She could see the spill of light from the inn on the other side of the lake, a sprawling hulk amid the snow.
Dakar halted suddenly and let out a low whine. He turned his head toward the flat, snowy expanse of the lake. The teeth of mountains called the Cage reared up behind the lake, chewing at the dark sky. Scraggly everpines peppered the mountains.
Zezili kneed her dog and whistled at him to move forward. He twitched his ears toward the lake.
“What’s out there?” she asked, patting the dog on the shoulder.
The dog yelped.
The quiet stretched. Dakar yelped again; a cry that echoed.
“What-” Zezili began.
She felt the air shudder. Heard a great
whumping
sound, like a massive ripple of air.
Then a dull thumping came from the lake.
Once. Then again.
She doubted her hearing. Was it some kind of echo? The echo of their passing?
Zezili dismounted. She knotted Dakar’s reins to a tree. She strode down a snaking path to the lake, her coat flapping behind her. She heard ice cracking. The sound rolled across the bowl of the lake.
Outside the cover of the trees, the flat lake caught the moons’ light like a mirror. The lake glowed milky blue. Zezili walked out onto the ice. It creaked beneath her. She peered across the lake and saw a fissure opening at its center. The snow trembled. A chunk of ice broke up from the lake and skittered across its surface.
Zezili moved faster, toward the heart of the lake. “Who’s out here?” she yelled. Her voice echoed, loud and eerie.
Something was coming out of the lake.
Zezili crouched where the cracks in the ice originated, and saw hunks of ice floating on open water. She got down onto her belly and slid forward. She saw a pale, clawed hand striking at the black water.
Then a head emerged, and a torso.
There was a woman in the lake.
Zezili should not have been surprised, not here, on the glowing ice of this twice-cursed lake, not after everything that had happened since she got the Empress’s order to start killing dajians, but she was struck dumb with horror as she watched the woman pull herself from the icy depths of the frozen lake, hand over hand, from freezing water to powdery snow.
The woman gazed up at her, not so much a woman, Zezili realized, as a young girl. She was dark of hair and eye.
Zezili took her under her arms and dragged her forward onto the ice. “Stay flat on your stomach,” Zezili said. “Don’t stand or you’ll drown us both.”
Zezili grabbed the girl’s arm and pulled her away from the broken ice floe. She dragged her clear of the long cracks around the scar. Then she stood and took the girl with her. The ice continued to groan. Zezili’s stomach knotted. The inn was not far, but if she, too, fell in the ice, she’d have to leave the girl behind.
She huffed out a sigh of relief when she stepped onto solid ground again. She picked up the girl, surprised at how light she was. The girl clung to her like a sodden puppy. Zezili glanced over her shoulder at the wound in the ice. A soft wind buffeted her face, drew the clouds back over the moons. The lake fell into darkness.
By the time she reached Dakar, it had begun to snow again.
The girl’s eyes fluttered.
“Where did you come from?” Zezili asked.
The obvious answer, of course, was the lake. But that was absurd. Zezili pulled off her coat and wrapped it around the girl. In the darkness, it was difficult to make out her features. If she bore some resemblance to a family Zezili knew, it might give her a clue as to why she was out here. Most likely, she was some desperate person trying to murder herself. Zezili had no patience for that sort of thing. Death always came soon enough.
Zezili commanded Dakar to sit. She pulled the girl up in front of her and wrapped her arms around her. She was a little thing, no more than a hundred pounds.
The girl murmured something.
“What’s your name?” Zezili asked. “Who’s your family? Did someone push you into the lake?”
The girl didn’t respond. Zezili whistled for Dakar to increase his pace. The girl had begun to tremble violently, which was good. When she stopped shivering, things would be bad.
It took another twenty minutes to get to the inn. Zezili called out for help, and a meaty innkeeper came to the door carrying a flame fly lantern.
“Found a girl in the lake,” Zezili said. “You have a physician here?”
“No, but I have a tirajista,” the innkeeper said.
“That’s not much help.”
“She is if you’ve brought something from the lake. Come in.”
Zezili tied off Dakar and took the girl into the inn. The innkeeper led her up to a room that already had a fire lit. Zezili lay the girl down in front of the hearth. One of the innkeeper’s dajians came up to help her strip off the girl’s wet clothes.
