by Adi Rule
“Hello to you, too,” an icy female voice answers.
“Oh, I do apologize.” The wheezy voice has an edge now. “Greetings. How are you? I’m fine. One of our agents got his throat slit, and the Beautiful Ones are spreading rumors about redwings.”
The wheezy voice speaks with an oily, upper-class affect, while the other sounds more naturally refined. I try to inch farther into the leaves to get a look at them, but I don’t dare make any noise.
“One of our—? Who—?” the woman breathes.
“You don’t get to know. Now, what have you found?”
The woman answers with a hint of venom. “What have I found? That’s a good one.”
“Don’t be flippant with me,” the wheezy voice says. “Remember, you are expendable.”
Rasus, what does that mean?
“I’m not flippant, I’m realistic,” the woman says. “Look, the Commandant has no secrets, all right? Everything you see is everything that’s here. I’m telling you, it doesn’t exist.”
There is a louder crunch of gravel now, and his voice turns severe. “Don’t be stupid. It is not your job to question its existence, it is your job to find it.”
“But they say the Black Thorn—”
“If he is real, he is a human being who pops when you squash him, just like everyone else,” he snaps. “We are getting impatient. If we don’t find the heart soon, the Beautiful Ones will. Or shall I report back that you are unfit? I’m sure the Empress’s son knows where it is, and I know someone who would be more than happy to squeeze it out of him.”
“No!” The young woman sounds nervous now. “There’s no need for that, please. No, I’ll—I’ll keep looking. I’ll find it.”
I hear more crunching of gravel as the two people move off in different directions. Is Zahi in danger?
When I’m certain they’re gone, I step out of the toad-hat and stretch my spine. I am still puzzling as I step off the path of brass stones and back onto the main gravel walk through the garden. Maybe that’s why I collide with a young man with puffy skin and watery eyes who looks like a turnip.
“Hey!” he growls, even though he is easily twice my size and I’m the one who was just bounced off into a patch of giant bluelets.
“Sorry,” I mutter, at least having the presence of mind to pull my goggles down over my eyes.
“Frigging servants,” Turnip Face says, straightening his foppish blue waistcoat and feathered hat.
“I’m not a servant, I’m a gardener,” I snap, even though it would be better to keep my mouth shut.
“Well!” he says, “Isn’t that—? Hang on, it’s you. What the hell are you dressed like that for?”
I turn away as though I have business on the other side of the garden. “This is my uniform, sir. Sorry to bother you.”
I try to step away, but he grabs my shoulder and turns me around. “What are you playing at, Jey?” he says.
Jey!
“I don’t appreciate your tone. Or your hand,” I say coldly, shaking him off. Sweet Rasus, what is going on?
“Sneaking around in here, in disguise?” Turnip Face says. Sweat glistens at his temples. “What are you doing? Are you working with them? Have you abandoned the cause? You little sneak!”
He grips my shoulders and pushes them together as though the information he wants will come shooting out of my chest if he squeezes hard enough. It hurts my bones, and the scars on my back sizzle. My lungs yearn for that one decadent pull of air I won’t allow them, the one I know will release the power I feel writhing at my core. But I remember the bloody men in the alley and try to keep my breath shallow.
“Mol’s flaming socks, I’m not in disguise!” I say. “I’m a gardener, you featherless oaf!”
“No more of your lies, Jey!” he spits, smacking me across the face with an open hand.
It stings. Even worse, it knocks my dark goggles to the ground. I scramble to retrieve them, but it is too late. The young man has frozen, his gaze transfixed on my face. “What the hell—?”
“What’s going on? Is something the matter?” A voice speaks up from behind him. My back cools; my shoulders ache.
“Everything’s fine,” Turnip Face says, though he looks a little shaken. He turns, and we both set eyes on Zahi Zan. “Your Excellency!”
Zahi bows, Turnip Face bows, and I’m not sure what to do, so I end up nodding rather violently.
Turnip Face is all smiles. “You’ve met my lady friend, Miss Jey Fairweather?”
