Zai initiates the beat with three sharp claps, and I begin.
It is, I feel, the best I have ever danced. The motions are second nature to me and I throw myself into them, allowing the sheer cloth to flow and snap around me. I forget the audience, the stakes. Iamthe gods-damned crocodile.
A minute passes in a blur and then I’m finished, breathing hard, holding the final pose. Finally, I dare to look up.
“Well. You know the movements.” Zai is examining me with a pained expression. There is a pregnant pause and then she sighs, waving me over to the wall. “Only at the end of the night. When everyone is drunk.” Her mouth twists. “Very, very drunk.”
I duck my head, using thankfulness to hide my sheer relief, and hurry across before she changes her mind. The girl who smiled at me before seems suddenly far more interested in studying the ground. A couple of others look openly displeased as I join them against the wall.
It doesn’t matter. I’m not here to impress them.
I’m in.
LI
I GASP AS THE GROUND VANISHES BENEATH MY FEET; Ifall, only for a second, but it’s enough for me to stumble and trip with a snarl of utterly confused panic.Thrum. I see red lanterns falling and stands coated with blood and I hear screams, and screams, and screams.
I open my eyes. It’s dark, and so as I roll in brief, defensive panic, it is the air that I notice first. Shockingly fresh and crisp. No city smell, just the faint earthy odours of the dew-damp ground.
Then my vision adjusts.
The candles lighting the room are gone. The room is gone. We are on a grassy slope painted with faint, cloud-diffused starlight. My eyes dart in bewildered assessment, trying to make sense of what just happened. Diago’s angry, confounded growl is rolling across the empty hills and fading toward a glimmering bay. Ostius, who apparently expected the abrupt drop and landed on his feet, is assessing our surrounds.
I lie there propped up on my metal elbow, panting a gradually slowing panicked rhythm, shards of triangular metal quivering in place. The shock almost too much, even for that trained and fortified part of my mind that maintains the connection. “What in all the rotting gods-damned hells was that?”
Ostius doesn’t even glance in my direction. Just taps his heart three times with three fingers. “I think you know.”
I think I do. Impossible to parse, but I think I do. There is a township, much farther down the hill. Fires and torches and distant motion within a rough wooden palisade wall. Space enough for a few hundred people, perhaps. A dock with the shadows of two small ships bobbing gently.
But the shape of the dim harbour beyond it is too familiar. The way the ground slopes, too.
“This is Caten,” I whisper dazedly.
“This is most definitely not Caten.” Ostius turns to me, apparently satisfied that there is no one else around. “Come. These crossings cause disturbances, and while tonight the druids should be busy with their own festival rites, you can never be sure.”
“Druids?”
“Sanctimonious little men. You wouldn’t like them. They don’t appreciate me dropping in like this.” Ostius delves into his bag and tosses me something. A white cloak. “You are one, tonight, by the way. Don’t speak. Just keep that arm hidden and stand there in your mask.”
I catch the cloak with my good hand, flicking it open. It’s richly made. An intricate green symbol stitched onto the back. “Where did you get this?”
“Another druid very kindly let me borrow it.” He examines me critically. “It would be more convincing if you had a staff.”
I hesitate, then focus. Take the last of the metal from my chest, a few pieces from my arm, and then form the triangles into a twisted, interconnected pole.
Ostius examines me and then gives a slow, delighted clap. “An Draoi na Ceárta. Oh, they are going totalkabout this.” He swivels and almost dances down the hill toward the township.
I grimace, then sling the cloak around my shoulders and follow.
“So this is … one of the other worlds.” It seems obvious that’s what he’s saying, but I need to hear it. The stars are sobright, here. The air so clean. Is it my imagination? Even on Suus, I don’t remember the world feeling so vast and empty and pure. “Obiteum or Luceum?”
“The second one,” says Ostius, a little dryly, though I don’t know why. His gaze is focused on the walls down the hill.
“So there’s another version of me here.”
“I doubt he’shere. But yes. Somewhere.” He chuckles. “If we happen to come across him, I promise I’ll allow time to stop and chat.”
I say nothing to that. Reflective as we pick our way through the darkness. It feels strange. Feels like I should know where he is, be able to sense him, somehow. But there’s nothing like that. Just the crisp chill of the night, and the faint sounds of celebration impinging as we draw closer to the palisade.
