CHAPTER FOURTEEN◄CHAPTER FIFTEEN►CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The darkness still hung over Sarat like a blanket of shadow as the transport carrying Talitha, Elkanah, and dozens of other Sivathi cleared the checkpoint at Palak Station and into the city proper. They’d cleared it with the paperwork the clerk had supplied them with, now—in the words of the captain they’d crossed—having semi-officially been inducted into the Confederacy of Liberation. Now they had to go to the temple.

The Zaket suns had sunk low weeks ago, their light now grazing the curve of the world at such a shallow angle that day never truly arrived anymore—not until the solstice ended and the cycle would revert itself and cover the northern pole in shadow in turn. Instead, the skies lingered in a continual state of inky washes tinged with polar light from the magnetic field of Siva: Deep indigo at the zenith, fading into violet and a pale copper glow along the horizon where the suns struggled to rise but never did. At these latitudes, the atmosphere scattered their dim light across the upper air, mingling it with the wisps of the southern aurora that fluttered like ribbons of vibrant silk.

Beneath such shadows, both Elkanah and Talitha had their eyes on the green oasis down below them as the transport had flown in. The rich plants and crops had long ago been cultivated and adapted to grow and flourish when the suns were high, and then harvested just before the long polar night that lasted for months at a time. It was why these places were the breadbaskets of Siva, after all, for not much could grow in the harshness of the deserts, aside from the irrigated rivers that were few and far between.

Owing to the massive agriculture trade of the poles, cities like Sarat acted as the anchor for it all, along with the other polar provincial capitals of the various Confederate provinces. The rural environments and cultures of the oasis soon gave way to the metropolis of Sarat, which felt as if it would swallow Talitha whole at her first sight of it. She felt herself sticking close to Elkanah—who was used to such sights, as he was the son of an architect—out of the overwhelming nature of it all as they descended the transport’s ramp and onto the city streets below.

Elkanah gently nudged Talitha as she instinctively brushed up close to him, her eyes darting every which way at the sights of Sarat. “I know it’s a lot to take in,” he said. “Just stick close to me. I grew up in cities like this; I won’t let you get lost or have us get separated, I promise.”

Talitha could only nod with another sheepish smile—akin to the one she had thrown during their flirtatious moment in the line outside the clerk’s tent. Even so, she couldn’t shake the feeling that the city was a titan, making her feel so small and insignificant; almost as if the immensity of her old master’s realm of Lathga Province had traded its oppressive nature for one now made of built up stone, metal, and flashing light.

Yes, flashing light. Even in the aftermath of the battle that had besieged the city, much of Sarat’s infrastructure was still active. Holographic images and signs floated on the sides of buildings, many flashing recruitment signs for the inhabitants of the city to join up with the Confederate Army. Illuminated noble gases flashed advertisements and signage for businesses, and traffic—both by footpaw, Zuthari and Rakvah, ground vehicle, and air—scurried to and fro all around. Sarat had shown magnificent resilience in bouncing back to its daily operations in the wake of the failed offensive against the southern pole. That, or most of the conflict had been kept out of their reach and limited to the farmlands of the oasis. The only signs of battle here were a few shell craters, a wrecked tank or assault gun here and there that needed to be towed away for scrap, and the occasional bombed out building. But in spite of it all, the vibrant nature of the city still stood resolutely in the face of the conflict that had more heavily scarred its surrounding territory.

“Just hold onto my paw,” Elkanah said, holding it out with a smile. “We’ll find that temple together. I saw it from Palak Station, so it can’t be that far off.”

Talitha gratefully took his handpaw in hers, stifling any further meaning in the gesture that it would outwardly suggest. But even if it did mean anything more to an onlooker… She honestly didn’t mind. The thought made her chortle slightly, holding her free paw to her mouth to mask her slight childish laughter. “We know the direction, but how do you expect we’ll get there? We don’t know these streets.”

“Nothing a little inquiry for directions can’t solve,” he said, pointing down the avenue on which they were currently situated. A flashing sign atop one of the buildings had an arrow pointing in an eastern direction—in the way of the temple, but the arrow itself visibly outlined text that read: ‘Gara Market Square—4km!’ Its subtext read: ‘Food from all corners of the poles, pre-war merchandise and consumables from our colonial brethren, fine clothes from master tailors, majestic mounts and beasts, starship and ground vehicle dealers—don’t miss it!’

