The Hidden Twin

by Adi Rule

  Whatever she has been rattling around in the lock gives a satisfying click, and she steps back. Fir turns the handle and gives the door a little shove. We wait, but nothing happens. All seems clear.

  “Be quick,” Fir whispers as I slide by her. “We’ll keep watch out here.”

  “Thanks,” I say. I meet her eyes when I say it, unintentionally, and it seems to throw her off a little. She gives a quick nod.

  The room beyond looks more like a parlor than a jail cell. It’s certainly nothing like the dank, candlelit dungeon below the sanctuary. I move with caution, taking care not to disturb the graceful upholstered chairs or the thin-legged tables set with books and used teacups.

  Between a gold velvet settee and an iron coatrack is a slender door, slightly ajar. I creep over to it and snake my head around the edge.

  It is a modest room with two dressing tables and a row of beds. The prisoners on this level really have it nice, I think, remembering my hollow-eyed guard and her choking device. The room is dim, and it takes me a moment to make out a sleeping form.

  I pad over to the bed, where a familiar lock of dark hair spills from under a floral-patterned blanket. I lean down, my face nearly touching the sheets. “Jey.” I touch her shoulder.

  She shifts, extending her legs and sliding the blanket off her face. My sister cracks her eyes blearily, then opens them as wide as raptor eggs.

  I put a finger to my lips and motion for her to follow me. Jey rises hesitantly and joins me in the parlor. I shut the door to the bedroom without a sound and signal for my sister to come with me. She doesn’t move; she is in shock. I go back to her, put my arms around her, and whisper, “It’s all right. I know somewhere safe we can go.”

  Her body feels rigid and strange, and she keeps looking at me with those raptor-egg eyes. I take a step back. “Jey,” I whisper. “We must hurry.”

  Then, slowly and without breaking eye contact, she shakes her head.

  I grab her shoulders, and she shrinks. “What’s the matter with you?” I hiss. “I’ve come to get you out of here. But we mustn’t be caught—we have to go now!”

  “No,” she whispers, so quietly I can barely hear her.

  I release her. “What?”

  “No,” she whispers again. “I … I know what you are.”

  All I can do is stare at her. “What do you mean? What do you mean, you know what I am? You’ve always known … what I am.”

  “I know more than that. More than you think.” She looks down. “You were never educated in the Temple, sister,” she says.

  “That would have worked out well, I’m sure.”

  “But I go.” Her voice shakes. “I go, and I listen. I thought they were going to—to rehabilitate you. Bonner said that the Onyx Staff would cast a healing light over you.”

  “Bonner!” I can barely stop myself from shouting it. “Bonner is a cruel man, Jey! Listen to me—”

  “No, you listen!” she says, sounding more like herself. “Do you think I wanted to get you killed? Do you think that was easy for me?”

  I steady myself against an overly dainty chair. “You told the priests about me? That I would be coming home from the aviary that day?” The realization crawls over my skin like a thousand worms. No longer steady, my legs buckle and I sit heavily on the chair’s fine upholstery.

  Jey wrings her hands. “Bonner didn’t say they would execute you! He said you would be cleansed. I—”

  “It’s not your fault,” I say, trying to hide the tremble in my voice. “It’s Bonner’s fault. He lied to you, that—that eel of righteousness. He’s a lying scoundrel.”

  “He’s not,” she says, unaware of how young she sounds. “I love him. We can’t choose whom we love.”

  My cheeks heat up. “What you have with Bonner is not love!” I stop myself, inhaling deeply. “We have to get away from here.”

  “No!” She paces away from me. “No, redwing. I understand now. I didn’t know before that you were a—a monster. I thought you were just like me.”

  “I am just like you!”

  Her eyes flash. “I saw the priest! The one whose face you burned off!”

  I open my mouth, but no sound comes out. I can still see his blood-streaked face.

  “And the other one!” Her words scratch with anger now. “His arms were in six pieces! Bonner brought those men here to show me what you really are.”

  “Jey, they were trying to—”

  “And I saw Bonner’s poor hands. His hands, sister. How could you?”

