“Aye, you’re not wrong. We’ve added dried kelp to the wine ration to help the workers hold water. Tastes like arse, but the wine was so watered down before I’m not sure they’ve noticed. I’ve promised the maestros that once we’ve proven the model, we’ll discuss pay increases based on performance.”
“You did what?” Salina hissed, fanning herself harder. “I doubt the Board will agree to that.”
“The Board can get fucked. Once they see these improvements and the profits they will realize begin to flow in, they’ll sing my tune.” I shrugged out of my jacket and held it in the crook of my arm. Even with Sin’s magic, the heat was palpable. “I’ve another proposition I’m holding on to. If they consider refining at the plantations themselves, as some of the minor companies do, they could ship directly to consumers.”
“It’s not that simple,” Salina said.
“You’ll need to increase oversight and security to prevent smuggling, sure,” Eld agreed, feeding her the lines I’d given him. “But you’d prevent some of the issues that led to this summer’s near miss.” Salina gave him a hard look and he shrugged, his sunburnt face innocent. “Buc’s not often wrong, Salina. I’d bet a few lire this could be expanded to kan production as well.”
“Now that might get the Board to reconsider,” Salina said as we neared one of the larger thoroughfares on the edge of the Mercarto. A crowd of people rushed by, heading in the direction opposite to ours. A moment later, a score of the Constabulary, their blue woolen uniforms dark with sweat, rushed past going the same way we were. “What’s going on?”
“Probably a turf skirmish,” Eld said, loosening his sword in its sheath. He glanced over his shoulder at the half-dozen guards behind us. “Maybe we should have brought more muscle.”
“You’re the muscle,” I said, and Salina laughed, but that was because she’d never seen him in action. Eld somehow managed to find a deeper shade of red despite his sunburn, and that made me laugh, too.
Until we turned the corner and saw smoke heavy in the air.
I’d taken it for haze, but now I could see it coming up in plumes from one of the factories at the end of the cobbled street. I felt Sin’s reaction and cursed. One of the Kanados Trading Company’s factories. My factory. Fuck me.
“Fuck me,” I repeated out loud.
“Is that—?” Salina said.
“Our factory,” Eld grunted. “Aye.”
“C’mon,” I said, breaking into a trot. “Let’s see what can be salvaged.”
“Ladies don’t run,” Salina gasped, catching up to me.
“Then it’s a good thing you’re in trousers and not skirts, eh?” Eld said, his voice light but his expression grim.
“Eld likes trousers,” I said. “He just doesn’t like to let on.”
“They’re not proper, but they do make running easier,” he admitted.
“Do much running in skirts?” Salina asked, and we both laughed.
“The fire crews better be there already,” I said, squinting. Sin’s magic burned through my irises: people poured out of the factories surrounding ours; flames leapt through the roof in great gouts of orange and pale blue from the sugar. “The surface area–to-volume ratio of refined sugar plus all the air around it could turn that building into one giant powder keg.”
“You mean it could explode?” Salina gasped beside me.
“Exactly.”
“Gods, then why are we running toward it?”
“Because that’s weeks of planning gone up in flames … not to mention profits!” I broke into an open run and left Salina behind.
Eld caught up when I was still half a dozen buildings away; the heat had become a living, roiling thing that blasted me in the face. I recognized one of the factory maestras standing nearby, despite the soot coating her tanned features, and called over to her.
“What happened?”
“Search me, signorina,” she said through parched lips, walking over. Eld offered her a flask and she upended it, drinking greedily. “Thanks, sirrah,” she gasped, black tearstains tracing down her face and dress. “We were working, doing just as you showed us, signorina, and the output was triple what we used to do. Then I heard shouting, louder than the machines, and saw smoke. Someone shouted ‘fire’ and we all ran.”
I turned back toward the factory. A little boy stumbled toward us, his trousers in burned shreds, angry blisters running up and down his spindly legs. Beyond him, a girl with singed hair and an arm that was obviously broken threw her head back and screamed as an older child whose shirt was half-torn away tried to comfort her. Had they been playing by the factory?
“Signorina?”
I hadn’t realized I’d asked the question aloud, but repeated it. “Children should know better than that. Are they the workers’ children?”
“Buc, they are the workers,” Salina said, reaching us at last. Bent over, hands on her thighs as she caught her breath, she looked up at me. “You knew that, growing up on the streets, surely.”
“What’s she talking about?” I asked the maestra.
“Some of the children are the workers’ offspring, aye,” the woman said. “Others are orphans or are looking to earn money for their family. The machinery is too finely crafted for adult fingers. And some of the processes require tight quarters that are best handled by the children.” She shrugged. “It is the way of factories.”
I stared dumbly back at the factory. I’d avoided all manner of gangs, including the press kind, especially after murdering Blood in the Water. Being a loner, I’d never associated with other children my age unless they were of the Tip and those sort never ventured this far east. Still, I’d heard of the factories.… I’d just never paid enough attention to remember them now. I’d started all this to save the children and instead I’d been using them.
“Help my brother, please!” A girl, barely older than Sister had been when … The girl ran out of the factory, screaming at the top of her lungs, and beating ineffectively at the sparks smoldering on her clothes.
