Chapter 10

10

Aiz

Kithka dragged Aiz down deep into the prison's depths, where there was hardly even a rumor of light. The cells were icy and hellish—holes in the ground with a latched door on top and a latrine ditch in the corner.

Aiz thought her jailers would leave her inside for a day or two. She'd survive. She had her anger to soothe her, fuel her, strengthen her for whatever came.

But almost immediately, she was gripped by nausea and confusion. In the Hollows, the only light came from the twisting purple ore veining the gray stone. The ore seemed to pulse like the fading heart of a fresh-felled deer. When Aiz touched it, she felt infinitely worse.

Aiz heard no sounds at all. No whispers from other prisoners, no passing footsteps. Not even the scurry of rats. There was only silence so profound that she would scream on occasion to remind herself she was alive.

A day passed. Three. Perhaps more, but after a time, Aiz couldn't keep track. The walls pressed in on her, and she struggled to breathe.

In Dafra slum, Aiz had sharpened her wrath on the ever-spinning grindstone of misery. But here, in the deepest bowels of the Tohr, her anger faded into hopelessness. She didn't know what would happen to Sister Noa or Olnas. The children or the other clerics.

She tried to tell herself the Sacred Tales, tried to take inspiration from Mother Div's strength during her flight from Old Kegar, when she hadn't known if she would find a new home or crash into a merciless sea. But Aiz heard Cero's voice in her head, caustic. Mother Div won't be reborn as the Tel Ilessi, Aiz. She won't save us.

Perhaps Tiral had figured out that Cero had the book. If so, Cero would die. It would be Aiz's fault. Her impetuousness would have deprived the world of his creativity, his dark humor, his dreams, closely held but beautiful. What if we harnessed the sun to grow plants in the winter? What if we transported goods with our Sails for other countries and got food in return?

I'm sorry, Cero , Aiz thought. I wish you were here. I'm lost. I don't know what to do.

Kithka brought food at uneven intervals, and when Aiz stopped eating, she yanked the girl out of the hole, beat her, and shoved the food in her mouth.

"The Triarchs don't want you dead, girl," she said. "They want you to suffer. You'll eat. If you don't, I'll shove it down your gullet again."

After the beating, Aiz lay on the dirt floor, body shaking and vision blurry. How naive she'd been to believe in Mother Div! Death is honorable in the service of belief. That was from the Eighth Sacred Tale, and it was rubbish.

This ugly, stinking, humiliating fade into nothingness— this was death. Not noble. Not in service of anything. But forsaken and forgotten in the depths of a jail where Kegar's most hated criminals disappeared. You were right, Cero. It was all lies.

Aiz.

The voice was distant, a whisper on the wind. Aiz tried to sit up, but her body felt weighed down with stones. Around her, the dim light of the cell shifted. It faded and transformed into the night sky, dancing with bands of purple, red, and green light. The silence in the Hollows was no longer the menacing quiet of death but the soft hush of a gentle snowfall.

Aiz's mind was a Sail, flying far away. She thought of her mother. How tired she always looked. Strange—it had been years since she remembered her mother's face, thin and sharp like Aiz's, but still soft somehow. She'd died during a raid after being forcibly enlisted. Aiz had tried to hold on to her as soldiers dragged her away. But she was too small.

Aiz, hear me.

"Who—who are you?" She batted at the air.

Aiz, my daughter, finally I come to you, in your hour of great need.

"Ma? Who is there?" Aiz called, bewildered, for she saw no one.

Do you not know me, daughter of Kegar?

A figure appeared above her, tall and hooded, face veiled, a crown atop her head. Aiz couldn't make out her features, but that silhouette was familiar from statues, friezes, and coins. Aiz knew her as sure as she knew her own face.

"Mother Div?"

Have you lost your faith so swiftly, Aiz bet-Dafra?

She knew people had visions before death. When the orphans in the cloister burned, Aiz heard many calling out to their mothers as they died. Not in pain or terror, but in greeting.

"There's no faith here," Aiz whispered. "Only death. Only darkness."

Darkness perhaps, for there is beauty in the dark, and strength. But not death, daughter of Kegar. Not yet. Listen well. Corruption eats at the heart of our land. It grows most virulently among those who rule our people. A traitor to my blood seeks to fulfill my prophecy of a Tel Ilessi. A vile pretender to whom Kegari lives mean less than a mote of dirt.

"Tiral," Aiz whispered.

The figure came in and out of focus. Aiz tried to shake away the torpor that weighed down her bones. She needed sharpness now. For this could not be real.

