Page 70 of Sightwitch
My gaze flicked down to Eridysi’s diary, still clenched in one hand. Perhaps it held answers too. After all, I had found this for a reason, and there were no coincidences, right?
“Will I be able to get back in?” I asked the Rook, lifting my gaze once more.
Another bird nod, and a tension unwound in my chest. I could return. I could fetch Captain, and we could return.
“And … will you go with me through the door?”
His head shuddered with a no.
“All right, then,” I murmured. I hadn’t really thought he would, and now he was clucking at me to hurry. So after easing the diary and pouch onto the rubble, I clambered over the fallen bricks and swept aside the vines.
Then, for the first time in my living memory, I left the grounds of the Convent.
Y2788 D3
MEMORIES
All the doors are finished. Tomorrow, we will move the first people through. They will come from the Scorched Lands, for Rhian is the only one of the Six with a network in place. The Exalted Ones watch too closely everywhere else.
But it’s a start. Person by person, family by family, we will move them into our secret city. A temporary home to hold them, hidden and safe, until we can find more permanent lands. Until the Six can use my now-finished blade to kill the Exalted Ones once and for all.
Something Lisbet said, though, has left me pacing and picking my nails to the quick. It was as I celebrated with her father and Cora in the workshop. We had mulled wine. I had been saving the spices for weeks.
We were giddy. The heat from the drink had given us all flushed faces, and the excitement from finishing the last door—we laughed and laughed and I felt more full than I had ever felt in my life.
A true gift from the Goddess.
I stirred a fresh pot of wine while Cora taught her father to play taro. Lisbet had come to my side, watching as the liquid spun and spun in its pot. The serene smile she always wore rested on her small mouth.
Then it suddenly stretched bigger, her eyes glowing bright, and she said, “I always wanted a brother.”
“Oh?” was my absent reply. It was such an odd, Lisbet-like thing to say.
But then she patted at my stomach. “Him,” she said emphatically. “Though I won’t get to meet him for a very, very long time.”
It took three circles of the spoon before I understood what she’d said. “You mean …” My stirring slowed to a stop. “I am with child?”
She nodded, and I gulped. Her words simply would not click into place.
Me. A mother by blood.
There was no time for this revelation to settle, though, before Lisbet moved on to the next subject.
“It will all be over quickly, Dysi, so you don’t need to worry like you do.”
“What will?” The question was breathy and lost. “The child?”
“No. I mean the end.”
Cold ran through me. “The end of what, Lis?”
“Of everything, of course. It will be painful, but I promise it won’t last long … Oh, the wine is burning!” She pointed to the pot, and before I could stop her, she’d snatched the spoon and taken over.
It took all my energy to feign joy after that, and as I have done with all of Lisbet’s prophecies, I scribbled down these words on the nearest page I could find—a page already filled with her visions.
I should ask Nadya to search the scrying pool for answers, but I find myself bound by chains. Unable to leave the workshop, unable to do anything but circle the same path as blood wells from nailbeds torn too low.
I did not tell the general of our child. I should have, but I am too scared.
