Twenty-Four: Conflagration

Waking with a start to the light of dawn, having somehow slept through the night, Jak was alone in Ra’s bed. With the robe wrapped tight, Jak hurried down the stairs past the guard, who seemed unaware of anything amiss. In the breakfast nook, Merit was in an uproar, berating Ahr and gesticulating wildly, while Geffn arrived looking just as confused as Jak was.

“What’s going on?” Jak demanded when Ahr glanced their way. “Where’s Ra?”

“She’s gone.”

Jak stared at him in stark disbelief. “What do you mean ‘she’s gone’?”

He folded his arms, betraying no hint of what might have passed between them. “She said there was something she had to do and she was sorry. I’ve told Merit that Ra has ordered him not to pursue her.” He swallowed, and his cheeks went subtly red. “Ra has spoken.”

“Ra has—” Jak’s vision clouded with anger. “What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything. She woke me up and told me to tell you good-bye.”

“And you just let her go.”

“What would you have had me do?” Ahr spread his arms at the walls around them that had been so carefully cleaned after the prelate’s destruction, as if to say you think I could have stopped the Goddess of Death?

“Something, Ahr. Anything. Maybe tell her not to kill herself!”

“I don’t think that’s what this is about.” Ahr’s stoic expression was infuriating.

“Then what is it about? What aren’t you telling me?”

Ahr glanced at Merit. “She said she meant to destroy the Prelate of In’La.”

Jak’s chest felt heavy. “Holy sooth. Is she going after them all?”

“That’s what I asked her. She just smiled.”

Merit was pacing angrily with his hand on his hilt. “Kasíschaht In’La?” Ahr explained in Deltan and Merit spat something that sounded like an obscenity, arguing with him at length.

Ahr sighed finally in exasperation, making an emphatic gesture of dismissal with his palms in the air beside his head. “Zela!” he shouted. “Enough!” He sat down at the table and began to fill his plate. “I’ve told Merit that Ra has spoken. She’s forbidden him to follow. He thinks he’s going anyway.”

“Then I’m going too,” Jak insisted.

He popped a piece of fruit into his mouth with a casual gesture as if they were discussing the weather, and spoke with his mouth full. “Ra told me to prevent you with force.”

“She what?”

“It really doesn’t matter, Jak.” Ahr finished chewing and swallowed. “Whatever else you understand of her, it ought to be clear to you by now. A Meer’s words have power. Separate from the one who speaks them. Merit can try to go after her all he wants; something will prevent him.”

Merit grumbled something else and jerked his sword in the scabbard before he stormed off, shouting orders to the Temple Guard. Jak sank to the bench. What if Ra had meant to do this all along? The intimacy they’d shared just hours ago now seemed surreal. Had it been nothing more than elaborate misdirection?

Merit returned from the front of the temple after a moment and spoke grimly in Deltan.

Ahr looked up at Jak. “The Guardsmen are defecting.”

In all the years of his reign, Ra had never once visited Ludtaht Alya, though he’d seen it in the Meeric flow. It seemed odd now to have lived so long and never to have spent time with other Meer. Alya had been a curious one, less than half Ra’s age and fascinated by non-Meeric creation. He’d perhaps gone mad a little earlier than most—it was a hazard of the Meeric blood—and had spent much of his time locked in his laboratory devising gadgets that could live on after he was gone. And so they had. The steam engine was one of them.

They made the port of In’La in less than three days.

The golden spires of Alya’s vast temple sparkled in the winter sun like a joyous expression as the steamboat drew near. MeerAlya had loved life, as Ra had never thought to. She wished now that she’d known him.

They disembarked, and she was escorted to the prelate, who sat upon the Meeric throne instead of wasting time pretending at presiding over a parliament of solicitors. He looked up from his reading and frowned at the sight of her, clapping his hands at the nearest guard.

“No need for that. Unbind her. She has spoken.”

The guard loosed her from the bonds, and Ra stood before Nesre, waiting.

