“Try harder,” the Seneschal said. “And I will try not to think about how much easier it would be to throw some boards on the damn stairs and drag her out in chains.”
“Do that, and she’ll chew your throat out with her teeth if she can’t find a knife.”
“Yes, yes, it must be done willingly,” the Seneschal said. “So says the chieftain. He’s had a good bit of time to consider the problem in his prison cell. Perhaps you would find that setting equally productive.”
Prison cell. In Nate’s unreal state, thinking of the prison was as good as actually being there. He’d felt the chieftain’s power outside the man’s cell: like the old days, going village to village searching for unaware Workers, sensing power like music. The song in the prison had been playing in a key he’d never heard before. “You need me,” he said. “I’m the only one she trusts.”
Which was true and also ironic, because Nate no longer trusted himself. On the way home from the House he saw John Slonim, the man who’d driven the first Slonimi caravan, back before the Slonimi were the Slonimi, before the first Work: a rail-thin man with dark skin and a heavy beard, standing on a box doing sleight-of-hand for petty coins. He saw a tall woman with enormous horns that curled behind her head, a knitted scarf wrapped around her neck and carefully tucked under the tips of the horns. He saw a mother holding a crying baby in the crook of one arm. The mother brought a dull silver vial to the baby’s mouth. The crying stopped.
Nate looked away. It is not real, he told himself. None of it is real.
“Better work faster, boy,” Derie said at the manor. “You’re like a pot that’s more glue than clay.” Then, as Charles held Nate down, she cut his arm, and put him back together.
* * *
When Nate woke the next morning, Charles had cleaned him up and put him to bed again, but was nowhere to be seen. It took some time but eventually Nate rose, and dressed and went downstairs. The last of the bread sat, stale and hard, on the counter; when Bindy arrived, she warmed a slab of it in a pan on the stove until it was soft again and stood over him while he ate it, frowning like a concerned mother. Then she wrapped herself in her shawl and went to the Seneschal’s manor to pick up Nate’s credit vouchers for the week.
The errand would take hours. As soon as she was gone, Nate went into the garden and threw up everything he’d eaten. Then he hung a rag over the gate in the garden: not blue, but white. Or at least it had been white, once. Inside, he fetched the box he’d prepared earlier that week, and put it on the table.
A moment later, he heard a tap at the garden door, and opened it. “Firo,” he said.
The former courtier was transformed. The crinkles around his eyes were free of kohl; instead of being combed high with pomade, his hair hung long, and instead of the gems he’d once favored he wore plain steel earrings, like a dockworker. His coat was as battered and drab as any factory worker’s, but the shirt under it was spotless. Behind him in the garden, a lumpy sack thrown over one shoulder, lurked a heavily muscled young man whose good looks hadn’t yet been worn away by work and privation. Soon enough.
In the House, Firo’s predilections had been permitted but not generally spoken of, which Nate could almost bear. Now, though, Firo went about shamelessly with his new pet, as if there were nothing unnatural at all about the relationship. To the Slonimi, passing on your power was everything. For a man to waste his time in a dalliance where there was no chance of a child was seen as selfish, even traitorous. Persistence of such pursuits was one of the few crimes that merited expulsion, and the stripping of power. “You can come in. He stays out,” he said to Firo.
The young man made a face. Firo rolled his eyes and gave his companion a conspiratorial, pitying look: What can you even do with these people? It did not endear him to Nate, but the young man grinned and handed over the sack.
“Really, magus,” Firo said when the door was firmly closed, “I don’t know what isolated little backwater bred you, but it’s long since time you left it behind.”
Nate gestured to the box on the table.
Firo’s slouch vanished. The two steps it took him to reach the kitchen table were full of courtier insouciance and swagger. Opening the box, he examined the three dozen vials packed inside it. They were identical to the ones hidden beneath the plank in Leda’s stall, identical to the one Nate had hallucinated the mother holding to her baby’s mouth (it must have been a hallucination—he was more glue than clay, his brain could not be trusted). Nate had made them all, after taking a few days to figure out the formula. It had been Vertus’s idea, although the former servingman preferred to use Firo as go-between. Nate hadn’t actually spoken with him in weeks.
