“Awi!” I hissed, as loud as I dared. “What are you doing? We need to get out of here.”
In response, she flew away from us, farther down into the Mountain.
“Should have brought a net,” Taran muttered, giving chase.
We pursued her deeper and down, the ceiling dropping and the walls pressing closer together, until we came to an iron-barred door at the end of a narrow hall. Everything in this part of the palace was covered with months of dust, but the boards of the door seemed new, and the iron locks that held it shut still had faint ridges from their recent manufacture, not yet worn smooth by use.
There was a small open panel where Awi flew to rest. The air that passed through the window tasted dry and warmer.
As I approached, ready to snatch up the bird goddess in my hands, I realized she was making a little creaking noise. Crying.
“What happened?” I asked, now hesitating to reach for her, though she didn’t appear injured.
“Napeth! Did you see him? He’s totally cracked. Off his stool.”
“Yes, I know,” I said, annoyed if nothing in particular had happened to Awi. “He’s so terrible, we had to fight a war about it. Two! And also why we need to go right now—”
“No, not like he was before. He’s worse, he came back worse. He would never have done this before.” She was still crying, sobbing if a bird could sob.
“What’s he done now?” I asked, but Awi abruptly flew at Taran’s face.
“You did this to him. This is your fault!” she cried, tiny feet almost scoring his cheek before he swatted her away, his face creasing in confusion.
“Mine? How is it my fault? I met him for the first time today. Wesha was the one who decided to exile her husband for three hundred years.”
“He was just supposed to stop being such a brute, and he could have come home. I never thought he’d go this far. Nobody would have.” Her voice was a hoarse screech, and she darted through the window before I could stop her.
“Damn it!” Taran spun on his bare feet. “A netanda birdcage.”
I tried the door and found it locked—not only locked, but bolted in three places.
There was no furniture nearby that might conceal the key, but though the tugging of my vow had disappeared with Awi’s flight, I still wondered where it led. What she’d seen.
“Where does this go?”
“Deeper into the Mountain, I guess,” Taran said reluctantly, examining the bolts.
I gnawed the inside of my cheek, then did my best to paste a look of nonchalance across my face as I sang the short blessing to open the lock, hoping Taran wouldn’t notice.
His head whipped toward me in surprise.
“What did you just do?” he demanded.
“This blessing opens locks,” I said, fingers crossed that he’d let it go.
“But where did you learn it? Not from Wesha. Or Lixnea,” he said with new wariness on his handsome face.
I hesitated on how to dissemble when I’d never heard anyone but Taran use it.
“I heard the man I was going to marry use it a few times,” I said, pulling the latches apart with my best expression of distant grief. This did not discourage him from inquiring further.
“Did he belong to a temple? Who was his patron god?”
I shrugged, not daring to look at him as my vow of truthfulness prickled my throat.
“Which god was his patron?” he pressed.
I hauled the creaking door open. “I’m not sure. Genna, maybe?”
