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“ARE YOU SURE SHE’D want us to be there? If she was scowling at you, she might want us to leave her alone,” Bataar protested as I shoved a mask in his hands.
Like I was going to let Zyla run this whole show. She kept thinking I was incompetent, but hadn’t I been the one who had saved her sister from the Bright Redemption? Hadn’t I been the one who saved her out of that tent? I could handle spying just fine without having my hand held all the time. I couldn’t wait to see the look of admiration in her pretty eyes when she realized how I’d managed what she couldn’t.
I shrugged a fancy brocade coat on – similar to Bataar’s but blue instead of red.
“It doesn’t suit you,” he said as I buttoned the front. My tiger’s eye pendant slipped out of my shirt, catching the lantern light and I tucked it hastily back into my shirt. Bataar froze. “I’ve seen that on you before, haven’t I?”
“The coat? I took it from the back.” Why were the buttons so small? It was like they weren’t even designed for men’s hands.
“No, the pendant. That’s heartstone.”
“We call it a tiger’s eye,” I muttered, fumbling with a particularly tricky button. I wasn’t made for noble clothes. Give me a proper manly coat any day of the week over this peacock-bright thing.
“It’s not a tiger’s eye,” Bataar argued. “They’re similar, but a heartstone – they have magical properties. Like the Doors of Heaven. They are made from the same mineral – the rock that forms from the souls of our ancestors.”
“Because that’s not at all weird,” I muttered. Oh great, now the buttons were crooked. Frustrated, I pulled the coat apart and began to button it again – this time from the bottom.
“Do you know what this means?” His voice was high pitched in his excitement.
Couldn’t he just leave me alone to dress in peace?
“I bet you a silver coin that you’re going to tell me.”
I buckled on the wide belt Zyla gave me when we flew into the city. It didn’t really match the rest, but it felt ungrateful not to wear it. After all, she gave it to me. Other than the pendant that Bataar was so obsessed with, no one had really given me much. I still felt bad about losing that cloak from Hubric.
“Have you had any extra protection against magical attacks?” Bataar asked, his eyes still alight.
“No,” I said gruffly, but I froze. Because I had been protected, hadn’t I? When that magical lightning hit Bataar he had been so ill he needed extra healing, but when it hit me it only left a small burn.
“I knew it,” Bataar said triumphantly, reading my expression and not my words.
I scowled. I hated that he always knew everything. Why couldn’t I know something he didn’t for a change?
“And are you drawn to the doorways? Drawn almost inexorably to them?”
“In Ex what?”
“Are you drawn to them in a way that you can hardly fight? Like, they pull you?”
I clenched my jaw. They did pull me. He didn’t need to know that.
Bataar’s jaw clenched, too and he reached toward my neck. “That’s mine, by right.”
“Whoa!” I threw my hands up, taking a quick step back. I shoved the pendant into my coat. Out of sight, out of mind.
“This was a gift from a friend. It’s not whatever you think it is. It’s just a gift, okay? So, you can keep your hands to yourself.”
Bataar stayed back, but his eyes narrowed, and he seemed poised to jump again. Boy, was he touchy.
“All heartstone belongs to my people,” he said, his slight accent stronger as if to prove the point. “And so anything made of it belongs to us. That means the Doors of Heaven and that means your pendant.”
“I don’t see you banging down the door of the Bright Redemption demanding the doorway back,” I protested.
“Don’t think I won’t! Any of the Exalted here would go crazy if they knew that place held a Door of Heaven! They consider them sacred just as we do and have tried to take them from us.”
“Why do they want them so badly?” Instant travel was nice, but it hadn’t worked out so well for the Magikas on the flying carpet. They’d plunged to their deaths and that could happen to anyone.
“The Code of Ko’Torenth states that whoever bears the Ko of a House is the rightful ruler of that house. It’s an idea that came from when they were our brothers, but no one has worn the Ko in a century or more.”
I was adjusting this ridiculous facemask when I paused. “Wait. Are you saying that by right you should rule whichever Exalted family has that eagle symbol?”
He flushed. “The Exalted House Tanagers. And I’m not sure if it’s an eagle or a tanager.”
“And I bet the Exalted house Tanagers wouldn’t like that much.”
“Why do you think I was running to the Dominon?”
Well, now things were making sense. Bataar was slated for greatness – or instant death. And he was fighting that destiny as much as I liked to fight my own.
“Why would they just show up on your arms after a century?”
“The Doors choose their master. It cannot be forced.”
I swallowed. I didn’t like where this was going. After all, one of these Exalted houses would probably like to kill the guy with the smoke on his arms as much as the House Tanagers would want to kill Bataar.
He continued, “Every year the children who have come of age from the houses of the Exalted line up beside the one door they have access to. It is a grisly journey up a steep cliff with ropes and picks. They each try to master the door and they each fail. They have failed for a century.”
I knew that door. I’d flown through it myself. But why would this Door of Heaven refuse the brave, noble, mountain-climbers? They were hero material if there ever was such a thing. And why would they choose me? I was nothing but a kid with a bit of luck and a dragon friend.
“I shut the Door of Heaven in the lower level of the Bright Redemption,” Bataar was saying. “But anyone with the Ko can open it again. Just because I haven’t heard of anyone else having them, doesn’t mean they don’t have Ko. There are three other symbols that might be out there, and anyone at all might bear those symbols on their bodies. The prophecies are clear:
Four to rule and four to reign,
From four the power of mist came,
From four it will come again,
But who and what and where and when?”
“Well,” I said, grabbing the cloak and wrapping it around me. “That doesn’t sound very threatening. It just sounds like a silly riddle for kids. Put on your mask and let’s go. We have enemies to spy on.”
“There’s more,” Bataar said as he tied on his full-face mask. His voice grew muffled as he put it on.
“Woe to those who gain the marks,
Feel the power of depths it sparks,
Destruction raining down on man,
On every house and every clan.”
“Oh yeah, that’s specific,” I said. “I can see why you’re worried. Oooooh! Destruction! Ooooh! Nameless threats. Get back to me when there’s something real to worry about.”
The quiet from behind his mask was scathing as I shoved him in front of me down the passageway back to Balde.
I didn’t believe that nonsense. It was only meant to scare children. But I couldn’t help the sense of foreboding that filled me. Two of us were marked. What if there were two more out there, destruction following us all?