Toil & Trouble

by Jessica Spotswood

  “Xosia isn’t wicked,” I protest, probably too quickly.

  “Of course you don’t think so.” He turns toward Savannah. “We need a mender here, not some backwoods necromancer.”

  Savannah keeps her stance neutral, her expression cool. “The High Warlock’s already sent our best menders to work on one of these poor souls, and they weren’t able to do a damn thing. This calls for special measures. I’ve got permission from the High Warlock himself.” She drops her arms to her sides and storms past Naveen. “So let’s get on with it.”

  “On with what? What poor souls?” I ask. Dread creeps up my spine like a frosty hand.

  Naveen huffs and turns to follow Savannah. “See for yourself.”

  I follow them into the back rooms, past the shelves of bottled spells and charms, to the storeroom full of untapped kegs. A burly woman stands guard, marked with the same Lady of Vengeance lines as Naveen—gold on her walnut skin. Beside her, in the dim light, sits a figure: a dark-haired, bronze-skinned boy, maybe a year younger than Savannah and myself. He stares right at me with cold steel eyes. He’s not glaring, exactly—I know a glare when I see one, but this is more a lifeless stare, like the creepy dolls in the antiques shop off 12. His chest rises and falls with calm, even breath, but otherwise he’s perfectly still. Expressionless. Empty.

  The cold dread wraps around my throat and squeezes.

  “He closed up last night, or was supposed to,” Naveen says. “When I came back this morning, though, the whole place was wide open. Unlocked, unswept, chairs still down. I came back here to see if we’d been robbed, and found him standing in the corner, staring at the wall.”

  I swallow down the lump in my throat. “Has he done...well, anything at all? Since then?”

  “Not really. Mostly, he’s completely motionless. We pushed him into the chair, and he sat. Except...” His voice cracks. “Well, when I tried to check the—the cuts on his arms and face. That’s when he went wild, swinging his arms and snapping at me. But the moment I backed off, he went right back to this.”

  I squint into the darkness. I’d missed the cuts at first, but now, they’re practically screaming at me. One across his forehead. One down each cheek. One on each arm. And with a sickening twist to my gut, I already know what we’d find on his legs, too.

  A long slit, clean but deep down to the bone. Stitched back up with Xosia’s blessings. Only this is no blessing at all.

  “The Pall’s come back for us, hasn’t it?” the guard mutters. “The Lady’s cultists are tryin’ to kill us all.”

  Anger blooms inside me, white-hot and scorching. I’m already fingering the pendant dangling from my neck as I step toward her. All the dark curses I never used, all the ugly spells I’d scraped together at the Conservatory—they sit on my tongue, ready to be unleashed.

  But I can’t. I can’t betray Xosia that way and lose control. Even if it’s just what they expect me to do. Maybe because that’s what they expect. And with that thought, the anger simmers rather than flares.

  Savannah raises her hand like she’s going to hold me back, but I won’t give her the satisfaction. “The High Warlock thanks you for bringing this to our attention,” she says, all syrup-sweet and diplomatic as hell. “But it’s a matter for the Priests now. We’ll need to take him with us, if you don’t mind.”

  “Why?” Naveen asks, eyes wide. “What are you going to do with him? I mean—if he isn’t really dead—”

  “Oh, we’ll bring him around,” Savannah says quickly. Then turning to me, her smile sharpens. “I’m sure you can find some way to undo this, can’t you, Mattie?”

  “That,” I say, “is for Xosia to decide.”

  * * *

  I want to take the boy back to my morgue—it’s where I feel safest, after all, my own little fief. But Savannah insists we take him to one of the labs in the Capitol’s basement. The High Warlock wants a full accounting of my work soon as it’s done, no matter the hour. Judging by what little Savannah’s told me, this isn’t an isolated case. What that means for the Sawtooths—what it means for me—has me knotted up inside.

  “Holler if you need anything,” Savannah says, her voice echoing off the gleaming marble floor and walls. “I’ll be just around the corner.”

