Thoth snorted. ‘Unfortunately, Highness, that’s normal for him.’
The Vicaress smiled at me, her gloved fingers gliding across my cheek. ‘The Crier knows, child.’
I swallowed hard, and she backhanded my face, hard and swift.
‘That’s the opposite of what we need from you.’ She rubbed the wool in her fingers. ‘We need everything to come out. All your dirty little secrets.’
I made sure not to move.
‘Do you have anything to say for yourself?’ the Vicaress asked calmly. ‘Anything you’ve been hiding, Spout?’
‘His given name is Micah, Highness,’ Thoth said, adjusting his scarf.
She leaned in and licked my sweat off the tip of her gloves. ‘I taste what you’ve been hiding, Spout.’
My body flooded with dread, but I begged myself not to let it show. I kept reminding myself that this enemy was a false prophet, and that she had no power over me.
But what had brought her back, and straight to my corner?
The Vicaress licked her lips, lush and red and plump, and then she stretched the wool out and slipped the cap over my ears. In an instant I felt the heat, the Sun diving into the black wool as if it was a long-lost lover. There was enough of a gap under my eyes that I could see her black sandals, but other than that the hat obscured my vision completely.
Her voice was close to my ear, so soft that only I could hear. ‘Your friend Moussa gave you up. He chose the black Wisp, and it took quite a bit of Cleansing to get him to scream, but eventually he did. Everyone does when the Crier’s wrath is involved.’
I heard the crackle of fire, and I smelled her blade come to life. The suffering had begun, my head was sweltering, and I knew things were only about to get worse. I couldn’t think about the Vicaress torturing Moussa. That would only make me break, and I wouldn’t break.
Someone clapped, drawing the sound of padding feet. I took a steadying breath, trying not to let the fear make me stupid. I couldn’t fall apart before knowing what the Vicaress wanted to know. I could still try to lie my way to freedom.
One of the taskmasters grabbed my arm, my body jerking in surprise. He responded with a hefty smack to my face. Then my other arm was grabbed, and my hands were chained together. There was the sound of metal hammering into stone above my head, and I tried not to let the tremors shake my heart.
Already the wool was soaked with my sweat, and the manacles were cutting off my circulation. The chain hanging from my arms was then locked to a pole the taskmasters had driven into the wall above my head, and I knew there was little chance I’d be leaving my corner alive.
But I wouldn’t break.
Whatever they wanted to know about my tinkering ideas, or the Shiver, or about Abb’s meeting, I wouldn’t let them have it.
A Jadan Garden existed.
The Crier was not on the Vicaress’s side, and chained or not, I would not die her slave.
She waved her blade under my nose so I might smell its acrid flames.
‘Spout,’ her voice was sweet and tender, ‘there’s no point denying it. Moussa has told me everything. So we’re going to sit here and play a few games, with all of your dirty Jadan friends watching, until you tell me everything you know.’
Her blade brushed against the skin of my arm and sent pain jumping into my skull.
Then the Vicaress peeled up the hat just enough for her tongue to hiss in my ear. ‘Where is Shilah hiding?’
Chapter Twenty-One
The sand beneath my feet opened up and swallowed me whole.
And I fell towards black water.
And fell fast. There was no wind at my sides, just a wash of heat running away from the waters below, shooting back up towards the crack of light through which I’d fallen. I wanted to cry out, but my voice didn’t listen, as it was already riding the heat up and away. I grasped, desperate fingers swimming through stifling air, but the harder I pushed, the harder my hands struggled against thick silence.
I suddenly hit the surface below, waves parting gently. Saltiness splashed into my mouth, and I knew this river. I let my hands glide over the surface, recognizing the waters; they’d poured out of my eyes and a hundred thousand others, and I could feel the current of tears beneath me churning. Instead of drowning, though, I was dragged forward, riding the cool black bubbles of memory into unending shadow. It was a strange realization when I discovered that there was no pain any more. I’d left pain far away, back in the world.
The river was wide, but its flow was gentle, and I let my head tilt slowly back as I watched the light being sucked into the distant split in the sky above. I was thirsty so I cupped a bit of the water into my mouth, and I tasted things of the past. Like the time I’d tinkered that little catapult for Matty to shoot pebbles against the barracks’ wall. And when Abb showed me the loose panel in his quarters.
Suddenly I realized that these tears had Cold in them. Not like the Draft in the bucket of Cold, but enough to make me curious. Were the glimmering beads raining into the river behind me, or into the dark cavern which I was being swept towards? Was the cool feeling blooming or fading, or eternal?
I knew I was coming to the place where the river ended. I was aware the current would plunge to somewhere different, somewhere I wasn’t quite prepared to go. I drank more of the waters, hoping that I might be able to carry some of the memories with me, and my head flooded with gentle visions of Mother Bev trying to free tangles in her daughter’s hair with the combs I kept having to make her, and the most evocative answers of ‘whatsit’ that Moussa concocted, and the time Jardin kissed me on the cheek when I first lent her a crank-fan.
