Anji pressed a hand to the door. She felt she’d been lugged around the whole of Yem’s northern reach and not moved an inch. The only thing she had to show for this journey was a collection of bruises, knife wounds, and an aching stitch in her side. Her only friends in the world had been murdered because of her. Running had become an ethereal, useless notion. As had the thought of speaking another word. She’d devise her elaborate, daring escape tomorrow, if only she could find a flat bit of rock in this old ruin and block out her guilt and shame and fear with the recess of sleep. She met the mask’s bovine stare with a nod.

It must have been answer enough. The Ox gripped Anji’s shoulder and pushed open the giant doors.

Chapter 21

21

At first, Anji felt she’d walked into a lightless, musty cave. The air smelled earthy and thick, like a basement gone over to mold. Her footsteps reverberated off the black walls and crumbling pillars set in twin rows along a central aisle scattered with shredded paper and broken brick. Whatever grace or grandeur the cathedral once held had vanished with its flock—a once glorious structure, now a ruin lit by columns of yellow light shining at angles from its many missing rooftiles.

The vaulted ceiling stretched away overhead, arches protruding in thick bands like a giant’s rib cage. Anji lifted her eyes to a sight so familiar it made her heart ache.

A symphony of color and shape, dazzling gold and yellow like summer wheat mixed with blues so deep pieces of the twilight sky might have been chipped off for paint. Figures in flowing dress spread across the curvature, the firmament of bodies and clouds and sunrays so meticulous in their detail, so lovingly brushed it clutched at her heart. She drank in the majesty, the movement frozen in a moment, faded and forgotten and rotting over the empty nave.

The Last Dance. The Nine Idols’ sowing of the physical realm, their ultimate gift bestowed to the newborn races and peoples of the world in those tender millennia past. According to the Order of Inheritance’s scripture (the little of it Anji had read), the Nine had given the world’s dead lands and still waters life and light, with no price and no expectation. They’d handed the keys to their own kingdom to mortals and left this plane of existence to govern itself. The Order’s philosophy being that though the Nine had created this world, they asked nothing in return from its inhabitants—no worship, no reverence, no wars in their name. Their scripture spoke only of gratitude, of community, of sacrifice for fellow peoples, and respect for all living things.

“You must be freezing.”