Etiquette of Exiles (Senyaza Series Book 4)

by Chrysoula Tzavelas

  “How can you let him say things like that to me? After I sacrificed so much for you? Terrible girl!”

  “I’m not,” Zellie whispered.

  “Run, Zellie,” said Cam softly. “I’ll be fine.”

  Zellie’s fragile self-control broke and she fled, leaving Cam taunting her grandmother behind her and her grandmother hurling insults at her back.

  Zellie went down paths she didn’t recognize in her attempt to escape, but she didn’t take a Big Step. She didn’t leave Cam behind entirely, though she knew that was fear and not courage. She had no courage.

  At last, when her muscles failed her, she found herself in a court paved with emerald-flecked glass bricks, in front of a vast, ash-colored mansion with windows like hollow eyes and an iron fence painted vermillion. The bricks reminded her of when the city had been warmer and stranger, before Cam had woken the spirit. That meant she wasn’t surprised when the spirit itself edged around the house.

  The tangled lines of light didn’t seem as bright anymore, and the spirit drifted along closer to the ground. Zellie, still panting, rolled to her feet and backed away, but it didn’t seem inclined to pay attention to her. She watched as it moved up to the window of the mansion, then passed through. The light passed behind the windows like a ghost. Zellie watched for a while, trying to see what Cam saw. She couldn’t, though. It was an alien made of light and a manifestation of something frightening and dangerous. If it was the city, it was unfriendly and wild. What could they possibly do to reach something so very different from them?

  At last the light moving behind the windows winked out. Zellie was unable to avoid thinking about Cam and her grandmother, then. After pacing back and forth for a few minutes, she went home.

  It might have been a garden in a different city. It was fenced on one side and bounded on two sides by tall townhouses. If it had even a little soil and greenery, it would have been a garden. But instead it was pavement, cracked here and there. Zellie had done her best to expand the cracks, but it was harder than it would have been in other cities. She grew dandelions, because dandelions would grow anywhere, and they helped the pavement crack apart.

  She’d learned that from her grandmother, long ago. She wished she’d learned it somewhere else.

  A pile of rags and leaves and branches covered with an old sheet was shoved against one of the walls. Cam sprawled out on his back, his eyes half-open as he stared up at the sky. Zellie almost tripped over herself dashing over to him.

  He drew in a ragged breath as she fell on him. “Hey,” he said, his voice creaky. “Glad you got away.”

  “What happened?” demanded Zellie, snuggling up to him. “Is she gone?”

  Cam reached over and brushed hair away from Zellie’s face. “She’s still around. Eventually she got bored yelling at me and went off to find somebody she could actually possess.”

  Zellie thought of the other runaways in the feral city and wondered why her chest hurt. She was safe and Cam was safe and that was what mattered, right? They’d have to move on, of course. Safety didn’t mean much if her grandmother’s projection was roaming the city even while they slept.

  She ought to start gathering up what little they had, turn her attention to convincing Cam they had to leave. It would be a challenge; he liked the feral city. He’d put so much effort into trying to tame it and if he gave up easily on projects like that, why, she’d still be with her grandmother, deluded by her lies.

  She ought to start moving. But she didn’t. Instead she rested her head on Cam’s chest, listened to his heartbeat, and wondered what would happen to everybody else. She’d warn them, she decided. It was the least she could do.

  * * *

  “Great,” said Ramone. “Now we have two new monsters to kill.” He kicked the curving spiral swing set at the Snail Playground that he and Izzy lived on opposite sides of.

  Zellie boggled at him. His attitude was just as alien as Sunny’s had been. The woman had given her a little smile and said, “I’m sure everything will be okay. I know you can handle this.”

  Dev, despite being a creepy little brat, at least reacted in a sane and sensible way to the news that an invisible witch with mind-control powers was roaming the feral city. “This is why I hate people,” he’d muttered, right and proper.

