Roa couldn’t blame her. She’d been skeptical, too.
They searched the cases. Lirabel stood across from Roa now, on the other side of a gods and monsters board, preservedbeneath glass. The playing pieces differed from her father’s, but Roa could still identify the caged queen and the frail king, the skyweaver and the dragon and the corrupted spirit. All of the pieces were carved out of acacia wood, and a slate of brass was fixed to the side of the case, engraved with the rules of the game.
Suddenly, from the next room over, Safire said, “I think I found something.”
Both friends followed the commandant’s voice until they saw her, shoulders hunched and eyes squinting as she leaned in toward a case whose corners were decorated with gold filigree.
The case was small, maybe the size of two handbreadths on all sides, and its glass unmarked by dust or fingerprints. On the wooden pedestal that held it up to chest height, a gold plate was fastened.
Engraved into the plate wasn’t a description, though. It was a story.
One about the Skyweaver.
Roa’s heart pounded in her chest. This was it. The place for the knife that could save her sister.
There was just one problem.
The case was empty.
Skyweaver
Once there was a god who traded her name for a loom, her heart for a spindle, and her face for a knife.
They call her Skyweaver, but that isn’t her true name. They say she dwells in the seam between worlds, where only the death marked can find her.
Skyweaver used to be good at many things, but now she’s good at only one: all day and all night, she spins souls into stars and weaves them into the sky.
“What are souls,” she whispers, “but stars waiting to be born?”
Her loom answers:rattle-clack. Shhhhh. Rattle-clack.
“What are souls,” she says again, “but worms inside a chrysalis, waiting to become?”
Sometimes that’s how Skyweaver feels—like she’s waiting to become. Sometimes she looks around her weaving room and thinks,This isn’t enough.
Her shuttle falls silent then. Her loom goes still. She looks down at the blade in her hand, glowing like the moon. In its silver reflection, a faceless girl stares back at her. A faceless girl whose true name she can’t remember.
“No matter,” she whispers.
Lifting the knife, Skyweaver cuts the old threads and begins her work anew.
Eighteen
Roa stared through the glass.
Why would the case be empty?
She undid the clasp and swung the lid open. She put her hand inside the case, touching the velvet cloth on the bottom, then pulled it out. There was nothing but more glass underneath, and the wood of the pedestal beneath that.
Maybe Torwin did intercept it,she thought.
Or maybe Baron Silva was showing off his new possession to his guests. Perhaps it was being cleaned. Or sharpened. Or possibly it had been decided this room wasn’t safe enough. After all, Safire had just picked the lock.
There were a multitude of possibilities. Roa needed to find out which it was.
“We’ve been gone too long,” said Safire, looking to the door. “If this is what you came for, it isn’t here. We need to get back.”
Knowing she was right, Roa shut the case.
