Page 206 of Mother of Death and Dawn

“We’re the Rebellion!” one enthusiastic woman called from the crowd.

“Not anymore, really,” another grumbled, eyeing the ruins of the Zorokovs’ house.

“No, we aren’t,” I agreed. “A rebellion is unitedagainstsomething. I like to think that now, we’re unitedforsomething.” Despite myself, I couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across my face. “I think we’re an alliance, now. The Alliance of Seven Banners.”

It was the first thing said all day that no one disagreed with.

* * *

“I do not knowwhy they are celebrating.” Ishqa looked out the window and crossed his arms in disapproval as he watched the festivities below—they had been going on for more than a week straight, at this point.

“Perhaps because not being in slavery after twenty years of it is, by most standards, celebration worthy?” Max offered.

“That is short sighted. They, and we, are in more danger than ever.” Ishqa turned to us, and it struck me exactly how old he looked. When I had first met him, I marveled at his eerie agelessness despite his centuries of life. Now it seemed like every time I saw him, the years weighed heavier.

As he so often did, Ishqa had disappeared for several days after the fall of the Zorokovs. We returned to the little house we had claimed as our temporary home to find him sitting on the stoop like a lost pet.

“See?” I whispered to Max, after we let him in. “I told you. Just like a cat.”

Now Ishqa paced the floors of the living room. He seemed agitated. “I flew up north,” he said. “Caduan’s armies have slaughtered entire townships on their path back to Ela’Dar. Lest you forget their ultimate purpose.”

It was impossible to forget their ultimate purpose after seeing how they had behaved at the Zorokovs’ estate. They had locked the doors of that place not with the intention of conquering, but with the intention of slaughtering. It was pure luck that they hadn’t killed more of our own.

“Of course we haven’t,” I muttered. My head hurt fiercely. It was exhausting to be flung from one disaster to another.

“Caduan would not have disposed of the Threllians unless he knew that he had other, more powerful weapons within his reach,” he went on.

“Reshaye,” Max said.

“Yes. Aefe. And…” Ishqa’s mouth opened, then closed as he trailed off.

“What?” I pressed, and he was silent for a long moment before sighing and shaking his head.

“I do not know. It’s only… a sense. There is something else. I do not know what. But I was close friends with Caduan for half a millennium. I know him well enough to see when there is something he is not showing the world. The power he holds now is bad enough, but I am even more afraid of what he keeps hidden.”

I exchanged a glance with Max, who shrugged, as if to say,Mysterious signs of impending doom. What else did we expect?

We were interrupted by a firm knock on the door. Brayan and Sammerin entered. Brayan gripped a crumpled-up letter, which he held out to Max.

“The Roseteeth secured a letter from Ara,” he said, “for you.”

CHAPTEREIGHTY-THREE

MAX

Iread the letter four times, and I still couldn’t wrap my head around whether it meant what I thought it meant, and whether it was a good thing if it did.

“Well?” Brayan pressed, impatient. “What do you think?”

I held up a finger and read it again. Passed it to Tisaanah, who read it twice, then passed it to Sammerin.

“It means that there’s a power gap in Ara,” Brayan said, urgently, “and that means opportunity.”

When he talked like that, I could see him as the man who led a bunch of mercenaries to overthrow foreign countries. He wasn’t wrong, but it seemed distasteful to be so excited about it.

The letter was from Iya, one of the sparse communications that we were able to acquire thanks to Brayan’s Roseteeth connections. The letter informed us that Nura had not returned to Ara after leaving to forge her alliance with the Threllian Lords. The Syrizen and the council had not been able to locate or contact her for weeks.

My running theory had been that Nura had managed to escape during the fall of the Lords. But she would have made it back to Ara by now, unless something had else gone wrong—and even then, she certainly would have communicated with the rest of Ara’s leadership. If the Council hadn’t heard from her at all, that meant she’d either escaped and met some sort of tragedy in Threll, or she had been captured by the Fey.

---