“Oh, it’s glaringly clear for those who have become attuned to the machinations of this plane. Within your thinking mind, my intentions are as clear as dawn.”
“I know nothing of your intentions.”
“Quell your suspicions, sister. You are the tether that binds me to the savior of my lineage. I would not destroy you, nor your search, in this vital hour.”
One by one, Nuhra’s suggestions and half-concealed truths condensed into a chilling, logical chain. It was never about Anna and never had been.
It was Ramyi.
“She won’t serve you,” Anna whispered.
“Serve me?” Nuhra threw her head back with laughter; the gesture was explosive, bordering on nonsensical, from a source of such composure. “There is no lust for power in my heart, Kuzalem. I seek to shelter the Starsent and nurture her, nothing more. I am her supplicant.”
“Forgive me if I doubt your kindness.”
“The Kojadi slumbered for millennia, lost to the ravages of those who could not endure or sustain their ways. But once again, their divinity has returned to this world. She will bring about a new age.”
Anna glared at the trailcarver, keenly aware of the tremors leaking out across her lips and nostrils. “Volna already has her.”
“A splintering of it, yes,” Nuhra said. “But I cast off the shackles of their ways long ago. Whatever shelter they could once offer to the Moraharem has fallen away. Now, my sacred task is clear: I must cleanse the mind of the Starsent.”
In spite of Nuhra’s fervency, Anna detected an undercurrent of something ardent and honest. For a moment she gazed beyond the tales she knew of the woman, beyond the blood that had surely been washed from smooth hands, beyond the stagnant rot of the city and its incursion into her essence. “What makes you think she would accept your instruction?”
“You are a being of light, Kuzalem, but your breed drives out every shadow that it touches. She was woven from darkness. What could you know of her world?”
Anna stared into her cup.
“I would still her bleeding mind,” Nuhra explained. “You may not understand our ways, but you know the fate of animals beyond taming. Give my lineage a chance.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Then the butchers will do their work.” Nuhra gently sipped her tea, studying Anna’s eyes over the rim of the porcelain.
Anna lifted her own cup for the first time. It rattled against her lips and the anise tea was cold, bitter. As with all things, whether through volition or the command of existence, there came a point of relinquishment. Ramyi was no longer her pupil, her cherished kin. By now, she wasn’t even a girl: The Starsent was as immune to Anna’s sway as the cosmos itself. Several moments passed before Anna realized she’d drained her cup.
“What stirs your mind, Kuzalem?”
“I have no guarantee that you won’t use her for your own ends,” Anna whispered. “Just like everyone else.”
“Am I a beast to you?” Nuhra asked, refilling Anna’s cup with uncanny precision.
“Everybody wants power. And if they don’t want that, then they want to destroy. But everyone wants something, and it damns us all in the end.”
“What do you want, then?”
Anna nestled her trembling hands in her lap. “I want this world to be purified.”
“By whatever means,” Nuhra added.
She let the screeches of the Howling Wall fill the ensuing silence. “Yes,” she said at last.
“The Starsent is the survival of our lineage,” Nuhra said, glossing over Anna’s reply as though she’d taken it for granted. “I would see my bones crushed and my mind obliterated to ensure her path in this world. Do you sense my heart, Kuzalem?”
“You can’t prove such devotion.”
“Ah, but you have the means,” she said, loosening the wrap around her neck. The flesh was stretched taut, yet supple, crawling with a flurry of briar-like sigils. “Dissolve my ambitions, sister, and the core of my being will remain. Let the Breaking affirm my truths to the highest masters of this plane.”
Two swift knocks rattled the door.
“We’ll be along shortly,” Nuhra called, keeping her attention fixed on Anna.
The trailcarver’s gaze was mesmerizing, rife with the steadfast faith and fear she’d cultivated over a lifetime in ritual chambers. To such an adherent, death could only be seen as an impediment. Her true path was assured, predestined, a ceaseless progression from seed to sapling to towering oak.
With a gentle nod, Anna reached into the folds of her robe.
* * * *
Nothing definite could be ascribed to the Breaking aside from its mechanism. A lone circle, formed with one flawless sweep of the blade, unwound a lifetime of separation. That was how Anna had described it to her disciples, at least, as the Kojadi tomes held no mention of such things. It sparked revelations about the defilements of a being’s old ways, about the harm they’d thrust upon those that they once considered foreign by flesh alone. And in that fateful moment, when the mind bore the weight of horrible knowing, there was no telling what might happen.
Anna had seen hired blades hang themselves from attic rafters. She’d watched concubines chant sacred words for days at a time, and farmers run to their forsaken children, and killers strip themselves bare, offering their garments and ill-gotten salt to the lowliest beggars of their city.
But Nuhra had already been on the cusp of awakening.
Emptiness gazed into her and she gazed back in wonder.
“Will she be able to guide us?” Andriv asked. He was peering through the sliver of the open doorway, examining Nuhra like an animal stalking the confines of its cage. The woman knelt by a bare, pitted wall, staring blankly into some realm that few could hardly envision. “She’ll return to us. Won’t she?”
Anna said nothing, because she did not know. Yet she was certain of one thing: Despite the appearance of a woman, Nuhra was no longer there. They were looking upon a being without a given name, without memories it could claim as its own, without the host of delusions that had dictated its former path.
“Can we trust her, Kuzalem?” Andriv asked.
“If we couldn’t before,” she replied, “we can now.”
“Does she not seek the Starsent?”
“Soon enough, we’ll learn precisely what she seeks. We should turn our attention to more pressing matters.” She moved to the threshold of the neighboring chamber and took stock of its dim, candlelit space. Bodies shifted under thick sleeping covers, arranged in rows that bore an unsettling resemblance to linen-shrouded corpses. Konrad and the tracker—Lukas—sat near a beaded rug, slumped over a table and its horde of charts. She heard them murmuring about something, exchanging snappy bouts of river-tongue, but hidden words no longer troubled her. Now the world’s terrors were raw and plain. “Andriv, are you certain she’s there?”
The brother moved to her side. “Beyond question. Even the Gosuri herdsmen confirmed as much.”
“Men will say anything for salt and broth in their bellies.”
“One of Nuhra’s cadre flew over the area just before the storm descended,” Andriv replied. “He marked a safe house near the western wadis. It was exactly where the tracker claimed it would be.”
“Lukas.”
“Kuzalem?”
She shook her head. “Sleep in the refuge of the Pale Crescents, brother.