Dawnbreaker

by Posey, Jay

  The stairs were twisted and sagging, and a section of it had pulled away from the exterior wall, but Wren thought he might be light enough to make it up. He’d always been a pretty good climber. The staircase led to a metal-mesh landing, where a dark and doorless entryway awaited. The fact that it was dark inside probably meant there weren’t too many holes in the walls and ceiling. Wren didn’t like the look of it all that much, but he knew he was running out of time, and he decided to check it out.

  He went to the bottom of the stairs and took hold of the metal railing. It wobbled a little when he took it, but it didn’t feel like it was going to break off. Not immediately, anyway. He started up cautiously, testing each step before he committed to it. The first few stairs groaned and creaked under foot, but they held. He took that as a good sign. Maybe not good, exactly, but at least it wasn’t a bad sign. The section that had pulled away from the building was about six feet above the ground, and it drooped and leaned inward towards the wall. Wren stood at the last stair before that part, looking carefully at how far he had to go before the staircase fully reconnected to the building. He figured it was five stairs. It was too far to jump and now that he was close to it, it didn’t seem like the steps in between could bear even his meager weight. He stood there considering for a few moments. The outer frame of the staircase on the high side was wide and still looked like it was in pretty good shape. He thought that if he could keep his balance and walk along the frame, he might be able to get up quickly enough that it wouldn’t collapse under him. And if the steps did collapse, well... at least it wasn’t that far to the ground.

  Wren took a deep breath and tested his footing, first with his right foot then, when that felt weird, his left. That actually seemed worse, so he tried leading with his right again. The angle of the railing made it more difficult than he’d expected, but after a couple of false starts, he held on to the rail and took quick, short steps along the outer frame. The metal whined and shifted beneath him. On his fourth step, the whole staircase shuddered and then popped, and Wren felt everything sliding to the right, away from the building. Further up the stairs, he saw another bolt pull free.

  His balance had already been off-center and even though he did everything he could to adjust, his next step came down right in the middle of the unsupported section. The staircase shrieked beneath him. He didn’t break through immediately, but he could feel the metal flexing and giving way with a sickening, almost mushy sensation. Without thinking, Wren threw himself forward with his arms outstretched.

  He didn’t get the push-off he had hoped for, and the impact was hard; his chin slammed down on one of the steps. A flash of pain, spots in his eyes. Not a graceful landing at all. But he hadn’t fallen through. Wren lay still for a long moment, sprawled flat on the stairs, feeling them vibrate under him. When he felt confident enough that the whole staircase wasn’t going to collapse with him on it, he risked lifting himself up and looking back down the steps. His feet were still dangling out over the bent and broken segment, but from the waist up he was laying on the more stable upper portion, where the staircase remained firmly secured to the building.

  Wren drew his legs up behind him, and crawled up the few remaining steps to the top. There, he turned and sat on the landing with his feet on the stair below. His chin burned. He touched it lightly, winced, and his fingers came away wet and bright red. He ran his thumb through the fresh blood and then wiped his hand on his pants. From his vantage he could tell the stairs were definitely in worse shape than they had been just before his ascent, and he wondered if he’d have to find an alternate way down. A moment later it occurred to him that, with as much trouble as he’d had coming up, that ruin of a staircase might be almost as good as another wall. A Weir probably wouldn’t try to come up that way without good reason, and even if it did at least it wouldn’t make it to the top without making a whole lot of noise. It was kind of like having a built-in early-warning system.

  Wren decided to check out the inside of the building. He touched his chin again, and then had to wipe his hand on his pants again. The blood was still bright and he noticed it’d dripped onto the stair at his feet. He was going to have to do something about that. For the time being, he tugged the cuff of his shirtsleeve out from his coat and used it to wipe the blood off the stair. Then he dabbed it gently on his chin. Wren got to his feet and stepped into the building, pausing at the entrance for a minute to let his eyes adjust to the gloom. The air was musty and when he shifted he could feel the grit on the floor under his feet. The sun was getting low and the door was facing the north anyway, so the light didn’t penetrate very far, but once his eyes started to get used to it he saw he had been partially right about the room. The walls didn’t have any holes at all that he could see. It was the ceiling he’d been wrong about.

