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For Dahlia, Ellen, and Leah,
who always push me to chase my dreams
(and add more kissing scenes)
Prologue
I always dreamed too big, too bright, too much. Every night, in the dank corners of the tunnels, the knobby spines of other tunnelers digging into my own, the Dreamer filled my head with promises of a better life. A life of sunlight and beauty—a place where I’d have purpose, and I could serve the Dreamer and his faithful people in the Barstadt Empire. He filled my head with hope.
But hope might as well be poison to a tunneler like me. We’re not meant to become anything more than what we are: the unseen, unheard hands that carry out the menial tasks for Barstadt’s dazzling daytime world. Hope seeped into my bones and weighed them down. For who wants to scrub at grime, sink her hands into painful limewater, and pocket away crumbs, day after day? Not when her nightly dreams hint at a life of real beds and warm stews as she defends Barstadt from nightmares and the enemies at its borders. I was poisoned with such dreams, and I had no way to flush them out.
Then Professor Albrecht Hesse offered me the antidote.
My tunnel’s ganglord rented me to the university for cleaning duties, but in Professor Hesse, I found a friend. He knew so much about the Dreamer, and Hesse was more than happy to teach me, chatting with me throughout the night while he monitored his experiments and I tidied his lecture rooms. I was bursting with questions about the Dreamer and the meaning of my dreams, but the more Hesse taught me of the sleeping world, the more I realized I knew nothing of the waking one. Soon I begged him to teach me to read and to write, to explain the history and politics not only of our home, the Barstadt Empire, but also its colonies and other neighbors in the Central Realms. But dreams—it always came back to my dreams, where I earned glory and fortune protecting Barstadt from pirates, enemy armies, gang leaders, monsters, and any other evil my sleeping mind conjured up.
“You dream so vividly—far more than my jaded students,” Hesse told me one evening, while he read over my meager attempts at recording my dreams and I rushed to finish my cleaning tasks. “A gift like this should not be wasted.” He offered me a chair. “How would you like to learn to make your dreams come true?”
As if there were any answer I could give but a desperate yes.
Hesse pulled a red leather journal from his desk drawer and sketched a girl sleeping in a city. “Every night when you sleep, you dream in the world of shallow dreams.” He drew a trail like a tether from her down into a forested land. “But there is a shared dreamworld, as well, for the Dreamer’s most faithful. That world is called Oneiros. It exists in perpetuity, watched over by the Dreamer. The souls of the Dreamer’s most devout can enter Oneiros, bound to their bodies by a slender cord.”
I was bound by a thousand ropes in those days. Paying tithes to the tunnel enforcers and turning over most of my earnings to the gangs. Hunting for crumbs to feed myself and my half brothers and sisters. Enduring the cruel scrape of my mother’s nails as she stared through me and begged me to bring her another wad of Lullaby resin to let her sink into dreamless sleep.
“I can take you to Oneiros, if you like.” Hesse pulled two vials from his laboratory stand and held one out to me. “The world of your dreams.”
I considered all the ropes that bound me to this world, but it was my dreams that decided for me. Perhaps Oneiros could make them feel more real. Perhaps in Oneiros, I could find a way to make them so.
I took the vial.
*
One minute, I was sitting in Hesse’s study, and the next, I was tugged away, like the lurch of sudden sleep. Sunlight surrounded me, golden liquid sunlight dripping down my skin. To a girl from the tunnels, that sunlight I’d rarely glimpsed in the real world convinced me I’d do whatever it took to make this my life.
I ran first, sprinting across the vivid jade grass, over flowers that twinkled as though their petals were made of jewels. But my feet were weightless—I stretched my legs and leaped in great bounds until I was flying, arms wide, soaring into the fresh, clean air. A vast quilted land unfolded beneath me—fields and forests and whitewashed stone cottages. Mountains loomed in the distance, and in a valley to my right spread a city with a central spire. Trailing behind me, more felt than seen, was that golden tether from Hesse’s sketch. But this rope didn’t try to restrain me—it only kept me whole.
