The low, the broken, the forgotten, the hungry—they will be your shield, your sword, your army…

  “Aiz,” Jak whispered, rubbing her shoulder the way Hani did when he had nightmares. “Shall I tell you a story?”

  Aiz kissed the boy on his forehead. “Another day, Jak.”

  “Let her rest.” Olnas herded the children away. “A good night of sleep is what she needs.”

  But Aiz did not sleep, even when everyone else in the cell did. Instead, she relived her strange visitation until every word was etched in her mind. She felt so consumed with confusion that she finally called out to Noa.

  “In the Hollows,” Aiz said when the old woman had settled next to her on the cot. “In the darkness, I—I saw something.”

  As she told the cleric of what happened, Aiz felt certain that her desperate mind must have conjured all of it.

  “I know it sounds like a Spires-forsaken lie,” Aiz said when she was done. “But, Sister, it felt so real—”

  “Because it was.” Noa took Aiz’s hands with gentle reverence to drive home what she said next. “To step into the abyss and know Mother Div will catch you—this is faith. The Seventh Sacred Tale. You have been chosen, Aiz. I know this in my heart, as sure as I’ve known anything in my life. Look, child—”

  Sister Noa shifted her rags to reveal a long pin. “It fell out of the Questioner’s hair last night. I took it, thinking to give it to Olnas. But—” She glanced at the lock of the cell. She knew well that Aiz had learned to pick locks and pilfer food as a child. “It was a gift from Mother Div. A sign. You’re not meant to wait. You’re meant to leave. Now, Aiz. Tonight.”

  Aiz shook her head. “I’d never make it.”

  “Where is your faith?” Noa drew herself up, and Aiz saw once again the woman who’d survived the toil and hardship of Dafra and still had enough strength to be kind. “Always, you believed. And now that you are called to act upon it, you falter?”

  “I believe the stories,” Aiz said. “It’s my own heart that I doubt.”

  “Do not!” Noa grabbed Aiz’s hand and forced the hairpin into it. “For it is the same heart that remembered the dead children all others had forgotten. The heart that gives first, takes last. I know the strength that lives within your heart, Aiz bet-Dafra. It is time you learned too.”

  “They will punish you for this.”

  “The Mother will care for us. If Tiral plans to declare himself Tel Ilessi, that is a sacrilege that demands an answer. You are Mother Div’s answer. Go.”

  If Noa died for helping Aiz escape, it would be the first of many deaths. If she fell apart every time, nothing would change for her people. Tiral would win. The Snipes would keep starving, keep dying in the raids that seemed to feed only the highborn. The Kegari would be bound to this merciless place, never to return home.

  Sister Noa tilted her head as if she knew Aiz was on a precipice.

  “Tell me a dream, little love.”

  Aiz drew a sharp breath in. “I dream of freedom from tyranny,” she whispered. “A better life for us all.”

  “Mother Div will make it so,” Noa said.

  Aiz nodded, took the hairpin, and thought, Mother Div, if it breaks to make two picks, then I will pick the lock.

  It broke easily. Aiz rose gingerly from the cot and made her way to the door. There, she thought, Mother Div, if I can open the lock, then I will walk through the door.

  The lock was ancient and heavy. But after only a minute of fiddling, it opened. Aiz’s hands shook. She took a breath and stepped through. She moved then as if drawn forward, as if some great cord pulled her. As she passed her brethren, voices whispered.

  “Light of the Spires.”

  “Light go with you, tale-spinner.”

  “Mother Div bless you.”

  “Tale-spinner of the Tohr. Hurry. We’ll keep your secret.”

  Each voice was a push at her back, urging her onward. She reached the end of the hallway and paused. One iron-banded door led to the Questioners’ chambers—they’d slithered out of it too many times for her to forget. The middle door led to the Hollows. Aiz pushed through the third door, entering a low stone hall.

  The hall was silent, the air weighty, as if charged by a storm. A nearby torch illuminated an open door, and Aiz peeked in to find a poorly stocked pantry. A rat scurried away at her approach.

  Forward, instinct told her, and she understood why a moment later. The Tohr was built into a mountain, but its layout reminded Aiz of Dafra cloister. Mother Div had built both, after all.

