Her black drowning-pool eyes grew by halves. “What did you say?” she demanded.
“I’m alive,” I said. “Back in the Iron Land. I’m using a machine to detach my soul from my body and venture here. But I’m alive, so that has to be worth something.”
Spider stared at me, and I knew I had her. The pure hunger in her eyes was unnerving, the expression of a desperately starving girl suddenly within reach of sustenance.
“I suppose,” she said carefully, “that we might work something out.”
“You want memories?” I said. “My soul? What?”
“You’re eager.” Spider regained some of her composure, managed to rein in the starved expression in her eyes. “What’s this Dean boy to you?”
“Everything,” I said honestly. “That’s why I’m willing to do whatever it takes.”
“Very well,” Spider said. “Your best memory. Your happiest moment. You want happiness back, I want what you hold most dear.”
I couldn’t remember a time I’d been truly happy or content. The joke was on Spider with this one.
“Done,” I said, and held out my hand. “Take it.”
“In time,” Spider said, rising from the pillows with surprising alacrity for a woman wearing such a heavy dress. “I always deliver on my promises before I take payment.” She came close, so close I could smell the heavy scent of dirt and decay wrapped around her as tightly as her clothing. “But I always get paid, Aoife. Make no mistake, and don’t try to cheat me.”
“I’m honest,” I said. “You give me what I want and you can pry whatever happy moments you like free from my brain.”
Spider gave me a bright smile and a pat on the shoulder. “That’s what I like to hear. Come now, let’s go meet Ian and find your boy before the Faceless chew him up and spit him out.”
Ian was pacing the dirt outside the jitney, and his face pulled tighter than a slamming door when he saw Spider.
“Look at you,” she cooed. “Poor Ian. Those months and years of being a Walker have been so unkind.”
She crossed the space between them and touched his cheek, sparing me a look as I stood by uncomfortably. “He used to have such a handsome face.”
Ian recoiled from her touch. “Don’t start with me, Spider. What’s between you and the girl has nothing to do with me.”
“She’s your blood,” Spider drawled. “And you have nothing to do with her?”
“Don’t listen,” Ian told me. “Spider will twist your ear as long as you let her, and twist your head in the bargain.”
“Oh, Ian,” she laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant laugh. It was the sound a person would make as something sharp jabbed into her flesh. “You always were such a sweet-talker.”
Spider led us down another long tunnel, part of the sewers that were apparently a piece of what was inside my head. I wondered at what memory the Deadlands had drawn on, what kind of darkness inside me that it fed on. I wasn’t sure I really wanted to know.
As we walked deeper, the muddy ground sloping beneath our feet, the sewers gave way to something older. The walls were studded with alcoves that held skulls, and the eyes lit up with a faint green glow as we passed.
“Just remnants of souls,” said Spider. “What’s left when the Faceless are done with them.”
I felt a plummeting sensation in my gut. “Dean’s not …”
“Oh no, dear,” Spider said. “He’s far too new. And if he was taken before his time, he’s got fight in him. They could use him for centuries before they drain him dry.”
“Thank you for being so reassuring to the girl,” Ian said from behind me.
“I consider it part of the service,” Spider said dryly. She stopped at a fork in the tunnel and took the left-hand path.
I followed, listening to water drip and things skitter in the darkness beyond the glowing eyes of the skulls. Just as I was beginning to think Spider had betrayed us, she stopped at a figure standing in the shadows.
“Ian,” she snapped, “be a dear and give a lady some light.”
Ian sighed, but drew out his lighter and flicked the lid open. A flame blossomed and illuminated the figure of a girl. Her dress was lush and purple, the sort of thing worn to the type of party a girl like me could only read about in old storybooks. Her hair was immaculate, but dry and weak as a spiderweb, so thin and pale that Ian’s light penetrated it, turning it molten gold.
