by Jodi Meadows
“Black Knife,” they murmured. “The queen is Black Knife.”
“One of them anyway. Can you believe . . .”
“Is it true?” asked Cael. “That you and King Tobiah are Black Knife?”
I eyed him askance. “Hand me your sword and find out.”
He felt his hip for his weapon, but I’d already unbuckled the sheath and had the blade half drawn before he noticed. “Please don’t tell anyone you did that.”
“As long as you understand the only reason you got me here was because I let you.” I opened the door to the queen’s suite and handed back his sword. “I’ll be out in a few minutes. We have a lot of work to do.”
“I should check the rooms to make sure there’s no danger.”
“If you must.” Unbelievable how much unnecessary work went into making sure I was safe. But I allowed Cael to glance through the chambers, and when he left, I caught the expected clank of the door being locked.
That was pointless, because the lock was on my side.
But that was followed by a thump as he wedged a doorstop into a crack at the bottom.
“Hey!” I flipped the lock and pushed at the door, but that only forced the stop tighter. “What if there’s a fire?”
“Then I’ll remove the doorstop.” Cael patted the door. “Oscar Gray’s orders.”
I kicked the door and rattled it again, but my protest was useless. There was nothing that would inspire him to release me. Not when everyone in the kingdom had worked so hard to get back their queen.
“This is ridiculous.” I marched to the center of my parlor and glared around, but there was nothing even remotely like a battering ram. I could slide something under the door to remove the wedge, but perhaps it was best to let him think he’d won for now.
After a few weak attempts to open the door, I put on a show of giving up, and then moved deeper into the queen’s suite, making my own inspections inside the wardrobes, under the bed, and up the chimney. There was no one, but sending someone to keep me occupied wouldn’t be beyond Patrick.
I shimmied out of my silk ball gown, piece by piece. Cape, bodice, skirt. The whole thing puddled on the floor like blood. Next, my hair came out of the bun, and went into a plain, tight braid.
Finally, I dragged my bag from under the bed and put on the only color I wanted to wear tonight: black.
The soft fabric slid cool over my skin, familiar and comfortable. Stockings, trousers, and knee-high boots followed. I put on my belt and baldric, and secured the sword on my back.
This felt right. I felt like myself. Like Black Knife.
Mask and gloves in hand, I strode toward the balcony door. And stopped short.
The doors between the king’s and queen’s suites were open, and Black Knife stood there with his sword across his back and his mask tucked into his belt.
“It’s like looking into a mirror,” he said.
“Except I comb my hair occasionally.”
He smirked and brushed a dark strand from his eyes. “Are you going somewhere? And do you want company?”
“It might be awkward that we’re wearing the same outfit.”
“These are my best clothes.”
“I agree. As nice as you looked earlier this evening, I prefer you like this. Much handsomer. You’re invited.”
His lower lip pushed out in a pout. “You only like me because of my sense of fashion.”
“Now that doesn’t sound like Optimistic Knife.” Tension eased inside me. I’d missed this. I’d missed him. “I guess you heard about the pair of armies down there”—I waved toward the balcony—“and immediately got sent to your room.”
“Hundreds of years ago, kings and queens rode into battle with their people. Now when there’s danger, monarchs are shuffled away, too precious to risk breaking. But what makes us leaders if we don’t lead?” He strode to the balcony and pulled open the door. Cool wind whipped inside. I ducked out first.
“Did you find James?”
His tone darkened. “No. I’m not sure where he is.”
“Probably securing the castle against invasion. The good news is that I think you made him invincible.”
“Perhaps. As long as he has you to awaken him.” Tobiah paused. “And both of us to keep him alive. I don’t know what happens to him if either of us dies. Maybe he’d drop lifeless, or disappear completely.”
I opened my mouth, but there was nothing to say. I didn’t know about Tobiah’s power, but I knew what happened to animated objects when their masters died.
I busied myself putting on my gloves.