My lady friend. This must be Bonner, then. Mr. Root Vegetables. Oh, Jey, you could have your pick of young gentlemen! Why this goon?
“Certainly, we’ve met,” Zahi says, his face blank. “It’s good to see you, Miss Fairweather. I’m glad you could attend my little gathering.” He extends a hand and I curl my fingers around his briefly. Then his features lighten in the faintest hint of a smile. “It seems I must apologize, and admit my utter embarrassment that you took my invitation as a request to work in the gardens today.”
“Oh, no,” I say, forgetting Bonner for a moment. “I just … I really like the uniform.”
Zahi laughs.
“I apologize, Your Excellency.” Bonner takes my arm a little roughly. “I’m taking her home to change right now.”
“As she wishes,” Zahi says, “though, really, my friends, it is unnecessary.” He glances at me. “I thought I heard shouting.”
I try to look baffled. “Shouting?” My best chance is to steer him away. I cannot hope for help, and I certainly can’t risk exposing my identity to the Empress’s own son. I can deal with Bonner on my own.
“No shouting here,” Bonner says. Flaming lout.
“Well, I’ll let you two enjoy the garden, then.” Zahi gives us a polite nod and takes his leave, joining a group of enthusiastic young ladies on the shady lawn outside.
I look daggers at Bonner, whose little eyes are wide.
“You’re … you’re not her,” he says.
Damn. No, no, no. I try to keep my voice steady. “What are you talking about?”
“You’re not Jey Fairweather,” he says.
“Of course I am.” I swallow. “Look at me. Who else would I be?”
“You have blue eyes.”
“Don’t be silly,” I say calmly. “I’ve always had blue eyes, don’t you remember?” Tamping down my revulsion, I put a hand to his face in a gesture of affection, but he pulls away sharply.
“When she said she had a sister, I—”
My chest gives a jolt. “She said she had a sister?”
“You are a bloody twin,” he cries, gaping at me like a fish.
My brain boils. “What did she tell you about me?”
“Where is your mark, twin?” Bonner snaps. “Where is the priest’s scar on your forehead? Don’t lie to me.”
My heart is racing. I look into his eyes. “Please,” I whisper. “For Jey’s sake, please forget you ever saw me. Okay? I’ll leave town. I’ll never come back. I promise. Please, I would never hurt anyone.”
He blinks at last, and frowns. Please, Rasus, let me have won him over. I’ll never ask for anything else again, I promise.
When Bonner speaks, his words are low and careful. “I’ll keep your secret from these good people here today. What you need to do now, girl, is put your goggles back on and pull up that bandanna.”
I do so, relief flooding my veins. “Thank—”
“Now, you come with me,” he says, grabbing my arm. “And if you disappear, I’ll go to your house tonight and break your sister’s neck while she sleeps.”
seven
When Bonner and I leave the grounds of the Copper Palace, we pass Zahi Zan and one of the pretty girls—the one dressed in buttery yellow—sitting on a stone bench next to a fountain. She laughs and throws her head back; he is making stupid faces. Neither of them notices us.
It’s not as though I’m being kidnapped or anything.
The trek back across the Jade Bridge is a mixture of trepidat
ion and annoyance. Bonner doesn’t say where we are going, but all I have to do is ask myself, Where would I take a redwing if I captured one? So of course we are heading straight toward the crowds of High Ra Square and the Temple of Rasus.
Bonner squeezes my arm with his sweaty fingers as though he is physically controlling me. Even without my redwing blood, I could shake this bloated slug off me. But I cannot run—he knows where we live, where Jey goes to school. I can’t watch her every minute when it’s impossible for us to be together in public.
We veer off wide Ver’s Way, navigating damp alleys and side streets peppered with dark-windowed shops I would hesitate to explore. We pass a few little brown street gardens whose meager harvests look even more unappetizing than Jey’s tomatoes. Bonner pulls me along, breathing heavily. For all his bravado, I can tell he is afraid.
