We Rule the Night

by Claire Eliza Bartlett

  Or perhaps they were only desperate enough to let the women turn their backs on their principles. Linné fought, once more, to keep her voice steady. “With all respect, sir, I would serve the Union better stationed with the regular army.” She knew how to fight, knew how to take care of her friends. Knew how to advance and how to try her luck for a Hero of the Union medal. And she knew that what she was doing was right. She was saving the Union, not destroying it.

  “If you serve on the ground, then you shall serve in the offices of Mistelgard,” Koslen said. “It’s the best I can do.”

  So that was it. If she joined the women’s regiment, she’d be forever tainted by her connection to the illegal Weave. If she said no, she’d be sent back to her father a failure. A disobedient failure, at that. Two things her father despised, all rolled up into her.

  “How can I be a pilot if I’ve never used… other magic?”

  “If you’d rather go home, I can arrange for you to be on the next transport.” The colonel turned toward the radio.

  “No.” The spark flashed through her, so hot she thought it would burst from her clenched fists and make a smoking hole in the office floor. She couldn’t go home. She couldn’t be a secretary. She couldn’t leave her friends at the front to face the Elda while she sat locked in her house, serving penance to a father who didn’t care what she could do. Who cared only how good she made him look.

  Koslen half turned to study her. His finger brushed the knob of the radio.

  Bitterness filled her throat and she clung to her rage. If she let go, even for a moment, it would come crashing out, and Koslen would declare her unfit, even for an experimental regiment, even for an illegal one. “I would be honored to join the regiment, sir.” She squeezed her fists until her nails cut her palms, until the sting drove her spark back in. She’d made a promise to herself, years ago, to fight like her father, to fight despite her father.

  And I will, she thought, glaring at the top of Koslen’s bent head. No matter how many men like you get in my way.

  3

  SEIZE YOUR CHANCES

  The latch scraped on Revna’s front door around midnight. Mama came in, a gray shape with a sleeping Lyfa in her arms. She let out a sigh as she leaned on the door to close it.

  “I’m home,” Revna whispered from the bed.

  Mama half screamed. “Oh my—” She clapped her hand over her mouth, banging Lyfa’s head against the door. Lyfa began to cry.

  “Here.” Revna reached out, and Mama came forward, depositing Lyfa in her lap. Mama’s face was as gray as her uniform. Dust and ash coated her hair, ringed the inside of her nose, powdered her lips. When the tears spilled over, they left tracks on her cheeks that smeared when she palmed at them. She bent down and pulled Revna into a hug so tight that Revna could feel the trembling in her arms, her legs, her shoulders. Lyfa sobbed between them, confused and tired and rubbing her sore head.

  Mama wrestled out of her coat while Revna held Lyfa, rocking her gently. “Lyfa,” she murmured, and her sister’s wails diminished. Her hearing was coming back, though she could think of better ways to find that out. “What’s your favorite constellation?”

  Lyfa sniffed. “Oryxus Brenna,” she said in her small voice, still sticky with tears. She was four years, three months, and she could say star names that Revna had never known.

  “Good job.” Revna squeezed her tight. Lyfa would be a brilliant astronomer when she grew up. If they made it to the other side of the war. If they could afford to buy her books on physics and astronomy and mathematics. If they could persuade the men-only science academy to take her. And how was Mama going to do all that once Revna was arrested for using the Weave?

  As Mama washed Lyfa with a cloth and changed her into a nightshirt, Revna wriggled out of her uniform. Then she took Lyfa and lay down. Stripes of pain still wound their way up her leg. Her prosthetics rattled against the wall, weary and terrified. She focused on the sound of Lyfa’s breathing, trying to match it as it slowed.

  Mama ran the wet cloth over herself, then slid into the bed on the other side of Lyfa. Normally she slept in the loft, in the bed she’d shared with Papa before he’d been taken away. Now she pulled Lyfa close and cupped one hand around the back of Revna’s head, stroking her hair.

  “What happened?” she said.

