What rotting kind of life could I live, knowing that? Staying here with the crew, with Meroe, knowing that my failure had delivered my sister into the hands of a monster?
Fog has rolled in off the sea, swathing the forest in wisps of cloud. The moon, rising, glints across the top of the mist, like a cold ocean rising up over the treetops. It swirls unsettlingly, and as I watch, it parts to reveal a large, four-legged figure at the base of the ziggurat. It’s an angel with a dog’s head, the one I’ve glimpsed several times now, which followed us from Soliton. It stands on the steps at the bottom of the building, looking upward, and I swear it sees me. It makes a jerking motion with its head, over one shoulder. Then again, as though it wants me to follow.
Following it would be madness, of course. Prime’s monsters could be out there, along with Blessed knows what else.
But it’s better than going back inside and confronting the truth.
I stand up, leaving the blanket behind. I’ve got only a light tunic on, feet bare, but it’s a warm night. The ramp on the side of the ziggurat doesn’t come all the way up, so I step off the edge of the first tier, absorbing the ten-foot drop with a crouch and a flare of Melos armor. Then the next, and the next, heat rising along my bare legs, descending in an arc of spitting green sparks. When I reach the ramp, I start to jog, bare feet slapping against the stone. The angel keeps staring at me, unmoving, until I’m nearly to the bottom. Then it turns, and with a last look over its shoulder lopes into the misty darkness.
I go after it. It moves slowly enough that I can keep pace, far enough behind that I can barely make out its bulk through the fog. Swirls of mist open around me, and in every faint, moonlit shadow I expect to see a walking corpse or a lizard-bird waiting to claw my guts out. But nothing attacks me. Overhead, I hear the squeak and flap of bats on the hunt, and once the abrupt screech of something small dying suddenly amid the undergrowth.
I don’t know which direction we’re going, but we travel for some time. Eventually the forest stops at a neat line of trees, and the angel walks out into a plowed field. There are other angels here, inert and still, waiting for daylight to begin their appointed tasks again. Compared to Soliton’s guardians, who are all disturbing, fantastical shapes, the angels of the Harbor are utilitarian—great featureless bodies with four legs and two arms, looking like stone statues no one has carved in detail. They take no notice of us.
The dog-angel stops in the middle of the field, the blue glow from its crystal eye lighting up the ground. In the middle of the neatly plowed rows of earth, there’s a pit, the sort of thing a real dog might dig to bury a bone. It’s about as deep as I am tall, like a grave. I pause in front of it, skin sheathed in sweat after the long run, breathing hard and fighting a stitch in my side. The angel points its nose down into the pit, and waits.
“You want me to go down there?” I ask it. I’m not expecting a response, and I don’t get one. Approaching the edge of the pit, I look down, and see something gleaming dully at the bottom. “Are you going to bury me alive?” I pause. “That’s a joke, I think.”
I climb down. What else am I supposed to do, at that point? Go home?
As I descend, the dog-angel lies on its belly and lets one foreleg hang into the pit beside me. It’s just about long enough to reach the bottom, and it puts its heavy stonelike paw on a gleaming bit of metal. I kick away a few clods of dirt to reveal a long metallic tube buried in the soil, stretching into the walls of the pit as though this angel had excavated a hole around some kind of sewer pipe.
Maybe it is a sewer pipe. Or irrigation for the fields? My grasp of the principles of agriculture is pretty hazy. Or else—
Then I get it, and my skin pebbles into goose bumps. It’s not a pipe for water, or for sewage. It’s a conduit, carrying Eddica energy, like the ones I found in the control room on Soliton. I’d known there must be something like that here, judging by the flows of power I could feel, but not where. Bending over, I can see the rush of energy inside it, tiny motes of gray light tumbling through the metal in a current. They wash up and around the paw of the dog-angel, shimmering in the blue glow of its eye.
It lifts its paw, then touches the conduit again.
“Yeah,” I say. “I get it.”
I don’t understand. But what else is new?