In the light of the fire, Zezili noted that the girl was a bit dark for a Dorinah, and she had the low forehead and broad cheekbones of a Dhai, covered in strange puckered scars, as if someone had taken an ice pick to her face. Not all with Dhai features were dajians; if this girl’s mother had claimed her as Zezili’s had, she would be free. Being marked like that made self-murder an even more likely reason for her jaunt across the lake, though. When they undressed her, Zezili saw old bruises mapping across her legs and torso, as if she’d been abused by some foul master. A runaway dajian was a more likely scenario than some parajista catching her up in a vortex and throwing her in the lake.
They wrapped the girl in a large blanket.
“Is this the girl?” said a woman at the door.
She was an older woman, forty at least, with long, lustrous black hair and the same broad Dhai cheekbones as the girl on the floor. But this woman was more clearly Dorinah, pale and gray-eyed, with a high forehead and bold nose.
“Found her in the lake,” Zezili said. “You’re the tirajista?”
“I am,” she said, and waved away the dajian. She knelt beside the girl. Put her hands to the girl’s cheeks.
Zezili heard her mutter something, and a warm vortex of air moved over Zezili’s hands where they met the girl’s body. Zezili pulled away. That was a parajista trick, not a tirajista. As Zezili watched, the water on the blanket evaporated, and the girl’s skin began to regain some color.
“I came here looking for my husband,” Zezili said. “He thought I was coming to Lake Morta.”
“And why would you do that?”
“To find Isoail Rosalia. Are you her?”
“May I ask who you are?”
“Zezili Hasaria.”
“Your reputation is well known.”
“My mother is Livia Hasaria.”
“Of course,” the woman said. “I’m Isoail, but we’ve seen no men here since the leaves fell. What did your husband want with me?”
“I expect he thought to find me here. My mother recommended you.”
“For what, may I ask?”
“She said you’re the best jista in the country.”
The girl on the floor opened her eyes. Zezili glanced down at her. “You alive?” Zezili asked. “You best get your papers together. What were you doing out there?”
But the look on the girl’s face reaffirmed that she had no papers. Zezili had seen that look of terror on many dajian faces. She sighed. “Listen, girl–”
“Mam,” the girl said in Dhai. Zezili realized she was looking not at her but at Isoail. “Mam!” The girl grabbed at Isoail’s dress. “I promised.”
Isoail took the girl’s wrist as if to push her away.
“I thought you were dead,” the girl said. “But I promised I’d find you. I promised. I did it. I’m not a coward, Mam.” She began to weep.
“Is she yours?” Zezili asked.
Isoail shook her head. She pulled the girl’s fingers free and said, in Dorinah, “I don’t know this dajian. Call the enforcers.”
After the girl was sedated, Zezili went downstairs for a drink and information.
It was still early enough that the innkeeper had hot food on order. Zezili ordered some and asked the innkeeper if an unescorted man had arrived at the lake.
“Man? Rhea’s tears, no,” the innkeeper said. “You pursuing a runaway? I didn’t think that was up to the legion.”
“He belongs to me,” Zezili said. “I’d pay well for his return.” She gave his description. “You hear anything of him, contact me at the Hasaria estate outside Daorian. Easy enough to get post there.”
“I’ll remember,” the innkeeper said, “though I expect you’ll be disappointed. The weather’s worse this year than usual. I’m not sure a housebound boy could survive it.”
“He had some currency,” Zezili said, and wanted to add that he was very pretty, but the idea of him using his prettiness to survive angered her, so she let that go unsaid.
“I’m sure he’ll turn up,” the innkeeper said. Zezili didn’t like the sympathy in her voice.
After eating, Zezili ordered a warm brandy.
“Anything else before I go to bed?” the innkeeper asked. “I’ve given you a room on the second floor, end of the hall. There’s a shared privy. You have your own sink, though.”
“Thanks,” Zezili said, and slipped the key into the pouch at her hip. “I’ll be fine for the night.” She found a broad, comfortable chair by the fire in the dining room and sipped the brandy. She was at Lake Morta. Anavha was not. She was uncertain what to do next except drink.