  And Eden, too, had been appropriately angry and upset. “My body stopped listening to me, girl. I know now. I’m staying the hell away from you, any weird shimmers, lines of light, or old person smell. And if I starve to death in the process, I’m going to haunt you. You brought this bitch here, you have to deal with her.” That last part was troubling, but the rest was a sound, healthy reaction.

  “How the hell are you going to kill anything?” Zellie asked Ramone. “I didn’t see you slaying any Huntsmen or giant lions or anything.”

  “Well, shit, what else are we going to do?” Ramone climbed up the slide. It shimmered like a seashell and stayed slick and cool on the warmest day. On cold days, like today, like every day had been since the spirit of the city was awakened, it crackled when touched. “Your man did his thing and now everything’s gone to crap. If we can kill that spirit, maybe the city will come back to life.”

  Zellie stared at him incredulously. “Did you see what it did to Deena?”

  “Well then, why are you here? Where’s Cam? Did he finally get eaten?” Ramone perched at the top of the slide, then stood up, shading his eyes.

  “He’s resting. Resisting her takes a lot of energy. I just thought you should know about the witch,” Zellie muttered but Ramone had stopped paying attention to her.

  “Hey, that’s Rani! She got something….” He slid down the slide and bounced to his feet. Rani was another of the city’s inhabitants. She’d been at the party, and she was somewhere lower on Zellie’s list of people to warn.

  The other girl bounced into the playground, carrying a bag fashioned from her jacket. Loaves of fresh bread peeked out. The smell made Zellie’s mouth water.

  “Where did that come from?” Ramone advanced on Rani with his hands out and she gave him a loaf.

  “The spirit,” said Rani happily. “I was looking for food and singing a song my auntie used to sing while she baked. The spirit showed up and I didn’t run away because I thought maybe it was listening to me. And it was, and when I was done, it sort of did a little dance and made this big pile of bread appear! And then it ran away.”

  Ramone paused in stuffing the bread in his mouth and said, “Wait, was it a song about baking? Do we just gotta sing to it to control it?”

  Rani shook her head. “Not about baking. Just this song my aunt sang. In Hindi.” She sang a line from it, then offered Zellie a loaf of bread. “Take some, there’s so much. Take one for Cam too. Is he unwell?”

  Zellie took the loaves. “Ramone will explain,” she said dully, bewildered and unexpectedly afraid of Rani’s discovery. “Ramone… if you encounter the spirit… remember Deena too.” She turned and walked away. That was it. That was the best she could do. And it wasn’t going to matter: they were going to get burned trying to control the city, or they were going to get possessed by her grandmother, or maybe even get caught in some awful clash between the two.

  She felt sick, her stomach twisting around so much that she couldn’t risk wasting the bread by eating it right then. Instead she took it back to her hideout. Cam had gone, but she felt so nauseated by fear that she couldn’t even be concerned about him. Instead she curled up on the makeshift bed and tried to squeeze the anxiety away.

  Zellie remembered how Sunny thought everything would be okay. She was an idiot tourist, she’d never really lost anything, but her faith was reassuring until Zellie remembered that Sunny’s faith depended on Zellie doing something about the problems.

  She must have meant Cam. Cam was the one who solved problems. Zellie would wait for Cam to come back, and he would figure out how to make everything okay, even if it meant they had to run away again.

  But the shadows lengthened and Cam
did not return. Zellie refused to think about it and did her best to fall asleep instead.

  Her grandmother coughed nearby. “Didn’t I tell you he’d abandon you? Just like your mother did? Everybody will always abandon you, sweet child. Except for me. You’re the one who abandoned me.”

  Zellie covered her ears and rolled to her feet. “Shut up!” She looked around wildly, trying to spot the source of her grandmother’s voice.

  “Don’t you talk to me like that, you ungrateful brat. After everything I’ve given up for you! Shame on you!”

  Zellie stumbled out of her hideout and down the street, blindly trying to escape the witch’s voice. She thought of other voices instead.

  Sunny whispered, “I know you can handle this.”

  Eden breathed, “You have to deal with her.”

  Ramone said, “Now we have two monsters to kill….”

