Our new friend, the old lady, wept as we prepared to leave, and the healer man rolled his eyes at her the more she carried on. I didn’t really understand it. We’d only just met, but the way she hugged us and squeezed our cheeks so frequently, you’d think she’d known us forever. We’d come across so many strangers outside the Pit, and none of them seemed to like us. But the old lady, she treated us nice. I was sorry to say bye, though not as much as Fiver, who hugged her goodbye and held on long and tight. Av’s mouth fell open and I just shrugged. It was too hard to explain. Fiver might have hated the Mothers, we all did, but if he could have had one, I knew he would have hoped for this one. She held out three pairs of thick foot coverings, which I suspected she’d made herself. They were warm and fuzzy on my aching feet. The old healer shook our hands and gave us each a heavy tunic and a colorful woven blanket that I was grateful for. He patted Av on the back, his farewell speech completely lost on our ears but his good wishes accepted with gratitude.
We set off by midday carrying a large pack filled with baked goods, meats, and bottles of the red liquid, supplied by the kind old woman. Thanks to her, hunger was one less thing we’d have to worry about. We followed on the same path Fiver and I had stalked Farka and her friend along the night before, trying our best to find their trail through the rocky slopes. I tried to pretend I knew what I was looking for, but mostly I was counting on Av and Fiver to point the way.
The slopes of the giant mountains were steep and jagged, but my feet were well protected by my new foot coverings. It was strange to walk in them. My feet had been naked my entire life, and swaddled in this thick fabric they were starting to sweat.
“How did he look?” Av asked. He listened quietly as we walked and Fiver and I filled him in on all the things he couldn’t remember, which was everything after we swam the river. “Was he”—Av watched me as he spoke, trying to read the answer on my face—“hurt?”
I didn’t say anything. When I saw Cubby, he looked healthy enough—no bruises or limps. He looked better than we did. But he had the mark.
“He didn’t look hurt,” said Fiver for me. “Scared, though.”
I swallowed, the image of him cowering beneath the Tunrar forcing a lump in my throat.
Av nodded. “That’s good.”
There was something on his face, something he wasn’t saying. “Why do you ask?” I said.
He stopped, planting his foot in a notch in the slope. “I just—” He turned and looked at Fiver. “Nothing, I was just wondering…”
He was hiding something.
“Av, what is it?”
He looked to me and shook his head, silently asking me not to make him say. I couldn’t do that. There were no secrets. Not now. Not when it came to Cubby.
“Tell me,” I said.
“I just had a dream, all right?”
“You mean like…” I looked at Fiver, realizing now why Av didn’t want to say. “You mean like your usual one?”
He shook his head.
“Dream?” said Fiver. “What dream?”
Av sighed and wiggled his foot deeper into the notch. “When I was sick, I kept having the same dream, over and over.”
“About Cubby?” I said.
He nodded. “And other things.”
“You saw him hurt?” I asked, needing to know more.
He shook his head. “Not hurt. I saw him. Smiling like usual. But…when I saw him, I felt sore. Like this really bad ache. I get the same thing with the dream about my—my other dream. I get these feelings. But this time it was different. It was…stronger.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’ll tell you what it means,” said Fiver. “Means he hurt his head really bad.”
“Yeah.” Av shrugged, rubbing his chin. “My head’s just not right.”
My stomach felt hot, the juices inside raging. What if Cubby was hurt? What if Krepin did something to him?
Av kicked at the notch in the slope, then reached for another above his head and tried to hoist himself up, but his strength seemed to give out and he fell back into me.
I held him by the arm to keep him steady.
“Av, you all right?”
He nodded. “Fine. Just a little dizzy all of a sudden.”
Fiver threw down our pack from the old lady. “She put something in here for you,” he said. He fished out a small glass bottle of the brown liquid he’d tasted the night before. “Tastes awful, but it’s for pain, I think.”
Wincing from the ache, Av reached for the bottle and took a sniff. “Ewf.” He took a deep breath and knocked the drink back, his face turning almost green as he swallowed. He coughed and sputtered and took a seat beside Fiver. “By Rawley, that’s foul stuff.”
Fiver smiled and handed him a piece of some kind of dried meat. “Here, takes the taste out of your mouth.”
He handed a piece to me, then set to work opening a bottle of the red liquid I didn’t much care for. I bent the piece of rubbery meat back and forth in my hand, my stomach too unsettled to take a bite.
“How are you going to do it?” asked Av. He was looking at me.
“Do what?”
