Through the tin walls, I could hear Brandt’s voice rising and falling in his easy salesman patter as he wheedled with Retch. Retch was having none of it—I could tell from his truncated responses—but it didn’t matter. As long as we had Retch on edge.
Thrum rested a hand on my shoulder. “Are you ready?”
The Ministry of Affairs’ reports on Synarius scrolled through my head. His quirks, his hatreds and likes (mostly hatreds), his relationship with Adolphus Retch. They were cousins, after a fashion, and had grown up on the streets together, but Adolphus was always one step ahead, a little nimbler on his feet and crueler in his deal making. I was nervous, but I felt prepared. As prepared as I could reasonably be.
I followed Thrum into the main corridor.
“Boss.” Thrum stuck his head into the warehouse, and I caught a glimpse of Brandt, freezing mid-gesture as he bartered with Retch. Dreamer, but he looked so confident—shoulders back, head high, lips curled with satisfaction. I pushed my shoulders back, trying to show even a fraction of his cool. “Synarius is here. Want me to take him to your office?”
Retch nodded. “I’ve heard enough of these jokers. Let’s go.”
Jorn’s mouth twisted. “Boss, you promised you’d hear out my friends.”
Retch’s face turned ghastly in the lamplight; for a moment the only sound was of the resin brewers churning the vats with their wooden paddles. “I don’t give a damn what I promised you.” Retch turned to Brandt. “Look, I couldn’t care less about your special brewing method. I wouldn’t care if it made me shit gold. Piss off, and if I catch you trying to sell this garbage in my market, I’ll hang you from the rafters by your balls.”
Jorn squares his shoulders. “But, boss—”
Retch silenced him instantly with a raised eyebrow. “I could swear I just gave you an order. You heard that, didn’t you, Synarius?”
I swallowed hard. “Aye, I heard that.”
Retch whirled back to Jorn with a knife-blade smile on his lips. “So I did. I worry you’ve forgotten your place, Jorn. You may be friend to every tunneler, but at the end of the day, you report to me. You belong to me.” He shooed Brandt and Vera off. “Get your tunnel rat friends out of here, then join us in the office.”
Jorn nodded, curt but confident. We’d counted on Retch to turn him down, of course; but I could see some of Jorn’s hatred for Retch dancing in his eyes. He and Thrum could easily have killed this man if they wished. They were both trusted guards; they both had regular access to Retch and plenty of brute strength behind them. But they were only two men, and the Ministry could do so much more to dismantle the gangs, see Retch tried for his crimes, possibly even help them liberate the tunnelers. They wanted to see the Stargazers destroyed.
For a moment I let Synarius’s features soften as these thoughts ran through my head. I suppose I’ll never know if that was the second mistake.
“What did you think of the girl I sent you last night?” Retch asked, striding past Thrum and me to climb the stairs to his office. “Eh? A fighter, wasn’t she?”
“Quite the treat,” I said casually, not wanting to dip into Synarius’s consciousness.
This, this would be the third mistake.
“All right, all right, all business today, aren’t we? About time you took our work seriously.” Retch led us into the office, where a skylight afforded him a dazzling view of the stars. My gaze, though, went straight to the safe in the corner as Retch made his way toward it—our final prize. With Retch’s logbook, we could dismantle the entire Stargazer gang, bring Retch to justice, out every corrupt aristocrat to ever work with him … My heart pounded at the thought. Justice for the tunnelers. For all of Barstadt. And with the corruption ripped out at its roots, the Writ of Emancipation was sure to pass.
The dial spun in Retch’s fingers, loud as horse hooves in my heightened senses. A click and the door fell open. Come on, Brandt. I flexed Synarius’s fingers. Let’s get this over with.
“No! Damn you! I won’t leave without selling a batch to Retch!”
Brandt’s screech wafted up the stairs to the office, followed by a fierce clattering, like metal ringing against the copper resin vats. “Boss!” Jorn screeched. “Dammit, boss, come quick!”
