“Only because they don’t know you,” Talon says, his voice gruff.
Solomus gives him a smile, one that does nothing to chase the sadness from his eyes. Then he turns back to me.
“My magic isn’t completely gone, but it fizzles out quickly. It’s another reason I didn’t automatically return you to Valadir when you were so determined to get your brother. If I’d had better control on what I could do, the curse wouldn’t have happened. It’s why I began training my Jomeini so young.”
Jomeini hugs her arms to her chest, growing far too interested in her shoes. Nattie’s request hits me at the mention of her, but I don’t want to bring it up in front of the others.
“Sir, can I talk to you for a moment? Alone?”
Solomus offers a smile. “Of course, child.”
Ren narrows his eyes. Talon’s and Shasa’s gazes dart between us, but all the same, Talon helps Solomus rise from the couch. Together the wizard and I make our way into the kitchen. In the corner of my eye I see Jomeini rise as well and begin pacing, nibbling harder on the nails of her right hand.
I can’t fathom why she’s so against this. Helping Gwynn could be the answer to everything. To stopping Tyrus, to getting the tears back.
“What is it, Miss Csille?”
“Is that why you’ve been looking for Nattie?” I whisper. “Because you lost your magic?”
The old man’s head jolts back. “What?”
“Nattie told me, sir. She told me to tell you to stop looking for her. To focus on your granddaughter.”
Solomus straightens his usually hunched posture, affronted. “When have you spoken with the First maiden wizard?”
“She…appeared to me. In a dream.”
The wizard slams his book to the counter. “Angels and brimstone, why will she visit you and not me? She knows I’m looking for her.”
“Let it go, sir,” I say. Pixie-Hair was vague with her warning to Talon and me. I’m sure this is coming across about the same her message did. But I don’t see how I can be more direct, not having more details myself.
He trembles, a storm too old to do much damage, more like a willow dying from within its white sheath.
“I suppose you’re right,” he says, placing a hand on the book and pinching the bridge of his nose with his other hand.
“Was there another reason she visited you, Ambry?”
“Sir?”
“The First Maiden Wizard surely wouldn’t have randomly chosen you to deliver a message for me and said nothing else.”
My heart catches. Do I tell him? How much does he know?
“The truth is, sir, I could use some help on that. Can we talk later? I wouldn’t mind your advice.”
His eyes fill with curiosity. “Of course.”
Solomus pats my arm as we return to the others in the front room. Jomeini’s arms are still folded to her chest, and she leans away from her grandfather, rocking back and forth. Solomus’s brow bends in her direction, though his words are for me.
“I wish I could help you access your friend’s dreams, Ambry. I just don’t see how it’s possible.”
“A mistake,” Jomeini mumbles. “It’s a mistake.”
Accessing my friend’s dreams. I sit there, remembering clouds, remembering walking past a girl with hair swirled like ice cream and being inadvertently sucked back into a space-like dream that I’d never had. My gaze shifts from Ren, to Shasa, to Talon, and back to the wizard.
“Actually,” I say. “I think I do.”
"What about Reveweed?” Ambry asks.
Ren’s head snaps up. He zoned out for the last bit of their conversation, but reveweed? How in the devil’s name does his sister know what that is? Sure, he helped her get in to Black Vault months ago, but his brotherly protectiveness lurks in, stalking the perimeter.
Ren trudges to the banister. Zeke and Ayso emerge from below, their footsteps thundering up.
“How is the nymph?” Solomus asks.
“Fit and fine, in a few hours,” says Zeke, bumping Ren’s fist with his own as he passes. Jomeini lifts her head and Zeke winks at her with his good eye. “What’re you lollygags talking about reveweed for?”
Ambry smiles at him. Her honey blonde hair is gathered at her neck, and she wears the same pants and shirt Ayso lent her the day before. “If there’s a way to get through to her, to touch the true Gwynn, the one we know is still in there, it would be in her subconscious, wouldn’t it? In her dreams?”
“It’s risky,” says Haraway.
