The fish on Mistress Rhima’s desk swam in circles, round and round in a sickening motion that never ended. Naheli could have sworn it was observing her. Perhaps it felt a kind of kinship; like her, it was trapped in glass, looking with longing at the world beyond.
Naheli stood with her spine straight and her hands behind her back, waiting for her mentor’s attention. The sun poured through the glass walls and floors of the Spire, but despite the trail of perspiration running down her temple, Naheli shivered. She locked her gaze on the fish. If her eyes strayed, so would her thoughts, and Rhima would sense them.
At last Rhima set down the crystal she had been studying. Naheli strained to hear the clink when it touched the glass surface of the desk, but the stuffiness of the room swallowed the sound.
‘Lady Sacrifice,’ Rhima said and held out her hands, exposing the mark of the priesthood in one palm, ‘I greet you.’
The voice of Rhima’s mind touched Naheli like a whisper. In her years of serving the Goddess, Rhima had mastered the art of shaping her thoughts until only the nearest empaths could sense them.
‘Mistress Rhima.’ Naheli held up her hands as well and felt the warmth of Rhima’s as they passed hers without touching. ‘I greet you.’
Rhima nodded. ‘You may sit.’
Naheli pulled her chair over the glass floor without a sound. In its bowl on the desk, the fish continued to swim its circles without a voice, without music, without laughter, like all the empaths of the Spire. Naheli dared not meet her mentor’s eyes.
‘You seem anxious, Naheli,’ Rhima said after a pause. ‘What is on your mind?’
‘The Sacrifice and the Goddess, Mistress Rhima.’
‘As they should be. But something troubles you.’
‘I sleep badly,’ Naheli said. It was the best she could do; she could not lie the way the non-empaths did. ‘My thoughts keep me awake at night.’
‘Thoughts of the Sacrifice?’
‘Of course.’
Mistress Rhima remained silent and Naheli stared at the fish, wishing it would turn to glass under her gaze. She was afraid of the silence. The Spire was always silent, and in that void her thoughts wandered to colour, to music. To the dusty table where she had sat and had tea from a chipped blue cup. To Thilkhan.
‘Naheli, look at me.’ This time Rhima’s thoughts carried a trace of compassion, and Naheli looked up into her mentor’s eyes. Their brown was the only spot of colour that Rhima’s white robes and veils could not conceal, the only hint at her family’s non-empath heritage.
Naheli gathered her courage. ‘Mistress Rhima, may I speak freely?’
‘What is it, child?’
‘I have been… longing.’ The thought came out stained with forbidden emotion. Naheli glanced at the glass wall, down on the non-empath world beneath the Spire. From so far above, the people down in the streets looked like ants, scurrying about while they fed, gathered, and built, while they laughed and spoke and sang and danced. None of their songs would ever reach the Spire. ‘It is so hard,’ Naheli went on. ‘The harder I try, the more I long. The colours…’ She checked her thoughts and raised the Wall. From where she sat, she could almost make out the roof of Thilkhan’s house, and she must not think of that.
‘My little one.’ Rhima’s thought was like a sigh in Naheli’s mind. ‘You must not think of colours.’
‘But I cannot help what I dream of and long for. Is it not the Goddess who sends me such dreams?’
‘It may well be,’ Rhima said, ‘but if such is the case, she sends them for you to grow stronger in the face of temptation and to make your Sacrifice a greater one.’
Naheli tore her gaze from the colours and fixed it once more on the fat, white fish swimming its rounds. ‘I wish I could die today,’ she whispered. ‘It gets harder the longer I wait.’
‘I know, child. But the Goddess tests you in your final days. You must be strong.’
‘Yes.’ Naheli ran a fingertip over the smooth glass edge of the desk. ‘I dreamt of the second act of magic. I looked to the ocean and lifted the whole island from the waves, and it floated across the sea towards the mainland.’
When Rhima did not reply, Naheli looked up and saw her mentor’s brows drawn together in a frown.
‘It is best, perhaps, if you keep such dreams to yourself.’
‘Yes, Mistress Rhima. I know.’
‘If you would like me to, I will speak to the alchemists and ask some relief for you.’
Defiance stirred behind the Wall in her mind and Naheli quickly quenched it. ‘Thank you. But I believe the Goddess wants me to endure.’
