Twice Dead

by Caitlin Seal

  Dozens of questions sprang to Naya’s mind, but with an effort she held them back. “I’ll be there.”

  “Good,” Celia said, the word clearly a dismissal.

  Naya glanced around the sparse basement, part of the safe house owned by the imaginary merchant Selleno. “Has there been any word from my father?”

  Celia tossed the last of the training gear into the crate. “No. Perhaps next week.”

  Naya bit the inside of her cheek. The answer was always the same, but that didn’t take the sting out of it. “Are you sure there’s no way to get a message to him? I just want to—”

  “No. I’ve told you already. We won’t risk our network with unnecessary communications. Things are fragile enough as it is.”

  “I know, but—”

  Celia gave her a sharp look. “The answer is no. You should be focusing on your own work.”

  Naya swallowed an angry reply. “I am.”

  “Good. I need you focused. Tomorrow there will be no room for errors.”

  A few minutes later Naya slipped out the back door into the alley behind the house. Light rain misted down, cool and refreshing on her face. She tucked the package under her arm and drew in a steadying breath of aether. Four weeks had passed since the night she’d met Corten on the rooftops. Four more weeks of silence from her father. Naya tried to tell herself it meant nothing. He was busy. Communications were too risky. But the stale excuses did nothing to ease the ache in her chest.

  She started walking. Focus on something else. The paper bundle crinkled with each step she took. From the note of warning in Celia’s tone, tomorrow night’s job would be something new. Perhaps the older spy had finally decided to trust her with work more important than spotting rune wards on houses.

  Naya paused at an intersection and peered up at the stars. The compass star was still a good three fingers above the horizon, which meant her training with Celia hadn’t gone as long as she’d thought. She still had a few hours left before dawn. Good.

  Naya jogged the last few blocks to Lucia’s shop. She slipped inside quietly to drop off Celia’s package, then headed toward the glass shop. When she got there, she found Corten waiting in the usual spot under the old oak tree. She slowed before he could see her, her chest tightening with familiar doubt. Turn around. Leave him to wait. Forget about him.

  They’d met here most nights over the past weeks, sometimes so she could practice manipulating aether, other times to explore the city. Corten had lived in Belavine for years, and with his help Naya no longer felt lost wandering its twisting streets and rooftops. It’d gotten easier and easier to pretend around him—easier to forget about all the lies that lurked between them.

  She stepped into the plaza and waved. This couldn’t go on forever. She knew that. Her secrets were too big. But when Corten returned her wave, she felt some of the tension in her shoulders ease.

  “You’re out late,” Corten said as Naya sat down on the bench next to him.

  “So are you.”

  “Funny thing. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t sleep.”

  “Strange,” Naya said, matching his somber tone even as a smile pulled at her lips. At first the long nights had terrified her. Now sitting with Corten under the stars felt like its own sort of magic.

  “So, what do you want to do?” Corten asked. “I don’t have any projects for Matius. There’s a night market in Vistel Square, or we could go down to the shore.”

  Naya grinned. “If I didn’t know any better, I might think you were considering wasting time on something fun.”

  “I find myself more willing to give Matius’s theories a try. Creator knows, it’s not like I can get any worse at glass shaping if I take a few nights off.” Corten tilted his head back. Above them the wind played through the leaves, nudging them aside to reveal glimpses of starlight. “Besides, I’m running out of things to teach you.”

  Naya’s chest tightened and she looked away. “There’s plenty I still don’t know.” She stood. “We can go out later, but for now there’s something I wanted to show you.”

  “Oh?”

  “Come on. I need to borrow your mirror.”

  They headed into the shop and up the stairs to Corten’s room. The space was comfortably cluttered, with a shelf of books against one wall and a desk and bed in the opposite corner. A singed shirt was draped over the back of the chair beside the desk. Naya leaned against the wall by the door while Corten rummaged through the desk drawers. He came back with a square mirror a little larger than Naya’s spread fingers.

  Naya accepted the mirror. “Close your eyes,” she said.

  Corten raised his eyebrows. “I’ve seen you practice feature shifting before.”

  Heat crept into Naya’s cheeks. “I know. Just do it.”

  Corten shrugged, then closed his eyes. Naya drew in aether, staring at the face in the mirror. She’d mastered the basics of feature shifting more than a week ago. Since then she’d been practicing in private, hoping to surprise him with her progress. Let go of what you think you should look like. The frizzy hair and hazel eyes weren’t really hers. They belonged to a dead girl who’d been too weak to defend herself. Naya didn’t have to be that girl anymore. Valn had given her a new name, and now she’d made herself a face to match. Her face tingled, then blurred. Her nose changed shape, becoming more rounded, while her cheekbones grew more pronounced. Her hair smoothed and darkened to black while her eyes became a brighter green.

  Naya smiled. Those looked like the kind of eyes that would make a person pause. Green eyes were more unusual than brown in Ceramor, but not so uncommon that they’d make her truly stand out. She set the mirror down. “You can look.”

  Corten opened his eyes, then blinked. “Wow.”

  Naya grinned. “What do you think?”

  “You look really different.”

  “Do you like it?” She tried to keep her tone casual.

