Tell the Wind and Fire

by Sarah Rees Brennan

  “I don’t think either of us knows how to keep someone else safe.”

  Carwyn nodded, and took the collar from my hand. We turned and left the bedroom.

  He was holding the collar awkwardly, as if he still was not sure what to do with it and would have put it in his pocket if he could. I went toward the old red sofa, meaning to sit down, but instead I stopped at the window through which I had once found Carwyn looking up at me.

  Sunlight was streaming in through my little window. The street outside was quieter than it should have been. I could see blinds drawn in the windows of the buildings opposite, suggesting that people were hiding instead of going to work.

  Down the street and over the faraway stretch of gray buildings was the horizon, and for a confused instant I thought I was seeing the sunset. But it was much too early for the sun to go down. The red fire lapping between the sky and earth was something else.

  The wall between the Dark and Light cities was down, torn down, and on either side of the rubble I saw fire. Both of my cities were burning.

  I was not feeling very steady, so I grabbed hold of the windowsill and let out the sound I had suppressed before: everything was coming out now, and there was no way to hide how scared I was. The sound was a laugh after all. I laughed at myself for ever thinking I could hide.

  “Before I go . . .” said Carwyn. “You’re not well. You’ve used too much magic, and that means you cannot protect yourself or anybody else.”

  I stopped leaning against the sill—it had been a mistake to let myself look weak in front of Carwyn—and turned to face him. Unbelievably, he was serious.

  “And you think I’d let you do something about it?” I snapped. “Not likely.”

  “I owe you,” said Carwyn. “You know I do. I know it as well. I’d appreciate the chance to settle some of my debt. And do you know any Dark magicians you can trust to take out the poison at a time like this?” He mimicked my cool tone. “Not likely.”

  “You think I’d trust you to drain my power?” The further retort was on my lips: my Aunt Leila was a Dark magician. She could do it. She wouldn’t hurt me. She would help me, like she always had.

  I did not say it. I did not, I realized, want her help.

  I looked at Carwyn. He did owe me, but I did not trust him. I had always had this done by Aunt Leila, or my grandfather when I was very young, or in a clinic where I could be certain the Dark magician would be entirely professional and I would be entirely safe.

  I was weak and shaking with the effects of magic in my blood, though, and I could not afford to be sick or lacking in Light power. I did need help.

  “All right,” I said, speaking low. “But don’t . . . don’t touch me.”

  I didn’t know why I’d said it. He’d touched me plenty before, and this was a normal procedure. It wasn’t a big deal.

  Carwyn nodded, head bowed as he searched in his pockets. Eventually he produced a small metal object, like an elaborately carved thimble that came to a point as sharp as a claw. I saw the shine of a tiny glass vial set behind the claw, bright as a teardrop in sunlight. The carvings on the metal were shadowy in contrast, with the strange shadows of the new cages. He fitted it on his thumb and took a step forward.

  I took a step back and hit the window. “Do you normally use that?” I demanded.

  “For private drainings, yeah,” said Carwyn.

  I frowned. “So—you do this for your Light magician friends?”

  Carwyn laughed. “I’ve never had a Light magician friend. But there are Light magicians who take quick, nasty trips to the Dark city. They will pay extra for a Dark magician to come and drain them in private.”

  I remembered how the woman at the restaurant and some of the people on the train had looked at him when he was wearing the doppelganger’s collar, the mixture of contempt and desire.

  “You don’t . . . have to drain me.”

  Carwyn glanced up at me, puzzled, and then something he saw in my face made him look less casual and more serious. “I want to help you,” he said. “I know you don’t have much reason to believe me, but I mean it. I want to.”

  “All right.” I held out my arm, fingers pointing to the floor. I was in an even worse state than I had realized: I could not stop my arm from trembling.

  Dark magicians in the clinic had, before now, held my arm steady. Carwyn did not. Instead he sank to his knees and used the metal claw to trace lightly up the vein in my arm until he reached the inside of my elbow. My back was against the window, my free hand gripping the windowsill behind me, my whole body straining away, but I knew he was being as gentle as he could.

