Skyfire

by Skye Melki-Wegner

  But then I stop myself. I’m making assumptions again. Ignoring the holes in Teddy’s past – the fragments I haven’t quite pieced together. His grandfather. The fact that someone used to read him storybooks. His parents? His siblings? I don’t know. For all I know, his family could have died at the hands of the guards, beaten to a pulp.

  Teddy pulls his knees up to his chest. I’ve never seen him look so dejected. He usually sprawls all over the place, his long limbs dangling with a confident grace.

  ‘You know,’ he says, ‘my parents were guards.’

  I stare at him, my mouth slightly open.

  ‘Hey, we’re probably gonna die tomorrow, right?’ Teddy forces a weak grin, with none of his usual bluster behind it. ‘No point hiding it now, I reckon.’

  ‘But your parents …’

  ‘Worked for the monarchy,’ Teddy says. ‘They beat the living hell out of anyone who broke the law. Used to take money off people. Poor people. People who were too scared to say anything.

  ‘My parents’d give ’em a trumped-up list of charges, and only drop the charges if they paid. I guess they were thieves too, in a way. But they didn’t steal from richies. They stole from folk that couldn’t afford to feed their own damned kids.’

  No one speaks.

  Teddy looks back down at his feet. ‘Worst part was the conscription, I reckon. When my parents found a kid who hadn’t signed up for duty, they’d do the bloodline test and suss out his age, and if he was over eighteen …’ He shakes his head. ‘Had to watch it once. Hid under my bed and wouldn’t come out for two days. Figured my parents might do that to me, too, if I didn’t join up for the army.’

  Clementine stares at him, horrified. ‘But surely your whole family couldn’t have been so … well …’

  Teddy shrugs. ‘Grandpa was all right, I guess. And I had a big brother, Tom. Used to read me stories. Told me I could be an alchemist, one day, like I dreamed about. He reckoned I could be anything I wanted to be.’

  I can picture it. A tiny boy curled up in a blanket in his bedroom. An older brother reading storybooks. The faint scent of cabbage and socks that always lingers in old apartments, and the shine of an alchemy lamp in the dark.

  ‘When I was eight,’ Teddy says, ‘my parents figured it was time to train me. I was a bit of a rascal, see – always climbing out the window, nicking my grandpa’s pipe for a laugh. Just stupid stuff like that. Pa reckoned it was time to whip me into line. To start me down the path of being a guard, so he dragged me along on a job.’

  Teddy’s voice hitches. ‘They’d found some revolutionaries, you see. People holding secret meetings and that. They were gonna blast ’em to hell: the whole damned family. Even the kids.’ He looks up at us. ‘Even Radnor.’

  I stare at him, confused.

  Then understanding hits me, with a stink far worse than sulphur. Radnor, our crew’s dead leader. Radnor, whose family was murdered by city guards. Teddy once told us he smuggled Radnor out while he was burgling a neighbour’s house – but now I understand. Teddy’s parents were the guards who killed Radnor’s family.

  ‘Never went back,’ he says. ‘Joined a thieving gang, and their leader trained me. My folks didn’t try too hard to find me, mind you. Reckon they were too ashamed of what I’d become. Didn’t want anyone to know they had a traitor for a son.’

  Teddy looks up at us, his eyes a little too bright. ‘And when Tom turned eighteen, they shunted him off to die in the army. Just another lump on the battlefield, bleeding out another inch of territory for Morrigan’s bloody empire.’ He snorts. ‘Only heard he was dead when I nicked the official notice from their bins.’

  There is a long silence, as thick as the stone of our prison cell. I think of Teddy’s reaction to the news of Lord Farran’s war. His horror at the thought of more combat, more conscription …

  Clementine gently disentangles herself from Maisy, and inches across to where Teddy sits. She places a hand upon his shoulder. ‘Teddy, you can’t possibly blame yourself for –’

  He looks up at her, eyes hard. ‘I could’ve done something. I could’ve saved a bunch of other people, I reckon, before I finally got the guts to do something with Radnor.’

  Clementine shakes her head, unsure how to respond.

  Another voice whispers, low and quiet in the shadows. ‘You didn’t choose your parents.’

  Lukas.

  My skin prickles as I remember another conversation. Another prison cell. Another confession. My desperate attempts to make Lukas believe this very fact: to believe that his Morrigan name did not make him evil.

