Sanctum

by Sarah Fine

  I handed my knives to Malachi. “She’s still grieving for him, isn’t she?”

  He looked startled. “Yes. It’s been years, but I don’t think it feels that long to her.”

  I wanted to ask what had happened, but the look on his face warned me away. Like Ana had when we touched on the topic of Takeshi, Malachi was suddenly deeply absorbed in meticulous, needless activity, positioning and rearranging the knives within that cloth pouch. As he folded it and put it away, I got up and headed to the door, once again dreaming of a hot shower.

  “We’re not quite done, Lela. If you can’t keep attackers at a distance, you’d better be able to fight back when they get close. Hand-to-hand is next.”

  I froze midstep. “And who was the sadist who brought that particular style with him?”

  He tilted his head and grinned. “Me.”

  FIFTEEN

  TAKESHI MIGHT HAVE TAUGHT Malachi how to use a staff and throw a knife, but Malachi’s merciless efficiency was apparently something he’d learned during his short, brutal life on Earth. As lethal as he was with the scimitar, his body was obviously his weapon of choice. It was something we had in common. The weapons just felt awkward to me, like I might be at more risk for hurting myself than hurting someone else. I was more at home with up-close fighting, and I was pretty good at it. But Malachi made me better.

  “When you’re fighting, there aren’t any rules. You must defend yourself and neutralize your opponent quickly. No fancy moves—you want every encounter to be as brief as possible. Do whatever is necessary to take down your attacker, no matter how cruel it seems. Kind of like what you did to Hani.” He gave me a wicked smile. “That was perfect. Except you should have made sure he was down before you ran.”

  I rolled my eyes. “If I’d done that, six of his buddies would’ve pinned me to the floor a few seconds later.”

  He frowned. “Good point. Run faster next time.”

  “Yes, sir.” I grinned and shot him a mock salute.

  “Next, use any available object as a weapon. I think you understand this one well. I saw what you were going to do with that beer bottle. It would have been excellent if your attackers weren’t wielding swords. If that happens again, just throw it at them and, like I said, run faster.”

  “Wow, this is helpful. When do I get to hit you?”

  He snorted. “You seem so eager. All right then, if it will make you happy.”

  He beckoned with his hands, inviting me to attack. I stepped forward and aimed a punch at his groin. Hell, it had worked with Hani.

  Malachi laughed as he blocked me. “Excellent strategy, Lela, but don’t be too predictable.”

  And then I was on the floor, my arm bent up behind me.

  “Stop waiting for the next thing to happen,” he instructed. “Make the next thing happen. Up.”

  I jumped to my feet and tried to punch him in the face, but he ducked and yanked my legs out from under me. My breath huffed from my lungs as I hit the floor.

  He smiled down at me, his hands curled around my ankles, resting them on the sides of his thighs. “If you had actually hit me, your hand would probably hurt more than my face. Don’t forget your elbows. Up.”

  When I obeyed, he showed me just how useful elbows could be. I was on the floor again within a few seconds, wheezing.

  I laid my forehead on the mat and rubbed at the twin aches in my chest, one where he had hit me, one that went deeper. I could tell he was holding back in a major way. He wasn’t going easy on me, but he obviously didn’t want to hurt me. Every time he knocked me to the floor, his hands lingered a bit longer as he helped me up, and the look in his eyes was warmer. And I liked it. More than I ever expected to.

  That didn’t mean I didn’t want to prove myself. I got up, gritting my teeth, and started to circle him. He watched me as I closed in, his face utterly solemn, like he was actually taking me seriously. I faked to the right and then jerked back and spun, using all my momentum to elbow him in the stomach, which was sort of like elbowing a brick wall. He grunted, but I had no time to celebrate the fact that I’d actually landed a blow, because he immediately planted his foot, took my head in his hands, and brought his other knee up.

  “Nice one,” I muttered in a nasally voice a second later, my nose pressed flat against his kneecap.

  “It’s hard to go wrong with a well-placed knee strike.” He lowered his knee and lifted my face to his. “Are you all right?”

