He snaps his fingers. The crisscrossing web of string poofs out of existence. The notes flutter to the floor. He frowns and shoos them into neat piles. Fluffy, suddenly visible in the mostly empty space, wriggles with delight and bowls into a pile, setting its contents flying.
Haynfyv takes a deep breath and tears his gaze from the creature. “How?”
“I don’t know, okay? I didn’t make it. It’s just like that.”
He waves away my grumbling. “Not that . . . creature. How am I to stop Her Worship?”
I flick a chair into existence so I can slump into it. “Maybe start by dropping the honorific? And that’s really your first question?”
“You have provided a plausible account for the evidence available. I am aware of no reason not to proceed on a provisional basis with the thought experiment. Based on the premise you have established, what would you suggest to be an appropriate response?”
I pause to untangle his language—a little too ‘precise,’ if you ask me—but since he seems to be headed in the right direction, I’m not about to argue. Especially because he’s not pausing to leave me an opening.
“You have made the assumption that I am capable of taking some action which would prevent the mayor from irreversibly damaging the dome surrounding the city,” he continues. “This further presumes that she or her agents have the knowledge and capacity to enact significant damage against said barrier. And you have additionally and tangentially stated that I am asleep and currently dreaming your existence, this space, and our conversation. I have now sufficiently tested this hypothesis. This space does not respond in accordance with natural law. I require additional information to examine your other assertions.”
“Huh?”
“How do you envisage me preventing Her Worship the Mayor of the Towers of Refuge from injuring the barrier? Your response may but will not necessarily touch on her nature, plans, and abilities, the nature of the barrier itself, and the nature of the Mara or other elements of the city, given the time available. As we are operating under the premise that I am asleep, please also consider that I am unlikely to remain so indefinitely.”
“Uh . . .”
He snaps his fingers again, summoning his own chair into existence, and peers down his nose at me. “In other words: talk fast before I wake up.”
Fluffy wobbles over, rolls twice around his foot, and subsides.
Did—did it just cuddle up and fall asleep on him?
“Tick-tock,” says Haynfyv.
I swallow a frantic giggle. He wants to know how to stop Maryam. He wants me to tell him. Because I showed up disrupting his dream and asking him to stop her—so of course, he expects me to have some idea of what to do. Of course he does.
I wish Ravel were here. Or Ash. Or Ange. But it’s just me.
And there is no time to waste. The sky is cracking, and Cass’s Refuge Force brother wants to know what I expect him to do about it. Not to mention, if I’m not convincing enough, he might decide I’m making all this up in the first place.
So how do I figure out the right direction to push him toward, convince him it’s the right thing to do, and motivate him to get moving?
Ravel’s cocky smirk floats to the surface of my panic. Ravel, the master manipulator. Ravel, who built his own realm out of nothing, always knows how to pull the exact string to get people to follow him.
Just . . . channel Ravel.
I paste on my best attempt at a suitably devilish smirk. “Here is what I need you to do.”
Chapter 15: Investigations
Haynfyv unfolds himself with a groan. Fluffy gives me a mental nudge, probably wanting to know what happened to its comfy napping spot. But for our plan to work, the inspector has to wake up.
Now I just have to hope he remembers what to do next. It probably wouldn’t have occurred to me to worry if he hadn’t brought up the possibility. But now his claim that humans don’t usually remember their dreams, if they’re aware of them at all, is all I can think about.
Everything hinges on my ability to communicate through dreams now. If Haynfyv starts acting on our meticulously plotted plan, I’ll know it’s worth trying to turn more agents to my side. On his own, there’s only so much he’ll be able to accomplish. But if I can start building the resistance one by one, there’s at least a chance I’ll be able to raise enough forces to keep even Maryam at bay.
Unfortunately, Haynfyv isn’t exactly racing to confirm my success. We agreed he would send a signal after waking up so I’d know our plan was on track. He graciously called it my plan, despite suggesting most of it. But all he’s doing is yawning and staggering stiff-legged from one end of the room to the other, peering at his notes.
Anytime now would be great. Really.
He tears a shred of paper free and crumples it in a ball, tossing it in a corner. Fluffy wriggles as if it wants to give chase.
The inspector rubs his eyes, nods, and scribbles something illegible on a fresh bit of paper. He wanders over to a different wall and tacks it up.
If I had a stomach on this side of reality, it would be sinking. Where is his sense of urgency? Stopping to play with his notes wasn’t part of the plan.
Haynfyv rolls his shoulders, making his neck crack, leans over, and rummages through the nest of blankets and balled-up bits of paper in the corner. He comes up with a slightly crumpled mask and smeared goggles. They get a frown and a painstakingly slow and thorough wiping with a blanket corner.
I’m ready to scream by the time he ambles out the door, as neatly uniformed as he can manage. He raises a hand in greeting to the enforcer coming down the hallway but says nothing in passing. Which is good, in that he didn’t start babbling all about his crazy night, but also devastating.
He’s either messing with me or has forgotten all about our conversation on the other side.
Fluffy rumbles in concern. Now what? Should I assume he’s just unusually dense and find someone else to try again with? What if he remembers everything, he’s just not on my side? Maybe he’s headed to Maryam to report me like a good little enforcer . . .