  Oh, Jey, why must you be so trusting? My sister’s innocent faith in that vile young man has led us to this. She is safe for now, but to the unshakably righteous, eventually everyone begins to seem tarnished and wicked.

  Jey’s voice quiets. “I am here for my own protection.” She glances back toward the bedroom. “The Beautiful Ones know you didn’t die. They said I had to come with them so they could keep me safe.”

  “Is that so?” I clench the delicate arms of the chair. “Did you smash our birthday vase because you were so happy about being safe?”

  She lowers her eyes. “I didn’t want to go at first. I didn’t understand.”

  “Yes, you did.” I look at her face—my face. “You always understood.”

  Now she stares back at me, hard. “They said you were an angry beast. That you would come for me. And you did.”

  I jump to my feet. “I came to save you!”

  Jey recoils. “Please! Please don’t hurt me, redwing. If you ever loved me at all, if there is anything human in you!”

  I can’t speak. I stare at my sister cowering at the thought of leaving her prison.

  “Bonner and I are going east tomorrow,” she says. “We’re going to join Papa. You won’t follow us there, will you?” She swallows. “They said you would seek revenge against Papa, too, once—once your mind starts to go. We’re going to take him away, and then you’ll never find us.”

  Heat trickles down my face, worse than worms, worse than blood. In a fragile whisper, I ask, “Do you really believe all those things about me, Jey? Do you really want to go east with Bonner?”

  She says nothing, but I can see her shaking. Jey, who has never been afraid of anything in her life, is afraid of me.

  “I want to be far away from this madness,” she says, sniffing. “And you … you can be me now.”

  “I’ll never be you,” I say. And for the first time in my life, I don’t want to.

  I turn and walk silently from the room. I make sure to close the door behind me.

  thirteen

  The cot in the bunk room of the Under House is not as comfortable as the mattress in the Dome, and it smells of beer instead of hay, but I sleep anyway, then wake in a curl under the thin blanket. I certainly don’t need the blanket for warmth in this sweltering basement, but right now I need a barrier between me and the rest of the world. I pull the fabric over my face.

  Murmuring from the common room buzzes in my ears, the words indistinct but the tone heated. I stretch an arm over my head, resting its weight on my sore ear to block out the sound. I keep my eyes closed.

  The door opens and closes. Footsteps draw near. I sense someone sitting on the cot next to mine, but I don’t open my eyes. I listen to him, the whisper of his every breath keeping me from unconsciousness.

  “I brought you something.” Corvin’s tone is a little hesitant, almost as though he is asking a question.

  I slide the corner of the blanket off my face and look up at him. “Is Jey right? Am I a monster?”

  His expression becomes distant; a dullness creeps into his eyes. “You can’t start asking yourself those kinds of questions.”

  I let my head flop back onto my pillow. “Well, that helps.”

  Corvin’s focus becomes more present and his features soften. “Sorry. All of us—we can be a little … intense. Especially—”

  “Fir,” I mumble.

  “I was going to say my sister. Nara.” Nara. If she were here now, she wo
uld sweep that stray lock of light hair from his bruised face. “We came here with nothing, and the city held us up,” he says. “She wants to protect the people here who can’t protect themselves.”

  I roll onto my back. “They don’t know to protect themselves. From—from whoever.”

  Corvin reaches behind himself. “Do you want what I brought you or not?”

  I turn my head. “All right.”

  He pulls out my wrench-box, the one from the top of my wardrobe. All my penny pulp redwings, photographs of Jey and my father, my mother’s tablecloth. I sit up, gazing first at the box, then at him. “How did you…?”

  He smiles and shrugs. “I got some of your clothes, too. I hope you don’t mind. I figured you’d want your own things. I watered your garden, too, for what it’s worth. All those green plants up there, in the middle of the city. It’s quite amazing.”

  “I’ve got a watering system,” I say. “My father designed it. And the raptor poo. The plants love it. Never could figure why the raptors have to wait until they’re inside to do all their business.”

  “Sounds … delightful?” Corvin holds out the box. “Anyway, when I found this, I knew it was special.”

