CHAPTER NINETEEN
T AMAR
An angry woman drew her sword as we came through the door. “You’re dead!” she shouted. “How can you be standing here? You’re dead!”
“Yeah, I’m dead, Xanthe,” Lauria said, grinning fiercely. She snatched up a heavy clay pitcher to swing like a club and threw herself toward the other woman.
Xanthe—I remembered her now, from the raid—fell back a step and her eyes went wide. Her free hand moved to her collar. “Stop her,” Xanthe shouted. “Grab her!”
Xanthe had a spell-chain, I realized. Lauria whirled to face it. She thrust out her open hand and for a moment I saw a hand clasp hers. Then the djinn spun in the air, shrinking to a pinprick of light, and plunged into Lauria’s chest like the point of an arrow. Lauria shuddered as it happened, and her eyes closed.
Xanthe raised her sword. “No!” I said, knowing what was happening too late to stop it. Someone brushed past me, and Alibek threw himself between Xanthe and Lauria, holding the sword we’d taken from Zivar’s guard. He caught the edge of Xanthe’s blade with his own sword and threw her back. Lauria opened her eyes, then leapt onto the bed, out of the way. Kyros stood frozen by the bed, held by Zivar’s djinn, and Lauria snatched a spell-chain from around his neck. “Take Xanthe’s sword,” she shouted, and I saw the sword fly through the air as the djinn snatched it out of her hand. A moment later Xanthe knelt on the floor panting for breath. With Alibek guarding Xanthe, Lauria jumped down off the bed and faced Kyros. “Where is my mother?”
“He can’t talk,” Zivar said. “Should I release him?”
“Yes—No. Wait.” Lauria searched Kyros. She found a dagger and a small knife, but kept looking. “I need to get at his feet,” she said to the djinn. It lifted Kyros up, and she yanked off his boots. Looped around one of his ankles was a second spell-chain, made from gleaming black stones. Lauria held it up and looked it over, a faint smile on her face. She nodded and gave Kyros a knowing look.
“The one he had around his neck was rightfully Zivar’s, I think,” Lauria said, and tossed it to her. She handed Alibek the black one. Kyros’s eyes were open, and I saw fury and despair pass through them as he watched. She searched his other boot, then said, “All right, Zivar. Let him talk. Where’s my mother?”
“Why should I tell you anything?” Kyros asked.
“I don’t know. Do you want us to keep you alive? Or do you want to die? We don’t have a lot of time.”
“Then kill me and get it over with.”
“Not with a sword. We’ll take you up in the palanquin and shove you out.”
Kyros blanched. He opened his mouth silently, then began to stammer. “You have to understand, Lauria, I trusted your mother. I trusted her. I trusted you, too, and both of you betrayed me.”
“What did you do to her?” Lauria whispered.
“As soon as she was brought to me, I—” His voice faded. Then he straightened his shoulders, as much as the djinn would allow, and said, “I took her down to the courtyard, and had it cleared. We sat in the shade. I told her to close her eyes. Then I cut her throat. She died in seconds.”
“I betrayed you,” Lauria whispered. “And you didn’t kill me.”
“I promised myself not to make that mistake again.”
Zivar stepped forward and caught Lauria’s arm, gently. “We need to hurry,” she said. “I think someone’s coming.”
“Have the djinn carry him,” Lauria said. “Stop his mouth again.”
Kyros’s eyes bulged with protest, but no sound emerged. Zivar went out, Kyros carried behind her like a big sack of rice. Xanthe had pressed herself into her corner, as if she hoped we’d forget about her, but Lauria turned. “Stand up,” she said. Xanthe stood. “Alibek, have your djinn hold her still, if you would.”
He twitched the spell-chain between his fingers, and I saw Xanthe go rigid, held by the djinn as Kyros had been.
“She’s Janiya’s daughter,” I whispered.
“She took your mother to Kyros,” Alibek said.
Lauria raised the knife to Xanthe’s throat, and I caught my breath. But Lauria only used the blade to force Xanthe’s head up and make her meet Lauria’s eyes. “You have a master, I see,” Lauria said softly.
