Firewalker

by Josephine Angelini

  Lily looked at Caleb, surprised he’d mentioned the Citadel. He rarely spoke about his training as a mechanic. He’d left everything but warrior magic to Lily’s other mechanics, and avoided assisting her in the rituals to make clean water, cleansers, or medicine for the group. Lily sensed a dark memory behind his dislike for the rituals, and she wished he’d talk about it. She got the terrible feeling that the witch or crucible who trained him had mistreated him in some way.

  Lily saw Una staring at Caleb with wide, sad eyes and wondered if the two of them had more in common than she was privy to. She didn’t pry. Keeping the peace between so many telepathically connected individuals meant that they all had to give one another space and know when to back off a subject. Lily’s inner circle of Juliet, the Tristans, Una, Breakfast, and Caleb would sometimes go days without speaking and purposely put a lot of physical distance between themselves on the trail. Not because they were arguing, but because they needed a break from always having someone so close to them, brushing up against their minds.

  The rest of the braves needed their space as well. While they craved Lily’s strength and her presence, it was the first time any of them had spent so much time around a witch. Many of them found it hard to adjust to having her in their minds and none of them were accustomed to sharing their headspace with someone who could potentially possess them. It set them on edge. Tempers ran high and the trail seemed to get longer every day.

  Lily started to understand why witches lived in citadels, separated from the rest of their claimed for most of the day. She had become a sounding board for everyone’s emotions, and more often than not, even non–stone kin were affected by one another’s moods because they were connected through her. Lily needed a buffer, but there was no way to seclude herself while they all rode on horseback across the ever-flattening terrain.

  CHAPTER

  14

  Carrick bartered his last beaver pelt for a sack of grain. It was a small sack, but he’d have to make do. There were still two bombs left for him to locate and disarm. Hakan, the builder, didn’t have any idea where to start looking for them and Carrick had to make his supplies last for as long as his search took. The money and first-class train passes Lillian had given him had made his trip between the cities downright enjoyable, but Carrick was in the wild now. City money wouldn’t get him grain or beans out here.

  At least the winter hadn’t been too harsh and some of the smaller family groups Carrick encountered still had stores of food they could trade. Some didn’t, of course. Being an Outlander often meant you went hungry, no matter what the winters were like.

  Now, if only Lillian had given him some witch’s medicine, then he could have bartered for more than just one sack of grain. He could have even gotten some dried peaches or a jug of maple syrup. Witch’s medicine was just about the most valuable thing there was in the Outlands. Carrick would ask her for it next time he was back in Salem, which probably wouldn’t be for a while yet.

  With Lillian’s help, he’d beaten all of Alaric’s messengers to the bombs, but he still had two to go and Lillian had made it clear that even one bomb was too many. She’d shared a brief glimpse of a cinder world with Carrick to motivate him, but he didn’t care much one way or the other. Cinder world, not cinder world, what was the difference? People had always killed each other, and Carrick couldn’t see that he’d be worse off if one of the bombs detonated, as long as it detonated far away from him. He might even do better, he figured. Cinder worlds were where men like Carrick—men who weren’t squeamish and knew how to take what they wanted—could run the whole place. One thing kept him motivated, though. He’d grown to crave the power his witch supplied him, and in the cinder worlds witches were done in first. Lillian wanted the bombs defused, and as long as he did what she said, he knew that she’d keep sending him those heady rushes of invincibility.

  For as long as she lived, that is. The last time he’d seen her she looked worse. Her skin had a green tinge to it, and her eyes burned with fever. Carrick didn’t think she’d last longer than a few more months—maybe a year at best—but he took comfort in knowing that there was still Lily. She was fresh and healthy. Carrick spent many hours thinking of her and her three willstones. Lily had been his first taste of real power and it had been the sweetest. Someday, he promised himself. First, he had to deal with his half brother.

