Archivist Wasp

by Nicole Kornher-Stace

  That sound. That weird sad little sound those devices made when they died. She’d heard it before. In her house, before the fire, as the swelling faded from her ankle.

  For a long moment there wasn’t enough room in her for words and rage together and she stood there trembling with the effort not to attack the ghost right then and there.

  She’d wanted to trust it. She’d needed to trust it. She’d fought down every instinct she had to not trust it, and all that had earned her was the novelty of an emotion she’d never before been in a position to feel.

  Betrayal.

  “Show me that thing you healed me with,” she said, her voice thick. “You know. That thing you said you’d trade me if I helped you.”

  The ghost’s eyes widened slightly. For a second the assurance fell from its face and it was nearly unrecognizable. “No need,” it said, recovering itself smoothly. “It’s secure where it is. Think about what you’re saying. Do you really want to risk me losing it in the snow just so you can reassure yourself I haven’t lost it alrea—”

  Wasp held up the arm the lurcher had bitten, the ghost had bandaged. “Why not heal this?” she said. “Don’t you need me in peak condition if I’m going to live long enough to hunt Foster down for you? In fact.” Unwrapping the bandage. Hurling it at the ghost’s feet. “I think it’s getting infected. Maybe you should do it now. Just to be safe.”

  “Later,” said the ghost. “We’re too exposed out here. This isn’t the time or place for—”

  Wasp folded her arms and stared at the ghost, its all-wrong voice, its wary eyes, and she could feel her rage rolling back from her, leaving an icy certainty in which rage would do no good, because all at once she knew that there was nothing left to her future worth raging for.

  “You know what the worst part is?” she said softly. “The worst part is that I was starting to trust you. I thought that this—this ridiculous search you’ve dragged me into—was somehow better than what I came from. Like down here I could be different, I wouldn’t just fuck up everything I try to fix. Guess I was wrong.”

  Wasp took a few steps from the ghost, then swung back around. “Actually, no. The worst part is you’re an asshole. And I’m stuck down here with you. And you don’t for one second deserve my help.”

  The ghost’s hand was on its sword-hilt. Wasp didn’t know why until she noticed the harvesting-knife in her hand. She wasn’t entirely sure yet what it was doing there.

  She looked at the knife. Then she looked at the thread. Then she looked at the ghost.

  “Truth is, compared to what I’m used to, this place isn’t so bad. I’m not starving. I don’t have to look at the Catchkeep-priest’s stupid ugly face every day. Nobody’s plotting to slit my throat and put my head on a wall. Do you know, I saw dead upstarts back there and they were working together. They pulled fifteen lurchers off me. Up above, they would have tried to kill me. And I would have been supposed to try to kill them back. Maybe I cut this thread and I go join them. Maybe I just disappear. Wherever I go, the Catchkeep-priest won’t be there, and neither will you. Doesn’t sound so bad to me.”

  The ghost’s mouth opened slightly, then shut. It eyed her. “You’re not bluffing.”

  “You have no idea,” she said, “how right you are.”

  She slid the knife in under the thread. She could see the dark stones of the blade through it. She swallowed.

  “Wait,” said the ghost.

  “Nothing to wait for,” she said. “Deal’s off. Go back to wandering around down here with your head up your ass for another thousand years. Oh, and you can keep that piece of garbage. I hope it keeps you great company for the rest of forever. I mean, look at it this way. At least you have one thing in common. You’re both already broken.”

  A second from cutting the thread, one last stray thought surfaced for the others she’d tried to help and failed—the four-days-to-die upstart, the child-ghost whose parents had looked upon her with such hate, and all the rest.

  One more on that list would make no difference. She would die with that curse on her head all the same. Let the Ragpicker gorge Himself on her should-have-dones. She hoped He choked.

  And then she paused.

  Something she’d said. I wouldn’t just fuck up everything I try to fix.