Owing to her illiteracy—aside from the text she knew on her collar by heart—Talitha couldn’t make out what it said, but she trusted Elkanah’s direction as he pointed in the way the flashing neon sign told them to go. She held on tight to his handpaw as he wove through the crowds of Sivathi going this way and that along the avenue.

Many faces couldn’t help but stop and stare at Talitha as she followed behind Elkanah. Just as had been the shock of Princess Aliya and others, the citizens of Sarat had never seen—or heard—of a golden furred Sivathi bearing the collar and lash marks of a slave, healed as they were. Even then, it wasn’t enough to stop anybody in their tracks, for the people were far too busy going about the hustle and bustle of city life to be bothered to any noticeable degree. The higher things went, the less people seemed to notice. Mounted riders and passengers atop Zuthari and Rakvah only glanced, those on the trams gliding on the rails above didn’t even acknowledge them, and the hover and air vehicles even higher than that moved far too fast to know what was below.

When they reached the Gara Market Square, however, attention towards them completely evaporated as Sivathi from all walks of life shopped, bartered, and traded amidst the cacophony of activity. The marketplace itself didn’t stand up to its ‘square’ name well—it was more like a circle that sat lower to the ground amidst the towering heights of Sarat’s skyline, and had to be at least two-hundred and fifty acres in size. The more technologically inclined vendors gathered towards the central part of the circle, where small starship and vehicle dealers underwent their trade underneath mesh nets and tents that protected their crafts from the elements. The perimeter ring outside of that held all the stalls that peddled smaller bits of technology, from little gadgets to larger tools. The third ring began to taper more into the traditional style of the old bazaars of Siva’s antiquity, before the days of spaceflight. Colorful awnings and tents there began to sell fine clothing, jewelry, fabrics, and a finite amount of imported luxuries from the colonial brethren of the Confederacy before the blockades had all but shuttered contact with them. The penultimate ring contained all manner of perishable and nonperishable foodstuffs alike, livestock, mounts, and pets—a kind of wet market in the truest sense of the term. The fifth and final ring, where Talitha and Elkanah had entered into, was a gaggle of miscellaneous small vendors, pawn brokers, and junk merchants—those who couldn’t decide on any one thing they’d wish to sell to fall into one of the other marketplace rings. Anything and everything seemed to find its way here, from rusty energy cells to old carved idols from antiquity that had long since lost their meaning.

For Talitha, the entire atmosphere hit her like a slap to the face at first, bombarded with wondrous scents of spices and food, and the not so pleasant tangs of machine oil and animals. As odd as the combination may have been, it was a completely new experience to her—one that made her heart flutter. This place—this whole city—had been hidden from her all her life, the only part of her ever having treaded in the likes of this metropolis being whatever blood, sweat, and tears she’d shed into the mud bricks that built the slums of such cities. Now, she was actually here!

Elkanah eyed around the entire slew of shops and stalls, looking for any that might have had instruction for the way to get to the temple. One of them—a ramshackle looking lean-to decked out in purple, yellow, and green fabrics to try and offset the rough appearance—had a sign that read ‘Hedra’s Reliquary’. Though hardly looking like it was anything befitting of holding a proper relic, it seemed to peddle religious wares and trinkets for pilgrims to the temple, or at least pilgrims who were keen on reimagining traditional Sivathi beliefs in the divinity of the High King, and that the suns were for all to share in.

“We’ll try there,” Elkanah said, tugging Talitha along by her handpaw. He was already halfway in meandering through the crowded marketplace, when she suddenly felt her pace falter and practically felt herself being pulled along by Elkanah as her attention was pulled away elsewhere.

Just outside Hedra’s Reliquary, soft, wooden clicks and the squeaking tugs of thin string made Talitha perk her ears. Elkanah didn’t notice, letting go of her handpaw for just a moment as she stood close by while he addressed the shopkeeper. Over top of all those noises was a sonorous yet warm voice that seemed to sail out and carry itself above the chaos of the marketplace. Keeping within a close distance to Elkanah, Talitha peered around the corner of the lean-to to the source of the noise.

In the small space between the adjacent stall—a sketchy looking pawn broker’s shop—sitting before a set of generators was an old, haggard, brown furred Sivathi, resting cross-legged before a crudely painted puppet stage cobbled together from scrap metal poached from vehicle wreckage, wood, and stones. As could best be done with the materials, the stage looked as if it depicted the interior of some kind of tent akin to those of desert nomads, from the days before the Sivathi were unified under the Crown of Siva. His fingers, though brittle and crooked with age, nimbly held the marionette crossbars in his paws, in his left the figure of a golden furred Sivathi priestess, and in his other a similarly colored warlord—both dressed in garments of a past time. All around the stage, a large group of at least a dozen or more Sivathi children sat entranced by the old man’s performance.