  “Our route got bombarded.…” Revna told the story in halting whispers, choking out the words when shame threatened to close up her throat. She’d been such a coward. Why had she thought about the Weave before her family? What would happen to them once she was branded a traitor? But she had to tell the truth. If she was going to be arrested, Mama deserved to know why.

  The Skarov officer had taken her home after their near miss, depositing her at her front door with a muttered “Stay inside” before he fled. Revna still didn’t understand. Was he waiting for her family to join her so he could arrest them, too?

  “Oh, my darling,” Mama said when she was finished. She and Papa had admonished Revna whenever they’d caught her using the Weave. They gave her spark tests instead, encouraged her to practice the one form of magic that was legal in the Union. But she hadn’t been able to keep away from the Weave. She’d used it when no one was watching. She’d learned how the threads could move her over the ground, and once, she’d even pulled herself up to the loft where Mama and Papa slept. But the Weave was dangerous, and she’d stopped herself for love of the Union.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. She shouldn’t have been so resentful after Papa was arrested. She shouldn’t have kept working the Weave, even a little, in secret. She’d probably be dead now, but at least Mama would get a few days off work for mourning.

  “When they locked the bunker, I was so afraid you’d—” Her hand tightened around the back of Revna’s head.

  “It’s okay,” she said, wiggling closer. It wasn’t okay—they both knew that—but what else could she say?

  “And Mrs. Achkeva, whining about her dog, how unfair it was that she couldn’t bring him down. As though we had air in the bunker for all the creatures on God’s earth—”

  “Mama,” Revna warned her gently.

  “I know,” Mama said, flapping her hand. Mama had been the spiritual one, going to temple every seven days. She didn’t pray anymore, but she called on this god or that one a little too often for a good Union citizen. “But you were missing, and you weren’t the only one, and all this woman cares about is her poor dog.…” She sighed.

  Revna echoed her sigh. It was cozy in the bed with the three of them. She wished she could be relieved that they’d all made it through the raid, but she still couldn’t quite believe it.

  “I’ll write to your father in the morning,” Mama said. “If you want to add to the letter.”

  Revna didn’t answer. The lump in her throat had grown too large. Of course she wanted to add to the letter. Papa wasn’t allowed to write to them, but they could send him mail, no doubt heavily edited by some bored Information Officer on the prison island.

  “He’d be proud of you, you know.”

  Revna let out a soft sound, somewhere between a laugh and a snort and a sob. “For breaking the law?” A tear slid over the bridge of her nose.

  “For saving a man’s life,” Mama said.

  “Even a Skarov’s?”

  Mama brushed her tears away with a thumb. “Especially then. It takes a lot to save a man you hate.” Her breathing evened, and before Revna could think of a suitable reply, Mama was asleep.

  The Union frowned on superstition and pointless tradition, but Revna had grown up with superstitions, and she even had one about herself. She was a curse. And her family was cursed with her. Every time something good happened to her, something bad seemed to happen to them. When Papa had used factory scrap to replace her old prosthetics, she’d walked better than she had since before the accident. Then he’d gotten arrested. Every time she had a good day at the factory, Mama or Lyfa came home crying. And now she’d survived outside in the air raid, cau
ght using the forbidden Weave, and Mama was going to be branded as the woman with two family traitors.

  Revna didn’t think she’d be able to sleep, but somehow the swirl of dread turned into dreams of dust and silver coats, and when someone finally banged on the door, light peeked around the blackout curtains. Mama woke up and gave her a worried look, but slid out of the bed and combed her fingers through her hair before opening the door. She murmured to whoever stood outside, then shut the door and pulled the blackout curtains back. Lyfa grunted and wriggled farther under the blankets as light flowed into the room, but Revna sat up.

  “What’s happening?” she croaked. Her voice had thickened in the night.

  Mama picked up her uniform and scrubbed at a palm-sized orange stain. “The factories are running,” she said. “Extra pay if we come to work today.” She was a cook for one of Tammin’s explosives factories, and she came home stinking of garlic and cabbage every night.

  Revna leaned back against the headboard, gathering a blanketed Lyfa in her arms. “The Elda didn’t hit them?”

  “Not one.” Mama put wood into the stove and grabbed the blackened teakettle. “So much for their Dragons.”