  From the look of everything she’d seen lately, that curse wasn’t on her head alone. It was the exact same misfortune that had gotten Foster killed.

  Even if she’d known she could cut and run, and survive it, there was no way she could leave now.

  Now it was personal.

  “You’re right,” the ghost was saying. It took a step closer to her, palms out. She knew that stance. She leapt back.

  The ghost shook its head. “I’m not trying to disarm you,” it said. “I’m trying to tell you the truth.”

  “You’re no better than anything I left up there,” Wasp spat at it. “You all just feed me some story so I’ll do whatever you say, laugh behind my back when I fall for it. Catchkeep chose you, Wasp. Kill some upstarts for Her, Wasp. Go live in some freezing little hut with no friends. Oh, help me find my poor lost lonesome ghost, Wasp, I’ve been searching for you special. What? You want to escape your shitty life? I have just the thing to help you fight your way out. Just help me out here and it’s yours. Not sure when I’m going to get around to telling you that it doesn’t work anymore. Pretty clever, huh? Yeah, well, I’m done.”

  She sheathed the knife. “I’m staying here. But not with you. I’m staying because I realized I want to find her. For all I care we can go our separate ways. See who gets there first.” She started walking.

  “Will you listen to me for a minute?” the ghost said. “I know you don’t owe me that. I’m asking.”

  “And I’m telling you I don’t care,” she said. “I don’t have time for this.”

  “I’m asking for one minute.”

  Wasp stopped. “You get five seconds.”

  “The truth is nobody told me those things about you.”

  “Yeah, I gathered that. Two seconds.”

  “I wouldn’t have believed them if they did.”

  “Outstanding. One second.”

  “Everything I said I saw for myself.”

  “I’m not interested in you trying to make nice with—”

  “I wouldn’t know how if I wanted to. It . . .” The ghost paused, momentarily at a loss for words. “It isn’t easy for me to learn to work with someone . . . new. After working with . . . with Foster . . . my whole life, you understand, my whole life, I—” It made a noise, not quite a laugh, short and sharp. “Clearly I didn’t work with her as well as I should have, either, or you wouldn’t be here.”

  “Clearly.”

  “I should never have deceived you. I realize that. I didn’t want to do it. But I needed your help, and I had nothing else to offer. If I had, I would have offered it. All of it. Anything. I’ve tried for so long to do this on my own, and I . . .” The ghost’s face twisted, and there was a space of silence before it continued.

  Wasp could hear the can’t it hadn’t said. She didn’t push it. It wasn’t a word she much liked having to say herself.

  “As for your methods,” the ghost went on. “Maybe you think I don’t mind in the slightest, standing by and letting you browse through my memories, knowing full well that I will never see them again for myself.” It gave her a long cold look. “You would be mistaken.”

  “I’m not trying to pry,” Wasp shouted at it. “I’m trying to help. You think this is only hard for you? At least you’ve done this before! How easy, exactly, do you think it is for me to learn to work with anyone?”

  “Going by what I’ve seen of your predecessors,” the ghost said drily, “I can see how that might be difficult.” It sighed. Shook its head very slightly. “You’re far from the first Archivist I tried to convince, you know. I don’t even remember when that started. Or why. It feels as though it’s been going on for some time.”

  “They didn’
t take the same shit from you, huh? Lucky me.”

  “That isn’t what I meant. Of all of them, you’re the first who was willing to listen. To look for her. To help me. You put your life on the line for two dead soldiers you never knew. And in return I betrayed your trust, as I betrayed her trust, and lost her. For what it’s worth, even if you go no further, I’m grateful you were willing to come this far.”

  “Agh,” said Wasp, uncomfortable. “This is getting way too dramatic for me. I’m going now, if you’re finished. Like someone told me a while ago, I don’t have all day. Up to you if you want to follow.”

  She took off walking. The ghost followed.

