“I suppose half the people controlling your bindings are dead now,” I said slowly. “Can you tell?”
“I suppose,” said Basil, nicking their finger. “It’s hardly noticeable.”
One of the small cuts on my hand healed. The sigil on their chest oozed more blue ink, so unlike Safia’s green, like an infection draining pus. They’d both be free soon.
I smiled, sat up, and winced. My shoulder ached as if something had been sitting on it while I slept. “Mack, where are Julian and Will?”
“Alive.” Mack helped me up and held a cup of water to my lips. “Julian’s pissed as a possum and refusing to talk to anyone. The surviving councilors were arrested. His Excellency passed out right after bringing you here, so the peers’ve been dealing with it. They’re thrilled about selecting new folks to hold the bindings and possibly doing away with the council altogether.”
Perfect—I needed them all here, distracted and vulnerable.
I took the cup, my hand shaking. “How long’s it been?”
“Two days,” said Basil. “Door had a fit too. Starting splintering till we sacrificed someone early. We’re up to two to three people per week.”
“And out of folks who plead guilty,” Mack said.
It would be soon, sooner than the eight weeks we still had. Either we killed more or it opened forever. I had to finish this first.
But even then, we’d need at least four sacrifices to keep it shut those eight long weeks.
“I need to see Julian,” I said and threw back the blankets. I was in the same clothes, excepting my shoes, and Mack pushed me back. “No, no. I don’t care about whatever you’re about to say. I need to talk to Julian.”
Basil bid goodbye to Mack. He filled me in on what had happened after Alistair and I passed out as he helped me dress. I was weak, my wrights’ reaping had left me quivering, and he helped me to the lift down into the cells and lab. Safia’s nervous laughter and Hana’s gruff voice carried up the shaft. I turned away from the tunnel leading to the lab. The cells off to the right were dark. I peered into the first one.
A hand shot out from between the bars. Bruised fingers tightened around my throat.
“You vile girl,” hissed Will. He was filthier than I’d ever seen him, and long, pale strips lined his skin where he had clawed the dirt from his face. “What did you do?”
“What I had to,” I said. “There is always a meaner, dirtier hand willing to hold the knife, and I realized that I would rather hold the knife that killed Cynlira.”
He dropped me and backed away. “You said you wouldn’t sacrifice me to the Door. So what’s your play, Lorena? Going to toss Julian through it? Make me watch?”
“Don’t be dramatic. I’m too angry you dragged Julian into this to come up with such petty plans,” I said. “I shouldn’t be surprised. We’re all animals, even you—protect your own or devour them to survive. Oh, but you probably never had to live with mice. They do that, you know. They’ll eat their young, sometimes not even to survive. Just because.”
They could have saved Cynlira, but instead, they were devouring it.
“I was prepared to die,” he said. “You are—”
“Not interested.” I turned away and called out, “Julian!”
“Lorena?” came Julian’s soft voice. He didn’t sound mad, only tired. A pale hand reached from a cell at the end. He crooked his finger, beckoning. “What did you do?”
“I picked the less vile of two vile options,” I said.
“We made a deal.” He lingered in the dark beyond my sight. “We would’ve saved people.”
“Only the wealthy who could afford to help. That none of you would even bargain to save more disgusts me.” I grasped the bars and pressed my face to them. “So I did what I had to do for Cynlira.”
“So you killed us?” he asked. “So you betrayed us? All our years for nothing. For some monster in a crown.”
“You were going to shoot me.”
He fell back against the cell wall, head shaking. “Would it have even hurt you? If I sundered you in two, would you even notice?”
“I would very much,” I said, “though probably not in the way you’re thinking.”
The unease in the taut pull of his arms as he crossed them and the furious rasp of his voice hurt far worse than a bullet would.
“You betrayed us,” he said.
“You betrayed Cynlira first.”
“Since when do you care about Cynlira and your nation? You never cared about anything, and now you’re so passionate, you’re killing friends left and right!” He sneered. “Folks would’ve been fine if they tried. It’s not like we’re shooting them in the knee and then letting them have at it. The strong would’ve kept walking.”
In Felhollow, no one gave kids younger than five shoes. It was partly to build callouses and make the kids strong and partly a holdover from worse days. The strong walked on. The weak died.
“No,” I said, “the folks rich enough to afford a healer after a nail goes through their foot or a wheelchair or paved paths survive. The ones who can’t afford any of that suffer. The ones society discounts are the ones who suffer under their rulers first, long before people with even a modicum of power notice.”
“Oh,” he said, “you’ll be a fine ruler then.”
“Curse ruling!” I hissed. “I want to save people.”
“Really?” he asked. “Or do you want to be the hero?”
I shook my head, disgust crawling over me, and my wrights curled around my shoulders as they sensed my unease. Julian leapt to his feet and paced.
He looked me over, mouth curling up and nostrils flaring. “What? No coat? No brooch? Just little Lorena Adler pretending she doesn’t have power and trying to tell me she’s right?”
