Sasha was aware that everyone might be looking at Jox, but their attention was on her. She hadn’t heard the story, but suddenly couldn’t sit still for it. She’d waited so long to learn about her mother; now that the time had come, all she wanted to do was get up and pace off a sudden case of restless nerves. Just when the jitters were nearing the breaking point, though, Michael touched his booted foot to her sneakered one beneath the table, a brief, supportive pressure that said, You can handle this . And she could, she realized, exhaling a long breath and drawing in the next. But she didn’t like that he’d been the one to remind her.
She shifted her foot away from his as the winikin continued, “Based on what the nahwal said about Sasha being his second daughter, and the way the timing fits, it seems that the baby was either stolen from the queen and replaced somehow with an appropriate substitute . . . or that the queen herself was involved in the deception. We don’t know which of those was the case; we may never know. Sasha’s mother made Ambrose memorize the triad prophecy, and insisted that it related to Sasha. In a way, this suggests the queen’s involvement. She was the most powerful itza’at of her generation, so it’s certainly possible that she foresaw Sasha’s importance to the end-time war, and knew she had to keep her alive at all costs . . . perhaps even by lying to her husband and her people.”
Sasha’s head buzzed as thoughts collided and separated within her, threatening to tip her brain toward overload. “But why send me away?”
It was Anna who answered: “An itza’at can foresee the future but not change it. If she envisioned the massacre, or a dark future at the very least, she might have thought to spare you.”
“Why not send all three of us away, then?” Sasha asked, then wished she hadn’t. Because if their mother had sent her to safety, it meant she’d knowingly left her two older children in harm’s way.
Strike didn’t look offended by the question, though, saying only, “Either she’d seen Jox raising us—
but not you—in relative safety . . . or she had no foreknowledge of our fate, but couldn’t risk sending us away, because it would look like she didn’t believe in the king’s plan to attack the intersection.”
“Treason is one of the few things considered a true and absolute sin,” Michael said out of the corner of his mouth. “It’s good for a one-way trip to Mictlan.”
“That’s—” Sasha broke off, not sure what she wanted to say, what she could say. She was only beginning to understand what it meant to be a Nightkeeper, how her decisions had suddenly become plural, impacting so much more than just herself.
“The king’s writ spells out the responsibilities of the leaders,” Strike said. “Personal desires are pretty far down the list.” He glanced at Leah. “Lucky for us, the jaguars are known for being not only stubborn as hell, but willing to rewrite the rules to suit themselves.” He returned his attention to Sasha. “Our mother made the choice she made—I have to believe it was her choice, in retrospect. She grieved deeply when the baby died, and again around the time of the funeral, which was a few months later. She and the king drifted apart for a bit too. In retrospect, what Anna and I remember of that period is pretty consistent with her having made some hellish personal choices.”
“If that’s true . . .” Sasha trailed off, trying to find the right question amidst the clamor of them in her brain. “If this was her plan to keep me safe and make sure I made it to the end-time, then why did she send me with someone like Ambrose? Why not a winikin?” But what she was really asking was, Why not someone stable, who had half a clue how to raise a child and introduce the Nightkeeper ways gently, rather than like magical boot camp for the criminally insane?
It was Jox who answered: “Even narrowing it down to the inner circle of the royal jaguars and their close friends, we’re still not sure who Ambrose was, for the same reasons as before—lack of records, too many people to choose from. But I think it’s safe to say he would’ve been someone the queen trusted implicitly, someone she thought would keep you safe and raise you well.” The winikin had clearly guessed her unspoken question, because he continued, “We have to assume that his orders from the queen included his severing his connection to the barrier. Every mention of the spells capable of breaking the barrier connection suggest that they are, quite literally, hell. If we take the trauma of the spell, and add that to his being abruptly cut off from the culture he’d spent his entire life training for, he must have . . . broken inside somehow. The queen would have picked him thinking he could handle it. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.”
You can say that again, Sasha thought. But for the first time in a long time—maybe ever—the anger and regret that tainted her memories of Ambrose were overlaid with a new degree of empathy. She’d been a part of Skywatch for only a few weeks, but already her life was intertwined, to different degrees, with her teammates, and the winikin. What would it be like to have that feeling of belonging, multiplied several hundredfold, and then have it yanked away? More, he would have been a functioning mage, capapble of tapping the barrier for power, for answers. Maybe he’d even had a cool talent. A lover. Gods, a family. Then, on his queen’s order, he’d left all that behind to undergo the worst sort of trauma, severing his connection to his entire life. And after that he’d been alone, adrift with a newborn baby, acting on standing orders to protect her and raise her as befitted a princess. Was it any wonder he’d lost it, that his priorities had gotten badly skewed, the delivery harsh in the extreme? Could she really blame him for breaking?
Sasha became aware that the tables had gone silent, that everyone was looking at her.
“You hanging in?” Michael asked.
She nodded. “Just rearranging a few very deep-seated preconceptions.” Like the one that said Ambrose had never wanted her, never loved her. He’d given up his life for her. How could that not be a form of love?
And at the thought, she had the glimmer of an idea, a strategy that might just get them into the haunted temple.
“I have something for you,” Strike said, gesturing for her to rise. “Come around here.”
Keeping the nascent plan to herself for the moment, she stood and joined him at the front of the group, in an open spot beneath the edge of the ceiba tree’s reach, where the shadows gave way to sunlight. Nerves hummed through her as she realized, from the serious expression on his face, that they’d moved into the formal-acceptance part of the morning’s meeting. She’d halfway expected something along those lines. What she hadn’t expected was for her stomach to go tight, for it to matter to her as much as it suddenly did.
She, who’d never wanted to believe in the Nightkeepers, now wanted to belong to them. She wanted to be one of them, wanted to fight with them, for them. She wanted her birthright, damn it.
Standing straight and tall in the strange orange sunlight, looking every inch the king even without his regalia, Strike pulled a gleaming black knife from his belt and held it out to her, haft-first. “Sasha Ledbetter, as a member of the jaguar bloodline and the royal house, this knife is yours by right of descent and the warrior’s mark,” he said formally. “Will you accept it?”