  Revna thought of the buildings crashing around her, the smoke parting like a ghostly curtain, revealing the end of her life. She set Lyfa down and scooted to the edge of the bed to retrieve her legs. Mama looked up from where she leaned over the spitting fire. “What are you doing?”

  “If the factories are open, then I’ll get extra pay, too,” Revna said.

  “Oh, no.” Mama brandished the kettle at her. “You don’t need to be attracting attention to yourself. Whatever miracle saved you last night, I don’t want to chance it.”

  Miracle, curse. She knew Mama wouldn’t want to hear her talk like that, so she grabbed her uniform off the floor and said, “The Skarov know where I live, not where I work,” and she got on with it.

  “You’re making it cold,” Lyfa complained in a muffled voice.

  Revna patted the lump of blanket next to her. “It’s light, Lyfa. Time to get up. You can help me with my legs, if you want.”

  As Lyfa poked her nose out from under the blanket, Revna finished buttoning her uniform and reached for her prosthetics. She pulled on her socks first, modified tubes made from old flour sacks. They protected her from the slim sheet of living metal that slotted over her legs next, tightening on her calves. There was a pin at the bottom of each sheet, which snapped into the outer legs. She let Lyfa draw the straps at the top of the outer legs tight, threading them through three buckles at her calf and knee. The living metal did the rest, pressing against her like a firm hug. She winced. Her legs were still sore from the night’s action, and her prosthetics still shivered with fear. She rubbed at the area around the buckles, trying to send calming thoughts. But her mind was filled with the Skarov, and the Skarov never brought calm.

  Mama pursed her lips as she watched. “You were caught out of the bunker. There’s no shame in taking a day off.”

  “If I don’t go, someone else will pull a double shift.” For the glory of the Union. Worse, the Skarov would have one more reason to arrest her. And perhaps worst of all, no one in the factory would blame her for staying home. Poor girl tires easily, they’d say behind her back.

  Mama sighed through her nose. She ushered Lyfa into an oversized coat and took her to the neighbors. By the time she came back, Revna had gotten up and poured herself a cup of tea. Her uniform was stiff with dust and crackled whenever she moved. It stank of smoke and heat. Then again, the whole city smelled of fire. She’d fit right in.

  “I’ll take you before I go to the kitchen,” Mama said. “Where’s your chair?”

  “Under someone’s house. I can take myself.”

  “And then Mrs. Prim Rules can fire you because you didn’t come in your chair?” Mama rolled her eyes and got the extra chair out of the cupboard. It rattled Revna back and forth on anything but the smoothest roads. But Papa had made it, and she loved it.

  Before she’d gotten hit by the cart, Revna had hated to sit down. She’d run everywhere and not even Papa could keep up with her. And that was how the accident had happened. She’d been nine, running free, flying over the ground. Then she’d woken in the Tammin factory hospital, on fire from the calves down.

  Her right leg had been amputated just above the ankle, her left leg just below the knee. The phantom pains visited her every day at first, pricking where her feet and ankles used to be, as though they’d gone to sleep and needed a good shake. The sight of the crude wooden legs Papa made for her, little better than stilts, had nauseated her. She’d learned to walk on them, though, and when she outgrew them, Papa made her new ones. Each time he replaced them they got a little better, a little better, and then he’d brought home enough scrap metal from the factory to fashion the living metal legs for her. He’d adjusted them after her last growth spurt, and the metal tried to take care of her in its own way. She could walk, nearly as well as anyone else, but they’d kept the chairs for when she got tired, and now her job depended on them.

  She buttoned her coat and got her clean scarf from the peg by the door. Mama tucked it under her coat, then leaned in and kissed her on the forehead. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said.

  “Me too,” Revna replied.

  A second knock sounded. “Yes?” Mama said, wrenching open the door.

  A man in a silver coat pushed her aside. No, the man in the silver coat. The Skarov Revna had saved. And he had two others with him.

  Problem: She was about to be arrested.

  She’d expected it. She’d spent half the night thinking about it. But that didn’t stop the shaking in her hands, or the involuntary squeeze of her prosthetics against her calves.

