Chapter 38 (the throne endures)

                                    

                                          
We blow out all the windows. Zadia lets me do most of those, since supposedly smashing things is good for when you're crying of relief for having not died today. 
She thinks I'm crying about that. I'm not crying about that. If this sinkhole had a simple name, I'd call it the pain of my whole life spent unknowingly in the enemy's base. More complicated and I'd add ingredients of my birth, the pain of Kael's current physical scrapes tingling on my nerves, how I'm carrying Michael's madness around. I think I'm carrying that around. Am I carrying that around? I don't know, no, I don't want to deal with that, I'm crying because we didn't die today, and Zadia's not crying, so I blow out most of the windows.
	With cleavers of mist, I slice glass from their frames--or I break them with my boot, or smash them with my knife hilt. Clouds of vapor catch spraying fragments and hurl them outside, shards clattering on the towersides, sparkling with sunlight. We circle the whole bulbous room and Zadia hammers out the final two with a broken chair leg, then hurls that out the window. We name the illuminated tower a courtyard, a place for growing things, a place for pondering courtyard mushrooms and the pavilioned sky.
We crane our heads to the breeze and fill ourselves up in the warm light, my tears plop to the painted dome, sliding to drip off the tower's underbelly like morning dew. Then Zadia and I, we use mist and knives and go running, screaming, slashing apart curtains, kicking the backs of wardrobes out, kneeling and carefully staking splinters of wood into the rug, knife-slashing open dress bodices. Zadia crushes necklaces and jewels against the walls, tiny orbs scatter in the frizzy rug. She stomps on tables and claws mist at the ceiling, raining plaster, tearing down curtain strings and sliding mechanisms. Thin rods and clasps disappear into the carpet.
I stab spears into the beds, then kick the mattresses off the frames and break the headboards. I jump on the beds' thin support beams, smashing them below my boots, I use mist to rip the legs apart. We shatter mirrors, grind face powder into the pillows, rip up runs of the rug and stab weapon hilts and torn socks into the gaps of cold, glowing stones.
	We drag our ruinous mess into a huge pile of wood shards and glass, away from the doorway and Perseverance and our backpacks. 
With fat mist cords, we drag corpses from the stairs past the dented door, so we don't have to go down the steps ourselves. We sprawl them in a loopy, leather path, two by two, winding around tattered curtain remnants, hurled bed stuffing, slashed up gowns and scattered black gemstones.
	Climbing precariously, we build a throne from the smashed silver wardrobes, bedside tables, blackwood frames. We cover up the silver paint and paler woods with black curtains, this is for the night warriors, we tie the curtains in tangled knots and make a seat from a table, the legs broken off, the stained eating surface wobbling on chunks of rubble. Out of wardrobe doors and mirror frames we cobble stiff armrests and a broken backrest; on them, I smear white soap streaks in a silly drawing of the rising sun. Then I sprinkle splinters of glass over the dry soap with mist fingers. At the top of the destruction behind the throne, we prop a wide headboard, intricately carved with mushrooms and roots.
	We haul Perseverance's breathing body onto the throne. He flops sideways, poking his arms on glass. We rest his boots on the heads of dead night warriors, the destination of the leather walkway. Zadia gives him a circlet crown out of a round shield that she smashed the center out of.
	Then I stab him from the back and through the gut, high and off center, so blood spurts over his dark red tunic, darkening it further.
	Zadia and I step away, backs to a window, breeze rustling our sweaty clothes. She plants her hands on her hips. "This is going to stink in a few days." 
	"Not all of them are dead."
The Empress might be one of the bodies sprawled over the debris-filled rug. We didn't check the faces. And there's still some bodies on the stairs.