by Adi Rule
At their center perches a faintly glowing egg-shaped object. No bigger than my hand, it pulses with life. Nara and Corvin stare at it, its clean yellow light reflected in their eyes.
I step toward it. “Is this … it?” I know the answer already. This small, bright thing is undoubtedly a heart. I look at Nara. “I—I don’t know if we should harm this.”
Her eyes flash. “Compose yourself, redwing. You know what this is. You know the danger it poses. Do what is right.”
“I agree with Lin,” Corvin says. “Something about this feels wrong. It’s just sitting there. It’s alive.”
Nara grabs each of us by a shoulder. “Listen to yourselves. This is the Heart of Mol. You know what the Onyx Staff wants to do with this—what he can do tonight if we don’t stop him. We’ve spent months looking for the Heart. Fog Walkers and agents have lost their lives in pursuit of it. And you’re prepared to forget the whole thing because it’s pretty?”
I look down. “I’m sorry, Nara. Of course you’re right.”
Corvin nods. “I lost my head for a moment.”
“Now, pluck it from its perch, redwing,” Nara says. “And smash the life out of it.”
I reach toward the shining, pulsing heart, as small as the hot-budges with their puffed-out feathers.
“Death to Mol, sister,” Nara whispers. “Death to the Others.”
My fingers freeze. “Death to the Others?”
Nara jerks a sour smile. “What do you think will happen when we destroy their godforsaken Burning Lands? They will perish like the plague they are, cleansed from the world.”
I don’t recognize the voice that comes out of me now, small and low. “All of them?”
“Nara,” Corvin says. “I thought destroying the Heart would put the volcano to sleep so it couldn’t be used to harm the city.”
“So it will,” Nara says. “And it will ensure that no one will ever have to go through what we went through, Corvin. Never again.” There is a look in her eyes, shiny and distant, that sets me on edge.
“Corvin?” I ask.
“This is not about revenge, Nara,” he says quietly. “Sweet Rasus, there’s no one left for revenge. They’re gone. They’re all gone.”
“Do you know what Others are like, redwing?” Nara’s grip on me grows tighter. “What kind of creature can drown its own child?” Her voice becomes ragged. “My father wouldn’t let her do it. My sister, and then Corvin’s brother, Ana and Birdy. For ten years, he wouldn’t let her do it, the four of us believing more strongly each day that we would all get to grow up. But she couldn’t live with the fear. She knew we were just children—all of us, just children—but her own skin was more important to her. So one night, she took a branch-lopper from the toolshed and killed Father in his sleep.”
“That’s enough, Nara.” Corvin’s face is streaked with tears.
Nara clutches my arm. “Then she beheaded Ana and Birdy in their beds. But you know what?” Her pupils are large. “A branch-lopper is an impressive blade. It carves Others up just as easily as it does humans.” She smiles. “That was the first wrong I righted.”
“I said, that’s enough!” Corvin pulls her off me. “My god, Nara, think of Elena!”
“Elena knows this is necessary,” Nara spits. “Oh, Rasus, just finish it!” She thrusts a hand forward, grasping at the beating heart.
And screams.
I look down. Blood pours from the end of her arm. Her severed hand rests on the dirt floor like a fallen red bloom.
A voice speaks from the shadows. “Touch the Heart again, and it will be your head.”
Nara falls to her knees. Corvin and I turn in alarm as a figure steps into the light. He is masked, dressed in shadow from head to foot, except for one long blade that gleams in his hand and another that hangs at his hip. “The Black Thorn,” Corvin whispers. “They say he is the right hand of the Salt Throne, that he has killed many Fog Walkers, but there has never been any proof.”
“If the Black Thorn exists, he is just a man,” I say, remembering the words. “Who are you?”
The figure approaches. “I am the one who protects the Heart from those who would do it harm.” He raises a gloved hand to his mouth and blows. Glittering powder billows around us, a sweet, biting scent. Nara collapses onto her side. Corvin falls.