  I lock the lab’s door as securely as I can and rub my pendant until my mind runs clear.

  I pull my ceremonial knife out of my belt loop and start examining the boy. The more I look, though, the more that seed of dread takes root. Whoever’s done this to him, they’re deeply familiar with my work, that much is clear. Except my method’s meant to usher the dead into the Lady’s embrace—protect their energy so it can’t be used for anything else.

  This, it would appear, is just the “anything else” I feared.

  It looks like they drugged him first, or so the streaks of purple at the corners of his lips would suggest. Then came the cuts—deep but thin, scraping to the bone. One on each limb, on his brow, and on each cheek. Whoever did this put a lot of effort into stemming the bleeding, and keeping each cut nice and clean.

  And then—

  I remember standing in the Conservatory hall, the air thick with adrenaline and stale perfume, presenting my graduation project to the Priests. There hasn’t been a Priest of Slumber since the Pall, of course, but they were treating me like I was the closest thing to it, and I wanted to prove that I was worthy. After having to piece together the works of former Xosia servants from mildewy, half-censored records and pages clipped from journals, I’d forged my own way to carry out the Lady of Slumber’s works. And for my project, ironically, I’d aimed at preventing another Pall.

  The souls are the key, I’d said, standing over a corpse, ceremonial knife still in hand. We draw them out and lay their business to rest. Their souls go on to the Lady, and no one else can make use of them once they’re in her embrace. A new practice—but one that will keep us all safe from that ancient threat.

  But someone’s done made use of these souls after all. They’ve sliced into this boy and teased his soul right out of his bones. Problem is, they’ve done it while he’s still alive.

  Humming along to the Luz Alvado song from the Starlight Club, I pick up the ceremonial knife and move toward the boy’s feet. It doesn’t feel right doing this here instead of my morgue, but I’ll make do with what I’ve got. I can’t commend his soul to Xosia while he’s still alive—or whatever state he’s in right now—but if I examine it closely, then maybe I can determine who did this to him, and how.

  The boy lies unmoving on the workbench before me, limp and oblivious. But the moment I reach out for the stitches along his calf, he lurches up.

  “Hrrphhh, mrrrphhh,” he says, or something like it. I’m not really paying attention, because he wraps his hands around my throat and digs his thumbs into the underside of my jaw.

  I drop the knife and try to hold my hands up in surrender. “Sorry! I’m sorry—”

  The minute I let go, he sighs, eases his grip, and slumps back onto the workbench, lifeless once more.

  And no one else can make use of them...

  I swear under my breath, then stick my head out the door to call for Savannah.

  * * *

  Savannah brings in a library cart brimming with dusty folios and cracked leather journals. “Looks like some of the ones on your list were checked out, so I guess we’ll have to make do with these.”

  “Thanks.” I pick up one of the old notebooks I used extensively for my project, then glance nervously toward Savannah. I’d never put up with her or anyone else saying it, but there was certainly truth in what Naveen at the Starlight Club had said—the Lady’s gifts can be used for malice. The Pall was proof enough of that. And in the darkness of a ruined laboratory, or amidst the flickering embers of my school notes that someone burned, or in the crushing silence of the bathroom when they sealed me inside—I surely dreamed of
using them that way.

  I flip through the pages but keep them close to my chest. The truth is right there, between the lines: all the spells I could have worked, if I’d changed my process just a hair. If I’d used it on live subjects, instead.

  The dark root of my old urges spreads. It coils around my limbs, my neck, my thoughts. I could have worked this spell—snatching control of someone’s soul and making them dance on my strings. Assign them a task—guarding the stitches on their limbs, for instance—and leave them to carry it out. Because that’s exactly what it looks like they’ve done to this boy. Just like the Pall, when the old cultists turned half the Sawtooths into their servants. I could squeeze the very essence of someone like Savannah out of her and force her to do as I like.

  The dark root whispers: I could do it still.

  “Find something?” she asks, looking up from the records she’s poring through.

