“Smart.” I cough, willing my right hand to lift itself to test the bruising at my throat. My right hand is having none of it, and remains flopped down beside my body, supposedly still connected to my body via the arm I can’t feel. “Cloaks are a menace.”
“Well, if you hadn’t been wearing one, you’d be in even worse shape…” Fortiss breaks off, and I can feel him shift beside me. “Talia, what’s wrong with…” Again his words peter out, and he says nothing as my mind shifts and eddies in a shallow pool of detachment. Idly, I wonder if Gent minds serving as a bed…or maybe he’s more of a couch?—
A white-hot rip of agony knifes up from my right shoulder as Fortiss drives all his weight into it in a merciless shove. “No!” I scream, my sight going dark as nausea swamps me again, and my world spins as we’re both wrenched skyward. Fortiss pinions me to Gent’s palm, his body spread eagled over my torso and legs, but Gent yanks his hand close. A moment later, still weeping with pain, I blink up into my beautiful Divh’s dark, furious eye, his breath blowing hard beneath his palm. I realize my left arm—my good arm—is wrapped around Fortiss…probably the only thing that’s saving his life.
Hurt.
Gent’s voice blasts through my mind in a jumble of babbling words, anxious and fast. In my mind’s eye, I retrace the trip from his perspective. The joy and anticipation, the leap of pure and utter possibility, transition into the space between plains. This last part is awash in stars, and I vaguely remember seeing it the way he is seeing it, though there is no way in my eyes could have processed so many points of light. Then comes a scene I don’t recognize, being whipped into a violent storm with lightning crackling all around wind and rain buffeting us. Gent rumbles in confusion and annoyance as he realizes the truth of what happened, watching how he became momentarily paralyzed as we re-entered his plane and he fell, fell, fell…
And then Marsh appears out of nowhere and bangs into him, his small wings churning violently, his fists like battering poles. He breaks Gent’s fall once, twice, and Gent loses his hold ofhis tiny cargo. The huge eye glistens, suddenly too bright, and I clutch Fortiss tighter because there’s nothing else to hold.
“It’s all right, Gent,” I say aloud, and also in my mind. Feeling has returned to my right hand, and I spread my fingers wide on his thick palm. “Szonja caught me.”
Fortiss has levered himself off my body by now and stares from my shoulder to Gent’s anguished face. “Tell him you hurt your shoulder, and the pain you felt was me putting it back in place.”
Gent huffs, clearly able to understand Fortiss all on his own, or interpreting his words through my mind, but I keep my arm around Fortiss to make sure my angry Divh doesn’t flick him off like a fly. “You still caught me, Gent,” I whisper to him.
Fortiss moves off me completely, then helps me to a seated position. I lift my left arm high, and Gent pulls his hand close enough that I can lay my palm against his cheek, my hand so tiny against the vast plane of his face that it might as well be a speck of dust. “You caught me. You’ll always catch me.”
Gent stares at me another long moment, and I reach up a little further to brush the drop of wetness that has seeped over his lower lid. Then he swings his hand away, and a moment later, he lays it on the ground again.
Fortiss helps me off, supporting me when my legs are too wobbly.
“Miriam is still out cold,” he reports. “But she’s breathing, and nothing appears to be injured. Tennet is watching her. Marsh is exhausted, too—he’s also in a dead faint.”
He gestures and I can see the giant heap of a Divh through the gathering night. And that finally strikes me as a detail too.
“It’s night?” I say stupidly, staring up the sky. “I know there was a storm, but it was daylight when we reached the plane of the Divhs and barely dawn at the First House. How is it already so late?”
“Szonja said that time moves differently here—and has no meaning in the way that we mark it. After all—she’s served my family for as long as we’ve been keeping records in the First House. That’s not possible if she actually ages.”
“Yes, but…” my head is swimming again, and I lift my hands to steady it, wincing as my right shoulder protests. “The sandworm had babies. How does that…I mean…”
He laughs as I shake my head. “Light willing, we’ll have plenty of time to answer all the questions we have about the Divhs and all the ones we don’t even know enough to ask. Right now, we need to get back to our own plane and pray that Szonja is correct about the passage of time there. Caleb and Nazar are scouting the outer perimeter of the Divhs’ plane, which seems to end at that western range.” He points to a track of mountains jutting up from the horizon, enormous even at this far distance. “The closer they get to it, the more the winds churn.”
“That range is congruent with the Unlit Pass—the only known pass through the mountains to reach the Western Realms.” Miriam’s voice floats toward us, and I turn to see Tennet with his arm wrapped around the woman, helping her move forward. Miriam’s skin is as white as bleached parchment, and she appears about thirty years older than she did when we left the First House this morning. I jolt as a spurt of fear zips through me. Miriam isn’t banded. Does time work differently for her in this plane?
There’s nothing wrong with her mind, though. “We need to look for a collection of mountains all bunched together, as if they were pulled together by a child. In the domain of the Eighth House, those mountains formed a natural protection for the house despite its location so close to the pass, and between that and the protection of the Divhs, it’s survived unscathed these many generations.”
“Unscathed?” asks Tennet, stepping away as she straightens and smooths down her robes. “How much contact does the Eighth House have with the First? Were they party to Rihad’s plans to overthrow the other houses?”
“They were not,” Miriam says sharply, turning to him. Her voice comes out a little raspily, and she blinks, then lifts a hand to her throat. She clears it and tries again. “You forget, not only was I born there, but I’ve traveled many times to the Eighth, though it’s been years since I saw it last. No amount of Rihad’s machinations could have pierced the heart that beats in that house. It is Protectorate born and Protectorate bred. They would never do anything that would lead to the end of our state. I wager they’d rise up against the Imperium itself if it sought to impose its will against the will of those born here.”
She blinks, as if startled by the severity of her own words, but they have my thoughts racing in a new direction.
“The Savasci,” I blurt. Fortiss and Tennet turn to me, but my eyes are on Miriam. “You were aware of them, that they’d come to the Tournament of Gold. You may have even known where they were hiding out.”
I glance at Tennet, seeing the obvious question in his eyes. “The Tournament of Gold was harried by marauders of a unique sort, thieves of stealth and cunning who didn’t kill their victims, and who moved like the night. They were a band of women, and they hailed from the mountains of the western border. Not exactly the Eighth, but close.”
I turn back to Miriam. “How well do you know them?”
“Well enough to protect them when I can—and ignore them when my attention would only cause them harm. Lord Daggar of the Eighth was aware of them too, of course. His father’s father tried to root them out when they first formed their commune in the mountains between the Eighth House and Merrivale. But theirs was a movement that wouldn’t die. Eventually, they cameto an agreement—the Savasci could serve as hunters for the Eighth, and in return, they were not hunted.”
“Hunters,” Tennet scoffs.
“Some of the fiercest you’ll ever meet, Lord Tennet,” Miriam says coolly, offering him a dismissive a wave of her hand. She completes the movement, but her glance alights on her fingers, and she goes still.
“Well, if they’re hunters, maybe they know a way up to the pass into the Western Realms.” Fortiss grimaces. “I confess I thought simply that I would give Szonja the instruction to enter back into our plane and it would be done, but she seemed…confused by that.”
