by Beth Revis
“Ready,” Grey said, pushing the boy wrapped up in my cloak toward the captain.
The captain paused, looking over the disguise, and shrugged. “It’ll do,” he said in a lower voice, one that wouldn’t leave this room. He pinned Grey with a pointed look. “And you’ll remember the deal?”
“Yes sir. Half now, half when we return.”
Half? I wondered, before realizing what Grey meant—he’d paid off the captain. I wondered how many golden allyras had been exchanged for my passage.
“Stay out of our way,” the captain added. He started to turn to the door, then looked from Grey to me and back to Grey again. “Well?”
“Yes!” Grey said, jumping to attention. He reached for me and dragged me over to the corner of the room—the one place that no passerby could see without actually coming inside.
The captain swung open the door and shoved the boy wearing my cloak out into the hall. “Get off my boat and curse it with your presence no more!” he shouted.
I could hear the crew jeering at the boy, laughing, tossing slurs at him as he rushed from the deck and back to the dock.
Grey crossed the room and closed the door. “Well,” he said, turning to me, “that actually worked. I had to pay the captain from my own finances,” Grey continued. “And I had to swear to him that you’d come back—he doesn’t think the Emperor would look too kindly on him transporting a criminal, but apparently he also doesn’t think the Emperor pays him enough.”
I narrowed my eyes. Grey was trusting, but I doubted the captain would so readily risk his own skin to transport me, given my criminal status. Maybe he was secretly sympathetic to Bunchen’s rebel network or planned to extort us for some other form of payment. I flexed my fingers. We would deal with that when the time came. Meanwhile, I had to get to Miraband.
I rubbed my shoulder, already missing the feel of the warm cloak resting against my skin.
“Good thing you had a cloak,” Grey said. He gestured over his shoulder. “That was Jarron, the captain’s nephew. He’ll dump the cloak once he’s out of sight and then return to his post as cabin boy.”
“Oh,” I said. I swallowed down the hard lump forming in the back of my throat.
It was just cloth.
“You’ll have to stay hidden here for the remainder of the trip though,” he said apologetically. “It’s only a week, though, and the room is . . . cozy.”
“You’re right,” I said, offering Grey a weak smile. “One week to Miraband.”
“Is this okay?” Grey asked. The room was small, with one bed hammered to the floor and a single shelf built into the wall. I set the copper crucible Bunchen had given me onto the bed, noting the thin mattress and thinner blanket that covered it. “I can sleep on the floor,” he added.
“It’s fine,” I said, without elaborating on sleeping arrangements.
This will all be worth it, I told myself. I tried to calculate the odds of someone attacking the quarantine hospital while I was away, then I pushed down the thought. In its place, worry for Ernesta boiled inside. Worry for all my revenants, if I couldn’t reverse the way their souls were slowly seeping from their bodies.
While I sat, motionless, on the bed, Grey paced the cabin. I couldn’t help but smile, knowing that his only worry was for me. “Peace,” I told him, laughing. “This is going to be a long journey if you intend to walk across the ocean.”
Grey paused, looking down at his feet. He moved to the bed and collapsed beside me just as the ship pushed away from the dock. His body lurched into mine, but when he righted himself, he didn’t shift away. Our knees touched.
“This has all been moving so quickly,” he said finally. “Just a few weeks ago, I was having dinner with my parents at their house. I was returning to Yūgen, planning out my last semester. Hoping to see you.” His eyes cut to me with a flash of the schoolboy innocence they’d held when I first met him before quickly fading to something darker.
I moved to wrap my arm around him, pull him closer to me. But he sat at my left side, and I realized too late that there was nothing there to drape over his shoulders.
“Yes,” I said simply, resting my residual arm against my side.
The ship moved with the rhythm of the waves and my whole body seemed to sway with it. Some people, I knew, got seasick, their stomachs turning with the uneven movement of the sea, but not me. Not us.
“Grey,” I said, staring straight ahead. “How do you think this will end?”
It took a long time for him to say, “I don’t know.”
TWENTY-SIX
Nedra
“AND THIS,” GREY said, plopping an orcine hat on his head, “is probably our best bet.”
“A hat?”
“An orcine hat.”
“Yes, I can see that. They don’t have orcine hats on the mainland?”
Grey hesitated. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Orcines like the cold. Miraband is in the south.”
I nodded. It was a fair point. Only . . . “You really think this is going to make a difference?”
“If not the hats, then this.” He pulled out a set of silver spoons, the handles decorated in a pattern of intertwining vines. When he saw my unimpressed look, however, Grey added, “This may all seem ordinary to you, but the mainland doesn’t have the regular wares of Hart. Something will stand out to them, and—”
I waved my hand. I’d heard his argument before, his belief that this scheme of the Emperor’s would improve the livelihoods of everyone in the north.
Grey dropped the silver back in the crate and crossed the room to sit beside me on the bed. “Is it that hard to believe that maybe something good will happen? I know you’re a pessimist, Ned, but between this and the rally, to say nothing of the new programs Emperor Auguste is implementing—”
“I just don’t understand why you trust him,” I said.