“Not a master,” Xanthe said defiantly. “A guest.”
“No wonder you never met my eyes. How many are like you?”
“Few.”
“To whom are your loyalties, really?”
“To the Sisterhood of Weavers!”
“Truly?” Lauria pressed her palm to Xanthe’s forehead. “Return to the Silent Lands, lost one, and tell them this: I will never be your tool again.”
There was a moment of silence, then Xanthe swayed, even in the grip of the djinn, as if her legs had suddenly lost their strength.
Lauria put away her knife, took Xanthe’s shoulders, and looked into her eyes. “Do you know why the djinn told you to throw me into the reservoir? Because under the water is a gate to the Silent Lands, and they wanted to force me to the other side. Because if they killed me there, they would have a gate. And they could make spell-chains, and enslave humans to serve them—and not just the other way around.”
Xanthe shuddered, but didn’t answer.
“I live because they failed. But you served them, Xanthe—you served the aerika against our kind. You were their tool. Don’t let that happen again.” Lauria turned away. “Alibek, have your djinn hold her here for a quarter of an hour, without letting her call out. Then have it let her go. Her weight would slow us down, and I don’t have the stomach to kill Janiya’s daughter.”
We went back up to the palanquin. It was even more crowded now with Kyros, but at least we had more djinni to carry us. I wondered what happened to the rogue djinn who showed us where Kyros was—it had disappeared. We pressed inside, and the djinni lifted us up. “Hurry,” I murmured.
“Don’t worry,” Lauria said. “If they follow us and we need some extra speed, we can just unload Kyros.” There was an edge to her voice that made my hair stand up.
“Why do you keep talking about throwing him down, Lauria?” I asked.
“Kyros is afraid of heights. He doesn’t like flying.”
I leaned close and whispered into Lauria’s ear, “I want the Weavers to think that Kyros stole the river chain. If he’s dead, they’ll know he didn’t. It’s possible Xanthe will run away without telling anyone what happened…”
Lauria nodded slowly. “We’ll need to keep him out of the borderland, then. He knows how to go there. They gave me a drug…”
“We’ll put the palanquin down somewhere and see if we can buy some.”
Kyros’s eyes were wide with terror or cold fever. “Unstop his mouth,” I said.
Kyros licked his lips and swallowed. He couldn’t move his head but his eyes traveled from me, to Lauria, to Alibek, to Zivar. Zivar caressed the beads of her spell-chain. She had a faint smile. Alibek’s face was strangely serene. He held the unsheathed sword across his lap. Lauria’s eyes burned with rage, cold fever, and grief.
“May I have some water?” Kyros asked. His voice was scratchy and weak.
“Do we have any in here?” I asked Zivar. “Where did this palanquin come from, anyway? Whose is it?”
Zivar shrugged and dug through a lidded wicker basket. She found a clay jug of water, a clay jug of wine, and a whole roast chicken. Lauria reached for the water jug, but I didn’t want her drowning Kyros with it, so I took it and let him have a swallow, then passed it around. “Anyone hungry?” I asked. I was. The chicken smelled of herbs and crisp skin. Alibek and I each tore off a leg and sat back to eat it. If Kyros was hungry, he didn’t say so.
His thirst only slightly satisfied, Kyros looked from one person to the next. His face grew desperate. He couldn’t hope for help from me, or from Alibek, or from Lauria. I wasn’t sure if he knew who Zivar was, but he wasn’t likely to get help from her, either.
We couldn’t really talk in front of him, though. The weight of the river chain rested against my chest. I had looped it around my neck, and the strands kept bunching up, sliding so that one or two wrapped tightly around my neck. I tugged at it to loosen it. Could I simply summon all of the djinni at once? Let the river just—go? I wasn’t actually sure how to summon djinni with a spell-chain. Did I have to take it out and look at it, or could I put my hand on it to use it? Would I say “djinni—come,” or just think it?