As I flew toward the spire in the sparkling city, I recognized the two golden posts at its crown, thrust skyward: they represented the Dreamer’s Embrace, guiding his faithful toward their dreams. I landed atop the crown and, as I scanned the beautiful world around me, tears stung my eyes. For the first time in my life, my dreams seemed within reach.
In a soft gust of air, Professor Hesse landed beside me. “What do you think, Livia?” he asked.
I blinked away the tears as I turned to answer him. “I think I like it better than the real world.”
Hesse smiled, but it looked forced. “So do I.”
*
We entered Oneiros rarely, at first. Hesse taught me how to navigate it only after all my work was done and we were sure my gang masters wouldn’t find out. But I hungered for the dreamworld with an ache that deadened everything around me, and Hesse was only too happy to indulge my pleading for another journey, while the dust thickened along the university’s baseboards and the floors dulled with grime. At the end of each trip to Oneiros, I hurried back to the tunnel entrance, too many chores left undone.
But one night, I lingered in Oneiros after Hesse departed to tend to his work, and I returned to the waking world much later than usual; thin tendrils of sunlight were already stretching across his office windows. In a panic I grabbed my cleaning rags—I’d be punished by the gang lieutenant if I wasn’t at the tunnel entrance before sunrise. Just as I was about to hurdle out of Hesse’s office, though, I was stopped short by the sharp sounds of an argument in the next room.
“—but you said yourself she isn’t ready. I don’t think it’s worth upsetting the gangs over one little tunneler.”
“She’s clumsy and careless, I admit. Stunted by life in the tunnels. But she’s learning. She’s not ready yet, but she’s the best prospect I have,” I heard Professor Hesse say. “I can’t keep her from her duties to the gangs much longer. Someone’s bound to complain. We have to choose now.”
My breath ached in my lungs. Clumsy, careless, stunted—Hesse had always showed me nothing but kindness.
“I don’t suppose you could hire her directly from them? Give you more time to see whether she’s really suited to our work?” the other voice asked. “We can’t give her this kind of power over the sleeping if there’s a chance we could lose her back to the gangs.”
“No, if we ascribe too much value to her, it’ll attract the gang leader’s interest. I prefer we give her temporary papers—purchase her outright, and if she demonstrates her worth, then maybe when she’s older we can grant her her f
reedom,” Hesse said.
“If she demonstrates her worth,” the other man echoed.
I spun away from the door, squeezing my eyes shut. I’d never heard Hesse speak this way before—so callously, with none of the patience and kindness I was used to from him. I knew my life was worth less as a tunneler, but to hear him, of all people, speak of me like a belonging—the way the gang lieutenants spoke of me—
“Hey, it’s all right. You can’t take them too seriously.”
I nearly leaped out of my skin at the sound of the voice. A boy perched on top of Hesse’s desk, chin propped on his fist. He was only a few years older than me, dressed in the impeccable suit of a young aristocrat, but with a wry smile that belied his formal clothes.
“I’m Brandt,” he said, looking me right in the eye. Dark blond hair thatched his tawny face, hanging into his eyes without diminishing their intensity.
I forced myself to look away. “I’m—I’m not supposed to be talking to you.” I shrank back from him, pressing against the wooden door.
Brandt hopped off the table and stepped toward me. He moved with an ease I could only dream of—confident and unhurried. “It’s okay. I know all about you—your secret’s safe. Hesse says you’re an incredible dreamer.” He held out one hand to me. “That he can barely keep up with you in the dreamworld.”
I started to reach for Brandt’s hand, then thought better of it and pulled myself to my feet. “You’ve been to Oneiros, too?”
“Are you kidding? I’m no good at dreams. My skills lie elsewhere.” Brandt plucked a piece of parchment off Hesse’s desk and began folding it as he talked. “I can lift the mustache right off a constable, though, and persuade a banker to give away all his coins.”
