Dreamstrider

by Lindsay Smith

  Brandt scoffs. “What do you think I mean? I knew you felt something for that man, but I’d no idea you two had grown quite so close. Did you really mean what you said?” he asks. “That you’d run away to Farthing with him?”

  “Oh, don’t you dare!” I scramble to my feet. “You have absolutely no room to tell me who I can spend my time with, where I can go—no right…”

  Brandt winces as if slapped. “What are you talking about?” he asks, far too quietly.

  Something about the look on his face snuffs what I’d been about to say. Something warns me that it’s not Marez who has him upset. But it’s far too late for me to pin false hopes on Brandt once more. “Nothing.” I spin from him. “Forget I said a thing. Yes, I meant everything I told him,” I add.

  But rage quivers through me. How dare he be angry at me, when he’s the one getting married to someone else? I want to keep pushing back. Make him feel even one ounce of what I feel when I think of him, and what we can never be. Let it sting and burn and leave a scar.

  Instead, he looks at the dirty ground, the luminescent paint overhead gilding the side of his face in blue. Jorn clears his throat at the mouth of the alcove. I take a deep breath and try to force the torrent of emotions out of my mind.

  “They know I’m the dreamstrider,” I say. “They told me there was a traitor in the High Temple, the renegade priest we’ve been looking for, but it was a ruse.” The horrible stench is gone, but my head is pounding, pounding, and my stomach aches with nausea and nerves.

  “What were they after down here, then?” Jorn asks. But Brandt’s barely listening; his jaw keeps working, like he can’t find the right question to ask.

  “Kriza stole something from somewhere above us. She was searching for one of the stairwells that lead up to Dreamer’s Square.”

  “The High Temple of the Dreamer.” Jorn nods. “I know the area from when I worked for Retch.”

  I swallow. “They mentioned working with a dealer, as well—resin, by the sound of it. Whatever they stole, it smelled…”

  “Smelled?” Brandt asks. “How do you mean?”

  “It’s nothing. I must have been imagining it.” I coil my hair into a loose bun. I lost my hat in the fall toward the canals and somehow shredded the grimy duster as well. The smell—it was like my dreams, or rather, my nightmares. Like the beasts in Oneiros. How could I explain it to them?

  “We’d better get back,” Jorn says. “If someone recognizes me…” Brandt grimaces, but nods. He hunches his shoulders to shelter himself and doesn’t cast another glance my way.

  I’m far beyond exhausted now; I could fall asleep walking, especially with Jorn at my back, guarding me. I can’t face those awful nightmares again. As we weave through the stalls, the breathing tangle of bodies, I scan the aisles for the one thing that can keep me safe from my dreams.

  If Nightmare is reawakening, to fall into Oneiros almost certainly means my death.

  I spy them on a tray, half-hidden by folded scarves cut from aristocrat’s dresses. They’re bigger than I remember—hard to pocket on the sly. But I’ve had practice, more than I care to admit. My fingers are around the wax paper wrapping and back inside my pocket in the time it takes to blink. I scan the teeming crowd to make sure no one’s watching me, but the two enforcers nearest us are busy threatening a woman with a baby cradled in her arms.

  The rumble reaches us before we leave the mouth of the tunnel. Loose rocks spray from the tunnel’s mortar as the earth vibrates. I hurriedly slip through the grate and climb hand over foot to street level. The gas lamp flames dance wildly in their casing, slinging eerie shadows across the street. With Brandt and Jorn behind me, we edge to the alley’s end as cheers swell around us—applause and brass instruments and the hammering one, two of thousands of heavy-soled boots and hooves and creaky carts hauling cannons and other equipment.

  The Farthing army streams past us, waving and blowing kisses to their Barstadt admirers. And why shouldn’t our city greet them as saviors? They are not from the Land of the Iron Winds, our sworn enemies. They have come to supplement, perhaps supplant, our own meager military. To flood our city. To overrun us, as we open our arms to them.

