by Beth Revis
I let go, because I knew she wanted to let go. Her soul slid through my shadowy fingers, and I tucked my iron crucible back under my tunic. The golden mist evaporated into the night air. I tilted my face up for a moment, watching as the glittering light disappeared among the stars far above. Then I stepped back.
“Well?” the mechanic asked gruffly.
“No,” I said, giving him the same answer his daughter gave.
The mill worker sputtered in disbelief. The mechanic’s face shadowed with rage. I turned my back to them and started walking back to the hospital.
“Wait!” the mill worker roared, his meek sorrow replaced immediately with fury. “You can’t just say no! You can’t! You brought that other boy back. Bring her back! Bring her back!”
He surged forward. I did not pause as I walked into the crowd of my revenants. They allowed me to pass, but then stood between me and the fathers. The men tried to claw and fight their way to me, but my revenants stood in silent protection, watching as the men finally broke.
“Fetch them a boat to the mainland,” I told the closest revenant.
I could still hear the fathers’ anguished pleading as I pushed open the doors of the hospital and let them slam shut behind me.
SIXTY
Grey
“The Emperor?” i asked. His portrait stared down at us, and I repressed a shudder.
“He knew,” Master Ostrum said simply. When I remained confused, he elaborated. “Emperor Auguste knew about Lord Anton. He knew about the protests from students, the dock workers who wanted to form a union. He knew that Governor Adelaide had been planning to peacefully pull from the Empire. He knew it all, and he came here to remind us who was in power.”
It seemed impossible; the Emperor was about my age. I shook my head, unable to absorb what it was my master was saying.
“He started the plague as a show of power. I think he stayed after the inauguration to see if he could use Governor Adelaide to stifle the protests,” Master Ostrum said. His eyes were sad as he looked at the shell of a woman. “When she proved unmalleable, he—”
“You’re saying the Emperor is a necromancer?” I gaped at him.
“It was Nedra who helped me to see it,” Master Ostrum said. “The plague seemed to target certain people—namely, the poor. Worthless fodder to the Emperor. He still has supporters among the upper classes, who benefit the most from his rule. And the few powerful people who opposed him . . .”
He let his voice trail off. Lord Anton, his biggest detractor, dead of plague. Members of the governor’s council who might have supported a revolution. The governor herself.
“He’s used the plague to terrorize the people,” Master Ostrum continued. “I have no doubt he plans to be the hero who stops it.” He glanced over to Governor Adelaide. “She’s hanging on, somehow. She’s stronger than anyone realized. But once she’s gone, the Emperor will use the plague to declare a state of emergency and dismantle the governorship. He’ll have complete control of our island, and anyone who thought to oppose him will be dead.”
Nedra had known. She had tried to tell me. The plague was a necromantic curse. I didn’t listen to her.
I let her go.
“We have to do something,” I said, but my voice was already weighed down with hopelessness. What could we do against the Emperor? Against a necromancer?
“The Emperor will not be easy to defeat. But it’s the only way,” Master Ostrum said. “If he dies, the plague will die with him.”
“We have to let people know,” I said. “If everyone knew he caused the plague, we could storm his rooms, drag him out . . .” I swallowed, unwilling to speak aloud what would have to happen next.
Master Ostrum barked with bitter laughter. “You think I haven’t tried that? He’s in the old tower, Astor.”
I frowned, not understanding the implication. The old tower surely wasn’t impenetrable. It had been built a century and a half ago, by . . .
By Bennum Wellebourne.
Realization dawned on me, and Master Ostrum nodded knowingly. “Wellebourne used necromantic runes to protect the tower. The Emperor is safe, as long as he stays in Wellebourne’s tower. That’s why he hasn’t left.” He paused. “But if we had a necromancer’s crucible, we could break down the door. We could reach him, and stop him.”
Governor Adelaide stirred in her seat. The iron bead she’d held in her hand clattered to the floor, rolling over to our feet. Master Ostrum picked it up. The bead was hollow and cracked, nearly split in two.
“When she was inaugurated, Governor Adelaide went to the treasury.” Master Ostrum’s voice was lower now, as if he were speaking in front of a casket. “She found Bennum Wellebourne’s relics. This was his crucible.”
I stared down at the rusted, hollow black bead, and I wondered at the souls that had passed through it. An entire army of dead.
“I suspect it’s protecting her, somehow,” Master Ostrum said, placing the bead back in Governor Adelaide’s limp hands. “But it won’t last. The crucible is breaking. It’s not strong enough to break through the runes protecting the Emperor.”
“But—can we make another crucible? Do we have to use Wellebourne’s?”
“No and no,” Master Ostrum said. “We need any necromancer’s crucible, but we can’t simply make one. They are . . .” His eyes grew distant. “Almost impossible. The sacrifice too great.”
I let out a breath. “But then how . . . ?”
“Astor, there is another necromancer’s crucible.” He paused. “I tried to send men to bring her here. There was some . . . confusion. She’s scared; she doesn’t understand the power she’s unleashed.”
I shook my head. No.
“Nedra Brysstain is a necromancer now,” Master Ostrum said, “and we need her crucible.”