Ren glares at him. He can’t help the dislike. It was first bred in him by Tyrus’ constant complaints anytime he heard Talon’s name mentioned, but after his conversation with Shasa and seeing how hurt she is, Ren’s aversion to the warrior has only deepened. “She tried to kill you in real life—”
“Badly,” Ambry interrupts.
Talon gestures with his fingerless-gloved hand. “The method doesn’t matter; it was still an attempt on your life. You’ll have far less control in a dream, Ambry. What if she kills you in the dream?”
Jomeini stands. “Talon is right,” she says.
Ayso pushes her glasses onto her nose, rising from her slouch against the banister beside Ren. “Wait, are you talking about dreamwalking?”
“Is it possible?” Ambry asks, ignoring Talon and Jomeini.
“No one’s ever attempted to walk into another’s dreams like this,” says Ayso.
“But can it be done?” Ambry’s tone is more insistant this time.
This idea is becoming more ludicrous by the minute. “Do we know if there’s any way to undo the tears’ effects?” Ren asks, attempting to steer their objective in a different direction. “If we can somehow extract them from a person’s system once they’ve been drunk?”
“Far as I know they’re just like drinking anything else,” says Zeke with a cheesy grin displaying the gaps between his teeth.
“Clearly that’s not the same,” Shasa argues.
Zeke laughs. “I mean they’ve been absorbed by the body. By now it’s too late.”
Ren sighs. Weeks have passed since Gwynn got hers.
“Gwynn wasn’t always like this,” says Ambry, a hint of pleading in her voice. “If we could change her back by going into her dreams, she could help us. She has the tears, Ren.”
“Yeah. I was there.” Honestly, sometimes…
Solomus steps from the couch, book in hand. “I think we could access them, if we were careful, as Mr. Haraway suggests. But I don’t think you should be the one to do it, Miss Csille. It’s clear Miss Hawkes’s feelings for you are…complicated.”
“I think it should be Ren,” says Ambry.
If Ren was holding something he would have dropped it.
“No,” Shasa interjects. The whole room looks at her before Ambry opens her mouth.
Ren shakes his head. “She probably hates me as much as she hates you. No doubt she’ll try to kill me too.”
“She’ll try to kill any one of us,” Talon says. “Is it really worth the bother?”
Jomeini’s attention bobs between the two of them. Ren’s irritation flares in an instant, but Ambry holds up a hand as if to prevent him from speaking. There’s a command in her eyes he’s still not used to.
“She’s our friend, Talon,” Ambry says simply. She’s way too calm, in Ren’s opinion. He fights the urge to crack his knuckles.
“I understand that,” says Talon. “But she’s at Tyrus’s right hand—where he intended me to stand. It’s clear she’s taken my place. You don’t know what he’s told her, Ambry. You don’t know how he’s brainwashed her.”
“All the more reason we need to do this!” Ambry argues, turning her back on Talon. “Ren, you knew her, you were in contact with her. I’ve tried once; she’s probably expecting something like this from me. But not from you.”
Ren sniffs. “Can I talk to you for a sec, Ambry? Privately?”
She glances back at the others around the living room and then looks up at him wit
h her gray eyes—their mother’s eyes—before nodding. He leads the way out back. The wind has turned chill with the setting sun.
“I know you still love her, Ren,” Ambry says before he can speak.
He opens his mouth to argue, the heated anger extinguishing. He thinks of Shasa in the woods, of her warm, sad eyes.
“Actually, I’m not sure how strong the feeling is anymore,” Ren says.
“This could give you a chance—if she loved you before, she may be more inclined to open up to you again in a dream, more so than anyone else.” Ambry’s expression is adamant; her brows lift in an earnest excitement.
“This is absurd,” Ren mutters. “You’re insane, Ambry, you don’t know what I saw pass between her and Tyrus. I was on the inside, just like Haraway said. I saw things…heard things between them…”
He thinks of conversations on their auds, the ones he showed Shasa. Of promises made between a silly teenage girl and a brooding romantic like himself.
