The Fire Children (24 page)

“Mother Sun, hear me,” Yulla breathed.

“She can’t.” Vedra’s voice came from right behind her.

Yulla shrieked, every instinct telling her to get up, to run, to crawl away if she had to, but Vedra reached out and snatched her by the collar before Yulla could even gain her feet. “Don’t you get it? She’s deaf to your prayers right now. Sister Moon’s in the way.”

Panic surged through her, but just like out in the desert, no matter how much she wanted to struggle, she found she couldn’t move. All around her, starlings landed on rooftops, on signposts, on steps.

“Nasreen saw you, you know, creeping along after our sisters. She’s been following you most of the day.”

Yulla glanced at Mother Sun again, and the realization it was nearly noon sank in. Help would be coming. It didn’t matter that she’d been caught; surely the priests would burst up from the cellars and stop the witch-women. Any minute now.

Vedra followed her gaze skyward and laughed. She must have thought Yulla was sending up a new prayer to Mother Sun despite what she’d said. “You want to see her? Take a look.” She plucked the smoked glass from Yulla’s grip and sent it smashing to the stones. It shattered into a thousand jagged pieces.

Yulla cried out, as much from the destruction of Ember’s gift as the sudden jolt of pain that was Vedra’s fingers digging into her shoulders.

“Look,” said Vedra, forcing Yulla to stare into the sun. “Look at her. She’s a murderer, your goddess. LOOK.”

Yulla tried squeezing her eyes shut and found herself unable. Her struggles were kitten-like at best. Weaker. The eclipse filled her vision. Bright. Searing. Tears spilled from her eyes, but they brought no relief. Yulla stared and stared, until Vedra’s voice faded away and there was only Mother Sun and Sister Moon, looming high above.

She dropped to her knees, but still Vedra held her. The tears dried up, leaving her eyeballs feeling grainy and too big for their sockets. She couldn’t see anything beyond the white crown and the black disc, and then, for a moment, they were reversed, as though Sister Moon wore a dark crown against a bone-white sky.

Then even that was gone, and her vision went black. Vedra released her at last.

Sobbing, shocked by the all-consuming dark, Yulla scrambled away. Shards of glass stuck deep into her palms as she moved. She didn’t care where she went, as long as it was
away, away, away.
Her shoulder slammed against the wall of the
versam
hall. She groped her way along it.

This blindness wasn’t like it had been in the cellars. There, it had been easy, almost a game.
Everyone
stumbled around.
Everyone
had to learn to move by feel, to go slowly and cautiously. They’d helped one another, and the nearness of others made it less frightening.

Now, though, Yulla was the only one who couldn’t see. Vedra’s mocking laughter swept over her, but whenever she swung her head to find the witch-woman’s direction, the laugh came from another angle.

One was close, right in her ear. She lunged backwards, flinging out her hands... and heard the sound of wings.

The starlings.
Another laugh, and another a few feet to its left. One from over her shoulder. One from above.
It’s Nasreen.
Aunt Mouse had kept a starling as a pet once, when Yulla was little. The bird mimicked the cat’s meow, and Aunt Mouse’s off-key singing. And now dozens of birds surrounded her, all of them laughing in Vedra’s voice while Yulla turned in helpless circles, trying to find a way out.

Bony hands grabbed her upper arm and dragged her along.
Amara.

“Let me GO!” She wrenched away from the woman, but freedom lasted all of three steps.

Vedra seized her by her burnt hand; her grip dug the shards deeper into Yulla’s palm. “You want to be with them so badly?” They were moving up now. Yulla’s toes caught on the steps to the hall. Vedra released her only long enough to let her fall, then hauled her up again.

Then they were inside. She felt the change from stone to wood beneath her feet, and the still air of the enclosed space. She tried to gauge how close they were to the edge of the hole, feared they’d simply let her fall into it, but instead Vedra pulled her the whole length of the hall.

