Toshi looked down the line. Tight faces looked back at him. If everyone stayed calm, the Hive would have no idea that anything was amiss, but only so long as Grace’s full attention was elsewhere. As soon as she saw people lining up outside Ivan’s lab through the Hive’s eyes, they were caught.
“It’s not me. She’s still playing with her new guest,” Toshi replied bitterly. “Are we sure about the formula?”
Mala’s face fell. “That was your job.”
“I missed meeting my contact,” he said, and she glared at him as if it were his fault Grace had kept him locked in his rooms for hours. “I’d better get in there,” he said, and brushed past her to join Ivan.
Inside the lab, dozens of people were very calmly, very carefully packing vials of antidote into whatever bags or satchels they happened to have handy, and leaving the lab with haste—but not too much haste. Most of the faces Toshi recognized as contacts of his, although he knew none of their names.
“For the restricted zone,” Ivan said, gesturing to the people leaving with bags.
“And the pesticide?” Toshi asked.
“Over there,” he replied, pointing to a line of vats against the opposite wall. “We’ve managed to retrofit a few crossbows to distribute it.” Ivan picked up a crossbow and demonstrated. “Shoot a dart into a swarm of Workers, the dart explodes and sends out a mist of pesticide. Trouble is, there are only so many crossbows to go around—just what a few rebels here and there have managed to steal over the years.”
“How do we get more?”
“All the Hive’s watchtowers are stocked with crossbows.”
Toshi thought of the platforms soaring high above the city streets. “But who can get to them except the Hive?” he asked. Ivan shrugged as if say he could only do so much. “Does the pesticide work at least?”
“Who knows? We can’t test it without alerting the Hive,” Ivan said with a fatalistic laugh. “Come. I need help.”
Toshi rolled up his sleeves. “Grace could wake at any moment. I’m on borrowed time,” he said.
“We all are,” Ivan replied.
Toshi was just about to put on a pair of gloves, when he heard a low hum in the air and felt all three of the Workers clinging to him suddenly lift off his skin. He looked around and noticed that all the Workers in the room were leaving. He and Ivan ran out of the room, hearing startled gasps, and pushed their way past the confused masses and out onto the street.
The sky had gone dark. Toshi looked up. Every inch of airspace was covered with Warrior Sisters. They were all flying toward the perimeter wall simultaneously. Ivan ran back inside, Toshi close on his heels, both of them taking the stairs inside the villa two at a time until they reached the top floor. Ivan pushed open a door to a room that was empty except for a single staircase that led to a trapdoor in the ceiling. They emerged on the roof of the villa and looked out past the wall.
An army stood on the field of flowers, ready for battle.
CHAPTER
15
Lily felt Juliet calling to her after she finished claiming another queen.
Lily, Lillian has taken her army to Bower City without us. They just disappeared.
Rowan’s brow furrowed in question at Lily’s expression. “Lillian didn’t wait for us,” she told him.
I told you I was gathering more forces, Lily called out to Lillian in mindspeak.
I gave you all the time I could, Lillian replied. Join me now or the war is lost.
Lily turned to Rowan. “What do I do?” she asked him.
Over the course of the day they’d managed to claim almost twenty nests, but it was only a tiny fraction of what they needed. Rowan pulled his lower lip through his teeth, his eyes scrambling across the ground as he thought. Finally, he shook his head.
“We don’t have a choice. Dividing our forces would be suicide,” he said. “We have to go.”
“But we don’t have enough soldiers,” Lily said, holding her hands out helplessly.
Rowan was calm. He looked at the Woven Lily had just claimed and smiled to himself. “Then I guess it will come down to which side has the strongest queen,” he said. He took her hand and kissed the backs of her fingers and warmth traced up her arm. “It’s time, Lily.”
Lily nodded. She was exhausted. She had never felt more awake.
Rowan struck flint against steel and sent a spark into the mulch at Lily’s feet. As the fire rose she closed her eyes to gather up all of her claimed.
