An earsplitting crack reverberated through the cavern, and the terric spirit spilled out of the harvester. Its entire body was covered in burns now, and its craggy face was fractured on one side, a portion of its mouth missing. But its eyes were bright and angry. The tunnel rat turned toward it just as the spirit raised one of its huge feet and brought it down.
The gravity in the cavern shifted, and suddenly Molly was sliding sideways, as if the entire space had been tipped. The lift groaned and finally buckled, the platform falling in a heap in the center of the cavern.
Whatever was happening to her and the lift, though, was nothing compared to the effect the shift had on the tunnel rat. It hurtled sideways, crashing into the rock wall. The terric spirit brought its foot down again, and the gravity pulled both Molly and ferratic flat against the ground. She struggled to stand, but it felt like trying to lift a ton of bricks. Even breathing was exhausting. But again, the tunnel rat got the worst of it. As it tried to stand, its legs broke under it, and with a groan the metal plates of its body bent inward. The ferratic crumpled, piece by piece, until all that was left was a small misshapen lump of metal. For a few moments all was still, and then the gravity eased, and Molly could rise again.
She looked to the spirit. It was lying still now, its stone cheek pressed into the ground, and it groaned softly. Outside of the harvester it looked even bigger, almost as large as the harvester itself. Its stony body was a rich red-brown where it was not burned black, and the glowing curlicues stood out in the shadowy cavern.
She glanced over to the wreckage of the tunnel rat. That too had housed a spirit—one driven beyond reason by the tortures it endured, but still a spirit. Now it was gone.
She couldn’t help that spirit. But there was one who might still need her help. “Toves,” she whispered as she rushed to the place she had last seen him.
Toves had not moved. He sat in a heap on the ground. The stones around his edges seemed whole, but at his core where the tunnel rat had torn into him was a pile of gravel. “Toves, can you hear me? Are you okay?” she asked.
The whole stones stirred and then contracted toward the center.
“Hell,” Toves said.
Molly clenched her hands, her teeth, her entire body.
“It’s going to be okay. We can get you through the font. You’ll be better there, on the other side, right?”
“Maybe.” The stones stirred again, piling briefly on top of each other before collapsing again. “Don’t think I can move by myself.”
Angry voices echoed in the mine shaft. Molly looked up to see more than a dozen figures standing at the edge, looking down at them and the broken lift. They were lowering ropes over the side.
“We’ve got to get out of here fast,” Molly’s father said.
“I know. But first Toves. Do we have anything we can use to carry him?”
Her father grimaced. “Moll, we don’t have time.”
Before she could answer, the ground shook beneath their feet. Molly looked over and saw the spirit from the harvester struggling upright. It stomped its front legs, and suddenly the light in the cavern dimmed. The mine shaft was closing itself, the rock walls flowing together like melted wax until it was blocked completely.
“Well,” Molly’s father said, “I guess that will buy us some time. But we’d best get moving.” He looked down at her where she crouched beside Toves’s broken body. She realized her cheeks were wet and turned away from her father to wipe her eyes. “Molly and I will get Toves home. Rory, Kier, you go with Ariel now.”
“I will come back for you,” Ariel said, “to give you air.”
Molly nodded and watched as her brothers and Ariel made their way across the cavern to the small opening that would lead them out. The fight with the tunnel rat had dislodged a few stones at the opening, but they moved them aside.
Molly bent to Toves. “Is it safe to separate your stones? There’s too much of you to carry in one go.”
“Not too far,” he said softly. “Try to keep me together.”
Molly nodded, then pulled out the bottom of her shirt and started piling some of Toves’s smaller stones into it. Her father did the same. “Thanks, Da,” Molly said.
“Travel like a king, me,” Toves muttered. “Nothing but the finest.”
They had moved the first load of stones a few feet closer to the font and turned back to gather more when a horrible scraping sound echoed through the chamber. Molly clapped her hands over her ears and turned around. The spirit from the harvester was back on its feet now, bending down toward the small font. It was shoving its head against the dark opening, trying to force its way through. The font bent and shivered, and the light around its edges flickered. With a sound like stones cracking apart, the font widened and the spirit’s head passed through.
“Hey!” Molly shouted, but she couldn’t even hear her own voice over the scraping sound. “Wait! The font is too small, it’s too damaged, it’ll—”
The spirit forced its broad shoulders inside, then its front legs and its hind. The lights of the font flashed wildly, growing so bright that Molly had to look away. A cloud of dust washed across her, and the chamber fell dark. The ground shook like a ship in a storm, and she heard stones falling from the ceiling. She covered her head until the shaking stopped.
She looked to where the font had been, but there was nothing there. Small glimmers of light danced around the cavern, but they were only the small breezes she had brought through the font before. Molly called one of them close, so she could see by its wan light.
“Toves, the other spirit, it—”
“I know. I can feel it.” Toves was breathing heavily, the sound like the patter of falling gravel. “Can’t say I blame it. Spent enough years in a box like that myself. You can’t think after enough time. You just want out. Home.”
Molly fell to the ground. “But we can’t get you home now.”
