Page 69 of All the Wandering Light

I touched Tem’s arm. He was hunched forward, his face reddened. Beneath that, though, there was a grayish tinge to his skin.

“Did they hurt you?”

He shook his head slightly. “It’s not that.”

I wrapped my arm around his shoulders, and he leaned his head against mine. Lusha, to her credit, didn’t speak, though I could sense the urgency radiating from her.

“The strangest part is,” he murmured, “I’m not that surprised.” He drew back. He was smiling, but it was a sad thing, as gray as the rest of him.

I didn’t have to ask what he meant. Tem had never fit. Overlooked and ignored by the villagers, including his own father, he had never seemed part of Azmiri, despite rarely setting foot outside the village boundaries.

“I don’t want to be like them,” he said.

“You’re not.” My voice was fierce. “You’re nothing like them. Just because you share their magic—that doesn’t mean anything.”

“The magic—” Tem faltered. “I don’t know how I did that.”

“Your powers must have been bound by the emperor’s spell, just like River’s were. At least partly.”

Tem swallowed. “What I did felt—wrong. Is that how Azar-at’s magic feels? Wrong?”

“It’s not the same,” I said. “Your magic isn’t wrong. It’s part of you, and I refuse to believe that any part of you is wrong.”

His expression lightened a shade. “Including my two left feet?”

“Besides that.”

He was quiet for a long moment, his gaze distant.

“I’ve always wondered who my mother was,” he said. “Was she one of the witches who attacked those soldiers in the Amarin Valley last year? Or set Jangsa on fire? All those people . . .”

There was nothing I could say to that. I just kept my arm around him until he drew a long breath.

“All right,” he said. “I can keep going. But where are we going?”

“The Three Cities,” Lusha said without hesitating. “Kamzin’s original plan is the best we have. We take the star to the emperor. We tell him everything we know about River, about their plans, everything. Hopefully his shamans can use the star to recast the binding spell before the witches attack the Three Cities.”

“But how will we get an audience with him?” Tem said. “I doubt his guards will be eager to listen to us.” It was an understatement. In our torn and dirty clothing, our haggard appearance, we could pass for beggars. My face was chapped and sunburned and frostbitten. My tangles had tangles. We had no fresh clothes, no money. The emperor’s guards wouldn’t let us near the palace.

“I’ll figure something out,” Lusha said. Biter croaked, as if in agreement. Several ravens had settled in the trees around us, perhaps having tired of pecking and clawing at the soldiers. A shiver crawled down my back as I felt their eyes on me.

“Lusha,” I said, “where did you learn that trick with the ravens?”

She blinked at me. “I didn’t. It was Biter.”

“Biter.” The raven croaked again at the sound of his name. He hopped onto Lusha’s shoulder and plucked a twig from her hair. The intelligence in his gaze was eerie—was this the first time I had noticed it? Biter was Lusha’s lifelong familiar, as Ragtooth was mine, his presence as mundane and unquestioned as an old footpath. But what did we really know about familiars and their powers? Very little—Biter had shown that tonight. The myriad dangers we had faced since leaving Azmiri had brought to light more than just Tem’s abilities.

Distant shouts reached my ears. The soldiers had found our trail. Lusha made an impatient gesture, and we ran on.

Twenty-Three

WE ENTERED THE Three Cities under cover of darkness.

The roads climbed and descended, twisted and turned over the hilly ground, nearly causing me to lose my normally unfailing sense of direction. There was only the glow of a passing traveler’s lantern—or dragon, if they could afford one—to illuminate our way, that and the patches of light spilling from mansions and well-kept shops.

We were exhausted. In the two days since we had escaped the Fifth Army, we had barely rested, stopping only occasionally to snatch our sleep in shifts. On the second day, Tem, who looked like a wisp of his former self, had begun to stumble—eventually I had taken his arm in mine and steered him through the forest while he leaned his weight on me.

As Lusha was the only one of us who had visited the Three Cities, she led the way through the winding, hilly streets. I was only too happy to let her—I felt more intimidated by the city than I ever had by the height of a mountain, or the darkest depths of a forest. Every dwelling loomed large, swollen with impossible luxury.