  Brandt swears beside me, an extra-filthy curse, and sags against the wall. “So if Marez and Kriza were using us all along to steal something, and gain control of the dreamstrider … Then what does their army mean to do?”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Brandt leaves me at my quarters with scarcely a word. He must send an urgent message to Minister Durst and the Emperor, who are still strategizing at the palace, and inform them that our Farthing saviors are not what they seem. A kind way of putting it. Dreamer, but I’m a fool. How could I have believed anyone could feel for me the way Marez claimed to feel? How could I not see his deceit in those wicked eyes, not notice the ploys I’ve seen Brandt use a dozen times? I wanted so badly to believe I was deserving. Of spy work, of a home, of love—even if not Brandt’s.

  I sink onto my mattress and stare down the bulge in my coat pocket. I can smell the Lullaby’s sickly sweetness from here, an overpowering fruity blow. Darkness surely awaits me tonight, whether in my private dreams—full of taunts and reminders of my failure—or in Oneiros, as Nightmare’s minions gather strength under the command of the traitor we’ve yet to catch. The Lullaby would ensure me a dreamless sleep at least. Do I really dare use it? It’s a vile, addictive thing, but it would protect me from those awful monsters in Oneiros. But what if it’s my duty to face them, as the dreamstrider?

  Dreamstrider. The cursed word sticks under my fingernails, irritating me in slow, subtle ways, but I can’t remember why. I can’t remember much of anything. My arms feel like they’re caked with clay from fighting to cling to the canal wall. My thighs sting from climbing up and down ladders on the battlements all day. My eyelids—my eyelids are weighted with lead. I’m fighting to keep them open, but sleep is winning out. It overcomes me abruptly before I have a chance to decide about the Lullaby. Something within my room clicks. I should check on it. I should lick the Lullaby just this once to keep me safe, and I …

  I am in the doorway of Brandt’s office. His own private office upstairs. Does he have one? In my shallow dreams, it makes sense that he would. As much sense as the ridiculous red velvet coat he’s wearing, high-collared and flocked in fuzzy swirls of gold. A silly dream, not a nightmare after all. I’m safe.

  He looks at me and waits for me to speak, but something blocks my throat, like I’ve swallowed my food down the wrong way. “May I help you?” he finally says, voice brittle as glass, and sets down his pen on the blotter.

  I start to speak, but rather than words, we converse in song. No discernable lyrics—it’s a flighty opera, like the one Vera and I heard at the Imperial Opera House while snooping on a soprano who owed money to the Bayside gang. Our song feels like fine grains of sand rubbing between my fingertips. A very strange dream.

  Somehow, I convey to him that I’ll take the letter he’s writing to Durst to the ravens for him when he’s done. Then everything goes fuzzy, like a pure white fur coat I once saw on the Empress. When I snap back to myself, the letter is clenched in my hand—it smells like lemons—and Brandt’s hand is on top of mine on the desk.

  “Did you love him?” he asks in a turquoise tone. We’re no longer singing, though the opera aria plays away behind us. “Is Farthing what you truly want? I won’t be angry—I’m sorry for how I behaved in the tunnels. I’m just worried for you—for what Marez might still try to do.”

  The opera halts; Brandt’s lantern dims, and he seems to stand at twice his normal height. Dimly, I feel something shift at my hip, like a jeweled sword sliding into a sheath. The sillier elements of my dream retreat into the shadows, and I’m left with something terrifyingly close to reality. I knew I should have taken the Lullaby. I’m only a little girl playing at emotions I can’t grasp.

  “I’m not sure of what I felt for him, but it wasn’t love. And it was built on lies.”<
br />
  “That doesn’t mean what you felt wasn’t genuine.” Brandt looks away.

  “But I know it wasn’t love.” I take a step toward him, steady and solid. “Because I’ve always loved you.”

  He rears back like I’ve slapped him. The air glows between us, and the office walls become a waterfall. “Livia.” When he says my name, it flutters like a feather tickling my skin. “Livia, please…”

  “I know.” I take a step back. “I can’t—We can’t.”

  “I—But you—” It’s his turn to choke on his words now, and they rise from him like glimmering soap bubbles. I taste the sound of them popping, and it tastes like honey. “I had no idea. I thought you didn’t—Livia, I didn’t know, and if anything happened to you again—Like what happened today—” He staggers toward me. “Why didn’t you tell me this before? Livia, why?”

