“When I tried to ask questions before, you got sort of handsy.” There. Now we’re back to reality.
“Handsy?” Howl coughs, a hand sneaking up over his mouth. It’s not strictly true, I suppose, but close enough. “I wouldn’t say—”
“As a distraction tactic, it worked all right. You were so concerned, too, asking about my family, my sister. Telling me about your brother and sighing all over the two of us being alone. I guess I should be glad you didn’t try to take any more while I still believed you.”
“Wow. You’ve got me pegged, Sev. I always seduce my human sacrifices before I tie them down for the hospital gods.” Howl leans forward, and the smile I thought was hiding behind his hand isn’t there, the light harsh on an expression much, much less amused than his voice led me to believe. “If only I’d known you were up for it.”
“And now you sound like Helix.”
“Just how far are you going to take this, Sev? You know I wouldn’t act like that. At least you should. I’m . . .” Howl takes a deep breath, and it catches on its way out. “I’m sorry for the way things happened.” The words’ steely edges seem to cut as they leave his mouth, spat down between us in a pool of blood.
“You’re sorry?” I pull the sleeping bag tight around me as if it can hold me together. Everything inside me has been boiled down to bones and raw terror at the blank spaces in the cave where Tai-ge and June should be sitting. I can’t take this conversation, can’t do anything other than fend him off. “Were you sorry for any of the others?”
“Others?”
“Your other sacrifices. The other people you’ve killed.” I pull the knife out of my pocket—the one Howl handed to Tai-ge back in the Chairman’s tent, then tried to take back—and hold it up as though it’s some kind of proof. “How much blood does this have on it?”
Howl’s mouth thins into a tight line, hands clenched at his sides. “Did you really just ask me that?”
My fingers catch on the rough ridges carved into the handle. I lower it, squinting down at the marred wood, the marks resolving into three characters: Hong Tai-ge. It’s my knife. The one I brought with me as a sort of good-luck charm the day I left the orphanage, wondering how I was going to escape Traitor’s Arch with the entire Watch after me. Howl took it away from me before we’d been together more than an hour.
The dull silver blade has been swapped out for an ugly notched version that curves up from the handle, as if the moment Howl took it, it turned into something violent, a twisted version of the original.
“Was this meant to be a trophy, like Sole’s dolls and Cale’s finger bones?” I hold it up again, the words spilling out before I can think them through. “Because you haven’t quite earned it yet.”
Howl’s glare breaths are too slow, too measured. “I don’t have to defend myself to you, Sev.”
“No? I guess you don’t if you stand by everything you did.” Prodding the rabid dog. It feels good. Reckless, as if taking control here will bring June back faster. Will somehow pull Tai-ge out of whatever cell he’s sitting in, wondering if today is the day he ends. I slide the leather sheath back over the knife, my anger a shield. “You lied. You would have gotten me killed if Sole hadn’t—”
“Yes,” Howl cuts in. “I lied to you. If I hadn’t lied to you, you’d be a pile of ashes under Traitor’s Arch, but somehow I’m still the cold-hearted killer who left my muddy handprints all over you? They probably would have had Tai-ge shoot you himself.” Howl talks over me when I try to cut in, raising his voice. “He would have done anything they told him to. The future General Hong’s first symbolic murder.”
“Tai-ge never would have . . . I wouldn’t have . . .” My fingers clench around the knife, Tai-ge’s name poking into my skin.
“You don’t think so? At least I saw you as a person. Not as a walking traitor brand or an inconvenient footnote on my childhood I couldn’t quite get rid of.” Howl snatches the knife from my hand, holding it up to show me Tai-ge’s name carved into the handle. “There was too much proof you really meant something to him.”
“I wasn’t a person to you, Howl. I was the price you tried to pay in order to go back to your real life.”
Howl sits back against the wall, one hand raking through his hair. “How can you think that?”
“What am I supposed to think? The next time I saw you after Sole told me the truth, you didn’t wave and come in the front door. You tackled me and put a knife to my throat.”