Zivar gave me a secretive smile. “The spell-chains I’ve made have just one aeriko each. It can be sent on any errand and used to do whatever I want. Not all spell-chains are like that. Some aerika are bound to a particular task: to hold up the stones of a temple, for instance. Those aerika can’t be easily summoned away from their task even if you have the spell-chain. You can break the spell by breaking the binding stones. Or, if you’re Lauria, you can touch the aerika and free them that way. That’s what she was about to do when Xanthe pushed her into the water.”
“I see.” I let my hand fall to my side.
Zivar looked at Lauria. “I heard you cry for help after Xanthe pushed you,” she said. “I wanted to kill her. She had hidden spell-chains and used her aerika to hold me still and silent. If she hadn’t, I swear I’d have told my own to rip her heart out, I was so angry.” Zivar shuddered. Her voice had started shaking. “I thought you’d surely drowned.”
Lauria looked up and met Zivar’s eyes. I could see a glint of humor despite her sadness. “Dying to kill Xanthe wouldn’t have done me much good.”
“I was too angry to care,” Zivar said.
“Is anyone following us?” Alibek asked.
“I don’t think so,” Zivar said. “My aerika are supposed to be watching. You could have yours keep watch, too.”
“They might not tell us in time,” Alibek said. “Is there a hammer in here? Can we free the djinni in the river chain now?”
Lauria raised her head again. “I don’t know if we should,” she said.
“You what?” Alibek said.
“Why?” I asked. Janiya had risked her life to keep the river bound, but Lauria?
“I don’t think this is a good time to talk about it,” Lauria said, and jerked her chin at Kyros.
We fell silent. “We’ll find the drug soon,” Zivar said. “In the meantime, if we see anyone coming…” She held out a pair of pincers like she’d used to twist wire. “You could probably break the stones with this, if you had to.” She gave them to me. Lauria watched but didn’t say anything.
We put down a few hours later, in a good-sized town. “I’ll go buy the drug,” Zivar said.
“Do we have any money?” I asked.
“Kyros has jewelry,” Lauria said, speaking for the first time in several hours. “Two rings. One has a ruby in it.”
“That would be too noticeable. Besides, we won’t need money. I’m a sorceress; I’ll trade a bit of work for what I need. The rest of you—no, I take it back. Lauria and Alibek, you stay here with Kyros. Tamar, come with me.” She slid out and I followed.
“Wait,” Alibek said. “Are you just going to take the river chain with you?”
“Do you think anyone in this backwater is going to take it from her with me standing right there?” Zivar snapped. “I certainly think I can protect it better than you. Come along, Tamar.”
“Why do you need me?” I asked, falling into step beside her.
“I don’t. But this way we can talk privately.” She waited until we were beyond earshot. “Why do you want to free the river?”
“Because when the rivers return, that’s supposed to free the slaves. All the slaves.”
“Rivers. Not river. And do you really believe that?”
“I think that enough people believe it that if even one river returns…it will happen.”
“Or it won’t, and they will despair because even the prophesied return didn’t help them.”
“You may be right.” The necklace had wrapped itself tight around my neck again. I tugged at it. “But it’s the best I can do.”
“I have seen the northern great river where it’s bound,” Zivar said. “Lauria has, too. It’s bigger than you realize. If we free it, thousands will die. Didn’t you live near the old course of the river? People you know will be among them.” She lowered her voice. “How many Greeks are you willing to kill to save the Alashi? How many Danibeki?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Well, think about it.”
We were at the edge of the town. A curious crowd was gathering. “I wish to see an apothecary,” Zivar called. There was a nervous shuffle, and then an older man stepped forward.
“I’m the apothecary,” he said. “What do you need?”
“A remedy for sleeplessness. I have trouble sleeping—great trouble. I’ve had a remedy in the past that would put an ox to sleep. Can you prepare it for me, quickly?”
“At once,” he said. “My shop is this way.”
We followed to a cottage. Herbs hung in bundles, and the shelves along the walls held jars stopped with corks. The apothecary brought down a large jug, opened it, then used a funnel to pour thick syrup into a smaller bottle. He corked it and gave it to Zivar with a tin spoon. “One spoonful should do it. Don’t take more than three. If you’ve drunk a lot of wine, take less than you would otherwise.”
