Jomeini watches too, her puzzlement melting into a simmering resolution, though Talon can’t fathom what can be bothering her right now. Crossing her arms, she makes her way to the table where Ayso placed the remaining reveweed and what’s left of the tonic. Her fingers travel, inspecting. And then, with another glance across the room, she makes her way to the door and leaves.
***
A fog settles over Ren. Neither cold nor hot, it lands one drop at a time, like the beginning of a rainstorm. The air shifts in warning of the oncoming storm until the wetness builds into a torrential downpour. He runs to the nearest door he can find before the rain hits, letting it slam shut behind him. Air enters and escapes his mouth. It’s tasteless and textured, drying out his mouth like he’s chewing on a tablecloth.
Low music pulses. People dance below in a scene Ren knows better than his hometown. Cadie’s set up with magitats; Zeke hovers over his trunk, wary of shoplifters; Ayso stands with Dircey, skulking and blending in with the patrons to keep an eye on things.
Instead of Micro at the door monitoring who enters, it’s Ambry. She wears a sleeveless shirt and tulle skirt with knee-high boots. Her hair is twisted up off her neck, her arms more toned than Ren remembers and spangled with magitats and bracelets.
Ambry’s dreaming about Black Vault? And looking like that?
Her gaze dusts across the crowd, and though he’s standing there at the top of the stairs, she doesn’t see him. A crease digs into her forehead. Ren follows to see Gwynn, her hair in a messy bun and wearing that old pink jacket she had.
A crowd of people surrounds Gwynn, cheering her on as she smokes some kind of pipe, exhaling sparkles and slamming back at the impact of the smoke.
Talon sits on a couch, wearing a clean shirt and pants. He stares straight ahead and then in an instant, Ambry is no longer at the top of the stairs but sitting beside him. Ambry pulls Talon’s face to her. She shakes his arm, punches his shoulder. But no matter how Ambry tries, Talon won’t talk to her.
“Okay,” says Ren. “This isn’t what I need.” Black Vault is only the base of the dream. What he’s really after is the core of Ambry, like Ayso said. If they want a shot of this working with Gwynn, that’s what they need to find.
He approaches Ambry, who is still shaking Talon’s arm. The warrior stares ahead as though she isn’t there, and the look of exasperation on her face builds.
“Ambry,” Ren says.
She bolts to her feet. “Can you believe this guy? The least he can do is give me my money back.”
It’s a dream, he reminds himself. Nothing in dreams really makes sense. That’s why this needs to work.
“Ambry, look at me,” Ren says, glancing back to the crowd around Gwynn once more. The pulsing music hounds his ears, but he takes his sister’s chin in his hand and forces her to gaze to his.
She rolls her eyes and shoves his arm away. “What are you doing?”
“Tell me what you want,” Ren says, not sure if it’s the right question to ask. But if this were Gwynn, that’s what he would ask her. What does she think she’ll get out of this allegiance with the enemy? “In your life. What do you really want?”
“What do I want?” she repeats.
The black of her irises connects with his own, and a rush of wind sweeps between them. He gasps as she does, her eyes widening, welcoming his scrutiny.
Small curls of red smoke spiral in her eyes. Slowly the smoky coils change, displaying images. He sees her going to Black Vault so Gwynn could get tears. The heartache and desperation when Ren himself was taken by soldiers burrows into his chest, along with the frantic energy that resonated to get him back, even after Haraway had given up.
With every change of image, Ren feels it all. The pang in her heart at the sight of a single man fighting against the crowd of citizens being taken to the Station, knowing she could do nothing to save him. The weight of her emotions drags him down like wet clothing. The pity for a group of captured, Proned men, the ache and longing for Talon. Her indecision, her fear of inadequacy, the worry of being unable to figure out the purpose of the tears in time.
The sensations crackle. His knees grow weak, and waves of realization snap over him. He breaks from her eyes with another gasp.
Music pulses, growing louder once more. Incense dulls his brain, making his thoughts lag. Ambry blinks several times as if unsure of what just happened. Ren grips her shoulders.
“I never realized you were dealing with so much,” Ren finally says.
