Fragile Remedy

by Maria Ingrande Mora

  Nate eased into the chair beside the bed.

  No words came.

  He expected to cry, but numbness took over instead. Even the pain beneath his bandages was far away—a distant beat. He struggled to look at Alden, his gaze drawn to Alden’s bloodied feet, instead of the emptiness of his face.

  James came in the room, footsteps ghostlike. “Will you let me prepare him for burning?” he asked. “I’m no stranger to the stillness.”

  Nate’s legs wobbled when he stood, and James caught him by the elbow to steady him.

  “I’m all right,” Nate said. But he wasn’t. Alden’s jaw had gone slack, and his mouth sagged. Alden would have hated seeing himself like that, devoid of all his energy and sharp beauty.

  Nate didn’t want to look anymore. He never wanted to see anything like it again. But once he turned away and left, that would be it. Forever.

  James crouched in front of Alden’s bare, bloodied feet. “In Gathos City, they remake the bodies of the dead until they look like living dolls. And they put them on display for days.”

  Nate grimaced. “That’s awful.”

  “It brings the living peace.” James shrugged. “But I’d rather remember what someone looked like before all that.”

  Nate remembered Alden carefully choosing several sparkling glass necklaces to wear on a rainy day, saying that he’d glitter if the sun wasn’t up for the job. Alden hadn’t been a good person. He’d hurt a lot of people. But he’d lived without apology. And that’s what Nate would remember: Alden with cut glass sparkling against his pale skin, and his eyes shining with wicked joy.

  “Thank you,” Nate said to James. He wanted to sink into the bed—to wrap his arms around Alden one more time. But he knew Alden would feel cold and wrong. “Gods watch you,” he whispered.

  And even though he didn’t believe in the Old Gods, he imagined Alden in a different place, listening to Fran’s birdsong stories of a time no one else could remember.

  Nate only made it as far as the hallway before his legs gave out from beneath him. He slid down the wall and dropped his head to his knees and cried. Low sobs wrenched out of him, a current of hurt piercing through his chest.

  Reed crouched and opened his arms, offering an embrace without coming too close. The gesture was so tender and gentle that Nate didn’t hesitate—didn’t give himself a reason not to fall into Reed’s careful hold.

  “I’m sorry,” Reed whispered.

  Nate turned and hid his face against Reed’s shoulder. Reed held him fiercely, making soft sounds against his hair like he was gentling a crying child. And Nate didn’t mind. He was safe and free to cry, each breath a mournful, awful sound. His head was full—stuffed with too much, more than he wanted to know in one day. Terrible things and wonderful things all at once. He cried for all of them, lost in crushing grief.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “You’re heavier than you look,” Juniper complained, shoving Nate out of a deep, dreamless sleep.

  He opened bleary eyes and bit back a cry as he tried to push up with his hands.

  Everything rushed back to him. Agatha. His wrecked hands.

  Alden.

  Pixel sat up in the bed and took him by the forearms, stilling him. “You can’t touch things! Jamie said so.”

  He smiled blearily at her use of Ivy’s nickname for the thin, strange Servant boy. Juniper watched him, a pillow clutched against her middle. The knot on her head was now a deep, purpling bruise. She wore a clean green shirt over her baggy pants, and there was something different about her face.

  When her mouth twitched, he realized what it was. She didn’t look so sad.

  “Are you staying with us?” he asked, surprised.

  “I can sleep on the floor instead.” Her fingers dug into the pillow.

  “With us. With Reed. With the gang.” Nate’s hands felt like they’d grown three times in size. Pinkish clear fluid leaked through the bandages, and he tore his eyes away from them quickly. He didn’t want to picture what was underneath.

  “If she wants to, she can.” Reed stood in the doorway to the small room. He gave Juniper an encouraging nod. “I trust you on account of what you did to Agatha. But we don’t solve problems with violence if we can help it. You can’t go about gutting anyone else.”

  “Unless they hurt us?” Juniper asked.

  “Even then, there might be better ways. Promise you’re not bloodthirsty?” he asked with a faint hint of a smile.