It is real, child. If it wasn't, how would I read your thoughts? My blood alone held the power of mindsmithing. If I was not real, how would I know that Tiral bet-Hiwa plans to claim the mantle of the Tel Ilessi before the next full moon?

Aiz's disgust penetrated the haze in her mind, her hunger for vengeance rekindling. Heartless, faithless Tiral as Tel Ilessi? The killer of orphans—who were most precious to Mother Div—playacting as the vessel of her spirit? It was repugnant. A desecration of Div's kindness, her love. But before Aiz could protest, the figure spoke again.

Heed me. The Triarchy is corrupted and cannot help our people. Only you can.

"How?" Aiz asked.

The highborn call the wretched poor Snipes, but we are Starlings who move together as one. The low, the broken, the forgotten, the hungry—they will be your shield, your sword, your army, the heart that beats within you. Look to them for strength. Do not let Tiral's blasphemy stand. For as long as it does, we cannot return home. We cannot leave this accursed spit of land for the golden shores of our forefathers.

Aiz gasped. Mother Div spoke of the Return. The tantalizing promise at the end of every Sacred Tale. Mother Div will return in the body of the Tel Ilessi, the Holy Vessel. And the Tel Ilessi shall deliver us back to the homeland from whence we fled, so long ago.

"I failed to kill Tiral," Aiz said. "Even if I succeeded, we don't have enough Sails or Loha to leave Kegar."

Do you know what Dafra , the name of your home, means?

Aiz shook her head.

It was the name of the evening star, the brightest in our sky far away, in the land to which I was born. Aiz bet-Dafra, you are a daughter of the evening star. You are not meant to be caged. Despair is death. Crush it. Stoke your rage instead. Escape. Kill the pretender. Take our people home.

"The clerics—"

I will not leave my most loyal servants unaided. Escape. Swear it.

"I—I swear."

Mother Div touched Aiz's hand, the cool slide of the cleric's skin as real as if she was in the room. Aiz felt sudden pain. She looked down to find a D cut raggedly into the skin between her thumb and forefinger.

I mark you, daughter of the evening star. You are my anointed. Do not fail.

Mother Div took one step back, then another, until she faded, the light surrounding her dimming, leaving Aiz alone in the dark.

Kithka returned Aiz to the main prison block hours later, hissing impatiently as Aiz limped along the Tohr's serpentine halls behind her.

"Thought she had another week." Gil glanced up at Aiz from his post at the end of the cellblock, picking at a flea in his beard.

"Orders," Kithka said. Aiz watched her, wondering whose orders. Wondering if her early release from the Hollows was the work of Mother Div.

Aiz ran a finger over the letter carved into her hand. Perhaps she'd been hallucinating. Her nails were bloody. She must have clawed the mark into her own skin.

Or Mother Div did it and you aren't meant to die here. Find a way out, Aiz.

Before, she'd thought the ceiling of the cellblock low, the shadows teeming with nightmares. But after the dark and silence of the Hollows, the spitting torch at the far end of the hall felt like a miracle. Prisoners peered out at her from their cells as she passed. They were crowded with more people, including clerics who weren't from Dafra cloister.

Whispers trailed as Aiz passed.

"It's the tale-spinner."

"Aiz. She's alive."

"The tale-spinner lives."

"Shut your holes," Kithka snarled, voice echoing. "And you"—she shoved Aiz in her cell—"the next time you open that rat trap, I'll stick a rusty knife up it."

The moment the jailer was out of sight, Noa, Olnas, and little Hani swarmed Aiz, helping her to a cot, pulling a threadbare blanket over her shivering body. She wanted to weep at their careful hands, their warmth.

Jak hung back, shy, but Finh, the red of his hair barely visible beneath the dirt, offered Aiz a wrinkled apple.

"I saved it," he said. "For you."

Aiz took it gratefully. "I was so worried. I thought—"

"We're fine," Noa soothed Aiz, though the bruises across her arms said otherwise. "Tiral sent nearly a hundred more clerics here. The ones who asked the Triarchy to release us. Our people have been rioting. A highborn neighborhood was burned down."

The low, the broken, the forgotten, the hungry—they will be your shield, your sword, your army…

"Aiz," Jak whispered, rubbing her shoulder the way Hani did when he had nightmares. "Shall I tell you a story?"

Aiz kissed the boy on his forehead. "Another day, Jak."

"Let her rest." Olnas herded the children away. "A good night of sleep is what she needs."

But Aiz did not sleep, even when everyone else in the cell did. Instead, she relived her strange visitation until every word was etched in her mind. She felt so consumed with confusion that she finally called out to Noa.

