“I will.” I try to sound contrite, but I’m too relieved by what his words imply: for me to tell him everything, he’ll have to stay with me long enough to hear it. “When we’re safe.”
I ignore the tiny voice in my thoughts that points out safe might never come. “Matias.” I turn to the archivist. “When I come back, I will—”
“You can’t come back,” Matias interrupts, rendering me temporarily speechless with surprise. Informal though he is, he never interrupts me. No one interrupts me. “Nimh—you can’t come back, not until this is over. You must know that.”
“But—”
“He’s right.” North has been quiet, but now he speaks up with a quiet urgency that cuts through my protestation. “If the people out there believe what she said about being some kind of god in waiting, then this temple is hers now—or will be by the time this night is over. We’ll have to get out of here first and worry about taking it back later.”
Matias is nodding in agreement with North. “The entire contingent of city guards couldn’t hope to remove Inshara, not if what Pisey tells me of her powers is true.”
“It’s not true,” I blurt out. “It can’t be.”
Matias’s eyebrows go up. “And yet she knew who North was? Where he was from? Who you believed him to be?” He pauses. “She made Elkisa act against her own will.”
I have no answer to that.
Matias sighs and shakes his head. “You must stay away, Nimh. Not unless you can come back with …” His eyes flicker toward North.
With the true Lightbringer. I must find some way to awaken his power—but with the scroll gone, so is the only clue the prophecy gave me to North’s destiny.
I find myself staring at my old teacher and friend, wishing I could touch him, wishing I could show my gratitude. I can’t help wondering if it will be the last time I see him.
The librarian’s eyes soften, as if he’s reading my thoughts. “I have seen leaders rise and fall and rise again in my time, child—all that matters now is that you are alive. I will send word when it is safe for you to return. Quickly, now—there is a way out just here.”
I follow him down through the stacks, North behind us. He pushes at one of the shelves, and it slides noiselessly aside. Behind it, the wall is marked with a shallow carving in the stone: a pair of circles, one inside the other, with a staring eye inside the smaller.
“I thought I knew all the tunnels and spy-walks,” I mumble, staring as Matias finds a hidden catch and a panel swings free at shoulder height with a faint grinding of stone, cobwebs trailing after it like tattered lace. “What is that symbol?”
Matias gives a helpless shrug, pulling one of his shelving trolleys over to serve as a means to climb up to the passageway’s opening. “Something from before the time when we began keeping records again. If you ignore the other passageways leading off this one and go straight, you will find yourself not far from the south river. Avoid the crowds.”
North makes a little sound, and when I look back at him, he’s got his pack off and is shrugging out of the black coat he wore to the feast. “This will help hide that red robe until we can find something else for you to wear.”
I slip the coat on, trying not to notice how it is still warm from his body, and how it smells a little of him. For a moment, I’m dizzy. It is, perhaps, the closest thing to an embrace that I’ve felt since I was five years old.
“Go, Nimh,” Matias says softly.
I whirl back around to face him. “But Inshara … what if she—”
“It’s taken me years to rid you of that habit. No more what-ifs.” His eyes are fond. I used to torture him with a constant stream of questions, most of them starting with that fatal phrase. What if I’m not the real goddess? What if I just say I manifested, and pretend? What if I did touch someone and no one else knew? What if …
When I continue to hesitate, Matias flaps one hand toward the passageway in the same gesture he always used to chase me out of the stacks at mealtimes when I was a child. “We’ve no time for this. I’ll be fine, Nimh—this Inshara won’t harm the only person who knows where everything is, not if she ever wants to consult a single prophecy or text.”
I swallow back my tears and nod. The opening in the wall is short and narrow, so North goes first to make sure his broader shoulders will fit. I watch him disappear into the dark hole in the wall, muttering oaths as his shoulders scrape past the narrow opening, and then climb up onto the top of the trolley myself.
I’m struck, strangely, by an old, old memory. I had climbed onto one of these trolleys as a child, despite having been told a dozen times by Matias never to stand on them, and was trying to use it to reach one of the higher shelves. Its wheels had shifted, and I had fallen, and ended up cracking a bone in my wrist. It was the first time I’d ever had to treat myself for a significant injury, for of course the healers could not touch me. I’d had to feel my own arm for the break, in too much agony to use magic to dull the pain, and then splint it and wrap it myself.
What I would not give, now, for the pain of a broken arm, if it meant not having to bear the pain of a broken heart.
Forgive me, Daoman.
I bite my lip, close my eyes, and clamber into the hole in the wall. It’s to the sound of Matias letting out a long, weary sigh that I let myself vanish into the darkness.
TWENTY
NORTH
As the panel closes behind us, we’re left in the dark. “I’m stopping,” I warn Nimh softly, just in case she keeps moving and accidentally comes into contact. “Can you make a light?”
She doesn’t reply, but a moment later a soft green glow appears, and when I look back there’s a light nestled in the palm of her hand. It illuminates her face, streaked with black and gray tear tracks where the kohl around her eyes has run, and the light casts long, thin shadows ahead of us. With her free hand Nimh reaches up for her crown, then freezes when she realizes she isn’t wearing it. Her eyes widen as they snap to meet mine.
“You left it back in the bathing chamber,” I murmur.
She swallows. “Inshara will find it.”
I ought to tell her it doesn’t matter, that if this cult leader wants to pretend she’s this land’s savior, it doesn’t change who Nimh is. But I know the importance of symbols—I know how I would feel if I saw the gleaming, platinum crown of my ancestors on anyone’s head but my grandfather’s.
Nimh clears her throat as if banishing her fear and grief, pushing her shoulders back. “We should go.”
We make our way along the dusty corridor, ignoring the passageways to the right and the left as Matias told us to. This place isn’t completely disused—the uneven pavers beneath our feet are clear of dust—but cobwebs hang across the hallway every so often.
We walk in silence, Nimh moving ahead of me. She’s got my jacket pulled tight around her shoulders, looking strangely ordinary despite the ethereal light. She could be any girl in Alciel, borrowing a boy’s jacket on a chilly evening. The tunnel curves sharply to the right, and I catch a glimpse of her profile.
Her eyes are partly hidden by the hair that falls around her face, but her expression looks as though she wouldn’t flinch if the roof fell down around her. I know this look—I saw it on my grandfather’s face, and my mothers’ faces, when my grandmother died. I’m pretty sure I wore it myself. It’s the look of someone who has crammed every part of their emotional response to a situation down into a tiny box and nailed the lid shut so they can carry out their duty.