Muse of Nightmares (Strange the Dreamer #2_UK)

by Laini Taylor

  And then he wasn’t in her mind anymore. He was thrust out of it and she was in his, flensing it like an uul hide with her inarticulate roar of rage. His hands flew to his temples, his face contorting at the assault of her voice, her wrath, her power. It invaded his mind, which felt, suddenly, fragile as glass that would shatter if the onslaught did not cease. He dropped to his knees, still holding his temples. His face was a rictus of pain.

  Nova’s hands were fists at her sides. Her stance was wide, head dropped, chin almost to her chest, and she was peering up through slitted eyes, her breath hissing out through bared teeth. Words hissed out, too.

  “Leave. My sister. ALONE!”

  Kora was on her knees now, the collar in her hands—in two pieces, as though it had snapped in half.

  Skathis rose, unsteady, his eyes bleary. There was blood on the floor and on the back of his head. He fixed on Nova, struggling to focus. A snarl of incredulous anger turned his plain face terrible.

  He had brought this out of her. This method seldom failed. As Solvay had said, it was against protocol, because it was dangerous. But Skathis had never feared it, because he had never met anyone more powerful than he.

  Until now.

  He lifted his hands to conduct the mesarthium, to retaliate, to end her.

  And nothing happened. It was like reaching for a sword and finding an empty sheath. Skathis’s gift was gone.

  “She’s not a smith,” he said, his voice thick with loathing, outrage, fear. “She’s a pirate.”

  A pirate. The word penetrated Nova’s red haze, but it didn’t make any sense. Pirates were murdering thieves of the seas. She was not that. She was only trying to save Kora. She looked to her sister, who was out of danger, but she couldn’t calm down. Power was rampaging through her, new and loud, unleashed and huge, screaming through every vein, every nerve. She didn’t know even what power it was. It was just spilling out of her, grabbing whatever it could.

  If astral was a rare gift, pirate was rarer still.

  But where astral was a welcome gift, pirate was anything but.

  It was the term for those whose gift was to steal gifts. It had seldom ever arisen, and was a kind of Mesarthim bogeyman story that sent chills down Servants’ spines. Imagine a person who could reach out with their mind, snatch away your gift, and use it themselves. Such was Nova, and her magnitude was shattering.

  In his outrage, Skathis was hideous, his countenance mad-dog vicious. He took a step toward her and she acted on instinct. Gods-metal surged up around him with neither elegance nor control. It reached his neck. It formed a collar.

  The collar tightened.

  “Stop her!” Skathis choked.

  And the others tried. Well, Ren could not. The telepath was still holding his head with both hands as though it might burst apart. His face had gone violet. His eyes were squeezed shut. The chaos of Nova’s mind amplified in his.

  Solvay and Antal both tried to subdue her. Antal’s gift was control of kinetic energy. He could take it away, depriving subjects of mobility, or amplify it, to make them faster, stronger. He tried to immobilize Nova. Solvay was a soporif, able to put people to sleep at will. Both were chosen for this duty for their ability to stop a subject whose gift went wild, and keep them from doing harm. But when they sharpened their minds toward Nova, they found their gifts snatched away and redoubled on them—freezing Antal in place and sending Solvay instantly slumping to the floor.

  She was only asleep, but Nova, seeing her fall, thought she’d killed her, and cried out. Whatever was happening, she couldn’t control it. The Servants could neither help her nor stop her, and the more her panic grew, the more her power did, too.

  Outside in the village, the people of Rieva drew back from the wasp ship as it began to buck, wings scissoring—deadly godsmetal blades lashing out, skinning the roofs right off the nearest houses and swatting two children off their feet to land in a tangled heap. There were screams of horror. Villagers fled. The wasp lurched, crushed a house, and foundered halfway through the village before finally slowing and falling still.

  Inside, Kora held Nova in her arms, saying over and over in her ear, “I’ve got you, I’ve got you, it’s all right, my Nova, calm down, my darling, my sister,” until the familiar and soothing sound of her voice began to cut through the whirlwind in Nova’s mind. It was like a rope thrown into a churning sea. Nova grabbed it, and it saved her from drowning. The whirlwind, the sea, they began to abate—enough that the Servants’ gifts, which she hardly knew she’d snatched, began to flow back to them in dribbles of power until, having just enough of his own back, Skathis was able to act.

