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Part I
The Fall
1
Aiz
Kegar, the Southern Continent
Aiz wished she didn’t hate her enemies with such fervor, for it gave them power over her. But she was a gutter child, and the Kegari gutters bred tough, bitter creatures, ready to stab or scheme or slink into the shadows—depending on what the moment required.
What the gutters didn’t offer was luck. Only a divine entity could bestow good fortune.
So, with dawn approaching, Aiz crept through the hushed, wood-beamed halls of the cloister and out to its stone courtyard. Her thin shoes and ragged skirt did little to protect her against the foot of snow that had fallen in the night. Still, she shoved forward, grimacing into the biting wind that whipped off the mountain spires and stole her breath. Perhaps it would steal her anger, too. Today, of all days, she needed a clear head.
For today, Aiz bet-Dafra would commit her first murder.
The orphans of the cloister and the clerics who cared for them still slept. Lessons began after sunrise. Kegar—a crowded city of a quarter million—was quiet beyond the cloister walls. Aiz was alone, accompanied only by her fury as she regarded the blackened timbers on one side of the courtyard. The orphans’ wing, still in ruins ten years after it burned to the ground.
Her chest tightened. She could hear the screams of the children who’d died there. She dug her nails into her thigh, into the ridge of skin beneath her patched skirt. Mostly, she ignored her scars. But some days, they still burned.
Your anger will be the death of you, Cero, her oldest friend, told her years ago. He’d seen her lose her temper too often to think any different.You must control it. Get what you need. Forget the rest.
She needed vengeance. Justice. She needed her plan to work.
Aiz stopped before the statue at the center of the yard: a woman wearing bell-sleeved robes and looking toward the mountains. Her stone face had hollow cheeks, thin lips, and a heavy brow; her hair was swept back from a high forehead. She wore a headdress carved with a beaming half-sun. Aiz liked to imagine that she and the woman in the statue had the same brown hair and light eyes.
The woman had many names. Vessel of the Fount. First Queen of the Crossing. But here in Dafra slum, where so many were orphaned by military drafts, illness, and starvation, she was Mother Div.
The statue’s plaque was pocked and weathered. But Aiz had learned the words as a child:Blessed is Div, Savior of Kegar, who led our people to refuge in these mountain spires after a great cataclysm engulfed our motherland across the sea.
“Mother Div, hear me.” Aiz clasped her hands in supplication. “Don’t let me fail. I’ve waited too long. If I’m imprisoned or tortured, so be it. If I’m killed, it is your will. But I must succeed first.”
Strange, Aiz knew, to ask the patron of light and kindness to bless a murder. But Mother Div loved orphans, too. She’d have wanted revenge for those killed in the fire. Aiz was sure of it.
A Sail passed overhead, its shadow like that of a giant bird, before winging off to the north. Tiral bet-Hiwa, the highborn commander of the air squadrons, sent patrols over the slums. A reminder that the Snipes who lived here were being watched. And a promise that, if they were lucky, they could join the watchers. Aiz observed the aircraft for a long time, and jumped when she heard a step behind her.
Sister Noa crunched through the snow, her frayed woolen skirt dragging. “Light of the Spires, little one,” the old woman greeted Aiz.
“Long may it guide us,” Aiz responded.
Sister Noa lifted a brown, wrinkled hand to Mother Div’s stone forehead before wrapping her own scarf around Aiz’s neck, waving off her protests.
“You’ll be working at the airfield,” Noa said. “While I laze.”
“Drinking tea with biscuits,” Aiz said, though the cloister was too poor for both. “Bossing your servants about.”
Noa smiled at the lie, dark eyes sparkling beneath the paling snow clouds. As a cleric in Dafra slum’s biggest cloister, she’d be on her feet all day, no better than a servant herself—overseeing lessons, running the kitchens, ensuring the care of any who came to the cloister for aid. And shivering all the while, no doubt.
She smoothed Aiz’s hair back with the same hands that had smacked her when she stole barberries and held her when she screamed at the death of her mother. Noa seemed old even then. Now she was gnarled and wrinkled as a thorn-pine.
The cleric peered at Aiz. “You’re troubled, little love. Tell me a dream.”
“I dream of a Kegari spring.” Aiz smiled at the familiar question. “And a belly full of siltfish curry.”
“May Mother Div make it so,” Sister Noa said. “The sun rises. Get to the airfield. If you ride with Cero, you’ll arrive before the flightmasters give you a hiding.”
Noa nodded to the cloister gate. Beyond, a horse stamped its hooves in the cold. The figure beside it paced in circles, equally impatient. Cero.
