What We Devour

by Linsey Miller

  Of course she’d put a pin in anything that could result in her losing power.

  “What if I do destroy your noblewright?” I asked. He was as old and as sharp as the shears in his pocket, and they had already tried so much. Creek and Carlow had been working on this for years. If they thought this was the direction to go in, it probably was.

  “Don’t worry, Adler,” said Carlow, her quill scratching through a series of calculations. “If we get lucky, you’ll destroy Creek entirely.”

  “A pity we’re stuck together forever,” Creek said and blew her a kiss.

  “Hush, you two.” Basil yanked a vine from Creek’s elbow, and it crumbled between their fingers. “We have to get them to stay alive once plucked from you.”

  The spare stool in the corner squeaked, and Creek said, “It appreciates me.”

  “Please shackle him to the Door,” murmured Carlow, setting her journal aside and tugging Creek to her eye level by his collar. She examined the slivers of skin where flowers and vines crawled out of Creek. He rested his chin atop her head. She licked her finger.

  “Did you use bone for these?” she asked and touched the stem of a bright red poppy. It stuck to her damp skin.

  “I did, and my arm will be rather useless the rest of the day,” he said.

  “Like the rest of you, I suppose.” Carlow plucked the poppy free, and it collapsed in a splash of blood. “Perhaps a new Door made from us would work since we’re immortal.”

  She pulled away, and he stumbled into the space left behind. I shuddered. They had tried everything to permanently shut the Door, it seemed, but none of it had worked. Everything made by noblewrought broke down within a few days when exposed to the Door. Carlow had managed to extend that to a fortnight by adjusting the wording of some of the contracts and using herself as sacrifice. Her Excellency had forbidden Carlow and Creek from using their lives as sacrifice after that.

  They couldn’t die, but they had too many other uses to risk it all on theories.

  “I’ll put in another request to Her Excellency so I can get started on murdering you for a sacrifice,” said Carlow, sharpening her quill. “Given your inability to keep your mouth shut, you’re the closest of any of us to being a door.”

  He tugged her close, one arm around her waist, and tapped his fingers along the arches of her ribs. “All mortals are doors if you pry hard enough. Do you think I would find a heart in there or only a withered poppy?”

  Basil sucked in a deep breath and turned away.

  “You’re slipping, Creek.” Carlow dug her penknife into his upper thigh and ripped open the artery. “You know there’s nothing in me. We’ve both ripped me open enough to know that.”

  Creek was dead before he hit the ground.

  “Baines, give me my notes back,” said Carlow, holding out her hand. “I have work to do.”

  Creek came back to life laughing, peeling aside his torn trousers to examine the scar-less stretch of skin. “And back to work.”

  “Ignore them,” Basil muttered to me. “They do this all the time. It’s easier to be dead than deal with life, I think, and things haven’t been the same since… Well, they were never good friends, but it’s gotten worse lately.”

  I nodded. Being alive was already like standing before a cliff. Each trouble was another hand on our back pushing us toward the edge, and being wrought was a whole other set of hands on our shoulders. We were useful, but only if we hurt ourselves. We were worthwhile, but only if we hurt ourselves. We were in control, but only if we hurt ourselves.

  “If none of your noblewright creations work,” I asked slowly, loud enough for the others to hear, “why not have the Heir use his vilewright?”

  “What will we do when his vilewright destroys the Door? Kindly ask the Vile to not eat us?” Carlow asked, turning to me with one black brow arched over her goggles. “We must be careful. Her Excellency is aware of all His Majesty’s contracts, and anything that could be viewed as treason will get us all killed. He might be her heir, but she has no intention of letting him rule until she’s ready to step aside. She doesn’t want us stumbling upon how to kill wrought—or their wrights—in our research.”

  Right, those bindings.

  “That is why you’re here though.” Creek narrowed his eyes at me and tapped his vine-covered skin. “Try to destroy these. Don’t be afraid. You’re not good enough to destroy my noblewright.”

