Page 98 of All the Wandering Light

I sprinted up the grand stone staircase, past a pair of royal shamans clothed in their traditional red chubas. One called after me, no doubt startled by my wild appearance, but I ignored her.

Above the main floor of the royal observatory, which was already higher than much of the rest of the palace, were several tiered floors ringed by balconies. Instead of going inside, I leaped to grasp the edge of the sloping roof and hauled myself up, first slinging an elbow over the edge, then a knee, until I was able to roll my body onto the roof. My skirt caught on a nail and tore. The curved tiles were slippery, but I had clung to ice sheerer than this, and clambered up them with little difficulty. I repeated the same process to reach the third-story balcony, and the one above. There I paused, glancing into the observatory’s inner sanctum. It had no windows or walls, its structure supported by pillars of whitewashed stone. A young man sat on the floor next to a telescope, head bent over a scroll. Incredibly, the man seemed to have no idea what was happening to his city. But, I realized, it hadn’t been fifteen minutes since the witches attacked the palace, though it felt much longer. And this high in the observatory, you were cut off from the world below.

I felt a pang. There was something in the young man’s attitude of absorbed attention, the fall of hair across his face, that reminded me of Tem. Where was he now?

I reached the observatory’s roof in less than a minute. I leaned forward on my hands, which trembled slightly from gripping the sloped tiles, breathing hard. The breeze lifted the hair off my neck and stirred my dress. I had almost forgotten I was wearing it. The fine fabric was stained now with smudges of roof dirt, and the hem was torn where it had caught on a tile.

Smoke wafted past, and I turned. The fires dotting the city were more numerous now, though they hadn’t consumed more than a handful of buildings—but they would, if left unchecked. I swallowed, thinking of the ruins that stood on the outskirts of Azmiri, the stone still warm to the touch after years of snow and rain.

Something sparked at the edge of my vision, colder and brighter than fire. I turned and found myself face-to-face with a girl.

A girl with my face.

I shrieked and nearly tumbled backward off the roof. The girl grabbed me by the arm, pulling me back to equilibrium.

“I’ve seen you before,” I whispered.

The girl only looked at me. She was wearing a red dress now—identical to mine—but before, she had worn a chuba. My chuba. I pictured her bending over me in the tent in the Ash Mountains, and then in the forest, her eyes luminous in the dark.

I had thought I was going mad. Yet she stood before me now, flesh and blood, with identical smudges on the front of her dress, as if she were my mirror image.

“What are you?” I said.

She smiled faintly at that, and held out her hand. Hesitating, I took it.

Light flared, spilling out from our joined hands. I jerked back in shock, and it flickered and died.

“You’re—” I took a step back, realized I was balanced on a precarious, slick roof, and stopped. “How is this possible?”

“I came up here to see if they would take me back.” The girl was gazing up at the stars. Her voice was like mine, but fragmented, strangely wavering. “But they can’t hear me, and I don’t have the strength to make the trip.”

I forced myself to speak through my shock. “I found you. Is that why—is that why you look like me?”

“I suppose so.” The girl was still staring at the sky. “I don’t remember what I used to look like. The first person I saw after I fell was you. So that was the form I took, whenever I felt like seeing the world through human eyes again.”

“You vanished,” I said. “When I saw you before, you vanished.”

“I was frightened,” she said. “I didn’t understand what had happened to me. I’m sorry.”

She seemed so downcast that I said, “It’s all right. No one could blame you for being afraid.”

“I never used to be afraid,” she said sadly. “Please don’t let that red-eyed man use my power again.”

I swallowed. My thoughts whirled. I wished more than anything that Lusha was here—calm, self-assured Lusha, who would certainly have some logical explanation for this. “What’s your name?”

Her brow furrowed. “I don’t know. That was . . . a long time ago.”

She sounded so forlorn that I reached out and touched her hand. Her skin was as cool as the night air, but she was solid, substantial. Not a ghost.

Light flared again when I touched her, but after a few seconds, it faded to a soft glow.

“That’s better.” She sounded relieved. “I feel stronger when you touch me. Almost as if I could make it back.”

“No, you—” I paused, drawing my hand back. The girl watched me. “You can’t. Not yet. Please—we need your help.”

She shrugged. “It’s your decision.”

“Is it?”