“Skip to the part where you and Ash get taken down by enforcers. Maryam’s going to get tired of listening to herself speak any minute now, and apparently I’m expected to do something about this mess.”
“Too late,” Ash groans, barely conscious in another set of enforcers’ arms. “Too late to stop her . . .”
“It will be if you two don’t quit wasting my time.” I need to get back to the barrier. We’ve got less than a day until Nine Peaks’ attack hits, and I’ve barely gotten started fixing it.
“Sorry flame,” Ravel whispers. “Thought we had a chance. Refuge only has so many enforcers, you know? I guess after all those years agitating for a revolution, I couldn’t let myself get caught on the wrong side when a real one finally broke out.”
“Wait, so you really . . . ?”
“Oh, flame—” He coughs. The enforcers give him a shake. He rolls his eyes, rasping, “You never trust me. Here I was risking everything to play secret agent for you, and for what?”
Yeah, unlikely. “Saving the world, remember? Again, no time. Hurry it up. What do I need to know to bargain with Maryam?”
“You don’t get it. There’s nothing to bargain for. She’s captured everyone. She thinks we were lying all along and now she’s done waiting—she’s bringing down that barrier tonight. And sacrificing everyone she captured to keep the Mara busy until she’s finished. She’s won.”
I look to Ash for confirmation. He’s limp in the arms of his captors. Not unconscious, just defeated.
“No. I won’t let her.” What am I doing? It’s not like my protests matter to these two anymore.
I’m not interested in trying to unravel whose side Ravel is on. I can’t do anything for Ash, and he’s in no shape to be useful at the moment. So I leave them behind to focus wholly on Maryam. She wouldn’t bother taunting me if there was nothing for her in it, right? Maybe?
I mean, if she’s anything like Ravel, she could just be doing it for entertainment . . .
“We’re waiting, Cole,” says Cadence, inspecting a torn nail. Her nails aren’t the only ragged parts. Her cheeks are hollow, her skin and hair dull, worn down by her attacks on the barrier. “Or rather, she is. Not me. I don’t care what you do.”
But there’s a glint to her shadowed eyes that says she’s paying closer attention than she wants to admit. I scan back over the past few minutes, trying to pull the correct memory from my split focus. Ravel, self-flagellating. Or flipping from double agent to triple—or is it back to double, again? I’ve lost track. Ash, defeated. Maryam . . . What was it Maryam wanted from me?
Doesn’t matter. This is a waste of time. If Maryam is determined to bring down the barrier, I just have to build it back faster and stronger.
“She wants to bargain for Ash’s life,” Cadence chews the peeling edge of a nail as if she can hardly be bothered to mumble the words in Maryam’s general direction. “Just him. She says she’ll get in my way if you don’t agree. Weaken my powers. We’re still connected, you know, and she has been working on ways to get control back. But if you spare Ash, she’ll stand back.”
I—what? I said no such thing.
Maryam yawns. “That boy just now? Fine, I don’t see why not.”
“Cadence, what are you—”
“Uh huh,” says Cadence, as if in response to some invisible, inaudible conversation partner. “Yup. Oh, really? Okay, it’s a deal then. She says it’s a bargain.”
I stare. “Did—did you just fake talking to me?”
She angles her head, says briskly to Maryam: “Now that is out of the way, we should get moving. Busy night and all.”
Maryam lifts one elegant eyebrow, clearly too intelligent to buy Cadence’s clumsy ruse. But the mayor merely flicks some dust off her diaphanous skirts and sweeps off to destroy the world.
“I won’t let you ruin this for me,” Cadence mutters under her breath, trailing Maryam at some distance for privacy. “But since you’re apparently too useless to remember to protect Ash, I had to do something. Don’t worry. I’ll keep him safe. I’ll even let you talk to him on special occasions. If he still wants to chat with the imposter after I save the city, of course.”
As if. “For the last time: if you destroy that barrier, it won’t stop the Mara. It’ll only unleash them on the world. You’ll die. Ash will die. Everyone will die, Cadence.”