“You know, kill her.”
My body went rigid. Fiver let out a laugh. I hadn’t thought about it. It hadn’t really hit me that I’d have to take a life until he asked. How would I do it?
“You really think it’s going to be Useless who does it?” said Fiver.
“What do you mean?” I said.
Fiver shook his head. “Look, they sent you, so if you want to give it a shot, fine. But let’s not pretend you’re not going to muck it up and need me and Av to jump in and help you.”
My cheeks went hot.
“Why did they send you?” Av scratched his nose and waited for me to answer.
“What?”
“Why did this Krepin man send you?”
“Because,” I said, “I’d do anything for Cubby, and he knew it.”
Av shook his head. “That’s why you agreed to do it. But if this is so important to him, why send you? He doesn’t even know you.”
“Doesn’t know I’m useless, you mean?” Since when did Av agree with Fiver? “Who cares why he did it! The point is I have to do it if I want Cubby back—nothing else matters!”
“Don’t get angry, Urgle,” said Av. “I’m just saying it sounds like there’s more to it. Why would he send a boy he doesn’t know?”
My ears felt like they were on fire and my cheeks and neck flushed. Only Krepin knew the answer to that. This was his game after all, his rules. How was I supposed to win it?
The three of us sat quietly, eating and drinking, all of us lost in our own web of thoughts. I was glad for the quiet, glad to not be answering any more questions. Questions, questions, questions. There were so many, and all the time. But in the quiet, I remembered there was really only one thing to think about: Cubby. Nothing else mattered.
“Think the Tunrar have caught up with Blaze by now?” Av asked, breaking the silence.
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know, and I didn’t want to think about it. If they did catch him, it would be because of me.
“I hope so,” he said to himself.
I looked at him, surprised. “No, you don’t.”
“Why not?” said Av, annoyed that I was defending him. “He killed Digger.”
I tore off a piece of meat with my teeth. There wasn’t much I could say to that.
“And he would have killed me if it hadn’t been for the old healer man.”
“What?”
Av wiped his chin on his shoulder. “He told you what plant to look for, didn’t he?”
“Av”—my face went hot—“it was our fault, I’m so sorry.”
“Our fault?” said Fiver.
“We picked the wrong plant. The healer man gave you the right one. It looked like ours, but different. We made the mistake.”
“Right,” said Av. “Just a bad coincidence, then.”
“You think Blaze knew we’d pick the wrong one?” asked Fiver.
Av looked down at the piece in his fingers and spoke quietly: “Don’t you?”
“No,” I said. Av looked up, his jaw tight as he chewed. “I just—there’s no reason for him to do that.”
“Do what?” said Av. “Kill me? Like he killed Digger.”
“Digger was suffering!”
“So was I.”
“He’s one of us!” I shouted.
I couldn’t look Av in the eye. I knew he’d think I was choosing sides. I kicked at the ground. “Why would he hurt one of his own? He took us to the Temple, even though the Beginners were looking for him.”
I glanced up to see Fiver shrug, not much caring either way. But Av was staring at me.
“ ’Cause he’s a thief, right?” he said. “He admitted it, didn’t he?”
I nodded. Stole a secret.
“Blaze is gone,” said Fiver. “What’s it matter now?”
“Doesn’t matter to me,” said Av.
I looked away and forced myself to swallow the meat that I’d chewed to a pulp between my teeth. Blaze was gone, why did it matter? Because I couldn’t believe it. Blaze helped me. He told me what I needed to know. Why would he help me and then hurt Av? He was a Brother. Brothers take care of each other. It was me who made the mistake. Not Blaze. But I couldn’t convince Av of that, not now. He was too mad at Blaze, too sad about Digger to hear about any of the good things Blaze had done for us. I could only hope that with Blaze gone, Av would start acting more like himself.
“How do you feel?” I asked him, hoping he wasn’t going to be mad at me the rest of the day.
He rubbed his head and sighed. “All right. That stuff isn’t tasty but I guess it really works.” He stood up and tossed me his last piece of dried meat. “We should get moving.”
I nodded. The dried piece of meat said we were all right.
After a few hours of uphill hiking, we came to a blockage of fallen boulders, sharp inclines on either side. The only way out was to turn back or climb around. Fiver and Av scoured the slopes but I couldn’t tell what they were looking for.
“Well?” I asked. “What do you see?”
Fiver laughed.
“There’s not a lot to see out here, Urgs,” said Av. “We’re mostly guessing at this point.”
