Dreamstrider

by Lindsay Smith

  “Mothwood,” I whisper. The word comes from somewhere deep inside of me, an instinctive reaction. But the rest of me is adrift. Mothwood smoke. Marez sending me into the dreamworld with mothwood …

  Sora nods slowly. “I think that’s what he called it, yes.”

  My throat aches like I’ve been swallowing glass. Marez isn’t just a slimy operative. He’s a dreamstrider, too.

  Hesse’s angry, vengeful test subject—subject 39.

  I cover my mouth with my hand and will myself not to cry. “Marez is a dreamstrider. He must be. And he’s been dreamstriding with my body to get the Ministry’s secrets.” All those strange dreams of digging through the Ministry archives rush back to me now. Searching for more information about the shards of Nightmare’s heart. Marez used me in my sleep, when he only needed my identity to grant him access. And when I was awake, he used me, too—like guiding him through the tunnels last night.

  Of all people, I should have seen the signs—but I didn’t have a clue.

  “He promised he’d buy me my citizenship papers,” Sora says, scrubbing away her tears. “Promised to take me back to Farthing. He said he loved me! I had no idea he was after Livia. I swear, I didn’t know—”

  “Enough.” Brandt’s every muscle is tightened like a loaded catapult as he cups one hand around my shoulder. “Liv, I know you’re in shock…” He bites off whatever else he’d been about to say, jaw muscles working. “But we have to leave now, before the Farthing army breaches the barracks. If you never sent that letter, then Durst doesn’t know that the Farthingers mean us harm—”

  Jorn appears in the doorway, a pack slung over his shoulder. “I couldn’t get everything you asked,” he tells Brandt. “There’s too many of them.”

  “We’ll have to make do.” Brandt turns back to Sora. “We need you to get us through the tunnels. Then we can talk about your betrayal,” he adds, with a fresh edge in his voice.

  “Of course.” Sora stifles a sob and draws a deep breath. I can see the tunneler in her shine through. While I share Brandt’s rage—how dare she, after everything I’ve done for her? But if I were still in the tunnels, wouldn’t I have done the same for a chance to escape? Didn’t I believe the same wretched lie from those velvet lips? Disgust is curdling, poisonous and sour, inside of me, and I don’t know whether I feel it more for Sora or myself.

  No, Marez deserves it most of all.

  I snatch up Professor Hesse’s journal and shove it into my bag, as well as a handful of tithes. The knowledge of Marez’s true identity feels like iron in my boots, weighing me down as I try to keep up with Brandt and Sora through the barracks halls. Hesse never specified what happened to Subject 39—I assumed he’d been consumed by the Nightmare Wastes, or else that he decided the danger was too great and forfeited his claim to power. But the truth seems much crueler, and I wonder if that’s what sent the professor into such despair. Marez is a dreamstrider with no regard for the Dreamer or the rules of the dreamworld. A dreamstrider who sought to use his powers against the Dreamer’s people instead of for them. Marez told me himself how he craved balance, to seize a power that he no longer felt Barstadt deserved. But is that, too, a lie? How much can I trust the doubts I’ve had in Barstadt and the Dreamer, knowing he steered me down that path?

  What more did he need from me? He can already dreamstride; while I’m sure he would love to deprive Barstadt of my ability, there must have been more to it. He needed me for something specific.

  I stop in the middle of the corridor, just outside the laborers’ entrance that leads to the Imperial Quarter tunnels beneath the ministry building. “The key.” I smack myself on the forehead. “The cabinet in Hesse’s Oneiros home—he used my memories to find it in Hesse’s old storage room, from after his office flooded. I didn’t even remember it myself, but it must have been there, recessed deep in my memories.”

  Brandt reaches for my hand to pull me into the dark mouth of the tunnels. In the distance, we can hear the dull echoes of shuffling feet. “Marez took what was in that cabinet?”

  I steel myself against the cool, damp air as we follow the twisting stairwell deep into the earth. “It must have been the binding ritual. In Oneiros—the gemstones—they said his heart will be bound once more. Nightmare’s heart. He has everything he needs to launch an assault on Barstadt with Nightmare’s help.” My hands flutter uselessly against each other. I can’t allow that tremor into my voice for what I have to say next. “Marez is the Commandant’s mystic, who promised him a warbeast. Nightmare.”

