The Broken Kingdoms

14 “Flight” (encaustic, charcoal, metal rubbing)

There were complications.

I woke only gradually, which was fortunate, or I might have stirred and given myself away. Before I could do that, someone spoke, and I realized Shiny and I were not alone in the room.

“Let go of me.”

My blood chilled. Hado. There was tension in the air, something that vibrated along my skin like an itch, but I did not understand it. Anger? No.

“Let go, or I call the guards. They’re right outside the door.”

A quick sound of motion, flesh and cloth.

“Who are you?” That was Shiny, though I hardly recognized his voice. It trembled, wavering from need to confusion.

“Not who you think.”

“But—”

“I am myself.” Hado said this with such savagery that I nearly forgot myself and flinched. “Just another mortal, to you.”

“Yes… yes.” Shiny sounded more himself now, the emotion cooling from his voice. “I see that now.”

Hado drew in a deep breath, as shaky as Shiny’s voice had been, and some of the tension faded. Cloth stirred again and Hado came over to me, shadowing my face. “Has she shown any sign of recovery today? Spoken, maybe?”

“No, and no.” Stiffer than usual, even for Shiny. The White Halls taught that the Bright Lord could not lie. I was relieved to hear that he could, though it plainly did not suit him.

“Everything is different now. They’ll begin taking blood again tonight. Hopefully she’s strong enough.”

“That will likely kill her.”

“Look outside, man. Two weeks have passed since Role died. Two weeks until the Nightlord’s deadline—as he has so dramatically decided to remind us.” He uttered a soft, humorless laugh. I wondered what he meant. “Dateh has been a man possessed since he saw it. There’s no hope of my dissuading him this time.”

Hado’s hand stroked my face suddenly, brushing my hair back. I was surprised at such a tender gesture from him. He hadn’t struck me as the type for tenderness, even to this small degree.

“In fact,” he continued with a sigh, “if her mind doesn’t return—or hells, even if it does—I fear he’ll take all her remaining blood, and her heart, too.”

Goose bumps prickled my skin. I prayed that Hado would not notice.

He touched the buckle across my midriff, silent now with his own thoughts—and showing no inclination to leave. I began to worry. The sunlight felt strange on my skin. Thin, sort of. Did that mean it was late afternoon? If Hado didn’t leave soon, the sun would set and Shiny would become powerless. We needed his magic for this to work.

“You are not quite yourself,” Shiny said suddenly. “Something of him lingers.” Hado stiffened perceptibly beside me.

“Not the part that gives a damn about you,” he snapped, and got up, stalking toward the door. “Speak of this again and I’ll kill you myself.”

With that he was gone, closing the door rather harder than necessary. And then Shiny was there, yanking at my midriff strap so roughly that I yelped.

“This place has been chaos all day,” he said. “The guards are on edge; they keep checking the room. Every hour some interruption—servants bringing food, checking your arm, then that one.” Hado, I gathered.

I pushed his hands away and fumbled with the midriff strap myself, gesturing for him to work on the leg straps, which he began to do. “What’s happened to get them all upset?”

“When the sun rose this morning, it was black.”

I froze, stunned. Shiny kept working.

“A warning?” I asked. The words of the quiet goddess came to me, from that day in South Root. You know his temper better than I do. Not Itempas, as I had assumed then. With more of his children dead or missing, it was the Nightlord whose temper would be at the breaking point. Would he even wait the full month he had promised?

“Yes. Though it seems Yeine has managed to contain his fury to some degree. The rest of the world can see the sun clearly. Only this city cannot.”

So Serymn had been right in her prediction. I could still feel sunlight on my skin, just weak. There must have been some light remaining, or Shiny wouldn’t have bothered trying to free me. Perhaps it was like an eclipse. I had heard those described as the sun going black. But an eclipse that lasted all day and moved with the sun across the sky? No wonder the Lights were a-tizzy. The whole city would be in a panic.

“How much time until sunset?” I asked.

“Very little.”

Gods. “Do you think you’ll be able to break that window? The glass is so thick.” My hands would not work as quickly as I wanted; I was still weak. But better than I had been.

“The cot legs are made of metal. I’ve loosened one of them, which should serve well as a club.” He spoke as if that answered my question, which I supposed was an answer in itself.