  ‘I was terrified of becoming king,’ Lukas says quietly. ‘I thought as soon as a crown went on my head, I’d become like my father. Lord Farran’s right about one thing, at least – my family’s always been brutal. But my father … well, he’s the worst of them all. The curfews. The alchemy bombs. The endless wars, the obsession with expanding our empire …’

  Lukas leans forward. ‘You know, I used to dream about living another way. People choosing their own leaders, instead of cowering beneath them.’ He exhales, his breath faltering. ‘If I became king … I think kingship’s the first thing I’d get rid of.’

  Silence.

  My own breath is tight in my throat. I already knew that Lukas still blamed himself, on some level, for his family’s crimes. Why else would he have left us, back in the borderlands, to sacrifice himself upon the dam’s kindred runes?

  Why else would he prove so willing to die?

  That thought stops me short. No matter what he says to Teddy, Lukas still feels that guilt. He feels it badly enough that he’s willing to throw his life away to correct it. That’s why he traded himself to Sharr to save us. That’s why he abandoned us in the borderlands, to sacrifice his life.

  To atone for a crime he never committed.

  Teddy stares at Lukas, an odd expression in his eyes. Teddy has always been the slowest to trust Lukas. The least likely to forgive the crimes of his family. He’s one of them. You can’t trust a royal. And finally, it all makes sense. Teddy couldn’t forgive Lukas because he couldn’t forgive himself.

  Suddenly, Teddy sits up. ‘Hear that?’

  ‘What –?’

  Teddy raises a finger. I hear it, ever so faintly: a scrabble of claws behind the back wall.

  ‘Rodent, I reckon.’ Teddy closes his eyes, straining to engage his Beast proclivity without a clear line of sight. ‘A rat, or a mole …’

  He twitches, visibly startled. ‘There’s something hollow behind the wall! Some kind of old tunnel, or a fissure in the rock.’ Teddy screws up his face in concentration. ‘Darkness. Shadows. Blimey, the air stinks …’

  As one, we rush to examine the cave’s back wall. The stone is raw and crumbly, as dry as the volcanic rocks of the plains. But if Teddy’s right, there must be a hollow space behind it. A natural crack in the rocks, eroded by centuries of flame and eruptions and alchemical juices.

  ‘Bet this whole mountain’s riddled with cracks,’ Teddy says. ‘I mean, it’s not the most stable landscape, is it?’

  ‘If we could just break through,’ Clementine says, ‘there might be a way out!’

  Teddy prods the stone. ‘Don’t suppose anyone’s got an alchemy bomb stashed up their sleeve?’

  ‘We don’t need a bomb,’ Maisy says. ‘The stone’s soaked in Curiefer – it’s incredibly volatile. If we build up a fire, we might be able to blow it up.’

  I cast my eyes around the storage cell, searching for anything that might help. ‘Those sacks … Maisy, can you get them burning?’

  She shakes her head. ‘Not without a spark. I can’t conjure flames out of the air.’

  Teddy seizes an old wooden crate. ‘All right, how about this?’ He smashes the crate upon the wall. It shatters, cracking into shards of broken wood, and Teddy turns to offer us the splintered pieces. ‘It’s what they do in stories, isn’t it? You know – rub bits of wood together to make a fire …’

  But the wood is rott
en, damp with mildew, and about as flammable as a bucket of water. We rub the shards until our fingers burn with pain and splinters. Finally, Clementine throws her pieces aside in despair and we’re forced to admit defeat.

  I run a hand through my hair in frustration. When I move my wrist, the light swings upwards. I glimpse the star charm imbued with the proclivity of Lukas’s dying grandmother.

  Imbued with the light and heat of star-shine.

  I hold my wrist up, my heart racing, and our patch of light sways drunkenly across the cave. ‘It makes heat.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So maybe it can start a fire!’

  I stare at the others, unable to hide my excitement. At the moment, the charm is providing only light, since I’ve learned to mentally suppress the burn of its star-shine. But I know it can flare into scorching heat. Down in the catacombs, this charm even melted through a metal padlock. If it’s hot enough to melt metal …

  Maisy empties a hessian sack, spilling dried beans across the floor. Then she places a chunk of heavy stone into the sack. ‘If you light this, then throw it at the wall, I think the impact should be enough.’