My skin shivers as my eyelids grow heavy. I gaze blearily at the shadowy man in front of me. “Your voice … I know you.”
The Black Thorn pulls off his mask and throws it to the ground in one savage motion. “And I thought I knew you,” Zahi says.
sixteen
Grimy walls, low candlelight, the overpowering scent of mold and oil—I awaken to sickeningly familiar surroundings.
I can’t say I’ve missed the dungeon in the Temple of Rasus. Still groggy, I swing my legs off the bare metal bench someone thought would pass as a bed and pad over to the wall of bars in front of me. Grit crunches under my now bare feet. They’ve taken all my clothing except my sleeveless undershirt and the uncomfortable tweed pants from the Under House lost-and-found. Which, I suspect, they probably couldn’t peel off my body.
I have no idea how many hours have passed or what is going on in the outside world. Caldaras City may not have been a bastion of comfort and safety for me, but it is my home. And if there is a chance I can still save it, I will try.
Closing my eyes, I call on the power below me. It finds me even here, snaking up through the soles of my feet, filling my veins.
It’s my most impressive fireball to date. The stones on the far wall glow red. But the bars of my cell remain solid.
Damn.
“Hey!” I call into the dim space beyond the bars. “Anyone! I have information for the Empress! Hey!” I rattle the bars.
I keep shouting for a few minutes. Finally, a vertical shaft of light appears in the darkness beyond my cage. It widens, a door opening, and three figures step through.
“We don’t have time to waste,” I say. “I need to speak to the Empress. And the Commandant.”
“You will do no such thing.” One of the figures detaches and approaches the bars; two hooded guards flank the door.
“Zahi,” I say. “Listen to me. The cult of Bet-Nef is alive and well in this Temple. They mean to awaken—”
“I know what the Beautiful Ones mean to do,” he says. “Why do you think I watch them from within their own Temple? The Heart of Mol is precious and powerful. Many would use it for their own ends. That is why, after the War of the Burning Land, the Salt Throne created the first Black Thorn from the second child of the King. I guard the Heart as my predecessors have done for a thousand years. I guard it from the cult of Bet-Nef. And from creatures like you.”
“You don’t understand,” I say.
“Who is Jey Fairweather?” His voice cracks at the edges. “Is she even real?”
My chest burns. “She’s my sister,” I whisper. “She’s real. She’s as real as Sunny.”
“Sunny!” he exclaims. “I had to spoon-feed her the location of the tunnel just to find out what she was up to. I followed her around for an hour this evening before I realized she must have passed the information off.”
“Zahi, listen—”
“I’ve listened to enough of your lies,” he says bitterly.
This is too much. I grip the bars. “What would you have had me do? Don’t you see? Even you’ve locked me in a cage.”
The light from the doorway ripples across his face as he looks at me, searching. “We always think we will know evil when it comes,” he says quietly. “And we rarely do.”
“Stop,” I plead.
He raises a hand tentatively, but lowers it after a moment. “Evil does not always conquer with wings of flame.” He’s going to leave me here. “I’ve saved the Others, haven’t I?” His voice is low, dull. “An entire society. It’s the right thing to do. Isn’t it?”
I feel my face heating up. I do not answer him.
Now he flashes a crooked smile with no m
irth behind it. “But you’ve won anyway. You’ve won because despite everything, all the secrecy, the killing … right now, this—” His voice breaks and he looks away. “This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
“I thought you cared for me.” The heat in my face stings tears into the corners of my eyes. I look for understanding in his face, for resolve. For regret. But I find nothing but stillness.
“I do,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not your enemy.”
I lean my forehead against the grimy bars. “Please don’t do this.”
“I’m sorry, redwing.” He turns from me, curved by sadness, and I watch his silhouette move through the doorway, the inhuman shadow he casts on the walls of the stairwell growing as he ascends. The guards follow, phantoms in the torchlight, and I turn away.
A tingle starts in my chest and sparks outward—sharp heat that makes my heart race. At first, I cannot name it. But then I remember the alley—Corvin’s face, bloodied, a pistol at his throat—and I recognize the feeling for what it is. Anger.
