Yesterday, trapped alone in her room, she’d felt despair. Today, she didn’t reprise it. Instead, she got mad. At Minya, of course, but the others, too. The ghosts had no free will, but what about Feral and Ruby and Sparrow? Where were they? If it were one of them being punished, she wouldn’t just accept it and go about her day. She would fight for them, even against Minya.

Did they really believe she had betrayed them? She hadn’t chosen humans over godspawn, but life over death—for all their sakes. Couldn’t they see that?

Under the influence of lull, Sarai’s days had been nothing but dreamless gray moments between one night and the next. This day was the opposite. It would not end.

She watched the squares of sunlight that her windows threw on the floor. They ought to have moved with the angle of the sun, but she was sure they were frozen in place. Of course today would be the day the sun got stuck in the sky. The gears of the heavens had gotten gummed up, and now it would be daytime forever.

Why not nighttime forever?

Lazlo and nighttime forever. Sarai’s belly fluttered, and she yearned for the escape that nightfall would bring—if indeed it ever came.

Sleep would help pass the time, if she dared.

She certainly needed it. The little rest she’d gotten, asleep in Lazlo’s dream, hadn’t even begun to allay her fatigue. These past days, hunted by nightmares, she’d felt their presence even while she was awake. She felt them now, too, and she was still afraid. She just wasn’t terrified anymore, and that was rather wonderful.

She considered her options. She could pace, bitter and frantic and feeling every second of her deprivation and frustration as the sun dawdled its way across the sky.

Or she could go to the door, stand in front of her ghost guards, and scream down the corridor until Minya came.

And then what?

Or she could fall asleep, and maybe fight nightmares—and maybe win—and hurry the day on its way.

It wasn’t a choice, really. Sarai was tired and she wasn’t terrified, so she lay down in her bed, tucked her hands under her cheek, and slept.

Lazlo looked up at the citadel and wondered, for the hundredth time that day, what Sarai was doing. Was she sleeping? If she was, was she fending off nightmares on her own? He stared at the metal angel and focused his mind, as though by doing so he could give her strength.

Also for the hundredth time that day, he remembered the kiss.

It might have been brief, but so much of a kiss—a first kiss, especially—is the moment before your lips touch, and before your eyes close, when you’re filled with the sight of each other, and with the compulsion, the pull, and it’s like . . . it’s like . . . finding a book inside another book. A small treasure of a book hidden inside a big common one—like . . . spells printed on dragonfly wings, discovered tucked inside a cookery book, right between the recipes for cabbages and corn. That’s what a kiss is like, he thought, no matter how brief: It’s a tiny, magical story, and a miraculous interruption of the mundane.

Lazlo was more than ready for the mundane to be interrupted again. “What time is it?” he asked Ruza, glaring at the sky. Where it showed around the citadel’s edges, it was damnably bright and blue. He’d never felt anger at the sky before. Even the interminable days of the Elmuthaleth crossing had passed more quickly than this one.

“Do I look like a clock?” inquired the warrior. “Is my face round? Are there numbers on it?”

“If your face were a clock,” Lazlo reasoned slowly, “I wouldn’t ask you what time it was. I’d just look at you.”

“Fair point,” admitted Ruza.

It was an ordinary day, if at least ten times longer than it ought to have been. Soulzeren and Ozwin did as asked and produced a credible reason to delay a second launch. No one questioned it. The citizens were relieved, while the faranji were simply occupied.

Thyon Nero wasn’t the only one exhausting himself—though he was the only one siphoning off his own vital essence to do it. They were all deeply engaged, hard at work, and competitive. Well, they were all deeply engaged and competitive, and all with the exception of Drave were also hard at work—though, to be fair, this wasn’t his fault. He’d have liked nothing better than to blow something up, but it was clear to everyone, himself included, that he and his powder were on hand as a last resort.

When all else fails: explosions.

This did not sit well with him. “How am I supposed to win the reward if I’m not allowed to do anything?” he demanded of Lazlo that afternoon, waylaying him outside the Tizerkane guard station where he’d stopped to talk with Ruza and Tzara and some of the other warriors.

Lazlo was unsympathetic. Drave was being compensated for his time, just like everyone else. And as for the reward, Drave’s personal fortune wasn’t high on his list of priorities. “I don’t know,” he answered. “You might come up with a solution to the problem that doesn’t involve destruction.”