  Chapter Seventeen

  They tromped through the snowfield for ages. They passed things that, to Wasp’s eye, might have been waypoints. A wind-shredded orange plastic tent. A cave hung with icicles that were mottled gray with ash. A distant huddle of dark birds circling and alighting on an unseen mass. A tiny pond, perfectly round, frozen into a mirror upon which no snow settled. The metal skeleton of something that had fallen from the sky and smashed there, its nose plowed deep into the earth. They walked on.

  Wasp was getting tired, and the cold was ridiculous. The wind was whipping up in gusts that stung her eyes, then settling for just long enough that the next one surprised her into cursing. She could barely feel her legs, the sensation in her hands and ears was long gone, and the only thing that proved her nose was still there at all was that it was running freely, which didn’t seem at all fair, considering.

  The ghost kept moving at the same measured, even pace, oblivious to the cold. Wasp knew it would slow down if she asked, and did not ask.

  Miles later, she tripped on something in the snow and went down. Digging revealed nothing there that should have caught her up. She stood, brushing herself off. She reached her hip and froze. The knife was gone.

  “No,” she breathed. It shouldn’t have been possible. Above, it had never fallen out of its sheath, not once, and now this was twice in one day, it made no sense. She splashed around in the snow, flinging it up in powdery armfuls. She couldn’t tell how far down it went, or if there was a bottom to it at all. The ghost stopped and helped her, kicking the drifts, fishing with the sword.

  They found it eventually, yards away. Not back the way they’d come, either—alone, with no footprints in a solid four-foot radius of the knife. It had to be ten feet from where she’d fallen. They stood above it, staring down.

  “No way,” Wasp said. Her skin was prickling, and not just from the cold. She looked at the ghost. It shrugged. “Glad one of us is used to this place anyway,” she said, stooping to swipe up the knife before something weirder happened to it, “because it is really, really—”

  From beneath the snow came a muffled metallic sound, and Wasp stopped midsentence, mouth open, snot freezing on her lip. Poked around a little in the snow with the knife. Whatever was below it clinked when she tapped it. The ghost was beside her before she called. They shared a glance, then started digging.

  It was a door, set into the ground beneath the snow, like the hatches that led down into the white tunnels beneath Sweetwater, ancient and lousy with ghosts. Even touching it she got a strange feeling in the back of her neck, like someone was watching her. Like she had back in the hedge-maze, staring up at a monster made of leaves.

  There was a wheel on top. They cleared the snow away and turned it. The door opened onto light of the same greenish cast as the fires. Wasp, not relishing the notion of another jump, peered down.

  There were the bare bones of stairs here, rusted and creaking, completely mismatched to the foot-thick metal door that had led down to them. They descended a few steps and pulled the door shut behind. Wasp descended the rest, while the ghost hung back, opening and shutting the door at intervals. A few knocks, listen, open, snowfield, shut, wait a bit, repeat.

  Wasp took this opportunity to explore.

  She couldn’t tell if this room was almost unbearably cold or almost unbearably hot. The walls looked like ice, but also like the fires she’d seen lit amid the snow. She was shivering and sweating at once. Words were scratched down the length of one long wall, in a language she couldn’t read. The tunnel went back and back, the walls shading to a dark glassy green farther down.

  Shredded remnants of ghosts lay in the corners like wind-blown trash. Wasp took a few steps toward one pile, and a sound echoed up from the depths beyond.

  It was like the howls of the lurchers on her scent—yet not. It was a shriller call, from something much larger or more numerous. It sounded like sheet metal tearing. She could feel the vibrations of it in her ribs.

  She drew her knife and started backpedaling for the door. “Hey—” she said.

  “Any minute,” said the ghost, pushing the door up and out. Snowfield. Leaden sky. Flare of greenish light as one of the pits erupted. Pulled it shut again.

  “We don’t have any minute.”

  The shrieking resumed, closer now. The walls were changing color, purpling like a bruise.

  “I’m not staying here. That door locks from the top, and I’m locking it. Staying or going?”

