“If you believed in the gods, you would not have sworn yourself to silence when Ragnar ascended. Others cheered, but you wept. Because you know…don’t you.” I step closer to the woman. She’s just above my own height. More muscular than Victra. Her pale face is nearly the same shade as her hair. “You feel the dark truth in your heart. All who leave the ice become slaves.”
Her brow furrows. I try not to lose my momentum.
“Your brother was Stained, a Son of the Spires. He was a titan. And he ascended to serve the gods but was treated no better than a prized dog. They made him fight in pits, Sefi. They wagered on his life. Your brother, the one who taught you the names of the ice and wind, who was the greatest son of the Spires in his generation, was another man’s property.”
She looks up at the sky where the stars blink through the black-violet twilight. How many nights has she looked up and wondered what had become of her big brother? How many lies has she told herself so she can sleep at night? Now to know the horrors he suffered, it makes all those times she looked at the stars so much worse.
“Your mother was the one who sold him,” I say, seizing the opportunity. “She sold your sisters, brothers, your father. Everyone who has ever left has gone to slavery. Like my people. You know what the prophets your brother sent said. I was a slave but I have risen against my masters. Your brother rose with me. Ragnar returned here to bring you with us. To bring your people out of bondage. And he died for it. For you. Do you trust him enough to believe his last words? Do you love him enough?”
She looks back to me, the whites of her eyes red with an anger that seems to have been long dormant. As if she’s known of her mother’s duplicity for years. I wonder what she’s heard, listening for two and a half decades. I wonder even if her mother has told her the truth. Sefi is to be queen. Perhaps that is the right of passage. Passing down the knowledge of their true condition. Perhaps Sefi even listened to our audience with Alia. Something in the way she watches me makes me believe this.
“Sefi, if you deliver me to the Golds, their reign continues and your brother will have sacrificed himself for nothing. If the world is as you like it, then do nothing. But if it is broken, if it is unjust, take a chance. Let me show you the secrets your mother has kept from you. Let me show you how mortal your gods are. Let me help you honor your brother.”
She stares at the snow as it drifts across the floor, lost in thought. Then, with a measured nod, she pulls an iron key from her riding cloak and steps toward me.
—
The stairs of the Way of Stains are frigid and gusty, and switch back devilishly into the sky through the clouds. But they are just stairs. We climb them without chains in the guise of Valkyrie—bone riding masks painted blue, riding cloaks, and boots too big for my feet. All loaned to us by three women who stayed behind to guard the griffin at the base of the temple. Sefi leads us, eight other Valkyrie coming behind. My legs shake from exertion by the time we reach the top and see the black glass complex of the Golds that crests the floating mountain. There are eight towers in all, each belonging to one of the gods. They surround the central building, a dark glass pyramid, like wheel spokes, connected by thin bridges twenty meters above the uneven snowy ground. Between us and the Gold complex is a second temple in the shape of a giant screaming face, this one as large as Castle Mars. In front of the temple lies a little square park, at the center of which stands a gnarled black tree. Flames smolder along its branches. White blossoms perch amidst the flames, untouched by the fire. The Valkyrie whisper to each other, fearing the magic at work.
Sefi carefully plucks a blossom from the tree. The flames scorch the edges of her leather gloves, but she comes away with a small white flower the shape of a teardrop. When touched it expands and darkens to the color of blood before wilting and turning to ash. I’ve never seen anything like it. Nor do I particularly give a piss about the showmanship. It’s too cold for that. A bloody red footprint blossoms in the snow in front of us. Sefi and her Valkyrie stay deathly still, arms outstretched with fingers crooked in a gesture of defense against evil spirits.
“It’s just blood hidden in the stone,” Mustang says. “It’s not real.”
Still, the Valkyrie are overawed when more footprints begin to appear on the ground, leading us toward the god’s mouth. They look to each other in fear. Even Sefi goes to her knees when we reach the stairs at the base of the temple’s mouth. We mimic her, pressing our noses to the stone as the throat opens and out waddles a withered old man. Beard white. Eyes violet and milky with age.
“You are mad!” He howls. “Mad as crows to travel the stairs on the eve of winter!” His staff thumps each individual step in his descent. Voice squeezing the lines for all they’re worth. “Bone and frozen blood is all that should remain. Have you come to request a trial of the Stains?”
“No,” I rumble in my best Nagal. To take the trial of the Stains now would do nothing for us. We would only see the gods when we received the facial tattoos. And surviving a test of the Stained is something even Ragnar thought I was not prepared for. There’s only one other way to bring the gods to me. Bait.
“No?” the Violet says, confused.
“We come to seek an audience with the gods.”
At any moment, one of the Valkyrie could give us up. All it would take is a word. The tension works its way through my shoulders. Only thing that keeps me sane is knowing Mustang’s on board enough with the plan to be bent on a knee beside me at the top of this damn mountain. That has to mean I’m not totally insane. At least I hope.
“So you are mad!” the Violet says, growing bored of us. “The gods come and go. To the abyss, to the sea down below. But they give no audience to mortal men. For what is time to creatures such as them. Only the Stained are worth their love. Only the Stained can bear the fever of their sight. Only the children of ice and darkest night.”
Well this is bloodydamn annoying.
“A ship of iron and star has fallen from the Abyss,” I say. “It came with a tail of fire. And struck among the peaks near the Valkyrie Spires. Burning across the sky like blood.”
“A ship?” the Violet asks, now utterly interested, as we supposed he would be.
“One of iron and star,” I say.
“How do you know it was no vision?” the Violet asks cleverly.