“MeerRa.” Nesre rose and appraised her as one might a prize stallion on display. “Remarkable. I hadn’t expected you to return as the weaker sex. Don’t you find it limiting?”

Ra considered. “I find it limits the perception of others. Though such perceptions were limited before my renaissance in different ways.”

The prelate shrugged and nodded to her to follow him. “Alya was a bit in awe of you, you know. I believe he tried to outdo you with the grandeur of this place. The temple, of course, preceded his reign, but most of the embellishment was added by him.” He looked about at the sweeping vaults of the gold-painted ceilings and the magnificent array of art and tapestry that covered the walls. “I’ve not yet been to Rhyman. How did he do?”

“It’s very impressive,” said Ra, and she was impressed, despite herself. She paused and touched a gilded frame that held a breathtaking view of a battle in a field of war. The reds of the bloodied warriors seemed so real she expected to see them drip. “Is this his art? I heard he painted.”

“These? No. These are priceless works he acquired throughout his reign from artists around the world.” Though Nesre had orchestrated his death, he spoke of him with something akin to pride. “He could have created whatever he liked, and yet he purchased things—with gold he’d spoken into being, but purchased nonetheless.”

They walked on until a portrait tucked into a dark alcove caught her eye. The subject was a tall, willowy man in a ceremonial robe of the House of Alya. Pale hair cascaded over one shoulder nearly to the floor.

Nesre nodded. “That is Alya.” Alya’s long mane was so fair it was silver, and his eyes were pale blue gems like Pearl’s.

“The boy is his,” said Ra.

“The child,” Nesre corrected. “It’s Alya’s seed, yes.”

“And the mother?”

“Ordinary stock. Meeric seed takes quite well to a common breeding bitch. But then, you know that, don’t you?”

He was trying to get a rise out of her, to test her at her word. Ra merely stared up at the inquisitive, intelligent face of MeerAlya until Nesre moved on.

He led her to a small, domed room in which a peculiar cage was the only furnishing: an eight-sided box of glass that appeared to be sealed on all sides. Inside, visible through the smoky glass, Pearl lay on his pallet, sucking his fist. Ra knew little of children, but he seemed far too old for such a gesture. Perhaps—she counted back over RaNa’s brief life—perhaps as old as ten.

“Have you kept him always this way?” She tried not to give him the satisfaction of her horror.

“Indeed, since birth.” Nesre brought out a key from the pocket of his robe and turned it in a lock recessed into the glass. “An experience that might have benefited others of its kind. It does only as I bid it.”

Pearl sat up swiftly at the sound of the key and stared toward the door. It was clear he couldn’t see them on the outside of it. He only saw what was reflected in his glass.

“I did only as my templars bid me,” said Ra. “No one had to keep me in a cage.”

Nesre ignored this and opened the door. Pearl’s eyes went to his like an obedient hound, and then he saw Ra standing before him in the flesh. He looked to the mirrored glass as if expecting to see her on the other side of it as he had in the vision, as if he thought he might be still staring at her reflection in the dark waters of the Meeric flow. When he began to believe his eyes, they filled with crescents of red.

“You will release him as you promised,” said Ra.

“Of course,” said Nesre. “I can do nothing else, as you can do nothing against your word.” He snapped his fingers at the boy, and Pearl came to him. Nesre pointed outside the cage. Apparently, their communications were not in words. Pearl trembled. Nesre snapped again, pointing, and Pearl obeyed, stepping out into the room with a look of sheer terror on his tearstained face. A breeze from the nearby arch lifted the loose hair in front of his eyes, and he shrank from it as if he’d never felt one before.

“It’s all right,” said Ra. “You can go.” She touched his hand, and he flinched, and then stared at the back of his hand. Had anyone ever touched him in kindness?

Pearl’s intent eyes studied her. He reached out to touch the dark braid hanging forward over her shoulder, and then, feeling it was solid, he fell on his knees and grabbed her around the legs as if he would never let go.

