I’m pulled off the saddle and fall to the ice, legs asleep after the long journey. The Valkyrie wait for me to rise with Mustang’s help. “I think it’s time,” she says. I nod and let the Valkyrie push us after Sefi toward the black temple. Wind pours through the mouths of three hundred and thirty-three stone faces that scream out from the temple’s front façade imprisoned beneath the black rock, wild eyes desperate for release. We enter under the black arch. Snow rolls across the floor.
“Sefi,” I say. The woman turns slowly back to look at me. She’s not cleaned her brother’s blood from her hair. “May I speak to you? Alone?” The Valkyrie wait for their quiet leader to nod before pulling Mustang and Holiday back. Sefi walks farther into the temple. I follow as best I can in my chains to a small courtyard open to the sky. I shiver at the cold. Sefi watches me there in the weird violet light, waiting patiently for me to speak. It’s the first time it’s occurred to me that she’s as curious of me as I am of her. And it also fills me with confidence. Those small dark eyes are inquisitive. They see the cracks in things. In men, in armor, in lies. Mustang was right about Alia. She would never listen. I suspected it before we entered her throne room, but I had to give it my best. And even if she had listened, Mustang would never trust Alia Snowsparrow to lead the Obsidian in our war. I would have gained an ally and lost another. But Sefi…Sefi is the last hope I have.
“Where do they go?” I ask her now. “Have you ever wondered? The men and women your clan gives to the gods? I don’t think you believe what they tell you. That they are lifted up as warriors. That they are given untold riches in service of the immortals.”
I wait for her to reply. Of course, she does not. If I can’t sway her here, then we’re as good as dead. But Mustang thinks, as do I, that we have a chance with her. More than we ever did with Alia, at least.
“If you believed in the gods, you would not have sworn yourself to silence when Ragnar ascended. Others cheered, but you wept. Because you know…don’t you.” I step closer to the woman. She’s just above my own height. More muscular than Victra. Her pale face is nearly the same shade as her hair. “You feel the dark truth in your heart. All who leave the ice become slaves.”
Her brow furrows. I try not to lose my momentum.
“Your brother was Stained, a Son of the Spires. He was a titan. And he ascended to serve the gods but was treated no better than a prized dog. They made him fight in pits, Sefi. They wagered on his life. Your brother, the one who taught you the names of the ice and wind, who was the greatest son of the Spires in his generation, was another man’s property.”
She looks up at the sky where the stars blink through the black-violet twilight. How many nights has she looked up and wondered what had become of her big brother? How many lies has she told herself so she can sleep at night? Now to know the horrors he suffered, it makes all those times she looked at the stars so much worse.
“Your mother was the one who sold him,” I say, seizing the opportunity. “She sold your sisters, brothers, your father. Everyone who has ever left has gone to slavery. Like my people. You know what the prophets your brother sent said. I was a slave but I have risen against my masters. Your brother rose with me. Ragnar returned here to bring you with us. To bring your people out of bondage. And he died for it. For you. Do you trust him enough to believe his last words? Do you love him enough?”
She looks back to me, the whites of her eyes red with an anger that seems to have been long dormant. As if she’s known of her mother’s duplicity for years. I wonder what she’s heard, listening for two and a half decades. I wonder even if her mother has told her the truth. Sefi is to be queen. Perhaps that is the right of passage. Passing down the knowledge of their true condition. Perhaps Sefi even listened to our audience with Alia. Something in the way she watches me makes me believe this.
“Sefi, if you deliver me to the Golds, their reign continues and your brother will have sacrificed himself for nothing. If the world is as you like it, then do nothing. But if it is broken, if it is unjust, take a chance. Let me show you the secrets your mother has kept from you. Let me show you how mortal your gods are. Let me help you honor your brother.”
She stares at the snow as it drifts across the floor, lost in thought. Then, with a measured nod, she pulls an iron key from her riding cloak and steps toward me.
—
