The Broken Kingdoms

16 “From the Depths to the Heights” (watercolor)

I grayed out for a time. The jostling, the running, and the blurring cacophony of sounds proved too much for my already-abused senses. I was vaguely aware of pain and confusion, my sense of balance completely thrown; it felt as though I tumbled through the air, unconnected to anything, uncontrolled. A blurry voice seemed to whisper into my ear: Why are you alive when Madding is dead? Why are you alive at all, death-filled vessel that you are? You are an affront to all that is holy. You should just lie down and die.

It might have been Shiny speaking, or my own guilt.

After what felt like a very long time, I regained enough wit to think.

I sat up, slowly and with great effort. My arm, the good one, did not obey my will at first. I told it to push me up, and instead it flailed about, scrabbling at the surface beneath me. Hard, but not stone. I sank my nails into it a little. Wood. Cheap, thin. I patted it, listening, and realized it was all around me. When I finally regained control of myself, I managed a slow, shaky exploration of my environment, and finally understood. A box. I was in some kind of large wooden crate, open at one end. Something heavy and scratchy and smelly lay upon me. A horse blanket? Shiny must have stolen it for me. It still reeked of its former owner’s sweat, but it was warmer than the chilly predawn air around me, so I drew it closer.

Footsteps nearby. I cringed until I recognized their peculiar weight and cadence. Shiny. He climbed into the crate with me and sat down nearby. “Here,” he said, and metal touched my lips. Confused, I opened my mouth, and nearly choked as water flooded in. I managed not to splutter too much of it away, fortunately, because I was desperately thirsty. As Shiny turned up the flask for me again, I greedily drank until there was nothing left. I was still thirsty but felt better.

“Where are we?” I asked. I kept my voice soft. It was quiet, wherever we were. I heard the bap-plink of morning dew—such a welcome sound after days without it in the House of the Risen Sun. There were people about, but they moved quietly, too, as if trying not to disturb the dew.

“Ancestors’ Village,” he said, and I blinked in surprise. He had carried me across the city from the Shustocks junkyard, from Wesha into Easha. The Village was just north of South Root, near the tunnel under the rootwall. It was where the city’s homeless population had made a camp of sorts, or so I’d been told. I’d never visited it. Many of the Villagers were sick in body or mind, too harmless to be quarantined, but too ugly or strange or pitiful to be acceptable in the orderly society of the Bright. Many were lame, mute, deaf… blind. In my earliest days in Shadow, I’d been terrified of joining them.

I didn’t ask, but Shiny must have seen the confusion on my face. “I lived here sometimes,” he said. “Before you.”

It was no more than I’d already guessed, but I could not help pity: he had gone from ruling the gods to living in a box among lepers and madlings. I knew his crimes, but even so…

Belatedly I noticed more footsteps approaching. These were lighter than Shiny’s, several sets—three people? One of them had a bad limp, dragging the second foot like deadweight.

“We have missed you,” said a voice, elderly, raspy, of indeterminate gender, though I guessed male. “It’s good to see you well. Hello, miss.”

“Um, hello,” I said. The first words had not been directed at me.

Satisfied, the maybe-man turned his attention back to Shiny. “For her.” I heard something set down on the crate’s wooden floor; I smelled bread. “See if she can get that down.”

“Thank you,” said Shiny, surprising me by speaking.

“Demra’s gone looking for old Sume,” said another voice, younger and thinner-sounding. “She’s a bonebender—not a very good one, but sometimes she’ll work for free.” The voice sighed. “Wish Role was still around.”

“That won’t be necessary,” said Shiny, because of course he intended to kill me. Even I could tell that these people didn’t have many favors to call in; best they not spend such a precious one on me. Then Shiny surprised me further. “Something for her pain would be good, however.”

A woman came forward. “Yes, we brought this.” Something else was set down, glass. I thought I heard the slosh of liquid. “It isn’t good, but it should help.”

“Thank you,” Shiny said again, softer. “You are all very kind.”

“So are you,” said the thin voice, and then the woman murmured something about letting me sleep, and all three of them went away. I lay there in their wake, not quite boggling. I was too tired for real astonishment.

“There’s food,” Shiny said, and I felt something dry and hard brush my lips. The bread, which he’d torn into chunks so I wouldn’t have to waste strength gnawing. It was coarse, flavorless stuff, and even the small piece he’d torn made my jaws ache. The Order of Itempas took care of all citizens; no one starved in the Bright. That did not mean they ate well.

