Bid My Soul Farewell

by Beth Revis

  “Me too,” I said.

  He dropped his forehead, resting it against mine. The boat swayed beneath us.

  “The other thing you taught me,” Grey added, his voice soft, “is that when you love someone, love them as much as you can, while you can.”

  His gaze met mine. Longing filled me—not just for this life I could never have, but also for Grey. His eyes reflected my desire, and my breath caught in my throat. It would be so easy to sink into the bed, into his arms, into this possibility.

  We couldn’t have everything, but we could have this moment. If only we dared to take it.

  I leaned forward, and it felt as if the whole world tilted, reality taking a step back to allow this one impossibility. When my lips met his again, I could sense the hope he kept held back so often. His tongue slipped forward, tentatively, and I savored the taste of him, rich like honey, hot like whiskey. I shifted my weight, sliding my right arm around him, letting my fingers tangle in his hair. I stumbled back, sinking into the mattress, and Grey followed me, pinning me under him as he deepened the kiss.

  I felt him along the length of my body, hard and taut with desire. But when he pulled away from me, panting, his eyes were filled with questions, not longing.

  “Ned—” he started, but I leaned up, cutting him off, claiming his lips as mine. He growled, crushing me under him, devouring me in his kiss. But then with a frustrated groan, Grey rolled off me, between my body and the ship’s wall. “Ned,” he said again, running a hand over his face. “You have no idea . . .”

  I scooted over to Grey and ran my fingernails along his spine, watching as shivers rippled over his back. “Grey,” I said, my voice low and deep.

  He looked over at me.

  Without breaking eye contact, I got up on my knees, lifting first my tunic, then the camisole over my head, tossing them to the floor. Grey’s eyes raked over my bare skin. “I want this,” I said. “I want you.”

  Grey lunged for me, his arms wrapping around me. My bare skin should have been chilled in the cool evening air, but instead it burned, flames rising under his touch. His mouth moved from my lips to my ear. He nibbled on the flesh of my lobe, his tongue licking along the shell of my ear before his kisses dropped lower, along my jaw, sending ripples of pleasure over my body as his tongue slid down my neck, his teeth nipping at the sensitive skin. I melted into the bed, my body at once languid and tightly coiling with want.

  Grey groaned with frustration and desire, but he ripped himself away from me and staggered off the bed. I had barely mustered the energy to lift my head back up when I saw him striding back, contraception in his hand. He stood at the edge of the bed, his eyes wide and lustful, and reclaimed my waiting lips in a kiss so deep it left me panting for air.

  “Are you sure?” Grey asked, pulling back, searching my eyes for the truth.

  “Mmm,” I moaned. He hesitated. I said, loud and clear: “Yes.”

  Grey groaned as my hands moved down to the waist of his pants. He struggled to open the contraception as I unbuttoned his pants, sliding my hand down, touching the skin that was paler, hidden from the world, smooth and warm. Grey pushed me back, divesting himself of clothes and putting on the contraception quicker than I had thought possible. He bounded onto the bed, the mattress creaking beneath me. A soft gasp escaped my lips, and he seemed nearly undone by the sound.

  Grey grabbed my hips, his hands firm but gentle as he pulled my body closer to him. That touch—his thumb pressed into my hipbone, his arms drawing me across the smooth sheets—seemed so much more intimate than the hungry kisses, the daring disrobing. I was deeply aware of my heartbeat thrumming wildly in my chest.

  The world seemed vivid but still.

  Grey let go of my hips but did not relinquish his touch. His hands slid up, his fingers barely brushing against the skin of my belly, over my ribs, cupping my breasts. His knees nudged my legs wider. Grey dipped his body down, kissing me as gently as he could, but I could feel the muscles in his arms trembling.

  I leaned up, uneven on my residual arm.

  I love you, I meant to say, a whisper directly in his ear.

  Instead, he pulled back. His eyes were heartfelt, his voice loud and clear and without the barest hint of doubt. “I love you,” he said as if there was no other truth in this or any world.

