rattling off a tirade of invective—or what I assumed from her tone was invective, though she’d reverted to her own language. Trsiel put his hands on her arms, but she flung him off and stalked to her window.
“Without the gift, she will fail,” Janah said. “Do not ask me to lead her to her destruction. I will not.”
Janah dropped to the floor with a thud, pulled her knees to her chest, and turned to stare out her window. Even from across the room, I could see that stare go empty as her mind retreated.
Trsiel laid his hand on my forearm, and we zapped out of Janah’s room.
Trsiel didn’t take me back to the foyer, but to some kind of waiting area, empty except for two white armchairs.
“She’s right,” he said, dropping into one of the chairs. “You can’t do this without the gift.”
“What gift?”
He waved me to the other chair, but I shook my head.
“What gift?” I repeated.
“An angel’s power. Full-bloods always have it. The others get it when they ascend. The Fates must know you need it for this, so what could they be…” His voice trailed off, his brow furrowed.
“Is it the sword? I wouldn’t mind the sword.”
A tiny smile. “No, the sword is a tool. You’ll get that, too, when you ascend—”
“Ascend?”
“Yes. But the gift is a skill, an ability. Not essential in most of an angel’s tasks, but obviously Janah thinks you need it for this one, and she’s not talking until you have it. But you won’t get it until you ascend and you won’t ascend until you complete your inaugural quest.”
“‘Complete’? You think I’m auditioning for angel-hood?”
“It isn’t something you can audition for. You must be chosen, and if you’re chosen, then you have to complete an inaugural quest. Finding the Nix is yours.”
“I’m fulfilling a promise here, not completing an entrance exam. The Fates did me a favor a couple of years ago, a very big favor, and this is how they want it repaid.”
“Perhaps I was mistaken, then.”
His tone said he didn’t believe it for a second, but I fought the urge to argue. The Fates would set him straight eventually. Maybe the misdirection was intentional—assuming Trsiel would be more apt to help a future fellow angel rather than a mere contract bounty-hunter.
“So this gift,” I said. “What is it? Maybe we can see whether—”
“See!” He shot up straight in his seat. “That’s it. Your father is Balam, right?”
“So they tell me.”
“That explains how the Fates expect us to get around the problem.” A slight frown. “Or so I think.” The frown deepened, then he sprang to his feet. “We’ll need to test it.”
He grasped my forearm, and the room disappeared.
We emerged in a long gray hall that stank of ammonia and sweat. A young man in an orange jumpsuit mopped the floor, swishing the water around haphazardly, coating the floor in a layer of dirty soap, with no apparent interest in cleaning the surface beneath. At the end of the hall, a door swung open and two armed guards strode through. Their shoes slapped against the wet concrete. The young man gripped the mop handle tighter, putting a little elbow grease into it, even whistling for good measure.
“Exactly what kind of ‘gift’ is this?” I asked Trsiel.
“You’ll see…or so I hope.”
He led me through the door the guards had used. On the other side was a huge industrial space flanked with two layers of prison cells.
“Uh, any hints?” I asked.
Trsiel kept walking. “If I tell you what to expect, then you’ll expect it.”
“Uh-huh.”
He continued walking, without a glance either way. We passed through two sets of armored doors, and came out in a long hallway. The moment we moved through those doors, a preternatural hush fell, and the temperature dropped, like stepping into an air-conditioned library. But even in a library, you can always hear sounds, the steady undercurrent of stifled coughs, whispering pages, and scraping chairs. Here, there was nothing. Life seemed suspended, waiting with bated breath.
As we drew closer to the end of the corridor, we heard faint noises—the clatter of a dish, a mumbled oath, the shuffle of feet on concrete. Then a softer sound, a voice. A supplication carried on a sob. Prayer.
We stepped into a single-level cell block unlike the earlier ones. At the ice rink, I’d reveled in the sensation of cold. Here, the chill went right to your bones, and had little to do with air-conditioning.