“She’s still in there, Ren. I can’t believe the Gwynn we knew is really gone. We have to try. If we try to go back into the palace, with all the soldiers around, with Tyrus, we probably won’t stand a chance. This way, though…”
Ren glances through the door’s window. Ambry has a point. And he would like to get the real Gwynn back as much as his sister. Though he isn’t sure having Gwynn back will change the way he’s feeling lately.
Shasa has made him feel things he didn’t know he could feel for another girl. She’s aggressive and dedicated, and so loyal to her friends and to what she feels is right. Ren’s throat tightens.
Something must have happened. Talon doesn’t seem like the type of guy to just turn someone like Shasa aside. What made the warrior pick Ren’s sister?
No doubt Haraway noticed the same calm command Ambry holds and yet her timid openness, so different from Shasa’s demanding, over-exuding presence. Yet, Ren likes that about her. After Gwynn, he likes a girl with her heart on her sleeve.
When Ren doesn’t argue any longer, Ambry reenters the house, giving him no choice but to follow.
“I say we do this,” Ambry says over their soft chatter. “Ren can practice on me first, before delving into Gwynn’s dreams. It’s our best chance at getting to the tears.”
Talon’s head angles to one side.
“Absolutely not,” says Ren.
“Ambry’s right,” Solomus says.
Jomeini’s mouth drops. “Grandfather, no!”
But Solomus continues. “I’m sorry, my girl. But if we can get Miss Hawkes back on our side, she could help us. If nothing else, we could get an inside look. Tyrus tells her things. Things he wouldn’t disclose to just anyone. At the very least we could find out what he’s planning next.”
“And get the tears back,” Ambry says with emphasis.
“I don’t like it. You said you were there,” Shasa says, rounding on Talon. “You’d know as much as she could tell us.”
“It’s been months,” says Talon. “He never once mentioned anything like the Stations to me, let alone his intent on Feihria itself. What I knew has already happened. We need this information. Gwynn has the tears, and short of storming the palace—which I doubt we’ll survive a second time—I don’t see many other options.”
“We have to try,” Ambry says. “Dreams got her into this.”
“I thought tears got her into this.”
Ambry ignores Shasa and goes on. “Maybe dreams will be the key to getting her back out again.”
Ren’s mouth hangs open, but their logic makes too much sense to argue. If anyone is going into his sister’s dreams, he’d rather it was himself.
“All right,” Ren says. “But if I show up in Gwynn’s dreams naked for some reason, all bets are off.”
Warwick holds his mouth open while lowering the welding helmet over his face. The small pane of glass is purposefully dark, ready to protect his eyes from the bright flames and any sparks that will inevitably fly. He slides forward on his rolling stool toward the soldering iron and begins working it with his foot.
Liquid metal drips into the collection bowl at the table’s edge as he guides the shaped, flat metal along the flame according to the markings he made. Just one more adjustment and the door will be ready to seal off Miss Hawke’s gemma machine.
A pain slits across his lip, and he winces, moving away from the soldering iron. Beneath the bulky helmet, he lifts a finger to the flesh newly exposed from its scab.
“Vreck,” he says, wincing again. Figures. He never realized he bites his lip while working until he can’t do it anymore.
He hadn’t talked to himself much before either, but solitary confinement at the Triad has pulled some fast ones on him. His mouth has scabbed over within, but at least he’s back to eating soft foods instead of sipping soups or mashing everything to a pulp just so he can slurp it down.
He really hates the fact that his body needs sustenance three times a day.
Miss Hawkes hasn’t been to see him since she burned the inside of his mouth. It bled for hours—he’s lucky no infection settled in. He expected her to come simpering back, to rub it in his face or make him beg for forgiveness. But this long, comfortless room has become his prison. Aside from the occasional order on his clipboard in the mornings, or meals slid in through a gap in the door, these beakers and tools are his only comrades, as emotionless and unfeeling as his schoolmates back home had been.
He holds the metal door to them for inspection now, silently asking their opinion since he hasn’t dared to speak much in the past three days.
