But he’d no sooner gripped the folded leather of her right sleeve than she gave a gulping scream, her eyes swimming in and out of consciousness.
The flesh of her truncated forearm crackled beneath his fingers.
It was still cold. He could feel the jutting bone.
“Hurts, does it?”
He stood up, still holding her right arm.
“Yes,” she moaned.
“Then hold your fucking tongue,” he snarled, shoving her away.
He stood at the railing, struggling to collect himself, feeling sick to his stomach.
It didn’t matter that he hated this, hated himself. All of it was temporary. “We’ll get the sweetness back,” he said again. “We’ll bring them to the Puppeteer. We’ll win this game. But speak out of turn, Deuce, and you’ll feel that pain again in an instant.”
She staggered up, stowing her notebook in her bag, then lifting a dark blue sack from the floor and slinging it over her left shoulder.
He’d been so distracted by her demeanor that he hadn’t even noticed it. It swung slightly, though she stood quite still.
“What is that?”
“It’s her.”
Rafe remembered what Hollis had said about Ashlan.
“You mean—”
Regeneratrix, he’d called her.
“Fresh-baked numbles!” cried a voice from behind him.
Rafe spun on a heel. Hollis was tucked away in Ashlan’s handbag, jabbing a cloth finger at her stomach. “That’s right, Rafe Davin, your supply’s replenished. Piping hot guts, and enough of them to buy you a hearty helping of your favorite street drug, I have no doubt.”
Ashlan was cramming a loaf of bread into her mouth, swatting Hollis’ hand away from her belly. “You enjoyed that too much.”
“What, splitting you open? I’ve been patiently waiting my turn ever since the man-boy showed me the way.”
Rafe looked down at the lawn, his face burning. He didn’t care for the way Hollis had spoken, or his horrid little leer, but he knew that the doll would never own up to it. And a drop of his rage would kill the thing in an instant.
At least he knew who to be wary of.
Down below, Tanka was striding across the grass. “Shall we, then?” she called.
As Ashlan started down the spiraling ramp, Hollis poked his head out of her bag. “Saddle up, boys and girls, and you’ll be back in the comfortable arms of a debilitating addiction in no time!”
“Knock it off, Runt, or someone’s going to toss you in a river along the way.”
Rafe walked down before Jassa, who seemed perfectly placid again. She even smiled at him as he passed, showing no sign that she remembered what he’d done to her moments ago. He wondered if she’d ever be what she was. Maybe his own sanity was just a veneer of shock that would crumble, in its own way, before long.
So long as Tanka put him back together first, he couldn’t see that it mattered. It had been a long time coming—if he could even call himself sane, as he was.
They made their way around the tree’s enormous trunk, until Ashlan stopped abruptly ten feet from the ground. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said.
Rafe, stopping himself before he stumbled into her, followed her gaze. Lumbering up behind Tanka was Umber the bear, dressed in a greatcoat, dragging a massive, silver-buckled, two-wheeled trunk with one paw.
Hollis pulled himself halfway out of the handbag. “Surely you don’t mean to bring him with us to Eth?” He craned his neck up at Ashlan. “Surely she doesn’t?”
“Umber will be just fine,” Tanka sang. “And I don’t go anywhere without him. Unless one of you wants to carry my trunk in his place?”
“Inconspicuous,” muttered Rafe.
Maybe sobriety wouldn’t be such a problem.
Not if they all died before they passed through the shining wall of Eth.
—Homecoming—
Ashlan was hanging back, scratching some more at the angry rash that had covered her legs, when the rest of them broke through the tree line. She could tell from the noises they were making that the city was in sight.
Tanka began singing to the wood, one last time before they left its safety, seeking its goodwill in her endeavor. Rafe sighed so hard it sounded like he was deflating. Even Jassa, who’d been quiet all these miles but for some brief consultations with Rafe and the occasional burst of babbling while she wrote in her book, let out a gasp and a fevered prayer.
