Page 39 of While the Dark Remains

I swallow around his fingers, staring up into his colorless face, his piercing eyes. It’s not my right to say anything, and so I don’t.

The king studies me and drops my chin. “I’ve just acquired a new acrobat, as it happens. I saw her perform in Garran City yesterday.”

Fear pierces me. It feels like falling.

His eyes narrow. “How old are you, anyway?”

The fear boils over. My throat is dry. Words won’t come.

“Well?” demands the king, shaking my shoulders.

“I am—I am sixteen, Your Majesty,” I lie, hating the shake in my voice.

Humor lights his face. “I see little use for two acrobats, especially when one bores me so greatly. And it seems to me you have been sixteen for a while.” He releases me and waves his hands at Nicanor. “Put her back in her cage. For now.”

Nicanor grabs my arm and jerks me away from the king, shoving me into my cage and locking it before hoisting me back up to my parrot’s perch.

I huddle on my sleeping ledge, counting the beats of my heart until, below me, the room empties, and there is no sound in the great hall but the children’s quiet weeping.

I’ve seen the king murder children from his Collection more times than I want to think about. That will be me soon.

I’m out of time.

But I’m ready. I’ve been ready for a while. It’s a relief. A release.

I get up from my sleeping ledge and tuck my knife into my waistband.

I glance around the cage dispassionately, then let myself out the door and shimmy down the chain.

I find myself slipping past the Skaandan singer’s glass cage, bordered by orange trees. The scent of citrus is sharp in the air.

A hand grabs me by the wrist and yanks me against the glass. I jerk my head up and look into the singer’s dark eyes.

“Please,” she begs, her grip hard as iron. “Please, you have to help me. Kallias means to kill me in the morning.”

I stare at her through the glass bars of her cage. Tears streak her brown cheeks, and the skirt of her robe is torn and bloodied. What did they do to her, after her nonperformance? Pity twists in my gut and I hesitate.

“I can’t,” I say. “I’m sorry.” But I don’t move. Because I can see her twisted and broken on the floor, her blood pooling around her, her corpse tossed like so much refuse into the Sea.

“He said he’ll make me sing an aria,” she whispers, “that he’ll—that he’ll cut my throat while I’m doing it.”

BlackGod, I’m going to be sick. Behind me, the level in the time-glass rises.

“Please,” she says. “My family thinks I’m dead. I have to get home. Ihaveto.” Something in her hardens, and all her being fixes on me. “Don’t leave me here to die. Please. I appeal—I appeal to the gods.”

I go still and cold. She’s invoked the Skaandan code of honor: An appeal to the gods is a life bargain, a binding oath. My mind wheels as I frantically recalculate my escape plan. I could still ignore her. I could turn without an answer, slip back up into the vent, leave this damn mountain behind forever, and go home, at long, long last.

But how can I do that? How can I leave her to join Hilf’s moldering bones at the bottom of the glacier sea? Her memory would haunt me forever.

And yet helping her would changeeverything.

Her jaw clenches. She shoves back her sleeve and shows me the underside of her wrist, where she rubs away a layer of dirt to reveal a white eight-pointed star. “I am Saga Stjörnu, crown princess of Skaanda, and Icommandyou to free me from this cage and take me home to Staltoria City.”

My mouth drops open. For a heartbeat more I just stare at her.

And then I pick the lock on her cage and do as she asked.

I take her with me.

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