“I want to help people,” she says distantly. “You asked what I want? I want to fix things. To use the tears for good, for what I’m meant to use them for. I just don’t know how, Ren.”
“You care so much it was painful to see it,” he says, remembering everything he saw in her mind. A collapsing forest, teaching others even when she couldn’t do what they did, loving Gwynn even after the anguish she caused when she took Ambry’s magic. “You have such a big heart, Ambry.”
Her face pinches in dejection. “The Firsts told me I have to use the tears to break Solomus’s spell, to stop the Arcaians. I think it’s maybe because I felt when others didn’t. When they couldn’t.”
“And you still don’t know why you feel?” Ren asks.
She shakes her head.
“You are their hope, Ambry,” Ren says. “That’s why it’s you. You’re their passion, their fear, their hate and frustration. You’ll fight because they can’t. That’s why it’s you. That’s why you’ll figure this out.”
Her eyes flick up to his once more. This time the despair is gone. This time a hopeful amazement rides in them. “You think I can do this?”
He smiles. “I do.”
A smile creeps at the corners of her mouth, lifting it until the grin blossoms on her face.
Ren can’t help returning it. Obviously he just helped her with something he didn’t know she was struggling with. He inhales, remembering why he’s here. “This could work,” he says to himself, glancing around for Gwynn once more.
She’s still standing where she was before, surrounded by a group of onlookers. He approaches her, his heart shrinking in his chest. Dream Gwynn looks like she used to, more youthful and innocent. The celery green eyes, the face that once made everything else around him dissolve. It doesn’t have that affect on him anymore, he’s pleased to note.
The crowd lets out another loud cheer as Gwynn brings a pipe to her lips and puffs on it.
One final look and then he can let her go. He can move on.
“Gwynn,” Ren says, pulling her to face him.
And she does so, exhaling a puff of reveweed right into his face.
***
Hurt and bitterness coat the underside of Jomeini’s skin, slowly transforming, a snake shedding its skin and changing colors to something black like hatred. That hatred guides Jomeini’s steps, giving her more drive than a vehicle in motion. Ambry is wrong about Gwynn. This won’t work—Jomeini can tell it won’t just as surely as she could tell Shasa’s plan to poison Craven wouldn’t. And she couldn’t stay in that room any longer.
No one in that room listened to her. She begged Ayso for help, begged Solomus. Ambry should know how she feels too, but she’s too absorbed in her own problems. Fury fists over Jomeini’s throat, battering against the cage she’s tried to enclose it in. But this time anger is stronger. It hammers and pounds with heat and fire and hatred until the bars crash down around her chest and pure vengeance filters in.
Gwynn Hawkes is just like Craven. A person like that will never change. No matter how badly Ambry wants to, she won’t succeed, and the thought only makes Jomeini hate Gwynn all the more.
Jomeini shouldn’t have helped Ayso figure out how to pull it off. But Ayso has been so kind to her. They all have been so kind. And that hug with Grandfather—the reminder of his awareness of her was exactly what she needed. That even though she was so destructive, he still loves her.
That thought ironically called her to action. She mentioned usi
ng transey to get to Gwynn and administer the drug to her, to access her dreams when the time came. But why wait? Jomeini grips the jars she snuck from the table, the excess potions Ayso concocted, resolving filtering through her.
She’ll go right now. Even under the most casual circumstances, it’s clear she’s dangerous to be around. She destroys everything she touches and right now her touch needs to be directed at Gwynndol Hawkes. She’ll get the tears and stop her friends from going through with a plan she warned them was wrong. Then they’ll all see how right she was.
Though she hasn’t used the transey magic Baba taught her as a child, she remembers it clearly. It isn’t hard to take a glass from the kitchen, shatter it against the counter and elongate one of the shards. Jomeini concentrates on the glass’s particles and soon it widens. She pictures exactly where she wants it to lead, and though she doesn’t know the room’s details, transey guides her there anyway.
The magic leads Jomeini to an elaborate room draped with the finest adornments money can buy. A maid is turning down a bed with thick, welcoming blankets. Wearing a red tank top and shorts, Gwynn Hawkes sneers at the maid from a fur-lined seat near the blazing fire.
