by Teresa Rook
I get my legs under me and force myself to stand, shifting the tech as I go. I grab Austin by the shirt collar and pull his up. “Climb,” I say as the wood continues to snap and burn.
Aubin and I claw our way upwards, the tech unstable beneath our feet, until we reach the open air. It’s choked with smoke, but at least there’s nothing threatening to collapse on top of us anymore. I can’t see a thing through the smoke so I pick a direction and hope it’s towards the edge of the pile. I push Austin ahead of me, eyes firmly closed and tears streaming from between scrunched eyelids. Violent coughs rack my lungs as we stumble across the top of the pile, the tech burning and giving way beneath us, no foothold secure. When we finally reach the edge, I’m taken completely by surprise, and I pitch over it headfirst.
I land hard on Aubin, but he doesn’t complain. I roll off him. The air down here is cleaner and we both lie on the ground, taking big, gasping breaths.
I look over at Aubin, then down at my own body. Neither of us are on fire.
The tech burns bright before me, the runes obscured by the light of the flames.
#####
“Lions,” says a distant voice. I blink to clear the afterimage of the fire, and a familiar black face bends over me.
“Ennis!” A smile stretches the corners of my mouth wide. “You’re alive!”
“I’m alive? You—you’re—”
“Also alive,” I say, then I cough. “Despite your best efforts?”
“What were you doing in there? Lions, Darga. We didn’t know— We never even considered—”
“It’s okay,” I say, and I try to sit up on my elbows. The pain makes me dizzy. “We got out.” I look him up and down. He’s not standing as straight as usual, and he keeps having to adjust his weight. He’s alive but he’s clearly hurt. “When did you wake up?”
“Just a few minutes ago.” He seems to notice Austin for the first time. His eyes bulge wide. “Who’s that?”
I wait for Aubin to introduce himself, but he’s silent. I might have thought he was dead if not for the rapid rise and fall of his scrawny chest.
“Where’s Riksher?”
“Back with the supplies. I was searching for you.”
I brush the black off my sleeve and am comforted to see the vibrant red underneath, mostly untouched. The heat from the fire must have worked in our favour. If we weren’t so soaked with sweat, Aubin and I both would have gone up in flames.
I rouse Aubin, who puts on a brave face and gets to his feet. He clings to my side and watches Ennis with narrowed eyes. The three of us make our way slowly back to Riksher. Confusion strays across his face as he takes in my condition.
“What happened to you?”
I tell him in an exhausted monotone that we were within the pile when it started to burn. His face goes whiter with every word.
“Lions, Darga,” he says. “I wouldn’t have set it on fire if I’d known. Ennis woke up, and I wanted to get this burning so we could leave. I thought you’d see the flames and make your way back.”
“That’s pretty much what happened,” I say in a voice that attempts to be chipper. Then my tone goes flat again. “I see you decided to burn the graveyard after all.” I glance at Ennis, who smiles faintly. He actually reaches for my hand, and I stare at it, brown and cracked between his palms.
“Think of it as a funeral pyre,” he whispers.
#####
After we’ve covered some basics—Ennis woke up on his own shortly after I left, and the two of them decided to save time by getting right to work on the tech—I gesture Aubin over. He detached himself from my arm while we were talking and has been sulking a short distance away.
“This is Aubin,” I say as he approaches. “He lives here.”
Riksher’s hands twitch at his sides. “People live here?”
“Just me,” Aubin says. “With my mama.”
“Where—” Ennis starts, but I draw a finger across my throat and he clamps his mouth shut.
“Darga promised she would fix it,” Aubin says, prompting Riksher and Ennis to look at me. I attempt a smile that turns out more like a guilty cringe. “She said she needed you to help her. Now everyone is together again. We go back.”
“Let’s talk first, Aubin, okay? Here. This is Riksher, and this is Ennis. They’re the Chirals I told you about.”
“I told you, I’m not going with them!”
“Going with us?” Riksher says, looking back and forth between Aubin and I. “Darga, a word?”
