by Beth Revis
“Not what we were expecting?” Nedra threw up her hand. “Grey, the iron bands aren’t some sort of trinket to be worn by a lord in the capital who thinks he’s fashionable! They’re a part of our religion.”
I blinked in surprise. “We’re all Oryan,” I said slowly.
“I guess some of us actually believe more than others,” Nedra snapped. “Grey, how could you, of all people, think that the iron band was nothing more than an object to sell?”
“Why does it matter?” I said, confused. “Ned, this could help people in the north live somewhere better than the village you were raised in.”
“I loved my village!” Nedra leapt up, her eyes flashing in fury. “And you would know that if you didn’t think value could only be measured with gold coins!”
“Ned—”
“The iron rings are symbolic of the most holy day of our island.” The words poured from her lips like boiling water spilling over a pot. “They’re meant to be prayed over and blessed by the Elders. They’re meant to be pushed into the graves of the people we love. They’re meant to mean something.”
“I didn’t think you cared about what the gods wanted anymore.” My eyes were on her crucible hanging from her neck in the spot where she used to wear a three-knotted cord. She had been the only person I knew who’d ever bothered to wear one; most people were religious only during the holy festival days and then in name only.
“It’s complicated!” Nedra shouted.
“Not really.” The louder she became, the more my own voice dropped. She was fire, but I was ice. “The gods are against necromancy. Oryous is supposed to conquer death, Nedra, not you.” My words sliced into her like a gutting knife, and there was a little piece inside of me that triumphed at the way her words died on her tongue. “It really is that simple. There’s right, and there’s wrong. You can’t expect me to respect a symbol of the gods when you defy them every second of the day.”
She stood there, fuming, her hand balled into a fist. But before she could say anything, I continued. “Ned, you can pretend all you want that you’ve done the right thing. Because I understand, I really do. It was wrong for your family to die. It was wrong for all those people in the plague to die. But just because that was wrong doesn’t make what you’re doing right. It doesn’t solve anything. If you actually cared about what the gods wanted, you’d leave death to them. What you’ve done, Nedra, what you intend to continue doing—it’s monstrous.”
Every muscle in Nedra’s body was tense. She took a deep breath in. I felt the air around us crackle with electricity, and even though the ship was rocking over rough waves, neither of us moved.
“Get out.” She spoke so quietly that if I hadn’t expected her to say those words, I don’t know if I would have heard them. But I did. Because necromancy was the unspoken line between us, and I had crossed it.
THIRTY-NINE
Nedra
THE NEXT MORNING, at dawn, when the light was still cold and blue, I heard footsteps on the wooden walkway in front of the door. They stopped. I could see a shadow under the door, two feet, so close that all Grey had to do was reach out and knock. I got out of bed and padded silently across the room.
He was on the other side of the door, I knew.
But he didn’t knock.
And I didn’t open the door.
For the rest of the week, I stayed in the cabin, and he stayed out of it.
* * *
• • •
It had taken the exact same amount of time to sail to Miraband from Hart, but the voyage to the capital had disappeared in a blink of an eye. And the return had been interminable. I spent every waking moment either reading or trying to reach my revenants. My worry grew as we drew closer to home and their deafening silence persisted.
On the seventh day, I awoke early, pressing my face against the porthole of the cabin, looking for signs of home. I wondered if the Emperor’s cruiser would take us directly to Blackdocks and I’d have to find my own passage to my little island. But the ship veered north, looping wide and stopping at the stone steps leading to the quarantine hospital. I wondered if the captain worried that the new recruits would spread word that a white-haired girl got off the boat at the abandoned hospital, or if he no longer feared consequences now that I was back where I belonged.
Everything I needed had been packed since the night before. I shouldered the large copper crucible and headed to the door. I pointedly did not look at any of the new recruits watching me from the deck, instead searching for Grey.
He wasn’t there.
Before my foot had touched the second stone step, the gangway was raised. Before I reached the hospital, the ship had already sailed away.
* * *
• • •
When I reached the large doors of the quarantine hospital, I had to push hard, ramming my shoulder against the mahogany, before they would finally open. Something blocked the door, something heavy but soft. A blackish-red stain smeared a dark rainbow across the white tiles of the floor. I followed the smudged gore to the object that had barred my entry—a dismembered female torso.
The stench of decay filled my nostrils. I gagged, but forced myself to step into the hospital’s foyer. The air inside felt heavy and damp. The doors had been closed for too long, entombing the rot inside.
Dozens upon dozens of bloody bits of human remains littered the floor, sticky with blackish-red blood congealing on the tile. I did not flinch at corpses; Death was an old friend of mine. But the sheer gore of these bodies, dismembered flesh strewn around the room, left to decay for the gods knew how long . . . Bile bubbled up my throat. I couldn’t stop retching, my eyes streaming as my body heaved long after the contents of my stomach were gone.
I threw myself back to the open doorway, gasping for fresh air. Blearily, I could see Grey’s ship as it cut across the bay, back to Blackdocks. I remembered the night I woke Grey up, overwhelmed with the silence in my head. My revenants had slowly quieted over the days, the result, I’d assumed, of their souls leaking out of their raised bodies. After reading the books from the Collector, I was certain that the silence was from their life energy seeping out, evaporating over time.
