She lives in a sprawling house built into ancient ruins where the mountains take root. I see the roof first: long rows of branches, wet with mist, stretching up the side of one of the fallen buildings strung out along the base of the mountain range. Only by following that trail of wet wood can I see where the rest of the house wanders, connecting various parts of the ruins. The ancients built this place into the side of the mountains, and so the woman’s home was built upward, each addition a little higher up the nearly sheer slope. The branch-covered rooftops curl up and around the paler stone of the ancients, a spider’s legs cocooning its prey.
As we get closer, I see that what I thought were wooden struts shoring up some of the house’s structure are actually thick beams of metal.
Sky-steel, I realize, with a jolt of horrified fascination. The ancients’ method of smelting trace amounts of sky-steel along with regular iron is a magic we lost after the gods abandoned us, but the skeletons of their spires and towers are all that’s left in many places. To see relics from the last time the gods lived among us used for such ignoble purpose fits with razor-edged perfection my image of someone with so little respect for the gods, and for our faith.
I cannot help but think of the beggars we passed on the road, the child North gave his food to, the countless souls lost in the mist-ruined village.
And here she sat, surrounded by sky-steel, while those poor souls suffered.
North is just behind me, a careful step and a half back. What he thinks of this place, I cannot say. But I can feel him there, and I’m aware of his every breath.
He was nearly lost to me—to the people that love him in his world in the sky—forever.
Unbidden, his words come back to me from last night, when we fled the temple on the riverstrider’s barge, and lay out on deck looking up at the Lovers.
I wish I could show you.
I thought I’d been prepared for it, for the inevitable moment when my heart and my woman’s body spoke louder than the divinity in me. I’ve looked—of course I have looked—at boys I’d glimpse during divine services, or the acolytes who kneel before me when I pass them, at one particular craftsman from town, whose hands were strong and dexterous and gentle, and so compelling I could not stop imagining what it would feel like to slip mine into them.
But none of them, not one, has ever looked back at me. Not as North does.
I wish I could show you what it is to be kissed.
I thought I had been prepared, that the strength of my forebears and the divinity I share with them would be far stronger than any fleeting, mortal attraction.
That I should come to this crossroads now is rich with irony. Now, as I prepare to face the woman but for whose failure I would be an ordinary girl, helping my mother mend fishing nets and thinking about promising my life to an ordinary boy from one of the riverstrider clans.
But forthis woman…
For who could be so selfish, so uncaring, soheartlessthat she could turn her back on the entire world, leaving every person in it to suffer so that she might experience a fleeting pleasure?
Heartless, I think. And all the while my own heart reaches out toward North with the thin, weak arms of a beggar child.
Jezara clears her throat, the first sound she’s made in hours. She opens the door and then stands, waiting, for North and me.
She is older than I imagined, for when I thought of her, my mind always conjured up some dark shadow-self containing all the terrible decisions I would never make. But this woman looks to be in her forties, somewhat shorter than I, and round of hip and face. She wears a robe—not red, but a deep purple—with no belt, and her hair is black save for a thin vein of silver spilling down across one side.
Our escape from the mist-ruined village is a blur of fear and astonishment—I remember North leveling his gaze at the woman, naming her, and then … nothing, save a roaring in my ears, until I came back to myself, running along a path toward the mouth of the canyon. Since then, Jezara has led the way without speaking but to say that we can shelter in her home.
Now she looks me up and down, an eyebrow raised. “Welcome, Divine One.” My face must give away some reaction, for she laughs, a quick, dry rattle of a sound that quivers and shakes loose the heavy air. “I never expected to meet you.”
The words are not exactly hostile, but there’s an air about her that unsettles me.
I have noticed that fighters often have a way of standing, a display of competency and physicality that permeates their natures even when they’re relaxed; Elkisa has it, a tinge of tension at all times that reminds me of her readiness.
But the best fighters, the older ones who have seen more, done more—they don’t stand that way. The tension is gone. They have no need to perform readiness, fortheyknow they are ready, and it doesn’t matter if anyone else does.
That is how this woman stands.
I open my mouth, but it’s some time before the words come out: “Thank you for helping me. How did you know to save us?”
Jezara’s lips give an unpleasant twist. “When they destroyed the guardian stone, there was a mist-storm over that canyon like I’ve never seen before. I’ve been patrolling the area since, looking for survivors.”
“They? Who? Who would destroy the guardian stone and leave so many helpless against the mist?” But even as I ask, I realize the answer.
I remember the woman with the gray armband speaking to Daoman the day I returned alive from the forest-sea. Her request was to dismantle a guardian stone for its sky-steel, to see if they could build one of their Havens. I look away from Jezara’s pointed stare. “You knew who I was. You could have let us die.”
Her keen gaze flickers over toward North. She doesn’t miss the red sash he wears at his waist, my colors firmly knotted there. “Then I would have no answers to my questions,” she says. “And you no answers to yours. Come inside. I will show you to the room you can use to rest.”