  The ceiling had collapsed in the middle. Or maybe it was more accurate to say it was the floor above that had fallen in. In any case, from where he stood on the second floor, he looked up through a yawning hole above and into utter blackness. Whatever else was up there, at least the roof hadn’t caved in over this portion. There was no visible daylight that he could see. He set his pack down on the ground there by the doorway and rummaged around for his chemlight. It took him a while to find it; it had fallen down into the very bottom, of course. When he finally felt it and wrapped his fingers around it, his hand brushed against the cold metal of the bundle he’d carefully packed on one side. The cloth he’d wrapped it in must have come undone.

  Wren crouched by the door. He pulled the chemlight out and laid it next to the pack on the floor, and then drew out the bundle and rested it on his lap. The cloth had fallen away in one part, exposing a portion of the grip and some of the surrounding steel. He’d intended just to wrap it back up and put it away, but now that he had it out, laid across his legs, he couldn’t resist peeling back the rest of the cloth and taking a peek. He drew the cloth away and looked at the heavy prize in his lap.

  Three’s pistol.

  He ran his fingers over it lightly, tracing the cylinder, the grip, the trigger guard. It was unloaded, but even so, he wouldn’t touch the trigger. He still remembered the deafening thunderclap that had filled the room and made his insides tremble, the one time he’d seen Three fire it. The pistol was massive but well-balanced. The scuffs and scrapes showed years of hard use; the finely-tuned components told of the great care that had been taken over it. Rugged and resilient. A precise instrument whose design left no doubt as to its purpose. Wren opened the cylinder to see the three empty chambers, then snapped it closed again. After a moment, he repeated the process. There was something almost soothing about the way the mechanisms all worked together. Even so, the pistol felt menacing in his hand. It thrilled him, but also felt wild and uncontrollable, as if at any moment it might turn itself on him.

  Mama had kept the pistol for a long time. Right until the end, when she’d passed the weapon on to Chapel, who had in turn presented it to Wren on their second day in Greenstone. Chapel hadn’t said much, just that Wren’s mother had wished him to have it, and he’d laid it on the table in front of him, with its three remaining rounds of ammunition on the side. It was as if some ancient king had handed down his sword from of old. Wren didn’t know the story of the weapon, but he could tell there was one. Three had handled it with both familiarity and reverence. For a long while, Wren had just looked at the gun on the table, too overwhelmed, too afraid to touch it, but too awed to turn away.

  It was Mol, of course, who had come to the rescue. She’d brought an aged but fine cloth and helped Wren wrap the weapon securely. The ammunition they kept separate, in a small pouch on the side of Wren’s pack. It was too rare to leave behind, and far too dangerous to leave in the gun.

  A dark, wet splotch appeared on the grip; it took Wren a moment to recognize his bleeding chin had just dripped. He hurriedly scrubbed the spot on the gun clean with his shirtsleeve and then dabbed his chin again. There was a cheap adhesive bandage or two in his
pack. He wrapped the gun back in its covering and returned it to its place in his backpack, and then rummaged around for the bandages. Mama would be upset about him using his sleeve like that. The thought made his chest go tight, but he kept himself under control while he pressed the bandage onto his chin.

  With that completed, Wren finally got to the task at hand. He picked up his chemlight and twisted the endcap to ignite it. It glowed yellow-green and illuminated the small room with its soft light. Not that there was much to see. The room was filled with debris, almost as if the room above had been full of concrete and had dumped it all in a pile here below. In fact, that might very well have been what had happened. There was more to the pile than just concrete, of course, but it really did look like someone had poured out a huge bucket of construction material. That didn’t leave much room for anything else in there. There were no windows and if there were any connecting rooms, their doors had been completely choked with the rubble.

