Until the day a savior arrived.
She came from the sea with a fleet of golden ships. Leandra, she called herself. From halfway across the world, she’d heard of the chaos tormenting the Star Isles and was here to stop it.
Leandra built a walled city where people could seek refuge from disaster and disease. She sent her soldiers out to hunt down the sea spirits terrorizing the islands. She made treaties with neighboring kingdoms for the things the islanders needed that they could no longer harvest—from land or sea.
Last of all, she climbed the steps of the Skyweaver’s tower.
“Join me,” Leandra said, standing before her loom.
Skyweaver wanted to help. Wanted to put an end to this horror. But what could she do? All she had was her spindle, her loom, and her skill as a weaver. All she knew was how to take souls and turn them into something else.
Leandra drew a knife, put it in the Skyweaver’s hands, and said, “You can kill him.”
But could she?
The Skyweaver paced her tower for three days and three nights. Finally, she agreed to Leandra’s plan.
Skyweaver didn’t spin souls into stars that night. Instead, she called the Shadow God, saying she’d considered his proposition and had decided to accept.
The Shadow God heard her.
The Shadow God came.
The moment he stepped through her door, Skyweaver spun a web made of starlight to catch him. She bound him up tight in her threads.
As she raised the knife to kill him, though, she found before her not a mighty god. Not a bringer of chaos and destruction. But a creature full of sorrow. A thing to be pitied.
“Do it,” he hissed.
But she couldn’t.
Instead, she hid the Shadow God away, in a place between worlds, where no one would ever find him.
And then she took something precious from him. Something that would ensure he remained ensnared forever.
Something he didn’t even know he owned.
She told Leandra it was done. The Shadow God was dead. What did it matter if she lied? He would never get free of her web.
So peace returned to the Star Isles . . . for a time.
Twenty-Four
Eris, whose fingers were cramped from weaving all night, had only meant to rest for a moment. But when she shut her eyes, sleep claimed her. She dreamed she’d failed to do as Jemsin asked, and now the summoner was walking the labyrinth, coming for her.
Eris woke with a start, sweat soaked. Heart hammering.
For a moment, she lay quiet and still, listening for the clicking of talons.
But all was silent.
Just a dream.
She remembered her half-finished weaving and sat up. The sooner she finished, the sooner she could find the Namsara and trade her in for freedom. So Eris rose from the bed of woven blankets.
It wasn’t her bed, just like the clothes in the wooden chest weren’t her clothes. They’d been left by whoever came here before she did. This place had never felt like hers, but rather like she was borrowing it until its true owner decided to come back.
Unlike the rest of the labyrinth, the bedroom had a natural warmth. The floorboards were well worn. Candles were lit on top of the dressers and bedside tables. And the embers of a forever-dying fire glowed in the fireplace. She’d never seen that fire go out, only burn. Same with the candles. She had no idea who kept them lit.
Maybe the ghost.
Now, as Eris passed the blue gown hanging over the chair in front of the vanity, she paused to study it. The weaving was so fine—expertly done—and no dust soiled it. No dust soiled anything inside the labyrinth.
The weaving, she reminded herself. The door.
Eris withdrew her hand and returned to the loom.
As she sat down before her half-finished tapestry and her fingers picked up the threads once more, she thought of what the summoner said: that Jemsin only wanted the Namsara because the empress wanted her.
Whatever she wants her for, thought Eris, sinking down on the soft rug and staring up at her progress, it can’t be good.
She should probably warn Safire.
Except no. Why would she? Safire and the rest of them had intended to hand her over to monsters today. Safire would do it again in a heartbeat.
She couldn’t care what the empress wanted with Asha. She didn’t care.
Eris thought of her goal. Of what Jemsin promised her: Freedom. Freedom to leave, to run, to never be hunted ever again.
Her gaze followed the dark blue threads of the weft. Reaching for Safire’s ribbon, she tied it on, then started weaving it in.
She had just fallen into a rhythm when that familiar soul-chilling cold swept through the room.
“Couldn’t sleep either, hmm?” she said as she worked.
Silence answered her.
When Eris looked up, the ghost was back. It was no longer quite so formless. If she looked hard enough, she could almost make out edges, like a silhouette. It even seemed more . . .
Human.
Eris thought of the bed that didn’t belong to her and the chest of clothes she’d never worn.
“Did they belong to you?” she murmured, wondering about this ghost’s story. Who it was, how it came to be here, how long it had wandered this lonely labyrinth.
It didn’t answer her. So Eris went back to weaving.
“Are you trapped here?” she guessed as she worked.
“Yes,” it said.
Her fingers fumbled the thread. Recovering, she thought of something Day used to tell her: that sometimes spirits with unfinished business didn’t cross from one world to the next but got stuck in between instead.
“Did you forget to finish something before you died?”
“I’m not dead,” said the ghost.
Sure, thought Eris. You probably all think that.
“I’m imprisoned.”
“Oh?” She paused again. “Who imprisoned you, then?”
When it didn’t answer her, she glanced back. For a moment, Eris could swear the ghost had fingers now. And those fingers were turning into claws. But the next moment, they were fingers again. So maybe she’d imagined it.
“Someone I loved,” said the ghost. “She’ll pay dearly for it.”
Eris turned to look more fully, to ask who would pay, and who it had loved, but by the time she turned around, the ghost was gone.
Sighing heavily, she shook her head. It didn’t matter. Only one thing mattered.
She returned to the loom.
Eris finished her weaving just before dawn. Cutting it free, she lifted it up to study the brown and blue threads and to run her fingers along the bits of Safire’s ribbon showing through.
She’d never done it before—made a door connected to a person. Normally, a door took her to the same place every time. She didn’t know if it would work the same way with a person.
Time to find out, she thought, moving through the labyrinth now, her candle illuminating the images depicted in colored glass. Mossy green meadows and bright orange bogs. Grassy headland and rocky shorelines. Brightly colored fishing huts. Hooks and nets and boats.
Eris was so used to the images trapped in the glass, she hardly saw them anymore.
Finally, she arrived at the yellow door. The one leading to Kor’s now destroyed ship. Setting down her new weaving, she opened the door. Silver-gray mist poured in. But she didn’t step through. Instead, she slid the pins out of the hinges, and pulled the whole thing off.