Page 58 of Beyond the Shadowed Earth
An icy fear curled round her heart, tangling with her rage. “You haven’t spoken to me since I was a child. I called for you. I screamed for you. Ibledfor you, and you didn’t answer. Why didn’t you answer?”
“Because you didn’t need me, then.” His voice grated in her ears, like stone scraping stone. “And because I was bound to another.” The shadow-god slipped through the wall and out onto the hill.
Eda followed, stone parting around her like so much mist. “Do you mean Ileem?”
He stood silhouetted against the stars, the wind ruffling through his wings, his crown blazing brighter. “You still care for your enemy, little Empress?”
“Youare my enemy.”
“You think he would have been different were he not bound to me? He would not have. He would have put a knife in your heart the instant he saw you. All his lies were mine.”
She hardened before him. “Have you abandoned him, now that you don’t need him anymore?”
“The princeling didn’t matter.” Tuer’s Shadow flexed his dark wings. “He never did. He was merely my way to you. And now you are on the path I brought you to, the path I made you for.”
“I made myself. I come of my own accord.”
“And yet.” He smiled, his teeth flashing in the darkness.
“I’m coming to kill you,” she spat. “To drive a knife into your heart and make you pay for betraying me, for taking Niren and my Empire. For leaving me withnothing.”
“I upheld my end of the bargain, little Empress. You did not uphold yours. The Circles are locked—how do you think you will find me?”
She lunged at him, intending to push him off the hill into the valley below.
But her hands passed through him, and a terrible chill seeped under her skin.
He brushed one finger against her forehead, and her brow flared with heat. “You cannot kill a shadow,” he said.
And then Eda blinked and she was standing at the ship’s rail again, the sea calm before her, sun streaming through wooly clouds to pool like water on the deck.
Chapter Twenty-Five
THE DAY WAS COOL AND STREAKED WITHclouds when Halda came into sight on the horizon. The land was green and white and gray: green trees, white cliffs, gray mountains. As the ship crept closer, tiny brown specks came into view circling the cliffs: the famed Haldan eagles said to be descendants of the ones who spoke with the god Uerc long ago.
The steamer took an age to reach Pehlain, the port city, and by the time it did, it was well into the afternoon, shadows slanting long across the dock. All at once the ship’s steward was shouting instructions down at the steerage passengers to collect their belongings—there wouldn’t be another chance to retrieve them.
Eda didn’t have much to collect, just a worn satchel she’d adopted from Lady Rinar, but she got stuck at the back of the crowd, and was nearly the last steerage passenger to squeeze out onto the narrow deck.
The first-class passengers were allowed to disembark first, and then finally the steerage passengers were ushered up the narrow metal stairs and out onto the dock, one by one.
As the people ahead of her left the ship, Eda was finally awarded a view of Pehlain: cobbled streets wound up from the quay toward squat stone buildings, banners snapping brightly from nearly every rooftop in blue and red and gold. Snatches of music leaked out from one of the nearest buildings, which was situated a little up the hill from the dock and was three times as tall as the rest of them. Eda realized it must be an inn. She still had the Emperor’s ring, but she needed it for supplies for her journey—she couldn’t afford to spend anything on accommodations, as much as she longed forsheetson abed.
It was her turn to climb the stairs.
Eda’s feet hit the dock, and the cobbled street after, her body swaying to offset the movement of the ship that was no longer there. Wind tangled in her hair, smelling of sea and salt and stone. She peered at the maze of streets winding up from the shoreline and, taking a deep breath, started walking.
She stopped to ask a Haldan boy for directions, thankful she spoke his language well enough for him to understand her. The city of Pehlain seemed, at first, to be a mess of disorganization: wandering, haphazard streets, buildings piled precariously on top of one another, a myriad of treacherous-looking trails leading up into the mountains.
But as Eda followed the boy’s directions, she found a chaotic kind of order to everything. The streets were labeled with freshly painted signs on every corner. Similar businesses seemed to be grouped together, the flower shops down one row and the fish markets down another. The cobbles lay smooth and worn beneath her feet, and the banners snapping from nearly every rooftop were splashes of bright color against the gray sky.
She shivered as she walked, her thin trousers and filthy blouse unsuitable for the Haldan climate. She wondered how cold it must be up in the mountains, when it was already so frigid down here.
She came to a storefront in a row of buildings halfway up a steep hill. Charms hung from the eave of the roof, carved wooden figures strung on lengths of bright blue and yellow yarn. Eda recognized the figures as depictions of the nine gods, all skillfully carved. If the boy’s directions were correct, this was a cartographer’s shop, and clothes and other supplies waited for her the next street down.
She pulled the door open and stepped in. The shop was narrow but deep, lit by a half dozen blue globe lanterns fixed to the wall at regular intervals. Between the lanterns, the left wall was plastered with so many maps it made the whole building seem inches narrower than it ought to have been. The right wall was lined with wooden racks specially designed to hold hundreds more maps, rolled up and protected in cream-colored cylinders. The whole place smelled like dust and paint and ink. More wood and yarn charms dangled from the ceiling.
Eda walked to the back of the shop, wooden floorboards creaking under her feet, to where a boy of eighteen or so sat on a stool with his bare feet propped up on a worn counter, reading a newspaper. He had the red-brown skin of most native Haldans and straight black hair cropped short behind his ears. He glanced at her over the top of his newspaper. “May I help you, Miss?”
