Gates of Thread and Stone

by Lori M. Lee

  “Almost everything inside the Academy is kept private,” I said impatiently. “Cadets aren’t even allowed to leave the campus until they’ve completed their two years.”

  “True,” Irra said. “But the secrecy, particularly surrounding the Tournament, is because Ninu wouldn’t want you noticing any familiar faces.”

  He couldn’t mean—

  “Ninu is taking them to play in the Tournament?” Avan said.

  “But … ,” I began. The Tournament was the final challenge that Watchmen Academy cadets had to face. It was their last chance to improve their ranking and placement after graduation. Ninu selected his sentinels from the cadets who won the Tournament. I’d read about it in school. Every year, a bunch of high school graduates left the district to join the Academy. I didn’t know any of them personally, but once they left, the chances of seeing them again were slim. The Watchmen were rarely assigned to their home neighborhoods.

  “Are you saying Ninu kidnaps his own citizens and puts them in the Academy? Or right into the Tournament?” I asked. “Why would he need to do that? It’s not like they’re short on cadets.”

  “The answer to that is a bit complicated,” said Irra.

  “Well, we’ve come all this way, so I think we can spare the time.”

  Irra scratched his cheek, looking thoughtful. Then he pushed past us and threw open the wooden door. “I’d like to show you something.”

  He disappeared down the hall. After a quick look at Avan, I hurried after him.

  Irra led us down hallways that could have been pulled from the Labyrinth, except the smell was musty instead of damp. Stained walls had progressed well beyond peeling, the puckered seams so brittle that they looked about to disintegrate at the slightest touch. The floor creaked and convulsed underneath us. We encountered a couple of girls in the halls. They both wore the same belted, faded-blue tunics with fitted pants, although one of them had altered her tunic by cutting the baggy hem and tying it tight above her hips so that the material hugged her curves. If these people were the Black Rider’s hollows, then DJ was seriously misinformed.

  The girls nodded politely to Irra and then to us. When I glanced back, the same red tattoos were visible at the bases of their necks, beneath their matching ponytails.

  Irra came to an abrupt halt at the top of a staircase. I skidded on my toes to keep from running into him. Avan steadied me with a hand on my lower back.

  It felt different here. That empty feeling returned, stronger, pushing beneath my ribs: gnawing, cramping, ravenous. It dipped cold fingers into my chest.

  “You feel that, right?” Avan murmured. I nodded and leaned into his hand, focusing on the warmth of his palm and letting it soak into my skin.

  “This is where the walls of Etu Gahl end. For now. It does change.” Irra lifted his hand to indicate we should stay where we were.

  We watched from the landing as Irra moved ahead and stood in the middle of a hallway that led to a dead end. I didn’t know what we were waiting for until I looked at his feet. The floor changed beneath him. No, not changed—aged.

  I looked around. It wasn’t just the floor but the whole hallway. The walls turned from white to yellow to brown; paint bubbled and peeled; mold spread in a dark stain along the crease where the walls met the ceiling and then streaked down to the floor; an entire section of the wall sagged into the beams. In this narrow hallway, time had spilled forward at an unbelievable speed, nothing like what I could do.

  But the threads remained undisturbed. Whatever he was doing, it was outside of time. Which didn’t make any sense, but my thoughts were too jumbled to work out what I was seeing.

  New objects winked into being as well: end tables covered in lace and then linen and then plaid, set with silver saucers that gradually darkened to brittle brass. Paintings and photographs fastened themselves to the walls, the images fading in and out with new faces until the glass shattered and the wooden frames dwindled to dust. Past the hall where Irra stood, the dead end had given way, and a completely new room had sprung from nowhere.

  “The living go to my sister when they pass,” he said. “But Etu Gahl is where ideas and objects come to die. My house is a place of forgotten things.”

  Irra glanced back, and I felt his stare inside me, like something alive.

  “What are you?” I asked.

  “The hunger that cramps your stomach. The decay that shrivels your crops.” He dragged his fingers along the wall. It blistered and rotted beneath his touch. “The shadows that carve into your cheeks.”

