Otherbound

by Corinne Duyvis

  The mage wasn’t after Cilla. Backlash cleanup, just as Jorn had said. Amara should go back and tell him. But … she’d been searching for a plan. She could ask this mage—a stranger, someone who wouldn’t tell Jorn—about the blackouts.

  Amara ran. For the next minute she followed the woman through the woods, diving behind this tree and that, until a pair of silver rails sitting on raised earth abruptly bisected the road.

  A moment later, Amara smelled something burning. Carefully, she moved closer to the rails. The trees thinned, robbing her of cover. The smell strengthened. Her own hands had stunk the same way yesterday.

  She shivered. The sensation ran down her spine again and again. She pressed clammy hands together and made herself step through the trees so she could see down the rails in both directions.

  The airtrain stood a stone’s throw away, gleaming metal except for a massive black stain on one side. That explained why it had stopped. Amara saw movement through the windows. She sneaked closer, until the voices drifting through the windows formed words.

  “Lightning,” someone was whispering. “Lightning.”

  “Just stay calm,” the Dit mage said. Amara saw the back of her head through the windows now, moving around, then dipping out of sight. “I’ll help you. All right?”

  The voice kept whispering. A different voice said, “My father. How’s my father?” When the mage didn’t respond, a sob tore through the man’s words. “The weather was fine before—when—how is he?”

  “It wasn’t me,” the mage said. Even from this distance, without seeing her face, Amara felt her irritation. “I haven’t used magic in months. I’m oath-bound. But I’ll get you to the carecenter, all right? Just let me put my hands here … This’ll hurt, but I need to …”

  “Your magic will make it worse,” the man said.

  “I’ve already prayed. The spirits might allow it. I’ll need a moment. Oh, curse the ministers!”

  The breeze carried more of the burning-flesh stink. Amara fought back a gag. She approached, anyway, climbing over a fallen tree, hiding behind another one. If the mage was against the ministers, maybe she’d be safe to talk to. Amara hadn’t been sure. The Dunelands ministers had roots in every corner of the world, but the Dit were their strongest supporters—more out of spite against the Alineans than anything else. Jorn was an exception.

  She’d always thought so, anyway.

  The Dit mage disappeared from the windows. Amara peeked around the tree. A moment later, the mage stood in the pried-open train doors, stunned, looking exactly at where Amara hid.

  “A spirit. You’re a spirit.” The mage stepped from the train. The earth squelched underfoot.

  Amara should pull back. Run. Anything but stand here, half-hidden behind a tree, watching that mage with a single eye. If Jorn knew …

  The mage went on. “No. You used to be? Were you possessed by one? But there’s still … There’s a presence …”

  A presence. Ruudde’s words echoed: Whoever’s causing this will catch on and try again.

  “Can we talk?”

  A passenger stumbling from the train drew the mage’s attention, but only for a moment, as if afraid Amara would disappear if she looked away for too long.

  Amara’s signing would give her away. If the mage didn’t rat her out, the airtrain’s passengers might. This had been a stupid idea, stupid and dangerous.

  And that stink of flesh was so, so intense.

  She pressed a hand to her mouth, turned, ran, left the mage’s shouts behind, forgot all about stealth and silence. The mage wouldn’t follow—she wouldn’t abandon the injured passengers—but Amara couldn’t slow. The smell stuck to her hands. Stuck to everything.

  She only had to return to Jorn and pretend nothing happened, and …

  That’d get her nowhere.

  She stopped. Took a quarter turn. Stormed through a layer of wet leaves. Thorns and burrs clung to her winterwear. She found the temple within a minute, spotting faded stone that blended perfectly into the colorless, storm-drenched woods; if she hadn’t known it was there, she’d have looked right past it.

  She’d always thought that if she prayed at a true temple, perhaps the spirits would forgive Jorn’s magic use and prevent accidents like the airtrain’s. He never prayed, to the point that Amara wondered if he’d ever sworn a mage’s oath in the first place. She’d asked him about it, back when he’d allowed questions, when sometimes he’d even smiled and indulged her. He didn’t pray at temples, he’d explained, because hired mages like the knifewielder might set a trap for him. He didn’t need to pray, besides: temple or no temple, the spirits understood why he called on them so often.

