I scowled. “It will always be—”
“You said yourself they would use us to hurt you. Look what’s happened just from your effort to restore trade.”
I opened my mouth to protest that this was merely their excuse, but before I could, Nahadoth’s head turned sharply east.
“The sun comes,” he said. Beyond Sar-enna-nem’s entry arch, the sky was pale; night had faded quickly.
I cursed under my breath. “I will do what I can.” Then, on impulse, I stepped forward and wrapped my arms around her and held her tight, as I had never dared to do before in my whole life. She held stiff against me for a moment, surprised, but then sighed and rested her hands on my back.
“So much like your father,” she whispered. Then she pushed me away gently.
Nahadoth’s arm folded around me, surprisingly gentle, and I found my back pressed against the human solidity of the body within his shadows. Then the body was gone and so was Sar-enna-nem, and all was cold and darkness again.
I reappeared in my room in Sky, facing the windows. The sky here was still mostly dark, though there was a hint of pale against the distant horizon. I was alone, to my surprise, but also to my relief. It had been a very long, very difficult day. Without undressing I lay down—but sleep did not come immediately. I lay where I was awhile, reveling in the silence, letting my mind rest. Like bubbles in still water, two things rose to the surface of my thoughts.
My mother had regretted her bargain with the Enefadeh. She had sold me to them, but not without qualm. I found it perversely comforting that she had tried to kill me at birth. That seemed like her, choosing to destroy her own flesh and blood rather than let it be corrupted. Perhaps she had only decided to accept me on her terms—later, without the heady rush of new motherhood to color her feelings. When she could look into my eyes and see that one of the souls in them was my own.
The other thought was simpler, yet far less comforting.
Had my father known?
17. Relief
During those nights, those dreams, I saw through a thousand eyes. Bakers, blacksmiths, scholars, kings—ordinary and extraordinary, I lived their lives every night. But as with all dreams, I now remember only the most special.
In one, I see a darkened, empty room. There is almost no furniture. An old table. A messy, half-ragged pile of bedding in one corner. A marble beside the bedding. No, not a marble; a tiny, mostly blue globe, its nearer face a mosaic of brown and white. I know whose room this is.
“Shhh,” says a new voice, and abruptly there are people in the room. A slight figure, half-draped across the lap of another body that is larger. And darker. “Shhh. Shall I tell you a story?”
“Mmm,” says the smaller one. A child. “Yes. More beautiful lies, Papa, please.”
“Now, now. Children are not so cynical. Be a proper child, or you will never grow big and strong like me.”
“I will never be like you, Papa. That is one of your favorite lies.”
I see tousled brown hair. A hand strokes it, long-fingered and graceful. The father? “I have watched you grow these long ages. In ten thousand years, a hundred thousand…”
“And will my sun-bright father open his arms when I have grown so great, and welcome me to his side?”
A sigh. “If he is lonely enough, he might.”
“I don’t want him!” Fitfully, the child moves away from the stroking hand and looks up. His eyes reflect the light like those of some nocturnal beast. “I will never betray you, Papa. Never!”
“Shhh.” The father bends, laying a gentle kiss on the child’s forehead. “I know.”
And the child flings himself forward then, burying his face in soft darkness, weeping. The father holds him, rocking him gently, and begins to sing. In his voice I hear echoes of every mother who has ever comforted her child in the small hours, and every father who has ever whispered hopes into an infant’s ear. I do not understand the pain I perceive, wrapped around both of them like chains, but I can tell that love is their defense against it.
It is a private moment; I am an intruder. I loosen invisible fingers, and let this dream slip through them and away.
I felt the poor sleep keenly when I dragged myself awake well into the next day. The inside of my head felt muddy, congealed. I sat on the edge of the bed with my knees drawn up, gazing through the windows at a bright, clear noon sky and thinking, I am going to die.
I am going to DIE.
In seven days—no, six now.
Die.
I am ashamed to admit that this litany went on for some time. The seriousness of my situation had not sunk in before; impending death had taken second place to Darr’s jeopardy and a celestial conspiracy. But now I had no one yanking on my soul to distract me, and all I could think of was death. I was not yet twenty years old. I had never been in love. I had not mastered the nine forms of the knife. I had never—gods. I had never really lived, beyond the legacies left to me by my parents: ennu, and Arameri. It seemed almost incomprehensible that I was doomed, and yet I was.
Because if the Arameri did not kill me, I had no illusions about the Enefadeh. I was the sheath for the sword they hoped to draw against Itempas, their sole means of escape. If the succession ceremony was postponed, or if by some miracle I succeeded in becoming Dekarta’s heir, I was certain the Enefadeh would simply kill me. Clearly, unlike other Arameri, I had no protection against harm by them; doubtless that was one of the alterations they had applied to my blood sigil. And killing me might be the easiest way for them to free Enefa’s soul with minimal harm. Sieh might mourn the necessity of my death, but no one else in Sky would.
So I lay on the bed and trembled and wept and might have continued to do so for the rest of the day—one-sixth of my remaining life—if there had not come a knock at the door.
That pulled me back to myself, more or less. I was still wearing the clothes I’d slept in from the day before; my hair was mussed; my face was puffy and my eyes red. I hadn’t bathed. I opened the door a crack to see T’vril, to my great dismay, with a tray of food in one hand.
“Greetings, Cousin—” He paused, took a second look at me, and scowled. “What in demons happened to you?”
“N-nothing,” I mumbled, then tried to close the door. He slapped it open with his free hand, pushing me back and stepping inside. I would have protested, but the words died in my throat as he looked me up and down with an expression that would have made my grandmother proud.
“You’re letting them win, aren’t you?” he asked.
I think my mouth might have dropped open. He sighed. “Sit down.”
I closed my mouth. “How do you—”
“I know nearly everything that happens in this place, Yeine. The upcoming ball, for example, and what will happen afterward. Halfbloods usually aren’t told, but I have connections.” He gently took me by the shoulders. “You’ve found out, too, I suspect, which is why you’re sitting here going to rot.”
On another occasion I would have been pleased that he’d finally called me by my name. Now I shook my head dumbly and rubbed my temples where a weary ache had settled. “T’vril, you don’t—”
“Sit down, you silly fool, before you pass out and I have to call Viraine. Which, incidentally, you don’t want me to do. His remedies are effective but highly unpleasant.” He took my hand and guided me over to my table.