The goddess of secrets had been a mystery. None ever knew what her gift even was. She hadn’t sown torment, like Isagol, tangling emotions for the fun of it, or eaten memories like Letha, who sometimes went door to door for them, like a caroler on Midwinter’s Eve. Vanth and Ikirok had made their powers known, and Skathis was Skathis: god of beasts, king of horrors, daughter-stealer, city-crusher, monster of monsters, madman.
But Korako was a phantom. There were no horrors to pin to her, save this one, and there was no one left to tell of it but Minya. Here it was, playing out: the goddess of secrets come to the nursery.
She was the one who tested them. She sensed when the children’s gifts stirred and coaxed them forth. And then she led them away with her and they never came back.
She stood in the doorway now, and dread pounded like drums. Sarai understood that Minya’s unconscious was layering in some retrospective knowledge. The girls in the room didn’t know the goddess was there. She watched them for a moment, and her face was a mask. She spoke, or did she? Her lips didn’t move, but her voice was soft and clear. She said, with a questioning lilt, “Kiska?”
And the little girl who was Minya’s playmate turned, unthinking, toward her. In the next instant, she froze, and just like that she was caught. Her name was Kiska, and her gift had come. For weeks, she’d kept it hidden, but all was undone just like that when reflex betrayed her. Korako had only thought her name, but Kiska had heard her. She was a telepath. Korako had suspected and now she knew.
She said—was she sorry?—“Come with me, now.”
Hundreds of times she’d done this before. Hundreds she expected to do it again. She little imagined, did she, that this was the very last time? That little Kiska with her one green eye was the last child she’d take from the nursery. Eril-Fane would rise up only three weeks later, and kill the gods and the children, too. But Kiska would be gone by then. Today was her farewell. She shrank with fear, and showed no defiance.
Minya did. Sharply, she said, “No.”
Sarai, a spectator, saw what Korako must have seen: a small, ferocious, burning girl with a presence ten times her size. “You can’t have her!” She was shrill, afraid but also furious. You could see her father in her—if, that is, the god of beasts would have used his power to protect children. “GO. AWAY!”
Korako didn’t argue.
It occurred to Sarai, watching, how easy she might have made it all. Whatever was in store for the children, why had she not simply lied? Why not pretend she was taking them to a lovely new life, with homes and grazing spectrals and the feel of grass beneath bare feet— with mothers, even. They’d have gone with her, willing, and been eager for their turn. But she didn’t say a word. She seemed almost to steel herself. Her spine got a little stiffer, her face a little blanker, and she didn’t meet Minya’s eyes.
Sarai saw something she’d never noticed before: There was a mesarthium collar around Korako’s neck. A collar, like an animal might wear. She searched her small cache of memories of the goddess. Had she really worn such a thing? Sarai tried to remember her death from Eril-Fane’s dreams. Had it been there? She couldn’t be sure.
Then, in the doorway, Korako made a gesture—a signal to someone—and. ..
...the skip reappeared. The anomaly, the blur. It reasserted itself in that instant. Again, Sarai had the impression that something was being obscured. She tried to look and saw only shadows. There was an ache in the aura, like pressing on a bruise. Was it Korako’s doing? Was she hiding something? But that didn’t make any sense.
This was Minya’s dream. If it was keeping a secret, it was her secret, and her mind keeping it.
Could it be the answer to where the children were taken, too painful for her to remember? The mind could do that. Sarai had seen it. If something was simply unbearable, it put up a wall around it, or buried it in a tomb. She had seen horrors hidden in a biscuit tin and planted under a seedling so the roots would grow around it and hold it fast. The mind is good at hiding things, but there’s something it cannot do: It can’t erase. It can only conceal, and concealed things are not gone. They rot. They fester, they leak poisons. They ache and stink. They hiss like serpents in tall grass.
Sarai thought that Minya must be hiding something with that blur. She needed to know what it was. She gathered her power around her. She was the Muse of Nightmares. Dreams did her bidding. They could not hide things from her.
She bent all her will on the place to force it into the light. The resistance seemed to wail and thrash. It was strong, but she was stronger. It felt like ripping something open—a rib cage or a coffin. And then it was done. The blur was vanquished, and...
...the Ellens appeared.
Sarai thought she must have been wrong. Why should Minya conceal the Ellens? They weren’t dead on the floor like the last time. This wasn’t the Carnage. What was there to hide?
Her next feeling was relief. She had felt the nurses’ absence so keenly. The nursery was like a half-painted picture without them in it. She thought they would comfort the girls, because that was what the Ellens did.
Or...that was what her Ellens did. These Ellens ...
