“Hello, Tensor,” she said scathingly.
The beat of the naga’s wings grew louder. The girl seemed unshakably sure of herself, utterly unafraid.
“Why are you doing this?” Mokoya asked.
She sneered. “Haven’t you figured it out?”
“No, Wanbeng. Why don’t you tell me?”
The girl’s face turned sharp and canny. She squatted, gracelessly, and plucked a book from the shambles of the floor. She flung it at Mokoya’s chest. “See for yourself.”
It was a logbook of some kind, the pages stained with ink, strange dyes. A looping, practiced hand had scrawled observations in thin lines down the pages. There were illustrations, dried samples of things tied in between the sheaves.
The diagrams and results and shorthand were too much to take in, with hell bearing down on them upon ship-sail wings.
“Wanbeng, what is this?”
Wanbeng looked triumphant. “They thought they could lie to me. Keep me from the capital when Mother was dying and hide the truth. They were wrong. I’m not a child any longer. I’m not an idiot.”
Her words weren’t registering. Mokoya could see the naga now, the fire in its eyes. So close its flight tore howling wind into the ruined chamber. “What are you saying?”
Wanbeng’s eyes glittered. “Don’t you see, Tensor? That’s my mother.”
No, Mokoya wanted to say. It was unthinkable.
Yet the pieces were all there: The naga was an adept. The Tensors had to have found a soul pattern from somewhere. And hadn’t Tan Khimyan and Raja Choonghey become close, in the capital, when Raja Ponchak fell ill?
The naga hit the tower again. Everything shuddered. A chunk of wall came away like steamed cake in the hands of a greedy child. A head, massive and serrated, reared into the chamber, bringing with it a wash of heat, of musk. Wanbeng ran toward it.
“Wanbeng, no!” Mokoya started after her.
The naga lowered its head, and before Mokoya could react or deflect the blow, she was hit in the stomach by a raw fist of air. The ground met her spine, hard.
Pain screamed from her knee to her hip as she scrambled to her feet. Wanbeng had climbed onto the naga’s massive head and was sliding down its neck, looking for a place to rest. “Wanbeng—listen to me—”
The naga beat its wings, trying to drive Mokoya off her feet again. She gritted her teeth and pushed back against it, preparing to fold the Slack. She’d be gravesent if she let the girl run off with this wild creature.
Opening her mindeye this close to the naga, she finally noticed the unnatural alterations that had been done to it, the thing grafted to its soul.
Mokoya’s fold carried her onto one of the naga’s hind legs as it took off into the sky. Its skin was hot and rough, and it stank with the musk of a hundred horses. Her feet held against its leathery texture. She climbed upward.
“Get lost,” Wanbeng shouted from the top of the naga. “You can’t change my mind!”
Was this what it was like, being on a boat at sea? One foot slipped, and Mokoya barely caught herself in time. Below she could see the glint of water reflecting flame and moonlight. Wind tore at her as the naga flew onward, away from the city.
“Leave me and my mother alone,” the girl cried.
“It’s not your mother,” Mokoya said, over the howl of wind and sand. “This isn’t—” She sucked in a breath. “Look at it! It’s a beast, a wild animal.”
“You’re wrong.”
In her words, Mokoya heard the echoes of her arguments with Thennjay about Phoenix. “I’m not.” She kept climbing. “Trust me, Wanbeng. I know what you’re feeling. I know what it’s like.”
The girl understood her meaning, but she wasn’t swayed. She shouted, her breaths harsh, “Just because you’ve given up on your daughter, doesn’t mean you’re right!”
“Your mother is gone,” Mokoya shouted back. “You have to accept that.”
Wanbeng’s features crumpled in rage. “You stay away from me!” And she struck outward with earth-nature, hitting Mokoya in the chest.
She stumbled. The naga pitched, and Mokoya lost her grip on its skin. Something struck her head hard. The world exploded in flashes of black as she felt herself in free fall, the shape of the naga receding, Wanbeng’s cry of “Tensor Sanao?” pulling away to silence. The cold embrace of water slapped around her, and darkness took her as the oasis folded over her head.
ACT THREE
THE RED THREADSOF FORTUNE
Chapter Fifteen
MOKOYA WAS FALLING, SLIDING, running up a rocky slope, red dirt in her eyes, her fingernails, her mouth. Her chest hurt like a shot wound, but there was no blood, just panic.
She knew what was happening. She knew, and she couldn’t stop it.
Her desperate knees and feet found the top of the slope, found the great plateau of the battle, found the source of the death smell. Blood. Guts. Burnt hide. The naga, stricken: mouth open, sides heaving, hole torn so deep its white ribs gleamed. And Rider, crumpled there: eyes half open, neck broken-angled, blood tracing calligraphy on their face.
“Rider!” Mokoya scooped them up, pulled them in, shook their senseless form. Found them heavy, inert, limbs dangling, skull dragging against rock. Slackcraft flared across their skin, tattoos stirring awake, burning through dead flesh and onto bone.
Mokoya folded in half and screamed.
Thennjay said, “I’m sorry, Nao. You know you couldn’t have changed anything.” There was blood on his robes, a weapon in his hand, a sorrowful expression on his face.
Had they been in battle? Why was he here? Why was she here?
Someone called her name. Like an herb bag being pulled out of soup, everything rushed away from her.
She woke to pressure on her back and hips, a sour taste in her mouth, and a symphony of pains and aches she could not begin to catalogue. Shock and fear forced her body upright anyway. She knew this place, this quiet cavern, with its light and warmth and sounds of soft water.
“Mokoya.” Rider appeared in her field of vision, an almost-blur of gray and cream. A jolt to her being—Rider was here, alive and unbroken. They were trying to keep Mokoya down on the soft fabric that made up a bed.
Mokoya pushed their hands away, struggling to get to her feet—to do what? She got halfway up, then sat back down. Her clothes had a stiffness to them that told her they’d recently dried out. How was she still in one piece? She should have shattered. She should have died.
Rider looked exhausted, their face bloodless and fragile as cracked porcelain. “Mokoya,” they whispered. “Thank the heavens.”
Behind Rider, Bramble was curled on the ground with her wings folded in, observing them. Bataanar and its destruction felt very distant. “What happened?” she asked.
They reached a hand toward Mokoya’s face, reconsidered, withdrew. “Where should I begin?”