Unwilling to accept she didn’t know everything already.
With that thought, the memories finally awoke. The stone room disappeared.
* * *
“Only in darkness can we understand life, and only in life can we change the world.” Stix frowns at the paper, a torn edge from Eridysi’s diary. The Sightwitch has gathered a whole stack of young Lisbet’s prophecies, and now she is laying them out, one by one, for Stix and Rhian, the Paladin of Fire, to see.
Rhian palms one of the papers, her muscled forearms rippling and her large, round eyes widening. “Six turned on six,” Rhian reads. “And made themselves kings. One turned on five and stole everything. It means we will die, doesn’t it?”
Eridysi cringes. “I hope not.” She rustles through the stack for several moments. She has never been the most organized person—her workshop always makes Stix’s fingers itch to move, to rearrange, to label. But eventually Dysi finds the page she needs and thrusts it toward Stix and Rhian. “Lisbet also said this, the next day. I don’t know if it’s a correction of what she said before or if it’s a new prophecy…”
Stix takes the page and reads aloud, “Six turned on six and made themselves kings. Five turned on one and stole everything.”
Rhian’s frown—a constant on her olive face these days—briefly smooths with surprise. “Perhaps there are two possible outcomes?”
“Perhaps.” Dysi shrugs. “When I ask Lisbet, all she will say is, ‘A good question, Dysi. A good one indeed.’”
Stix sighs. Why the Sleeper chooses to speak through an eight-year-old, she’ll never know—and why the goddess can’t speak more plainly is an old frustration, rounded at the edges.
“We need to go,” Rhian says, her fingers moving to Stix’s shoulder. A gentle gesture, for she knows how much Stix despises returning to Lovats’s court. The jade ring she always wears rubs against Stix’s silken sleeve. “The Exalted Ones will wonder where we are if we do not return soon. Lovats will wonder.”
Stix nods and lays the prophecy atop the others. Before she can exit Dysi’s workshop, however, the Sightwitch calls, “Wait. There’s one more. For you, Baile.” She gathers up Stix’s hand and curls a large page into her palm. “Like most of Lisbet’s declarations, I don’t know what it means. But perhaps you will. Perhaps one day it will save you.”
Stix bows her head. She will read it later, in privacy. Later when there is time.
It is several days before such a moment comes and she can tuck herself away in her quarters at Paladin’s Keep on the edge of Lovats’s lush granite city. On the top floor with the door locked and no one but her tabby to see, she unfurls the page—wrinkled from several days tucked within her bodice. Then she reads:
Three rules has she, our Lady of the Seas.
No whistling when a storm’s in sight.
Six-fingered cats will ward off mice,
And always, always stay the night for Baile’s slaughtering.
Stix came out of the memory gasping for air. Unlike the violence of other memories, this one had felt so calm. So simple, so real with Rhian beside her. One of the Six, Rhian had been a mothering type who had died the same day Baile had, when the Rook King had killed them all. Six turned on six and made themselves kings. One turned on five and stole everything.
“I understand,” Stix said. Then she pressed her head against the stone and thanked the past lives for finally answering her call. “I understand.”
“What happened?” Ryber asked beside her. “Did you see something?”
“Hye,” Stix murmured, and taking Ryber’s hand into hers, she glanced down at the tabby. “Are you ready?” The cat purred, and Stix smiled. Then she raised her foot and stomped once. Twice. Thrice.
The floor beneath them vanished. They dropped once more into the Ring—into a clashing of sound and humidity and rumbling rodent feet.
The flames of the Ring burst against Stix. So hot her heart compressed beneath them, her ears and skull felt pummeled in two. Or perhaps that was the rats, now surging toward her, climbing over her toes, up her body. But the night’s clouds had dispersed, revealing moonlight.
Revealing midnight.
Which meant it was time to follow the rhyme. Time to become the Lady Baile whom Stix was meant to be. Not just the saint’s chosen, not just a vessel for memories a thousand years past, but Baile herself. A Paladin. Someone as strong as Kahina, if not stronger. Because this was her palace, and her water-filled home.
Fangs cut into Stix’s legs. Bright bursts of pain punctuated by squeals that claimed all hearing. Bodies covered her with warmth and fur and claws to draw blood. She had to ignore it though. Just for a moment, she had to ignore it and pray she had interpreted the writing correctly.
Slaughter Ring, slaughtering. Slaughter Ring, slaughtering. Always, always stay the night.
Her arms stretched long. She was done with seeking answers. Done with the timeless existence of the voices. She was done picking at an open sore and wondering what Vivia must think.
Stix reached. She knew what her magic felt like. It had been a part of her for almost a decade. An organ, a limb, a piece of soul that not even flames could contain.
Come, Stix told the tide rising in a river below. We are one, and I need you. Come. Power wove through her muscles, even as her vision wavered. Come this way, keep coming. The Ring and Ryber and all the rats hazed away. Stars sprayed across Stix’s eyes, but the water listened. Her oldest, dearest friend.
It slithered as she needed it to slither, wringing from the very air itself and squeezing into the gaps between flames. It obeyed and rejoiced and sank until the flames had no more fuel, no more will to live. And as the conflagration paled, ice rose up from the earth to claim each rat, to freeze them one by one.
Power surged over Stix. All of it, straight from Noden. So vast and full and entirely her own. She saw almost nothing. There was only darkness and flashes of weary light. But for now, while she revelled in the true edges of her magic, she didn’t need her vision. The slaughtering was done.
Fingers gripped her shoulder—so much like the memory of a Paladin named Rhian. But it was Ryber’s voice who said, “We’re safe. You can stop now.”
“Hye,” Stix answered, a sound both ragged and elated. Then: “I can’t see. The magic is … everything.”
“It will recede,” Ryber assured her. “Kullen’s lungs always failed him when he used too much power.”
“I can’t wait for it to return, though, Ry. We need to get to the harbor. Can you lead us there?”
“Why?” Ryber asked, even as she scooped an arm behind Stix. Water rushed around their feet, rivulets melting off the rats. “What’s at the harbor?”
“What your cards were pointing us to all along: the Queen of Hawks, the Queen of Foxes, and the Giant.”
FORTY-THREE
It was a good dream. Yes, Safi was back in the Loom, but this time she wasn’t slowly fading while Zander held her aloft. This time, she floated and flitted and followed the sound of Iseult’s voice.
Then she found her Threadsister. She was right there, flesh and blood, standing before her. “Weasels piss on you!” Safi laughed, a trilling sound that seemed to vanish as soon as it left her lips. “You’re not supposed to be here.”