Silence: Book One of The Queen of the Dead

by Michelle Sagara

  Maria came up through the window next, and she took a lot more care getting down from the frame. Chase, in the window beside hers, was doing the same. “You’re okay?” he asked. Emma wasn’t certain who he was asking; she couldn’t see, clearly, where he was looking.

  “Emma?” Maria said.

  “Avoiding the smoke,” she barked back. “Hurry, please.”

  But it wasn’t as easy as that; it never was. Maria was stepping gingerly across the boards, testing how much give they had; she was stopping to listen to Chase, and she was following his directions. He was less careful than she was.

  Emma couldn’t see what Maria was stepping on; she could only see what she herself moved across, and she wondered just how different they were. Grinding her teeth, and staying as low to the ground as possible, she crawled along the same path that Maria Copis was walking. She crawled faster.

  By some miracle, they reached the hall door, then the hall itself. Emma didn’t bother to get to her feet, because the smoke here was at its thickest. Instead, she scuttled across the floor, holding her breath; she could only barely see the dim outline of the door in the hall; she couldn’t tell what color it had been painted. She thought, at first, the poor visibility was due to smoke, but then she realized that it was night in Andrew’s world. The fire had occurred at night.

  Breathing through her nose and keeping her lips tightly pressed together, she made her way to his bedroom door. She couldn’t and didn’t look for Maria; there was too much smoke, and she was too afraid. She had never been in a fire before, and if she survived this one, she would never, god willing, be in one again.

  The door was slightly ajar, and over the crackle of burning, she heard Andrew Copis for the first time.

  He was screaming.

  EMMA HAD TO FIGHT THE URGE to get to her feet and run into the room; she crawled toward the door and nudged it open just enough that she could fit through it. Andrew Copis was standing—in his bed—screaming for his mother. It wasn’t a scream of pain; in some ways, it was worse. He was utterly terrified, and his voice was raw with the weight and the totality of that terror.

  As long as she lived—and she wondered how long that would be—she would remember the sound, the feel of it; it passed right through her, leaving some of itself behind.

  She didn’t fight to stay on the floor after that; she couldn’t. She got to her feet, and she ran to the bed, and to the child who stood there, his eyes wide with the horror that came from a growing realization that he’d been utterly and completely betrayed—and abandoned. He had, she realized, his mother’s dark hair, and part of it was plastered to his face; the bangs were wet with either sweat or tears, and gathered in clumps near his eyes and across his forehead. Emma reached out for him.

  He was cold. He was so damn cold to the touch she pulled back as if she’d been burned. He didn’t seem to notice that she’d touched him; he didn’t seem to notice that she was there at all.

  She heard footsteps behind her, and shouted. “Chase, shut the damn door! Keep the smoke out!”

  The door did close. She heard his muttered apology.

  “Emma?” She also heard Maria’s voice. It was hard to listen, though; Andrew had not fallen silent, and Emma thought, short of exhaustion, he wouldn’t. No, not short of exhaustion. Short of death. This was how he had died.

  She felt it like a blow, and she almost turned to throw up. But turning, she caught sight of his mother’s face, and that was just as bad.

  She looked at Chase instead. Chase, whose face was shuttered, whose expression was grim and closed. She wanted to ask him to help, but she couldn’t force the words out. Or not all of them.

  “Chase…”

  He grimaced, which cracked his expression. “What is it?”

  “He’s so damn cold. I can’t—” She lifted shaking hands. Numb hands. “It’s not like—”

  “Emma,” Chase said, cursing. He walked to her, caught her hands in his. Crushed them, briefly. “He’s powerful. You knew that.”

  “I didn’t know what it meant.” She swallowed. Chase was angry. And, she realized, he probably should be. Andrew was here—and he was in worse than the hell she’d imagined. She’d tried to touch him once, and she was almost in tears. How pathetic was that?

  “Sorry, Chase,” she told him. She squeezed back, feeling her fingers.

  And then she squared her shoulders, took as deep a breath as she could, regretted it briefly, and approached Andrew again. This time, she held out her hands slowly, waving them in front of his open, sightless eyes. Nothing. If he was aware of her at all, he made no sign.