“What are the odds,” Nate had said to the courtier the first time, “that I’ve had dealings with both of you, and now you have dealings with each other?”
Firo had only laughed his horrible courtier’s laugh. “Fairly good, since Vertus runs three quarters of the black market in New Highfall. A better question is how a judgmental prude like you has made two such interesting friends,” and Nate had said, pointedly, that they were not friends, and never would be.
As Firo inspected the vials, Nate emptied the sack. Inside he found a supply of empty vials, as well as good, soft flour, butter, cheese, some meat that looked like goat, and a pile of decent-looking root vegetables. There were also three smaller, very well-wrapped packages: one sugar, the other two candy. Chocolate caramels and glazed cherries. Cherries were long out of season. They smelled like sunlight and open air and freedom.
Firo watched Nate’s deep inhalation with some amusement. “A funny world we live in now, magus. The confectioner’s trade is as illicit as yours. Speaking of secrets, how is our little dark horse these days?”
Nate, feeling like he’d been caught doing something salacious—Firo made him feel that way about almost everything—rewrapped the candy. “Not that it’s any of your business, but she’s fine.”
“I’ll take your word for it. At least somebody’s been eating all those lovely sweets, and it’s clearly not you.” Firo surveyed Nate critically. Nate knew he was thinner—every day his bones seemed to emerge further from his flesh—but he didn’t like being looked at by Firo, no matter the motivation. Suddenly, Firo laughed. “Dark horse! To think, all the time and lovely talk I wasted on her, and all I needed to do was offer her a sugar cube.”
Nate scowled, but said nothing. Firo shrugged. “Speaking of treats, I ought to be getting on. The longer Vertus waits, the smaller our cut gets. Poverty makes my William cranky,” he added fondly.
“So treats work on him, as well?” Nate didn’t bother to keep the nastiness from his voice.
“Loving somebody who loves you back isn’t such a terrible thing, magus. You ought to try it sometime,” Firo said, his voice full of cool pity. Then he left.
* * *
Nate tried to get Bindy to take some of the black market food. “Some candy, if nothing else. For Canty, and the other littles,” he said.
At the mention of her brother’s name, Bindy looked wistful. Canty spent his days in the factory crèche now, being cared for by women too old or pregnant to work. Nate knew she missed him. He did, too. “I ought not to,” she said. “If Rina found out, she’d turn you in. Anyway, magus, we don’t need food. We’re okay. But I’ll take some for Darid, if you don’t mind.”
As always, Nate felt an irrational stab of fury on hearing her brother’s name, but he was careful not to let it show. “What does Rina think of Darid, then?”
“He’s not staying with us. Ma says it’s best not to talk about him when she’s around. Rina’s done really well on the factory committee. She’s got a talent for it,” she added loyally. Then, “Sign my papers, magus?” The crèche wouldn’t let Bindy pick Canty up unless Nate signed her off as having worked a full day. Once, when he’d lost track of time inside and Nora had been working the long shift, Canty had
spent nearly two days there. Now Nate signed a few days in advance.
After Bindy took food for her brother, and some was put aside for Judah and the others inside, there was still enough for Nate and Charles. They’d have to manage somewhat carefully, since he’d surely end up trading away the new vouchers like he had the old, but neither of them had much appetite these days. While the goat stewed, Nate made a Slonimi pan bread that baked up warm and pillowy in an iron pan on the stove. For flavor he used the last of his supply of a particular spice that he’d brought with him across the Barriers, and not seen since. The smell of it brought Charles downstairs to the table. When he tore open his share of the bread, steam rose from the soft interior. Charles inhaled deeply. But then, instead of eating, he put the two torn pieces back on his plate with exaggerated care.
“I’m leaving, Nate,” he said.