  “I’m not.” Juniper shuddered. “I didn’t like doing that.”

  Ivy poked her head through the doorway beside Reed. “Anyone awake in there?”

  “All of them,” Reed said.

  “Nate, I need to change your bandages. Think you can walk?”

  He started to assure her that he didn’t need his hands to walk, but the moment he crawled off the bed his knees trembled, and he stumbled. A flutter of panic rose—was he getting sick already?

  “James said you’ll be wobbly for a few days.” Reed caught Nate with a gentle grip. “Be careful.”

  It felt natural to have Reed close. Touching him.

  Dazed, Nate gave himself a moment to lean in to Reed’s side. He wanted to reach for his hand and squeeze it. But he wasn’t even certain he had fingers anymore.

  “I’ll be right here,” Reed whispered, knowing exactly what Nate needed hear better than Nate did himself.

  Nate followed Ivy in a daze. He didn’t remember taking his boots off, but his feet were bare and quiet against the worn wood floor. He realized he was wearing clean clothes too. They were baggy and smelled old in a way he couldn’t place.

  She helped him up a flight of stairs. “This is my room,” she said.

  It was full of mismatched furniture from decades ago—all of it faded but very soft. A small unmade bed crowded a corner, and the rest was a jumble of chairs and dressers and cracked mirrors and plastic bins full of bandages and vials. It smelled lived-in and comfortable, like bedding dried out on a line on a clear day.

  “You look tired,” she said.

  “I get that a lot.” Nate tried, and failed, to brush his hair behind his ears, awkward under her scrutiny. He sat down and drew his heels up to the chair and hugged his knees.

  She pulled a chair up beside him and rifled through a plastic bin full of medical supplies. “Do you think you’re growing weak already? I don’t know how much Remedy you were able to get at Agatha’s . . . I don’t know what to expect.”

  Nate furrowed his brow, taking stock of how he felt. It was difficult to tell with so much hurting, but he was pretty sure it was the kind of pain to be expected. Not the aching, deep weakness of the stillness coming over him. “I don’t feel bad that way.”

  She began unraveling the bandages on his hands. “It’ll still be a race against time.”

  “It’s not a race.” Nate’s jaw clenched. “Not if you can’t win.”

  “Well, that’s the thing.” Ivy grimaced as she peeled back the final layer, revealing bright-pink skin and the dark lines of the stitches across Nate’s palm and fingers. “Between what Alden figured out and my calculations, I think I can replicate Remedy. And with your tinkering and Pixel’s, we can build a still.”

  Nate’s heart sank as he eyed his oozing skin. He tried to flex his hand. His fingers wouldn’t move at all. “It won’t work. Not without a Diffuser.”

  “I have credits saved up, some tech from Gathos City I can barter with. We’ll put the word out that we need a Diffuser—that we’ll pay handsomely for it.”

  “But that’ll draw too much attention. You’d be in danger. Everyone would.”

  “What’s the alternative, Nate?” Ivy asked gently.

  He clenched his teeth. While he was willing to accept the alternative for himself, he wasn’t willing to give up on Pixel’s chance to survive.

 
“We’ll be careful. We’ll be smart. And you’ll help keep us safe. I’ll talk to the Courier I was paying to try to find you, so she can start working on finding a Diffuser instead.”

  “You paid a Courier to find me?”

  “One of the best, I’m told. By Val, anyway.”

  Where do you live, Nathan?

  Nate’s stomach rolled over. “The Courier’s name is Val?”

  Ivy blinked up at him from her work, gray eyes wide. “Yes. Do you know her? Because if you do, she’s not very good at her job.”

  “No, not really. I met her three times. She must have suspected the first two times, though.” He sighed out a breath. “Why didn’t she tell me where you were?”

  “The way the Breakers have been scrambling for GEMs, she was probably weighing her options.” Ivy echoed Nate’s sigh. “That’s the trouble with Couriers. They’re good at what they do, but they’re not loyal.”

  “Agatha was hurting her,” Nate said. “She didn’t trust her, I think. It seemed like Val was being punished. Like she was scared.”