  I shrink back, shame flaring on my cheeks. Does she know what I was thinking? Is it written all over me like the Dark Lady’s prayers? It’s been a long time since I entertained those thoughts, but being around Savannah again makes them come rushing back. I shake my head to clear it. “I was just thinking how—”

  A shadow stirs behind her, beyond the doorway to the lab. Then, like an echo, the boy on the slab lurches to his feet.

  Savannah swears. “Now hang on, we aren’t finished with you—”

  He shoves her back with force. I jump up and reach for one of the basic spells from our Conservatory days—an air-thickening spell—but my tongue’s clumsy with it. I haven’t used any spells not meant for Xosia’s ears in a while. Savannah reacts faster, trying to weave a net across the doorway to keep the boy from leaving.

  But he brushes it off like there isn’t even anything there, and takes off down the hall.

  “There was someone down there,” I say. “Just a minute ago.”

  “Do you think it’s whoever’s controlling him?” She takes off at a sprint, strappy heels clacking against the marble floors, and I shuffle after her in my high-tops.

  “Could be. Where’s he going?”

  We both skid around a corner, nearly crashing into each other and the wall. We’re just in time to see him disappear down a stairwell.

  Savannah swears under her breath. “He’s headed for the tunnels.”

  The tunnels connect the Capitol to the Conservatory, plus a few other administrative offices. I grab her by the arm and pull her with me toward the stairwell. “Come on. He could lose us quick down there.”

  We reach the bottom of the staircase, but it’s anyone’s guess which direction he went in the honeycomb of tunnels that stretch beneath the town. Savannah fixes me with a determined stare. “This way,” she says. “The paths beneath the Conservatory.”

  I nod, my pulse pounding. The Conservatory is about the last place in the Sawtooths I ever want to be. But we don’t have a choice. I’ve got to stop whoever’s done this to him—and whatever else I fear they have planned.

  Cold sweat drips down my spine as I head deeper into the bowels of the tunnel complex. Any minute now, I should be surfacing into the labs and study rooms underneath the Conservatory. The same rooms where I first designed my work. If someone’s perverted my designs—if they’re trying to create another Pall—

  Something throbs in the back of my skull, a dense sound that’s too low to hear. Xosia’s sigil grows warm where it rests against my sternum, underneath my T-shirt. Someone’s working the Dark Lady’s spells nearby. Someone who isn’t me.

  I skid to a stop as a turn brings us over a stonework ledge, overlooking a narrow channel of water far below. We’re in some kind of chamber far beneath the Sawtooths, the Capitol and the Conservatory somewhere far above us. But down here is a different world, one I’m betting has escaped the High Warlock’s notice. Probably all the rest of the Priests’, too.

  “Where’d he go?” Savannah whispers. She’s trying to be quiet, but her words bounce off the rounded chamber.

  “Only one way to go.” I point toward the narrow staircase that wraps around the chamber’s lip.

  Savannah eyes it warily. She’s still in her evening gown and strappy pumps. “Um...you go first.”

  I follow the staircase down toward the next chamber with my heart in my throat. When I step inside, though, I see why.

  Sparks of light—dozens of them—twist together and seethe in the heart of the round chamber, coiling like ropes. They aren’t just any lights, though, I realize as the sigil practically burns into my flesh. I know these strands of energy too well.

  The souls harvested from the dead.

  Except these aren’t from the dead—or from the living. They’re from people trapped in between. Shucked out of still-living bodies and leashed up like attack dogs, ready to obey a wizard’s command. Was this how the cultists of the Pall enslaved thousands to their will so long ago?

  But I already know the answer to that. This is the dark usage of the Lady’s gift that, in my darkest moments, I thought of seizing for myself. And now that I’m asking the question once more—of what other ways the Lady’s magic could be used—I feel that pull again.

  We obey, a voice whispers—a sparkling strand of energy dancing toward me. We are meant to obey.

  But this isn’t what Xosia wants. Death is her final gift, not a holding cell. Only she can claim these souls and shape them to her own purpose—it’s not for me or anyone else to decide.

  “Mattie...” Savannah whispers, but she trails off.