Ra pulled him away despite the strength of his grip and lowered herself to his level. She looked into his tear-red eyes and gave him a silent communication over the Meeric link: go to the coal woman. She searched his eyes to be certain he understood, and they widened with dread. He’d seen Shiva in his visions. She couldn’t blame him for his fear, but Shiva was the only one she could send him to. He was ill equipped to wander the world alone.

“Go,” she said aloud, and Pearl stood and stumbled away from her.

He glanced up at Nesre, not believing. Nesre waved his hand at him with impatience, and Pearl ran, haltingly, no doubt for the first time in his life.

She could see in the prelate’s eyes he intended to break his word the moment she was dead, thinking hers would no longer bind him. He intended to do harm to Pearl. He didn’t realize he would never have the opportunity. And anyone else who might think to try would encounter MeerShiva.

Nesre smiled at her and held his open palm toward the cage, welcoming her into it.

Pearl blundered through the temple. He’d seen parts of it in his mind’s eye through the shifting river of dark glass, but he hadn’t understood the enormity of it. It assaulted his eyes with a riot of light and hue as if his short-lived box of pastels had escaped and colored every surface, and it stretched around him endlessly, making him dizzy. He fell more than once, but picked himself up and hurried on, afraid the armed men who guarded the halls would take him back to the cage. He couldn’t quite believe it when they let him flee.

His head was so full of new things, he didn’t know where to look or what to think. He concentrated on the safe haven of his interior landscape. In the vision, Ra had called him a boy, and this had filled his mind for days. He was a boy, not a creature. Not a thing. The Master had only ever thought of him as Meerchild or “it”. In the Master’s mind, this was true, and Pearl didn’t question it.

He somehow reached the entrance to the temple and the light of day nearly blinded him. Pearl staggered down the shining white steps, slipping midway down and sliding to the bottom. He caught himself on the carpet of dead flowers that littered the ground and stared up at the temple, dazzling and sharp with gold.

Ra had told him to go, had shown him the picture in his head of the great Meer hiding in her guise as a vendor of coal. His intestines churned with fear as he picked himself up and turned toward the city. He knew where to go. He knew how to find her. He didn’t want to, but he must.

Pearl focused on the destination to keep from being overwhelmed by the things around him, running through the city with his vision narrowed, both physically and mentally. Color and sound blurred at the edges of the tunnel of purpose he’d made for himself. Nothing else mattered. He must reach the coal woman. He bypassed the market. She wasn’t there. He saw her in the small, dark room where she’d been before.

He pressed onward, weaving through the crowds of people as he crossed tree-lined avenues and dusty streets, dodging the wheeled contraptions careening around him with their loud, unpleasant noises. His heart was hammering in his chest and his sides ached like fire, and the soles of his feet were torn and bleeding, but he found the house. The grate was partially moved aside from the opening as if the coal woman had just stepped down for a moment to retrieve something before going out.

Pearl dropped into the cellar and crept to the door. She was there, and she sprang at him from the dark like a wild cat disturbed in its cave, green eyes glowing with feral rage as she transformed from the coal woman into the majestic Meer. Pearl cringed, bracing for her attack.

Shiva raised her hand to fling away the dirty child who had trespassed on her cell, but something about him made her pause. His knees shook beneath his stained shift as he stared up at her, but he stood his ground. He smelled like Meer, but that was impossible. She would have known the moment he was born.

She seized him by the front collar of the shift. “What do you want, boy? Out with it now, or I’ll snap your spine.”

He shook in her grip, and his mouth worked as if he was trying to speak, but only a tiny sound came out, like the squeak of a cornered animal. Shiva lifted him and threw him against the iron bars of the door with a force that would have broken a normal child in half. This one sank down on his knees and began to weep blood.

Shiva hissed furiously. Where had this sniveling Meerchild come from? She strode forward to pick him up from the ground and finish him off. Meer or not, he had violated her sanctum.