  I reach for the box, wrapping my arms around it. “It is,” I say. “Thank you.” I let my upper body fall backwards onto the cot. The box isn’t cuddly, but it calms me.

  Corvin is silent for a moment. Then he asks, “What do you know of Others?”

  “I know very little of anything I haven’t read about.” I close my eyes. “In the stories, Other princes and princesses—they’re always princes or princesses—are lovely, intelligent, kind. They admire humans enough to use their magic powers to come to the aid of lowly servants and noblemen alike.” I open my eyes and study the dark metal ceiling. “They are everything redwings are not.”

  “Redwings are not lovely, intelligent, and kind?”

  I snort. “Not traditionally.”

  “You don’t seem very traditional to me,” Corvin says. I am silent. He leans back, propping himself up on his arms. “What about your mother? She was an Other.”

  “She died soon after I was born,” I say. “I don’t remember her.”

  “I’m sorry,” he says softly. “Do you know anything about her? What she was like?”

  I inhale and sit up. Enough of this lying around. I swing my legs over the side of the cot.

  Corvin straightens up. “I’ve offended you.”

  “Offended me? Certainly not,” I say, color rising in my cheeks.

  He nods. Then, in a gentle voice, he says, “My sister is going to ask you to do something extremely dangerous. She sees it as the only way to save Caldaras City, and maybe it is, but I want you to know that you can say no.”

  I don’t know how to respond. Instead I rub my thumbs along the edges of the wrench-box. “Would you like to see my mother’s tablecloth?”

  The corners of Corvin’s eyes crease in a half smile. “I would love to see your mother’s tablecloth.”

  I click open the box, which utters a small creak of protest. The scrap of linen is neatly folded at the bottom. Corvin’s gaze lingers on my stack of penny pulp redwings, but he doesn’t say anything.

  “Here.” I hand it to him with care. “She grew the linstalks herself, and my father spun it.”

  “This is very fine.” Corvin fingers the brown edges. “But what happened to it?”

  I had almost forgotten the tablecloth must once have been large enough to cover a table. For most of my life, it has been this scrap—just enough to swaddle a secret baby. “Our house burned down,” I say, avoiding his eyes. “My father saved this bit of the cloth.” But no one saved her.

  “Can you weave, as well?” Corvin asks.

  The heat in the bunk room is starting to make me light-headed. “My mother wasn’t a weaver; our neighbor did that. My mother was a gardener like my father. Linstalk can be tricky, you know.” A meadow fluttering with flowers flashes through my mind—is it a memory, or did I imagine it? “You have to let the stalks rot from the inside for a long time, then you break it—smash it to wet hell—and then finally you’re left with these long, smooth fibers that can actually be made into something beautiful.”

  Corvin carefully folds the scrap of cloth and hands it back to me. It seems old and shabby in this light. It would have shone when it was new. “Thank you for showing me,” he says. “I’ll leave you to your sleep.” He gets up and lowers the gaslight. From the doorway, he turns. “I’ve seen the lin growing in Val Chorm, before it’s harvested,” he says. “Rippling with speckles of the loveliest purple-blue color. It’s beautiful then, too.”

  * * *

  The Under House is dark and silent at last, but I’m wide awake, swinging my legs from a decrepit balcony overlooking the alley behind the Pump Room. Two wild raptors clutch the railing, night-alert.

  I have two options: go or stay, as simple as that. Simpler. Go.

  I would probably like the cliffs of Drush, where raptors eat lizards until their feathers turn green. I could cultivate a little desert garden and cook for the salt miners. I could live under the sky, away from the bonescorch orchis and the Beautiful Ones.

  Yet Caldaras City feels like home, as greasy and poisonous as it is. I rest my face, still hot from the Under House’s roasting bunk room, against the railing of the balcony. The iron is cooler than the steamy night air, but hardly a relief. Nara told me to get some sleep, that we would talk about it in the morning. She trusts me to be here in the morning, and right now I can’t find a good reason to be. Zahi … I close my eyes. No. Zahi cannot be a reason. To him, I am Jey. Not me.

