Dreamstrider

by Lindsay Smith

  Yet maybe he really does see something in me the Ministry can’t. Brandt said I had a determination in me. Maybe Marez sees it, too—perhaps sees it even more. I swallow as a nervous excitement ripples through me. Maybe Marez’s interest in me is about something else entirely. Feeling my face start to burn, I duck my head.

  We follow a curving alley off the main square; Marez tosses a glance over his shoulder to make sure I’m with him. His glossy curls look especially lustrous in the early dawn light. “Let’s see how right you are about your Dreamer protecting his flock from bad dreams.”

  He slides up to a doorway set into the alley and raps casually, then purses his fist to his lips, affecting modesty. The door cracks open just long enough for a bloodshot eye to appear, and then it slams closed again. Chains rattle and the door flings wide.

  “’E’s got cold feet.” A burly, aging gang enforcer, swaddled in ratty aristocratic garb, holds the door open for us. “I told ’im you’ll pay good for what ’e knows, but ’e’s not believin’ me.”

  “I’m sure we can convince him.” Marez’s pencil-thin smile invites me to reconsider the definition of “convince.” My pulse races. I’ve never taken part in a questioning at the Ministry before. I try to turn my fear into excitement at the unknown, a new adventure.

  We duck into a smoky gaming den, where men and a few gap-toothed women huddle around tables that constantly rock back and forth under the force of their Stacks playing. I think I could get drunk off the stink of ale in the air alone. Indulging my delicate secretary role, I clutch both hands to my chest and gasp.

  In truth, though, I’ve seen worse—far worse—in the tunnels. I’ve lived through worse. Suffering is just a fact of Barstadt life. Could Farthing life really be so much better?

  “Apologies that this isn’t up to your usual standard, Miss Silke,” Marez whispers right into my ear. His lower lip lingers a little too long against my earlobe—or do I imagine it? A thrill runs through me, or maybe it’s a shiver.

  We follow the enforcer across the gaming floor and duck through a ratty curtain into a hallway. I hold my breath in sudden panic. Please don’t let him be leading us to a Dreamless den. I can’t face that smell of dark memories, laced with the sweet, seductive Lullaby resin. We drift down the corridor, and I feel it on the air, stale and thick as a wall pushing me back. My mother’s distant stare swims before my eyes, begging me to let her sleep a moment longer. Please, please, no.

  The lieutenant stops before another doorway and holds up his hand. “Wait here while I get him.” I release my superstitious breath. The lieutenant ducks under the curtain, revealing only a slash of the horrors beyond: a full-grown man shriveled down to his skin and bones, rolling upon his hammock in unending sleep.

  I flatten against the wall and shut my eyes, trying to clear away the memories of my mother as she succumbed to another night of Lullaby sleep or of Hesse and his final days.

  “What’s the matter, Silke?” Marez asks, flattening his palm beside my arm against the wall. “Never seen a Dreamless den before?”

  The lie rests on the tip of my tongue. I expect Marez to be watching me with haughty indignance, but his face is soft, tinged with sadness. Marez understands my feelings toward my previous life; he didn’t try to wave it away like the others in the Ministry do, telling me it’s just the way of things, it’s how Barstadt’s always been. “It’s been a long time,” I say slowly. “From my life … before.”

  He rests a gentle hand against my forearm, his expression heavy with understanding. “I’m sorry you have to see it again.”

  “It … it shouldn’t be this way,” I stammer. “The gangs. The Lullaby addiction.”

  Marez’s gaze flicks toward mine. “I thought you believed these people deserve their fates, foundering in Lullaby dreamlessness. That it’s their own fault for not believing hard enough.”

  I shake my head, fighting not to lose my nerve. Dreamer, but it feels freeing to speak this way. “If anyone’s to blame, it’s the constables and the aristocrats who keep the gangs in business—the diseased backbone of Barstadt. We—we could do better.”

  “And so you could.” He tucks a lock of hair behind my ear. “The gangs fill a need—the need people have to escape their troubled dreams. If there wasn’t a demand for it—”

  “Fine. So the need for Lullaby is the result of some failing on the Dreamer’s part. Is that what you want me to say?”