  Brandt swears, and Sora wails with a fresh set of tears. But she only allows herself that one outburst. She clamps her jaw shut as we enter the main trunk line that runs beneath the Ministry and Imperial Square. A throng of workers stream in both directions past the enforcers at the tunnel’s mouth, joined by more than a few folk who I suspect are refugees like ourselves. I dive my hand into my coat pocket, feeling around for the stash of tithes I keep on me, but instead my fingers brush across the wrapped ball of Lullaby.

  A line of escapees and workers snakes down the tunnel, and we shuffle into the flow, heads down, unquestioning. Jorn shuffles alongside me with all the coolness of a caged tiger, though the tunneler instincts in him, too, keep his gaze cast down.

  Brandt takes a deep breath. “All right. We can use this. If the Farthingers have free access to the Imperial tunnels—”

  “Not free,” Sora says. “The tunnels connecting to the palace were sealed after the last protest by the Destroyers. But they do have the gang leaders’ support and access to several of the main tunnels.”

  “So the gang here knew the invasion was coming?” I ask.

  “That’s my understanding, yes.” Sora scowls. “Our gang bosses told us all to report to work as usual, though the Destroyers were hinting they had other plans.”

  “And we already know one of the gangs supplied them with mothwood smoke. Among other things, most likely.” Brandt scowls. “Their dealer must know where Marez and Kriza are stationed.”

  “So we’ll just charge into the gang leader’s office and demand to know their whereabouts! That’ll go over wondrously,” I say.

  Sora flinches. Jorn cracks his knuckles. “I can try to reach out to the Destroyers. See if they’d be willing to aid me one last time,” he says.

  Brandt frowns. “They might just as easily turn you in to Retch for the bounty on all our heads.”

  “Sora,” I ask, looking between her and Jorn. “Which gang has control of the tunnels beneath the Ministry of Affairs these days?”

  She bites down hard on her lip and mumbles something, the sound lost in the crunch of gravel underneath our feet.

  I draw a deep breath. I cannot lose my temper. I need every ounce of energy I have left to find us a way out of this mess. “I’m sorry. What did you say?” I ask as calmly and as patiently as I can.

  “Stargazers,” she says again.

  Brandt crashes into the person in front of him. I nearly choke on my own tongue. And Jorn, Jorn—he sweeps Sora off her feet and in no time at all is dangling her over the stream of runoff by her ankles.

  “We’re headed straight into Stargazer territory?” He rattles her like he can shake the truth away.

  “Enough!” I cry, tugging at his arm. “It’s not as if we have any other options. These tunnels are our only way out. Put her down already!”

  Jorn flips her around and plops her right on the edge of the creek. Her arms windmill as she seeks balance. An older man sniffs at us.

  The Stargazers will be another matter entirely. And right at the fore of their constellation is Adolphus Retch. The man whose main bodyguard Brandt and I liberated so long ago, at the same exact moment his Lullaby operation burned up at the docks, just after he murdered his lieutenant in cold blood. The man who’s promised to kill Jorn if he ever sets foot in Stargazer territory again.

  “Well then,” Brandt says. He flicks the coin I’d given him as his tithe into the air and catches it. “Let’s make t
he best of it. Any way we could get the Destroyers involved?”

  “We just might.” Jorn fingers a scar that spans the knuckles of his left hand. We’re nearly to the gang lieutenant’s post, where he collects each tunneler’s tithe. “Do you trust me?” Jorn asks.

  No, says the voice in the back of my mind, without hesitation. He may have kept us alive in Birnau, during the Stargazer Incident, and plenty of times between. But this is personal for him.

  But Brandt answers for us, chin high, defiant. “I don’t see how we have any choice.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The new Stargazer headquarters, in a shunted-off portion of the Imperial catacombs, are certainly a step up from Retch’s old Bayside tunnel digs. Clearly the Incident didn’t set them back for long. Each chamber is more elaborately decorated than the one before, with shimmering golden mosaics and marble sarcophagi and altars ablaze with scented candles, although the scruffy, leather-clad guards do detract from the effect. Jorn binds Brandt’s and my hands and gags us, and escorts us through the fifth or so set of guardsmen.