  The back door to the Pump Room clangs open. Nara and Elena step into the alley, their features barely visible in the dim reach of light from Mad Lane. I still my legs, hoping the women will pass without noticing me. The raptors, however, launch themselves irritably, and though they move with the noiselessness of predators, they are large birds skimming the contours of a dark alley. Nara and Elena notice.

  “You’re not going to sleep up there?” Nara sounds like she is three seconds from scolding me.

  “I’ll come down in a few minutes.” We all know it is a lie. I may sleep up here. I may slink away toward the Path of Mol, the wide avenue that leads to the train station. But I’m not going back down to the Under House tonight.

  “Come have a drink with us,” Elena says. “You’ve had a long week.”

  “Thanks, but I’m fine.”

  Nara nods and starts to move away, but Elena stands her ground, hand on hip, and says, “Balderdash!”

  I jerk my head back, never having been confronted with “Balderdash!” before. Elena stares up at me from the gloom like a storm brewing.

  Nara looks at me with a bemused expression. “She’ll stand there like that all night,” she says. I suspect I was wrong about Nara being the more severe of the two.

  We don’t go to the Pump Room, but back to the office of the Caldaras City Daily Bulletin. Nara locks the door behind us and leads the way through the little curtain at the back of the office. The sizable space beyond is bright and noisy, with great clanking printing presses whirring out tomorrow’s paper. People in dark jumpsuits move as precisely and purposefully as the cogs of the machines they operate. Nara and Elena pay them little notice as we make our way to a spiraling metal staircase in a corner of the room.

  The apartment above the office is elegantly furnished—damask and deep colors—and Nara wastes no time decanting three small glasses of something precious and emerald green that completes the atmosphere of sophistication.

  “I suppose I might have assumed you didn’t live in the Under House,” I say, sipping. The fragrant, minty liquid prickles my nose. My eyes start to water. So much for sophistication.

  Elena assumes an ornamental pose, one elbow resting on the mantel, and Nara seats herself on a red velvet settee trimmed with dark wood.

  “We’ve no need to live in the Under House,” Nara says. “We are not in h
iding.”

  “In hiding?”

  “There are things you do not understand,” Nara says.

  “Thanks for that vague assessment,” I say. “But it is true, I must admit. There are many things I do not understand. How to darn socks, for instance.” I put a hand on my hip, cocking my head. “Do people go into hiding because they cannot darn socks?”

  Elena chuckles. “I would have disappeared long ago.”

  Nara downs her glass. “Fine, Redwing, then understand this: Those who would betray this city in the Deep Dark don’t want their plans to be known, and they have powerful friends. Once their eyes are on you, you disappear or you die, and it’s better if you get to make that choice yourself.”

  “See, that wasn’t so hard,” I say, suddenly entranced by a strange canvas on the wall: vibrant reds and yellows on a field of jet black. Now I can’t tell if my eyes are watering from the emerald drink or the assault of color. I blink and turn my gaze elsewhere.

  Next to the gaudy, jumbled piece of artwork hangs an exquisite landscape framed by twisting brass. I fold a hand behind my back as Papa taught me to do. “Very nice.”

  “It’s a Zan,” Elena says. “Fanny. Great-something-or-other to our dear Commandant.”

  “Is it Val Chorm?” I take a step back, letting the green wisps and dots of purple-blue swirl in my eyes.

  “It very well may be,” Elena says. “Nara inherited it from her grandmother, who lived in Val Chorm.”

  I turn back to the room and Nara gestures to an armchair upholstered in the same red velvet as the settee. As I lower myself into the seat, she asks, “Have you been to Val Chorm, Redwing?”

  “I’m from there, actually.” I take another minty-fire sip of my drink. “But I don’t suspect we’re here to discuss my childhood.”

  Elena sighs and pulls a delicate coppery chair out from a desk next to the fireplace. She seats herself and says, “We’re happy for people to stop by for a chat. Some of the reporters will come up, you know, or the occasional bridge club friend, but we don’t get an excessive amount of visitors. So don’t think that you aren’t welcome. But, yes, the real reason you’re here is that Nara wants you to save the world.”