The Sky Weaver Page 13

  “Leave us for a moment,” she told the soldats.

  As they stepped out, Safire shut the door.

  “You royals sure travel in style,” Eris said the moment they were gone. Her voice had a lazy, mocking edge as she looked around the room. “The upholstery in here alone could pay to feed a starving village.”

  Safire looked around her. The cabin was decorated with lavish furniture made of dark wood and upholstered in rich blues and purples. Portraits hung from the walls, and on the table, silver goblets rested beside a decanter of wine.

  Eris tilted her chin toward the bed. “And I bet those silk sheets—” The words died on her lips as her gaze fell on the object in Safire’s hand. Something desperate flashed across her face.

  It was the confirmation Safire needed.

  “First you say you burned it,” said Eris, her eyes meeting Safire’s. “Then you say you buried it. That’s twice you lied.” Her lips curved in a slow smile. “Looks like I’m starting to rub off on you.”

  The comment rankled Safire. She didn’t respond. Just grabbed the chair from the desk and turned it around, sitting down before her captive.

  “I have a theory,” she said as she tossed the spindle up and down. Taunting Eris in the same way Kor had. “The rumors say the Death Dancer is uncatchable.” Up and down went the spindle. Eris never took her eyes off it. “They say she can escape any cell. That she walks through walls. That she eludes even death.”

  The next time the spindle landed, Safire’s fingers closed around it. She looked up to find Eris’s gaze intent on her face. “Not so long ago, I watched you disappear before my own eyes. And now, here you are. Caught. What’s the difference between that night and this one?”

  When Eris didn’t answer, Safire lifted the wooden object by its slender end, holding it up.

  “It’s the spindle,” she mused aloud. “It somehow allows you to disappear.”

  Eris smiled with just one side of her mouth. “Why don’t you give it to me, and I’ll show you if you’re right.”

  Leaning over the back of the chair, Safire smiled back. “I know I’m right. Without it, you’re nothing more than a common thief.”

  Eris’s elegant jaw hardened. “So this is what you do with all your captives, right before you march them to their deaths? Taunt them? Gloat over them?” She shook her head, disgusted. “It’s beneath you.”

  Safire smarted at those words. She sat back, her cheeks reddening with heat.

  But what did she care about this lowlife’s good opinion?

  She did care, though. She cared that Eris was right: taunting and gloating were beneath her.

  I’ve been spending too much time in the company of criminals, she thought.

  Still, Safire rose from the chair, unsettled, and walked to the small porthole. “I’m not marching you to your death,” she said softly, looking out to the harbor in the distance. She could just make out wharves and fishing sheds and boats moored to docks. Beyond it, the city sprawled out and up the mountain at its back. “The empress will give you a fair trial.”

  Eris snorted. “You’re a fool if you think that’s true.”

  Safire turned in surprise to face her. “What do you mean?” In Firgaard, every criminal had a right to a trial. Things hadn’t always been this way, but they were now, under Dax and Roa’s rule.

  “If she puts me on trial, I’ll tell the truth. And Leandra doesn’t want me telling the truth.” Eris’s eyes were unnaturally bright. “Trust me, princess. I’ll get no trial. She’ll take me up to the immortal scarps and dispose of me—like she does with everyone she hates most.”

  Safire crossed her arms, turning back to the porthole, watching the smoke from Axis’s chimneys curl into the distant sky. She needed to be careful here. She knew Eris was perfectly capable of manipulating her.

  Hesitant, she asked, “And what’s the truth?”

  “You’ve already decided what it is,” said Eris in a small voice.

  Safire turned to face her. “Try me.”

  So Eris told her.

  Seven Years Previous

  “We’ve hidden her here as long as we can.”

  Eris hadn’t intended to spy. She’d only come to Day’s room because the weavers were out of purple dye and had asked her to fetch more scarp thistles. She’d come to tell Day she was going up to the meadow.

  Day liked to know where Eris was at all times.