‘Very good.’ Rhima rested her white hands on the desk between them. On one of her bony fingers glittered a heavy ring made of glass. ‘Now, we should continue your training, but there is another matter I must address first. The Elders convened this morning to discuss your second act. The Lady Oracle was present and expressed concern about your—how to put it—focus. She believes you require additional help to concentrate on your preparations for the Sacrifice.’
‘But my mind is on the Sacrifice all the time.’
‘Yet your eyes stray to colour and your thoughts to sensation.’ The voice of Rhima’s mind grew gentler. ‘The Oracle thinks it for the best. You are to stay inside the priesthood chambers and focus on seeking the guidance of the Goddess. I will be with you, of course.’
Naheli started. ‘Not only inside the priesthood chambers?’
‘You may visit the square, of course, to pray at the altar.’
‘But the harbour? The beach? The—’
‘No. Inside.’
‘The cliffs? I must be allowed to see the ocean!’
‘You may watch it from inside the Spire or from the square.’
‘Not even the path to the shore?’
‘I am sorry.’
Naheli felt a tightening in her throat. It made her ache, but she had forgotten how to find relief. ‘I have tried so hard.’
‘I know.’ Rhima reached out a hand, but the gesture fell short before it reached Naheli’s face. ‘It is only seven days now. Be strong.’
Naheli dropped her gaze to the fish. Round and round it went. Trapped in glass. Longing. ‘Did you agree to this?
Her mentor hesitated, then said, ‘It was not so much about my agreement, as I am sure you understand.’
‘But I have so little time left.’
‘Nevertheless. It is decided.’
‘Could you not—?’
‘Lady Sacrifice. The decision is final.’
Naheli became aware of her clenched hands. She looked at the glass wall, which was burning with sunlight. The thick air threatened to choke her. She thought of the colours out there and gave her mentor the only acceptable answer. ‘Of course, Mistress Rhima. I understand.’
After a long pause, Rhima said quietly, ‘I convinced the Elders to give you until tomorrow to make your preparations. If you have goodbyes to make, you ought to make them tonight.’
‘I will,’ Naheli said. ‘Thank you.’
They went to work through the teachings of the Goddess, and Naheli thought of the goodbyes she would make tonight, the blessings she would receive, everyone’s pride. She allowed some of those thoughts to slip through to her mentor. But she raised the Wall higher around the one goodbye that really mattered.
The one that would mean death if Mistress Rhima found out.
The realm of the non-empaths lay outside the Spire beyond a mossy set of stone steps that were as rough as the people who had hewn them. Inside the Spire the empaths spoke of those people only in whispers, ashamed of the outcasts who shared their island. While Naheli made her way down that staircase, shrouded by the night and with the wind in her hair, she wondered if not her own people were the ones confined, and the non-empaths free in their exile.
She kept her head low and glanced back over her shoulder. Even in the dark of night, the glass and the mirrors of the Spire angled starlight through all the levels and lit up the towers. The silhouettes of the empaths moved like ghosts through the corridors, but no one seemed to be following her.
Naheli pulled her white robe tighter and cursed when the hem caught in the brush overgrowing the stairs. She hastened on into the shadows swallowing her like a living creature at the bottom of the steps. From here she had to feel her way forwards with hands and feet unused to the brush and the cobblestone streets. The rapid beating of her heart mingled with the roar of the ocean that rose in the distance as if to greet her.
Thilkhan’s shop was the third house on the main road. Golden candlelight spilled out through the cracks in the shutters. Naheli lingered for a moment, caressed the wood, and listened to the sound her fingers made on the rough surface. She knew that Thilkhan always kept his door unlocked. When she pushed it open, a set of little bells above rained down a shower of silvery sound on her. She peered into the room, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the half-light.
“Well, if it isn’t the Lady Sacrifice!” Thilkhan rose from the table, which was littered with feather quills and inks, and came to greet her with a smile. “Haven’t seen you in ages. You grow whiter all the time.”
Naheli had not heard spoken words for some time, and it called for an effort to answer him. “I could say the same to you,” she said, also smiling, “just you grow dusty instead of white.”
Thilkhan opened his arms for her. “A hug for an old friend?”
