Dreamstrider

by Lindsay Smith

  Vera groans. “Damn it, Livia. Why me? I don’t even want to be a bloody operative anymore. I’m ready to marry some disgustingly wealthy suitor and bide my days by spending as much of his money as I can.”

  “You ran from that before,” I say.

  “Yes, but that was back when I thought there was more to life. When I thought she was willing to give up her title and inheritance for me, like I gave up my family … Ah, well. I was wrong.” She touches her forehead, between her eyebrows. “I’m getting a gemstone set there soon. I’ll have quite a choice of suitors.”

  I slump back in the overstuffed armchair. “Please, Vera. If we don’t stop Marez, Nightmare will destroy everything—including your plans for a quieter life. I don’t stand a chance of infiltrating the Commandant’s entourage without you.”

  She laughs then, a wry smile twisting her lips. “They were quite fond of me when we were in Birnau, weren’t they?”

  “Yes!” I exclaim, maybe too desperately, but I’m too short on time to butter her up slowly, like Brandt would. “You performed fabulously. We’ll sneak into their entourage in no time and follow them straight into the palace and put an end to all of this before they resurrect Nightmare.” And find Brandt, I think silently, but with an aching heart, I know that must come second.

  “Fine. Fine.” She rubs her hands together. “What’s our plan, then?”

  I pause for a moment. “Err … well … How do you normally piece one together?”

  Vera shrugs. “I usually wait for Edina to tell me the plan. When I’m speaking to her, that is.”

  I force myself to smile. “All right, then let’s think what Edina would say. Probably something involving disguises, but with the Ministry under Farthing’s control, we can’t access their costumes, and—”

  Vera clears her throat daintily and glances away from me as her cheeks turn a pretty hue of rose. “I may have a solution for that.”

  “Wonderful! What is it?”

  “Well, I…” She grinds her toe into the woven rug. “Edina never said as much, but she seemed rather fond of how the serving girl costume looked on me in Birnau, so I, ah, borrowed a few.”

  I’m about to fling myself at her to hug her, but I manage to stop myself. “Wait, how do you know she fancied them? I thought you and Edina aren’t speaking.”

  “Oh, we’re not. It’s to make her feel miserable with guilt and envy, and forget all about marrying Brandt.” Vera sits up straighter, grinning at herself.

  I shake my head. One should never expect sense from Vera, despite her knack for inspiring brilliance when it’s required. “All right. But I’m all out of mothwood rags.” I pull the last dried up one from Kriza’s pocket.

  “I’ve a solution for that too.” Vera stands up. “You’re aware of my family’s business, aren’t you?”

  I stare at her blankly.

  “Well then. Let me introduce you to our family storerooms.”

  *

  Vera’s family’s basement is a maze of alchemical ingredients—dreamwort and mothwood, purifying water, resins for every possible ailment. “All of it honestly obtained, too,” she explains as we walk through the shelves, grabbing everything we’ll need. “My father prides himself on not doing business with the gangs. Another reason my parents weren’t happy about her.”

  Vera wastes no time setting the mothwood aflame in its tinderbox and stuffing a fine selection of scarves into the upper compartment. While the scarves soak up the smoke, we busy ourselves dressing in courtesan garb. I take care to drape a gauzy veil over my eyes to cover the black eye Vera gave me. This much, at least, seems to be going well.

  It’s what’s transpiring in Oneiros that makes me far more nervous. I’m still pinned in place by the sword. The lizard has rolled off of me and is crouching in the mud, her eyes focused on something out of my field of vision. Lady Twyne, perhaps? What is she doing with the heart shards? Why hasn’t Marez pressed into my thoughts again? I try to move my arms, but the mud is congealing around me; the stench holds me down, a living and breathing thing that has taken up the lizard’s task. Kriza may be toying with me for now, but soon, very soon, I fear she’ll awaken and force me out of her body, and then I’ll be lost in the dreamworld. If I don’t find a fresh body to inhabit, the Wastes will claim me in no time.

