by S. W. Clarke
She was gone. Tamzin was gone again, and if this wasn’t its own madness, I didn’t know what was.
Loki stared into my eyes, still seated above me. He and the ghost children, who all gathered in, gazing down at me.
“She don’t look so well,” one remarked to another, joshing with an elbow.
“It’s that sickness,” the other said, her blond hair so real and matted I could practically reach out and touch the tangles.
“Clem.” Loki’s claws dug in past my shirt, ten little thorns. “The second vial of valerian.”
The second vial. There was another vial.
I began to reach for it, the muscles in my arm protesting the whole way, when I stopped short. “No,” I whispered.
“No?” Loki’s claws dug harder.
Around me, I could see it—the illusion of the labyrinth, though half of me didn’t really believe it was an illusion. Not the tables, the chairs, the faint growling still coming from the other room, the ghosts. Not the mesmerizing, glowing spot in the corner of the room.
My head angled right, toward the end of the room with the two candles. There, glowing like the black sun off an angel’s halo, was the place where the leylines crossed.
It was beautiful, shimmering, iridescent in its corruption.
The ghosts congregated around it, drinking, laughing, carousing—but over a dozen of them had gathered right there.
Where power and pleasure meet.
The blade was buried there.
I wouldn’t be able to see it all if I took the valerian. More importantly, I wouldn’t be able to destroy it.
I struggled to sit up, and as Loki hopped off, he said, “Didn’t you hear her? She said Rathmore’s coming—”
“I heard. Ten minutes.” I reached out, fingers closing around the Backbiter. “So help me.”
The kids all backed up, though Thom remained where he stood, eyes severe. “Help you do what?”
My palm slapped the ground, stinging as I shifted weight onto it. “The blade. I can’t leave without it.”
“The blade,” I heard one of the children whisper to another, her voice vibrating with excitement. The echo passed through the children and to the adults, who began to eye me, a lull passing through their drunkenness. “The buried blade,” the whispers said.
As I moved toward the far wall, no one made to stop me. In fact, the children side-stepped alongside me, hopping and chirping to each other as though they had been anticipating this. Or maybe it was the Backbiter they were excited by, the increasing glow of it in my hand, the chain clinking across the floor as I arrived at the candles.
When I did, I dropped to my knees, feeling the pull toward the leylines and the earth. The weapon wanted to be with itself, and the urge was like nothing I’d experienced. Not with the key to the rod or the rod to the chain.
This was the last piece slotting into place. Its power was so close, even the Spitfire purred inside me. And it never purred.
I had nine minutes.
What happened next felt automatic, as though I knew what to do. My hands went to the floor, fingers splayed, the Backbiter pressed between my palm and the old stone.
When I pressed down, the stone didn’t feel as solid as the rest. The grout between the stones was crumbled, some of it entirely gone. This part had once been dug up and then reassembled, stones placed back over but not properly repaired.
It would be an easy demolition.
The flames flared to life in an instant, covering my hands and the Backbiter, illuminating the dark room to brilliant proportions. Behind and at either side of me, gasps sounded, their voices as real as Tamzin’s had been.
I knew my eyes must be as milky as my face was bloody, as my bottom lip was fat and broken. The madness pulled at the threads of my lucidity, even as the Spitfire urged me to go, go, go.
Nothing could stop me now. I couldn’t stop me.
The flames rose high, enveloping my arms and face, casting the whole world in blue-white heat as, with a yell, I gripped the Backbiter with both hands, raised it up high, and drove the flaming weapon into the stone. It sank right through the rock, burning a hole down, down—until it encountered an equally hard substance. Orichalcum.
The Backbiter remained speared into the floor as my hands released it. I sensed Loki coming to stand by my side, watching as I watched my own fingers work. I grabbed at rock, flung it aside, removing the layer of stone until I quickly reached earth.