  Kitchen’s ahead, she thought, and sure enough, the next open door led into a darkened room where Aiz made out the gleam of an enormous cooking pot. But that was when Mother Div’s blessing appeared to run its course.

  Two jailers stepped out of the dining room to her left—a room she hadn’t seen. Gil, stocky and well armed, and Kithka.

  Mother Div’s first true test of my mettle.

  Aiz’s body ached from the beatings. Her muscles were weak and atrophied from lack of movement. But she was still a child of Dafra’s hard streets, and the guards were so surprised to see her out of her cell that they stared in shock.

  Aiz leaped upon Gil, snatching his knife from his belt and shoving it into his throat before she could doubt herself. She felt queasy at the way his flesh gave, at the drag of steel against bone. She ripped the knife out, bringing meat and sinew with it. Gil collapsed and Aiz barely evaded Kithka’s fist as the tall woman lunged for her.

  “You’ll die for this.” Kithka whirled, circling Aiz with her daggers out. “You and your clerics.”

  The jailer leaped again, fast enough that Aiz couldn’t get out of the way. The back of her head hit the tunnel wall and her knife fell. Aiz blinked rapidly, trying to clear her vision as Kithka grappled with her. She let her body go boneless, and then slammed her palms as hard as she could into Kithka’s belly.

  The jailer doubled over, shrieking when Aiz wrenched her knife away and stabbed her in the shoulder. Aiz shoved her into a pillar and put the blade to the woman’s throat.

  “Do it then, you Snipe bitch,” Kithka spat out. “Make it quick.”

  Aiz stared at Kithka, taking in the emaciated frame, the sallow skin, the bruises on her throat and the tattoo on her wrist, a circlet of four flowers, each with a slash through it to mark the children she’d lost. It was a common tattoo in Dafra slum. Stillbirths, fever, illness, starvation. There were so many ways for children to die in Kegar.

  Mercy, Mother Div seemed to whisper.

  “I won’t kill you.” Aiz eased the knife back. “I am you. We are daughters of the evening star. You do not deserve death. You deserve safety. Your babies in your arms. Food on your table. A warm hearth.”

  “I—” The woman looked not angry but confused. Her eyes filled. “My mother said that we were daughters of the evening star. How did you—”

  “We are meant for more than this.” Though Aiz’s childhood in Dafra told her to keep the dagger, the voice within told her to offer it to Kithka, who took it, perplexed.

  “You’ve heard the Sacred Tales,” Aiz said. “You listened the other day. Our people are meant for better. I aim to give it to them. Let me go. Tell me how to get out of here.”

  The guard gazed down at her dead companion.

  “He was cruel to the prisoners,” she said. “Especially the little ones. I hated him for it. But what can I do? My family must eat.”

  Aiz held her peace. One wrong word, and that dagger could end up in her chest. Give her a moment, the voice within said. Give her grace.

  “You speak to Mother Div, yes?” Kithka said. “You tell the stories like a cleric even if you don’t wear the robes.”

  A guard called out at the end of the hall. “Kithka? Gil? I heard something.”

  Kithka lowered her voice. “Ask Mother Div to guide the spirits of my children to the Fount, girl,” she said. “That they might spend the afterlife bathed in its light.” The jailer shoved her toward a door in the dining room. “Through there. Down the hall. Last chamber on the left. Looks like a storage closet, but there’s a door. Go through it.”

  “Thank you,” Aiz said. “Kithka—”

  “Go.” The jailer moved toward the voice that had called out. “Before I come to my Spires-forsaken senses.”

  Aiz limped through the door. She had no plan if she emerged from the prison. She would freeze in her rags. She had no food or shoes. No way of getting in touch with Cero or anyone at the cloister. If there even was a cloister left.

  But exhilaration still buoyed her. She could have been stopped, killed, caught. But she hadn’t been. Daughter of the evening star.

  She stumbled into the closet, which was crowded with manacles and chains. Aiz shuddered as she moved them aside to find the door.

