“I’ll get her some water,” said Feral, running for the kitchen.
“What is it? Are you unwell?” asked Eril-Fane, crouching before her. He looked so worried.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Don’t fret over me.”
“Can you breathe?” he asked. “Is it your hearts?”
“I suppose it is my hearts, but not like that. I’m fine. I’m fine.” She grew stern to make them believe her. “It’s grief, not a heart attack. And I think all of us know by now that grief won’t kill us.”
They fussed over her anyway. Feral returned with water. It was sweeter than the water in Weep and she wondered, as she drank it, where in the world it came from, this rainwater procured by a cloud-stealing boy. And she wondered, too, where in the world they’d end up, these cast-off children claimed by no one.
“We should get you home,” said Azareen, though Suheyla was only an excuse. She was eager to be gone from here. Her mind kept turning indoors, to the sinister arm with its row of little rooms, and the sound of crying babies and weeping women at all hours.
But Suheyla shook her head. “Not just yet. I want to ask...”
Maybe it was better not knowing, but she couldn’t stand it any longer. This could be her last chance to find out. Could she live with wondering all the rest of her days? She wouldn’t be able to pretend anymore that those babies—her baby—had been neither real nor people. “Do you know what they did with them all?” she asked, looking from face to face. “What they did with all the babies?”
There was a silence. Sarai, for her part, was seeing the row of cradles and the row of cribs, Kiska with her one green eye, and Minya trying to protect her while Korako waited in the doorway.
“No,” she said. “We don’t.”
“We only know that Korako took them away once their gifts manifested,” added Feral.
“Took them where?” Suheyla asked, afraid to hear the answer.
“We don’t know,” said Sarai. “We wondered whether they could have taken them all out of Weep? Like Lazlo?”
“I don’t see how,” mused Suheyla. “The gods never left the city. Oh, Skathis might have flown downriver to track runaways, or to Fort Misrach to execute faranji who’d been fool enough to come across the desert. But besides that, they didn’t go anywhere.”
“They didn’t take them out of the citadel,” said Eril-Fane.
“We certainly would have noticed,” Suheyla agreed.
“No,” said Eril-Fane. “I mean: They didn’t take them out of the citadel.”
They all turned to him, unable at first to understand the distinction between what his mother was saying and what he was. They were in agreement, weren’t they? But Sarai saw that he was disturbed, his eyes not quite meeting hers, and she realized: Suheyla was speculating. He wasn’t. He was telling them.
“What do you know?” she asked at once.
“Only that,” he said. “After you were born, I...Sometimes I went by the nursery, to see if I could see you. Isagol didn’t like it. She didn’t see why I should care.” Emotions moved over his face, and Sarai felt them all in her own chest, the same as he had felt her hope in his. “She made me stop,” he said. “But before that, I saw Korako. Several times. Walking, with a child. Different children, I mean. I don’t know what she did with them. But I know they went in together, and...she came out alone.”
“Went in where?” Sarai asked, breathless. They were all riveted on him.
“There’s a room,” he said. “I never went in it, but I saw it once from the end of the corridor. It’s big. It’s...” With his hands, he formed the shape of a sphere. “Circular. That’s where Korako took the children.”
He was describing the heart of the citadel.
Chapter 34
Bacon Destiny
Ruby woke, and wondered what had woken her. She lolled for a second or two...and then sat bolt upright in bed—in Minya’s bed— remembering where she was, and why. She spun, braced for the sight of the little girl awake and maniacal or, worse, simply gone, and then slumped with relief. Minya was still laid out on the floor, eyes closed, face peaceful in sleep as it never was in waking.
How furious the others would be if they knew Ruby had fallen asleep on watch.
But it was fine. Minya was drugged. It was obvious that the potion in the green glass bottle was working. It was ridiculous that they had to watch her sleep. That was probably a sport in purgatory, Ruby thought: sleep-watching. Well, she was bad at it. It wasn’t her fault. She wasn’t skilled at being bored like the others were. If they expected her to stay awake on watch, then someone would have to keep her company.
“That defeats the whole purpose of taking turns,” Sparrow had said when Ruby pleaded with her to stay.
“Stay with me, and I’ll stay with you,” she’d tried bargaining.
“No, you won’t,” Sparrow had replied. “You’ll skip off free the instant your turn is over.”
“Well, can you blame me?”