The boy looked up, and as she reached for him again, he gasped one word, as if it took all his strength: “Ra.” With the name, she saw danger emanating from the swirling flow of Meeric knowledge.

Shiva looked into the boy’s eyes, paler than celestine, and read what he hadn’t words to tell her. With a sigh, she lifted him off the ground like a sack of grain and set him before a stool in the corner of her small room.

“Sit.” She pointed at the stool, and the boy stumbled back onto it in surprise. “Stay.”

She pulled her dusty, coal-woman’s cloak around her, transforming it into a dark swirl of fabric that spun about her limbs into the garments she wanted. It settled into a deep red gown in the tiny-waisted, high-busted fashion of the day—no corset needed, as she simply reshaped her own flesh and bone—with generous folds in the skirt to let her walk unencumbered, and over it, a deep indigo cloak of velvet into which she retreated beneath the cowl hood. Her Meeric hair she wound into a thick knot at waist level and let the rest flow. It snaked of its own accord into the cowl and down her back.

She hadn’t been out in public except as the wretched crone since the Expurgation. If she was going to show herself to the fools who fancied themselves worthy of a Meeric temple, she would do it as MeerShiva.

Ra hadn’t promised Nesre any other vetma beyond her peaceful surrender, so it was no breach of her word to refuse when he demanded she conjure for him. But she’d promised not to harm him, so when he drove his stiletto into her shoulder in a rage, she could only breathe through the pain.

On her knees in the mirrored cage, she bent forward as he yanked his weapon out of her. “I have granted your vetma,” she said through clenched teeth.

“You’ve only granted the letter of it.” He cleaned his blade. “But I happen to know that your kind is very resilient. I’ve had the child on whom to test the limits of Meeric endurance. We’ll just have to see whether your ability to withstand pain can outlast my patience. I have waited for you for thirteen years. I can be a very patient man.”

“I thought you wanted me dead. A trophy for your wall.”

“Oh, I do,” said Nesre. “But all in good time.”

He stabbed her again, this time through the back of her hand where it rested on the floor. Ra hissed in pain and frustration. She hadn’t expected to be caged. She’d meant to burn Ludtaht Alya, but it seemed her will couldn’t extend outside the dark glass. It somehow held the Meeric flow at bay, reflecting it back. This was how he’d kept Pearl so tamed. And because she’d vowed not to speak harm against Prelate Nesre, she couldn’t simply say “burn” within the small space while he was in it and destroy him with her incidentally as she’d planned. It would be too deliberate an act. She would have to wait for an opportunity to escape the cage to take him down with her.

The situation outside Temple Ra was grim. Ahr had helped Merit take a census of the members of the Guard remaining loyal to him and found that fully half had fled Rhyman after Ra’s return and another quarter at least were now among the dissenters demanding his ouster. Though it was a testament to the loyalty he inspired that any had stayed on in his command at all after the destruction of Prelate Vithius. To hold off the mob now filling the courtyard and the square beyond, and spilling into the streets, they had fewer than three hundred men.

Temple Ra had no gates to storm and no reasonable way of keeping the people out of it once their rallying cries reached the fever pitch that would overcome their fear of a vengeful Meeric spirit, but for the past three days, Merit’s men had managed to keep them at bay. Protestors stood on the steps and on the marble benches in the garden shouting to the crowds about the danger of placing power in the hands of a man with known ties to the former despot Ra of Rhyman. Ahr shook his head, watching the same fools utter the same nonsense they’d spoken thirteen years ago in fomenting revolution against MeerRa. He’d been one of them.

Jak joined him at the front of the atrium, keeping a wary eye on the shouting and fist-pumping. “How long are the guards going to be able to hold them off?”

“I don’t think holding them off is really what they’re doing,” Ahr replied. “When this mob decides to move against us, it will move. It hasn’t worked up the courage.” He looked at Jak observing him with new eyes, probably trying to picture him as the dissident girl he’d been. “When they do move, I want you to leave. Merit will have an escort ready to take you out through the servants’ quarters in the rear of the temple.”