  “Maria,” Emma whispered, aware that the smoke was thickening in the room, aware that—for herself and Andrew—there was a growing lack of time, “brace yourself.”

  She didn’t know how Maria responded, wasn’t really certain she’d been heard at all. Emma reached out with both of her hands and grabbed both of Andrew’s.

  The cold was so intense it defined pain; she forgot about fire, about heat, about the smoke of things consumed by either. She tasted blood and realized that she’d bitten her lip. Knees locked, she stood, rigid, in front of him.

  But even with his hands in hers, the screaming didn’t stop. Emma realized she’d bitten her lip to stop from joining him. She dropped to her knees by the bedside, coughing; she’d dropped the cloth during her first rush to reach him, and she couldn’t hold it anyway; both of her hands were in his.

  “Drew!”

  Emma.

  Maria could suddenly see her son. And Emma could see her father.

  “Drew!” Maria darted forward, closing the gap between them. She blinked, coughing, as the truth of fire rushed in, along with the lack of sunlight that spoke of night. If her son was trapped here, so, now was Maria Copis—but Emma understood, from the look on her face, that she had been trapped here ever since the night her son had died. She reached for Drew, and her hands passed through him. Emma shuddered; she couldn’t help it.

  Maria reached for Drew again. A third time. A fourth. There was no fifth, but there were now tears, leaving a trail across her cheeks. “Emma—he doesn’t see me.”

  It was true.

  “I don’t know why,” Emma forced herself to say. The words were shaky and uneven, but she managed to get them out clearly. “This has never happened before.” She turned and looked up at her father.

  Emma.

  “He can’t see her. He can’t see his mother. I—I don’t even think he can see me, and he’s so cold.”

  Sprout. Brendan Hall stood in the wafting smoke. He watched Maria and her son, and after a moment, he closed his eyes. I was spared this, he told his daughter softly.

  “You were never in a fire.”

  No. That’s not what I meant. I was spared your death. I got to die first. This— he shook his head. This is our worst nightmare, Em. As parents, there is no fear that’s stronger. It’s still my worst fear. If it were up to me, you wouldn’t— But he opened his eyes again, and he looked at Maria Copis’ face. He didn’t bother to say the rest.

  “Help me, Dad. I don’t know what to do. I can’t leave him here—”

  Her father glanced at Chase.

  “I honestly do not give a damn what Chase thinks or what he’s afraid of right now. We’ll all die here if I can’t get him out. His mother’s not going to leave him a second time.”

  It was true. It hadn’t occurred to her until this moment, but it was true. She could tell Maria that she had two living children who needed her, now more than ever, and she knew that Maria, like Andrew, would be deaf.

  Her father reached up with both of his hands, and he cupped her cheeks. His hands were not cold. Emma remembered what he’d done—what she’d taken from him—and she tried to pull her face away. “No, Dad—”

  He couldn’t touch her unless she touched him first. She remembered that. He couldn’t touch her unless she wanted him to touch her. But he did, and maybe that said things about her that she’d never wanted to a
dmit. She said no, but she let him do it anyway.

  Chase started forward, hand outstretched. But he stopped, and he dropped the hand, where it curled in a fist at his side. “Emma—”

  “Shut up, Chase. Just—shut up.”

  “Is he trying to give you power?”

  She said nothing, because what she wanted to say would have irritated the hell out of her father. At least it would have when he was alive.

  Sprout, he said quietly, let me help you.

  “I don’t want—”

  Sprout.

  “I don’t want you to leave.”

  He smiled, the indulgent smile that had always been given only to her. And sometimes Petal. I won’t leave. I’ve nowhere else to go.

  “But I—”

  He bent down and kissed her forehead gently. Where his lips touched her skin, warmth traveled, carrying with its slow spread something that felt like the essence of life, which was strange, because he was dead. She tried to hold on to the cold, but she couldn’t. Maybe she was that selfish. Maybe, in the end, all children were. But this warmth reminded her of what love, being loved, felt like, and she leaned into it.