  Carrick got swiftly back on Rowan’s trail after making his trade. Again, Rowan was moving away from the cities. The mountains would cause problems with his connection to his witch. Lillian was special, Carrick knew that, and she could keep the connection with her claimed over vast distances, but granite was granite, and not even she could penetrate that if there was enough of it. He didn’t like the thought of losing Lillian’s strength. He told Lillian in mindspeak that he didn’t think Rowan was leading him to the two unsecured bombs anymore, but she’d still wanted Rowan followed and Alaric’s plans for him discovered.

  Carrick didn’t know what Alaric was using Rowan for anymore now that Lily was gone. If anything, with Lily’s possible control over his mind and body, Rowan was a security threat to the sachem. After watching them for over a week, he’d realized that Alaric and Rowan were stone kin, and as such their private discussions were beyond even his most cunning attempts at eavesdropping. That had come as a surprise. It was rumored that Alaric had no stone kin. Lillian had wondered how long that had been going on, and she doubted if anyone knew about it. Not even Lily.

  Something had happened between Rowan and Alaric—maybe it had been a fight, or maybe it had been an order—and then Rowan had left Alaric’s tribe unimpeded and in the middle of the day. Lillian sent out other spies to find either Chenoa, Keme, or the bombs, and she sent out Carrick to follow his half brother. Carrick was the only one of her spies suited for that task. He could still feel his brother, even though Rowan had buried their connection so deep even Carrick couldn’t sense it anymore. That didn’t matter. Their blood bond wasn’t what Carrick followed now.

  Carrick knew everything there was to know about suffering. It was his one true gift. After a childhood spent sending off wounded animals to drag themselves panting and whimpering with pain into the darkness, he even knew how to track suffering.

  Rowan had no idea he left a trail of sorrow behind him as bright and clear as painted stones.

  * * *

  Lily dropped her bedroll on the ground next to her sister’s and looked around. She didn’t see Juliet anywhere. The sun was setting, and by this time her sister would usually have some kind of meal waiting for the two of them. Lily laughed at her own annoyance. She was starting to think like some fifties’ husband who expected his wife to have dinner on the table as soon as he got home from work.

  She reached out to Juliet and followed the connection between them to the perimeter of camp. Her sister sat atop a small rise that was covered in shin-high grass and dotted with vibrant spring wildflowers. Lily joined her, sitting down next to her in the fragrant grass. They looked out over a vast plain that was so mind-bogglingly large that it seemed to stretch on past the edge of the gathering evening, through the night, and straight on to the next morning. Lily fancied she could see all the way to tomorrow’s dawn rising behind this setting sun.

  “Look at them run,” Juliet said.

  An uncountable number of buffalo undulated across the plain like a dark tide of muscle and blood washing over the Ocean of Grass. The pounding of their hooves thrummed through the earth and felt like a heartbeat under Lily’s hand.

  “Alaric told me about this,” Juliet continued quietly. “He said seeing it would open me up so wide that all the hurt inside would just spill out.”

  Lily realized her sister was crying. She wished she could join her, but her hurt was more complicated than her sister’s. It wasn’t clean. When Lily did an autopsy on her love for Rowan she saw that most of the evidence pointed at her. And Lily had never been good at feeling one emotion at a time, like pure sadness or utter joy. Her sister
had that talent, but not her. Everything Lily felt was tainted with other feelings, and sometimes she wondered if all the complications she put on her emotions kept her from ever really feeling anything. Except once. There was one night when all she had felt was love. Having that single taste just made it worse.

  “Thank you for choosing me over Alaric,” Lily said. It was the first time they’d talked about it—the first time Lily acknowledged what Juliet had sacrificed for her.

  “I couldn’t let you die,” Juliet replied, wiping at her face.

  “Actually, you could have. I’m not your real sister.”

  Laughter bubbled up through Juliet’s tears. “Yeah, you are. Only my real sister would drag me all the way out here.”

  Lily dropped her head and let her shoulder shake with laughter. At least they could still share a laugh, even if Lily couldn’t cry.

  “Where the heck are we, anyway?” Juliet said, looking around with a puzzled frown.