Shilah and Cam were there, but most of all I felt my memories of Abb trickle into my heart, and spread out with a deep sense of comfort. I could feel his powerful hands at my back as he sewed together a deep gash, and the time he’d accidentally triggered my Colour Wheel, laughing together until our throats burned as we tried to scrub the dyes off his face.
The current speeded up, and some instinct in me knew I was closing in on the edge.
The end.
I didn’t feel the need to panic. I’d left that above too. The river felt as natural as breathing. The tears were calm and cool, and mostly I just wondered what Matty had been thinking as he rode these waters not so long ago. I hoped he’d thought of me kindly as the precipice came closer.
The current increased to impossible speeds, rocking up and down, and I felt my body surge into open air. Tumbling through emptiness. I didn’t feel dizzy, or upset, or even properly sad. Life undressed itself from my shoulders, and my dreams of things left un-invented gently strained through the tiny holes in my mind, and my essence dissolved into the beautiful black nothing.
And then peace.
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‘Where are you?’
The words came from everywhere at once.
It had been an eternity since I’d had to communicate, so I closed my soul again and rested.
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‘Where are you?’
A pinpoint of golden light burst into the dark. The spot was tiny, but against the black it was everything.
It came closer, not in a straight line, but as if blindly searching for me. I tried to curl back into the darkness, like a pinch of sand tucking itself back into the bottom of a dune, but the light continued its annoying search, hurting what were once my eyes.
‘Where are you?’ the light asked. ‘I can’t see you. They put it in the ground.’
I remembered someone who used to say something along those lines, but I didn’t care enough to throw off the blanket, and I pulled death more tightly around my body, tucking in the edges.
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‘Please,’ the voice said after another hundred lifetimes. ‘It’s not supposed to be this way. I’m sorry. I’ve been ready for so long.’
I sighed, peeking out and trying not to wince against the harsh light.
‘How?’ I asked. ‘How can I help you, so you might leave me alone?’
‘The whole thing is a lie,’ it said.
‘Well, who was the one who told it?’ I asked, annoyed, pushing myself back under.
Silence.
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‘You’re a Jadan,’ the light said. ‘I need a Jadan.’
‘Yes. I was a Jadan.’ My voice sounded odd, muffled through eternity.
‘I’ve been waiting so long. I suffer too, you know. Where are you? They put something in the ground.’
‘What did they put in the ground?’ I asked with a sigh.
‘I don’t know,’ it said. ‘The end?’
I shook what was once my head.
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‘Where are you?’
It was interesting to smile again after so long, but the movement didn’t come back easily. ‘You’re not going to let me rest, are you?’ I asked.
‘Only a Jadan can help me.’
I grumbled, but then realized the light was pure and wonderful, and for a moment I didn’t know why I’d been pushing it away. It was so grand that darkness itself quaked underneath.
‘You can invent it,’ it said.
‘Invent what?’ I asked.
‘Where are you?’
I waved my arms, but then I realized that that movement could only happen in the past, so I stopped. ‘Invent what?’
‘Langria.’
‘Langria? What’s that?’
‘Freedom. Life. Everything. Put it back to how it was. How I made it the first time.’
I tasted the tears again, like a rash from chains. ‘I thought Langria was already real.’
‘You have to make it real.’
‘Then I can rest?’ I asked.
Silence.
‘How do I make Langria?’ I asked.
‘Aren’t you an Inventor?’
‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘Was I?’
The light pulsed, golden hues knocking at my door. I shrugged what were once my shoulders and it came in.
Then the most spectacular thing.
Ice.
Ice only existed in legends; the old, alive version of me never understanding what it could possibly feel like. But at a single touch I understood. This was what the Crier was made of, what He’d been trying to give our people for so long. Ice, that lived in the deep darkness; Ice was forever. I remembered certain things: an idea. Two ideas. About Cold in the sky and the stars.
‘You think I can reach them?’ I gasped.
‘You’re an Inventor.’
‘Come with me,’ I said, my edges still crackling with Cold. ‘Come back and help me.’
‘You’ll have help. But I can’t.’
That was when I finally felt how trapped the voice was. The gold couldn’t be lifted from the darkness unless from the other side. I heard the river in the distance, splashing in my direction. I let out my eternal sigh, breathing away the last of my non-existence.
‘Build it,’ the light said as the waters found me. ‘My Jadan Inventor.’
‘I’ll try,’ I said.
‘Promise.’
‘I promise.’
‘Where are you?
The wool was peeled from my head and I gasped as the street came back into view, the fading Sunlight nearly breaking my eyes. The intense smell of salts ambushed my mind, keeping me afloat.
‘Where are you?’ the Vicaress asked, waving the vial under my nose.
Life was too vivid and I wanted to scream, but a piece of boilweed had been shoved into my mouth to keep me from doing just that. All the thirst and aches and pain from fresh wounds returned at once, all the things she’d done to get me to talk, and I closed my eyes, desperate to return to that blackness. My shoulders were on fire, arms still locked above my head, chains taut and keeping me from the ground.
I once again felt the sears on my ribcage where the fiery blade had pierced me. And the missing bits of flesh on my knuckles. And the stiffness of the dried blood on my calves, and the bruises driven deep into the bones of my forearms.
