Dreamstrider

by Lindsay Smith

  I slump forward and crawl on my belly, making my way across the marble floor now covered in muck as slowly as I can manage. The lizard’s eyes follow me, but she remains motionless, not yet threatened. I enter the swamp alongside her and float. The lizard is right beside me, her pulse as sluggish as the swamp—

  We open our eyes.

  I stagger forward on Kriza’s muscle-clad legs that propel me too far with each step. I’m at the door of the office before I can stop myself. Pain flowers at the base of my skull where Brandt cracked Kriza good with the tube. But I’m not sorry. I hope that somewhere in her sleep, she can feel it still.

  I throw open the door just in time to come face-to-face with the guard. His hand grasps for thin air, for the doorknob I’ve just pried away, and he stares into my eyes—for a second I am certain that he must see through the Kriza skin I’ve donned. But then he rocks back on his heels and presses against one side of the staircase.

  “Sorry. I thought I heard a commotion.”

  “Just a stuck drawer. Not that it’s any of your business,” I add, doing my best to adopt Kriza’s attitude without having to dip into her thoughts. I can’t risk waking that lizard. Not now.

  But the guard stands there, watching me like he expects me to perform a miracle, so I make a show of closing the door and ushering him down the stairs. “If the confederate council wanted you involved in our work, they’d have told you,” I say.

  I exit the warehouse and stare, bleary-eyed, up at the window in the little office. Oh, Brandt. Brandt. Please find a way out of there alive. Please don’t leave my body behind.

  I touch a finger to my lips, pretending almost for a moment that I can feel his warmth still lingering on this foreign skin, and I set off for the Imperial Palace.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The Farthing army officers have wasted no time making themselves at home on the verdant palace lawns. The officers’ tent encompasses a urinating cherub statue, and soldiers lounge in the rose bushes and tie their tents to the spiky gates. I can see how easily one might think them our saviors, given their jovial smiles and easy chatter with the Barstadt ladies who have come out to ogle them. Even some aristocrats take part, gemstones flashing in the setting sun.

  The captain is easy to spot—he’s the one splayed out on an armchair under the tent commandeered from Dreamer knows where, flanked by three ladies with different shades of facial gemstones, sloshing steins of ale. A nasty word or twenty lingers on my tongue for these aristocrats who are all too eager to abandon our Emperor as soon as their fortunes look imperiled, but I am not Livia. I am Kriza. I am one of them, or even worse.

  The captain nods at me as I stride up the slope but makes no move to stand to greet me. “Don’t overexert yourself,” I say in the most condescending tone I can muster.

  “Did you get what you needed from the Ministry of Affairs?” the captain asks me.

  I grimace. “We secured the archives, but the people in the barracks escaped,” I bluff, though I hope that it’s the truth.

  The captain finally sits up at that, nudging one of the taffeta-swathed women off his armrest. “I’ll have Colonel Guritz’s head. Where did they go?”

  Somewhere in the rancid, desecrated Dreamer’s spire, the mud is drying against my skin, making a putrid statue of me. It cracks like parched Iron Winds earth as I inch closer to the lizard, but I am slow, so very slow. She flicks her tail; her knife-slash nostrils clench and release. I must become one with the corruption in Oneiros. I must know her thoughts.

  “They’re not important. Right now, we need access to the palace.” My hand shoots forward to indicate it beyond the gates, guarded by nervous-looking and wholly inadequate soldiers. I have to warn the Emperor and Minister Durst about Marez’s true aim to resurrect Nightmare. “Where do we stand on that matter, or have you been too busy ingratiating yourself with the locals?”

  The captain tugs his uniform down and stands. “Excuse us a moment, ladies.”

  “Don’t forget House Jurard,” one of the women, topaz and emerald and a diamond between her brows, purrs as they shuffle out of the tent. I make a mental note not to forget House Jurard, either, if we survive this—to report on how quickly they turned against Barstadt.

  The captain tugs his rumpled coat back into place. “We’ve located some of the periphery tunnels your crime boss mentioned, but I understand that the Emperor has mechanisms for sealing them off in case of invasion. I sent some scouts to see if that’s happened, but they haven’t reported back yet.”

