He sat beside her, and she noticed his greeting wasn’t exactly warm. He wasn’t unfriendly, just reserved. Guarded. He hadn’t smiled, and although he met her eye, it was as if he was seeking something in her. Something he had yet to find.
“Good morning, Scythe Possuelo,” she said, mustering her best Scythe Anastasia voice.
“Afternoon, actually,” he said. “Time flows in odd little eddies when you’re in revival.”
He was silent for a long moment Citra Terranova might have found awkward, but Scythe Anastasia found merely tiresome.
“I’m guessing you’re not just here for a social visit, Scythe Possuelo.”
“Well, I am pleased to see you,” he said, “but my reason for being here has to do with your reason for being here.”
“I don’t follow.”
He gave her that searching look again, then finally asked, “What do you remember?”
The panic rose again as she considered the question, but she did her best to hide it. In fact, some of it had come back to her since she’d regained consciousness, but not all. “I went to Endura with Marie—Scythe Curie, that is—for an inquest with the Grandslayers, although I’m hazy as to why.”
“The inquest had to do with who would succeed Xenocrates as High Blade of MidMerica,” Possuelo explained.
That opened the door a little wider. “Yes! Yes, I remember now.” The dread inside her grew. “We faced the council, made our arguments, and the council agreed that Goddard was not eligible, and that Scythe Curie should be High Blade.”
Possuelo leaned away, taken slightly aback. “That is… eye-opening.”
There were more memories now looming like storm clouds on her mental horizon. “I’m still having trouble remembering what came next.”
“Perhaps I can help you,” said Possuelo, no longer mincing words. “You were found sealed in the Vault of Relics and Futures in the arms of the young man who murdered the Grandslayers and thousands of others. The monster who sank Endura.”
* * *
Food and water came twice a day for Rowan, sliding through a small slit in the door, but whoever was doing the sliding didn’t speak at all.
“Can you talk?” he called out when the next meal arrived. “Or are you like those Tonists who cut their tongues out?”
“You aren’t worth the waste of words,” his captor responded. There was an accent to his voice, FrancoIberian maybe? Or Chilargentinian? He didn’t know what continent he was on, much less which region. Or perhaps he was misreading the situation. Perhaps this wasn’t life at all. Maybe he was dead for good, and, considering the sweltering nature of the cell, this was the mortal-age idea of hell. Fire and brimstone and the actual Lucifer, horns and all, ready to punish Rowan for stealing his name.
In his current light-headed state, it seemed possible. If so, he hoped Citra was in that other place with pearly gates and cottony clouds, where everyone had wings and a harp.
Ha! Citra playing a harp. How she would hate that!
Well, all musings aside, if this was indeed the living world, then Citra was here, too. Regardless of his current situation, it was a comfort to know that Scythe Curie’s ploy to save them had worked. Not that the Grand Dame of Death had any desire to save Rowan—his salvation was just a collateral consequence. But that was fine. He could live with that. As long as Citra lived as well.
* * *
The vault! How could Citra forget the vault? All it took was Scythe Possuelo’s mention of it to bring back the memory. Citra closed her eyes and kept them closed for a long time as her mind flooded just as inescapably as the streets of the doomed city had. And once the memories came, they didn’t stop coming. One revelation after another, each one worse than the last.
The bridge to the council chambers collapsing.
The frenzied mob at the marina as the city began to sink.
The mad scramble with Marie to higher ground.
And Rowan.
“Anastasia, are you all right?” Possuelo asked.
“Give me some time,” she told him.
She remembered Marie tricking her and Rowan into the vault and sealing it, and she remembered everything that came after, down to their last moments there in the dark.
After Endura fractured and hit bottom, Citra and Rowan had pulled all the founders’ robes over themselves as the vault grew colder and colder. It was Citra who suggested that they cast the robes off and allow