In A Burning Room

by TS Ward

  It was cold and easy then, but now we stood in a burning room trying to find the door. We breathed in the smoke because that was what we had to do to survive.

  In my dark room I was trapped, but outside those walls—it was hardly any different.

  I was lost. I was terrified. I was finding myself. I wanted this to be finished. I wanted out. Out of my name and my blood and the Empire.

  “How would you be?” I whispered.

  It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair to ask him that. He didn’t know a damn thing about what happened to me—I hardly knew—but he didn’t hesitate.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what they did to you. I want to know, but at the same time I’m scared to know. I’m afraid to have that in my head. The thing is, you do. You have to live with it because it happened to you and right now, you’re alone in that. And I don’t want you to be alone.”

  I stared at the twisted packet in my hands and tried to swallow the lump in my throat, tried to fight the stinging behind my eyes. I don’t want you to be alone.

  My voice got caught on the way out as vowels tripped over the edge of my tongue. “Sometimes things seem bad. Just a little bad, while it’s happening. A little, because it could be worse. It could always be worse, right? And then you get the chance to step back from that and see it in a new light and it’s so much worse than—why do you even care? Half of these people would laugh if they knew.”

  “I’m not them. I care because I… Why do you think?” He looked at me then. “Why?”

  I frowned. “Because it’s your job?”

  He shook his head but didn’t say anything, his tongue caught between his teeth. The sun caught his eyes at just the right angle to turn the green into honey yellow.

  He set his hand in the sand behind me, leaned in close, and his other hand came up with fingers splayed like he was trying to explain something. “No, I care because—okay, yeah, it is kind of my job.”

  I shoved him lightly back into the sand and stifled a laugh. “I thought you were going to say something else.”

  “That’s the joke, Sparky.” He nudged me back as he leaned forward again, and ducked his head to look at me, leaning close. “What did you want me to say instead? What else am I supposed to say?”

  “Not… that.” And then, jokingly, “I mean, that was a golden opportunity to profess your undying love and loyalty, but now that it’s passed, I don’t think you’re going to get that chance again. That’s it, Jack, you missed out, you blew it. Now we’ll have to go on with our lives never knowing what would have happened if you had just—”

  “What kind of a person would imagine a future so bleak as that?” He laughed, a grin spreading from ear to ear as he settled back onto his elbows in the sand and tilted his head back. He looked up at the sky and the few white clouds that passed over the blue, voice suddenly serious. “I wouldn’t ignore any opportunity to tell you something like that. I haven’t. Just not in so many words.”

  I looked at him.

  The curve of his neck caught the sun and I—I didn’t know what else to say. I just looked at the lines the sun drew across him and how he was so much softer than James was ever capable of being. He was honest and unafraid of how I would react to that honesty. I took a breath that stirred up a fluttery feeling in my gut. “What does that mean?”

  He shrugged. “It means what you want it to mean.”

  “No, it doesn’t! It doesn’t.” I sighed and shook my head. “Why can’t you just tell me what you know about me? Why can’t you tell me what I don’t remember?”

  Silence filled the air around us.

  He squinted against the sun and sat up to rest his shoulder against mine. “Since we’ve left the Embassy, are there things that you’ve remembered that you didn’t before?”

  A frown settled over my face as I tried to think. “I remembered something about the fountain, in the garden behind the Manor. There were soldiers there when there normally wouldn’t have been. I think I was trying to sneak out through the fence in the back and someone said my name.”

  “That was me,” he mused.

  “Oh,” I murmured, and then, “I remembered something about Roam, too. I was angry with my father so I told her that he had cheated on her with her friend, which was true. I told you about Lourdes and my brother. But I haven’t told her that. When I mentioned it, she reminded me about something else. Clary. She said to ask you about her.”

  He looked startled. “My sister? What about her?”

  I remembered what she said—sneaking off to see your friend, and then sneaking off to see her brother and not telling either of them.