We step out of earshot of the kid, which doesn’t take much with the thunder roaring overhead. “He can’t stay here,” I say. “It’s amazing he’s…that he’s still okay. But look at him,” I whisper. “We can’t leave him all alone.”
“So, what then? We take a child with us across the continent? He sits on the back of your horse, goes days between eating, sleeps a few hours each night, travels hard? Darga, be reasonable. What was your plan? Return him to Salis? All the way back to Salis? I thought you wanted to save your tribe.”
I go stiff as stone. He did not just try to use that against me. This Chiral did not just imply that it’s my negligence that’s harming my people.
I look back at Aubin, who still watches us distrustfully. “Ennis,” I say, appealing to the person who’s always on my side. “We have to take him. You know that. We can’t leave a kid all by himself.”
“Are you going to help me or not?” Aubin shouts. I look to Riksher desperately, pleading. His inhales deep through his nose, and his lip begins to curl. Austin apparently doesn’t think the prognosis is good because he drops his arms from across his chest.
“Fine,” he says. “You’re not the right one. Somebody else will come. And I’ll be here when they arrive.”
With that, he sets off at a dead run for the buildings at the edge of the square and disappears into an alleyway.
“Wait!” I call, stumbling after him. “Of course we’ll help! Aubin!”
Riksher grabs my arm. “Darga. Be reasonable. We’ll never find him. He could be anywhere. We go after him, and we’re just losing time. If we move on, we’re one step closer to helping Aubin and every other suffering Carnigan.”
“We can’t just leave him here with the runes,” I say, trying to shake him off. “He’s not well. He’ll die if he stays here. He’s a kid. The runes will kill him. Nothing can live with them, you’ve seen that. We have to get him away.”
Riksher goes dangerously still. “The runes are gone. We burned them.”
Shit. Of course he thinks burning the pile will be enough. He doesn’t know that all the metal will stay deadly. “There might be more in the towers,” I say, grasping at straws. But the centre of the city is clear. A few runes at the outskirts won’t make the whole city unlivable, not if the Yurals could survive so long with their deadly wall.
Riksher watches as I scramble to come up with something convincing. He steps closer and his hand on my arm turns from restraining to threatening. “Darga. Tell me what’s going on.”
I begin to hyperventilate. I do not want to have this conversation.
“Riksher,” Ennis says, alarmed. “You’re hurting her.”
“Tell. Me. What’s. Going. On.”
“If I tell you, will you help me with the kid?”
“Of course we’ll help,” Ennis says. “Just tell us what’s happening.”
It’s Ennis’s trust that undoes me. Riksher I could lie to, could lead around even if he knows it. I can handle Riksher knowing I’m a liar.
But not Ennis.
“The runes are still here. Fire doesn’t destroy them, not on metal.”
Ennis’s eyes bug out. He opens his mouth, then closes it. Riksher is perfectly still.
“So, everything we’ve done here?” Ennis asks. “This whole journey. Pointless, all of it?” He hangs his head and swings it from side to side, low. “You’re joking.”
“Just this city,” I say in what I hope is a placating tone. “Just the metal, I swear
. Everything else burns away, but the fire can’t melt the metal, so it stays and the runes stay.”
“Explain. Now,” says Riksher through gritted teeth.
“We can’t destroy it all, okay? There are parts that are important.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Okay. Deep breath. Cards on the table. “Niroek can still grow food.”
They both stare at me, waiting.
“Okay. Niroek has food. And we used to trade. You remember, Riksher, you must.”
“There’s no trade anymore,” he says.
“Because we don’t have the trains. But I think, if we can get them running, we might have a chance. We can move produce again, show Niroek we’re still worth their time. We can get food from them.”
“The…trains.”
I wait nervously.
“So, you lied to us about the fire,” he says, “because you wanted us to think that was enough. You were counting on us burning the trains and thinking we were done, and then what? You’d come back later, magically turn into a witch, and use the trains to feed the continent? Was that your plan? Were you going to be a big hero?” He seems to notice his hand still on my arm and drops it in disgust.