“Julian…”
“You’ve always had power.” He jerked me close and grabbed a strand of my hair, twisting the pale red about his fingers. “Maybe this was a warning—here she is, this necessary Chaos, last remnant of the Vile.”
I pulled away from him, hair ripping.
“I didn’t do this for power,” I whispered. “I never wanted power. You know that.”
“You have always had more power than us,” said Julian. “Power always corrupts, especially yours.”
“Power reveals.” Tears welled up behind my eyes, hot and painful, and I smacked the bars. “Those you loved gained power and misused it, but I am not them. I showed you who I was over and over and over again—with each cut to heal your sorry ass, I showed you—and I lied to keep myself safe. You keep holding that over me. Do not make me the monster while you thrived from my work!”
“Yeah, I bet your power’s been really revealing,” Julian said, voice a low rasp.
I reared back, growling. Like an animal.
His jaw tensed.
“Really? Me having sex with him is the worst thing you can imagine?” I laughed even though it hurt. “I always wondered if we were only friends because you were hoping I would change. Was I a prize, Julian? Or were you so insulted I didn’t want you that it became an obsession?”
“What do you want, Lorena Adler?” the Sundered Crown had asked all those weeks ago, but wanting wasn’t the problem. Not wanting, this lack, was the problem. People could forgive discretions that came from wanting because everyone wanted something, but the moment I didn’t and it interfered with what they wanted, I was unnatural.
I wasn’t. I wasn’t unnatural or lacking or cold. I wasn’t missing out. I had tried so hard to separate myself from everyone else, to make myself unappealing so as not to disappoint, and I was wrong. It was his problem to deal with.
I was simply someone who didn’t desire him the way he wanted, and he couldn’t deal with it.
“My existence isn’t about you,” I hissed, “and I am done justifying my life to people who don’t e
ven think I’m a person, because if you did, you would have respected me when I told you who I was and every day when I showed you.”
“You soaked yourself in death every day,” said Julian. “Who’d want to touch you after that except another monster?”
I staggered. “Another?”
But he wasn’t wrong. I’d built walls of lies and kept everyone at a distance. It was easier to deal with the loneliness when no one wanted to touch me because I was an undertaker, not because they knew I wouldn’t want to sleep with them.
“You were always drawn to death, so lifeless, I shouldn’t be surprised you took to killing,” he said with a sneer. “Those folks you killed were good people.”
Maybe I was drawn to death because most weren’t, because they found it distasteful, and because they wouldn’t expect anything of me so long as I was death’s. Death was a shield between me and what I’d no interest in. Being an undertaker had spared me justifying my existence and disinterest.
“They’d killed people and were happy to let more die,” I said, voice breaking. “Your father has killed far more people than I have, and you were happy to kill more.”
“What?” he asked.
“My mother, every factory accident, every person worked to the bone and given nothing in return,” I said.
“That’s not his fault.” Julian shook his head and paced. “Lore, you can’t save everyone. It’s childish to think you can. Hard decisions must be made.”
“I am making one,” I said. “We can save as many people as your plan would’ve killed.”
“For what?” He laughed, high and chilling. “They’ll mess it up again.”
We had grown apart, and I couldn’t stand this boy calling for a culling. I knew him. I could trace the threads of the Julian I remembered as a child to this person before me. I didn’t want to, but I could. I hated it. Him.
And I had no more qualms about what I had planned for him.
I tilted my chin up. “The Door stays shut until it can’t anymore. The next sacrifice will come soon, and then we have two weeks. Our next experiment to shut it for good will be the day before. Then the conspirators go to trial and are set to be sacrificed as we figure out what to do. That’s you and your father and all his terrible friends. It’s so hungry now, I give it a month before it devours you all instead of waiting all eight weeks.”
Not a lie. That was supposed to happen. Julian wanted to give his father the legacy he thought his father deserved, so I would give him an opening. All he needed was a nudge.
“After that,” I said, “your father will be remembered as the man who wanted to open the Door and kill Cynlira to save himself. The Chase legacy.”
Julian wouldn’t be able to stand that. He would try to open the Door before our final experiment. We had thirteen days to get everyone in Cynlira safe. I had to free the wrought from their bounds as soon as possible.
His green eyes flickered in the lantern light. I could practically see the plan settle in his mind. He had to prove me wrong.
It hurt that I knew him so well and he knew me so little.
“At least my legacy will be my own,” he said. “Yours isn’t really yours.”
I tightened my grip on the old bars until the rust bit into my skin. “That’s how I know you never really understood me.”
Take my memory of his face, the looks of loss and horror, and create a signal for me to see when he tries to escape this cell.
It would be easier if I didn’t remember how much this hurt.
“I never wanted a legacy, Julian. I only wanted a happy life, and if I can’t have that, I’ll die trying to make sure everyone else gets it.”
Thirty-Eight
“You’re supposed to be resting,” said Basil, frowning as I entered the caverns.
“There’s no time.” I stacked up all my notes about the Door, ignoring its creaking laughter. “Do you know when the court is meeting to select who will get the bindings?”
They shook their head. “Tomorrow? They don’t like leaving it up to chance. Carlow’s already tried to break hers and died once today.”
