Black the Tides

by K. A. Wiggins

  And if some small part of me thrills that the someone they need happens to be me, well, there are worse things. Things like hoping for the impossible. Like dreaming of running off and rescuing my friend instead.

  “The mission is what matters,” Cadence says. “Get them across, and then you can worry about the ones left behind.”

  So I lead my small band of survivors down the stairs and through the halls and back to a torture chamber full of supplies.

  And there, I perform my final act as a leader and tell them to follow the most devious, unreliable, and untrustworthy person I know. I tip the game in Ravel’s favour and back away.

  He gives me one stunned glance and snatches at my sleeve. But I slip out the door before he can stop me. Before it has even closed, I hear him taking charge with that hypnotic voice of his.

  Good. He’s better at playing this role than I am anyway. Much joy may it bring to him. And if he fails them, may all my ghosts haunt his every step to the final breath of his miserable life.

  Cadence screams at me all the way back through the underground warren and up the stairs and only stops when I place my hand on the chilly surface of an unremarkable door that leads to a place I’ve only seen through another’s eyes.

  “Don’t you dare,” she warns. “The mission—”

  Not my mission.

  I don’t dare breathe the words out loud, not this close to the enemy stronghold, but I know she hears me. I can feel her fury. Her confusion. Her hurt.

  She is bound to the past by our memories. I’m not. And I’m afraid she’ll never understand. Never forgive me. But that doesn’t change what I have to do.

  Because Ravel is the one with the power to save everyone.

  Which means I’m the one who’s free to go after the stragglers. I’m the one who has to reach those who can’t escape, or who have never dreamed of escaping.

  And, because I’ve decided to be brave but I’m not confident it’s going to work all that well for any of us, I plan to start with both the hardest and the most valuable rescue of all.

  Cadence falls silent as I ease that unremarkable door open and slip from the dim and dirty stairwell into unparalleled opulence. The corridor glitters with gold and concealed lights and strategically placed mirrors. I twitch and spin, jumping at every reflection, straining to catch sight of the telltale blur of coalescing Mara before they spot me.

  The mayor of the Towers of Refuge could have imprisoned Ange anywhere. She could have had her killed or sacrificed her to the Mara for the sin of her defiance. Maryam Ajera is, if not Ravel’s mother in the most literal sense, at the very least the woman who caused him to exist and raised him. More or less. And I’ve spent time in her devious head. If she had wanted Ange dead, she would have sacrificed her to the Mara in front of her followers. If she had wanted her kept prisoner, she would have kept her with the group to show how powerless their leader really was.

  No, if I’m right, she will have kept Ange alive and within reach. A hostage. Maryam’s probably known about her and her little breakaway group for years—decades, even.

  She doesn’t want Ange. She wants what she has always wanted.

  Me.

  Chapter 34: Mirrors

  I hug the mirrored wall and hold my breath. My feet whisper against thick carpet as I peek around the corner.

  This is usually when Cadence chimes in, but she seems to be punishing me with disapproving silence. I’ll have to find some way to make up with her later.

  This is what we do, after all: fight, reconcile, and fight again. And, if I’m about to be caught and sacrificed to the nightmares, I’d rather she weren’t around to see it anyway.

  I expect to find Ange in the mayor’s extravagant audience chamber, but when I reach it, all is still and silent. I creep through one glittering jewel of a room after another, marvelling at each new display and wary for the slightest sound or hint of movement.

  I know this is a trap. I just don’t know what kind.

  A startlingly plain, off-white door catches my attention. It’s the only thing that doesn’t fit. I backtrack as quickly as I can without making noise, peering around the corners of spaces to either side of the corridor. But there’s a distinct lack of Refuge Force uniforms lying in wait.

  They’re probably on the other side. The problem is, so must Ange be. I tiptoe across thick carpet. Press my ear against the smooth, cold surface of the door and hold my breath. Not a sound.

  I test the lever-style doorknob, first flicking it with my nail, then tapping with the pad of my finger, before I trust my whole hand to it and press—

  It’s unlocked.

