Eris was too busy thinking of ways to choke this woman to death with her hands bound behind her back. When she didn’t answer, the empress crouched down, face-to-face with Eris now. Studying her captive as if searching for the answer to a burning question.
“Why did you kill them?” Eris demanded.
“Who? That pack of traitors in the scrin?”
“They were no threat to you.”
The empress’s eyes gleamed with a terrifying mirth. “No,” she murmured. “No, I did that for fun.”
Eris’s anger glowed like embers within her.
She spat in the empress’s face.
There was a long, cold silence. And then the empress brought her hand swiftly across Eris’s cheek. The sharp sting was immediately followed by the coppery taste of warm blood. She’d bitten her cheek.
Eris spat the blood out, too.
The empress rose to her feet, stepping back. Her voice hardened around her next words: “I’ve spent the last seven years searching for two things, Death Dancer: you and that knife.”
Eris frowned.What knife?
“I know she gave it to that sniveling servant of hers. I thought for sure he would have given it to you. But it seems I was wrong.” She glanced up, over Eris’s head, to the Lumina soldiers guarding her. “No matter. I have one of you now and am quickly closing in on the other.”
And then, like a picked lock springing open, Eris understood: she wanted Day’s knife. The one Eris sold seven years ago to buy her and Jemsin’s escape from these islands.
That’s why you want the Namsara, she realized, remembering the sight of the knife at Asha’s hip.
“Captain Caspian?” the empress said softly, as if to herself. “Lock her up with the other one.”
The other one?thought Eris, her cheek stinging as the soldier behind her grabbed her beneath her armpits and hauled her painfully to her feet.What other one?
They turned her away from the throne. Eris looked back once over her shoulder to find the empress clutching the hilt of a saber at her hip with long, thin fingers. After climbing the steps back up to her throne, she spun and sank down onto the white stone, leaning forward, as if deep in thought.
The soldier at Eris’s side forced her onward. As he did, she thought back to the knife Day gave her. One for cutting scarp thistles. It seemed ridiculous now that he would give her a big, beautiful, ethereal knife to perform such a mundane task.
He gave me a spindle, too,she realized. They’d taken it from her in the tower.A spindle that isn’t really meant for spinning wool.
What if the knife wasn’t really meant for cutting scarp thistles?
God of Tides
The god of tides was a creature of tempests and terror. Revered by pirates and fishermen alike, she called herself Leandra and was loyal to no man but one: her brother, god of shadows.
Together, they were wild and fierce and free.
Together, they struck fear into the hearts of men and monsters alike.
Until the day Leandra raised a tempest and her brother didn’t come to help her. Only stood and watched with something cold and dead in his eyes. When she dashed ship after ship against the rocks and roared for him to join her, she turned and found he was not at her side.
She called; he didn’t answer. She searched the shallows and depths of all the waters. Of all the seas. But he was neither in the shallows nor the depths.
Leandra began to worry. The waves churned. The winds swirled. And by the time she finally found him, all the powers of the sea boiled in her wake.
“Brother!” she called, moving to embrace him. “I thought I’d lost you. I’ve come to take you home.”
The god of shadows did not return her embrace. Nor did he wish to come home.
Leandra lashed out, angry and confused.
