I was too stunned to move. My vision blurred, and my breath came in short bursts. The Ziz couldn’t be dead. We were going to save it.
Daziel recovered first. “How do you know?”
“It has become quite obvious,” the older shayd said. “I commend you—though your mother will not—on attempting to solve this on your own, but enough is enough. Leave the adults to their work.”
“What work will that be?” Daziel asked. He sounded challenging, his chin jutted out, but I could see the flicker of both fear and desperate hope in his eyes, as though he wanted nothing more than for an adult of his own people to sweep in and make everything right.
“Why, we will have to prepare to leave Ena-Cinnai,” the shayd said. “There is little else to be done—with the Ziz gone, the winds will fluctuate so wildly the land will be unlivable within five years. Other lands will face their own difficulties, so it is not yet clear where will be the best place to go, but it is best to be ready.”
A moment of dreadful silence, and then the Sanhedrin broke into wild, unstructured yelling.
“I will discuss this with the Chief Judge and the grand duke,” the shayd said, his voice cutting through the noise. “You may call upon me at my usual rooms.” He vanished.
Chaos remained. I looked first at Aunt Tirtzah, appalled shock on her face, then Professor Altschuler, who wore a matching expression. So much for reassurance.
“Come on.” Daziel grabbed my hand. He pulled me back through the entrance door, into the small antechamber where we usually waited. No one bothered to stop us.
“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere we can talk.”
But we didn’t talk, not the whole fifteen-minute walk back to my aunt’s, not until we reached the relative safety of our room. I threw myself on the bed, grabbing the blanket as though it, unlike the adults, could offer some measure of safety. “Who was that?” I said, still shocked. “Do you think he was right?”
Daziel paced back and forth. Paz’s tiny head following him worriedly from the foot of the bed. “If he says the Ziz is dead, the Ziz is dead.”
“Is he right about the rest? The country will become unlivable—the world?” My throat was dry. I found it unfathomable, a nightmare I was desperate to wake from. “What are we supposed to do?”
Daziel looked grim. “I’ve never known him to be wrong.”
“Who is he?” I asked again, desperate to grasp the situation, to sort all the players, to find some angle to make this man less trustworthy.
“Ah.” Daziel stopped pacing. “That was my father.”
An entirely different kind of shock washed over me. “Are you serious?”
“Mm. Why?” He registered my alarm, which had graduated from angst on a worldwide level to deeply personal dismay. “What’s wrong?”
“Yourfather. Some warning would have been nice,” I said, aware I was being nonsensical; Daziel hadn’t known any more than me that his father would show up in the center of the Council room. But now I had to worry about meeting Daziel’s dad on top of everything else.
“He likes to be dramatic. One of the few pleasures allowed to him, he’d say.” Daziel sighed. “I’m sure we’ll see more of him soon.”
“When?” I looked down at my outfit, practical brown as usual. I wasn’t sure what one wore to meet the parent of their betrothed, but I’d have liked the chance to think about it. “Today?”
“I couldn’t say.”
The tone of his voice—defeated—caught my attention. “What do we do? If the Ziz is dead?”
Daziel looked on the verge of tears. “I don’t know.”
“But—how are we supposed to fix the winds? Bring on the Maestril? It should be here by now.”
Daziel shook his head. “We can’t.”
We had failed.
I hadn’t expected to fail. I’d known it was a possibility—I wasn’t an idiot—but in my heart, I supposed, I’d thought if I worked hard, if I didn’t give up, everything would be all right.
It wasn’t all right.
