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Morovara shook her head again. “We used to be called ‘world talkers’ because when you open yourself up a part of the world itself listens and responds. If you try to bend it to your will, it’ll only hurt you and those around you. Don’t force it. Ask and listen.”
“But I’m a heart turner—the stories describe witches who control minds and emotions, twisting people’s Spirits while they are still inside their bodies.”
“A misnomer.” She chuckled. “You’re no story, sweet girl. Some might think you turn the hearts of men, and you can.” She smiled, and I heard the double meaning in her words before she sobered. “You don’t need to change others, that way lies madness, and you can only amplify or smother what’s already there anyway. With powers such as ours, taking time for quiet is essential. Focus on that. The noble mages don’t understand. They suppress their magic all their lives, then attempt to push through their limits in a great show of power. Everything needs balance—like you and your sister—life and death.”
The song of the temple was quieter than the city—rushing of robes, chants, and sleeping bats. Cats slinking through stone corridors on silent paws hummed in the back of my mind.
“I can feel the calm here.”
Morovara shook her head. “You’re still using magic. There are more dead under Tal, generation upon generation, than anyone knows. With my help, the priestesses sing them into the ground, calm them to sleep and guide them through the Grove. Even up here, even during daylight, I can feel their discontent, and it grows every day. If I could not close off my mind, I would neverrest.”
“What do you do?”
“Separate myself. For me visualization works. I imagine a blanket, the kind my mother knitted, wrapped around me. It might be old, but it can still take away the cold of the dead.” She lifted a threadbare black cloth from the back of her chair and stroked the fluffy fabric. “Everyone has their own method. Your sister imagined herself in the Archive, surrounded by knowledge.”
I pictured the prince’s mental walls, and brick by brick built my own. They were not smooth obsidian but worn and climbable. Yellow like the hidden courtyard. When needed, I could remove a stone to let something in or ascend the top and leap into the sea of others’ emotions.
While building inside me, I had no idea if it would work, but as I settled the last mental brick, there was, perhaps for the first time, silence.
I’d believed before I touched the crown, I only felt Lumi’s intentions, but that was not true. Always, the melody of life had been there, playing through me, pulling me forward in a dance all my own.
This was like plunging my head under the water in the bath, only more. Like I levitated in an infinite ocean, knowing there was life all around, but my ears were unable to convert the swells into sound. My great-grandmother nodded to me as she petted the cat. Was this how others experienced the world?
The magic had seemed something separate from me, a power to use or not. But that was not what it meant to be a mage.
This was.
The magic was me, and I was it. And without it, I hardly recognized the world around me. Drawing on it too deeply, like I hadin Lowtown or when I fell, made me more part of the silent song playing all around. Like someone whose hearing increased until they could not filter out the crickets and each feline purr became thunderous.
What kind of mage had the man who climbed onto the table during my welcome banquet been? He talked of the king hiding and the dead rising. Peasants clamoring to get inside. It sounded too much like what von Lemerch had spoken of in the crypt later. What happened when a water seer lost himself to his power?
The hairs on my arms stood, a chill so deep even the Talian summer heat could not reach it formed inside me. Time was running out.
I imagined prying a brick away from my wall, destroying the unnatural silence inside without allowing the world’s song to overwhelm me, and faced Morovara. Finding family had distracted me. It was time for harder questions.
I pulled my hand away. No matter how kindly she had welcomed me, she was a stranger who had not reached out to help when I needed it. And now the dead were walking the city, and her priestesses were secretly meeting with von Lemerch under the Women’s Tower, talking of death and rebellion.
I could not mention von Lemerch, but I was finding there were ways to work around that. Focusing on what I had seen, what I knew instead of what I might guess, I started on the questions I had formulated during the long night.
“As the high priestess, you control the Spirits in Tal?”
Morovara sipped her tea. “There is no controlling the dead, especially the older ones. I guide andcalm.”
I frowned before I could hide it. “So, you cannot make them do anything?”
“Perhaps for a bell. Perhaps if they’re newly dead. Why do you ask?”
The grandmotherly smile had dropped, and I saw the unbending woman underneath. Despite loosening the hold on my magic, I felt nothing from her now. She was better shielded than even the prince. Where he was a black wall, she seemed simply to not be there.
I could have told her how the Spirits obeyed Lumi. Or perhaps found a way to mention the priestesses being where they should not be. But after last night, those were not the most urgent things happening.
“The dead—still inside their bodies—are attacking families in Lowtown.”
Morovara blinked. “Are you sure they’re deceased?”
“You identified my magic without asking me. I know life and death.”
Her face did not change but a slight tremor shook the tea in her hand as she stirred it three times in a silent appeal to the Goddess she served.