“What about the new orphanage and hospital he’s planning?” Grey asked.
I shrugged. “Ask me again when they’re actually completed.”
“He’s trying. I respect that.”
Grey scowled when I didn’t answer him, but I wasn’t looking to pick a fight. Instead, I turned to the contents of the copper crucible Bunchen had given me.
“I’ve never seen one this large outside of a bank,” Grey commented.
“What’s inside is more valuable than any gold coins,” I said. We spent the rest of the evening skimming through the handful of books, unwrapping the cloth-covered parcels, and opening each of the little boxes. One was full of dirt; the label said it came from a grave in Siber. Hidden in the dry soil were small bones—human finger bones, but far more than could have been taken from a single hand. Another box, marked with several different runes, contained nothing but a small, charred stick crumbling to ash, and several insect exoskeletons.
“What do you think these are?” Grey asked, picking up the hard shell of one of the bugs and examining it.
“Corpse beetle,” I said, barely looking up. “Careful, they bite.”
“They’re dead,” he started, but then screeched, dropping the scurrying beetle back into the box.
“Told you. And the captain told us to be quiet.”
“It was dead!”
“They’re called corpse beetles for a reason,” I said. “They’re supposed to look dead. Better close the box.”
This time, Grey listened to me, slamming the box shut. “How can it have survived locked up inside here?”
“They eat dead flesh,” I said. “Useful for if you need a skeleton. They can go into stasis for centuries after they feast if you set them on fire and store them away from sunlight.”
Muffled scratching sounded from within the box. The corpse beetles had awoken. Grey stared at the box, rubbing the place on his finger where the beetle had bitten him.
“Living flesh drives
them mad,” I added, quickly placing my hand on the box and chanting the runes that sealed it again. “It has a taste for you now.”
Grey’s eyes grew wide and panicked. “What does that mean?” he asked in a hushed voice.
“That beetle will now hunt you for the rest of its life, until it consumes all the flesh from your bones.”
His face paled.
“Kidding,” I said, rolling my eyes at him. “They’ll eventually go back to sleep if we leave them alone.”
Grey pushed the box as far from him as possible, eyeing it distrustfully.
I picked up a different box and passed it to him. Inside was an iron ring, finer than the one Grey wore on his knuckle now. He didn’t seem to recognize it. “One of the originals, used to seal the graves of the undead who returned to death after Bennum Wellebourne fell from power,” I explained.
Grey dropped the box on the wooden floor of the cabin as if it, too, were full of corpse beetles. I picked it back up, cradling it in my palm with reverence.
“It took a while for me to see its significance,” I said, picking the ring up and fingering the fragile iron. “It has runes on it,” I told Grey. “Can you see them?”
He peered closer, squinting, then shook his head no.
“They’re necromantic runes,” I said again.
“Of course they are,” Grey said. “Wellebourne—” And he stopped. Because he had realized what I had. Bennum Wellebourne had already been executed—hung for his crimes—when his army of revenants had fallen and been buried. He could not have made the iron rings that ensured they were trapped in their graves. There must have been someone else who at least had enough knowledge of necromancy to create these rings after Wellebourne had hung, someone who wanted to ensure the dead stayed that way.
I wondered how many more necromancers were out there, quietly righting the wrongs of unjust deaths, hiding because of ancient laws that painted us as evil.
“There have been other necromancers throughout history,” I said. “And, Grey—some were good, not evil. We’ve just never heard of them. This ring is proof that a good necromancer helped seal the graves that Wellebourne had emptied. They’re not all bad.”
By the time I finished speaking, there was a pleading note in my voice, one that I wished I could have hidden but also couldn’t deny. Because maybe if Grey could see that not all necromancy was evil . . .
Light danced off the ancient ring, reflecting the oil lamp’s warm glow. I gasped, then held the ring closer to the flame. The runes engraved into the metal were small, ruddy, and dim, barely legible. But strands of almost-invisible silver light crisscrossed over the ring. “It looks like a cobweb,” I whispered.
“What does?” Grey asked.
My fingers passed through the silver filaments as if they weren’t there, but when I reached for them with my shadow hand, pressing the ring against each incorporeal finger, they could not penetrate.
“It’s a net,” I said. Even centuries old, the alchemy held strong.
Grey started to ask something else, but I shushed him. I put the iron ring on the table, then withdrew my necromancy crucible from the chain around my neck. The crucible was a few centimeters smaller in diameter than the ring, so I placed the iron bead in the center. Using my shadow hand, I tried to lift the ring over my crucible.
The iron bead hung suspended over the hollow center of the ring.
Grey gasped, though he couldn’t see what I saw—part of the iron passed through. The net of light tangled with the golden light of my souls. That must have been the true purpose of the ring—to capture any soul that tried to rise from the grave.
But there was more than light in my crucible. There was darkness, too, that inky black in the center that was hungry for the power in my soul. It oozed over the flickering golden lights, down the sides of my iron crucible. The second the black touched the silver net, I could hear in my mind a hissing sound, like scorching. The net caught souls, but it was no match for the darkness.