She sways, paling, fragile as a bubble blown to its very limit. Then her wide, tragic gaze hardens. “Don’t be silly. Monsters don’t kill dreamwalkers. Only defective weaklings like you.”
I almost do it. I reach for her with every intention of ripping control of that body from her stupid, selfish fingers. It’s probably even the right thing to do.
But it’s Cadence. If I take power from her, will she have anything left? As impossible as she’s being, she’s just a child inside, trapped in her own memories, desperate to turn back time. And even lost in the past, she remembered to save Ash.
She’s not evil. At least, not all-the-way-through evil.
So I leave her behind. I leave all of them behind, grateful I won’t need to pass through the prison floors again and face down more victims to get where I need to be.
The barrier is still healed. Actually, it’s more healed. The wide, hardened area seems to have shrunk to the size of a closed fist.
Only, as it turns out, I haven’t been the only one working to fix it.
Haynfyv is stretched against one wall, apparently capable of sleeping anywhere, arms awkwardly twisted beneath him in a sort of pillow. He mutters even in his sleep. I can’t make sense of any of it. But if he’s found an easier way to fix the barrier, I need to know what it is.
Chapter 30: Lifeblood
“You’ve returned.” Haynfyv doesn’t get up from his chair, scribbling notes even in his sleep.
But where the last time I visited his dreamscape, there was nothing but a tangle of pinned notes tethered by string, now, it’s cluttered with beakers, small, sharp, silvery instruments, and numbered diagrams.
“You’ve been busy.” My finger squeaks against the cool, smooth curve of a beaker.
He tips his head in faint acknowledgment. “You have been absent. Challenging, you know, to make progress when one repeatedly loses hours’ worth of work at a time. But I think I’ve got it sorted on both sides now. More clarity here, of course, than there. It is a complex formula: blood, and life, and ground gold, and a few other elements besides. Over there, I’ve only worked out the blood part, which, I’m afraid I must admit, isn’t going terribly well for myself or the others presently on their way.”
“Others?”
He blinks. “Your associates in the tunnels, mainly. They were off to see about gathering donors more widely before coming down to bleed.”
“Bleed?”
He frowns. “A touch slow tonight, aren’t we? Blood powers the barrier, in essence. Ha—‘essence.’ That is very good. Don’t you think?”
“Hilarious. You’ve been bleeding on the barrier? And it came back to life?”
“It’s not strictly alive, you know. But then, I suppose from a certain perspective one might—”
“And it works no matter whose blood is added? Even just a little?”
“Well, the minimum effective dose is quiet small, yes, but—”
“And no one has actually died?” It was one thing for Cadence’s blood to revive the damaged fragments, but if mere human blood could be donated to strengthen the barrier without harm to the donor, that could change everything.
“Well, not as of yet. But, as I’ve mentioned, the formula does seem to include life as well as blood. Regrettably, I failed to ascertain that input prior to involving, ahem, myself in the experiment. I don’t suppose you could warn off the volunteer donors on the other side for me?”
“You don’t mean—”
He holds up a hand to the light, tilting it thoughtfully. His deep grey-brown skin glows as if lit from within, but that is nothing more than a pleasant illusion masking
the horrifying truth: he’s fading, just as I’ve been, the light shining through. At least according to Susan, I’ve been damaging myself by weaving myself into my healings. In his case, there’s no such—
“I can feel it pulling on me,” he murmurs with unnerving fondness. “Hungry little thing.”
I back away, my elbow sweeping a beaker off the edge of a table. It shatters. “It can’t—it shouldn’t work like that. Just—just stop feeding it!”
He flexes his hand. “It won’t help. I told you. ‘Life’ is part of the formula.”
“No. No, it’s okay. I’ll—” I’ll what? Save him? Stop him from feeding himself to the barrier to make it stronger when that is exactly what I was about to do? He’s a grown man. It’s a shame he’ll die—but if this works, he will die a hero. Like his brother.