There were costume rooms in the back, places for performers to store their props, or to change their clothes between acts in a play. Yulla’d been back there before, but she’d never seen anything that seemed like a cellar door. Vedra held her still a moment while someone—Amara? Siwa? Had Nasreen gathered herself into a woman again?—shifted heavy things around. Perhaps the door had been hidden all along.

It had to be past noon by now. Where were the priests? Where was the rush of people leaving the cellars to come help up above? She strained her ears listening for shouting outside, for doors slamming open and people running through the streets.
Where are they?

“No one’s coming for you,” Vedra whispered, her breath tickling Yulla’s cheek. “Nasreen found your message and washed it away hours ago.” Whoever had been shifting furniture finished. Hinges creaked, and Yulla felt the rush of cool, damp air from the tunnels. “Not even your parents. I brought them to the rockfall yesterday morning. We found your things: a shoe, your satchel, the food you stole from your own house. All of it at the bottom of a fresh cave-in. They think you’re dead and buried beneath the stones.”

The strangled mewling she was hearing, Yulla realized, came from her own throat. “They’d... they’ll try to dig me out, even if it’s only my body. And then they’ll know you’re a liar.”

“It’s dangerous enough to shift those stones around in the light. They could kill
themselves
if they try it in the dark. No, Yulla, they’re waiting for the Darktimes to end to look for you. By then it won’t matter anymore.”

Then she gave Yulla a shove and the ground fell away. These stairs had no banister for her to catch onto, nothing to break her fall other than the cold, rough stone from which the steps were hewn. Every hit awakened old pains and introduced her to new ones. The only consolation came halfway down, when consciousness took pity on her and fled.

Y
ULLA AWOKE TO
murmured conversation. Pebbles dug into her back, but they were the least of her pains. All the injuries she’d sustained the last few days joined their voices to the ones she’d received in the (
fall, I fell, Vedra pushed me and I fell
) Her burned hand throbbed in time with the headache pounding at her skull; her elbows and knees protested when she tried to bend them, scrapes on both stinging anew. Nothing felt broken, at least, but she wouldn’t know until she could stand up and test that theory.

A dull ache had settled in behind her eyes. She brought her good hand up to rub at them, clearing away the grime and sleep-sand.

I still can’t see.

No, that’s not entirely true.
The ghost of that silver sun with its dark crown flashed across her vision, floating from left to right before it faded. She didn’t know whether to take it as a sign of hope or not, and set it aside for later. She focused on her other senses.

The murmuring, for instance, had gotten closer.

“She’s waking up.”

Yulla didn’t recognize the voice—feminine, maybe her own age or a little older, but not anyone’s she knew from Kaladim. The others were unfamiliar to her as well, a girl’s and a two children whose piping tones made their genders hard to guess. And then, as she sat up slowly, groaning with the effort, one she knew.

“Yulla? Are you all right?”

“Ember?”

“Yes, it’s me.” She felt his heat as he knelt beside her and took her hand. There was something
wrong
about it, though, swirls of cold eddying through his warmth. The rim of a cup touched her lips; she could feel the seam where it had cracked and been glued back together again. Was it from one of the heaps of furniture she’d seen last time she was here?

“Drink. The squat little witch left a bucket of water at the top of the stairs a while ago. I don’t think the others knew she was doing it, the way she looked.”

Siwa.
Yulla sipped greedily. With everything else, her parched throat had been at the bottom of her list of worries. The water was warm and flat, but it might as well have been nectar for how much better it made her feel. She wondered if this gesture—of humanity? Kindness? Guilt?—on Siwa’s part meant the witch-woman could be reasoned with.

“Ask her if she saw him.” This was the same voice that had noticed her waking up. She turned her face this way and that. The echoes bouncing off the cavern’s walls made it hard to tell exactly where the speaker stood.

“Saw who?”

“Our brother,” said Ember. “They took him away from us a couple of hours before they threw you down. It’s... You’ve been out nearly a day. He hasn’t come back.”

