by J. F. Penn
Her pulse raced at the possibility of being trapped here. She would not be entombed in the bowels of the earth. She turned to duck back out the door.
“Welcome!” The voice was warm and sweet, like peppermint tea served to guests as hospitality. An open gesture that promised no harm.
Sienna stopped, took a deep breath and turned round.
Dr Rachel Tabib was rounded and bespectacled, short and plump with a wide smile. Her straight dark hair was tied back in a no-nonsense ponytail and her Middle Eastern origins were clear in her darker skin and slight accent.
Rachel smiled. “Were you leaving?”
A beat of silence as Sienna considered her options. She could leave now, avoid all of this. Would Bridget really stop her from traveling to the Borderlands? She might want to, but Sienna knew her magic was necessary, so she’d probably be allowed to go, anyway.
But as she looked into Rachel’s eyes, she sensed no threat, only gentleness and a desire to help. There was almost a hum of healing magic around the doctor, as if she had a hive of golden bees inside, producing honey to soothe those in need.
Sienna shook her head. “I’m staying.”
Rachel indicated an open door behind her. “Please come this way.”
The smell of antiseptic grew stronger as they walked together down a corridor to a suite of examination rooms. A nurse walked past and glanced down at Sienna’s arms, his eyes widening in concern. Sienna pulled the sleeves of her t-shirt down, covering the tendrils of black that grew more intense as her anxiety rose. She tried to dampen them down, breathing deeply to calm her fear. The Shadow fed on such emotion and she could only keep it in check if she controlled herself.
Once inside the examination room, Rachel closed the door. “I saw what you did out there. Can I see your arms now?”
Sienna pulled up her sleeves again to reveal the marks already fading to grey.
Rachel reached out a hand. “May I?”
Sienna nodded.
The doctor’s touch was feather light as she traced the whorls, her gaze following the patterns. “I’ve never seen them fade so quickly.”
“I have more.” Sienna’s voice wavered a little, and she felt the prick of tears. She realized how much concern she had been holding inside and how worried she really was about the marks.
Rachel stepped back and Sienna pulled off her t-shirt to stand in her bra. Her skin prickled in the cool air and she was acutely aware that she must look diseased or infected. Tainted by darkness.
But the doctor’s eyes brightened. “They’re beautiful, Sienna. Truly, I’ve never seen anyone like this, not here in the wards or in any of the Ministry records.”
“What is it usually like?”
Rachel sighed and shook her head, as if seeing the faces of lost patients before her. “The Shadow usually presents as a stain through the blood and blooms on the skin like a bruise. Once it reaches a certain point, the individual is overwhelmed and slips into a coma of nightmares.”
Sienna remembered the horror of the shadow weave and felt her chest constrict. The whorls darkened and swirled across her skin, moving like constellations, their power held in check until an inevitable explosive end. They spun faster, obscuring the freckles on her pale skin.
Rachel reached behind her to press the emergency call button, her eyes wide with panic.
“Wait,” Sienna said. She closed her eyes and thought of her grandfather’s map shop, the rustle of paper like stalks of corn in a summer field edged with poppies, the smell of elderflower as she walked along the canal and the sound of birdsong. As her breath returned to an even cadence, tension releasing from her body, she sensed the marks fade. She opened her eyes.
Rachel stood in stunned silence. “You can control it?”
Sienna nodded. “I think so. I just don’t know how much I can take, or how long I could do it for, or under what conditions. I have so many questions and no one to talk to.”
Rachel held out a hand and took Sienna’s. “You can talk to me, but I can’t possibly understand what you’re going through. Nobody can.”
Sienna pulled her long-sleeved t-shirt back on. “I don’t want Bridget or my father to know how extensive this is. They’ll stop me going to the Borderlands again.”
“They want to protect you.”
Sienna nodded. “Yes, but I need to discover what this means. Something draws me back there. I have dreams …”
Rachel froze. “Dreams?”