“What?” That was not what I wanted to hear. I didn’t need guesses. I needed to know. I needed to know exactly how to find the Belphebans. Fiver and Av were supposed to be the best hunters in the Ikkuma Pit. How could they be guessing?
“We’re used to Nikpartok,” said Fiver. “Baublenotts was sort of the same terrain, but this is a lot trickier. There’s too much rock.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this last night!” I was furious. “We had them then! We could have followed them then!”
“They knew we were following them. They—”
“I saw this too,” interrupted Av.
“Saw what?” said Fiver.
Av kicked at the pebbles by his feet. “All of this.” His eyes flicked to me. “Rocks and ice.”
At first I didn’t know what he meant, but his eyes bore into mine. And then I remembered, his groggy voice spitting out nonsense. Wawksh and eyesh.
“Rocks and ice?” I said.
He nodded.
“Wh—” I tried, not sure what to say. “What does that mean? Does that mean you dreamed we would be here?”
He shook his head and looked away, touching his wound where the old man had fixed him up.
“Does that mean—” I felt a sour sting at the back of my throat. “That thing about Cubby. You said he was hurt. Does that mean he’s hurt?”
“By Rawley, Urgle!” snapped Fiver. “It was just a lousy dream. Quit making yourself crazy. He said the kid was smiling!”
“He’s right, Urgle,” said Av, tying the lace on his foot covering. “He was smiling.”
I stared at him, wanting him to explain himself, wanting him to say what exactly he’d dreamed. But he was done talking about it. His dreams had a way of scaring him, and he wouldn’t face them until he was ready. But if he really did see this, then his dreams were starting to scare me too.
“I say we go up this way,” he said finally, pointing up a sharp slope to our left that looked like an awful climb.
“Are you kidding?” argued Fiver. “Up and over this rock pile is the easiest way.”
“Unless you don’t want to be followed.” Av shrugged.
Fiver thought a moment and nodded. “All right, we’ll go your way.”
This was not the conclusive decision I’d been hoping for.
With a heavy heart and all the tension I thought I’d lost the night before suddenly weighing down my shoulders again, I followed Av and Fiver up the steep incline.
It wasn’t as bad a climb as I’d feared. In fact, it was less difficult than climbing the walls of the Ikkuma Pit, and we reached the rocky shelf we were aiming for with relative ease.
Once we were up, there was little guesswork to be done. The shelf only extended in one direction, into a cave in the wall of the mountain, so we had no choice but to venture in. I wasn’t too thrilled about heading into a dark, unexplored cave, but the light was easy to see and I knew how long we’d have to walk before we came out on the other side. Not too far.
As we made our way through the dark tunnel, more doubts and concerns crept into my mind. Av said he saw this. How? How could he see what hadn’t happened? Could he see what was happening to Cubby? What would happen? Did he see us finding the Belphebans? A new wave of sick rushed over me at the thought. If we did find the Belphebans, which at this point was looking less and less likely, what then? How exactly was I going to kill their leader? How would I even know who she was? The more uncertainty I built around my task, the more I had to ask myself Av’s question. Why send me?
Then there was screaming. I tensed and readied for a brawl with the Tunrar, but the sound was different. Melodic and human, voices instead of animal shrieks. They were angry. The light from the tunnel exit was gone, and a figure stood in its place. Fiver readied his fists and Av unsheathed his dagger, the two of them poised for battle. Her legs were long and lean, her shoulders delicate but squared away, as she stood planted in front of us. She gripped a bo staff that, from the way she was standing, we could assume she knew how to use, and well.
Leaping down from above her dropped another equally leggy woman, whirling her sling at her side.
I wished I had some kind of weapon on me, like a pistol.
More screams sounded behind us and my back muscles tightened when I realized they might have pistols of their own.
Behind us came another woman, her hair a mess of wild curls. Her giant-bladed ax glinted when she brandished it above her head, catching the natural light. She advanced on us slowly, her face as hard and cold as the rock walls that trapped us.
“Well,” said Fiver, “looks like we found them.”
Behind her, still more were coming: blades and slings, spears and other weapons I didn’t recognize but that I knew would hurt me pretty bad if given the chance.
“We’re trapped,” I said.
“Get behind me,” said Fiver.
Fiver rolled and held up his club, which only brought on a chorus of cackling laughter from the advancing banshees. Apparently, Belphebans didn’t scare as easily as Tunrar.