As I held a piece in my mouth, hoping saliva would make it more palatable, I considered what I had heard. It had had the air of long habit—or ritual, perhaps. When I’d swallowed, I said, “They seem to like you here.”

“Yes.”

“Do they know who you are? What you are?”

“I have never told them.”

Yet they knew, I was certain. There had been too much reverence in the way they’d approached and presented their small offerings. They had not asked about the black sun, either, as a heathen might have done. They simply accepted that the Bright Lord would protect them if He could—and that it was pointless to ask if He could not.

I had to clear my dry throat to speak. “Did you protect them while you were here?”

“Yes.”

“And… you spoke to them?”

“Not at first.”

With time, though, same as me. For a moment, an irrational competitiveness struck me. It had taken three months for Shiny to deem me worthy of conversation. How long had he taken with these struggling souls? But I sighed, dismissing the fancy and refusing when Shiny tried to offer me another piece of bread. I had no appetite.

“I’ve never thought of you as kind,” I said. “Not even when I was a child, learning about you in White Hall. The priests tried to make you sound gentle and caring, like an old grandfather who’s a little on the strict side. I never believed it. You sounded… well-intentioned. But never kind.”

I heard the glass thing move, heard a stopper come free with a faint plonk. Shiny’s hand came under the back of my head, lifting me gently; I felt the rim of a small flask nudge my lips. When I opened my mouth, acid fire poured in—or so it tasted. I gasped and spluttered, choking, but most of the stuff went down my throat before my body could protest too much. “Gods, no,” I said when the bottle touched my lips again, and Shiny took it away.

As I lay there trying to regain the full use of my tongue, Shiny said, “Good intentions are pointless without the will to implement them.”

“Mmm.” The burn was fading now, which I regretted, because for a moment I had forgotten the pain of my arm and head. “The problem is, you always seem to implement your intentions by stomping all over other people’s. That’s pretty pointless, too, isn’t it? Does as much harm as good.”

“There is such a thing as greater good.”

I was too tired for sophistry. There had been no greater good in the Gods’ War, just death and pain. “Fine. Whatever you say.”

I drifted awhile. The drink went to my head quickly, not so much dulling the pain as making me care less about it. I was contemplating sleeping again when Shiny spoke. “Something is happening to me,” he said, very softly.

“Hmm?”

“It isn’t my nature to be kind. You were correct in that. And I have never before been tolerant of change.”

I yawned, which made my headache grow in a distant, warm sort of way. “Change happens,” I said through the yawn. “We all have to accept it.”

“No,” he replied. “We don’t. I never have. That is what I am, Oree—the steady light that keeps the roiling darkness at bay. The unmoving stone around which the river must flow. You may not like it. You don’t like me. But without my influence, this realm would be cacophony, anarchy. A hell beyond mortal imagination.”

Surprised into wakefulness, I blurted the first thing that came to mind. “Does it bother you that I don’t like you?”

I heard him shrug. “You have a contrary nature. I suspect you are of Enefa’s lineage.”

I almost laughed at the sour note in his voice, though that would’ve hurt my head. I sobered, though, as I realized something. “You and Enefa weren’t always enemies.”

“We were never enemies. I loved her, too.” And I could hear that, suddenly, in the soft interstices of his tone.

“Then”—I frowned—“why?”

He did not answer for a long while.

“It was a kind of madness,” he said at last, “though I did not think so at the time. My actions seemed perfectly rational, until… after.”

I shifted a little, uncomfortable, both from my arm and the conversation topic. “That’s pretty normal,” I said. “People snap sometimes. But afterward—”

“Afterward I had no recourse. Enefa was dead and could not—I thought—be restored. Nahadoth hated me and would shatter all the realms for vengeance. I dared not free him. So I committed myself to the path I had chosen.” He paused for a moment. “I… regret… what I did. It was wrong. Very wrong. But regret is meaningless.”

He fell silent. I knew I should have let it go then, with the echoes of his pain still reverberating in the air around me. He was ancient, unfathomable; there was so much about him I would never understand. But I reached out with my good hand and found his knee.

“Regret is never meaningless,” I said. “It’s not enough, not on its own; you have to change, too. But it’s a start.”