  I’d had people in the clinic take blood clumsily: my arm ached for days after. I’d known that Carwyn had to be good to have gotten a pass into the Light city. I watched his easy expertise and remembered that the Strykers had taken the pass from him, something he must have worked hard for, and he had not even seemed surprised.

  When the metal claw sank in, the pain came fast but lasted only briefly. The blood that trailed down my arm had visible traces of Light in it, like mica sparkling in dark stone. I looked down at Carwyn and saw the sudden hunger in his face.

  Dark magicians did not have to drink the blood. They could absorb blood spilled near them, as they did with the cages, feeding off the blood and death in the air. In the clinic, they kept it, and we did not have to watch what they did with it, even though we knew it was consumed or sold out of sight. My aunt and my grandfather, when he was alive, had drunk it in front of me, and I had been happy to see them do it, to give them power as they healed me.

  Carwyn’s dark head hovered over my arm, but he held my gaze. He did not put his mouth to my skin. He kept looking at me, and kept his promise, while relief poured through me as if I was parched earth and his magic was rain after a drought.

  Carwyn slid the metal claw out of my arm, knelt there for a moment longer with his face still tipped up to mine, then rose to his feet. He pulled off the claw tip from behind the metal point, extracting a vial that was about half the size of a thimble and now filled with my blood. I picked up a towel and wiped away the thin trail of blood smeared down my arm.

  My blood cleansed and my head clear, I understood myself better: I’d asked Carwyn not to touch me because I had wanted to know that he would not do it if I asked. He had not.

  “You can drink it,” I said.

  “Thank you,” said Carwyn. “Perhaps I shall.” He stoppered the vial, and it disappeared into a pocket.

  I did not thank him. There was too much between us that he had not apologized for. I could not find it in me to be grateful, but I did find myself concerned about him, feeling as though I had been right about him the first time, that he was the person I had thought he was and not the nightmare creature I had feared.

  I put my back to him and faced the burning world outside the window.

  “Where are you going to go?” I asked. “Nowhere’s safe.”

  “If I could choose where to go . . .” Carwyn began, but stopped.

  Ethan was gone, and Jarvis was gone, both where I could not find them. I did not have the patience for this.

  “You can choose. That’s what giving you the collar meant. You’re free to go. You’re as free as I can make you. You can go anywhere you want to go in the world, and I hope you find somewhere safe. I can’t tell you what to do. You have to decide, and I have to go after Ethan.”

  “If I could choose where to go,” Carwyn resumed, as if I had not spoken at all. “If I could go anywhere in the world, I’d want to go with you. I don’t want to be where it’s safe. I want to be where you are.”

  I froze, still holding on to the windowsill. “What did you say?”

  I turned away from the fire outside. Carwyn met my eyes with a level gaze. He looked different than I could have imagined anyone would while saying something like that. There was a look of fixed despair about his face, as if he was gazing at someone dead, as far away from him as that.

  �
�They say that doppelgangers don’t dream,” said Carwyn. “That you have to have a soul to dream.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re saying,” I said, slowly. I had slept in the same bed as him, his head on a pillow beside mine, and he had not slept any differently than anyone else. “I don’t know whether doppelgangers dream or not. I have never known any doppelgangers but you.”

  “I haven’t known many either. There aren’t many,” said Carwyn. “The hood is license for any cruelty. The faceless are as good as voiceless: nobody would listen if any one of us called for help. I told you this already. We look like those who would have died young without the Dark magic that saved them and made us. We die young instead of them.”

  He almost never seemed or sounded serious. Even now, when he was talking about the death of his own kind, his lip was curled and there was an uncertain wicked flicker in his eyes that made me think he was about to make a joke. I felt wary, waiting for the twist, waiting for the doppelganger’s trick.