  Corten looked away. “I guess.”

  Naya’s smile drooped. “You guess?”

  “It’s nice. Impressive. But you look like someone else.”

  “Well, that is the point.”

  “Why? There’s nothing wrong with your real face.”

  Naya crossed her arms, annoyed, and angry at herself for being annoyed. She shouldn’t care what he thought. But she’d worked for hours to get the nose right, and she’d hoped at least he’d be excited to see her succeed. “Well, I guess it’s good to know you don’t think I’m deformed.”

  “That’s not—”

  “Never mind,” Naya cut in. “I just wanted to show you what I’ve been practicing.” She let go of the new face—Blue’s face—and felt her features shift back.

  Corten shoved his hands into his pockets. “Sorry. I didn’t realize you’d been working so much on your own.”

  “I wanted to surprise you,” Naya muttered. What was wrong with him? It was one thing if he didn’t like the face, but he looked almost angry.

  “You managed that.” Corten kicked at a bit of crinkled paper on the floor. “So were you going to tell me before you ran away, or were you just planning to disappear?”

  “What are you talking about?” Naya asked. “I’m not running away.”

  “Then why do you need that?” Corten gestured to her face.

  Because I’m a spy and my master ordered it. The words felt so small and simple that they might easily slip out, unraveling everything. She tried to imagine how this must look to him. For weeks now he’d been helping her test the limits of her bond. He’d taught her things no ordinary servant would need to know, and he’d never asked questions. He hadn’t confronted Lucia even though she knew he wanted to. Was he angry because he thought she would run away after all that, or because he thought she’d do it without telling him?

  Naya looked up and saw hurt written in the tightness around Cor
ten’s eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I should have told you what I was practicing. You said before that I had to accept what I’d become. I’ve been thinking about what that means. I know I wasn’t exactly open-minded when we first met, and I said some things I wish I hadn’t, so I guess I wanted to show you I’m trying to become someone new.” It was true, even if it wasn’t the whole truth.

  Corten’s shoulders relaxed. “Oh.” Silence settled between them. “So, you really are planning to stay in Belavine?”

  Naya smiled. “I really am.”

  “Have you talked to Lucia about…you know?”

  He was talking about the illegal runes. Naya looked down at her hand, thinning her aether until she could see the carved bones. “There’s no point. She hasn’t tried to tell me, so she’d obviously rather keep it a secret.”

  “Who cares what she wants? She made you a reaper. If you’re going to keep working for her, then you have a right to know why she took that risk.”

  “I’ll ask her. Just not yet.”

  “Why not?”

  Naya scowled. She could feel the weight of secrets and her father’s silence bearing down on her. “Because I’m not sure if it matters. It’s not like knowing will undo anything.”

  “But—”

  “Can we please not talk about this right now? Let’s just go to the night market, or the shore, like you said. I know I have to deal with her at some point, but right now I don’t want to think about the future. I want things to be simple. Just for a little while.”

  “Simple.” Corten blew out a slow breath. “All right.”

  “Thank you.” Naya turned and started down the stairs.

  “Blue?” Corten called behind her.

  “What?”

  He was standing at the top of the stairs, light from his bedroom outlining his lean frame. “Just promise me that if you do decide to leave, you’ll tell me.”

  She reached up and squeezed her mother’s pendant until it dug into her palm. “I promise.”

  Naya got back to Lucia’s shop just before sunrise. Corten hadn’t brought up the future again, but Naya had still felt the question lurking in every silence that fell between them. She heard Lucia descending the stairs to the shop and pushed her worries aside. Tonight she would meet with Celia. She needed to make sure she was ready.

  Naya flexed the fingers of her left hand, imagining the rune-carved bones hidden there. Changing her features wasn’t the only thing she’d learned since she’d begun practicing with Corten. She concentrated on the air just above her hand, imagining aether pooling in her palm. Aether was potential, energy waiting to be focused into something new.

  So Naya focused. After a moment the pale glow of aether was replaced by ordinary light. Pain prickled through her bones, but she ignored it. The light was absolute proof of what she was: a reaper, capable of weaving aether into other forms of energy with nothing more than thought. It was terrifying, inhuman. But a part of her thrilled at the power.

  She stared at the light, making it glow slowly brighter until the pain in her bones grew to something she couldn’t ignore. Reluctantly, she closed her fingers and snuffed out the light. So far she hadn’t dared try anything more than creating tiny lights or bursts of heat. She could think of dozens of ways she might use the reaper’s powers. She’d even debated telling Celia what she knew, but something always held her back. Just because Celia’s views on necromancy were more pragmatic than those of most Talmirans didn’t mean she’d risk working with a reaper.

  The bell on the front door chimed. A moment later Lucia called up the stairs. “Blue! Come here!”

  Naya scowled, then arranged her features into the mask of an obedient servant and headed for the workroom. She found Lucia standing next to a thin woman in a simple dress. One of the woman’s arms was wrapped in a kitchen towel. She held it out reluctantly, flinching as Lucia peeled the towel back to reveal a nasty burn across the back of her hand and wrist.