Sarai saw their faces, and she almost did not know them. Oh, their faces were their faces. They were shaped the same, anyway. Less Ellen wore an eye patch, but Sarai already knew that she had. Isagol had plucked out her eye. In her ghostself she restored it. It wasn’t the eye patch that was the problem, though, but her good eye—or at least, the revulsion in it. She was looking at Minya and Kiska the way humans look at godspawn, as though they were obscene. And Great Ellen...
Sarai felt stricken, robbed, punched in the hearts, and laughed at all at once. Her sweet Great Ellen had round red cheeks that they called happiness cheeks, and they were still round and red, but happiness had nothing whatsoever to do with this woman. Her eyes were as cold as eel flesh in snowmelt. Her lips were puckered like a badly sewn buttonhole. And her aura was pure molten menace.
She went for Minya. Less Ellen seized Kiska and muscled her toward the door, where Korako was waiting. The whole time, the little girl was looking back over her shoulder, helpless dread on her face. Minya fought, kicking and spitting. She let out such a scream. It was the one that lived inside her—the apocalypse thing, throat-scouring, head-filling roar of endless rage. It whipped out of her like an animating spirit breaking free of the skin that contained it. In the dream, as it could not in truth, her wrath took the shape of a demon. It coalesced, red of skin, fire-eyed and huge. It dwarfed the nurses. It filled the room. What teeth it had, what a howl. Sarai was pummeled by its fury. She staggered, stunned, but also glad, because surely Minya was taking control. She would seize the dream, and her friend as well. She would save Kiska and win, and have at least a moment of peace, even if it wasn’t real.
But the demon only howled with anguish as Kiska was dragged away.
And then Great Ellen drew back her arm and backhanded Minya to the floor. The howl cut off with an abruptness that Sarai could compare to just one thing: the moment her body, after its long, quiet fall, hit the gate, was impaled, became dead. The rage storm ended. The wrath demon vanished. And Minya lay like an unloved doll splayed out on the floor.
Chapter 27
The Living and the Ghosts
Years ago, Minya had made them all swear not to use their gifts on one another. It had seemed a little unnecessary. Of course it was important that Ruby not use hers, but the rest of them? Sparrow’s and Feral’s gifts weren’t dangerous, and Minya’s wouldn’t even work on the living. Still, they’d all sworn so solemnly, so completely under Minya’s spell—and not grudgingly under it, but happy to be there. They’d adored her, their sharp-tongued, dark-eyed deliverer. But now it struck Sarai that it was her Minya had looked at while they all said their oaths. It was her gift Minya had feared. But all these years she had kept her promise, allowing Minya to keep her secrets. If even once she had defied her, might she have understood?
Now she flinched out of the dream, stunned and pale. Lazlo was there. He was holding her other hand, and he’d felt the emotion flooding through her, the same way he’d felt her screamed NO! His hearts were pounding. He didn’t know what was happening. It felt like being locked out of a room while someone you love was trapped inside with unknowable terrors. “Are you all right?” he asked. “What happened?”
At first she couldn’t even find words. She stared at Minya, lying on her pillows, and knew that on just the other side of a barrier only she could cross, Minya was lying on a cold metal floor with no pillows and no one to help her.
No one was ever going to help her. Everything she would do, she would do alone and with blood on her hands. Sarai swallowed the bile that wanted to rise up her throat. “Get the others,” she told Lazlo. “Please. Tell Sparrow...” She swallowed again, fighting not to retch. It helped to remember it wasn’t real—not the bile or her throat, anyway. Her horror absolutely was. “Tell Sparrow to bring the lull.”
. . .
Out in the garden, Sparrow knelt beside a cluster of flowers. They were torch ginger, perfect red. She’d always thought they looked like little fireworks exploding.
In Weep, every year on the anniversary of the Carnage, they set off fireworks. There were, apparently, all manner of festivities, but the fireworks were the only ones that they could see from up here. And though the godspawn knew what was being celebrated, it was hard not to want to watch the fire blossoms lighting up the night.
The humans didn’t call it the Carnage, but the Liberation. Sarai had brought back that fact from her visits to Weep. Through her moths she’d witnessed many things, and carried back stories for the rest of them, much like a girl who’d attended a ball and smuggled sweets home for her younger sisters.
And now she’d smuggled back more than stories, and more even than sweets. She’d brought a man.
Sparrow liked Lazlo very much. Based on him, she thought she would trust Sarai to go fishing for more humans and bring them back, too.
It was a dizzying idea—strangers, here—but less terrifying than the thought of going down to Weep. Sparrow longed to leave the citadel, but the city itself terrified her. When she was younger, she’d daydreamed about her unknown human mother, and of going down to live with her, certain that, given a chance, her mother would love her back. Great Ellen had been gentle with her, saying how they needed her here, while Minya had been more blunt. “They’d bash your head in with a shovel and throw you out like garbage,” was how she’d put it, and Sparrow knew it was true.