“These don’t have much grip,” Revna said.
Linné took a breath. “You can hold on to me.”
She looped her arm under Revna, squeezing around her ribs. Her touch was hesitant at first, but her grip tightened as they took a step. They moved their legs together, slowly. Linné stank of sweat and mud and unwashed hair, of stale smoke. Revna doubted she smelled any better. Pain assaulted her every time she moved. Her palms burst with it as she made a fist around Linné’s coat. Her phantom feet made her want to cry. Her working prosthetic rubbed against her residual limb, scraping at the already raw skin. She could feel a long blister forming near her knee. Another had already punctured. Her bad leg gripped at the ice, but her residual limb kept sliding off its center of balance. The prosthetic had become a shackle.
Sweat collected at the edge of her cap and dripped around her collar, freezing when the wind brushed her. The air thickened as the storm neared. But they made it a meter, then another. And then they’d reached the crest of a false summit, with the main part of the mountain beyond.
They stopped, facing the summit. “It’s a long way,” Revna said. The mountain was a deep blue shadow, a cutout overlaying the darkening sky.
“Less than it looks. We’ll reach the top tonight.”
“And then what?”
Linné patted the pack. “We’ll set off a flare.”
“And all the Elda will see us?”
“Or maybe Intelgard will see us,” Linné replied. She wore her favorite expression, the one that meant she’d made up her mind and wouldn’t change it. As Revna opened her mouth to speak, Linné shook her head. “Don’t waste your breath. I don’t—”
“Leave people behind,” Revna finished. “Even if I’m asking you to do it?”
Linné’s hand tightened on her jacket. “That’s treason. They’d strip your family’s rights as soon as I reported it.”
Revna was too cold to be angry. She hurt too much. “You can’t be loyal to both me and the Union, Linné. You have to choose one.”
She’d expected Linné’s silence. It was the shot that took her by surprise.
Her left knee wrenched and her body was jerked forward. A scream scraped her throat raw as she hit the snow, and the mountain erupted in flight as birds fled the sound. She rolled, bringing her arms up to protect her head.
Linné twisted and yelled, reaching for her gun.
The Elda boy stumbled up the trail but stayed on his feet. He held one hand over the hatchet wound in his stomach, fingers clutched around something dark and glistening. Hate radiated from his blue eyes. His pistol shook in his hand.
Linné fired. Two bursts of red bloomed on his chest. His gun fell. Linné didn’t lower hers until he’d sunk, first to his knees, then to his face.
Then she dropped down beside Revna, shoving her pistol back into its holster. “You got shot.” Her voice trembled.
Revna sat up. Her prosthetic foot spasmed and she blinked through tears. “I’m okay,” she said, fumbling for her crutch. Linné grabbed her arm, trying to lift her without touching her hands. The moment Revna put pressure on her left prosthetic, it buckled again. Her heart crashed, and she took great gulps of air. Terror and pain wound tight around her.
“Let me,” Linné said. She pushed up the tattered end of Revna’s trouser.
Revna’s knee was scraped and bloody, but intact. Her upper calf was a mass of bruises from walking wrong on the prosthetic. And below that—
Her left prosthetic had been ripped apart right below the end of her residual limb. The metal sheet on her calf had crumpled. The bullet had torn all the way through, leaving a twisted hole. She couldn’t walk on it now. She’d never be able to walk on it again.
“Fuck,” she said, deliberately.
Linné took off her pack. “I can carry you. We can still get to the summit—”
“Leave it,” Revna said. A new sort of numbness began to fill her. She ran her fingers over the frayed edge of the bullet hole. She was so tired. Tired of walking, and walking, and never getting anywhere. Tired of dragging down the people around her. Tired of the thin line between treason and loyalty, tired of the demands of her Union, tired of wondering whether her family was alive or dead. She was tired of remembering, tired of hurting, tired of her disability.
“I’m serious,” Linné said.
“So am I,” Revna snapped. “Stop trying. You don’t have to save me. I’m not your brother in arms. I’m not your ticket to some medal.”