  We were chest-to-chest, and his hands were still on the sides of my face. He’d left himself unguarded. I considered kneeing him in the balls for half a second but was completely distracted when his thumb stroked across my cheek. I sucked in a tight breath, stunned by the heat of his touch and the look in his eyes, my heart skipping unsteadily. After a few seconds of staring at each other, he blinked and his hands fell away.

  “Come,” he said abruptly. “I’ll teach you how to disarm a knife attack.”

  And so it went. And went. And went. I lost count of how many times I hit the floor, but weirdly, I was enjoying myself and feeling more at ease than I had since arriving in the dark city. I was hopeful and getting excited about heading out to look for Nadia. With Malachi and Ana going with me, how could I not succeed?

  Then he attacked me from behind.

  It happened quickly. Later, I realized I should have expected it. Maybe it was because adrenaline already ran thick through my veins. Maybe it was because my guard was down, and I wasn’t braced against the memories. Maybe it was because he grabbed me around the neck in a frighteningly strong grip, and I couldn’t get loose. But when he wrapped his other arm over my chest and I felt his body behind mine, everything went black, and all I could do was scream and claw and kick.

  Facedown facedown I can’t breathe and he will crush me here and leave me helpless and empty and worthless and bleeding until next time and no one will hear me scream.

  When I opened my eyes, I was curled into a corner. My lips tingled, and black spots floated in front of me. My arms were folded over my head, shielding myself from…nothing. It was quiet. I lifted my head. Malachi sat a few feet away, and I couldn’t read his face. Red furrows tracked across one of his cheeks and the backs of his hands.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  I wiped the tears from my cheeks with impatient, angry swipes and pushed away the rebellious tendrils of hair that had escaped my braid. “No, I’m sorry. That’s embarrassing. I tend to panic when someone gets behind me.” I got to my feet shakily, keeping my back to the wall.

  He blew out a long breath as he stood. “I knew that. I felt it the night I interrogated you. I saw it in your eyes when Sil grabbed you. But I did it anyway, and I shouldn’t have.”

  “No, you should have. Do you think the next Mazikin who gets the drop on me is going to ask for permission to approach from the rear?”

  “Why was it so bad this time?” he asked. He looked like he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear my answer.

  “I don’t know. Some times are worse than others.”

  He winced.

  I shook my head, defeated by my own frustration. “I hate feeling out of control,” I whispered. “I can’t remember what just happened.”

  “You panicked. I let you go when I realized what was happening, but you didn’t stop.”

  I took a deep breath, eyeing the door. I had regained the feeling in my lips, and my vision had cleared. But I still felt jittery, like I wanted to run. “How long did it last?”

  He looked at the floor. “Not long.” Too long, shouted the slump of his shoulders and the clench of his fists.

  “You have to show me what to do,” I said firmly.

  He didn’t answer me and kept his eyes on his boots.

  “You have to. You can show me what to do, and maybe I can learn to stay calm. Not freak out. Not black out. If you’re so concerned that I’ll need to protect myself, then you should do this for me.” The silence was deafening. “Malachi.”

  As soon as I said his
name, he brought his eyes to mine. They were dark with sorrow. “I don’t want to be the one who brings it back for you, Lela. I don’t want you to see him, whoever he was, when you look at me.”

  I almost relented because he sounded so sad. But I hated this feeling of losing control, of being helpless. I was frightened of what it might mean if it happened in the arms of an enemy next time. “I’m sorry. That’s why you have to do this for me.”

  He turned away. “Fine. Now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Slow first. I approached too quickly last time.”

  “Okay.”

  “Go to the center of the room. Close your eyes.”

  I obeyed, tensing to fight the nausea. But this time, as he came up behind me, he issued nonstop instructions. I clung to his voice and followed it blindly. He showed me how to use my body’s instinctive movements, exploit the weakness of the wrist, and pinpoint the attacker’s most vulnerable spots in order to shake free. He taught me how to turn and strike once I’d escaped. He made me practice it over and over again. Finally, he approached silently and attacked, and I didn’t panic as I evaded him.