“How shall I pay you?”
“My roof leaks near the chimney. If you could have your aeriko patch it, I’d consider it an excellent trade.”
While one djinn did that repair, Zivar had another split firewood in exchange for a pot of stew he’d made for his own dinner, and a cask of wine. We were soon on our way.
“They tricked Lauria into drinking this,” I said, holding up the syrup. “I don’t think we’ll be able to trick Kyros.”
“I think that if he’s given the choice between drinking the syrup and being thrown down from the height, he’ll choose the syrup,” Zivar said with some satisfaction.
“Why do you hate Kyros?” I asked. “Because he held one of your spell-chains?”
Zivar’s eyes flickered. “The spell-chain that Lauria found in his boot,” she said. “He made that. I’m certain of it. Men are not supposed to learn sorcery, but he married a sorceress who failed in her apprenticeship, and I would wager he persuaded her to teach him. Magic…” She shook her head in disgust. “Magic is for women.”
“What about shamans?”
“Eh. They’re nothing to do with me.”
“Why do you dislike men so much?” Even among her servants, there were no men. “I spent years as a concubine, and I don’t dislike all men.”
Zivar sighed. “Do you really insist on a reason? They smell bad. They shed. Some of them have hair on their backs.” She threw up her hands. “They’re men. What more of a reason do you need?”
I would never understand her. I resolved not ever to trust Alibek’s safety to Zivar, and followed her back to the palanquin.
I poured syrup into the spoon and held it up where Kyros could see it. “This will make you sleep,” I said. “Nothing more. Open your mouth.”
Kyros hesitated. I wondered if he feared it was poison. I saw no advantage to poisoning him over killing him some other way, and neither did he, apparently, because he opened his mouth and swallowed it. I dosed him with two spoonfuls, then thought it over and gave him another half spoon. He was bigger than Zivar. His eyes soon took on a glazed look and he fell asleep, drool running from the corner of his mouth onto the cushions.
“It smells like rank feet in here,” Zivar said as the djinni lifted us up.
I sniffed. “I’ve smelled worse,” I said.
“Oh, I’ve smelled worse,” Zivar said. “It still smells rank. Ugh. I wish I’d had the aeriko steal a larger palanquin.”
“Wouldn’t that be heavier?” Alibek asked. “Slower?”
“I don’t think anyone’s following us.”
“Sure they are,” Alibek said. “Even if Xanthe lied or ran and they believe Kyros stole the spell-chain, he’d head in this direction.”
“Maybe.”
“It’s the most likely possibility.”
“Have your aerika seen anyone coming? Mine haven’t,” Zivar said.
“And of course, no aeriko has ever chosen not to see something it was supposed to be watching for,” Alibek said.
“What would you have me do? We could abandon the palanquin and go on foot…”
“I think we need to take care of the spell-chain now,” Alibek said. “We have it. We can break the rocks and free the river, and no one will be able to put it back together.”
“That’s not true,” Zivar said. “We can free the river, but the Sisterhood can just bind it back up again.”
Lauria stirred, but said nothing. “Kyros is asleep now,” I said. “Lauria? You used to say that you wanted to free the river.” I thought about all the people in the path of the water. “Did you change your mind?”
Lauria straightened up and looked around at all of us. “The real reason the Sisterhood bound the northern great river was to hide the gate that leads to the Silent Lands.”
This was not what I had expected her to say.
“You’re going to have to explain that a little more,” Alibek said.
Lauria sighed. “There’s a gate that leads to the Silent Lands—the borderland—the place where the djinni live. It’s a real gate, built out of stones. I found it after Xanthe threw me out of the palanquin. Tamar, you send your spirit through that gate every time you visit the borderland. Zivar, you go through that gate to find djinni when you make a spell-chain. It opens into their world. They have no gate into ours.
“They lured me through because I have a gate in my heart. If they’d killed me on their side, they would have a gate. They could use it to bind us, to make spell-chains that enslave our kind.