  I nodded. It wasn’t an insult, only a fact, but my vilewright still grumbled.

  Creek held out his arm, and a white rose twined about a vivid blue pansy grew from his open skin. My vilewright slipped down my arm, shivering the whole way. I braced myself against his desk.

  “Memories work best as sacrifices from Carlow and me. Our curses make bodily sacrifices insufficient since we cannot perish, so physical sacrifices are either useless or leave us dead for days at a time.” He picked up an unlabeled vial from his desk and held it out to me. “It took me nearly one hundred deaths to create this, but there’s only enough to kill ten people.”

  “Only ten people?” I asked.

  Carlow snorted, and Creek crossed his arms.

  “I’m rather fond of my first memory of Carlow dying,” he said. “Use it as sacrifice and destroy the plants only.”

  Destroy these flowers, I prayed to my vilewright, and take Creek’s first memory of Carlow as sacrifice.

  My vilewright whined, and pain like an ice pick stabbed at the back of my eyes. It wasn’t enough.

  Destroy what you can of the flowers. The mortal parts.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. A warmth like spring sunlight streaming through leaves and the damp scent of turned earth settled over me, and my vilewright swept over Creek. Creek gasped. There was a clatter, glass against wood, and a drawer shutting. I opened my eyes, and my vilewright trilled as if it had been waiting for me. The flowers rippled, and their petals fell away. I stumbled. Creek picked me up and sat me on his stool.

  “Now that is curious,” he said.

  All that was left of the flowers were veins, red and thin, standing upright in the shape of the plant they had once laced.

  Basil came to my side. “Is it still attached to your veins?”

  “Truly,” said Creek, “what is the difference between the veins of a leaf and the veins beneath my skin?”

  “So many things.” Carlow leaned over the odd leftovers of my magic and touched the veins. “It feels as if the petals are still there even though I can’t see them. What was your contract?”

  “I had it destroy the mortal parts,” I said. “Those must be the immortal parts. The sacrifice wasn’t enough to destroy them.”

  “That’s it?” she asked. I nodded, and she sighed. “I knew Creek and I weren’t completely mortal, but if a vilewright can’t destroy creations using our bodies, perhaps the Door can’t either.”

  “I’d need a bigger sacrifice from one of you all though,” I said. “I’ve never destroyed anything immortal.”

  Carlow gestured to her knife in my hands. “Kill me. I’ll revive eventually, and it should be worth more than Creek’s memories.”

  He frowned. “You cannot predict how long it will take you to revive from that.”

  “I need a break from you lot anyway,” she said.

  “No.” I dropped her knife. “I’ve never killed anyone, and what if it takes ages for you to revive?”

  “Then I’ll revive more well rested than I’ve ever been,” said Carlow. “Will your vilewright obey if you specify how much to destroy to ensure I am only dead for a few days at most?”

  It purred, the answer rumbling out of me with a stutter. “Yes.”

  “Half of one petal should allow her to revive tomorrow,” Creek said and handed me the knife. “It’s not murder. It’s a sacrifice.”

  “Those aren’t exclusive,” I said.

 
My stomach rolled. Even if Carlow and Creek could revive, this line of research ended at only one point—to destroy the Door, many wrought would have to die.

  “They are today.” Carlow let Creek pick her up and sit her on the desk before me. She opened her coat. The binding on her chest was a brilliant, weeping blue. “Do you know what your contract will be?”

  “Accept Franziska Carlow’s life as sacrifice,” I said, “and destroy half of a rose petal.”

  Basil held up their hand.

  “That’s a very simple contract,” they said, nose wrinkling. “It might not work.”

  “It’ll know what I mean.” My grip on the knife grew slick with sweat. “I had to learn to work with them quick. Didn’t even know most words when I started. It’ll know.”

  My vilewright, always a sharp pain or low growl, let out a soft hum.