We got the straps undone and I sat up. There was no dizziness this time, though I swayed when I stood. Shiny turned away from me, and I heard him positioning the table in front of the door. This was to delay the guards, who would enter as soon as they heard Shiny break the window. Every second would matter once we began.

There was a quick grunt from him, and a metallic groan as he worked the loose leg off his cot. As quietly as he could, he moved the broken cot in front of the door, too. Then we went to the window. I could still feel sunlight on my skin, but it was weak, cooling. Soon it would be gone.

“I don’t know how long it will take for the magic to come,” he said. Or whether it will come at all, he did not say, but I knew he thought it. I was thinking it myself.

“So I’ll fall for a while,” I said. “It’s a long way down.”

“Fear alone has killed mortals in moments of danger.”

The anger I’d felt since Madding’s death had never gone away, just quieted. It rose in me again as I smiled. “Then I won’t be afraid.”

He hesitated a moment more but finally lifted the cot leg.

The first blow spiderwebbed the window. It was also so loud, echoing in the partially emptied room, that almost immediately I heard men’s voices through the door, raised in alarm. Someone fiddled with the lock, rattling keys.

Shiny drew back and heaved the cot leg forward again, grunting with effort as he did so. I felt the wind of the leg’s passing; a truly mighty blow. It finished the window, knocking out several large pieces. A startlingly cold wind blew into the room, plastering my smock to my skin and making me shiver.

The guards had gotten the door partially open but were impeded by the table and cot. They were shouting at us, shouting for aid, trying to jostle the furniture out of the way. Shiny tossed aside the cot leg and kicked out as much of the glass as he could. Then he took my hands and guided them forward. I felt the cloth of his smock, removed to cover the jagged edges along the bottom sill.

“Try to push out, away from the Tree, as you jump,” he said. As if he told women how to leap to their deaths all the time.

I nodded and leaned out over the drop, trying to figure out how best to push off. As I did so, a breeze wafted up from below, lifting a few stray strands of my hair. For an instant, my resolve faltered. I am only human, after all—or mortal, if not human.

Deliberately, I summoned the image of Madding as he had gazed at me in that last moment. He had known he was dying, known that I was the cause—but there had been no hatred or disgust in his expression. He’d still loved me.

My fear faded. I moved back, away from the window.

Shiny said over the guards’ shouts, urgently, “Oree, you must—”

“Shut up,” I whispered, and took a running dive through the opening, spreading my arms as I flew into the open air.

Roaring wind became the only sound I could hear. My clothes flapped around me, stinging my skin. My hair, which someone had tied back into a puff in an effort to control it, broke the tie and clouded loose behind me. Above me. I was falling, but it did not feel like falling. I floated, buoyed on an ocean of air. There was no sense of danger, no stress, no fear. I relaxed into it, wishing it would last.

A hand swatted at my leg, jarring me out of bliss. I turned onto my back, lazy, graceful. Was that Shiny? I could not see him. My plan had failed, then, and we would both die when we struck the ground. He would come back to life. I would not.

I reached up, offering my hands to him. He caught them this time, fumbling once, then drawing me close and wrapping his arms around me. I relaxed against his warm solidity, lulled by the rushing wind. Good. I would not die alone.

Because my ear was against his chest, I felt him stiffen and heard his harsh gasp. His heart thudded hard once, against my cheek. Then—

Light.

By the Three, so bright! All around me. I shut my eyes and still saw Shiny’s form blazing before me, thinning the darkness of my vision. I could feel it against my skin, like the pressure of sunbeams. We streaked toward the earth like things I had imagined but would never see with my own eyes. Like a comet. Like a falling star.

Our descent slowed. The wind’s roar grew softer, gentler. Something had reversed gravity’s pull. Were we flying now? Floating. How far had we fallen, how much farther to go? How long before the sun was gone, and—

Shiny cried out. His light vanished, snuffed all at once, and with it went the force that had kept us afloat. We fell again, helpless now, with nothing left to stop us.

I felt no fear.

But Shiny was doing something. Twisting, panting with effort or perhaps the aftermath of his magic. I felt us turn in the air—

And then we hit the ground.