“Ah, little ones, have you time for another tale from the days of old?” the old man said, his booming voice betraying the frail nature of his body. He deftly turned the two puppets in the direction of the children, holding forth their little miniature handpaws with a swift motion of the control bars, as if demanding answers from his audience.

“One more, one more, Iman!” the children chanted happily, clapping their paws and swishing their tails.

Talitha’s gaze felt cemented to the scene beginning to play out, for reasons she could not discern. Maybe it was the sheer plainness of it all being presented to her as something glorious and wholesome, when she had not been permitted any sort of simple pleasures in her life, or maybe it was how such a humble appearing Sivathi carried himself in such a cheerful way, in spite of the war that had come to their doorstep and the system that sought to crush him and others. It was a hopeful symbol for the girl to see. But maybe her attraction was also due to something she still didn’t yet fully understand.

“Listen closely, little ones,” old Iman said as he turned the puppets back towards one another, unfurling the cloak about his shoulders to douse the stage in shadow from the overhead lamps he’d pointed in that direction. “Listen and learn from the old folk tale of the Priestess of the Skies, last of a line that cared for all Sivathi as a true herald of the Zaket suns and all that rested beneath their gazes. Let us remember the legends whose memory we resurrect in the present day and fight for now, when the blessed binary stars were for all of us to cherish.”

Talitha looked over the shoulders of the children from afar as the performance began, the eyes of the kits filled with wonderment at seeing Iman’s show. “Once, before the Sivathi were under the lone banner of the Crown of Siva, before our paws had stretched out into the cosmos, when the Zaket suns were the only things to guide the chieftains and their tribes and not the whims of a High King or Queen, and when the dunes still swept the land with songs of the old tribes…”

With his exposition finished, Iman unfurled one side of his cloak to reveal the spotlight that shined down on the golden marionette of the priestess, her plainly painted form still resonating its regal nature in the way the old man’s muscle movements posed her. A staff was held in her right wooden handpaw, topped with the two suns indicative of the Zaket stars, and clothed in a simple robe colored blue like the sky and trimmed with yellow. “There lived among the Sivathi of ancient a Priestess of the Skies, known as Sarahi,” Iman said, twirling his finger on the control bar and causing the little puppet to point its staff towards the crowd of children, making them giggle cutely in response. He gingerly began to move her along the stage in the tent, towards a stationary mannequin laying down, as if ill. “Sarahi was beloved by all of the tribes across Siva for bestowing the blessings and healing power of the Zaket suns upon the sick, the poor, and the unfortunate. From village to village she would travel with her staff of the stars, singing songs of hope and magic to those who most needed them and restoring strength to the weak. She cared for and looked after the people, as a shepherd tends their flock.”

Iman knelt down the golden furred puppet beside the immobile mannequin, tenderly swirling the staff above its head as if in a motion of magical curing. With a free handpaw, he sprung a small lever behind the stage, causing the seemingly immobile figure to slowly creep upward to a standing position with arms outstretched in a thankful nature that its illness had been driven from its body. The children watching oohed and aahed at the outwardly magical nature of it all, none the wiser that it was a simple mechanical trick from the old man.

Flicking another switch, a small conveyer underneath it all began to move the stage set off and underneath the makeshift system, quickly replaced by another crude rendition, this time of a desert scene with two simple light bulbs atop the backdrop acting as the binary Zaket suns against a pale blue sky made of cardboard. He brought the puppet of Sarahi to a slow and steady walk back and forth across the woodwork of the desert floor, bringing the handpaw up and over her brow as if to shield her vision from the brightness of the binary stars. “The people had indeed bestowed the title on her—Priestess of the Skies—for she meditated and gathered her strength only when the suns were at their zenith in the heavens. When they rose and when they set, Sarahi would travel to where she was needed. And when the nights came and the only light came from the face of Gefo, she would do her duty to the Sivathi of all the tribes. She asked for little in return, for her service and seeing the smiles and gratefulness of her people was the sweetest reward of all.”

With a sudden and aggressive flick of his wrist he unfurled the other side of his cloak, the quick motion catching the children—and even Talitha—off guard, making them flinch and gasp in reaction. Out of the shadow came the puppet of the warlord, similarly golden to the Priestess of the Skies, yet adorned in metal armor and weaponry scrounged together from a myriad of scrap sources, just like the rest of the stage and scenery.