  Finally, we reach the wrought iron gates, framed in human skulls and flanked by stacks of femurs. Part of the original Imperial catacombs, or Adolphus’s own special touch? I doubt I want to know.

  “Well, well, well.” A vicious smirk curves the first guard’s mouth. “Jornisander the Destroyer. Look at this, boys. I guess these catacombs have ghosts in them after all.”

  I glance at the second guard, who’s watching Jorn like he might evaporate before his eyes. “Retch told us you were dead, or good as.”

  “Nah, not dead, though he’s about to be. Who let you through?” the first guardsman asks. He sizes up Jorn, who, for all his considerable girth, only reaches this man’s nose. Does Adolphus breed them or what? If we had an army full of castoff Stargazer muscle, maybe we wouldn’t be cowering under the press of Farthing and the Commandant right now.

  “I understand your boss has a bounty on all three of our heads,” Jorn says. He spits into the canal and glowers right back at the guard, as if he’d spat in his face. “I’ll take my chances that I can spare one with two.”

  The first guard snorts. “All right, Jornisander. It’s your head.” He pulls the pins holding the gruesome gate in place, and it swings open under its own grave weight.

  The second guard, however, is still staring at Jorn with a twitch to his face. “A lot of folks believed in the Destroyers. A lot of folks gave their lives to continue the work your ilk began,” he says, looking Jorn square in the eye. “Was quite a blow to learn you were a stool for the Ministry after all.”

  “Why give a damn about what I did, or didn’t do? The Destroyers were never about me. They were about justice.” Jorn shakes his head. “You don’t need me to fight for the Writ. To oppose the gangs. If they only fought for me, then they were fools.”

  The guard puffs up his chest. “They’re fighting still. We—they’ll win freedom without your help!”

  “Good.” Jorn grins, though there’s no warmth behind it. “As they should. And they should start with bastards like Retch, who let these Farthing monsters take over our city—”

  “Shut your bloody mouth,” the first guard snaps at Jorn. “How about you wait outside, Tomas? You and I need to have a little chat.”

  Tomas’s cheeks darken. “Y-yes. Sorry.”

  But Jorn lowers his mouth toward Tomas’s ear as we pass, only for a second, before we follow the first guard through the gate.

  Adolphus Retch’s lair is a vulgar twin to the Emperor’s—vaulted ceilings gilded in moss and water stains instead of gold. What it lacks in surface space, it more than makes up for with all the absurdly unnecessary bits of treasure crammed into the slots where the early aristocrats’ bones once lay. Glittering golden trinkets, stacks of pottery from the kingdom that preceded the Commandant’s Land of the Iron Winds, scrolls depicting Oneiros and Nightmare and the Farthing forests and the Itinerant Sea and the ivory-skinned tribesmen of the north. One sarcophagus has been refashioned as a massive bed, complete with a white-eyed concubine sprawled under a satin sheet. A shudder tears through me as we walk past her; I try not to consider the likelihood of my mother inhabiting some similar Lullaby-pacified fate. I know only that she secured protection for our corner of the tunnels, and I never questioned at what price.

  Adolphus Retch, boss of the Stargazer gang, stands up from his jagged throne. He himself could pass for a distant relative to the Emperor, now that I look at him. Shorter and rounder, but with the same fired-clay look of a man who’ll down a shot of rye with you one minute and throw you in the bear cage the next. The already lazy smile on his moist lips swells up like a blister as he scans the unbelievable prize that just walked itself through his doors.

  “Jornisander the Destroyer! Or is it Betrayer now? My least favorite bodyguard. And what were your names again? Barton and Olga?” He tucks his thumbs into his armpits. “Well, I’m sure they weren’t your real names anyhow.”

  Jorn pushes Brandt and I onto the stairs leading to the altar; without our hands free to catch ourselves, we crumple onto the floor. Jorn’s boots are caked with sewage and slough as he treads before us. “When I left your service, I stayed out of the tunnels. Not once did I breach your territory. Call me a deserter if you like, but I’ve done you no harm.”

  “No harm?” Retch erupts with laughter. “You mean aside from turning me against my best lieutenant and burning down the entire Stargazer warehouse? And how about the ensuing riot that ran me out of the Dockside tunnels? You’re as bloody harmless as a sewer roach, aren’t you!”

