Bid My Soul Farewell

by Beth Revis

  The golden light poured from the crystal blade, filling my sister. I watched first as the blade turned clear, emptying of energy, and then I shifted my gaze to Ernesta’s eyes, watching as they filled once more with life.

  “Nessie?” I whispered, barely daring to hope.

  She blinked.

  “Can you hear me?” I asked, a little louder now.

  Her lips parted. “Yes,” she said.

  My entire body sagged with relief at the same moment my heart filled with joy. “Nessie!” I shouted, throwing my arms around her. Tears sprang to my eyes.

  I felt her arms move—awkwardly at first, as if she’d forgotten how it was to live inside her own body—and then she wrapped me in a hug that was warm even if her body was still cold.

  “Ned,” she whispered against my ear, and it was her voice, truly hers.

  Her arms slipped from around me. Her body shifted, straightened.

  I pulled back. Already, I could see the life fading from her, like a candle flickering at the end of its wick. “Nessie?” I asked, my voice cracking in desperation. “Nessie!”

  Her blinks slowed.

  “How do I save you?” I screamed at her.

  I could see it now—the golden glow of life evaporating off her, a smoggy mist that twinkled and faded to nothing. A burning house with all the doors and windows open, I thought dimly, then panic seized me. I grabbed her shoulder with my right hand. “Nessie!” I shouted, forcing every bit of power I had within me into the command. “Tell me how to save you!”

  She met my eyes, and I could still see a tiny spark of life. And when she spoke, I knew—because she was my twin, because she was the person I loved most in all the world—I knew she believed what she said:

  “You don’t.”

  FIFTY

  Grey

  I HAD NEVER seen a crowd turn into a mob, or a mob turn into a riot. That is, until Nedra raised the dead in front of most of Northface Harbor.

  When the dead first opened their eyes and pointed to me, I could not rip my gaze away from theirs. While I doubted many people were able to discern the word their silent lips mouthed, I did.

  When the corpses hung limp once more, I turned to the Emperor.

  His face was filled with an expression I could not name. Not fear, not exactly.

  I’m sure he thinks they were pointing at him, I thought. But I knew: The shame of these people’s deaths was on me and me alone.

  And I wished, more than anything else in that moment, that Nedra didn’t know the role I had played in the hanging. My father had once told me that executioners always shrouded their faces under a black hood so that they could hide from the death they were inflicting. But it wasn’t true. They hid from the living, the ones who saw what they were doing.

  How foolish of me to assume I could hide behind a scroll of parchment with the words Execution Order written across the top.

  The captain of the Emperor’s Guard rushed up the steps of the viewing box. “Your Imperial Majesty,” she said breathlessly. She threw one arm over the Emperor’s shoulder, half leading, half pushing him to the steps. I raced after them, tripping on the Emperor’s gilded chair as I ran. The sword the Emperor had given me jabbed painfully at my thigh.

  The Guard swarmed around us as we touched the ground. Ropes had been arranged to partition the crowd, giving the invited guests a special viewing area. Now everyone ran wildly, pushing and shoving in an effort to get somewhere, anywhere else. Just away.

  But the Guard, trained from the best soldiers Miraband had to offer, was too well disciplined for that. They easily formed a triangular shape with their bodies, moving as one like a spear through the crowd. The Emperor was placed in the center of the formation, and he latched on to my wrist, dragging me with him into the protective barrier of his soldiers. Behind the red-coated Guard, I could hear people screaming and running, the noise of their feet thunderous.

  The gardens will be ruined, I thought, then shook my head. Flowers and trees could be replanted. What about the people who’d been plague victims, walking with the aid of crutches or wooden legs? What about the orphans, with no one to guide them to safety?

  While everyone else streamed away from the gallows, the Guard led us directly beneath the hanging dead. I looked up at their feet dangling over me. And beyond them, to the bright blue sky with powdery clouds swirling through the air.

