It was like a journey through the hell of those who defy the Yanjing will of heaven. I thought I’d stopped believing in those hells, but they hadn’t stopped believing in me. They had followed me all the way here. This one had, anyway.
Around noon that third day, we came down the crumbling road into Moharrin. I took one glance at the lake. That was enough. It was filled with dead fish. More acid from Mount Grace.
The village was a mess. The earthquakes had made a hash of it. Some wooden houses had collapsed. A lot of the rickety wooden barns and sheds were destroyed. Nothing moved anywhere. My heart dropped to my belly.
The ash was a lot worse up here, too. “It’s like the town is a ghost,” I told the mules. I’d been talking to them for a while. “Without people it’s a ghost of itself, you know? No farmers, no kids. Everything’s all gray. No smoke from the chimneys, no sounds. It’s dead.” My eyes were sulfur dry and bitter. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered in this world.
The mules just flipped their ears at me. They aren’t good conversationalists.
I looked at the sun and choked. Smoke came from the inn’s kitchen chimney.
Of course. The inn was stone. Its barns were mostly stone. People might come there for safety.
Quiet as a mouse, I dismounted. All this way I had named rocks and their shapes to myself so I would not think. I had plenty not to think about. I couldn’t think that Meryem, Nory, and Jayat were dead. I couldn’t think that rough types who had stayed behind might have gotten them. The problem was, rough types might be at the inn right now.
What to do? I didn’t have any weapons. Talk about bleat-brained! I had always had my magic before. A little of it was coming back, but it wasn’t enough to turn a crystal into a night lamp. As a weapon, my power was useless.
I took off my headscarf, though I kept the one over my nose and mouth. I didn’t want to give myself away by sneezing. There were fist-sized rocks beside the road, smooth ones. A girl with a headscarf and stones always had the makings of a sling.
I tethered the mules in what was left of an orchard. With rocks in my pockets, I crept up on the inn. Instead of going through the main door, I went the long way around, to the kitchen garden.
Meryem sat on a clean bench in the swept-out kitchen yard. Chickens pecked all around her, looking for food. She’d been grinding chickpeas. The Dreadful Doll sat beside her for company. She was singing to it. She hadn’t seen me.
I tried to breathe and blinked a lot, my eyes stinging fiercely. Only six years old, but like me, she had survived all the world threw at her. My foolish words hadn’t gotten her killed. I had a second chance. I’d believed I would wear her death as a chain around my neck all my life.
I walked slowly to her, because I was afraid I would stumble. “I was wrong to say what I did.” My voice was muffled by the scarf over my mouth. I pulled it down.
She dropped her chickpeas. “Evvy! You came! I thought you left!” She grabbed me and hugged me and started crying.
I hugged her back. So maybe I was crying, too.
“Wait. Stay there—don’t run away!” Meryem ran inside the kitchen.
I heard barking. Dogs ran out, growling, their hackles up. They were a mixed crew of animals, but they all looked serious. I backed up, hands in the air to show I meant no harm. Behind them came Nory and Jayat. Nory was armed with a huge pot in one hand, a knife in the other. Jayat had an iron spit that he held like a staff. Both of them relaxed when they saw me. And I couldn’t help it—I grinned. They looked good and alive.
Jayat gave a couple of tricky whistles. The dogs growled, circled around me, sniffing, then went back inside. I was glad to see them, not just because they were animals, but because they were protecting my friends. “Nice dogs,” I said.
“They come from the farms around here. Nory collected them in case anyone nasty came along. She taught me the whistles. What happened to your volcano? We noticed when the mountain stopped smoking.” Jayat pointed to Mount Grace. Clouds hid the peak. The outline I could see looked different, but I saw no plumes of ash and steam.
“It’s poking up offshore,” I told him. “You can see it if you go down to Sustree. Flare and Carnelian have all the glory they could want.”
Nory is more practical, like me. “How bad is the road?”
“Impossible,” I said. “I had mules and it took me two and a half days. We’re stuck here for a while.” As if the land itself agreed, it shuddered, making us stagger.
Nory looked at Jayat. “We keep foraging. Evvy can help. She owes us some hard work.”
I glared at her, but she was right. It was my fault Meryem had left the group. “I brought two mules,” I told them. “I’ll bet there’s plenty more livestock around if we can feed them. We’d better hurry, though. If they can’t dig through the ash or find water, they’ll start to starve.”
Jayat leaned on his iron spit. “How will you get home? Is Rosethorn still in Sustree? Did you bring Luvo?”
I shook my head. “They sailed. But they’ll return, eventually. Luvo will tell Rosethorn I’m alive—we’re alive. As soon as she can bully someone into sailing here, she’ll come. Once I get my magic back, I’ll be able to tell Luvo you’re alive, too. I’ll bet you coppers to diamonds Oswin will come with her. He was half-crazy when he found out you weren’t on the ship.”
“You sound pretty sure of your Rosethorn.” Nory’s face was as sour as her voice.