Chapter 38

  Day 22

  Who can comfort you, Lonely Wind?

  What can still your incessant crying?

  Are you a fugitive? One who has sinned?

  Are you condemned to dying?

  What do you see, Wind…a place to hide?

  Or treasure, lost…stolen…misplaced?

  A friend perhaps you could stay beside

  If only you weren’t disgraced?

  Disconsolate Wind, I should go with you,

  For hearing your plaintive weeping,

  My own heart feels strange and friendless too;

  And bitterly lonely…in keeping.

  - Dorothy Bentley Alderson, “Lonely Wind”

  Anthea’s legs dangled off the edge of her platform, her feet bare as though she was dipping them into the vast ocean of empty air before her. Beneath her feet, far down and away from the dizzying heights, the tower-marked gridded plains of Tesibius stretched away to the pale blue horizons. The sunless blue-grey sky above, veined with darker streaks of star-speckled violet, spread inert and lifeless into the distance. Not a breath of wind on Tesibius, the Tower Moon. Not a whisper. All silent on the Tower Moon.

  Even here, atop the tallest tower, the air was lukewarm, still, and dead. No music to stir the wind, to ruffle the fields of limp flowers down below. No wind to make music with the towers. A cycle of stagnation.

  No doors either. Only hers marked the decagon: a white latticework, sad and alone next to the nine empty spaces. Apart from her, only Jeronimy had neglected to gather even a single door. Even Rosma had made one with Fiora. And dear Fiora, she had almost all of them; she lacked only the black door and the white. She would not be getting either—the first out of unwillingness, the second out of inability. For the doors required creation, and that part of Anthea did not exist anymore.

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  Hopeless. It had been so from the beginning. Anthea could not acquire any doors. She could not complete her moon quest, as Derxis called it. She could do little but sit here on the high places, watch her moon wither and die, and try to help the others succeed. They still trusted her. They still believed in her. But she knew better than to hope. She knew their fate.

  Acarnus had recently provided her with valuable intel. A great success for him, for all of them. They knew the location of the Dark Ruler, and now they knew his defenses. It might still be possible, especially with Rasmus leading the charge, to defeat him and take his key. Though they had all dallied far too long while the Dark Ruler grew powerful, it might still be possible. They had to try, and soon.

  She knew now why Acarnus had treated her coldly after she lost her song. He himself had explained it to her, direct and responsible as ever. The knowing was painful, for it raised a question: what would he have done, had Akkama not altered his memories? Would he have stayed by her side? Or would he have left her all the same? She did not know, and neither did he. Yet the question mattered deeply to her. Could she be loved even without a song? Acarnus had regained his memories, with interest, but not his feelings. They were only awkward colleagues now, neither of them in possession of an emotional spectrum of sufficient depth to prohibit their continued collaboration (these were his words). Neither of them could mourn their mutual loss, for neither of them felt it. Nor could they resent Akkama.

  Anthea spent most of her time traveling to Skywater or other locations around Ardia, sometimes visiting the other moons. She sought something, anything, to still the gnawing despair within her. She had even tried Emmius’s crushed crystals, but that had only made her see the Burning Books. Her greatest comfort emerged as a surprise. It was not her angel, which she had still neglected to name. It was not even her newfound ability to fly.

  It was Rasmus. He came to visit her whenever he was able. He told her stories, old tales of the gods and of ancient Infernus. He reminisced, utterly transparent in his endeavor to elicit from her a smile, a stroke of nostalgia, a fond memory. He told her all that he knew about the gods, which was important because the gods were somehow themselves. The gods had done this very thing, had had their own moons, their own doors, their own angels and guardians and quests. And no one, not even Fiora, had tried as hard as Rasmus to create a door with Anthea.

  Anzu appeared before her as he always did: an unexpected terror. He was bright, so horribly bright, that Anthea always flinched away, fearing the books. Anzu rivaled the Burning Books in dread and glory, yet lacked judgment. Anzu, she sensed, was if not kind, then at least empathetic.

  Anthea forced herself to look at Anzu. The bird soared gracefully out in the dead skies. No shadow traced the ground below, which might have given a clue as to just how large, exactly, the white guardian really was.

  It turned toward her, and it looked at Anthea with eyes that blazed like the Bright World. Fear not, those eyes seemed to say, for there is no part of you that I do not know. You cannot surprise me, disappoint me, offend or insult me. You cannot gain either my approval or my censure. You are so entirely within my comprehension that you scarcely exist at all.

  Anzu had a message for her, relayed with such a forceful simplicity that Arcadelt’s methods seemed unwieldy.

  His message was a warning for precisely her, at precisely this time and location. Something dire was nigh. A line would soon be crossed which would never admit a retreat. Anzu was telling Anthea because it was still within her power to prevent it. Would she succeed? He knew. The extent of his knowledge put her status as a free, thinking being into question. But he would not say.

  It had to do with Abraham Black, and the balancing scales of judgment.

  Anzu vanished, though she never saw him go.

  Anthea continued to sit for a while, dazed. Then she took up her scythe, which had a name now, and stood on the brink of her high, high tower.

  She stepped off. She plummeted for a full five seconds before letting her wings ease her freefall into a slow, sweeping arc that lifted her out and away from her home. This, the air howling against her, flinging her hair and tearing at her loose clothes, was the closest thing to wind that existed on her moon.

  She could fly now. She could soar. She could glide. If her moon had had currents of air, then she could have ridden them like the eagles on her old mountain. Finally, at last, she had what she had always wanted. And now that it was hers, she had lost the ability to enjoy so much as a fragment of it. She would have laughed at this cruelty had she been capable of laughter.

  She soared all the way to her Skywater door. Anzu’s warning could not be taken lightly. She had to find out what was going on with Abraham Black and Akkama.