  Past the platform, there were fewer people—everyone here had already fled. The Guard broke their formation, but only after the mounted patrol had encircled them.

  “No,” the Emperor said.

  “It’s safest—” the captain started, but she was cut off by a withering stare from Emperor Auguste. The Guard wanted us to travel back to the castle using the prisoners’ carriage, now empty. But I could see why the Emperor didn’t want to get inside. It might be protected with thick walls, but there were also iron bars and locks. And the lingering memory of the fate of the last occupants.

  “You there.” Emperor Auguste pointed to one of the mounted patrol. The soldier broke away from the protective circle that surrounded us, dismounting as soon as he was in front of the Emperor. He held the reins of his black gelding in one hand, artfully bowing. It was all so formal and practiced, as if the chaos outside the circle wasn’t happening at all.

  The Emperor took the reins out of the soldier’s hand. He turned to me. “You ride?” he asked.

  “I can, yes.”

  The Emperor pointed at another mounted soldier. “You.” He pointed, and in moments that soldier’s horse’s reins were in my hand.

  “Your Imperial Majesty,” the captain of the Emperor’s Guard said. “You will be exposed if you ride. My soldiers will have a more difficult time protecting—”

  The Emperor cut her off. “Your soldiers aren’t coming with us.”

  “Sire?” the captain said, her brow furrowing.

  “You men,” the Emperor said, waving a hand at the mounted patrol still astride their horses. “Head east, in formation. The Guard will head south. Astor and I are riding north.”

  “We don’t know where the necromancer is,” the captain said. “You could be riding straight into a trap.”

  “Nedra’s not a threat,” I said, but everyone ignored me.

  And I wasn’t sure I even believed myself at this point. I had understood why she raised her sister, and even why she’d raised the dead at the hospital. But she seemed to have turned the prisoners into revenants out of spite.

  “I gave a command,” the Emperor said coldly. “Not a request for your input.”

  The captain squared her shoulders. As the Emperor and I mounted our horses, she called out orders to the Guard and the mounted patrol, directing them exactly as the Emperor had commanded.

  The Emperor dug his heels into the side of the black gelding, racing north. Gravel sprayed out around us. I allowed myself one last look at the Imperial Gardens—the trampled grass, the emptying grounds, the thirteen dead bodies—before my horse galloped after him.

  FIFTY-ONE

  Nedra

  I PACED THE forest.

  A part of me knew it was dangerous. Most of the mob had fled, running to cower in their homes, comforting their children. Young ones didn’t belong at public executions, and it shouldn’t have taken necromancy to remind their guardians of that.

  The Emperor’s Guard had disappeared—presumably whisking His Imperial Majesty off to safety. I looked up to the Emperor’s viewing box. Both he and Grey were gone, the ornate gilded chair tipped over. Two dozen soldiers—most on foot, some on horseback—patrolled the area.

  And there were workers, too. Everyone always forgot about the poor souls who had to clean up after the dead.

  I watched from the forest that lined the gardens as workers mounted the platform. A slender woman stretched out over the edge of the stage with a long pole that ha
d a hook at the end. She grabbed each rope noose and pulled it—and the body that hung from it—closer to her, while another worker hacked at the rope with a machete. The bodies fell, one by one, onto the ground below them. Once all thirteen lay, limbs akimbo, in a heap on the ground, a soldier dragged an Elder closer.

  The Elder trembled as he stood over the corpses. He moved his lips in prayer and his hands in a circle, the blessing for the dead to remain dead.

  As soon as he was done, he scampered off. More workers appeared, loading the thirteen bodies into the same boxy wagon that had carted the prisoners to the Imperial Gardens while they still lived.

  Follow me, Nessie, I ordered in my mind. What little life I had been able to give her was gone now, along with the black energy that had turned my ghost arm obsidian. But there were still inky shadows of black under my skin, swirling over my heart.

  “Hurry it up,” the wagon driver called. “Got a long road, don’t I? Want to be back before dark.”

