Dorian was the only person in the village who declined to choose a side, whether to stay or go. Some accused him of indecision, while others argued that there had to be some reason that only Dorian understood.
He summoned me to his house some time after sundown, two days after Kris fled. I had known it was coming, had been braced to face him ever since I’d explained that Kris was an architect come from a city bent on taking the Iron Wood’s residents for its own uses.
He opened the door for me as I lifted a hand to knock, and ushered me inside. I sat in the same chair I’d sat in that first day, feeling more nauseous and uncertain than ever.
“I’ve been thinking,” said Dorian, taking a pot of steaming water from the top of his stove and pouring it into two cups, “about your pixie, as you call it.”
I blinked, caught off-guard by the topic. I had expected a discussion about Kris, or the city, or Gloriette, or my part in it all. “What about it?”
“Well, typically those clockwork type creations need to have magic added to their stores constantly, or they run down. I’ve seen them before. Got to have something to keep the clockwork running.”
“It used me to recharge.”
“That’s just it,” said Dorian, handing me one of the two cups and then sinking down into the chair opposite me. “We can’t do that, you know. Exude magic that way. We have to concentrate to let it out. It doesn’t sit about us like—like a cloud, for anything to be touched by it.”
“So clearly the city’s methods are imperfect,” I said, weary of having my own imperfections, my differences, pointed out to me. I bowed my head, inhaling the fragrant steam. “I was leaking. It’s not a surprise.”
“I’m not so sure,” said Dorian, curling his hands around his mug. “You’re not a Renewable, no, but you’re not ‘normal’ either.”
“I won’t be anything once the power runs out.” I could hear the bitterness in my voice. I regretted it, but could not quite control it.
“Are you so sure it will?”
I blinked again. “Well—no. But what reason would they have to lie?”
“At what point have they ever told you the truth? The thing is, I can’t figure out why they would have sent that young man here to collect you.”
“I guess because they wanted to tie up loose ends?”
“That’s possible. But he risked a lot, coming in here to get you—”
“Don’t try to convince me that he cares about me,” I protested.
“No, I wouldn’t dream of it.” There was a faint smile on Dorian’s face. For the briefest of mad moments I wanted to shout at him for it. I restrained myself. “I was going to say that to take such a big risk, there must have been promise of a big payoff. I’m not so sure you’re as useless as you think you are.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not sure. But whether it’s the quality that allowed you to survive their process in the first place, or whether the process changed something within you, you’re different now, Lark. You’re not one of us, but you’re not one of them either. I’m not certain what you are, or what you can do—except that to come so far, on such tiny reserves of power, you must have an ability to manipulate power that any one of us would envy.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I burst out. “The only thing I’ve managed to do is flail out with it, and sometimes it hasn’t even worked.”
“You told me you threw a creature off a cliff, and lifted yourself and another person up in the air,” replied Dorian, both brows lifting. “And after your resources were nearly depleted. Did you think magic was easy? There’s a reason we don’t have everything floating around by magic here, Lark. To lift even the smallest of things takes incredible concentration and effort and strength. It’s much easier to just use our hands. I’m not saying you’re skilled. You have about as much finesse as a toddler throwing a tantrum. But you have an ability to take the tiniest grain of power and magnify it tenfold. I’ve never seen anything quite like it, and I’ve seen as much as anyone in the world, I’d wager.”
“But what does that mean? Am I not going to die?”
Dorian lifted his cup and took a slow, careful sip of the hot tea. “I can’t say for sure,” he said. “I won’t lie to you. If it was one of us, the act of having our magic torn away from us for good probably would kill us. It’s probably why your city does it when its citizens are children, and flexible. But you? After what they did to you? I don’t know. For now, just try not to use your power. It does seem like they were telling the truth about the power in you ebbing, at least. You did say it had been getting harder.”
I nodded, trying to swallow the lump in my throat. “What are you going to do? About the Institute? They’ll be here any day.”