“You can’t either,” I said, crossing my arms.
Brandt smiled at me, lopsided. “Well, maybe not yet, but it’s good to have dreams.”
He finished folding the blank sheet into a paper sculpture of a lily. I scowled at him as he held it out to me. “What are you doing here?” I asked.
“We’re going to work together. Hasn’t Hesse told you? He’s got big plans for you.”
I stared, something tightening in my gut. “For me? But … why?”
“Because you’re special.” Brandt tilted his head. “There’s no one else who can do what you do.”
“I—I’m afraid you’re mistaken.” I backed toward the door, twisting the cleaning rag in my hands. “I’m just a tunneler. And I have to get back underground.”
Brandt took another step toward me. “But what about your dreams?”
I froze. My dreams stirred inside me, restless, unable to stretch their wings.
“I heard you have dreams of doing great deeds for the Dreamer and Barstadt,” Brandt said. I turned around to face him. “Is it true?” His expression softened, open and warm. “Because I don’t dream like that, but I’d love to hear about them.”
For all his ease, the tunneler in me was suspicious. I didn’t survive in the tunnels without suspicion in my bones. “Why? What can you give me in exchange?”
He tilted his head. “Well, I can show you what you need to know about the Ministry.”
“The Ministry?” I asked.
But then the door swung open, and Professor Hesse and another gentleman stormed into the office. Brandt tensed, snapping to attention like a soldier, but Hesse went straight toward me and clutched me by both shoulders.
“Livia. You told me once that you wished you could be free of the gangs.” Hesse’s face tightened as he studied me. “Is that still what you want?”
I stared back, trying to reconcile the callous man I’d just overheard with the kindly Hesse I’d always known. Which one was the truth? “Of course it is.”
“You’ll have to work hard,” he said. “Not for the gangs, but for Barstadt. For the Dreamer himself. Are you willing to do that?”
My heartbeat throbbed in my ears. Barstadt was a land of growth, of achievement, of expansion. How could a malnourished little girl possibly embody those things? Yet the Dreamer hinted at greatness for me. For all of Barstadt. “I am.”
Hesse nodded, glancing over his shoulder toward the other man. “Good, good. Livia, this is Minister Durst from the Ministry of Affairs. He’s going to purchase citizenship papers for you.”
I swayed backward. “My papers? But I—” My head spun; I felt my knees buckling beneath me. “You mean I’m going to be free? I don’t have to live in the tunnels any longer?”
Minister Durst pursed his lips. “Not quite. The Ministry of Affairs will retain the papers for safekeeping until you’re old enough to determine your own fate. But you’ll be free of your masters in the tunnels, and we’ll take charge of your training along with Hesse.” He tugged at his coat lapels. “It’s quite an honor to work for the Ministry. And we are honored to have someone with your potential.”
“But what is the Ministry?” I asked.
The minister turned toward Hesse. “I thought you’d taught her the most basic of—”
“We’re the Emperor’s secret police,” Brandt said, words spilling from him eagerly. “We keep tabs on the aristocrats and the gangs, disrupt criminal activities, conduct spy work abroad … I mean, I haven’t done any of that yet, but I will.” He grinned at me again, that wide gas-lit smile. “We can learn together.”
“Spy work?” But if Hesse thought I was clumsy, slow-witted, daft … “I’m not sure I’m cut out to be a spy.”
Hesse snorted. “Don’t be foolish, child. What you offer is somewhat different.”
Brandt stepped forward. “Anyone can be a spy,” he said. “But no one can use the dreamworld like you can. What you’re going to do is something much better than basic spy work.”
“No. I’m afraid you’re all mistaken. I’m just a tunneler. And—and I really need to return.” I looked down, face burning, and found the crumpled paper lily in my hand.
Hesse’s grip eased on my shoulders. “But, Livia, you can be so much more. I’m going to teach you how.” Hesse smiled then—a real smile, the sort I only ever saw from him when we were in Oneiros. “I’m going to teach you to dreamstride.”