Hollis peered up from Ashlan’s bag, whispering, “Are there strangers about? I’d love to get my first glimpse of Eth.”
“Knock yourself out,” Ashlan muttered. She’d had her fill of the place a century ago.
She seemed to remember swearing an oath that she’d never return.
One more to break before the end.
Itchy and ill-tempered, she made her way forward and joined the rest of them in the brush at the top of the hill. Down in the valley, open fields were divided by the packed dirt of Southway—a long, winding road whose trickle of travelers swelled into a dense crowd toward the end.
There, in the distance, stood Eth, its high, serrated wall gleaming like mother-of-pearl in the pink light of the sunset. The story went that its bricks were carved from the scales of some sea-beast slain by the heroes of old, back when the bodies of the Gone-Away gods were still warm underground, and the ocean was a damn sight nearer. Above the wall rose the city’s fabled architecture: the Nail of Naywen, Clumthrullion’s Keep, and that triple-cluster of crystalline towers known only as Shiny Clump.
The city was a showboat, to be sure, but none of its wonders had the power to stir Ashlan’s heart. She’d seen it all too many times, from too many angles, seeking too many things that never came to be.
That’s what she told herself, at least. Then she caught the barest glimpse of a low, silvered dome, and it felt like her pulse had caught on a pricker bush.
The University at Eth.
How happy her mother had been to see Ashlan, first-born in her brood, accepted. Then Elil Ley had been killed, along with half the population of Eth, including the vast majority of Ashlan’s classmates—all trotted out into the fields and executed, a hundred at a time.
That was the first time Ashlan had been slaughtered in public, and she’d later slipped off the back of the burial cart and into the wood, waiting for years until the Professoriate had forgotten her face.
There was a second chance, and third, and a fourth. Again and again, she’d emerge from the wood and put herself through the same entrance exam, always under a different name, all the while noting the subtle ways that Eth was changing around her. The Professoriate, after all, was influencing the magics of war, learning to shape the Uni into a powerful body whose knowledge would outlast even the shrewdest, most devious leaders of Eth.
But Ashlan was learning, too, albeit through sheer repetition. By the end, she whipped through the entrance exam so quickly that she was taken for some kind of prodigy. Through it all, she’d always half-expected one of the professors to recognize her eventually, but there were so many students, so many of them identical brood-mates, that the moment never came.
No one was there to watch when she finally graduated. But Ashlan was proud—not of herself, but for herself, in her mother’s stead. She’d still had hope, then, and it was the memory of that emotion that shocked her now.
How alien it seemed. She’d believed in this place. She’d loved its streets, even its people.
That was a hundred years in the past now, though, and in all that time, the one thing she’d never allowed herself to do was come back.
Seeing the shine of that faraway dome, she knew why.
It felt like she’d turned to coal inside, gray, cool, and cracked—and now the sight of the Uni had her splitting open, surging with a long-buried brightness.
She wondered how something so old could burn so hot.
“Come on, then,” called Rafe. “That’s a long line ahead of us, and we can’t afford to los
e any more time.” Without a glance at the rest of them, he started down the hill. Jassa followed close behind, holding her ruined right arm overhead and singing.
“If anyone needs me, I’ll be in my office,” rasped Hollis, tucking himself back into Ashlan’s bag.
“I don’t know if I’m ready to follow that kid’s orders,” said Ashlan, watching Rafe zig-zag downhill.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to be, Lady Ley,” said Tanka, starting off after him. “While you’re dispatching the Puppeteer, I’ll be—” She glanced at Ashlan’s handbag. “Otherwise occupied.”
Figuring out how to kill me, thought Ashlan, then rewiring the addicts, then using my regenerating body to get yourself a womb.
Only then—after everyone else had gotten theirs, and with Hollis’ magical bank in pocket—would Ashlan be allowed to end this journey.
She stopped to scratch her feet again, staring daggers at the Uni.
She’d been waiting for death since she left the place. She could wait a little longer.
Rafe looked up from the bottom of the hill, irritated. “Can’t you heal that up,” he called, “instead of slowing the rest of us down?”