She started with the insect Woven. Seeing through the pale lavender tinge of the speaking stone near Richmond, she summed all fifty thousand of them. Using the same speaking stone, she moved to her raptors, only one thousand pairs of wings, but they would be invaluable to fight the flying Hive.
Her mind dove into the fast-flowing stream of the speaking stones, heading north. She saw green and stopped to gather the nine thousand of the tank-like Pride and the thirty thousand of her human claimed waiting at the camp. Carrying all of them with her, Lily vaulted across mountains and valleys, her mind swimming across the miles of the continent to where Pale One and the twenty thousand warriors of the Pack were waiting in the flaxen-yellow hue of the Ocean of Grass.
Lily turned her mind, now nearly a hundred thousand strong, through the scorched red of Death Valley, up over the thin pink and rarefied air of the rocky mountains, and into the misty pearlescent throbbing of the westernmost speaking stone. Toshi was standing right next to it. He called out to her.
Lily, has the war begun?
Yes, Lily replied. She played the vibration of the redwood grove and jumped her army. I’m here.
“She’s here,” Toshi said, his eyes searching past the army at Bower City’s gates and into the distant smudge that was the redwood grove.
“Obviously,” Ivan remarked dryly. He looked down at the orderly ranks of disciplined soldiers. “She didn’t bring enough.”
“That’s not Lily,” Toshi said, frowning with confusion. “That’s the other one. The Salem Witch. Mine is coming.”
He craned his head to look up at the Hive as more of them streamed into the air from the city. The din of their wings rattled his bones. He saw Warrior Sisters rising up from the restricted zone. Toshi wondered whether the antidote had ever made it to his family. Whether it even worked.
“There,” Ivan said, pointing to a figure being carried to the ramparts over the main gate. “That’s Grace. They’re building her pyre right there.”
Toshi stared at Ivan. “They’re really going to burn her?”
“Oh yes,” Ivan replied as a sinister memory stole through him. “I hope that witch of yours is as strong as she seemed. I once saw Grace spend two whole days and nights on the pyre.” He looked down at his hands and Toshi could have sworn he saw flames licking inside Ivan’s eyes. “We chopped down every tree. Burnt all the switch grass. We even threw our clothes on the fire. And through it all she burned. Screaming. Laughing.” When Ivan looked up again his eyes were sunken and haunted. “Grace lives for the pyre.” He clapped Toshi on the shoulder, shaking himself. “I have serum to distribute and you have crossbows to steal.” A thought occurred to him. “This would be a lot easier if we were stone kin.”
Toshi was struck by the offer. “It would be an honor,” he said.
When they touched each other’s willstones Toshi was surprised to find Grace was there at the forefront of Ivan’s thoughts, but not Grace as they both knew her now. Toshi saw a backdrop of dusty mining towns, horse-drawn carriages, homesteaders in broad-brimmed hats and gingham prints, and Grace as a girl with long plaited hair, a buckskin dress, and beaded moccasins.
“That was a long time ago,” Ivan said, drawing Toshi back to the here and now. “Come. We have a lot of work to do.”
They went back downstairs, stopping in the room where Grace had learned to spirit walk in the hopes that they could help Red Leaf, but the shaman was gone. They continued on down to the lab where the forced calm had given way to pandemonium. Mala was nowhe
re to be found. The table she had been manning was tipped over, and vials were scattered all over the floor. People were pushing and shoving their way into the lab to grab handfuls of the serum and rush out. Toshi tripped over something and realized that he was stepping on a body.
Toshi pulled the inert woman out of the main flow of the mob and checked her pulse. There was a welt the size of goose egg on her neck. She was dead from a sting.
He looked out a window. Workers were swarming outside, coalescing into great clouds and descending on the most panicked people. When the cloud flew away and moved on to the next person, the dead body left behind would be covered in stings. One sting would be enough to kill a person in ten seconds, but the Workers were overreacting as much as the people were. Their hive was being invaded and they were turning on anything that was not them.
