Chapter Twenty-Six

I fish under my mattress. The tracking spell remains tucked where I left it. If I remove the orange thread, I’m sure I can use it with Ingo’s earring. Once I know he’s safe, I’ll use his discarded spells to get my mother out, but I feel like I owe him for them. I drop to the ground and check the spot where I hid the earring but come up empty. I take an unsettled breath. Did someone steal it? I almost laugh at my paranoia. After two eyebrow incidents, even the cleaning staff refuses to enter our room. Most likely, it fell into a crack somewhere.

No matter. I can still find out what’s happened to Ingo. The Healers assured me he was taken to the infirmary, but I can’t stop this nagging feeling that they lied to me.

The barest hint of dawn paints our room a greenish blue, so I hurry through the halls alone. I expect the infirmary to be busy, but I find only two Healers wandering its rooms. The Healers check on patients that look ill the way of normal sickness. They cough and dab their noses with cloths, while others snore away.

I stop a Healer in the hallway. “I’m looking for a boy named Ingo. He had a rash on his arms and was wearing gold earrings. He was brought here last night.”

“Sorry, child. You must be mistaken. We didn’t admit anyone last night,” he says. “I’ve been here all shift.”

I was not wrong. Someone is lying to us, but I cannot decide between Arisa and Reshar. Arisa looked genuinely shocked at Galaya’s death. But Reshar is also up to some secret plot, with at least one other person, and somehow Nanay Oshar is opposing them. I wonder if the disappearances have anything to do with this creature they mentioned. I shudder and imagine shadows swallowing me whole. I need to get out of here before it’s too late.

“Kuran.” My sister’s name falls flat off Tanu’s lips, and my surprise quickly turns to a frown. I am not happy that he followed me here. I am doubly displeased that it’s Tanu and not Teloh who bothered to check on me after my mother’s sentencing.

“Did you know that it took almost a hundred years to build this fortress?” he blurts out nervously. I roll my eyes to the Heavens and stare at the pale stone roof. It’s carved in the diamond pattern of snakeskin for protection. To protect whom? From what? If it’s meant to protect everyone inside the fortress, it’s done a poor job.

“There was nothing you could do for your mother at the trial. It’s not your fault.” He steps in front of me to block the way.

Anger knots my stomach, and I lose my words. How patronizing he sounds, and since when has he worn spectacles? He doesn’t hide them away this time. Perhaps the appearance of maturity might be important here in the fortress, or perhaps a lifetime of a nose in a book has strained his eyes.

“Did my sister tell you that I was a secret?” I ask.

“No.” His mouth flattens into a line. “She knows I would have disapproved of your mother’s choice to hide you from the Baylan, even though I understand it.”

Self-righteous worm. He might have turned my mother in, just as Yirin did. He might have turned me in if I hadn’t guilted him into a promise. Yirin would have liked Tanu. Perfect, serious, and obedient, unlike her selfish daughter and her rotten children.

“Why are you here?” I ask him. “Do you want me to turn myself over to Arisa?”

“No.” He blinks those big blue eyes. “I came to fetch you and your friends for the next test, but Virian and Dayen didn’t know where you were. I thought you might have needed new gauze for your injuries.” He’s still ever so rational, but this time he’s off the mark. I’m not here for myself.

I crumple my scarf in my hands. Hells, I wish I could break something. I need to move, to breathe again, to scream. To do something rather than wait for my doom. I’ve hardly had a moment to search for my mother, and I’m running out of time.

“I promised Kuran that I would keep you safe,” he says.

I give him one long, hard stare. He knows more about magic and the fortress than I do, and I can use that. He might recognize the wards on the dungeons, or perhaps the guards might let an initiate inside to do some cleaning, or perhaps I can pry some information from him.

Reluctantly, I turn back toward the great hall alongside Tanu.

“Is there somewhere besides the infirmary that the sick might be taken?”

His eyebrows knit together. “I’ve only been assigned to the living quarters in the Spring Palace, so I don’t know. The fortress is so large. I haven’t heard of any, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t private rooms elsewhere.”

I check over my shoulders again. No one is near, but I half expect to turn a corner and find Omu herself walking the halls, ready to smite us.

“What about the dungeons?” I ask. “Ingo was taken away. Could he be locked up there if the infirmary are full?”

He looks at me like I’ve sprouted another head. “Why would they put the sick in the dungeons?”