“Of the Tower of the Winds, voices calling my name. I’m flying with creatures who might tear me apart, but I long to soar with them between the worlds.”
“That’s more like the reports of those who slip into shadow coma. They talk of being called over there, of desperately wanting to go. Be careful, Sienna, the Shadow is not always what it seems.”
“What could happen to me?” Sienna asked softly.
Rachel met her gaze without flinching. “Come to the ward. See for yourself.”
Without waiting for a reply, Rachel walked to the door, and a second later, Sienna followed. Behind the examination rooms, there was another row of doors. Like much of the Ministry below the streets of Bath, it extended in unexpected directions. Sienna suspected magical layers to the geography as it was impossible to see how there was space for everything down here.
Rachel pushed open one of the doors to a darkened space beyond, lit only by occasional lamps that cast golden pools of light onto faces of sleeping patients. She beckoned and together they stepped onto the ward, walking softly between the beds.
It was calm and quiet and for a moment, Sienna wondered why there were such dire stories about the place. The patients looked well cared for and at peace. Then she noticed the black lines running under their skin, the marks of shadow holding them in a netherworld from which they could not escape.
A moan came from one of the beds.
Monitors beeped faster and a distant alarm sounded from outside the ward. The sound of running footsteps.
A young woman thrashed against her padded shackles, terrified of something in her nightmare. She howled, an animal sound from the core of what remained of her humanity, the part of her that could still respond. The lines of her IV drip stretched as she arched her body off the mattress, straining to escape her bonds.
Sienna wanted to run, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away. Thoughts of the shadow weave that Sir Douglas had trapped her in surfaced once more, memories of teeth and claws that ripped into soft flesh, devouring what was left of her. To be trapped in something like that was beyond terrible.
The nurse they had passed earlier jogged in, his concentration fixed on the patient. He nodded briefly at Rachel, then went to the woman’s side. He pressed a button to increase the dose of sedative and after a moment, the terrified woman lapsed back into fitful unconsciousness. But her mouth still twisted in pain, her fingers clutching at the sheets.
“Can’t you help her?” Sienna whispered. “She’s still in distress.”
Rachel shook her head. “We’ve tried so many things and continue to experiment with more. But the coma is powerful, and the Shadow has its hooks in deep. Each of these Mapwalkers invited it in, a drop for every use of magic. You know the dangers, Sienna, and even though you have some ability to control it, who knows where that may lead. The only way to wake these people up is to take them into the Borderlands.”
“So why keep them here?”
Rachel frowned. “What would happen to them over there? Slaughtered by the Warlord, sucked dry of their magic in one of the dark chambers, or turned into Shadow Cartographers like Sir Douglas Mercator — perhaps the deepest cut of all. I have heard of what goes on over there.”
“But there is also beauty, and good people fighting in the Resistance — and hope for a different future.” Sienna walked over to the bed and looked down at the young woman, her body and mind ravaged by a nightmare. “Perhaps even a way to end all this.”
Rachel came to stand next to her. “If you think there i
s a chance, I won’t stop you — I’ll tell Bridget you have time left before the stain is critical — but you have to understand the danger, Sienna. I don’t want to see you in one of these beds.”
As dawn turned the sky coral-pink, Titus and Finn reached the outskirts of the trader town. Early morning workers emerged from the doors of the shanty-town huts, eyes blearily assessing the strangers before turning away.
Titus led the way, weaving through narrow lanes until they reached the densely populated center of town. Larger buildings made of stone and brick lined these streets, designed to last longer than the outer camp dwellings. Wealthy merchants lived in the upper floors, a world away from the living conditions of those they enslaved. Their servants lived in warrens of underground rooms beneath.
Over the years, these basement dwellings had been sublet, knocked together and turned into enterprises for the working class. In one such subterranean cellar, deep down and heavily insulated, Kabila the midwife helped women give birth away from the prying eyes of the Shadow Guards, those who would take the babies or even the women themselves for the camps.