  Go. Go. Go. Voices behind her, in the hallway. She scrabbled at the handle, stiff with grime and disuse. The voices grew louder, but the door did not budge. She braced her feet and pulled with her whole weight. She was so close.

  “Mother, please,” she murmured. “Be with me once more.”

  The door squealed open to a tunnel of pure darkness. Fear burned through her veins, a memory of the Hollows.

  There is beauty in the dark, and strength. Aiz closed the door behind her and staggered forward, a hand outstretched. She walked until her feet burned, then went numb. With each step she felt weaker. She realized why when purple-black veins began to appear in the rock walls of the tunnel. Aiz reached her hand out to touch the substance and flinched back. It burned.

  A faint whistling echoed through the tunnel. It grew louder the farther she went. Stronger.

  Wind.

  She was on her knees now, crawling because her feet couldn’t support her. And then it was not Mother Div who Aiz thought of. It was her loathing of Tiral and the Triarchs, a lightning bolt that lit her veins aflame with outrage. They were the reason Kithka mourned her children and Cero his father. They were the reason the cloisters didn’t have food and the Snipes didn’t have hope.

  And Aiz swore on the Mother that if she survived, she would destroy them all.

  She turned a sharp corner. Blessed light poured into the tunnel. Aiz sobbed, knees bleeding, and burst out of the cave into a raging storm, the wind howling around her like a thing possessed.

  Perhaps she should have been afraid of the cold or starvation. Of death. But a figure emerged from the darkness, catching her as she fell, and she smiled when she saw green eyes burning into hers, brown hair swirling about his face.

  “Did you hear her, Cero? Did she visit you, too?”

  Cero shook his head and pulled off his cloak, the same gray as the rocks around them, and tucked it in about her shoulders. “Come, Aiz. We must hurry—we’re dead if we don’t get to shelter.”

  “There is beauty in the dark.” Aiz reached up and touched Cero’s face. “And strength. But not death. Not yet.”

  11

  Quil

  The explosion at Navium’s docks was so massive, the plume of smoke and flame shooting so high, that Quil struggled to make sense of what he was seeing. His mind cycled through the possibilities—fire in the lumberyard; explosion on a Sadhese oil ship; experiment gone wrong.

  Then the shock wave hit, knocking him and the Empress to their backs, and he knew in an instant that it was none of those things. That his old life had been a castle made of sand and sticks on a shoreline, and the explosion was a wave crushing it with unfeeling finality.

  The Empire was under attack.

  He crawled toward the Empress, who lay crumpled against the wall of the palace. She was still and panic gripped him.

  “Aunt Helene!” He knelt beside her, shaking her shoulder. “Empress!”

  She couldn’t be dead. The last thing he did was pick a bleeding fight with her. Why the hells hadn’t he taken a second to think? Why—

  His magic surged and screamed for release, incited into a frenzy by his own panic. It felt as if a part of his mind was completely out of control. Take her thoughts, his magic urged. Her memories. It is the last chance for you to hold on to any part of her.

  His aunt’s voice brought him back and the magic faded.

  “Qu-Quil—” She opened her eyes. Her voice was thick, slurred, but she was alive, and Quil would have hugged her if she wasn’t clawing his arm, trying to stand.

  “Thank the bleeding, burning skies, Aunt Hel.”

  The balcony door burst open, and Musa, his fine tunic covered in dust, staggered out. Arelia and Sufiyan followed close behind, halting at the sight of the immense fireball.

  “The—the docks,” Arelia said. “Must have been a munitions explosion.”

  “Munitions?” Musa stared at the plume of fire. “You mean firepowder? Firepowder wouldn’t—”

  BOOM.

  The next explosion, from the cothon where the military ships were moored, knocked all of them to the ground. Screams erupted from the ballroom, and Aunt Hel’s guards emerged, scims drawn. Foremost among them was Rallius, a Mask who’d been captain of her personal troops for nearly twenty years.

  “Empress.” His gaze raked the gardens behind her, looking for threats. “We must get you to the safe room.”

  “Send units to every drum tower,” Aunt Hel said. “Our heads should be aching with their thundering by now. I want to know what happened to our drummers. Get a message to my Blood Shrike,” she said. “She’s to remain—”

  “The Shrike will know better than to come here,” Rallius said. “The Gens leaders are already gathering in the safe room.”