  I snort. “Those tunnel folk are like savages. Your scouts were probably stripped of their uniforms and left for dead in an alcove somewhere.”

  “So we take the tunnels by force.” The captain shrugs. “What about using your little”—he swishes his hand—“nightmare demon things?”

  In a warehouse several blocks away, I feel my blood boiling. How dare these foreigners treat our city like a toy castle to be razed at their convenience! It takes all my will to swallow down my rage; in the swamp, the lizard’s eyes glide slowly to meet mine.

  “Too unreliable, without the final shard,” I manage to say without spitting on him. “The traitor bitch’s spirit or ‘echo’ or whatever she is will put it in place, but you have to get your sorry arses into the palace and claim it first.”

  “Can’t Commander Marez just dream his way inside?” the captain asks.

  I wrack my brain for a plausible excuse. “He’s busy trying to transfer the shards. Believe it or not, it takes some effort.” I narrow my eyes. “Any other smart questions for me, pet?”

  “Well, see if he can’t find a way around it anyway. The show he put on earlier this afternoon was rather impressive. I might’ve soiled my pants if I didn’t know those demons running around are on our side.”

  Nightmare’s minions seeping into our world—Marez did that? Kriza’s heartbeat races in answer to my panic. I thought it was only because Nightmare’s heart was nearly reassembled. If he’s capable of weakening the barrier between dreams and reality like that, then he’s far, far stronger than either Professor Hesse or I could have possibly imagined.

  “We’ll see what we can do,” I say tartly. “Meanwhile, find us a more reliable way in. What are you thinking?”

  He eyes the palace soldiers through the gates. “We outnumber them, there’s no doubt. But if we charge in all at once, if there’s too much noise and panic … It could get ugly. We could lose our chance to nab the shard.”

  “Yes,” I say, nodding. As if not nabbing the shard is the only downside of chaos and slaughter.

  “I think your alternate plan will have to do for now. Is Marez ready to conduct his … ‘ritual’?”

  Hesse’s binding ritual. And Marez means to conduct it to bind Nightmare’s soul to his will once he has the final shard. But Oneiros jars me from my thoughts: quick as a flash, the lizard that oozed torpor is upon me, pinning me in place in the muck. Darkness wells around my eyes. Within Kriza’s body, I feel my insides shredding up. Mud sloshes over my face. I hear footsteps along the grimy temple floor, slow and deliberate, approaching me.

  I try to wriggle free, but I’m trapped. The lizard’s hot breath snuffles along my throat and in my ear. It won’t hurt me, not now. But neither will it let me go.

  A shadow falls across me in Oneiros; something sharp prods me in the spine.

  And then Kriza’s lips coil into a smile, one I’m not controlling. Dreamer, please, oh, please. Is she waking up? Don’t let me be thrust into the Wastes. Don’t let the nightmares consume me.

  Kriza faces the captain dead on. My grip is fading. She speaks, far too cognizant, too sinister, though not strong enough to cast me out of her body. “Our plan has already begun.”

  And from the bottom of the hill, I see someone familiar treading toward us on uncertain limbs. A cautious, frightened girl, with no facial gems, wearing a ratty dress. Her honey curls whip around a plain face, but that smile—that smile does not belong to her. I smother down a sc
ream as she approaches, eyes aglitter with victory.

  “Halt, Barstadter,” the captain calls to my body.

  But my body turns to the captain. “I may be Barstadter by birth, but I assure you, I’m loyal to your side. I’m here to gain access to the palace for you. Marez told me to give you this.” My body holds out a signed scrap of paper.

  The captain scrutinizes it for a few moments. “The Farthing Confederate Council’s seal.”

  I try to fight against Kriza—I have to stop Marez. My body. I have to stop me. But I can’t move, can’t regain control of the limbs.

  “Deepest apologies. An ally of Marez’s is an ally of Farthing’s.” The captain gestures toward the palace. “The tunnel entrances to the palace are sealed.”