“If we free the northern great river, that gate will be exposed. If we leave it, they’ll lure another person like me through to their side. If we destroy it, there will be no more sorcery. Maybe even no more shamans.” Lauria tipped her head back against her cushion and sighed.
“There was a Weaver who believed that Zeus was under the reservoir,” I said. “She was going to break the spell-chain to find him. Janiya stole it to stop her.” I swallowed, thinking about what Janiya had sacrificed to keep the river bound.
“Yes. I heard that story from Xanthe, shortly before she dumped me in. I think the story might have been invented by the djinni, as bait for someone before me. They failed, but the story lives on.”
“If we destroy the gate, what will happen to existing spell-chains?” Zivar asked.
“Bound djinni will stay bound unless they’re freed. If they’re freed, well, there are other gates. I think they’ll find their way back eventually.”
“If the aerika can go back, why wouldn’t I be able to get to the borderland?” Zivar asked.
Lauria shrugged. “Well, I could be wrong. But it’s not easy to get there now. This gate is big and it stays in the same place. If you go there once, you can usually find your way back. And it will be gone.”
No more Sisterhood of Weavers. But no more shamans, either.
“And a lot of people will die,” Lauria said. “The reservoir is huge. All that water, coming down from the mountains…It will go far past its banks. I don’t know how far or fast it will go, but it will be a bad flood.”
“But it wouldn’t just save the Alashi,” I said. “It would save the djinni. The Sisterhood couldn’t enslave them anymore.”
“And it would save us,” Alibek said. “Or—maybe not us, but our children or grandchildren. The djinni came really close to getting Lauria’s gate. There are other people like her out there. They failed with Lauria, but surely they’ll succeed eventually.”
“But thousands of people will die,” Lauria said. Her eyes were shadowed.
“Is there a way to drain it slowly?” I asked.
“If we drain it slowly enough to avoid a flood, that will give the Sisterhood time to stop us. When they realize what we’re after, they’ll guard the gate. Even if they don’t realize what we’re after, I expect they’ll guard the reservoir as soon as they can.”
“Can you try telling the djinni to start letting the water out tonight, and maybe we can break the spell-chain in the morning?” I said. “At least there’d be less water to unleash. Right?”
Lauria still hesitated.
“Why not?” I said. “Even if we decide tomorrow not to break the spell-chain, just the water coming down will make a lot of people think the river has returned.”
“For a time, I thought I was meant to free the rivers,” Lauria said. “I thought I’d been chosen. But that was a lie. That was just the djinni trying to lure me through the gate.” Lauria closed her eyes for a moment, then went on, her voice shaking. “I am afraid that by freeing the northern river I might somehow be making myself their tool again.”
“The rice-eaters wanted you to come through the gate,” Alibek said. “The barley-eaters—surely they want you to destroy it.”
Lauria raised her head slightly and looked at Alibek.
“I always thought the old line about the rivers’ return just meant that we would never be free,” he said. “But now we can make one of them return.”
Lauria looked at Zivar. “You agreed once to let me free the river, but that was before we saw it. And before you knew what it concealed.”
Zivar touched the two spell-chains around her neck. “You would infuriate the Sisterhood,” she said. “And my servants, as well. But—I think I would enjoy that.”
Lauria nodded. “I’ll need to hold the necklace to summon the djinni in it,” she said to me. I untangled the strands and tugged it off. My shoulders felt suddenly much lighter. Lauria held it in her hands and closed her eyes. Usually it was easy to summon a djinn, but this necklace was supposed to keep them where they were. Still, after a bit, I saw the sparkle of a djinn in the darkness of the palanquin.
“Your freedom is at hand,” Lauria said. “But first, I want you to let the water out gradually. Start with a stream. Then let more and more come, faster and faster. Let those who no longer need to hold back water carry it in enormous raindrops to places where it will do no harm, and leave it there. Let two others come here to watch for sorceresses coming toward us—if they catch us, they will take the spell-chain, and you will stay slaves. Can you carry my bidding to the others?”
“Yes,” the djinn said.
“Will they obey the commands given through you?”
“Yes.”
“Then go, and carry out my orders.”