  Lucia clicked her tongue. “You should have come to me sooner. Come on. Let’s get this cleaned up.” To Naya she said, “Get me the ointment in the blue jar, third from the left on the top shelf.”

  Naya fetched supplies, then stood back as Lucia smeared ointment over the burn and bandaged it. “You’ll want to change that twice a day. Add another layer of the cream when you do, and come back right away if anything looks off.”

  The woman smiled, revealing a gap where one of her front teeth should have been. “Thank you. I promise we’ll pay as soon as Javen’s next wages come.”

  Lucia returned the smile. “Don’t worry yourself over it.”

  After the woman had thanked her again and left, Lucia turned to Naya. “When you’re done here, there are some jars in the back room that need rinsing.”

  Naya nodded and started cleaning up the scrap bits of bandage. She’d been surprised when she first learned Lucia worked with the living more often than she did with the dead. Naya had gotten used to it, but she still didn’t like watching the necromancer treat the injured. She didn’t like watching the way her patients smiled and laughed with her. In these moments Naya felt the tension in Lucia’s aether ease. She couldn’t reconcile this smiling woman who treated coughs and scrapes with the one who’d risked Naya’s soul experimenting with dangerous runes. There was too much of a contrast between them.

  The shop’s front bell rang again a few minutes later. Lucia frowned. “Seems we’re in for a busy day.”

  Before Naya could respond, a wave of dark emotions slammed into her. The scissors she’d been holding clattered to the floor as the stench of panic and guilt made her stomach heave. She gripped the edge of the worktable.

  “What—” Lucia began. Then her expression hardened. “Aether,” she muttered. “I’ll be right back.” She hurried to the front of the shop.

  Naya focused on the way the worktable’s smooth surface pressed against her fingers, on the lingering smell of ointment, on anything that distracted her from the aether. What in creation was going on? A man shouted something, and the fear in the aether grew stronger. Naya took a step back.

  “Blue, come here!” Lucia shouted before Naya could flee for the stairs. She considered pretending that she hadn’t heard. “Blue!” Lucia shouted again.

  Naya clenched her teeth and inched toward the front room. She found Lucia speaking with a middle-aged couple. A man with a pot belly, curly brown sideburns, and small eyes stood close enough to Lucia that his breath stirred her gray-brown hair. Beside him was a small woman with broad features. Her bottom lip trembled and her eyes were fixed on Lucia with a feverish intensity. In her arms she clutched a limp, blanket-wrapped form. A child’s foot dangled from one end. Naya froze, her eyes locked on the foot.

  “I will not make promises I cannot keep. After the fall you described, it may be difficult to find bones still whole enough to hold a bond,” Lucia said calmly. “You may take her elsewhere if you wish, but time will be your greatest enemy now.”

  “They say you’re the best,” the man said, his voice rough with emotion. “Can you do it or not?”

  “I will do everything in my power, but we should—”

  “Just take her,” the woman interrupted. “Please. If there’s still a chance, just take her.”

  “I will. Of course. Blue, please take the child.”

  “What?” But before Naya could say anything else, the woman was pressing the blanket-wrapped thing into her arms. It felt cold, heavy, and terribly stiff.

  Lucia directed her into the back room and shut the door behind them. “Set her down on the table there.”

  Naya could only stare at the flat metal surface. Horror rose inside her, steady as a crawling tide consuming the shore. She couldn’t seem to think past the weight of the bundle in her arms.

  “I said set her down!”

  Naya lurched forward and slid the corpse—the girl—onto
the table. The blanket caught on the corner, pulling away from her head. Thankfully the child’s eyes were closed. Tangled brown hair spread out around her once-pretty face. At first glance she might have been sleeping. Then Naya noticed the way her features drooped to the right where her skull had caved in.

  “Move.” Lucia pushed Naya to one side. She pulled back the blanket, exposing the rest of the girl’s broken body. The girl still wore a knee-length blue skirt and a blouse with bits of lace around the collar. There was blood on the lace, and one of the girl’s arms lay bent at an impossible angle. Gently, Lucia prodded the girl’s limbs and torso. “Right femur still seems whole,” she muttered. “Good—that’s good.” She caught Naya’s gaze.

  “Go back and talk to the parents. Tell them I should be able to salvage enough bones to make the binding. It will take one day to extract the bones and make the carvings, and another for the singing. Answer any questions they might have. I need you to keep them calm and keep them from interrupting me.”

  “Me?” Naya’s voice was tiny. Lucia didn’t answer. She was already halfway across the room, gathering tools from the drawers under the counter. “I don’t have any idea what to tell them.”

  “I don’t care what you tell them. Just keep them calm and keep them out of my way. I don’t intend to lose this girl.”

  But she’s already lost. That was what Naya wanted to say, except the words wouldn’t come out. Lucia crossed the room with absolute certainty, assembling her tools next to the girl’s body. Naya tried to remember the death rites the keepers back home had chanted, the ones that would guide a soul to its final place in the light. But in the weeks since she’d come to Ceramor, everything had gotten muddled in her head. She couldn’t find those words, which had once rung with absolute truth. All she could think about were the dark tides she’d plunged into after the poison dart had found her neck.