by Beth Revis
“There is no such thing as ‘minimal’ treason, Hamlayton,” Emperor Auguste said, his voice brooking no argument. “Treason is treason. They will stand trial soon enough.”
“What of the treasonous nobility?” Hamish said, his voice rising. The tension in the room was palpable, but Hamish seemed ignorant of it. “This council has seen time and again that one’s personal wealth can buy a faster trial, and with a better outcome—”
“Enough.” The Emperor didn’t shout; in fact, the word was barely audible. But Hamish’s mouth snapped shut, and he slumped down into his chair.
Emperor Auguste turned to me, an easy smile on his face that belied the argument seconds before. “Report, please,” he said, waving his hand to indicate that I could continue.
A droplet of rainwater dribbled down my neck, and I shivered. Everyone waited for me to speak. “Er,” I started.
“A commission of five thousand units, yes?” the Emperor prompted, smiling at me with a sort of apologetic look; I thought he only just then realized the awkward position he’d placed me in.
“Yes.” I nodded, taking a deep breath. Channeling everything my father had ever worked for, I stepped forward, detailing the new trade commission and what it would mean for the north. As soon as I quit speaking, there was a smattering of polite applause from the council. Hamish stood, bowing slightly to me, and a few others followed suit.
“This is truly remarkable,” Emperor Auguste said. “I hadn’t wanted to scare young Astor, but this sort of negotiating between colonies and homeland can be tricky at best.”
Not scaring me was one thing, but a little warning about the process would have been nice. Still, I couldn’t help but beam under the Emperor’s radiant pride. “I want you to speak at the rally,” the Emperor continued. He turned to one of the new men on the council. “Add him to the schedule,” he ordered.
The man looked flustered, but nodded.
“What day will that be?” I asked.
“Tomorrow,” the Emperor said.
I swallowed. I knew the Emperor had been planning it for as quickly as possible, but I was intimidated by the suddenness. Still, this was for Nedra. If everyone was focused on all the good that was happening in the north, then they might forget their desire to punish her.
“We’ve been focused on building national spirit and goodwill among the people,” the Emperor continued.
“I noticed,” I said.
The Emperor stood, clapping me on the shoulder and then turning me toward the door. Now that my report was done, I was dismissed. “This is how you build a nation,” he told me in a voice so low that only I could hear.
“With rallies?”
“With pride.”
FORTY-ONE
Nedra
“NESSIE.” SHE STOOD there, emotionless, as I choked out her name, tears streaming down my cheeks. The copper crucible strapped to my back slid and fell onto the metal floor with a loud clang that broke the steady ticking of the enormous clock behind her.
“How did this happen?” I asked, knowing she couldn’t answer me.
I had told Nessie to stay here and wait for me. And here she stood, in exactly the same spot I had left her. If I had been gone a year, I had no doubt there would be dust collecting on her shoulders.
But I had ordered all my other revenants to stand watch and protect the hospital. Perhaps the aggressors had thought that the ones who’d converged in the foyer to defend the building were all the revenants I had; perhaps none had thought to climb the hundreds of steps to the clock tower.
I looked up at Nessie, who still stood quiet, motionless. Was her soul aware of what had transpired? Had she stood here, a statue, hearing the wet thwacks of blades against flesh for however many hours it took to decimate my revenants?
The weight of all I had done and all I had failed to do pressed down on my ribs, choking me of breath. I stumbled up, clutching at my chest as I felt my heartbeat ratcheting. Nessie watched me silently as I staggered to my desk, gasping for air. Black spots flickered across my vision. My hand reached for my chair, but it was my left hand, the one that no longer was there, and I stumbled, dropping to the floor.
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe and everything was going wrong and my heart was going to burst, and if I died, so would Nessie. But it didn’t matter because she was already dead, and I would be, too, because I couldn’t breathe.
My right arm curled protectively over my chest as I huddled on the floor, trying to remember what it was like to not be dying.
I gulped for air, sweat stinging my eyes, but I didn’t blink away from Nessie’s gaze, and she, of course, didn’t turn away from mine.
* * *
• • •
I don’t know how many lifetimes passed, but in the end, I got up from the floor. My hair was matted with the drying blood and gore from downstairs, my skin smeared with it, tears tracking down my face. My heart hurt. But still, I got up.
There was work to do.
* * *
• • •
I stabbed at my shaking hand, forming the blood key to open the copper crucible. I didn’t know what I was looking for; it was just the last recourse remaining. I shifted the contents carefully, aware of the grime on my skin, trying not to smear congealing blood on the delicate old paper. Even so, my hand brushed against the box the Collector had given me, the one I had been unable to unlock.
One of the copper bands disappeared. The upper band, the one that had refused to open with my blood.
I stopped, my breath catching. The runes spoke of blood that was alive, and blood that was dead. It must have been the gory mess of blood from my ripped-apart revenants that had opened the upper band of the lock. I squeezed a fresh drop of my own, living blood on the box, and let it splash onto the copper. The lower band faded to nothing.
