It happens as we’re breaking down camp at sunset, the group still in fairly high spirits, despite the ever-thinning trees and the snow beginning to crust the grass. One moment, the midnight tendrils are gliding around my neck and cooing in my ears, preparing to shield our caravan, and the next they’re clumsily yanked away. Like a child holding a quill with so much concentration, it stabs through the sheet of parchment.
I could easily snatch the darkness out of his untrained grip and be done with it, but since he’s considerably weaker than before, I decide to use it as a teaching opportunity. I’ve been showing Ziva something new every day—how to coax the ribbons into flat stitches to form the netting that conceals our caravan. How to nudge those tendrils along in the direction you want them to go. How to toss a cluster of darkness to incapacitate a person. And now, how to disable a halfwit. I don’t know where in the skies Temujin thinks he’ll go, or how he’s going to get there, considering Ziva and I can still see him plain as day, but I make a point not to think about the inner workings of his dubious mind.
“Ziva!” I call.
“It isn’t me!” she insists as she scrambles to where I’m folding my bedroll.
“I know. Not even you’re this pathetic.” I shoot her a teasing grin and she shoves my shoulder. “It appears our aspiring Night Spinner has taken a handful of darkness…. How would you react?”
“By taking it back.” She lifts her hand, but I drape my fingers over hers.
“Youcould… but consider our enemy. Temujin acts like a spoiled, entitled child. That would only start a tug-of-war.”
“You don’t think I’m strong enough to best him?” Ziva’s thick brows flatten into a familiar scowl.
“Don’t look at me like that. Of course you are. But it’s a needless waste of energy.”
“So what do I do?”
“If he wants the darkness, give it to him.”
Ziva cocks her head in confusion. “But—”
“Allof it.”
The corner of her mouth curls. With a flick of her wrists, she gathers the night in her arms and thrusts the bundle across the encampment at Temujin, who’s attempting to blend into the shadow of a rock. The oily darkness pummels him like a waterfall, knocking him flat on his back. He gulps and sputters as if he’s truly drowning, and I encourage Ziva to keep the tendrils flowing perhaps a tad longer than necessary.
Two nights later Temujin attempts to steal the darkness again while we’re wading through the deepening snow. This time, the inky weave barely snags and he collapses with a frustrated roar.
I snicker and yank him back to his feet, pleased to be holding the rope tonight, to witness this failure. “I thought Kartok promised you access to Zemyan magic?”
“He did! I drank the hot-spring water. That’s how I was able to wield your siphoned starfire! I don’t know why—”
“You don’t know why theenemylied to you?” I say with a needling grin.
“He didn’t lie. I’m sure there’s a logical explanation.”
“The logical explanation is, you’re pitifully naïve.”
“Just kill me and be done with it.”
“Not until you give me what I want,” I say for what must be the hundredth time.
“Ican’tgive you any information.”
“You mean youwon’t,” I correct him. “If Kartok discovers you relayed his plans, he won’t appoint you governor of Sagaan. All of your treasonous scheming would have been for nothing.”
“No, I mean Ican’t.I don’t have a choice.”
“ ‘We always have a choice,’ ” I parrot the seemingly valiant proclamation he spewed at me back in the false realm of the Eternal Blue. “ ‘It’s no fault of mine if you can’t bear the alternative….’ ”
“Fine.Yes. Initially, there is always a choice. But sometimes we make mistakes that limit our options, cinching them into a funnel, until every choice has been stripped away and we’re shackled to the path of that original misstep.”
I resume marching without warning, forcing him to stumble to keep up.
“Why don’t you ask Orbai if shecan’torwon’tstop trying to return to Kartok?” Temujin gestures up ahead, to the shepherd tasked with transporting my eagle. She’s trapped inside a cage originally intended for a dog, still attacking the wooden bars as if they’re the carcass of a rabbit.
I’ve visited her every day of our journey. Begging her to come back to me. Whispering happy memories of our years together. Reaching out to gently stroke her golden feathers. But her eyes continue to dart with a wild intensity I haven’t seen since the day she arrived at Ikh Zuree, just hours after being snatched from the tundra. Every time my fingers get close, she lunges to snap them off.