When it was gone, I asked Lauria, “What will happen if someone dies from the water they let out?”
Lauria shrugged. “I don’t know. If they kill me, I guess you’ll get to decide without me whether to break the binding stones. And it will be up to the three of you to break the gate.”
There was nothing to do until morning. Zivar made herself a nest and lay down to sleep. Alibek wrapped one of the silk cushions around his sword and tied it with a ribbon, so that it wouldn’t cut anyone who rolled over in the night. He set it where he could reach it, arranged some more pillows under his head, and closed his eyes. I checked Kyros, who was still breathing, but not moving otherwise, then lay back against some of the pillows. Lauria lay beside me. I heard Alibek fall asleep, and I thought Zivar slept as well, but Lauria was still awake.
“Do you want to kill Kyros?” I asked softly.
“There’s no harm in keeping him alive a bit longer,” she said. “Just in case the plan worked.”
“I suppose,” I said.
“It won’t bring my mother back.”
I had expected to hear rage but Lauria’s voice was worn and quiet.
“Did I ever tell you what my mother did the first time I got into a fight?” she asked.
“No.”
“I was, oh, probably five years old. Maybe six. I fought with a boy down the street, a year or two older than me. He was mixed blood, like me, but everyone considered him Greek because he had a Greek father who actually lived with him. Anyway, I think technically he won the fight but I bloodied his lip and gave him a black eye, and later his mother showed up at our door to demand that my mother punish me for hurting her son. What she wanted was for my mother to summon me downstairs and then beat me in front of her. What I wanted—I was listening, of course, from the upstairs window—was for my mother to stand up for me. I hadn’t started the fight. The boy was older than me, bigger than me! Instead, my mother wept about the difficulty of being a woman alone—she always implied that my father had died in a skirmish with bandits before he could settle down with her—and how she just didn’t know how to handle me, a girl who didn’t act like a proper girl. After a bit the other mother left in disgust. I was relieved, but disappointed.”
Lauria let the spell-chain rest on her stomach. I could see the glitter of the stones, but it was too dark to see her face.
“That was always the way it was. My whole childhood. She always found some way to get me out of trouble, but it was always a spineless way. Always the way with the least risk to her. I guess I assumed…” She broke off and took a harsh breath. “I guess I assumed this meant she’d always find a way to get herself out of trouble. Out of the trouble I got her in.”
“You can’t blame yourself,” I said.
“Of course I can blame myself. She wouldn’t have even been in Penelopeia if it weren’t for me.”
“I met your mother in Penelopeia,” I said. “She sought me out when she heard my name. She was not what I pictured.”
“Other people’s mothers never are.”
“True.” I thought that over, wondering what Lauria would have thought of my mother. “Your mother would willingly have traded her life to save yours. But…she’d have gone to her grave more happily if she’d had one more chance to tweak you for never getting married like a proper daughter.”
Lauria let out a short laugh at that.
“Could you ever have been the daughter your mother wanted?”
“No,” Lauria said. A long pause, then she added, “She didn’t raise me to be that daughter. Even though she always said she tried.”
“Maybe that’s not really what she wanted. Maybe she really wanted you, even if she couldn’t admit it.”
“Maybe.”
“Is there anything you could have done differently to protect your mother?”
“Not gone after Thais. That put me in Kyros’s hands.”
“We wouldn’t have the river chain.”
“My mother’s life, for the river’s?”
“Would she make that trade?” I asked.
“No. Remember, she always looked for the weak way out.”
“But she raised you to choose otherwise.”
“Yes. My mother never would have made the trade, but…it’s not impossible that she would choose for me to make it. So long as I felt properly guilt-stricken afterward.” She fell silent, and after a while, I fell asleep.
I looked for the borderland that night. I wanted to talk to Zhanna or Jaran, to tell them what we had done. Instead, I found myself face-to-face with a djinn. “See,” the djinn whispered, and I felt myself caught in a whirlwind and blown distant. See.