“Everyone, calm down,” Ivan shouted, holding up his hands, but the mob was past listening.
“I need good climbers,” Toshi shouted amid the rushing, grabbing confusion. Ivan called out two men by name.
“Avery! Michelson! Come with me,” he ordered.
Two tall young men stopped trying to hold back the tide of people and came forward. Ivan had them gather up as many darts full of pesticide as they could carry and led them out the back way and through the twisting passages of the villa. There were no Workers indoors. They were all out on the streets, swarming.
They stopped at one of the many service storerooms. Ivan went to the dusty shelves littered with fishing poles, skis, tennis rackets and all other kinds of recreational equipment. He pulled down a large duffel bag. Inside were ropes and grappling hooks for climbing, which he distributed between them. Toshi, Avery, and Michelson looped the thin, strong rope over their shoulders and put the pesticide in the duffel bag.
“Toshi,” Ivan called after them as they ran. Toshi stopped and looked back. “Good luck.”
Toshi nodded. You, too, old friend.
When they hit the street, they saw that the situation had deteriorated further. Bodies lay here and there in the streets. Swarms of Workers were expanding and contracting in the air in a murmuration. They were chasing people indoors, and anyone left outside would be targeted.
Toshi’s raiding party ran to the nearest watchtower. Storm clouds started forming into a wheel over the city and the sky turned an ominous shade of pewter. Grace was on her pyre, and her power was building. As the raiding party pounded down the streets Toshi felt a sharp sting on the back of his hand.
He started counting to ten.
Lily opened her eyes. She stood among the redwoods. Rowan was still clasping her hand.
Her army shifted out of the shadows of the ancient giants, their faces stark with awe. Jumping was a new experience for most of them, and even for those who had done it before, the sight of the towering redwoods was enough to strike them dumb.
Tell them to calm down, Rowan said in mindspeak.
Lily did her best to explain, and to those claimed that couldn’t understand, she did her best to comfort them.
Now. Tell them not to kill one another, Rowan added.
“Right,” Lily breathed. She could feel all her claimed balking at being thrown together like this, and it wasn’t just the ranch hands against the Outlanders anymore. The Pack hated the Pride. The Pride hated the raptors. The simians hated the humans. The insect Woven felt nothing, but everyone hated them. This wasn’t an army. It was a melee waiting to happen.
What have I done?
Remind them why they’re here, Rowan said in mindspeak. Get them to focus on fighting the Hive.
Lily felt a clamor rising in all of them. They would not accept this. The hatred between them went too deep.
“Wait,” Lily whispered desperately to herself. She could feel control slipping away. Grumbling, shouts, and hisses rose up from the ranks. She could force them to work together. Control them. Bend them to her will. That would be the easiest way. That would be what Grace would do, maybe even what Lillian would do, too.
Lily was neither of those people, and she decided she never would be.
She ran to the highest point she could find—which happened to be the back of one of the raptors—and climbed up with a silent appeal to him to help her do this. She steadied herself against the raptor’s enormous head and shouted what she only dared whisper before.
“Wait! Listen to me. You aren’t enemies,” she called. “Hear what I have to say before you all tear one another apart!”
“Listen,” Rowan yelled.
“Listen!” Una echoed, backing him up.
Every face in the crowd turned to her. She looked out, taking it all in, searching for a place to start. Her claimed. They were all so different. They were together, but she still needed to find a way to unite them. She took a deep breath and began.
“I come from a world where people never know what it’s like to be someone else. We can only imagine what it feels like to walk around in someone else’s shoes. That’s what we say, by the way—walk around in someone else’s shoes—which is so small compared to what you can actually do here.
“In my world we don’t know what it is to live a different life from the one we were given, to be a different race or gender, forget about being a different species. In my world we fear anyone who’s different. We think those people are our enemies and that they want to take what’s ours or destroy our way of life. We think like that because, well, what else are we supposed to think? We can’t know someone else’s mind like you can.