“Yet the warlords who truly led the tribes feared the Sarahi and all she meant to the people,” Iman said, his voice deepening. “How could the unity they sought from a strong leader come from the gentleness of a holy woman, and not from the fearsome rule of a warrior?”

Iman thrust his other handpaw back and forth wildly, causing the warlord’s puppet to shudder and shiver violently, like it was in a flying rage. He roared gruffly, partly aggressive, and partly in a rather childish way that would still appeal to the children but get the point across. “‘What manner of thing is this, where a wielder of fire and sword is robbed of the blessings of the suns by a tenderhearted missionary!?’” he bellowed out, causing the children to gasp and recoil, some clutching their tails fearfully. “Such were the words of Barath the Silverclaw, a chieftain who broke tribes to his will not by blessing or song, but by the bite of whips and the tightness of chains. His tribesmen sang Sarahi’s name louder than his own, and sought her love and wisdom more than they placed their faith in him.”

The puppet of Barath unfurled a tiny whip in his handpaw—little more than a strip of leather not more than a few inches long—but the sight of it made Talitha cringe as she saw Iman trudging the warlord forward in a stomping motion, his little wooden footpaws mimicking every step those of her worst masters like Zeshom Noor made in their fiery episodes of anger. She drooped her ears slightly at simply hearing the children laugh aloud at the caricature of the warlord. For her, the sight of such a symbol was beyond simple giggles. It was reliving pain and torture. And as Barath approached Sarahi, a little piece of her heart almost felt transplanted into that of the Priestess herself. Had she been in her shoes before?

“And so Barath sought to steal the magic of the heavens and the Zaket suns for himself,” Iman continued, bringing the little strip of leather that was the whip crashing down towards the staff that Sarahi wielded, flinging it out of her little wooden handpaws and having it clatter across the stage. “So that all who looked to the skies would see him and his power and be reminded of the terrible strength that he held over all Siva. Thus, he cast the Priestess of the Skies down with the Sivathi beneath him, breaking her staff in two and selling her into slavery upon capturing her in the night. Never again could she challenge his authority with her songs and blessings of hope that were his to command as the true herald of the Zaket suns.”

The children gasped again as they witnessed the Priestess of the Skies thrust off the stage and behind the backdrop when the whip came crashing down upon her. The puppet of Barath cackled maniacally, the wood clattering crazily as he did so before Iman thrust his cloak back over the stage once more, darkening it in shadow. The little conveyer belt activated again as he flipped a switch and then furled back his cloak once again, the light now revealing the arid landscape of a dying farm, its canals dried up, its crops withered, and its fields cracked and dead. Painted on the backdrop were scores of other Sivathi—slaves themselves, laboring in the heat of the suns trying to turn the barren earth into useable land. Before it all stood the new puppet of Sarahi, clad in rags much like Talitha’s, the steel collar around her neck and a rusty plow in her handpaws. It almost felt to the girl as if…

…It was her. That she’d been there before. She felt her chest tighten at the whole thing playing out, practically feeling as if her nightmares from slavery were returning, even though she was safe in Sarat now.

“Her paws bled and her back burned,” Iman explained as he had the puppet laboriously swing the plow in a working motion, making its knees quiver in weakness. “She labored in chains throughout the fields and the mines, kept under close watch so that she could never challenge the warlord. And Barath the Silverclaw had though himself rid of the Priestess of the Skies that had dared invoke the glory of the suns to empower the people. ‘Let her toil,’ he said. ‘So that Sarahi may learn humility in the face of those who truly deserve the right to wield the power of the Zaket suns.’”

Talitha felt her heart pounding in her chest as each word spilled forward from Iman’s mouth, the thudding her body practically overriding the audible conversation Elkanah was having with the shopkeeper behind her. How could this story seem so familiar to her? She, of the golden fur of nobility per Zeshom Noor’s dying words, cast down as a slave? Or was it really the solar flare that had done this to her? If it had been, then why did this simple children’s story resonate so strongly with her, petrifying her body with crippling emotions as if she was the very marionette on the stage?