  Warmth flooded my cheeks. “Nothing, I mean—just that she… she has red hair, right?”

  He paused, and then a laugh burst from him. “Yes, she does, and so do Maeve and Eden and Aemon. So did Grey. Finn and I are the only ones—I’m the only one who doesn’t. Why do you ask?”

  I shook my head. “You have siblings. You said that, in Warren. How old are they?”

  He looked down and thought for a second. “I’m twenty-eight, so that means Clary is twenty-seven. Maeve is twenty-two. Eden and Aemon, they’re twins, they’re… fifteen? Hell. Hell, I’m getting old. Why are you making me think about this, Sparky?”

  “What about Grey? And Finn?”

  “I don’t want to talk about them,” he laughed nervously. “They’re gone now, that’s all.”

  The flush in my cheeks deepened. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

  “No, you knew. Before.” He reached out and set his hand on mine, fingers curled to wrap around my palm, and I stayed perfectly still. “But that’s okay. Maybe I’ll tell you again soon.”

  We sat in silence and watched over the camp as the sun drifted at an achingly slow speed.

  Fitz had Tiger held upside down. The girl giggled like crazy as he kept pretending to drop her to the sand. I didn’t know what brought the thought to my mind, but I remembered what James had said about the soldier, what Ellie had said about protecting kids from the Empire. The two thoughts had a sliver of connection in the back of my mind that didn’t make sense.

  “Fitz—Fitz had a daughter, didn’t he?” I asked. It seemed right. It seemed like a distant memory that was slowly coming back to the light.

  Jack was quiet. “He has a lot of nieces and nephews.”

  “But he did. Didn’t he? That’s real?”

  A distant look crossed his face, and the lines etched next to his eyes weren’t from smiling this time. It took him a long time to answer me, but I waited, and when he did his voice was soft and coated in an ache.

  “He had a daughter. Sammy. That… that was a long time ago. Tiger’s a lot like her, from what I remember, anyway. Looks like her, too. My other uncle, Sean, he has twin daughters. Inja and Cecelia. They’re identical, but Inja is wild and Cecelia is softer than that. I haven’t seen them since I was a kid, since my brother—”

  He cut himself off as he pulled his bone-handled knife out and held it in his hand. He started to talk again, but he hesitated, shaking his head as he returned it to his belt.

  “They let you keep that? In the army?”

  Jack nodded, a slight smile tugging at his lips. “Thanks to you. I kept it in my locker when I started and they kept confiscating it, but I’d just steal it back. My commanding officer tried to get me kicked out for it but you saw it and argued for me.”

  “I didn’t meet you as a shadow?” That was what I had assumed.

  He shook his head. “Do you remember where you were going, when we ran into each other at the fountain?”

  To find Clary’s brother.

  My voice was stretched thin. “I think so.”

  His hand was in the sand behind me again. He turned his head to me and I held my breath. “To see me. But I beat you to it.”

  The warmth in my cheeks wasn’t from the sun. I folded my hands together and pressed them between my knees, stared over the tents at the horizon and the distant mountain caps.
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  I struggled to force out a single word. “Why?”

  He shrugged and leaned forward, forearms hooked around his knees. “Figure it out, Soren.”

  “Just tell me!” I snapped. My voice was too loud and it carried down the dune to the few closest rebels. They looked up and I grew quiet, an ache buried in my words. “Jack, please. I don’t want to say the wrong thing.”

  His voice was hoarse. “You can’t say the wrong thing.”

  “Neither can you,” I bit back.

  He roughed his hair and then dropped his face into a hand. He didn’t say anything, didn’t move. The sun shone bright against the ring on his finger and I stared at it, remembered Roam’s, remembered my father without his.

  I looked at my own hands.

  “The world feels fake,” I said after a while, and hooked my elbows around my knees.

  He laughed lightly. “Yeah, well, everything feels too real to me. Too real, too much, unavoidable, absolute bullshit that I can’t get away from it. It's great.”