“Things should be so different here. But what do I see? The same division, the same fear, the same us-against-them mentality that I see back in my world. Walltop hates the Outlanders. Why? Because the city isn’t large enough for everyone and Outlanders are always trying to sneak in illegally. Outlanders hate the Woven. Why? Because the Woven took their land. The Woven hate the humans. Why?” Lily paused, knowing this was the missing puzzle piece. “Because a human enslaved them and forced them to be killers. A human created them in order to tear this world apart.
“Your hatred isn’t real. The things that divide you aren’t real. They were created by greed. Someone has set you all against one another so she could profit. Someone has made it so you need walls—walls that divide you and make you weak so she can be stronger. This world has only one true enemy, and we can fight her. Here. Today. I brought you all together for this one purpose, but first you have to stop fighting one another. It’s up to you. I’m not going to force you. The choice is yours.”
Lily jumped down and rejoined Rowan on the ground. She felt the silence as deeply as she heard it. She waited. No one left. No fights started. Everyone just stood there, staring at her.
“What’s going on?” she mumbled to Rowan.
“They’re waiting for orders,” he told her, eyes bright as he buried a laugh.
Lily panicked. “I have no idea what to do,” she said.
“That’s okay. I do.”
Rowan turned. Tristan, Caleb, Una, and Breakfast were right behind him. Alaric and Pale One were right beside them. Rowan turned back around and pointed to a group of ranch hands on one side, and then at a bunch of wolves on the other.
“You start cutting down the trees, and you drag them into a pile,” Rowan ordered. “Our witch needs a pyre.” When no one moved, he started yelling. “Quickly! The Hive will be on us any minute now! Who has axes?”
Spurred into action, Woven and human alike started scurrying before Rowan’s anger. He struck out into the disarrayed clusters of men, women, and Woven and started arranging them into groups.
As Rowan moved away from them, Lily felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned and saw Tristan.
“I need to talk to you,” he said urgently, his eyes still following Rowan’s back as he stalked away, barking orders.
“Now?” Lily asked, motioning to the utter chaos that was moments away from tumbling down upon her head.
“I’ve been trying to get you alone for weeks, but Rowan never leaves your sid
e,” Tristan said, dragging a hand through his hair. “There’s something I need to tell you. In case one of us doesn’t make it. I need you to know something.”
“What?” Lily asked, concerned, and recalling that every time Tristan had tried to speak with her alone lately, Rowan had appeared to interrupt and hurry them off in different directions.
“Rowan never meant to abandon the coven. He intended to go with us when we made the crossing. It wasn’t his choice to stay behind.” Tristan took a deep breath. “It was your Tristan’s.”
“What are you talking about?” Lily said, completely blindsided.
“When you woke up after being in the cage, do you remember how he didn’t have a mark on him, but Caleb and I got the stuffing beat out of us when we tried to get your willstones from Rowan?” he asked. Lily nodded numbly. “Well, I cornered your Tristan and made him show me what happened. This is his memory.”
. . . The three of us can hear Rowan making noises in his sleep. Caleb told me he has nightmares sometimes, but this is sad. He sounds like a child, whimpering and pleading. I wonder what he must have gone through as a kid to be like this, and I feel bad for the guy. Almost bad enough to stop this, but not quite.
I hang back and let the other Tristan and Caleb go rushing into Rowan’s tent. Rowan barrels through the two of them quicker than I’d thought. He’s terrifying, even without Lily’s strength in him. Feral. I wince a little as he drops the other me. He starts to charge me and I back off, yelling.
“Whoa, take it easy! It’s me.”
His eyes clear and he seems to snap out of it. He runs his hands through his hair, looking at what he’s unwittingly done to his stone kin.
“Didn’t you tell them?” he asks me.
He already knows I didn’t—if I had, they wouldn’t have tried to jump him—but he can’t accept it yet. It’s hard to accept it when someone’s set you up. He sits down heavily, his eyes skipping around, thinking.
“Why?” he asks.
I sit down next to him. I want to get this right so he understands. He’s got to be the one to leave her or I don’t stand a chance.
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