  But, instead of some kind of torture chamber or cell, I step into a lost world.

  The windows draw me first—enormous, unbroken panes taking over two walls. Beyond, brilliant sunlight winks off blue waves and the silver peaks of distant mountains.

  I press my hand against the glass and stare at the wheeling gulls and scudding clouds. Traffic—both pedestrians, and strange-looking closed vehicles—churns in kaleidoscopic patterns through streets.

  But then the pattern repeats. And starts over again, a third time.

  It’s not real. The glass doesn’t show an endless vista, but a fingers-breadth recording.

  It’s still hard to step away.

  The rest of the room is less immediately gripping—more like living quarters I’ve seen in Nine Peaks than anything else in Refuge, or below. It has everything you might need—a glossy but restrained kitchen along one wall, comfortable seats facing an enormous blank screen against another. Stairs climb to another room tucked high above my head behind a glassed-in railing.

  There are too many closed doors for comfort, though. I ease up to each one with my breath caught in my throat and my knees bent as if I’ll have a hope of darting away when a squad of enforcers lunge out at me.

  But the first doors only open onto closets, and the next, into a large, glistening bathroom. I pause to longingly stroke the thick towels, wishing absurdly for time to clean up before continuing this ill-advised rescue mission. Even in fresh clothes, I reek of seaweed.

  The next door leads to an enormous bedroom with yet another bathroom attached. And it’s the bedroom that holds the key to what this museum of the old world is doing on the mayor’s floor. Framed pictures clutter the tops of cabinets and hang on the walls: photographs of a handsome black-haired man with long, dark, laughing eyes, and a pretty but severe-looking young woman.

  Her smile is a little too sharp, her hair too precise, her clothes even more so. Her eyes are a pale, almost tawny brown, the shadows underneath not fully concealed with tasteful, skin-tone makeup.

  I shiver. She looks nothing like the mayor—except for in a single photograph. She’s curled against the black-haired man, laughing and looking at him instead of the camera, and in that one image alone there is in her face the pale reflection, just the very slightest hint, of Maryam’s impossible, inhuman beauty.

  I pick the framed photo up from a low surface beside the bed and take it with me. If it comes to it, maybe I can throw it at an attacker and hope the glass cuts them or something . . .

  And it’s about time I came up with some kind of weapon because there is only one door left unopened. Not only that—there’s a low, even sound coming from the other side. Someone’s in there.

  I flatten myself against the wall. My heart races. They must know I’m here. Why are they still hiding? What are they waiting for?

  And why can’t I just walk away?

  I watch from an impossible distance, as if it’s someone else’s hand reaching out to the lever. But no one jumps out at me and nothing attacks. The only living thing on the other side of that door is a woman slumped in a strange chair that sits on curved rails instead of four feet, her face curtained by a fall of shining hair.

  I strain to catch sight of the trap that surely lies in wait, but it is well hidden. If the mayor had set out to design the least threatening-looking space possible, sh
e certainly hit the mark.

  The walls are painted pale grey, with delicate shapes scattered across their surfaces in muted hues of green and blue and yellow—stylized clouds, rainbows, strange animals. A boxy white structure with slatted sides fills one corner, an array of tiny fabric-covered shapes in matching pastels suspended above one end. A tall cabinet with a moulded, high-edged cushion on top has pride of place on another wall. Everything is round-cornered, and plush, and gentle looking except the woman in the chair.

  It is not Ange.

  “I’d offer you a seat, but . . .” Maryam Ajera sweeps one elegant, manicured hand at the room, indicating the lack of chairs. Golden chains and bangles clink as she leans back, crossing her long, slim legs. Her diaphanous layers shift, showing a shapely calf and fragile, bejewelled ankles. Nothing about her belongs in this place.

  But her brilliant, heavily made up eyes are pink rimmed, and her palm had been lined with weeping crescents of red when she gestured.

  I should run. Instead, I inch further into the room and try for boldness. “I’ve come for Ange. What have you done to her?”