“Could I get in to check?” I fish for answers, hoping not to arouse his suspicion.

“Only the Datus have a badge for entry. There is no way in or out.” He shrugs, and I don’t think he puts my plan together. I doubt he thinks I’m capable of such a thing.

But he’s helped me more than he knows. I will steal a badge if I must, and that only leaves the Guardians on shift to deal with.

I jump at a loud bang and collide with Tanu. I only breathe again when I confirm that the source of the sound was just a shutter let loose by the wind. Leaves skitter across the floor in loops, mirroring the hallways, making the music of tiny skeletons rattling in boxes. The first time I came here, I thought it beautiful; now I think it is sad and old and crumbling. I don’t know what’s changed my mind. It’s not the Sundo. Perhaps it is me that’s changed.

Tanu keeps his opinions to himself. I wonder if he ever thinks about Kuran—if he misses her. I saw the way he looked at her when she wasn’t watching. I remember one day when she stumbled and fell and he gently returned her slippers to her feet. He loved her, but maybe love is not enough.

I wish my sister were here instead of Tanu.

We part ways at the entrance to the great hall. It feels too soon for another test, like the waters of time keep spilling through my fingers no matter how hard I try to cup it in my palms. But the Sundo continues, and I need to make an appearance or I’ll arouse suspicion from the Datus. Perhaps I can slip away in the chaos that always seems to follow the testing and swipe a badge from the Datu busy administering it. If not…

I decide that the aged Archivist, Datu Senil, might be the easiest to steal from, and the minute I am alone again, I need to sneak away to find their offices.

I ignore the dark looks and whispers about Ingo’s disappearance. Even Dayen and Virian stand a little bit apart. I clench my jaw. I will see this through, and I will keep the people I care about safe.

We’ve all gathered in the great hall under a midday sky as dark as night. Inky clouds pelt rain at the glass walls of the fortress. A long-promised storm whips the ocean into a frenzy so fierce that I’m afraid it might smash through the stone and wash us all away.

The storm reminds me of the vision the glass fortress offered me, and I imagine sparring with Teloh on the rooftop, a blur of forms, as magic surges around him. I’m here, I whisper in my heart like a fool. Maybe I only imagine it, but the wind curls softly across my cheek.

We are led in a silent procession down a ramp into the silent center of the fortress. The tunnel burrows so deep into the stone that no natural light ever touches it.

My ghosts grow frantic again as we descend. They bump and flap against my ribs like birds trying to flee their cage, and I fight to keep my feet from turning the other direction. Right now, nothing matters more than this test. Not understanding Arisa’s schemes. Not figuring out who I am. I must not be removed from the Sundo now.

A hooded figure waits at the bottom of the ramp, but I recognize Reshar’s pursed lips from a distance. His blue-flamed torch shrouds us all with sickly light. He shrinks and grows as the light flickers, like a guardian to the Three Hells: Reshar but not Reshar.

“Holy Omu governs the day, and Hamshar the Seeker blesses the twilight, but we on earth must also tend to the night.” Even his voice is different. It scrapes across his teeth like a stone coffin lid sliding out of place.

At the end of the ramp is a single wooden door. Like the doors that open into the fortress, a story is carved into the ironwood, but it is not one that I recognize. Baylan hide their faces from a storm cloud in one image. In the next, a woman marked with a star on her forehead commands the storm into a box and chains it tight. In the last, the same woman sits atop the box, with a crown on her head. She seems to stare right through me. I shiver and huddle into myself.

“And how do we find our way in the darkness?” Reshar asks.

I remember an old refrain from a tune that all Tigangi are taught as children.

By the light of the stars.

By the Raja’s commands.

By the iron in our blood.

And what do we seek?

A beginning.

Candidates enter the door one by one, and when it opens, nothing remains but an empty space. When it is my turn, Reshar stops me at the threshold and fixes his hard eyes upon me.

“This is your chance, village girl. Say the word, and I will send you home before the fortress destroys you. Don’t waste your life here like I have.”

Beyond the threshold is a gaping hole that the light of Reshar’s flame does not touch. It could be a trap. The ghosts tumble over in my chest, and my head begins to vibrate like one of Reshar’s brass gongs, but I made my choice when I walked through the gate of the fortress. I keep my eyes on the doorway as the wood squeals open. All my futures wait beyond this moment and through it.