  “Don’t worry,” my body says with a vicious sneer I didn’t even know my lips could form. “I can always gain audience with the emperor. Oh—and I’m afraid Kriza’s not to join us in the palace.” It’s my voice speaking, but I’ve never put such venom into my words. “See to it that she doesn’t.”

  My own eyes turn toward me, the briefest of smiles gracing my lips. And then I watch myself slip quietly through the palace gates.

  Part Three

  DREAMSTRIDER

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “Kriza?” the captain asks, touching my arm. “I believe Commander Tanin has use of you elsewhere.”

  Tears spring to Kriza’s body’s eyes, even as her lizard form chuckles at me, holding me captive within Oneiros. What easy prey I am. I force our eyes away from the sight of my body slipping into the palace entrance.

  But then a fresh thought rounds on me. If Marez accessed my body, then he must have gone to the warehouse. He must have run into Brandt. Brandt. What happened to him?

  Dreamer, please …

  “I’m sorry. I have to—the warehouse—” I shove past the captain and take off at a dead run for the glassworks shop. Kriza’s muscles are built for this, and in no time I’m back at the shop without a drop of sweat to show for my haste.

  It’s abandoned. The guards are gone. I charge up the stairs toward the office. The door is ajar, the floor is empty—not even Marez’s body is there—and the window is busted out, glass flecking the cobblestones below. No Brandt. I spin in circles, certain he must be here somewhere, and Marez’s body with him. But nothing.

  Nothing but blood dabbling the edges of the shattered glass.

  Brandt. I choke on the very thought of his name. The memory of the kiss we shared the last time I saw him turns to poison on my lips. No. Did they capture him? Worse? I can’t follow that blood trail to its logical conclusion. I can’t wander that nightmare path.

  In Oneiros, the lizard weighs down on me. She’s letting me use Kriza now, relishing my pain as I’m forced to see her victory through her eyes. The swamp on the temple floor rises around us in gurgling fits and starts, the stench of decaying vegetation consuming us. But that terror pales to the one in the gemstone setting at the temple’s heart, the one I can feel thrumming in my bones.

  The four shards of Nightmare’s heart are hungry and eager as their final component draws near. A figure now sits by the setting for the shards, humming a merry opera to herself: the specter of Lady Twyne. Her eyes meet mine; she smirks, eyes gleaming. “There’s no use fighting,” she says. “It will all be ours—this world and the next.”

  No. I can’t let them win—let Nightmare consume Barstadt in misery and suffering. I have to interrupt their ritual with the Commandant.

  If only Brandt were here, he’d know what to do.

  I run back out to the street, but can find no trail to follow. Just the lattice of shattered glass. No blood, no obvious path that Brandt might have taken. It hurts, it burns in my lungs like I’ve breathed in coal smoke, but I have to trust that he got away, that he’s found a way to get help. We’ve always trusted one another, knowing the shape of the other’s actions before taking our own, so we never overlap and never overstep.

  I think. I trust. I hope.

  According to Retch, Marez is binding Nightmare to his will, but needs the Commandant’s and the Emperor’s blood both. I may not be able to keep him from getting the last shard of Nightmare’s heart, but I can keep him from whatever comes next. And I know just who can help me get close to the Commandant.

  A sprinkling rain lashes Kriza’s cheeks as we soar through the streets of Barstadt. More than once, a Farthing soldier steps forward to challenge me, but when he sees who I am, or at least whose skin I’m wearing, he falls back.

  The Barstadters are not so fortunate. Outside the houses and shops, the Barstadt soldiers tell them to stay inside for their own good if the soldiers of the Land of the Iron Winds break through, but as I jog through the ale halls and tenements near the docks, I see they’re far less gentle. Here, they make no effort to conceal their true role as our captors.

  Finally, I reach my destination, an older but still august quarter populated by senior merchant families on the cusp of breaking into the aristocracy. No wonder Vera ran away from that—with her quick wit and good looks, she was an engraved invitation into the uppermost crust.

  When she opens the door to me, she immediately rears back and punches me in the face.

  “Nightmare’s bones!” I shriek, stumbling backward. “Vera, please! It’s Livia!”