The box was open.
My breath caught in my throat as I carefully lifted the lid. Inside was a single object, long and narrow, wrapped in white silk so aged that it was brittle and yellowing. I peeled the fabric away carefully.
My hand shook as I pulled out a crystal knife.
It was about twenty centimeters long, most of it a thick blade. Clear as glass, but light enough that I thought perhaps the center of the blade was hollow.
“What do you do?” I mused, holding the knife up to the milky-white light streaming through the clockface in the tower.
There was no book inside the box, no helpful instructions. I shifted the knife from my real hand to my shadow hand and felt a jolt of power at the touch.
The blade itself didn’t seem that sharp—when I scraped it against my boot leather, it didn’t cut at all. But while the entire knife was smooth, I could see embedded inside, glittering as if faceted, runes running all along the hilt.
I squinted, trying to read them. There was one that repeated, almost in a pattern, and while it was familiar, I couldn’t quite place where I’d seen it. It took several moments for me to finally remember. I lunged for the copper crucible, pulling out the books the Collector had given me, the ones I’d read over and over again on the long, lonely journey back home. I picked up the oldest book and flipped to a place near the end. “Cadavers,” I read aloud, “once raised, store their life energy inside their imperfect bodies. The savvy necromancer can then use his revenants to enhance his own power.”
After that, several chapters were ripped from the book. But, in faint pencil and sketched with a shaky hand, someone, perhaps the Collector, had drawn a rune—four lines pointing up, connected by a horizontal line along the bottom. Beneath that was a single word handwritten in the margin: lich.
I still didn’t know what the word meant, but if the rune in this book matched the one engraved inside the crystal knife, then surely the blade had been made by a necromancer.
Using my shadow hand, I raised the knife up. My shadow hand
seemed darker somehow, more corporeal. I gasped and looked down at my crucible. The black energy that swirled in its base, the energy that gave me the power of death over life, was spilling out of the iron bead, pouring over my shadow arm.
Power crackled in my blood. I felt as if electricity was sparking inside me. I felt stronger. Invincible.
I swung the knife through the air. An eerie sort of electricity emanated from the blade.
I wanted to test it. Looking around, I settled on my worktable. I steeled my arms, then threw my full strength behind the crystal knife as I stabbed at the table.
I spun around, off-balance, and fell on my backside. The worktable, despite taking the full brunt of my blow, was unscathed. Not even a scratch.
“What good is a knife that can’t cut?” I muttered.
I looked for an answer, which meant, of course, I looked to my sister.
Her eyes were focused on the crystal knife.
I stood slowly, crossing the clock tower. The ticking matched my steps. Nessie’s eyes did not leave the clear knife in my hand. But as I drew closer to her, her body started to tremble.
“Nessie?” I said.
Silence.
But I didn’t need her words to know that she was more than afraid. She was terrified. Her lip curled over her teeth in a repulsed snarl. This thing, this crystal knife . . . despite the power, I could sense that it was wrong.
I stared down at the blade. At the hilt there were glimmers of light, strings of gold that I recognized as my sister’s soul.
My body connected my crucible to the blade, and both my sister’s soul and the dark power inside my crucible’s base bubbled down my arm and around the knife.
I wondered—if I could pull my sister’s soul out of the darkness, could I then put it back into her body? Would that be all it took? I couldn’t do it on my own. I had reached into my crucible before with my shadow hand, trying to extract Nessie’s soul. My power alone wasn’t enough.
But perhaps with the crystal knife . . .
I had to test it first, before I risked hurting my sister.
I reached with one finger on my right hand to touch the edge of the clear blade. As soon as my skin brushed against the crystal, I felt indescribable cold, so icy that it burned. I snatched my finger away—there was no mark, no sign of damage, but it took several minutes before feeling returned to my finger.
Meanwhile, a faint golden glow filled the crystal blade.
I looked at Nessie. She looked at the knife. Silent tears streamed down her face.
I shifted the crystal knife to my right hand and lifted my shadow hand toward the edge of the blade, little finger extended. As soon as I touched the crystal, the ghost-finger started to disappear. I jerked away, willing the shadow to reform.
I felt no pain—without flesh, there is no pain—but the shadowy finger did not return. It was gone, eaten by the darkness.
The knife did not cut flesh. It severed souls.
FORTY-TWO
Grey
THE EMPEROR FOUND me in the chapel.
“You did remarkable work,” he said. “I wasn’t sure if you’d be able to secure a commission, but this bodes well for the future of Lunar Island.”
Why can’t Nedra see it that way? I thought. Aloud I said, “Thank you.”
The Emperor stood beside me, gazing up at the large round Oryous eye window. “Come to thank the gods for your successful journey, Astor?”
At the moment, I disliked religion for the way it had forced Nedra and me to opposite sides. I had only come here for privacy.
As if reading my mind, the Emperor said in a low voice, “You still care about the necromancer, don’t you?”
I turned to him.