I had prepared myself for the worst: coming home to revenants that were all like Nessie, empty inside and hollow shells of who they used to be.
I had been wrong.
That had not been the worst.
I turned back to the interior of the hospital. I had learned long ago there was no point in denying the truth, no matter how gruesome. And the truth was my revenants had not been silenced because their souls and energy had slowly dissipated.
The dead cannot die.
But they can be torn apart. Ripped, piece by piece, until they were nothing but bloody chunks and dismembered parts on a dirty, stained floor.
I looked around me at the carnage that stained the walls and littered the floor. Small pieces of the bodies of the people I had given life after it was taken from them too soon—a thigh, a hand, a neck, a jaw.
There had been a battle here.
And my revenants had lost.
I dropped to my knees, ignoring the sticky gore that soaked through the material of my trousers. My eyes darted from body part to body part, trying to piece together who was who. That scalp with long hair—was that Kessel? Oh, gods, that little hand, that had been a child. I recognized the coat that belonged to Dannix. He’d been alive, a defender of my dead—perhaps caught in the crossfire and chopped up . . .
So that I couldn’t raise him after.
Who? My heart screamed. I thought we’d scared off the aggressors from Cliffside—had they come back? Or was this the Emperor’s doing? Maybe he knew I’d go with Grey, maybe the captain of the ship had betrayed us and told him I’d gone to Miraband. I’d left my revenants with orders—protect the hospital and the people inside. But could they survive a battle wi
thout me to direct them? They had already been so weak when I’d left, empty like . . .
Nessie.
I looked around the foyer with blurry eyes, trying to sift through the human remains for a piece of my twin sister, for a face identical to my own. Oh, gods, Nessie. She could more than defend herself, but she wouldn’t act without an order from me. Had she just stood there, while the attackers hacked her body apart?
Why did I never fear this? I’d felt in control. Invincible. Confident in my knowledge that no living person could defeat me in battle with my revenants by my side.
But I hadn’t been by their side.
My body bent over, and I gasped for breath, the sound harsh and wheezing, too loud in the silence that was only broken by the buzzing of flies. My eyes were wide and stinging, but I couldn’t tell if it was sorrow or rage that incapacitated me. When my revenants had needed me the most, I had not been there. Shame burned my cheeks. I had been with Grey, while my revenants had been hacked to pieces.
Whoever had done this had attacked with a plan. My army literally ripped asunder—I could do nothing with necromancy to save handfuls of flesh and the broken ends of splintered bones. This had been done purposefully. Methodically. Nearly all the bits of bodies on the floor were unidentifiable. If I pieced them all together, different parts of a gruesome puzzle, would I be able to reform any one person? Even if I knew which mangled, bloody bits belonged to Nessie in this sea of death, how could I ever hope to put her back together again?
As soon as that thought melted into my wildly beating heart, my entire body sagged. Grief flooded my mind as her loss—finally—overwhelmed my senses. I tried to breathe the heavy, sticky air, too sweet and too metallic. The air in my lungs turned into a choking sob. I had never been so utterly broken and defeated before. There was nothing, nothing I could do now. Slowly, my hand stilled. I closed my eyes.
And a new emotion filled me, slowly, like a rising tide drowning out all other feelings.
Relief.
If Nessie was gone, if all my revenants were gone . . .
I was free.
I shouldn’t feel this way, I thought dully. This is wrong. But I couldn’t help it. I had spent every waking moment since becoming a necromancer trying to find a way to get back a small part of the life that the plague had taken from me. If she was past saving, though, if this was it, the end . . .
I felt the tears running down my cheeks, hot as acid. Of course this wasn’t the end I wanted, but it was an end.
My eyes drifted up. While blood and organs and torn tissue covered the floor of the foyer, the gore did not extend into the halls or up the black stairs leading to the clock tower.
I made my way slowly across the tiled floor, in part so that I wouldn’t slip on the congealing blood. I had to wiggle my foot through mounds of chopped flesh, leap over piles of severed limbs. I slipped once, my foot catching in the crook of a dismembered knee, landing face-first in the gore and staining the front of my tunic blackish-red. I struggled to regain my footing, picking pieces of entrails off my face. My hair was stiff with old blood.
My hand slid over something wet and squishy as I tried to push up from the floor, and I fell again. My eyes were on the same level as another brown eye. There was enough left of Lixa’s face that I recognized her. Tears blurred my vision; it was easier to see the organs and limbs of humans I couldn’t identify. But this was Lixa. I had raised her the first night I’d been a necromancer. She’d been among the last of the plague victims ferried to the hospital before it closed. When I had raised her, all I had felt from her was hope. She had no one to come back for—no family or lover or even close friend who missed her—but she had been so eager to live a life that she had jumped at my offer for a second one.
Most of the top of her skull had been smashed in, and what remained of her warm brown hair was matted in the place where her neck had been.
The attackers had been thorough.
