Inshara must have sent agents down the river when she realized I was no longer in the temple city.
The boy’s glittering eyes glare fearlessly up into mine. I’m not wearing my ceremonial red—there’s every reason to think the boy has no idea who I am.
“What are you doing here?” I demand, after a silence that stretches far too long.
He pulls a hideous grimace and then spits at me. Instinctively, I jerk back a fraction, horrified and confused all at once—never has anyone treated me thus.
“Waiting for you, False One.” His voice is harsh and defiant.
I fight the need to run all the more. He does know who I am—but if anything, he seems to be recoiling from me rather than positioning himself to try to touch me. Still, my every muscle is ready to move.
“How … how did you know I would be here?” I keep the tip of the spear at the boy’s throat.
He sneers at me and turns his face away. I see that the lines across his cheeks continue on past his hairline, barely visible through the short-cropped hair. They’re not painted at all—they’retattooedinto his flesh.
Sickened, I harden my heart like Daoman taught me. I press the point of the spear against the boy’s throat, just shy of piercing the skin. “Answer me!”
The boy gives a gurgle in response to the spear’s pressure, but when I lift the point of the spear to let him breathe, the gurgle turns into a laugh. He looks back up at me, his tattoos drawing my gaze in toward his sharp eyes the way the striped petals of a huntsman rose lure flies into its deadly center.
“The true Divine One sees all,” he says in a low, fervent voice. “The Divine Oneknowsall. You think you know what it is to be a god?” Another laugh, the edges bright and fractured with the intensity of his faith. “Compared to her, you are a flea—while she is the sun, the moon, the stars, the …”
I press the point of the spear in again, and the rant turns into a gurgle. “She sent her people up the river—you saw this boat.” When the boy says nothing, glaring at me, I let my breath out slowly. “Why have you come to wait for me?”
“I am a messenger, but an arm of my goddess’s reach—”
“What is your message?” My voice cuts across his, surprising even me—ordinarily, such ceremony is my whole life. But now I have no patience for it.
The boy blinks at me, and then smiles slowly as his eyes unfocus and his gaze drifts upward. When he speaks again, his voice is different—higher, smoother, familiar somehow. “Sister,” he recites, “I bear you no ill will, for who alive can know the weight you carry but I? Let us not war against each other but come together to help the people and land we love so much.”
I recognize the familiar note in his voice. He sounds almost exactly like Inshara, his boy’s voice carrying her higher one without cracking or bending under the tension.
“Come back to me,” the boy continues. “Come home before the Vigil of the Rising, and I promise no one will harm you. Come home, and I will not harm your cloudlander. He cares for you very much, sister. Come home, and he is yours.”
I cannot speak, cannot move. The boy’s eyes roll back into place and he looks up at me, all at once drained and alight. I keep the spear where it is, though in this moment I could not stop him were he to reach up and wrest it from me.
Inshara has North.
Half a dozen images flicker through my mind, each more horrible than the last. North languishing in a cell, despairing of ever seeing his home again. North being tortured for information on my whereabouts. North, broken and bleeding somewhere, delirious with the approach of death, whispering about this boat and this place and the kiss we did not share, with his dying breath.
She could have killed him, rendering me powerless to carry out my destiny, but instead she keeps him. She knows how valuable he is.
He cares for you very much… .
North is still here.
I can’t help the trickle of relief that breathes life back into my hands, giving them strength again. I would rather see him safe with his people than held by my enemies, but … now I might see him one more time.
Hating myself for the flicker of happiness that thought brings, I jerk my thoughts away and focus on the boy. Inshara could have sent a whole team of agents here to kill me or capture me if she knew I would be here alone and unprotected—instead, she sent one boy, unthreatening, easily overpowered.
I shift my weight, sliding one foot closer to the boy, and he writhes, body twisting away from me as if I were surrounded by some invisible force.
Not only does she want me alive, she’s clearly given her messenger instructions not to touch me.
Why?
Does she want to strip me of my divinity publicly? To put on a show for my people, rip their faith away in such a manner that it could not be denied?
I gesture with the spear. “Move—put your back to that tree there. You are going to answer my questions.”
