The Other Side of the Sky - Amie Kaufman Page 0,69

few dusk-to-dawn blowouts in my time at the palace, and I like to think I’m pretty good at it, but I have to give credit where credit’s due. Techeki has earned the title Master of Spectacle.

The place is a riot of color, food, and music, song and laughter echoing down at us from the ceiling tiles. I’m not quite a part of the celebration tonight. I’m dressed all in black—Techeki had no other option, given my unknown status here, but I can’t pretend I don’t envy the gold paint daubed on those around me. Back home, my face would be painted up with exquisite flash and glitter, my clothes shot through with gold. After all the time I’ve spent shedding it to make my escapes from the palace, it’s ironic that I miss my golden thread. But I’m trying to keep myself a blank canvas, unknown to these people, so that Nimh and I can paint me with whatever pictures we want, and later on, whatever picture will get me home.

Also, I don’t know the steps to any of their dances—literally or metaphorically.

I decline an invitation from a pretty girl who wants to draw me into the middle of the crowd, and another from a handsome boy with a head full of braids, who offers me a drink I can’t identify. Shooting him a rueful grin, I slip around to the far side of a column. The architecture here is spectacular, and I tip my head back as though I’m admiring the mosaicked ceiling.

Then something bumps against my ankles, and when I look down, Nimh’s cat is staring at me meaningfully.

“Where did you come from, Captain Fluffypants?” I ask, dropping to a crouch and offering him my finger to sniff. He reaches up to hook it with a paw, pulling it in closer. Then he very gently bites me—not hard enough to break the skin—and turns away, stalking off a few steps. He looks over his shoulder to see if I’m following.

I only met my first cat yesterday, but I’m already clear that it’s better for everyone if I do what he wants. So I follow him around the edge of the room. Bordered by columns, the huge, circular chamber has six grand entrances, but we take none of them. Instead, he butts his head meaningfully against a service door, and when I open it for him, we both slip through.

The hallway waiting for us is empty of decoration and of people, but there’s a lantern hanging on a nail, and I bring it with me to light our way. After a couple of minutes and a flight of stairs that takes me up a floor, the cat pauses at a section of the wooden paneling that looks no different to me from any other and makes a loud, talky sort of noise.

“Here?” I say, holding up my lantern to study it. I knock on the wooden panel.

Nimh’s voice rings out from the other side, startling me. “Come in.”

Only when the cat butts his head up against the wooden paneling do I see it give a fraction. When I push on it, a door swings open soundlessly to admit us. The room inside is carved from rock, and strings of glowing lights illuminate plants that tumble down from high-up ledges. An intricately carved wooden screen lets through pinpricks of light, and the soft murmur of voices and music—it must look out on the hall I just left.

In the center of the room is a large pool, the dark water gently rippling. Nimh’s standing in it waist-deep, her eyes rimmed with black, her lips dusted gold, and …

… and she’s not wearing a single thing.

“North! I thought you were a handservant.” Her words are like a dim buzzing, and I barely hear them. It’s only when she recovers from her own surprise and tilts her head inquiringly that I realize I’m staring, and spin around to face the way I came, cheeks burning.

A distant splashing gets past the buzzing in my ears, and then the slight sound of bare feet on stone. It’s a moment before I register her voice again, and I realize she’s been saying my name.

“North? There is no need to be ashamed. I am my people’s goddess. No corner of my life is private. None of it has ever been.”

I risk a look over my shoulder. The pool is empty now except for the ripples she left behind, illuminated by the light coming through a series of