I put my hand on the conduit, and try to feel the Eddica flow through me. Then, all at once, there’s another presence, and a voice in my head.
“It took you long enough.”
“Hagan?” It comes out as a whisper.
His shape appears before my closed eyelids, outlined in gray Eddica-light. I fight the urge to sob at the sight of him. Not that I make a habit of that, but …
“Where have you been?” I say. “I haven’t seen you since my fight with the Scholar. I thought—” I swallow and clear my throat. “I thought you were dead. Deader. Dead again. Whatever.”
“I think—I think I nearly was.” His shape wavers, as though it’s made of fog and the wind has picked up. “I don’t think I’m quite … whole, anymore. I don’t remember everything. What the Scholar did … damaged me. It took a while for me to pull myself together, so to speak.”
“I tried to help you,” I tell him.
“I know.” He shakes his head, leaving trails of gray light. “I nearly had it when the ship sailed into the Harbor.”
“What happened?”
“I felt something reach out to Soliton. Take control of it. The city’s system controls the ship’s, it was designed that way. But I could feel someone coming with it, passing into Soliton’s system, rummaging around. Looking for something like me.”
“Prime,” I say, mouth dry. “It was Prime.”
Ghost-Hagan nods. “He doesn’t control the city’s system, but he can ride it. And he’s stronger than I am, much stronger. I pushed myself into this angel and ran. I don’t know exactly how much I left behind.”
“Left behind?”
“Parts of myself. My feelings, my memories. I crammed what was important into this thing.” He shrugs. “I feel … incomplete. But it doesn’t matter.”
“Why did you wait until now to say something?” Unreasoning anger flares. He could have helped us against Prime—warned us, at least—
“I can’t talk to the city’s system, or else he’ll notice me,” Hagan says. “This is the only way I could figure out to talk to you, piggybacking directly on a conduit. Even here, I don’t think we have long—”
“No, we don’t,” another voice says. A young woman, sharp and commanding. “So can we get on with it?”
Her ghost-image forms beside Hagan. It’s indistinct, compared to his, blurred and constantly fraying and re-forming. She’s about my age, with long pale hair and iceling features, tall and slender. Given Catoria’s story, I can make a pretty good guess as to her identity.
“Silvoa, right?”
She grins, wide and infectious. Another blurry shiver runs across her image. “I see you’re up to speed. That’s helpful.”
“More like a lucky guess,” I say, shaking my head. “Are you…” I can’t think of a tactful way to ask the question.
“Dead?” She gives a decisive nod. “As a doornail.”
“Ah.”
“Prime took me prisoner when Gragant and I tried to get into his ziggurat,” Silvoa goes on, matter-of-factly. “When I wouldn’t work with him, he tortured me to death.”
“Um.” Because how, exactly, do you respond to that? “Sorry. I mean. So…”
“Why am I still here?” she says. “He caught my spirit when I died, just like you did with Hagan. Except you seem to have given him free run of Soliton’s system, while Prime keeps the Harbor pretty well locked down.”
“Why?”
“He likes to torture me from time to time,” she says, waving a hand in a blurred gesture. “He’s not very complicated, in some ways.”
“She contacted me while I was following you to the ziggurat,” Hagan says. “Told me where to look for th
e conduit. There’s a network running under the entire city.”
“And when he finds me, he’ll close the loophole I used to get out,” Silvoa says. “I have no idea how long it’ll take to find another one, so let’s not waste time. Isoka—It’s Isoka, right?”
I nod, dumbly. Even without the added complication of being dead, Silvoa’s rapid-fire style is a little overwhelming.
“Okay. You had the right idea, trying to get into Prime’s lair.”
“Catoria told me what you were trying to do. I thought we might have better luck.” I swallow. “That was … stupid. I just—”
“Not stupid, but maybe a little premature. Catoria…” Silvoa’s businesslike expression softens. “Is she all right?”
“She seemed fine,” I say. “She talked a lot about you.”