The smile on his face faded, and he shook his head. “That I can’t say,” he said, his expression troubled. “It’s an impossible situation. Part of me would like nothing better than to erect a wall not unlike the one you passed through to come here, in order to keep them out. But we don’t have that kind of power and finesse. And we might as well scatter to the corners of the continent; because no one in the future will be able to come here seeking asylum the way you did.”
I was silent for a while, staring into the depths of my tea at the dark leaves lurking at its bottom. “How do you know I didn’t lead them here?” I whispered.
“Oh, Lark. You did lead them here.”
My gaze snapped up—but he was smiling again.
“But you didn’t do it on purpose. If you had, then you would have left with Kris. We have scouts after him. We will find him. But you can hardly be held responsible for the fact that the leadership of your city is slightly ahead of the curve of the other cities’. If it hadn’t been you, it would have been someone else.”
“But it was me,” I blurted angrily. “There were signs everywhere, I was just too stupid to see them. How could I have ever thought I was capable of doing all of that, over the past few weeks?”
Dorian listened, not a hair out of place, not a sign that he had any reaction to my angry outburst. “And yet,” he said, after a few moments, “here you are. So you clearly are capable.”
“I was sent.”
“You made a choice,” he said firmly. “And you saw it through.”
I got out of my chair. Clutching my mug, still almost too hot for my fingers, I paced around the perimeter of the oneroom house. I stopped at the bureau full of trinkets, eyes raking across each one of them.
“You could have left with him and been safe, but you chose to remain with us.” Dorian’s calm unsettled me, so different from Oren’s blank expressions—Oren’s were hiding something fierce and raging underneath the surface, but Dorian gave the impression of calm all the way through. With the Institute a matter of days, if not hours, away, I could not comprehend his serenity. Nonetheless, that calm reached me, soothing me despite my agitation.
I stood looking at the rows of curios for some time before I realized what I was seeing. When I did, I snatched up the paper cat I’d seen my first day, and whirled around.
“Where did you get this?” I asked, extending my hand.
Dorian’s eyebrows lifted again. “A boy made it for me. He came through some years ago, from a city as well.”
I nearly dropped my mug. “Kris said that my brother might still be alive. He made figures like this. The boy—what was his name?”
“He was here only for a day or two before setting off again. I can’t quite remember. Something strange, like—Rue? Sage?”
“Basil,” I whispered.
Chapter 27
Dorian said nothing in reply, but I could see the memory in his gaze. I could hear raised voices in the distance outside but I ignored them, my eyes locked on Dorian’s face.
“Where did he go?” I croaked, my voice cracking horribly. “Did he say?”
“He said he was looking for answers. I gave him the location of a city far to the north—here.” Dorian rose from his chair and crossed t
o the map, jabbing his finger at it. “This is us, here. This is your city, to the east—see it? And this is where I sent your brother.” His finger moved up the map, tracing a thick black line marked The Great Northern Road up to a blue pin to the north.
“Why send him there?” I asked, staring at the pin until my eyes began to water, as if it might give me answers.
“Last I heard, though it’s information from several generations ago, the people there had been experimenting with restoration.”
“Restoration?”
“Trying to turn the world back to what it was. Before the wars. Setting free the magic trapped in the pockets.”
I struggled to speak past the lump in my throat, loud enough to be heard over the rising altercation outside. “Or taking it out of people.”
Dorian gazed back at me until a piercing scream had us both snapping our heads toward the window. I ran for the door, bursting through it and coming up against the railing and staring down through the gathering twilight.
A cluster of scouts was entering the village, manhandling—something. It was concealed by the press of their bodies, but I realized quickly who it must be.
Kris. They’d caught him, or else he’d come back.
I threw myself down the ladder so quickly I barely touched it. Once my feet hit the ground I sprinted for the cluster. As I drew closer, one of the scouts was flung back and I saw a flash of wild, pale eyes that brought me to a crashing halt.