“And toil she did, little ones,” Iman said sadly, turning a knob behind the stage to cause the lightbulbs to flicker, emulating the pulsing heat and rays of the binary suns. “But even though Barath the Silverclaw thought his opponent to be silenced, the subjects of the warlord and the slaves that labored with her still sang her songs and spoke her name. No matter what he tried, he could not stop them from cherishing their memories of her goodness and all the Priestess of the Skies had done for them. And when the people began to chant her name louder and louder in defiance of their overlord, Barath could not deafen it out no matter how hard he sought to destroy her memory by the ignominy of slavery. They remembered.”

But nobody remembered Talitha. At least, not yet, if Zeshom Noor’s story held true. She reached up to her neck again as she had done at the clerk’s tent, tugging on the collar still fastened about her neck. Until she was rid of it once and for all at the temple, the feeling of shame would never truly leave her. And would it completely be driven away when that happened? The marks on her back were still there, and the tan undertone of her fur still remained. The more subtle signs of servitude could never be done away with permanently. But maybe—just maybe—the world would soon see her beyond such definers, just as the Priestess of the Skies was known for her graciousness.

“So the people of Siva sought to restore to power the one who had cared for them more deeply than any other; the one who had shared the goodness of the Zaket suns with all,” Iman said. With the click of a button, the motors underneath the little stage began to shuffle up a crowd of small, two-dimensionally painted Sivathi, swaying up and down like waves of the ocean as it emulated a restless mob. He gently lifted Sarahi atop them, as if being carried on their shoulders. “They rallied around her when they heard her cries, and begged the Zaket suns to not to abandon her to such a fate. And the suns listened!”

The puppet of Barath came back out onto the stage, running forward clumsily to stop Sarahi from leading the people again. As he did so, the brightness of the two lightbulbs that represented Zaket A and B began to glow white hot, practically to the point where the overflow of electricity would cause them to shatter. “The Zaket suns answered the prayers of the people as they saw them champion their daughter, the Priestess of the Skies. They began to shine brighter than they ever had before; the sheer brilliance of their rays melting away the chains that bound Sarahi and the others. The soldiers of Barath and the warlord himself were powerless to stop the tide that had turned against them, blinded by the light of our home stars that recognized who truly wielded their power without abuse.”

The shuddering figure of Barath the Silverclaw fell to the stage floor near the ebbing display of small painted Sivathi, swallowed up like a sinking ship as from it, the staff that had been Sarahi’s before was returned from up under the stage and into her handpaw again. “And so it came to be that Sarahi, the Priestess of the Skies, who had been the prophet of the Zaket suns and all their glory and was cast down as a slave, was made anew and returned to her rightful place by the people of Siva who never lost their faith in her,” he began to finish, turning the puppet of Sarahi towards the crowd of children and having her kneel down in a bowing motion. “And to this very day, as our loved ones struggle against the Crown of Siva that would seek to act as Barath the Silverclaw had, we do not forget that the Zaket suns are for the meek and oppressed, and not to be hoarded by a long king, queen, or warlord.”

What Iman finally closed with fell upon Talitha’s shoulders like a crushing weight that she couldn’t stand to bear, yet she felt responsible to bear it anyway.

“And perhaps those fit to wield the blessings of the suns for us all may arise from the lowest of places, just as Sarahi—robbed of her rightful place and having dwelt among the downtrodden—came to do with the help of all Siva’s people,” he finally finished, tugging a little chain on the back of the stage and drawing the curtain over the miniature puppet show.

As the children erupted in applause and cheers, Talitha showed no such emotions of joy. She could only stand there in the shadow of Hedra’s Reliquary, looking down at her handpaws trembling, her heart caught between her ribs like a bird too afraid to fly away. The giggles and laughter of the children felt distant and muted, like echoes from another lifetime that she hadn’t known, but was supposed to know. She couldn’t know, because maybe she had been robbed of it too, just like Sarahi. But maybe those around her—like Elkanah—would guide her back to it. She looked up from her paws and then back at the now limp figure of the Priestess of the Skies behind the curtain, motionless as Iman stepped forward with a small plate, to which several of the children dropped talir coins into in thanks for the performance.

It should have meant nothing to her. It was just supposed to be an old folk tale told by an elderly storyteller to give hope to the little ones in a time of crisis and uncertainty. But to Talitha, it felt so personal. It inspired hope within her, to be sure, but fear at the same time; the fear of not knowing about herself and the fear that she’d been lied to about her life. The golden fur, the chains, the collar, a fall from grace that she didn’t know about—Zeshom Noor’s dying words rang in her mind over and over. “I thank you—Princess—for your secret status…”

She knew she was probably no Princess, in spite of the mockeries of that title that Zeshom Noor and his overseers had said to her. When he’d said it in death, it was like he’d really meant it. But how could she be anything noble? The Sivathi—never in history—had seen one of noble blood descend to the depths of slavery; even in the story, Sarahi wasn’t truly noble, but just a Priestess. Such concepts were relegated to just that. Stories. That’s all these were, and that’s all this one should have been, yet it affected her more deeply than anything else could.