Titus paused at a small wooden hatch in the side of one house, more like a hurricane shelter than a proper door. He knocked once, twice, once again, then waited.
A minute later, the hatch opened slightly.
Kabila smiled up at him, the lines on her face deepening in a broad smile. “Come in, come in.”
Titus clambered inside and Finn followed close behind, shutting the hatch behind him and bolting it securely.
Kabila walked ahead down a tunnel with a ceiling so low, both Titus and Finn had to bend down. The midwife was short and wide with ample curves draped in a faded red sari embroidered with silver thread, a remnant of her Indian heritage.
She had told Titus about her early memories one night as they sat waiting for the guards to pass by overhead, how she had been aboard one of the refugee boats escaping a flood. Her family had found themselves lost in the dark and woken to find themselves in the Borderlands. Titus would never forget the look on her face as she recounted the terror of being torn from her mother’s arms, from seeing her father beaten to the ground, her older sister taken by the guards for the Fertility Halls.
Kabila had been sold as a child slave to the household of the wealthy merchant whose house she still lived beneath so many years later. When she had outlived her use for her master’s pleasure, she worked in the kitchens, learning from women in the warrens all the ways she could help the girls of the trader town. Kabila had eventually taken on the mantle of underground midwife, while still maintaining her day job above ground. It was dangerous work. The soldiers of the Shadow would be only too happy to destroy the rebels helping women in trouble, but Kabila saw her lost sister in every young woman saved and she lived for the cause.
“Come and have tea.” The midwife led them into a cozy kitchen with low stools around a small table. Everything down here was compact and basic, but somehow it felt welcoming and just as it should be. Titus glimpsed a room beyond with a simple bed over a stone floor, scrubbed clean of the blood shed in childbirth, but still bearing marks from the suffering within. He thought of Maria, tied to such a bed in the mountains, screaming his name. He shook his head to clear the image.
Kabila filled a rustic teapot with leaves and boiling water and let it steep on the table, steam rising from its spout in spirals. She placed cups down before it and then sat, hands folded in her lap, her eyes alive with curiosity.
“Now, tell me what you found.”
Titus pulled the black boxes from the pack and explained what they had found in the alchemist’s tomb.
“I’m sure the base of Liberation is made from belladonna. If we can try an antidote for that, perhaps the magic will not take in the womb.”
As he explained the plan, Titus knew his words sounded farfetched. He saw doubt in Kabila’s eyes. What had seemed possible under the moon faded away in the harsh light of day. His words trailed off …
Finn continued for him. “You could test these compounds and find the best option, then I can source more of these ingredients from the rainforest. We can make more of it. Send it all over the Borderlands. It’s possible, isn’t it?”
Kabila picked up the teapot and poured the tea, the sound of liquid sloshing into the cups filling the silence.
“Even if you’re right, an antidote for belladonna means nothing.”
Titus began to protest, but she raised a hand to stop him. “I’ve worked with it for decades, that and all the other medicinal plants. I know when to use them and when to hold off. You’re not telling me anything new. Believe me, I have tried everything. The magic is responsible for mutation. The belladonna might carry it, but magic is the key.”
She fell silent and took a sip of her drink.
Titus sighed and shook his head. “I had hoped that somehow this might be new knowledge, that there was a simple way to stop the abomination.”
Kabila smiled kindly. “Life is never simple.” She put her cup down. “And now I have something for you.” The midwife rose and bent to a low cupboard, opened it and pulled a package from within. She handed it to Titus. “This came late last night by messenger from the rebel base.”
Kabila put her hand on his arm, squeezing gently, with an expression Titus had seen on her face before when she told families of a death. A deep sense of foreboding rose within him.
He took the package, recognizing the handwriting from one of the women who cared for Maria and other addicts in the rebel camp. He tore open the seal and unwrapped it, barely constraining the sob that rose within at what he saw.