  “Well, she doesn’t have to be scared anymore. Agatha can’t hurt her.” Ivy spoke fiercely, but her tone had a haunted edge. “Not ever again.”

  A current of hope buzzed through Nate’s tired limbs. It kindled a longing that threatened to burn him up. “Reed can get the parts we need. He can find anything.”

  “Hopefully, most of the parts will still be in Agatha’s basement.”

  Nate fought to keep his mind calm. Gamble or not, it was better than no chance at all. His heart rattled at the thought of having more days. “You really think it’ll work?”

  “I do. And it won’t take much. The Remedy Alden was giving you was cut with his own weak formula. When we make it correctly, you won’t have to come back to me for it as often as you likely did before.”

  Relief washed over Nate—not because Ivy thought she could keep him alive, but because she said he’d have to come back for it.

  “Is that a mother thing?” he asked.

  She dabbed fresh salve onto Nate’s skin and arched her brow. “What?”

  “I didn’t tell you I wasn’t going to stay here.”

  “Well. You were seven years old when I said goodbye to you. You’re not a child anymore. You have a life in the Withers.” She brushed a loose fall of hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand. “I wish it was a better life, but I would never expect you to stay with me in a sick-den.”

  “It’s not a bad life. They’re good people,” Nate said, bristling.

  “I know. A safer life is what I meant, I suppose.” Ivy glanced up at him, her fingers gentle. “You’re very fortunate you found them. Even Alden. Well . . . he kept you alive.”

  Nate gave her an indulgent nod. He didn’t need her approval to know that Reed and the girls were good. They were the best. And no one knew as well as he did that Alden had kept him away from the Breakers as long as he could.

  Ivy’s fingers strayed to the cut at his forehead and the rough texture of the scar where Alden had mended him up. “What happened here?” she asked.

  “The train wreck.”

  Ivy’s eyes widened. “You were there?”

  He ducked, wondering if this was what being in trouble with a parent felt like. “Um. I climbed up and opened some doors, that’s all.” Now that he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to die soon, it sounded a lot crazier.

  “I was there too. Collecting a few former acquaintances. It turns out that sheltering Gathos City legislators goes a long way toward getting your smuggling habits forgiven,” Ivy said with a sly grin.

  “Well, I forgive you for being a smuggler,” Nate said, trying to make a joke and finding that he wanted to mean it.

  Ivy’s eyes brightened. “I can never ask for your forgiveness, Nate. It’s too much to ask.”

  The knotted-up part of him that had always resented her for making him and leaving him eased just a little, but it would always be there. A bruise between them. He gave her a solemn nod.

  She let out a shaky, wet laugh and brushed her fingers at her eyes in a flutter. “Now that I’ve connected with old acquaintances, maybe my smuggling days aren’t over.”

  Scavenging tech. Smuggling GEMs out of Gathos City. It wasn’t such a leap. Nate found himself grinning. “Maybe we can help.”

  She exhaled a happy sound, her hand rising to her throat, where bruises formed a ruddy collar. “I know I didn’t have a hand in raising you, but I’m so proud you’ve turned out absolutely perfect.”

  Nate wrinkled his nose. “I smell like a waste-trench.”

  She laughed. “I mean your heart is perfect.” Her expression sobered. She took clean cloth and rewrapped Nate’s swollen hands. “You’re good. And brave. It’s true that I don’t believe in the Old Gods, but I want to shout my gratitude to the stars.” When Nate made a face like he tasted something bad, she swatted at him playfully. “Listen, I’m making up for a lot of lost time. Give me a chance to have my mother feelings.”

  The space between was already staticky and strange, too thick for him to reach through and embrace her. She was a stranger, and he was too grown up to cling to his mother.

  “Did you really leave Agatha behind?” he asked, daring to give a name to the hurt that gnawed at him like a stitch in his side.

  Ivy wrung her hands slowly, watching the pale skin twist. She took a small, hitched breath. “Yes. I could only orchestrate the escape of one GEM. It was never a question who that would be.”