“You should go,” Toves said. “They’ll be digging in here soon enough.”
“I’m not going to leave you here like this,” she said.
“She’s right,” her father’s voice said, surprisingly far away. Molly turned and could just barely see him crouched against the far wall. “That quake caved in our escape route. We’re not going anywhere.”
“Oh,” Toves whispered. “So we’re all screwed then. Well, if you’ve nothing better to do, maybe you could bring those bits of me back here. Be more comfortable.”
Molly watched her father feeling his way across the ground with his hands, back toward them. She realized he couldn’t see by the light of the wind like she could. To him the cavern must be pitch black. She got up and went to her father, putting her hand on his shoulder and guiding him back to Toves’s side. She began moving Toves’s stones back together.
“What do we do now?” Molly asked.
“What do you mean?” her father said.
“I mean, what do we do?” Her voice echoed around the cavern. “How do we get out? How do we get Toves to another font?”
There was a scraping sound, and Molly turned to see Toves’s stones shaking with laughter. “Don’t stop, do you, girl?” he said.
“You have no idea,” her father replied.
“You’re not answering my question,” she said.
“Because there is no bloody answer!” her father shouted, the sound amplified by the closed chamber. “There is nothing left to do! We’re stuck here until Haviland Industries comes to dig us out, and then we either get locked up or shot!”
“There must be something we can do.” Even to her own ears, her voice sounded small and lost.
“Does regret count as something?” her father said. “We shouldn’t even bloody be here. I told you.”
“But we had to try,” Molly said. “None of us could have known that harvester would be here. If it hadn’t been, Toves would have gone straight through and been home.”
“Sure. Rub it in,” Toves said. His voice was even smaller than Molly’s—a sound th
at whispered along the ground and was swallowed by the shadows.
“But you don’t always have to take the risk,” her father said, sounding more tired than angry now. “You don’t have to throw yourself into the middle of every damn fight.”
“If I don’t, someone else might—”
There was a thump above them, followed by a very faint whining sound. Molly and her father looked up, though neither of them could see the roof of the chamber.
“That’ll be them,” Molly’s father said. “The harvesters. Or Disposal, most likely. Who knows how long it’ll take them to tunnel in here.”
“Maybe Toves can dig us out. If we can get him feeling better, he might be strong enough, and we could—”
“Stop, Molly. Just stop.”
“No! We can’t just give up, Da! Toves, what can we do to help? Do you need fresh earth? Your stones closer together? What?”
She stopped speaking, and a moment later the echo of her words petered out. The chamber filled with a silence so deep Molly could feel it pressing down on her.
“Toves?” she whispered. “Toves?”
Still no answer. She called the small winds closer so she could see, and knelt down to press her hands against Toves’s stones.
“Is he…?” Her father put his hand on her back.
“Toves?” she whispered again. But the stones had no voice to answer her. They were gray and dry and growing colder by the moment. She leaned down until her forehead pressed against them, and she felt tears in her eyes. She let them run and bit her lip to keep from screaming.
No one moved. No one made a sound. Her father’s hand on her back trembled. Or perhaps that was her trembling—she couldn’t tell. She sat there, head pressed painfully into the dead stone that had once been Toves, not ever wanting to move again.
I wanted to get you home. But I asked you to stay. I made you stay.
“Moll?” her father said. She ignored him. “Molly, something’s happening.”
She hardly heard him. Her head was spinning with grief, with guilt. Oh God, another one. He asked me for help and I killed him, just like Meredith, just like all those people and spirits aboard the Gloria Mundi.
For some reason the image of the boy from the factory burst into her mind, his eyes wide with fear. Fear of Molly. Maybe they’re right about me. Maybe Brighid’s right.
“Molly, look!”
She noticed that the chamber was no longer silent. There was a strange rumbling above them, almost like thunderclouds. She looked up and saw blue arcs of electricity running across the ceiling, illuminating the rough walls. The electricity ran back and forth. Several arcs gathered into one point and then descended in a lightning bolt, striking the ground several yards away. Molly jumped to her feet.
“What is it?”
“Hell if I know. Maybe Disposal is doing this? Some kind of new weapon?”
The electricity was getting worse, moving faster, the crackling almost deafening. It sprang from the bare stone everywhere. Lightning struck the ground again.
“Da?” Molly shouted over the sound. She could feel panic rising like fire along her spine. “What do we do?”
“We need cover!” he said.
“There is no cover!” A bolt hit the ground only a few feet from her father. “Da! Look—”
Before she could finish, something impossibly bright descended from the ceiling and struck her, knifing through her. She felt as if her body was shaking itself to pieces, and everything went black.
“Molly. Molly.”
Her skin felt like it was trying to crawl off her bones. Her fingers were shaking against the floor.
“Molly, wake up!”
Her eyes snapped open. Her father was leaning over her, his face covered with dirt and sweat.
“What…what happened? The lightning.”
“It’s gone now. Once it hit you, it stopped right away. How do you feel?”
She breathed deep. “Shaky. But I’m okay, I think.”
“Thank God. The burns didn’t look so bad, but I didn’t know what damage it might have done under the skin,” her father said.
