Nameless tobam-1

by Lili St. Crow

  But where could you hide when this came knocking?

  And if I don’t answer, will they tear the house down? The trembling was all through her. She realized she hadn’t taken her coat off, though the cottage was warm and snug, and she still had her boots. The same boots that had carried her through snow and filth and the holding cell.

  I wanted to know where I belonged. Now it’s calling me . . . home? Is that the word for what you can’t escape?

  Her hand reached for the knob. The foyer rippled around her, and the charms in the cottage walls made a low warning sound.

  The locks slid back, each with a faint definite sound, bones clicking together. A sliver of white winter sunlight glared through a crack, widened, and Cami blinked in the sudden assault of light.

  They regarded each other for a long few moments.

  “I’m sorry,” Tor whispered. The bruises on his neck were livid, and the cut across his cheekbone had leaked blood, dried to a crust. He was shivering too, steam rising from his skin—he wore tattered jeans and the remains of a white T-shirt, sliced and burned. “I’m sorry. She knew I could find you.”

  Cami’s hands were numb. His hair was stripped back, plastered down with crud she didn’t even want to think about, and she finally saw what had snagged her gaze on him all along.

  His jawline was heavier, but it was familiar. So was the arc of his cheekbone, and the shape of his mouth, especially the space above his top lip. There was the shape of his eyes; their color had distracted her, but they were catlike and wide.

  And just like hers.

  I look like him. We’re the same. That was the feeling of hand in glove, of broken-in trainers. They looked . . . similar.

  Related.

  His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Don’t step outside.” The whisper came through cracked lips. “Please. She can only push me so far. You’re safe in there.”

  I’m not safe anywhere. She found herself touching her face, wonderingly tracing the shape of her upper lip. Just like his.

  Why hadn’t she seen it before?

  “Run.” Tor coughed, and something moved in his black eyes. Sharp alien intelligence peered out of his drugged gaze, and he shuddered. “Please. I don’t . . . don’t want . . . Run.”

  I ran once, didn’t I. Ten years ago, Mithrusmas Eve. Not far enough, though.

  Never far enough. What was it the Family said?

  Blood always tells.

  If he went back without her, what would happen to him? And what would the Queen send next time?

  I have to stop this. Cami braced herself. She slid out of her coat, and stepped outside into the cold. It was too small for him, but she wrapped her coat around his shoulders as his shivering infected her.

  Tor’s hand closed around her wrist, unhealthy feverish heat scorching her skin. He let out a tired, hopeless sigh. Their footsteps crunched on the charmed path, and as soon as they stepped past Gran’s gate, his head dropped forward like a tired horse’s. Woodsdowne was deserted, and in the distance, the baying of dogs began.

  The first fat flakes of the day’s snow began to whirl down.

  PART III: The Sacrifice

  THERE WAS NO SNOW UNDERNEATH.

  The dogs hadn’t come after all. Instead, Tor had led her through the maze of Woodsdowne, west toward the core. Not for very long, though—he’d stopped at the intersection of Columbard and Lamancha Avenue. The piles of snow and ice to each side, broken by titon-plows, imitated small mountain ranges. The buildings were tall and dark here, festooned with icicles and whispering with the chill breeze. Any one of the boarded-up windows could have exploded outward, giving birth to a jumble of dog-shapes salivating and snapping their steelstruck teeth.

  But it was in the very middle of the crossroads that a round slice of frozen street had silently opened its dark eye—a manhole cover, ice crackling away from its circumference, pushed up by an invisible force. Tor moved her toward it, not ungently, and she’d seen the iron rungs going down.

  New Haven’s surface swallowed them, pleating closed overhead and smoothing itself like a freshly-laid sheet.

  Tor took her wrist at the bottom of the ladder again, and her coat fell away from his shoulders, landing on a sodden pile of something stinking. It was almost warmer down here, but her breath still came in a cloud and thin traceries of steam. Cami stopped, and he tugged at her arm.

  “N-n-n-no.” She tried to peel his fingers away, but they wouldn’t come. “I’m n-not g-g-going to r-r-run.” She would follow me. There’s no point. “H-Here.” Her voice echoed oddly, and she managed to work his hand down so his fingers laced through hers.