Drave scoffed. “Doesn’t involve destruction? That’s like me asking you not to be a mealy-mouthed poltroon.”

Lazlo’s eyebrows shot up. “Poltroon?”

“Look it up,” snapped Drave.

Lazlo turned to Ruza. “Do you think I’m a poltroon?” he asked, the way a young girl might ask whether her dress was unflattering.

“I don’t know what that is.”

“I think it’s a kind of mushroom,” said Lazlo, who knew very well what poltroon meant. Really, he was surprised that Drave did.

“You are absolutely a mushroom,” said Ruza.

“It means ‘coward,’ ” said Drave.

“Oh.” Lazlo turned to Ruza. “Do you think I’m a coward?”

Ruza considered the matter. “More of a mushroom,” he decided. To Drave: “I think you were closer the first time.”

“I never said he was a mushroom.”

“Then I’m confused.”

“I take it as a compliment,” Lazlo went on, purely for the infuriation of Drave. It was petty, but fun. “Mushrooms are fascinating. Did you know they aren’t even plants?”

Ruza played along, all fascinated disbelief. “I did not know that. Please tell me more.”

“It’s true. Fungi are as distinct from plants as animals are.”

“I never said anything about mushrooms,” Drave said through gritted teeth.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Drave, you wanted something.”

But the explosionist had had enough of them. He flung out a hand in disgust and stalked off.

“He’s bored, poor man,” said Tzara, with a flat lack of pity. “Nothing to destroy.”

“We could at least give him a small neighborhood to demolish,” suggested Ruza. “What kind of hosts are we?”

And Lazlo felt a . . . fizz of uneasiness. A bored explosionist was one thing. A bored, disgruntled explosionist was another. But then the conversation took a turn that drove all thoughts of Drave from his head.

“I can think of a way to keep him busy,” said Shimzen, one of the other warriors. “Send him up in a silk sleigh to blow the godspawn into blue stew.”

Lazlo heard the words, but they were spoken so evenly, so casually, that it took him a moment to process them, and then he could only blink.

Blue stew.

“As long as I don’t have to clean it up,” said Ruza, just as casually.

They had been briefed, earlier, on the . . . situation . . . in the citadel. Their blasé demeanor was certainly a cover for their deep disquiet, but that didn’t mean they weren’t absolutely in earnest. Tzara shook her head, and Lazlo thought she was going to chide the men for their callousness, but she said, “Where’s the fun in that? You wouldn’t even get to watch them die.”

His breath erupted from him in a gust, as though he’d been punched in the gut. They all turned to him, quizzical. “What’s the matter with you?” asked Ruza, seeing his expression. “You look like someone served you blue stew for dinner.” He laughed, pleased with his joke, while Shimzen slapped him on the shoulder.

Lazlo’s face went tight and hot. All he could see was Sarai, trapped and afraid. “How can you speak like that,” he asked, “when you’ve never even met them?”

“Met them?” Ruza’s eyebrows went up. “You don’t meet monsters. You slay them.”

Tzara must have seen Lazlo’s anger, his . . . stupefaction. “Trust me, Strange,” she told him. “If you knew anything about them, you’d be happy to drop the explosives yourself.”

“If you knew anything about me,” he replied, “you wouldn’t think I’d be happy to kill anyone.”

They all squinted at him, puzzled—and annoyed, too, that he was spoiling their amusement. Ruza said, “You’re thinking of them as people. That’s your problem. Imagine they’re threaves—”

“We didn’t kill the threave.”

“Well, that’s true.” Ruza screwed up his face. “Bad example. But would you have looked at me like that if I had?”

“I don’t know. But they’re not threaves.”

“No,” Ruza agreed. “They’re much more dangerous.”

And that was true, but it missed the point. They were people, and you didn’t laugh about turning people into stew.

Especially not Sarai.

“You think good people can’t hate?” she’d asked Lazlo last night. “You think good people don’t kill?” How naïve he’d been, to imagine it was all a matter of understanding. If only they knew her, he’d told himself, they couldn’t want to hurt her. But it was so clear to him now: They could never know her. They’d never let themselves. Suheyla had tried to tell him: The hate was like a disease. He saw what she meant. But could there ever be a cure?

Could the people of Weep ever accept the survivors in the citadel—or, like the threave in the desert, at least suffer them to live?