5

Pirra is on the deck of the ship, screaming at Hylas. “I hate you! I’ll hate you forever!” She goes on screaming as the ship pulls away and he is lost from sight.

Now the voyage is over, the ship has reached Keftiu, and Pirra is watching the sailors unload Havoc’s cage. The lion cub is frightened and miserable. She’s been seasick all the way, and has rubbed her forehead raw on the bars, but Pirra couldn’t let her out in case she jumped overboard.

They’re hardly ashore when something terrible happens: The Sea begins to withdraw. Pirra stares in disbelief at glistening mounds of seaweed and stranded, flapping fish. Then the captain remembers a story of the old times and bellows a warning. “It’s going to attack! To the hills! Run!”

Now the sailors are fleeing in panic and Userref is dragging Pirra up a cliff. She sees Havoc in her cage, abandoned on the rocks, and screams at the men to set the cub free, but Userref won’t let go of her wrist and the Great Wave is roaring toward them with vast white claws . . .

Pirra woke up.

She was in bed at Taka Zimi. Her chamber was warm: Embers crackled in the brazier, and she lay in a nest of sheepskins. She smelled the wormwood that Userref burned to ward off the Plague, and heard the distant roar of the waterfall and the gurgle of water collecting in the cistern under the sanctuary. But the dream clung to her. She remembered the terrible silence after the Great Wave had gone.

She shut her eyes. She hadn’t actually seen Havoc washed away. Maybe someone had let the cub out, and she’d escaped in time . . .

Round and round Pirra’s thoughts circled: from grief for Havoc, to shock and disbelief over her mother, to rage and anxiety—mostly rage—about Hylas.

As her heartbeats slowed, she realized she was clutching her amulet pouch, which held the falcon feather he’d given her two summers before. Falcons are creatures of the Goddess, but Pirra loved them simply because they enjoyed a freedom she didn’t have. It had meant a lot when Hylas had given her this feather.

But things were different now. All through the winter she’d had fights with him in her head. “I told you I’d die if I was sent back to Keftiu—and yet you did it anyway!”

“I was saving your life,” replied the Hylas in her head.

“You should’ve left that to me! If you hadn’t forced me onto the ship, I’d have found another—probably the same one as you—and I’d be free! Instead I’m shut up here forever, and it’s all your fault!”

“And me?” said the imaginary Hylas. “What if I drowned in the Great Wave, and you’re arguing with a ghost?”

And so it went on.

Suddenly, Pirra couldn’t take it anymore. Yanking open the pouch, she pulled out the small tattered feather. She’d kept it through fire and flood. Well, not anymore. She had to get Hylas out of her head.

Swiftly, she drew on woolen leggings, a long-sleeved tunic of otter fur, and calfskin boots lined with fleece, then flung on her fox-fur mantle. Ripping a twist of wool from her hair, she found a small stone lamp and tied on Hylas’ feather, to weigh it down. Then she slipped quietly out of her chamber.

At the shrine, lamps glimmered before the bronze Watchers who sent their metal prayers to the Goddess while Her human worshippers slept. Pirra put her fist to her forehead and bowed, then crept out onto the steps.

Her spirits plummeted, as they always did when she saw the sky. Though it was night, she couldn’t see the Moon or the stars. The Great Cloud shrouded the world. It was like being in a tomb.

The sanctuary of Taka Zimi perched like an eyrie high on a shoulder of Mount Dikti, with its back against the mountainside and a precipice in front. It was a long narrow building split into four: Pirra’s chamber at one end, then the shrine, then two chambers for Userref and Pirra’s hated slave girl, Silea, with the cellar and cistern beneath.

In front of the sanctuary was a small snowy courtyard enclosed by massive stone walls twenty cubits high. At the far end of the courtyard, the guards’ quarters and the heavy barred gates occupied one corner, while in the other, stone pegs jutting from the wall led up to a windy lookout post, where a shaggy old juniper tree clung to life on the edge of the precipice.

Torches burned between the stone bulls’ horns on top of the walls, but the guards’ quarters were dark. All Pirra could hear was the thunder of the waterfall and the hiss of windblown snow.

She thought of the endless walks she’d made around the courtyard, and of her pathetic plan of escape. Whenever Silea was busy, she would sneak into the slave girl’s room and kick aside the mat that covered the hatch to the cellar. Down there in the freezing dark, she would hack at the wall where the pipe carried water from the stream outside into the cistern in the cellar. Over the winter, she’d managed to dislodge one stone, creating a hole about the size of her fist.

“This is your fault, Hylas,” she whispered. “You’re why I’m here.”

Racing across the courtyard, she climbed the pegs to the lookout. The screaming wind blasted her with snow, and she grabbed the trunk of the juniper tree to steady herself. In her free hand she gripped the lamp with the feather tied on. When she threw it, it would be gone for good.