  He folded his elegant, slender hands at his waist. His golden-brown eyes were soft and warm and terrifying.

  “I have been known as Famine. But call me Irra.”

  CHAPTER 16

  MY JAW SNAPPED shut. Magic was the only explanation for why he could do such extraordinary and inexplicable things. Like me.

  But I had a feeling he wasn’t like me. Or rather, I wasn’t like him. This was way beyond my own abilities. Was this what a real mahjo could do?

  “Wait,” I said, stepping back and forgetting that I was standing at the top of a staircase. Fortunately, Avan’s hand kept me from tumbling backward.

  Irra chuckled. “Is it so hard to believe?”

  After what I’d just seen him do? No. And yes. Because as much as magic remained a vital element in Ninurta, as much as I was reminded of it every time I watched a Gray in motion, I had never seen magic do this.

  Suddenly, I could understand how powerful the mahjo must have been before Rebirth.

  “How did you do that?” I gestured to the hallway still shifting around him, although the speed had slowed. “You just … How?”

  I knew it was a difficult question to answer, but I still wanted to know. Even though, if someone asked me how I could sense the threads, I would say, “Beats me.”

  “I am Infinite,” he said, as if that explained everything instead of confusing me more.

  I shook my head. “What is that, like … immortal?”

  “Generally, yes.”

  What the drek was that supposed to mean? “You can’t really think you’re immortal?”

  “Among other things,” Irra said breezily. “But no matter. Most of my hollows aren’t sure what to believe, either. I suspect a few of them still think I’m simply a demented mahjo and that Etu Gahl is a lunatic’s magic gone wild.” He didn’t seem bothered by that fact. If anything, he sounded amused.

  “Are you mahjo?” Avan asked.

  “No,” he said. “But we are connected.”

  Seeing what he could do, I was tempted to believe him. But immortality seemed like something much bigger than wielding magic.

  Avan’s fingers flexed against my back. “What are you doing here,” he asked, “hiding in the Void with a bunch of hollows?”

  “They’re human, right?” I added. I remembered G-10’s smile, the girls we’d passed in the hallway, and the tattoos on their necks.

  “For the most part,” Irra said. “And I’m here because my brother—Ninurta, your Kahl Ninu—built his city to spite the laws of our kind.”

  The floorboards groaned beneath Irra’s weight as he joined us on the landing again. Behind him, the hallway and the room had stopped changing, and settled into the same state of general disrepair as the rest of the fortress.

  “The laws,” Irra continued, “that forbid direct interference with humans.”

  “Kahl Ninurta the First?” Every Kahl took on the name of Ninu, and the current one had ruled since before I was born.

  “There has only ever been one Kahl.”

  How was that possible? I didn’t know what any of the Kahls looked like, but I’d been taught that each Kahl ruled for his lifetime, schooling his heir in relative seclusion until it was time to pass on leadership. Wouldn’t someone have noticed if he was immortal?

  “The Infinite are constant in number,” Irra said as we followed him back the way we had come. All the turns and passageways made the route difficult to memorize. �
�We lost one some time ago—Conquest, as we knew him—and Ninu was chosen to succeed him. He is the youngest of us. When a child is given restrictions, he grows rebellious.”

  “Ninu created Ninurta because he was having a tantrum?” I said. “That’s ridiculous.”

  Irra gave a delicate shrug. I suspected there was more to it—a lot more—but he wasn’t sharing the information.

  “Absurd or not, Ninu has fashioned himself into a leader of men. As to his sentinels, they are mahjo, the result of our dalliances with humans.”

  “Ninu isn’t the last mahjo?” Avan asked.

  “Ninu is not mahjo at all,” Irra said. He turned a corner, and I hurried to keep pace with his much longer legs. “The mahjo are mortal descendants of the Infinite. Once, they carried our magic in their blood. But their petty war changed that.”

  “That ‘petty’ war decimated the world,” I said.

