Give the Dark My Love

by Beth Revis

  It wasn’t a carriage, though, not really, and we all knew it. There were no fancy seats behind elegant doors. This was a wagon atop wheels, the few windows barred and a heavy lock on the door. This was a prisoner transport.

  “Am I under arrest?” I asked, hoping some of my father’s authority was in my voice.

  The captain opened the transport door. “Please get inside,” she repeated without looking at me.

  For a brief moment, I felt a rush of panic. I focused on the narrow spot between the guards, and I believed if I burst through them, I could escape. But I had no reason to flee—I was guilty of nothing except, perhaps, association.

  I stepped into the carriage, the wagon shifting under my weight until I settled on the bench on one side. One of the male guards followed, sitting across from me. The captain shut the door, and she and the other guard clambered to the bench atop the transport, tapping the horses with a whip to get them moving.

  Chains I’d not noticed before rattled as the wagon bumped over the cobblestones. I slid over the smooth wooden seat before I steadied myself. We were moving at a fast clip, and I stood despite the uneven motion of the carriage, holding on to the bars at the window so I could watch my neighborhood slip away.

  Once the cobblestones gave way to smooth paving stones, the ride got easier. Outside, the buildings were smoother, too—made of sleek, carved stone, not ramshackle wooden planks. I guessed that was what wealth did, wore away all the rough edges of everything it touched. Money was nothing more than sandpaper made of diamond grit.

  I knew where we were going before we got there. Still, I couldn’t help but gape in awe as the door to the carriage opened.

  We were at the palace.

  At the beginning of the school year, Yūgen had hired sleek black carriages to carry us up to the grand entrance, the curving marble steps cascading with roses, the flapping banners of silk and gold lamé flapping in the wind as we proudly walked up the stairs as if we belonged nowhere else. Now the prisoner transport carried me to the back.

  “This way,” the captain said politely as the other officers accompanying her dispersed. Despite my arrival, I was not treated like a prisoner.

  The captain led me inside. The hallways were marble, protected by a lush red carpet, and the doors along the plastered walls were made of rich, shining cherry. We walked in silence for several minutes. The farther into the palace we went, the more richly decorated the hallway became. Little niches built into the walls displayed paintings and busts of important, long-dead politicians on short stone columns. The doors grew wider, and they were carved with bas-relief designs that indicated who worked in each office. A battle scene for the governor’s general, a scale weighted with gold for the chief tax collector, three stars for the governor’s personal Oryon confessor and advisor.

  The door we stopped at had a single mark engraved in the wood: a circle with a lopsided T spilling out from it. The first rune of alchemy.

  These were the chambers of the Lord Commander.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  Nedra

  The Emperor’s Guard came in a red lacquered boat. The priest and the others who’d come to my island had been quick to report us. But I had spent the night preparing.

  I waited by the door, watching through the crack as the captain pulled out a vocal horn. “By order of Emperor Auguste, you must surrender your person for trial.”

  I could still hear the boots of the Emperor’s Guard when they had come for Master Ostrum. They beat him bloody and dragged him away. I had hidden in the darkness, and even though most of the emotion had been cauterized from me with my parents’ death, I still had the capacity to fear.

  I was not afraid now.

  My revenants stood behind me. They could sense my plan, and they awaited my command. The living who’d come to my island were nervous.

  “What are you going to do?” Dannix asked. “The Emperor—”

  I shook my head, not bothering to hide my smile. How could Dannix be afraid of a little boy hiding in a tower when I was right in front of him?

  “The Emperor sent a whole ship to capture me,” I said. I looked back at my revenants. “It will not be enough.”

  “This is your last chance!” the captain on the boat shouted up to me. I didn’t move. I had learned from Tomus that the gravest insult to most men was simply to ignore them.

  A plank lowered from the ship to the stone steps, and six men walked onto my island, rifles at the ready. They called up at me again to surrender.

  My eyes cut to Dannix. He clutched his son. I refrained from rolling my eyes. He had no reason to fear.

  I pushed open the double mahogany doors and stepped into the light.

  The Emperor’s men cowered beneath me. Behind me was a troop of the undead.

  I felt drunk with power.

  “We’re here to arrest you,” the captain called up at me.

  I couldn’t help but smile.

  Come out, I whispered in my mind.

  My revenants moved as one, an unstoppable force descending upon the soldiers. I laughed aloud as the men with rifles panicked. They fired their weapons, but it did no good, and soon enough they turned tail and fled.

  The captain shouted for the retreat, and the few brave men who’d tried to stand their ground raced behind him, up the plank, and back on the ship. The captain’s eyes drifted up to me at the top of the stairs. I relished his terror.

  Let’s play with them, I told my revenants.

  As one, every single revenant turned to the captain. Eyes wide, teeth bared, lips snarled up. Staring at him.

  “Go!” the captain screamed at his men. They fumbled with the oars, trying to push away from the stone steps.

  I want the ship.

  The revenants drew closer. It didn’t matter that the captain had thrown away the gangplank. The revenants moved with superhuman strength, leaping at the boat, grappling up the smooth lacquered sides, scrambling onto the deck.

