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I look at them both, so supportive, always there for me, no matter the odds. Then I pat both their shoulders. “It’s all right,” I say. “I can handle this. It’s just a few gods, right?”
Britta smiles wanly. “Just a smallish pantheon of eighty or so.”
I nod. “I’ll speak to them, see my mother, get my kelai. Everything will be all right.”
They both nod, but uncertainty lies in their eyes, fear flickering just behind them. So I lean in closer. “And if anything goes wrong, you begin razing, understood?”
A grim smile slices Britta’s lips. “Perfectly.”
“And with pleasure,” Keita says.
I take a step back.
“All right,” I say out loud. “See you all soon.”
As Britta and Keita nod, Lamin suddenly approaches, his eyes hesitant. “Deka?”
“Yes?” My response is as cold now as it was when I first saw him this evening.
“I know you must be doubtful and mistrustful, but just remember, they’re your allies…and so am I.”
“I’ll try not to forget that when you’re once again spying on me.”
Lamin looks down, chastened. “I don’t know how I can ever begin to apologize for that.”
“I do.” I look up at him, my expression firm. “You can remain here when we leave.”
When Lamin’s eyes flit to mine, stunned, I continue with the speech I’ve practiced since I first began climbing those floating steps this evening. “I can’t trust you; you’ve proven that. Your loyalty was never to me and the others; it was to them, the people we didn’t even know existed. To the gods we didn’t even know were watching us. All of whom you sold our confidences to. My confidences to. So when we leave, I don’t want you to come with us. I want you to stay here, with your family. You’re not part of our group—you never were.”
Lamin steps forward, his eyes wide. “But, Deka, I—”
“No,” I say, turning away. “That is what I have decided.”
He tries to walk closer, but Keita steps in front of him, his eyes firm. “Consider yourself lucky that’s all she asks of you,” he says quietly. “If it were White Hands, she would have already taken your head.”
Tears fill Lamin’s eyes, those strange yet unnervingly familiar white eyes. “Deka,” he says, pleading now as he turns to me, “I never meant to betray you.”
I stare straight into his eyes so he can see the determination in mine. “And yet that’s exactly what you did.”
As Lamin hangs his head, I turn to the others. “I’ll see you all soon. Until then.”
“Until then,” my friends reply.
Then I gesture to Ixa, who swiftly flitters to the ground, already transforming from a nightflyer into his adolescent form, only there’s a difference now. Instead of seeming more feline, the way he usually does, he now seems more reptilian, perhaps in preparation for this aquatic adventure. Once he has fully transformed, we head down onto the path, walking slowly and surely onward until, moments later, the water comes crashing down around us, only it doesn’t inundate us the way I expect. Instead, it surges around me in a swirling pattern, creating a pocket of air that grows smaller and smaller until finally, it dissipates, leaving me several leagues beneath the surface with nothing but the ocean currents billowing around me.
For a moment, all is silent except for the thunder of the waves crashing far above. I hold my breath, almost frightened to inhale. But then I remind myself: I’ve walked underwater before, survived being inundated before.
And more to the point, this water doesn’t feel anything like all the water I’ve encountered before. It’s so light, my body moves effortlessly through it, my dress seeming to repel the water rather than take it in. Could it be that the Maiwurian gods have intervened to allow me to move about easily in this new environment?
I take a cautious breath. Water immediately rushes up my nose, only it’s not alone. Something accompanies it: air. I can breathe!
I take another breath, this one less water-filled. Then another, and another, until finally, I’m breathing. And that’s not the only thing I’m doing. I dart through the water, my body moving so swiftly, it’s as if the currents are air. I blink, shocked, when my eyes begin to adjust, the darkness of the water lightening until suddenly, I can see everything around me with perfect clarity.
I’m on what appears to be a ledge, the surface some leagues above me, deeper water looming in the distance. Oceanic plants sprout all around me, some of them long and stringy, others short and squat, with glowing leaves in all the colors of the rainbow. It’s like each plant is its own little light in the gloom of the deep water, attracting fish and crustaceans and all sorts of other creatures I could never even have conceived.
A jellylike mass moves so fluidly in the currents, lights shimmering up and down its sides, that it takes me some time to realize that it’s not the currents that are moving it but the creature itself. It’s swimming toward a small school of shimmering silver fish and—
My jaw drops when the creature suddenly expands to three times its size and envelops half the school.
