I wiped their face off with my coat. “You work in there?”
“Yeah,” they said, “but I just started. I don’t know how—”
“It’s fine. Listen—have you heard an explosion?”
They shook their head.
“Do you know which building stores the loaded shells?” I asked, glancing at Basil. They were almost lost behind the wall of people and smoke. “Or the gunpowder?”
“It’s around back,” they whispered. “It’s close.”
Of course it was. Everything in the Wallows was crowded. That was why the factories and a canal fed by the Tongue separated it from Norwel district.
“Go help any healers you find.” I shoved the kid back. “Basil?”
“Lore! Here!” They waved at me over the heads of the crowd. Their eyes were bloodshot, and the binding at their chest wept ink and blood. “I can maybe keep the building from collapsing, but I can’t use oxygen in my contracts. It’s not allowed.”
Of course. Better to disallow all noblewrought from creating it lest one bound to Life created a bubble in a vein. These bindings were a scourge. Without them, the noblewrought could have stopped the fire completely.
But no—these lives were necessary sacrifices to ensure no wrought ever harmed anyone.
“Basil,” I shouted. “What makes gunpowder work?”
They swayed. “Saltpeter. It creates oxygen when hot, and—”
Noblewrought had created the gunpowder used these days, and water wouldn’t render it harmless. Oxygen kept the fire alive, but destroying it would leave everyone breathless. The sacrifice for that much destruction would be too large anyway.
Carlow’s sharp voice cut through the screams. “Move! I have an idea.”
Basil and I turned. Carlow rolled a metal barrel toward the fire, soldiers and healers trying to stop her. She pushed them off and kicked the barrel onward, a white crystalline powder leaking from one end. Basil hissed.
“Did you rob a soap maker?” I screamed.
“Yes!” Carlow, binding bleeding freely, laughed. “How much ammonia and sulfur do you think is in there?”
“What?” Basil grabbed her arm. “You can’t.”
“At least this curse is good for something,” said Carlow.
She closed her eyes, and the power from her noblewrought rippled over me. My wrights whined, and Basil winced. The powder Carlow had brought with her vanished, her noblewright taking it for whatever she was creating, and a pale-yellow snow settled over the front half of the building. It flowed when it hit the flames, sinking into every burning crack.
“Gods,” I muttered. “Carlow, what did you—”
She laughed and collapsed.
“We’re not allowed to do major chemical alterations.” Basil wrapped one arm around Carlow and tried to pull her away. “Her binding killed her.”
“All the binders, those councilors and courtiers, should burn.” I grabbed Carlow’s legs and helped carry her to the gathering of healers a block away. “The back’s still burning. We have to stop it before it hits the loaded shells.”
Basil blanched. “Shit.”
I scanned the crowd. There had to be someone here who could help, someone who could do anything. I needed a sacrifice, more than blood or memories, to destroy the fire or its oxygen. Because of their bindings, the wrought couldn’t do anything. The wealthy had ensured the common folk of Cynlira could never save themselves.
Basil, red hair black with ash and cheeks pink with shining burns, dragged another survivor from the wreckage. They brushed the woman’s brittle hair from her face and listened to her lungs. Their eyes said what they couldn’t.
I approached slowly, bile rising in me.
“I’m sorry,” Basil was saying. “I can’t heal this, but one of Safia’s teachers might be able to help.”
It was a kind might. Half the woman’s chest had burned away.
“I’ll get one of the healers.” Basil patted her unburned hand. “They can take the pain away.”
“Wait,” I said and knelt next to the woman. “I can do it.”
“Thank you,” said Basil, darting off to help elsewhere.
I took the woman’s uninjured hand. Her eyes rolled to me, the question in them obvious.
“I’m not a healer, but I’m not bound either, so I can make sure nothing hurts you,” I said. “One of the healers might be able to help, but the sacrifice required is probably more than their binding allows. I know I’d have to near kill myself to do it.”
She dragged her trembling fingers down the back of my hand. Five jagged lines. An understanding.
“I can keep the shells from exploding and put the fire out, but it requires a sacrifice. One I won’t ask for. I can guarantee it will work, though, and I’ve seen what the healers can and can’t do. My mother died in a fire like this, Northcott’s years ago, but she held on for days. It wasn’t worth it. It was painful. She told me not to heal her, and I should’ve listened.”
She laced her fingers with mine.
“I need to know where the shells are,” I said. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
She nodded, pulled away, and raised her hand to point to a large shed with locked doors off to the side of the factory. It was unmarked and wedged between two identical buildings.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
Destroy her sense of pain. Destroy the oxygen near the fire until it dies.
My vilewright, hungry and frantic, swept toward the flames. They went out all at once, as if a single breath had snuffed them, and I groaned. My vilewright returned, carrying the scent of blood and knee-buckling exhaustion to me. I bowed over the woman.
Her finger dug into my arm.
“I wanted you to see it,” I said and forced myself up. “It’s your doing. You saved them.”
She stared up at me with wide eyes, and I couldn’t help but see my mother in them. I’d never been able to begin fresh like Northcott, who’d paid for his crimes with paltry fines. I’d never recovered. So many hadn’t. Grief never healed. It scarred.