"In the Hollows," Aiz said when the old woman had settled next to her on the cot. "In the darkness, I—I saw something."

As she told the cleric of what happened, Aiz felt certain that her desperate mind must have conjured all of it.

"I know it sounds like a Spires-forsaken lie," Aiz said when she was done. "But, Sister, it felt so real—"

"Because it was." Noa took Aiz's hands with gentle reverence to drive home what she said next. " To step into the abyss and know Mother Div will catch you—this is faith. The Seventh Sacred Tale. You have been chosen, Aiz. I know this in my heart, as sure as I've known anything in my life. Look, child—"

Sister Noa shifted her rags to reveal a long pin. "It fell out of the Questioner's hair last night. I took it, thinking to give it to Olnas. But—" She glanced at the lock of the cell. She knew well that Aiz had learned to pick locks and pilfer food as a child. "It was a gift from Mother Div. A sign. You're not meant to wait. You're meant to leave. Now, Aiz. Tonight."

Aiz shook her head. "I'd never make it."

"Where is your faith?" Noa drew herself up, and Aiz saw once again the woman who'd survived the toil and hardship of Dafra and still had enough strength to be kind. "Always, you believed. And now that you are called to act upon it, you falter?"

"I believe the stories," Aiz said. "It's my own heart that I doubt."

"Do not!" Noa grabbed Aiz's hand and forced the hairpin into it. "For it is the same heart that remembered the dead children all others had forgotten. The heart that gives first, takes last. I know the strength that lives within your heart, Aiz bet-Dafra. It is time you learned too."

"They will punish you for this."

"The Mother will care for us. If Tiral plans to declare himself Tel Ilessi, that is a sacrilege that demands an answer. You are Mother Div's answer. Go. "

If Noa died for helping Aiz escape, it would be the first of many deaths. If she fell apart every time, nothing would change for her people. Tiral would win. The Snipes would keep starving, keep dying in the raids that seemed to feed only the highborn. The Kegari would be bound to this merciless place, never to return home.

Sister Noa tilted her head as if she knew Aiz was on a precipice.

"Tell me a dream, little love."

Aiz drew a sharp breath in. "I dream of freedom from tyranny," she whispered. "A better life for us all."

"Mother Div will make it so," Noa said.

Aiz nodded, took the hairpin, and thought, Mother Div, if it breaks to make two picks, then I will pick the lock.

It broke easily. Aiz rose gingerly from the cot and made her way to the door. There, she thought, Mother Div, if I can open the lock, then I will walk through the door.

The lock was ancient and heavy. But after only a minute of fiddling, it opened. Aiz's hands shook. She took a breath and stepped through. She moved then as if drawn forward, as if some great cord pulled her. As she passed her brethren, voices whispered.

"Light of the Spires."

"Light go with you, tale-spinner."

"Mother Div bless you."

"Tale-spinner of the Tohr. Hurry. We'll keep your secret."

Each voice was a push at her back, urging her onward. She reached the end of the hallway and paused. One iron-banded door led to the Questioners' chambers—they'd slithered out of it too many times for her to forget. The middle door led to the Hollows. Aiz pushed through the third door, entering a low stone hall.

The hall was silent, the air weighty, as if charged by a storm. A nearby torch illuminated an open door, and Aiz peeked in to find a poorly stocked pantry. A rat scurried away at her approach.

Forward , instinct told her, and she understood why a moment later. The Tohr was built into a mountain, but its layout reminded Aiz of Dafra cloister. Mother Div had built both, after all.

Kitchen's ahead , she thought, and sure enough, the next open door led into a darkened room where Aiz made out the gleam of an enormous cooking pot. But that was when Mother Div's blessing appeared to run its course.

Two jailers stepped out of the dining room to her left—a room she hadn't seen. Gil, stocky and well armed, and Kithka.

Mother Div's first true test of my mettle.

Aiz's body ached from the beatings. Her muscles were weak and atrophied from lack of movement. But she was still a child of Dafra's hard streets, and the guards were so surprised to see her out of her cell that they stared in shock.

Aiz leaped upon Gil, snatching his knife from his belt and shoving it into his throat before she could doubt herself. She felt queasy at the way his flesh gave, at the drag of steel against bone. She ripped the knife out, bringing meat and sinew with it. Gil collapsed and Aiz barely evaded Kithka's fist as the tall woman lunged for her.

"You'll die for this." Kithka whirled, circling Aiz with her daggers out. "You and your clerics."

