Sky Breaker (Night Spinner Duology), Addie Thorley [100 books to read in a lifetime txt] 📗

Forgive me. Strengthen me. Show me what to do.

A lightning bolt of clarity doesn’t strike, and answers don’t miraculously appear in my mind—as they do when I’m writing in my Book of Whisperings—but while I pray, I feel warm, steady arms wrapping around me. Giving me the tiniest nudge. Helping me up off the ground.

“We need to go,” Serik finally says with a tired sigh. “We don’t know where the Shoniin and Zemyans are camped, and we need to be within the walls of Uzul before they arrive.”

“I’m not going anywhere with her.” Emani, Bultum’s terrifying wife, levels a finger at me.

“Please don’t make this more difficult than it already is,” Serik pleads. “It’s easy to cry for blood when that blood won’t stain your hands. We’re all just doing our best. Including Enebish.”

The shepherds mutter and scowl and complain loudly, but they let me follow them back to where the rest of the caravan waits—to hundreds of additional people who will be just as furious with me.

I decide now is not the time to mention the even bigger problem they all seem to be overlooking: King Ihsan will never welcome us into Namaag. Not if he knows the Shoniin and Zemyans are coming for us.

No one speaks to me, or even looks at me, for the rest of the day. Which isn’t so different from before. I prefer it, in fact. It’s quieter, easier, better. Or it would be, if I didn’t have to watch the shepherds praise and coddle Ziva. As soon as we set off into the marshes, they sucked her up into the center of the caravan, petting her hair and offering her water, taking a sudden interest in her story, as if her wayward starfire saved them singlehandedly.

If they want to applaud someone for misplaced bolts of starfire and rash and dangerous decisions, it should be me. But she’s the hero and I’m the monster, no matter that they’d all be dead if Ziva had been leading them from the start.

My waterlogged boots catch on a protruding root, and as I crash to the unforgiving path for what feels like the millionth time, an unexpected thought seizes me: Is this how Ghoa felt when the Sky King began addressing his missives to me? When the Kalima flocked to me, instead of her, for advice? When the crowds in Sagaan cheered loudest for my power?

Of course, I would never maim Ziva or frame her for a massacre, but chills overtake me, despite the much warmer air of the swamp. Where is Ghoa now? What’s happening in Sagaan? I want to know, and at the same time, I don’t. I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t part of me that hopes she suffered a horrific death. But if she’s dead, that means Kartok and Temujin succeeded in taking the capital. And the thought of their scheme proving victorious, and knowing I had a hand in it, makes me nearly as sick.

There is no good option. No positive outcome.

I try to distract myself with the scenery. I knew Namaag would be wet and thick with trees, but nothing could have prepared me for the otherworldly beauty of the marshes. Rivers tangle and twist through the forest, each a different color: from midnight blue and algae green to silty brown and sulfur yellow. The air sits heavy in my throat and tastes sickly sweet with rot.

It’s the only Protected Territory I’ve never visited—King Ihsan allied with the Ashkarians long before I was born, when the Sky King convinced them to build aqueducts to Sagaan to end the drought, and they’ve caused little trouble since. There’s never been a reason to send the Kalima. We were busy engaging Zemya and acquiring the other territories.

A strange iridescent insect buzzes around my head, louder than the spice grinders in Nashab Marketplace, and the air fills with the calling of birds. Never in my life have I seen so many birds! Herons and egrets and ducks and ibis. Under other circumstances, I would adore them, but every snapping beak and rustling feather reminds me of Orbai—attacking King Minoak, choosing the scout, abandoning me when I needed her most.

Fury and heartbreak war for control of my heart, so all consuming, I don’t realize the caravan has ground to a halt until I slam into the back of a wagon. I expect to receive a death glare from its owner, but they don’t glance back. No one does. The entire caravan is entranced, gazing up at the city of Uzul just ahead.

It’s built high up in the canopy, on platforms and bridges that connect one behemoth tree to the next. My jaw hits my shoes as I take it all in. If any king should be called the Sky King, it is undeniably Ihsan. His feet probably never touch the earth. The roofs of the houses are thatched with moss, and the walls are constructed to look like leaves, blending perfectly into the foliage. Copper pipes that look for all the world like branches run beneath everything, sucking water up from the marsh and feeding it into the treetop homes.

Everything is green—as green as Kartok’s false Eternal Blue. Except for the flashes of yellow and orange and turquoise darting through the dense greenery. At first they register as birds, but as I squint harder, I realize they are people hustling down the thoroughfares.

We don’t resume our march again for a long while. I presume Serik and the head of each shepherd family are discussing the tactics of our entrance—things that no longer involve me—so I nearly jump out of my skin and into the murky water when someone touches my elbow.

“Have you ever seen anything so incredible?” Serik’s hazel eyes glitter and there’s a new bounce to his step. Such a welcome change from the shadow-eyed wisp he’s become over the past weeks. “We made it, En.”

Barely, I want to say, but