What if Zeshom Noor and his overseers had said such things as an insult to what she couldn’t have; what she should have had? What hadn’t they told her?

“Talitha?” Elkanah finally blurted out, breaking the girl’s train of thought as she felt a tap on her shoulder. “Is everything okay? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

His touch made her shiver and flinch, having practically been lost in her own world for those last several minutes. “That old man,” she said, pointing to Iman as he continued to collect tips from the children and some of their parents. “He told a story that I’d never heard before, but I felt like I already knew it; like I’ve lived it, or am living it now. The tale about the Priestess of the Skies.”

“The one about Sarahi?” Elkanah asked, thinking back to the last time he’d heard it, which had to have been as a child and when his mother told it to him as a bedtime tale. Granted, the version many of the middle-class told probably varied from the way Talitha had just heard it, repurposed to justify the nefarious ends of the Crown. “A lot of Sivathi know that one. There’s many different versions, based on class, among other things.”

“This one had her sold as a slave for interfering with the warlord’s control over his people,” she said. “And he tried to break her, Elkanah. I don’t know whatever past life there was for me, but if it was anything like hers… When he said that she was cast down and enslaved, I felt as if I were her. Like I was there. I don’t know what this tale meant, but it’s as if it has been chasing me my entire life and has only now caught up to me.”

She turned around to face him, looking down in an unsure manner. “You remember what Zeshom Noor said before you saved me,” she said. “Calling me what he did. Maybe… they weren’t the dying ravings of a Sivathi at the end of his pitiful rope? What if what he said is true?”

Elkanah clearly saw the distress in Talitha’s heart, and he reached out to place a handpaw on her shoulder in comfort. “Maybe you were meant to hear that story, Talitha. The Zaket suns have brought us so far together, and delivered us through so much, that maybe it was their plan to have had you in this place to hear it. But we’re going to find out, Talitha,” he said in assurance. “If it is what you wish. I know my story and how I got here. You were denied that in Zeshom Noor’s clutches. If this is what you seek to find out with your freedom, then by the suns, we’ll find the truth. Whether it was a flare that gave you that golden fur, or whether it was long lost royalty, I promise that we’ll find the truth. I don’t care if others might find the story to be an impossibility. You’re here, and you exist. You have a right to know.”

When Elkanah said that, the fluttering sensation in her chest felt like it was finally set free, the flying of her heartbeat no longer caged up. Nobody had cared about her wants, needs, or acknowledged her dreams when she looked up at the night sky to the world beyond Zeshom Noor’s estate. There, she was still another slave, just like the rest. She’d stomped the mud day after day, shaped the bricks in their moulds until her handpaws were sore, felt the whip on her back, and it had been pounded into her mind that she was worthless; teased with what could have been with her golden fur with the insults of the overseers. Now, somebody cared enough about her desire to know more and seek the coveted truths that she was denied. Somebody wanted to help her when she’d never been cared about before. And for that, she wanted to pursue the chance she’d been given as far as her heart would permit her to go with Elkanah’s help.

Her handpaw reached to her collar again, the pawpads of her fingertips brushing the steel that had shaped her whole life for the last twenty years. She wasn’t Zeshom Noor’s any longer. She wasn’t the Crown of Siva’s any longer. And maybe she hadn’t been meant to be theirs at all.

Elkanah saw her reach for the steel around her neck. He smiled to her, holding out his handpaw again so that she wouldn’t get lost in the crowd. “Let’s get going,” he said. “Hedra gave me directions to the temple we can follow. Once we’re there, we’ll get that wretched thing off your neck; the next step in finding out your truth.”

Talitha squeezed his paw firmly out of security, trust, and more as he began to lead her in the direction of the temple, their gold and white furs eventually meshing with the sea of other Sivathi that scurried around the marketplace. But after that story that Iman had planted in Talitha’s mind, the crowds of Sarat’s people, and all the cities of Siva, would soon come to realize that this pair—a freed slave and a soldier—were destined to not blend in with the rest, for their names would be known throughout history and across the stars.