  “But you’re that—Farthing monster!” She pounces on top of me, right there on her parents’ porch, ready to strike again.

  I throw up my hands to absorb her blows with my forearms, which Kriza’s arms seem to do surprisingly well. “Don’t be ridiculous! You have to believe me. I know about you and Edina, and how you were pouting up an awful storm while we sailed south—”

  “Lying fiend!” she howls.

  “And I know you never eat the nuts on your rolls from Kruger’s, though you always order the cinnamon nut buns. You always pick them off and give them to me. Or you did, before—before I set you on fire.”

  She slows mid-swing and stares at me, scrutinizing. “Oh. Well, I suppose it could be you,” she says, tilting her head to one side. “But I’m not sorry for punching you. I hope it swells up something fierce when that Farthing bitch wakes up.”

  “Yes, about that…” I scramble to my feet, surprised to find myself towering over Vera. “The other Farthinger has my body.”

  Vera swears. “Come inside.” She steps back from the door. “I think we’re both going to need some of my parents’ cider.”

  “So those awful rumblings,” she says, staring into the depths of her cider mug. “You mean that Nightmare’s breaking into our world again?” She looks up at me. “It can’t be true, can it? They scattered his heart. But the gems they were hunting…”

  “They’re very close. I’d be surprised if Marez isn’t prying the final shard off the Emperor right now.” I wince, trying not to imagine what heinous criminal acts are being committed with my body, and take another gulp of hot brew.

  “But the Commandant. What role does the Commandant play in all of this?” She shakes her head. “Is he just a convenient excuse for them to occupy Barstadt City?”

  “There’s more to it than that. The captain was very insistent that the Commandant be brought to them.” I shudder as, within Oneiros, the lizard’s nails sink deeper into my flesh. The mud has nearly covered my nostrils now. That sword pierces me further—Marez’s soul, inhabiting my body. He’s squeezing at my mind, trying to press into my thoughts. No! I can’t let him see what we’re planning. I push back, and the shadow retreats, but only by a fraction.

  Vera drains her mug and stands. “Well, I wish I knew what to do. I could help you find a new body to occupy, maybe, if you’ve only got a little while longer left in that one. I’ve got some supplies still. But I’m done with the Ministry, and all the hypocrites who work for it.”

  “What are you talking about?” I catch her wrist. “Is this about Edina?”

  “It’s about more than just some silly tiff,” she hisses, snatching her arm from me. �
��Bad enough that she’s going to run off and marry stupid Brandt just to keep her father happy. But the aristocrats, the gangs—they’re all interconnected. Maybe they deserve to burn.” Vera fluffs her skirts with a harrumph. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

  “Oh, you wouldn’t, would you?” Now I feel it—fire spreading through my limbs, the heat of my anger and indignation stoking me to courage. “I clawed my way out of the tunnels, thinking, praying there’d be something better on the other side. And you know what I found? Dead bodies, of all the tunnelers and dreamstriders who tried before. The boy I loved, taken from me by the very system I was working to uphold. More bureaucracy and corruption and lies. I wanted to give up, too. Run off to Farthing or some place where I could make my own life.”

  My words sound odd in Kriza’s voice, but I feel stronger, saying them. I feel more in control, not less. I feel more like myself.

  “I keep waiting for the Dreamer to show me the right way, but what has waiting gotten me? I’m done waiting. Waiting for Barstadt to change, waiting for the Dreamer to live my life for me. We’re the only ones capable of stopping Nightmare right now, and it’s up to us to do so. Or do you want to keep on letting others dictate your path?”

  Vera slumps back into her seat. “Bloody dreams,” she sighs. “When’d you get a clue?” She shakes her head. “Fine. I’ll do what I can. But if they awaken Nightmare, then what good are we to stop them?”

  I pinch the bridge of Kriza’s nose; she’s developing a terrible headache, and her left eye is slowly swelling shut. Vera’s right about her deserving the black eye, though. I try not to mind the pain too much. “We can infiltrate the Commandant’s caravan. I’ll take control of the Commandant, and he’ll lead me right to Marez to stop the binding ritual.”