Ellina paused on that thought. Something—some half-formed idea—nudged her mind.
“There was a reason my mother did not want Farah to be queen,” Ellina said slowly.
“Yes,” Kaji agreed. “Farah has shown her true self.”
Ellina was not sure that was what she meant, but she quickly finished dressing and said only, “You can turn around now.” Kaji did. He appraised her, then glanced at the book on his divan. “Keep it,” Ellina told him. “If you need to reach me, you can pretend you are returning it.”
“Yes, but could you not have chosen something more…subtle?”
Elves and Warwas the title of the volume Ellina had chosen to bring. It was the same book she had given Venick a month earlier when he was bedridden from a knife wound to the hip and insistent on teaching her battle strategy. Ellina remembered Venick’s surprise when he realized what she had brought.Elves have books about war?he had asked.
History books, mostly, Ellina replied.
Books about the purge, you mean.
It was a bloody mark on their history. Centuries ago, conjurors had not been elven, but human. Human conjurors possessed many of the same powers elven conjurors did today, using their magic to shape stone and summon shadows and weave storms. Elves—concerned with what humans might do with that kind of power—decided to put it to an end. They rounded up human conjurors, beheaded them and burned the bodies.
Necessary, Ellina’s mother said when she first told her daughters the story.We did it to protect ourselves. Humans are undisciplined. They cannot be trusted with such power.
Messy, others said later, when Ellina had grown older.Do you know how much blood a human body contains? Do you know what they smell like when they burn?
She had not, at least not then. But she had learned. In the legion, Ellina had killed more humans than she cared to count. Occasionally they burned the bodies. The smell was acrid, sometimes even sweet. It would cling to Ellina’s clothes for days.
“I think the book is fitting,” Ellina said.
Kaji twirled the single golden ring he wore on his smallest finger, then dropped his hand to his dagger, unbelting it. “If you must go, take this.”
“Kaji, no. If I am caught, they will trace it back to you.”
“I thought you said you will not be caught.”
“In which case I will not need a dagger anyway.”
The elf’s brow creased. He looked as if he might again try to council Ellina on the perils of making reckless choices, but in the end he merely sighed and said, “Be careful.”
Ellina offered a small smile. Then she climbed out his window.
???
She knew her route. She had planned it carefully, running through it so many times that it seemed burned behind her eyes. Ellina leapt from Kaji’s window onto an awning, then down into a windy courtyard. It was fully night now, and Ellina listened as deer listen, for the faintest sound, a footstep, a breath. She darted quickly through the shadows, concealed in the dark in Kaji’s uniform. She was not seen.
The everpool glowed in the moonlight. It looked exactly as it always did: pearled, calm. Despite the wind whipping through the stony garden square, the water remained still.
Ellina stepped to the pool’s edge. It was impossible not to remember the last time she had come here. She had asked Venick to accompany her, gripped by a wanting she could no longer deny…and an uncharacteristic daring whose danger she should have recognized.
It is an everpool, she had explained. All elves knew about the power of the everpools, but most humans did not.You step inside and ask it your questions. Sometimes, it gives you answers.
Ellina slipped out of her shoes and rolled up the hem of Kaji’s pants. She stepped into the pool on the far side where the water was most shallow, no more than ankle deep, and pulled a letter from her pocket. The message she had scrawled was simple.There are soldiers waiting for you in Abith. They will attack as soon as you arrive. You must not go that way.
Quietly, Ellina whispered to the water in elvish. “I come bearing a message for Dourin. Show it to him and him alone, should he ask for it.” She set the parchment into the pool.
As soon as paper met water, the everpool began to ripple, not from the point of contact but from its center—the everpool’s core. The water glowed faintly, shining with a light from within. The message vanished, and the water stilled once more.
Ellina exhaled. It was done, she could go. Yet she stared at that water a moment longer, envisioning the network of everpools that would carry her message into Dourin’s waiting hands. She thought of her letter traversing leagues in an instant, zipping along its way.
She imagined that she had gone with it.
TWELVE