Fines were never enough.
“Are you ready?” I cupped her face in trembling hands. “Anything you need me to know? Anything to tell your loved ones?”
She touched her heart and dragged her fingers down my face, leaving five broken lines of blood and ash. She cut a sixth line across them.
“I’ll be quick,” I said and pinched her cheek. “This hurt?”
She shook her head slowly, and I twisted her neck just so, snapping her neck below the stem. I knew death far too well.
Take her as sacrifice.
The woman exhaled once, and I stayed with her long after my vilewright passed through her. Wallowers moved around me, racing into the building despite the pockets of flame still smoldering. I drew Death’s sigil across the woman’s face and winced at the pounding ache in my head. My vilewright grumbled.
Sacrifices were never enough.
Create oxygen for the survivors as quickly as you can, I prayed, and take my voice, my wakefulness, my sleep. Take something that won’t kill me and let them live.
My noblewright engulfed me, and my breaths quickened. My chest tightened. It wasn’t enough.
My mother. That last day before the accident when she called me to supper. Take my last memory of her.
My noblewright trilled and ripped away. Screams and sobs echoed across the wreckage. The skeleton of the building cracked.
I was a child again, standing in the ashes of my mother’s factory and dragging her home to save. The Wallows never changed. Cynlira never changed. It would always demand we save ourselves through suffering.
I’d tried to get Alistair to make the councilors and courtiers see reason, but I would never be able to. They were beyond it. They were above it.
“I can’t,” I said an
d choked. “No one can fix Cynlira.”
Nothing would ever be enough.
Thirty-Three
I awoke in a bed, swaddled in blankets and confusion. A bitter taste stuck to every nook of my mouth, and fingers curled around my ankle. My hands stuck to my clothes, peeling away slowly. Everything hurt.
“You shouldn’t sit up,” said Alistair from near my feet. The fingers on my ankle tightened.
I sat up and swallowed back the nausea. “You shouldn’t have put off signing the safety regulations law.”
I lunged, pinning him to the bed. The ashes of the dead and dying and the knowledge of how little they were worth to the people meant to represent them clung to my skin, and they left ghastly smears along his skin and clothes. Alistair’s hands flexed near my sides.
“I told you to deal with the safety regulations,” I said. “You didn’t. I’m done. Why keep me here if you don’t listen to me?”
It wasn’t enough to not be bad; a person had to be actively good. They had to try to do good. Apathy was as bad as villainy, and it would destroy this world. I’d been wrong.
“I shouldn’t have stayed,” I said and let him go. I hadn’t thought I’d be able to say those words. “I thought you wanted me here. You clearly don’t.”
His eyes widened. He clutched my shirt, knuckles against my ribs. “No, no, no, no. What do you mean?”
“Will’s guilty. We have no contract. You don’t take what I say seriously.” I shook his grip from me. “I’ve no reason to stay.”
“We’ll write a new one.” Alistair tumbled off the bed after me, and his fingers tangled in my filthy shirt. “It wasn’t about the Door. It wasn’t important.”
“It was important to me.”
“I’ll fix it,” he said. “Please, Lorena. I’ll pardon Will. I’ll talk to the court and council. I’ll put you in charge of them. Whatever you say, I’ll do. Just stay.”
Oh, now that I was threatening to leave, he could do it? How little he valued what I needed, but how perfect for me.
“In charge of the council?” I asked, letting his arms wrap around my waist. “You’ll sign what I set in front of you? No more forgetting?”
Will’s plan depended on Alistair not noticing the councilors prepping for the end of the world, and my new plan hinged on Alistair leaving it up to me. I needed those safe havens.
The Lirans cast aside by their leaders deserved them.
“No more,” said Alistair, his mouth pressed to the crown of my head. “With you, I have learned more about the Door in weeks than I have in years. You understand it like I do. You understand the Vile.”
“I thought I did,” I murmured and touched his hands. “I think I’ve been wrong about a lot of things.”
Apathy wasn’t better than disdain. I couldn’t fix Cynlira by moving the peers and manipulating Alistair. Cynlira had made them what they were today and taught them to think as they did, relegating people to profits. The problem with Cynlira wasn’t its people or the Door. It was Cynlira itself.
This country was a machine using us all until we broke. The peerage pulling the levers profited, and the council, little more than levers themselves, stayed well-oiled and conditioned so they could keep working us to death. Alistair was no more than a golden cog, and he could be replaced. Any peer taken out would be. The factory would be rebuilt within a month.
The machine that was Cynlira had to be destroyed. There were too many bad pieces in an already terrible system.
“Help me get dressed,” I said. “We’re going to care for the dead.”
Blood stained the front of my dress. Alistair brought me a wet cloth, turning away as I washed. I didn’t even know the woman’s name, the one I’d sacrificed, and it didn’t matter. The anger that had always been in me, smoldering ever since my mother’s life had faded, would never burn out. There was always another factory. There was always a necessary sacrifice.
“Did you think to ask how many died?” I rubbed the smooth skin of my chest and slipped into a clean dress, doing up the buttons in the front. My noblewright was quiet and still against my back. “Alistair?”