  The energy swirls around me—whispering, crying, screaming, shouting the secrets of the not-living and the not-dead alike. It shouts the secrets in my own heart.

  The dark curses that sat sour on my tongue every time the other Conservatory students taunted me.

  The Dark Lady’s forgotten teachings itching in my fingertips whenever the High Warlock disparaged me, disparaged my work.

  The cold hunger in my chest when I look out at the Sawtooths, the lands I aim to protect, and see only distrust and suspicion looking back.

  You could do this. You have this power, they sing. They caress my cheeks like silk ribbons; they lift my hair and make it dance in their breeze. You could hold our leash. You could make them all believe.

  You could make them all understand.

  “I found your notes,” someone says.

  A boy steps forward from the far side of the chamber. Amber and violet and teal lights dance across his face, obscuring his features, but he looks young—young as Savannah and me when we studied at the Conservatory. Young enough to be one of the new Xosia acolytes Savannah mentioned. He reaches toward the mass of energy and snatches a fistful of it with an angry curl to his lips.

  “Your research was so helpful. Far better than those useless old tomes in the archives. But you didn’t go far enough—not nearly.”

  I grip the sigil around my neck, even though it feels molten hot. Savannah’s not standing behind me any longer. Where the hell did she go? “This isn’t how the Lady’s gifts are meant to be used. Those souls belong to their bodies, or to her—not you.”

  “No? And why should they have their souls, these cowards, these wicked people? They hated you too at the academy—I know they did. And they hate and fear you now.”

  “I don’t need them to love me,” I say. “I serve Xosia, the Lady of Slumber. She’s enough.”

  “Not for me.” He twists the strands of souls in his hand, and I feel a tug deep in my gut.

  The souls crackle, seething, angry. Their whispers turn to shouts; their words shred into sharp consonants, lashing and stinging at me.

  Lady of Eternal Slumber, guide me, I pray. These souls aren’t ready for your embrace. Give me the strength I need to stop him—let me return these souls to where they belong—

  “They hate and fear us because they hate and fear Xosia. They know she’ll come for th
em someday. But with all our spells, our glamours, our magic—no one wants to admit it. They think they can keep puttin’ her off.”

  Footsteps sound all around us; slowly, people begin to file into the room. Not just any people—they’re the ones whose souls he’s currently wrangled. Some I recognize, like the lady down at Jenny’s diner who’s always got a stack of pancakes towering over her. One of the guys from our class at the Conservatory. He never made it to Priest, but he sells some healing stones and quick fixes down off the interstate.

  Just people from the Sawtooths, people like any other—fearful but hopeful, capable of hate and love. I’ve seen their best and their worst. As long as the people of the Sawtooths are in love with life, they’ll always dread Xosia’s coming. Though I’m content with the company of bones, even I feel the teeth of loneliness and distrust every day. I felt far worse at the academy. I feel far worse sometimes still.

  “You think they deserve your pity? You know what they do with that fear. They take it out on us—Xosia’s faithful servants. But it doesn’t have to be this way.” He tugs at the souls, and the husks of people surround him, slack-faced and waiting. “We can make the Sawtooths a land for the Lady—a land of the dead. Life only for those who deserve it, for those who serve the Lady true. And for the rest—they’ll serve us. They must earn the chance to pass into her embrace.”

  Give me strength, my Lady. But my grip on the sigil falters.

  “You know I’m right.” He laughs, a hollow, scraping sound, like nails dragging against stone. “Xosia wouldn’t have let me build this army if not.”

  Behind him, Savannah’s eyes—dead, empty—stare back at me. And I know what I have to do.

  I close my eyes. No use in pretending I didn’t once think these same things. I probably did when I wrote those papers he’s used. But the Lady doesn’t mean us to use her gifts this way. Because if she did—

  Lady of Slumber. I’ve given you my life, and in death, I look forward to your embrace. A calmness drifts around me, soothing as a blanket. I’ll always harvest the souls, and I’ll always gather their secrets so they can be put to rest.