  We’re Family, too. Every scar on her twinged heatlessly, and she wondered if he had nightmares too. Who held him when he woke screaming?

  Did anyone?

  A curious faraway look came over his face. There was no shadow of the garden boy there. This was an automaton, stumbling like a broken-stringed puppet through a labyrinth of concrete passageways. Pipes ran overhead and alongside them, some groaning and hissing; the floor kept steadily sloping down. She had to duck to avoid some of the pipes, Tor ducking as well with weird mechanical grace. Icicles dripped down from the infrequent gleams of light above, turning to a crusted seeping on the walls.

  He took a hard right, and his fingers tensed. “Hard,” he muttered. “Interference Underneath. Bring her.”

  “I-i-it’s a-all r-r-right.” Cami squeezed his hand. You can’t stop this. It’s not your fault. It’s mine. I ran away, and everything is falling apart around me. Because of me. I went where I didn’t belong. Cami’s chin raised slightly.“T-tor. It’s ok-k-kay.”

  “Don’t wanna.” He shook like a rabbit, but his legs kept going. “Don’t make me.”

  Oh. He’s not talking to me. So she simply followed him, going down and down, away from the light.

  It never got completely dark, though. Once the glimmers from above faded and the concrete changed color, traceries of pale glowing fungus appeared on the walls. Growing in curves and sharp dots, they looked like decoration—but Cami did not want to brush against them. They smelled. Not of anything bad, just a faint breath of spice and fruit.

  And smoke.

  Another sharp corner. His skin was cooler now, and Cami had stopped shivering. A faint breeze, warmer than the knifing wind above, touched tendrils of her hair, fingered the walls with their glowing patterns. The fungus was like brocade, fuzzy flower-shapes soft and plush against the roughness. Down and down, and the breeze was redolent of fruit now, a summer orchard with a tinge of perfumed burning. It was warm and moist, and Cami’s skin crawled steadily. Little ant feet crawling all over her—tiny little feet of apprehension, nausea, familiarity.

  I know this place.

  Stairs, going down. The concrete was ancient here, and New Haven crouched overhead. How deep were they? She had no idea. Her feet ached; her fingers, locked in Tor’s, were slippery with sweat. Her boots slipped a little, and they passed through an archway. S**vAY, it said overhead, except part of it had crumbled.

  Dingy tiles that had once been white, cracked and falling. It was a much larger tunnel, the breeze whooshing through it with a low hungry sound. The floor was ancient and filthy, the domed ceiling draped with long shawls and gauzy runners of that pale glowing stuff. Was it a fungus if it hung in sheets like that, intricate glowing lacework?

  It reminded her of the shimmersilk scarf and its poking, slashing tassels, but she was past wincing at the thought. Instead, she stared, wide-eyed, and her heart was an insistent drum in her ears.

  I am. I am. I am.

  Had she stumbled this way before, six years old and terrified, forcing her small legs to pump, smelling smoke and fury? The black hole in her memory would not tell her. It just pulsed, soft slithering sounds coming from its well-mouth.

  No, the noise wasn’t from inside her head. Tor halted, a fresh thread of blood soaking into his T-shirt from a ragged slice on his back, and she heard rippling. The gleam on the floor wasn’
t the fungus; it was a reflection of the light from the ceiling on slowly moving water.

  A canal. And as the breeze chuckled to itself, creeping fringes of perfumed smoke stringing from the left-hand archway where the water disappeared, she heard another sound. A rhythmic splashing.

  Oars, dropped into water.

  The boat was coming.

  Tor stepped to the very edge of the canal. Chips of ancient yellow paint under the crusted dirt leered up at them. She stared at the ceiling, her mouth slightly agape, and as the splashing intensified a sodden gleam appeared.

  It was a small flat-bottom boat, its draping of rotting white velvet trailing the scum-laden surface. Dimples showed in the water where invisible oars dipped, disturbing the weird scrim of paleness, probably some algae related to the fungus all around.

  The boat was empty—or anyone inside it was invisible, too. It nosed gently up to the side of the canal and halted. Cami’s throat had closed up. Her eyes prickled.