  When Eris heard voices inside the room, she immediately turned away, knowing how her guardian felt about eavesdropping. But at the sound of her own name, Eris stopped.

  She couldn’t help herself; she turned and listened at the door.

  “The Lumina are getting stronger.” It was the Master Weaver’s deep voice. “If she stays any longer, she’ll bring sorrow upon us.”

  “I understand,” came Day’s soft answer.

  “You know how I feel about the girl. How we all feel. But . . . I’m sorry, Day.”

  The door opened suddenly. Before Eris could hide, the Master Weaver halted, the silver tassels of his robe swishing. His clear black eyes stared down at Eris, full of surprise.

  Day stepped out beside him.

  “Eris . . .”

  The two men exchanged a look above her head.

  “I’ll see you at dinner,” said the weaving master. Before he left, he touched Eris’s shoulder in what could only be good-bye.

  As his footsteps padded away, the implications of his words unraveled inside her.

  He wanted her to leave? But this was her home. Everyone and everything she loved was here. Day. The looms. Her best friend, Yew. The cliffs and the meadows and the sea . . .

  “Why?” Her voice sounded strange in her ears. Like a mirror breaking. “Why will I bring sorrow on everyone?”

  Day bent toward her until their eyes were level. He wore no tasseled robes, but a knit gray sweater and trousers stained with dirt. He was only a caretaker, after all.

  “Listen to me. . . .”

  Eris wasn’t listening. She was panicking.

  She’d always known she was no one important. She was an orphan, taken in out of charity. Because the weavers had made a vow to the Skyweaver: to harbor those who needed harboring.

  But she never thought they would send her away.

  “I can’t leave,” she said, her voice cracking. “Where would I go? I have nowhere to go, Day. I’ll be all alone!”

  “Eris.” His strong hands came down on her shoulders. “You are never, ever alone. No matter where you are.”

  She shook her head. Tears burned in her eyes. He didn’t say: Everything will be all right. He didn’t say: I won’t let them do this.

  “You don’t want me either,” she realized then. She’d always feared it, deep down. But here was the proof. “No one wants me.”

  “Eris . . .”

  She didn’t want to hear any more of his empty words.

  Pulling out of his grip, Eris turned and ran.

  She ran hard down the halls—bumping into apprentices as she escaped the scrin. Beneath the setting sun, she ran up the dirt paths, through the silver boreal forest, along the rocky cliffs facing the sea. Her footsteps pounded the earth, trying to outrun what she’d overheard.

  She didn’t stop running until she reached the meadow.

  It smelled of juniper and sea salt up here. In the distance, far below, the sea roared as it crashed against the rocks.

  Eris had just collapsed in the grass, weary from running so fast and so far, when a sound came from across the meadow.

  She looked up to see Yew bumbling toward her. Bleating loudly, his stubby white tail bouncing as he ran across the field. He butted Eris’s shoulder with his soft white head, then proceeded to nuzzle her.

  Eris threw her arms around Yew, breathing in his musky smell and burying her tear-streaked face in the sheep’s wool—which was fuzzy from being recently sheared.

  “Why does no one want me?” she whispered.

  As if in answer, Yew curled up
beside her and put his soft white chin in Eris’s lap.

  When she’d cried herself out, she lay in the golden grass, staring up at the blue sky. Picking up her knife—the one Day gave her for cutting scarp thistles—she ran her fingers over the embossed star pattern in the silver sheath.

  “To remind you the Skyweaver is always with you,” he’d told her the day he gave it to her. “When you use it, say a prayer to her.”

  Eris closed her eyes, thinking of the prayer Day recited with her every night before bed:

  When the night descends . . .

  I look to those who’ve gone before me

  lighting my path through the dark.

  When I am deserted and alone . . .

  I know your hands hold the threads of my soul

  and there is nothing to fear.

  When the enemy surrounds me . . .

  I remember you are with me.

  And though they break my body, they can never take my soul.

  They always spoke the last line together. Eris recited the prayer twice now and when she opened her eyes, she felt calmer. Less angry. But still hurt.