Shiny let out a long sigh of almost unbearable weariness. “Change is not my nature, Oree. Regret is all I have.”

More silence then, for a long while.

“I’d like some more of that stuff,” I said at length. The throb of my arm was becoming more present; the liquor had worn off. “But I think I’d better eat something beforehand.”

So Shiny resumed feeding me, giving me more water, too, from among the offerings the Villagers had made. I had the presence of mind to keep a little in my mouth and use that to soften the horrid bread. “In the morning there will be soup,” he said. “I’ll have the others bring some to us. It would be best if neither you nor I are seen for a while.”

“Right,” I said, sighing. “So what do we do now? Live here among the beggars until the New Lights find us again? Hope I don’t die of infection before Mad’s killers are brought to justice?” I rubbed my face with my good hand. Shiny had given me more of the fiery liquor, and already it was making me feel warm and feather-light. “Gods, I hope Lil is all right.”

“They are both children of Nahadoth. In the end, it will be a matter of strength.”

I shook my head. “Dateh’s not…” Then I understood. “Oh. That explains a lot.” I felt Shiny throw me a look. Well, too late to take it back.

“She is my daughter, too,” he said, at length. “He will not defeat her easily.”

For a moment I puzzled over this, wondering how on earth the Lord of Night and the Bright Father had managed to have a child together. Or was he speaking figuratively, counting all godlings as his children regardless of their specific parentage? Then I dismissed it. They were gods; I didn’t need to understand.

We fell silent for a while, listening to the dew fall. Shiny ate the rest of the bread, then sat back against a wall of the crate. I lay where I was and wondered how long it would be ’til dawn and whether there was any point in living long enough to see it.

“I know who we can go to for help,” I said at length. “I don’t dare call another godling; I won’t be responsible for more of their deaths. But there are some mortals, I think, who are strong enough to take on the Lights. If you help me.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Take me back to Gateway Park. The Promenade.” The last place I had been happy. “Where they found Role. Do you remember it?”

“Yes. There are often New Lights in that area.”

Yes. This time of year, with the Tree about to bloom, all the heretic groups would have people at the Promenade, hoping to convert some of the Lady’s pilgrims to their own faiths. Easier to start with people who had already turned their backs on Bright Itempas.

“Help me get there unseen,” I said. “To the White Hall.”

He said nothing. All at once, tears sprang to my eyes, inexplicable. Drunkenness. I fought them back.

“I have to see this through, Shiny. I have to make sure the New Lights are destroyed. They still have my blood—they can make more of those arrow things. Madding isn’t like Enefa. He won’t come back to life.”

I could still see him in my head. I always knew you were special, he’d said, and my specialness had killed him. His death had to be the last.

Shiny got up, climbed out of the crate, and walked away.

I could not help it. I gave in to the tears, because there was nothing else I could do. I didn’t have the strength to make it to the Promenade on my own, or elude the Lights for much longer. My only hope was the Order. But without Shiny—

I heard his heavy footfalls and caught my breath, pushing myself up and wiping the tears off my face.

Something heavy and loose landed in front of me. I touched it, puzzled it out. A cloak. It reeked of someone’s unwashed filth and stale urine, but I caught my breath as I realized what he meant for us to do.

“Put that on,” Shiny said. “Let’s go.”

The Promenade.

Dawn had not yet come, but the Promenade was far from still. People stood in knots on streets and corners, murmuring, some weeping, and for the first time I noticed the tension that filled the city, as it must have since the sun had turned black the day before. The city was never quiet at night, but by the sounds that I could hear on the wind, many of its denizens had not slept the night before. A good number must have risen to wait for the sunrise, perhaps in hopes of seeing a change in the sun’s condition. There were none of the usual vendors about—and no one at Art Row, though it was still too early for that—but I could hear the pilgrims. Many more than usual seemed to have gathered, kneeling on the bricks and murmuring prayers to the Gray Lady in her dawn guise. Hoping she would save them.

Shiny and I made our way along quietly, keeping close to buildings rather than crossing the Promenade. That would’ve been faster—the White Hall was directly across from us—but also more conspicuous, even amid the milling crowd. Most Villagers knew better than to enter those parts of the city frequented by visitors; doing so was a good way to get rousted by Order-Keepers. They would be tense today, and a good many of them were young hotheads who would just as soon take Shiny and me into an empty storehouse to deal with themselves. We needed to reach the White Hall itself, where they were more likely to do the proper thing and take us in.

