“Touch me and I’ll kill you,” Luft said, and her hand froze. “Not that you could do much even if you tried—you don’t know the Word of Air. So you’d better step back onto safer ground, or else you might find yourself falling off the roof of this building with the oxygen vacuumed out of your lungs to keep you from screaming.”
Ryse sucked in a breath in shock—maybe to make sure she still could—and hissed, “What would Carlin have to say if he knew you were threatening another Godspeaker?”
Luft shrugged, with an unconcerned smile on his face that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “He’s used to it. As long as I don’t threaten him, of course. And I never would.”
He seemed to have a tolerable working relationship with his Godspeaker, if not a close one. I couldn’t imagine ever achieving such a state with Ryse. It probably helped that Carlin didn’t seem to be a sadistic psychopath like her. At least, he had to be nicer than she was if he was passing on keycards that let Luft get around without constantly being on display. Now that I thought about it, I’d spotted Luft nearly as infrequently as Cruithear, the mysterious Word of Shaping who I’d never laid eyes on.
It also probably helped that Luft didn’t believe the City Council was out to destroy him. After all, using the Word of Air probably didn’t kill him a little bit inside every day. Nor did he know about the Council’s mostly thwarted plan to replace even the obedient Words with unthinking, unfeeling automatons—a plan that still might be put into action, just for me, in less than a month.
The sub-zero silence of our ride continued to the basement, where Luft had apparently decided he was going. I would have made some joke to piss Ryse off if I could have articulated it better than a fall-down drunk on the street. And if I could have mustered the humor for joking. My humor was in the negative. The silence was broken only by the ding of the elevator as it opened onto a tucked-away hallway of the greater lab facility, which led to the outer observation room.
Luft backed out of the elevator first, keeping Ryse in front of him, and paused to wait for us as if being polite. But I knew it was to keep her from seeing his back. Ryse’s eyes narrowed.
“You’re not authorized to be in here,” she said, wheeling me past him and down the sterile white hallway.
“We’ll see.” Luft followed us, hanging only slightly behind Ryse.
A scent-wave of antiseptic hit me in the nose, and my hands tightened into fists … fists! They were still weak, but stronger than they had been. Maybe the sedative was wearing off. That was an upside—the only one—to spending hours painstakingly destroying Khaya’s garden: the drug had had some time to work its way out of my system.
The lab was quiet, the lights dim. It must have been later than I’d thought, far later in the day than my usual training session. My leaden stomach grew heavier when I realized no one was in here. For once, I wanted witnesses.
We stopped outside the locked door leading to the outer observation room. I shot Luft a desperate look, silently begging him to stay. I might have even whimpered. Speaking was maybe possible at this point, but I didn’t want to try in front of Ryse and let her know that I could.
Ryse was about to reach out and swipe her card when Luft beat her to it, swiping his own. A light on the card-reader turned green and the door slid open. He gestured the way forward for us.
“After you,” he said with a slight smile.
Ryse shoved me into the observation room and whipped around to face Luft, blocking the doorway. “This is absurd. I don’t know what Carlin was thinking giving you that keycard. Only Godspeakers are allowed in here—”
“Tavin’s not a Godspeaker,” Luft pointed out. “He’s a Word, and so am I—”
“He’s the Word of Death, and this is his training area. I’m his trainer. No one else needs to be here.”
Luft shrugged. “I often have observers, both Godspeakers and Words, when I’m training.”
“The Word of Death is at a precarious stage in his development, unlike you. The circumstances are different—”
“Different because you’re doing something … unconventional … with Tavin?” Luft asked with dark insinuation.
Ryse was nearly shaking with fury, her white hand gripping the doorframe like a claw. “How dare you question my—”
“Then, if this is a normal training session, what does it matter if I stay and watch? Either you let me, or you delay your training to call Carlin and Eli down here. Otherwise I’m not leaving.” Luft folded his formidable arms across his chest. “And don’t try to close that door in my face unless you want it blown back in yours.”