Jomeini’s sudden appearance sends Gwynn diving for the dazeblade on the fireplace mantel.
“Don’t bother with that,” Jomeini says, whisking with a hand from this distance. The blade clatters to the tile hearth, and she takes a deep breath, savoring the moment.
She never had the upper hand with Craven. Not once. But with the assurance spreading through her body, she has it now. She bottles down the rage, letting it stew, letting it fester.
“What do you want?” Gwynn demands, suspicion in her voice.
“I burned an already dead body. I attacked sirens when I should have been attacking soldiers. I attacked Cadie when I should have been going after you. But I won’t fail this time. I’m going to take you out, Miss Hawkes.”
Heat fuels her words, triggering the flame inside her. She feels the power that comes with extreme anger.
Fear grips Gwynn’s expression. She backs into one of the tall mahogany bedposts and fidgets as if reaching behind for something.
Jomeini sniffs. Thoughts ward in—warnings, second guesses. She dismisses them all and steps closer to the other girl still clinging to the bedpost.
"What’s happening?” Talon demands. He guards the foot of the two cots, his eyes plastered on Ren. Ren hasn’t stopped twitching and jerking, not since the wizard lowered that green mist into his body. Every once in a while, Ambry spasms as well.
“I don’t know,” says the wizard. Behind him, Ayso digs through a trunk frantically, as if searching for the exact object she knows will stop whatever is going on. Ren continues to convulse. Solomus leans over him and presses hands to his temples, and this time, he speaks plain Valadian so anyone listening can understand.
“This will not overtake you. Let it in, Ren Csille. Let the powder do what it needs to. It will not overtake you.”
Ren’s chest rises high; he inhales a long, balanced breath. His body slowly relaxes and then his breathing slows as well, becomes rhythmic and steady like Ambry’s.
Talon would give anything to be able to read minds at this moment. To know what Ambry is feeling. To know what Ren is seeing.
***
Ren gasps, choking on the drug. His arms whip forward as something hooks him from behind, and then he lands hard, his face smashed against a hazy pane of glass. He reaches out for something, anything, but the glass shifts, uprighting him. Ren wanders, pounding, searching for an exit. Each way he turns, he’s trapped.
Ambry, where have you sent me?
“Ambry?” he calls out. No one answers.
He paces. He paces the room as the sun sets. He paces as the sun rises. He paces as hunger begins filling his belly, as his hair slowly grows, as scruff prickles his chin and bunches out in a beard. He paces as age settles in on his bones, whittling him down, and still there’s no door. He reaches for the changing furniture, now a chair, now an end table. He lifts it to break the glass but the chair only bounces off, knocking him back instead.
It’s no use. Wherever this is, he’s stuck here.
***
“Ambry, Ambry wake up,” Talon says, shaking her. He looks to the wizard. “Something is wrong.”
Solomus stares down at the slumbering girl. Her chest rises and falls. Lines pinch between her brows. She arches her back, gripping the blanket in her fists. This sleep is anything but restful.
Talon lifts one of her eyelids, but it closes once he releases her. “What did you give her?” he snaps at Ayso, who’s chewing her lip and flipping through a book as if looking for an answer.
“So long as he’s in her mind, she won’t wake,” says the wizard.
“Then get him out of there!” Talon cries. “Or send me in. Something has gone wrong, and it’s clear they need help.”
“It’s risky,” says Solomus. “One in her dreams is bad enough, but sending two…” The wizard trails off. “She loves you, Haraway, which could make it even riskier. She may not let you go once you’re in there. Especially if things turn pleasant to her mind.”
“What does that mean?”
“Dreams allow us to live out what we never could in reality. Who knows what she imagines between the two of you, especially considering the way she feels for you? She may never let you go. You may never want to leave. I don’t know what’s happening to Ren’s mind at this moment, being encased in the mind of another. This has never been attempted before.”
Talon stands helplessly, watching Ambry’s face cramp tighter and tighter. Once again she flexes all over, her body going rigid. Simultaneously, Ren cries out and thrashes, then he thumps back onto the cot. Blood begins seeping out the side of Ambry’s mouth.
