Page 96 of All the Wandering Light

“Ruler?” I froze. I yanked him around to face me. “Ruler. You? Are you—are you the shadow emperor?”

“Esha thought that the Crown had passed to me. It’s why he wanted me dead.” He seemed to think. “I should have died in the Ashes. The dagger was obsidian. But somehow . . .”

“So what does this mean?” I felt cold. River’s mother was a monstrous figure from dark stories that had terrified me as a child. It should have made me want to draw away from River—instead, I drew closer, more frightened of the spectral figure of my imaginings, which my mind couldn’t match up with him.

“I don’t know.” River smiled, an unexpected flash in the darkness. “But I know Esha will be furious.”

“Can you order him to stop?” I said. “Or, I don’t know, stand in front of an obsidian arrow?”

“I can’t order anyone to do anything. That’s not how the Crown works. You can’t compell a witch—it goes against our nature.”

“Well, what’s the point of it, then?” I felt increasingly desperate. Lusha was in danger, and I was trapped down here in some impossible shadow dungeon, unable to reach her.

“I suppose we’ll see.” River drew me forward, and then we were rising—a cloud of shadow formed beneath our feet, lifting us. I gripped River’s hand so tightly it turned white. I didn’t trust the shadows of the sky city, which clung to me like spiderwebs. But the shadows River had summoned didn’t seem inclined to ensnare me—they were as soft as spring grass, and cool against my bare calves.

We rose higher. If we were still somehow beneath the palace, we should have struck the floor. But the floor was gone, and we rose through the shadow tower until the light of the banquet hall flickered through its walls. River placed a hand on one of the shadowy stones, murmuring something, and they parted, forming an uneven doorway. I stepped through onto the polished marble of the emperor’s palace, my legs trembling.

There was no one near. We were at the far end of the banquet hall, close to the corridor that led to the libraries. My thoughts flashed to Tem.

“Kamzin.” River’s voice was low. I turned.

Shadow staircases hung suspended in midair. A pagoda of darkness reared up before us, its door half-buried in the marble floor, as if the palace were a tide in which it was sinking. There was also the edge of what looked like a wall, tall and crenellated, jutting at a haphazard angle from the outer wall of the palace. It seemed to continue on the other side.

A scream rang out, and I was running. I didn’t know who had screamed—it didn’t matter. I dodged an empty door frame that hovered at head level and seemed to lead to nothing but more shadow and the hint of something vast, a room larger than the banquet hall.

“Lusha!” I yelled. I circled around a strange half tower, and suddenly there was a knot of a dozen soldiers firing arrows into a sea of armor and shadow.

It was chaos. I couldn’t make out the emperor—perhaps his guards had managed to ferry him from the hall. I couldn’t see Lusha or Esha. Scarcely a yard from where I stood, a witch fell writhing to the floor, an arrow in her back.

“What are you doing?” A guard seized my arm, and I recognized River’s friend. “I thought you left with the emperor. Get back!”

He would have dragged me bodily from the hall, but River had caught up to us. The young man dropped my arm. “Dyonpo Shara, I meant no—”

“Where is the emperor?” River interrupted.

“He’s been escorted to safety while we deal with these creatures.”

My gaze swept the hall. It was clear that the soldiers were not “dealing” with anyone—their numbers had swelled, but so had their dead. And more shadow-figures had joined the witches.

River seemed to be eyeing a tower that loomed over the rest—it went right through the ceiling of the hall. I wondered briefly what the palace must look like from outside, with strange shadowy architecture jutting out like appendages.

River raised his hand. There was a sound like the crack of thunder, and the tower split in two. The upper half toppled toward the crowd of witches and guards, who scattered, shouting. When the tower struck the floor, it exploded into tiny shadows like shards of glass, which then dissolved into nothing.

There was an eerie silence.

Everyone was staring at River now. The guards, including his friend, had fallen back, an uncomfortable echo of his earlier reception at the banquet. But it wasn’t respect in their faces now. It was fear. River didn’t look any different—not to my eyes, at least. But it was clear, from the expressions on the guards’ faces, that they were no longer oblivious to the magic radiating from him.

Esha stepped out of the crowd. In one hand, he held the star, and with the other, he held on to Lusha, who, to my infinite relief, seemed unharmed. Her eyes fixed on mine, and I saw my own relief reflected there.

Lusha gave Esha’s hand a gentle tug. He glanced at her, triumph still glowing in his red-rimmed eyes. She gave him a steady look, then swung one of the guards’ obsidian daggers toward his heart.

Her aim was good, but Lusha was not left-handed, and when Esha dodged with a hiss she couldn’t recover quickly enough. She fell back, dagger raised.

“Kamzin,” she said, her voice clear and carrying, “command it to stop.”

I could only stare. “What?”

“The star. It will listen to you. You found it, and that’s—”