  “It doesn’t matter.” Carlow prodded a spot directly over her heart and felt for the gap between her ribs. “So long as we can find a way to destroy something immortal-made, we have a chance at destroying and replacing the Door. Pretend that petal’s the Door. Stop worrying about killing me. All that matters is finding new, better ways to affect the Door. Destroy it. Lock it. Anything.”

  “Most people dream of doing it,” said Creek, “so enjoy it.”

  Take Carlow’s life as sacrifice, I prayed to my vilewright, and destroy half of that petal, immortal parts included.

  I jammed the knife between Carlow’s ribs, and she died in minutes, slumped across the desk. Creek held up his arm. Basil tested the petal.

  “Destroyed completely,” they said, fingers moving through the space where it should have been. “It’s not growing back either.”

  Creek closed Carlow’s eyes. “Promising.”

  Eight

  I vomited in the washroom. Basil held back my hair, washing Carlow’s blood from my hand with a damp cloth. Because of the bindings, none of them had ever been able to create ways to trap immortal things or destroy them, since that was too similar to trapping and destroying wrights. The Crown would never have allowed such experimentations, but I wasn’t bound and could undertake whatever contracts I wanted. We repeated similar contracts for the rest of the day, learning that physical sacrifices worked best for destroying immortal objects.

  It made sense. The Door required physical sacrifices to stay shut. Why wouldn’t creations made by the only other immortal things left, wrights, require the same to be destroyed?

  “However we deal with the Door, it will require blood,” said Basil, glancing from Carlow’s corpse to the watered-down wine sky outside. “Why is it always blood?”

  “It won’t be if you open it,” Creek said. His body was pocked with holes left by my vilewright’s destructions. “Carlow had to die for you to manage even this little bit. Imagine what destroying the Door would require?”

  “Imagine what remaking a version that didn’t demand sacrifices would require?” countered Basil.

  “Let me think on it tomorrow,” I said. Carlow’s body, still and silent, made me shudder each time I saw it in the corner of my sight. My wrights were overworked and lethargic. My head ached from all the contracts. “I doubt anything will ever be enough.”

  “Not from us alone.” Basil shooed me out the door. “Go rest. We’ll resume tomorrow.”

  By the time I got to my room, I was too tired to sleep. Restless energy raced over my arms and legs.

  I never heard Carlow return. That was another way Cynlira scarred us; it was how Cynlira had scarred my mother and all the folks in the Wallows. It pushed us to work and work and work until our bodies broke down and we couldn’t remember the last time we slept. It told us that if we worked hard enough, we could be rich.

  We couldn’t be.

  The peerage would work us until we died, bolster their bank vaults with our work, and then leave all the money we’d earned them to their heirs. It was what it had done to my mother. It was what the Heir was doing to Carlow. It was what the Crown was doing to all of us. Overwork, be it from too many sacrifices or too tiring jobs, kept folks too exhausted to resist the way things were.

  Someone knocked three times on my door, and I hesitated. The Door would try to lure me to open it.

  “Lorena?” came the voice of the Heir.

  He would be a terrible lure.

  I opened the door. “Your Majesty?”

  “I fear I have neglected you, but my mother required my presence for these last few days,” he said and swept into the room. “Next time, make sure it’s me at the door before you open it. Ask me only something I can know.”

  “Excessive, but if you insist.”

  “I do.” He set a small glass bowl of red dirt on my desk, leaned against the wall, and clasped his arms behind himself. It was the same bowl Carlow had presented me with but never deemed me ready to work with after all our tests. “Basil told me of your experiments today, and if you are up to it, I have another for you. Can you destroy this?”

  The dirt was impossibly smooth, each granule the same minuscule shape and color. I tipped the bowl, and the dirt spilled out. It pooled like water.

  “What is it?” I asked, and an oily, bitter taste coated my tongue. I had not been up to it, but now I wanted to know. “It’s not dirt.”

  “Do you know why blood is red?” asked the Heir.