“How else was I supposed to make you and Tai-ge listen? Seems like you’re forgetting about that time Tai-ge shot me.” He looks down when I just stare at him, incredulous. “You know what? Fine. I am a terrible person. I thought through the situation the way I was trained to. Like a Menghu. I didn’t know if you or Tai-ge still had a gun. I didn’t want General Hong’s Red-to-the-core son to shoot me again before he saw my First mark and could fall down on his knees.”
“If you say one more thing about Tai-ge, I swear, I’ll—”
“This isn’t about Tai-ge.” Howl twitches forward, his voice raised now. “I protected you every second we were in the Mountain. When did I ever do anything to make you think I was okay with letting Dr. Yang and his little Yizhi minions take you?”
“They were going to kill me and you knew it, Howl. Every step on the way to the Mountain you knew it, and you said nothing. You said less than nothing. You lied so I wouldn’t run away.”
Howl is quiet for a second, and when he finally speaks, his voice is barely a whisper. “Dr. Yang said there was a chance—”
“A chance they might not need to cut me open? That makes me feel much better. And you didn’t just lie about why you wanted me to go with you. You lied about who you are to get me to trust you. They were terrified of you in the Mountain.” The accusation makes me feel strong. I don’t know why I didn’t see it until Sole pointed it out. Helix—who plays a starring role in my nightmares—flinched away from Howl but was able to kill June’s father without blinking. Cale practically dragged me to the cutting tables herself, but then folded the moment Howl stood up. “I saw the Menghu do some pretty awful things. What kind of monster could you possibly be to make someone like Helix scared?”
Howl stands up, hunching in the low space like a creature winding its muscles to spring an attack. The light behind him is blinding, but shadows crawl across his face, turning him into a featureless blur, darkness in human form.
“Don’t . . .” I try to swallow my fear, but it sticks in my throat, raising my hands to brace for whatever violence is brewing in that shadow.
“Don’t what?” He sort of laughs, the sound black and ugly. “You really are scared of me.” He backs out of the opening and stands just outside, staring up into the owl’s tree, the light harsh across his features. When he finally looks at me, his face is dead. “I thought you were just making it easier for yourself. Refusing to talk to me. Blaming me because it was the cleanest explanation. The one that made it so you didn’t have to think or feel anything for yourself. Why don’t you just stab me now, stop the evil from spreading? I’ll hold still.” He pulls the knife from his pocket and drops it on the ground in front of him like a challenge.
“I’ll show you how, if you don’t know.” Howl points to the spot just under his sternum. “Right here. Go ahead, Sev.”
My whole body curls away from him. Away from the knife, and the sandpaper roughness to every word. I look down at my hands, dirt and pine needles pricking at my knuckles, ashamed to find tears freezing on my cheeks.
“What gives you the right to tell me I’m the twisted one, Sev? You have no idea what it’s like to know that if you don’t pull the trigger first, it’ll be your blood melting the snow. You’re worried about what I didn’t tell you? You want to hear it now?” I feel him shift in front of me as if he’s willing me to meet his gaze, but I won’t. I can’t. “Like how it feels to go hungry, because if anyone in my family went foraging, the chance of getting back home was almost nothing? How it feel
s to be the one who has to make decisions between lives? Is it the kids I know from the Mountain who get to live, or the men dragging truckloads of rice to whoever has to eat behind City walls?” His voice breaks, every word a knife between my ribs. “You want to know how it feels to stand guard over bodies that used to be your friends so they aren’t dragged off into the forest piece by piece by gores or Sephs or whatever monsters are closest?”
The sleeping bag feels too tight now, smothering me.
“How would you feel sitting warm and safe, eating food so fancy it makes your stomach turn, having to laugh at jokes about the way Menghu smell after they die? Forced to smile across the table at the people who killed your family and friends? I couldn’t stay there any longer. I didn’t trust Dr. Yang. I just . . . couldn’t do it anymore.”
“It was worth it to you, then.” My voice is a ghost, transparent wisps that are already long gone. “The only daughter of Jiang Gui-hua, the person who screwed up your life by curing you. You thought it was worth chancing my life so long as it got you out of there.”