  Amara always suspected it was nonsense, but that hadn’t stopped her from hoping that, if the spirits listened no matter what, sketching misshapen buildings in the dirt still stood a chance of catching their attention.

  She crouched, steadying herself with one hand on the temple’s stone. She’d never touched a temple before. It felt icy cold. Let this work, she thought. Let the mage come back.

  She searched around half-rotted leaves for a chalky piece of stone, and slowly, carefully, drew it against the temple. Even with ink she struggled to mimic Cilla’s letters, let alone with a rock this blunt, but she remembered the basics.

  Mage, she wrote blockily, the chalk cold in her hands. Then, Spirit airtrain. Need talk. She’d probably misspelled it. The mage would understand, though, wouldn’t she? Market, she wrote next. Maart had a trip scheduled tomorrow. Market stallkeepers were so busy that you could get away with pointing and never speaking a word.

  She’d find a way to go in his stead.

  Amara stared at her letters with a mixture of pride and fear.

  ow come you’re not rehearsing with your friends?” Nolan asked, perched in Pat’s desk chair. The extra pill would need time to kick in. He had a hard time sitting still, though. He kept pushing the notebook on her desk back and forth and tapping his foot and spending a second too long in Amara’s world—

  —Cilla was reading on one side of the room while Amara finished up lunch at the fire pit with Jorn and Maart, rootpatties in hand, acting as if nothing was wrong. Jorn was looking at her with prying dark eyes, but he hadn’t said a word about how long she’d taken to find the mage—

  “—I am.” Pat frowned. “Our drama teacher makes us rehearse together in the gym, but we don’t have a lot of time since we also have to build the set. That’s why we need volunteers. I asked Mom, but she’s too busy working.”

  Nolan held back a cringe. “Rehearsing with your friends at home, I mean.”

  “I just don’t want to make a big deal out of it. What if I screw up?”

  “You won’t. I promise.”

  Pat fought a tiny surprised smile. Straight teeth pushed into her bottom lip to keep it in line. Nolan couldn’t recall the last time she’d taken anything he said so seriously. For a moment he wasn’t sure what to do with himself.

  “Thanks. Um—so I’m in the ER, and a girl just went missing from her room …” Pat stood by her bed, chest puffed out, ignoring schoolbooks and bags scattered around her feet. “No!” she bellowed. “I have to know where she went—”

  —Maart stood to clean up the mess, leaving Jorn and Amara at the fire pit. She should be calm. Jorn couldn’t know she’d contacted the mage. But if he did … Already, tension was locking up her spine; already, she was crushing her rootpatty between her fingers. Jorn had burned her simply for daring to read. He’d do so, so much worse for this.

  A clap shook the granary. She jerked. Thunder?

  “Again? This must be backlash.” Cilla kept one finger in her book.

  “Yes. I sense it.” Jorn smelled clean, a whiff of fish on his breath as he spoke—

  “—know I’m a nurse! Don’t tell me what my job is!” Pat took a threatening step forward—

  —Jorn’s and Amara’s eyes kept meeting without a reason, and every time it held Amara still. She wanted to suck the patty�
��s remains off her fingers, just so she wouldn’t be stuck like this, but any movement might make Jorn snap.

  Just say it! Amara wanted to shout. Say what you want to say! She tried to slow her breathing, and her frustration alongside it. She felt too loud. Too present. She needed to be invisible. Nolan fought off her fear, because he couldn’t let it crawl into him, he had to stay an observer, shouldn’t even be here—

  “—you awake?” Pat was gathering thick bunches of hair into a ponytail, her movements irritated. Nolan found himself staring somewhere over her shoulder, swallowing as he tried to get a grip. Why was his throat so dry? He shouldn’t let Amara get to him.

  “Right. Sorry.” In his absence, his hands had pressed onto the notebook enough to warp the paper. Ink dotted his fingers. He flattened the pages, the familiar paper grain a comfort. He’d meant to jot down notes to show Pat he took her seriously, but he hadn’t written a word. “You’re doing great.”