“You are not that old,” Naheli said and allowed him to embrace her. He always smelled of dust, of inks and of parchments and of the old books that lay scattered all over his shop. The cloth of his shirt was rough against her skin, so different from the smooth robes of the empaths. Naheli listened to his heartbeat for a moment before Thilkhan pushed her away far enough to look at her with his brows drawn together.
“You’ve been gone long, Nel. And grown thin, too. What are they doing to you up in that Spire, really? Should I have a serious talk with Mistress Rhima, you think?”
“I wish you could. She wouldn’t understand you, though.”
“Oh, right.” Thilkhan grinned and pulled out a chair for her. “Empath minds are too simple to understand the glory of speech.”
Naheli sat down with him at the table. It hardly fit between the wall and the counter where Thilkhan sold his books and quills, and one of the legs was cracked so that the table wobbled whenever she supported her weight on it, but she loved the rustle of the splintered wood under her fingers and the glitter of dust that rose from its surface and dispersed in the candlelight.
“I understand you,” she said and met Thilkhan’s eyes. They were a green so intense that it seemed unusual even here — let alone in the Spire.
“Well, you’re special. Lady Sacrifice and all that, protector of the island, saviour of our poor lost souls.” He made a dramatic bow on his chair, but then he grew serious. “Honestly. Where’ve you been all this time?”
“I couldn’t get away,” Naheli said. “They watch me all the time.” She ran her hand over the window pane, and her fingers left a trail in the dust. “I haven’t got long to go now.”
“Any progress on that second act? We didn’t notice anything down here.” Thilkhan stood up again and before she quite knew how it happened, he had put a cup of tea into her hands. He always had tea at the ready although she had never seen him making it. It was one of the non-empaths’ great mysteries, perhaps one that a pure empath like Naheli could never understand.
“I’ve been trying,” she said into her cup—it was the chipped blue one—and closed her eyes while the steam rose up and left a thin layer of moisture on her cheeks. “Mistress Rhima has been trying, too. But I can’t seem to force it.”
“Of course you can’t.” Thilkhan sat down again and looked at her over the rim of his own cup. “That’s not the way to go about it, is it? What happened to having some faith and all that?”
“I suppose so.” Naheli relaxed a little. Although he was a non-empath, Thilkhan always eased her fears about the Sacrifice. “I’ll do better.”
“You’ll find that second act, don’t you worry. Just stay away from my shop when you do it, right? It’s messy enough as it is.”
Naheli smiled. “How is Eggie, then?”
Thilkhan shone up. “Oh, she’s grown since you last saw her. Wait, let me get her for you.”
He disappeared in the shadows between the far shelves, and Naheli looked after him. Sitting here like this, in warm candlelight and with a blue teacup in her hands, the weight of the Sacrifice lifted off her shoulders and she could breathe freely. But she must not let down her guard too much. She had come to say goodbye, and the more she relaxed her grip on her mind, the more it would hurt.
Thilkhan returned with a wooden box filled with sand and twigs. Inside it lay a green-speckled egg, so small that it could have fit in the hollow of Naheli’s palm.
“She doesn’t really look bigger,” she said. She knew that among the non-empaths it might have been proper to lie, but she could not bring herself to commit such a violation of her people’s tenets. “Can I touch her?”
“Of course you can. She likes you.”
Naheli stroked the surface of the egg with one fingertip. It was so different from the smooth glass surfaces of the Spire. “She is a lot prettier than Mistress Rhima’s horrible fish. Will she… come out, you think?”
“The word is ‘hatch’,” Thilkhan said. “And I’m the only one who thinks so, but yes, she’ll hatch, I’ve no doubt.” He turned his teacup in his hands, and his eyes lingered on the egg before he looked up at her again. “How are they treating you, Nel?”
Naheli checked her thoughts before she remembered that Thilkhan could not sense them. “You don’t doubt that they would treat the Lady Sacrifice well, do you?”
Thilkhan shrugged. “Rumour has it there’s torture going on in there.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“Am I?”
Thilkhan put a hand over hers, and Naheli realised that her knuckles had whitened from clenching around her teacup. Thilkhan’s hand was darker than hers; he never needed to veil it.
“I know I shouldn’t come here,” she said in a whisper that stuck between her lips. “I know there’s little time to go, and I’m putting you in danger, but… they are going to keep me locked in. I won’t be allowed to leave.” She bit down on more words and raised the Wall around her mind before she realised that that, too, was useless with Thilkhan. “I’ve come to say goodbye.”
