Nianjia didn’t inquire about the knives, and I saw why a moment later; her attention had been captured by the journal pages. “Where did you get these?” she breathed.
“From Riverren,” I answered, my tone carefully even. Was that many-bridged, lilac city her home? Would its name deal a wound to her heart?
Her head snapped up, eyes wide but surprise, not pain. “You’ve been to Riverren?”
“On the king’s orders,” I confirmed, and quickly added, “The last one. The prick. Not this one.” I gestured at Kamaal, whose stare twinkled with amusement that he quickly shut down.
Whatever life had entered Nianjia’s eyes died, her stare going flat.
“How long were you…?” I asked without tact.
“Years. I was in that prison for years. I was a girl when they took me, no more than sixteen.”
I swore filthily. She had to be in her thirties now. So… twenty years? Longer, if she wore her age well. “I’m so sorry,” I breathed, brushing her hand with my gloved one. “You deserve revenge more than any of us.”
Nianjia sucked in a shuddering breath and nodded, a shutter going down over her eyes as she straightened, chin high, and became a warrior once more. “This is how they entered this land originally,” she said, pointing at the word etched next to the wall. “Through the gate.”
“The—” I exchanged a swift glance with Nabil. “Did you say gate? Not grave?”
Nianjia seemed to sense its importance because she quickly explained, “This word can mean grave, this way.” Then sherotated the page, turned it upside down. “But this way it reads gate.”
Holy shit. I covered my mouth, reeling. Xiaoyu wrote the word upside down. Or was the map upside down, too? I quickly scanned the page, matching it to the map spread over the table.
Nianjia realised it at the same moment I did. “And it—well, my Ithanysian geography isn’t the finest, but it looks close to here. See, that coastline lines up with this at the base of your continent.”
It did. The sketch was no longer an abstract collision of lines, but a very accurate portrayal of our land. Upside down! The page had been upside down this entire time. Who decided it was a good idea for a word to be legible from both sides? I shook my head, disbelieving.
I could place every city and town perfectly on the journal page now, and the wall… the marker for the gate—not grave—was onourside of the dismantled wall. Or was that the wall in the sketch at all? Was it theriver?
“Let me see,” Kamaal commanded, and accepted the page from me, frowning as his stare flicked between the paper and the map on the table. “The gate isn’t in Shyra. It’sthisside of the Reaper’s Pass, which would put it…”
“In the mountains,” Nabil said quickly, urgency and excitement brightening his eyes to chocolate brown.“Thosemountains.” He stabbed a finger at the tent wall, the forest beyond it, and the stalwart peaks that overlooked the old trees where we’d camped. “Nianjia’s right. It’s close. It’shere.”
I felt it again—that shivery sense that what we found here would tug on a thread of fate and unspool the entire thing. Or simply smooth out a knot. Cold tingles ran down my arm as I held out my hand for the page.
“Can I see it?”
Whatever he heard in my voice, Kamaal handed over the page instantly, watching me like a hawk as I mentally adjusted the scale of the small paper to the span of the map. It placed the grave in the mountains around Willow Green as Nabil said or claspedbetweenwoods and mountains. The shivery sense intensified.
“Who made the gates?” I looked up, met Nianjia’s stare. “Where did they come from? Do you know?”
“They were stolen,” she replied, her brows forming harsh slashes over her eyes.“Webuilt them. They were a gift from a master craftsman to a king millennia ago, so he might visit the daughter he missed so much, who lived in a distant city far from the capital.”
“The distant city—was it Riverren?” I pressed.
She knew what I was getting at immediately. “You’re right, it still opens into Riverren. In a different building than the original gatehouse, but the pathway remains. But the glass itself was stolen from both Riverren and Idelasia and brought here, to your lands. We never knew where they were taken, not untilwewere taken.”
“King Bakshi wasn’t the one to steal it. It happened far earlier,” I guessed. “Around the first Zalaam war.”
She blinked. “The timing does line up,” she agreed.
“Bakshi must have found the gate by chance,” Kamaal input. “Or been told where to find it by the queen pulling his strings.”
That made sense. “So one gate was moved to Morysen and opens into Riverren. That means there’s another gate that leads to your capital.”
Nianjia shook her head. “Not just there. The gates could take you anywhere, lead you to any city.”
“The queen could use one to appear anywhere she wanted?” Kamaal growled, dragging a hand along his jaw. “Large enoughfor wyverns to fly through,” he added to himself. “An entire aerial legion appearing from nowhere, with no warning.”
