodies.”

The riverstriders have intricate burial rituals, each clan’s traditions a little different from the others, but they all involve the river. I wonder if it would bring Hiret any comfort to know Capac and his brother died so close to the water.

Would it have comforted you?

“Your task.” Hiret’s voice shatters the silence, which I hadn’t noticed until she spoke. “Did you accomplish what you needed to?”

I blink at her, feeling slow and stupid, pinned under her grief. “Task?”

Her expression flickers with pain, or anger. I’m not sure, just now, that there is any difference. “The reason you came to Quenti’s that day in the market. The reason I sent my husband to aid you—the task you could not tell me about, but could ask my family to sacrifice themselves for.”

Now that I’ve seen that crack in her blank expression, I cannot unsee the grief behind it. I cannot unhear how very close she is to the edge. My heart is sick and pounding.

I can only think of one thing to tell her: the truth.

“I do not know for certain, Hiret.” I gulp a breath. “But I think so.”

Hiret’s eyes widen, her voice trembling. “You think so?”

“I will not lie to you,” I tell her, my own eyes burning with unshed tears. “I wish I were certain. I wish I did know. But I swear to you, I believe. They died for something. I had to be there that night.”

To find North.

Hiret’s anger lingers, but she pauses, gaze raking across my face. Whatever she finds there makes her take a breath, her brow furrowing as her eyes slide past mine, focusing beyond me. “How disconcerting,” she whispers. “To learn that your goddess has as much need of faith as you.”

This time I don’t hear the footsteps that herald a new arrival. It’s not until someone clears her throat that I find Elkisa standing not far away, looking between us.

I wish that I could rush toward my friend and throw my arms around her. I wish I could take her hand, I wish I could fall down at her feet and apologize, I wish I could …

But our reunion cannot be that way. With the entire healing staff of the temple as witness, and the grief-stricken riverstrider at my side, I must remain the Divine One—and even if we were alone, I could not hug her, touch her, assure myself that she’s real and safe.

“Divine One,” Elkisa says, her voice taut. She must have heard of my return, for she doesn’t look surprised—but her relief is there, all over her face. “The Master of Spectacle said you were looking for me.” Her eyes shift toward Hiret, and she bows her head to the riverstrider in a gesture of grief and respect.

“Hiret,” I manage, keeping my voice even. “This is Elkisa. She was with us on our journey.”

Hiret presses her lips together hard and returns Elkisa’s nod, and she speaks again in that low, controlled voice that tells me that something deep inside her wants to fly apart at the seams. “I would like to bring my husband and his brother home. Will you mark the place for us on a map?”

Elkisa hesitates, and I know she must see the same image I do every time she closes her eyes—the bodies swinging from the trees, twisting slowly, horrors half-hidden in the shadows. Perhaps, by now, the jungle has wrought yet more ills upon them.

Elkisa has a better mask than Hiret or I, though, and she speaks calmly in reply. “We will bring them home for you, I give you my word. You should remember them as they were—the Divine One would not want you to see them as they died. Please, let my fellow guards and I serve you in this way.”

Hiret hesitates and glances to me, and though inside I wonder why I couldn’t have found words as graceful as Elkisa’s, I nod slowly.

“We will send a party in the morning, Hiret.”

For a moment, I think she really will fly apart—that her grief will find all the weak places in