The Girl of Fire and Thorns Complete Collection (151 page)

I wrap my fingers around it and pull it out slowly, afraid of what I’ll see.

I hold it up to the sun. It’s blue-black now, a huge crack zagging through the center. The back side is smeared with blood. I put my other hand to my navel, my empty navel. It’s monstrously large, sore to the touch, and seeping.

It feels like a camel is standing on my chest, and I can hardly breath. I know this means something, something important. But I can’t think what.

Mara slips an arm around my waist. “You’ve done it, Elisa. This was it. Your act of service.”

“And you lived,” Hector says, his voice dropped and gruff.

I turn around, survey our handiwork. We cleared an enormous area. One spot grows dark with damp, like a blot of ink in the sand. Beside it are my fig tree and a few smaller sprouts, their living green a stark contrast to dry sand and shale. Off to the side is the mountain of sand we removed to reach it all. I stare in awe. I would have killed myself trying to dig it all out alone.

That’s why I didn’t die, I realize with a start. Mistress Jacoma obsessively painted herself into an early grave. Lucián drained his youth carving the Hand of God, which now sits in my throne room at home. I would have driven myself to death too, were it not for my friends. They helped shoulder the burden.

“I think we just saw history being made,” Belén says.

Mara drops to her knees to study my fig tree close up. “We’ve watched Elisa make history all year,” she says, fingering a fragile leaf. “So why this? God wanted an
oasis
? It’s so . . . uninspiring.”

Belén shrugs. “‘The mind of God is a mystery and none can understand it.’ Damián the Shepherd never knew why he was compelled to dig his well. He died long before the well caused an accident that ended a battle. We may never know why Elisa was called to serve in this way.”

“You know what else this means?” Hector says. He gazes down at me with an expression that can’t be interpreted as anything other than smug. “It means everything else you’ve done—starting a rebellion, saving Brisadulce, finding the
zafira
, negotiating peace with Invierne—none of it was your
act of service. Your Godstone didn’t drive you to do all those things. You did them all
yourself
.”

I understand their words but can’t absorb them. The only thing that feels real and true to me right now is that the Godstone no longer pulses inside me. I can’t sense the
zafira
squirming beneath the crust of the world. I won’t be able to call upon its aid to save my home.

I am powerless.

I am ordinary.

PART IV

37

T
HE
urgency of our journey does not abate, but I’m taciturn and reclusive, preferring to take my meals a few strides away, where I can feel a little bit alone. I’m different now. A whole new Elisa. And it seems as though I ought to think it through, learn who I am again, before I’m fit company for everyone else.

One afternoon, when I’m sure no one is watching, I pull my detached Godstone from my pocket. It glimmers dully in my palm, and the fissure through its center snags on my skin. I close my eyes and try to call the
zafira
. Nothing happens. Not even a tickle of power.

I try again in the evening, this time using the pristine jewel I retrieved from Lucero’s altar. Maybe I can be like Storm, a sorcerer with a detached stone. But again, nothing happens. No matter how hard I pray, how firmly I ground myself to the earth, I remain an empty, powerless vessel.

Something must have happened when my stone cracked. I gaze out across the expanse of desert, slitting my eyes against
the glare as wind whips strands of hair against my cheek.
This place is still part of me
, I tell myself firmly, even though it feels as though I’ve been severed from the world.

I feel a hand on my shoulder. “No one thinks any less of you,” Mara says, and I wonder if she spied on my failed attempts. Then she sighs. “But if you need to be unreasonable for a while, go ahead.”

I
am
being unreasonable. But the Godstone has been an inextricable part of me—both my body and my life—and I don’t know how else to be.

“You completed your service and
lived
,” Hector says to me that night as we lie in our tent. “You might not be glad about that, but I am. I’m hugely relieved, to tell you the truth.”

“But I’m powerless,” I whisper.

“Yes, powerless,” he echoes. “Which is why I have no desire to do this.” He kisses my forehead, letting his lips linger. “Which is why I can easily say no to this.” He presses his lips to mine, teases them open, and kisses me long and deep. “And why I am not utterly compelled to do this.” He yanks my body against his, and his hand slips under the hem of my shirt. “Do you see, Elisa?” he says, his voice dark. “How little power you have over me?”

The next morning I take breakfast with everyone else.

Exhausted and saddle sore, with sand creeping into crevices I didn’t realize I had, we reach Brisadulce in a record two weeks. Gloriously high walls blend seamlessly into the desert landscape. Were it not for the steady stream of traffic in either direction, you’d never know you approached a massive city,
until all of a sudden it rises from the sand, a huge and ancient monolith of stone guarded by tiny toy soldiers who peer from its regular crenellations. I breathe deep of the warm desert air. It smells of camel dung and ocean salt and hot-baked sand, and I love it.

Hector holds up a fist, and we pause well outside the view of the city guard. The laughing, affectionate, talkative Hector has been replaced by the other one, the coldly calculating commander.

He shields his eyes against the sun’s glare and says, “The guard at the main gate is tripled,” he says. “I’m sure it’s the same at the other gates.”

“Could we get in through the harbor?” Belén asks. “We could disguise ourselves as sailors or dockworkers.”

From habit, I place my fingertips to my navel to send up a quick prayer for wisdom and luck, only to find concave emptiness. So I send my prayer out into the nebulous mental space of dreams and hopes and imagination—which might be sending it nowhere at all—while I wonder if God hears. This is what it’s like to be everyone else, to pray and never have a physical assurance that someone is listening.