  It wasn’t perfect, or complete, or permanent. But for me it was victory. Malachi didn’t look so sure as he wiped the sweat from his face and tidied the room. He kept rubbing the back of his neck, like it was really hurting him. But I was pretty sure he wasn’t in any physical pain.

  I had gotten exactly what I needed, but I suddenly felt guilty for asking it of him. It seemed like I’d taken something from him, and I didn’t know how to give it back, how to make him feel better. I didn’t know him at all, I realized. It only felt like I did.

  He switched off the lamps as he approached the door and turned to see if I was following. That jittery, uneasy feeling was on me again, but now it was because I had no idea how to fix this, whatever had happened over the past hour. And yet I desperately wanted to try.

  “Hey, Malachi, I know it’s late, and I know we’re leaving tomorrow. Before we go…” I sucked in a breath and continued quickly. “Before we go, I was wondering…if you’d show me what you do for fun around here.”

  It was the most romantic thing I’d ever said to a boy. But as the words left my mouth, I heard how stupid they sounded. If I’d said that to any guy I’d known before, he’d have snickered and made the worst possible interpretation. It’s quite possible the interaction would have ended in violence.

  Malachi just stared at me like he was turning my words over in his head, letting them loop around his brain a few times. “Okay,” he said. “Come with me.” He pulled the door open and ascended the stairs. I followed, swallowing my relief like candy.

  He didn’t exit the stairway when we reached the main floor. Soon we were climbing up a spiraling staircase into the tower that jutted up from the roof of the Guard Station. My thighs complained bitterly after the grueling workout they’d endured, but I kept quiet as I followed Malachi, who maintained a steady pace as he proceeded upward. I was having a silent argument with myself about whether to break down and ask for a rest when I heard a door open directly above me and looked up to see him climb through it. He held his hand out to me. Wind gusted through my hair and dried my sweat as I took it, letting his strength compensate for the failure of my exhausted legs.

  We were at the very top of the tower. It was a small space, only a few feet wide—enough room for only the two of us. The surrounding wall was waist high, an iron railing pressed into the crumbling mortar between the stones.

  “I come here,” he said softly. All around us, the silent city crouched on its hill, eating the light. I turned in place, thinking Malachi must have used this view to draw parts of his map. It was easier to see and comprehend from here, at least until my eyes hit the solid mass of skyscrapers at the peak of the hill.

  He pointed to the wall of buildings. “We’ll go to the north, beyond there. That’s the oldest part of the city. The buildings…I know it sounds strange, but they get taller every year. The oldest ones, in the center, are the tallest. The shorter buildings near the wall are newer. But they get taller, too. You see, if someone in the city wants a house, it grows. If they want a pagoda or a hut or a tower, it grows. All they have to do is want. Wish. Desire. Then the buildings take on a life of their own, fed by the wanting. But what comes of that wanting is never good. Or satisfying. Just…big. So the city grows, and the misery within it grows. Like a disease.”

  “Is there a cure?”

  “Sure, but not everyone is willing. I think some people like the disease better. It’s more familiar, and they don’t want to give it up, even once they know they can be healed of it. The cure itself, of course, can be very difficult to take,” he said, sounding regretful.

  I thought of Nadia, out there in that vast darkness, alone in her sorrow. But Malachi was saying there was a way out, a way Nadia could be cured of her sadness. She would be made whole again. And I would make sure it happened.

  Malachi leaned back against the wall. He pointed to the white building on the far edge of the city, the one that had called to me so clearly just before I’d come through the Gates. It still tugged at me, luring me forward.

  “That’s the Sanctum,” he said.

  I took an automatic step back. The building that drew me in like a magnet was the very one I wasn’t yet ready to visit.

  “Good to know,” I muttered.