  “Really?” Her hands dropped to her sides. She sounded at once suspicious and hopeful. Did she care that much about his opinion? Why did that thought make him so damn uncomfortable? “I’m trying for a Michelle Rodriguez vibe, you know.”

  Was he supposed to know that name? Dad had Rodriguez family down in Mexico, but Nolan guessed Pat meant an actress rather than that great-aunt they’d met as kids.

  “Would you … if you saw me in a movie … Never mind. You don’t have to do this if you don’t care.”

  “I do care,” he said immediately. That wasn’t true. But he wanted to care. He was trying to care.

  He shoved Amara from his mind. Her fear wasn’t his. He wanted to stay here, in the safety of Pat’s tiny room with its dusty shelves and dorky mirror and neon gym bag dumped in one corner. He didn’t want to go back, but—

  “—when I’m queen,” Cilla was saying, “I won’t let any ministers abuse magic like this. We’ll keep the world in balance.”

  “It’s repulsive how they’ve treated this country,” Jorn said in a clipped voice.

  But you’re working with them, Amara thought. Was all this an act? Or were he and Ruudde working against the other ministers?

  All Nolan could think was, You know I’m here, Jorn, don’t you?—

  —he needed to say something, and fast, because the way Pat looked at him, he knew he’d blown it. Their second practice session and he’d spent half of it with Amara. He wiped sweat from his hairline and stared at the notebook as though studying his earlier, nonexistent notes. “You might be over-playing this scene. You’re shouting a lot.”

  “But I’m talking to my boss. I’m supposed to hate him. I told you: my character thinks he knows something about the missing patients. Oh, and she’s scared because he might’ve left those voice mails.”

  “I’m not seeing fear.” He focused on Pat with all his might, to the point where his staring would probably creep out anyone else. “You’re just shouting.”

  “You said I was doing fine!”

  “You are. I’m impressed,” Nolan rushed to assure her. He’d promised to be critical, though. “I just think you can play that fear more convincingly. Fear, true fear—you can’t cover that up. There’s always this voice at the back of your mind: What if I’m not safe? It changes everything.” He didn’t know what he was saying. He rubbed his thighs while he talked, hoping to avoid blinking. He didn’t want to mess up again—

  —Amara was eating her rootpatty, stuffing it into her mouth faster than she ought to. She couldn’t swallow all this, not without her tongue, not without sauce to help it down, but she needed something to do and no, no, Nolan didn’t want to know any of this—

  “—true fear?” Pat didn’t move. Nolan wasn’t used to her so still. Normally she’d fiddle with her hair or cross her arms, or her eyebrows would move weirdly across her forehead. Now, her eyes drifted to his stump. He scratched it self-consciously. Pat should be blowing him off by now—he got plenty of concern from their parents already. He’d liked seeing Pat this way, as far removed from his issues or Amara’s panic as possible: making over-the-top proclamations, waltzing around her room with a fake stethoscope around her neck …

  But Amara still—always—won out. It wasn’t fair to Pat. Nolan rubbed his face. “True fear is the kind you can’t reason away. It makes you want to puke. To do anything, anything, except face—whatever it is you fear. And every time you think of it, even for a flash, part of you panics.”

  Pat still didn’t move. “But if you’re really angry?”

  Nolan thought of Amara, who pushed her anger down so deep it couldn’t escape. He thought of Maart, who let it burst out in pieces. He thought of Jorn, who gripped Amara’s hands and— “It depends, I guess.” When he talked next, the words came more easily. This was about a school play, nothing more. “You could make your character shout, then step back, like she realizes what kind of trouble she’s getting into.”

  “OK. Thanks.” Nolan didn’t recognize Pat’s high-pitched, nervous laugh. He’d freaked her out, hadn’t he? He breathed deeply, then let the air escape. He should go to his own room, see if the extra medication was working the way he’d hoped.

  “I’m nauseous,” he lied, and hated himself for it. “I should go.”

  mara’s legs trembled with energy. So did her hands. She couldn’t afford them to. A seam of Cilla’s topscarf had torn, and putting a needle into Cilla’s hands was asking for trouble, so it was up to Amara to carefully push gold thread through the scarf’s patterned maroon surface. She bit down hard in concentration.

