Caldaras City at night always carried with it a unique combination of gloom and menace. But now that the Deep Dark is upon us, the citizenry has embraced the black fog and strange noises. We prod the night with glittering candles and bright fabrics. We walk the streets at all hours.
With the poultry living out what will probably be the most confusing year of their lives, we awaken each day to bells instead of crowing. Ornate old things, the bells’ dusty voices sing over the city from forgotten cupolas and bell towers, with the most resonant, imposing song coming from the highest dome of the Temple of Rasus.
It is fitting that when we learned the true nature of our storied heroes, day became night. So many hearts and words were turned upside down the evening of Crepuscule. Bet-Nef, both a monster and a human. Dal Roet, his twin brother and our savior, a redwing. Yet now a rightness pervades the city that wasn’t there before. At least for me.
As soon as Master Fibbori’s team had made the Copper Palace grounds beautiful again, it was time for official words to be spoken. When the Empress declared me a hero, Papa fell to his knees in the middle of the crowd on the Copper Palace lawn. And when the Salt Throne pardoned all redwings, past and future, he wept for three days. I had so much fear and guilt bottled up in my veins, I never realized how much my father had been keeping in his own heart.
“It’s damned chilly,” Fir says, her hair a dark tangle against the night sky. “Can’t you set something on fire with those crazy spark-fingers of yours?”
I rest my chin on the aviary’s metal railing. Below us in High Ra Square, the priests are just finishing their morning meditations. Without the sunlight interfering, we can see the muted rainbow of the glowing visions much more distinctly. “I could melt this railing,” I say, “but I’d probably burn your face off in the process.”
“Cute,” she says, shivering so intensely in the breeze that it borders on theatrical.
“Some Fog Walker you are, Fir,” Corvin pipes up from my other side. “Ten degrees’ difference, and your blood turns to ice water.”
“More like twenty,” Fir grumbles, rubbing her hands together. “Thirty, even.”
“It’s only a year,” I say. “Then we can steam like vegetables all we want.”
The priests begin to disperse, but the three of us remain. Is it comfort or simply inertia? Or something else?
“How’s your garden taking to the darkness?” Corvin asks me.
“Better than expected.” I watch a few storefronts and offices flicker to life in the streets below. “My father constructed a spectacularly odd arrangement of mirrors and lamps that seems to be doing the trick. It’s based on some Roet Island designs.”
Corvin smiles in the dimness. Then he asks quietly, “Still no word from your sister?”
“Tactful,” Fir says.
I laugh over the pang in my heart, and both the pain and the joy are real. “That’s all right. If you can’t ask awkward personal questions of your friends, who can you?”
Corvin looks out across the twinkling square. “She should have come for your ceremony.”
“She’ll come eventually,” I say.
The railing clangs as Fir gets to her feet. “Can’t waste the day up here.” She leans over, her hair streaming in the dark breeze. “It’ll take us until lunchtime just to climb down.” Now she looks over at me. “Those of us who can’t fly.”
I rest back on my elbows. “I’m not just going to fly everywhere, you know.”
“Not even for our enjoyment?” Corvin gives me a cheeky smile. Then he says softly, “I’ll never forget the way those wings peeled away from your back and sent you dancing into the air. They were there the whole time, and nobody knew.”
Fir takes an echoey step toward the little window we climbed out of. “Oh, keep it together, will you? Ver’s green ass, Corvin. Come on, Lin. The Empress will be expecting us.”
I get lazily to my feet. “The Heart is fine. I can feel it inside me, humming along.” I gesture to the volcano that watches over us from beyond Lake Azure Wave, still glowing faintly from the inside. “Mol doesn’t seem to be complaining, at any rate.”
“She wants reassurance,” Fir says. “You can’t begrudge her that.”
“If we must.” I stretch down a hand and pull Corvin to his feet.
Fir pulls open the creaking window frame. “You’ll be fine. He won’t even be there. They say he left before the mess was even cleared up. Won’t even help his brother hunt down the Beautiful Ones.”
In truth, I still don’t know which of us betrayed the other. Zahi is gone, and I can hardly blame him. But all I say to Fir is, “I don’t know who you mean.”
Fir laughs, but Corvin is silent. We crawl through the window one by one, descend into the quiet shadows of the old aviary. In some ways, I have traveled this path many times, as my sister and I came together to watch the morning meditations, or separated afterwards, she to her life and me to mine. But today, in the new darkness, I am no longer Jey with the wrong eyes and the wrong blood. I am me. A redwing. With all as it should be. I am Lin.