In the fading light she couldn’t see Linné’s expression, but she felt the blow land. Linné flopped down beside her. “I don’t want to stop trying.”
Oh, Linné. She never gave up. She wouldn’t admit defeat, even when it might save her life. And she didn’t stop to think about what Revna might want. Revna had already lost one whole family. Now she was starting to lose another. This war wanted to take everything from her.
Her voice came out hoarse. “There’s nothing you can do. I can’t walk without this leg, but if you go now, you can get over the mountains before the Night Raiders finish tonight’s run. You can tell them about the Serpent. You can tell them what happened.” Linné could change the war, and wasn’t that all that mattered? What was the worth of one cursed girl by comparison? The regiment would forgive Linné. The propaganda would love her.
And the Union would finally leave Revna alone.
Linné shook her head, balling her fists on her thighs. “I won’t leave you. We can do it together. I’m not trying to win some medal—”
“No,” Revna cut in. “You’re trying not to feel guilty.” Her voice rose. “You’re so busy thinking about yourself, like it’s your fault if I die. You want me to live, but you don’t care what happens after. Going to prison, facing the Skarov—I have to deal with the consequences, not you. So if you’re going to leave me, leave me now.”
“Don’t tell me what I have to do.”
Revna twisted to face her. “But you should tell me? I joined to protect my family, and I—” Mama. Lyfa. Everything she knew, burning. What could have survived that, and what was the point in hoping? “I killed them. You want to take me home so I can dig two empty graves and stand trial for treason.”
Linné reached out, but she didn’t seem to know where to put her hand. Her eyes were hard and angry and desperate. “We can find out what happened to your family. Don’t give up because you don’t know.”
“I do know what happened!” she screamed. Linné recoiled. Revna pulled her knees into her chest. The broken prosthetic dug into the back of her thigh, but she didn’t care. This was all she had left of her father. Her poor father, taken from her piece by piece, scrap by scrap. Memory by memory. “I happened,” she whispered. “I’m a curse. On everyone. My father’s in prison. My home is gone. Katya and Elena and Nadya and Asya would still be here if it weren’t for me.” Linné would be safe at the base.
“It’s not your fault,” Linné said.
“It’s still my doing.”
Linné shifted. Her finger scraped in the snow, drawing a Union firebird. Revna wanted to shove her off the side of the mountain. She was sick of Linné shouting, snapping, spouting Union rhetoric, and swearing like a Union soldier.
But when Linné finally spoke, her voice was soft. “You’re not a curse on me.”
Revna fought to breathe. Her skin was too tight and her eyes itched and she couldn’t say anything. She shook her head.
Linné’s voice picked up strength and certainty. “You’re not. How many times did you save my life? You irritate me in almost every way. You’re a wet blanket, you’re long-suffering, falsely modest about your powers, and the one time you decide to grow a spine is when we’re stuck halfway up a fucking mountain. But you’re not cursed, and dying won’t fix anything.”
Revna felt Linné’s eyes come back to her. She couldn’t look up. The world started to blur. Linné’s hand landed on her arm. “It doesn’t matter if we’re friends or not. You joined the Night Raiders to pr
otect people, and you’ve always managed to protect me. I can’t walk away.”
“What do I have to go home to?” What the Union asked, she would give. One way or another, they’d have her death. “I won’t be a prisoner of the Union. You can’t make my choices for me. Not here.” She made herself look at Linné, and Linné met her gaze. Her eyes had lost their anger. Instead they were filled with a hopeless pleading that Revna almost couldn’t stand. But she didn’t break away, and as she watched, the pleading in Linné’s eyes became less, and the hopelessness became more.
Linné broke eye contact at last. “You’re right.” She looked down at her trembling hands. “But this doesn’t have to be the end for you.” Revna shook her head again but Linné pushed on. “I know things look different for you on the other side of the mountain. If you come back, you will stand trial. But you’ll stand trial with me, and when we’re through, we’ll find out what happened to your family. I won’t abandon you then, and I won’t abandon you now. I have faith in you.”