I was halfway down the cobbled street before I realized it, leaving Eld and Salina shouting in my wake. “More, Sin. Give me more.”
My legs burned with fire that had nothing to do with the flames before me. I tackled the girl hard, rolling her over and over so that any sparks were extinguished. My elbows and knees screamed, but I held her close, shielding her body with mine until we came to a stop with her on top of me. Terrified brown eyes stared down at me. Burns crisscrossed her cheeks in angry streaks.
“It’s okay,” I whispered. “You’re safe, now. It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not,” she said, shaking tears from her eyes. “Zeno’s still inside. We were running, but the smoke was thick, I couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, and I lost him. My only brother. Ma told me to watch him close and I lost him!”
“Easy, easy, little one,” I said, using Sin’s strength to roll her off of me. I sat up. “What’s your brother look like?”
“Black hair like mine, but shorn on account he got lice. He’s always getting into trouble,” she said through her tears. “Short and thin, he’s got a new brown shirt and—”
“I’ll find him,” I promised, leaping to my feet and wrapping her in my jacket. “A big pale man who is sunburnt as fuck is going to be here in a moment. He’ll help you.”
I pulled my shirtsleeves up, thankful that I’d taken to trousers last month, and took off, gulping in air that shimmered from the heat. It hurt, but not as much as the smoke would when I got inside. I leapt over bodies of those who had breathed in too much smoke and dodged chunks of the building that had already come down. The entrance looked like a gaping maw of black death, thick clouds of smoke obscuring whatever was held in its depths. I didn’t care. I knew what I was looking for: a little boy who wasn’t going to die because of my mistake.
“Ready to find out how magical you are, Sin?”
“I’ve a feeling I better be,” he said. “Are we really doing this?”
&nb
sp; “We’re saving Zeno, one way or the other.”
“The other way ends with us dead.”
“I couldn’t save Sister, because I was little and I didn’t have you,” I told him. The last burning warehouse I’d been in flashed through my mind, Sister lying motionless on one side of the flames, me standing helpless on the other. Never again. “I’m saving Zeno.”
“Her truth, we’re doing this,” he whispered.
“Aye.”
I leapt through the doorway, tripped, and rolled, felt my back burn from the scorching hot floor, and came to my feet, dancing with the flames.
49
Smoke, thick and black and suffocating, drove me to my hands and knees. The scorching floor burned the palms of my hands and my legs through my pants, but at knee height there was a scrap of breath to be found. Pushing myself up, I sprinted, bent double, for a few dozen paces, then dropped down and crawled, sucking greedily at the rancid air, then jumped up and ran again. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat.
After the first few rooms, the building opened up to the factory floor and here were my old nightmares made reality. The far side of the factory was lost in a wall of flame, hulking machinery twisted and melting in its fiery embrace. Sugar exploded in small, rapid bursts that sounded like two armies squaring off. Here, there were bodies, echoing Sister.
I ran to the first—too big to be the missing Zeno. My eyes burned, from the sweat streaming off my forehead or perhaps from the smoke. When I turned the body over, squinting through my tears, the lifeless eyes of a woman stared back at me, a bloody dent in her skull and chunks of mortar telling the rest of the tale. Letting her fall back into a pool of her lifeblood, I ran to the next. And the next. Each one drew me deeper in, each sank fear deeper into my bones, but none of them were Zeno.
“Buc! We’ve got to get out of here,” Sin shouted. “Even with time dilation and letting me search out the bodies that look like a boy’s, we won’t be fast enough. This place is going to explode or implode and either way my magic won’t be enough to save us.”
“A few moments more,” I wheezed. I wanted nothing more than to turn around and run, heeding the little voice that said I couldn’t save Sister then and I couldn’t save Zeno now. Fuck that. I could taste burning plaster, it was all I could smell, and my eyes were slits below the shirtsleeve I’d cut off and tied around my forehead to keep the sweat out. “We’ll find him. I know it.”
“Buc—”
“A few moments more!” I saw a narrow walkway between some of the machines and remembered what the maestra had said. They use the children in tight spaces. I took off, bent double, glad I was rail thin despite all the food Sin had me eating. A big man like Eld would have had trouble squeezing through, but I could run.
And run I did … full tilt into a bigger lad, sending him spilling into the dozen other children who were huddled in a crying mass behind a few large barrels. Water sloshed over the sides, hissing and steaming when it hit the floor.
“What are you lot doing here?”
“We’re trapped!” a girl shouted.
“We can’t get out,” another said.
I grabbed the lad I’d knocked over and studied him for a moment. His eyes were watery from the smoke, but he wasn’t crying. “Was it your idea to hide here?” He nodded. It had been a good thought, trying to use the water barrels as a shield, but he hadn’t realized how devastating the flames were.
“Go back the way I came and turn left. Left! You understand?”
He nodded again.
“Here.” I tore off my other sleeve. “Soak this in water and put it over your mouth. Take the others with you and stay low. Burns won’t kill you. Smoke will. So you stay low and you get them out. Okay?” I shook him when he did not respond. “Okay?”
“Aye, aye!”
