There, I had a view of the soldiers in practice—and what a sight to behold. I will never forget it. Two hundred people, bundled up and layered in loose, leather armor, moved in perfect coordination at the bellowed cries of a man on a wooden scaffolding. He paced back and forth, dressed no differently from his subordinates.
The general, I presumed.
Crossing the battlements, we entered a private study, where a welcome fire snapped in the fireplace. Steaming, rosemary-scented broth waited on a short table at the room’s center, and four cushions rested around it.
The King’s bird swept off his shoulder and landed on a hook overlooking a long, curved desk covered in maps and letters.
“This is the general’s office,” the King explained, yet before he could peel off his goggles, the door creaked open.
A fur-covered head poked in, and a decidedly feminine voice said, “Your Majesty, we need you at the stables, sir.”
Instantly, the rook was off his perch and flapping back onto the King’s shoulder. The sound of his flight drowned out whatever the woman said next—and whatever the King answered—yet the sudden stiffening of the King’s spine told me it could not be good.
“I’ll be right there,” he told the woman. Then he swung his gaze back to me. His expression was inscrutable behind the wool and fur. “I need to go to the stables. We’ve had disease hit my favorite hounds. Lady Saria just arrived to help, and … I apologize, Sister Eridysi. Can you speak with the general alone?”
I bowed my head. “Of course.”
“Thank you. I will join the two of you soon.” And with that, he yanked on his goggles and pushed back into the winter’s day.
The door thunked shut, and I was alone. After hanging my cloak and goggles on a knob by the door, I crossed to the fireplace to wait.
As I warmed up, a grin eased over my face. My head lolled back.
I had done it. I had done it! One passage was complete, and the remaining five would be easily done. Then, once we had them all, we could start porting people away from the Exalted Ones. Even the blade to kill them was almost complete too. All our plans were coming together.
I beamed so broadly my cheeks hurt. Even when the door rushed open and footsteps stomped inside, even as I turned to face whoever it might be, I still grinned.
I couldn’t help it.
The general stopped dead in his tracks at the sight of me, the door open and his mittened hand clutching the latch. Snow swooped in. Cold washed against me.
My smile faltered. Then frosted away entirely. Why did he stare? Why did he not shut the door?
I offered a polite bow. “I am Sister Eridysi. You must be the general.”
He flinched. Then, voice muffled by the angle and the layers, he mumbled, “Yes.”
Aiming for a string of hooks nearby, his back to me, he removed each layer. Hat, scarf, leather armor, outer coat, undercoat.
He shrank and shrank and shrank, until at last there was nothing but a man with dark hair and a standard black silk uniform.
Then he turned to face me.
“You,” I breathed.
“You,” was his reply. Then his gaze dropped to his toes, and he scrubbed a hand over his dark hair.
Nervous. He was … nervous.
“You told me you were a soldier.” Accusation laced my tone.
He offered a tight laugh. “An advanced soldier.” Then he shrugged, his eyes finally lifting to meet mine across the room. “Does … it matter?”
“No!” I rushed forward two clumsy steps. Then stopped, feeling a fool.
Now I was the one staring uncomfortably at the ground. “I simply … That is to say, I assumed you were somewhere near the Convent. In one of the Rook King’s southern forts.”
“A fair guess.” He cleared his throat. “I never specified.”
“You must truly love the girls.” I twirled away and marched to his desk. It was so much easier to speak when I didn’t face him.
So much easier to breathe.
“Not that I doubted you loved them, of course,” I rambled on. “But it must take you an entire day to travel both ways.”
“Each way,” he corrected. “The journey takes two days.”
I watched him from the corner of my eye as he approached me at the desk.
He frowned. Then he was at the table and standing beside me. Close enough that I could smell iron and horse. Close enough that, if I wanted to, I could have reached out and touched him.
“So you are that Sightwitch. The inventor without the Sight.”
Shame gusted over me.
“Your eyes are silver,” he continued, oblivious of the fire raging on my cheeks. “So I assumed you were like the others.”
“Well, I’m not,” I said flatly.
Now he was the one to blurt. “I meant no offense. I’m sorry, my lady. Truly.”
I believed him and forced a smile. “I suppose we’re both more than we let on.”
“Ah.” The worried lines of his face smoothed away and he offered me one of his own smiles. The kind that made his bright eyes crinkle and my stomach knot tight. “When did you get here?”
“Only moments ago. The first doorway is complete.” I gestured vaguely up the mountain. “I just tested it.”
He stiffened. “You tested it?”
“Of course. Who else would?”
“I don’t know. Someone who isn’t you.” He shook his head, an impatient movement. “What if the magic had gone wrong? What if you had not arrived here at all? Did you even try it before you stepped through?”
“How would I possibly try it?” I drew back my shoulders.
“Throw a stone in it.”
“The spell only works on the living.”
“Then send a Paladin!”
“Oh, right,” I retorted, “because the most important people in all the land would risk their lives testing my doorway.”
“Yes! And they should! This is their rebellion—”
“This is our rebellion!”
“—and if they die, then they’ll be reborn!”
“Why are you shouting at me?”
“Because it was foolish! What if you had died?”