  She laughs, a throaty purring that cuts off abruptly as she catches sight of what I carry. She tilts her head, curls tumbling, earrings chiming, the warm overhead light exposing shining tracks down her poreless, ageless skin.

  The heavy-lidded golden stare she levels at me reminds me uncomfortably of her son.

  “Perhaps we can dispense with the games, you and I.” Her honeyed tones have vanished along with the laughter. Her posture shifts to match, upright, contained. Commanding. “Oh, come in and settle, child. I’m not the one who bites.”

  I step out of the doorway, but only just, putting my back to a wall so I can keep an eye on both her and the open door at the same time. “I’m good.”

  I give her a narrow look of my own. Her lips twist into a pale shadow of that smile I saw in the photos of the woman she used to be, still keen, now weighted with exhaustion.

  “Your little friend is fine,” she says, shrugging heavy locks back impatiently. “You kept refusing my summons, so I had to do something to get your attention. You will get her back as soon as we finish our chat. But first, I’ll have my property back.”

  I check the hall one more time before edging forward just enough that the framed photo brushes her fingers, forcing her to lurch off-balance to catch it when I let go too soon.

  This time, her laugh is sharp. “So. You’ve learned to play, have you? What else have you picked up since you left my care?”

  She is hateful and dangerous, and I wish with all my being that I had never spent one moment inside her head. If I hadn’t seen her ghosts back then, watched from behind her eyes as the Mara taunted her with their deaths, I wouldn’t be able to guess that this place is not a museum but a memorial. That smaller-than-child-sized, so carefully fenced-in bed never held Ravel’s infant form. She never rocked him in that chair, never put him to sleep in this gentle, soft room. Not him, no, but the child before him. The one that broke her, I suspect—and through her, generations.

  She is the monster behind my parents’ death, and so many others’ beside. Her actions broke me in two, and stole my past, and made me believe I was broken. Maryam is at the heart of everything bad that has ever happened to me and those I care about, and it shouldn’t matter that she is also the one who has kept the Mara at bay all these years, if only barely, no more than it should matter that she lunges for that photo when I let it drop; that her eyes fill when she glances at it; that when she tucks it quickly away with its face to her chest, it joins the threadbare, tearstained toy already clutched there.

  It shouldn’t matter, but it does. It’s enough to keep me standing here, waiting to see what this woman made monstrous wants with me.

  “Good. Silence is good,” she nods approvingly, sending a chill up my spine. “You might just do after all. Let’s begin.”

  Chapter 35: Getaway

  The mayor’s audience chamber swims into view, all golden and glittering. I don’t know how I got here, but I’m not alone—someone’s breathing. Behind me.

  I pick myself up off the floor warily, twist, and lunge to attack. Bad idea—my head spins and the contents of my stomach try to sear their way back up my throat. I stagger a couple steps, bouncing shoulder-first off a mirror. The spiderwebbing cracks are shatteringly loud.

  I cringe, but no one comes running. And the only other person in the room is Ange.

  Her ankles are bound to the legs of a gilt chair, her wrists wrapped in thick gold cord. She must have been drugged; such restraints seem as if they could hardly hold her long. Still, I wait several long moments before moving to free her. This has to be part of Maryam’s plan, somehow. But, since no one seems to be attacking us right this minute, all I can think to do is free my friend.

  The knots fall apart in my hands. I shake Ange’s shoulder. She shifts, muttering in her sleep, but doesn’t wake.

  I waste another few minutes examining the corners of the room for any hints of the trap I must be springing before hauling her up. She’s slight and I’ve grown stronger, between Susan’s chores and Steph’s training. It’s still an effort to drag her across the room.

  My steps falter at the thought of the long, dark stairwell ahead of us. The hair on the back of my neck stands on end. My shoulders hunch not only against Ange’s weight but the threat of attack at any moment.

  I can make out just a hint of distant murmuring as if from a conversation a couple rooms away. And yet, I stumble from the mayor’s shining domain into the darkened stairwell without encountering the slightest resistance.