“Yeah. I did. If one life was all it was going to take to stop Reds from killing my friends, to stop Firsts from killing everyone else . . . ?” He shrugs. “And if it didn’t even have to be my life? Yes. You’re absolutely right. That was exactly what I was thinking when we left the City.” Howl takes a step back from the opening, the white blaze of light reflecting up from the snow blurring his features. The raw honesty in his voice cuts. “But it only took a few days out there with you to realize that I couldn’t . . . I got to know you, and . . .” He trails off, as if the confession that he was okay with me dying is easier to articulate than him changing his mind about it.
“Is that excuse—that I’m harder to truss up for the scalpel once you know my favorite color—supposed to make all this okay, Howl?”
“That’s not where we’re standing right now, and it hasn’t been for a long time, Sev.” He shakes his head. “What’s your excuse? You left without me. If you were so sure Yizhi was going to kill you, then what did you think was going to happen when I was the only one left?”
Silence. Only the hiss of the wind, the hush of snow as it blows down from the trees. Every inch of me is frozen, paralyzed, not able to expel the high-pitched scream ringing in my head.
“I don’t even know why I came after you. I hoped . . . but hope is useless.” Howl takes another step back, and then another. “Life isn’t a weiqi match, Sev. There isn’t a grid or stones or rules that end the game with a polite bow. Not everything can be reduced to what colors you’re wearing.” He doesn’t speak for a moment, then shakes his head. “And I don’t know why I’m trying to convince you.”
My hands claw through the dirt, my brain unable to process the raw awfulness singeing his voice.
“Whatever Sole said to you, I would never have let Dr. Yang hurt you. Hell, I was willing to leave the Mountain for you. I’m done with hurting people. With lying. With all of this.”
When I finally look up, he’s gone.
CHAPTER 24
IT’S COLD IN THE LITTLE shelter Howl made for us, wind whistling over the tarp and through the branches above. The owl pellets under me make me feel dirty and diseased, as if I’m lying in a bed of bones and skin, but I can’t move, exhaustion weighing me down.
I left him. I knew what I was doing too. I just assumed Howl would leave, the same way he left before. It isn’t much of an excuse either, now that it’s been lobbed at my head. I chose my life instead of his because he chose his life instead of mine.
The last glaring bits of daylight burn into my eyes when I force myself to sit up to the sounds of rustling in the tree above me. I should have listened the first time I heard the owl’s call. Tai-ge in a cell. June . . . I can’t think about June.
And Howl. Whatever goodwill he had for me might as well be dead too. All the anger and hurt and awfulness I’ve been refusing to acknowledge since I left the Mountain threatens to overwhelm me, to squelch out any last bits of the person I was before.
I pull myself up from the ground with a growl and storm out from under the tarp. The nest is just above me in the tree, the clumps of dry grass and pine needles like a dead thing lodged in the branches. Ice burns at my palm as I pry a rock from the frozen ground.
When I lob the rock at the nest, it glances off, landing in the snow with an inept plop. My throat burns, an inarticulate scream clawing its way out of me, but even the satisfaction of an unrestrained cry is dampened by snow, the sound muffled and close. Swearing at the rocks and the dirt, the ice, I kneel down to pry another stone free.
But then something moves in the nest, the coppery rust of twilight blinding me as a shape bursts from the nest and up into the sky. The bird circles around, shadow falling directly on me as it dives down, landing on the branch just above me with a hiss.
My fingers wrap around a loose rock on the ground, the touch of ice like needles and acid against my skin. The owl stands with its shoulders hunched, as if all the ghosts of the dead are gathered in its shadow, the bird’s yellow eyes glaring and reflective in the failing light. It hisses again, bobbing back and forth.
I throw the rock at the creature even as its talons come out, diving toward my face. The rock misses, but I don’t move, arms spread wide as I scream a war cry at the demon bird. At the last moment, it veers to the side, then circles back around to perch on the edge of the nest. It cocks its head, looking down at me. A terrible chill needles down my spine. Parhat looked at me the same way, as if wondering how best to take me apart. Like Mei, right before she looped a wire around my throat.