  Vera and I rush to the docks, cloaks thrown over us to keep the biting autumn cold from our now very exposed flesh, and stop at the edge of the Farthing squadron guarding the battlement gates. The smell of spent ammunition hangs in the air, drifting in lazy tufts over the harbor. In the distance, I can see the black-shelled warships of the Iron Winds fleet, hulking like beetles, jagged horns overpowering their slender profiles. An ant trail of landing boats spans the distance between them and the docks.

  “All right,” I mutter from beneath my gauzy drapes. “How do you suggest we pull this off?”

  But Vera has already slunk away from me and is shimmying her way down a drain pipe at the lowest point of the battlements. I can do nothing but stare slack-jawed at her as she hops lithely from rivet to rivet, until she pauses to glower back up at me and beckons me with a furious wave of her arm.

  Kriza may be stronger than I am, but her dense muscles aren’t meant for this work. The drain pipe groans under my weight. I’m better off scaling the stones themselves. I flop my way down the wall in an excruciating dance. For once, I sense a tiny fear in the lizard’s pulse. She does not want her body damaged. I smirk, grateful to have the upper hand, if only for one painful moment.

  Vera sidles up to a guardsman near the gate’s mouth, overseeing the reassembly of some ludicrous black carriage the Commandant’s entourage has hauled over on one of the landing boats. When he hunches over a wheel assembly, she places one slippered foot before him; he follows her gauze-swathed tan leg up to its terminus and raises a brow at her.

  “The Iron Winds blow, but the Commandant is our windbreak. He shall never fall,” she purrs, and reaches out to trail her index finger from his ear down along his chest.

  “The Iron Winds have truly blown in a beauty for me,” he says with a grin.

  I try not to gag.

  Vera pouts, jutting out her lower lip. “Unfortunately, I’m promised to the Commandant,” she says. “When you’re finished with your assembly, could you let us inside?”

  The guard hesitates, and Vera takes a step back. Of course they’re being cautious; this is a strange land, and they’re allied with monsters.

  “I’ll be sure to tell him who helped us,” she says, leaning toward him again. “What’s your name? Maybe after we’ve visited the Commandant…”

  “Yes. Of course.” He snaps at the other soldiers to hurry up their assembly. “Lieutenant Radiant Moon. Don’t forget me, sweetheart.”

  “Oh, I won’t,” she says, her grin as wide as her face, and the lieutenant helps us into the cab.

  We settle onto the cushions, leaving a gap between us for the Commandant. “Dreamer bless, woman. You’ve got nerves of double-forged steel,” I tell Vera.

  “I do my best.” She winks, but I can’t help the tightness in my throat and the twist in my gut. This is a far too delicate and chaotic mission to undertake without my partner. Where can Brandt be? Please, Dreamer, let him be safe.

  Let him be alive.

  “Kriza is not going to be pleasant when she wakes up,” I say, trying to push away my terror. If I can just keep talking … “We’ll have to restrain her before I drink the dreamwort.”

  “Don’t worry. I have it all figured out.” Vera pats my knee. Somehow, I’m less than reassured.

  The carriage door swings open. The Commandant stares at us with his little, venomous gaze, until slowly, his cheeks relax. “The Iron Winds blow favorably today.”

  “They always favor you, my tamer of breezes,” Vera says.

  “Let’s see how much they favor me,” he replies with a smirk. I suppress a shudder as he climbs in between us. He loops one arm around my shoulder and the other around Vera’
s, and she clings to him as though a fifty-foot chasm just opened underneath her. I grit my teeth. I suppose it wouldn’t help our plans much if I lost Kriza’s lunch all over the Commandant right now.

  I grimace and stare at the curtained window while the Commandant’s hands rove over Vera. She giggles and playfully swats at him. Then his hand crawls up my thigh. It may not be my thigh, but I’ve no interest in whatever he’s looking for. I fish a kerchief out of Kriza’s cleavage, holding my breath as I do so, and feather it against his shoulder.

  “Tell me, my Commandant. Do you think this perfume smells pretty?” I ask him, and I hold out the kerchief to him.

  “Let me see, my dear.” He holds it to his nose and takes a deep breath.

  Clunk. His head lolls back against the carriage.

  Vera exhales, and her shoulders hunch forward. “Dreamer’s mercy. Took you long enough.”

  “How close are we to wherever they’re taking us?”

  She peels back the curtain. “I’ve no idea. We’re not headed to the palace.”