Fiver swung at the ax-wielder, who dodged out of his way. He lost his balance when his swing didn’t connect and she threw him up against the wall of the cave, pinning his arms and chest behind the staff of her ax. Av flew at her, but one of her friends, a metal chain attached to two heavy balls gripped firmly in her hand, was on top of him, easily holding his arms behind his back. She quickly tied them together with the chain. I was the only one left.
My feet shifted from side to side as I danced moronically, trying to decide which way to flee, both exits blocked.
“Where will you run, little boy?” crowed a familiar voice. Farka approached from the back, a long blade held in her left hand. She smirked as she watched me bounce and tremble.
“Run, run, run,” she mocked as her friends cackled around us.
“Bring them,” commanded the woman with the bo staff from the mouth of the cave.
Farka grabbed me by the scruff of the neck, and the three of us were dragged outside.
There were about eleven of them, their clothes a mishmash of different heavy fabrics wrapped tightly against their bodies to protect from the cold. The cloth clung to their figures and I couldn’t help but notice their swollen chests, their round hips. Their hair was long and wild, and they were all relatively young and healthy, not melty or rounded like the Abish women or our generous old lady. They were beautiful, every one of them, and I felt awkward and small under their scrutinizing stares.
We were brought before the one with the bo staff. She was shorter than the rest of them, but muscular and regal. She had a look of detached interest, as though this were less exciting for her than it was for the others.
“You said there were two,” she said, her smoky-smooth voice commanding silence from her companions.
Farka spoke up, gripping my neck tighter. “There were. These are them, I’m sure of it.”
“Elome?”
Farka’s friend from the night before emerged from the crowd and looked over me and Fiver, then nodded. “Those are the same boys.”
The shorter woman grunted and looked directly at me. “Ikkuma?” she asked.
I glared at her, silence the only weapon I had left.
Farka shook me hard and I growled under my breath.
“Speak! Little boy.” The last words were sneered at me through tight teeth, and I saw that she was loving every second of my anger.
“You are Ikkuma, are you not?” the short woman asked, her tone commanding me to answer.
I nodded.
“Yes!” Farka barked at me.
“Yes!” I shot back. “We are from the Ikkuma Pit.”
Murmurs erupted from the crowd of warrior women and the shorter one’s disinterest suddenly melted away.
“You are quite young, are you not? To have traveled so far from your home?”
I didn’t know what to say. They’d caught me before I could finish my task, caught me before I could rescue Cubby. I stewed silently and stared at the ground, refusing to meet her eyes.
“We seek our Mothers,” Av blurted out.
My body radiated with embarrassment and I opened my mouth to argue. The very idea that we had traveled all this way to find our Mothers, that we were, by definition, Mother seekers, those spineless Brothers who needed to know the woman that abandoned them, to find her and beg her to keep him, was offensive. I would never. We would never.
But Av was smart. There was no better reason to give them.
Fiver, obviously just as offended at the thought of being a Mother seeker, opened his mouth to protest, but I cut him off as quick as I could. “That’s right!” I shouted. “We seek answers! We’ve come to face our Mothers!”
Farka let out a frustrated groan in my ear and threw me to the ground.
“Never mind why they are here, Serin!” she shouted at the short woman. “They tell us lies! No Ikkuma this young has ever come to us. It is a ruse! Let us kill them here and now. What if they are spies for the enemies?”
Well, Farka may have been a nasty piece of work, but she was sharp. I had to give her that.
Serin looked down at me, her lips tight while she thought. I could tell our story hadn’t convinced her.
“Serin!” said another woman, older, her hair silver and tied back tightly from her face. “I suggest you take them to her Sacred Innocence. Let her decide the right course of action.”
Serin considered this a moment, but Farka was thirsty for our blood.
“No!” she said. “No more delays. Just finish them now. You can’t bring them back to camp.”
Serin sighed. “Her Holiness will be able to judge them better than I.”
“You cannot bring them into the camp when so many suffer from the Guilt. Whether the Sacred Innocence condemns them or not, our plagued sisters will be tortured by their presence!”
“Enough, Farka,” Serin ordered.
Yes, I thought, enough, Farka.
Serin nodded to the women holding Av and Fiver. “Bring them.”
We walked for ages, every step a struggle as we tried to move in sync with the wretched wenches who held to us tightly. I tripped a few times, and Farka was always quick to kick me and shout at me to get up. It was clear she was not the Belpheban Head, but with each kick to my side I wished she was.
In the distance, a group of several white figures approached, their hands held out in welcome.
Serin laughed when she saw them. “I take it our Sacred Innocent has seen our special guests.”