“Looks contagious,” said Jassa, pursing her lips.
Ashlan shook her head, cursing under her breath as she worked her nails over the mottled skin of her ankles. For all these miles, Rafe had been dragging his feet, complaining about the worsening symptoms of withdrawal—but from the moment Ashlan stumbled through a scratch-patch and got her bare feet covered in this maddening rash, their lateness was her fault.
“I’m not hacking off my feet just to get rid of a rash, Rafe.” She wished Hollis hadn’t been so forthright about her powers. “It’ll pass.”
Unless she sloughed off the skin first, she thought, forcing herself to give it up. Sick of his nagging, she picked up her pace, overtaking him quickly—then forcing him to jog, panting, in order to keep up.
Now, from the front of the group, she noticed how deep the crowd was, and how tightly they’d packed the Southway. There were hundreds of them, mostly mercenaries, coming back from a day’s work in the killing fields. Most were in rough shape—sliced up, held together by bandages and tourniquets ripped from their own uniforms, slumped in the dirt or carried on their fellow soldiers’ backs. Ashlan was startled to notice there were no medics or supplies out here, yet for all the suffering, there was no sense of urgency either—the portcullis was closed, and folk were playing cards in the dirt while their brood-mates slid helplessly closer to death beside them.
It was hard to watch. But taking care of this endless war’s wounded wasn’t her job anymore. Hadn’t been for a century.
“The hell’s the holdup?” she said.
“The Guvnor locks the gates,” said Jassa, digging out her notebook and tucking it in her right armpit, “whenever there’s too much blood!”
“A real splatter-fest this week, too,” said a woman leaning on a pike near the side of the road. Her eyes kept drifting to the bear, though she looked too exhausted to make much of a fuss. “And his guards just finished knocking hell out of a protest over in Greater Splanchnic. Pushed the murder line right up into the red. Ground got a little wobbly yesterday.”
Ashlan blinked at her. Eth could only take so much killing before the catacombs came to a boil. Too many violent deaths, and the guts of the Gone-Away started to shift under the streets, shivering the city with quakes and rogue enchantments.
But armed conflict took place outside the wall.
At least, it was supposed to.
“He’s—killing citizens? Inside?”
“By the scores. Plus, the city medics got a raise recently. So they’ll wait for the worst of the wounded to die out here before they let the rest of us in. Just in case.” The pikewoman hawked and spat, philosophically. “You’ll probably want a guide. For a few coins an hour, I could—”
“She’s new,” said Rafe, glaring as he waved them on toward the line. “The rest of us aren’t.”
“Right,” muttered Ashlan, too distracted to argue, “that’s my problem.”
She was trying to imagine how many deaths it must have taken to push things this far. The shining wall kept a number of useful enchantments from spilling out over the countryside, where they’d lose their power—but at the cost of this constant instability. A ban on urban violence was the most expedient solution, but it was notoriously difficult to enforce—and people were murdered all the time, mostly by guards.
Half the times Ashlan had been cut down in her student days had been within the walls, and still the city stood. It must’ve taken a massacre to get this close to the edge.
“Better play it safe, Runt,” she whispered as they neared the throng. “Just the big guy. No minions. A bloodbath could bring the whole city down.”
Umber was drawing a great deal of attention as they came to the back of the line, but Tanka was supremely nonchalant. Ashlan looked closely at the crowd gathered around him. It wasn’t just the walking wounded who were shielding their faces from the glare of the low sun on the wall, as she’d originally thought. There were merchants’ carts, too, surrounded by armed escorts, and itinerant families with dusty faces, and a fair number of extremely pregnant women hoping to make it inside before they popped. The most famous of Eth’s enchantments was brood-birth—mothers never had single children here, but identical batches of seven, which made it far more likely that one would live until adulthood.
Ahead of them in line was a woman who hadn’t been able to keep herself from birthing. She clutched the lone baby to her breast, weeping as she insisted that it would be all right.