“Do you remember the last time we were up here together?” Tobiah slipped past me and stood at the balcony rail. Being Black Knife gave him strength and focus.
I knew, because it did the same for me.
“I remember,” I said.
“You had just saved my life.”
“And you were about to save mine.”
“We were so young.” Black Knife—Tobiah—leaned toward me. His arm brushed mine.
With both of us dressed like this, it was so easy to forget that we weren’t still friends trying to pretend we were enemies. It would have been so easy to think of myself as a thief with a flair for forgery, and him as the annoying vigilante who’d done me the biggest favor in the world.
He dropped his eyes to our hands, black gloves on stone, our small fingers barely touching. “This feels like ten years ago. Both of us up here. My people down there, fighting yours. I hate this, our lives coming back to what people will do for a prince, or a queen.”
“Or just someone they love, no titles necessary.” I couldn’t imagine Patrick actually loving anyone, let alone me, but the wraith boy possessed terrifying devotion. Where was he now?
Aecor City spread below, lights blazing under the cold starlight. People surged through the streets and castle courtyard, but not to fight. They wanted refuge.
“We have to go down there,” I said. “We have to stop the fighting.”
He faced me, one hand on the mask tucked into his belt. “This is your city. Where do we start?”
“The lowcity. There.” I pointed toward the marshes in the east. “That’s all the information I managed to get. You said Prince Colin had about five thousand men. It’s hard to guess at the Red Militia’s numbers, unless we find Claire.”
“Your Militia informant.”
“That’s right. She was to join the Queen’s Guard this afternoon, but—”
“I showed up. Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” I wanted to say more, but no words would come. Not when our relationship was so uncertain. “Let’s start near the lowcity gate. There are several courtyards and parks in that area, appearing every time old buildings collapse. The ground is too unstable to support new buildings without magic.”
“A likely battleground.” He slipped his mask from his belt and started to put it on.
“I should warn you,” I said. “Four armies. Two colors. I needed a way to identify our people, so I told Sergeant Ferris to paint the same symbol on all of his soldiers’ fronts, backs, and sleeves.”
Tobiah lowered his mask. “And?”
My heart thumped, and I hated myself for giving away his secret. “I told him to use a black knife. It was my only idea. Now everyone is painting knives on their clothes, even civilians.”
His eyebrows lifted, and his scowl shifted into a grin. “That means there are thousands of Black Knives moving toward Colin’s and Patrick’s armies?”
“In a way.” He wasn’t angry?
No. He was laughing. It was a soft, weary laugh, but it warmed his face and eyes. “That’s wonderful, Wil.”
“Really?”
“I always wanted Black Knife to become a symbol of hope in Skyvale. I didn’t want others to take up vigilantism, which did happen on occasion, but I wanted to inspire people. I wanted them to know someone was watching over them. They didn’t have to know who it was, just that someone cared.” Wind caught his hair, and he s
moothed it back. “I was glad when you took it up. It was a relief knowing Black Knife was still taking care of my city.”
Now that city was gone, but we still had a chance to save mine.
I pulled my mask over my face. “Time to go, Optimistic Knife.”
“As long as no one else takes that name.” He grinned as he put on his mask. But before we could start down the wall, an acrid-scented heat rolled in.
White wraithy mist poured over Tangler Bay and the Red Bay, smothering the southern tip of the highcity within seconds. A deafening crack sounded, like bones snapping, and hundreds of thousands of glass shards exploded into the air.
The cliff-side mirrors had done nothing to protect the city.
Nothing at all.
“No.” Tobiah swayed on his feet, and his breath puffed out his mask in small bursts. I took his shoulders to steady him, and he turned his face against my neck with an angry sob. “Not again.”
“It’s Chrysalis.” My words tasted like ash. “He’s returned.”