  I should be grateful that they took me in at all, she thought. Me, a worthless orphan.

  Using this thought as a shield against the hurt, Eris got to her feet. Spotting a patch of scarp thistles growing in clumps near the cliff edge, she drew the knife out of its sheath and went to cut some.

  “As a good-bye gift,” she told Yew, who lay in the grass now, watching her with deep brown eyes. “For the weavers.”

  Eris didn’t know when it had gotten so late, only that when Yew bolted upright, staring toward the sea, the sky was dark and the stars were coming out.

  Eris let go of the thorny scarp stalk and lowered her knife, looking in the same direction.

  Yew bleated, agitated. Eris laid her free hand atop his warm back, peering through the blue twilight. A silhouette came into view. Something—a man?—was walking toward them from the cliffs. Above him, a massive black raven soared through the air.

  Eris frowned. There was no path up or down those cliffs. You had to climb the steps on the other side of the scrin.

  So where had he come from?

  Day’s warnings about strangers filled her mind and Eris stepped back.

  “Who are you?” she called out.

  She could see from where she stood that his gait was clumsy and stiff. As if he were limping.

  He stumbled.

  Eris sheathed the knife and ran to him. Yew trailed nervously behind her. As she got closer, she saw he was an older man, maybe Day’s age. His clothes were soaked and a hideous red gash sliced his forehead just above his right eye. Blood—now dry—had run down his cheek and neck, pooling in the hollow of his throat. That black raven circled above him.

  “Are you all right?” Clearly, he was in some kind of trouble. “What’s your name?”

  “Jemsin,” he rasped. “My ship . . .”

  His hands shook, and Eris could see his fingers were scraped and bloody.

  Had he climbed those cliffs? She looked from his hands to his face as admiration flared within her.

  The raven dived suddenly, flapping its massive wings as it landed on Jemsin’s shoulder. It stared down at her with bloodred eyes. Growing strangely cold beneath its gaze, Eris stepped back.

  “A wicked wind dashed us right up on the rocks,” Jemsin said. “Like we were nothing but a leaf. Where am I, girl?”

  “Shadow Isle,” she said, eying the raven as she stepped carefully beside Jemsin, ready to catch him if he stumbled or fell. “The scrin isn’t far. They’ll help you. Where’s the rest of your crew?”

  He shook his head, his shoulders sagging. “Eaten. The sea spirits got each and every one of them before they could swim ashore.”

  Eris thought of his men, swimming through the cold silver waters as one by one their comrades were pulled under by clawed and scaly hands.

  She shivered at the thought.

  “Come on,” she said, taking his hand in hers as she led him back down the cliff paths, through the boreal forest, forgetting all about the scarp thistles. The raven flew from his shoulder and began to circle the sky above once more. But as they drew nearer to the scrin, something made Jemsin stop.

  “Wait,” he hissed, grabbing her arm. Yew bleated at him. The man let her go, raising his hands. “Do you smell that?”

  Eris sniffed.

  The acrid tang of smoke hit her. She turned, looking in the direction of the scrin. Through the darkness, above the tops of the junipers, she could see a multitude of red sparks spitting at the sky.

  Cold dread spread through her.

  “No . . .”

  The man reached for her again, but Eris was already running. Straight toward the fire.

  Straight toward home.

  Yew bleated somewhere far behind her.

  It wasn’t long before she saw the flames themselves. Huge, ravenous flames. Orange and red. Devouring the scrin.

  Swarming all around it, watching it burn, were men dressed in black, with silver blades strapped across their backs.

  But that wasn’t what halted Eris’s footsteps.

  It was the man being forced to his knees. Being forced to watch.

  “Day . . . ,” she whispered.

  A woman stood before him, her pale hair twisted back in a severe bun. The way she held herself—chin high, shoulders back—said she was used to giving orders. She was dressed in black like all the other soldiers, her hand gripping a silver sword as she stared down at her captive.

  “Did you think you could hide from me?” Eris heard the commander say, her voice ringing out over the crackling flames.