I had discarded my makeshift stick, as it was too much of a giveaway. I barely had the strength to hold it, anyhow; a fever had sapped what little energy I’d gained from resting in the Village, forcing us to stop frequently. I walked close behind Shiny, holding on to the back of his cloak so that I could feel it when he stepped over an obstacle or skirted around milling folk. This forced me to keep low and shuffle a bit, which added to the disguise, though I could feel that Shiny hadn’t done the same, walking with his usual stiff-backed, upright pride. Hopefully no one would notice.

We had to pause at one point while a line of chained people came down the street with push brooms, sweeping the bricks clean for the day’s business. Debtors, most likely, only a step away from life in the Ancestors’ Village themselves. Working despite the tension in the city. Of course the Order of Itempas would not disrupt the city’s daily functions, even under a god’s death sentence.

Then they were gone, and Shiny started forward again—and abruptly paused. I bumped into his back, and he put back an arm to push me aside, into the doorway alcove of a building. Unfortunately, he touched the broken arm in the process; I managed not to scream, but just barely.

“What is it?” I whispered, when I’d regained enough self-control to speak. I was still panting. It helped me feel cooler, given the fever.

“More Order-Keepers, patrolling,” he said tersely. The Promenade must have been crawling with them. “They did not see us. Be still.”

I obeyed. We waited there long enough that Shiny’s morning glow began. Irrationally I worried that it would somehow draw the Lights, even though no one had ever seen the glow of his magic but me. Though perhaps it would work in our favor and draw some godling instead.

I jerked back, blinking and disoriented. Shiny held me up, bracing me against the door.

“What?” I asked. My thoughts were blurry.

“You collapsed.”

I took a deep breath, shivering before I could help myself. “Just a little farther. I can make it.”

“It might be best if—”

“No,” I said, trying to sound firmer. “Just get me to the steps. I can crawl from there if I have to.”

Shiny obviously had his doubts, but as usual he said nothing.

“You don’t have to go in with me,” I said as I recovered. “They’ll just kill you.”

Shiny sighed and took my hand, a silent rebuke. We resumed our careful movement around the circle.

That we reached the White Hall steps without trouble was so amazing that without thinking, I whispered a prayer of thanks to Itempas. Shiny turned to stare at me for a moment, then led me on up the steps.

My first knock on the big metal door got no response, but then I hadn’t knocked hard. When I tried to lift my hand again and swayed on my feet, Shiny caught my hand and knocked himself. Three booming strikes, seeming to echo through the whole building. The door opened before the third blow’s echoes had faded. “What the hells do you want?” asked an annoyed-sounding guard. He grew more annoyed as he assessed us. “Food distribution will be at noon, the way it is every day, in the Village,” he snapped. “Get back there or I’ll—”

“My name is Oree Shoth,” I said. I tugged back the hood so he could see I was Maroneh. “I killed three Order-Keepers. You’ve been looking for me. For us.” I gestured tiredly at Shiny. “We need to speak to Previt Rimarn Dih.”

They separated us and put me in a small room with a chair, a table, and a cup of water. I drank the water, begged the silent guard for more, and when he brought no more, I put my head down on the table and slept. The guard had obviously been given no instructions about this, so he let me sleep for some time. Then I was roughly shaken awake.

“Oree Shoth,” said a familiar voice. “This is unexpected. I’m told you asked to see me.”

Rimarn. I had never been so glad to hear his cold voice.

“Yes,” I said. My voice was hoarse, dry. I was hot all over and shaking a little. I probably looked like all the infinite hells combined. “There’s a cult. Not heretics—Itempans. They’re called the New Lights. One of their members is a scrivener. Dateh.” I tried to remember Dateh’s family name and could not. Had he ever told me? Unimportant. “They call him the Nypri. He’s a demon, a real one, like in the stories. Demon blood is poison to gods. He’s been capturing godlings and killing them. He’s the one who killed Role and… and others.” My strength ran out. I hadn’t had much of it to begin with, which was why I’d spoken as quickly as I could. My head drooped, the table beckoning. Perhaps they would let me sleep some more.