Part One
DREAMS
Chapter One
I’ll never get used to those first few moments of dreamstriding, when I open my host’s eyes and look down at my own body crumpled before me. Today, it’s in the hay of a stable hundreds of fathoms from home: fear tightens my jaw even in sleep, honey curls spill over my ruddy, freckled shoulders, and my chest flutters with shallow breaths I no longer control. I want nothing more than to burrow back into my shed skin.
But before I can return to myself, Brandt and I have a mission to complete. Everything depends on me and my skill.
While the Ministry employs dozens of spies like Brandt, each better trained and with sharper reflexes than me, when the mission is this critical, I’m the one person they can’t afford not to use. I’ve endangered lives with my clumsiness, blown informants’ covers with my slow wits, but this cursed gift forever guarantees me a spot on the team. Yet I wish anyone else could have been given this skill. It pulled me from the sewage-laced tunnels I was born to and gave me a purpose, the life I’d longed for, but the weight of failure hangs heavy on my soul. I wish I could give this gift to someone more deserving.
But there is no one else. I call myself a dreamstrider because there are no other dreamstriders to protest.
While my body sleeps, I inhabit the body of General Cold Sun, a top military commander in Barstadt’s neighboring kingdom across the southern strait. The Land of the Iron Winds. Our sources report that the Land of the Iron Winds is preparing to attack Barstadt, but we’ve not been able to gather proof or plans. And so this is what all of Hesse’s research into the dreamworld led to: while the general’s consciousness sleeps in Oneiros, I can fill his skin, walking and talking as if I’m him.
At first, Cold Sun’s skin hangs awkwardly around my soul like a wet shift, impossible to shrug into place. His
joints move all wrong, like he’s a crude marionette, and I’m not used to seeing the world from his height—the tops of doorframes loom dangerously close, and I have a view of the cowlicked crown of Brandt’s head. But slowly, I adjust. I steal into the gaps between his heartbeats and the rhythm of his breath. I ease into the general’s muscles, his bones, his very marrow. For the next few hours, while the mothwood smoke we piped into his carriage keeps his consciousness dormant in Oneiros, his body is mine.
“Oh! Livia! Why, I can hardly tell a difference.” Brandt grins up at me as he wriggles into the valet’s outfit.
I try to twist General Cold Sun’s face into a scowl, but it quickly breaks into a grin. “A flattering look for me, don’t you think?” My words grate through the general’s vocal cords like coarse sand. I help Brandt scatter hay over my abandoned body, covering up that cold, vacant face, as well as the unconscious general’s valet, whose clothes Brandt’s now wearing. “Let’s find out what the Commandant’s planning.”
Brandt leads us from the stables, and in only a few paces, his confidence melts into the guise of the meek, hunched little manservant we’d drugged inside the general’s carriage. Unlike me, he can become someone else without leaving himself behind. But this is what it means to dreamstride—this is the freedom Hesse promised me. I hold the tether from General Cold Sun’s body. So long as I hold that tether, my soul can control his body in the waking world while his soul slumbers harmlessly in the dreamworld.
As we round the stables, Brandt halts with a sharp inhale. A towering fortress of black metal juts from the earth before us, turrets like claws raking through the rust-hued sky. We’ve reached the Citadel, the seat of power for the Commandant—the supreme commander, general, and for all intents and purposes, god—of the Land of the Iron Winds. It smells sharp like a smith’s furnace, molten and a little bit like blood.
“Now to see if our spies were lying to us or not,” Brandt says. Foreigners are barred from entering the Land, and all subjects are forbidden from leaving. Everything we know about the Citadel and the Commandant was smuggled out of the Land at great cost. Entering it terrifies me, but Brandt is electrified. He was born for this—the chase, the subterfuge, the danger. I can almost see the plans spinning like a weaver’s loom in his mind. I have no such gift. If I were in control of my own stomach, I’d probably be emptying it right now.
Dreamstrider Page 1