He chooses to take me along the back ways of Caldaras City rather than the crowded routes—the actions of a guilty man trying to hide his crime. But the result is that we are now alone in the spiderweb of run-down, forgotten lanes, and he doesn’t know what I am capable of. I don’t entirely know myself.
A raptor gleams in a little patch of sunlight, watching me with lazy interest. Scientists tell us raptors and great stritches and little parakeets are all strange, new versions of the terrible creatures that used to roam the land before human beings and Others, maybe even before Mol exploded out of the fiery depths. They are as ancient as the gods themselves, but they have not endured because of temples and worshippers and supernatural powers. The raptors, with their hollow bones and streamlined bodies, have survived because they adapt. They see reality for what it is, not what they wish it to be.
We’re getting closer to High Ra Square and the Temple of Rasus, and I don’t expect to be welcomed with open arms by the priests there. Or the guards. Mol’s blood, I hadn’t even thought about all the Temple guards. And there will be throngs of people in the square, and innocent worshippers in the Temple.…
I’m going to have to kill Bonner. Here. The realization jolts me.
He gives my arm a particularly zealous tug and I dig my heels in. We come to a stop. Four or five dirty stritches peer suspiciously from the shadows of a roughly soldered pen.
My feet burn with the power below them, roiling in the ground. The ball of energy at my core snaps and arcs.
Do I really want to do this?
“Come on.” Bonner wrenches my arm. He gives me a hard look, but I see the fear beneath. He is afraid of me, and he is right to be.
“Don’t do this, friend,” I say, looking deep into those arrogant, watery eyes, trying to see into the soul of a person who could profess to love my sister and then threaten to break her neck. A person who could kidnap someone who has never done him any wrong and hand her over to those who would kill her.
My fingers start to tremble, tingling with fire. The stritches shuffle quickly to the back of their pen, clustered in the shadow of a grimy metal half roof. Bonner is frozen, staring, finally aware of the perilous position he has put himself in. I could dull those watery eyes for good right now, and my sister would never have to know what happened. I could boil the blood inside his veins.
Do it now, I tell myself. My fingers are so hot, I could peel his skin with a touch.
“Let’s go, creature,” he hisses, puffing himself out like a rock thrush looking for a fight. “Get moving.”
Do it. I extend a hand. Bonner looks at it, wide eyed.
But suddenly, the dirty alley mist is disturbed by a small sound. A cough. I turn, ears prickling. There—so close, it’s amazing we didn’t see him—is a ragged man with shallow breath and hair like fine, junk wire. He sits in filth against a back wall, legs splayed as though they are no longer really a part of his body. A huge, ancient raptor with tattered feathers and its one eye closed is perched on the man’s bony shoulder, two old friends forgotten by the rest of the world.
The man looks up at me with blank, pink eyes, all memories of fear or anger or happiness long since evaporated. But through the emotionless haze, I can tell he is waiting to see what I will do next. He coughs again, and the big raptor opens its faded, golden eye and finds me. Does he know of redwings, this man? I will be the first one he has ever seen, and the last.
Bonner doesn’t even glance at them. “That’s enough, you. Move along. What’s the problem?”
“The problem?” I give him a stony glare, feeling three eyes on me all the while. Now I lean in close to my kidnapper and whisper, “The problem is that you’re on fire.”
In an instant, I grab Bonner’s hands and permit a small burst of flame to pounce through my fingertips. He screeches—dramatically, I think, since it’s just a small fire—and staggers, falling to the ground. “By all the—! What did you do?” He pats his raw hands against the greasy black dirt of this back lane.
For a moment, I think I hear more raspy coughing from the old man, but when I turn, his pink eyes are sparkling. He is laughing. I meet his gaze and can’t help but laugh along with him.
Bonner rises drunkenly. “Don’t—don’t you dare run, you monster!”
I cross my arms. “I won’t run. Not while my freedom is payment for my sister’s life. So you can keep your bloody hands to yourself.”
His eyes flash. “You’re going to die, redwing. The Beautiful Ones are going to rip your flesh from your bones.”
“If it keeps you away from my sister, let them do it,” I say. “That’s what love is, I suppose.”