  Her eyes, half-closed against tears and dust, flew open. She veered to the right, went up some steps and flung open the door to a tall building the color of fire. Inside it was bright instead of dim, with lights blazing in burnished brass fixtures along a richly paneled corridor. But it was cold, too, cold enough that Zellie’s toes felt it immediately through her ragged sneakers.

  Zellie waved her hand, feeling for the prickle of the Inside’s attention, then took another few steps inside as her grandmother’s cough rattled behind her. “Don’t you take this to somebody else’s house, child. Do you want to be put in jail? That’s what will happen.”

  Carefully Zellie moved down the corridor, achingly alert for any movement or strangeness. Any minute something would happen and the Inside would attack her. If she was quick and clever, maybe she could divert it onto her grandmother. It was the best she could come up with.

  But nothing happened, except that it was cold. Even the lights were cold and there was no reaction, not even a flicker, when she touched one. That was mysterious, but not the least bit threatening. It was odd. Zellie thought about the streets that no longer changed and wondered if the city really was dying.

  But the Inside didn’t seem to be slowing down the witch at all. Her stinking breath reached Zellie’s neck when she stopped to investigate the frozen lights, and her rattling voice continued to hurl a mix of insults, threats, and pathetic pleas.

  “That’s right, keep walking. But nobody will ever love you. You’ll see. You’ll ruin it just like you always have, and you’ll come running back to me, begging me to forgive you. But why should I? No, I’ll tell the truth about you to anybody you manage to delude. I have a duty not to let you hurt people.”

  “Shut up,” said Zellie. “Go away. You don’t know anything.”

  “I know you, child. I’ll make sure everybody else does, too. Or you could just come home. We could start over. You could apologize and I’d let you have your old room back. I’ve been busy turning it into a workroom, but I’d make the sacrifice for you. I do try to be a good person, unlike some people.”

  The rattle crept inside Zellie’s head, giving her a headache. She’d spent so long blind to what her grandmother was doing to her, believing all her lies and distrusting her own emotions. But what if Cam was really gone? What if the others in the feral city all turned on her, caught and twisted by her grandmother’s voice?

  No. She wouldn’t go back again. Death would be better.

  The bright corridor shuddered around her. Tiny holes along the bottom of the walls opened up: fanged mouths opening and closing, just big enough to snap a hand or a foot clean off. The walls themselves rippled like the sides of a great beast, inhaling and exhaling. A twisted joy swept through Zellie. Maybe she and Cam had hurt the city somehow, but it wasn’t dead, not yet.

  She moved faster, breaking into a jog. The corridor opened up into a series of small square rooms, each one a little bit larger than the next, with fanged maws stretching across the floor in random patterns.

  “Oho. I see. Oh yes. Look at you,” rattled the witch. “Look at you, invading this creature. You live on its back like a flea and then you creep inside. You are terrible. Poor creature. Let me help you, poor creature.”

  Zellie wondered if the city would get inside her grandmother’s mind or her grandmother would get inside the city’s mind. She really, really hoped they’d manage to devour each other.

  The final square room had a door made of brass and red wood, and it opened like another maw when Zellie approached it. She could see the teeth and the tongue beyond. But she heard a voice, too: Cam’s, and she plunged through.

  She emerged into the dim, clouded evening, into a large courtyard. Three tall buildings formed three sides and the final wall had only a broken hole to serve as a gate. The sea-green and white paving stones fitted together to form a design that was both blossom and beast. In the corner sizzled the white-light lines of the city spirit, and a few yards away crouched Cam, talking to the thing.

  Zellie’s grandmother was right behind her again, the exhalation of her cackle a foulness against Zellie’s hair. She could see the shimmer of her presence, feel the clutch of her hand. She was so very happy to see Cam again, to witness proof that he was exactly who she thought he was, but she didn’t hesitate. The spirit of the feral city was a burning spirit. It didn’t like what it perceived as a threat, whether that was a gathering or an invasion or simply reaching out. It had burned Deena. It could burn her grandmother, too.