The necklace he had given to Maria on their wedding day, a tiny silver hummingbird representing the grace and speed at which she moved and the pace of their love. A folded note lay alongside it.
Titus flattened it out with one trembling hand as cold fear spread through his limbs. His vision blurred as tears ran down his cheeks, dropping onto the ink. He wanted to wash away the terrible words and then perhaps they could not be true.
“She’s dead,” he gasped. “She died giving birth to a misshapen corpse. A monster.”
As he sank to the floor, Finn knelt with him and Titus sobbed into his friend’s embrace as he clutched the tiny hummingbird in one fist.
Images of their love flooded back to him — stolen kisses in the library, lazy hours entwined under the apple trees in the orchard, running together over the hills, the sound of Maria’s laugh echoing across the valley. He would never touch her skin again, never feel safe in her embrace, never hear her say his name. His heart emptied, each tear wrung from his wretched soul.
After the wave of despair passed over, Titus let the rage come. He would avenge Maria’s death. He had nothing left to lose.
He pulled away from Finn and wiped his eyes. “We go east to the camp where they make Liberation. There’s a munitions store on the way. We’ll get explosives and stop this thing at the source.”
Finn nodded. “I’m with you, brother.”
8
Sienna walked out of the medical wing with Rachel’s warning echoing through her mind and a vision of the young woman’s hand clutching at the sheets, white-knuckled as she faced an unending nightmare. Would she end up that way if she crossed the border once more?
“Sienna, wait a moment.”
Her father’s voice made her turn and Sienna waited in the corridor for him to catch up.
John Farren’s gait was hobbled, his back torn beyond repair from the tortures of the dungeon below the Castle of the Shadow. He kept the suffering from his face most of the time, but Sienna knew that chronic pain tormented him at night, and plagued his waking hours. She had once believed her father lost on an expedition many years ago, and perhaps it was best to think that was still true. She had not told her mother that he still lived, partly because those old wounds had healed and they had both moved on, but also because of Bridget. Sienna had glimpsed the love between her father and the new Illuminated, but there was
little hope for them now to act upon those feelings. Sienna could only hope that she and Finn could transcend their different paths and find a way to be together.
As her father reached her, Sienna wrapped her arms around him, clasping his shoulders, careful not to press against his back. John winced a little, then relaxed into her hug, putting his arms around her in his turn. They stood for a moment, breathing together. Sienna could hear his heartbeat, still strong in his chest, the magic that ran through both their veins part of a long line of Blood Mapwalkers. There were so few of them left now, and still so much to do on both sides of the border.
John pulled away. “Be careful over there.” His blue eyes darkened, like waves upon a storm-borne sea. “The balance of power has shifted and there is nothing in the annals to help us navigate this new time.”
“It will be okay, Dad. Mila and Perry will be with me, and I’m sure we’ll get through, find Finn and the Resistance and work with them.”
John shook his head. “A cross-border alliance has never worked. Our worlds are ever more divergent and the Borderlanders are right to want their share of wealth. I fear it is too late for compromise.”
Sienna smiled. “Your generation tried one way, now let mine try another. The Ministry has survived much, and it will continue on, I promise.”
John bent forward and kissed her forehead. “I’m proud of you,” he whispered. “And I know your grandfather would be, too. Go safe.”
A few hours later, Zoe joined the Mapwalker team in the Gallery of Geographical Maps. She looked around with fascination at the long corridor, its walls painted with bird’s-eye scenes of distant lands. Each was a portal, a simple way to travel through space and time with minimal use of Mapwalker magic.
They stood in front of a map of modern Egypt, made notable by the disruption of the Nile by Lake Nasser, but Zoe could see traces of another layer beneath, a magical map that would allow them to travel through. Now she had learned to shift her vision, she could not unsee the contours of the world beneath the real. It gave her a mild sense of vertigo even at this level. How much more would she feel if she navigated the threads below? She tried to quash her fear, digging her nails into her palms. She was determined to be worthy of this assignment.
