"I will make it alright," she said. "I -- I will speak to his family; I will appeal to them as his friend. I will--"
Rhaena touched her hands. The sentence was lost somewhere distant, as if she had forgotten how to speak. A black dot of blood stuck within the cavity of a rotten, hollowed tooth started to throb. She sucked in air, a gasp, let out a faint noise like a cricket's neigh as all the muscles in her throat turned to stone.
The Dream. Troughs of milk. Games of bones. A song ringing in the eaves of buildings of gold and alabaster. Hawks. The needy and starving in lines around the Meetinghouse. The hairless seamstress, the Killer; leather-faced Cherny, the Gatherer; Catch-Catch-Catch in his wild splendor, the sower of some seed that had taken shape between the girl's thighs and had blossomed into a child, knowledge of Soodsy, a daughter, she was so good with her knife, Killing as she was meant. A cart of the dead. Yellow-bead eyes of the Hungry. A silver-bleeding Regent, Brown's power-hungry hands. Cherny's final, violent death; the fall Myrken in a single, sand-tarnished, world-crushing Song-- The girl's fingers twitched against Rhaena's. She knew her seams, she knew her rhetoric, her simple math; she knew her
glass words and right from wrong in the eyes of the Nameless. But what she had no knowledge of were talents. Rhaena's conscience prying against the soft fleshwalls of her mind, piercing, digging. There were artifacts there that spilled over with the Dream as if she had shattered a seal of wax on a cork of over-fermented wine, spurts of other memories splattering out from between the cracks--
the sweltering heat the the the stink of maddening incense incense prayers lifted up to the nameless no names nameless don't have names wrap the thread around your fingers twist it just like so the nameless roll it down across the thumb you fool you--Th-that one must be Jernoah.Ye are right about words. Ye have wronged me with yers, lass.We went on th-th-the boat, and all went away - I sang to th-the Others. They wanted to know why I wasn't with th-them. All th-through the boat, I sang.a conversation.
she killed him. just a seamstress, but she did.
i know. she was afraid. she feared being broken.
but she killed him. she killed the Calamity--
but her parents, her mother is mad with smokeroot and her father makes shoes.
a cobbler's daughter is expendable. he will have another. it is blasphemy to slaughter a Calamity.
you will not concede because of her fright, then.
we need a cad'vak. the festival draws near. a reliquary for the horrific deeds done this year in our State.
If they ever try to take you back to Jernoah, Mister -- Mister Catch, I -- I promise I'll not let them.you would have her eat the sins. you would take her hand away and give her the silver.
if i must. she will share the burden.
and when she dies--
what Jernoah has done wrong will make barren the earth where she perishes.
this year's cad'vak? for the nameless.
like a piss-white prophet. for the nameless.
so they cut the hand hand hand how will i make the make the make the mending you will learn again such a good seamstress share the share the burden burden my father makes a shoe and mother smokes a root promise me promise me me me you will not tell anymore stories stories stories mirrors a shard mirror bad stories i am no oracle
Th-th-they p-p-put in silver chains, and I was so p-p-proud, everyone c-c-came to see me, and they threw flowers at my feet, and g-g-gave me the grandest cart to pull.an old woman with stalactite teeth smiled--
the growing rat'vak. the one who grows. black smoke and black smoke and black smoke and all for Jernoah.A mug of white peppermint tea spilled over. It hit the floor and shattered, precious porcelain bursting like a cracked egg across the wooden schoolhouse floor. A collar of black sweat made sticky the neck of her dress. Her palms disengaged, knowing naught but the lapse of a sluggish, weary second--
"I am -- I am
sorry," the girl whispered, chair scraping against the floorboards as she squatted, a puddle of skirts sprawling out around her like a filthy, half-torn halo as she frantically scooped jagged pieces of cup into her silvered palm.