“The Six would have gone on just fine without me,” I snipped, and because I didn’t know what else to do—because I don’t like confrontation—I gathered myself up to my fullest height and said, “I will tell Lisbet and Cora you send your love. Good day, General.”
Then I stalked past him and aimed for the door. As I grabbed at my cloak, ready to yank it off its hook, his voice skated over me. The words were too low to discern.
“What?” I angled back.
He cleared his throat. Then louder, he offered, “They aren’t the only reason.”
“Who?”
“The girls.”
I released the cloak. Then turned to stare at him straight on.
There was no more anger to cloud his eyes. Nor pain nor anything else I could easily recognize.
Then he repeated, “The girls aren’t the only reason I come each full moon,” and I knew exactly what expression he wore.
Need.
And I needed it too. I had all along, hadn’t I? Since that day at the Sorrow when the world had tilted sideways. When he’d flashed a single smile.
I would not let this moment slip past.
In four long steps I was back to him. Rolling onto my toes and looping my fingers behind his head.
His hair was as soft as I had dreamed it would be.
Then our lips touched, and it was over. I had kissed before. A hundred girls around me, and I was bound to try. But I’d never met someone who made me want to keep kissing like he did.
Twice, I had to pull back to catch my breath. The room spun. His face spun.
But I could not stay away for long. A heartbeat, perhaps two, and then our lips were crushed together once more.
This was it. This was what it was all about—this was true Sight, true understanding of what life really meant.
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The general and his daughters had been the change to shake me loose, and I knew that from this moment on, I would never be the same.
I knew what I had to do. It was what Tanzi wanted me to do, what she’d wanted me to do all along.
To go beyond.
To be free.
All these hours and days and weeks, I had had only one purpose: to reunite with my Sisters and my Lazy Bug.
All these years, I’d thought this was my future. I would become a powerful Sightwitch Sister and join the ranks of those who protected Sirmaya—and who one day joined with her forever in sleep.
But my Goddess was dying. If I finally took hold of what I’d always wanted, it would mean turning my back on a world that needed me.
I couldn’t do that, and Captain had been right all along. Back on the Way Below, he’d been right: there was not one set path for me. I could choose another. I could make my own Sight with clarity and purpose and thinking beyond.
Tanzi had said there was another way to heal Sirmaya, so I would find it.
I splayed my fingers on the ice, right over Tanzi’s heart. It was so silent now. So still. “I’ll come back for you,” I whispered. “I’ll heal the Sleeper, and you’ll wake up again.”
Then I gathered up Eridysi’s diary and the gold leather pouch, and with my chin held high, I left behind all the people I’d ever loved.
The ice, however, had a different plan in mind. I reached the exit, ready to march back into the main spiral, when a loud crack! rattled through the room. Everything shook, hard enough to topple me.
I found my gaze level with Trina’s. She looked so young within the ice.
Ice, I realized, that was moving. Too surprised to react, I watched as three crystals lanced out from beside Trina’s head.
More cracking sounded around me, echoing and solid. I looked down to find ice rising up from the floor.
It wasn’t until the ice slid its claws around me that I finally moved.
I bolted for the door. Ice erupted from all angles. Bigger, fiercer. Stalactites to pin me down.
This tomb did not want me to leave.
I dodged. I leaped. I hit the spiral pathway, where the Rook hovered in place, panic clear in his frantic wingbeats.
He saw me. He cawed. Then he folded his wings and dropped like a stone.
“Curse you!” I screeched, slinging left. “I can’t fly!”
I couldn’t blame him for leaving me, though, for as I launched my legs high, ice began to fall. A tremor from a dying—a cleaving—Goddess.
I ran.
I don’t know how I mustered such speed after so much exhaustion. After losing the one thing I’d wanted: my family. Yet somehow, by the grace of Sirmaya, I ran faster than I ever had before.
The world around me misted into a streaming haze. Ice rocketed toward me, sentient and grabbing. I ducked, I dove, I twisted and turned. I hopped, I stumbled, I ran, ran, ran.
“I don’t want to sleep!” I tried to holler between bounding steps. “I want to heal you! I’ll find another way—no sleeping!”
The ice did not listen. The tremor did not stop.
I reached the bottom floor, where the Rook screeched and flapped at what little remained of the exit. If I’d thought it tight before, it was nothing compared to now. I wasn’t sure I could even fit in there, much less squeeze all the way through.
The Rook squawked a warning.
I dove sideways. Half a beat later, ice smashed to the ground. A huge column of it shattered outward, and as each shard hit the ground, it reached for me.
No. No. No. What little power I possessed was a drop of water compared to the other Sisters. Thousands of them slept in this mountain, from the thousands of years we’d been protecting Sirmaya. With my mind, my drive—I would heal the Goddess from the outside.
I would not succumb to the sleeping.
I hit the exit and flung myself inside. Cold wrought the air from my lungs, and ice razored into my chest, my legs. Shrinking! This space was shrinking! And the ice would not let go. Over and under, it crowded in, trying to hold me down.
“Release me!” I shoved sideways. Harder. Harder. Blood streaked the blue behind, but I couldn’t stop. The Rook had squirmed ahead, and since he was still moving, there had to be a way out.