  “I know as much about doppelgangers as you do,” said Carwyn. “All I know about doppelgangers is what I’ve been told. I never knew if I had a soul, and while I was buried I lived in a wild, degraded, disgusting way. I remember hating the way I lived sometimes when I was younger, but more and more I didn’t care. I thought I couldn’t care and that nothing mattered. And then I met you, and you tried so hard to make things right for Ethan and for your family and even for me. I could not figure out why you did what you did for me. I was a stranger. I thought . . . it might be because you liked me, but now I know you don’t. I’m glad you don’t. There have been a couple of people who were kind to me because they thought I was interesting or good-looking or useful. You were kind to someone you didn’t know and shouldn’t have trusted. That was what taught me who you are. You woke all the old shadows in me that wanted to be something like a person. I thought I would never want that again.”

  I was held still with utter shock.

  I felt as I had on the balcony in the Plaza Hotel, the whole world turned upside down and the pieces falling together to make a picture entirely different from the one I had expected. The doppelganger under my window looking up, the doppelganger’s sharp voice on the phone, concerned about me.

  Not a trick. A romance.

  Carwyn took a step back, leaning against the door frame, and I could not believe how badly I had misinterpreted the restless glitter of his eyes. He covered his face with one hand, but it was too late. I knew he was crying.

  “So—you’re going to be a good person from now on?” I asked helplessly, stupidly.

  No more of his random cruelty, the way he had tormented me over Ethan out of bitterness or malice even though now he said he cared about me. If he felt like this, then acting like that hurt him, too, degraded him, too. If he was not what people thought him, he should not behave like he was.

  Even as I had said the words, I did not think they were true. I could see no hope in his face, and I could find no hope of my own.

  “No,” he said, unshading his face and looking at me. His eyes were clear now. “I will never be better than I am. The collar was just a symbol. It wasn’t what people were shrinking from and punishing me for. They were afraid of me. I will always have someone else’s face and not enough heart. You set me free, and look what I did to you. I am going to be worse someday. I’m going to be so much worse.”

  He spoke as if it was a foregone conclusion, and I could see his pain at the idea. I didn’t know if what he believed was true or if he was making it true by believing it, but I didn’t care. I was angry at the waste and angry with him.

  “So why tell me any of it, then?” I demanded. “Why would you load another burden on me when I have enough? I am not responsible for your heart! Are you just this selfish?”

  “Yes,” said Carwyn. “I wanted you to know. I am selfish enough to do it for only that reason, but there is another. I wanted you to know something else.”

  The city was burning and Ethan was in danger, and Carwyn was a lost soul.

  “I’m not interested,” I said loudly. I let go of the windowsill, crossed the floor in one stride, and shoved him so his back knocked into the door frame. “I’m not interested in listening to anything you have to say.”

  Carwyn grabbed one of my hands, his grip too strong for me to escape from it, and I thought for a moment that he was going to wrench my arm out of its socket. Instead he raised my hand to his lips and kissed it, roughly, so his lip split open under one of my rings. It was so far from what I had expected that I did listen to him after all.

  “You were not the first dream I ever had, but you were the only dream that ever felt real. You were the dream that taught me I did have a soul. I don’t know how low I will fall or what evil I will do, but I know you. I know there is nothing between us and there never could be. But I would do whatever you asked. I would do anything you want. If I had anything worth giving to you, I would give it. If I had anything to sacrifice, I would sacrifice it for you.”

  I didn’t try to pull away from him.

  “I don’t want you to sacrifice anything.”

  “Don’t think well of me,” Carwyn said, and smiled his dark little smile, though his lashes were still wet. “Not for a minute. This is selfish too. It’s useless. You don’t need me, and I can’t do anything for you. One day you will be happy, and I will sink even further. I’ll be the lowest scum of the streets and you’ll never see me again, but I wanted you to know that wherever I end up, I will still feel the same about you. If you ever think of me then, I want you to remember me as someone who would cut out his heart to spare yours. This is the last thing I’ll ever ask of you. You were always kind to me, even when you did not mean to be, even when you wanted to be cruel. You were angry for me when I would not have thought to be angry for myself, you warned me that cupcakes were too sweet, and you healed my wrist. You treated me like I was a real person, and I almost felt real. Be kind to me again, let me be real to you one more time: I beg you to believe me.”