Molly probed her chest with trembling fingers. There was a small hole burned through her shirt above her right shoulder, and a circle of raw and blistered skin under it. But that was all. She frowned. Growing up aboard an airship, she’d seen more than one lightning strike—it was a risk all aetheric sailors ran, and often it was fatal. I shouldn’t be okay. A strike like that, I should be dead.
“How long was I out?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Long enough that we won’t be alone much longer.” He pointed upward, and as she looked up, Molly realized for the first time that the cavern wasn’t as dark as it had been. There were small holes where the mine shaft used to be, and as she watched, the head of a drill pierced through, showering down dust.
Molly flexed her arms. Other than the strange jitteriness and an ache in her chest, everything seemed to be working fine. What the hell was that? She stood.
She looked around for anything they could use to defend themselves and picked up a loose rock.
“Don’t, Molly,” her father said, taking the rock from her hand. “You can’t win with that, and it’ll only get you killed. Just let it be done.”
She kept looking around. There were still a few of the purple spirit-world winds skittering around the cavern. She called them in closer, gathering them up. With all of them, she had a decent stream of wind. Her hair and clothes began to flutter.
“There’s wind down here?” her father said.
“Some. Not much.” She tried to recall how tall the mine shaft had been. It might be enough to reach the top. But not for both of us.
The drill was coming through again. Molly stepped back just as a slab of rock fell down from the ceiling. Sunlight poured in, making Molly blink. She brought the winds in tight around her. She could see the sky far above her, on the other side of a swarm of people.
“Molly, please. Don’t fight anymore. I couldn’t stand to see you get hurt.”
“I know, Da. I won’t fight.”
Ropes were uncoiling now, slapping against the cavern floor. People were sliding down—clad in black with silver swords on their jackets, igneous rifles in their hands. As they came down into the cavern, Molly could make out more and more of the sky.
Thirty yards to the top, I think. I’ve never made a jump like that. But I think I could do it.
The Disposal agents were shouting, aiming their weapons at them, but Molly didn’t hear their words. She was watching the patch of sky beyond the agents and whipping the winds faster and faster around herself.
The first agents hit the ground and ran for them. Molly looked at her father. Her heart was like a storm in her chest, and the winds she’d gathered roared in her ears. Her father’s eyes met hers.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“No, wait—”
She brought all the winds under him, sending him up into the sky. His arms flailed, fighting the wind, and she saw him screaming, though she couldn’t hear him. She focused all her will on the winds, pushing them higher, faster, through the dangling ropes, up the mine shaft, up until he reached the ground, far past the Disposal agents. The winds tipped him over the edge of the shaft, and then he was gone. Molly released her hold on the winds.
She felt a sharp pain in the side of her head, and suddenly she was spinning around. She saw the agent who had just hit her, his gun held like a cricket bat. She tried to bring her hands up, but they didn’t respond, and she fell hard onto the stone. The agents were all around her, and her vision was swimming. There was a dark shape swinging down at her—Is that a hand? A boot?—that resolved slowly into a face with a dark mustache and darker eyes.
“Howarth.”
“Hello, Ms. Stout,” he said. “You’ll understand if I don’t want to take any chances with you, yes?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but simply raised his fist and brought it down hard.
ACT TWO
INCARCERATION
SEVEN
The first thing she felt when she woke was relief.
She lay completely still, eyes shut. It’s over, she thought. I’m done. I can’t do any more. It felt like a huge stone rolling off her chest.
The pain came second. It occurred to her that her nose felt strange, like it no longer quite fit on the rest of her face. Her head ached too. And her shoulders. Something was pressing down on her shoulders.
She opened her eyes and saw a blank white ceiling above her. She was on a cot in a small, pristine white room. There was no other furniture in the room. The wall just beyond her feet held a door and a large window revealing an empty hallway. She sat up and watched, but no one walked by.
Now that she was upright, her head started to feel better, but her shoulders still ached. She looked down. Two hinged metal bars were wrapped over her shoulders, meeting above her solar plexus, where they were locked together by a circular clasp. Iron. Some kind of harness. She sat up and felt behind her. The bars of the harness crossed in the middle of her back, too, in a welded cross that dug into her spine. Is this to block my connection with the wind?
She tugged at the clasp on her chest, but it was locked tight. She was wearing a light cotton shirt that did nothing to cushion the pressure of the metal bars. She tried reaching for the wind, but of course there was no wind in the closed room. She couldn’t feel Legerdemain anymore. Without that connection, it was like half of her emotions were missing, half of the world gone dark.
She felt her nose. There were bandages across it, and when she tried to pull them off, a lancing pain shot through her head to the base of her neck.
She stood and walked to the glass. Her room was near the bend in a hallway. To the left it continued straight, but to the right the hallway turned, and she could see several more doors and windows running its length.
There was a rap on the glass, and Molly turned quickly. Someone had stepped in front of the window while she was peering down the hallway. She took a step back.
The man on the other side of the window was slim, with a thick black beard. He wore a long white lab coat. For a moment they watched each other, and then he pointed at her bed.
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