  “Because it can’t change anything!” My heart twists—this dream is far too real. But instead of the pain I expected such words would bring, the emotions slowly leak out of me, spiraling away, like I’ve washed them down the drain.

  “But, Livia…” Brandt looks at me like I’ve stabbed him. “You never even acted like—”

  I am split in two, one part of me rushing toward him to bury my face in that warm velvet robe, the other steered back by a comforting hand. It feels like Professor Hesse’s when he’d guide me gently away from the Dean’s office. He was always there to rescue me. What’s he rescuing me from now?

  The guiding hand wins. I don’t know how, but it plucks me up, and we soar, soar over Barstadt City where the Farthing soldiers clump up like curds in the city streets, where Nightmare’s bones glint with moonlight, dazzling and fierce.

  Nightmare. Nightmare. There is something more I’m being guided to do.

  Brandt’s letter to the minister falls from my grip as the hand drops me. I drift through the air like a fallen leaf, fluttering onto the empty streets of Barstadt—no, it’s Oneiros now. But where are the Dreamer’s Shapers, the priests? The cobblestones ring out like cannon fire under my footfalls. Birds should scatter in my wake; dreamers should peer from their carefully constructed dwellings to see what all the noise is.

  I stare up at the Dreamer’s Spire and suppress a shudder. Last time I was here I was attacked by the Nightmare Wastes, but I don’t sense any of their darkness tonight. Normally, I’d pray to the Dreamer to keep me safe, just in case, but I can’t seem to think of any words that feel right.

  Even if I did pray to him, there’d only be that roar of silence, a desperate vacuum begging to be filled with noise.

  I head into the entrance to the Dreamer’s Spire, where water flows down one side of a great domed room and then flows back up on the other side. But there is no trickling, no gushing sounds. I circle the chamber and flick my fingers into its stream but feel nothing. The gold-flecked smooth stone dome reminds me of stars peeking through a haze of clouds. It’s the perfect setting in which to feel the Dreamer’s Embrace, but I feel nothing. I am completely and utterly alone.

  There’s a depression at the chamber’s center—I don’t notice it until I almost trip into it. It looks like someone has pried away a golden medallion that was set into the floor, revealing a strange pattern of molded black glass beneath the marble tiles. Four massive gemstones sparkle in specially carved settings in the glass; a channel of molten gold flows around them, webbing them together. I’ve seen this pattern before—the artwork on the door of Hesse’s cabinet. The gems pulse dimly, and something finally punctures the fog of noiselessness.

  Whispers.

  I kneel down and cup my ear over the gemstones to pick out their words. At first they’re too soft, like fingers rustling across silk. Then syllables emerge, bobbing in the streams of sound, but I can’t decipher them. I hold my breath, but even my pounding pulse is too loud over the voices.

  —in a fiery blaze. Melt their hopes from their bones. Feast upon the marrow of despair and make a cloak of their hides. Nothing tastes so sweet as hopelessness. Drink it in like blood, and poison them with the failures they can’t escape—

  I leap back from the well as if I’ve been burned. Panic worms through me and I wheeze, trying desperately to breathe even though I’m certain the air itself will drown me. Nightmare, Nightmare. The shards of Nightmare’s heart. Four of them, right in the holiest place in all of Oneiros. And one empty groove in the black glass, where the final shard will go …

  You will fail them all, but you will not fail me. The gems flash before my eyes, washing away all other sight, as they whisper through the room. You will bring us the last shard. And thank us for the privilege. My heart will be bound once more.

  A shadowed figure emerges from the darkness, the firelight slithering across her facial gemstones. Lady Twyne. A vicious smile curves her lips. A seeping wound stink floods the temple, turning it into a swamp. My eyesight swims. The water turns to tar, flowing up and down around me like the bars of a cell. I hear something circling my cage, like a pacing animal with long, deadly claws. It growls, low and feral in the back of its throat.

  You will bow.

  Dreamer, please, I whisper silently. He may ignore me, but I have to try. If ever there was a time I needed your embrace, it’s now. I’ve fought the Wastes before but I don’t know if I have the strength tonight—

  Water splashes across my face, warm and welcome as it cuts through the sulfurous chill of my captors. I gulp down air and sit up in bed. Someone’s staring at me—my eyes slowly focus on her flyaway hair and dingy gown.