  The worst part wasn’t the alienness of Underneath. It was the familiarity. No wonder the house on Haven Hill wanted another girl, a different girl.

  This was where Cami—or whoever she was—belonged.

  Tor stepped off solid land and onto the boat. Her arm stretched out, their fingers linked, and he glanced over his shoulder at her. The bruises and welts on him showed up garish and hideous in this directionless foxfire light, and the rippling reflection turned him into a monster for a moment. A jack, or a Twist, the bruises peeling skin and the blood on him black.

  He’s just . . . he’s like me. Cami stepped forward. He is me. We’re the same. The boat gave a little underneath, swaying, and Tor steadied her. A splash and another lurching, and his arms were around her as if it were the most natural thing in the world. The boat almost-spun, righted itself, and drifted for the left-hand tunnel, where the wreathing smoke was incense, and the smell of it filled her head with blind numb buzzing.

  The archway swallowed them. Here it was dark, except for the algae’s weaker glow.

  “Princess.” His breath was hot against her ear. “I tried. Sorry.”

  She shook her head, carefully, hoping he’d understand.

  She was the reason he’d been beaten like this. She was the reason the Strep had snapped and started in on Ellie. She was the reason Nico was screaming with blood-madness, locked away. She was the reason Papa Vultusino had Borrowed and come downstairs . . . and transitioned to Unbreathing.

  If anyone should be sorry, Tor, it’s me. But her tongue was knotting up, she could feel it.

  Book. Candle. Nico. The charm wouldn’t work now. She was going to fix the problems she’d made for everyone. Take the extra piece out of the puzzle, and throw it into the trash where it belonged. Where it had always belonged, no matter how far it had been flung.

  THIRTY

  WHEN THE BOAT BUMPED AGAINST THE BOTTOM OF A high sweeping flight of stone stairs, she was almost—but not quite—ready for the terror.

  The stairs.

  They had sharp polished edges, each step mirror-shining. She knew how they bit when you fell down them, stabbing and slicing. She also knew what the fresh red streaks bubbling on the glossy stone were.

  She gets . . . hungry.

  The doors were tall, made of the same polished black stone. Their carvings shifted with faint scratching noises, apples and dogs and faces with long flowing hair and foxfire-glowing eyes. The bad place in Cami’s head bulged again, and she heard tinkling laughter.

  This time she stepped off the boat first. Felt the sharp edges under her bootsoles, and the idea that she might faint and fall on them kept her upright. Tor’s arms dropped to his sides; he hopped with eerie grace to the steps too, balancing.

  Her hand flashed out, she steadied him.

  He didn’t even look at her.

  The doors creaked, a soft musical sound. Tor stepped up once, waited for her. She took a step, and her breakfast rose in a hot acid gush.

  She retched, milk-curds and blackcurrant jam splattering on the bright clean steps, and her heart was going to explode. She could feel it tightening before it shredded into useless scraps, her entire chest full of clawed wriggling dread.

  The doors flowed outward, and the hounds poured free. They were almost silent, only the occasional yip as they bolted down the stairs and surrounded Cami’s swaying and Tor’s poker-stiff frame. They didn’t press close, and she struggled to stay upright.

  Just at the threshold, the man in the tan trench coat stood. Only now he was in leather, different tones of brown matching his wooden skin. The Huntsman’s face was wooden too, blue eyes afire with a different light than the pale diseased glow. That light dimmed as he gazed down, and behind him, like a pale moon rising, was a shadow of white.

  “My runaway children,” the White Queen murmured. Dulcet honey, her voice scraped like the smoke and made the bad place in Cami’s head shudder and squeeze down on itself. “Home at last. How I’ve missed you.”

  A dog snarled and jumped. Cami let out a miserable vomit-scented little cry and took the next three stairs in a rush. Tor began to climb, and the reek of spoiled honey and rotting fruit was quickly swept under a pall of spiced, numbing smoke. The inside of Cami’s head began to feel very strange—too big, an empty ballroom with nobody to take her hand or start the scratchy ancient Victrola.

  The dogs drove her through the door, and as she passed the wooden man he twitched. Not much, but the Queen laughed.