  Putting a toothbrush into Cilla’s mouth was asking for trouble, too, but Jorn insisted. Nearby, Cilla boredly ran the brush past her teeth, her shoulders bare to avoid stains on her topscarf. Her winterwear was just as chic as the scarf Amara was repairing, with finely stitched cuffs at the ankles and golden satin lacing running down the thighs and back and sides. A lace pattern adorned the very top where it sat snugly around her breasts, even though that part would be hidden under a topscarf most of the time. Now, though, her sternum and arms were bare, revealing muscle flexing under the skin of her arms and that faintly glowing palace tattoo above her breasts. It was the same as Amara’s—the shape of an Alinean volcano surrounded by a star’s spikes—but Cilla’s tattoo was larger, and it sat free while Amara’s was encircled. And if Amara were looking at Cilla at all—which she shouldn’t—she should look at that tattoo and not the softness of the flesh underneath.

  She cleared her throat, both to distract herself and to get Cilla’s attention. There was something she needed to ask. She chose her gestures with care, though tension showed in every flick of her fingers, and said, “If those blackouts happen again, Jorn will punish me.”

  Anything more explicit was too dangerous.

  Amara stared right into Cilla’s eyes. Looking away meant disrespect; it meant fear. Fear meant distrusting your betters. That was unacceptable. She’d already taken a risk saying this much without a lead-in or a specific request for Cilla’s time.

  Cilla lowered the brush, looking surprised. “I … understand.” She bit her lip, then caught herself. Teeth and skin were a risky combination. “Well, I’m certain you won’t black out again.”

  Promise? Amara wanted to ask. Promise you won’t tell him if I do?

  It didn’t matter. Cilla could swear up and down that she’d keep quiet, but she’d already told on Amara once, and she was still her better. She remained a danger.

  “Let’s hope,” Amara said, and checked the bowl near Cilla for pinkened spit. Clean. She picked up her needle again.

  Cilla lowered her head, her expression hidden behind pointy locks of hair that Amara could never make sense of. Most Alineans wore their hair shorter than Cilla’s chin-length locks, even shaving the sides; since they tattooed their servants’ necks, long hair meant you had something to hide. When the Alineans had crossed the Greater Ocean and founded the Dunelands as a trading outpost, they’d taken both their servants and hairstyles with them. The shorter hairstyles had rub
bed off on some settlers from the Continent, but most of them wore it long, especially given the Dunelands’ persistent, wet chill.

  Amara didn’t know whether it was a statement or vanity, but Cilla had opted for the middle road: short enough to reveal her neck, long enough to run her fingers through. Amara’s hands twitched wanting to do just that. Her feet twitched, too. She couldn’t sit still. She had all this pent-up worry and anger and nothing to do with it, nothing but pricking this stupid needle into Cilla’s scarf, studying patterns that reminded her of flames—nothing at all like her own scarf, which was drab and thin.

  Her legs wouldn’t stop moving. Muscles pulling, her feet wrenching back and forth. Amara held them down, but then her head shook, too, tiny tugs in all directions. Her sight faded for a second without her ever shutting her eyes. She willed her neck still.

  It didn’t work.

  She wanted to raise her hands to press them to her cheeks, but they hung unresponsive by her sides, as though she’d slept in the wrong position and a million needleseeds were about to stab her skin with every movement. Those pricks refused to come. Her arms simply didn’t listen.

  Her head stopped moving. It came to a halt with her face turned right, looking at Maart still cleaning the fish on an old grain cart across the room.

  “Amara?” Cilla made a sound of hesitation.

  Amara’s lips moved. But she didn’t move them.

  It wasn’t just her head or her arms she couldn’t use. She tried to wiggle her toes. To direct her eyes back to Cilla, who was getting up from her seat, based on the sound of her chair scraping against the floor. None of it worked. This wasn’t like needleseeds. This was worse.

  Amara felt her heart speed up—so maybe she could control that, at least, her heart was still hers, still listened to her panic—and then her hands rose, and her head turned back to Cilla, all of it without her say-so.

  Amara stumbled, and for that split second she was falling to the floor and couldn’t stop herself, couldn’t move her feet forward or extend her arms or cover her face—