“There will be repercussions for this,” Ryse said in her softest, deadliest voice. “I promise you that.”
He only shrugged. “Maybe.”
Gods, he knew how to throw his weight around. Maybe Words weren’t so powerless with the Godspeakers if they knew how to play their cards right. I would have cheered Luft on if I could have.
Ryse stormed out of his way, thrusting my wheelchair through the observation room toward the inner lab. She marched me inside it and the steel door slid shut, the room closing around me like a cage of white tile and reflective windows. The chair’s rubber wheels squeaked to a halt while she punched a numerical sequence into the keypad next to the door, then there was a metallic thunk as the door’s bolt slid into place. I was locked in with her.
At least Luft was outside, able to watch through the windows. It would be bad, but maybe not as bad with a witness to keep her in check. Then again, Ryse was more furious than I’d ever seen her.
Maybe it would be worse.
That was when I heard the soft whining, and then a high-pitched yap. Something rattled its cage.
Oh, Gods.
The heels of Ryse’s boots clicked on the tile as she walked in a slow circle around my chair, her hand trailing along my bare shoulder. My shirt was still open in the back, the Words exposed. She dropped her hand to the seat belt and unbuckled it, then strolled across the lab and knelt behind a counter. I heard the click of a latch being released.
A floppy-eared puppy burst out from behind the counter, slipping on the slick floor. A mix of black and white splotches covered its short coat of fur, and a whip-thin tail was tucked as far as possible between its back legs, curling around to point at its belly. It ran away from Ryse, then skittered to a halt when it saw me in the wheelchair. As if it could sense the Words that started whispering in the back of my mind, a whimper of fear leaked out of it, along with a trickle of urine.
So I had graduated from bunnies to puppies. Ryse was going to make me kill a puppy, for the Gods’ sake. A terrified puppy.
I didn’t like full-sized dogs, the kind with sharp teeth and long legs that had chased me when I’d hung off the back of the garbage truck. Or the sniffer-variety that the Athenaeum had sent to track down me and Khaya. I’d killed one of those, not with Words but a pocketknife. But that was for survival. This was just a scrawny little thing, the kind I used to find half-dead in a trash bin and spend weeks nursing back to life in Drey’s garage.
It didn’t matter that I had less than a month to become a functional Word of Death. I couldn’t do it, or let Ryse make me.
I lurched, trying to stand, but all I did was topple sideways, knocking the wheelchair over with a crash and spilling myself out on the tiles—closer to the puppy, who shied away, its eyes wide in fear and confusion. I dragged myself to my hands and knees and started crawling for the door. It was locked, I knew, but I didn’t have another plan.
“Luft,” I groaned, “help me!”
A cold hand seized the back of my neck. I tried to wrench it off and roll away, but Ryse twisted my arm behind my back and slammed my face into the ground. Blood burst from my nose in a hot flood.
My blood was fine. I didn’t care about that. But it wouldn’t only be mine for long.
Ryse started to read the W
ords, and the strength of their intent flooded me—but then she cut off with an abrupt scream and a snarling yelp from the puppy. Perhaps it had bitten her, but I didn’t wait to find out. I writhed, spinning out of her armlock like I’d been taught, and threw her off of me. Her head slammed into the nearby wall and she cried out.
My body was stronger, reinvigorated by the Words and a massive dose of adrenaline. Instead of running nowhere, I leapt on top of her, straddling her with my weight so she couldn’t kick me off. My bare hands found her throat.
This was the only way I could escape her.
Her eyes bulged and she made gurgling noises, her fingers clawing at my wrists hard enough to draw blood. Again, I didn’t care about my blood. She tried to go for my eyes, but my arms were longer and she couldn’t reach when I leaned back. Her legs thrashed, but the heels of her boots only scraped frantically against the tiles.
A chorus of Words sang in my head as my grip tightened and Ryse’s pale face reddened: Squeeze, asphyxiate, crush … I ignored them, choking her with my own hands. I wasn’t a murderer, but her death was the only way to stop her. And if I killed her, I wanted it to be me that did it, not the Words; Tavin, not Death.