  Merciless, he drew a mass of metal from the wall behind the girls. It shaped into a club. They never saw it coming. It hit the side of Nova’s head with a terrible resonant thud. Her eyes went wide, then dim. She slumped in Kora’s arms, and the last of her stolen power flowed back to its rightful owners.

  Ren was able to lift his head and open his eyes again. They were a gruesome sight, the whites full red from burst blood vessels. Solvay stirred on the floor and groaned, and Antal was released from his paralysis. Skathis wrenched the collar from his neck and hurled it aside. He stripped the godsmetal glove from Nova’s hand. He did not shape it into a diadem or collar, but only repossessed it.

  Kora was crying, cradling Nova. They were a pathetic sight in their torn and dingy smallclothes, faces wet—Kora’s fearful, Nova’s slack.

  Solvay rose to her feet, shaking her head to clear it. Antal helped Ren up to his. “That was...unexpected,” the telepath said weakly.

  “That is why there are protocols,” said Solvay.

  Skathis didn’t even look at them. His eyes remained fixed on the girls. Dread possessed Kora. She wondered how she could ever have found his plain face benign. Something dark and wild burned in him. She had never been so afraid.

  “What are you going to do with us?” she managed to ask in a shadow of a voice.

  The other Servants shrank inwardly. They knew the answer. Of course Skathis would kill this girl who had made him as helpless as a mortal.

  But he did not lash out unthinking. If Skathis’s wrath had been purely volatile, he might have been less deadly. Instead, he was calculating. Of course he wanted to kill the girl, but he understood that if he did, he would render Kora useless—a leftover piece of something broken, and no good to him at all. He wanted her power. He was young and rising in the imperial ranks. His ship was small, only corvette class, which meant being assigned to duties like this one, recruiting in backwaters. If he hoped to one day command a battleship, he had to win the godsmetal to grow it, which meant outsmarting and outmaneuvering all the other smiths in the fleet. It was a treacherous game, played with cunning and without mercy, and a spy would greatly help his cause.

  What finer spy than an astral, he mused, particularly one bound to him by obligation. It was decided. He would make it clear to her later: that her sister’s life depended on her own obedience. Now he wanted only to be away from this wretched place.

  “You are no longer an us,” he told Kora.

  The bottom of the ship melted open to make a hole under Nova, whose limp form sagged right through it. Kora cried out and tried to hold on to her, but the mesarthium was against her, locking her in place as it dragged Nova down. She fell a good four feet to land hard on the ground below, her inert limbs splayed wide. The metal pooled back like a turned tide and Nova was gone.

  “No!” Kora screamed, scrabbling futilely at the floor.

  “You’re mine now,” said Skathis. “Your only ‘us’ is with me.”

  They did not stay to test the rest of the hopefuls of Rieva. They did not take their leave of the village elder, Shergesh. The wasp simply launched, bending its metal legs, flicking its wings that had caused so much damage to the village, and casting itself skyward, taking Kora with it, and leaving Nova, unconscious in the dirt.

  . . .

  Nova awakened slowly.

  Her eyes ach
ed. Her head ached. Her mouth was dust-dry. She couldn’t swallow. She was in her house—her father and Skoyë’s house—lying on her pallet on the floor. It was daytime, the house empty, and this was a wrongness. She and Kora were always up at first light—when there was light—their pallets rolled and stowed. For a moment, blinking, aching, parched, unwell, she forgot...everything. Even from here she could smell the ripe stench of uul husks rotting on the beach. The Slaughter. In her memory: the beach, a flash of blue in the sky.

  A skyship.

  A jolt went through her. She tried to say Kora’s name. It came out a croak, and Kora did not come. She tried again, louder. Still a croak, and still no Kora.