“Stop!” I cried, shaking myself from my stupor and reaching for the nearest scout. “Stop it—I know this boy!”
The scout shook me off. I recognized him as Tansy’s friend Tomas. “Stay back, Lark, he’s dangerous!”
“He’s not!” I shouted, charging my way into the group.
I couldn’t blame them for thinking he was dangerous. As I broke into the ring of scouts he snarled, throwing one of them off with such force that the scout hit the ground and lay there, stunned. In a fluid motion, Oren snatched his knife out of his boot. The scouts lurched back as he carved a half-circle of deadly, glinting steel in the air.
I stood alone, forcing myself to remain still. “Oren! It’s me. Stop!”
The way he stared at me, blank and feral, reminded me of the way he’d looked that first day when I saw him in the house of the ghosts. Devoid of humanity. Wild. Hungry. His fingers twitched around the knife, a nervous shift of his grip. “Lark,” he said finally. He blinked away the wildness.
I could see Tomas standing beyond Oren’s shoulder. His expression was grave, his voice tightly controlled. “Lark, he’s dangerous. He sliced up one of my guys. You should—”
“He’s just not used to this many people,” I cut in angrily. “If you just let him calm down he’ll be fine.” He’d come here looking for me—why else would he have braved this place? And the scouts had treated him no better than the shadow monsters they so ruthlessly killed. “Oren, can you put the knife away?”
Oren’s eyes flickered from my face to the scouts in the circle beyond me, then back again. “I came here to get you,” he said. “Never should have let you—come on, let’s go.” He brandished the knife, the scouts scattering in a wave before him. The moonlight scattering from the blade cut a path through the crowd.
“But I’m fine,” I whispered. There was still a hint of that ferocity in his gaze. There was always a part of me that panicked when Oren was close, like a mouse that senses a cat. He was a part of that cutthroat world, and I wasn’t. “Look at me. I’m happy here. Just put the knife away and you’ll see.”
Another quick glance away from my face. He gave no sign of hesitation or indecision, not even a shift of his weight back and forth or an uneasy look.
Tomas caught my eye over Oren’s shoulder and nodded, making a rolling gesture with his hands. Keep going.
“I promise,” I said, moving toward him. “They’ve been really great. Lots to eat and a place to sleep that’s not the ground. And protection, they keep the shadow people out. Just give me the knife.” I held out my hand, concentrating all my willpower on keeping it from shaking.
I saw Tomas frown, glance at one of the scouts next to him. I ignored him, focusing on Oren.
“This is a bad place—” he started.
“It isn’t.” I swallowed, continuing to move toward him. “Why would I tell you to put the knife away if it was dangerous here? Really, Oren. I promise it’ll be fine. Don’t you trust me?”
His eyes stopped flicking around and came to rest on mine. He had asked me that same question not long ago, and I had said no. I held my breath, the rushing of my heartbeat in my ears like the sound of the waterfall at the summer lake.
Oren’s grip on the knife shifted once more, another flash of silver in the moonlight. Blade down. Killing stance. But before I could step back, his lashes lowered for half a second and he flipped the knife down so that he held it by the blade, arm outstretched. Offering it to me.
I let out the breath I was holding, taking the knife with a shaking hand. “Thanks. I’m glad you came. I wanted to find a way to—”
Before I could finish, Tomas leapt, his body crashing into Oren’s and tackling it to the ground. Oren landed with a grunt of pain, chin hitting the ground with a dull crack.
“What are you doing?” I shrieked. I threw myself forward, reaching for Tomas to try and pull him off of Oren’s struggling form. He lifted an arm to shove me back, and the blade of the knife caught him low across his shoulder. He hissed with pain, but didn’t let go of Oren.
I stared at the line of red bisecting Tomas’ arm. “I’m sorry—I—”
“Grab her, will you?” shouted Tomas, now helped by two other scouts to try and pin Oren to the ground.