FORTY-FOUR
“CHRYSALIS.” TOBIAH SPAT the name like a curse, but his anger didn’t disguise the tremor in his voice. “Why is he out there? I thought he was secured—”
“He was, but Patrick tricked him. When he realized he’d done wrong, he decided to make it right.”
“With more wraith?” His breath rasped.
“He thinks he can protect me. He thinks he can control it.”
“Can he?”
“I don’t know.”
The bank of wraith mist coalesced into a thick band that twisted just above the city like a giant worm, stretching as far north as the castle curtain. I had to drop my head all the way back to see the end of the boiling mass. Heat and stink pushed off it in waves, nauseating.
Then it spread into the sky, blocking out the moon and stars for a moment that seemed like eternity. Tobiah’s arm squeezed tight around my waist, as the wraith shifted and plunged toward the southeast corner of the city.
Wraith splashed up and rained over everything in small, glowing flecks that lit the night.
“Oh, saints.” My voice sounded small under the screams that rose from the streets.
Panic erupted across the city as eerie white lights drifted through the hot sky, lighting the lowcity as bright as the wraithland, and for the first time, I could see evidence of the battle between Patrick and Prince Colin.
Columns of smoke towered over the lowcity beyond the factories—close to the gate where I’d guessed the fighting would be. That was where Chrysalis would be, too.
“Let’s go.” I released Tobiah, but his grip on my waist only tightened.
“It’s the Inundation all over again.”
“No.” I faced him and pulled him close enough to lean my forehead on his. “It’s going to be different this time. I’m going to find Chrysalis. I’m going to stop this.”
“I’ve already watched one city fall to the wraith.” Sweat made his mask stick to his skin. “If Aecor City falls—”
“Aecor City won’t fall. We won’t let it. Right? This is what Black Knife does.”
He dragged in a heavy breath and pulled back a fraction to focus on me, on my eyes behind the mask.
“There’s still a chance for Aecor City. We have to find Chrysalis and make him send away the wraith.”
“It will just come back.”
“We have a barrier. We’ll put it up before the wraith returns.”
He hesitated, like he wanted to argue that the barrier was only a stopgap, but at last he nodded. “We have a barrier.”
“Good.” I found my grappling hook. “Let’s go, Black Knife. We have a city to save.”
He moved toward the opposite corner of the balcony, his grapple and line in hand. “Together?” he called over the shouts from below.
“Always.”
I climbed over the rail, giving him a second to do the same, and as one we rappelled down the castle wall. People scattered out of our way, making a pair of perfect half circles below us.
“It’s Black Knife!” Someone pointed up at me.
“There are two!”
The news of Black Knife’s identity hadn’t spread out here, yet. And in the face of fighting and wraith, a foreign vigilante didn’t matter much. But as my boots thumped the ground, the panic shifted into excitement.
“Black Knife will save us!”
I loosened my hook and gathered my line, searching over heads to meet Tobiah’s eyes. His posture was stiff and serious as he pushed his way through dozens of people, toward me.
But the people pressed closer. Fingertips grazed my sleeve. Others tugged at my mask.
I jerked back, reaching for a dagger out of habit, but Tobiah was there, his hands on my shoulders.
“It’s all right.” With the noise all around, I felt his murmur of comfort more than heard it.
“What is that glow? Wraith?” asked a man.
“Yes.” Tobiah’s answer came hard.
“Are you going to stop it?”
“Yes,” I said. “We are.”
Someone gasped. “That’s the queen’s voice. And the Indigo king’s.”
There was no obvious communication, but a few people in our path stepped back and out of our way. Then more until there was a clear line to the city.
The whispers rippled down the ranks of people: “Black Knife will stop the wraith” and “The heir to four Houses” and “Queen of the vermilion throne.”
Their words became waves of sound as Tobiah and I raced toward the fighting and wraith.
At the top of the courtyard wall, Melanie was waiting in the same place I’d run into her the first time I sneaked into the city.
“About time.” She finished tying her hair into a ponytail; the shorter strands fell around her face. “We thought you’d never leave that balcony.”