“That’s quite a tale,” Rimarn said after an astonished moment. “Quite a tale. You do seem… distressed, though that could simply be because your protector, the god Madding, has gone missing. We keep expecting his body to turn up, like the other two we found, but so far, nothing.”

He’d said it to hurt me, to see my reaction, but nothing could hurt more than the fact of Madding’s death. I sighed. “Ina, probably, and Oboro. I… heard they’d gone missing.” Perhaps the discovery of their bodies had triggered the Nightlord’s dramatic warning.

“You’ll have to tell me how you heard that, since we’d witheld that information from the public.” I heard Rimarn’s fingers tap against the tabletop. “I imagine you’ve had a difficult few weeks. Been hiding out among the beggars, have you?”

“No. Yes. Just today, I mean.” I dragged my head up, trying to orient on his face. People who could see took me more seriously when I seemed to look at them. I willed him to believe me. “Please. I don’t care if you go after them yourself. You probably shouldn’t; Dateh’s powerful, and his wife is an Arameri. A fullblood. They’ve probably got an army up there. The godlings. Just tell the godlings. Nemmer.”

“Nemmer?” At that, at last, he sounded surprised. Did he know Nemmer, or perhaps know of her? That would figure; the Order-Keepers had to be keeping track of the various gods of Shadow. I imagined they would keep an especially close eye on Nemmer given that her nature defied the pleasant, comfortable order of the Bright.

“Yes,” I said. “Madding was… they were. Working together. Trying to find their siblings.” I was so tired. “Please. Can I have some water?”

For a moment, I thought he would do nothing. Then to my surprise, Rimarn rose and went to the room’s door. I heard him speak to someone outside. After a moment, he returned to the table, pressing the refilled cup into my hand. Someone else came in with him and stood along the room’s far wall, but I had no idea who this was. Probably just another Order-Keeper.

I spilled half the water trying to lift it. After a moment, Rimarn took it from my hands and held it to my lips. I drank it all, licked the rim, and said, “Thank you.”

“How were you injured, Oree?”

“We jumped out of the Tree.”

“You…” He fell silent for a moment, then sighed. “Perhaps you should begin at the beginning.”

I contemplated the monumental task of talking more and shook my head.

“Then why should I believe you?”

I wanted to laugh, because I had no answer for him. Did he want proof that I’d leapt from the Tree and survived? Proof that the Lights were up to no good? What would sway him, me dying on the spot?

“Proof isn’t necessary, Previt Dih.” This was a new voice, and it was enough to startle me awake, because I recognized it. Oh, dear gods, how well I recognized it.

“Faith should be enough,” said Hado, the New Lights’ Master of Initiates. He smiled. “Shouldn’t it, Eru Shoth?”

“No.” I would have leapt to my feet and fled if I could have. Instead I could only whimper and despair. “No, I was so close.”

“You did better than you realize,” he said, coming over and patting my shoulder. It was the shoulder of the bad arm, which was now swollen and hot. “Oh, you’re not well at all. Previt, why hasn’t a bonebender been summoned for this woman?”

“I was just about to, Lord Hado,” said Rimarn. I could hear anger in his tone, underlying the careful respect in his speech. What…?

Hado humphed a little, pressing the back of his hand to my forehead. “Is the other one prepared? I’m not keen on wrestling him into submission.”

“If you like, my men can bring him to you later.” I could actually hear Rimarn’s frosty smile. “We would make certain he is sufficiently subdued.”

“Thank you, but no. I have orders, and no time.” A hand took my good arm and pulled me up. “Can you walk, Lady Oree?”

“Where…” I couldn’t catch my breath. Fear ate at my thoughts, but I was more confused by the conversation. Was Rimarn turning me over to the Lights? Since when had the Order of Itempas been subservient to some cult? Nothing here made sense. “Where are you taking me?”

He ignored my question and pulled me along, and I had no choice but to shuffle at his side. He had to go slow, as it was the best pace I could do. Outside the little room, we were joined by two other men, one of whom grabbed my injured arm before I could evade him. I screamed, and Hado cursed.

“Look at her, you fool. Be more careful.” With that, the man let me go, though his companion kept a grip on my good arm. Without that, I might not have remained standing.

“I will take her,” said Shiny, and I blinked, realizing I had grayed out again. Then someone lifted me in strong arms, and I felt warm all over like I’d been sitting in a patch of sun, and though I should not have felt safe at all, I did. So I slept again.