  A long road . . .

  There were plenty of crematoriums in Northface Harbor, all no more than an hour’s drive away.

  But the superstitious people of the city wouldn’t want revenants burned here. They would want distance.

  The pauper’s grave. They were going to bury the thirteen traitors in the pauper’s grave in the cleared-away forest in the center of Lunar Island. Nearly all the plague victims had been buried there. I had gone there with Grey, pressing an iron ring into the mounded earth for Burial Day.

  There were thousands of dead buried in the earth there. And while I had gotten just a wisp of energy from the dead at the quarantine hospital, if I multiplied that with all the dead buried in the pauper’s grave . . .

  I tried to tamp down the hope rising in me. They’d been dead for weeks, though in Miraband I’d seen the echoes of life, the impressions of the dead that had been gone for centuries. But perhaps, with that many dead in one place, there would be enough energy to give Nessie more than a few moments of real life. I was buying time I knew couldn’t last, but I had gotten this far on nothing but books and instinct. I would steal what moments I could with Nessie until I found a way to truly restore her.

  I refused to believe it was impossible. What was impossible, anyway? I had already defied the world once when I raised the dead. I could do it again.

  As long as she stood before me, there was still hope.

  Without giving myself a moment to doubt, I left the forest, heading to the prisoners’ wagon. The driver was already atop it, pulling his gloves on and picking up the whip. The last worker was loading the final body inside—a slender boy about my age. I walked past the worker, stepping inside the wagon, and then turned to help her haul the body inside.

  “Thanks,” she said, wiping her brow.

  Nessie strode past her and climbed inside the wagon after me.

  I could see the worker piecing together what was happening. Without thinking, I reached out and grabbed the threads of her soul with my shadow hand, freezing her in place. I raised my right hand up, pressing my forefinger to my lips.

  “Shhh,” I instructed.

  Eyes wide and terror-filled, the girl nodded the second I released her soul and backed away. The doors to the wagon slammed shut, the latch falling into place. A moment later, the wagon lurched into motion, the driver clicking his tongue at the draft horses.

  I settled into a corner of the wagon, my back against the wall. Thirteen dead bodies bumped along the uneven road with me. I glanced at Nessie. Fourteen dead, I supposed. It didn’t matter. I was used to death.

  FIFTY-TWO

  Grey

  I HAD THOUGHT the Emperor was taking us on a roundabout route back to the castle. But once we left the residential district and headed northeast, I kicked my horse harder to catch up with him.

  “Where are we going?” I asked. My hand drifted to the sword at my hip. When the Emperor had strapped it to me earlier today, I’d thought of it as only decoration. Now, though, I was glad to have a weapon.

  The Emperor didn’t stop, but he did allow his horse to slow. “Somewhere safe,” he said. He didn’t look at me.

  “Safe? Where?”

  The Emperor didn’t answer my question, instead yanking on his reins, guiding his horse off the cobblestone road and down a dirt path that was rutted with wagon-wheel tracks.

  I followed him off the road and pulled my horse up beside him. When I got closer to the Emperor, I saw that his face looked pale and ashen, and he had dark circles under his eyes. “Your Imperial Majesty?” I asked. “Are you well?”

  “No,” Emperor Auguste said. He cast a sideways glance at me. “I haven’t been for a long while.”

  He had seemed to me to have improved so much since his imprisonment by Governor Adelaide, but then, I had only seen him over the last week in flashes and moments—at a council meeting, during the rally, before I signed the execution order. He had been able to maintain the appearance of strength and health, but it must have been a facade. After all, he was the one who insisted that the people needed to see strength. They needed to feel pride in their Emperor, not sympathy or fear.

  I tried to hold my horse back, but Emperor Auguste maintained a steady pace, outdistancing me. “Come on,” he called over his shoulder.

  I nudged my horse back up.

  “It’s been so long since I’ve ridden,” the Emperor muttered, mostly to himself. “Not since Enja, really. We use rail more often on the mainland.”