  And—for that moment at least—I believed him.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Nedra

  IT HAD BEEN the silence of my revenants that changed everything. Without their whispers in my head, I could finally hear the voice of my heart. And it wanted this. We spent all our time in the cabin, Grey leaving only to fetch us food. In addition to the books I got from Bunchen, Grey acquired a stack of maps of Miraband, and we charted the courses we would each take on our one day on the mainland. We created an oasis of ourselves, each morning filled with reading, just as we had done as students, each evening filled with each other. It felt like a moment stolen from time, an eternity cast among the waves.

  Until the ship docked.

  If I had not noticed the ship slowing, the sails lowering, or the gentling of the waves, I would have known we had reached Miraband by the excited yelling of the soldiers returning home from months on Lunar Island. It seemed as if they’d saved every bit of rum for the hour before docking, so raucous were their celebrations.

  The Emperor’s cruiser would be departing Miraband early the next morning, giving Grey only one day to meet with the trade advisory council and me one day to track down the collector whose address I’d found in the copper crucible. We planned to spend the night aboard the ship together.

  Before the ship had finished docking, Grey dropped a purse of gold coins into my hand. “What’s this?” I asked.

  Instead of answering, Grey said, “This is a short trip for me. I’m returning with the ship so I can be back in Northface Harbor in time for the Emperor’s rally.”

  When I looked again from the bag of money to Grey, he added, “I can’t help you, Nedra. I don’t know how. I don’t have any answers for your revenants. If you have to stay here . . .”

  I could see it, then, the defeat and sorrow in Grey’s countenance. This was what he had meant by love hurting. He wanted me to stay with him—and give up necromancy—but if I couldn’t, he was letting me go.

  And this, more than anything else he’d said or done, proved to me that his love was true.

  “I’ll send a message if I decide to stay,” I said. “But otherwise, expect me back here. No matter what, I’m returning home as soon as I can.” My revenants needed me.

  The ship finally moored. The soldiers clattered down the gangplank, all eager puppies ready to go home.

  “Ready?” Grey asked.

  I grabbed Bunchen’s copper crucible, which contained not only the relics of necromancy she’d given me, but also my personal belongings. Thanks to the alchemical lock, the large basin appeared empty; its contents would only be visible again if I made a key of my own blood. I’d lengthened the strap so that I could comfortably carry the vessel across my body.

  A warm breeze blew my white hair over my face as I stepped onto the deck, the last to leave the ship. Miraband was far more southern than Lunar Island, which, even in summer, carried a cold bite on moonless nights. I wondered if this city ever saw snow.

  Grey touched my arm, leading me toward the gangplank. Despite the warmth, I felt a chill, and turned to see the captain staring at me, his eyes squinted. Even though I’d spent the entirety of the past week cloistered in the cabin and out of his sight, his tense shoulders didn’t relax until Grey and I were off his ship.

  The docks at Miraband were easily ten times the size of Blackdocks. Giant ships sliced through the center of the bay while smaller boats darted up and down the connecting estuary. A myriad of languages floated around us, mostly Allyrian, but I caught snatches of Doishan and Choixian, as well as some I didn’t rec
ognize.

  Grey was fascinated by the boats. “That’s an eastern clipper,” he said, pointing to one with red sails, “and that’s a modified carrack, probably from Siber. Oh, a cog!” He dragged me across the wooden dock, but I couldn’t care less about the ships. It was the people streaming around us that captured my attention. One whole crew—the one aboard the cog—had skin so pale I wondered how they didn’t burn under the sun. I’d never seen such different colors of hair either—golden brown, yellow, even copper. Lunar Island was a common waypoint on voyages across the Azure Sea, but these pale people must be from Enja, to the west, a part of the mainland that was recently conquered. They had no reason to cross our sea; they’d more likely travel west across the Pan Ocean, visiting the island nations on the other side of the world.