“She’s bleeding, Solomus! There must be some way to tether me to this side, to get me out again despite what may happen,” says Talon, hovering over her. She’s so beautiful, with her thin-boned face, her soft mouth and long lashes. This can’t be the last he sees of her breathing. It can’t be.
“Let me in. You’ve got to.” Ren cries out again, making Talon flinch. “For both their sakes.”
Worry treads on the wizard’s brow, but he slowly nods. “Get Ren out,” Solomus says. “Only then will Ambry wake. But you’ve got to do it without her dream-self seeing you, or heaven forbid, touching you.”
Talon swallows, heat flushing up his throat. To see her but not touch her. He already attempted that and failed in the worst way. What are conditions like in her dreams? Will he be swept up in her fantasies, unable to help himself as well? The thought is too tempting. He clenches his teeth, forcing himself not to wonder about the possibilities.
“It won’t be a problem,” Talon says, hoping to sound convincing.
The wizard raises an eyebrow, and Ayso emerges from the book absorbing her attention. She removes her glasses. “Perhaps we should call Shasa back. Someone else should go, someone not quite so…attached.”
“It won’t. Be. A Problem.”
“The pressure is too much on her already, having him in her mind,” Ayso argues.
“But it’s clear he’s stuck—something has gone wrong,” Solomus says, overriding her. “We don’t have much other choice.”
Ayso’s eyes boggle wide, but she doesn’t argue.
“All right. Put this on,” Solomus says, pulling a ring from his finger. He mutters more of that language, and Talon feels the ring heat against his skin the moment it touches his palm. “That should bind you to me. You should be able to do magic in there. Stream a sizzle of magic into it when you have her brother in hand, and I’ll know you’re ready to be removed.”
Nothing he can’t handle.
Ambry winces and coughs. Solomus dabs her mouth and the kerchief returns bloodied.
“Solomus,” says Talon uneasily.
“Lie down and close your eyes.”
***
Talon gasps at the color of Ambry’s mi
nd. It’s no pleasant, sunny day, but the sky is filled with fire.
“What nightmares are causing this?” he wonders.
Soon the fires burn out, and he’s sitting on a couch in a warehouse while vendors scatter around him. He recognizes Ayso and Zeke, along with the man at the bar who sold him a drink and promised not to tell Micro he was there that night all those months ago.
Ambry’s dreaming of Black Vault?
Talon rises from the couch toward where a crowd of people huddle. Ambry’s bobbing up from the center, shoving past for all she’s worth and shouting her brother’s name over and over. The sight of her slams into him. She wears a purple tulle skirt going just to her thighs, while a jacket hugs her torso. Thigh-high socks climb her legs, followed by tall boots. Her hair is pulled up, flowing over one shoulder like stones that glisten with flecks of gold.
He’s never seen her look so beautiful.
“Ren!” she cries again.
“Ambry!” Talon shoves people, lifting them as though they’re rats instead of humans. Their bodies shrink in his hands, growing tails and becoming scratchy with fur. He drops them just as fast.
Whoa.
It wasn’t Ambry who made that comparison; it was he.
He whirls around, his senses growing clouded by the incense in the air. The wizard was right. They’re dealing with something they have no clue how powerful.
“I should never have come here,” he mutters, searching for the door. But he didn’t enter, not really—one minute he just appeared. Talon wheels around and heads back for the couch he was sitting on, taking his place once more.
He works to clear his mind, to contact Solomus somehow. He fingers the ring Solomus gave him. Inhales. Exhales. Where has Ren gone?
And then Ambry approaches, frustration on her face. “Will you get off already?” she demands, shoving him hard, her skirt flouncing. And the surprise is clear on her face when her shove works. Talon rises to his feet, quickly regaining his footing to stand right in front of her.
Vreck.
Her face alights at the sight of him as surely as a sunrise cresting at the edge of a moor. Everything about her comes to life, her eyes, the glow in her cheeks, and her smile—that perfect bud like a timid flower blossoms now to a full sideways crescent, cutting straight through him.
Such a Daring Endeavor Page 27