  No squad of enforcers steps from the shadows. No monsters coalesce from the air.

  I reposition my grip and start down the stairs. Something is sure to go wrong any moment now—but I might as well gain as much distance as possible before then.

  I have to stop and rest several times. Every time I let Ange slide to the floor, I think it will be the last. I imagine distant rustling, muffled boots, hushed breaths. I sense the immanent tug of fingers in my hair, or the shove of a hand at my back, pitching us down the sharp steps.

  Near the bottom, Ange squirms and mutters, the drugs evidently starting to wear off. Her tears wet my shoulder, scaring me more than anything so far. But she only weeps silently, refusing to respond to questions. By the time we take our first steps into the empty halls that once housed Freedom, she’s at least bearing some of her own weight. I feel suddenly lighter, inside and out.

  I did it—saved her—all by myself? I can’t quite believe it yet.

  I stagger around one last corner, Ange moaning in my ear, but it doesn’t dampen my eagerness to celebrate her rescue with everyone. Except, when I peer down the corridor leading to the once-torture-chamber-now-storage-room where I left Ravel in charge of the ragtag band of refugees, the door hangs open. The room beyond is dark and silent.

  We took too long. They’ve gone on ahead without us.

  Good.

  Horror at being left behind wars with a quiet glow of satisfaction. By now, they must all be across the barrier and free—and so shall we be. Soon.

  I stagger onward, propping up Ange’s faltering steps. We’ll make it. Just a little further, and we’ll find Ravel, waiting for us. Maybe he’ll even backtrack, meet us part way.

  I could use the help—I pant with the effort to keep Ange upright and moving forward, blinking away the sting of sweat. Any minute now, he’ll turn a corner with that cocky grin and those dangerous, brilliant eyes. He’ll help get Ange and me across, the last of many. We’ll settle the refugees a safe distance from the monster-haunted shoreline with their supplies. Maybe put our pursuers to good use minding them, or even guiding them back to Nine Peaks.

  I smirk at the thought. The elders said it wasn’t worth coming back here. They thought no one could be saved. They thought wrong—and I can’t wait to show them just how wrong.

  Of course, I’ll have to wait just a bit longer for that particular ple
asure, because once Ange is safe and the refugees are secured on the other side, Ravel and I will return.

  This part of the plan I never discussed with him, or Cadence. I am neither burdened by her memories nor driven by her need to complete the mission our parents sacrificed themselves—and us—for.

  Which is just as well because I’m not the child they brought into danger and abandoned. I am not bound by their purpose, or path, or powers like she is.

  I’ll use whatever and whomever it takes to save my home and the people like me, abandoned in a place they never had the option not to choose, deprived of even the idea of choosing anything else.

  I’ll steal the Mara’s prey out from under them and starve those nightmares for lack of dreamers to devour.

  There’s more than one way to kill a monster.

  Cadence keeps her silence, stunned, perhaps, at my brilliance. Or maybe just absent and sulking. Doesn’t matter either way—because Ange and I stagger around that one last bend to find more than just Ravel waiting for us.

  And every one of my self-satisfied, oh-so-clever plans shatters and joins the shards of the tunnel at my feet.

  Chapter 36: Massacre

  Blood pools at my feet. Screams echo against the walls. I don’t know how I didn’t hear them sooner. And then I do.

  “How dare you,” Cadence says. “You know nothing. You’re powerless. Your plans are worthless.”

  Her unexpected attack heightens the unreality of the scene. At the far end of the chaos-filled pipe, Ravel splashes through the barrier with a ragged gasp and seizes the nearest warm body. His golden eyes are wide, teeth bared. He catches my gaze for a single desperate heartbeat. Then he throws himself backward, vanishing with his human cargo.

  My gaze stutters from one horror to the next, unable to take it all in. There’s a crush of people massed from one side of the oversized pipe to the other—people who should’ve crossed over by now. Churning in their midst are dark whirlwinds of destruction, the Mara, gleeful in unobstructed carnage.