I might have killed her, too, if the door hadn’t exploded. The force tossed me off Ryse, cracking my skull on the floor when I landed. My vision blurred.
Through the dust and wreckage, I eventually made out Luft standing in the warped steel doorway. Not only him. Swanson and another man came rapidly up behind him, arriving with too many guards to count—but I might have been seeing double as they slipped into the lab, in and out of focus. The room began to fade around the edges.
The tranquilizer dart wasn’t even necessary, though a guard shot one into my shoulder at practically point-blank range.
seven
I felt like death when I awoke. That precise figure of speech made me laugh grimly, and then I wished it hadn’t because my head exploded. A tranquilizer hangover was one thing, but this was a whole new level of skull-splitting agony—a side effect of a concussion, most likely. I tried to lift a hand to feel my head, but my arm jerked to a halt.
It was cuffed with leather straps to a metal bedrail. I looked around to discover I was back in the hospital.
“Shit,” I said.
“Did I raise you to talk like that?”
I whipped my head in the direction of that voice—and cursed again as my head exploded a second time.
Drey only smiled and folded his hands in his lap, where a magazine rested. He was seated at my bedside, wearing a white button-down shirt and tweed slacks. A squat pair of reading glasses perched on his nose, and for once his chin was free of grizzled stubble. He’d never looked so clean-cut while driving the garbage truck. Nor had he ever read a magazine.
As odd as it was, seeing Drey after so long quieted all the fears that had been clamoring just outside the sphere of my immediate attention. If he was near, that meant Ryse wasn’t.
“Nice outfit,” I said, wincing. “You look like a nerdy professor.”
“And you look like a madman.”
“Thanks.” It was probably true, with my restraints and the hospital gown I was wearing. I gingerly leaned my head back against my pillows and stared at him, unable to contain the hope bursting in my chest. “Gods, it’s good to see you. I’ve missed you—I mean, since I’ve been here, never mind all that time I thought you were dead. I’d hug you, but … ” I waggled my cuffed hand at him.
Drey stood up and moved closer to the bed’s rails. “Not because you’re worried about killing me?”
I frowned at him. “Well, a little. Not really.” If I could keep from unleashing the Words on Ryse during the most out-of-control moment of my life, then I wasn’t too worried about how I’d be with Drey. Especially not with this headache pounding too loud for me to even hear my own thoughts, let alone the sinister, ever-present whisperings in the back of my mind. Still, it was a first to not have to worry about killing someone. “I think I’ve got it mostly under control now—”
“Too much control,” Drey said, echoing Swanson in a disturbing way. But then he lifted his hand and took mine. His fingers were as rough as sandpaper and as gnarled as always, which was somehow comforting.
I pretended to shake his hand with the limited range the cuff gave me. “Hi. Nice to meet you. I’m the Word of Death. What was your name again?”
Drey blew out an exasperated breath. “It’s Andre Bernstein, as you must know by now, judging by that petulant smirk on your face. Though you don’t get to call me anything but Drey. Or Mr. Barnes, if you keep smirking at me like that.”
“I’ve never once called you Mr. Barnes, and I’m not about to start now, old man.” I hesitated, the so-called smirk dropping off my face. “What does everyone else call you? Dr. Bernstein?”
Drey’s smile faded too. “I haven’t been called that for a long time. But yes.”
“So why are you here?” That sounded harsher than I’d meant, so I asked, “Why are you allowed to see me now? Is this goodbye or something? Have they already decided to replace me?” My fears began to interject again, making me sound like how I felt inside: not like a scary, powerful Word but a kid, scared shitless.
“Not yet,” Drey said. “But they will, if you keep running your mouth about their ability to do so. That project is a secret, known only to a few Godspeakers and the City Council.”
