The sea was the color of the night and made no sound beneath them. One moment she could reach down and brush her hand against the spray of the waves. The next, they were high in the sky, as close to the stars as they had been the first night they had flown like this. The wind was silent as well. His voice was the only sound she could hear. The soft, familiar song wound on, warm and steady, resonating through the world around them.
They would reach the desert soon and return home to the comfort of their bed. She did not ask him how far it would be. She knew he had flown here once and trusted that he remembered the way.
Yet the song began again, and there was no sight of land. The smell of salt was strong. She grasped his hand and the song stuttered, slowing, and suddenly the ocean was right beneath them. Pressed close against the roiling, silent waves, she could not see the horizon.
She leaned into him urgently, trying to shake him out of his stupor, but he stared straight ahead, lips moving in soft recitation. She dug her hands into the carpet and pulled up, desperately hoping it would change course before they plunged into the sea. It lurched suddenly and threw her onto her back, dangerously close to the carpet's edge, and the dark sky filled her vision. Overhead the stars were winking out one by one like vanishing blades. Before she could right herself, the carpet collapsed as lifeless fabric beneath them, and she slipped into empty air. Her frantic hands found no purchase, and she caught a glimpse of him falling beside her before the water rose up like a jagged wall, the crack of flesh and bone shattering in an instant—
She awoke with a choked scream.
The smell of salt was strong. She dragged herself upright, hands combing deep into her hair, nails digging into her scalp. She could not see in the dark, could barely make out the sheets tangled around her legs. Air passed shallow and quick through her lungs as if she were still falling, the wind snatching away her breath.
She carried a lamp to the balcony and lit the sconces. The twin swords trembled in her grip. She fought to keep them still and straight, breathing in measured paces, practicing each movement as an elementary form of control. The first swing was fast, brutal, ringing. She stumbled to the side, her hearing unbalanced as if submerged in the sea. She struck again, faster, imagining the air as the refracting light of a star, a shifting white spark captured at the point of her blade.
Again. She stepped forward, closer to the dark, away from the fires she had lit. She could see nothing in the sky. There was no moon, only a handful of stars. She parried an invisible foe and struck at his heart, killing him in an instant. More took his place. The vanguard of her enemies. She struck at them all, wild and precise at the same time, fighting them with the desperation of one who could not see land. There were hundreds, thousands of them. They stretched on and on, and she inevitably slowed, breathless and aching, dizzy with the motion of the waves.
The scent of salt drove her to her knees. A sharp clang of metal rang in her ears, the swords clattering on marble. She gritted her teeth and tasted water, drops of a lukewarm ocean. She clamped a hand over her mouth, biting into the palm to stifle the first sob. With her other hand she fumbled for a sword and gripped it clumsily, slamming it point-first into the floor beside her. It glanced off and scraped across stone. She grabbed the other and did the same. She struck at the floor again and again, stabbing straight down to hear the clang and feel the killing blow like a torrent into her hands up through her arms into her shoulders, ebbing near her throat. There was sound now, and salt.
When she could no longer lift a sword to strike, she let both blades fall to her sides. The scars in the stone were lifeless, already permanent. There would be no transference.
Carpet came at her call, and she said nothing as they left the city, setting their direction with her line of sight alone. The swords rested against her back, a cold comforting weight. She waited for Carpet to signal their arrival, as reluctant as it was to obey her command. Only it could see the difference in the sand, but she remembered the difference in the air. Still, dead. Watched.
Carpet slowed when she expected, and she drew her swords. Below, the desolate city began to stir. She imagined a hundred hollow eyes like starving stars, aware and waiting, weapons raised in bony hands to greet her arrival.
"There," she whispered, her gaze riveted on the narrow cliffs and the tower at their crest. "Go there."