  The cold drained out of her hands, although she still held onto Andrew Copis. Andrew, who still wailed, unseeing and terrified.

  Chase was watching her in silence. Watching, she realized, her father as he stood, bent over her. When her father unfolded, he vanished slowly; for Chase, Emma realized, he had vanished the instant his lips had left her forehead.

  She met Chase’s gaze and said, “That was my father.” Her voice was thick. She swallowed, then turned back to Andrew.

  “Your father.”

  “He came to help me. He—it does help me. Even if he didn’t—even if I didn’t—” She couldn’t force herself to say the words. “It helps me to know he’s there. And that he’s always been there, watching me.” But she flinched as he continued to stare. “I think I know why you hate Necromancers,” she whispered. “Because I’m afraid. What he gives me, Chase—I take it. I’m afraid I’ll take it all. I’ll use him up, somehow. There’ll be nothing left.”

  Chase was utterly still. After a moment, he slid his hands into his pockets and swore. Neither Maria nor Andrew noticed; Emma couldn’t make out the actual words herself. She could make out the smoke and the heat of the floor. Time was passing in Andrew’s world, and time here was not kind.

  Finally, Chase said, in a flat, cool voice, “You need more power.”

  She shook her head.

  “You do. And it’s standing there screaming on the bed.”

  This was a test. Emma thought it, and wanted to slap him. But she couldn’t withdraw her hands. Even if they were no longer so cold she couldn’t feel them. Perhaps especially then.

  Instead, she turned her attention to Andrew Copis, who was choking. He might have been choking because he’d screamed himself raw. He might have been choking because of the cost of that screaming in a house that was filling with smoke. It didn’t matter.

  “Andrew,” she said, raising her voice as his sputtered, momentarily, out.

  He stared straight ahead. He stared through her. Through his mother, whose hands were shaking. She’d not made fists of them; she still held them out, palms up, as if to show how empty they were.

  Emma turned to Chase, still holding the boy’s hands, and said, “Chase, I don’t care if you think you’ll have to kill me. I need you to tell me what I need to do here.”

  “If you keep this up, I won’t. Have to kill you,” he added. He looked around the room. “It’ll just be a matter of time.”

  “I notice that you’re standing here anyway.”

  “It was me or Allison.”

  “Allison wouldn’t—” she bit her lip.

  “Or Michael. Emma, I’m not what you are. You need to pull some of his power.”

  “I’m doing that now, according to Eric—if I weren’t, his mother couldn’t see him at all.”

  “If what I’m seeing is any indication—and remember, not an expert—you’re not doing it at all. You’re giving him whatever you have. Emma, he has power for a reason.” He grimaced. “He’s stuck here. It’s that power that will unstick him, and the only person who can use it is you.”

  “He’s not exactly giving it.”

  “No. But you can—exactly—take it.”

  “And what the hell am I supposed to do with it?”

  “Fuck, Emma! You came here without even thinking?”

  “I came here because I was thinking—about him! It’s not like there are a lot of experts I can just ask to show me what to do!”

  Maria Copis cleared her throat. Loudly.

  Emma and Chase both startled, and both had expressions of similar guilt as they looked at her.

  “I need to be able to touch him,” she said quietly.

  “Lady,” Chase said, “he’s dead. There’s no way—”

  “I can’t bring him back to life,” Emma told Maria. “And I am not letting you die. I’m not even sure the dead can touch each other.”

  “I need to be able to touch him,” Maria said, in the same reasonable, flat voice.

  Emma took a shallow breath and counted to ten. She got to eight, which is about as high as she ever reached in her own home. But it wasn’t words or temper that killed the count; it was sensation.

  The hands that were holding Andrew began to tingle, and as Emma looked down at them, they began to glow. The glow was golden, but it wasn’t even; her hands looked as if she’d slid them into delicate, lace gloves. She could see her fingers beneath the winding strands of light; could see, beneath the forming lattice, the veins on the back of her hands and the slight whitening of her knuckles where her hands were clenched that little bit too hard.