The woman in the center, her garb significantly different from the warriors that had captured us—long, flowing white fabrics, a scarf wrapped round her head—smiled and bowed.
“Her Holiness was worried for your task this morning, dear Serin. She has sent us to comfort you.”
Serin smiled and took the woman’s hand in hers. “I am comforted,” she said, and bowed.
“Visitors from the Ikkuma Pit,” the woman called to us. “She is waiting for you.”
Who she was, I had no idea. I figured if I asked I’d get a bruise from Farka.
The woman in white turned and began walking towards an encampment; tents and crates peeked out from behind rocks and boulders.
Farka and the other two forced the three of us forward, dragging us to follow the white-garbed woman and her companions.
The woman turned and scowled at Farka. “That won’t be necessary, Sisters. The boys are capable of walking on their own.”
The women holding Av and Fiver let them go without hesitation, but Farka held on to the back of my neck a moment—I could feel her wanting to argue.
The woman in white narrowed her eyes, and Farka scoffed, releasing me and pushing me away from her.
“Follow me, gentlemen, I will take you to her,” the woman in white called.
We did. What else could we do? Though, whoever she was made me feel a bit uneasy. Just saying she was not giving us a lot of information. She was not a name, or a face, or an idea. I gulped because that last part wasn’t really true. She was an idea. She was an idea I’d had since I was left at the walls of the Ikkuma Pit. A sick thought crept into my mind, the thought that she might be the she I’d hated my whole life. I shook my head, trying to get rid of it. She could have been anybody.
The woman in white led us towards the encampment, and as we approached, more Belphebans emerged to meet us. I suddenly understood why Farka thought this was a bad idea, and I was surprised to find myself agreeing with her. The women of the Belpheban camp behaved in two ways: half crowed and hollered at us to leave, throwing things and jeering. “She isn’t here!” they mocked. “Go back to the garbage dump she left you to rot in!”
The other half were trying not to cry, or were crying in hysterics. They tried to get close to us, tears streaming down their faces, our guide calming them and gently turning them away.
“Is that my Benedon?” one wailed.
“My boy! My baby boy!” cried another.
“No, no, Sisters. They are not yours!” our guide assured them.
“Forgive me, my son! Forgive me!”
They were reaching for us, clawing at us, wailing and jeering, pulling and pushing, and I grabbed on to Av, more frightened than I had been in Abish Village. I tried not to look at the faces flashing by me, terrified I’d recognize one, the one female face I might know, a distant memory made real, the she I was afraid of, the face of my own wretched Mother.
I’d been so focused on doing what Krepin wanted, on getting Cubby back, that I hadn’t even thought that I could be marching right into the den of that monster. She could be here. She could have been any one of them. And would she recognize me if she saw me? Had she seen me already? Would she come for me? The urge to run buzzed in my legs and I thought about making a break for it, hiding in the mountains. I never thought I’d face her, and here I was, facing her a hundred times over with every Mother who wept and reached for me.
I closed my eyes trying to get ahold of my pounding heart. If she was here, I told myself, if I had to face my Mother, I’d face her for Cubby.
Our guide ushered us into a grand cave, the Belphebans stopping at the mouth as though an invisible force prevented them from following us inside.
I was shaken up, trembling. I was so frightened but I’d managed to make it through the crowd. Av kept looking back nervously, making sure the women weren’t following. Fiver clutched to the bag of supplies from the kind old Fendar Sticks lady, his eyes distant and unfocused.
“Forgive them,” said the woman in white. “They tend to behave that way whenever a son returns for answers, though I can’t say we’ve ever received three at once.”
So it was true. When some of the Brothers left on their Leaving Day, they went searching for their Mothers. I suddenly felt embarrassed, ashamed that any of the Brothers who left could have come here on such a pathetic search. Though I suppose technically, we were the same as them now.
“How many have you seen?” asked Av.
“Oh, dozens. As long as there have been Belphebans, their sons have come to find them.”
“Do you ambush them too?” growled Fiver.
The woman in white sighed heavily. “These are tense times, child. You must understand that.”
We didn’t really, but we were getting a better idea every day. I thought of the damage we’d seen in Fendar Sticks, the boys with their pistols stopping us on the road. Somehow, the Beginners’ Holy War was a force bigger than I could have imagined.
“Where are we going?” asked Av.
“To the dwelling of our High Priestess,” said the woman in white. “The Sacred Innocent.”