Linné’s hope was so earnest, so unlike her. Something within Revna reached for it. Maybe they could stand trial together; maybe they could search for her family.
But she was afraid of what they’d find. “You said no prisoners.”
“Revna,” Linné whispered. The last hope behind her eyes flickered and Revna felt the understanding click into place. She knew Revna was right. But she wouldn’t leave, not unless Revna froze to death.
Or died some other way. “Give me the gun.”
For a long moment Linné was motionless. Then Revna heard the snap of her holster, and Linné’s hand rested lightly on her knee, fingers curled around the gun.
The Elda pistol swam in and out of focus. Guns were such strange things, death in small packages. And the first thing she’d manage to hit would be herself. An irrevocable ending, a fate she couldn’t try to change. The weight of it pushed against her arms. But she reached anyway.
She wanted to die with a comforting thought in her head. Of her mother and father and Lyfa, all whole and happy again. Like they never would be, because no one ever returned from Kolshek, and Tammin Reaching was no more.
The air smelled like metal and snow. She lifted the gun with her cracked hands.
Shaking. Her hands were shaking. She turned the gun over and over. Her thoughts fluttered from place to place. Magdalena, arguing cheerfully with the other engineers. Her scabbed fingers scraped against the trigger. Cabbages and the firing range and abhorrent food in the mess. The barrel, long and thin and wicked. The silver of the Weave under her wings.
And Tamara, believing in her. Tcerlin believing in her. All the girls believed in her. And she believed in them, too.
Even in Linné.
Revna wasn’t a curse. The Union was her curse. She could let it unmake her, or she could march back to Intelgard demanding a soldier’s welcome and a list of Tammin’s survivors. The war was eternal, but the war was also her. Her and everyone else who might do something outside the perfect Union plan. She could give up, or she could hold her head high. She could make the Elda someone else’s problem, or she could bring the curse of the Union down upon them like no one had before.
And if the war didn’t want her, the war could go screw itself.
She set the pistol back down on Linné’s leg. Linné’s hand clamped over it as she breathed out. Relief flowed over Revna, mixed with fear that she might change her mind. Even without the Strekoza, she was in her navigator’s head.
Revna sniffled. Her cheeks were stiff with quick-freezing tears. She began to shudder. Linné leaned over with an awkward cough and dabbed under Revna’s eyes with her dirty sleeve.
“You’re brave, you know,” Linné said. “I mean it. You’re more than your legs.”
Revna hiccuped. “I know.” And she did know. Everyone made such a big deal out of it and of course she fucking knew she was more than her legs. She was furious with everyone for thinking she wasn’t, furious with Linné for saying it as if it were some revelation.
And furious with herself, for forgetting it for even a moment.
20
YOUR BROTHERS WON’T ABANDON YOU
Linné took the flare gun out of the pack and strapped it to her belt. Then she kicked the pack off the side of the false summit. She knelt with her back to Revna. Revna almost asked, Are you sure? But that was the thing about Linné. She was always sure. Revna wrapped her arms around Linné’s collar and Linné looped hers under Revna’s knees.
Linné grunted as she struggled to her feet. “You’re heavy.”
Revna’s arms tightened. “Didn’t your father ever tell you not to mock a girl’s weight?”
Linné didn’t laugh. She set out resolutely, planting her feet firmly with every step. Revna kept her duties to clinging.
As they went up the mountain, the path grew steeper, and soon Linné was pushing through snow up to her calves. The noise of the birds diminished as the trees thinned, and the only sound in the air was Linné’s labored breaths, huffing in and out to the beat of Revna’s heart. The cold had settled in her bones, so deep she thought it might never thaw. Her eyes felt puffy and she wanted nothing more than to close them, to let herself drift off on Linné’s shoulder. She ached. Her arms and phantom limbs ached from holding on; her head ached from fatigue. Her heart ached for the things that had happened and the things yet to come.
The night deepened, but Linné didn’t stop. Weak moonlight filtered down through the clouds, giving the world a ghostly cast. Linné pushed a sickly spark through her hands that gave only a little light to the path in front of them. Revna waited for the first flurries of snow. They had to get down the mountain before the storm broke.