  Wren’s spirits dropped. He wasn’t sure what exactly he’d been hoping to find, but this certainly wasn’t it. The thought of having to find another way down was too discouraging to face. He was standing there with the chemlight down by his side trying to work up the resolve to head back out again, when a glimmer caught his eye. He held the chemlight up above his head, but couldn’t see what had caused it. After a moment, he slowly lowered the chemlight. There. He saw it again.

  He bent over and held the light out at arm’s length, and though he lost sight of whatever had caused the glimmer, he saw now that one of the floorbeams had collapsed at an angle and had helped form a sort of shelf. What had looked like a solid mountain of wreckage actually had at least one cave. Wren walked closer and got down on his hands and knees. Sure enough, there was a small pocket in the debris. It wasn’t very deep and the smell of dust was so thick it made him cough. He got up and went back over to the door, and then looked towards the pocket. He could see it now, the variation in depth of the pile, but it wasn’t at all obvious that there was a hole in it. If something did come in the room, it’d have to look pretty hard to notice.

  Wren returned to the opening and got down on the floor again. He really didn’t like the idea of crawling in there. How long, he wondered, had all of that stuff been piled up like that? The thought of him accidentally knocking something loose and being buried alive almost turned him right around, broken stairs or no. But he stuck his chemlight in there and took a look at the top. There was a solid chunk of concrete or marble, still in one piece, that was laid across the angled floorbeam. He pushed on the broken floorbeam a couple of times, but nothing shifted other than a little dust. It seemed stable enough. And even though he was hesitant, he couldn’t deny it felt like the right kind of place.

  He slid his pack in first, and then crawled after it. There wasn’t even enough space for him to sit up all the way, but it was deep enough that he could get all the way inside if he tucked his knees up. It wouldn’t be comfortable, that was certain. But it did feel safe.

  Wren scooted out backwards and pulled his pack after him. He’d decided. That would be his place for the night. But he wasn’t going to spend any more time in it than he absolutely had to. He returned to the doorway and sat down on the floor with his back against the wall so he could look out. The sun had disappeared behind the buildings off to the west. In another hour at most, the Weir would be out. There wasn’t much else for him to do before then.

  He dug around in his pack and pulled out one of the ration bars jCharles had given him. Mol had packed some better food, but he’d had to eat that first so it didn’t go bad. The bar wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t really something anyone could enjoy. It was spongy and bland, with a kind of buttery aftertaste. Wren knew it had a good balance of nutrients. He wouldn’t be hungry in the night. But it wasn’t very satisfying either. He drank some water and got out his thermal blanket, which he wrapped around his shoulders. He pulled up the hood of his coat. Somewhere behind those buildings, the sun started to set. The sky faded to pale purple and the shadows reached out across the landscape as it was embalmed in twilight. Wren waited as long as he dared. Almost too long.

  The first cry was so distant that he initially mistook it for the wind caught and transformed by the ruins. Realization came moments later as an icy shock that woke him to action. Had he dozed off? He got to his feet and hugged his pack to his chest. The room was far too dark now to find his hiding place. A foolish mistake. Now he’d have to risk the light, when he could have, should have, already been tucked safely away. A good lesson, if he lived to remember it.

  Wren ignited the chemlight and held it close, shielding it with his body and his pack. Where it had seemed weak and mellow in the afternoon light, now it blazed like a beacon in the darkness. He scrambled to the pile and dropped on his hands and knees to find his entry point. Fear was rising now that the reality of his situation had materialized. Night was falling, the Weir were abroad, and Wren was alone. He wasn’t panicking yet, but each second he couldn’t find the opening threatened to push him over the edge. Was he too far right? Or had he passed it? Everything looked so different in the dark, with only a narrow beam of light showing slivers.

  He couldn’t help it; he had to take the risk. He held the chemlight up, extended. Maybe it was coincidence that another Weir cried out just then.