Jak glared hotly at him. “I am not leaving you here and running away like some coward.”

“This isn’t your fight, Jak.”

“And how is it yours, then?”

Ahr shrugged and looked back at the crowd. “I helped create them. I helped them destroy a man.” He swallowed. “And a child. I suppose it’s fitting now that I should be on the other side of their wrath.” For once, Jak said nothing to contradict him. “And I am Merit’s man,” he added. “I am loyal to him to the end.”

Jak nodded, hands in the roomy pockets of the dungarees, at last seeming to understand something about him. “Were you lovers? Before…”

Ahr nearly choked on his laughter. “Lovers? Merit and I? Sorry, I’m not laughing at you, just the idea. Merit was… He was my protector. And he was Ra’s. He loved us both. But not like that, I assure you.”

A memory struck Ahr of looking up from where Ra was working his way down her body as she lay naked before him on his own altar, and seeing Merit watching. It was his job to watch over Ra. He watched in all directions; it was necessary in an open-air temple, and he couldn’t afford to turn his back out of modesty. He’d blushed and looked away, but she hadn’t. It seemed natural that he was a part of their lovemaking. She’d felt beautiful, transcendent, like a piece of art.

The unrest grew louder in the courtyard, coordinated groups shouting that Merit had no authority over Rhyman. The organized escalation couldn’t mean anything good. The crowd surged toward the steps, demanding Merit’s abdication.

Merit came forward through the ranks of his men, raising his arm for quiet, and was met by a chorus of jeers. He spoke anyway, in a voice that commanded attention. “In the absence of the prelate and his solicitors, I have the authority and duty of my office as Lord Minister of Security to serve as ruler of Rhyman.” The voices grew louder, trying to shout him down. “Unless there are solicitors of the Court of Rhyman in the crowd now!” It had the desired effect. The cacophony abated for a moment. “Perhaps they would like to come forward instead of hiding in anonymity and explain why they have abandoned their duties.”

“Perhaps you’d like to explain why you’re giving sanctuary to a Meer in the Court of Rhyman!” The speaker hid his face when the protesters looked around amid murmurs and gasps.

“There are no Meer in Rhyman,” Merit said with a look of amusement on his face. “Who’s told you such a fiction?”

“I saw it with my own eyes!” the challenger shot back.

“Solicitor Khalus.” Merit identified him shrewdly. “Come forward and tell us about this Meer you believe you’ve seen. I’m sure everyone would love to hear your evidence.”

Khalus lowered his hood. “I’ll stay where I am, thank you. I have no interest in being torn to shreds like Prelate Vithius!”

“Torn to shreds?” Merit scoffed. “Or could it be you’re simply repeating tales and were not even here on the night Vithius abdicated and abandoned Rhyman?”

A murmur of doubt ran through the crowd, and Khalus looked around in alarm at the numbers surrounding him.

“Who here claims like Khalus to have been a witness to this alleged Meericry?” Merit demanded. “I dare you to challenge me to my face.” He waited. “What, no one?”

“We don’t need evidence to see that the prelate has disappeared!” someone else shouted. “Restore the solicitors and let Merit be judged in the court!” Shouts of assent followed, but Merit persisted.

“I ask again, where are the solicitors?” He looked about. “Let them come. I could certainly use their assistance in running the government of Rhyman!”

“Out with the Meerists!” The shouts and agitating began again, drowning out anything else Merit might have planned to say. The anger of the crowd had reached a point of no return. Ahr had seen it before, and he felt green at the memory of it. They swelled against the barrier of Merit’s men, and as the Guard defended itself with force, cries of brutality rang out.

Ahr grabbed Jak’s arm. “Get inside.”

Pearl huddled on the stool, not daring to move. Even if MeerShiva hadn’t kept him there with her word, he wouldn’t have dared to disobey. There was something dark and terrible in her eyes. He closed his and concentrated on the temple, trying to see what had become of Ra. She had come for him, as he’d hardly dared dream. If the Master were to hurt her, it would be Pearl’s fault. He’d seen in the Master’s head that he wanted very much to hurt her, and yet not because he felt strongly about her, but because she stood in his way. Surely, the prelate couldn’t harm such a powerful Meer, but Pearl looked, just the same.

