CHAPTER NINETEEN
She’s perched primly on the edge of the sofa. “I didn’t expect you to call,” she says, regarding me with luminous, impossibly dark eyes. “I was under the impression you looked to lost gods for advice these days.”
I blush. So she knows about the paper hound in the conservatory. “I needed a different sort of advice that day.”
“I will recover from the insult eventually,” she says. I can’t tell if it’s a joke; I can never tell with Amba.
“I need your help.”
“I can’t defend Skylark. That is a risk to my immortality I am uninterested in taking.”
I wonder how much she knows. “I wasn’t going to ask for that.”
“Then what did you want from me?”
“I need to get word to Rama immediately.”
Amba rises off the sofa, her eyes flashing like lightning in the sky. “You want a goddess to run an errand for you?”
Her annoyance is a gust of wind that knocks me back against the wall. I don’t cower. “I can’t use a tech screen. And I can’t send a comm from my watch. They’re probably monitoring all of my devices. I can’t give Lord Selwyn any evidence to use against me. I need to speak to Rama, but I can’t do it safely without you.”
The wind stops. “They would still know you were the one who passed on the information,” she points out.
“They might guess,” I say, “which is better than if they had proof.”
Amba nods. “Very well. Just this once, Esmae.”
I thank her and write a hasty note. Tell your father they might try to take Skylark. They need to know it’s under his protection. I don’t know what else I can say. If I start telling Rama anything more, I’ll open the floodgates and sit here writing to him for hours.
I put the folded note into Amba’s hand. She closes her fist and the paper vanishes into smoke, ready to materialize when she needs it.
She considers me for a moment. “I told you not to fire that arrow.”
“I know.”
“I should have told you the truth.” She sighs. “If I’d told you why I wanted you to stay away from your brother, maybe you would have obeyed.”
I laugh without any real humor. “But you’re so good at not telling me the truth, Amba. Remember that fairytale you made up about my heartbroken mother giving me up?”
Amba doesn’t look sorry. “How does one tell a small child that her mother was so afraid of her, she almost killed her? It was kinder to let you believe she never wanted to give you up.”
I don’t know if that’s true. Was it kinder to let me believe my mother loved me? Was it kinder to give me years of hope, only for me to end up with even more pain when that hope finally burned out?
“So what was it?” I ask again. “Why didn’t you want me to meet Alexi that day?”
“My brother Kirrin is determined to help Alexi win this war, you know,” she says.
“That’s not an answer.”
“Strive for a little patience, Esmae. Kirrin is important.”
“He’s the god of tricks.”
“And bargains,” she reminds me. “He doesn’t like it when people forget that part. Kirrin loves Alexi. He was the one who gave him the Golden Bow.”
The Golden Bow is the bright bow Alexi always wears on his back. I knew that it was a gift from a god given when Alexi was only ten years old. It’s a divine weapon, one only Alexi can use. It’s said that there’s an incantation he can use to transform it into an explosion of radiance that will obliterate any mortal enemy he chooses.
As if that wasn’t sufficient, Rickard gave all his students a gift when they passed his first test. Bear got Rickard’s own mace. Alexi got an arrow that will always return to him. And I got the Black Bow, cut two thousand years ago by Amba herself.
“Kirrin’s help may make all the difference between victory and defeat for Alexi,” Amba says. “It’s very difficult to defeat those who are so loved by gods, even with a god-graced ship.”
“Lucky for me, then, that I’m not trying to defeat him.”
She sighs, steps close to me, and touches my cheek. I see sorrow and calamity in her eyes. “You are loved by gods, too, Esmae, even if you don’t yet know it.”
I smile. “That’s absurd. You’re the only god I know, and you don’t love me.”
She frowns but doesn’t reply.
“What could I possibly have done to make the gods see me as something out of the ordinary?” I ask her. “What could I possibly have done to make any of you love me? Was it the competition?”
“That is a scant part of it,” she says. “Perhaps you can’t see it, but you are more than your flaws and mistakes. You are more than the sorrows of your past. Your heart is as fierce as a lion’s. You are loved by gods, just as your brother is. Remember that. Perhaps it will help you in the way it will help him. Perhaps it will help save you in the end.”
I go very still. “What?”
She’s silent.
The chill starts at the top of my spine and spreads out from there. “Save me from what?”
Amba turns away. “Time is different for gods. We see small pieces of the past and the present and the future all at once, like stars. We see what will be and what can be and what may or may not be. And what we see shifts as different choices are made. I’ve told you that before. What I may not have ever told you, however, is that sometimes we see fixed points. Events that cannot be shifted. We don’t always know the how, we don’t always know the why, and we almost never know what leads to a particular event. Mortals make their own choices, and we can’t control them, but they inevitably lead themselves to their own fates—their own fixed points. And those points, in time, will happen. One way or another, they will happen. They already have happened. You see? Past and present and future are all one and the same to us.”
“Just tell me!”
She won’t look me in the eye when she says it. “Four years ago, when Elvar took the throne from your brother, Kirrin and I both saw the same piece of the future. We agreed not to share it with either of you, but Kirrin told Alexi about it just yesterday. He told Alexi he would murder his twin sister one day.”
My heart thumps unevenly. “No.”
“We didn’t know how it would come about, exactly, just that it would start on the day you met your brother. That’s why I wanted you to stop training with Rickard. That’s why I wanted to keep you away from Alexi. Then, when you went to the palace on the day of the competition, in spite of my asking you not to, more of the future became clear. Suddenly, I could see how it would start.” The way she looked at me before I fired the arrow. “The moment you shot that fish, you sealed your fate. Made that event a fixed point.”
“It’s not true. He wouldn’t. Alexi wouldn’t. I’m his sister.”
“He will do it. We’ve seen it. There will be a duel, a broken arrow, your eyes will grow wide with fear as you realize he’s broken the rules. You will fall, and you will spit blood onto the grass beneath you before you die.”
“You cannot seriously believe Alexi Rey would break the rules of a duel. That’s even less likely than him killing his own sister.”
“It is what it is,” says Amba softly.
My fists clench and unclench at my sides. And in a dark, terrible corner of my mind, a little voice tells me not to forget Rickard and the curse he laid on me.
That’s the day his curse will come for me. And Alexi will kill me.
“When?” I ask. “When is it supposed to happen?”
“Soon. Neither of you look any older.”
“You and Kirrin must have made a mistake. The blueflower jewel keeps me safe, Amba. Alexi can’t kill me.”
“I don’t know how it’s possible, just that it will be.”
“He won’t do it.”
“He will.”
“Tell the gods to watch us,” I snap. “If I really am a favorite of theirs, like Alexi or Grandmother or Rickard, then my words should have power. So tell the gods to watch us, Amba. That will not be our fate. Alexi will not kill me. I will not die that day. I swear it.”
I expect her to be furious with me for making reckless vows, but she simply smiles. For just one moment, her eyes shine as gloriously as stars. “Now you must keep that vow, Esmae,” she says. “I do not believe you can, but I hope you will.”
I will, I swear to myself. I will.