“I wish she wouldn’t,” Silvoa says. “I wish … well, a lot of things. Not relevant. The point is, I was right back then. If you can get to all three access points, the system will recognize you as an administrator. You can lock Prime out, shut off his power, use the angels against him.”
“I thought I would be able to control Soliton after I got to the Garden, but—”
“This is different. Trust me. I know you have no reason to trust me, I’m sorry. But I’ll help you.”
“Even if you’re right,” I say, “I can’t get into Prime’s ziggurat. I’m not going to waste more lives with another attack.”
“We’re working on that,” Hagan says.
“I have an idea,” Silvoa says, nodding. “But you need to get to the other two accesses first. That way, when you reach the third one, you can shut Prime down on the spot.”
“That makes … sense.” Sort of. “But I don’t know if the others—”
“He’s on to us,” Silvoa says. “Ice and rot. Isoka, Hagan will try to get in touch with you again. But—”
Her ghost-form freezes, mid-word, and then vanishes in a puff of Eddica energy. Hagan looks around frantically.
“I need to run,” he says. “And so do you. Good luck.”
I open my eyes.
I’m still at the bottom of the pit. The dog-angel is already moving, backing up from the edge, and I scramble up toward it, bare feet shifting in the dirt. The field is still dark and quiet, and the Harbor angels sit motionless, but other figures are rapidly approaching. Corpses, lurching toward us at surprising speed.
The dog-angel—Hagan—gives me a final nod, then turns and lopes off into the darkness. He leaves me alone at the center of a ring of monsters, which I suppose counts as a vote of confidence. I find myself grinning as I raise my hands, blades igniting with a snap-hiss. The first corpse-thing comes into range, and I take its head off with a single cut and send the flailing body into the pit with a well-placed kick.
The others pause, or at least I imagine they do. I spread my arms, blades cutting cracking trails through the darkness. The old rage sings in my veins, the old rush. No one else to get hurt, no one to get in the way.
Bring them on.
* * *
By the time I get back to our ziggurat, the eastern horizon is fading from black to gray. I jog up the ramp, clothes and skin spattered with mud and black blood from the corpses. The guard gapes at me, and I give him a manic grin, still high from the adrenaline of the fight. He hurries off ahead of me as I stroll down the corridor, stopping in the main chamber to borrow a rag and clean myself up.
Meroe arrives after I’ve managed to scrub off the worst of it. Her face is composed, but her eyes are puffy from crying, and just a look from her rips my heart in half. She stops in front of me, takes a deep breath, then looks around at the gathered crew, who are watching our every move.
“In here,” I tell her, taking her arm and ducking back out through the corridor and into an empty storeroom. Some of Catoria’s gifts are piled here, but no one is around, and a glance at the guard trailing Meroe keeps her at a safe distance.
“Isoka—”
“I’m sorry.” The words spill out, without any conscious thought on my part. “I’m sorry, I’m so rotting sorry. You were right. You’re always right.”
“I’m not.” Meroe takes a deep breath again. “I haven’t been … I didn’t think about how this must be for you. I got…”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not.” She glares at me, tears forming in her eyes. “You don’t get to make me the perfect one, Isoka.”
“You’re right.” Her mouth curves upward, and I roll my eyes. “Sorry. You’re wrong, too. But it is fine. At least, I don’t know what will happen, but you and I…” I shake my head. “Next time, please punch me sooner?”
“I’ll take that under consideration,” she says. I can tell she’s trying not to grin. “What happened? Are you all right?”
“Fine. Some of Prime’s monsters turned up. Nothing I can’t handle.” My mind feels like it’s fizzing. It won’t last long—I’ll crash hard, soon—but for now I’m flying. “Call everyone together, the pack leaders. I need to talk to them.”
She nods, and half-turns. I grab her shoulder, turn her back toward me, and kiss her. After a startled moment, she melts into me, our bodies pressing together as though slipping back into the place they most belong. She holds me so hard I can barely breathe, hands sliding up and down my spine, sending warm shivers across my skin. For a moment there’s nothing in the universe but her, the soft, dark, beautiful glory of her.