Somewhere, a crow cawed, and for a moment, Pirra thought of the Crow warriors on Thalakrea. They’d escaped to safety. Had they found out that she’d taken their precious dagger?

Hylas hadn’t given her the chance to tell him; he’d been too busy forcing her onto the ship. Well, if he believed the Crows still had the dagger, that only served him right.

“Get out of my head, Hylas,” she muttered, and leaned over the precipice as far as she dared.

“Pirra, what are you doing?” shouted Userref. He stood on the sanctuary steps, frozen with horror.

“Getting rid of something!” she yelled. Drawing back her arm, she flung the lamp—and the wind tore it away into the whirling void. “There!” she shouted. “That’s the last of you gone!”

“You promised you wouldn’t climb up there,” admonished Userref when they were back in her chamber and he’d dealt with the guards, who’d been woken by the shouting.

“I didn’t promise,” retorted Pirra.

“Mistress, how could you?” scolded Silea. Her plump face puckered with disapproval, although she loved it when Pirra got into trouble.

“Silea, go away,” snarled Pirra.

“I wish I could,” muttered the slave girl. That was a lie: She was enjoying Taka Zimi, safe from the Plague, and with little to do except flirt with the guards.

“Just go,” commanded Pirra.

Rolling her eyes, Silea went.

Userref studied Pirra. “What you threw away, was it that falcon feather Hylas gave you?”

Pirra turned on him. “I told you never to speak his name! I ordered you! And in case you’ve forgotten, you’re still my slave, just like Silea!”

There was a prickly silence. Userref crossed his arms and glowered at the brazier. Pirra snatched up her bronze mirror and glared at herself. The cold made her scar show livid on her cheek. She’d burned her face deliberately when she was twelve, to avoid being wed, but now that she was nearly fourteen, she hated her scar. She’d tried everything to make it fade. Nothing had worked.

Userref looked unhappy. He loathed being angry. Pirra felt a flash of affection for him. He was the big brother she’d never had.

Despite the cold, he still shaved his head in mourning for his beloved Egypt, and painted black stripes across his eyes, in the hopes that it would bring back the Sun. For him even more than for the Keftians, the Sun’s disappearance was a catastrophe: He lived by its daily rebirth.

“Sorry,” she mumbled.

He gave her a smile that lit up his handsome face. “Doesn’t matter, I understand. It’s this terrible place.”

The frozen mountain had appalled him. “This thing you call snow,” he’d exclaimed on their first day at Taka Zimi, “it’s everywhere! And some demon has put a spell on my breath and turned it to smoke!”

Pirra had had a struggle to make him wear warm clothes, as he refused to touch wool, regarding sheep as unclean. At last she’d persuaded him into a linen tunic and leggings padded with goosedown, a harefur cloak, and calfskin boots stuffed with hay.

Pirra noticed that his pouch was slung over his shoulder. “You’re going out,” she said.

“Down to the village to get more wormwood.”

“Let me go with you,” she begged.

He sighed. “You know I can’t. I swore to your mother.”

Pirra blinked. She hated it when he mentioned Yassassara. “The High Priestess is dead,” she told him levelly.

“Which makes her wishes sacred.”

“For how long? Am I to be shut in here forever?”

“You know the answer. Till the Sun returns and rids the land of Plague.”

“What if that never happens?”

“Your mother sent you here to be safe. Now that she’s dead, the priests—”

“They don’t care about me any more than she did!” Pirra burst out. “They only want me alive so they can trade me in marriage when this is over!”

Userref turned to go, but she ran to him. “Userref, please! Let me come with you, even just outside the gates! I won’t run away, where would I go? There’s nothing but mountains and snow!”

“Pirra—”

“All winter I’ve been pacing that courtyard! If I do it any more I’ll go mad!”

“Pirra I can’t! I swore to your mother!”

“My mother is dead dead dead!”

There was a shocked silence. Pirra folded her arms and turned her back on Userref. She had hated her mother, but she’d been stunned by her death, and she was haunted by their last exchange. “You ran away,” Yassassara had said coldly. “You shirked your duty to Keftiu.”

Pirra had wanted to tell her that on Thalakrea, she’d risked her life for Keftiu—but she’d never gotten the chance. That day she’d been banished to Taka Zimi, and she’d never seen her mother again. Now she couldn’t ever make Yassassara proud of her. It was too late.

She turned to find Userref observing her thoughtfully. “You’re more like her than you know,” he said. “Just as brave and just as strong-willed.”

Pirra flinched. Once, Hylas had said something similar. You’re brave and you don’t give up.

With a snarl, she ground her fist against the wall. Stop thinking about Hylas.

“And Pirra,” said Userref from the doorway. “That feather. It’s an emblem of Heru, my falcon-headed god. You can’t get rid of it as easily as that.”

“What do you mean?” Pirra said sulkily.

“You sent it out on the wind. Who knows what the wind will send back?”