And then I dug, excavating the Scottish dirt around the weapon, deep and deeper, fast and faster, until, distantly, I realized it wasn’t Clementine digging at all.
It was the Spitfire.
The creature inside me had taken over without my consent. At least on the Siberian lake I had given it an invitation to take me over. This time, it had happened without even my awareness, until I was clawing like a feral creature at the dirt and turning my hands brown.
But you did give it consent, Rational Clem said. It’s part of you.
Of course it was. Of course. It had always been part of me, ever since I could form memory.
And so it was when I finally uncovered a glimpse of green, glowing metal laid flat into the earth that I had forgotten whether it was me or the Spitfire in control, and I had accepted that my fingernails were half broken. I had accepted that Loki hadn’t said a word. That the ghosts had gone silent.
I pressed the remaining dirt aside with frantic tenderness, uncovering an outline of the blade. Two feet long, curved like a scythe. Unscratched, totally undiminished by its time under the earth.
When I managed to dislodge it from the ground and lift it up in both hands, I felt the sting of its tip pricking my finger, like a religious rite.
Now that I’d given my blood to it, the blade and I were joined.
Chapter Forty-Two
When I struggled to my feet with the blade in one hand and the Backbiter in the other, the chain dangling long, I understood at once.
The chain was missing its head. Its lethal face.
I brought the blade toward the chain, and the two hummed with resonance, wanting to be together. And when I joined them, the flames from my hands licking over the metal, they reattached in total silence, seamlessly, as though they had never been apart.
And for the first time in my life—despite the broken bones and my lame leg—the Spitfire was fulfilled. Absolutely and completely, all its burning desire and need brought to a momentary halt as the power hummed in my hand, almost too intense and yet not enough. Not nearly enough.
The madness no longer tugged at my mind, and I knew I didn’t need the valerian. Not anymore. That was for weakness, for fear, for uncertainty.
With the Backbiter, I didn’t feel any of those things. Not even the pain of my broken bones and cuts and bruises.
I turned with the weapon in my hand, the blade swinging from the chain, its face turned upside down. Loki stood at my feet, the ghost children gathered around me, dozens of ghosts filling the room in an eerie hush.
And it was in that hush I felt it.
It was coming. From far, far away, something was coming. I didn’t know if it was good or bad, except that I was now tethered to something I could sense anywhere, and it was racing to my location.
For now, the leyline. I turned around, facing the spot where power and pleasure crossed—the two leylines corrupted by the Shade. And as the blade hung long beside me, I understood two things:
Now that I’d touched the thief’s blade, reassembled the weapon, I knew it wasn’t meant for anything as crude as severing heads from bodies. It was meant for thieving the most crucial thing in the world: magic—power. Which meant Aidan was right.
And I knew that Umbra’s training in the fall had been for this moment, when I would have the Backbiter in hand and stand before a corrupted leyline which I could see with my own eyes, and know exactly what to do.
“Careful,” Loki murmured by my side.
“You’ll either get Careful Clem or Quick Clem,�
� I said, “but not both.”
I gripped the rod in both hands at my waist, raised the chain end up and swung it once in front of my body, bringing the blade in a vertical arc by my left shoulder and then up and around. When it swept low to the ground, it skimmed the glow off the leylines, drinking in the darkness.
The blackness was swept aside like smoke, and some of it remained with the blade as it came back around. I caught the chain in my grasp, staring at the blade. The dark tendrils swirled around it, and then up the blade, up the chain, braiding their way toward me. Soon they slithered up the rod, and when they reached my fingers, I sucked in air just as the Spitfire did.
This was the Shade’s power. It was immense, and it was delicious, smoky and rich. It swirled up into my mouth, between my lips, down my throat, and after that, all pain was gone. This was a drug, and both the Spitfire and I wanted more of it.
I swept the blade like a scythe—once, twice, three more times over the leyline and the darkness, each time drawing in more of her power until it had receded entirely, and the glow that remained was as clear and brilliant as the sun.