“Because I make the drops?” He knew Charles didn’t like what he did for Vertus, but he hadn’t thought it was so bad.
“No. The drops don’t bother me. I mean, I want them like I want my next breath, but I prefer to be in my right mind.” Charles shook his head. “No, the committee came knocking yesterday while you were inside. Left a summons for me and my nonexistent working papers.” With a glint of humor, he added, “I’ve been ignoring it, but that strikes me as rather a short-term solution, wouldn’t you say?”
Nate’s mouth was suddenly dry, the bread turning to sand in his mouth. “We’ll get you papers. You can be my apprentice.”
“Bindy is your apprentice. Do you want to choose between us?”
There was nothing Nate could say to that. “My porter, then.”
“I think the Company of Porters would object.”
There was nothing Nate could say to that, either. “You’re my friend,” he said finally.
“You’re mine, too. And that’s why I’m telling you: I’m leaving.” He leaned forward, his face filled with an earnest intensity Nate hadn’t seen there in a long time. He felt struck nearly dumb by the force of it. And of course, this was why Charles had been chosen to come along, wasn’t it? His persuasiveness, his charm. “Come with me,” Charles said now. “Don’t stay here. It’s killing you. You know it is.”
“The world needs—”
“No.” Charles was stern now. “I don’t believe it anymore, Nate. Oh, I know, the Work seems real. But everything I felt when I was dropping seemed real, too, and it all came out of a bottle. We’ve both been told since we were children that if we cut holes in ourselves we can work wonders, but what wonders have we actually seen?”
Nate shook his head. “You haven’t been in the tower. You haven’t met—”
“The girl?” Charles’s expression twisted. “The girl is a girl and the world is the world and it’s always been like this, Nate, it’s never been any other way. There’s nothing to unbind. There are only our lives to live. Be in love with her if you want, but don’t delude yourself, don’t think of her as some sort of miracle—”
From the front of the manor came the distinct and impossible sound of the locked front door opening. Both men froze as an irregular thump-thump-tap made slow and steady progress down the hall, past the parlor and stairs. Two feet and a cane.
Charles was wide-eyed, frozen in fear. Nate imagined he looked much the same. They were both children again, waiting for Derie to come beat some brain into them, as she called it.
“Run,” Nate whispered, barely able to hear himself.
Charles shook his head with a fearsome resolution.
The kitchen door opened. Derie hobbled in. “Dinner, boys? And poor old Derie not invited.”
For a moment, neither man said anything. Then Nate pushed a third chair out with his foot. The legs screeched on the wooden floor. Derie sat down; she took up Charles’s forgotten bread and bit into it. With grudging approval, she said, “Not bad, Nathaniel. Not as good as Caterina’s. It’s the water that makes the difference, you know. Water’s dead here. Like everything else.” She tossed the bread down. Then she looked at Charles.
“Leaving, are we?” she said. “Or just talking about it endlessly, like a jay?”
Nate found his voice. “Just talking, Derie. Not endlessly.”
She barked a laugh. “Says you. This one’s been chewing on it in that parboiled mind of his for days now.” To Charles, she said, “You’ve got no defenses anymore, boy. You burned them all out with that poison you put in yourself, and now, you don’t take a shit without me knowing about it.”
Charles raised his chin. “I did my part. I got Nate inside.”
Derie made a scornful noise. “Would have been nice to have had a courtier on the inside, too, wouldn’t it? One that hadn’t stewed his own brain like tea leaves so it’d feel nicer while he wasted his seed in some third-rate courtier girl.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered,” Charles said, unfazed. “Shame the Work can’t show you the future, old woman. Never occurred to you that anyone else might have designs on Elban’s empire, did it?”
“This is not about his empire, you stupid boy. This is about the entire world.” Derie’s voice was a vicious hiss.
“I’m not a boy,” Charles said.