“It’s too late,” I say, though my ghosts refuse to settle. I take two steps, and the door slams shut behind me. All my senses snuff out like a pinched flame.

There is no breeze. There is no sound. There is no light. And as usual, I am alone.

…

A mirrored maze winks into place. There is no roof but a dark sky, nothing to see by but moonlight. The walls chill my fingers to the touch, and infinite reflections follow me as I walk. They are my only companions besides the buzz of Reshar’s magic. Prodding. Poking. Seeking. But what?

It can’t be real. I grab my taped fingers and bite back a scream as I flex my joints. The maze flickers. Gone, then there again, confirming my suspicions. But magic is rarely harmless.

I walk straight into a mirrored wall, and my reflection twists in surprise. It screams soundlessly and points behind me. New corridors appear. A hundred copies of myself shout and wave warnings, but if they have voices, I cannot hear their silent pleas.

I take a right at a junction and trip over a sitting body. A sun-bleached skull rolls out of a moldy wool hood, and its empty eye sockets stare up at the roof.

“I have a riddle for you. What is my true nature?” the skull asks in Teloh’s voice. The skeleton howls in laughter, and its bony fingers clamp onto my arms. I frantically pry myself loose and slam bone into a glass wall. My reflection’s scream is audible as it shatters.

“I will find you,” Arisa whispers over my shoulder. I spin but see nothing except my fractured self, bloody and beaten, begging for help in another pane of glass.

I run until I am dizzied by the winding route, until I can’t feel my toes, until everything in me is numb and there is no air left in my lungs. The tremor of Reshar’s magic travels through my bones like an earthquake, shaking loose my foundations and sending cracks through my soul.

“Give in.” The whispers follow me, growing louder and bolder.

I slam into another wall, and the glass boxes me in. My reflection wavers as I slam at the mirror with my palms. “Who are you?” it asks.

My ghosts threaten to leap out of my throat to the voice of this command, but I swallow them down.

Behind me, another reflection offers up a gleaming kris. “Show me the deepest parts of your soul. What are you hiding?”

The ghosts in my chest scrape with tiny claws. Their howls to be let out feel like bellows of hot air against my chest, but there will be nothing of Narra left if I do. I cannot. I dare not, for I’m afraid of who I might become if I let them take over.

“I don’t know.” I spin and see myself reflected over and over. “Who are you?” one reflection asks shyly and looks up from under her lashes. “Show yourself!” Another reflection bangs against a mirror with white-knuckled fists and a scowl. “Please?” My copy nervously tugs at the scarf around her neck. “I don’t know!” I pound at the glass with my fists and my feet. The glass spiders, then shatters. I tumble into a cold room and taste blood in my mouth.

Reshar sits before me on a hard chair. Bathed in the last dregs of his spell, I see him before, and I see him now, as the forms of his lives overlap. His skin remains a deep, dark brown, but his eyes are not so full of bitterness.

The magic dies away, and all trace of softness vanishes as if it never was. Those tired eyes and familiar sneer return me to the present.

I bend over and spit blood onto the floor. My soul should have been ready to be peeled like an orange, but my fingers remain Narra’s, brown from sun, wiry from work, and utterly unremarkable.

“How hard you resist. I must make you show me your soul to judge your worthiness. Sit.”

I cross my legs on the cold stone, and he bends over, takes paper painted with a diagram and presses it to my forehead. Heat sears my skin, and ashes dust my nose as the paper dissolves, but nothing changes. My ghosts barely flutter in response.

“This should not be possible.” He growls and sits down so we’re eye to eye. “I ask you again: Who are you, Kuran Jal?”

Who am I? The truth is, I don’t know. Am I Astar? It sounds preposterous, because I could not think of anyone more ordinary than myself. But who is Narra, anyway?

I take a deep breath of air to steady myself. It smells like the flowers blooming at night, of a fresh rainfall—like Teloh. Maybe I’m losing my mind.

“I…”

A scream echoes in the hallway, and it is followed by another. Reshar jumps straight to his feet, and I do, too. What now? I want to tear out my hair in frustration. Maybe I truly am cursed to a life where everything that can possibly go wrong will go wrong. “Stay here and lock the door. Only open it for me.”

Something soft brushes against my ear, and I shut my mouth. I raise my hands and find that the shriveled flower I wear has grown plump and waxy. My skin prickles all over, and I tremble. It curls against my earlobes as its leaves spread. Big magic.