Behind me, gasps sounded—the children and the adults.
The leylines had been uncorrupted.
Now the Shade’s power was inside me, thrilling through my chest, my veins. And still I wanted more. The Spitfire wanted more.
“Clem,” Loki said, sharp and insistent. Bringing me back. Reminding me.
When I forced my eyes down to his, I remembered: I was Clementine. And I wasn’t down here for this.
“Callum,” he said. “Tamzin said Callum is here.”
I turned away from the leylines. Around me, the labyrinth was as clear to me as the real world, a strange spiderweb enchantment. I could practically see the magic at work, the mesh of it throughout the room, keeping these souls trapped here.
“Move back,” I said, and Loki and the ghosts backed away from me, clearing a space.
I swung the Backbiter, the blade swinging up and shearing the air near the ceiling. As it did, it cleaved a rip in the enchantment, the illusion of the brothel torn away to reveal the dank old vault.
The ghosts’ faces lifted, staring wide-eyed, their five-hundred-year prison just revealed for what it was: a goddamn soul trap.
Beside me, Loki whispered, “What’d you just do, Clem?”
The blade whistled to a dangle beside me, the enchantment magic licking over it, seeping into my fingers. This was the Shade’s magic, too. “I tore a hole in the labyrinth, Loki.” I started forward, angling the Backbiter into another swing, the blade racing through the air on my opposite side. “Come on. We’re going to get Callum.”
I stalked through the vaults, the blade swinging as I went. I knew I was riding a high on this magic, that soon enough the pain would sear through me, send me to the ground. But for however long it lasted, I would use it.
Thom ran alongside me. “They’re escaping. The people are escaping.”
“Which people?”
“All the ones stuck down here.”
The souls. They were escaping the labyrinth. I took another swipe as we passed into the next room, ripping away another section of magical scaffolding. “Good. You should escape, too.”
“But more are coming,” he said as though he hadn’t heard me. “Jonet told me the big one is coming. She said he’s at the staircase by the bridge.”
“The big one,” I murmured, still in motion.
“He means Rathmore,” Loki said from beside me.
The boy nodded. “The big one with the sword.”
So Tamzin hadn’t been lying: Rathmore was coming for me. And he probably wasn’t alone.
“We should go,” Loki said. “Now. While we can.”
“No.” My walk quickened as we entered a fresh hallway. “Not yet. Callum’s here.”
“Callum?” the boy said.
“As big as the big one,” I said. “Long, black hair.”
“Oh!” Thom’s hand rose, finger pointing. “One of the sleepers. He’s in that one.”
He was pointing to the entrance to one of the vaults at the end of the hallway.
I didn’t know what “the sleepers” could possibly mean, but I was used to not knowing anymore. I only knew recognition had entered Thom’s voice, and that was good enough for me.
“How long has he been asleep?” I asked.
“Oh, ages. They brought him in here a year ago, and then a woman did magic and his body stayed but the rest of him walked off.”
This was familiar, but I couldn’t place exactly how. “But he’s asleep.”
“Aye,” Thom said without hesitation. “As long as he’s sleeping, his soul can’t go to Heaven.”
The pain was starting to set in, creeping up my limbs, gnawing at my chest and face. Bones were definitely broken, but my legs and arms still functioned. The blade still swung. I kept moving forward.
Thom danced alongside me, sidestepping. “You’re mad, but I like you. So we’ll help you.”
Before I could ask him what that meant, he raced the opposite direction, bare feet slapping over the stones. And a few seconds later, his child’s voice rang out through the vaults, echoing back to me.
It was accompanied by other children’s voices, a cacophony of noise and running feet. A chaos only children could create.
They were buying me time.
Loki and I came to the vault entrance the boy had pointed to, and flames burst along the length of the Backbiter the moment the thought entered my mind that I needed light.