  There. To his left. He hadn’t gone as far back into the room as he’d thought. He crawled to the opening, shoved his pack through first and scurried in behind it. In his haste, he caught the top of his head on the corner of the floor beam, hard enough that it stopped his forward momentum. He managed not to cry out though the pain of it brought tears to his eyes. He ducked lower and crawled as far into his hiding place as he could and pulled his legs up behind. Wren’s heart was pounding and he closed his eyes and tried to focus on his breathing. Deep breaths. Slow it down. It took twenty, maybe thirty seconds before he felt like he had things under control again. And when he opened his eyes, he realized he’d left his chemlight on.

  It was still in his hand, glowing happily. With a quick twist of the end cap, he switched it off. The darkness swallowed him in an instant. Wren lay there listening for any sounds that might warn he’d given himself away, but the blood pounding in his ears made it hard to trust anything. For ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, he did nothing other than fight to still himself. He was twisted at an awkward angle, and the concrete under him worked through his hip bone with a dull, aching restlessness. He pressed his head into his pack and set his mind to enduring it.

  Just a little longer. Just a little longer.

  It was probably a full hour before he gave in and repositioned. When he did finally move, the muscles in his back spasmed to life and even when he’d settled into a new posture it felt like he was lying on a bed of hot needles. And he’d gotten his thermal blanket tangled and caught so that the larger portion was caught beneath him. He couldn’t quite keep it pulled over his shoulder and his legs were completely exposed. His hood was still up, but it too was twisted off-center so that his left ear was uncovered. He wasn’t too cold yet, but he could feel the temperature dropping as the night air filtered in through the entrance to his hiding place.

  It was going to be a very long night.

  The good news was he hadn’t heard any more cries of the Weir. Whether that was because they were nowhere nearby, or because he was too insulated in his hiding place, he wasn’t sure. He wanted to believe the former. His imagination assured him it was the latter. It was a detail he hadn’t considered, hadn’t even known to consider. He’d thought he’d been clever to use the broken staircase as an alarm. But what good would it do him if he was too buried under debris to hear the warning?

  As the night progressed, that thought grew in his mind and wreaked havoc with his thoughts. What had begun as a mere possibility transformed into certainty. It was no longer a question. There was a Weir outside, on the stairs, in the room. Wren knew at any second the blackness of his hiding place would vanish, replac
ed by glow from the light of those probing eyes. He trembled uncontrollably, and though the pain of laying in place was great, the fear that paralyzed him was greater still.

  He knew it would come. Any second now. Any second now.

  But it didn’t. And just when Wren thought he would break from the terror, a thought came unbidden. If he could imagine the worst, could he not also bend his mind to imagine the best? And his mind argued against itself. The best seemed too much, too distant, too impossible. But surely he could find something better. Even that seemed foolish. What good was it to pretend there was safety when danger was crouching at your door?

  That thought brought back in a flash the memory of the night in Morningside when everything had first gone wrong. The night the girl had come to his room. The night Snow had come to kill him. He had been frightened then. Truly and wholly terrified. But he hadn’t just stayed there in his bed, waiting to die. The fear had motivated him, had given him focus. As it had when he’d gone to his mama outside the gate, walking out into the sea of Weir to bring her back.

  Wren tried to put himself back in that mindset. To embrace the fear, rather than resisting it. To draw power from it instead of letting it drain him. What if there was a Weir out there in his room? What could he do about it now? How would he respond?

  His knife was still in his belt. He was laying on it, though he thought if he shifted a bit he could draw it. In fact, if he tucked his elbow into his side and bent his wrist down as far as he could, his fingertips brushed the grip. He wouldn’t take it out now, but knowing he’d be able to if he needed it reassured him a little. Not that he was confident it would do much good. He’d used his knife to defend himself twice in his life, and both times he’d surprised his attackers. The second time it had been against Asher and it had ignited his wrath rather than extinguishing it. Wren figured trying to fight a Weir would be more like that.