  Irra waved a dismissive hand. “And for what reason? To prove which side was the superior force? It was a conflict born of little more than pride and conceit. The Infinite decided it would be too dangerous to allow the mahjo to retain their powers. However, by stripping them of magic, their blood became poison to their Infinite parent. It was, I believe, nature’s way of maintaining balance.”

  “So when Ninu discovers any descendants … ,” Avan began.

  “He snatches them up and transforms them into his toy soldiers, both to protect himself and as weapons against the rest of us. I’ve managed to recruit my own, mostly by stealing them from him, but I make do with my resources.”

  “Ninu has Reev?” I asked.

  “Is that all you’ve taken from this conversation?”

  I flushed, first out of embarrassment and then frustration. To think that Reev had never left Ninurta at all …

  “Why would Reev’s boss believe he sold him to you?” Avan asked.

  “Ninu does have to keep up my reputation if he doesn’t want an uprising on his hands.”

  We reached the hall where Irra’s study was located, but he led us past it. I slowed outside the door to the courtyard again, lulled by flowers as big as my hand and the scent of grass—real grass, not the dry, straw-like weeds in Ninurta.

  “There will be time later to explore,” Irra said.

  I looked away, annoyed with myself, and spotted the knife in Avan’s hand. I had completely forgotten about it. He gave it back to me, and I stuffed it into my bag.

  “Come,” Irra said, “you must be hungry.” He grinned, a dark, almost derisive gleam in his eyes. “Fed by Famine. What has the world come to?”

  The mess hall was full. It was probably about lunchtime now, and there had to be at least fifty people gathered around the wooden tables and benches. They talked loudly, laughing and leaning into one another as if they were all old friends. Several of them waved when Irra dropped us off at the entrance.

  In the food line, Avan and I received trays, and an enthusiastic chef allowed us to pick what we wanted to eat. I stared at the display of food. My stomach grumbled loudly, but I was completely at a loss. Our meals at school were picked for us and usually consisted of a clump of mashed potatoes, watery pea soup, overcooked carrots, and sometimes milk, if we were lucky. The vegetables tended to taste a little sour, but I was happy to eat. Food was food.

  “Tell you what,” the chef said, brandishing his spatula. He wore a blinding-pink apron, and his wavy brown hair was covered with a matching hairnet. He was almost as riveting as the mounds of food. “I’ll let you sample everything, and you can decide what you like best.”

  Despite my objections, he piled my tray with enough food to feed a whole level in the Labyrinth. And then he did the same for Avan. I tried not to gape.

  The chef winked at me and said, “Come back for seconds.”

  “So wasteful,” I muttered as we searched for an open table.

  I kept one eye on Avan and the other on my tray. The bread roll actually steamed—it was fresh. The beans were covered in a brown sauce that didn’t look like mud. I’d never seen carrots that were so orange, and the corn glistened with what could have been real butter. I had tried butter once when a friend brought it to school, but it had been rancid.

  How could the Rider afford these quantities of food? Where did it come from? I sniffed at my tray. Everything smelled delicious. My stomach growled again.

  “Then we better eat up,” Avan said.

  We sat near the wall, and I hunched over my tray. Everyone around us was dressed in similar tunics. But like the girl from the hallway, many of them had altered the clothes to suit them. They also had no reservations about staring. I felt distinctly out of place.

  “What do you think of Irra?” Avan asked, seemingly oblivious to the dozens of eyes on us. “Crazy or immortal?”

  “Maybe both.”

  “You believe him?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  If Ninu wasn’t mahjo … If he and Irra really were immortal … then what did that make me?

  The mess hall, like the courtyard, was spared the decay of the rest of the fortress. Someone had swept the stone floors and dressed the walls with colorful drapes. Sweet and savory aromas and the heat from the kitchen wafted throughout. It felt comforting. Safe. Like Reev.

  My chest tightened. I focused on my laden tray instead.

  I took my time eating, sipping my soup and trying bites of everything. I wanted to relish each new taste.

  “You know,” Avan said, picking at a bowl of bright fruit slices, “after my final exams last year, I got an invitation from the Academy.”

