Twenty-Two

This time when Eris stepped through the gray, she focused hard on her destination. As the mists swirled, she no longer walked Axis’s festive streets, full of color and laughter and dancing. She strode beneath that star-studded sky, the silence sparkling around her as she took the path across.

When that dark blue door painted with a moon and stars appeared before her, Eris relaxed. She’d successfully escaped. Reaching for its silver knob, she opened it and stepped through, straight into the labyrinth, its stained-glass walls flickering in the eerie floating white lights above.

Shutting the door behind her, Eris let go of her focus. Looking down, she uncurled her fingers to reveal a pale blue ribbon lying across her palm.

Unlike the last few items she’d stolen from Safire—taken only to provoke—she had a purpose in mind for this one.

As Eris strode into the maze, she thought of Safire. Remembering the warmth of her mouth, the softness of her lips . . . and that look of horror on her face as she abruptly pulled away. While Eris smiled like an idiot.

What an utter fool I am.

She closed her hand around the ribbon, squeezing it tight.

“Good evening, Eris.”

The rasping voice behind her made her spine straighten. Eris whirled, stumbling away from the thing stepping out of the shadows she’d just come through. He had blue-black feathers, hooklike talons, and eyes as red as blood.

Kadenze.

Jemsin’s summoner.

Half man, half monster, Kadenze was the one thing that could follow her through the mists and across: to this in-between place. It was the reason she had never successfully escaped Jemsin—because it could track her anywhere.

The summoner’s hellish gaze burned into her. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

Eris shoved the ribbon behind her back, swallowing hard. “What does he want?”

“Jemsin is very concerned.”

Eris narrowed her eyes at the monster before her. “Yeah? Well you can tell Jemsin that his good mate Kor delayed me considerably.”

“Jemsin will deal with Kor,” said Kadenze, its bloody gaze moving over her. “You do your job.”

“I’m on it,” Eris growled. “Just give me some time. Tides.”

“He wants to remind you,” said Kadenze, moving closer, “of the cost of failure.”

But Eris had never failed a job, and she wasn’t about to start now. Certainly not with so much at stake. If she handed him the Namsara, Jemsin would let her walk free. If she failed, he would deliver her to her enemies.

Of course she wouldn’t fail.

A sudden, sweeping cold rushed in, making her shiver. Feeling it, the summoner looked up over Eris’s shoulder to the stained-glass panels behind her. Eris didn’t look. She knew what it was: the ghost moving in the labyrinth, probably drawn to the sound of their voices.

“Why does Jemsin want her?” It was a question Eris hadn’t cared to ask before. She asked it now only because, being forced into Safire’s company these past few days, she couldn’t help but notice how the girl worried over her cousin. How protective she was of her.

“It’s the empress who wants her.”

Eris’s chin lifted. She hadn’t expected that. “What?”

The summoner shifted from foot to foot, its feathers ruffling and talons clacking against the ground. As if something had unnerved it. “Leandra made the captain a deal he couldn’t refuse.”

Eris narrowed her eyes, thinking of Jemsin’s meeting with the empress. It was his sole reason for sending Eris to Firgaard. Leandra must have made her proposition then.

“What did she offer him?”

“Full access to her waters—if Jemsin delivers the Namsara.”

Eris whistled, wishing Safire could hear this. What kind of benevolent ruler gives a pirate permission to wreak havoc all over the Star Isles? It was a trade much further in Jemsin’s favor, and it made Eris wonder: What did Asha have that the empress wanted so badly?

And why not just invite her along with her brother—who was currently on his way to the citadel now?

Unless she had and Asha refused the invitation.

Eris shook her head. All of these questions were starting to give her a headache. What did it matter, anyway? It wasn’t her business. With the ribbon gripped tight in her hand, Eris turned away from the monster.

“Are we finished?” she asked, walking toward the first turn in the labyrinth.

“For now.”

The door creaked open. Eris didn’t wait for it to shut before she continued on. Her feet had long since memorized the way to the heart of this maze. The images on the stained-glass walls were so familiar to her, she often dreamed them in her sleep: seascapes and stormy cliffsides and sleepy little coves. When she arrived at the center, the familiar sight of her loom warmed her just a little.

Eris sank down into the soft white carpet on the floor. Staring up at her empty loom, an image flickered through her mind: Safire with her hair down and her head crowned with blossoms. She leaned over her basket full of skeins, running her fingers gently over colors. Looking for something that matched the ribbon she stole.

The door to Kor’s burned ship was useless to her now and needed replacing. She’d woven that door from torn strips of the Sea Mistress’s sails and it had opened onto the ship’s galley. That was the only way the magic would work—using objects from the place she wanted to go. It was Day who told her this. Who taught her how to turn the weavings into doors.

This place will keep you safe, he’d told her.

But that was before he died. Before Jemsin found her. Before she realized Kadenze could hunt her down no matter where she was—even across.

An old sorrow clumped in her throat. She swallowed it down, pushing the memory of Day far away. Where it couldn’t hurt her.

Right now, Eris needed a door that would take her to a person, not a place. She’d never made such a thing before. She didn’t know if it would work.

These were the things she did know, though: Asha, the Namsara, was in the Star Isles. And very soon, Safire would make contact with Asha—to warn her about Eris.

So Eris would make a door that led to Safire. She would keep to the shadows, like she had in Firgaard, waiting and watching. And when Safire made contact, she would unknowingly lead Eris straight to the Namsara.

Eris picked up a light brown skein of wool for the warp and started to unwind it. As she did, the air grew colder. Eris paused, sensing something watching her through the glass. She knew what it was.

She kept unwinding the yarn. But the ghost remained. It was common for it to come and go while she was in the labyrinth, but rarely did it linger.

“What do you think?” Eris asked. “Do these colors match?”

She often talked to the ghost. It never talked back.

Except this time, it did.

“Who hurt you?” Its voice was like wind scratching at a door.

Eris’s hands fell still. Slowly, she set down the skein and looked up. The ghost loomed over her. Black as the night sky and shaped like a man. But it wasn’t a man.

Her heart beat fast.

The ghost stared her down, silent as death. Eris knew that stare. It had watched her for years now, ever since the first time she’d stepped across.

But why talk now when it never had before?

It seemed to be staring at her arms, studying the damage the stardust steel had done. Her wrists were bloody and raw where her flesh had burned away.

“Does it hurt?”

She nodded.

The ghost moved closer. Eris held herself still. It reached for her wrists, and as it touched her, a rush of feelings swept through her, all of them familiar, none of them her own:

The terrible longing for someone you can never have.

The empty ache of forever being alone.

The soul-crushing darkness of despair.

If she’d been standing, she would have fallen to her knees with the overwhelming weight of them all. She shuddered. But as the ghost’s feelings flooded her, they expunged the stinging, throbbing pain in her wrists.

The ghost stepped back. And though its sorrow lingered in her, everything else had been taken.

She drew her hands into her lap and stared down at her wrists. They were sore and festering just moments ago. Now the pain was gone and there were ugly red scars where the open wounds used to be.

Scars that would be there, she knew, for the rest of her life.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

The ghost said nothing.

“What are you?”

“Nothing good,” it said.

She frowned. If it wasn’t good, why had it taken her pain away? “What’s your name?”

“I’m . . . Crow,” it said finally. “Or I was, once.”

And then it melted back into the shadows.