  “Missouri, almost to Kansas,” Lily answered, even though that meant nothing to this Juliet.

  “It’s flat.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I mean really flat.” Juliet shaded her eyes and peered into the tricky twilight. “What’s going on down there?”

  Lily followed her sister’s pointing finger and saw a cluster of buffalo suddenly turn against the tide of their fellows. From between the parting buffalo came a pale, loping figure trotting across the plain.

  “That’s the pale Woven,” Lily said, grabbing her sister’s hand and stiffening. She hadn’t seen the pale coyote in weeks, and Lily had thought she’d stopped following them.

  “What’s that?” Juliet asked in a shaking whisper.

  The pale coyote stopped and came to rest, and a hulking shape that Lily had never seen before came out from between the now-scattering buffalo. It was twice the size of the already large coyote Woven. Its snout was elongated and its ears pointed like a wolf’s, but the dark Woven’s long forearms ended in what Lily could see were clawed, but still human-like hands. The wolf Woven had a stooped back and slightly shorter hind legs, like a hyena’s, and it ran toward the pale coyote on all fours with a strange, rocking canter. The first word that popped into Lily’s mind was werewolf.

  “I think that’s a member of the Pack,” Lily whispered in response.

  The wolf Woven came to face the coyote Woven and sat back on its hind legs, looking for all the world like they were engaged in a conversation. They didn’t sniff each other or circle around, like two normal canines would, but rather they sat very still, neither of them so much as twitching. After what seemed like forever to Lily, but was probably only a minute or two, the pale coyote stood up and went back the way it came. The wolf watched the coyote leave and then trotted casually through the herd of buffalo like it owned them.

  Lily looked over at her sister. Juliet’s mouth was parted and her eyes unblinking. “What did we just see?” Juliet asked fearfully.

  “We need to tell the rest of the tribe,” Lily said.

  “Were they mindspeaking?” Juliet said incredulously.

  “I don’t know,” Lily said, clenching her jaw in anger. “But we’re definitely in Pack territory now, and they definitely have more human in them than anyone’s been willing to admit.”

  Lily stormed back to camp, calling in mindspeak for her inner circle to gather around the fire. By the time she got there, she had already relayed what she and Juliet had witnessed.

  “I want to know why everyone seemed to leave out the fact that the Pack is half human,” Lily demanded.

  “They aren’t human,” Dana snapped. “It doesn’t matter what they look like.”

  “Does it matter that a coyote and a wolf just sat down across from each other like they were having a human conversation?” Lily sputtered. “See, that’s something that would matter where I come from.”

  Caleb and Dana shared a tight-lipped look.

  “Just say it out loud, you guys,” Lily said tiredly.

  “Our people have always given human attributes to animals,” Caleb said in a rare burst of anger. “We don’t think of animals the way you do, Lily. We know they’re not dumb. They cooperate, they communicate—they do lots of things that humans do. The thing that separates them from us is that we don’t eat our dead. We bury them and we mourn them. They don’t love their families like we do, or honor their ancestors, and it’s an insult to us for you to keep saying that they’re human.”

  Lily sighed and ran a hand through her hair, feeling like she’d just stepped into a cultural minefield. “And what about mindspeak? What about using willstones? Regular animals don’t do that, only Woven do. Come on, you guys. I know this is a big deal to you, but let’s stop with the whole ‘they’re so different from us’ thing, because it isn’t helping anymore. The Woven are more like us than they are like animals, whether you like it or not.”

  “Even the insect Woven? The ones that eat their own offspring?” Dana asked angrily. “No. I won’t believe that. And when you see the Hive, you won’t believe it either. The Hive’s Warrior Sisters look more human than even the Pack does, but the things they do—” Dana suddenly broke off with a shiver.

  “You’ve seen the Hive with your own eyes?” Lily asked. As far as she could tell, Dana was the only person apart from Rowan and Alaric who had claimed to have actually encountered the Hive.