  I put down my spoon, my eyebrows rising. This was news to me. Sometimes, if students did exceptionally well on their final exams, the Academy scouted them for enrollment. If we had stayed in Ninurta, I would have taken my finals at the end of the coming school year.

  “And?” I said.

  He looked down. “I considered it. I mean, I heard even the lowest-ranking Watchmen make about thirty thousand credits a year. My dad could close his shop.”

  That was probably more than what his shop made in two years.

  “Why did you turn it down?” I asked. It was a hell of a deal, but no amount of credits could have persuaded me to devote my life to serving the city. I would rather be poor and free, but that didn’t mean Avan felt the same.

  His lips quirked. “I couldn’t stomach being one of them.”

  I grinned and began to reply, but was startled by a clatter to our left, followed by laughter.

  Two tables away, a group of women were talking animatedly. One of them had her hair up in a ponytail, exposing her scarred tattoo—her collar, as G-10 had called it. From what I could tell, Avan and I were the only people in the mess hall without collars.

  No one here displayed the same guardedness about it as Reev and that sentinel outside the Labyrinth. I guess there was no shame in something everyone shared. After the talk with Irra, it was easy to figure out what the collars meant. And what that meant about Reev.

  Why hadn’t he told me he was a sentinel? I didn’t even know how it could be possible, but there was no other answer.

  A heavy body dropped into the space beside me. G-10 beamed as he placed his tray next to mine. His held a modest portion of soup.

  I gave him a small smile in greeting. He brushed his sandy hair out of his eyes and then thrust out his hand. After a moment’s hesitation, I took it.

  “We should have proper introductions this time,” he said. The smattering of freckles on the bridge of his nose made him look young. “I’m G-10. For now.”

  “Kai,” I said. “This is Avan.”

  He shook hands with Avan as well and nodded to my tray. “Best thing about this place: the food. We’ve always got more than enough to eat.”

  Considering Irra’s unlikely claim that he was the personification of Famine, the irony didn’t escape me.

  “It’s different than what I’m used to,” I said. I bit into a green vegetable that resembled a tiny cabbage. Sweet juice
spilled over my lip, and I licked at it. I never knew a vegetable could taste like this. “Mmm. In a good way.”

  When G-10 didn’t say anything else, I glanced up. He was looking at my mouth. Warmth crept into my cheeks even though I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. He could’ve been thinking about what a slob I was. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, glancing quickly at Avan. He was watching us with an inscrutable expression.

  G-10’s eyes lifted to mine. He looked amused by my reaction. “Did the Rider fill you guys in?”

  “Some of it,” I said. Maybe G-10 could fill in the many blanks that Irra’s explanation had left. “Were you a sentinel?”

  G-10 made a broad gesture. “We all were. Irra saved us. Severed the leash.” He touched his neck. “But he couldn’t take off the collar. The magic is too complex. It’d kill us to remove it.”

  DJ’s information had been considerably off, but I couldn’t blame Irra for keeping him in the dark. DJ wouldn’t hesitate to spill Irra’s secrets for the right price. It still irked me that I’d given him most of our life savings.

  “You’re all descendants of people like Irra?” Avan asked. He leaned against my side to talk to G-10, his arm pressed against mine.

  Even now, after all the time spent clinging to him on a Gray or sharing his body heat on the cold dirt, his touch sent ribbons of warmth spiraling through me. I fixed my attention on what G-10 was saying.

  “They call themselves the Infinite,” G-10 said. “And yeah. Finding out I was mahjo was hard to believe, especially since I don’t have any real magic. Still, being a descendant of immortals does give us some pretty convenient abilities. Rapid healing. Strength. Superior reflexes, that sort of thing. It’s the reason Ninu can brand us with collars. Normal humans wouldn’t survive it.”

  The description fit Reev well—my indestructible big brother. Not once in all the years I’d been with him had I seen him hurt or sick.

  “What does it do?” I asked, gesturing to his neck.

  “The collars are like magnifiers. They seek out whatever traces of magic remain inside us and enhance them so that we can work harder and tire less. After Ninu is done with us—” His gaze slid away. “Can’t really say how much of what’s left is human.”