As he did, Safire breathed in the smell of this place: salt and juniper and moss. Just for a moment, despite her chattering fears and conflicted feelings, Safire felt a presence. Not like Sorrow waiting in the mist, or Eris following her through the halls. This was something else. Something far older and deeper. It was as if the spirit of these islands had come to brush up against her.
Safire lifted her palm to one of the giant stones.
From beside her, Dagan said very quietly, “I thought I recognized that dress.”
It wasn’t the words he said so much as the way he said them that made Safire turn. The fisherman stared at the left wrist of her raised hand, to the silver star embroidered there. At the sight of it, his dark brown eyes shone with sorrow.
“That’s the mark of the scrin.”
Safire lifted the embroidered sleeve closer, squinting through the lantern light.
“I used to trade with them for fish,” he whispered, his eyes seeing something else. “They’d give me garments in exchange.” He blinked, then peered down to Safire’s wrist once more, staring at the mark. “They sold for a near fortune in Axis’s market. People would come from all over to buy them, just because of that star.”
He looked up, suddenly. “Where did you get it?”
“It . . . was a gift,” she said.
He nodded once, and she could see in his eyes that he was finished talking about this, that there was pain here and he was ready to change the subject.
Safire couldn’t let him do that. Here before her stood someone who might know things: about the scrin, about the night it burned. She couldn’t let this chance to find out the truth escape her.
“Actually,” she said, knowing the risk and taking it anyway, “it was a gift from the empress’s fugitive. A girl named Eris.”
His face jerked back to hers. “What did you say?”
“Eris.” Safire touched the silver star. “She left it in my room tonight.”
He swallowed and when she looked up, his eyes were staring at her the way a hungry man stared into a bowl of rice.
“Is that true?” he whispered, looking into the darkness around him, as if fearing he might be overheard. “Is she alive?”
Safire felt her pulse speed up. She nodded, wanting to keep him talking, needing to know what he knew. “Did you know her?”
He reached for the stone next to him, then missed it, losing his balance and stumbling. Safire caught him before he fell.
“I need to sit.”
She found him a low stone and helped him down onto it, then sank into the grass next to him. The lantern burned between them, lighting up their faces.
“No one beyond the scrin knew of her existence—not even I,” he murmured, looking out to sea. “But there was an accident one day. I’d made a delivery and was preparing my boat to leave, when this little girl with a nest of white hair came tearing down to the scrin’s wharf, demanding my help. She and another weaver had been gathering scarp thistles for dyeing when her friend fell from one of the cliffs. Her friend was stuck on an outcropping, his leg broken. Grabbing a coil of rope, I went with her, and together we pulled him up. I helped her get him safely back to the scrin, and the moment we stepped through the door, the Weaving Master took me aside. He begged me not to speak of what I’d seen. To never tell a soul about Eris.”
Safire rested her chin on her knees, frowning hard. “Why?”
Dagan shook his head. “They were giving her sanctuary. Someone wanted to harm her, he said, and if her existence was made known beyond the scrin, it would put her in grave danger.”
“But who would want to harm a child?”
“I don’t know.” Dagan shook his head. “We quickly became friends, Eris and I. She’d help me unload the fish, talking all the while. She never stopped talking, that child. It’s how I found out that whenever there were visitors, she was confined to her room—an old cellar behind the kitchens—or sent up into the cliffs to collect plants for dyeing.
“I was happy to keep her secret. I swore an oath to never speak of her beyond the scrin. It’s an oath I’ve kept all these years.” He looked to the star on the wrist of Safire’s dress. “Until now.”
Safire felt hungry for more. She wanted to learn everything she could about Eris from someone who had truly cared about her. But Dagan had fallen silent again, staring into his weathered hands.
“Do you think she burned it?”
His face darkened like a storm. “What?” he hissed.
Safire drew back. “The scrin, I mean. They say she burned it down.”
“A child who loved nothing more than to weave and run wild and help the groundskeeper in the dye room? Do I think she burned down a temple with the only family she’d ever known inside?” He scowled as he said it, balling his hands into fists. “The Lumina came and questioned all of us. Everyone who’d ever supplied the scrin with goods. They were looking for the one who started the fire—a dangerous criminal who escaped in the night. An enemy of the Skyweaver, they called her.” He glanced at Safire. “That’s the highest form of treason in the Star Isles.”
Safire leaned over the lantern, needing more. “If it wasn’t Eris, then who did it?”
He shook his head and kept his voice low. “All I know is if that girl is the Skyweaver’s enemy, so am I. Skyweaver is supposed to be a god of hope, lighting our way through the dark. But I have no use for a god who does nothing while her servants are slaughtered.”
Dagan turned his face up to the dark sky, as if to scowl at the stars—which were hidden now behind the clouds that had gathered.
“Some say the Shadow God is coming,” he whispered. “I say: let him come.”
Safire felt a drop of rain on her face, then lifted a hand to find several more. Soon the sound of hundreds of thousands of raindrops echoed all around them, clinking on the rocks.
“Who says the Shadow God is coming?” asked Asha.
They both started at the sound of her voice. Asha stepped into the light of the lantern, her black hair wet with rain, her fingers laced with Torwin’s. Safire wondered how long they’d been there.
“The islands,” said Dagan. “The wind and the sea and rock all whisper his name. Just listen and you’ll hear it.”
As the others fell silent, listening, Safire’s thoughts were loud in her mind.
Just who was Eris? More important, if Eris was telling the truth, was there a way to prove her innocence?
Safire rose to her feet and stepped toward Asha.
“If I leave you here,” she said, not liking the words at all, only saying them because she knew she would not be convincing her cousin tonight, “will you promise to watch your back?”
Asha smiled. “I always watch my back.” Eight years of hunting dragons would do that to a girl. “Dagan lives in the yellow house on the point. You can find us there.”
“Don’t do anything reckless,” Safire said, reaching for the Namsara and pulling her into a hug.
“When have I ever?” Asha whispered, holding her tight.
“Every day of your life,” Safire whispered back.
Mounting Sorrow, Safire said good-bye, then flew through the rain to the scrin, taking Asha’s lantern with her.