But when he reaches the elevator, he heads in the opposite direction of the mayor’s apartments. This is more promising. We agreed that he should investigate the underground perimeter of the barrier to start with. That way, he could establish the truth of what I told him while also looking for ways to slow or counteract Maryam’s activities.
The floor display ticks down as my hopes rise. He forgot to signal me, that’s all. He got too excited about investigating and dashed off, expecting me to figure it out. He already signalled me and I just missed it.
I get the sense the inspector thinks I’m a bit of an idiot. He was probably being clever, subtle, in case of surveillance. We really should have agreed on a specific signal ahead of time. I assumed he’d just wake up and start talking to me, but of course he realized that would be too dangerous.
Or he was embarrassed. Not everyone is used to talking to invisible people, after all. Fluffy rumbles agreement. Of course that’s it. He wouldn’t want to go around looking like he was talking to himself. He’s probably waiting until he’s beyond the reach of Refuge’s surveillance so he doesn’t get scooped up and sent off for retraining.
But the numbers flicking by on the display slow and the car stops too soon with a groan and a slight but unnerving bounce. Haynfyv’s mirrored goggles reflect the doors sliding open on an unfamiliar floor in Refuge instead of the semi-abandoned underground.
Here, the lights are bright and the hallways freshly painted in lumpy, bland neutrals. Two enforcers pause mid-pace and scramble to snap their goggles back down and straighten their masks. Haynfyv gives them a nod. They bristle, moving to fill the hallway. He taps the code printed near his left shoulder, denoting his rank. They exchange glances and move aside.
Haynfyv marches past, turns a corner, and repeats the whole process, finally facing down a third pair of Refuge Force guards on either side of a windowless door. This time, when he
points out his code—which apparently comes with a relatively high level of clearance—the guards fail to move aside.
“Sorry, Inspector,” one says, shifting his weight. “This one’s under special orders. No visitors but Her Worship and Her Worship’s Hands.”
Her what?
“I do not ‘visit’ prisoners,” Haynfyv says crisply. “I interrogate them.”
“Not this time,” the other guard says with satisfaction. “This time, no one goes in except the mayor or the apprentices. And you don’t look near strange enough to be either of those kids.”
The first guard nods. “It’s the uniform, see? The boy never would wear a uniform right, and we hear that new girl, she dresses up all fancy like Her Worship, even though she ain’t got the—” he sketches curves in the air, smirking.
Haynfyv makes an impatient motion. “I have no—” He pauses, repeating the gesture. “No current interest in a discourse on dress-based signifiers of authority. Neither do I intend to entreat you to act counter to Her Worship’s instruction. I merely wish to look in on the prisoner to ascertain her condition for the purposes of reporting her welfare and readiness for interrogation to Her Worship. I repeat: I will not enter the cell. I will not be visiting the prisoner. Now, open the door and stand aside.”
“Now, I don’t know about—oof.” The first guard’s elbow in his side obscures the rest of the second enforcer’s sentence. There is a brief scuffle and some low grumbling to the effect of “just ’cause he’s not Her Worship don’t mean he can’t make life difficult.” It ends with both junior Refuge Force members standing to one side while Haynfyv and Ange stare at each other through the open door.
She’s alive.
I hoped—but just because her ghost hadn’t yet taken up residence in my nightmares didn’t mean she wasn’t long gone. And now she’s here, in the flesh. For a little longer.
Her bruises are livid, but she unfolds to her feet with no sign of stiffness. Haynfyv holds up a hand, palm out, to warn her against approaching. He shoves his goggles up on his forehead and nods, maintaining ferocious eye contact, but says nothing.
She blanches. “You’re—you are, aren’t you? Cass’s—?”
Haynfyv takes a step forward, and the second guard lunges to grab his arm.
“Hey, you said you weren’t going in—”
“Sorry, Sir, but he’s right,” the other chimes in, moving to block.
Ange springs with a shout, taking the distracted enforcers off-guard. But Haynfyv sets his feet and fills the doorway.
She runs into him shoulder first and bounces backs. “Why? Aren’t you here to—?”
He shakes his head, still silent. She takes another run at him, and this time he catches her and holds her in place until the guards take over and wrestle her back to the far wall.
Ange is alive. Ange is safe and alive and here. Safe-ish, anyway.
I throw myself at her—and flinch away from a sudden sizzle of pain.
What was that? And how? I don’t have a body. I barely even exist on this side of reality. So how on earth did I just get burned?
And why is this pain so familiar?
“Thanks for the assist, Sir,” the first guard says, panting with the effort of holding onto a furious Ange despite his partner’s help, not to mention being a good head taller than her. “I don’t suppose you’ll need to mention this in your report?”
Haynfyv takes a step back, peering not at the embarrassed guards with their spitting, kicking prisoner, but at the edge of the doorframe. Ange must have given him more trouble than I realized because his fingers seem to have dug in and gouged little holes where the frame meets the wall. He peers at his dusty fingertips, fitting them back into the divots. When he removes them again, there’s a glimmer of metal beneath. Gold. Layers upon layers of thick gold wire mesh are embedded in the wall around this cell.