What he saw was the inside of his cage, and for a moment his heart twisted with dismay, thinking he’d only been having a vision and was now once more inside it. But Ra was there. She was sitting on his pallet, looking at his drawings on the floor. She was wounded. Pearl’s heart began to race. No, this was wrong. It was wrong of the Master to cage Ra. Very wrong. Pearl might belong there for being a mongrel bastard, but Ra was good. He felt it emanate from her in rays, a warmth that encompassed everything around her. Even though she’d destroyed the prelate of Rhyman, she was kind at heart. And that prelate had done a very bad thing to the other Meerchild. Pearl had seen that too. Ra’s grief had driven her to punish him.

Pearl moved his Meeric eye beyond the glass walls of the cage, and for the first time, he realized it was only glass on this side. The Master had seen everything he did. He couldn’t think of anything bad he’d done except hiding the drawings, but it made him feel dirty to think of being watched. And now the Master could see Ra. But he wasn’t watching now.

Pearl scanned the temple and found him reclining in a dining nook, enjoying a meal of roast duck and candied parsnips. Seeing this made Pearl remember how hungry he was. One of the ways the Master punished him was by denying him food, and since finding the hidden paintings, he’d given Pearl nothing to eat. He’d discovered Pearl could go many days without sustenance, though he hungered the same as anyone else. The food the Master was eating was never what Pearl got, but he hadn’t minded much. The Master brought him plums and cherries when he was good.

He realized he was dwelling on the food, experiencing the smell of sage butter and cinnamon, and the taste of the sweet bread and hot spices of the relish the Master dipped it in. Pearl swallowed and pushed the hunger down and returned his vision to the cage. He didn’t like watching Ra through the glass. Seeing her in the pictures that came to him didn’t seem wrong somehow, but on the other side of the glass, it gave him as bad a feeling as knowing he’d been watched himself.

Pearl grew agitated. Ra couldn’t stay there. He couldn’t let the Master hurt her as he planned. He had to let her out.

Pearl held out his hands until he could feel the coldness and the smoothness of the glass against his palms. “No,” he whispered. It wasn’t easy to say words, though he heard them often enough in his head. His training had been thorough, and it hurt his throat and stomach to let sound come through his mouth. And there were many words he simply knew his tongue couldn’t form.

He breathed in deeply, letting his mind swim in the Meeric river, letting his will exhale into the world with his breath. “Bad glass. No glass.”

It shook in his vision beneath his fingers, heat building in it. Ra looked up.

“No glass,” he whispered again.

The walls of the cage shuddered, bowing outward as if made of something pliant, and then snapped back. Pearl felt faint and flushed, as if he were about to be very ill, and his eyes burned as if he’d touched them with pepper oil. He pushed against the glass once more, shoving forward, feeling its matter shift through his fingers. “No glass!”

And then it shattered outward, from the top down, into a thousand glistening splinters, raining from the temple dome like a shower of stars. He could feel the splinters in his hands, and when he opened his eyes at last, he saw his palms were bleeding.

Ra sat cross-legged, surrounded by the delicate musical notes of the cage’s falling debris. She’d felt a ripple in the Meeric flow, a vibration that had the signature of Pearl, just as the glass began to fall. If he’d reached Shiva, he was miles across town, and yet he’d focused his will on something he neither saw nor touched. Astounded by his skill, she forgot for a moment the significance of the event—that she was free of the binding cage. She relaxed into a meditative state, using the points of light sparkling from the carpet of glass as her focus, and waited for Prelate Nesre.

In a moment, he came running from the open chambers beyond, outrage and disbelief nearly choking him. She allowed him into the narrow field of her consciousness. Nesre stopped and stared at her in astonishment amid the debris. He’d expected her to run.

