Cracking open my amulet, I released a beam of starlight, silver and gold, and dazzling with all the colors of the heavens. It was not a true show of my power, merely a gesture to ease their fear, but it worked. Heads lifted, eyes glimmered. Threads of hope wove through the crowd.
“It isn’t my magic that will save us from Gyiu’rak!” Edan shouted to the crowds. “It is Maia Tamarin’s!”
“I will fight Gyiu’rak,” I pledged, “and Lady Sarnai will defeat her father. But the shansen’s army is strong. We need all of you to help us, so we can win back A’landi’s future.”
At that, murmurs of agreement swelled across the camp, and I stepped to the side as Lady Sarnai came forward to rally the soldiers.
I would do my part. I only prayed I would not let them down.
* * *
• • •
Baba sat on a log, huddled beside a small fire over which a brass kettle hung, rubbing his hands together for warmth. Despite his recent captivity with the shansen, he looked sturdier than he had in years. Over the past few days, I’d heard him laugh with Ammi and some of the older men and women at camp. I’d even seen him attempt to help with the mending.
Yet whenever he saw me, his good spirits faded.
I lifted the kettle and poured hot water into the wooden cup at Baba’s side. If he’d heard my confession, he said nothing about it.
“I didn’t think I’d ever see snow again,” he murmured, sifting it through his fingers. “Did you know I grew up near Jappor? I was a lazy boy, didn’t want to learn my father’s craft—or any other, for that matter. One year, there was a terrible blizzard in the middle of autumn. No one expected it, so we were unprepared. It lasted days, and since there was no business to be had during a storm, we ran out of both food and money.”
He regarded me. “Since I was the oldest son, my father sent me into town to beg. I trudged from house to house through the snow, which was waist-high, offering to mend torn sleeves and patch up pants in exchange for rice. Just as you did in Port Kamalan when times were hard for us. That was when I discovered I loved my needle and thread, as my father did and his father before him.” He touched my gloved hands. “As you do.”
“Did you know the scissors had magic?” I asked, after a pause.
Baba inhaled the steam from his cup before sipping. “I suspected. My mother never spoke of them. She was a talented tailor herself, like your grandfather. But she stopped sewing when I was very young. She gave me the scissors when I moved to Gangsun with your mother and instructed me to take care of them. I think she knew they wouldn’t speak to me. I take it they spoke to you.”
“They did,” I replied. “But I’ve lost them. I had to give them up.”
Baba could tell there was more to the story than I was telling him. “You’ve gotten so pale, Maia. I worry about you.”
“I was sick for a while,” I said. It wasn’t a lie, not entirely.
“The enchanter…he took care of you?”
“He did his best. I wish you would give him a chance.”
Baba sighed. “I want to, but then I ask myself—where was he when the shansen attacked the Autumn Palace? How can he say he loves you when he abandoned you to the mercy of demons and the enemy’s soldiers?”
“Is that what bothers you, Baba? That you think he left me to die?”
From his silence, I knew it was. “Maia, I want what is best for you. A man of magic is not—”
“Edan left because I lied to him,” I interrupted. “I didn’t tell him what I’d become. Just as I’ve been avoiding telling you. If there’s anyone you should distrust, it should be me.”
Baba stared at me, stricken. The color drained from his face. “Now is not the time for stories, Maia. This is unlike you.”
“You know it is the truth. Baba, you’ve noticed the changes….”
“I noticed when you came home,” he said quietly. “As if all the light from your eyes had vanished forever.” He stopped. “I blamed the enchanter for your unhappiness.”
What could I say to comfort him?
“They aren’t rumors,” I whispered. “It was my choice.”
“Your choice? First your mother, then two sons,” Baba choked. “A father shouldn’t have to bury his children, Maia.”
My throat burned with sorrow. I wished I could cry with him, but no tears would come. The brisk air fogged at my lips, a tendril of steam twisting from my breath.
“I’m sorry, Baba,” I said. “If I don’t return, be good to Edan. Keton could use another brother, and Edan…he has no one in this world.”
Baba’s eyes clouded with the tears he’d been trying to hold back. “You love him,” he said. “He is the one your mother spoke of, then. The one you are tied to, from this life to the next.”
“Yes.”
Snow began to fall, and I held out my hand, watching the flakes melt as soon as they touched my palm. Below, the fire smoldered, its sizzling the only sound aside from birds. The embers at my feet blinked like dying stars.
“Then let your heart be at peace,” Baba said at last. “No matter what you become, you are always my Maia. Always my strong one.”
Something in me lifted, knowing my father understood. “Thank you, Baba. Thank you.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The shansen’s horn blared from the other side of the Jingan River. Three calls, each deafening enough to unsettle the snow from our helmets.
An invitation to battle.
I stared fixedly ahead, ignoring my reflection in a soldier’s shield as I rode alongside Edan, behind Lady Sarnai and Lord Xina. We’d left Baba behind in the camp this morning, but I’d chosen not to say goodbye.
It was for the best. I’d woken up different today. Overnight, my black hair had deepened into the darkest shade of gold, my eyes burned red as molten fire, and my nose had sharpened to a point as fine as an arrowhead.
I hadn’t greeted Edan when he came to me. I had recognized his tall frame, the square edges of his jaw, the slant of his shoulders. But I didn’t know why I recognized him. Why I loved him.
A bridge divided our army from the shansen’s, ten soldiers wide. Engraved on a stone pillar at its base was a greeting from A’landi’s first emperor, welcoming all to the capital, Jappor, where the Great Spice Road began and ended, where fortunes and misfortunes were made and reversed. I wondered if the first emperor had ever imagined that this bridge, the only way into Jappor, would also become the doorway to war.