The waist of her dress had been cut away, and resting where her guts should have been sat the face of a clock, all brass and gear and ticking urgency. The girl’s clockwork eyes rolled open, and camera irises regarded us with the dispassionate glare of a machine.
Spider bent to examine the face of the clock. “Counters,” she said. “The Faceless use them to keep track of all the souls in any given quadrant of the city. We think they were alive, once—the lost and the forgotten sorts.”
“They look human,” I said.
“A lot of things in this place look human,” Spider told me with a wink. “But rest assured, this pretty face was never anything but a predator stalking the red-light district and making herself sick on human souls.”
She jabbed at the clock, causing the gears to seize. “Isn’t that right, dearie?”
The girl’s jaw was clockwork, but it worked a bit, and even though her eyes weren’t human, I saw something in them—pain, and sadness. The same sort of look I saw on caged animals, ones who knew they had no hope of escape.
“Tell her who you’re looking for,” Spider said.
“Dean Harrison,” I told the counter. “I need to find Dean Harrison.”
Something inside her skull whirred, the spiderweb hair vibrating slightly, and then her torso rotated, the clockwork ticking, counting something off. Souls? Seconds? Last breaths?
I didn’t know, but she pointed down one of the many tunnels around us. “Number sixty-three,” she said in an echoey voice piped through some sort of aethervox.
“And there you have it,” Spider said. She looked over her shoulder as a cry echoed through the tunnel. “And we better get moving, if we don’t want to become just another pet for the Faceless to amuse themselves with.”
We hurried down the tunnel. This place was completely different from the skull-lined corridors. Those had been like something out of a bad dream or a horror story. This place was all iron, like a prison back in the living world, each door marked with a clumsily painted number.
I could hear sounds from behind some doors, and shadows danced beyond the bars of others, small windows set at face level. I saw fangs, twisted features, skulls without skin and shrieking vapors without form.
“This is odd,” Spider said. For the first time, she didn’t sound as if she were two breaths away from mocking me. “This place … this is for the worst souls, murderers and the kinds the king wishes to keep under close observation.” She turned her eyes on me. “You didn’t withhold the fact that your Dean is some kind of bad boy, did you?”
“Dean shouldn’t be here,” I said. I was starting to feel frantic. This was worse than I’d thought. If the king kept souls that he particularly wanted here, why was he keeping Dean? And what price was I going to have to pay to release him?
“And yet, he is here,” Spider said, coming to a stop. Her long, tattered skirt whispered around her feet, across the stone floor. “Right here, in fact.” She raised her hand to point at the ragged 63 painted above the door.
I flew across the space, all of my senses leaving me. I felt my body collide with the iron door, felt bruises blossom, but at the same time didn’t really process any of it. My eyes searched the cell and found only darkness save the tiny cube of light projected from the window.
“Ian!” I shouted, desperate. “I need light!”
“All right, all right,” he said, putting his hand on my shoulder. He squeezed, and I knew he was trying to calm me. I was trying to calm myself but was having no success.
The light penetrated each corner of the cell, until it finally lit on De
an. I let out a sob of relief, and banged my fists against the iron. Only Ian grabbing my wrists got me to stop.
Dean looked up, his gray eyes silver in the dim light. “Aoife?” he said softly. “Aoife … are you dead?”
“It’s a long story,” I said. “Sort of, but not really. But that doesn’t matter, Dean. I’m here to get you out.”
“Not now, you’re not,” Spider said, looking over her shoulder. I heard a whisper close by, the sound of a soft foot over stone. “Faceless,” she said. “We have to leave, now.”
“No.” I grabbed the bars, reaching for Dean. “I’m not leaving without him.”
“You stupid girl, there’s nothing we can do!” Spider snapped. “Unless you plan to seek an audience with the king himself and bargain for the boy’s release, he’s here to stay.”
I turned on her, feeling the slow-burning fury in me turn volcanic. “You said you would help me.”