  Other hand on the door, the ghost set one finger to its lips. Hush.

  She could not hear so much as feel something approaching. There were no footsteps, no sound of wings or slithering. The shrieking had not returned again. It came to Wasp that whatever was causing it might be right in front of her, savoring her confusion, breathing down her neck, choosing the choicest bite, and she simply could not see it.

  Her flight instinct almost picked her up bodily and hurled her up the stairs.

  “Fine. You’re on your own. Let me through.”

  At that, whatever the light source was, it guttered wildly and went out.

  Suddenly Wasp’s knife seemed very small.

  The ghost rapped at the door with its knuckles. This time it sounded different.

  An unseen hand locked around Wasp’s wrist and she yelped. “It’s me,” said the ghost. “Hold your breath.”

  Then it opened the door.

  A wall of water slammed into her. Water went cascading down the steps, down the throat of the cave in the dark. The shrieking came again, horribly close—then receded, accompanied by a sound she couldn’t begin to place, not claws or fins or wings or feet, but all these things at once, or none, as whatever made the noise was borne away on the rising tide. The lights stayed out.

  The amount of water was astonishing. The cave was filling fast, and in the dark she had no way of measuring how long she’d stand there gasping like a landed fish before the water level rose and caught her up behind. Wasp wound her arm around the stair-rail to keep herself upright as the force of it battered her, held her head free of the waterfall that used to be a doorway and started shouting at the ghost to close the door. Even as the words left her mouth, she realized that the door had opened outward, with all the colossal weight of the water against it. The fact that it had opened at all amazed her.

  The ghost’s voice, near her ear. “We’re going up.”

  “Through that?”

  “That’s our door.”

  Wasp looked toward the water, looked toward the ghost, and wrapped herself tighter around the railing. “I can’t swim.”

  “You don’t need to. Just let go.”

  It was that or drown. If she could drown. She pictured one of those silvery ghost-rags, filling with water at its nose and mouth until it ballooned and burst.

  She let go of the railing.

  “On three I’m going to lift you through,” said the ghost. “Hold your breath. Close your eyes. You’re not going to like this.”

  Wasp considered the awful force of that water. Though it made her shiver to say it, she said, “We can wait here until the room fills, and—”

  “I don’t know how long the door will hold. Whatever’s next might be worse, and trust me, it could be. I’ll be right behind you. On three.”

  Wasp inhaled until her lungs burned. Be throu
gh there, Foster, she thought. Please. I can’t take much more of—

  “Three.”

  She felt herself being lifted into the water. It bore down on her. She thrashed her way up through it. Made no headway. Her lungs were on fire. Her entire body stung. It felt like the water was flaying her flesh from her bones.

  Just when she thought she couldn’t take any more, the pressure was gone. She was through. Still underwater, still in the dark, flailing and breathless, and the suction from the whirlpool started pulling her back in. She gritted her teeth, got her feet under her, and pushed off against the silt and sand beneath.

  She was strong but the water was stronger. She was starting to black out. Frantically she paddled forward, gaining no ground. In the dark she couldn’t see if there was anything along the bed of the—what? Lake? Sea?—to grab hold of. She reached down to sweep the ground blind in front of her and the current whipped her legs out from under, hauled her back down, convulsing now, willing herself not to breathe—

  Suddenly, below her, the room had filled. The whirlpool stopped. All was still. She marshaled the dregs of her strength and kicked off again, as hard as she could. She couldn’t see light above. For all she knew she wasn’t even aiming up. Her arms scooped water, pushed it aside. Her legs kicked and floundered. Her chest felt like it was imploding.

  Then the ghost’s hand found her wrist in the dark, and she was being pulled upward with such force and speed that she couldn’t keep the air in her lungs. It exploded out of her, and she clamped her free hand over her nose and mouth to keep from gasping water in. She shut her eyes and waited for her resolve to fail.