Still, I will not let Zahi Zan die in a cascade of lava. The way forward is clear. Out.
There must be a weakness to this dungeon. I slide my palms across the rough surface of the wall behind me. I scrape my nails and drag my knuckles across the stone. I push threads of flame into the corners of the cell but find no hope of freedom. The penny pulp redwings sneer from my memory: eyes like embers, muscles like stone. The world looks at me and sees them. Yet I can’t picture a real redwing trapped in a pen like a baby stritch.
A real redwing. What does that even mean? I sit on the metal bench, letting my head fall into my hands.
“All right, enough. We’ve got work to do.” A voice bounces off the dank walls. I look up, startled. One of Zahi’s guards has stayed behind, and detaches himself from a black corner of the room.
I sigh. “Look, I have no secrets anymore, so before you torture me, why don’t you just try asking me what you want to know?”
The guard lowers his hood. “Very well. Do you intend on wearing those painful-looking old pants until they have completely shredded themselves off your body?”
“Corvin!” I run to the bars. “How—?”
He cocks his head. “You don’t think I can really be knocked out by anysleep, do you? Do you have any idea how much of that stuff I’ve inhaled over my lifetime? It was just a matter of finding the right opportunity to slip away.” He bends, and I hear a key clunking into the lock.
“Where’s Nara?”
“To his credit, your young man had her bandaged up and sent to the private hospital on Roet Island. Under heavy guard, of course.” He gives the key a shake, and the rusty mechanism thunks into place.
I step out of the cage. “He’s not my young man.”
“I told you not to trust him.” Corvin pulls a pair of shoes from his pocket. Ver knows where he found them; they are little more than leather wraps. Still, I am grateful to get something on my feet.
“He is not untrustworthy,” I say. “He is a good man, and who’s to say he’s wrong? I still don’t truly know what we ought to have done with the Heart when we had the chance. Do you?”
“No. But that’s not what I meant,” Corvin says with an expression I cannot read. “I just knew he would break your heart.”
I look away. “My heart is of no concern to you.” I finish tying the leather shoes.
He gives a sharp nod. “Very well. Let’s go. The Salt Throne’s procession has just left for Roet Island, and we still have to collect Fir.”
I groan. “Do we have to?”
* * *
Fir, it turns out, does not have the high tolerance for anysleep that Corvin does. She’s curled in a nest of dirty burlap at the bottom of the little boat we have commandeered to take us across Lake Azure Wave. The lake is not meant for boating, though the temple keeps one or two of these impractical craft for emergencies. Certainly the potential inferno-death of the city constitutes an emergency.
Corvin rows quickly as we try to reach the shore of Roet Island before the boat becomes too hot to sit in. Already his gloveless hands are slipping on the metal oars. Every once in a while, Fir raises her groggy head and I push her down again before an oar can smack her in the face. This is easily my favorite part of Crepuscule so far.
We approach the island out of sight of the Jade Bridge, skimming through the shining water and dark sky. Corvin wraps shreds of burlap around the oar handles, but still grimaces as he pulls. When we reach the island, I jump over the side and haul the boat on shore as quickly as I can, the scalding lake water lapping at my shins.
Once the boat is on land, Corvin rolls Fir over the side, where she lands in a heap on the fragrant earth. “Fir!” he hisses, swatting her cheek. “Hey!”
“Let me try,” I whisper, and give her a good smack.
“Ow!” she whines.
“Get up,” I say. “We’re on Roet Island, and the Onyx Staff is probably already here.”
She squints up at me. “Wha?”
Corvin puts a hand to his forehead. “All right. Leave her.” He bends down and speaks into her ear. “Don’t wander off! And don’t go into the lake!”
She spits—or perhaps drools—and takes a groggy swing at him, which he dodges. “Don’ tell me whatta do, you fedderless son of a … You’re not my…” And she falls back onto the dirt, eyes closed.
Corvin looks at her. “She’s fine.” I raise an eyebrow at him. “No, she’s fine,” he says. “Let’s go. Wait, I’m taking her saber.”
