The Other Side of the Sky - Amie Kaufman Page 0,91

for a long moment I’m convinced he’s slipped back into unconsciousness. Then, with a hoarse bark of amusement, he says, “Take Orrun’s barge. Idiot boy keeps his keystone just inside the door. Teach him a lesson, asking for someone to steal it.”

I whisper a thank-you, wishing I could stay and talk to him until he sleeps again—or that I could be North, and give him my hand, the only bit of comfort he asked for. Instead, I reach for my spearstaff and climb to my feet.

North is gently withdrawing his hand to follow suit when Quenti’s eyes suddenly fly open again, fixing on North’s face as he tightens his grip.

“I know you,” the old man mumbles, a sudden alertness in those vague eyes.

North glances at me, his own eyes a bit wild. “Um—no, sir, I’m not from—”

“Yes …” Quenti’s voice is stiff and dusty, like an old forgotten manuscript. “I’ve seen you before. You’re from a place so far away I used to think it was just one of the Fisher King’s stories … but it was the Fisher King who took you in. I said it was a pity his tales of Sentinels weren’t true.”

“The Fisher King?” North repeats the title, his brows drawing together. “Who, um …” He remembers too late that he should know the answer to the question, and cuts himself off, but Quenti does not question his ignorance.

“The Fisher King,” he repeats. “His stories are his fish. Quick, glistening things that are always moving.” The old man is animated now, energy restored as he speaks. “They jump up, and if you’re quick you can catch them, and pin them in place for a while. The Fisher King is the keeper of our traditions, lad. The teller of our stories, our songs, our ballads. He knows the laws that go beyond those of the temple, that belong only to the riverstriders. He is where we go for wisdom. And my, but you have questions for the Fisher King, don’t you? You, from your faraway place.”

“It is the mist,” I whisper to North, whose eyes go even wider at that last statement, uncannily true. “Or else the pain—he cannot know what he is saying.”

Quenti’s brows draw in, and his dusty voice grows heavier. “You spend too much time around our goddess, boy. She is not for you to love… .”

North finally succeeds in freeing his hand, and he retreats back toward the door. “I’m sorry. I won’t, uh, do that anymore.”

But Quenti’s alarm is already subsiding, as though whatever invented memory he was reliving went dark the moment he let go of North’s hand. He mumbles something, then closes his eyes, breath slowing again.

North turns that wide-eyed look on me, and I tilt my head in a silent gesture toward the door.

The breeze, though still warm, is like a dash of cold water as we stumble out of Quenti’s barge and into the night.

North takes a few more steps, as if all too eager to put some distance between himself and the wounded old man in the bed. “Nimh, what the … What was that?” he blurts.

I have to wait a moment before I answer, letting the cooler air restore some of my equilibrium. “He is mist-touched,” I say finally, as I turn toward the row of riverstrider barges, looking for Orrun’s boat.

“The mist did that to him?” North gestures at his own face, his gaze creeping back toward the single lighted window above us.

“It can damage the mind and the body. Make people see things, bestow power or take it away. Sometimes it even grants the gift of prophecy.”

“Prophecy,” North echoes, voice equal parts confusion and skepticism.

Orrun’s boat is not far from Quenti’s. It’s one of the newer barges, smaller than the others, though that suits our purposes fine. I move down the little woven reed pathway and step up onto the edge of the boat.

North follows me, though his mind is still up in Quenti’s room. “So you’re saying he somehow knew who I was and that you’d brought me here? And he’s trying to warn me not to …” He halts, and when I glance over at him, his eyes meet mine and then dart away.

“That was not prophecy,” I tell him. “He did not even know I was the goddess—he thought I was still a little girl.”

“Still. Unnerving,” North mumbles, following me as I move toward the steps up to the captain’s perch.

Orrun is no “idiot boy,” as Quenti said—he is a man