“We can talk about this later,” I plead. “Just help me find the kid.”
“I’ve got news for you, Darga. People are going to get hurt. Kids are going to die. And even if it’s not directly your fault, there’s always going to be something you could have done to change it. Some choice that would have saved these people, something you could have prioritized differently. No matter what choice you make, there is always going to be someone that gets hurt. This kid is your lesson.”
“Please.” I look to Ennis, who says nothing. Just stares at me as though seeing me for the first time. Repulsed. “Please just help me save the kid. We just set his home on fire. Don’t make me leave him here.”
“We wouldn’t have burned it if you hadn’t lied to us,” Ennis says.
His criticism cuts deep. I expected it from Riksher. Ennis, though, I’d thought would be on my side.
Riksher turns his back on me and walks stiffly away. I lock gazes with Ennis. “Please,” I whisper, and then he turns away, too.
“Don’t follow us,” he says. They gather up the supplies and disappear around a corner. I sink slowly to the ground.
Ventrin
twenty-two
They left me my horse, her saddlebags hung over a slivered wooden post nearby. I’d like to think that was Ennis’s idea.
I try not to look at Meeree as I untie her. She nudges me, hungry, and I push her nose away. I can’t deal with animals right now. I can’t deal with anything right now.
I mount up only because I can’t stand to stay in the city, especially not alone. Riksher and Ennis are right. I have no chance of finding Aubin if he doesn’t want to be found.
His death will be slow, but it will come.
I choke back a sob and twist my fingers in Meeree’s mane. I follow the tracks, the same way Riksher and Ennis are sure to have gone, because I don’t know where else to go. Maybe I can still catch up to them. Maybe I can make them change their minds.
They’re going to find a way to destroy the trains, for real this time. And sticking to the edge of Akisir feeling sorry for myself won’t free me from the responsibility I bear for that.
So Meeree and I follow the tracks.
When we come across a piece of witch tech wedged in the dirt, I abruptly dismount. I hit the ground running and revel in the pain that blooms across my fist as it slams into the small tower. Blood spurts from between my knuckles lands on the dirt, staining it brown. I punch again, and this time my knuckle splits entirely on the metal. I wail on the structure until my energy is fully spent, and then I collapse in front of it, staring up at it ruefully.
“This isn’t your fault,” I tell the tower, its purpose unknown, a relic of a civilization I will never understand. “It’s on me. All me. Mhyra was right, you know? Naive. Thinking I could direct the Chirals, work for them and work for me. But it was their choice to trust me. And why did they?” I look at my bloodied, purpled hands, the red seeping down past my wrists in little rivers, as slow-flowing as the doomed rivers of Carnigai. “Because of you. Because I see you. Because I know what you are.”
It’s so tempting to do nothing. I want to sit and let the desert roll over me, bury me like the tech we’re so afraid of. Just another relic from a time that is no more. I am young but obsolete because, despite all my strength and my medicine and my witch gimmick, I change nothing for the better. I am just a witness.
I fall onto my back, purposely hard enough for my head to connect with the ground. At least there is choice in pain.
Lying on my back, the upside-down silhouette of the dead city of Ventrin catches my eye, its spires rising sharp into the sky against the backdrop of the Cirrin mountain range. I roll onto an elbow and squint at it. How far? A few days’ ride, at most? It’s the ending point, the final destination for Riksher and Ennis. All tracks lead to Ventrin.
Which means, I realize with a shock, that the Dead City is probably full of trains.
I sit all the way up. Riksher and Ennis are going slowly, burning everything in their path. They won’t leave the tracks, and in a few weeks, they’ll be there. If I cut through the desert, I can beat them to Ventrin, especially since they don’t know it’s a race. They probably think I’ll go home to Barnab, try to live out the rest of my life in peace before I starve to death. Enough adventure for her. Back to the farm.
They are wrong.