  He cups my chin and tilts my face toward his. “Is that what you think of me, Silke?” It burns where he touches me. Like he’s made of poison, I think bitterly—but no. That’s not right. Like he’s made of fire. The fire I need to be a better operative. A better me. I want that fire, too.

  “I’m not trying to turn you against your beliefs,” Marez says. “I just want you to question what you’ve been taught. You must always think up here.” He taps my temple. “Not just with your heart.”

  “Balance,” I say, my voice far breathier than I’d meant.

  Marez nods solemnly, lowering his head. I can feel his breath on my face. “Balance.”

  Balance. The word quivers in my blood like a high, clear note. It has to be better than scrambling my way up the crooked spines of the other tunnelers as I make my escape. Better than Barstadt’s obsession to climb ever higher—through marriage, through colonies conquered, through gangs placed under one’s control. Better than the pressure to be better, more. To live up to Hesse’s impossible theories. To be aristocratic enough for Brandt and the legacy he must grow.

  Suddenly, I crave balance, the way little tunneler Livia craved a hot meal. I need it like I need air.

  The lieutenant stumbles out of the den, escorting a sooty, rat-faced man with crinkled gray hair. Marez’s source—Dreamer only knows where he managed to dig him up. Marez releases me, standing at attention, that sharp glint back in his gaze. I tug at my dress and adopt a similar pose, though my face feels like it’s aflame.

  “Y’see, Karl? I told you they’re nobody to be afraid of. They’re gonna treat you real nice,” the lieutenant says. He shoves Karl forward. “How about you three head back to the parlor and make yourselves at home?”

  Karl looks between Marez and me, tongue worrying at a gap in his teeth. “I want the gold up front.”

  “Done,” Marez says. “And the first round is on me.”

  Back in the gaming parlor, the lieutenant finds us a booth tucked away from the noisy Stacks tournaments, and fetches us three tumblers of some dreadful grain alcohol. I tuck my hands into my lap and try not to let my skin come into contact with the filthy booth.

  Karl downs his drink in one gulp before staring a hole through the table as he speaks. “All right. So my buddy works at the jail down in Imperial Square. Where they kept Lady Twyne, right? And he swears there was some scary guy coachin’ her about somethin’ that didn’t make much sense. Bribed my buddy so he could get close to her cell and talk to the lady.”

  “Well?” Marez asks. “What did they talk about?”

  Karl raises his drink, gulps, and then lowers the glass to the table. It rattles against the wood; his arm, still gripping the glass, is shaking. “It—it don’t make sense. You know? Crazy stuff, like.”

  Marez snatches back the pouch of gold and stands up, towering over Karl, who’s shrunken down into himself. “Come, Silke. We’re leaving.”

  I glance back at Karl, but he’s curled inward, away from whatever he heard from his friend. “But…” Karl’s jaw works like he wants to protest, but nothing makes its way past his lips. He grimaces and shakes his head.

  “This man has nothing for us. I’m sorry to have wasted your time.” Marez holds out his hand to me, all hints of his earlier good cheer erased. This is the counterweight to his easy demeanor—the carrot and the stick.

  Slowly, I lift myself from the chair and shuffle toward Marez. His hand closes around my shoulder.

  “Wait,” Karl says. “Just … a moment. Wait.” He digs the heels of his palms into his temples. �
�All right, all right, I’ll tell you.”

  Marez runs his tongue over the edge of his teeth. Behind him, I catch Jorn’s eyes; anger smolders on his face; he’s giving Marez the sort of look he used to reserve for Stargazer lieutenants who compelled him to fight other tunnelers to the death in brawling rings. But I’m not in any danger—Marez must be calling Karl’s bluff.

  Marez releases my shoulder and returns to his seat, eyes never leaving Karl. I rub my shoulder where Marez had gripped it too hard, and follow them back to the table.

  Just a play on Marez’s part. Nothing to be nervous about.

  “They were babblin’ about dreams,” Karl says. “She was askin’ him to hide her soul in her dreams, something like that. Make her live forever.”