  “Musa.” The Empress turned to the tall Mariner. “Get me answers. Whatever you can.”

  Musa nodded and disappeared over the balcony and into the garden below. Aunt Helene didn’t spare him a glance, nor her nephew, nor the city burning behind her. She pushed past Rallius into the ballroom.

  “Come.” Rallius gestured Quil, Sufiyan, and Arelia inside. “Quickly.”

  “We should go down to the city,” Quil said to Sufiyan over the pandemonium of the ballroom. “To the docks. People might be injured. They’ll need help.”

  Sufiyan’s face was blank. It was Arelia who regarded Quil as if he’d suggested they chop their own heads off.

  “The city guard will see to them.” She glanced at the cracked ceiling. “We need to move if we want to live.”

  Another rumble shook the ballroom, and a chandelier above rocked wildly, its tapers flickering and falling to the floor twenty feet below. The earth groaned.

  Rallius pulled Quil away from the flames now spreading across the ballroom, and they entered a long, pillared hallway.

  “Wait, my prince!” Rallius eyed the high windows lining the hall, the glass spiderwebbed with ominous cracks. “I’ll go first.”

  Rallius was ten steps ahead when a deep hum sounded from above them, like the sweep of a bird’s wings but a hundred times louder. Deeper. The ground shuddered so violently that the windows shattered.

  Quil grabbed a pillar, but Arelia slammed into Sufiyan, knocking him to his back and tumbling over him.

  “I’m sorry—”

  Sufiyan silently pushed Arelia off and stood, unmoving, which was when Quil realized his friend was in shock.

  “That blast was closer,” Quil said. “It’s not a munitions ship, Arelia. Suf, let’s move—” The cries outside intensified, a new wave of pain exploding with every attack.

  The doors behind them burst open and a herd of guests rushed past, no doubt hoping to escape the palace and make it home.

  Quil took two steps after them, wanting desperately to go into the streets of Navium and do whatever he could. The screams of his people swirled and echoed like a hellish wind. The prince’s hands shook in rage and sorrow.

  “Move, you three!” Rallius staggered toward them. “We’re under attack and you’re making it easy for our enemies!”

  Something’s coming, the Bani al-Mauth had said. Quil had felt the truth of that statement in his bones. But he’d never imagined this.

  “It can’t be an attack.” Arelia limped beside Quil. “Our watchtowers would have seen ships. Bombs this big wouldn’t fit on sea trebuchets. It’s not possib—”

  “Quil!”

  Sufiyan yanked him backward, his mouth open in a silent scream as another blast shook the palace and one side of the hall crumbled, stone tumbling into the space where Quil was just standing. Freezing air blew in from the black winter sky. The sculpture garden was below, its priceless carvings shattered to dust. The balcony where Quil had stood with his aunt was gone entirely.

  Quil had a clear line of sight to the outer gate, thronged with guards and party guests all trying to escape. Beyond, the city burned and the sky glowed a lurid orange. Something flashed above.

  The world turned to white fire as the glimmering object smashed into the palace gate and exploded, leveling everything for a hundred yards around it. Quil’s ears screamed and his vision went dark.

  When he opened his eyes again, he didn’t understand whether he was standing or on his back, whether he was staring up into a dark sky or down into one of the hells. His chest seized in terror. The last time he’d felt like this was a year ago, after walking into a blood-soaked chamber.

  Don’t think about it. Don’t.

  His ears made a strange, high-pitched eeeeEEEEEeeee, then went silent, then shrieked again.

  Sufiyan’s face appeared above him, bloodied and soot-stained. “Not again,” he muttered as he frantically shook Quil. “Not another brother. I—I can’t—”

  Quil coughed and grasped his friend’s shoulder. “I’m all right, Suf,” he said. “Where’s Arelia?”

  “Here.” Arelia staggered toward them, her dress ripped from waist to hem. Quil blanched at the blood trickling down her face. “It’s nothing,” she said, and lodged herself under one of Quil’s shoulders. Sufiyan took the other, and with Rallius leading, they lurched down the hall.