Waking, this time, was very different.

It took a long time, for one thing. I was very conscious of this as my mind moved from the stillness of sleep to the alertness of waking, yet my body did not keep up. I lay there, aware of silence and warmth and comfort, able to recall what had happened to me in a distant, careless sort of way, but unable to move. This did not feel restrictive or alarming. Just strange. So I drifted, no longer tired, but helpless while my flesh insisted upon waking in its own good time.

Eventually, however, I did succeed in drawing a deeper breath. This startled me because it did not hurt. The ache that had been deepening in one side where I thought the ribs were cracked was gone. So surprising was this that I drew another breath, moved my leg a little, and finally opened my eyes.

I could see.

Light surrounded me on all sides. The walls, the ceiling. I turned my head: the floor, too. All of it shone, some strange, hard material like polished stone or marble, but it glowed bright and white with its own inner magic.

I turned my head. (More surprise there: this did not hurt, either.) An enormous window, floor to very high ceiling, dominated one wall. I could not see beyond it, but the glass shimmered faintly. The furniture around the room—a dresser, two huge chairs, and an altar for worship in the corner—did not glow. I could see them only as dark outlines, silhouetted by the white of the walls and floor. I supposed not everything could be magic here. The bed that I lay on was dark, a negative shape against the pale floor. And threading up and down through the walls at random were long patches of darker material that looked like nothing I had ever seen before. This material glowed, too, in a faint green that was somehow familiar. Magic of a different sort.

“You’re awake,” said Hado from one of the chairs. I started, because I had not noticed the silhouette of legs against the floor.

He rose and came over, and as he did, I noticed something else strange. Though the other nonmagical objects in the room were dark to my vision, Hado was darker. It was a subtle thing, noticeable only when he moved past something that should have been equally shadowed.

Then he bent over me, reaching for my forehead, and I remembered that he was one of the people who had killed Madding. I slapped his hand away.

He paused, then chuckled. “And I see you’re feeling stronger. Well, then. If you’ll get up and get dressed, Lady, you have an appointment with someone very important. If you’re polite—and lucky—he may even answer your questions.”

I sat up, frowning, and only belatedly realized my arm was encumbered. I examined it and found that the upper arm had been set and splinted with two long metal rods, which had then been bound tightly in place with bandages. It still hurt, I found when I tried to bend it; this triggered a deep, spreading ache through the muscles. But it was infinitely better than it had been.

“How long have I been here?” I asked, dreading the answer. I was clean. Even the blood that had been crusted under my nails was gone. Someone had bound my hair back in a single neat braid. There was no bandaging on my ribs or head; those injuries were completely healed.

That took days. Weeks.

“You were brought here yesterday,” Hado said. He set clothing on my lap. I touched it and knew at once that it was not the usual New Light smock. The material under my fingers was something much finer and softer. “Most of your injuries were easily treated, but your arm will require a few more days. Don’t disturb the script.”

“Script?” But now I saw it as I lifted the sleeve of the nightgown I wore. Wrapped into the bindings was a small square of paper, on which had been drawn three interlinked sigils. The characters glowed against my silhouette, working whatever magic they did just by existing.

Bonebenders might use the odd sigil, generally the most commonly known or simple to draw, but never whole scripts. Anything this complex and intricate was scriveners’ work—the kind that cost a fortune.

“What is this, Hado?” I turned my head to follow him as he went over to a window. Now that I knew to look for that distinctive darkness, he was easy to see. “This isn’t the House of the Risen Sun. What’s going on? And you—what the hells are you?”

“I believe the common term is spy, Lady Oree.”

That hadn’t been what I’d meant, but it distracted me. “Spy? You?”

He uttered a soft, humorless laugh. “The secret to being an effective spy, Lady Oree, is to believe in your role and never step out of character.” He shrugged. “You may not like me for it, but I did what I could to keep you and your friends alive.”

My hands tightened on the sheets as I thought of Madding. “You didn’t do a very good job of it.”

“I did an excellent job of it, all things considered, but blame me for your lover’s death if it makes you feel better.” His tone said he didn’t care whether I did or not. “When you have time to think about it a little, you’ll realize Dateh would have killed him, anyhow.”