I took the hint, not even needing to look for the surveillance cameras to know they were there. “Why, then? They’re not … they’re not getting rid of you now that I’ve screwed up so badly, right?” My voice came out more and more panicked. “What I did wasn’t your fault!”
“Shh, Tavin, don’t worry,” Drey said, patting my hand. “You haven’t done anything wrong. But this is my fault. I can’t tell you how sorry I am that this happened to you.” Tears glazed his eyes. I couldn’t remember a time I’d seen Drey cry. “If only I hadn’t gotten you that job that sent you in here … Please believe me, I just wanted Swanson to see the man you’d become, and maybe give you a future—but, Gods, not this future. Not the one I thought I’d averted.”
He was still careful to avoid mentioning Swanson’s role in everything, even as emotional as he was. While people now knew that I was Swanson’s biological son, hardly anyone knew that Swanson had orchestrated my original escape as a baby. Most everyone thought it had only been Em, my mother and the former Word of Death, and Hayat, Khaya’s father and the former Word of Life, who’d faked my death and convinced Drey to smuggle me out of the Athenaeum.
“I thought you were safe from your fate as the Word of Death,” he continued. “Never in a million years did I think you would end up like this. But you did, and it’s my fault.”
Now I was really freaked out. This definitely sounded like a goodbye, or a confession before death.
“No, Drey, I was the one who broke Khaya out of here! I was the one who got her out of the city.” I searched for a camera, as if I could talk directly to whoever was watching on the other end, convince them.
It wasn’t entirely the truth, of course. Drey had helped us escape Eden City by providing supplies and a safe house; Chantelle, a prostitute I’d known most of my life, had hidden me and Khaya in an old utility room under a bridge; and Jacques, captain of a trash barge, had smuggled us out on his boat. But no one needed to know how much I owed those three.
“And I’m the one who’s deciding to be a shitty Word of Death now,” I went on. “Do you hear me? It was all me! They can’t punish you for—”
Drey shushed me again. “Tavin, Tavin. Listen to me. You need to worry about yourself, not me. I’m not going anywhere. In fact, you and I are going to be spending a lot more time together.”
“How?” I demanded. “What about Ryse?”
“Swanson suspended Ryse.”
“What?” I sat up in surprise, my back straightening
as if I’d been zapped by Ryse’s stun-gun. I let out something halfway between a groan and a shout. “Gods, my head hurts!”
Drey plucked a pill bottle off the stand next to my bed, unscrewed it, and shook a couple pills into his palm. “Think you can swallow these?”
I was about to nod but stopped myself in time. “Yes. Now tell me what’s going on.”
“Stop talking and open up.”
I obliged him, impatient. He tipped the pills into my mouth and held a glass of water up to my lips like I was six years old again and he was giving me something for a fever, not for a concussion after a fight with a Godspeaker. I swallowed as quickly as possible and said, “Tell me.”
Drey sighed, setting down the glass and leaning both hands against the bed rails. “Ryse was pushing you too far, driving you insane. She was impatient because … ”
He didn’t finish, but I knew why Ryse was in a hurry with my training, other than just being a sadist. She had a deadline to get me functioning before her godspeaking would be rendered unnecessary. If an automaton was given the Word of Death, it would obey the Council’s commands without her special brand of urging—unless, of course, it went nuts and tried to kill everyone.
“Well, her methods were too harsh,” Drey said. “I knew it, but finally everyone had to acknowledge it after the debacle in the lab two days ago.”
“Two days?” I glanced down at myself. No wonder I felt as fresh as rotting road kill. “I’ve been out for a while.”
“You received quite the blow to the head when Luft blasted the door open.”
“He helped me,” I said with renewed surprise. “Or, wait … did he bust in to save Ryse’s life?”
“Both,” Drey said, looking down at his hands. “By saving Ryse’s life, he saved yours. If you’d killed your Godspeaker, it would have been a lot harder for me to argue with the City Council to give you a second chance as the Word of Death.”
“A second chance?” I repeated, both relieved and alarmed. “With Ryse? But I thought Swanson suspended her!”
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