“Something’s wrong with her eyes,” said the girl. “Ask her what’s wrong with her eyes.”

Ember’s fingers were a gentle pressure against her chin. She let him tilt her head left and right, up and down. Judging by his breath on her cheek, he was close enough to kiss—if they hadn’t been prisoners of the witch-women, that was, or surrounded by his siblings. “What happened?”

“Vedra caught me. She made me stare at the eclipse.” From all around her came the hiss of water thrown on fire, even from Ember. “I’m all right. It doesn’t hurt.” That wasn’t entirely true. Her eyes felt grainy, like she’d peered into a sandstorm’s fury without a veil to protect her. It was nothing beside her other injuries, or the cold that was working its way into her bones and making them ache. She shifted closer to Ember, but even when he put his arm around her shoulders, it didn’t warm her up. “Why is it so cold down here?”

“It’s that glass up above us, I think. I feel cold air coming down from it sometimes. And the leashes, too. They’re keeping our heat at bay.” Agony tinged his words.

Yulla twisted around and touched the collar around Ember’s neck. It felt leathery, stiff. Beneath it, she felt his heat, and those strange surges of cold. She had to pull away after a moment to keep from being singed, but not before she found the place where the collar fastened. “Maybe I can cut them off of you.”

“No.” This was the first girl’s voice, the one who sounded a little older than Kell. “I still don’t think she should touch us.” Feet shuffled over to her, and heat suddenly bloomed, just above Yulla’s right shoulder. “Can you feel this?”

It got uncomfortable quickly, like she’d stepped too close to Hatal’s brick oven. The warmth was pleasant at first, then began climbing into the realm of pain. “Yes, it...” She shifted away before it could burn her like a brand. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s what I thought.” The female voice withdrew. “We can’t...” Her next words weren’t actually
words
at all. It was the roar of a campfire, the
pop-hiss
of a match freshly struck. “I don’t know the word.”

It’s the language of fire.

“Dampen?” supplied Ember.

“Right. Yes. Their spells are keeping us from just... melting this place down to slag, but we can’t control it, not all the way. We won’t hurt you from a distance, but you can’t get close long enough to get these off.”

“I can try. I can touch Ember.”

The crackle of dry tinder catching.

Ember’s grip on her hand tightened, then relaxed. “My sister—call her, uh, Char—thinks we should keep away from humans.”

“It’s how it’s always been,” said Char. “And for good reason.”

“We’ve been over this—”

“Yes. You saved her, she saved you. To what good? Here you are anyway, and she’s been through Mother only knows what.”

“I’m
right here,
” said Yulla. It annoyed her when Kell talked about her like she wasn’t present, and suddenly Char reminded her of her sister. She pushed away from Ember and climbed gingerly to her feet. Somehow she managed not to hiss as her muscles protested the motion. Turning to face the direction of Char’s voice, she hoped she didn’t look the fool. “If your brother’s still alive up there, they’re hurting him. I’ve seen what they did to one of our priestesses so they could trap all of
you.
They want to draw down Mother Sun herself. It’s going to take more than a bit of bloodletting.”

The image of Anur’s ruined arms came to her unbidden, and with it the priestess’ plea:
Promise me you won’t go in the other ritual room. Promise me you won’t even open that door.
She was suddenly glad she couldn’t see the leashes, as suspicion wormed its way through her gut. What
had
the witch-women done to Anur’s poor dead husband Ishem? She remembered how casually Amara had chatted with Siwa while they were stealing the priestess’ blood; could the woman be so unfeeling as to

(
flay him
)

(
nononono
)

She shied away from the thought, but not before she remembered one of the more gruesome Brigand Queen stories, where the Scourge of the Seven Sands allied with a warlock who bound his enemies with ropes made of human skin. Abba had refused to read it to them; Yulla had only heard the story once, when Kell stole his book of tales and read it to her by candlelight. The girls hadn’t slept for days afterwards.