Minya regarded them, gathered now around the stranger. They seemed all arrayed against her. She gave her answer slowly, as though instructing idiots in the obvious. “If I didn’t use my magic on her, she would evanesce.”
“So use it for her, not against her,” Sparrow implored. “You can hold her soul but leave her free will, the way you do with the Ellens.”
The Ellens were the two ghost women who’d raised them, and there was a problem with Sparrow’s innocent statement. The women, they all now noted, weren’t currently exhibiting “free will.” If they had been, they would not have remained apart, huddled behind the metal barrier Lazlo had made when he fought off Minya’s assault. They would be right here with them, tangled up in their business, clucking and bossing as was their way.
But they were not, and as this dawned on them, their shock pivoted in this new direction. “Minya,” said Feral, appalled. “Tell me you aren’t controlling the Ellens.”
It was unthinkable. They weren’t like the other ghosts in Minya’s sad, dead army. They didn’t despise the godspawn. They loved them, and were loved, and had died trying to protect them from the God-slayer. Theirs were the first souls Minya had ever caught, on that dire day when she’d found herself alone with four babies to raise in a blood-spattered prison. She could never have managed without them, and it was as Sparrow said, or at least it always had been: She used her magic for them, not against them. Yes, she held their souls on strings, like she did with all the rest, but that was just so they wouldn’t evanesce. She left them their free will. Supposedly.
Minya’s face tightened, a flash of guilt no sooner showing than it vanished. “I needed them. I was defending the citadel,” she said with a special glare for Lazlo. “After he trapped my army inside.”
“Well, you’re not defending it now,” said Feral. “Let them be.”
“Fine,” said Minya.
The ghost women emerged from behind the barrier, freed. Great Ellen’s eyes were fierce. Sometimes, to get the children to tell her the truth, she turned her whole head into a hawk’s. They could never defy that piercing gaze. She didn’t transform now, but her gaze pierced nonetheless.
“My darlings, my vipers,” she said, coming over. She seemed to glide, her feet not touching the floor. “Let’s have an end to this bickering, shall we?” To Minya, in a voice equal parts fondness and censure, she said, “I know you’re upset, but Sarai’s not the enemy.”
“She betrayed us.”
Great Ellen clucked her tongue. “She did no such thing. She didn’t do what you wanted her to. That isn’t betrayal, pet. It’s disagreement.”
Less Ellen, who was younger and slighter than her broad, matronly cohort, added with some humor, “You never do what I want you to. Is it betrayal every time you hide from a bath?”
“That’s different,” muttered Minya.
To Lazlo, watching, with the awful sensation that his hearts were in a vise, the tone of the interaction was bizarre. It was so casual, so entirely not on par with Minya holding Sarai’s soul prisoner. They might have been scolding a child for hugging a kitten too tight.
“We should all decide what to do,” said Feral in his newly deepened voice. “Together.”
Sparrow added, with a note of pleading, “Minya, this is us.”
Us, Minya heard. The word was tiny, and it was huge, and it was hers. Without her, there would be no “us,” just piles of bones in cradles. And yet they gathered around this man they had never seen before, and stared at her as though she were the stranger.
No. They were staring as though she were the enemy. It was a look Minya knew very well. For fifteen years, every soul she’d captured had looked at her just like that. A frisson of… something . .. ran through her. It was as fierce as joy but it wasn’t joy. It shot through her veins like molten mesarthium and made her feel invincible.
It was hate.
It was reflex, like drawing your knife when your foe’s hand twitches. It pounded through her like blood, like spirit. Her hands tingled with it. The sun seemed to brighten, and everything became simple. This was what Minya knew: Have an enemy, be an enemy. Hate those who hate you. Hate them better. Hate them worse. Be the monster they fear the most. And whenever you can, and however you can, make them suffer.
The feeling welled up in her so swiftly. If she’d had fangs they’d be beaded with venom and ready to bite.
But .. .bite whom?
Hate whom?
These were her people. Everything she’d done for the past fifteen years had been for them. This is us, Sparrow had said. Us us us. But they were over there, looking at her like that, and she was no part of their us. She was outside it now, alone, apart. A sudden void opened up in her. Would they all betray her, as Sarai had, and…what would she do if they did?
“We don’t have to decide the whole course of our lives right this moment,” said Great Ellen. She fixed her gaze on Minya. Her eyes weren’t hawk-like now, but soft and velvety brown and filled with devoted compassion.
Inside Minya, something was coiled, growing tighter and tighter the more the others faced her down. Telling her what to do could only back her into a corner, where she would, like a trapped thing, fight to the bitter end. From the start, Lazlo had raised her hackles by coming out of nowhere like an impossible vision—a Mesarthim, astride Rasalas!—and ordering her to catch Sarai’s soul. As though she wouldn’t have on her own! The gall of him. It burned like acid. He’d even pinned her to the ground, Rasalas’s hoof hard on her chest. It ached, and she was sure a bruise was forming, but it was nothing next to her resentment. By compelling her by force to do what she’d been doing already, it was as though he’d won something, and she’d lost.
What if he’d asked instead? Please, won’t you catch Sarai’s soul? Or, better yet, trusted that she just would. Oh, it wouldn’t have been all how-do-you-do and sitting down to tea, but would Sarai be frozen in the air right now? Perhaps not.
And though Lazlo couldn’t be expected to know her, the others certainly should. But of them all, only Great Ellen understood what to do. “One thing at a time and first things first,” she said. “Why don’t you tell us, pet. What’s first?”
Instead of ordering, the nurse asked. She deferred to her, and let her choose, and the coiled thing in Minya relaxed just a little. It was fear, of course, though Minya did not know it. She believed it was rage, only and always rage, but that was the costume it wore, because fear was weakness, and she had vowed to never again be weak.
She might have replied that first they would kill Eril-Fane. It was what they expected. She could see it in their wariness. But she saw something else in them, too: a budding defiance. They had tested their voices against her, and they still had the taste in their mouths. It would be stupid to push them right now, and Minya was not stupid. In life, as in quell, direct attacks meet with the greatest resistance. It’s better to be oblique, lull them into lowering their defenses. So she took a step back and, with effort, grew calm.
“First,” she said, “we should see to Sarai.”
And with that, she let her go—her substance, not her soul. No tricks. She’d made her point.
Released from her grip, Sarai fell back to the ground. It was abrupt, and she collapsed to her knees. All those long moments she’d been held rigid, paralyzed, she’d been fighting it, probing for weakness. But there was no weakness. Minya’s hold on her had been absolute, and now that she was freed, she began to shake uncontrollably.
Lazlo rushed forward to hold her, murmuring in his gravelly voice. “You’re all right now,” he said. “I have you. We’ll save you, Sarai. We’ll find a way. We’ll save you.”
She didn’t answer. She rested against him, depleted, and all she could think was: How?
The others—except Minya—all clustered around, stroking her arms, her hair, asking if she was all right, and casting shy looks at Lazlo, who was, after all, the first living stranger to ever stand in their midst.