I stripped useless page after useless page in my journal. None of it mattered, these years of experiments by Alistair or the few I had taken part in. I had stripped Creek’s bones and treated his corpse like it was no different from Carlow’s mechanical horse. The Door was one of the Vile, the Vile were everywhere and waiting to pounce once the Door was opened—or lifted or unanchored or however it did what it did was undone—and the only way to deal with the Vile was to offer them lives in exchange for letting some live. Just like Will Chase.
Laughter trickled out of me, quiet and slow, and Basil slammed their book shut.
“There’s no point in wallowing,” they said, picking at the binding where the surviving thirteen courtiers still controlled every contract they did. “We can’t lock the Door or destroy it and create a new one, and you’ve already set something in motion. It’s sloppy, but it seems to be working. What’s next? The surviving thirteen courtiers?”
I stared at Basil, and they cocked their head to the side.
“I’m optimistic,” they said. “You people always mistake cynicism for shrewdness, but Carlow’s the least shrewd person I know.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “You’re all involved in this too. There was little reason for me to be so secretive for so long.”
I’d forgotten—Basil was the youngest of Alistair’s noblewrought, but he still only took the best.
“The councilors have been plotting to let the Door open for over a decade, so they wanted to kill Alistair in case he did figure out how to close it,” I said. “Then they were going to put their plan into motion while the peerage fought over who was Crown next. They’ve been hoarding resources and consecrated ground to protect themselves from the Vile.”
Basil stiffened. “But only enough for them.”
“They were going to let the Vile do as they wanted with Cynlira and then start helping the survivors as some sort of belated saviors, so I told them I would help them attempt to assassinate Alistair.”
“And they believed you.” Basil’s fingers clenched and unclenched against their chest. “You can’t lie. Of course they believed you, and now the Crown not only owns their properties but all the ledgers detailing exactly what they have and where.”
Most wrought came from common families. If Basil, if everyone else weren’t bound to court and council, they could do far beyond what they did now. Some, undoubtedly, would side with the court and council. There would always be people who sought power and tried to gain it by tearing others down, but there would also always be good people. We could be stronger than we were now.
“We’re stronger together,” I said. “They bind wrought as children to keep us isolated and controlled, but imagine what we could do if all of us worked together instead of on single contracts.”
“What about the noblewrought who bound you?” I asked.
“They were like us once,” came Safia’s voice at the door. She moved toward us slowly, clearly having a bad pain day made worse by the demands of her binding, and green ink stained her dress. “But they decided they had survived it and put up with it, so we should too. Never mind that the bindings have gotten more vicious and more restrictive over time.”
Safia laughed, but there were tears in her eyes. Behind her, Carlow slipped inside the cavern.
“Do you know how many people I’ve had to let die because the court didn’t want to waste me on them?” Safia asked.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Shut up,” said Carlow, goggles hiding her face. “You don’t understand it.”
We all came together, the four of us, before the Door. It wasn’t frightening with the future so close.
“I made it all the way to ten before they bound me. I remember being free,” whis
pered Carlow, fingers tearing into the earth. “There wasn’t a lock that could keep me out. There wasn’t a space I couldn’t make my own. There wasn’t a home I couldn’t fix. I did more with my noblewright when I was five than I do now, but Vale Shad was too small a town for a noblewrought. That was what the Sundered Crown said. I looked up one day and she was there, Creek at her side. She wasn’t gentle when she bound me. She said it would make me stronger.”
“The Shearwill family’s run Ipswit for centuries,” Safia said. “I was thrilled when they found me. The world’s not made for me, and it reminds of that at every turn. The Shearwill family points out every expense, every change, they made for me as if I should be grateful for it. Like they’re doing me a favor. Like I don’t know they only do those things for me and not the other thousands who could use them because I’m useful. Use,” Safia spat and covered her mouth with her hands. “I was always a ledger to them—costs and gains, and then suddenly I was noblewrought and worth investing in. The Sundered Crown too. His Excellency. The lifts, the streets, and all the little changes he’s made are only there because one of us made ourselves useful to him. There’s no reason for healers to cost more than the price of the sacrifice and supplies. The Shearwill family could pay for every person in Mori to be cared for and still only cut into a pinch of their wealth. Adjusting the world so that I could live in it was only feasible once I started earning money for them. They shaped my life twice over.”
Her fingers touched her chest and came back bloody.
“They make us ledgers,” she whispered and held out her scarred arms. “They teach us to hurt ourselves, and the only way to survive is to hurt ourselves more, and then they’re angry when we flinch. You understand enough, Lorena, but you can’t understand this like I do. If I weren’t wrought, I know exactly what I would be worth to them.”
“They teach us with these little blades.” Carlow laughed. Dried rings of salt stained the lenses of her goggles. “So clean as if it made the act cleaner, but it’s the first thing they teach us as children. Alistair Wyrslaine and his mother were the only peers to be wrought in forty years, and they didn’t learn by cutting themselves. Even the Sundered Crown was taught how to sacrifice to her vilewright first.”
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