I saw a stone room, and four women shouting at each other in Greek. A bracelet like a coiled serpent lay on its side on the table in front of them. They were all talking at once. I could barely make out what they were saying, but they were talking about Kyros, Lauria, and the river chain.
“Of course the army aims to betray us,” one of them said. “I never doubted this. But they hadn’t the means, until—”
“—surely he won’t dare,” someone else cut in.
“Surely! Surely you won’t assume anything this time!”
“Why go to all the trouble of seizing the karenite if they were going to render it worthless?”
They all started talking again.
“Are they the high magias?” I asked my guide.
Yes.
“Where is Xanthe? Didn’t she report what happened?”
Silence.
Piecing together the conversation, I thought that they did think Kyros had stolen it. They thought that Xanthe had lied about Lauria’s death, and Kyros and Lauria had been working together. “She’s his daughter, after all,” one of them said.
I wanted to find Zhanna or Jaran, but someone was shaking me, dragging me back. It was still mostly dark. “Someone’s coming,” Alibek said.
I sat up. “Are we going to break the spell-chain?”
“How much water remains?” Alibek asked Lauria.
“I don’t think we have time to ask,” Lauria said.
“Put down the palanquin,” Zivar said to her own djinni. “I know you’re going to do it.”
Lauria looked at me. “I’m not going to decide this on my own. But yes. I’ve thought about it, and I think we should do it. It might not be worth the destruction if it were just to save the Alashi or just to free the Danibeki. But it’s also to free the djinni. And to prevent the djinni from ever enslaving us.”
I nodded. So did Alibek and Zivar. Kyros was still sleeping.
“Let’s do it,” I said. “Let’s do it now.”
We put down somewhere on the steppe. The eastern sky was faintly gray. I smelled dry grass and cool air, and felt a rush of longing to be back with the Alashi. Soon.
“Everyone find two rocks,” Lauria said. We were near a rockfall, and I dug out a flat stone, and another I could hold comfortably in my fist. Lauria dropped the spell-chain on the ground and spread it out into a big circle.
“I think it’s best if we space ourselves out and all smash the first stones together,” Lauria said. “On the count of three. Then move on around the circle, breaking the binding stones as fast as we can.”
We took our places.
“Do you want to count?” Lauria asked me.
My mouth went dry and I almost couldn’t speak. “The world will be made new,” I said. Then I raised my stone. “One,” I said. “Two.” In the lantern light, I saw Zivar, Alibek, and Lauria raise their stones, as well. “Three.”
I brought my stone down. I had seen djinni freed this way before, but this time, I thought I heard a clap of thunder as we brought our rocks down. The binding stone shattered to dust under my own rock. I moved quickly to the side, searching for the next karenite bead.
In the twilight, the karenite beads were hard to see. If I wasn’t sure whether a bead was karenite or something else, I smashed it. I had hoped to hear the voices of the djinni—Lauria could hear them speaking when she freed them—but I didn’t. Maybe they were too far away. I could hear my own heart beating, and I could hear the clatter of the rocks against each other.
The sun was rising when we finished. I scanned the sky to our west but couldn’t see our pursuers yet. Lauria took the pincers and snapped one of the links, then started passing the chain through her hand to look for any last pieces of karenite. “Now what?” Alibek asked.
“I dreamed last night about the Sisterhood,” I said. “I saw them arguing over what to do. It seemed like a djinn-sent dream. They believe Kyros did it. I think they think he wants to destroy the gate.”
“We need to keep them uncertain,” Lauria said.
“They won’t be looking for travelers on the ground,” Alibek said. “We could bait them by sending the empty palanquin away—they’d probably never catch up.”
“We have no horses…”
“So? We have feet.”
“We’d have to carry Kyros, unless you think we can wake him up,” Lauria said. “He’d have no reason to try to walk quickly.”
“Sure he would,” Alibek said. “He knows we’ll settle for leaving him dead.”
“The palanquin will only work as bait if they’re looking for a palanquin, rather than the five of us,” Zivar said. “Or the spell-chain.”
My head came up. “They’re probably looking for the spell-chain,” I said. “We could leave it on the palanquin.”