  In Oneiros, the lizard is smiling, that smug grin so like her human form. I can’t wait to leave her stranded.

  “We’ll sort it out when we arrive. Go ahead and tie me up.”

  Vera hastily binds my hands—Kriza’s hands—together in her lap. “All right, let’s get on with it already!” Vera raises the vial to my lips and I plunge back into Oneiros—back into a lightning storm of blood.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The lizard is gone—Kriza must have woken up the moment I fled her body—but the swamp remains inside the temple, pelted by bloody rain. I slosh out of the mud and wheeze for air, but it’s thick with rot; it feels like the blood is flooding my lungs. The earth rumbles with a mighty crack, and a chunk of the temple’s ceiling crushes the spot where I’d been standing just a moment before.

  I reach the lip of the sunken black glass where I’d found the Nightmare shards and suck in my breath. Marez must have already gotten the ruby from the Emperor, and is transferring it now. The fifth shard hasn’t finished transferring into Oneiros, but a red orb glows in its setting, brighter and brighter each moment that I look on it.

  Lady Twyne appears from the shadows, her eyes sinkholes in her sallow face. Blood drips from her facial gems; three long gashes run the length of one cheek. The first Commandant stands beside her—gaunt, his face sharp with hunger. He must have preserved his soul, too, I realize with a twist in my gut. How long has Marez been working with them?

  “It’s coming,” Lady Twyne croaks in a voice like curdled milk. Her gaze passes through me.

  “You won’t find my son.” The first Commandant’s voice carries the same hollow echo. “You’re too late.”

  I can’t give up. I have to stop them. But I can’t linger here. With the Nightmare Wastes taking such vicious root, my bodiless soul is sure to get eaten up in no time. I can hear wings pounding just outside the temple as Nightmare’s minions circle as if for a feast. Please, Dreamer, though you have not answered me yet, please hear my prayers now: let me find the Commandant swiftly. Let me save your world, and mine.

  A blessed breeze wafts through the temple, cutting through the fetid stale air. I breathe it in, let it cleanse me with its gentle coolness. It tickles my ears and flutters against my soul just playfully enough to let me know it’s there. It whispers nonsense as it drifts across my skin.

  No. I stand up straighter. It’s not nonsense—it’s a chant. An affirmation of strength, of power, of blood yielding to iron. The younger Commandant. But of course it is.

  I fling my arms out wide and let the breeze dance around me. It snakes through the crevices between my fingers and lifts every hair on my arms and legs. It sighs in response, chattering louder now. I would not have expected the Commandant to appear like this, but I won’t complain about one thing going easy for me this time.

  We open our eyes.

  Kriza screams and lunges for me before I can even see clearly. Without use of her hands, she uses her shoulders to bash into my jaw.

  “Guards!” Vera shrieks. She throws herself onto Kriza, as Kriza strains at the bindings with a snarl. “Want me to use the mothwood?”

  “No! No, keep it away from her! It’s better that she stays here. In the waking world,” I rasp.

  The carriage clatters to a stop. Someone throws open the door—one of the Commandant’s guardsmen. “What’s going on in here?”

  “Take this one away,” I say, thrusting my thumb—the Commandant’s thumb—at Kriza. Vera can barely keep her wrangled back. “And be careful—she’s a biter.”

  The two guardsmen exchange glances before reaching for Kriza. She charges one of them, bowling him over, and the other pounces on her, wielding a baton. After a brief scuffle, they’ve knocked her unconscious once more. Once we’re safely away from Kriza’s unconscious body, Vera slips the vial back to me. It’s far too light—only one more dose left, if that. Without access to the Ministry’s supplies, this body is probably my last chance at getting back to my own.

  If I can ever find myself again.

  “All right. Marez has to meet with the Commandant—with me—to perform the binding ritual. As far as I know, he’s still got my body.”

  “So I need to force him out of it. You. Whoever you bloody are.” Vera rolls her eyes. “But how?”

  “There’s Lullaby in the pocket of my dress—my body’s dress,” I tell Vera. “It should pull my body’s tether out of Oneiros … and his consciousness out of my body.”

  She purses her lips. “But if your body isn’t close by for you to take hold of its leash in Oneiros … then how will you get back inside it?”

