The lights nearest to them go out instantly, and I see the signal travel along the waterways. As it meets between each anchor, the net is complete, and the lights go out across the city, darkness sweeping inward, every pinpoint of light extinguished as the wave sweeps toward us.
The people below me are invisible now, but … Inshara is still illuminated.
Skyfall, Jezarawastelling the truth. Her daughter, immune to the sky-steel, stares up defiantly at the mist-storm and the wild goddess riding it, watching as it begins to tear itself apart.
Surrounded by sky-steel, Nimh screams. The sound is an echo of the mist-wraiths back at the dead village. My skin crawls horribly, and for an instant I’m sure my eardrums are going to burst. Her whirling pillar shudders once, and then implodes around her, until all that remains is a writhing orb, hovering just above the stone terrace.
“Nimh!”
Her name’s ripped out of me as I push to my feet, as I break into a run, unsure if she’s even still inside the cocoon—unsure if she’s even alive.“NIMH, NO!”
I skid to a stop beside the roiling ball of mist, helpless. The storm within it rages, though now and then a flicker of light shows me a glimpse of an arm, a leg—she’s braced, frozen, locked in a struggle with the force of Inshara’s sky-steel. I reach out toward her, then snatch my hand back as a shock runs through me. I’m raging at my own helplessness, but to touch her cage of mist would surely be deadly—to become like Quenti, or worse, like the mist-wraiths.
But Nimh is in there, my heart cries. The orb hovers just in front of me, barely large enough to contain her form.
Footsteps behind me make me whirl in time to see Inshara descending to this level of the terrace. Her guards hurry after her, Techeki on their heels. She stares at the condensed, raging storm for a moment. Then she turns and snatches a spear from a nearby guard. She whirls back, raising her arm.
My muscles bunch before I’ve time to think it through, ready to launch me in between the spear and what’s left of Nimh.
Then a voice rings out like a bell, singing across the crowd. “That’s enough!” For a moment, I can’t tell who spoke—and then a figure shoves its way through the throngs of people to emerge just in front of us. Her gaze is lifted.
Fixed upon her daughter.
“I did not raise you to be a monster,” Jezara calls, panting with effort. How she made it through the destruction below, through the wide swath of rubble that marks Nimh’s path into the city, I have no idea. “Stop this now.”
The spear drops from Inshara’s hands, clattering harmlessly to the stone. She lifts her chin. Is it in attempt to maintain her composure? “Mother. Why are you here?”
Confusion permeates those assembled on the terrace. Many of them clearly recognize their former goddess. But they had no idea Inshara was her forbidden child. Jezara moves up the bottom few steps until she’s standing just below me. “I’m here,” she says, “to stop you from becoming this. This isn’t who you are.”
“This isexactlywho I am!” Inshara snaps back, eyes blazing. “Iam the one the Lightbringer speaks to! I have heard him all my life—he has told me I am special, I am chosen.Iam chosen, not her!”
Slowly, Jezara makes her limping way up the stairs until she can stand alongside me, between her daughter and the still-struggling Nimh, fighting her own battle against the mist.
“How can you stand atherside?” Inshara bursts out, voice agonized. “She is nothing to you—a symbol of the world that cast you out!Iwas the one who lived with you in squalor, raised on the jeers and disgust of everyone around us.Iwas the one they spat on when I passed them in the street.Iwas the one who went hungry so that we could raise enough to leave that place. She isnot your daughter!” Inshara’s voice cracks with her intensity, the last words emerging in a ragged shout as she extends a shaking finger toward me.
“Insha,” Jezara says softly.
“Do you not see what I’ve done?” Inshara pleads, her eyes lighting, her gaze desperate. “I’ve made them choose me, Mother, these people and this faith. I’ve made them choose us both.”
“They didn’t choose you,” Jezara replies quietly. “They’re afraid of you. You mistake terror for loyalty.”
“No. Don’t you see?” Inshara whispers, stretching a hand back toward the priests and guards still raggedly arrayed around her. “I’ve made them love me.”
“Insha,” Jezara says, her voice soft. “I know who you are. I am begging you now—stop this. You still havemylove. You don’t need theirs.”
Inshara’s face flickers, something softer responding to her mother’s voice. Then her expression hardens. “I havehislove,” Inshara blurts, clutching at her chest—no, at the chrono she wears strung on a necklace that hangs there. “The Lightbringer’s. And when I am ready, he will manifest his power in me.”
“You hear his voice fromthat?” Jezara’s voice is high with surprise. “From that necklace I gave you?”
Inshara cradles it in both hands, curling over it like she’s protecting something precious. “From as early as I can remember.”
Realization dawns like a cold sweat, prickling all over. Unable to resist, my hand slides down my arm to touch my own chrono. If I’d known that thechronowas where Inshara was hearing that voice … But who could be speaking to her through it?
“It can’t be,” Jezara mutters, confusion swamping her realization. “He was banished. He never spoke to me. I gave up on him. I presumed …”
Her head lifts, eyes finding Techeki’s. The Master of Spectacle is watching her with a grief-stricken expression.
“Forgive me, Divine One,” he whispers. “I feared you would waste your life trying to follow him.”