Nate felt the antagonism burning between the two of them, and fear began to burgeon into panic inside him. “Derie,” he said, and went silent. There was no balm for this wound, no salve for this betrayal. Because that was how Derie saw it, he knew: a betrayal not just of her, but of everything generations had worked for. Lives and blood, vanished like water into dry dust.
Part of Nate agreed with her.
Suddenly Derie smiled, brilliant and hard. “Well, what to do about this? Can’t let you go feral, with all that Work in you.”
“Send him home,” Nate said.
“Where he’ll do what?” she said, as if Charles wasn’t even there. “All he’s ever been trained for is pretending to be a courtier. I can doubt he can even hitch up a horse anymore.” She picked up the bread knife. “And of course, he won’t have the Work anymore.”
Sometimes an ordinary person was born powerful. Away from the caravan, without planning, without interference. You could feel them, your first day in a new village, like a campfire in winter or water in the desert. It was easy to pick them out of a crowd, because they were the ones everyone else either gravitated toward or edged away from; they were the only ones who seemed real.
And sometimes the opposite happened. Sometimes, a person born with power grew up unworthy; wanted to leave, or was expelled. But they couldn’t take their power with them—it couldn’t be allowed to spread unchecked. So it was removed. Nate had been thinking of expulsion just that day, with Firo, but he had never actually seen one happen. When he was a child, Caterina had never let him watch, and when he grew older he didn’t want to.
Now he sat frozen as Derie sliced into her hand and drew quick sigils in the spilled blood. Nate felt the Work rasp over his mind, where it had touched Charles’s. Like an insect, Derie began to strip away Charles’s power like leaves from a tree, unweaving every bit of Work he’d ever done. It was brutal, ugly. Nate ached with empty places where Charles had been, where he was torn away. Charles himself gasped for breath, gray-skinned, lips bluing. Sweat beaded his forehead. The sounds coming from him, small and helpless, were worse than Judah’s screams during the caning. Nate knew he could do nothing to stop this.
“Stop,” he said anyway. “Stop, Derie.”
“I think not,” she said.
Charles was a dwindling flame, then a spark. Nate reached out to lend some of his own fire, and felt himself slapped back, the sting of it reverberating through his entire body.
The spark sputtered. Died. Charles’s writhing stopped. He slumped dull-eyed in his chair. “You’ve killed me.” His voice was a void.
“Not at all.” Derie stood up. “You can live like that as long as you like. Of course, most find they d
on’t like to for very long. But that’s not my problem.” Leaning on her cane, she stomped to the counter and picked up a basin that Bindy had left to dry on the shelf. Then she stomped back. Dropped it on the table in front of the living husk that had once been Charles. “There. So you don’t leave a mess if you do decide to do the decent thing.”
She left. Charles was uninjured physically, and looked exactly as he had before Derie had arrived, but everything was wrong. His friendly presence in Nate’s head was gone. Nate’s heart broke for him. He tried to imagine living like that, stripped of all power, all connection. Cut off from the world, from all the people he’d ever loved. The loneliness of it. The misery.
Charles closed his eyes. His head moved ever so faintly back and forth, and Nate remembered him saying, a lifetime and mere minutes ago: I prefer to be in my right mind. “Knife,” he said. His voice sounded like it was three rooms away.
Nate brought his knife. He laid the weapon down on the table in front of Charles. “You don’t have to do this,” he said. “You could—” But even as he spoke, he knew better. Nobody ever survived having their power taken away. Nobody ever wanted to.
It took Charles some time to get the knife into his hand. It took more time, and effort, to bring the knife’s edge to the vein in his arm. It was excruciating to watch but it was unthinkable to Nate to do anything other than stay, and wait, and witness as, finally, Charles mustered the strength to open the skin, as his blood started to flow into the basin. It was as dead and lifeless as the rest of him, no more alive than the sludge at the bottom of the Brake.
And although it took longer than either of them would have liked, Charles began to grow pale. “Nate,” he said eventually, and Nate said, “I’m here.” They had to speak the words aloud, because neither of them could feel each other anymore.
The Unwilling Page 50