  Nova sat up—and she nearly collapsed when it seemed the contents of her head did not sit up with her. She swayed forward, palms spread out over the rush mats to keep her from tipping over. When the room stopped spinning, she peeled her aching eyes open and found herself staring at her hands.

  Which were not blue.

  It was only when she saw them as they were—pale as they had ever been—that she was hit by a powerful memory of staring at them blue, the one shining in its godsmetal glove, the other her own skin. She blinked at them through the haze of her vision, and tried to understand what was real. It seemed a dream, images coming in flashes. Kora’s eagle. The flung godsmetal ball. The buzz in her skin. And...what happened after. It was hazy. It would always be hazy. The flashes sorted themselves into a picture, and a terrible sick dread welled up in her.

  Where was Kora?

  Footsteps, child-quick, and then Aoki, her half brother, ran inside, saw her sitting up, spun, and ran back out. He was shouting, “Ma! She’s awake!”

  And so Skoyë’s silhouette filled the doorway. Her hands were on her hips. There was triumph in the pose. “Still alive?” she asked,

  disappointed.

  “Where’s Kora?” Nova croaked.

  “Oh, don’t you remember?” Make no mistake: Skoyë delighted in reminding her. “They took her.” She came forward, and Nova could see her homely face, fierce with vindication. “You they threw out like garbage.” She loomed. “What happened inside that ship, Novali?”

  Kora was gone. Nova could think of nothing beyond that. She felt the truth of it. Kora’s absence was a pulsing void that nothing could ever fill. “When?”

  “Three days ago,” said her stepmother. “They’re long gone. She’ll be in Aqa by now. Maybe she’s found your mother, and they’re together without you. Maybe they’ll have a house and live together,” she went on cruelly, but Nova didn’t hear. It was as though a patch of reality had been torn out, leaving a hole that swallowed all sound, all thought.

  Kora was gone, and she was still here.

  Unchosen.

  “Now, get up,” said Skoyë. “You’re in luck. The Slaughter’s not over. Get down to the beach. The uuls won’t butcher themselves.”

  Chapter 29

  Warp

  Sarai did give Minya the lull, a small dose with plum syrup to cut the bitterness, in case she could taste it in her sleep. She touched the little girl’s hand and, full of dread, reentered both dream and nursery, to wait beside her prone form as the gray descended and erased all pain, guilt, and fear—and everything else, too. It was better, Sarai knew from her own experience: Sometimes nothing was better than something. It all depended on the something.

  She left Minya’s mind, but not her side. She sat with her and took the next watch. She told Lazlo he didn’t have to stay.

  “Well, that’s a relief,” he said. “I was wondering when I’d get a break from the woman I love, who is the first and only person I’ve ever loved, and who I would happily sit beside under literally any circumstances forever.”

  Sarai fought a little smile, but not very hard. And Lazlo would have stayed sitting beside her on the floor, his shoulder the perfect height to rest her head against, but Feral spoke up then. “Actually, do you think you could see about making the doors work now?” He studiously avoided looking at Ruby as he made the request, and Sarai couldn’t tell if his motive was to keep her out, or to give them privacy. She wondered if he even knew.

  “Go on,” she told Lazlo when he looked to her, and he kissed her on top of the head and went out with the others, leaving her on her own with Minya.

  She watched the little sleeping girl—so much threat all put on hold by a few drops from a green glass bottle—and wondered what was hidden in the labyrinth of her memories. Could it be true, her dark surmise: that the Ellens had been puppets all along? It didn’t seem possible. But neither could Sarai retreat into her old, comfortable belief in their love, not after what she’d seen in the dream.

  She knew she wasn’t finished with the nursery or the Carnage, and that she would have to go back there, and keep going back until she found a way to make a difference—to help Minya, and create a chance for a future, for all of them. But she couldn’t do it right now. She needed a rest from nightmares and she wanted to give Minya one, too. Maybe the lull would let her mind calm itself, and break the terrible loop. She didn’t know, but she was so grateful that the urgency was gone. They had time now. At least they had that.

  . . .

  Ever since he got here, Lazlo had felt the mesarthium holding its breath, waiting to claim and be claimed. There had been so much else going on—heavenly, hellish, and in-between—that he hadn’t been able to focus on it, but now he was eager to give himself over to it.