“We’d be recognized anyway,” Mara says. “We’re too well known to the city watch. The general has eyes everywhere; I’d bet my spice satchel on it.”

“Not me,” Red says. “No one knows me.”

“Surely there’s a secret way in?” I say. “Every ruler has an egress from his own city.”

“There used to be a tunnel,” Hector says. “It collapsed in
the war. I kept meaning to tend to it, but it was low on my list of—”

I wave it off, recognizing his I-have-failed-to-protect-you tone. “We’ll find another way. What about the sewers? They lead to the cliffs and the sea, right? Are they climbable?”

Mara groans. “Sewers. Caves. Why does it always have to be sewers and caves?”

Hector rubs at his chin. “It’s possible. They are slick and dangerous. But our biggest obstacle would be the surf just below. It’s hard to get close in a boat without getting pounded to death.”

“We need disguises,” Belén says.

Hector shakes his head. “They’re searching everyone who seems suspicious. We can’t risk it. If they search us, we’ll be recognized for sure.”

“I have an idea,” I say. Triumph fills me.
I have an idea
. This is my only lasting power.

They all turn to me. Belén grins.

“The monastery is open to the public,” I say. “We’ll send Red to Father Nicandro. Ask him to bring us priests’ robes and escort us into the city. We’ll pose as visiting clergy from . . . Amalur. On a pilgrimage to God’s first monastery. No one would dare search priests on a holy pilgrimage.”

“It’s a good plan,” Hector says.

“I prefer it to sewers,” Mara says.

“It could be dangerous for the girl,” Belén says. “Her Invierno blood is strong.”

“I’ll do it,” Red says with a lift of her tiny chin. “It’s just
my eyes that make people mean. I have lots of practice hiding them.”

“You’re certain, Red?” I ask. “Brisadulce is a very big, noisy place.”

She shrugs. “I can do it.”

“All right, then.” I crouch down before her. “I’m not going to write this down, in case it’s intercepted, so you must memorize it.”

She nods gravely.

I give her specific directions to the monastery and ask her to repeat them back to me. She does, flawlessly, and I silently vow to find the best possible tutor for the girl and her quick mind. “When you get to the monastery, ask for Father Nicandro. Insist that you have a message for him. He is the head priest, and not everybody has access to him. So whoever you speak with will ask you to tell them the message. Don’t. Your message is for Father Nicandro only. If pressed, say it’s a message from Ambassador Alentín and must be delivered in private.”

Alentín’s name should get her an audience. He is a priest in his own right, as well as the head of Queen Cosmé’s foreign delegation.

“When you are with Father Nicandro, and only then, you will tell him about us and about our need to sneak into the city.”

Her eyes are wide with focus. She mutters to herself, committing what she has heard to memory. On the chance that the priests try subterfuge to get information out of the girl, I add, “I want you to ask Father Nicandro a question to verify that
it is him. Say this: ‘You once met with the queen in the dead of night, in the scribing room, after the watch rang the first hour. How did you make arrangements for this meeting?’ Now repeat it back to me.”

She does, making only one small mistake, so we go over it once more.

I smile. “I snuck a note to him during the sacrament of pain, right before he pricked my finger. He shoved it into his sleeve.” My smile fades. “If the person you speak with does not mention it, he is not Nicandro.”

Red shifts, avoiding my gaze. “It will be hard to hide my eyes once I start talking to people,” she says, and her tone is so apologetic that I bend down to hug her.

“If they notice, they notice,” I say. “Tell them anything you want. Tell them you are island bred and all your brothers have the same eyes, maybe. And I swear to you, Red, after this, if we are successful, you’ll never need to hide your eyes again.”

She hugs me back fiercely, then disengages, draws herself to full height—which is no height at all—and says, “I’m ready.”

Everyone else hugs her next, and no one says it, but we all know it’s for just in case.

She shoulders her pack and trudges down the hill toward the road. We watch her tiny form merge with traffic, and then I only catch glimpses here and there as she weaves her way toward the city entrance.

Hector raises his hand to shadow his eyes and says, “She’s at the gate.”

She is barely a mote in my vision, but Hector has the eyes of a hawk.

“There’s a carriage in the way . . . oh, there she is. The guards have stopped her.” He puts his other hand to his scabbard, as if he can protect her from a distance. “They’re talking to her.”

Mara and I exchange an alarmed glance. “She’s clever,” Mara says. “She’ll think of something, right?”

I nod, my heart in my throat. She’s just a little girl. A sweet, precious child as ardently innocent as my own little prince. Why did I send her on this dangerous errand?

“Still talking,” Hector says. “Lots of back and forth. One just grabbed her pack. He’s looking inside.”

“If they hurt her . . .” Belén says.

“Her hands are on her hips,” Hector says. “I think she’s yelling at them.”

Oh, God. I can just imagine.
“I am Lady Red Sparkle Stone, handmaiden to the queen, and you had better let me pass!
” No, she’s cleverer than that. She knows better. Doesn’t she?

“She’s in!” Hector says, and relief floods me. “They let her go. One of the soldiers snagged her food pouch, though. I’ll kill him.”

We settle down to wait on our hillside overlooking the road and the desert beyond. The sun burns the air until it shimmers, but none of us moves up the hill to take advantage of the shade provided by a few stunted palms there. We stare toward Brisadulce’s massive gate, as if we can summon Red back to us with the force of our collective gaze.