She had been afraid of Thilkhan’s reaction, but he only looked at her in silence, so long that at last she lowered her head to escape the green of his eyes.
“I’ve got something for you,” he said then. “Though I don’t know if it’s going to make anything better. Do you want a look?”
Naheli nodded and followed him when he picked up a candle and led her into the back of his shop. Here the tools of his trade lay scattered in a chaos only he understood: inks and parchments, quills and books, all spread out on shelves as well as on the floor. Naheli tip-toed around a heavily laden table and ran her fingers over the spines of books as she passed, listening to the rustle of old paper that she never heard in the Spire.
Thilkhan paused beside that table, and the flickering light of the candle chased shadows across his face. “It came with the ship a few days ago,” he said.
“The ship?” Naheli forgot all her questions when Thilkhan handed her an envelope. It was the lightest shade of blue, like the sky in spring. In black ink, glistening as if it had only just dried, it had her name on it. The letters were crooked like a child’s.
Naheli felt Thilkhan’s eyes on her. “For me?”
He nodded. “Looks like empath writing, that.”
Naheli’s hand began to tremble and she hurried to open the envelope. She pulled out a single sheet of paper; its dark-ink letters brought back memories she had thought she would never have to face again. Not in a thousand years could she have mistaken Leykhan’s handwriting: child-like and clumsy letters that refused to be forced into shape.
Something inside her battered against the Wall. She looked up at Thilkhan, who nodded at the letter.
“Not going to read it?”
Naheli raised the Wall around her memories and sent a prayer to the Goddess. She ran her fingers over the ink. It didn’t smear; it remained perfect in its glistening black, unmarred by its travels.
Naheli,
I hope you haven’t forgotten how to read in the years since I last saw you. I’ve learnt to write better, as you can see, though I doubt my words will ever be pretty. Except to you, of course. I hope you still appreciate them.
I’ve thought long and hard about whether to write to you, but in the end, I decided I should. If it’s my last chance, I want to tell you what I never had the courage to tell you. I long for you. I love you, even now when the ocean is between us.
I know this letter is going to cause you pain, and for that, I am sorry. But with the Sacrifice at hand, perhaps you have come to your senses. It’s not too late to change your mind.
Think about it, Naheli. For my sake, please think about it. You don’t have to do this.
I’m waiting for you. Please try to remember me.
Leykhan
It took Naheli a long time to read the letter. She had to spell it out word by word, hindered both by Leykhan’s crooked handwriting and her own inability to read well. When at last she looked up, Thilkhan was still watching her, his brows raised as if to demand an explanation.
She took a deep breath. “It’s from Leykhan.”
“I guessed as much.”
“It’s not possible,” Naheli said.
“Well, the letter is here.”
“But he’s—”
“Apparently not.”
Naheli shook her head. “It came with the ship, you said?”
“A few days ago.”
“I didn’t see a ship.”
“Then you didn’t pay attention, perhaps. Denying the truth isn’t going to make it go away, Nel.”
“Why would they bring it to you, then?”
“They didn’t. They left it at the library, and Mariany passed it on to me. Thought I’d be most likely to see you.”
“But it can’t be.”
Thilkhan lowered his voice. “Aren’t you happy?”
Naheli listened inwards for her forbidden feelings. Was she happy? What was it like to be happy?
Thilkhan observed her for a moment and then put his arms around her. Naheli leaned against him, but she was tense all over. “The Forgotten don’t return,” she whispered.
Thilkhan shrugged. “I’d say you have your proof right here.”
She longed to believe it. For one moment, Naheli gave herself to Thilkhan’s embrace and to dreams of a future in which she would live and in which she would see Leykhan again. A future of sand between her toes and the salt of the ocean in her hair, of a hand holding hers.
Then she pulled away from Thilkhan. “I’ve got to go,” she said. “They will come looking for me. I… I may not be able to see you again.”
“Naheli—”
But she shook her head. “Goodbye.”
She turned and ran before Thilkhan could stop her, and by the time she heard him follow her, she was already out the door and back on the cobblestone road. Here the darkness shrouded her and she was glad for it, for against her will, her eyes strayed with every clattering step to the sky-blue envelope that had her name on it in glistening black ink.
From Leykhan, who had died five years ago.