  I take the sack, fingers shaking. I think back to the airbase in the wastelands of Taladia. The workers had been so careful with their vats of Curiefer; any sudden impact could blow it into oblivion. They shipped it off the train and into a cooling silo, as mechanical as clockwork, terrified that it might explode in their faces.

  And we’re about to blow it up in an enclosed space.

  ‘This explosion,’ I say slowly, ‘how big will it be?’

  Maisy shakes her head. ‘I don’t know.’

  I look up at the others, asking silently for permission. Unexpectedly, it’s Clementine who nods first. ‘Do it.’

  The others hesitate before nodding their consent.

  I press the charm to the sack, casting silver light upon hessian. For a moment, nothing happens. I close my eyes and focus on the charm, coaxing it into a stronger flare of magic.

  Heat, heat, heat …

  Sharp pain flares at my wrist. My eyes fly open, as I realise too late that part of the charm is touching my skin. But the rest of the charm is pressed against the sack and, with a sizzle, a thin tendril of smoke rises from the hessian.

  Maisy throws out her hands, engaging her Flame proclivity, and coaxes the spark up into a roar. I hurl the sack against the back of the cave. It hits the wall with a whumph! and flames explode from its centre. Heat and sparks ripple out across our cell, rumbling and roaring like a rush of violent water.

  Teddy curses as a spark hits his shirt, sizzling through to sting his bicep before he manages to slap it out. Maisy throws up her hands to fend off the flames, shielding us from the worst of the blast. Even so, I’m left coughing and choking as the back wall rumbles. There’s a roar through the smoke – a clatter and clang, a rumpus of collapsing stone.

  The fire fades.

  I stare through the smoke, struggling to clear my vision. I hear people coughing lungs full of smoke, then realise that some of the coughs are my own. Still spluttering, I risk a few steps forward to clear the air with my hands. Then I hold out the star charm, keen for a closer look at the damage.

  Half of the back wall has crumpled – and some of the ceiling, too, by the looks of things. Chunks of stone lie piled on the floor, broken and smoking with residual heat. But behind the rubble, I see darkness. A hollow cavity in the stone.

  I whirl upon Teddy, a wild grin breaking across my face. ‘You were right!’

  ‘The power of rats,’ Teddy says solemnly. ‘Never underestimate the little buggers.’

  We clamber through the rubble, tumbling one by one into the dark. There’s no point trying to stay quiet. If Lord Farran were still nearby, he’d have heard the explosion in our cell. But there’s no shouting, no barrage of gunfire, so I assume we’re beyond his hearing. Our boots clack like bullets as we scurry forward.

  Then Clementine stops. She claws at the back of her neck, tearing down her collar to scratch her fingernails into the flesh.

  ‘Your proclivity must be almost ready,’ Maisy says. ‘If it’s that bad …’

  ‘I think it is ready,’ Clementine says. ‘The last few minutes, it’s just been … well, it feels like the last gust before the end of a storm.’ She looks anxiously at her twin. ‘Will you check for me?’

  Maisy nods. ‘Of course.’

  I hold up the star charm. Maisy lifts Clementine’s hair aside and peers at the back of her sister’s neck. She lets out a sharp gasp, then says, ‘Air. It’s Air.’

  The rest of us hurry forwards to see. The markings form a cluster of clouds, with tendrils of swirling wind and light.

  It’s funny. When I first met the twins, I’d have expected Clementine’s proclivity to be Flame. She’s the fiery twin: the brash, loud one who crackles with the heat of her own confidence. It’s Maisy who should be Air. The quiet one. The soft one. Like a little summer breeze.

  But then I think of Maisy on the mountaintop. Her face straining in concentration, her magic flaring, as she fought back the fire that would have burned us all. That wasn’t the face of a summer breeze. That was the face of Flame.

  ‘Guess you would’ve moved to the spires, yeah?’ Teddy says. ‘If we hadn’t nicked off from Bastian’s clan, I mean. You’ve got an ethereal proclivity.’

  Clementine glares. ‘I’d never have left you. Any of you. If Danika was allowed to stay in the village, I’d have done the same.’

  Her voice is as haughty as the night we met, down in the sewers of Rourton. Back when she dismissed us as a bunch of worthless scruffers. But now the tone clashes with the message of her words, and it occurs to me that Maisy isn’t the only twin to have been changed by this journey.