  “Abandon ship! Abandon ship!” the captain screeched. The crew raced for the lifeboats on the other side. They let the pulleys drop before everyone had gotten inside, and some crew jumped from the ship, landing in the water as the lifeboats crashed into the waves. The men in boats pushed off, rowing as fast as they could, and the men in the water screamed for them to wait, come back, save them.

  For a brief moment, I wondered if the captain would try to go down with his ship. He had the look of a noble martyr. But as soon as my revenants boarded the ship, he scrambled portside, tossing himself directly into the bay and swimming frantically to his men waiting for him. Shivering, he huddled on the lifeboat, his head bowed in defeat.

  I grinned. I had my castle behind me, my army was growing, and now I had a ship. When I found the other necromancer, the one who had caused so much suffering, I would be ready.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  Grey

  The Lord Commander was the governor’s right-hand man. Usually a person of extreme importance already, and an adept alchemist. I hadn’t known that Governor Adelaide had selected anyone to take the position since her inauguration. The news sheets had reveled in the tragedy of her falling ill, but the boring politics of who had acquired which title hadn’t been as popular.

  The captain of the guard swung open the door of the Lord Commander’s office, and I followed him inside. Rather than a room, we were in another hallway.

  The captain stepped back through the door. “Wait here,” she said, then shut it, trapping me inside.

  I waited for several minutes, but nothing happened. I drifted closer to the door at one end of the hall; it was marked again with the Lord Commander’s seal, and I assumed it was his private office. I walked the length of the hallway to the other end and shifted the cloth just enough to see what was on the other side.

  The throne stood on a dais overlooking the marble floor. An enormous oil pa
inting of the Emperor hung from velveteen ropes behind the throne—a reminder that Governor Adelaide served the Emperor first and that he was the true ruler of Lunar Island.

  I stepped farther out, surprised that no one rushed to stop me. Movement caught my eye, and I noticed a woman sitting on a chair positioned at the bottom of the raised dais, just under the throne. She was wrapped in black damask, with long dark hair streaked with gray. She turned her head, and I caught a flash of gold—a diadem was braided into her tresses.

  I stepped down from the dais. Governor Adelaide looked up at me with milky eyes.

  Her image was plastered throughout the city, but I thought of the last few times I’d seen her in person. At the quarantine hospital, walking with Nedra, her body regal, gracious, an easy smile on her lips in the face of tragedy—a mask clearly worn for the benefit of those around her. Before that, standing strong with her people on Burial Day. And before that, at her coronation ball, her face alight with laughter.

  She was a shell of who she had been. The woman who sat before me now was faded, her face sunken in, her hair dull and brittle, her skin ashen. I had known she was sick, but I didn’t realize just how bad it was.

  “We keep her from the public eye for obvious reasons.” Master Ostrum swept aside the red velvet curtain and strode into the throne room. “It would be demoralizing.”

  “Os—Master Ostrum,” I said, shocked. “I thought you’d been—”

  “Yes, the papers greatly overstated the situation.” His voice was dry. “I wasn’t arrested. I was promoted.” He tapped the bronze badge pinned to his alchemical robes. It was shaped like a hand forming the first rune of alchemy.

  “You’re—”

  “Lord Commander now, yes.”

  I bowed my head quickly, then looked over at Governor Adelaide.

  “I misjudged her,” Lord Commander Ostrum said as he walked closer to the governor. “My politics seem silly now, in the face of this plague. Especially since we were more politically aligned than I’d thought.”

  “I’ve never seen symptoms like this,” I replied. Although I spoke right in front of her, it was as if Governor Adelaide was in a world of her own, not even registering the sound of my voice. The only movement she had was in her fingers, as she rolled a small iron bead in her hand. While all the news sheets reported that she had contracted the Wasting Death, she didn’t have blackened appendages or amputations, no green film in the eyes. This was . . . different.

  Master Ostrum motioned for me. “Greggori,” he said. “Come with me.”

  We crossed the throne room, heading toward a door on the other side. “Where is everyone?” I asked.

  “Staff has been systematically reduced. Plague took many, soon after the governor fell ill. The others . . . were fired,” he said, as if that wasn’t the right term for it.

  “But the governor is too ill to—”

  “By the Emperor.”

  I drew up short. Master Ostrum paused, impatient. “Try to keep up, Greggori,” he said, exasperated. “And forget what you’ve read in the news sheets.” He paused. “I assume your father has kept you abreast of the current political situation.”

  “We rarely talk,” I said immediately, but while that was true, I did have some understanding of the unrest in the government.

  “The citizens of Lunar Island want freedom. That’s what your father’s group wanted.”

  I was reminded of how Master Ostrum had been close to Lord Anton before his death. “But not you?” I asked.

  “Oh, I wanted freedom, too. Our island deserves to be its own nation, out from under the thumb of the Emperor. What I didn’t know—what none of us knew—was that it was Governor Adelaide’s plan as well.”

  I stopped short.