The cave tunnel opened up into a large cavern; the ceiling stretched so high, and white crystals bigger than the A-Frame hung down from above and protruded from the walls. Rows of women dressed in white were singing softly and sat with their foreheads on the floor. They didn’t acknowledge us, absorbed in their music.
We approached a group of crystals in the center of the cavern, a nest of white pillows and blankets at its base, and standing in the middle was a small contorted figure—a girl. Her eyes were closed, her arm stretched towards the ceiling, her spine bent so far back her head was nearly upside down. Her right foot stood rigid and sturdy on the floor, while the left curled upwards to cradle her head.
Fiver snorted as he tried not to laugh, while I tried to keep my mouth from dropping open. Was this what we were in for? Would they torture us by twisting our bodies so badly that we’d tell them everything? About the Beginners? About my mission?
I was knocked in the shoulder as Av took a step back. His nostrils flared as his chest rose and fell quickly between panicked breaths. Did he dream this? Did he know what they’d do to us?
The woman in white bent on one knee before the contorted girl and addressed her: “On you all my happiness, Holiness.”
The girl’s eyes shot open and, without difficulty, she righted herself until she was standing before us like a normal person. She smiled, her cheeks betraying perfect dimples and shining with a radiant blush. Her lips were full, and she kept them pressed together while her dark eyes twinkled as she took us all in.
I stopped breathing, the face that had smiled at me in the Baublenotts suddenly alive in front of me. Belphoebe, the sister of Ardigund, alive.
“Mine for you,” she said to the woman in white. Her dark hair was veiled by a white scarf draped around her head, and across her forehead she wore a silver band. When she looked at me, my body flushed and I felt my cheeks burning. My stomach was leaping and I looked to the floor before she could tell I was having some kind of nervous fit. I’d never felt anything like this before. She had my head spinning. Blaze said Belphoebe lived thousands of years ago, it couldn’t have been her. But the dimples were the same; the kindness was just the same.
“These are the boys from the Ikkuma Pit we were told had been seen in Fendar Sticks,” the woman in white explained.
I mustered enough strength to look back at the girl again, but when I did I saw that her big brown eyes were all for Av, her warm smile devoted to him. She had forgotten about me. He shifted awkwardly and cleared his throat, but she kept drinking him in with her gaze, her eyes welling with tears.
Of course he was all she could see. He was Av. The best hunter in the Ikkuma Pit. Av the Selfless, who helped his best friend without concern for himself. Av the Fearless, who knocked out full-grown men. Av the Strong, whose body never weakened even after it had been poisoned.
He stood there, taller than me, taller than Fiver, smooth olive skin and slender limbs defined with practiced muscle. Where else could she look?
The girl moved closer to him and he backed away.
“May I?” she asked him, holding her hands up by his face.
Av looked at me nervously, but I turned away, suddenly jealous.
With no other options, Av nodded and she placed her hands on either side of his head and closed her eyes. She stayed like that a moment, and tears began to fall down her face.
She released him and wiped her cheeks.
I thought of the Abish fortune-teller, and for one terrifying moment I thought this girl had seen our future, seen us kill the Belpheban Head, like the Abish girl had seen danger in my hand. And then a worse thought came to me. What if she was the Belpheban Head?
I looked to Fiver, who was equally frightened, and we watched the girl as she wiped her eyes.
A tremor of doubt fluttered in my stomach. Maybe Fiver was right, maybe I wasn’t capable of doing what I had to do.
Then the girl burst into a gracious laugh and threw her arms around Av.
The woman in white gently touched the girl on the shoulder. “My lady?” she said quietly.
“Forgive me, forgive me,” the girl managed to say, smiling through the tears. “I’m just so happy you have come.” She grabbed Av’s hand in hers and looked to me and Fiver. “Please come! We have so much to discuss!”
“But, Your Holiness,” said the woman in white. “Serin, and the others. They are waiting for your judgment.”
The girl checked her level of excitement and composed herself all of a sudden, radiating a nobility and authority similar to Serin’s. “Tell them I have seen inside the boys and they are pure in their intentions. We will welcome them with open hearts.”
At that, she pulled Av towards her nest of pillows and motioned excitedly for me and Fiver to follow.
Fiver let out a sigh of relief, thrilled to discover the Sacred Innocent’s special gifts were lacking. Me, on the other hand—I was still shaking. I should have been happy. The girl had saved us from a Belpheban execution, but she’d done it for Av. I thought she was the most perfect thing I had ever seen, and she didn’t care what happened to me.