“We” being all of us, gods and Arameri, right down to the servants and baggage. One moment we were in Sky’s forecourt, and the next, the forty or so of us were somewhere else in the world, transported by a flick of Yeine’s will. It was lat, aer here; the dawn had advanced into full morning, but I paid little attention to this. I was too busy laughing at the Arameri, most of whom were stumbling or gasping or otherwise trying not to panic, because we stood atop an ocean. Waves surrounded us, an endless plain of gently heaving emptiness. When I looked down, I saw that our feet dented the water, as though someone had laid a thin and flexible coating between the liquid and our shoes. When the waves bobbed beneath us, we bobbed with them but did not sink. Some of the Arameri fell over, unable to adjust. I chuckled and braced my feet apart, balancing easily. The trick was to lean forward and rely on one’s core, not the legs. I had skated oceans of liquefied gas, long ago. This was not so different.
“Bright Father help us!” cried someone.
“You need no help,” Itempas snapped, and the man fell over, staring at him. Tempa, of course, was rock-steady upon the waves.
“Will this do?” Yeine asked Remath. Remath, I was amused to see, had solved the problem of maintaining balance and dignity by dropping to one knee again.
“Yes, Lady,” Remath replied. A swell passed beneath us, making everyone rise and then drop several feet. Yeine, I noted, did not move as this occurred; the dent beneath her feet simply deepened as the water rose and flowed around her. And the swell died the instant it drew near Nahadoth, the wave’s force dissipating into scattered, pointless motion.
“Where are we?” Shahar asked. She had knelt as well, following Remath’s lead, but even this seemed difficult for her. She did not look up as she spoke, concentrating on remaining at least somewhat upright.
It was Nahadoth who answered. He had turned to face the sun, narrowing his eyes with a faint look of distaste. It did not harm him, however, because it was just one small star, and it was always night somewhere in the universe.
“The Ovikwu Sea,” he said. “Or so it was last called, long ago.”
I began to chuckle. Everyone nearby looked at me in confusion. “The Ovikwu,” I said, letting my voice carry so they could all share the joke, “was a landbound sea in the middle of the Maroland — the continent that once existed where we now stand.” The continent that had been destroyed by the Arameri when they’d been foolish enough to try and use Nahadoth as their weapon. He’d done what they wanted, and then some.
Deka inhaled. “The first Sky. The one that was destroyed.”
Nahadoth turned — and paused, gazing at him for far too long a breath. I tensed, my belly clenching. Did he notice the familiarity of Deka’s features, so clearly etched with Ahad’s stamp? If he realized what Deka was, what Remath and Shahar were … Would he listen if I pleaded for their lives?
“The first Sky is directly below,” he said. And then he looked at me. He knew. I swallowed against sudden fear.
“Not for long,” said Yeine.
She raised a hand in a graceful beckoning gesture toward the sea beneath us. The Three can bring new worlds into existence at wile sl; they can set galaxies spinning with a careless breath. It took Yeine no effort to do what she did then. She didn’t need to gesture at all. That was just her sense of theater.
But I think she’d overestimated the mortal attention span. No one noticed her once the first stones burst from the sea.
It was Deka who murmured for a bubble of air to form around all of us, warding off the now-churning waves and spray. Thus we were safe, able to watch in undisturbed awe as jagged, seaweed-draped and coral-encrusted chunks of daystone — the smallest the size of the Arms of Night — rose beneath and around us. Rubble undisturbed for centuries: it rose now, tumbling upward, stone piling atop stone and fusing, walls forming and shedding debris, courtyards rising beneath our feet to take the place of the heaving waves, structure shaping itself from nothingness.
Then it was done, and the spray cleared, and we looked around to find ourselves standing atop glory.
Take a nautilus shell; cut it cross section. Gently elevate its swirling, chambered tiers as they approach the tight-bound center, culminating at last in a pinnacle on which we all stood. Note its asymmetrical order, its chaotic repetition, the grace of its linkages. Contemplate the ephemerality of its existence. Such is the beauty that is mortal life.
This was not Sky, old or new. It was smaller than both its predecessor palaces and deceptively simpler. Where those earlier structures had been built compact and high, this palace hugged the ocean’s surface. Instead of sharp spires piercing the sky, here there were low, smoothly sloping buildings, joined by dozens of lacy bridges. The foundation — for the palace had been built atop a kind of convex platform — was many-lobed and odd, with spars and indentations jutting out in every direction. Its surface gleamed in the dawn light, white and nacreous as pearl, the only similarity between it and Sky.