The jailer leaped again, fast enough that Aiz couldn't get out of the way. The back of her head hit the tunnel wall and her knife fell. Aiz blinked rapidly, trying to clear her vision as Kithka grappled with her. She let her body go boneless, and then slammed her palms as hard as she could into Kithka's belly.

The jailer doubled over, shrieking when Aiz wrenched her knife away and stabbed her in the shoulder. Aiz shoved her into a pillar and put the blade to the woman's throat.

"Do it then, you Snipe bitch," Kithka spat out. "Make it quick."

Aiz stared at Kithka, taking in the emaciated frame, the sallow skin, the bruises on her throat and the tattoo on her wrist, a circlet of four flowers, each with a slash through it to mark the children she'd lost. It was a common tattoo in Dafra slum. Stillbirths, fever, illness, starvation. There were so many ways for children to die in Kegar.

Mercy , Mother Div seemed to whisper.

"I won't kill you." Aiz eased the knife back. "I am you. We are daughters of the evening star. You do not deserve death. You deserve safety. Your babies in your arms. Food on your table. A warm hearth."

"I—" The woman looked not angry but confused. Her eyes filled. "My mother said that we were daughters of the evening star. How did you—"

"We are meant for more than this." Though Aiz's childhood in Dafra told her to keep the dagger, the voice within told her to offer it to Kithka, who took it, perplexed.

"You've heard the Sacred Tales," Aiz said. "You listened the other day. Our people are meant for better. I aim to give it to them. Let me go. Tell me how to get out of here."

The guard gazed down at her dead companion.

"He was cruel to the prisoners," she said. "Especially the little ones. I hated him for it. But what can I do? My family must eat."

Aiz held her peace. One wrong word, and that dagger could end up in her chest. Give her a moment , the voice within said. Give her grace.

"You speak to Mother Div, yes?" Kithka said. "You tell the stories like a cleric even if you don't wear the robes."

A guard called out at the end of the hall. "Kithka? Gil? I heard something."

Kithka lowered her voice. "Ask Mother Div to guide the spirits of my children to the Fount, girl," she said. "That they might spend the afterlife bathed in its light." The jailer shoved her toward a door in the dining room. "Through there. Down the hall. Last chamber on the left. Looks like a storage closet, but there's a door. Go through it."

"Thank you," Aiz said. "Kithka—"

"Go." The jailer moved toward the voice that had called out. "Before I come to my Spires-forsaken senses."

Aiz limped through the door. She had no plan if she emerged from the prison. She would freeze in her rags. She had no food or shoes. No way of getting in touch with Cero or anyone at the cloister. If there even was a cloister left.

But exhilaration still buoyed her. She could have been stopped, killed, caught. But she hadn't been. Daughter of the evening star.

She stumbled into the closet, which was crowded with manacles and chains. Aiz shuddered as she moved them aside to find the door.

Go. Go. Go. Voices behind her, in the hallway. She scrabbled at the handle, stiff with grime and disuse. The voices grew louder, but the door did not budge. She braced her feet and pulled with her whole weight. She was so close.

"Mother, please," she murmured. "Be with me once more."

The door squealed open to a tunnel of pure darkness. Fear burned through her veins, a memory of the Hollows.

There is beauty in the dark, and strength. Aiz closed the door behind her and staggered forward, a hand outstretched. She walked until her feet burned, then went numb. With each step she felt weaker. She realized why when purple-black veins began to appear in the rock walls of the tunnel. Aiz reached her hand out to touch the substance and flinched back. It burned.

A faint whistling echoed through the tunnel. It grew louder the farther she went. Stronger.

Wind.

She was on her knees now, crawling because her feet couldn't support her. And then it was not Mother Div who Aiz thought of. It was her loathing of Tiral and the Triarchs, a lightning bolt that lit her veins aflame with outrage. They were the reason Kithka mourned her children and Cero his father. They were the reason the cloisters didn't have food and the Snipes didn't have hope.

And Aiz swore on the Mother that if she survived, she would destroy them all.

She turned a sharp corner. Blessed light poured into the tunnel. Aiz sobbed, knees bleeding, and burst out of the cave into a raging storm, the wind howling around her like a thing possessed.

Perhaps she should have been afraid of the cold or starvation. Of death. But a figure emerged from the darkness, catching her as she fell, and she smiled when she saw green eyes burning into hers, brown hair swirling about his face.

"Did you hear her, Cero? Did she visit you, too?"

Cero shook his head and pulled off his cloak, the same gray as the rocks around them, and tucked it in about her shoulders. "Come, Aiz. We must hurry—we're dead if we don't get to shelter."

"There is beauty in the dark." Aiz reached up and touched Cero's face. "And strength. But not death. Not yet."