  “Perhaps we could get a rail system here,” I said. “One reason why the north seems so cut off from the south is because the quickest way to get there is to cross the water. Ships in the bay are not as fast as a train could be.”

  “Hmm,” the Emperor said. “Perhaps.” But it was clear his mind was elsewhere.

  “This is an old road, did you know that, Astor?” the Emperor continued, deftly changing the subject. “One of the first roads on Lunar Island.”

  I looked past my horse’s neck, at the worn grooves of the dirt path.

  “Wellebourne’s army took this path,” the Emperor added.

  “You know your Lunar Island history well,” I commented.

  “I know more about the colonies than the mainland,” Emperor Auguste said. “And Lunar Island more than most other colonies. It was Emperor Aurellious whom Wellebourne marched against. He came closer than the history books say.”

  “I didn’t know that,” I said.

  The Emperor laughed once, a bitter sound. “Because Aurellious wrote the history books. Or rather, he had them written. The victor always writes history. So the books say Wellebourne was betrayed and caught and hung. But they don’t say how far Wellebourne actually got. He had Aurellious’s soul in his hands before he was caught. The Empire knew what to make public and what to hide. All the history books leave that out. Only the heirs are taught that part of history. To remind us how close we came to losing the Empire.”

  For a long while, there was only the sound of the horses’ hooves on the dirt road.

  “That’s why I’ve had my eye on your necromancer,” the Emperor said finally. “I’ve read about necromancy,” he continued. “I know what she could do—to me, to the Empire.” His back was very straight, but his shoulders were hunched, almost in defeat. “I was raised to fear necromancers. All heirs are.”

  I frowned. Necromancy was almost unheard of in this day and age. Nedra was the exception, not the rule.

  Seeing my look, Emperor Auguste smiled bitterly. “Necromancy is about more than raising the dead,” he said. “It’s about control, and it’s about power. What greater power is there than that over life and death?”

  He seemed to want me to answer, so I said, “I don’t know.”

  “Nothing. A necromancer in the right position would be more powerful even than me. The Empire doesn’t need to fall for a rebellion to take place. Simply shift ha
nds.”

  “Nedra wouldn’t—”

  “I’m not talking about Nedra,” the Emperor said. He spurred his horse on, outpacing me.

  * * *

  • • •

  In a few hours, we reached the place the Emperor had told me would be safer than the castle. I stared out at the mounds of earth, now with patches of grass covering the raw marks of red clay. “The pauper’s grave?” I asked.

  The Emperor looked around, his eyes scanning the trees that lined the massive gravesite. “We need to hide,” he said. He dismounted and led his horse by foot toward the remains of the forest.

  “But—”

  He silenced me with a look, and I followed him without another word, my hand gripping my sheathed sword.

  “What are we doing?” I asked once we were in the shadows of the trees. It would be twilight soon.

  The Emperor didn’t look at me as he stared over the long lines of scarred earth. “Waiting,” he answered.

  FIFTY-THREE

  Nedra

  THE WAGON FINALLY rolled to a stop. Through the iron bars on the window, I could see the last rays of sunlight dip below the bay.

  I heard the wagoner hop off his seat in the front, pausing to pet the horses. I stood and faced the door, so that when he opened it, he saw not the pile of jostled dead bodies, but me.

  I lowered my cloak’s hood as he gaped at me. My white tresses tumbled out onto the black cloth.

  He stuttered unintelligibly, scrambling back and tripping on a stone. I hopped out of the back of the wagon, with Nessie trailing behind. The wagoner’s eyes looked from me to her, and he blanched even more.

  “Go,” I said.

  He launched himself back up to the front of the wagon and whipped the already-tired horses into a frenzy. I was barely aware of the clatter of his departure. Dusk had settled over the graveyard, but I hardly noticed that either. Because now that I was here, I realized I didn’t need the sun to see what had been waiting for me all along.