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In the meantime, we will remain here to aid in preparations for our first offensive against the gods.
I return my attention to Sayuri as she nods. “Hmm…,” she says, stepping closer. The movement is so swift and fluid, she’s in front of me before I notice she’s taken a step.
I hastily retreat, unnerved to be so close to the deathshriek. Her claws seem even sharper than they were back at the Warthu Bera, and now they have been edged with gold, as have the spike-like quills on her back that cause her signature rattling sound.
Even more than before, Sayuri seems an intimidating shadow. But that might just be my guilt talking. There’s so much I owe her, so much I have to atone for.
She stares down at me, unblinking, and I stare back, a fly caught in the gaze of a particularly large, particularly deadly spider. That is, until I realize.
Sayuri’s eye contact is direct, unbroken. And she isn’t peering off into thin air like she’s seeing things that aren’t there. I noticed this before, but for some reason, I didn’t understand what it meant until now. “You’re fully lucid,” I conclude.
Could this be because she’s no longer under the influence of blueblossom, the sweet-smelling flower the matrons at the Warthu Bera used to drug her into submission?
A bitter smile slices her lips as she repeats, “Lucid…. Such a fascinating word. So much judgment hidden in so few syllables. Tell me, Angoro, do you believe that you must remain attached to this world to comprehend everything that is around you?”
I blink up at her. “I—I don’t know.” I don’t even understand what she’s asking, truth be told.
Sayuri’s smile spreads wider, now a baring of teeth. She gestures up with arms as long and gaunt as a conid tree’s branches in midwinter. “This world, this physical realm upon which you and I stand now,” she continues. “Do you believe you must remain attached to it, to what you see, what you smell, what you hear, to understand it?”
As if prompted, my mind immediately races back to Myter and what they taught me. The Greater Divinity. Space and matter. All things I still don’t truly understand. But I know they’re there, know that they’re all forces that affect me for better or worse.
The Greater Divinity especially. Even now, I can’t fully connect to it—or rather, don’t want to fully connect to it, given my misgivings. What if there’s some malevolent force behind it, some god that’ll take me over the moment I truly let it in? I’m not certain I still believe that, but I hold off just in case.
“No,” I finally say, sighing. “I don’t believe that. There are a great many things I cannot see that still exist despite my inability to perceive them.”
Sayuri’s smile slices wider. “And you were so blind before.”
Sayuri doesn’t have to explain what she’s referring to. The last time we spoke, right before she disappeared over the burning walls of the Warthu Bera, she hinted to me that the Gilded Ones weren’t what they seemed.
“I wanted to live in a dream,” I say, recalling that time. “A fantasy of what this world could be, rather than what it truly was. So I chose not to see what the mothers were. What they were doing.”
“You still call them the mothers.” There’s no judgment in this, only a statement of fact.
“A slip of the tongue,” I admit ruefully. “It’s only been a few months since I believed—”
“That they loved you. That they cared.”
There’s a sorrowful understanding in Sayuri’s tone. But then, she was one of the first four alaki born to them, a war queen—one of their primary generals. She was one of the chosen. One of the beloved.
Only, the Gilded Ones’ love always comes at a cost. All the gods’ love does. Sayuri and I both know that.
I nod before looking up at her again. “How did you find out about them?” I ask. “Initially, I mean. It must have been difficult.”
I know from our prior conversations that Sayuri discovered what the goddesses were when they were at the height of their power. During that era, their pretense at doting motherhood was exquisitely calibrated, and their ability to erase the memories of anyone who went against them was flawless.
That Sayuri even suspected them then says a great deal about the strength of her mind, no matter how fractured it may seem now.
She shrugs, the movement rattling up and down her quills. “I went mad,” she says simply. “And do you know, madness is illuminating. Because when you no longer think like others, you’re forced to think like yourself. To see things in ways you might not have seen before. To see the truth. And that brings understanding, painful though it may be.”
“So now you’re here.”
“Now I’m here.”
“With White Hands, your eldest sister…. Who you promised to kill the next time you saw her.”
“And I made good on that vow.” Sayuri gives this reply so casually, it’s moments before its meaning sinks in: She made good on her vow to kill White Hands the next time she saw her.
“You did?” I ask, surprised, though I really shouldn’t be.