  “Jack—”

  “Hey, you wanted to keep moving, right? We’ve got a lot of ground to cover and you won’t believe Conleth after this damn desert. Real food, not this spaceman crap. Real beds. Fresh, running water. It’s right on the shore of this lake, and the farms are beautiful this time of year. It’s surrounded by them. One hell of a pub, too. Makes all your wildest dreams come true.”

  He pushed himself up to his feet and offered his hands to me. I took them, but he let go the moment I was balanced and turned away, moving down the dune.

  “Come on, Soren, I’m looking forward to this now!”

  25

  The Perseids rained across the night sky.

  I stood on the Sailer, leaned on my elbows, and looked up.

  The night was calm. It wasn’t quiet, but it was calm, and a distant storm cloud sat on the horizon where the tops of the mountains peeked over the shifting dunes. Sometimes they were there, and sometimes they weren’t. Just like the clarity in the words that carried over from the fire Rabbit’s people gathered around.

  “You know what I want?” Someone called out, “I want to be Mercury!”

  “Why would you want that?” Someone on the other side of the camp shouted.

  “Because screw the bitch!” He laughed at his own joke, which drew more laughs from the rest of them.

  I was not laughing.

  My nails dug into my palms and I bit my cheek so hard that I tasted blood and all that was in my mind was James and the guilt that I felt for making him cry—he was a child again, a sweet child bringing gifts to our mothers.

  Tonight, I was not a surge of electric anger. I was not a live wire of static current, no fired glass bones that heated my nerves.

  Tonight, I was a dead battery. I was useless and I shook and my chest ached with a crushing pain.

  If there was a time for it all to hit me like a collision wall in the simulation room, I would not have chosen now. I would not have chosen this exact moment to have the copper wire taste of the desert air poke holes through my lungs. I would not have chosen this moment to have my bones shattered so sharply against my skin. I would not have chosen this moment under these stars and comet tails to remember every little thing that touched-poked-prodded-squeezed-pressed-punctured-struck—

  There were stars above my head. The air and the wind did not come from ventilation in the walls. There weren’t any walls. The sand shifted and buried and uncovered charred buildings with the slightest change in weather. The sky stretched infinite with those tiny speckled stars that I had only dreamed about.

  There was a wooden sailing boat that coasted the dunes like ocean waves.

  The world was a dream. It was my dream, it was what I wanted. I wanted to get out and here I was but—all I really wanted was my little bear.

  You know what I want? I want to be Mercury. He wanted to hurt me. They wanted to.

  That was the warning. That was why Roam stayed above Warren, that was why Fitz wanted me to stay up there too, and I should have. I should have stayed put. I should have held my tongue. I should have hidden myself from these animals who wanted to be like a cruel man just for the sake of hurting me.

  They don’t really hate you. They hate your father. They hate his name.

  I was pain, I was riddled with pain, and every second spent outside of the Embassy and away from James was a second that it grew.

  I didn’t want to hurt. I wanted to be safe and cold and hardened, and I was melting, burning, softer than the air. I was weak. I was a frail thing. I was a wisp of smoke from paper tinder that didn’t last a second beneath a magnifying glass.

  The wood of the Sailer creaked as I sank down to my knees, sat on my heels, and rested my forehead against arms wrapped over the rail.

  My chest grew tight and I shuddered as I sucked in air through clenched teeth, and the chill of the night drove ice like knives through me.

  I remembered this. I remembered not being able to breathe, not wanting to breathe, lying hysterical on the floor of the dark room until all I felt was nothing.

  Soren? I heard what he did. I heard what he did to you and I want you to know that it isn’t your fault. I… I know what it’s like. With him. That’s all. I’m sorry.

  When I closed my eyes, her face was there.

  The softness of her jaw despite the sharp angle of it, her charcoal doe eyes filled with sincerity. She was small but strong and barely older than I was and she didn’t take any bullshit from Mercury or anyone else. Until he broke her.