Before us were bodies hanging from shackles along the wall, each of them seated with their heads down and their arms affixed high, legs out before them. They weren’t decomposing; they just seemed to be...not there. And as I came forward, lifting faces, I didn’t recognize any of them.
Not until I arrived at the far end of the room. There, his shadow dancing in the light off the flames, was the sleeper I’d come for. I knew it was him without even seeing his face.
Callum Rathmore hung from the wall, chains affixed into the stone and glowing cuffs around his wrists. His clothes were damp, soiled. His black hair veiled his head, which dropped toward his chest. One leg was folded under him, the other straight out.
I rushed to him, dropping to my protesting knees, setting the Backbiter down to free up my hands. When I pressed his hair aside, he didn’t respond. His head didn’t lift, and he seemed dead.
Or asleep. Because when my hand went to his chest, it rose and fell under my fingers.
“Callum?” I said, but I got no response. As though he were in a coma, or wasn’t even in his body.
Like the will-o-wisps.
I stared at him, eyes wide, my hand still on his chest.
This was the kind of magic the Shade had used five centuries ago to remove mages’ souls from their bodies and place them inside will-o-wisps. Except Callum’s soul had been released into Falaichte, the labyrinth, and Callum’s body hadn’t died.
Chapter Forty-Three
I stood, the Backbiter in hand, turning a circle. “Callum!” I called out, as though his soul would hear me over the yelling echoing all around, the children’s clamoring.
No one came. The only person whose eyes were on me were Loki’s.
“Clem,” he said, “you’re bleeding.”
When I looked down, blood slid down the length of my left arm, dripped from my fingertips. I was bleeding from so many places, hurting in so many places, I couldn’t even figure out which was the worst of them. But I did know one thing: even through the adrenaline, I was starting to feel lightheaded.
Time was running out. The Shade’s power had come and gone so quickly.
But I couldn’t leave without him.
Thom’s words came back to me: As long as Callum’s body was alive, his soul couldn’t leave the Earth. Which meant there had to be a way to join his soul with his body again.
I could figure that part out later.
I turned toward Callum’s body. My fingers we
nt up to the white, glowing cuff around his wrist, and the cold off it scalded my fingers. I yanked my hand away. I didn’t know what kind of magic this was, and I didn’t care.
It was cold. And I could always defeat cold.
I raised the Backbiter, gripping the chain in one hand, and called on the Spitfire. Allowed it to take over. The Backbiter raced with fresh, hot flame licking a foot out from the weapon.
“Clem, Loki began, “you can’t—”
“You don’t know what I can or can’t do.” With a growl, I swiped the flaming blade through the air. It raced toward the two chains affixed to the wall, sliced through them without any resistance at all. Callum’s arms dropped, and he slumped, falling to his side.
“Okay,” Loki said. “I guess you can now.”
The Spitfire receded, spent already. I had overused it, or maybe I just didn’t have the life energy to do much of anything.
The children’s voices were getting closer. Which meant William Rathmore was getting closer. And through the blood rushing in my ears, I heard Thom cry out, “He’s coming!”
Now I heard it, distantly: clanking. The clanking of metal sabatons on stone.
I grabbed Callum’s hands, leaned back, testing how draggable he was.
Not at all. He must have been over two hundred pounds.
When I released him, I fell to a seat, breathing hard, overwhelmed by the pain, the bloodloss, the exertion. Stars appeared in my vision, white spots blinking in and out as I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them again.
Loki spun toward the doorway, tail upright and bushy. “Do you see that?”
I squinted at the doorway, where I could have sworn a strangely hued light grew and grew in the empty hallway. “Loki,” I whispered, “am I dying, or is that a blue light?”
“It’s definitely blue.”
In the next moment, the blue glow turned into a flash of white light, blinding my retinas. I threw a bloody hand up over my face—
And then I heard the whispers.
They were voices I had first heard years ago, back before I’d known who they were, whom they belonged to, why they spoke to me.