  “Revna Roshena?” said the first. He looked as if he hadn’t slept all night. One of his companions sported a black eye, while the other fiddled with the torn hem of his coat.

  “What do you need, sirs?” Mama asked. She held her hands clasped in front of her and her head cocked, all politeness and curiosity. But Revna could see the whites of her knuckles, the way her throat bobbed when she swallowed.

  The Skarov’s eyes never left Revna. “We have business with your daughter.”

  Mama lifted her chin. “Then you have business with me, as well.”

  “It’s all right,” Revna cut in. Mama couldn’t go around antagonizing the Skarov. She had Lyfa to think of. “You’ll be late for your shift.”

  The Skarov glanced at his companions. Then he said, “You may come, if you wish.”

  “Mama,” Revna began.

  “Get in your chair,” Mama said.

  Revna knew what Mama was doing. She was trying to make Revna look helpless and innocent. If Mrs. Rodoya could be fooled into underestimating her, why not the Skarov? Revna didn’t think it would help them this time, but she got into the chair and let Mama push her out the door. Her gaze lingered on the things she wanted to remember. The stove. The lopsided ramp that Papa had stuck over the sagging front steps. The birch tree that defiantly broke through the stony ground in their yard. She’d climbed that tree, before the accident. She’d always intended to try again. This was probably the last time she’d see it.

  Tammin was a bizarre mix of ruin and order. Buildings stood proud next to heaps of brick, all that remained of some people’s homes and livelihoods. First responders and living metal flatbeds had cleared enough rubble that people could make their way to and from the factory quarter. They stopped to observe the strange little entourage as it passed, and Revna knew the news would be around Tammin before sunset. The traitor’s daughter had been carried off, too.

  Revna folded her hands in her lap and tried to ignore the whispers that followed them. This was how they would remember her. Not as the girl who was always on time, not the girl who worked hard and stayed late. She’d never given Mrs. Rodoya any reason to discipline her, nor given any of the girls on the assembly line some excuse to dislike her. She handled living metal
better than anyone else on the factory floor, and most times she could calm it with a touch. No one would remember that. She was the disabled girl who was as traitorous as her father. GOSSIP WON’T HELP BUILD WAR MACHINES, but apparently it fueled Tammin.

  The Skarov wove through the city, backtracking and second-guessing as they took streets that dead-ended in ruin. Mama and Revna fell behind, but they finally passed the munitions quarter and made their way to the nicer parts of town. Here the damage was worse, and the houses drooped, moments from collapse. First responders and young citizens picked through the wreckage, calling to one another when they thought they found life. Mama’s hand rubbed her shoulder as they passed a team pulling a limp body from a collapsed house, and for the first time since last night, Revna was glad she’d used the Weave.

  Tammin wasn’t the first civilian-heavy city targeted by the Elda. Four years ago the Elda had flown their first prototype planes over Goreva Reaching, a mining town at the edge of Union territory. By breakfast, war had been declared. Everyone in Tammin had thought that the twenty-year truce between Elda and the Union meant peace, but the first bombing put an end to that.

  The Elda had swooped in hard and fast to save the God Spaces, the holy sites where this god or that was said to have blessed the earth. Supreme Commander Isaak Vannin said there was no God, they wrote, so why should he be entrusted to take care of the God Spaces? According to the old traditions, Goreva was blessed by the goddess of the morning. The Elda decried the way the Union stripped the earth to pull gold and silver and living iron out of its depths.

  Revna had always found it strange, though, that when the Elda took Goreva, the mining didn’t stop. The resources had gone to Elda instead. And they’d used those resources to make Skyhorses and Dragons that could fly farther and farther north, all the way up to Tammin and its farmland, and the Teltasha Forest around it. And in some way that led to Revna being paraded through town, and what next? The family earnings cut again for Mama, the shadow of secondary citizenship dogging Lyfa’s steps as she grew. Even if the war ended in the next few years, Lyfa would be punished—in which schools she attended, which jobs she could take. Don’t cry, Revna told herself. The Skarov would think she was afraid. And she was. But more than that, she was angry.