  He was too close to me, his grip not tight enough to hurt and yet somehow still hurting me, as if his skin was hot and his hold on me could burn. I was trembling.

  I looked away from him and said in a low voice, “I believe you.”

  I was not looking for his reaction and I did not see it. The next moment, the door opened, and Penelope and Marie came through. They were both beaming wildly, their footsteps clattering in a frantic chorus of joy. Someone else walked in with them.

  It was not Dad. It was Jarvis. He was holding tight to Penelope’s hand, and he looked gray and thin and old. Until he saw Carwyn. Then he simply looked afraid.

  “You’re not Ethan,” he whispered.

  “Would you believe I’m Ethan’s twin,” Carwyn asked, “and that they kept me in the attic my whole life because they didn’t want Ethan to be shamed by how much handsomer I was?”

  I looked at Penelope and Marie, who were staring in confusion and growing horror. I glanced at Carwyn and saw him smirking, showing no trace of tears nor any sign that he had been making an emotional confession. I didn’t spare any of them more than a glance.

  “You knew he wasn’t Ethan,” I said slowly to Jarvis. “You knew Ethan couldn’t be here. So you know where Ethan is. He found you, didn’t he? Where is he?”

  “Lucie,” said Jarvis.

  “Tell me! Tell me where he is.”

  “Lucie, I’m so sorry,” said Jarvis. “He found me. He gave himself up in my place. He told them he’d do whatever they wanted as long as they let me go. He is in the hands of the sans-merci.”

  He had accomplished his mission, my hero, my knight. I was sick with terror.

  I swallowed. “And where’s Dad?”

  “He’s with your aunt,” said Penelope, her face very serious. “But I swear to you, he’s safe. The sans-merci are hailing him as a hero and a martyr. And, Lucie, the sans-merci have commanded you to go to them as well. Your aunt wants to see you.”

  Nob
ody swore to me that Ethan was safe. None of them wanted to lie to me.

  I took a deep breath. “And I want to see her.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  THEY HAD ETHAN AND I HAD TO SAVE HIM, and I’d promised Aunt Leila I would come if she asked for me. I did not know what she wanted with me. I did not know what the sans-merci wanted from me. I could not stop hearing them calling for the Golden One, their voices echoing through that great hotel that had become a palace of the dead.

  I had spent two years doing what I did not want to do and had to do anyway. Now I made my way up the gentle slope of the streets.

  Aunt Leila had given Jarvis very specific instructions. She had told him that I should not head toward the hotel. She had told me to go somewhere else.

  Nobody had told Carwyn to come with me, least of all me, but he had insisted, and I had not wanted to leave him with Penelope’s family.

  He said nothing to me as we made our way, and I said nothing to him. I kept walking until Times Square came into view again, not in the light of morning but in the glow of the early afternoon, just beginning the sun’s fall. The square was a metallic glen, made of buildings and not trees. The tall rectangular towers shone like giant mirrors; the lines of gems affixed to several of them were like vast jeweled belts hung in the sky. Usually Light power showed images on screens and formed advertisements that walked among the denizens of the city—you only knew they were magic and not real people by their peculiar brightness and the occasional flicker.

  Not today. The crowd of people today was all real, and there were so many of them, and so many were from the Dark city. Clothes were made differently in the Dark city. I remembered that now, how the very stitching of the seams and the colors of the materials looked different. There were fewer bright colors, and less material, because the Dark city did not have extra cloth to waste on full skirts or frills. I clenched my fists in the material of my long skirt, which swung around my legs like a bell. I must have looked like someone from the Light. It might have been safer to look like a Dark citizen.