“She’s not,” I muttered, but I knew even as I spoke that this was not the case. I had seen her just before she left Yūgen for the last time. I had seen the darkness within her.
What happened while she was gone? I asked myself again. I should have asked. I should have known.
“You can talk to her. She’ll listen to you, Greggori. She’ll come with you—or let you have her crucible. And with it, we can get to the Emperor.” He looked down. “I won’t lie—even when we break down the doors, it won’t be easy to stop what he’s done. But one thing is for sure: Kill the necromancer, kill the necromancy.”
If the Emperor died, the plague would die with him.
We could stop the illness.
We could save lives.
We would be committing treason.
SIXTY-ONE
Nedra
Ernesta watched me impassively as I paced around the clock tower. I had read all the books again, quizzed the revenants about their deaths, done everything I could think of to find out more about the plague, but I kept coming up short. I knew it was the creation of a necromancer, but who? And, more to the point, how could I stop it?
I paused in front of Ernesta.
And why could I still not give her the life she deserved?
I stared into her face. Identical to mine. Same gold-flecked eyes. Same high cheekbones. Same large forehead and black hair and big ears and pointy collarbones.
And yet, now we didn’t look alike at all.
“I’m sorry,” I told her blank face. I said it like a prayer.
I pulled up the crucible from the chain around my neck, and I held it in the palm of my shadow hand. I closed my eyes.
I could still feel her soul. There were whispers of my parents, too, deep in the blood iron. My family was not quite past my reach. Their souls echoed in the crucible, whispers, reminding me of who I was, of love that was true. I couldn’t hear words in the echoes, just . . . just feelings. Of calm. Of love. Of peace.
I opened my eyes and my vision filled with the empty stare of the thing that looked like my
sister. I had only this pale imitation of Nessie, a soulless, lifeless puppet that shared her name and that stood in the corner of my workroom, watching me, waiting for me to command it.
Her. Waiting for me to command her.
She stepped forward.
“Get me a cloak,” I told her. “I’m cold.”
Ernesta silently moved across the metal floor to the crate I used as storage, rifling through the contents and emerging with my cloak. She walked back to me, holding it out. I took it from her hand, and she lowered her arm. She stood there. Waiting. For my next command.
Rage pricked at my eyes, and I slammed my fist into the face that looked like my twin sister. I felt her nose crunch; her flesh gave way beneath my pummeling. She didn’t move to defend herself. She stood there until my force knocked her over, and then she fell to the ground, and still I raged, kicking her viciously in the ribs, stomping her weak body, crouching over her and driving my knuckles straight into her face.
I stopped when I grew exhausted. Her body was bent and broken, bruised and bleeding.
I touched the crucible, spoke the runes. White light encased Ernesta’s body, and, in a moment, she was healed and whole again.
She stood up. She looked at me.
She waited for her next command.
SIXTY-TWO
Grey
Kill the necromancer, kill the necromancy. The words moved my feet forward, filling me with determination. It didn’t matter that the necromancer was the most powerful person in the world.
He had to be stopped.
I went to Blackdocks. The factories loomed along the bay like hulking giants, blocking out the stars on the horizon.
“Come on.” A man’s voice carried through the night. “You have to take me.”
“Not for just a silver,” another man said.
The fog thinned as I reached the water’s edge. Usually there was a large cluster of flat-bottomed boats that ferried people up and down the coast. But tonight there was only one.
“Where you going?” the skipper called to me. His accent was thick and heavy, making it all sound like one word: waryougwan?
“The quarantine hospital,” I said, looking past him. The tall brick building was barely visible in the dark, only identifiable by the illuminated clockface.
The skipper spit a stream of blackleaf juice into the bay. “Told him,” he said, jerking his head to the other man. “Ain’t going there. Not without proper gold.”
“Please,” the first man begged, his voice cracking. He stank of alcohol, but he seemed sober. My eyes drifted down to the large lump at his feet. I gasped—it was a woman, her body covered by a cloak but clearly dead.
“That place is cursed!” the skipper said. “I ain’t gonna—”
“Ten gold,” I said.
The skipper gaped at me. “Yeah, all right,” he said.
“Him, too.” I nodded to the other man and the dead woman.
“For ten gold I’ll take whoever can fit.”
The other man turned to me and grasped my hands. “Let’s go,” I said, more abruptly than I meant to, but his effusive thanks made me uncomfortable. That, and the corpse.
None of us talked. With every bump in the water, the dead woman’s head lolled. Her mouth was open, her tongue fat and heavy. The man kept adjusting her cloak, as if keeping her warm mattered.
As soon as the boat touched the stone steps leading up to the hospital, the skipper started rushing us off. I got out first, looking toward the hospital. The man grunted, awkwardly trying to get the dead woman from the boat onto the step. The skipper pushed away with his oar, and the woman’s feet splashed into the icy water before the man could pull her up to a step.
I watched the boat fade into the darkness.
“Hello?” the man called. “Hello? We need help!”
I turned. The doors to the hospital opened.
A woman stepped out. She carried herself stiffly, her chin tilted up.
“Nedra,” I whispered.