His shoes crunched over the shards as he approached her slowly. Ra smiled and let him come to her.

“MeerRa. What—?”

Ra spoke a single, quiet word. “Fire.” It began in the gold-painted wainscoting from sparks in the wiring of the electric lights hidden behind panels of oak.

Nesre looked baffled as he stood before her. “What?”

“Ludtaht Alya,” said Ra, “is on fire.”

“What in the world are you talking about?” Nesre looked about, seeing nothing. He hadn’t the Meeric eye.

Before he could question her further, shouts came from every direction of the temple, servants and guards calling out at once in a panic: “Fire!”

Nesre whirled about. “Damn you! What have you done? What’s going on?”

“Purification. Making us one with the elements, to return to that from which we all flow, Meer and ordinary men alike.”

The smell of smoke had at last reached the small alcove where Nesre had stored his pet Meer. There was only one entrance to this alcove, and as Nesre turned toward it, a wall of flame leapt up the tapestries on either side of the arch like crouching mountain cats and engulfed the passage in heat and acrid fumes.

Nesre stepped into the circle of glass and grabbed Ra by the arm, pulling her to her feet. “Put it out! You gave your word to speak no harm against me!”

“I spoke no harm against you, Prelate Nesre. Your presence here is of your own accord.”

He pulled his stiletto from the sheath at his belt and held it to her breast, his fingers digging into her flesh as he shook her with fury and mounting fear. “Put it out, or I swear I will hold you here to die with me! The only way you can escape is by harming me, and you are bound to your word!”

“I have no intention of leaving.”

“But you’ll die!” His voice rose in a pitch of hysteria.

“Yes, Prelate Nesre. I have done that before.”

Nesre began to cough into his sleeve, his eyes watering. “Why?” he demanded. “Why not just leave? You’d have won, dammit! I don’t know how you destroyed the cage, but you would have been free. You could have gone your own way and left me alone!”

She stared at him serenely. “As you said, I am a woman, and softhearted. You kept a child here caged like an animal, but with less respect. You need to die.” The fumes of burning fibers and metallic pigments were making her lightheaded.

Nesre made a wild attempt to flee through the wall of flame, but it leapt to his robes, and he fell screaming to the ground, trying to roll the flames out in the layers of crushed glass. Ra sat down once more on little Pearl’s pallet, watching him dispassionately. Her lungs were burning with the smoke, but she would wait to be certain Nesre perished before she succumbed to it. Sweat poured down her back and fluid ran from her eyes that, for once, was only water. The prelate’s moaning quieted, and his shuddering body stilled, and she expelled her last breath and closed her eyes.

The first time Ra had died, his last thoughts had been of Ahr. That desperate need to see her again, to make things right, had brought Ra back despite all odds, though the pain of his death had left the new Ra nearly as vulnerable and empty-headed as a child. And she’d made nothing right. She thought of Ahr now, and of Jak—unexpected, sweet Jak. She’d only just begun to know the depths of passion that hid beneath that quiet exterior. Would it be wrong to return again? Should she have returned at all?

She let the light, clear liquid of her watering eyes trail down her cheeks like tears. Her selfishness in returning had caused others pain. She ought to let the winds of the elements take her where they would, returning in the ordinary manner if she was meant to. It was so hard to leave fate to its own devices.

She was drifting toward the weightlessness of death when a deafening crack reverberated through the temple. Timbers falling in the entry hall, perhaps. But the air around her seemed to be drawn past in a rush toward the arch, and she opened her eyes as the flames were sucked through the doorway with it. They billowed outward and then dissipated as if a blanket had been thrown over them.

Shiva stood in the void they left, a brilliant indigo cloak fluttering in the breeze as the air returned as mysteriously as it had gone. She took one look at Prelate Nesre, badly burned but his chest still rising shallowly, and bent down and snapped his neck with a quick twist. She shook her head at Ra.

“Thick-headed child. Must you always do everything the hard way?”