“My captain sent me a message from Hart, and he gave his final report once he docked at Northface Harbor,” the Emperor continued.
A report in Hart . . . “So you know I took Nedra with me to Miraband.”
“And brought her back, yes.”
I looked him in the eyes. “She doesn’t have to hang for necromancy. She’s done no evil with it.”
“Except for the dozens of dead she raised. And,” the Emperor said, as an afterthought, “the dozens of people she killed when she raided this very castle.”
I thought about the fierce rage Nedra had shown when she first returned to Yūgen, after her family had died. She had taken all the grief she must surely have been feeling, and she’d pushed it down, down. Instead of taking time to mourn, she took souls.
She took power.
“She used her powers for good, though,” I said. “To save you.” My voice rang out, echoing on the stone walls of the chapel.
The Emperor raised his hand. “Peace. Do you see torches and pitchforks poised to storm her island?”
“I want your word,” I said. “I brought you the trade commission. I want a pardon for Nedra in return.”
The Emperor gazed at me coolly. I met his eyes defiantly, my jaw set.
“You love her,” he said as if only realizing the truth as he spoke it. He tapped his chin. “And yet when you returned from Miraband, my captain says you left her alone on her island and came here.”
“Yes,” I said, in answer to all his points.
Something in his face softened. “You have my word,” he said. “Nedra Brysstain will not hang.”
With a nod, the Emperor turned and left the chapel, the door closing almost soundlessly behind him. I was left in the chapel with nothing but his promise and my dark thoughts.
FORTY-THREE
Nedra
I STEPPED OUT of the clock tower and toward the iron staircase, Ernesta following me silently.
From this vantage point, with the crystal knife in my hand, I looked down at the gory remains of my revenants. They deserved a better farewell to this world than this.
Now that the shock had worn off, I saw not the debris of death, but the pale golden glow of life. Even ripped asunder, bits of soul and energy still clung to the chunks of flesh and exposed organs. I didn’t want their souls to suffer any longer. I could send my revenants to the afterlife.
Whoever had come to do this—vigilantes or the Emperor’s men—had acted in the cruelest way possible. In an attempt to decimate my army of the undead, they had rendered helpless the souls of these people trapped in the decaying remains of their bodies. I held out the crystal knife with my shadow arm and my iron crucible with my right hand, calling the golden light to me.
While before souls had seemed like threads weaving into my crucible, now the dead were so far gone that their souls were little more than a mist. The untethered souls rose slowly, first melting into my iron crucible. But then the power and energy bubbled out, sliding down my shadow arm. I felt each soul pass through me as it moved into the afterlife, impressions of each person, leaving behind nothing but the raw energy of their shorn lives.
This was what I had learned from the Collector’s books. When a necromancer raised the dead, the body became merely a container, holding the energy that gave it a second life. This was separate from the soul, which held the essence of the person, the memories and personalities and emotions. The soul could move on to the afterlife, but the energy . . . it was power for the taking. All life had this energy—the books even hinted that I could manipulate the living with theirs. And it was what made Nessie a shell; her body was animated with this life force, but her soul was trapped inside my crucible.
I said my farewells to my revenants’ souls as best I could as they passed into the afterlife. I mourned the loss of time I could have spent with them in death.
Their energy buzzed through my shadow arm, passing through it and into the hilt of the crystal knife. The blade felt like it contained lightning, brimming with possibility. By the time all the flesh on the floor was nothing more than meat, the crystal knife radiated with warm, soft light.
My hand vibrated with the power contained inside the knife. This was what most necromancers wanted from the start. None of them cared about revenants’ souls fading; they wanted only the residual energy from their forced lives. Feeding off of this energy would make me even more powerful.
I grazed the tip of the blade over the knuckle of my shadow finger, the one that had evaporated at the knife’s touch. It reformed, and my hand was whole again.
And strong. I gripped the blade harder, feeling the power fill me, crackling in my blood. My senses sharpened; my entire body was alert. I had never felt so alive. With a wrench, I pulled the tip away from my shadow hand. My muscles were shaking in anticipation; I felt as if I could pull the hospital apart brick by brick and still have the energy to rebuild it again.
But I didn’t need this power.
Nessie did.
My shadow hand gripped the glittering hilt. I would not waste this last gift of those I had raised.
I turned to my sister, whose normally passive eyes watched the blade. I wondered at that connection—her soul was wrapped up in the mysterious dark power woven into the iron, and it seemed to react to the crystal blade. Maybe if I gave Nessie more power, she could wrest her soul free from my crucible.
“Hold out your hand.” My voice was stronger now.
Nessie offered her left hand, palm up.
I touched the crystal knife to her skin, and I pushed. Not the blade—it’s tip still rested against her palm. I pushed at the energy inside the blade. My shadow hand shook. The dark power seemed to rage against the loss of the golden energy inside the crystal; it had wanted to consume it. But I fought the black, focusing instead on the light.
The little cloud of golden, sparkling light floated through the crystal knife, down into Nessie’s open palm.