  Day held her gaze from where he knelt in the dirt.

  “Where is it?”

  Day didn’t say a word.

  “Shall I tell you how she screamed in the end? How she begged?”

  Day’s jaw clenched and for a moment, Eris thought he might lunge, but he stayed where he was and did nothing.

  “Tell me where it is!”

  Day stared past her. Stony and silent. Giving no answer.

  The commander hit him in the jaw with the hilt of her sword. Day spat blood, shook his head once as if to clear it, then looked up. Past the woman. To the stars.

  Eris saw her guardian’s lips move. Watched his mouth form the familiar words.

  “‘When my enemy surrounds me . . .’”

  It was the prayer he’d taught her. The one they recited together at night.

  “‘I remember’”—his voice seemed to get louder, floating up to Eris—“‘you are with me.’”

  The commander sneered at Day, drawing back her sword.

  Eris knew what was about to happen. Knew she was powerless to stop it.

  “No . . .”

  “‘And though they break my body, they can never take my soul.’”

  The commander plunged the silver sword through Day’s heart.

  Eris felt her body freeze over.

  Before she could scream, Jemsin’s hand came down hard over her mouth. Pulling her back. She tried to push him off. Day needed her. She had to go to him.

  The woman withdrew the blade. As she did, Day looked straight at Eris. As if he’d known she was there all along.

  Their gazes locked. Eris saw the blood seeping through his gray sweater. Saw that his eyes were already clouding over. She stopped struggling.

  In that moment before death stole him away, he mouthed one word.

  “Run.”

  And then Jemsin was hauling her back to the trees, telling her the same thing as Day.

  “Day! The scrin!” She sobbed. “My friends are all inside!”

  Jemsin grabbed her shoulders and made her face him. “Listen to me, lass. Your friends are dead. There’s nothing you can do for them now.” He pulled her against his wet, salt-encrusted clothes. “We have to run. It’s what he would want: for you to survive.” He pulled her away, wiped the tears from her cheeks.

  Eris l
ooked up into his brown eyes.

  “Are you ready?”

  Eris nodded.

  They ran.

  They needed a way off the islands, but everything Jemsin owned had sunk to the bottom of the sea, and the Across would only shelter them temporarily—the only door within it led straight back to the scrin. So Eris tried to barter her spindle for passage aboard a ship. The shipmaster sneered at her, turning them both away—until he saw the knife at her hip. The one Day gave her. “That,” he told her with gleaming eyes as he called her back, “is a fairer trade.”

  So Eris sold her knife in exchange for passage.

  It was only after they sailed out of the harbor, only after the Star Isles disappeared in the distance, that Eris wondered: Why Day? Why had the commander of the Lumina army forced him to watch the scrin burn, and no other? He was only a caretaker.

  And what had they been looking for? What was so important, it warranted burning the scrin with everyone inside it?

  But Eris remembered the conversation she’d overheard. The Master Weaver had given her a clue when she eavesdropped on him and Day: If she stays any longer, she’ll bring sorrow upon us.

  Day hadn’t disagreed with him.

  Eris didn’t know why the Lumina had come, or what they wanted. But she did know this: The destruction of the scrin, the slaughter of all her friends, the death of her guardian . . .

  These things were her fault.

  Nineteen

  Eris had never told that story to anyone. She only told it now because it might earn her Safire’s sympathy. If she had Safire’s sympathy, she might be able to change the commandant’s mind about handing her over to the empress.

  But another part of her told the story because ever since Kor told Safire it was Eris who burned down the scrin, Eris couldn’t stop thinking about the look that had come into Safire’s eyes. Horror. Then disgust. And last of all: loathing.

  Normally, these things didn’t matter to Eris. Who cared what other people thought about her?

  But for some stupid reason, it mattered what Safire thought.

  In the silence after finishing her story, Safire stood immobile, staring out the porthole. Eris shifted uncomfortably, waiting for her to say something. The pain in her wrists made her jaw clench, and her legs shook from being forced to stand all night.