Daughter of Smoke and Bone - Laini Taylor [51]
She was floating. She gave a delighted hoot and put her arms out for balance, sculling at the air as if she were floating in the sea, but… it wasn’t the sea. It was the air. She was flying. Well, maybe not quite flying—yet—but floating at the threshold of the whole freaking sky. Which happened to wrap around the whole freaking world. Above her, night was huge and everywhere, full of stars and wild things—an infinitely deep, infinitely penetrable sphere, and she rose up higher and higher, claiming it.
She could see the roof of Bain’s cabin from over the treetops now. Breezes whispered in her ears, cold but playful, seeming to welcome her to the high places. She couldn’t help laughing. Once she started, she couldn’t stop. It was a helpless, incredulous stream of giggles that sounded a little nuts, but who wouldn’t sound a little nuts at a moment like this?
She was flying.
God, she wished there was someone here to share it with.
She would soon be sharing it with someone, but it was not, to say the least, the… er, individual… she would choose to share anything with, if all else were equal. But all else was not equal. There was only one individual in the entire world who could help her do what she needed to do, and that, unfortunately, was Razgut.
The thought of Izîl’s creature made Karou shudder, but her fate was now tied up with his.
In Marrakesh, after learning of Izîl’s death, she had wandered the lanes around the mosque in a desolation of disappointment. She’d been so sure Izîl would be able to tell her what was going on. She’d been counting on it with such intensity. She crumpled against a wall and gave in to tears that were a mixture of grief over the death of the poor, tortured man, and frustration for herself.
And then, echoing over the ground, came an unholy chuckle. Beneath a broken donkey cart something shifted, and Razgut dragged himself into the light. “Hello, lovely,” he purred, and it was a testament to Karou’s mental state that she was actually glad to see him.
“You survived the fall,” she said.
But not unscathed. Bereft of his human, he was splayed out over the ground. One arm had been crushed; he cradled it to his chest and dragged himself with the other, legs limp behind him. And his head, his awful purple head, was flattened at the temple, crusted with dried blood, and still embedded with rocks and broken glass.
He gave an impatient flick of the hand. “I’ve fallen farther.”
Karou was skeptical. The minaret towered overhead, the tallest structure in the city.
Seeing her glance up at it, Razgut chuckled again. It was a curdled sound: mingled misery and spite. “That’s nothing, blue lovely. A thousand years ago, I fell from heaven.”
“Heaven. There is no heaven.”
“Quibble, quibble. The sky, then, if you know so much. And I didn’t exactly fall. That makes me sound clumsy, doesn’t it? As though I tripped and fell into your world. No. I was thrown. Cast out. Exiled.”
And that was how Karou had learned of Razgut’s origin. It was hard to believe, looking at him and remembering the angel—that mythic, perfect being—that they were kin, but when she forced herself to really look at Razgut, she began to see it. And the splintered joints of his lost wings could not be denied. He was not a creature of this world.
She had also understood, finally, the twisted fulfillment of Izîl’s bruxis. In wishing for knowledge of the other world, he had gotten himself saddled with Razgut, who could tell him everything that Brimstone would not.
“What happened to Izîl?” she asked. “He didn’t really kill himself, did he? The angel—”
“Ah, well, you can blame him, he dragged us up the minaret, but the fool hunchback flung himself off, all to protect you.”
“Me?”
“My brother seraph was looking for you, lovely. Naughty boy, with all his questions. What does he want with you, I wonder.”
“I don’t know.” It gave Karou a chill. “Izîl didn’t tell him where I live?”
“Oh no, noble fool. He danced with the sky instead, and the sky dropped