  “Iron.” In order to create or destroy blood with my wrights, I had to know what everything was made of. My work as an undertaker had given me excellent knowledge of how the mortal body worked. “Iron doesn’t make dirt perfectly ordered like this.”

  “No, but this isn’t really dirt so far as I can tell,” he said. “It’s part of the Door, or at least a physical manifestation of the Door. It took us two years to figure out how to separate it from the Door’s cavern.”

  “What?” I yanked my hand away from it. “What do you mean by physical manifestation? A door is a door.”

  “Not always.” He raised one shoulder and lowered it slowly. “We know this isn’t truly dirt, but what it is eludes us, just as the Door’s true form eludes us. Can you destroy it?”

  He eyed me over his glasses. I followed his line of sight to a little spot above my shoulder. He nodded to the empty space.

  “Your vilewright is…” He waved his hand back and forth. “Listing?”

  “Tired,” I said.

  “If you insist. Can you do it?”

  This was a challenge then. Could the dualwrought girl who’d threatened him in Felhollow back up her confidence?

  “Of course I can attempt it, but I have questions. Can I touch it?” I asked. When he nodded, I swept the dirt back into the bowl. The grains made a sound like shattering glass, and a few clung to my skin, their touch oily and damp. I scraped them into the bowl and sniffed my hand. It smelled of nothing. “Have you tasted this?”

  “It tastes of nothing as well,” he said. “Several people and wrought have tasted it, myself included. Touch appears to be the only sense through which we can accurately perceive it.”

  I rubbed my fingers on my shirtsleeve. It was like I had dunked my fingers in lard.

  “How many people did you feed it to before trying it yourself?” I asked.

  “I am the Heir to the Crown of Cynlira. I am too valuable to be tested so freely, but I did test it myself last year.” He bowed his head, hair covering his face, but he couldn’t hide his smile. “You understand that, don’t you?”

  Because all lives could be reduced to value. The peerage never saw the nuance in such a statement.

  My teeth clenched together, and he glanced up at me.

  He inhaled, exhaled, removed his glasses, and cleaned them against his shirt. “You are upset by this?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  The disappointment of his sigh was palpable, and I remembered clearly how he had once said, “You must understand me.�
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  If I was to be here, help Will, and stop the sacrifices, this boy was my best chance.

  “I understand why you did.” I touched his arm. I did not let my thumb slide a hairbreadth to the left and beneath his sleeve. I did not curl my fingers around his wrist. He stilled. “That doesn’t mean I agree with it.”

  He was as twitchy about touch as me. He wore his clothes like armor, the sleeves always buttoned tight against his wrists and his cravat knotted about his neck. I loved touch, to be touched and to touch, but so often, others expected more afterward and didn’t know how to stop when I drew back. I used undertaking as a shield: no one wanted to touch the girl who touched death. It saved me from expectations. The Heir used fear and finely tailored suits.

  The Heir’s jaw tightened. I withdrew my hand.

  “What would you have done?” he asked.

  Not approached those certain to say yes if you offered them enough money. That was too easy and led down too many dangerous paths.

  But I lied and shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “I hate not knowing,” he muttered. He unbuttoned his greatcoat and sat at my desk. “I have not yet explained to my mother that you are here. I do not know how she will react to our deal involving Willoughby Chase. You realize that not sacrificing him will require another sacrifice? Can your conscience bear to send another in his place?”

  Will had helped me when no one else would, and now I could finally help him.

  “My conscience can’t bear letting an innocent man die,” I said and leaned against the desk. “Does she select the sacrifices?”

  He nodded. “Now that it’s one sacrifice every month, she discusses it with the court, and in the event the court betrays her, she alone will decide. She hardly needs them to do what she wants, but it is easier for all when she agrees with the court. They could kill her, but she would kill them. Everyone would die. She could kill them, but they would kill her. Everyone would die. For now, it is a precarious peace.”