When I mounted the steps to the clock tower, I left behind shining bloody footprints on the black stairs. I gripped the railing, my ascent slow and methodical as I imagined the invaders doing the same.
They called me a monster, all of them. But I never cut someone down. I never hacked away—
My steps stumbled. The worst I’d ever done, I’d done to the one I loved the most. And Nessie had been alive when I’d amputated her arm, unable to do anything but feel me sawing through her bone. At least my revenants had felt no pain when these enemies destroyed them.
When I got to the top of the iron stairs, I looked around, my stomach twisting with dread at what I was sure I would find.
There, in the center of the room, just under the ticking gears of the enormous clock, stood Nessie. Whole, and as alive as I had made her.
She stared blankly at me, and I felt the staggering weight of her death settle on me like an iron mantle around my shoulders. I straightened my spine, my resolution solidifying within me.
It wasn’t over yet.
FORTY
Grey
BANNERS AND FLAGS were festooned upon every pole and lamppost in front of Blackdocks—the red and black colors of the Emperor displayed prominently. The cloth made snapping sounds as the wind got stronger. I flicked up the collar of my coat, leaning into the cold. It would storm soon—one of those quick thundershowers that dumped water from the sky in buckets but was completely gone in an hour. I glanced up the hill, wondering if I could make it back to the castle before the downpour.
“News!” a little girl hollered from the corner. “The latest news!”
I dropped a coin in her hand and took one of the news sheets from her stack, reading it immediately. The Emperor had made quite an impression on the people while I’d been away. Last week, he’d attended service at one of the small church halls near Blackdocks, blessing the Elder himself. The plans for the orphanage and a new quarantine hospital had already begun, with notes that the Emperor’s coffers would be footing the bill. A splashy headline announced a public festival that would happen in two days’ time. I remembered Hamish’s reservations about doing so much so soon, but it was clear the Emperor’s will would not be denied.
I turned the paper over, and gasped when I saw my face looking up at me. It was a re-creation of the portrait my mother had done before I went to Yūgen, my chin tilted up, my hair a little too long. MEET THE MAN WHO’S SAVING THE NORTH! the headline beneath my picture proclaimed. The article was brief and was clearly being used to encourage people to come to the upcoming rally in order to hear news of my success. I was deeply grateful I had good news to relay.
Beneath the fold was a full article about a group of thirteen rebels who’d been arrested. I scanned the printed black-and-white faces. The images were rough, but I could tell immediately that none of the captured criminals were my family.
A fat raindrop landed on the paper, smearing the ink. I glanced up as the little girl grabbed her remaining stack of news sheets and ran for cover. Holding my own paper above my head as the downpour started, I raced across the street, flagging down a coach. “To the castle,” I said as I ducked inside.
Even here, inside a hired coach, evidence of the Emperor’s influence persisted. Black-and-red ribbons were stacked in a neat basket on the seat, with a small sign that said TAKE ONE. I did, and I pinned it to my coat. The farther up we climbed, the more bunting I saw draped on the windows of storefronts and even homes. Shiny new flagpoles bore the Allyrian flag, and bunting decorated most of the nicer houses along the streets. I caught sight of street workers huddled in an alley taking shelter from the storm, their bags laden with even more black-and-red cloth.
It’ll have to be more than just a cosmetic change, I thought, remembering Hamish’s warnings. But I suspected that it already was. This level of change to the face of the city meant that people had to be hired. More jobs meant less homelessness. And with new street decorations came cleaner str
eets. Stoops had been swept, windows cleaned. No trash piled up in the gutters. Even the rain seemed to be in on the plan, making the city sparkle.
I had thought Miraband to be wondrous, but now I realized how good it was to be home.
The coach brought me to the back of the castle, and I ran inside, doing my best not to get soaking wet. Servants stood near the door, one bending down to wipe my shoes off for me. “Thanks,” I muttered, shifting away as soon as possible.
Before I’d even made it to my room, another servant rushed up to me. “Mr. Astor!” he called.
I turned.
“You’re wanted in the council room,” he said formally.
I was gratified to realize that I mostly knew the way back on my own; he only had to redirect me twice. A herald announced me when I stepped inside.
The Emperor no longer had a cane. Instead, he paced around the council room, looking up as I entered, an inscrutable expression on his face.
“Astor!” he called. “My captain sent word that you have been successful in your mission.”
“Ah, yes,” I said as every council member turned to look at me. There were new faces among them, people I assumed had been appointed to the council in my absence, though several new empty seats dotted the room.
“Excuse me.” A woman I didn’t recognize spoke. Several council members fidgeted nervously, and Hamish gave the woman an encouraging nod. “I know Astor’s report is important, but we need to talk about the prisoners first,” she said.
“Prisoners?” The question slipped past my mouth before I had a chance to bite my tongue.
The Emperor glared at the councilwoman. “We’ve collected thirteen traitors to the Empire,” he said. “Their trial will be soon.”
There had clearly been a note of dismissal in his tone, but Hamish ignored it. “‘Soon’ is a relative term, Your Imperial Majesty. These people are commoners, and whatever role they played in treasonous activity was minimal at best. The prison conditions are atrocious and—”