  They went to the dexter arm—himself, Feral, Ruby, and Sparrow—and Feral repeated what he’d told Lazlo before: that the doors used to respond to touch.

  Lazlo put his hands to the wall. The sense of connection was instantaneous, and profound. The citadel was more than an enormous statue. It was a network of systems put in place by a god, all fallen dormant since his death. For Lazlo, they woke.

  Energies rippled and stretched.

  They absorbed him, even as he absorbed them. Nothing outwardly changed, but something crucial did: the metal, its signature, its being, all of it was translated. What had been Skathis’s now became his. Earlier, Lazlo had told himself that this whole vast, otherworldly citadel could not possibly belong to him, but it did, and it went even deeper and stranger than that: It wasn’t merely his. It was him, a part of him now in a way that felt almost as though it were alive.

  He let his perception flow outward. The energies felt like ornate musical staves, weaving in and out of each other, dense with information and commands. There was a whole language at work, but it was nothing that could ever be explained or taught. Lazlo knew what it was like to learn languages. It was work. This wasn’t. It simply gave itself to his mind, making sense to him in a wordless way that could only be described as magic.

  Feral was right, he found. The doors could be keyed to fingerprints, so they would open only at the touch of those authorized to enter.

  He keyed Feral’s door to him, and there was a fraught moment of silence where they might have gone on to the next door, but neither Ruby nor Feral moved. Finally Ruby cleared her throat, and Feral asked Lazlo sheepishly, “Can you make it so she can open it, too?”

  He did. And he keyed Ruby’s door to the pair of them as well, and had a premonition that he would many times be asked to change them back and then back again.

  Sparrow’s door was keyed to her alone, but she didn’t close it. She was used to her curtain, she said, and asked, “What about the other doors? Not the open ones to be closed, but the closed ones to open?”

  It was an excellent question. Because mesarthium doors didn’t shut so much as melt closed and become wall, it wasn’t apparent where they even were, much less what lay behind them. What was the citadel hiding? A thrill went through all of them. Those of them who’d grown up here had spent hours of their childhood imagining the rest of the citadel, tormenting themselves with the notion that wonderful things were just out of their reach: libraries and racing tracks and menageries; bigger, better kitchens stocked with all sorts of delights; playrooms fi
lled with whole other sets of trapped godspawn leading parallel lives. Basically, anything they wished they had, they would imagine existing on the other side of a wall. It had been maddening, and an integral part of their mental landscapes, these places that were closed to them, and yet, for all that they were unreachable, never so unreachable as the city. They couldn’t very well dream of Weep, where they would be killed on sight. It had given their minds a place to go, even though they could not.

  And now the prospect of finding out what was there raised the hairs on their arms. As for Lazlo, it was all new but no less thrilling. With his hand to the wall, he sent out his will, bidding hidden doors to open.

  “There,” he said as a seam appeared on an expanse of wall just up the passage. They rushed to it, breath held as it split, became a door, and revealed—

  “Linens,” said Ruby, disappointed. It was only a closet.

  “Oh good,” said Feral, helping himself to a set of silk sheets to replace his, which had been burned. “What?” he asked, flat, turning around to find them watching him with amusement. “You try sleeping on scratchy sheets.”

  Lazlo smiled and shook his head. He’d hardly known any sheets but scratchy ones. For all that this was a prison, it was a luxurious one.

  “Let’s look for some real treasure,” said Ruby. She was on her toes, springing up the corridor. “There must be pantries in the kitchen. There might be sugar!”

  They followed her, and found that she was right: a pantry door had opened on a wall beside the bank of stoves. Ruby led and the others followed, but they thumped into one another when she halted on the threshold. “What is it?” asked Sparrow. “Why did you—? Oh.” Peering around her, she saw why Ruby had stopped, and so did Lazlo and Feral, who could see over the girls’ heads.

  There were skeletons in the pantry—some cooks or scullery maids who’d been trapped when Skathis died.

  “Poor souls,” said Sparrow.