The glass and tools inspect his work. The screwdriver corks its eyebrow in dismay.
What? he thinks. The measurements are exact. I checked it twice, cut once, just like my father taught me.
The screwdriver doesn’t respond.
Warwick chokes the tool in his fist, wheeling his chair to where the rest of the gemma machine sits. He holds the door into place, the final piece on the oven-sized instrument. The cuts he made are just what it needed; the door clamps in snugly. Perfect. He begins to hum and secures the screws, one after another, until the door swings on its hinge and locks when shut.
Miss Hawkes enters the room that morning, and he nearly hits the ceiling with excitement at having another creature to talk to. She looks lovely, a golden halo hovering along her long waves of hair. It’s down today, hanging to her waist, and she wears civilian clothing. A shirt and regular pants. The look suits her, so much so that Warwick blinks in shock.
Psychotic Miss Hawkes may be, but at least she’s a living soul, someone to talk to during the monotony of the day. Still, he backs away in uncertainty. She burned his mouth the last time he saw her.
“They tell me you haven’t tested my device yet,” she says without any preliminaries. She tosses her hair, giving Warwick a glimpse of a few cuts and bruises along her throat.
This gemma machine doesn’t work the way magitech electronics do. According to her request, it doesn’t run on a stream of magic, but instead on a port designed to hold a small vial of tears and siphon the power they hold into it. He had to calculate the algorithm carefully so the liquid didn’t damage the machinery.
She glares at him emphatically, waiting for an answer.
He points to his mouth. She can’t possibly have forgotten what she did to him the last time she was here. Carefully, he shapes the words. “Can’t. Speak.”
Her eyes taper, making her look both charming and formidable all at once.
Finally, she shuffles the rest of the way to where he sits. “I don’t trust easily,” she says. “So I suggest you choose your words wisely from now on.”
Absurd. One minute she was telling him she liked him to speak his mind. Then he did so and was literally burned for it. Wisely isn’t the word he’d use. Tiptoe is more like it.
She takes his chin in her hands, and a pang of fear flickers through him. For a moment he worries she'll hurt him again.
Light illuminates his periphery,
and a cool stream oozes in, healing him instead. The scabs in his mouth shrink; the pain dies away. He works his jaw, relishing in the movement.
“Thank you,” he says, his tongue exploring. The scabs are gone. What a relief. “To answer your question, I don’t have the final touches on the machine done yet. And I still don’t have magic with enough power to create the transfer you’re expecting.”
She lets out a laugh. “You mean to say you didn’t get my note? I thought you were supposed to be some kind of genius. I left you seven jars, Warwick.”
She gestures to the small silver case holding the jars of gleaming, blue tears. Of course he got her note and inspected the jars. He considered drinking some, trying to purchase his freedom, but the instant he thought of it the Prone on his wrists burned, and he nearly toppled to the floor at the inhibiting feeling in his gut. She didn’t want him to drink them. And so he couldn’t.
The reminder of her control over him drains a large part of her appeal this morning.
“Seven jars of dreams sold by Itharians, now to be used to imprison them,” she adds, stroking the case.
“This device is a one-use-or-it-goes-terribly-wrong type of thing, my lady.”
She raises an eyebrow at the moniker. It’s true—he has never addressed her so formally before. He may be overdoing things just a tad. Still, considering what happened last time, he’ll overdo the niceties.
“In my experience, my lady, I find it best to measure twice and cut once, if you’ll forgive the construction analogy. In this case, where people are involved, it’s best to triple check one’s results before implementing—”
“Feihria will be crossing that border any day now, and Tyrus has to have that device, do you understand? It must be in place when they cross into Valadir! So what if it takes all seven tries to get it right, the point is that we hurry things along!”
“But these are people you’re experimenting with.”
“So?”
Warwick can barely mask his astonishment. “So I assume you want them to survive the process, otherwise it would be quite pointless, wouldn’t you agree?”
Such a Daring Endeavor Page 24