Time stretched into a strange, incongruous thing measured in grunts and cracks and endless straining. Until finally I was there—I could see a sliver of darkness that could only be Paladins’ Hall.
As if sensing how near I was to escape, the ice closed in all the harder. A shackle sliced around my left wrist. Then another around my ankle.
I tugged, I fought, I screamed, “I don’t want to sleep! I am going to heal you! Let me go!”
Still, the ice ignored me. It pulsed outward, a vise to clamp off my breath, to smash in my skull.
Still, I battled and reached. Blood and tears mingled in my mouth. There was the hall—right there. I was so close, so close.
I reached it.
Even now as I write this, I do not know how. The ice moved enough for me to free my wrist and ankle, then I toppled headfirst through the doorway.
But I wasn’t safe yet, for the ice was not stopping at the door. It was thrumming outward, trying to claim me even as the door’s halves swung in.
Please shut, please shut.
The door did not shut, and in a stone-trembling roar, the ice burst out. It was coming for me.
I scrabbled around, my mind a clash of rules and fruitless prayers. Rule 35: Stay calm, for panic serves no one.
Please, Sleeper, help me. Please, please.
Rule 13: Never leave a fire untended.
“Enough,” I hissed at myself. “Focus, focus.” What were my options? I was alone on the ledge with the Rook nowhere to be seen—nor Captain. I hadn’t thought he would be here, but I’d hoped.
How else was I going to leave this platform? Even without the ice, I needed a way off.
Fighting to ignore the approaching ice—so loud, so loud—I scuttled to the edge of the stone and stared down.
A galaxy of stars met my eyes.
We had flown right over it, and I’d never seen.
As I stared at the stars—not true stars, but spirit swifts swirling and dancing amid nine lights placed in perfect coordination—I realized that the answer stared up at me.
I laughed then. The sound burbled out, a pot boiling over in my belly.
For it was right there. The answer to the Nine Star Puzzle was right there and had been all along.
Suddenly, I knew what Tanzi had been saying all these years. Think beyond, Ryber. Think beyond.
She meant beyond the framework of stars. I had always assumed that I had to keep my chalk inside the slate, but it wasn’t true—nothing in the instructions ever said I had to.
I tore out my map, and there, right under my nose, was my second answer: the way off this ledge. It was even scribbled on the paper.
Palladin’s Hall, 38.
It’s what all these numbers on the map were. Rules. But I’d been so trapped inside the framework, I hadn’t thought to think beyond.
Tanzi had recognized that the stars, the Rules—none of it was real. It was only what we chose them to be.
I stuffed the map into Eridysi’s diary, no time to fold it. The ice was at my heels, and I had to go. Now.
I threw a final glance down. If I was wrong, then it was a long way to fall—a very long way to fall.
But I wasn’t wrong.
This was my true path. One without structure, without Sight or guarantee or anyone at my side to help me forge ahead. Yet I knew what mattered most, and I would do whatever it took to get there.
Just as I had found the Supplicant’s Sorrow all alone as a child, I would find a way to heal the Goddess. And when Sirmaya was healed, when her sleep was calm and there was no more risk that this world would end, then I would return for my Sisters. I would return for Tanzi.
And with that purpose held tight in my mind,
I stepped off the ledge.
I did not fall to my death. The bridge had been there all along, even if I could not see it. What is life except perception?
This was how Tanzi had lived. While I’d been hiding behind my walls and rules, she had tasted freedom.
I walked and walked, the bridge ever descending while starry spirit swifts glimmered closer with each step.
The doorway that Captain had taken hazed into focus. First a glowing wave of blue. Then the archway. Rubble. Jungle vines.
And finally the Rook, waiting for me on the floor.
When at last my feet stepped onto visible stone once more, my lungs whooshed an exhale of such force that I doubled over. Then I laughed again, the same delight singing through me that I had felt above the invisible bridge.
My jubilance was short-lived, though, for as I drew myself up, I found the Rook chittering his beak. He skipped forward, backward, side to side.
He wanted me to go through the door.
I wiped at my face and fixed my gaze on the jungle fanning ahead. Sweat, blood, a salty line of tears—all of it smeared onto my sleeve, but I hardly noticed. My thoughts were on the Rook.
He had guided me and saved me every inch of the way. He’d saved Captain too.
“It’s him, isn’t it?” I asked, trudging a step closer to the door. “He’s a Paladin?”
The Rook’s head bobbed. He clacked his beak.
“And he’s important.”
Another clack, and this time the Rook ruffled his feathers. “Hurry,” he was saying. “No time.”
I wanted to ask why. I wanted answers to everything—why Captain mattered, what waited beyond that door, and above all, how to heal Sirmaya. But the Rook couldn’t speak, and my only chance for real answers lay beyond that rubble.
My gaze flicked down to Eridysi’s diary, still clenched in one hand. Perhaps it held answers too. After all, I had found this for a reason, and there were no coincidences, right?
“Will I be able to get back in?” I asked the Rook, lifting my gaze once more.
Another bird nod, and a tension unwound in my chest. I could return. I could fetch Captain, and we could return.