The innkeeper left her a lantern by the chair and put out the rest of the lights in the common room. She bolted the door. Zezili wondered if she had any security out here. Surely she had some hulking swordswoman around to deal with rabble?
Zezili sat in the semi-darkness, drinking and considering her next move. A sane woman would go back to Monshara. A sane woman would forget about a runaway man. But every time she thought of Anavha lost, her chest hurt and her vision blurred.
As she watched the banked coals of the fire flake and fade, she heard a sound from outside. She thought at first it was just the wind, but the wind became words. A muttering voice. Clunking on the porch. Then rapping on the door. More muttering.
Zezili went to the window.
“Don’t open it.”
She glanced back. Isoail was coming down the stairs, her long skirt caught up in one hand. She carried a lantern in the other.
“You heard it from up there?”
“I expected it,” Isoail said. “You already pulled one thing from the lake tonight. They come in pairs now.”
“What do?”
Isoail shuttered her lantern and stood with Zezili at the window. In the light from the moons, Zezili saw a hunched, hooded figure standing on the porch. It leaned against the door. As Zezili watched, the figure brought up its hand. Knocked again. Then began to scratch at the door.
“What is it?” Zezili said, low. “If it’s dangerous, I can kill it.”
“I could kill it just as well,” Isoail said. “Listen to that language. Do you know it?”
“No,” Zezili said.
“Then let it be,” Isoail said. “Sometimes when something comes through, it triggers another event. Other things… come after.”
They watched the figure in silence for some minutes. Zezili saw a hank of pale hair escape the hood. An older woman, then, or an Aaldian? The figure snorted. Laughed. A small, childish giggle that made Zezili’s flesh crawl.
After what felt like hours, the figure shuffled off the porch and waded back toward the road.
Zezili glanced over at Isoail. “Who was it?”
“Something from the lake,” Isoail said. “Not all of them are as docile as that dajian upstairs.”
“I don’t understand.”
Isoail took up her lantern again. “I’m surprised at that,” she said. “I heard rumors that you’ve been eliminating dajian camps at the Empress’s order for some weeks. Has she not told you why?”
“I have a good idea why,” Zezili said. “I’ve been on the other side.”
“Have you?” Isoail sounded genuinely surprised. She unshuttered her lantern. Her face looked garish in the sudden light. “Then surely you understand.”
“What, you think she was from that other world?”
“There’s more than one other world,” Isoail said. “Some even less friendly. We’re still determining how many.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“The Empress requested a coterie of Seekers to monitor occurrences here at the lake ten years ago,” Isoail said. “It’s always been a holy place. It’s only very recently we understood why.”
“So, you’re Tulana’s?”
“All Seekers answer to Tulana.”
“People come through?” Zezili asked. Isoail was isolated here. She must not know about what happened at the Seeker Sanctuary.
“A good number of them,” Isoail said. “We’re not sure why here. It requires less effort, less energy from Oma, perhaps.”
“Why was that one dangerous?”
“Some come from a world very like ours with similar people. That’s likely the one you visited, correct? A world very like ours, with people who share our faces?”
“Yes,” Zezili said.
“Others are… much different.”
“How?”
“That’s… I’m not sure that’s something I can speak of without breaking an Imperial order.”
“What
can
you tell me?” Zezili gestured to the chairs by the fire. “You know I’ve been there. I’m working with one of them.”
“I’m afraid I know little that will help in your campaign,” Isoail said. Isoail took a seat. Zezili sat across from her. “We both have our orders from the Empress.”
“I expect you won’t tell me all of yours.”
“No,” Isoail said.
“So, how do you stay in residence here without raising suspicion?”
“I do tirajista demonstrations in the summer,” Isoail said. She smiled wryly. “I’m particularly sensitive to Tira, and Para, of course.”
“A double channeler? That’s rare.”
“Yes.”
“No wonder you got stationed out here.”
“I’m sure you understand the burdens we all bear to maintain the empire,” Isoail said. “All the intrigue becomes tiresome, though. I go to the Seeker Sanctuary twice a year to renew my license. In blessed years, the Empress has no other task for me but my research here.”