Ashlan glimpsed wet, matted hair and tiny, purple fingers—and all but broke into a run, spitting copiously, hands on her stomach.
“The hell are you going?” shouted Rafe.
“Change of plans,” called Ashlan.
“What are you up to, Ashlan Ley?” hissed Hollis from her bag.
She couldn’t wait to get him out of there—his weight against her body was more maddening with every step she took. Carrying him around for so long, so close to her body, she’d even caught herself thinking of him as her son. They did have a great deal in common, biologically, but the thought still felt too bizarre to entertain. “Trust me,” she whispered back, though it occurred to her that Rafe might not follow.
Luckily, Tanka was right behind her, Umber pulling the squeaking wheels of the silver-buckled trunk at their heels. “Is something wrong?”
Ashlan glanced back. Rafe’s face was red as the setting sun, but he’d taken off after them with Jassa following in his footsteps, moronically serene.
“We don’t have an extra day to wait for that gate to go up,” Ashlan barked, pressing on into the fields around the wall, where the pong of sewage wafted toward them. “By tomorrow night, these two will be sweating hard enough to forget their names. We’ve got to find another way in.”
“There is no other way in!” shouted Rafe, struggling to keep up. “They’ve locked the place down, except for Pharynx Gate—and every other chink in the wall, however tiny, is crawling with guards.”
“The sun will set in a matter of moments,” said Tanka, “and we’ll be blanketed by night. As for the guards, they’re nothing but armored flesh. They won’t slow us down any longer than we allow them to, will they, Umber?”
The bear, which had done nothing but shuffle along all this while, let out a rumbling gargle—not a roar, exactly, but a long, deep vibration that seemed to come from its bones. As Ashlan and the others startled, it opened its ragged mouth, shaking its head in a clear sign of assent.
“I—I don’t know, Tanka,” said Ashlan as Hollis wriggled against her hip. She was worried, now, about what she might have started. “We can’t just cut our way through the armed forces of Eth. Spill that much blood, we could bury a whole neighborhood.”
“Perhaps.” Tanka waved a hand across the field, where the nacreous wall was steadily darkening. “If we slay them within ci
ty limits, we risk awakening the remains of the Gone-Away. But draw them outside of Eth’s walls, and we suffer no such quandary.”
“A murder out of Eth is no murder at all,” offered Jassa, patting her blue sack of guts with affection.
Rafe had folded his arms tightly around his chest, tapping his sternum with two fingers. “How do you intend to draw them out, exactly?”
“There are tunnels used to dispose of the bodies of those they murder inside the city,” said Tanka. “There’s one not half a mile from here—I know it well.”
“What are you going to lure them out with, though?” Ashlan said, peering down the length of the wall.
Tanka smiled. “With you, Lady Ley.”
Rafe looked like he’d just gotten a bit of good news. “It could work.”
It was a sign she’d been spending too much time with these people that Ashlan could be comforted by Jassa’s assurances, if only for a moment. She kept tossing her dice on the pitted stone that rose from the reeking muck near the tunnel, muttering as she scribbled down the results. “Another kiss! Another kiss from Fortune’s lips.”
“Stop saying ‘kiss,’ ” pleaded Rafe, hunched beside her. Both of them were sniffling, their faces sheeted with sweat, but only he seemed shaken.
Ashlan stood before the moonlit mouth of the tunnel, knee-deep in bilge. She could feel the slippery bones in this slurry, and was glad for the cover of darkness.
Under the wall it was black as pitch. To one side of the round entrance stood the bear beside its wheeled trunk, Ashlan’s bag slung over its massive shoulder—she’d been relieved to get Hollis away from her for a while—while Tanka stood on the other, idly flexing her fingers.
From the far-off line before the gate, Ashlan heard the death of another mercenary, marked by a distant burst of ritual wailing as the brood marked its loss.
It was a fitting accompaniment to this idiotic mission, but there was no one to blame for this mess but herself. So, setting her jaw, she bent down and plunged inside.
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