  I squeeze my eyes shut. The thought of the Wastes, lapping at my soul, consuming me with despair …

  But it’s a sacrifice I have to be willing to make. All of Barstadt is worth more than my life. My willingness to sacrifice is what makes Barstadt my home instead of Farthing—I’m not purely interested in advancing myself. It’s what will give us the advantage we need. “If it has to be done … it has to be done.”

  Vera glowers at me. “Livia. No.”

  “If that’s what we have to do to stop him, then you have to do it, all right?”

  Vera gives a curt jut of her chin. It’s about all the acquiescence I’ll get.

  We’re in a narrow stone passageway, lit by gas lamps but otherwise unremarkable. Is this near the palace? I don’t recognize the scenery, or the sloping cobbles hemmed in by rock instead of buildings. The path appears to have been cleaved straight through the stone, as if by some great ragged claw.

  “My Commandant. The mystic awaits you,” a guard says from the mouth of the cleft. “He has taken a new form, but I assure you it won’t impact the ritual.”

  Vera and I climb upward. The slope overlooks the whole of Barstadt City, from the splash of red brick at Banhopf University and the glittering gold of the Imperial Palace to the pointed black slate roofs of everything in between; the sailboat masts tower in the docks, and the Iron Winds fleet floats beyond the horizon.

  On the ridge above us, strung out like a child’s broken toy, stretch the bones of Nightmare.

  The ravine we just climbed through was gouged out of the mountain ridge hundreds of years ago. The sharp, geometric bones of Nightmare’s claws beckon me to walk through them like an archway. As we pass to the other side of them, lurking below Nightmare’s suspended ribs, I see the Emperor, Minister Durst, the Farthing general, and … myself. A thick piece of gauze is wound around Emperor Weideger’s forehead, drops of blood beginning to seep through from where Marez must have torn the ruby out. His eyes are glassy, as if he’s lost in a dreamless sleep, but he can’t be, not entirely—he stands upright and slowly turns his head toward me. Durst and the Farthing general appear much the same way, wearing the looks of men who see Death’s shadows crossing over them and are not afraid. Marez has drugged them for whatever’s coming next.

  “I promise this won’t take but a moment,” my body say
s, beckoning us forward. She is smiling in a way I’ve never felt, smiling with every muscle and bone. The rest of the small group stands rigid, without guards or bindings on their hands. Only my body’s eyes turn to follow me as Vera and I step forward.

  The Commandant’s breeze whispers across me in Oneiros. It’s my sole comfort—everything else has turned rotten. I hear the distant groan of building supports giving way. All the creations of the Dreamer’s faithful are shattering into nothingness, sucked up into the Wastes. Lady Twyne stokes the final shard like it’s an ember; its glow grows with each passing moment. Her gaze catches mine and she grins. “Use this body all you like,” she tells me. “We can’t be stopped.”

  “This is not part of our agreement,” the Commandant says through me, addressing Marez in the waking world. “You were to turn over Barstadt City to me.”

  “Oh, but you wanted your weapon. And I shall deliver it to you. Better still, I shall make it a part of you—and you a part of it.” I see my amber eyes twinkle as my lips speak. “It’s what your father wanted.”

  My body lurches toward me in the Commandant on the rocky slope, but a horrendous slurping sound stops it short. The noise ricochets off the mountain walls, off the buildings below us. It gurgles like a dying beast drawing its last breath through shattered lungs. It sounds like death, sucking us all into the darkness of the Wastes.

  A black swirl appears at the center of Nightmare’s rib cage, rotating with lazy, oily arms. It pulsates, and the sucking noise grows louder as the slimy center of the orb stretches and expands to fill those massive ribs. It belches nauseating rot into the air. I raise my arm to cover my nose.

  “It’s time,” my body says.

  Two Farthing soldiers seize the Commandant’s wrists, pinning them behind my back. Another pair wrestles Vera to the ground. The Commandant is out of shape, but strength lurks beneath his softness; I struggle against the soldiers, yanking at their arms, but they fend me off with a sharp crack to the temple. The Commandant’s vision goes blurry, and briefly, I’m thrown back into Oneiros, nearly dislodged from the Commandant’s body.