Retch charged for the office door. In a blink, I saw the rest of our plan playing out. Retch, rushing down to the main room to see what the commotion was, and protect his prize crop—the Lullaby. Thrum seizing the logbook and hiding it in his substantial coat. Brandt striking the match and tossing it into the cart of lion’s milk jars as Jorn pretends to evict him and Vera.
Fire. Chaos. And lots and lots of smoke to cover our movements. Thankfully, the milk was slow-burning enough that everyone could make it out safely, but Retch didn’t need to know that. Once the whole warehouse was a pile of ash, there’d be no telling that Jorn and Thrum made it out alive, that the logbook hadn’t been incinerated.
But Retch stopped at the office threshold. “Synarius.”
Lakes have frozen over for less than that voice. Hearts have stopped for less.
“Want me to reason with ’em?” I asked.
“I was just thinking…” Retch tilted his head, unsettlingly calm despite the chaotic noises coming from the warehouse, and peered up through the port window cut into the ceiling of his office, bathing us in starlight. “About the girl I sent you last night.”
I felt the apple of Synarius’s throat twitching against the collar of his shirt. “Yes? What about her?”
Retch’s eyes narrowed into knife slits. “That I didn’t send you one.”
Thrum’s hand flew to his belt, but Retch was too fast. With one quick whistle through the air, Retch’s dagger buried itself in Thrum’s forehead, all the way to the hilt. Thrum crashed to the wooden floor, rattling the whole warehouse.
“Who are you?” Retch took slow steps toward me. He didn’t need to hurry—he already had a fresh dagger in his palm. “You look just like my lieutenant. Sound identical. But you can’t be him.”
“Please, Adolphus!” I threw up Synarius’s hands. Retch circled around me like a wolf; over my shoulder, Brandt, Vera, and Jorn continued to shout and stomp about, oblivious to the situation unfolding in the office. “It’s me, Synarius! We’ve known each other since we were kids!”
“Then you know I will kill you. No matter how close we are.”
I leaped for the doorway, stumbling on Synarius’s thick legs and crashing to the floor. Retch’s knife embedded itself into the doorframe, where my hand had been moments before. I gripped the staircase railing to pull myself up, but he snatched me by Synarius’s thick ankles. “Abort!” I screamed. “Abort the mission!”
Then Retch’s wooden plank connected with the back of Synarius’s head.
Flashes. Blood-smeared images of the warehouse, of Jorn and Brandt and Vera running toward me, still hauling that cart full of lion’s milk. Adolphus Retch’s ghoulish face glaring down at me like a denizen of Nightmare made flesh. Retch screaming that my whole family would burn, that I’d be fed to his hounds. And that piece of lumber, chasing me as I skidded and rolled down the stairs; connecting with Synarius’s thick body, again and again, snapping my bones and slicking my eyesight with blood. I had to get closer to the storage room, where my body lay. If I could drag myself just a little farther—
Dimly I felt the pain bubble through as I forced myself out of Synarius’s body and went into Oneiros.
I grabbed the lead back to my body and woke up tangled in a musty tarp in the storage room, surrounded by screams from the other side of the door as Synarius woke back up to his cousin beating in his skull. I seized a torch from the wall and burst back out of the storage room. “Let’s go!” I wheezed. “Now!”
And Vera widened her eyes at me too late as I pitched the torch into the cart of lion’s milk jars.
Where the gauzy sleeve of her dress tangled in the wooden slats.
It was Jorn, in the end, who saved all of us. He scooped up Vera even as her dress caug
ht fire and shoved Brandt and me toward the door. Vera screamed as the flames dug deep into her flesh; my last glimpse was of Brandt frantically helping her beat them out. Jorn didn’t even look back for Thrum; I think he already knew.
“I’ll find you, Jorn. You and all your friends. I’ll tear the flesh from you myself! I’ll destroy you!”
As Retch turned to stop him, Jorn kicked the cart over, spilling the now-flaming liquid all over the warehouse floor.
Synarius may have been Stargazer scum the same as Retch, but no one deserved to go like that—beaten alive and set aflame. Thrum certainly deserved better. If anyone deserved to die that night, it was Retch himself. But he survived, even if most of the warehouse did not, and he rebuilt the Stargazer empire.