  I stare at Karl, dumbfounded. Is it even possible to do what he’s suggesting? I think back to the building I saw flickering through the trees in Oneiros last night—I’d forgotten about it in my panic to escape those horrible beasts. But if a person were capable of preserving her soul inside Oneiros, to continue her treachery even after death …

  Karl continues to bore through the table with his gaze. Marez, always one for subtlety, merely lifts one brow. “And how reliable is this friend of yours?” Marez asks, words oozing with cloying contempt.

  “I … he … Okay. He works for the Stargazers, okay? And he didn’t just overhear the conversation.” Karl leans in closer. “The Stargazers boss paid him to bring the guy into the jail so he could talk with Lady Twyne.”

  The Stargazers—tangled up in more than just shady business dealings with Lady Twyne. I’m suddenly overcome with the urge to throw up. Dreamer, why do the Stargazers have to be involved? Anyone but them.

  I look back at him and Karl, and try to summon Brandt’s skill for playing roles. “It’s frightening to think,” I say. I manage a watery smile. “Traitors like Sindra Twyne preserving themselves through dreams?”

  Marez lifts his tumbler in a toast. “May your Dreamer protect us from whatever it may mean.”

  I toast with them, but look to Jorn again. Jorn is not a small mammal; though he’s all muscle and hair, I’d wager he weighs more than some ponies. The look on his face, though, at the mention of the Stargazers is like the look of a wolf facing an even larger predator. He may be brave enough to sail into the dark metal heart of the Land of the Iron Winds with us tomorrow, but I don’t know if either of us has the stomach to face down Adolphus Retch again.

  Not after the Stargazer Incident.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Jornisander the Destroyer—a name long drenched in blood. A prized fighter in the tunnel brawling rings, where victory only came from total annihilation. The iron fist of the Stargazer gang, protecting the gang leader from enemies real and imagined as he carried out whatever gruesome tasks the leader didn’t wish to soil his own hands with.

  But Jorn was always more than a hammer and a blade. He saw the way the gangs exacted revenge, extracted payment, exploited tunnelers, all while fattening their own purses and those of the aristocrats who colluded with them. He believed life could be different for himself and all tunnelers. And so he decided to spill some blood of his own.

  A murdered gang lieutenant here and there, some aristocrat’s accountant found strangled in his sleep—the blood stains spread far, though I can’t say anyone mourned their passing. All of his victims were monsters in their own rights—one prostituted tunneler children to vulgar aristocrats; one beat a tunneler woman to death for failing to offer a suitable tithe.

  Jorn recruited more disgruntled tunnelers to his cause, and they branched out from random violence into more precision strikes. Some of his allies, too, turned to other means—educating tunnelers, urging them to resist the gangs’ demands, fighting for rights and pay and even, most improbably of all, citizenship for all tunnelers. Jorn only set it in motion, but the movement grew far beyond his vengeful killings to protect tunnelers who’d been wronged. Eventually, the Ministry couldn’t ignore whatever campaign was taking place. And there was Jorn, right at the source.

  The Ministry convinced him to secretly inform to them on the gang leaders and their activities. With Jorn’s help, Durst promised, they could root out corruption and exploitation through legal means, and help the Destroyers advance their cause of emancipation for the tunnelers (though, of course, they couldn’t support it outright). From the information Jorn passed us, the Ministry dismantled three Dreamless dens, five gambling houses, and an elaborate smuggling scheme that stretched across Barstadt’s northern colonies.

  Jorn was good at what he did, and while the Ministry knew there were always risks, it was only a matter of time before the Destroyers’ successes started to put Jorn in danger. Adolphus Retch, the leader of the Stargazer gang, liked the prestige of keeping a winning brawler like Jorn as his pet, but Jorn wanted to see Retch burn. For Jorn, it was personal, given the countless times Retch had sent Jorn into the brawling ring to kill or be killed with no other options as a born tunneler. But the Ministry had other reasons, too, to bring the Stargazers down—not least of all for the chaos they sowed within the tunnels and without. The Stargazers were, after all, the biggest and cruelest of the gangs; rumors of Retch’s evil deeds were whispered like warnings to keep tunnelers and aristocrats alike in their thrall. Durst proposed an extraction when he feared the risk to Jorn was too great—we’d pull Jorn out of the tunnels in a spectacular fashion, make it look like he’d been killed so no one would come looking for him to blame, and grab as much dirt on Retch as we could on the way out. Turn it over to the courts. Use Jorn’s detailed testimony to see Retch tried for his crimes.