“We?” I moved my line out of the way and offered a hand to Tobiah. His fingers tightened around mine as he swung himself over the parapet.
She motioned down the walkway where five people crouched in the shadow of stonework. One by one, they stood and came to meet us. James, Oscar, Kevin, Theresa, and Sergeant Ferris all had swords buckled at their hips, and long black knives painted down the fronts of their uniforms.
“I told Oscar that sending you to your room was both pointless and rude,” Melanie said.
“We’re not letting you go out there alone.” Theresa cocked a hip toward the lowcity. “There’s a minor war.”
“Plus the wraith,” said Oscar. “Is that Chrysalis’s doing? His guards reported him missing half an hour ago.”
“Unfortunately.” I glanced at Tobiah, who was trying not to look at James. “There’s no point in ordering them to go back. We may as well let them help.”
Tobiah gave a swift nod. “Keep up. We can’t afford to waste time.”
Everyone agreed as Melanie stepped forward and tugged my mask off my head. “Put this away. Your people need to see your face.”
“Fine.” I thrust my mask into my belt and rappelled down the other side of the wall.
There was no easy way to travel; jumping from building to building wasn’t an option in this part of the city, with the roofs pitched so steep even Black Knife and I would have trouble. That left the ground, though from the wall, I’d had a quick view of bodies packing Castle Street and all the surrounding roads so tightly it was a wonder anyone could breathe.
Moving against the flow of bodies was almost impossible, so I led my team around the edges, keeping to the walls of buildings where I needed only one elbow to keep people from my space.
“This is more annoying than I thought it would be.” The din nearly drowned Theresa’s grumble, even though she was right behind me.
I started to laugh, but a commotion in the street stopped me.
“The wraith is here!” A man threw himself into a cluster of boys, knocking one over. Others around him staggered and turned on him with angry shouts.
I raised my voice. “K
evin! Take care of that!” I glanced back long enough to see him snap and thump his chest, and then he pushed through the crowd to follow orders, and I had to dodge someone vomiting in the path ahead.
We forced our way opposite the crowd for what seemed like hours, pausing to help where needed, but it couldn’t have been more than thirty minutes before we turned a corner and suddenly broke through the crush. Now that there was room to move, I staggered and braced myself against a brick wall, gasping in the wraith-hot air. Sweat poured down my face and neck and spine. My clothes clung uncomfortably.
The others came around the corner, sweating and panting as much as I was. Tobiah took off his mask and swiped his forearm over his face, but paused halfway through the motion, and stared up. “It’s snowing.”
Flakes the size of my splayed-out hand drifted from the wraith-lit sky, sticking where they hit the ground. When I knelt and held a hand over one, I could feel the heat even through my gloves.
I stood. “Don’t touch it.”
Melanie scowled at the sky as the number of giant white flakes doubled. “Oh, that shouldn’t be hard at all.” She smoothed back her hair, sweat sticking it to her skull.
I waved the group onward. “Hurry. We have to stop the fighting.”
“What about the wraith?” Sergeant Ferris strode ahead, checking around a corner before I reached it. “Can you stop the wraith like you did in Skyvale?”
Tobiah, James, and I exchanged an awkward three-way glance. “No,” I said. “It might kill me. It would make everything worse.”
Chrysalis would be wraith mist, and James would be the lifeless shape of a boy.
“If I can find Chrysalis, I can tell him to send the wraith back.” Maybe if I just wanted it enough, he’d do it without my order. But I couldn’t count on that; he was unpredictable at the best of times.
And this was not the best of times.
We picked up speed as the streets cleared closer to the lowcity. The eight of us took up a steady trot, with Tobiah and me in the center, and the others around us like the points of a star.
“You should have announced yourself back there,” said Kevin. “They’d have made way for you.”
“Maybe.” Melanie waited a few steps before continuing. “Or the royal presence would have caused even more calamity.”