“No,” he said softly. “I didn’t.”
I touched his shoulder, and he helped me into my coat.
“Do you know the name of the vilewrought Will hired to kill you?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I am a monster, Lorena. Do you really need more evidence of that?”
“I didn’t ask her either.” I handed him my second greatcoat. “Wear this.”
We left the palace grounds with no guards save for Hana and walked across Mori to the Wallows. Alistair didn’t look like His Excellency without a carriage, soldiers, or white greatcoat stamped with Chaos’s sigil. No one paid us much mind.
The talk of the fire was too interesting anyway.
By the time we reached the Wallows, the building had been reinforced, and noblewrought were searching the wreckage. The healers had set up a small tent in a nearby building. Safia spotted Hana right away.
“Nineteen dead,” she said, bandaged hands clutched in her lap. “If you’ve got time, we could use you.”
“How much help do you need?” I asked.
Safia startled, seeing Alistair and me for the first time. She bowed her head. “A healer. I’m still in training, and the factory’s healer had only just started. The healing houses from here to the Works are overrun.”
I glanced at Alistair.
“Hana,” he said, “acquire every available noblewrought bound to Life in Mori. I don’t care how trained they are. Get them here.”
“Right away,” she stuttered. “Your Excellency.”
“Where are the dead?” I asked and tapped my coat. “We’ll take care of them.”
Safia pointed to a small, run-down church barely across the watery border with Formet. We made our way there, waving once to Basil and Mack helping a group repair homes near the factory, and I claimed a small table at the back of the room. Alistair frowned when I rolled up his trousers. He didn’t complain about washing the corpses clean though.
I pulled back the canvas covering an unidentified corpse—burned flesh, black lips, damaged lungs. I propped them up and pierced two veins with hollow needles. Their blood was still warm.
I watched Alistair while I waited. He was washing a child no older than ten and listening—it was clear from his face that each sound was flowing in one ear and out the other—to their father sob.
I pulled the canvas from the second corpse. Franziska Carlow, very much alive, blinked up at me.
“Adler,” said Carlow. “How many dead?”
I dropped the canvas back over her.
She growled, sat up, and vomited in her lap.
“Eighteen now that we’re not counting you.” I pushed her shirt aside and studied her binding. Her white ribs peeked out behind the raw flesh. “How are you feeling?”
“Like Shearwill killed me for saving lives.” Carlow shimmied out of her coat and dress, leaving them in a sopping puddle in the funeral rites pool, and I wrapped her in my coat. “Where’s Baines?”
“Either still helping with repairs or resting,” I said and took her by the arm. “Alistair, I’m taking Carlow to the healers. Will you be all right here?”
He nodded and brushed the last of the ash from the child’s hair. “Go.”
Carlow stared at him like she’d never seen him before and didn’t even think to pull away from me.
“Come on.” I wrapped one arm around Carlow to keep us both standing. “I need to talk to y’all anyway.”
We made it to the healer’s house without falling down. Mack was sitting against a wall in the back, his dark skin ashy. Basil was lying on the floor, their head in his lap, and staring at the ceiling. I dropped Carlow next to Basil and collapsed near Mack. He grabbed my hand.
“We’re no
t doing it, right?” he asked.
“No, we’re not, and we’re not letting them do it either.” I laid my cheek against his shoulder. “You still staying at Noshwright?”
“For now,” he said. “Doesn’t feel very welcoming though.”
Safia, doubled over in her chair, motioned for Hana to help her over, and I waited for them.
“The factory’s healer nearly killed themself trying to save people,” said Safia, not even lifting her head. “They’ll be touch and go for a day.”
“Leave them to the others,” Hana said and rubbed her back. “You’re half-dead too.”
“You all awake enough for a chat?” I asked. “I’ll make it quick.”
Basil cracked one eye open. “Very quick.”
“Willoughby Chase, the man I came here for, was attempting to assassinate Alistair to prevent him from closing the Door. The council wants it opened,” I whispered. “They’ve been hoarding everything they need for survival and buying up old churches to live in once the Vile are here.”
Safia groaned into her arms, and Carlow punched the wall.
“They can’t possibly have enough space for everyone,” she said. “The population of Mori alone…”
“They’re not planning on saving everyone,” Mack said. “They’re planning on saving themselves.”
“They’re no better than the peers.” Safia lifted her head, the dark coils of her hair a veil, and sobbed. “We’re bound to them. They’ll make us help them, won’t they?”
“That’s their plan, yes.” I swallowed, throat dry, the full weight of the last few days sitting in my chest, and took a deep breath. It tasted of blood and burnt flesh. “But I have another, and I would like all of you to trust me. Prepare yourselves for the Door opening. Trust me to deal with the council. Please.”
“You can’t lie to us.” Carlow laughed. “Of course we trust you.”
It was laughable—the court and council could’ve prevented this all with their money and resources, but instead they had opted to save themselves and their power every single time. If they had put their minds to it, they could’ve saved everyone. They could’ve been heroes, but they wouldn’t have been rich. They would rather kill everyone than give up even a pinch of power.
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