Zivar shook Kyros awake and dragged him out of the palanquin.
“Let’s lighten the load as much as possible,” Alibek said. We took out the wicker basket, the jugs of water and wine, the remaining food, and of course the bottle of syrup and Alibek’s sword. There were cushions and blankets inside, so we pulled all those out, too, leaving silk-covered walls and the rug on the floor.
“All done?” Lauria asked, walking up with the spell-chain bundled in her hands. We nodded. She had coiled the chain, and she set it neatly inside the palanquin.
“Where should I send it?” Zivar asked.
Lauria thought it over. “Casseia, perhaps? It’s where the other great river turns south—perhaps we’d make the Weavers think we meant to free both rivers.” Zivar shot her a narrow-eyed look, and Lauria gave her a shrug. “I still haven’t thought of a way to free that one. But the Weavers won’t know that.”
“We kidnapped Kyros to persuade the Weavers that the army had turned against them,” I said. “Is there some way to send the other half of the message to the army? Let them know that the Weavers are turning on them, and persuade them to break off their own attack and turn on the Weavers?”
“Yes,” Lauria said, and her eyes were suddenly fierce and intent again. “We can send them the old river-chain. And a note.”
We found paper and ink among the goods from the palanquin. Lauria spread out a piece of paper, dipped the pen, thought for a moment, then wrote. She gave her note to Zivar to read. “What do you think?”
Zivar read it aloud. “ ‘The Weavers have turned on us prematurely, but never fear; plans have changed. Their power will shortly be at an end. Move south and ready yourselves. The bandits and the steppe are no longer a concern.’ Why should they believe this?”
“Other than the fact that it’s accompanied by the broken river chain?” Lauria looked Kyros over. “It would help if it were clearly from Kyros, wouldn’t it? Kyros, take off your ring.” She pointed at a ring on his finger—a ruby nearly the size of my thumbnail, set in gold. “We’ll send this along.”
Kyros had been rubbing his eyes, still foggy from the drug. Now he straightened up slightly. “Let me sign the note,” he said.
Lauria narrowed her eyes. “Why?”
“Because you’re right that the Weavers will likely turn on the army now. I’d like them warned.”
Lauria thought that over, then handed him the pen. He dipped it in the ink and carefully signed his name. Lauria blew on the ink gently to dry it, studied the note, then shrugged and tucked the note, the ring, and the broken chain into a silk-lined compartment built into the palanquin.
Zivar murmured to one of her djinn, and the palanquin rose and flew away. Kyros watched it go, then said, “I’m thirsty. May I have something to drink?”
Alibek sent his djinn to fetch water for us, and we had it fill our jug to pass around. We let Kyros drink his fill and eat some of the food. There wasn’t much point in taking him with us if we were going to let him fall dead from thirst on the walk. We gathered up the useful things from the palanquin, bundling them together in knotted blankets and ripped-open silk pillows. I loaded Kyros down with a share of the heavier stuff, then bound his hands. “If you try to run,” I said, “or if you try to hurt us, I will think up a very painful and unpleasant way to kill you.”
“I believe you,” Kyros said, and gave me a grim smile. “I won’t try to run. Or try to hurt you.”
He wouldn’t run or try to hurt us today, anyway, I thought. Tomorrow might be different.
“Why did the Sisterhood of Weavers bind the southern great river?” I asked Zivar. “Do you know? Is it covering anything?”
“I don’t believe so,” Zivar said. “There’s no reservoir, as there is with the northern river. They just diverted it, through a tunnel under the mountains. Perhaps they just wanted water in Persia.”
“Alibek,” Lauria said, “I think you should let me carry the black spell-chain.”
“Why?”
“Because if anyone comes after us, we can use the black chain to kill with. If you gave the order, the djinn might kill you. I think I could avoid being killed. If not, well, I’ll take my chances.”
Alibek pulled the chain over his head and gave it to her. “Who’s the sorceress who made it?”
“Kyros,” Lauria said.
There was a shocked pause. I glanced at Kyros. He did not deny it. So Zivar was right.
“Better start walking,” Zivar said, and we set out.