The Theft of Sunlight by Intisar Khanani (story reading .TXT) 📕

There is no word that will move him. I bow my head and retreat to my room.

I pace my room, considering my options. My mind jumps from the Scholar’s demands to what the morning will bring, to the boys’ stories, to the Darkness. And there is nothing I can do—no way to inform the princess, not about my own danger, not about what happened to the boys, or the clue we’ve uncovered.

My hands clench into fists, but even my anger is useless. I have never felt so helpless in my life. I raise my hands and press hard against my head, as if somehow I might order things, find a way forward when there is nowhere I can go and nothing I can do. Come sunrise, chances are I’ll die. And leave all this behind, all the things I should have done, or could have helped fix.

I want my family desperately—I don’t know what this will do to them, to Melly, and my parents, and my sisters—to Niya especially. It hits me like a wall of bricks. I stand stock-still, staring blindly across the room. Niya and I are a matched pair. We’re supposed to be there for each other after Bean has married and our parents grow old and eventually pass on. If I die, Niya will spend those years alone. She can’t even hope to stay with Bean’s eventual family because the chances of someone else in her home discovering her secret is too high.

That’s the one thing I’ve always promised her: that I would be there for her. That we’d have each other. It is only one thing more that I cannot help, but together with everything I have learned tonight, all that might be won or lost, it is one thing too much. I am not letting the Black Scholar destroy all these futures, all these hopes, even if I have to throw myself from the window.

Which I might.

I go back to it, running my hand over the smooth plaster finish, then turn to the room. I am getting out of here. There is a large bed to one side, a small table and chair by the window, supplied with a lamp, and that is all. I stalk over to the bed, pull back the woven blanket to assess the sheets. They’re a fine, soft linen, and of course far too short to reach the ground, even tied together. But I carry Niya with me, and the gifts she gave me. I can use the bone knife hidden in her stitches to nick the edges of each sheet and rip it into strips. Braid those together, and I’ll have a rope that should hold my weight comfortably enough.

I return to the window. The street lies relatively quiet, though I can hear the faint echoes of laughter and carousing from somewhere not too distant. But here I see only a young man passing by. I lean out the window, searching the shadows. There, by the corner, I spot a dark form leaning against the building. He might be waiting for someone, or he might be one of the Scholar’s guards. I doubt I could safely descend with a makeshift rope and run away before such a guard caught me.

I step back from the window, moving to sit in the lone chair. Perhaps if I wait long enough, he will move on to another post. Or doze off. All I can do is hope. And wait. No matter what I try tonight, I must wait until the house has fallen asleep, the streets quiet.

So I hunch beside the lamp and read the spidery writing of the long-dead archer, following the army’s march to the sea, their ill-conceived attack on the Faerie marauders, and, ultimately, their massacre.

They are an army, greater in number and skill than ours, and backed by a sorceress of terrifying talent. We were as the empty husks of wheat before them, chaff in the wind. Half our nmbers fell to Fae swords while their own were still sheathed, their eyes blinded by a fell darkness. The carnage—I cannot write of it. Death everywhere. The cries of the wounded in our ears, or at least, those whom we could save and bring with us. A rout, a complete rout. But a score of us left, and the king. At least we managed to protect him. He has sent to Tarinon for his remaining troops, and for every lord to raise troops of their own. The Circle of Mages will send their most adept mages to oppose the sorceress. We meet at Ajroon to rally once more against the Fae. Let us hope they do not harry our footsteps now, or we shall die long before we may hope for reinforcements.

It seems strange to me that, facing my own imminent demise, I find myself so compelled by the archer’s words, reading feverishly of the survivors’ flight to Ajroon, the raising of a second army while half the coast was laid to ruin—merchant ships commandeered, trading towns surrounded and their inhabitants marched out to the fields while their houses burned, leaving them with only the meager belongings they managed to gather in sheets and satchels before they were forced out.

Peculiar, is it not? wrote the archer. They let those who do not fight live, and do not take what they carry from them. So we have half a country of refugees streaming in from the coasts seeking food and shelter, carrying their best silver, their favorite books, their jewelry. That is kindness itself compared to what Mendar says was the king’s practice in the Fae lands. And while our people might curse the faeries, they curse our king equally. Few of these men and women join our forces to expel the Fae. Yet, if they do not, we shall fall soon enough. What sort of rulers would the Fae make over us? Is it treason to wonder?

Over the following weeks, the army suffered loss upon