Kantu closed her fingers around the dial, turned it, and started to haul.
“The Fa,” she answered Mikiel on a heave, “rules Sanis Al. That’s the desert at the bottom of Bellisaar, east of here, hugs the coast. Not much plant life there—not even succulents. Very duney. We call it the Red Crescent for the color of the sands.”
“Yes, but…”
The door creaked open.
“I’ll go down first,” Kantu interrupted. “Since I seem to have a habit of falling on people tonight.” Grasping the top rung of the hidden ladder, she swung herself into a hole she could not see, that she knew by touch and memory alone, and climbed down three short rungs. Then she dropped.
The drop was not a long one, but Kantu fell hard and forgot to roll. For a while she lay inert, breathing in short, painful gasps as her eyes tried to focus on the triple entrance to the mazepath.
The first door led, eventually, to a hole in the ground that went down a mile and had bones at the bottom. The second, to a tunnel that wound around to nowhere for as long as you had strength to walk it, then stopped. The third braided its way into the rest of the maze, and thence to the heart of the Catacombs.
In just a few minutes, Kantu promised herself, this blackness will end. I will see my friends. I will see Manuway. And Crizion. And the Rokka Mama.
Mikiel dropped through the darkness beside her, irritated.
“For once in your life, go slowly! Clodkin! If you haven’t noticed, you’re hurt.”
She hauled Kantu to her feet, slung an arm about her, and propelled her toward the correct entrance.
“Thanks, Mik. I’m just about done, I think.”
“I know. Kantu?”
“Yeah, Mik?”
“I know who the Fa is.”
“I just told you.”
“No, I mean—” Mikiel stopped and sucked air, as if breath were her prayer for patience.
Half of Kantu wanted to watch her friend’s face. Half of her feared Mikiel once again igniting the blue light: its source, its possible sentience. Cowardice won. Kantu waited in the dark.
“I mean, Kantu,” Mikiel said slowly, “I’ve been to Sanis Al. It was a year ago, on a scouting mission for the Rokka Mama. It’s not nice—they’re in a drought; their crops and animals are failing.”
“Yeah,” Kantu muttered. “The rivers dried up when the rain stopped.”
Mikiel pressed on. “The Army of Childless Men exist to protect the Fa and his wives, to guard the Shiprock and drive marauders from their borders. They’re peacekeepers. They have never been interested in expanding their territory. Sanis Al was ceded to them by the gods. The Fa himself holds godright to the land. It’s in his blood. He never leaves it. So why is he here in Rok Moris? With all his soldiers around him? Why did he bring the wizard night? That’s what I was really asking. Not who the Fa is. What he is. What is he here for? Why did he post rewards for you? My question is, Kantu… What is Fa Izif ban Azur to you?”
“No one.” The lie sat like a live coal on Kantu’s tongue. She wanted to spit it out, that it might light her way through the ’Combs. But she swallowed instead. “I’ve never met him. He’s just a story the Rokka Mama used to tell me, when I asked what made the sun rise every dawn.”
Within minutes of entering the heart of the ’Combs, Kantu left Mikiel to the tender mercy of the Carpet Keepers. The twins immediately started scolding Mikiel for running off with their ragbags.
“Miss Athery, you know better!” Vishni reproached her with a sorrowful mouth. “You, who’ve flown with us these eight years!”
“No carpet,” Ranna spluttered, her color high, “even tatty old ragged ones that no longer fly, is to be treated lightly! They deserve respect. More than respect—reverence!”
But scolding turned to gasps of awe when they saw Mikiel’s glider.
“All those pieces!” Ranna exclaimed. “Working together!”
“It flies?” Kantu heard Vishni ask.
“Sort of,” Kantu murmured as she turned to go, smiling with raw lips. By the time she reached the threshold, Mikiel was flashing her stolen blue button around, chattering away about Crizion’s design for the glider’s construction and Mikiel’s own daring rescue of Kantu.
Kantu limped down the corridor to the surgeon’s cell, hoping to be scrubbed, rubbed, bandaged, and sent to bed without further ado. She had not gone far before she started tripping on the cots and bedrolls lining the halls, and wading through the wounded to get to Rahvin’s cell. When she did, she found the surgeon gone, either on his rounds or for good, and his supplies scanty.
The Rokka Mama, however, was there, tending a long spear score down Manuway’s chest. His back was to her, so he did not see Kantu at the doorway, and Kantu saw only the bones of his spine and the sharps of his shoulder blades, the blood that had dried his curly hair to spikes. The Rokka Mama, bending to swab out his wound, did not see Kantu either. Her bramble of frosted black hair had been tied back in a braid and covered with a kerchief. Her round face, usually dominated by a radiant and implacable serenity, had gone haggard.
She looks, Kantu thought with a rush of shock, old.
The realization almost repelled her back into the hallway, back through the mazepaths, back up into the enchanted darkness and the blood-soaked city above.
“Surprise!” she croaked instead, too tired for tact.
Something in the Rokka Mama’s rigid posture cracked. Her gaze flashed from Manuway’s wound to fix on Kantu in the doorway, but the expression in her eyes did not change. Ghosts swam in the deep brown depths.
She thinks I’m dead, Kantu realized. She thinks I’m a spirit sending, a terrible shadow thing, coming back one last time to tell her I am no more.
The Rokka Mama’s body shuddered and pitched forward. Manuway reached to steady her, turning slowly to look over his shoulder. His eyes widened at the sight of Kantu, and he whispered something swift and low to the Rokka Mama, who had hidden her face in her hands. At last, the Rokka Mama nodded. She raised her face and looked again at Kantu.
Kantu surged into the room, making the formal sign of the Thundergod with her fingers. Her words burst from her lips, as if she were a child.
“You’re not hurt, momi?”
Of all the Bird People who called the Rokka Mama mother, only Kantu was hers by blood. Usually it made no difference.
Her voice ragged, the Rokka Mama replied, “Sore grieved, pili. But sound.”
“Good. That’s good.”
“You’re whole? Still of one piece?”
“More or less. Finish up with Manuway. I can wait.”
Kantu propped herself up against a wall while the Rokka Mama finished dressing Manuway’s wound. Manuway watched her, his eyes tracking Kantu’s gradual slide to the floor, where she slumped, eyes slitted with exhaustion, knees crooked to her chest. He was not a man to smile often, but he smiled now.
“Last I saw you,” he said, “you were hurtling through the air.”