Rémy was still crouched on top of Dita’s cage, the little girl slumped across the bars at the bottom.
“Dita!” Rémy cried. “Stay awake! Can you hear me? Try to stay awake!”
The drums began to sound again. They echoed through the cavern, louder than ever before. The cult members began to move. They abandoned the pit and some left the raised stone stage, dropping back down to the ground level to resume their previous formation. Others remained on the platform, separating into two silent, impenetrable lines. One by one they all turned to face the center of the platform, a fresh chant beginning, droning on endlessly beneath the beating drums.
There was movement behind the stage, too. Out of the darkness of the archway came another cascade of cult members, walking in two slow, solemn lines on either side of the channel etched in the stone floor. Each of these carried a drum, fastened around their necks with a cord woven of blue thread, beating it rhythmically as they walked slowly out of the gloom.
Between them, apparently moving of its own accord within the channel in the floor, was a huge stone throne, patterned with ornate carvings. It was turned away from the cavern, its back so high that Rémy couldn’t see who was sitting in it. It slid smoothly in time with the drumbeat, tugged forward by invisible hands. To its left walked a lone man not dressed in the colors of the Sapphire Cutlass, but in white, with a golden cummerbund at his waist and a turban wrapped around white hair — Sahoj. His white tunic had been torn to reveal the tattoo of the cult, etched across his chest. He stared straight ahead, walking calmly in time with the throne until it reached the end of the channel. When it stopped, he stepped aside, turning to face it, a movement echoed by the drummers. They, too, turned inward to face the throne, still hammering out a slow, hypnotic beat.
Rémy saw movement to her right, this time at the tunnel entrance near the winch. She looked over to see her friends being herded back into the cavern. Behind them were more soldiers, not wearing the colors of the cult this time, but those of the raja. Her friends were trapped, outnumbered, and surrounded, and Rémy’s heart sank. Surely, now, all hope for them — for everything — was lost.
The drumbeat ceased, although the chanting went on. She looked back toward the stone stage just as the throne began to rotate, swinging on an invisible pivot.
Rémy felt her breath run still in her chest.
On the throne sat a woman clad in gold, her eyes shut as if she were sleeping. Her chest was encased in a breastplate that reached over her shoulders to end in spikes as sharp as a church’s spire. Her armor was etched with intricate patterns — whorls and loops like the waves of a churning ocean so that it seemed to ripple even though she was as still as the statues around her. Her waist was encompassed in a wide belt, also of gold, edged by strands of blue silk that fringed her thighs.
The woman’s legs were bare, though at first it seemed as if they were clothed in the same blue silk as worn by her followers. But then, as they caught the light from the flaming torches on the walls, Rémy realized the truth. Her legs were not covered, but transparent, formed of a stone so clear and so blue that it would match the sky of a high summer’s day over Paris. Even from this distance, where she clung on top of Dita’s cage, Rémy could see how they distorted the shape of the throne behind them, refracting the image of the carved stone as if through a prism.
Slowly, deliberately, the woman raised her hands and then lowered them to the armrests of her throne. She tipped back her head, opening her eyes.
Rémy shivered. Behind the woman’s lids there was nothing but pure, bright sapphire, faceted to glint and shine the same unnatural, transparent blue as her legs.
The Sapphire Cutlass pressed her palms into the stone arms of her throne. Rivulets of power began to dart from her form into its carvings, tracing from where her heart should be along the patterns that circled her armored torso and into the throne, as if the chair was part of her. She lifted her chin, and Rémy realized with dread that the supernatural woman was looking straight at the cage on which she crouched. The Sapphire Cutlass moved her head with one tiny flick, and the cage instantly began to move. Rémy felt it judder beneath her feet and then lift clear of the pit before swinging toward the throne and descending, just as smoothly, to land at the woman’s feet.
Dita lost consciousness completely as the cage touched the stone. The Sapphire Cutlass stepped from her throne with silent, menacing grace. Rémy flexed her arms and rotated her shoulders, ready to fight. The goddess seemed not to notice her at all, her attention fixed on Dita instead. Rémy sensed her chance and leapt from the cage, left foot extended in a move she would usually use to mount a moving pony in the circus ring.
She was knocked from midair by the metal-clad arm of one of the woman’s attendants. Rémy crashed to the ground, a forest of legs closing in around her. She sat up, her head ringing painfully from the impact, and rough hands grabbed her shoulders, dragging her to her feet.
The Sapphire Cutlass seemed oblivious to the disruption. She raised one hand toward the cage, and two of her soldiers moved forward to grasp the bars. Another fluid movement of her hand, and they were pulling the metal apart, bending the rods, prying open Dita’s prison as if it were made of nothing more than paper. One of them reached in and lifted the little girl out, laying her at the foot of his goddess.
“Dita,” Rémy shouted, struggling against the arms that held her. “Dita, wake up!”
The girl didn’t move at all and Rémy feared that she was already dead. The Sapphire Cutlass looked down at the lifeless pile of rags that was Dita, examining her with cold blue eyes. Then, slowly, she crouched at the girl’s side and extended one hand to place it on Dita’s forehead.
“Stop it!” Rémy cried, still struggling and still trapped. “Leave her alone!”
She saw a tiny lick of blue flame dance around the woman’s arm. It circled the limb from shoulder to elbow, from elbow to wrist, from wrist to palm, before flickering out of sight. The Sapphire Cutlass withdrew her hand from Dita’s head and stood up. She remained at the girl’s side, looking down with her impassive, terrifying blue gaze.
The drumbeat went on and on, crashing and echoing around the cavern. Rémy’s head ached and the flames from the ever-burning torches were beginning to hurt her eyes.
Dita moved. She turned her head left and right. She sat up. She opened her eyes.
They were of the purest, purest blue.
They were sapphire.