“How?”
“I’m not killing anyone.”
He gave a small smile. “Aren’t you? What will happen when you give him the power to remake magic itself, I wonder?”
I wouldn’t be giving it to him.
But that didn’t mean I wouldn’t be killing anyone with it.
I thought about his words, then remembered my cousin’s to me.
Finally you’re acting like a Nazir.
Doyou think I don’t know what it’s like to wear the skin of another animal?
What skin was Kiyan wearing?
Was he the lamb, or the wolf?
And which was I?
Chapter 31
Sometimes I wonder if I’m doing the right thing. Or if I’ve forgotten what’s right or wrong and I’m just surviving.
—Letter from Kiyan to his family, unsent
Kiyan
Why work for him? Why do his bidding?
I raked my hand over my face trying to get her words out of my brain, trying to think of anything other than the questions she’d asked, cutting to the core of me.
When she’d asked about Tirich Mir, it was as if she were reading my thoughts.
She doesn’t know who you are. No one does.
That was what scared me most.
No one knows who I am.
And when I died, I would be alone.
I sat up in my bed. If I couldn’t sleep, I would do something else.
I walked out of camp, to the slow, winding river that made its way through the lower mountains that came very near our camp. Once there, I stripped off, unclipping my cloak, unbuttoning the indigo tunic of the Salt Guard and then slipping off my trousers.
I could have easily heated a bath or used the standing washbasin in my room, but being from River, we were always able to clear our heads best when we went back to the water.
I dove in, the crisp mountain water sluicing over me, returning me to myself, even if just for a moment.
When I came up for air, the moon was high above me, and I tipped my head back in the water, looking up at it.
I planted my feet in the riverbed, the water calm and shallow enough that I could stand without issue, and for a few seconds I let what little power I still had of my life magic flow through my fingers, calling on any spark of life in the river.
Jaipari, fish, mud lobster, the whisper of water chestnuts, rushes, and reeds. The roots of a babul tree responded, as well as the life spark of a woman far downriver fetching water.
In that moment I felt like the peri I was before the Court of Salt took over our Court.