And if it fails, he’ll die anyway.
So I leave him to his dreams and take a moment to bow in thanks to the still body slowly bleeding out onto the tunnel floor, instead of staying to upset him with my useless horror. The last thing he needs to spend his final moments on is appeasing my worthless, self-indulgent feelings. He has already given too much. He may not wake at all before it’s over. Because one way or another, this will all be over soon.
The barrier wails.
The stony dead patch on its surface swells from the size of a fist to the size of my head, doubling in size again, and then again as the lives trapped within wail and sputter into darkness. The cracked surface spans both walls now, completely reversing the effects of Haynfyv’s sacrifice.
But Cadence is nowhere in sight.
“So look harder, stupid,” she says from the other side of the city. “And stop pretending you have eyes.”
And because she’s right and I don’t, I find myself unable not to see her brush a finger against the barrier. It wails, and another patch goes silent.
When did she become this powerful?
She shrugs. “Maybe it’s because of that lovely rest you and the traitorous scum so thoughtfully provided?”
Her brows furrow, her scarred palm flat now against the hard surface of the barrier, sucking the life from an underwater section half the length of the city border. Her knees buckle, but she just leans in, bracing her forehead and both hands against the desiccated shell. Flakes stick to her clammy skin, paper-like dandruff of the undead.
Half a city away, water starts to bead through to the inner surface. Fluffy trembles against me. Squishy sloshes apologetically.
She smiles. “What’s wrong? You’re not going to whine and nag like usual? I know you can see it crumbling. Not much more to go, and the ocean will finish the job for me.”
But she’s wheezing, her lips cracked like the barrier. It’s the only thing holding her up, as if every ounce of life she tears from it is being sucked back from her.
“It’s killing you.” Is it because she bled on it? Like Haynfyv said, is it taking both blood and life? Or is the incredible power she’s drawing on making her waste away before my eyes?
“You really don’t see,” she whispers. “Look further.”
At first, I think she means beyond the barrier, but as I strain to expand my focus wider, higher, further, it all opens up before me.
Haynfyv’s ‘donors,’ trying to shake him awake. Shrugging at his lack of responsiveness. Opening their veins to splash blood against the stone. Cadence winces at the renewal pressing back against her, slowing the seeping waters, rallying against the weight of the wild, careless sea on the other side.
A dozen levels above, my awareness skitters across the sick and injured and recently captured prisoners cowering at the sight of the enforcers streaming through the door, come to take them away. Ash is there. And in a separate room, Ange. And in yet another place, Sam with his arms protectively around Lily. Yet another child I’ve failed.
I look away, pushing to see higher still, glossing past the unconscious forms of dreamless children who I can only hope will never wake again. More likely, when the rest of us are gone and the equipment fails, they will wake to a dead city, living only long enough to register its horror before their untouched minds call down the monsters. There is nothing I can do for them now.
Further up: Ravel, huddled in the corner of a locked room at the top of a tower he has never truly escaped. Shivering in absolute darkness. Rocking, covering his ears against the gleeful, taunting whispers of the Mara. Shaking his head, knocking it against the wall. Gasping in pain and fear and misery.
Good—he’s the one who brought them back to die. Brought my friends, brought a child, even, back to this deathtrap of a city. No excuses. Their suffering is on his head. And if there’s some shred of comfort in having someone to share all the guilt with, I won’t have to be ashamed of it for much longer. The bloodbath has begun.
Because even higher yet, Maryam presides over a grand sacrifice like this city has never seen. One shuddering, wailing prisoner after another is dragged to her feet, chained in place, and subjected to her spidery touch as she offers them up to the Mara. No quelling drugs, no bleary tumble into darkness for these. They go shrieking, cursing, fighting to the last.
Until Amy.
Shoulders back, bruised head high, Ange’s mousy, timid sister stalks across the killing floor to stand over Maryam with blazing eyes. Gracefully, she kneels, glaring all the while. Her slim hands are knotted in front of her, knuckles in sharp relief, as if her dying wish is to wrap them around the elegant neck of the woman in front of her.