I hissed in pain as one of the silver filaments broke apart, snapping so violently that I flinched. The darkness ate away at the silver light, poisoning it, burning through it until there was nothing left.
Until the iron ring splintered apart.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Grey
I WOKE WITH a jump, Nedra’s face so close to mine that I almost shouted, stilling myself only when I felt the dampness on her cheeks wetting my own skin. The oil lamp had faded, but a flickering flame cast the room in shadows. We were both still dressed; we’d dozed without meaning to fall asleep for the night.
“I can’t hear them, Grey,” she whispered in my ear.
I turned awkwardly; Nedra’s arm was around my neck, and her face was pressed against my shoulder. I couldn’t see her, but I could feel her. Her whole body trembled, and her voice quaked as she whispered again, “I can’t hear them.”
“Who?” I asked, my voice cracking from disuse, sounding far too loud. Ships are silent in ways cities never can be.
“My revenants.” Nedra pulled away, her eyes red-rimmed and wide open. “I always hear them,” she said, touching the side of her temple with her finger. “Every single one that I raise. I hear their thoughts, always. Since I went to Hart without them, it’s been . . . quieter. They could still show me what was happening at the hospital, though. But when I just woke up . . .”
“Silence?” I provided for her. She nodded, fresh tears welling in her eyes.
Nedra bit her lip. “What if . . .”
I didn’t let her see my frustration. What if the dead were dead again? Good. They should be dead again.
But seeing the fear on Nedra’s face, I swallowed my words into equal silence.
“I can’t fail them,” Nedra muttered, falling back against my neck. I wrapped my arms around her, holding tightly.
“I don’t know what it’s like to lose everyone you love,” I said. “But I know it’s not your fault.”
Nedra made a noise—it could’ve been a sob or a laugh. “How do you always know the exact worst thing to say, Grey?” she muttered. “Besides, you’re wrong.”
I looked at her curiously, not understanding.
“I haven’t lost everything. That’s the difference between me and the rebels, the homeless, the other survivors.” She took a quavering breath. “I still have something left to lose.”
I let her words sink into me slowly. I looked at Nedra’s twin and saw only what was gone—her life, her soul, her very self. But Nedra saw something to hold on to.
I held her tighter, pressing her against my skin, wishing that when Nedra measured all she had left, I was listed in her heart. She didn’t pull away, instead clinging to me as desperately as I clutched her. She whispered against my chest, “What can I do?”
Gently, I disentangled her arm from around me, pushing her back so I could meet her eyes. “Nedra,” I said, forcing as much sincerity and truth into my voice as I could, praying she would believe me. “Why do you always have to do something? There are some times when there is simply nothing you can do.”
Fury flashed in her eyes, and I knew instantly that she’d never agree with me. “I need you to know this,” I tried again, my voice low but urgent. “It’s okay to let go. That is not failure.”
Nedra’s lips pressed together in a tight line. I wasn’t sure if she wanted to debate or just rage at me, but either way, she swallowed it all back down inside her.
Eventually, without speaking, Nedra settled back on me, her head on my chest, tucked up under my chin. “I don’t need you to understand.” The bitterness in her voice was palpable. “I just need you to be here, now.”
I tried to hold her tighter, but Nedra abruptly sat up. She scooted off me, her absence leaving half my body cold as ice.
Standing, Nedra took off her shirt, revealing only a camisole underneath. “What?” she a
sked, sticking her tongue out at me when she saw my expression. “I’m not sleeping in my clothes.”
“Is that what we’re doing?” I asked. “Sleeping?”
“Yes,” she said, “we’re just sleeping.” She threw her dirty shirt at me, but she was grinning.
We were trapped in this cabin, and just as we were hidden from the rest of the world, the rest of the world was hidden from us. For the first time since she left Yūgen, Nedra seemed like Nedra again, without the ghosts and guilt that seemed to constantly haunt her. It was as if, as long as this ship was crossing the ocean, the entire world had paused for us.
I slid off the bed, standing up so I could more easily remove my belt and my own shirt, tossing the garments into a pile at the foot of the bed. Nedra peeled back the cover on the mattress, then turned to me. I could see the serious expression in the shadows of her face. I thought she wanted to say something, then, but she didn’t.
Instead, I reached out, my hand on her shoulder, brushing down her left arm. My fingers grazed the ridged, pale scars that snaked over the place just above where her elbow had been. I wondered—not for the first time—how Nedra had lost her arm. Missing limbs were common on Lunar Island, throwbacks from the plague that had maimed more than a third of our population. But Nedra’s amputation had been . . . messy. The scars spoke of the limb being ripped off, not sawn, of the flesh healing strangely.
When I looked up from the scar, I met Nedra’s unflinching gaze.
I did not jerk my hand away. Nedra looked at me with a stillness that reminded me both of a frightened doe unable to move and of a mountain cat poised to attack. Without breaking eye contact, I slowly dipped my head down closer. She did not shy away as I leaned in and kissed her.
She sank into my touch, her body melting against mine. My breath caught, and I felt a tightness building in my core. I forced myself to break the kiss and push my want down. Her eyes were closed as I pulled back. Desire squeezed my stomach like a vise.