And Jorn, who should have led the investigation into the Stargazers, revealing that he was alive only after we’d built our case and he was no longer in danger of assassination, has instead been relegated to a twilight land. Retch can’t go after him without drawing heat from the Ministry, but neither can Jorn operate in Stargazer territory without opening himself to an attack from Retch’s men.
Months passed before I could look Vera or Jorn in the eye without seeing those flames, that knife buried to its hilt. Without hearing Vera’s screams. Smelling her arm as it cooked. Envisioning all the tunnelers who believed in Jorn that I’d now betrayed. I never looked up in the inquisition; I barely answered Minister Durst’s questions. The unspoken truth hung in a fog around us like the stink of lion’s milk: were I anyone but the dreamstrider, I’d be back in the tunnels now, begging for scraps of food.
I can never forget where I’ve come from, where I deserve to be. And I will never forget what it’s cost me and everyone who crosses my path. I’d be a fool to think they’ve forgotten, too.
Chapter Sixteen
“Treatise on the Transference of Matter Between Oneiros and Barstadt.” Brandt holds up a battered old folio with a crease in its center that looks like it was used to prop up a wobbly chair. “One of Hesse’s papers, I take it?”
I settle into the cot, curled on myself like a cat. We’re holed up in one of the berths on board the clipper Sunrise Siren. By tomorrow evening, we’ll have transformed it into a standard Land of the Iron Winds river skimmer, complete with appropriate documentation, flags, and cargo, but until then, I’ve been poring over a selection of Professor Hesse’s journals. “He willed them to me. I thought I’d pass the time reading up on them—see if there’s any mention of the—the key in that note.”
Brandt grimaces as he leans against the wooden post. “Drat. I meant to stop by the constabulary before we departed to see if they’d made any progress on their investigation.” He squeezes his eyes shut. “I’m sorry, Liv. I know I promised to help you. It’s only—there’s a rather lot going on…”
I suspect he means with his engagement, but I’m in no mood to dwell on that. “Yes, well, Vera’s theatrics of late have been very, uh, distracting…”
My feeble attempt at lightheartedness clatters between us. I shrink back into my cot and try to resume reading while Brandt looks over at my box of Hesse’s notes.
“There’s an awful lot of material here,” he says. “Care for some help?”
“By all means. Any reference to the key, or some sort of technique or note that might match up with what Marez’s informant told us about Lady Twyne’s soul or attempting to resurrect Nightmare.”
Brandt flips through the folio with a deepening furrow in his brow. “This could take some time. Shall I see if Edina would help us, too?”
A great pressure weighs down on me. “I, uh…” I cast around for a suitable excuse. “I’d hate to trouble Edina with some silly pursuit of mine.”
“Silly? Why would she think it silly?” Brandt frowns. “Edina thinks very highly of you. She’s told me as much herself.”
My chest aches at his words—at the thought of him discussing me with his betrothed. “Well, Vera certainly doesn’t think much of her. The way they’re at each other’s throats.”
“Yes, well, Vera has her … own reasons for that.”
“Because of Edina’s father?” I ask.
Brandt works his jaw back and forth; his gaze is intensely focused on Professor Hesse’s treatise before him. “I suppose that’s part of it.”
“But not all of it.” I put one finger in the spine of the notebook and tilt it down so Brandt must look at me. “What ever happened between them? I suppose I’ve never had to work closely with both of them at the same time before. I nearly got Vera burned alive and she doesn’t look at me with half as much contempt.”
Brandt hesitates a moment, gaze boring into me, then tosses the journal aside with a sigh. “Very well, I suppose it’s best you hear it from me.” He leans back in his cot. “You know how I told you Edina had been involved with … someone before.”
“Right,” I say. It’s my turn to furrow my brow.
Brandt ruffles his bangs, then holds his hand over his face as he speaks. “Well, it was Vera.”
“Oh.” Then, letting the full weight of his words sink in, “Ohh. Right. Because aristocrats aren’t as understanding about two women fancying each other as we tunneler folk are.”