“And I could, if he were a regular soul!” Spider shouted. “But he’s not! For whatever reason, the king’s taken an interest in him, and there’s nothing I or you or anyone can do about that.”
She grabbed for me, but I wrenched my hand free. “I’m not leaving.”
“We must!” Ian hissed. “Or the Faceless will apprehend us.” His face blanched. “I’m not going back, Aoife. I’m not staying here, not in this rancid city. Do you have any idea what they’ll do to me?”
Dean blinked, as if he’d just been woken from a dream. “Aoife, I never thought I’d see you again.…”
“Don’t worry,” I told Dean. “I’m going to get you out of here.”
“Forget her!” Spider shouted, dragging Ian farther down the tunnel. “She’s done for!”
I heard them, but it was as if they were already far away. I was far too focused on Dean.
“I’m sorry, Aoife …,” Ian started, but the shadows of the Faceless had penetrated the tunnel, and he turned and ran.
I stayed where I was, waiting for the silent hooded figures to approach. They surrounded me, and it took a moment before I could speak.
“I know that your job is to exterminate me,” I said. “It’s what you must do. But before you do, I seek an audience with your king.”
The Faceless tilted their heads, and I knew they were staring at me even though I couldn’t see their eyes.
“Aoife, no …,” Dean said from his cell. “No, don’t do this. You don’t know what he’s like, what you’re getting yourself into.…”
“I do,” I said. “I’m doing what I have to.”
Looking back at the Faceless, I put on my bravest expression. At least, I hoped it was brave. Or merely foolhardy, instead of terrified. “I know you can talk,” I told the closest Faceless. “I know you can understand me.”
“And if we were to take you to the king,” it hissed at me, its voice like steam scalding skin, “what would you have to offer?”
“That’s between me and the king, don’t you think?” I snapped. “I don’t deal with minions.”
The Faceless hissed as one, but then they parted and gestured for me.
“Aoife, no …,” Dean said again, but I held up my hand to stop his arguments.
“It’s all right, Dean.” If this was the way it had to be, I’d do what I had to. I’d talk to the king, and I’d find a way to give him whatever he demanded for Dean’s release.
I walked to the center of the Faceless, and was surrounded by them as they led me to the mouth of the tunnel.
“You must think you’re very brave,” said the Faceless in the lead.
“No,” I said. “Not brave. Just determined.”
“Come, then,” another said. “Come with us, and see the one who waits.”
12
Across the Bleak Plain
THE FACELESS TRAVELED on foot and kept their circle tight around me, until I felt as if I’d smother.
As we left the city behind, I tried to move out of the tight knot of black robes, but the nearest Faceless hissed, sounding more like a serpent than a thing that was even remotely human, and I shrank back. “I’m sorry,” I said.
As we walked, the sun grew lower in the sky, a violet sunset that cast all of the land in a strange purple glow. I sped up my stride to get closer to the figure in the lead.
“How far are we going?”
“Two day’s walk from here lies the domain of the Yellow King,” said the Faceless.
“I am human,” I reminded him. “I need rest and food and water.”
“We will stop when it reaches full dark,” said the creature. “At the edge of the Moaning Marsh.”
“I can’t tell you how excited I am about that,” I muttered under my breath, but I resigned myself to walking until the Faceless were good and ready to stop.
The land flattened out, the short grass and scrub giving way to dense thickets and underbrush, and the land at the edges of the road growing wetter. The smell of decay and the whine of insects permeated the air around us, and I slapped at every inch of bare skin. I still ended up covered in welts.
I envied the Faceless their cloaks, and their lack of faces.
Finally, when I was just about to collapse and refuse to go any farther, the group circling me veered off the path. I saw a rough camp set up, a fire pit and some battered lean-tos. The stink of the marsh was all around us, and I realized that I’d be lucky to get any sleep.
“Here,” said the leader. He was a bit taller than the others, but that was the only way I could differentiate him. “We rest.”