  “But you knew she’d be in danger if you left?” he pressed. He needed to know the hatred and fear that had driven her, made her cruel.

  “I suppose I did, Nate.” Her words scraped out, hollow and soft. “I have much to make up for. I’m trying. I’ll keep trying.”

  He touched her hand. It was smaller than he expected, smaller than his own. “Maybe getting more GEMs out won’t be that hard. We can help them. Agatha said they’re opening the gates.”

  “Of course they are.” Ivy squeezed his hand and met his gaze with a watery smile. “But you have to understand . . . Government moves slowly when it comes to reversing mistakes. It should be this year. This season, even, if Agatha didn’t put them behind schedule with her assault on the railway.”

  “Why would they want to let people from here back into Gathos City?”

  “It’s not about letting people in. Gathos City is dangerously overcrowded. There’s not enough land, and you can only build towers so high. The Withers is a ghost town in comparison. It’s ripe for development. They’ll let some people in—the workers they need. But mostly, they’ll let people out.”

  Worry rippled through Nate. He couldn’t wrap his head around well-dressed strangers and more A-Vols and people who didn’t want to save them but take away their homes. If the gates were opening, they needed to know when. They needed to be prepared. “Do you have a ticker?”

  “Believe it or not, I’m hopeless with those old things.” Ivy tied a small knot with the bandages. “None of my tech works here. Gathos City jams the wireless signal on the entire island.”

  Nate had no idea what a wireless signal was, but his arms went tingly anyway. The prospect of new tech to tinker with went a long way toward soothing his fear of strangers in the Withers. “You have Gathos City tickers?”

  “Not exactly. But I have a box full of marvelous things up in the attic. You’re welcome to take the tech apart. It’s all useless here.” She laughed softly.

  “What’s funny?”

  “I never imagined being able to give you something to play with.”

  “To tinker with,” he corrected. Mothers were wonderful and embarrassing all at once.

  “Will you teach me what you know?” she asked.

  “If you do the same.” He reached his hand out to shake on it, seal it as a promise.

  They both look
ed at the lumpy shape of his bandaged hand and laughed. Ivy leaned forward and kissed his forehead. “I will.”

  “I’m glad I know you now,” Nate said.

  She wiped tears from her lashes. “I’m glad I know you too.”

  Sparks was the only one who thought the plan was terrible. “No,” she said, shaking her head fiercely. “No!”

  They stood in the Ivy House kitchen, scrubbed clean from head to toe and freshly combed and shaven. Even their clothes were clean—or as clean as they could be, thanks to a good washing in hot water and an afternoon hanging on a line on the rooftop. Nate was grateful to have his own clothes back, but still embarrassed from needing Reed’s help to get them on.

  Juniper and Pixel were with Ivy on the roof, out of earshot.

  Nate’s hair tickled his nose. It got fluffy when it was clean. “Sparks, it’s not like we’ll never see her again. We’ll be working on the still for weeks. And I’ll have to come back here all the time, even when it’s done.”

  “Ivy’s from Gathos City. Can you really trust her?” Sparks asked.

  “You trust her fine, and you know it,” Nate said. The way he figured, Sparks knew Ivy House better than the rest of them. She’d been the one to lead them here, after all. And the more he paid attention, the more he saw James and Sparks watching each other and finding excuses to work on chores together. “You like it here.”

  Brick leaned against a counter, her fingers running along the uneven edge where water damage made the wood buckle and split. “It’s safer than running day and night.” She eyed Sparks. “Safer than what somebody might want from Pixel come a few years.”

  “She’s ours,” Sparks said. She crossed her arms and then uncrossed them to wipe at her nose. Without heavy makeup, her brown eyes were young and gentle. And scared.

  “She isn’t ours. And I say we let her decide,” Reed said. “She’s old enough to choose.”

  “She’s a kid!” Sparks swallowed a sob. “She doesn’t know better. Of course she’s going to want to stay here.”

  “Aw, girl.” Brick walked up to Sparks and pulled her into a smothering hug that hid Sparks’s shaking shoulders from the rest of the room. “That’s just it.”