I felt arms catch hold of me, my feet leaving the ground as I instinctively tried to get back to Oren’s side. The knife fell from nerveless hands to the ground.
I could only watch as they wrestled him to a cage in the center of the square, one I’d always assumed was for livestock. Its iron bars were clearly crafted from frozen wood, immutable and solid. You can’t magic iron.
Once the door of the cage slid shut, they released me. I slumped to the ground, spent. Oren threw himself at the bars of the cage and the whole thing trembled. I broke free from my captors for half a second, bolting toward Oren until Tomas stepped in between us. The scouts caught up with me, strong hands wrapping around my arms again.
“Don’t,” he warned, clasping his arm with his hand as his sleeve dripped red. “He’s dangerous.”
“Only because you attacked him and threw him in a cage!” I snarled.
“We attacked him because he’s a monster!” Tomas shouted back, his breathing audible through his nose as he battled pain and anger. “He’s one of Them.”
“What?” My voice didn’t even sound like mine. It sounded like a recording of my voice, twisted and played back on itself. “No, I traveled with him for a week. He saved my life. He fought them.”
As I spoke, Tomas let go of the wound on his arm to hand the cage’s key to one of the other scouts. From his boot he withdrew one of the long, slender glass rods that each of the scouts carried—the rod which Tansy used when she found me in the perimeter of the Wood. He approached the cage warily, as if expecting Oren to lash out at him. Instead Oren pressed himself against the back of the cage, eyes darting from the tip of the rod, to Tomas, to my face.
There his gaze held, and while he was distracted, Tomas darted forward and touched the tip of the rod to Oren’s arm. My ears rang with silence, a thunderclap in reverse. I shook my head to clear it, and when I looked at the cage again, Oren was gone. In his place—
It snarled, hurling itself at the bars standing between it and Tomas. Tomas looked at me, mouth open to drive home his point, but when he saw my face, he fell silent.
The thing was as hideous as any of the beasts, its skin a sickly gray, traced all over with veins running black. Its bright, wet lips drew back to reveal a row of pointed teeth, mouth flecked with foam as it rag
ed against its confinement. The colorless eyes stared all around, darting this way and that, seeking some structural weakness in the cage. The clothes were the same, only now I could see the tracery of veins in the skin through the thinly worn fabric of his shirt. The multicolored, patched pants were hideously out of place on its body.
“I’m sorry, Lark,” said Tomas, reaching for my hand. I didn’t resist, my bones all but turned to water. “Come on, I’ll take you home.”
• • •
Tomas turned me over to Tansy’s parents. Their attempts to comfort me were fuzzy at best in my mind, the night passing in a haze of refused comfort, biscuits, fruit. Tansy’s mother pressed a mug of tea into my hand after adding something from a blue bottle among her wares. It’ll help you sleep, she said. I pretended to drink it, setting it aside.
When Tansy came home, full of news and rumor about what had happened, I tried to feign sleep to avoid her. She was all too gleeful to know about my experiences with “one of Them,” asking things like, “Wow, and you never knew he was a monster?” and “To think you slept right next to him and he could have woken up and eaten you!” She told me I was terribly brave to have lived alongside Them for so long. Her amazement was typically childlike. Another day, I would have loved to hear her speak of me as brave—but now I could only see that animal snarl, superimposed over the fierceness of Oren’s features.
Only once did I attempt to lift myself from my haze of misery long enough to ask, “What will they do to him?”
“Oh, don’t worry,” said Tansy. “They’ll take care of it. We scouts are trained to do it.”
There was a deadly finality to those last two words. I swallowed, my mouth dry and my voice cracking. “Do what?”
“Execute Them.” Her childish directness turned my blood cold.
Eventually I feigned weariness, Tansy and her family all too willing to believe that whatever had been in that blue bottle had put me to sleep. It was only once the three of them were asleep that my mind began to work again, shuddering to life like an ancient, overgrown machine.
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