  He closed his eyes as a light gust of wind hit us. It was the closest thing to fresh air I had experienced, and I watched Malachi’s chest expand as he breathed it in. I turned back to the east. The buildings were not as tall there, and the wall of the city was easily visible. Beyond that I could see the wild forest. A huge flock of birds burst out of the trees and flew over the canopy. A moon hovered low and fat and bright just above them. At least, I assumed it was bright. The veil that hung over the city dimmed its beauty and rendered its glow weak and gray.

  “The darkness is part of the city,” Malachi said, seeing me squint. “But if you know how to look, you can tell day from night. You can see the sun. Its light doesn’t reach us here, but I’ve learned to see it.”

  “How long have you been here?” I was afraid I already knew the answer, give or take. But for his sake, I hoped I was wrong.

  He sighed. “The passing of years is more difficult to track than the passing of days. And I try not to think about it. What year is it on Earth now?”

  I told him and immediately regretted it.

  He looked down at his boots. “Oh, it’s been a long time, then. Longer than I thought. I don’t want to tell you.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be nosy.”

  Another sigh. His gaze shifted to me, and he hesitantly said, “I’ve been in this city for about seventy years.” I did some mental arithmetic and nodded. As far as I could remember, it fit. It meant he would have died…killed himself…in the early 1940s.

  He looked wary, like he was trying to figure out my reaction. “You don’t look surprised.”

  I took his hand in mine. As my fingers slipped under the cuff of his sleeve, he flinched, but then he got tangled in my gaze and held still. I pushed the sleeve to his elbow and ran my thumb over his tattoo. “I saw it. When you were unconscious. I didn’t know for sure, but I learned something about it in school. About what the Nazis did to the Jews and others who came into the concentration camps.”

  “Yes. Ana told me they teach it in school now. That people call it the ‘Holocaust.’ A horrible word, but it fits exactly.” He tilted his head, and his eyes locked onto the tattoo. “History. It feels very fresh to me sometimes. At other times it feels like thousands of years ago. And at all times it feels smaller to me than that word. History is big. For me it was just my family, and my neighborhood, and my city, slowly closing in around me. I didn’t even notice at first that it was all shrinking and strangling and falling apart. I was too young to understand it. But when I didn’t believe it could get worse, it got worse. It kept getting worse.”

  I sque
ezed his hand. “I’m sorry.” I didn’t know what I was sorrier for: what he went through or that I was making him talk about it.

  “It’s fine,” he reassured me, but his voice revealed the lie. He let the moon pull his gaze from his arm, and I watched his expression as it slowly transformed from grief to something softer.

  Longing.

  He longed to escape. He was escaping in that moment. I knew the feeling well, staring at a spot on the wall where the wallpaper peeled away and imagining myself crawling through to the other side, far away from where I actually was, what I was actually going through. How many times had I done that? How many times had I concentrated so hard that I wasn’t present in my own body? How many times had it saved me from shattering into a million pieces?

  He seemed so distant that I had to ask. “Are you here?”

  “No,” he whispered.

  I didn’t know whether to feel happy or sad, because I wanted him to be with me, but I wanted him to be free as well. It didn’t seem possible to have both. I reached up and touched his face, the swollen ridges where I’d scratched him in my panic, the angular slope of his jaw, the iron-silk feel of his skin.

  My hand trailed down to his chest. I spread my fingers to absorb the heat and beat of his heart. I half expected him to push me away. Instead, he spread his arms and gripped the iron railing that surrounded us, leaving himself open, giving me control.

  I put my other hand on his waist and leaned forward, resting my forehead against his chest. It was the same position I’d put him in when I made my sorry attempt to seduce him for the nonexistent key. Tonight my heart was beating as fast as it had then, and so was his. Yet there was nothing I wanted from him this time except for him to be right there with me. His knuckles turned white as he grasped the rail, like he was straining. Or restraining. But his expression was distant, and it didn’t look like he was coming back anytime soon. So I decided to join him.

  I took a breath, inhaling the leather and sweat from his skin, and turned around to face the forest. He was behind me. It felt all right because, after tonight, I knew he wouldn’t hurt me.