“Love!” He looks genuinely astonished. “Love is protecting innocent people from evil! As if a thing like you could know anything about love.”
The skin on my face turns cold. I almost don’t recognize the fearsome voice that comes from my own throat. “What I do know,” I snarl, “is that I could kill you right now if I wanted. And it would be easy.”
We set off again, and Bonner doesn’t say another word. I glance back at the ragged man, but he and his companion have closed their eyes. They sit motionless in the dirty fog, and for all I know, they may go on like that until the end of time.
Now I have complicated matters. We step into a wide, noisy street and the just-brighter-than-shadows diffusion of light that passes for sunshine here. Since I did not kill Bonner in secret, I’ll have to escape once he has deposited me at the Temple, and pray I can make it back to Saltball Street to warn Jey before he realizes I’m missing. A slightly more delicate operation, I admit.
Moments later, we finally ascend the marble steps that lead to the great Temple of Rasus. The vestibule beyond the front doors is cavernous enough; I can’t imagine what the actual sanctuary is like. Bonner bows low as we enter, then gives me a look. I give him a look right back, all venom. No way. I’m not bowing. He squints as though he should have known I wouldn’t have the decency to thank the god who is about to smite me. Then he motions for me to follow him, even though that’s just what I’ve been doing for the last half hour. My work boots clop on the clean floor, white marble tiles that gleam with patches of sapphire, gold, and ruby from the light shining through stained glass windows.
A purple-robed priest, a rank above the blue lower priests, stands near the entrance to the sanctuary, but Bonner ignores him and pulls me to the side. There we wait for what feels like an eternity. Priests and civilians come and go, but Bonner pays them no attention. Eventually, another purple priest emerges from the sanctuary—the same one from the Jade Bridge and the murdered man—and Bonner is finally interested. They speak in low tones while I pretend to give a critical eye to the celestial scene carved into one of the vestibule’s sandstone pillars. The priest eyes me, then disappears through a modest door I can just catch sight of behind a large gold curtain. I wonder how long it will be before the Temple guards arrive.
It is not long.
* * *
Like any self-respecting temple, this one has a dungeon. I’m sure they have another name for it, like Righteous Correctional Detainment Area and Exercise Facility. But as someone who has
read more than her fair share of penny pulps, I recognize the iron bars, dirty stone floors, and pieces of equipment that look extremely specialized without the nature of their specializations being immediately evident. The dim light from a few fat candles set in the walls creates the kind of gloom that gives rise to unwarranted panic.
Or completely warranted panic.
Bonner was ushered away, the purple priest’s hand on his back, a couple floors up. The guards and I continued to descend until bright gaslight, marble, and gold velvet were replaced with yellow flickers, bare stone, and suspicious stains.
My feet still burn, toying with invisible tendrils of flame that snake up from the earth under the floor, but as far as I can tell, escape is impossible from this room. One door, one staircase leading up, and probably fifty people I’d have to incinerate between here and the outside. Not ideal. I’ll have to wait a bit longer.
The Temple’s one-size-fits-all iron collar is fastened heavily around my neck. The attached chain must weigh nearly as much as I do, and I hunch forward to avoid it pulling my throat back and strangling me. And I realize I may be a blight on society, but is a chair too much to ask?
The two black-clad guards, a rugged, bearded man and a skinny, hollow-eyed woman, scowl at me from under their spiked iron helmets—representative of the sun’s rays, an idea that would work beautifully if the sun were black and terrifying.
“All right, what are you in for?” the bearded guard asks. “Fabrication or heresy?”
I frown. “They don’t tell you much, do they?”
“Fornication?” the hollow-eyed one offers.
“Now you’re making me blush.” I cross my arms. “Do you really not know why I’m here? How are you ever going to torture me properly?” Jey would be proud of how completely I’m concealing my fright. Well, almost. Just have to keep that loud heartbeat in check.
Sweat drips down the sides of my face. The dungeon is stifling. But the anticipation of my punishment, the mystery of it, is the worst part. My insides feel like they’re being squeezed by the very air in here.