“You promised! To get me out of here! And you’ve had weeks to get to the Painted Tower. What are you doing here, you lazy drudge?”
“Did you not notice that the City is under attack?”
She whistled a shrill dismissal. “Yes! Wesha’s barely holding the Gates closed, and this entire place is about to fall apart. You were supposed to get the boy and go. Where is he?”
I grimaced, feeling my breath hitch as if it would like to become a sob instead. An unworthy part of me wished I’d done just that and didn’t know this was happening.
“Probably waking up alone right about now—he tried to stop me from coming to help.”
“Of course he did. With the Allmother gone—”
“Did you see what happened? Is she really dead?”
The little bird postured with one beady eye like she wasn’t going to answer, but she hopped between me and the trail of scorched earth.
“I heard the fight go on for weeks, Napeth and the Mountain. Today he cracked the ground open to escape, and the Mountain is quiet. She’s either dead or asleep or…I don’t know. It’s never happened before. If she’s not there to remake us, who even knows whether we’re still immortal? We could die, really die!”
Awi certainly meant herself and Taran, not Death, but that was where my mind immediately went. If I took my little knife and went after the winged lion in the distance, might I end things for good this time if I got in one lucky blow?
Worth a try, my despairing fury crooned.
Anger could provide enough light and heat to keep a wounded soul alive. I knew that from experience. It wasn’t hope or righteousness that had fueled me when I started the rebellion against Death. I’d relied on anger, and I welcomed it back into the furnace of my heart now.
“I’ll go find out,” I said, a tingling sense of resolve stilling the shake of my limbs. I almost smiled, but the bird goddess realized my plan and panicked.
“What! No, you stupid little polecat, you’re just going to leave me, all these priests, that wretched boy you came all this way for?”
“Taran wouldn’t come,” I repeated bitterly.
“So you’re just going to ditch him?” she shrieked. “You’re just as unforgiving as he is—a hateful, stupid girl, the worst priest I’ve ever had.”
“I’mnotyour priestess. I have one little vow to you, and if I happen to live past sticking a dagger into Death’s black heart, it should beveryeasy to convince Wesha to let you through the Gates.”
I could hardly rush after Death while being heckled by a sparrow, so I was forced to try to catch her.
“Stupid! Stupid!” she chanted, dodging my hands. “What do you think a priestis, anyway? It’s just a vow, and every vow is a sacrifice. You’re the only priestess I have left—or that Taran has.”
I’d never put that together before. Every vow was a sacrifice of our freedom, and the vows of complete obedience that priests took gave up their entire lives. No wonder the Stoneborn were so greedy for priests: it was the same impulse as Death’s lust for human sacrifice.
Maybe I could end it today. I didn’t delude myself that my chances were very good, but if Taran had managed it once, perhaps I would succeed today—maybe Death’s fight with the Allmother had weakened him, or I’d catch him by surprise.
“I guess you’d better hope I live, then,” I said.
The bird must have seen the determination on my face, because she flew directly at my throat, tiny feet scrambling for a hold on my neckline.
“Stop! Wait, I’ll tell you where they took the priests.”
With another wrench of anger, I halted, plucking her from my collar and holding her at arm’s length. Her little black eyes bugged out as she pleaded with me.
“If you’re just going to get yourself killed, you might as well do it with a tiny chance of success. Go after your mortals instead—I saw Death’s Fallen take them. There’s a passage to the Underworld hidden in Wesha’s palace. They’ll sacrifice the mortals there, try to give Death enough power to bring down the Gates from the inside.”
My immediate reaction was that the bird was lying to get me off the battlefield, but it was almost too fantastical to be pure invention. I’d been living there for weeks, Taran for months—how could he have missedthat?
Though he did have Death’s armor—perhaps that was how he’d stolen it.
If the passage was there, he probably wouldn’t have told me. He didn’t want any part in my war, after all.
“Why would there be a passage to the Underworld in Wesha’s palace?” I demanded.