  Durst chose Brandt to helm the mission. Brandt and I had mostly done trifling operations thus far, infiltrating alehouses and the like, but this mission was complicated and needed a dreamstrider. Brandt was certain I was ready to handle something more. Durst agreed to put me on the team, not only for the close access dreamstriding offered into paranoid Retch’s inner circle, but, it seemed to me, to convince himself that I’d really lived up to all Hesse had promised about me after all.

  This would be the first mistake.

  I remember clearly the way I felt, sitting in the briefing room while Brandt reviewed his plans with us. The bright blossom of excitement unfurling within me, of pride, of a sense of rightness within the world. If I served the Dreamer right, I’d help Barstadt. I’d help the case for the Writ of Emancipation. If I could be strong enough, good enough. I believe I could be, at last. That the Dreamer would give me the strength.

  Jornisander and Thrum, one of Jorn’s fellow vigilantes, met Vera, Brandt, and me at the back entrance of the Stargazers’ resin warehouse down by the docks. My eyes bulged at the sight of them—Jorn, larger than life, like a stone carving that should be holding up a colonnade in the Imperial Quarter, and Thrum, nearly as tall, but wide enough to seal shut a tunnel line.

  They had already knocked out one of Retch’s lieutenant’s, Synarius, and they took us to the storage room where they’d stashed his unconscious body. Brandt produced a scarf from his ridiculously dapper vest and feathered it under Synarius’s nose. I pulled a face before gulping down my dreamwort elixir, and when I opened Synarius’s eyes I found Vera pouring a cloudy liquid, like overskimmed milk, from a pitcher into smaller bottles at the bottom of her cart.

  Brandt spread a grimy oilcloth over my body in the corner. “Are we almost ready?”

  “Almost.” Vera kept one eye on me as she topped off the rest of the jars.

  I pulled myself to standing. Too fast, but I was impatient, ready to jump into the action and prove myself. I wasn’t used to Synarius’s scratchy eyes and legs like coiled springs. And the smell from whatever Vera was pouring—sharp, making my head spin from vicious little fingers that sank into my skin and held tight. Then, as I tried to move, Synarius’s feet snagged on the bundles of ropes on the storage room floor—

  I caught myself, but when I tripped, I’d splashed the substance Vera had been pouring all over her righ
t arm, her chest, her shoulder. She sucked down a deep breath and proceeded to swear at me as quietly as she could manage.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I’m still gaining my footing!” I snatched a scrap of fabric from her cart, nearly upending the remaining jars of liquid, then started smearing the scrap all over her wet gown.

  “Give me that, you imbecile, before you kill us both.” She ripped it from my hands—from Synarius’s hands. “Do you have any idea what this is?”

  “Your—your liquor. That you and Brandt are pretending to sell to Retch.” Synarius’s voice wasn’t equipped for such a meek, shuddering tone.

  “And also a highly dangerous, highly flammable, highly unstable compound. Lion’s milk.” She sighed. “Didn’t you read the mission brief? We’re using it to burn this warehouse to the ground.”

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered again.

  Vera opened her mouth to continue the tongue lashing, but Brandt spoke first. “Vera. Are you a part of this team, or not?”

  Vera’s mouth slowly eased shut.

  “Good. Then respect your team members—all of them. We have a job to do.” He turned toward me. “Be careful. Take it slow if his body’s throwing you off, all right?”

  I nod, tension easing away.

  Jorn knocked on the storage room door before poking his head inside. “It’s time.”

  Jorn accompanied Brandt and Vera into the main warehouse, where Stargazer lackeys stirred giant vats of the noxious Lullaby resin, while we waited in the storage room for them to carry out their charade. I could smell it from our storage room, mingling with the spilled lion’s milk, twitching at Synarius’s bulbous nose. Thrum watched me with eyebrows stitched together, like he was waiting for the Synarius he knew and feared to reemerge.