After much painful negotiating with a tree, Corvin and I perch on the wall that surrounds the Copper Palace. From here, we have a good view of the main lawn, where all the Empress’s guests are gathering to watch the ascendance of Bel, the Queen of the Stars.
FOOOOOOO! The unmistakable sound of an official olimu-horn is a clear, mellow disturbance in the night air. I turn my head toward the long note. At the edge of the lawn is a small raised tent hung with bright flags. After a moment, a cheer goes up as a woman waves from under the flags—the Empress, tall and distinguished even from this distance. The Commandant, all medals, stands to one side, and the Admirable Zahi Zan stands on the other next to a plain young man I take to be his older brother.
He’s not protecting the Heart now, is he? I think sourly. I watch the doors to the Empress’s private garden dome, but there is no sign of activity.
The Empress addresses the crowd. She is a model politician, speaking calmly—but with a commanding edge—about the value of coming together as a society to flourish in the Deep Dark. It is an eloquent and confident address, but my mind is focused on the monstrous sleeping mountain that looms over all of us, just out of sight beyond the black mist.
Corvin fidgets, tapping his fingers on the flat surface of the wall. But when the Salt Throne rises to speak, he becomes utterly still, tensed for action.
“Beloved,” the Salt Throne says. I have to strain my ears to hear him. “We embark now on a journey together. A journey into the darkness that Caldaras has not seen for a thousand years. But we do not go without Rasus.” Several people in the crowd make the open-palmed gesture of acknowledgment. “In the sky, our sun may give way to lovely Queen Bel for a time, but he lives on in the life he has made possible here. In the food that we have grown. In our very flesh.”
From my perch, I look up and down the length of the Copper Palace. All is still. I see Corvin’s eyes searching the crowd on the lawn, but nothing seems out of place.
Until the hedge maze explodes.
Screams shoot out from the throng of aristocrats; people scramble over and around each other in an attempt to escape the debris. Corvin is on his feet. I try to take in as much as possible—the Commandant and the Empress with their arms protectively around the Salt Throne, Zahi Zan with his long blades unsheathed, running toward the site of the explosion, the Onyx Staff … where?
I scan the grounds. Corvin looks, too. And at the same moment, we find him. Serene in shining white
, he stands near the gaping hole where the hedge maze once was, his onyx staff raised high above his head. And from the hole, a star rises. But it is not Queen Bel in ascendence.
“The Heart,” I whisper.
“He didn’t have to find it,” Corvin murmurs. “He’s calling it.”
“Well, he’s going to stop calling it.” I jump down from the wall, my blood roiling.
Corvin and I run for the Onyx Staff, knocking through priests and temple guards that have detached from the swirling crowd to protect him. Corvin efficiently hacks and threatens his way forward with Fir’s saber—I’m surprised he really does know how to use it—and I lash out with blazing abandon, no weapons necessary. Zahi advances from the other side of the lawn, and we descend on the Onyx Staff at almost the same moment. But when we get close, the Onyx Staff strikes out and knocks us all backwards onto the grass.
Or does he?
I scramble to my feet and watch Zahi swing at him again. I’m not quite sure what I see; there is a strange duality to the Onyx Staff now. The man I remember stands placidly with the staff raised, calling forth Mol’s Heart from its nest in the earth. But when others advance on him—Zahi, Corvin, the palace guards—a bright, different version of himself lashes out, as though the Onyx Staff is two beings at once.
And the second being begins to grow. The bigger it gets, the more fiercely it defends itself, a shimmering, translucent man with broad shoulders and a sword whose every flourish leaves a trail of sparks in the air.
“What in wet hell are you doing here?” Zahi grabs my shoulder. I jerk away as a purple priest thumps a palace guard off his feet between us.
“What is going on?” I point to the giant defending the Onyx Staff. I have seen him before, but where? “What is the Onyx Staff doing?” I back up, my feet sliding on the grass. Zahi pulls me behind a stone flower bed.