Chapter Forty-Six

The storm has dwindled, but a maelstrom still twists above the spires of the glass fortress. Lightning forks into the roof, setting it alight. There might still be time to stop Arisa, so we hurry through the ruined city. Shards of glass dust the streets like snow in the middle of summer, and the ground continues to tremble beneath our feet like a giant snoring beast. Wooden rooftops rest smashed against gates and walls. Neighbors pull each other from the rubble and tear sheets into bandages. The air smells of vinegar, lemons, and iodine. Spells of healing burn like candles. No hands stay idle.

Along the water, parts of the city have washed away completely. Some trees withstood the storm, a little barer now and stripped of clumsy branches and leaves, but the wards shaped by the Cultivators did their duty. The worst of the destruction follows a path to the edge of the city where I ran. Bato-Ko is damaged but not destroyed. I did not fail the city completely.

Oshar’s compound lies in pieces. Its buildings lay crushed by balls of hail as big as cabbage heads. Only the shed where Virian and Dayen sheltered remains intact.

A circle of untouched dirt surrounds the shed. Oshar huddles within the circle with her family, and to my surprise, Reshar crouches at her side. Cuts from flying glass make patterns on his face, but they are small and will heal without scars. The resemblance is stronger when they stand together, though the Datu’s hair has not yet gone white like his mother’s. In another life, I can recall Oshar bouncing her baby boy on her knees with laughter in her eyes. She could charm even a princess from Turium with her humor, but she was always infuriatingly contrary. It is a trait her son shares. Now I am glad for it.

I stop short upon seeing the long shape laid out beneath a blanket topped with my grandmother’s cane. Virian kneels on the ground to the side. Her short hair is tangled with leaves.

“I’m so sorry, Narra,” she says.

I fall to my knees beside her. I hardly knew my grandmother in this life, but she’s been taken away from me already. Virian clasps my shoulder as I lift the blanket. Yirin’s strong hands lay folded at her chest, battered and cracked. The undersides of her nails are black with dirt, but around them, the most perfect spells of protection are clawed into the ground. She saved them, even if she didn’t agree with them all.

We humans are contradictions, all bad and good at once. We are more than what anyone says.

My heart constricts. Yirin’s loyalty was tested when she was forced to choose between her duty and her family. Once, she chose duty, but in the end, she chose her family. I kiss her forehead, and I am glad she cannot see my expression. If she were anything like my mother, she would have scoffed at my softness. “Maybe in the next life I will have a chance to know you,” I whisper. I must attend to the living first.

“Where is Arisa?” I ask.

Reshar flinches. “I was halfway here when the storm began. I only know something terrible has happened,” he says. “I could not get near the center of the fortress.”

“I must go back and stop her.”

“Astar?” he asks.

I nod, and a breath escapes his lips. This gives him more assurance than it should. I have no powers. I only remember moments of the past, not things as complicated as orasyons. Arisa was trained since birth in the ways of the Baylan. I have not trained in anything nor studied anything beyond what was required of a cloth merchant. In this life, I am bereft of magic.

Astar the mediocre would not inspire song, but I was never responsible for the stories the Tigangi told about me. With time, the tales took a life of their own, until most were nothing like the truth at all: I am only human.

But Omu’s long, slow plan has finally come together, so patiently executed that I have no idea how many cogs and wheels she set in motion. Astar was just one piece and Arisa another, so that she might manifest on the earth and rule like a God.

But only those of the earth have power on the earth. Binding Chaos was a test—a first step. Now, Omu has all the bodies she could ever use to make her own and all the Demon’s power to fuel a spell. If she walks the earth, there will be no stopping her, for no power on earth can match hers.

“I need to get past the guards and the Demon.” I stand and brush dirt from my malong. I tie my hair in a knot at the base of my neck, ready for work. To lose Teloh would be like losing a part of my soul, but I swear to do what I must, because Omu cannot be allowed to get her way. I touch the kris tucked in my waist, and it hums in response. “I cannot do this alone, but I will not ask you to come. You may not leave the fortress alive. I may not, either.”

“If we die, we come back in another life to piss in Arisa’s food,” Virian says.

I stifle a laugh that feels so inappropriate but necessary.

“Where you go, I go,” Dayen says without hesitation.

Oshar takes the slippers off her feet and presses them into my hands. Then she picks up my grandmother’s cane and leans against it. “My family and the city need me right now. I will rally all our families.”

Sayarala touches her thumb to the base of her throat in a Turinese blessing. “Good luck, Astar.”

I nod. A trusted friend is worth a thousand strangers. At least, I need them to be.

Reshar says nothing, but he walks out the broken gate behind us. We have as much hope as a candle lit on a windy day, but it will have to be enough.

…

We snake through the debris and back streets slowly because entire uprooted trees litter the street. Chunks of shale roof tiles stick out of walls and fences. We pass a family frantically digging through the rubble of a flattened house, but we can’t stay to help. We pass dangerously close to a patrol of Guardians, but they are too busy answering to the angry people who surround them to notice us. The Guardians look just as lost and uncertain as the citizens of Bato-Ko, and there is no sign of the Seven. Worry grants my tired body another burst of speed.

Clouds still churn above the fortress, but the Seven combined could never control Chaos for long. I quaver at the thought of how they teased the power out of Teloh, because he would never give it willingly.

The Demon was once so desperate to escape its cage that it cut off chunks of its own flesh to set its power free. Flowers bloomed where its blood dropped, and storm clouds gathered with each scream, but his flesh grew back as though it had never been broken. He was a feral thing, once.

But that is not the Teloh I met in the greenhouse, nor the one whose lips touched mine. We have both changed. No matter what Omu wills, change is inevitable for those touched by mortality. The earth is our domain, not hers. Not yet.

But the maelstrom is already smaller than it was only minutes ago, and I lead them into a run.

No one watches us pass through the broken gates of the fortress and squeeze carefully through its main entrance. The massive wooden doors hang off their hinges and look ready to fall over. Fissures travel up and down the fortress’s glass walls, and sharp chunks of the roof litter the floor of the great hall. I hope my sister is still safe somewhere inside. I want to go to her so badly, but we need to stop Arisa first.

Virian adjusts her small hip bag packed full of papers scribbled with spells, but I catch a wince of pain at the edges of her expression.

“You don’t need to come if you hurt too much,” I say, but she only grunts in reply.

“If we don’t come, there may be no more Tigang to come back to,” she says. “I’m fighting for my home. Where will Arisa be?” she asks.

“Follow the bodies.” Reshar shrugs. I offer him a small smile of assurance, but he looks away unimpressed.

We see no one in the halls. I’m not sure if anyone still lives or if everyone is hiding. The fortress was not spared from the Demon’s assault. Leaves and branches and vines sprout from the stone in various states of blooming, seeding, and fading. All stages of life surround us, just as time feels like it’s spiraled around again.

But Astar started this. Now I must end it.