“We’re almost there,” Linné panted. “Almost there.” She muttered it as she walked, until it became a whispered chant, and then steady breath as they went up and up. The breath became Revna’s clock. They made it another meter, and another. Almost there, almost there. Her legs and hands stopped burning. She didn’t think that was a good sign. But she locked the thought away. First they had to get to the top of the mountain, then she could worry about hypothermia. Almost there.
Then she heard the faint sound, bouncing from peak to peak. Buzzing.
She twisted her head as far as she could. “Skyhorses.”
Linné leaned on a tree and turned to look over the false summit and the hills behind. The Skyhorses drifted below the clouds, flitting and flashing. They made tight circles, passing over and under one another like dancers. Spark flashed from their jaws. “What are they doing?” Revna said.
Revna and Linné watched the Skyhorses dip, turn, dive. A flare of yellow-orange caught in the trees near the Ava River and stayed there, like a beacon. The Skyhorses’ circle became a little wider, flame spouting.
“Shit,” Linné said. “Shit, shit—”
The Skyhorses were burning the Ava River. The Serpent, their evidence. And they were moving methodically across the taiga toward the mountain.
“Don’t you dare let go,” Linné said. She pushed up the path. The buzzing behind them grew louder. Revna clutched Linné with all she had.
The forest spat and crackled as trees succumbed to the flames. Birds and foxes screamed. Heat began to nudge at the back of Revna’s frozen neck, and the thick scent of charred pine filled her nose. The gray sky illuminated, bright as daylight. “Almost there,” hissed Linné. They tottered around a slanting formation of rocks.
The mountain fell away in a seemingly impossible face. The plains spread out below them, pale as the surface of the moon. Revna dug her chin into Linné’s shoulder as she looked down. “God,” she whispered. Linné winced against her. “What now?”
“Down the mountain,” Linné said.
“I don’t see a path.”
“We don’t have a—” But Linné never finished. The thrum of a Skyhorse made Revna’s bones shake.
Linné slipped and fell in the snow. Revna’s shoulder hit the ground and her grip on Linné loose
ned. They tore away from each other. This really was how she’d die. With the long neck of a Skyhorse above her and with flames behind her.
The clouds parted, death streaming in.
Only, it wasn’t death. It was a little fat plane of canvas and wood and metal. Spark popped like gunfire on the fuselage—the 146th Night Raiders. The Strekoza spun away, rolling wing over wing as the Skyhorse tried to retaliate. Smoke poured from the Skyhorse’s tail, and the Weave stuttered in and out of sight as its navigator fought for control.
The Skyhorse’s engine choked. It roared with rage. The scent of smoke and storm filled Revna’s nose. The Strekoza was coming back around for another pass, and this time it came with company.
The Skyhorse took its chance as the Strekoza flipped under its nose. A long flame sent a scorching wave of heat blasting over the top of the mountain.
Linné scrambled over. She looped one of Revna’s arms around her shoulders. “Let’s go!” She dragged them both to their feet.
But it was too late. Revna’s curse wanted one last try.
A second Skyhorse passed over them, so close it blotted out the world. Its engine hummed like a swarm. It winged around the injured plane, herding its friend away. A Strekoza flew below its underbelly, undaunted, blasting spark against the Skyhorse’s wing.
“Down,” Linné yelled in Revna’s ear. Down the mountain.
“How?” Revna shouted back.
The Skyhorse screamed, and fire lit the sky. The ground trembled.
“However we can!”
The snow beneath them began to slide. Revna lunged for the safety of the rock formation. It was already gone.
Linné was gone, too.
Then she was gone. Tumbling down the slope of the mountain, caught up in the avalanche.
She had to swim, to swim with the snow. But she hadn’t swum since she’d lost her legs. The snow dragged on her prosthetics like a tide, and she went under. Her nose and mouth filled with it as she tumbled. The snow slid under her jacket, up her trousers. Her left prosthetic snapped. The roar of the battle became the rush of a cold white sea.
We Rule the Night Page 28