As if she could hear me, she looked down, her gaze intent. She stumbled on the step, but regained her balance quickly. My heart plunged. She’d thrown her arm out to try to catch herself—but she no longer had her entire left arm. I tried to recall if she had signs of black in her skin when I’d seen her in Master Ostrum’s office. How had so much changed in such a short time?
“Hurry, hurry,” the man pleaded under his breath, but Nedra’s pace was slow.
And then, behind her, more people emerged from the hospital. Dozens—just under fifty or so, I guessed. These people moved as one, flowing like liquid over the steps, a wave of people that surrounded her.
The man started to pray.
The crowd behind Nedra seemed a random assortment of people, male and female, all different ages. Some had blackened limbs, but they didn’t show pain.
They didn’t show any emotion at all.
I sucked in a breath, my eyes watering. I hadn’t wanted to believe it was true. Not my Nedra.
But when she stopped, they stopped. When she looked at the dead woman, they looked.
And when she turned to me, every dead eye focused on my face.
I opened my mouth to speak, but Nedra turned away without a word, crouching down to inspect the body of the woman at the man’s feet. The man’s hands twitched nervously as Nedra pulled away the cloak, revealing no sign of plague. Instead, she had bruises blossoming on her throat.
My head jerked up to the other man’s face. “It was an accident,” he said. “I swear. Can you save her?”
Nedra still didn’t speak as she reached under the collar of her cloak and pulled out a chain. At the end of the necklace was a small iron bead, dark and whole, unlike the broken bead Governor Adelaide had held. I sucked in a breath. Would it be enough to take down the Emperor?
Nedra’s eyes cut to me, narrowed and fierce. She raised an eyebrow, as if daring me to comment on her necromancer’s crucible.
When I didn’t respond, she reached toward the dead woman with her residual arm. Nedra’s eyes softened, but her focus intensified. Behind me, the man’s babbling stopped. He stared in horror at the revenants. Whatever they were looking at, it was the same thing Nedra’s attention was focused on.
“Can you bring her back to me? I love her,” the man said. “She’s my wife.”
“She’s not.” Nedra’s voice was tight, and I could tell she was angry. “And she doesn’t want to come back to you.”
She stood.
The man’s face purpled. “You will bring me back my wife, you—” he started.
Nedra held a hand up. “I only bring back people who want to come back,” she said. “And besides, I don’t see why you want to bring someone back after you murdered her.”
The man sputtered, rage overwhelming him. “I would never murder her!” he snarled. “I love her.”
Nedra cocked her head. “The dead don’t lie,” she said simply. “You killed her. I’m not bringing her back against her will just so you can pretend to apologize.”
“I’ll make you—” he started, lunging for her.
I jumped to protect Nedra, but I needn’t have. Her revenants circled the man, and he couldn’t break through them. “Come along, Grey,” Nedra told me, heading back up the stairs.
“What are . . . what are they going to do to him?” I asked. The revenants were so tightly packed around the shouting man that I could barely see him.
“Whatever they want,” Nedra said, shrugging, not slowing her pace back up to the hospital. “They all saw the poor woman’s soul, too. They all heard what she had to say about him.”
The man’s voice went from angry shouting to terrified screams, but all I could hear was what Nedra had told him before: The dead don’t lie.
I glanced behind me once before I stepped inside the hospital after Nedra. I could
not see what the revenants were doing, but the man’s screams had stopped.
Nedra didn’t pause as she made her way sedately to the spiral staircase leading to the clock tower. I followed, my mind a riotous mess, caught somewhere between panic and fear. Those monsters outside—they had worn the faces of humans. There had been children. My dread grew with every step. I could not tell if I feared the monsters inside more than the one I followed.
Nedra is no monster, I told myself firmly, but I could not calm my heart.
Someone waited for us at the top of the stairs. I gasped and stumbled down a step, my eyes unable to comprehend the exact mirror copy of Nedra standing beside her. The real Nedra had an edge to her I’d almost forgotten, something rough like splintering wood. This other girl didn’t have that. Behind her eyes, it was as smooth as glass. My Nedra was missing her left arm; the other one’s right arm had been amputated above the elbow. But other than that, they were identical.
Identical . . .
My gaze dropped to Nedra’s hand, wrapped up in the hand of the creature that seemed to be a mirror copy of her. The monster’s fingers were loose, resting in Nedra’s grip, but Nedra had white knuckles, she was holding on so hard.
All of Nedra’s stories about her family came flooding back to me.
“Nedra,” I said slowly. I looked at the empty shell of a person who stood placidly beside her. “You didn’t tell me your sister was your twin.”
She sniffled. For the first time, I realized Nedra was crying. Nedra, the feared necromancer who raised revenants and clutched their souls in her hand, was silently crying, fat tears slowly leaking from her eyes, one after another.
I acted without thinking. I reached for her, cradling her face with one hand, my skin immediately wet and warm from her tears. “Nedra,” I whispered, “why didn’t you tell me?”
“Why didn’t you ever ask?” she growled, jerking her face away. Her hand slipped out of the monster’s.
She reached for me with what remained of her left arm, the residual limb twitching. Nedra looked down at her shoulder as if angry at its betrayal, but she didn’t try to touch me again.