  I stared in wonder at everyone around me on the docks. A woman selling rope could have been a cousin of mine, so similar were we in appearance, but she had heavy black tattoos all up and down her arms, over her chest, even a half dozen dots atop each eyebrow. A man wore a fine woman’s gown, his face painted with rouge, and he smiled when I returned his curtsy as we passed. I bumped into a tall woman with skin so dark it seemed to have blue undertones. She grinned at me and spoke something in a language I didn’t recognize. She shrugged when I just smiled helplessly back, as if to say, That’s the way of it here.

  Gray darted up to a dumpling stall. “Let’s get the bean dumplings,” he said. “Father always talked about them.”

  “Bean?” I asked, doubtful such dumplings could be anything other than disgusting. Beans belonged in soup, not mashed up as filling in pastry.

  Grey ordered two for us, and the seller quickly plucked a pair of pale brown dumplings from a steam basket, dropping them in a bit of paper before handing them to us. They were so hot they almost burned my hand, but, following Grey’s move, I bit into mine.

  The paste inside the dumpling was made of something grayish-red, and while it did have the consistency of beans, I was shocked that it was sweet. Not like honey or sugar, but almost like a small cake.

  “I didn’t expect that,” I said, staring down at the dumpling in my hand as steam dissipated in the air. The outer wrapper was chewier and denser than bread from back home, and I liked it just as much as I did the filling.

  “Miraband is great,” Grey said. He had a look about him like a child who’d gotten every sweet in the shop.

  “Oryous is not pleased!” a voice rang out above the crowds. Several people rolled their eyes, and space cleared out near a man who stood on a crate at the end of the dock. “The gods envisioned us as free men, outside the tyranny of an emperor! The Emperor is not our god; we need not obey the laws he puts upon us!”

  Grey frowned. I knew he heard the man, but he pretended not to, a trait I’d noticed most of the people from Northface Harbor shared. In the villages, no one could pass by without a greeting, but apparently in the cities, it was best to pretend you could be alone in the crowd. And the more disruptive someone was, the more studiously they were ignored. Grey’s pace quickened, heading to the street leading into the city.

  I jogged to catch up with him, the copper crucible banging against my back. Three soldiers in red coats—part of the Emperor’s personal guard—marched toward the protestor. I turned around just as two of the soldiers dragged the man off his crate, cuffing him as he continued shouting. In moments, they were all gone, taken to a side street I couldn’t see, the crowd swallowing them up whole.

  But the message was clear. Everyone in Miraband loved the Emperor, because anyone who didn’t was silenced.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Grey

  THIS PLACE WAS everything my father told me about and so, so much more. The sounds, the smells, the sights—it was overwhelming in the best possible way.

  “Do you think they’re happy?” Nedra asked as we passed a Doishan food stall, charging far too much money for drizzled stick meat.

  I moved Nedra quickly through the winding streets of the old city, even though many of the shop windows promised exotic wares from around the world, enticing us to stay and look. We passed pockets of areas that seemed to predominantly represent one culture or another—immigrants and refugees, no doubt, who’d turned a little piece of Miraband into the home they’d abandoned.

  “Why wouldn’t they be?” I asked. The main thoroughfare into the city center was wide, but we shared the road with horses and palanquins, even wheeled carts that drivers operated with pedals to carry small loads.

  There seemed to be a vibrant excitement as we neared the enormous doors leading to the wall surrounding the heart of the city. Nearer to the docks, the people in the stores and booths were settled; they had no intention of leaving their boroughs. But here, there was movement. Everyone was focused on farther up, farther in.

  The wide stone entrance was slit in the middle, with giant iron doors hidden within the stone walls. But dirt clogged the tracks and rust peeked through the dark metal. It was clear that, while these gates could be shut, protecting the city heart, they had not been for a very long time.

  Nedra lingered near the open gates, and I took the moment to recall my instructions. The Emperor’s travel secretary had told me to take a trolley to the city center, where a carriage would meet me. I’d been imagining a sort of fancy wagon, designed to carry as many people as possible, but on this side of the wall, where the streets were wider and more evenly spaced, I could see wires hanging over the roads and grooves cut into the stone path.