Fighting always leaves me wanting to rut, after, a deep, sweet ache. I consider, briefly—the bags of cloth in the corner look soft enough—
Meroe breaks the kiss, reluctantly. I let my arms fall away from her, and she takes a trembling step back, breathing hard.
“I’ll … get everyone together.” She gives me a shaky smile.
“After I talk to them,” I murmur.
She raises one eyebrow. “And after you’ve had a bath.”
* * *
Once again, the Council and the pack leaders gather in one of the smaller chambers.
I can feel the missing faces, like broken teeth in a punched-out grin. Shiara is with Catoria and her people, and Thora is still asleep upstairs. Jack is here, looking unusually disheveled and baggy-eyed, her short hair teased into unruly spikes. Zarun leans against the wall, a bruise blooming across his handsome face and a bandage wound around one arm.
Was Safiya here the first time? I can’t remember. Guilt still tugs at me, but its pull isn’t as strong as before, as crippling. To command is to sacrifice. I think Meroe and her father were both right. Their sacrifice and mine.
“I assume you’ve all heard what happened by now,” I tell them. “I’m sorry if I’ve been … unavailable. I’ve been thinking.”
“Thinking hard, it looks like,” one of the pack leaders says from the back row.
I look down at myself—still barefoot, still smeared with dirt—and grin. The moment of tension dissolves into a round of laughter.
“People are dead because of me,” I tell them. “I did what I thought was right, and now they’re dead.” I pause, because I’m not sure what to say next. I’m sorry doesn’t seem adequate.
“That’s what happens, on a hunt,” Zarun says. “You make decisions. Sometimes people die.”
There’s a murmur of agreement from the others. And, I realize, they do understand. Zarun and the Council ran Soliton in the name of the Captain for years, and every pack leader faced the same choices on a smaller scale every time they went out into the dark. You make decisions, and sometimes people die.
I fight the urge to glance over my shoulder at Meroe. Instead, I look straight ahead, and push on.
“If anyone else wants to take a shot at this,” I tell them, “now would be the time to say so.”
One by one, everyone looks at Zarun. With Shiara gone, he’s the last member of the old Council still here. He raises his eyebrows, then shrugs.
“You’ve got my advice, if you want it,” he says. “But I’m still with you, Deepwalker.”
&nb
sp; “Clever Jack owes the Deepwalker and her partner her life, now,” Jack says. Her old flair is returning, though her mask has not yet hardened, and I can still see pain in her eyes. “Speak and she will obey.”
The rest of them agree, less volubly. A grunt, a nod. The pack leaders are not a group of men and women given to emotional displays.
“Just tell me one thing,” Zarun says. “That’s a dozen of our people Prime has killed now. I assume you’re not planning to let him get away with it?”
“Of course not. He needs to be dealt with.” I take a deep breath. “But it’s going to be more complicated than we thought. I think we’re going to need help.”
13
TORI
My bravado lasts almost until we get back to the gate to the Eleventh Ward.
I can feel it slipping away, the furious adrenaline that powered me through the interview with Thul, the determination I’d felt afterward. With every step, that energy drains from my body, replaced with a dread as black and thick as tar. By the time we reach the gate, I’m wobbling on my feet, and Garo has to help me through the short queue. I barely register the faces of the guards as we show them our documents.
Immortals. The word has loomed large in my nightmares since I was a little girl. Even before I knew the details, I understood what it meant. The Immortals had the power to tear my tiny family apart, to rip me and Isoka away from one another. Whatever other horrors they could inflict on us seemed almost immaterial, compared to that. In the Second Ward, they’d been an abstract fear, a vague worry about disaster, like the risk of a tsunami or a hurricane. Now, though, they’re horrifyingly real.
I have no idea how long ago they’d come for Isoka. She could be dead—it’s impossible for me to imagine that, death was too much like giving up, my sister would never do it. She could be trussed up in the back of a cart, headed out to some distant outpost of the Legions. She could be stalking back and forth in the darkest cell under the palace, beating herself bloody against the bars. She could be—
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