  When did you stop fighting it?

  I haven’t. I’ll always fight. And now I’ll fight for you.

  I opened my eyes.

  My father left James in charge. He left him in charge when he knew he was a monster, and a cruel monster left uncontrolled, one who switched on and off like a lightbulb. Nice, and then not. Not, and then nice.

  A sinister nice, when he wanted something without trouble. Cold and then hot and then cold again until he burned and then I had a knife and I could have just stabbed him right there in that dead city.

  The whole desert was a dead city.

  Arden was dead, and that brought the anger back into my lungs in fistfuls of cold glacial strength.

  Another round of vulgar jokes on my name were passed around and I was on my feet again.

  I jumped over the side of the Sailer and landed with a hollow boom and the groan of the building buried beneath the sands.

  They told me these were smaller and fewer, just little houses on the outskirts of an ancient town, but it made my heart beat a little harder anyway.

  Fitz looked up from where he knelt on the ground. He was working on patching up a crack in the boat’s hull with a flashlight held between his cheek and his shoulder.

  “You look pissed, princess,” he told me. “You aren’t planning on punching any of those assholes, are you?”

  “Don’t call me princess,” I snapped, but the words came out quiet.

  The thought of walking into a crowd of people who roared over such vicious jokes at my expense suddenly punched me in the gut.

  I knew I could defend myself. I knew what I was capable of. But I couldn’t do that if the whole point was to prove that I wasn’t an evil megalomaniac.

  “I might have considered that and worse, but maybe just a stern talking to that you’ll back me up with?”

  He set the hammer down and plucked the flashlight from his shoulder to switch it off. “You’re going to try to be diplomatic to people whose favourite past time is beating each other up for fun, and you want me to go with you.”

  “That… that’s what I said,” I murmured.

  Fitz stood up and slipped the flashlight into one of the utility loops on his belt. He wiped his hands off on the bottom of his jacket and chuckled softly.

  His voice was softer, a little less defensive, but his arms were crossed over his chest and he looked at me with a squinted eye. “I—you know, I thought you would be different, coming ou
t of that program. Everyone always is. Kids we knew, who showed the signs and it turned out to be nothing useful, when they came back or when they were placed as soldiers, they were always… always on the edge of something. I assumed the same of you. You seem stronger.”

  I frowned and looked at the Sailer. The moonlight shone across the wood stopped where it became rough again.

  Always on the edge of something.

  I felt like it. I felt like I was standing on the edge of a cliff about to step forward and topple into the void, like I could just take a step back and it would be alright, but the point of a knife pressed between my vertebrae and either way I lost.

  “You disagree?” He asked, tilting his chin with the question.

  I smiled weakly and took a step back. “I thought I was getting better, but I doubt I’m any different. Just a moment ago I felt a little on the edge of something because of what those people were saying, about—if what happened to the other Sceptres was anything similar to what happened with me, then we’re definitely no different. I just can’t figure out if it would have been harsher or easier if I wasn’t his daughter, or if I wasn’t expected to be the Genesis.”

  “I couldn’t tell you,” Fitz said.

  “Especially with… especially with Mercury.” My hands shook at the thought of it.

  Fitz nodded, tucked his chin down, and scratched his beard. He looked back at me with quiet and cautious words in his mouth.

  “Can I ask what that’s about, you and Mercury? What’s going on there? What happened? What’s happening?”

  I caught a curse before it tumbled out, and the noise that replaced it was a breathy laugh. “No.”

  “He hurt you,” Fitz stated.

  “I had every opportunity to stop him, every ability to, but the others he hurt. He hurt them when I wasn’t—” I choked on the words. I couldn’t force it out. I didn’t know why all of this was bubbling up so easily, but it was, and it was a cruel reality that I did not want to face. “He didn’t hurt me. But it was basically the same thing.”