  Ding! Ding! I whirled around, my eyes scanning the bustling crowd, just in time to see a metal, wheeled contraption roll past. A tall pole jutted from the center of the wagon, which had been fitted with bench seats. Atop the pole, a pulley connected the wagon to the wires in the street, sparks flickering as it gained speed. There was no horse or mule—somehow the wires drew the wagon.

  “Looking for the trolley?” a woman asked me, tipping a lime-green hat at me. She wore the badge of the city of Miraband, a sun with six pointed rays encircled with a black border, and her eager expression assured me that she wanted to help.

  “I’m to go to the trade authority,” I said.

  “Ah, you’ll be wanting the blue trolley,” the woman said confidently. She started to lead me to a little stand I’d not noticed before, but I pulled back. “Nedra?”

  “Just there,” the woman said, pointing to where I needed to go, then she turned to help someone else.

  I found Nedra a few moments later, staring up at a street sign that had the name of the road in two different languages—Allyrian and another language, one I didn’t recognize. “Ned?” I asked.

  “I think the person I’m looking for is close to here,” she said. Although we’d both studied the map on our journey, the old district had not been well labeled, and we’d only been able to guess at where her collector was. Nedra’s gaze was distant, then she shook herself as another trolley went by. “It’s like magic,” she marveled.

  She wasn’t wrong. While the dusty yellow limestone that most of the buildings were made of seemed ancient, there were shiny bits of new technology jutting out in all directions. The lamps along the street weren’t stained black with oil; they glittered like crystal, and I wondered if they ran on the same sort of energy that operated the trolleys. A whistle blared distantly, and I recalled the rail lines connecting Miraband to the rest of the mainland. Although it had taken us a week by sea to reach the city, one could cross the same distance across land in a few days thanks to the steam engines that could go faster than any horse and didn’t rely upon the wind.

  “Why don’t we have any of this?” Nedra asked me.

  I laughed.

  “Lunar Island is a colony of the Allyrian Empire,” she insisted. “We don’t have . . .” She struggled for the words. “We don’t have any of this. We should. The Empire should share its wealth, its technology, with all of its colonies. What else does the m
ainland have that we don’t?”

  “Blue trolley, departing soon!” a voice called out. I cast my eyes behind me, to the trolley stand. “Lunar Island can’t afford any of this,” I said, thinking of my meeting with the trade authority. Silently, I promised, Yet. First, I needed to secure a strong trade agreement. That would give the north more jobs, which would give the area more security. But a rising tide lifted all boats. As employment increased in the north, prosperity would spread throughout all of Lunar Island. If I was successful today, then later factories would be built, trollies installed, and all the other wonders of Miraband would follow. I swallowed, daunted by the possibilities.

  Nedra noticed my distraction. “Go on,” she said.

  I gave Ned a quick kiss, then darted across the street, paying for a ride in the trolley. I was the last to board, crammed near a woman wearing peridot-green silk, whose hat kept bumping against my ear. The trolley lurched to life, and I could hear the hum of energy as the wires sparked and pulled us up and up into the heart of the largest city in the world.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Nedra

  GREY HAD ALWAYS been good at seeing only what he wanted to see. It was a special kind of blindness, one I almost envied.

  He didn’t notice the shanties outside the wall. The children swarming in the shadows, some begging, some picking pockets. He had just smiled at the woman with a ripped bodice, not realizing she offered more than coy looks. Oblivious.

  Ernesta would have loved that about Grey, how he only saw the light, never the shadow. They were much the same that way.

  Thanks to the maps, I knew that the collector I was looking for was near the wall, almost in the old city, not that far from the old municipal building. While the streets were more orderly here than outside the gate, it was still a tangle of dead ends and narrow alleys along the edge. I quickly ducked away from the main thoroughfare, the dinging bells of the trolleys and the bustling noise of the people fading although never quite fully disappearing.