  Master Ostrum nodded, a knowing smirk on his face. “Oh yes. She kept her true intentions well hidden, but Governor Adelaide knew how to play the political game. She intended to find a way to break from the Empire peacefully. Her plan would have worked, too . . .”

  “But then she got sick?” I guessed.

  Master Ostrum’s bark of laughter was bitter. “No. Then the Emperor found out.”

  FIFTY-NINE

  Nedra

  Death was coming to my island.

  I could feel it, the way my grandmother used to feel a storm approaching. The rain made her bones heavy and her joints creak, but the closer Death came to me, the more alive I felt. It buzzed through my blood, electrifying my body.

  I consciously pushed my shoulders down and lifted my chin, lengthening my neck and straightening my spine. I could feel their eyes on me, watching as I glided down the hallway. I was always aware of where my revenants were. That was something the necromancy books hadn’t told me—when you raise the dead, you become connected to them body and soul. I felt them, each one of my subjects, as if there were an invisible string tethering us.

  From throughout the building, they gathered closer to me, pulled to Death just as I was.

  Head up. Eyes straight ahead. Do not hesitate.

  Do not let them see your fear.

  It was animalistic, the way they tilted their faces to me as I drew closer, the silent acceptance as they bent to my will and followed behind me. Most of the time, they could pretend they were alive again—that normalcy had returned. But not when I was around. I called out to the darkest part of their souls. I merely whispered, and their bodies were under my control.

  I pushed open the hospital doors and stepped into the crisp night air. A crescent moon curved over the river, sending ripples of its arch dancing across the water. My gaze drifted to the city, sparkling beyond. From here, it looked beautiful.

  When everyone in the city dies of the plague, I wondered idly, will I want to bring them all back?

  Not everyone was worth saving.

  The still air was disturbed by the sound of a wooden oar smacking against the water. I glanced down and saw a ferry. The skipper looked grim even from here, his eyes casting back to Blackdocks. But four adult passengers huddled on the boat, and they looked eager, scanning the edges of my island, looking up at my hospital.

  By the time my revenants and I arrived at the bottom of the stone steps, the flat-bottomed boat was already pulling away, the skipper slapping the water noisily in his haste to leave. These people would have had to offer the skipper a lot of money to convince him to take them here. The people from the boat stepped forward, their faces slack with fear as they saw me and my revenants. I wasn’t sure who they feared more.

  One man dressed like a mill worker bent down, touching the mound on the dock. As I drew closer, I saw that he was holding the still hand of a dead child, covered by a knit blanket.

  The man nearest him had clothing stained with oil, his fingers black with soot. A mechanic, I thought, or maybe a cleaner in the factories.

  “We were told you could help,” he said. He didn’t look down at the body. When I didn’t reply, he added, “To give us back our little girl.”

  “And our son,” the other couple said, the man holding the child out to me.

  Children. I closed my eyes, swallowing down the lump in my throat.

  “It was the plague,” the mill worker said. “It happened so fast. We saw the black in her fingers, and we thought there was a chance . . . but then her eyes paled, and we did what we could, we tried, we never left her side, we both lost our jobs, but it was too late.”

  I didn’t care. How she died didn’t matter. The method never mattered. Dead was dead.

  Unless I brought them back.

  I started with the boy. His father wouldn’t put him down, instead holding him as I pulled out his soul, fed it through my crucible, then returned it to the boy. He gasped—a rattling, eerie sound—and the revenants behind me turned to him, watching. His father released him, and the boy walked over to the other revenants, joining their ranks.

&n
bsp; I waved my right hand at the boy’s parents, and they melted into the crowd, fear evident on their faces. They weren’t sure they’d done the right thing tonight.

  “Please, please,” the mill worker said, drawing my attention to the little girl. His babbling faded to silence as I ripped away the blanket covering his daughter.

  I fingered my iron crucible with my right hand, then slipped through her skin with my left one—the ghost one. I dug into her body, lifting out the golden light of her soul. None of the living could see it, but the dead did.

  I did.

  My eyes grew warm, and the heat spread down and in, washing over my mind and seeping into my bones. It was relaxing, but had an edge of panic and urgency, like slowly realizing I was drowning in a warm bath.

  There were only moments now, just a few breaths of time before the warmth was replaced with utter, still cold. Before the little girl’s soul slipped forever past my reach. There was no time for formalities or niceties. I could not linger over small talk like the girl’s name, or her past, or if she was happy. I had time for just a few questions, asked directly in my mind, answered by her fading soul.

  Do you want to come back? I thought the words with no tone or inflection. I can bring you back, and you can be here again.

  But I won’t be there? she responded.

  I did not know where there was, but it was a place the dead often talked about, quietly, among themselves when they thought the living couldn’t hear.

  If you are here, you can’t be there, I answered.

  Are my fathers sad? she asked. Her voice was like a high-pitched bell, the words ringing in my mind.

  I was dimly aware of the way the mechanic had choked back a desperate sob, the way the mill worker had stood to be beside him, the way they were clutching each other’s hands.

  That doesn’t matter, I replied. The cold was starting to creep in. Do you want to come back?

  . . . No.