  “Yes,” Dana replied. “When I was a child, before I had a willstone. The Workers just look like bees, but the Warrior Sisters—they look almost human. All females. All identical twin sisters. I only saw them once, and I don’t know if what I remember is real or if it’s a nightmare or I’d show you what we’re about to face. I’m hoping it’s just a nightmare.”

  Lily could feel herself losing the sympathy of more and more braves, and she knew that by morning her tribe would be smaller. She saw the two Tristans looking at each other, and then heard her Tristan’s voice in her head.

  Leave it, Lily. The Hive is off-limits to Outlanders.

  I’ve noticed. These Warrior Sisters have reached mythical proportions in their minds, even though only two or three people claim to have ever even seen them. I don’t believe in the bogeyman, Tristan.

  But they do. Let it go.

  “Why don’t we focus on the Pack right now, and fight the Hive when we meet them,” her Tristan said calmly.

  “No one fights the Hive, Tristan,” Caleb said. “You just run.”

  “Well, the Hive isn’t here. And we can still prepare for the Pack,” the other Tristan said. “They hunt at night just as well as they do during the day. We need to get ready.”

  Lily stood by the fire, hands on her hips, while everyone else split up and prepared for a fight. Howls rode on the wind as the last bit of light heaved itself over the edge of the horizon.

  “Lily?” her Tristan said. She turned and noticed that he was still with her. “Do you want me to stay and guard you while we fight, or do you want Breakfast?” he asked.

  “You. No, him,” Lily replied, quickly changing her mind. She grinned. “Una would kill me if I sent Breakfast out there to fight something he’s never seen before.”

  “He tends to lock up when he sees a new Woven,” he agreed sheepishly. “Only for a second, though. He’s getting much better.”

  “He’s had to,” Lily said, frowning at the fire. “Do you think I’m wrong about the Woven?”

  Tristan thought for a second before replying. “I think you’re asking the Outlanders to change what they believe about the Woven, and more importantly, what they believe about themselves. That’s a lot. Some of them will do it, some of them won’t.”

  “I’m just trying to find a way to stop the Woven from killing the Outlanders. Trying to eradicate the Woven doesn’t work. Lillian taught me that,” Lily said, looking down and shaking her head at the irony of it. “But if the Woven and the Outlanders can coexist somehow, Alaric doesn’t have to destroy the cities. He told me that the only reason he was thinking of blowing up
the cities was because he couldn’t fight both them and the Woven. If the Woven stop killing the Outlanders, then Alaric has no reason to attack the cities. The Outlanders wouldn’t be trapped.” She spread her arms wide to include the huge tracts of land that now lay in darkness. “They could come out here and they would have all this.” Lily gave him a wan smile. “Piece of cake, right?”

  “If it was easy someone else would have already done it,” he said.

  “And no one has,” Lily replied, her brow pinching with dread. “Not on any of the thousands of worlds I’ve seen. Thousands of other Lilys have tried to solve this same problem and none of them have done it.”

  “All it takes is one.” Tristan touched Lily’s shoulder, and she turned to face him. He stood close to her, and his level gaze was full of faith. “It’ll be you,” he whispered and tilted his head, kissing her swiftly before leaving to find Breakfast.

  Lily stared after him, stuck in the moment. Of course she knew how he felt about her. He was in love with her. The trouble was, she didn’t know how she felt about him anymore. There was a hole in her, and what amazed Lily was how big it had gotten. It had started where her heart used to be, and somewhere along the way the hole had eaten her through and through. And now, when she looked inside herself, she saw nothing. Not a good trade for Tristan—all his love and devotion for her big, giant nothing.

  Lily shook her head to clear it and sat down next to the fire, reminding herself that she needed to focus. She reached out to her tribe, connecting their minds to one another as if they were spokes on a giant wheel. There were thirty-one braves out there beyond the sphere of firelight, and they needed her strength.

  She felt Breakfast take a seat next to her and together they waited through the long night, listening to the mournful howls of the Pack circling just beyond the edge of vision. But the attack never came, and Lily never gave the order for her braves to find the Pack and kill them.