Fluffy squirms unhappily, but this is the best news I’ve had since Haynfyv woke up. That much gold means Maryam’s trying to keep her alive. Granted, it’s probably also meant to keep me out as well as the monsters. But if there’s one thing my miserable upbringing in Refuge equipped me with, it’s resistance to the typical dreamwalkers’ gold allergy.
The door closes, hiding Ange from view. Now that I know it’s there, I can perceive the cell as a sort of dead space. While most of the upper floors of Refuge have some gold content, the mesh there is thin and sparse. Those walls and floors are nearly transparent if and when I want them to be. Ange’s cell appears nearly opaque, even when I focus. It burns when I press up against it. But it can’t keep me out.
The pain is astonishing but fleeting once I’ve crossed over. Alone, Ange looks exhausted and more injured than she had let on. She draped herself across the narrow cot at the far end of the room in such a way as to be able to roll off and to her feet at a moment’s notice, should the door open again. But her eyes are closed and her breathing shallow.
Still, the Mara didn’t get her. And Maryam hasn’t executed her. Yet.
“I don’t suppose you can hear me?” No response.
It was a long shot. I shouldn’t feel so flattened by her lack of response. Nor should I be this thrilled when her eyelids snap open. She stares right at me. . .
Making me all the more crushed when they flutter closed again. I shouldn’t be. She’s not dreamwalker-kind, to hear me when she’s awake. I’ll just have to wait for her to fall back asleep now, that’s all.
I drift closer. Her breathing is even, if alarmingly shallow. Are her ribs cracked? Is she sick? She doesn’t look flushed . . .
She doesn’t feel warm, either, when I float right through her and bounce off the outer wall with a sizzle.
Ouch. But it’s worth the risk of a fleeting burn to talk to her again. I lean in—in—
And get another stinging swat from the wall as I slip through again. Why can’t I reach her dreams? What’s wrong with her? Or me?
The air stirs in the cell, ruffling her dark hair. She jerks up on her elbows, scanning the room with too-bright eyes. Maybe she does have a fever. But she wasn’t imagining that disturbance.
I think . . . I think that was me.
So I do it again, reaching for the deep, nagging frustration of powerlessness, a simmering rise that boils over into a wave of force that stirs the fabric of the waking world around me.
That’s all it does, though. No matter how hard I bear down, without the forest’s vastness to draw on, I can summon little more than a breeze.
Ange shuffles over to the cell door, feeling around its edges for the source of the breeze. She frowns and works her way along one wall to the cot then back around to the door again, inspecting floor to ceiling for signs of a vent.
By the time she completes a third circuit of the room, her lips are blue and her hands are shaking. Sharp spots of colour blossom in her too-pale cheeks, highlighting glassy eyes. She shivers, tossing for a few moments on the hard cot. Then she goes limp.
She’s worn out. She needs her rest and time to recover. But her world isn’t the only one on the verge of ending, so I slip into her dreams.
Chapter 16: Furniture
Cass is waiting for me. His eyes are flame and his hands ice.
Behind him, Ange whirls across a patterned carpet in a pool of light, laughing. She looks younger, healthier. And much, much happier than I’ve ever seen her.
Around the perimeter of the carpet, there are just a few simple but curiously elegant pieces of wooden furniture. A chair, all sharp, clean angles. A small table, the lovingly oiled grain gleaming. A spindly standing lamp—the source of the light. An open shelf, holding just a few boxy, unfamiliar objects.
There’s also music—faint, intricate, and equally unfamiliar.
I can barely hear it out here in the darkness, out on the edge of the horizon where Ange’s ghosts wait. Cass isn’t the only one here. He’s just the only one I recognize.
He visits my nightmares, too.
“I need to see her.” I put a t
entative hand on his arm. It burns. I knew it would. “I need to speak with her.”
Cass’s shade shakes his head. The flames flare brighter.
“Please. I have to—”
“Leave,” he rasps, barring my way. Smoke curls from between his lips. “You have done enough. Leave her in peace.”
I take both scorching hands in mine and look the phantom, or memory, or nightmare, or whatever it is full in the face, despite the heat and the brilliant darkness. “I’m sorry. I can’t fix it. I can’t bring you back. I probably can’t even save her. But I need to talk to her. And I’m not waiting for permission.”
Then I push past the resistance at the borders of her inner world.
“Took you long enough,” she says.
My Ange. Tired, tough, unbending leader of the Underground, Ange.
She looks around the furniture-strewn, lamp-lit room with its lilting soundtrack and huffs.
“Sorry. Apparently, I’ve been feeling nostalgic.” She waves a hand. The unfamiliar room is replaced with the makeshift infirmary in the tunnels below Refuge—or, at least, a reconstruction of how it was back before that space was destroyed. “Better?”
“You were waiting for me?”
She shrugs. “It was always a possibility. I’m assuming you’re here for real this time, but I’ve been wrong before. So? What did I miss?”
Fluffy takes that moment to tumble out of my arms and scuttle its way over to Ange. It nudges her foot.
Her nostrils flare. “What is that?”
Burn the Skies Page 10