But I hadn’t broken. Shilah was still safe. The Jadan Garden was still safe.
‘Welcome back, Spout. Don’t think you’re done yet,’ the Vicaress said, tossing a cup of water at my side and throwing in a Wisp.
‘Maybe he doesn’t know her,’ Thoth said gently. ‘Perhaps this Moussa was mistaken?’
The Vicaress looked at him, a curious tilt of her head. ‘Does the Crier speak to you too? Are you a holy now, Jadanmaster?’
It was curious to see Thoth standing up for me, and it made me wonder how pitiful my body must have looked. I’d never felt so thirsty in my life, even after Abb had walked me to the banks of the Kiln.
‘Apologies, Highness.’ Thoth bowed, low and deep. ‘I just meant your time is most valuable. I can take over for you if you like? I’ve memorized the Compendium myself, and—’
The Vicaress held up her gloved hand for silence. ‘This is my work.’
Thoth bowed once more, stepping back and letting her return to my torture.
I was tempted to dismiss everything that had happened as a hallucination, just a bunch of visions firing in my mind as it was ripped apart, but something told me the voice couldn’t be ignored. I could still hear the words in my ears, could still feel the touch of golden Ice at my core.
I’d spoken with the Crier.
A presence that needed me to live.
I just had to get through the next bouts of torture until they got bored. I’d scream and scream, give the Vicaress every agonizing sound she wanted, stretch my threshold to the limits.
But secretly my mind would be elsewhere.
The wool had drained me of water, but now there was something different running through my veins.
If the Vicaress killed me, fine.
If not, I had my own work to do. And Shilah and Cam were going to help me.
The Vicaress yanked the piece of boilweed from my mouth and I spat out a mouthful of blood to the stones at my feet. She gave me a delighted look, picking up another cup of water and forcing it down my throat.
Then she pulled the wool back over my eyes, the heat returning.
‘Gather your screams,’ her voice said, close to my ear. ‘We’ll try again in a few hours.’
Chapter Twenty-Two
I was still blinded by wool, but I knew that distinct creak of metal, blades lifting apart. The safety latch had been opened, and the fast little clicks were calling out, notches that had been dug into the pole to give warning that the mouth was about to bite.
I would have recognized those sounds anywhere.
Mostly because I’d built the damn thing.
‘Hmmm?’ the taskmaster said in front of me, followed by a rustle of cloth. ‘What the—’
I’d never heard the Stinger actually pierce flesh before, and the sound was uncomfortably satisfying. I felt a bit guilty for how sharp the blades must have been as they sliced through the guard’s skin, but then again, I’d designed it that way; to be faster, and with less mess.
Then came the whoosh of the springs, the pop of the trigger capsule, and I knew the guard was done for, poisoned with enough scorpion venom to take down two Slab Hagans. The guard made a few half-hearted grumbles, but they didn’t last long before his body hit stone.
The wool was peeled from my eyes, and the boilweed plucked from my mouth, and I came face to face with my rescuer, outlined by starlight. She had red Khatberry juice smeared over her face to lessen the shi
ne of her lovely skin, and she blended well with the dark.
The guard was lying on his stomach, the Stinger lodged in his back, all three blades of the mouth buried in deep.
‘You should have given me two vials,’ Shilah said, a dark smile on her face. ‘What if there was another guard? How would I have saved you then?’
I spat out the globs of leftover blood and boilweed, and licked my dry lips. There was just enough moisture to make a few desperate sounds. I drew attention to the chains with a rattle of my numb arms. ‘Not saved yet.’
Shilah unslung a waterskin from her chest and tipped it up to my mouth, the cool relief splashing down my throat. I started to choke, and she slowed the flow, her fingers careful and tender. I looked over Shilah’s shoulder at Arch Road. It was empty save for the limp body, but I knew the Vicaress would be coming back soon.
‘How’d you find me?’ I asked.
She chuckled, walking her fingers through the air. ‘Like I said, you’re very slow. Turns out you’re even slower when you’re chained to a wall.’
I smiled, irritating a few blisters on my lips. ‘I didn’t tell her.’
‘About what?’
‘What do you think?’ I leaned in, the chains rattling. ‘I know what I have to do. What we have to do together. I think it’s why you’re here.’
‘I’m here because the Vicaress is an evil, lying, Sun-baked piece of shit. And she was hurting my partner.’ Shilah reached into her pocket and pulled out a few long threads of metal. ‘I assume you’ll be able to use these?’
I tried to flex my fingers. Nothing at first, but as the cool water began to splash across my insides, they freed up. I nodded to her palm. ‘That one. Third from the right.’
Shilah came close, her body folding against mine. Her dark hair brushed my chin and I inhaled her familiar smell.
‘You smell terrible,’ Shilah said with a smile, sniffing my neck. ‘You shouldn’t do this any more.’
I angled the metal into the shackles and began to feel for the give in the lock. Her eyes were narrowed as she scrutinized it herself. Catching the look on my face at her proximity, she winked at me, but kept her gaze focused. ‘Just pretend I’m your Cold Wrap.’
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