The creature flaps its wings once, then takes off into the bruised evening light. I stand there staring long after it’s gone, death flying on silent wings away from me into the forest.
Death. Insanity. SS. The real enemy. Dr. Yang already wields it like the long swords from a history book: too grand for us of the lower caste to hold, but not grand enough to stop the blades killing us. Howl is out there, either looking for June or scouting the camp or maybe gone forever, on his way to help Sole.
What am I doing?
I crawl inside the shelter and pull out my pack. The camp isn’t too far away. Maybe I can go back to the paddies, find the spot June was, and somehow follow her footprints . . . I jerk to a stop halfway out of the shelter as the heavy crunch of footsteps shatters the silence.
Groping in my pocket for the knife, I find only fabric. Howl dropped the knife somewhere near the cave’s entrance.
Anger boils in my throat. At myself for yelling at a stupid bird and attracting attention. At Howl for everything, at Tai-ge for getting caught and refusing to let me get caught with him, at June for her magical forest powers failing. At all of them for leaving me here alone under the owl’s tree.
I scuttle back into the shelter and comb through the snow to find the knife. Once its frigid metal is in my hand, I crouch with my back to the rock wall by the hideout opening and wait.
The footsteps don’t pause to explore this way or that, don’t trip or slide. They come straight up the rocks. Scuffle over the top of the boulders and land outside with a thump that shakes a clump of snow down from the tarp just outside the opening.
I launch forward with a shriek, crashing into the person just as they bend to pull the tarp back and expose me. Boots and snaggy shoelace hooks, knobbly knees that give way to ice and dirt when the wiry form easily sidesteps my attack, shoving my face to the ground.
“Be quiet!” A girl’s voice. “How can you ever hear anything when you are so loud?”
I let my cheek rest against the ice, something inside of me disengaging. And I can let myself cry because it’s June, and she isn’t dead at all.
CHAPTER 25
“ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?” I ask once we’re inside, my cheek red and smarting from being shoved down into the ice. June might not be a trained fighter, but she’s quick on her feet. I suppose a half-brained attack from me might not measure up to the full-to-the-brim insanity sh
e must have dealt with when she was still with her father.
June nods, her eyes narrowing as they skid across my neck. She points at the marks there, eyebrows furrowed.
“It hurt.” I press a tentative finger against the raw skin and shrug. “But I’m not dead.”
June stares a second longer, her hand raised as if she wants to touch the scabby, bruised skin, but then sits down. It only takes a moment for her to extract her pack and the waterskin inside, though instead of drinking, she pokes it experimentally. It isn’t all the way full.
“Howl drank from it. Not me.” I can’t keep from looking at her, as if she’ll dissolve into a shimmer of golden hair and cold-night hallucinations if I look away. “He’s out. . . .”
June nods to the doorway, not a single thread of surprise pulling the weave of her calm asunder.
“You’ve seen him?” I ask.
“Drew off the Menghu.” June glares out at the coating of snow as if it’s to blame for everything that went wrong. “They were following me.”
So he didn’t leave. Where is he now? I wonder. Is he coming back, or was that argument the end of Howl and me sharing the same space?
My thoughts all sludge together, my chest seeming to constrict as the last words he said repeat over and over in my head. That he’s done. I suck in a deep breath, telling myself that it will be okay. Howl being gone is what I wanted anyway. He can go back to being dead.
I reach out to touch June’s shoulder, mentally shoving the table holding my thoughts over, the bits and pieces skittering away in a violent burst. June’s alive, and right now that’s all that matters. “What happened last night?” I ask. “There were gunshots and then the explosion went off, and the Menghu started killing people. . . .”
She gulps down some water, then closes the waterskin. “Scouts came in. Maybe the ones after our heli. They saw my hair. Saw the patroller in the trench.” June’s mouth creases up to the side in a sort of grimace. She reaches into her coat and pulls out a gun, the dying embers of the sun glinting off the metal. It’s the weapon she took from the guard at the top of the paddies.
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