“Take it. Hold it however you are most comfortable,” she instructed, keeping her voice a very even tone.
Doing so, Nothing held it like a paintbrush, in loose fingers. She did not practice writing or calligraphy but had watched Kirin do it many rainy afternoons. She crouched where the sorceress directed her and tried to calm her breathing.
“I am going to guide your hand. When you are ready, you must will the wand to glow.”
Nothing nodded, but the instant the sorceress placed her hand over Nothing’s, that same cold darkness encroached upon her sight and body. She shivered.
Instead of releasing her, the sorceress pressed more firmly. “Hold it back or embrace it, or you cannot help.”
“Which?” Nothing whispered.
“You choose,” the sorceress said angrily, as if she’d said it a hundred times before.
The anger helped, and Nothing ignored the dark curlicues along her vision until they were gone. Then it was only the softness of the sorceress’s fingers hovering against her knuckles, her hand at rest against Nothing’s wrist. The sorceress’s black-lacquered nails seemed to swallow light.
No other part of them touched, but Nothing felt completely in the sorceress’s control.
“Now,” the sorceress murmured. “Link this line with that, from exactly here to exactly here.” She pointed with her other hand.
“A straight line or a curve, or…?”
The sorceress sighed in irritation.
Nothing gritted her teeth. She pushed the tip of the crystal wand against the floor at exactly the correct point and dragged it unthinking to the other line. The wand flared, the floor groaned, but the line sliced into place.
There was a pop inside Nothing’s ears, and all the tension and waiting energy faded.
“Good,” the sorceress said, soft against Nothing’s cheek. Then she added in more of a drawl, “Though it’s a deeper line than necessary.”
The sorceress stood, and Nothing shivered, blinking at afterimages of cold, dark spirals and curling tentacles. She stood too, facing the sorceress, and thrust out the wand. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” the sorceress said mildly.
“What will we do with this long-sight spell?”
“Oh, it isn’t finished. Only the diagram.” The sorceress walked to the empty wall. “Are you coming?” She glanced over her shoulder at Nothing, then vanished through the solid rock.
As quickly as she could without stepping upon any of the diagram lines, Nothing dashed after.
TWENTY-FOUR
AS SHE WALKED THROUGH the portal after the sorceress, Nothing wondered if she went because she wanted to or because she always followed.
The room she stepped into might’ve been part of a house. Rich wooden paneling hid the mountain walls, inlaid with carved teak and lattice as if they were windows beyond which one might view the sea. Rugs covered the floor, deep blue and purple with spots of red florals, and the ceiling was banded with thick beams and whitewash. Wooden furniture clustered intimately around a desk and a hearth burning what looked and felt like real fire. Book piles leaned precariously into one another, and pillows were tossed about on both floor and plush sofa. Beside the hearth a real door opened into another room.
Lamps filled the rooms with bright, warm light.
“Sorceress?” Nothing called.
“Through here,” the reply came, distant from the other room.
Nothing went into it. An entire wall was mirrors, some human height, some round and small, with floor pillows and bolsters near them, as well as low tables filled with paint pots and powder. There was also a bed on a swaying trestle, and a wide, open wardrobe spilling silks and satins and shining cloth Nothing had no names for.
The sorceress wasn’t even in her bedroom.
Nothing paused, feeling like she didn’t belong. She heard running water beyond yet another door and peered through at bright tiles, but she refused to walk into a bathing room. Biting her lip, Nothing returned to the sitting room and plopped onto one of the sofas.
What was the point of this? she thought. Was it supposed to be friendliness or seduction or admission to the sorceress’s privacy to prove her willingness to reveal secrets?
Maybe the sorceress simply had wanted to bathe away her sweat and work.
Nothing closed her eyes and listened for the heartbeat of the mountain.
She didn’t hear it.
“Thirsty?”
Nothing snapped her head around to the sorceress, who leaned her shoulder against the bedroom doorway. Her damp hair fell heavily around her face, making her magical eyes seem huge, her cheeks rounder and prettier. A silky green robe was clenched around her waist with a white and pink cherry-blossom sash, but the collar was an open arrow down between her breasts, revealing the entirety of the bronze-pink scar over her heart. Nothing’s own heart clenched at the sight of it.
She wanted to—she wanted—
The sorceress walked barefoot across her plush rugs to a sideboard and lifted a decanter of bright-pink liquid. She poured two small bowls of it and brought them to Nothing, offering one.
“Tea or liquor?” Nothing asked, cupping the bowl with all her fingers.
“A little bit of both.” The sorceress sipped at her bowl.
Nothing stared through the pink drink at the shimmering images painted on the inside of the bowl: little gold and blue fish, tiny as grains of wheat. She sipped. The drink was bittersweet and complicated, with a tiny burn. She understood how it might be a little bit of both.
The sorceress draped herself upon a low sofa, delicately crossing her ankles. “Tell me what you like to do, Nothing.”
“Do?”
“In your old life, at the palace.”
“Why?”
“You said you are not my demon, and so I would like to know who you are.”
“I’m not anybody.”
“Nothing,” the sorceress murmured.
“Exactly,” Nothing said, and drank all the rest of her drink.
“But what do you do?”
“I listen. I—I eat and drink and go where I wish through the walls of the palace. I spend time with Kirin and sometimes my friend Whisper. I trade gossip for what I need, but only if Kirin is not nearby. When he is with me I can have anything I want.”
“What sorts of things have you wanted?”
“You know the answer!” Nothing forced herself not to throw the little bowl.
“You wanted what the prince wanted. You wanted to be quiet and unseen, to be his companion without ambition. Never to leave, but only to push or pull what you could to make him happy.”
Nothing’s voice shook when she said, “I already accept he mastered me, that some part of me was a demon and vulnerable to it. Why are you making me say it again? He was my friend, my prince. Why should it have seemed odd to want to make him happy!”
“Because it infuriates me,” the sorceress said coldly. “I would like to put his eyeballs on a platter for it.”
“No,” Nothing snapped.
“As you wish.”
“I was friends with the great demon of the palace,” Nothing said, trying to offer the sorceress something.
“Were you?” She looked at her bowl, slowly swirling liquor within it, instead of looking at Nothing.