“No. And that’s why I’m skipping off free now.” And she had, and so had Feral, claiming he had to refill the tub in the rain room, and so Ruby had taken a nap, more out of spite than fatigue. But now she was awake, and as her flash of panic receded, she heard voices out in the corridor.
And...were those footsteps?
You never heard footsteps in the citadel, because they all went barefoot all the time. But Ruby heard them now and came instantly alive. She was off the bed and sprinting down the stairs from Minya’s bedroom, through the domed antechamber to the door. Lazlo had left it open when he brought the doors back to life, since they were all coming and going so often, and it was a good thing, or else Ruby wouldn’t have heard anything, or woken up, or poked her head out into the corridor to the incredible sight of people crossing the passage up ahead. Fully human, fully alive, boot-wearing people.
Ruby ducked back inside, breathing fast. What were people doing in the citadel? She peeked out again. They were headed into the passage that led to the heart of the citadel, and she registered what she hadn’t before: that Lazlo, Sarai, Sparrow, and Feral were walking with them. Calmly.
No one was holding anyone hostage, as far as she could tell. And...was that the scent of bread?
Well. If they thought she was going to stay here and watch Minya sleep at a time like this, they were sorely mistaken. Indignantly, she followed them.
. . .
Every soul left in Weep was watching the citadel. After so many years living in dread of the sight of it, it was hard to make themselves look at it now. But their own had gone up there and none would be easy until their return, so they watched.
Into this curious waiting, Soulzeren and Ozwin returned. They’d been sent for by Azareen, and had made the trip back from Enet-Sarra only to learn that she and Eril-Fane had flown with Lazlo up to the citadel.
“I suppose that means they don’t need our services after all,” remarked Ozwin.
They were the husband-and-wife botanist and mechanist who’d conceived the silk sleigh, a clever flying machine lifted by the gas given off by decaying ulola flowers. They were part of the Godslayer’s delegation, and had vacated the city the other morning along with nearly everyone else.
“Well, I can’t say I’m sorry to be back,” said Soulzeren.
It wasn’t that they’d minded the rugged conditions at Enet-Sarra. They hailed from the Thanagost badlands and weren’t put off by a little camping. It was their fellow faranji they’d minded. Their sourness and bickering had poisoned the very air. Soulzeren thought the others might have borne the danger and inconvenience with more fortitude if they’d still believed the Godslayer’s “great reward” could be theirs at the end of it. But they were men of facts and numbers, and with Weep’s problem no longer seeming likely to be resolved by mundane means, they were embittered by their sudden irrelevance.
The word unnatural had been tossed about like a hot potato, and sweet, earnest Lazlo Strange had been trumped up into an infernal mastermind who’d had them all fooled.
“You reckon it’s safe to stay?” asked Ozwin, rubbing his balding head. Their escort hadn’t been quite clear on the situation in the city, but nobody seemed panicked, and that boded well.
“Some’ll be safer if we do. I’m less likely to commit murder here,” replied Soulzeren.
“Well then, that settles it. Murder’s an awful bother. Bodies to deal with, paperwork and that.”
Soulzeren raised an eyebrow. “Paperwork for murder?”
“There’s paperwork for everything. Shall we reclaim our old room, my lady?”
And so they ambled over to the Merchants’ Guildhall, where they were greeted by the astonishing sight of Thyon Nero unhitching a donkey from a cart. He looked decidedly disheveled, his usually pristine clothes wrinkled and dusty, and his famous golden hair uncombed. “Oh,” he said, surprised to see them, and smiled not at all unpleasantly. “You’re back.”
For a moment they could only stare. He seemed a different man from the one they’d traveled the Elmuthaleth with, who would certainly never have touched a donkey, or worn a dirty shirt, or smiled like he meant it. His smiles had been pickled things, as though they’d been preserved in vinegar on some earlier occasion, to be pulled out to act as garnish to his artfully plated expressions. This smile was crooked and loose and seemed born of laughter. He wasn’t alone. The young Tizerkane, Ruza, was with him, holding a heavy black frying pan, a long strip of bacon lolling from his mouth like a dog’s tongue. This was strange, too. Not the bacon tongue—that was Ruza to a T. But the warrior was Lazlo’s friend, and there had never been any warmth between Thyon Nero and either of them.
Well, thought Soulzeren, disaster makes strange bedfellows.
“Care for some bacon?” Thyon asked.
“I’ll never say no to bacon,” replied Ozwin.