  She leapt forward, driving herself at the spirit. She could see the lines of the spirit reacting to her charge, twisting, turning, brightening. Then, as a crackling thunder boomed around her, she took a complicated Step, twisting herself sideways through space. A forest of crimson and snow flickered around her and a parking lot full of people and a reeking house she knew and hated. She saw a wrinkled old hand on a crystal ball.

  Then her complicated step completed and her leg kept twisting under her until it snapped. She fell to the ground as light and thunder raged around her.

  Then the light faded and the smell of blood overwhelmed the smell of ozone. The green paving stones were slick with red, and streaked with black and glossy white—but mostly red. Zellie hurt so much she couldn’t breathe.

  The lines of the city spirit rearranged themselves over her and she tried to scoot herself away. Then Cam was at her back, holding her. “Shh, you’re okay.”

  “My leg,” Zellie whimpered. “My leg.”

  “It’s still there. Maybe you broke it, doing what you did, but it’s okay.”

  Zellie kept her eyes on the light. It was moving closer, and it was already so close. It was going to swallow them; she’d seen all the fangs. “The blood….”

  “I don’t quite know what happened there. I couldn’t really see,” Cam admittedly candidly. “But it’s not yours. Was it your grandmother? I thought I heard her.” He glanced around. “But not anymore, I guess. Too bad for her.” He scarcely paused a moment before breathlessly barreling on. “I’ve been thinking about this spirit.”

  “We have to get away, Cam. Help me stand up?” Zellie’s teeth chattered together.

  “Not yet,” he said gently. “I know what has to happen with the spirit, Zellie. And I can’t do it.”

  “Oh, Cam,” she moaned. The pain was making her dizzy and the smell of blood made her stomach revolt.

  “It’s lonely, you see,” Cam went on, his hands tight on Zellie’s shoulders. “I’ve never really been lonely before. I’ve always had family who loved me. Friends. And you. I’ve never been alone like the city is. It’s totally separated from the people meant for it. I could never really commune with it because we don’t overlap enough.” Cam’s voice became tender. “But you know what it’s like to be lonely, Zellie. You were so lonely when we met.”

  “What—what?” Zellie couldn’t quite get her question out.

  “You have to let it touch you, Zellie. So it can understand what we need. So it knows it’s not alone.” Cam supported her, holding her, giving her his strength. The wavering lines of the spirit tangled themselves togethe
r fretfully. “No Big Steps, no running away. No grabbing at it. Just let it reach for you and know you.”

  Zellie remembered Deena’s hands and looked around at the remains of her grandmother. She’d been sliding backwards through the goo of her grandmother. And Cam had caught her. Cam loved her. Without Cam, she’d be alone. She’d trusted her grandmother once. She trusted Cam now.

  She closed her eyes and held out her arms open to the spirit.

  Lines of light wrapped around her, penetrating through her flesh and into her core. It hurt a little, but compared to the pain of her broken leg, the experience was a warm tickle. Then the light reached into her emotions and she no longer knew whether it was pain or something else.

  She wondered if she could communicate with it. But no words came to her, heard or spoken, only a feel, like music. It was lonely: lonely and afraid and desperately out of place. For a moment she felt as if it was kindred, like she’d found a frightened dog in an alley that wanted to be taken home and fed.

  But only for a moment, only for the time it took for her to perceive the rest of the entity: vast and alien and old. It had been there far longer than any human city, waiting for the fulfillment of a promise. Its thoughts were mannequins spilling teeth from their gut, crystal sculptures weeping music, a playground made of seashell. It wasn’t out of place. She was. The knowledge was profound and absolute: She did not belong there.

  And yet—it was lonely, as she’d once been lonely. Cam had seen that much. It looked at her and saw her, for the first time: saw more than an irritation in its skin, saw a mind, small and foreign and hungry. It saw and it moved against her soul as if it would fill her, It would edge out her dreams and will and flesh until she too was nothing more than blood and a memory.

  Then the force withdrew and her leg screamed in pain and Cam’s arms were around her. The creature of light and lines was gone.

  Zellie blinked and coughed. There was something she had to say. Some message she’d understood.