  “And look at you now. King of the Imperial tunnels. Hard to see that as anything but a step up,” Jorn says.

  “Mm. But you don’t know the price I paid for it.” Retch’s voice is thin as a rapier. I wrestle myself to a sitting position. He wants to speak of prices paid? My blood boils at the thought. He better not dare blame us for what he’s done—for selling all of Barstadt to the Farthingers.

  “I know something of it.” Jorn sounds like he’s chewing marble. “Your steady buyers from Farthing, for a start.”

  “Not your concern,” Retch responds, too coolly. He’s not rising to the bait. Brandt catches my eye, and I blink to give my consent. Dreamer, bless that boy for always knowing my thoughts! “Oh,” Retch continues, “by the way—if you think you’re going to trade these two in to clear your bounty, you’re going to be very disappointed. Boys?”

  Two behemoth guardsmen flank Jorn. They’re too swift, even for him. Each snares one of his arms, and they fling him onto his back across a sarcophagus. Adolphus is on him like a scorpion, blade raised over Jorn’s sternum to strike.

  “You’re right. I rebuilt my little chemical fiefdom from scratch. Mothwood and Lullaby—they sell well enough, I suppose, but here’s where the real money is to be made.”

  Brandt’s foot hovers in front of him; he rolls it so gently onto the stone floor it’s like he’s giving it a kiss. The next foot follows suit. Stitch by stitch, he silently rises to standing, without even a pop of his knees. From my view at his back, I see the rope dance free from one wrist—Jorn bound them with a trick knot—and he slips it inside the sleeve of the other.

  In the corner behind the guards, a little slip of a shadow glides along the wall, small enough to have been just a flicker in the candle flame.

  “Nightmare’s bile, they call it on the streets. Dash of used cleansing water and a wicked slurry of poison. You’ll feel like you’re stewing in Nightmare’s gut.”

  Adolphus swipes the blade down Jorn’s chest. A shallow cut, but Jorn’s screams rattle the catacombs to their marrow. I don’t have time to contemplate why before Brandt flies onto Retch’s back, moving in one seamless motion as my unlaced bindings slither to the ground. Brandt hooks his rope bindings around Retch’s throat like he’s bridling a horse. “Guards!” Retch wheezes.

  Tomas storms in, blade drawn. He looks at Retch and Brandt, then at Jorn and the guards holding him. �
�Is it true?” Tomas asks Retch. “You’ve let the Farthingers take control?”

  “You’re just cattle to be sold,” Retch says. “What do you care who owns you?”

  Tomas lunges at the guard, who drops Jorn and throws up an arm to block the stab. Tomas’s dagger flies across the room. But Tomas presses forward. He grapples with the other guard. They tumble to the floor, and with a swift punch, the other guard goes limp, unconscious beneath Tomas.

  I run to Jorn’s side, but he’s flailing his arms like a sail ripped loose. Once I manage to pin his arms down, I see why. The wound itself is mild, but his veins are blackening around it, webbing across his rib cage. “What’s happening to him?”

  Retch laughs, hoarse and wheezing as Brandt pulls the rope tighter. “He’s trapped in his nightmares now.”

  Jorn jerks, twisting as if trying to evade countless blows. “You can fight them,” I plead with him. “Pray to the Dreamer. Think of a reason to fight…”

  Adolphus cackles, straining against the rope at his throat. “Your Dreamer is a lie. He won’t help you. Your doom is coming—I can hear its wings, beating like a heart.”

  “Don’t say another word except to answer our questions.” Brandt yanks the rope tighter; Sora scurries around him to bind Retch’s hands and legs.

  Jorn’s eyes roll back into his head. Dreamer’s mercy, he’s not going to make it. Could I enter his consciousness with him, fight the nightmares for him? I thumb the vial at my throat. I’m running low—we weren’t able to grab reserves from the storage room in the main Ministry building before we left. I have to save it for Marez, if I can, but if it means helping Jorn …

  “First question. What did you supply the Farthing spies with besides mothwood?” Brandt asks, holding firm on the rope.

  “Connections.” Retch wheezes. “Information.”

  He pulls tighter. “Too vague. What kind of information?”