The Skysinger is on fire.
I’m hurtling toward the main flight of gliders now with no chance to warn any of them that I can’t avoid them, no way to scream out to any of them for help. Any other day, and the flames whipping out the back of the Skysinger would signal distress—but almost every glider here is rigged to impress tonight, with holographic paint jobs or cannons shooting glittering clouds of confetti, and they’ll all assume these flames are just one more show-stopping trick.
There’s a bright green craft coming at me from my right. It has right-of-way, and I’m reduced to flashing my external lights at it, waving both hands madly inside the cramped space, desperately trying to show the pilot I don’t have my hands on the steering controls.
“Look, look at me!” My voice breaks as a shout turns into a scream, and I’m thumping on the inside of the glass. “Over here, over here!”
It’s getting closer and closer now, and I can see the shape of the pilot—who must think I’m some kind of idiot out to play a game of who’s got the stronger bladder?—and I’m screaming and thumping at the glass, grabbing the useless controls with one hand and yanking at them, as though it’ll do anything at all, and we’re going to—
The green glider pulls up at the last possible moment, the undercarriage nearly scraping the top of my cockpit, and I try to duck in my seat, though I’m so perfectly cushioned by it there’s no way to move.
For an instant I’m relieved, and then I glance ahead, and my heart surges up into my throat as reality reasserts itself. Because I’m still heading for the palace and the empty sky beyond it—I’ve just bolted straight into the exclusion zone, and I wonder for a mad moment what would happen if they shot me down, because the council might know who I am, but the guards won’t—and now I’m past it, and approaching the edge of the island.
And already the glider’s losing altitude as the warmth of the land mass fades, and I’m yanking at the controls, someone’s voice—my voice?—begging the Skysinger to respond, to let me turn around before it’s too late. With its engine malfunctioning, I have no way to gain altitude—no way back, if I fall.
But it’s too late already.
I’m out beneath the blue of the open sky, but I’m past the edge of the clouds that have always been below me. The darkened landscape beneath stretches out with nothing between it and me.
And slowly, the nose of the glider is tilting down.
THREE
NIMH
The riverstriders tie the river barges at the marshy shoreline as the sun dips down beyond the forest-sea, working together with the kind of easy synchronicity only brothers could have. Capac wears braids to match Hiret’s, tied back from his face in a thick bundle against his neck. Maita’s hair is unbraided, long and coiled into a pile at the crown of his head. He is the younger of the two, and has the smiling air of someone always at ease.
Dragging a river barge high enough onto shore that a sudden flood could not tug it loose is back-breaking work, and the riverstriders’ brown faces gleam with perspiration. Of the three guards who’ve come with me, only Elkisa has spent any time on the river, though even she fumbles with the ropes as they join in the effort. She and Capac pull at the bow, while Rheesi and Bryn haul from the stern—Maita stands alone between them, muscles straining.
Capac calls for a brief halt, then bends with a groan to scoop water over his head. Maita reaches up to haul off his shirt, sodden with sweat, and uses it to swipe at his dripping shoulders. My gaze slides toward that movement as if dragged there, and it seems to take me far too long to pull my eyes away again. Mine aren’t the only eyes on him either—one of my guards, Bryn, has her heart-shaped face turned his way, one corner of her mouth curled up. Distracted, she doesn’t notice Rheesi dropping the rope until the sudden pull of it topples Bryn into the water.
From my earliest memories, my guards have towered over me. Infallible and mighty, bringing with them the comfort of invulnerability no matter where I went. Now, beyond the temple and its city, with their mistakes peppering the water with ripples and Bryn’s face pink as she looks anywhere but at Maita’s shoulders … they seem all too human.
A little shiver runs through me, and before I can examine it—or the little ache I feel at the sight of handsome Maita laughing and offering his hand to help Bryn back to her feet—I lurch from my seat and move toward the edge of the barge. “This is silly,” I call, interrupting their chatter. “It will be easier with six.”
“Wait, Divine One,” Elkisa calls breathlessly. “In a moment you can disembark more easily.”
“A little water will not harm me,” I reply lightly, reaching down to grasp the gunwale of the barge before jumping into the knee-deep water. “And I wish to help.” I don’t say the true reason I can’t stay on the barge any longer: I’m too restless to wait uselessly while they work, as though finishing this task might make morning come more quickly, and with it, the rest of my journey.
I wade over toward Maita and reach for the rope he’s been hauling on, careful to stay several paces behind him, beyond his reach. He glances down, noting the distance between us with a nervous flick of his eyes.
Capac throws Elkisa a questioning look, and when my guard merely shrugs, he warily signals us to resume hauling the barge onto the riverbank. After a few seconds, he begins to sing, a rhythmic call-and-response work song traditional among the riverstriders.
The rope tears at my palms, which are unused to its rough fiber, but the burn is nothing compared to the exhilaration of joining my people at work. The high priest would howl to see me, and the Graycloaks would scoff and call me undignified—but in this moment, I’m no longer Nimhara, Forty-Second Vessel of the Divine; I’m just Nimh.
Dragging at this rope, my feet cooled by the water, I am more real, more seen, in this private moment than when I perform the intricate dances and rituals of the divine before hundreds of worshippers, all watching me with hungry eyes.
I lean back against the pull of the rope and let my eyes rest on the shift and change of muscle in Maita’s back some distance ahead of me. In another life, I might have married a riverstrider boy like him. I would’ve spent my days hauling on these ropes with him, or mending fishing nets, or diving for river lettuce. This could have been my world, between sun and water and the muddy borders of the forest-sea… .
Maita shifts his grip, turning to face me and pull against his shoulder—and we both see that the rope has slid a little in his hands, and he’s too close to me. He lets go, recoiling from me so violently that he staggers back waist-deep in the water, striking the barge with a painful thunk.
Capac calls a halt as Elkisa throws her rope down and comes splashing toward us, her gaze wide with alarm. Her agitated questions are a hazy litany, my eyes still on Maita’s face, as ashen as if he’d just been pulled back from the edge of a yawning abyss.
I shake my head in response to Elkisa’s concern—no, I am not hurt. No, he did not touch me.
Yes, I will wait back beneath the trees while they finish securing the barge.
My body tingles as I drop down onto a fallen tree, muscles here and there twitching from such a sudden end to the unfamiliar effort. From there, I watch as the riverstriders and temple guards resume their task—Bryn says something too low for me to hear at this distance, and Maita and the others burst into tension-relieving laughter.