  “I’m sorry.” Sora’s cheeks are flushed with scarlet; big fat tears cling to her chin. “I’m so sorry, but you wouldn’t wake up, I know you said never to wake you unless it’s an emergency, but he’s gone too far and I had to warn you—”

  “What? What’s happening?” I blink slowly. My thoughts are packed with gauze. Nothing’s making any sense, and my vision is strewn with castoff images from my dreams.

  “The Farthingers.” Sora looks away from me. “The invasion’s begun.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Brandt stands right behind Sora, glowering at me like I put a toad in his trousers. I can hear boots heavy against the barrack corridors, the distant report of cannon fire on the battlements overhead. “The Farthingers are attacking? What about the Commandant’s troops?” I ask.

  “They’ve breached the bay.” Brandt clenches his jaw. “Our blockade never even saw them approach. They just—manifested inside the harbor.”

  “No—are you certain?” I ask, springing from bed. But Brandt’s expression leaves no room for doubt. “They’re using transference. Hesse’s theorem—traveling into Oneiros and then back out to cover great distances.” I wince. “Must be a damned powerful priest to be able to do that for a whole fleet.”

  “And we have more immediate problems here,” Brandt says. “The Farthingers have confiscated the Ministry for themselves. We tried to burn as many records as we could, but the first place they went was the archives, and now they’re rounding up all our operatives.”

  “Nightmare’s teeth. We have to help the other operatives.” My pulse is racing; I scan the quarters for something, anything we could defend ourselves with. “Are we still safe here in the barracks? We can lead everyone out.”

  “We barricaded the doors, but it won’t last much longer if help doesn’t arrive.” He narrows his eyes. “You sent the message to Durst, right?”

  I stare through him as some fragment of a dream drifts past me. “The message?” Did we have a conversation about this last night? No, surely I dreamt it. Wait—was Brandt in my dream? “Are you talking about—You were writing a letter to the minister. In my dreams.”

  Brandt’s shoulders tighten. “No, I’m not talking about dreams. I’m talking about your little show at my office. You were supposed to send the letter to Minister Durst at the palace to tell him about the Farthingers. Nightmares, this is perfect.” He turns away from me. “If you’re going to pretend none of that happened … tha
t you didn’t say those things—”

  “I’m not pretending! I’m just trying to understand. You mean that wasn’t a dream?”

  Something shatters in the corner of the room. We both whip around to find Sora staring at the broken porcelain ewer at her feet. Her eyes go wide as eggs, and she begins to tremble as tears run down her face.

  “Sora, darling.” I throw my arms around her. “Shh, shh, it’s going to be all right. It was just an accident. We’ll worry about it later.” I pet her springy curls. “We need to make our way out of the Ministry right now. Do you think you can help us through the tunnels?”

  “It’s not an accident!” she sobs, shoulders heaving under my grasp. “It’s all my fault! Please, Miss Livia, don’t be angry with me. I was only trying to—to get out of the tunnels, like you did.”

  I pat her shoulders. “Sora, it’s all right. We’ll get out of this. But we can’t fix it if you don’t tell us what’s happened.”

  She pulls back from me and turns her head aside. “He said he loved me. That he’d take me away from here. I was only trying to make a better life for myself. I—I didn’t know!”

  Brandt rounds on us slowly, eyes hooded. “Who promised you what, Sora?” His voice is deathly, stiflingly still. “What have you done?”

  “The—the Farthing man. Marez.” She smears a trail of snot onto her sleeve. “He said if I’d let him in the barracks a few nights here and there, bring him up through the tunnels—”

  I stagger back from her. My chest aches like someone took a hammer to it, and all I hear in my ears is the ringing of cannon shots.

  “You let him into the Ministry? Into the barracks?” Brandt seizes Sora by the collar of her shift. Then, in a wave of revulsion, he lets her go and drives his boot down onto the fragments of porcelain instead. This time, his swears are so vivid I couldn’t repeat them if I wanted to.

  Sora quakes like a cornered hare, each fresh sob gurgling from her lips with a high-pitched snap. “He couldn’t get into the Ministry building proper because of the guards, and there are no tunnel entrances to the main building. He had these rags that smelled like molded parchment…”