The robed figures left the road and re-formed their circle, hunkering down on the ground like crows coming to roost. Their cowls drooped over the voids underneath, and after a time I could hear nothing but a slight wind through the reeds of the nearby marsh.
The ever-present cold of the Deadlands soon found its way into my bones, and I made my way back over to their small group and nudged the leader of the Faceless. “I’m cold.”
I got no reaction, and when I waved my hand in front of their cowls, nothing stirred. At least that left me free to go build a fire, if I could find anything to burn.
The marsh stretched as far as I could see, the dank smell of rotting plants rising up to meet my nose as I squelched through the mud, picking off the gray branches of drowned trees where I could find them. The wood was light and dry and would burn well.
I missed my father all the time, but I’d never missed him more than at that moment. He could light fire with a thought—it was his Weird. I had to resort to finding two rocks and striking them together until a spark finally caught the dried grass and twigs I’d stuffed into the center of a pile of sticks.
The Faceless paid no more attention to the fire than they had to me, and I drew close to it, holding my hands above the flames and trying to tuck my jacket around me.
I didn’t think I could sleep with all the worries about Dean, meeting the king and getting us both out of here banging in my head, but I’d drifted off, head bowed low, before I realized it.
The sound that woke me was inhuman, even for this place. It rose from within the earth, low and then oscillating higher and higher until I thought my eardrums would burst. It retreated, increased, as if everything around me in the marsh was screaming.
I got up and pulled a branch from the fire, the flame at the end of it flickering before me as I walked toward the sound. The Faceless never stirred, the wind ruffling the edges of their robes. They paid no more mind to it than statues would.
The marsh mud sucked at my feet, but the ground seemed firm enough a few inches down. I saw a blue light ahead, bobbing and weaving through the drowned forest, and doused my flame to follow it.
I couldn’t say why I was creeping around the Deadlands in the dark, just that the strange sounds and the blue light had captivated me. Dimly, I realized I was under the same sort of compulsion as when Lei had drugged me, but I couldn’t stop moving.
There were more lights, more moaning, only now it resolved into voices, whispers too indistinc
t to make out what they were saying.
All around me, the blue lights blossomed, and I could see they were tiny bodies, faces, with black eyes and long black teeth dripping with marsh muck.
I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t even do that.
What is she? one hissed. She’s not dead.
She’s marked, another whispered. Marked for the one who waits.
Not anymore, said the first. Now she’ll stay here with us, and we’ll let the marsh swallow up her bones.
All at once, just as I was starting to panic, a different kind of glow filled the marsh, and the bobbing blue shapes fled, screeching. The marsh gave one last, heaving groan and then everything settled again, except for the ever-present wind.
“You shouldn’t be out here alone,” a voice said. The syllables were clipped, from somewhere in Europe.
Reality crashed down around me like a thunderstorm, and I came back to myself. I found myself no longer standing in mud but in water up to my chest, feet sinking deeper into the muck with every passing second.
“Stay calm,” the voice said. “They lure you into the water and you drown without even realizing it. Before you can blink, you’re one of them, trapped in the Moaning Marsh for eternity.”
“You sure know a lot about this place,” I managed. The water was freezing, and my teeth chattered so violently I could barely talk.
“I’ve spent many nights here watching the glow,” the voice said. “Those things—I think they’re dead creatures from the marsh. Certainly not human.” The owner of the voice glided into view, managing to stay on top of the marsh even as I sank deeper.
“I try to help travelers when I can,” said Tesla. “But you’re not just a traveler, are you?”
I gaped, and stopped trying to stay afloat. Rancid water flowed over my lips and up my nose and I choked.
“Easy, easy,” he said. “You’ve got to move toward the shore.” Like the souls I’d encountered in the Iron Land, he possessed a slight silver glow, and when he glided closer to me, he illuminated solid ground about five yards away. “You can do it,” Tesla said. “You just can’t panic.”
The Mirrored Shard ic-3 Page 16
