ignored it. “Madam, please,” she said, in a muffled voice, “take me. Let them
go.”
“What?” Harran said, looking up from Tyr, who was washing his face again.
“Your goddesses have come to beg your life of me,” said the Queen. “But you know
the ancient price for letting a soul go back up that road once it’s come down.”
“No!” Harran said, shocked. And then, remembering to whom he spoke, “Please, no!
I’m dead-but my town’s not. It needs her. Mriga, talk her out of this!”
Mriga could only look at him, and not steadily: Her eyes were blurring. “She
also has offered to pay the price,” said the Queen. “They almost came to blows
over it. They cannot choose. I offer you the choice.”
Harran’s jaw moved as his teeth ground. “No,” he said at last. “I won’t go-not
at that price. Send them home. But-“
“We’re not leaving without him,” Mriga said.
Siveni looked up from the dirt, her eyes flashing “Certainly not.”
The place was becoming brighter. Was it Siveni’s spear, Mriga wondered, or
something else? The buildings seemed almost as bright as if Sanctuary’s usual
greasy sunlight shone on them. All around, the dead were blinking and staring.
“Let him at least go,” Mriga said. “We’ll both stay.”
“Yes,” Siveni said.
Death’s Queen looked somberly from one of them to the other.
Tyr slipped away from Harran’s side and up next to Siveni-then jumped up and put
her delicate, dusty forefeet right on the white robes of the Queen. She looked
up into her face with big brown eyes.
“I’ll stay too,” Tyr said.
Mriga and Siveni and Harran all started violently. Only Ischade looked away and