Maryam appears amused. “Any last words, my child?”
“Don’t you use that word. You don’t have children,” Amy says, high and clear and unhurried. “You have pawns. Drones. My child is proud of me. Would yours be?”
I gasp. I never would have thought she had it in her. Maryam’s smile flattens. Her hand shoots out, the words of the ritual savaging the air like shards of broken glass.
I rise against her, throwing everything I can muster into a force barely strong enough to stir Amy’s long dark hair as she falls.
I choke on bitter regret and helpless fury. There is absolutely nothing I can do about her death—besides make sure her sacrifice isn’t in vain.
“Well?” Cadence gasps in the distance. “See anything good?
Her hands shake, sweat rolling down her skin. She is stretched out on the floor of a tunnel deep under Refuge, nose to the barrier, hands pinned against it with the weight of her body. I can practically hear her heart stuttering. If I had known she was going to kill herself trying to fulfill her dead parents’ final mission, I would have taken back her body sooner.
At least, that’s what I should be thinking. But after the way Amy went to her death clear-eyed and unbending, seeing my own almost-sister like this just makes me sad.
Such a waste, all of it.
Then I plunge into the shrieking morass of the undead and start undoing her work.
CADENCE HAS ALWAYS been stronger than me.
I’ve seen the memories—both hers and Ash’s. She was a gifted child; clever, athletic, and powerful in the ways of her people on top of it all. When I came onto the scene, even as a disembodied ghost she retained that natural dominance; that belief that she always knew best and I should just fall in line.
So I don’t know why I’m surprised that she can shred the barrier faster than I can build it back up. Even worn ragged, she is faster, more powerful. And she has the natural advantage in this, too: it takes far less effort to destroy than to heal.
She reaches in and tears apart the scraps of life trapped in the barrier by the handful. I have to go one by one, fishing with painstaking care for those fragile, corroded, gossamer-thin strands of individuality and purpose. I strain to puzzle out and piece together something with a semblance of life, taking care to leave it ragged enough to wound, as is the nature of the barrier. And every time I wrap up another stunning effort in healing beyond the grave, beyond humanity, even, she has gone and crushed a whole swathe of once-lives into so much dust.
She tears and I rebuild, and all the while the vast power of the ocean presses, presses, presses against a surface growing incrementally more brittle and porous every second. First the barrier seeps, water working its way through tiny flaws to bead on the other side. Then it fractures, surface cracks deepening, slicing through to spurt thin streams in airy fans.
Then it buckles, all at once. Dozens of gushing spigots turn into one gigantic grinning mouth, gaping to let the waters rush through. The speed—the crushing weight of it—does more than fill the tunnels and chambers and halls. The raging torrent punches through walls and bursts through ceilings, sweeping away the lesser obstructions in an instant, pounding relentlessly against the more sturdy until they give way beneath the assault.
If the tunnels hadn’t been scoured over and over again to fill Refuge’s prisons, Ange’s Underfolk would have been the first to die, every escape route cut off at once as their deep hideaways gather the rushing waves. Instead, the first casualty is Haynfyv. He drowns without ever waking—and there is no time for guilt or regret, because Cadence is next.
“Get up,” I snap, hardening my tones to hide the fear. “It’s coming—you know it is. You have to run.”
She sighs, stretched across the floor. “I did it, didn’t I? I broke the barrier.”
She’s too spent to lift an eyelash. She threw everything she had into fighting me. And even if she hadn’t, even if she were in the best condition of her life, if she were at her most powerful, she couldn’t outrun this. Not now, not unless the current slows and the tide reverses in the next instant, and even then . . .
It’s such a waste. I—I should have ripped that body from her stupid fingers ages ago. If she was going to die like this all along, it would have been worth the risk. I could have saved her. Might’ve killed her too, but at least—at least—
Burn the Skies Page 20