#####
Away from the tracks, the desert becomes ominous. All at once, my deviation goes from a heroic last stand to a looming threat. By the time I allow myself to look back, the tracks have disappeared. I lead my horse in a straight line towards Ventrin, keeping my eyes peeled for some sign of life. Maybe another starving tribe I can fail to help. But it’s flat and yellow in every direction, just dirt and grasses and me on my old, lame horse.
“It’s okay, girl,” I say, missing Tilly terribly. My brown mare was a million times the horse this pinto is. I pat her reluctantly on the neck, and she whinnies, shying away from nothing.
After a few hours, I become aware of a distant ringing. At first, I think it’s just the sun having messed with my head, but it gets louder as we continue. I stop my horse and strain to listen.
Meeree wasn’t being paranoid. Somebody’s screaming.
I click her into a canter, trying to pinpoint the source of the sound. In this desert, it could be coming from anywhere. It comes and goes endlessly, sputtering off and rearing back up, clearer and more high-pitched than before.
I spur Meeree onward, the screams pulling my pulse rate higher and higher until I feel like I’m inside a boiling kettle. The grasses around me thin out and disappear, and the colourless ground begins to show a black foundation underneath the dirt. The horse shies away from the new terrain, the clacking of her hooves against the black rock unnerving both of us. The rock shines the sun’s light back up, making it difficult to see. We follow the screams further until I’m not even sure if Ventrin is on the horizon anymore. Everything is bright and hazy, and heat pools around my neck, between my breasts, down my waist. I swallow with a dry mouth and try to fight off the dizziness.
And still, the screams.
I order Meeree forward in a blind search for their source. “Hello?” I call into a swirling mist that kicks up around me and thickens with every step, blurring the desert around us. “Who's there? It's okay. I can help you.” But the screams only grow louder, surrounding me. We clack over the black stone in a frenzy, both of us blind and panicked, and then with a terrible cry, my horse dips massively forward and we pitch down.
And down.
She falls forward and lands headfirst with a snap that makes my stomach clench. She tips sideways and her body hits the ground with a crunch.
The crunch wasn’t just her, I realize with an explosive burst of p
ain. It was my leg, crushed between her body and the hard, hot ground. I scream, but the sound is everywhere now, a deafening howl that seems to echo from the earth itself.
I become aware of a new pain, a searing heat. More than just discomfort and fatigue, it slices at me with hot teeth. I try to roll away from it but it’s there, too, another knife stuck straight up from the ground. I can’t get enough away. I’m trapped under my dead horse.
I reach with my good shoulder for Meeree. I find her flank and lay my palm flat against it, but nothing happens. She is still. I want to see her body, to truly understand how I've harmed her with this foolish plan. But the steam rushing up from the ground creates a curtain between us. I quickly withdraw my hand, the heat too much. I curl into as small a ball as I can, trying to hide from the heat. “Help me,” I shout as loud as I can manage, but the screaming swallows my plea. I feel welts forming on my skin. I'm cooking alive.
I force myself to my feet, wailing as I try to drag my body out from under the horse. I consider just leaving my leg there, it hurts so much to pull it out. Cut it off and start fresh with the bones that aren’t shattered. But I somehow manage to wiggle free, and it doesn’t help. Without the pressure of her weight to hold it in place, my leg pulses erratically, a new burst of pain with each ruptured blood vessel. I crawl, the leg all but dead behind me.
The rushing white mist is everywhere, but I reach through it until my outstretched hands touch a solid surface. I scrabble against it for a handhold but it’s almost perfectly smooth. I come away with burnt fingertips. The mist obscures the edge, but the fall didn't kill me, so it can't be that far up. I try again, stretching up on my good leg, but the tips of my fingers touch only rock. I can’t reach.
Meeree. My stomach lurches again, but she's just a body now, and if I don't get out of here fast, there will be two bodies roasting in this pit instead of one. I can barely see through the mist. It's condensed into droplets all over me, soaking my hair and making it warm and heavy down my back. I place an unsteady foot on Meeree’s ribcage, dreading putting all my weight on her.