  She glanced at Maria Copis, but if Maria noticed at all, she gave no indication. Chase, on the other hand, was watching her hands with narrowed eyes.

  “What do you see, Chase?”

  He shook his head.

  “Andrew,” she whispered. But Andrew, like his mother, was in a different world, a different time.

  “It’s not Andrew,” Chase told her.

  She frowned. Then she looked at her hands again. The strands of light were strands of gold; they were the chains that she had broken and wound around her palms. She could follow them, now, tracing filigree from skin to the air around her.

  Georges materialized first, pulling himself slowly into the world. He reached out to touch Emma, and Emma let him.

  Maria Copis flinched. That was all. Whatever pity or kindness she had to spare for the dead was being entirely absorbed by her son. Georges was not her problem because he wasn’t hers. Following Georges came Catherine, and she appeared in the same slow, almost hesitant, way. But she also touched Emma gently.

  “Margaret and Suzanne can’t come unless you call them,” Georges told her. “And neither can Emily. She’s almost here,” he added, “but she’s kind of stuck.”

  Chase stared at the two children. “You came here for Emma on your own?”

  Georges nodded solemnly. “Margaret didn’t think Emma would call us,” he added. “I told her we could come. And,” he said, with the serious pride of a six-year-old boy, “we did it. The fire can’t hurt us,” he told Chase. “We’re already dead. But it can hurt Emma. We like Emma.”

  “But she’s a Necromancer.”

  Georges shook his head forcefully. “No, she’s not.”

  Chase lifted both hands in surrender. “This is fucking insane,” he told Emma, out of the side of his mouth.

  “We can still hear you,” Catherine told him, with all the vast and vulnerable disapproval a six-year-old girl has in her arsenal. Having been one, Emma was familiar with the tactic.

  “I thought…you couldn’t talk to each other.”

  “We couldn’t, before,” Catherine condescended to tell him. “We couldn’t until Emma. But now we can talk to each other. Georges can talk to Emma’s dad,” she added. “I like him.”

 
Georges faced Emma. “You need to call the others,” he told her. “Margaret is really smart. She can help you. She’s been in the City of the Dead for a long time.”

  “Does she want to come?” Emma asked him. She tried to keep hope out of her voice.

  Georges nodded. “She says it’s dangerous, though.”

  “Why?”

  “Necromancers.”

  Chase swore. A lot.

  “Chase, do you want to go?”

  “Fuck.” He reached into his pocket and swore more loudly. “The fucking phone! If we survive this, I’m going to kill Eric.”

  Emma grimaced. “I’ve got mine,” she told him. She glanced significantly at both of her occupied hands. “It’s in the left pocket. Dig it out.”

  He did as she asked, although it was slightly awkward, and when he’d flipped it open, he punched the buttons hard enough it was a small miracle they didn’t come out the phone’s back. “If Eric doesn’t answer this—Eric?” He moved a little away from Emma, and covered his mouth. “Emma, get this show on the road—we don’t have time. Yeah, it’s me. Who else?

  “We might have a problem. No, shit for brains, a serious problem. One of the ghosts says we’ve got Necromancers. No kidding. No, they’re not talking about Emma. No, how the hell should I know? They’re not talking to me. You want me to leave?” He glanced at Emma.

  Emma called Margaret, Suzanne, and Emily. They came quickly, and far more easily than either Georges or Catherine had done. But they came because Emma summoned them.

  “Maybe. How the hell should I know? Look—you need to get the others the hell away from the house. Yes, I’ll stay. I think it’s a waste, but I’ll stay.” He looked up at Emma. “Emma—when your ghost said Necromancers, plural, was that just a figure of speech?”

  “I don’t know. Give them a sec, we can ask.”

  “A second is about all the time we have. We didn’t manage to kill Longland.”

  “Margaret?” Emma’s voice was soft and shaky. She couldn’t reach out to touch the older woman because she didn’t want to let go of Andrew, even if touching him didn’t seem to be doing any good. Margaret, who was not six, made no attempt to touch her.