None of this made sense. I pushed back the covers and tried to get up. I was still weak; no amount of magical healing could fix that. But I was stronger than I had been, a clear sign of improvement. It took me two tries to stand, but when I did, I did not sway. As quickly as I could, I changed out of the nightgown and into the clothes he’d given me. A blouse and an elegantly long skirt, much more my usual style than the shapeless Light clothing. They fit perfectly, even the shoes. There was also a sling for my arm, which eased the lingering pain greatly once I worked out how to put it on.

“Ready?” he asked, then took my arm before I had a chance to answer. “Come, then.”

We left the room and walked through long, curving corridors, and I could see all of it. The graceful walls, the arched ceiling, the mirror-smooth floor. As we mounted a set of shallow, wide stairs, I slowed, figuring out by trial and error how to gauge height using just my eyes and not a walking stick. Once I mastered the technique, I found that I didn’t need Hado’s hand on my arm to guide me. Eventually I shook him off entirely, reveling in the novelty of making my way unassisted. All my life I had heard arcane terms like depth perception and panorama, yet never fully understood. Now I felt like a seeing person—or how I had always imagined they must feel. I could see everything, except for the man-shaped shadow that was Hado at my side and the occasional shadows of other people passing by, most of them moving briskly and not speaking. I stared at them shamelessly, even when the shadows turned their heads to stare back.

Then a woman passed close to us. I got a good look at her forehead and stopped in my tracks.

An Arameri blood sigil.

Not the same as Serymn’s—this had a different shape, its meaning a mystery to me. The servants of the Arameri were rumored to be Arameri themselves, just more distantly related. All marked, though, in some esoteric way that only other family members might understand.

Hado paused as well. “What is it?”

Compelled by a growing suspicion, I turned away from him and went to one of the walls, touching the green patch there. It was rough under my fingers, scratchy and hard. I leaned close, sniffed. The scent was faint but unmistakably familiar: the sweet living wood of the World Tree.

I was in Sky. The Arameri’s magical palace. This was Sky.

Hado came up behind me, but this time he said nothing. Just let me absorb the truth. And at last, I did understand. The Arameri had been watching the New Lights, perhaps because of Serymn’s involvement, or perhaps realizing that they were the most likely of the heretic groups to pose a threat to the Order of Itempas. I’d wondered about Hado’s odd way of talking—like a nobleman. Like a man who’d spent his whole life surrounded by power. Was he Arameri himself? He had no mark, but maybe it was removable.

Hado had infiltrated the group on the Arameri’s behalf. He must have warned them that the Lights were more dangerous than they seemed. But then—

I turned to Hado. “Serymn,” I said. “Is she a spy, too?”

“No,” said Hado. “She’s a traitor. If you can call anyone in this family that.” He shrugged. “Remaking society is something of a tradition with Arameri. When they succeed, they get to rule. When they fail, they get death. As Serymn will learn soon.”

“And Dateh? What is he? Her unwitting pawn?”

“Dead, I hope. Arameri troops began attacking the House of the Risen Sun last night.”

I gasped. He smiled.

“Your escape gave me the opportunity I’d been waiting for, Lady. Though my role as Master of Initiates allowed me access to the Lights’ inner circle, I could not communicate beyond the House of the Risen Sun easily without rousing suspicion. Once Serymn turned out nearly the entire complement of Lights to search for you, I was able to get word to certain friends, who made sure the information reached the right ears.” He paused. “The Lights were right about one thing: the gods have ample cause to be angry with mortalkind, and the deaths of their kin have done little to endear us to them. The Arameri understand this and so have taken steps to control the situation.”

My hand on the Tree’s bark began to tremble. I had never realized the Tree grew through the palace, integrated with its very substance. At the roots, its bark was rougher, with crevices deeper than the length of my hand. This bark, high on the Tree’s trunk, was fine-lined, almost smooth. I stroked it absently, seeking comfort.

“Lord Arameri,” I said. T’vril Arameri, head of the family that ruled the world. “Is that who you’re taking me to see?”

“Yes.”

I had walked among gods, wielded the magic they’d given my ancestors. I had held them in my arms, watched their blood coat my hands, feared them and been feared by them in turn. What was one mortal man to all that?

“All right, then.” I turned back to Hado, who offered me his arm. I walked past him without taking it, which caused him to shake his head and sigh. Then he caught up with me, and together we continued through the shining white corridors.