Page 42 of A Court of Truth and Thorns
“Leaf, please,” I whisper desperately. “You think I don’t know that you’ve every reason in the world to hate me just now? I left you. I aided hundreds of others before my own sister. I don’t deserve you. But please, please just come now and hate me later. We’ve no time.”
“Don’t be an idiot, Kali.” Leaf grips my shoulders, aghast. Her eyes bore into mine. “The problem isn’t that you did what you had to in order to survive. It’s that you’ve just killed everyone in Dansil.”
28
KALI
Irun through the hidden passages toward the exit, my sword pounding against my thigh, my heart keeping beat with my steps. Leaf’s words haunt my every breath. My face, drained of blood, stares without seeing. Stars.Stars.What have we done?
I don’t see the man stepping from the shadows until his arms are around my waist, pulling me in toward him. Only his scent stays my arm from launching a dagger.
“I thought you’d turn up here sooner or later.” Rune’s voice drips with both reprimand and relief. He pulls me away from him long enough to place his hand over my galloping heart. “Something’s happened.” Not a question.
I nod anyway. It’s all I can manage.
“Something so big, you are not even cursing me for almost getting myself skewered just now,” says Rune.
I meet his gaze, no longer caring whether he condemns me for going after Leaf.
“I knowwhyBahir enslaves whisperers,” I say, the wordstumbling from my mouth. “It’s not just that he’s a mage and wants no competition from them. Heneedsthem. To keep the Eye of the Goddess stable. That orb, it’s not just an oversized light crystal. It produces light, yes, but it does more than that. Leaf, she’s done research, taken soil samples, and,” I swallow, “and she touched the Eye when Bahir’s guards held her in the abbey. Bahir uses his captive whisperers to keep it tuned.”
Rune puts his hands on either side of my head. “What did Leaf learn?” he asks softly.
“The Eye affects Dansil’s climate. Its magic is toxic. If—when—the Eye loses tune, the toxic rays will scatter like wildfire. They will kill every person in half the kingdom’s radius.”
Rune stiffens, his face tight as his mind comprehends the words. “The Drought?”
“Even tuned and controlled, the Eye spills some toxins in its rays. Infants are too weak to survive it.” Drawing a breath, I steel myself against the passage wall, the screams of Zalia’s pregnant friend, who we forced to accompany the whisperers, fresh in my memory. “There is more. Bahir has been spawning with his female followers. The pregnant mothers are warned that going aboveground will kill the child.”
“The latter might be a lie to keep the girls in line,” says Rune. In thought, not challenge. “Is there evidence that staying belowground protects the infants?”
“Yes. There is no Drought in the Order, Rune. Bahir houses the whisperers in the abbey, but the young children and pregnant mothers are all kept beneath the ground.” I shut my eyes. “He doesn’t just want to rule Dansil. He wants to be a god.”
For a heartbeat, the only sounds in the passage are the quiet whispers of our breaths. Then Rune speaks, softly butwithout fear. “Is the Eye tuned to Bahir’s blood? Were the girls mistaken when they said it was not?”
“No.” I wince. “I can only draw a crystal’s magic if it’s tuned to my blood, but Bahir must know another way of tapping into a crystal’s magic and is doing so with the Eye.” I shake myself. “But that little matters now. With the whisperers gone, the Eye will become unstable shortly.”
“When?” asks Rune, calculations dancing through his eyes. “Months? Weeks? Days?”
“Hours,” I whisper. “Unless I stop it.”
“Unless we stop it,” corrects Rune.
“This plan is ludicrous.”Rune secures the rope around my waist and shifts the pack on his shoulders into a more comfortable position. We stand in shadow by a far temple wall. Around us, the moonlit stillness of night shatters against the uproar in the abbey behind the temple, where all the roses are now flocking, trying to close the proverbial barn gates after the horses have already run. Guards shout to each other. Voices argue the merits of going after the whisperers immediately, while the trail remains hot, or waiting until morning so there is light to see by. So long as they keep arguing there instead of patrolling here, they are welcome to debate all they like.
“You have a better one?” I slide my hand along the rough wall. The climb would be palatable if not for the small barrels of explosive powder we each carry on our backs. “Plus, I recall us saying something similar a couple weeks ago about freeing the whisperers from the abbey.”
“You mean the mess we are trying to clear up now?”
Well, there is that.
“I suppose we could go inside instead and ask one of the holy guardsmen to show us to the roof.”
Rune growls. “Hilarious.”
“I know.” I test the rope, a curtain of shadow secure around Rune and me. My reserve of magic is nearly drained, but once we are on the roof, there should be little need for darkness. I step up to the wall and find my first foothold. Standing on the ground, Rune feeds the rope out as I climb the first few paces and anchor in. With a tug, I signal my success to Rune and climb on by feel only until I find the next attractive point to drive in an anchor spike. Secure the second anchor. Signal. Climb again. When the rope reaches its full length, my shadow stretching below me to cover us both, I find solid footing and take in the line while Rune climbs up to my ledge.
Then we do it again, brushing our fingers along each other’s flesh in reassurance each time we pass within reach.