  ‘Come on,’ I say. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  The tunnel ahead glows with a strange silver light: the flicker and heat of alchemy. As we wriggle through the darkness, the heat intensifies. It’s painfully hot, but not enough to burn my skin. Not quite.

  The stink of sulphur isn’t just a smell any more; it’s a taste. A mouthful of rotting eggs and old socks, smeared across my tongue.

  The tunnel ends with a ledge jutting out into shadow. The air is thick and I cough, spluttering uncontrollably, as unnatural light dances on my skin. And with a terrible lurch, I realise where we are.

  The shaft of the geyser.

  I can’t breathe. I retch, gasping, as all five of us stagger back into the depths of the tunnel.

  ‘Ugh!’ Teddy says. ‘What the hell …?’

  ‘We’ll never make it,’ Clementine says. ‘We can’t climb up the rocks if we’re choking to death – we’ll fall, surely, and then …’

  She trails off, looking stricken. But it’s too late; we’re all imagining a body hitting liquid Curiefer. The bubbles and scorching heat. The stink of boiling flesh and splitting bones, swallowed by the shine.

  ‘If we go back, we’ll die anyway,’ I say. ‘Farran will either shoot us or drag us off to the battlefield and let King Morrigan do the honours. Isn’t a small chance better than nothing?’

  ‘And if one of us falls?’ Clementine says. ‘Will you take the guilt, Danika? If I fall, or Teddy falls, or Mai –’ Her voice hitches. She takes an unsteady breath. ‘If Maisy falls, will you take the blame?’

  I stare at her, my mouth dry. I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to picture their bodies falling, melting. Nausea bubbles in my throat.

  ‘I think we can do it,’ Maisy says. ‘Clem … if you and I work together, I think we can keep them safe.’

  Clementine starts to protest, but Maisy cuts her off.

  ‘You have an Air proclivity. If you can just push away the gasses, you could clear a space for us to breathe. You could keep fresh air flowing around our faces.’

  ‘I’ve only known my proclivity for a few minutes!’

  ‘I’m not asking you to travel through it,’ Maisy says. ‘That would be too dangerous. But you should b
e able to push outward a little, just to keep the air flowing around us.’ She looks at her sister with a pleading expression. ‘I know you can do it, Clem. I know it.’

  Clementine glances at the rest of us, awaiting an objection. No one speaks.

  ‘I can help too,’ Maisy says. ‘I can keep us safe from spits of fire. Flame and Air. If ever there were two perfect proclivities for making it out of here alive …’

  Clementine looks at her sister. I watch them both: two slender girls, their blonde curls tangled into knots, faces stained with soot and dirt. And just for a moment, the fierceness in Maisy’s face transfers to Clementine – like mirrors reflecting back into each other.

  Clementine closes her eyes. And around us, the air begins to stir.

  The rock stings with heat beneath my hand. I pull my sleeves over my palms and try to ignore the pain in my fingertips.

  The boiling pit of Curiefer gurgles below us. Thick bubbles pop and splatter. Sometimes they hit the rocks and explode, spitting fire and alchemy juices. Clementine keeps her teeth gritted and the air around us spins. It’s a harsh flurry – amateurish and barely controlled – but it’s enough to keep the steam cleared, and the sulphuric gasses out of our lungs.

  We climb with every inch of muscle and sinew in our bodies. We cling to rocky ledges, and haul our legs onto protruding boulders. We ignore the aches, the pain, the heat. We ignore the whiplash of air when it slams out of Clementine’s control. We ignore the scatterings of pebbles and broken stone from the climbers above us.

  Clementine accidentally slams a handful of soot and gas into our faces, and I’m left to splutter as I cling to the rocks. I would trade anything for a gasp of fresh air: one last gasp, out in the open, away from this choking hole of dark and steam. Is that too much to ask? Just one last gasp, before I die?

  Don’t let go, Danika. Don’t let go.

  The Curiefer casts an unnatural light through the shaft. Tendrils of liquid lash up like strands of hair, then flop back down into the smouldering pit.

  A new blast of gas envelops us. Clementine loses her grip and scrabbles at the rocks, shrieking. I lunge to grab her ankle, but can’t quite reach. She writhes, her expression desperate, her eyes clenched shut, struggling to dispel the steam before it can scald the flesh from our bones. I hear Maisy panting, using every desperate skerrick of her Flame proclivity to keep the heat at bay.