  “One happy little family,” she purred, and one broad, soft white hand touched his shoulder for a moment. “Greet your father, little Nameless. After all, he gave his heart for you.”

  The warm draft was from tall greasy-white candles with oddly pallid flames, serried ranks of them on either side of the high-ceilinged hall. Blue gouts of incense rose from powdery dishes, veiling the ceiling. The Biel’y—tall spare men and women with blank eyes holding only her reflection, there were no children—wore gray robes, and each throat held a silver gleam. The medallions were eager, avid little eyes too, and Cami, her mouth full of sourness, stumbled miserably up the center of the aisle in the White Queen’s wake.

  She was so tall, the Queen. Her parchment hair was piled high and elaborate, ringlets bobbing and bone pins with dangling colorless crystals thrust artfully through. The other women were shaven-headed, the men short-haired, and their feet were bare while the Queen swayed on lacquered sandals with funny wooden blocks on the soles that went tic tic tic against the stone floor. She wore white velvet and silk, but the hems dragged on the dusty floor, little motheaten bits showing.

  At the far end, there was a low wide padded bench on a dais, under a great fountaining fall of crystallized glowing fungus. It pulsed and glittered, this colony of light, and its glow bleached the Queen still further.

  Cami stopped dead at the bottom step of the dais. Her arms and legs shook, the tremors spilling through her in waves, her bandaged knees and hand throbbing. Every hair on her body was trying to stand up.

  Imagining that pale slimness with a baby was . . . Cami’s stomach cramped again. Heaving nausea passed through her and away, an earthquake in numb flesh.

  The Queen turned, sank down on the bench, and Cami realized it was her throne. A sigh went through the assembled Biel’y. More were coming, their robes shushing and their bare feet padding.

  She knew that sound. The black bulge inside her brain swelled a little more. The faint tang of acridity under the incense’s spice coated the back of her throat, and that was familiar too.

  “My newest Okhotnik may approach,” the Queen murmured, and a rustle went through the assembled. The candleflames bowed.

  Tor staggered mechanically up the three dais steps. Cami’s hands itched to help, but she was nailed in place. His black hair, still slicked back under a mask of crud, gleamed wetly, and the rags of his T-shirt flapped.

  She still could not look at the Queen’s face. Her eyes simply refused. Instead, she stared at the hands, lying folded in the velvet and silk of h
er lap. The soft fingers, the dimpled knuckles—but there was something wrong.

  There were marks on those hands. They had always been plump and soft and young before. Now there were pronounced veins, and shadows of age spots. And a tremor that had never been there before.

  “Good boy.” The Queen’s chuckle was soft, but so cold. “You brought My Nameless back to Me. I had my doubts, young one. But you will make Me a fine husband. I will not need another.”

  A cracking sound. Cami flinched, whirling. The dogs had crept up the aisle, red tongues lolling and their coats washed pale by the weird directionless light. The wooden man stood in the aisle, slump-shouldered and stiff; another rending cracking noise echoed and he listed to the side. His blue eyes were closed, and a rivulet of splintering crawled through him, crunching and creaking, tiny pieces falling from his face and grinding themselves into dust. The leather of his clothes sagged obscenely, sawdust pouring from sleeves and legs, and collapsed inward.

  The memory of Papa’s slow crumbling folded through her brain, slid away.

  “Such a strong heart he had, and given so thoroughly.” The Queen sighed, and the Biel’y sighed too, a susurrus passing through candleflames like wind through wheat. “Now, My Nameless. Come here.”

  She’s talking to me. Dread choked Cami. Little black spots danced in front of her. The dogs crept closer, on their bellies. One whined, a high nervous sound.

  Silence stretched, thin and quivering. The candles hissed, and even the crystalline mass over the throne was making a sound—a felt-in-the-teeth ringing, like a wineglass stroked with a wet finger just before its singing shivers it into pieces.

  Until one word broke it. “N-no.” Cami dug her heels into the stone floor. The Queen’s will wrapped around her, pulling her toward the steps, but the sourness in Cami’s throat and the sudden pain from her bandaged left fist, its knuckles throbbing with the feel of glass splintering underneath them, both refused the urge to obey.