“That’s putting it mildly.” Brandt rubs at the side of his jaw as he searches for the right words. “Just as it is the duty of every son and daughter of an aristocratic house to marry, in order to further their family’s fortunes, so too is it their sworn duty to produce heirs to advance each House into the next generation.”
“So what happened?” I ask.
“Well, this was before Vera joined the Ministry, mind you. She and Edina had debuted at the same social season and became fast friends, and then more, but Vera’s family would have none of it. They’re merchants, you know, and badly wanted Vera to marry a man of higher station in order to elevate their own status. So Vera reacted as you might expect.”
“Rashly?” I say.
Brandt grins. “Yes, more or less. She abandoned her family, forsook her inheritance, and joined up with the Ministry instead. When they sought Lord Alizard’s blessing, however, he gave Edina an ultimatum: that he’d have Vera killed if Edina didn’t end things with her. This is what Edina told me in confidence, mind you—Lord Alizard’s shady gang ties are still an open secret amongst political circles.” Brandt shakes his head. “So she ended it. But the damage had already been done with Vera’s family; and neither of them is willing to stop their work with the Ministry, and Minister Durst has begged them to keep the peace for the Ministry’s sake.”
My mind whirs. “But if Edina fancies—or fancied—Vera…”
Brandt’s smile fades, and he sits up straighter. “She—she fancies…” His face burns a deep crimson. “Um, she fancies men and women both. I’m—this isn’t a sham—”
“Look at you.” I laugh. “You can’t even talk about it without getting flustered. How will you ever survive marriage?”
The truth of my words hangs heavy between us. His marriage to Edina. A whole lifetime with her, away from the Ministry. Away from me. Brandt twists away from me, and I’m sinking, deeper and deeper into the cot.
I don’t want to lose Brandt, but perhaps it’s already too late. I can’t forget how he left me the night after Hesse’s death, how his duty was already calling him away when I needed him most. No matter how skilled of a dreamstrider I become, I can’t bring him back to me. I can’t keep my friend forever. Perhaps it’s time I worry about what comes next.
Brandt reaches for Hesse’s journal again. “How about I—let’s—let’s look for a mention of this key.”
“Let’s,” I say, too loud.
01 Tremmer’s Month, 618 AN
35, 36, and 39 are the best batch of recruits thus far—their grasp on their own dreams is uncanny, and 39 has already showed an aptitude for remaining lucid, owing in my mind to his exceptional piety and contrition in the university temple. He correctly described the general layout of the temple at the heart of Oneiros aft
er a fortuitous albeit brief slip out of his shallow dreams; tonight I will give him a sample dosage of dreamwort elixir.
I don’t know if I can keep going through with this. I try to put on a brave face for 12, because she has trouble enough trusting in herself. But the weight of my failure is crushing down on me. Souls are surprisingly heavy things.
Subject 12. That must be me. Eleven others died before he reached success through me? I suppress the groan clawing its way up my throat. Why, Dreamer, why did I deserve to live? I skim through the next few entries until another one catches my eye, later the same year.
09 Juliar Month, 618 AN
35, 36, and 39 are still progressing in the trials. They are responding positively to the dreamwort potion and have thus far successfully entered Oneiros with it on two occasions each (three for 39), but even 12 was controlling her trips to Oneiros at this stage in the trials. Sadly, she remains the sole bright light in this zealot’s folly. I don’t want to push them too hard, but against the only dreamstrider I can compare them to, they are already lagging behind. But they’ve survived Oneiros as it is; this seems proof enough to me they have a chance.
Long discussion with Durst about 12’s performance and his desire to produce more dreamstriders to better expand the Ministry’s capabilities. He is certain 12 is only the beginning of what can be achieved. 12 proved the concept, but he wants more dreamstriders—skilled ones, experienced ones, instead of clumsy youths. He wants to see what a fully capable dreamstrider can do. I pray to the Dreamer every night that he’s right, that I am not giving fuel to Nightmare’s remnants, feeding the Wastes without cause.
I fear my research has led me astray once more. The binding ritual, the technique of transference … I worry more and more now of what could become of them if the research fell into the wrong hands. Not only for the heresies I’ve uncovered about Nightmare’s death, but for the power in these truths …
Dreamstrider Page 16