“Easy, lad, I’m no captain,” I said, with a smirk that I didn’t feel. It did the trick, made him smile against his will. “Now … go!”
The boy corralled the others, tied the silk around his nose and mouth, and then they were gone, disappearing into the grey smoke that was beginning to turn an ominous black. I levered myself into one of the barrels. The water was hot, but cooler than the air. I ducked beneath the surface half a dozen times, sending water sloshing over the sides, hissing and sputtering. I jumped out and took off again, boots squelching with every step, steam rising from me in clouds almost as thick as the smoke. I felt my lungs seizing up, my heart pounding a tattoo that reverberated through my throat. Sin was right.
Magic or no, we didn’t have much time left.
The walkway turned right, then left, toward the back of the factory. I jumped over a tangled pile of brown debris … and skidded to a halt. Spinning around, I ran back and saw a thin boy in a brown shirt lying beneath a collapsed wooden hoist. Sin’s magic burned my arms and my vision narrowed as I heaved the broken machinery off of Zeno. Bending down, I put my ear beside his mouth and felt more than heard a rasping breath. Crowing, I hauled his limp body up and over my shoulder, mentally thanking him for not being one of the larger lads. As it was, his feet knocked against my knees as I half ran, half lurched back the way I’d come.
Hot coals rained down from overhead as I ran; a pair slid across the back of my left hand, leaving fiery tear marks in my flesh. Howling, I glanced up and saw open sky sucking the smoke out like a funnel, and real fear for the first time flashed through me. That much air would fan the flames, but worse, I’d a suspicion the sugar stores hadn’t gone up yet. When they did, with this much flame and air … this entire factory would turn into one large, exploding canister shell.
“Give me more, Sin!”
“I’m giving you all I’ve got,” he growled, and I could hear the exhaustion and terror in his voice.
When you’re in a situation where a God is afraid, and Sin was as close to a God as I wanted to come, you know you’re fucked. I ran past the water barrels—dry now—and burst out onto the main factory floor. My feet windmilled beneath me as I turned too fast and slipped. Zeno and I both hit the floor, slamming into the ground hard enough to drive the little breath I’d left out of my lungs. Gasping for air, I fought to my knees, blinking back spots, then made it to my feet and grabbed Zeno.
“C’mon, kid, we’re getting the fuck out of here,” I grunted. I made it three paces before something hard smashed me in the back and drove us back down to the burning floor. Pain lanced through me, darkness caught at the edges of my vision, but my eyes were on the lad. I promised his sister I’d save him. Night washed over me, but I fought to move. Sister. Something was holding me back.
I promised.
“Buc!”
Sin’s voice was shrill in my ears, sounded almost like Eld’s, and then I lost the fight and black soot suffused me completely.
50
“I found you and the boy lying together, your body shielding his,” Eld said quietly when I returned to the present. He shook his head. “I thought you were both dead. I couldn’t breathe, could barely see or move. Somehow I got you in my arms and stumbled out. I tried to pick up the boy, too, but I just couldn’t.” I could hear the truth, the regret, in his voice. “Salina had the fire crews put us on a wagon and take us out of there. We were a few blocks away when the entire place went up like a thousand mortars. The concussion woke you up.
“You’d lost your mind.”
“I don’t remember any of this,” I said. I glanced down at the scars on the back of my left hand. The tear-shaped ones that still itched. “Why?”
“Half the roof fell on you,” Sin said, his voice coming through my lips.
“I really fucking hate that,” I told him out loud.
“Aye, but Eld can’t hear your thoughts.”
“I’m not sure if that’s a curse or a blessing,” Eld said.
We both groaned at his half-hearted attempt at humor.
“Half the roof fell on you,” Sin continued. “Your skull was cracked. Your brain took a beating, Buc. Knocked both of us clean out. W
hen you woke up, you woke up without me. By the time I came to…”
“You were speaking gibberish before Sin woke up,” Eld said. “I’ve never been more terrified in my life and, you know, after the past summer, that’s saying something.”
“So Sin woke up and fixed me?”
“Not quite.” Sin sighed. “Some of the burns on your body were going to fester if the shock didn’t kill you outright. I fixed those. For the most part,” he added when I felt at my hand. “Your collarbone was fractured and I fixed that. I was able to heal the hair-thin fracture in your skull and repair the damage to your brain, Buc, but…”
“But what?”
“He couldn’t heal your memory,” Eld said. He chewed on his lip. “You kept blaming yourself for the factory. For the children. Noises set you off and when you were startled, you were angry.”
“You were furious,” Sin said. “You wouldn’t listen to me and fear of fire was set so deep in your bones that you refused to be around candles or lanterns or flames of any sort. You were half-wild.”
“I was growing desperate,” Eld said.
“We both were,” Sin agreed. “So much so that I, uh, supplanted your consciousness and spoke to Eld directly.”
“You what?!?”
“I had to do something,” Sin protested. “Without Possession, Eld was my last hope.”
“That must have been a real mind fuck for you,” I told Eld. My voice was light, but my mind was spinning, trying to process everything they were saying alongside a host of newly recalled memories that were a roaring tempest inside me.
“He told me everything that had happened,” Eld said. “How the blow had kept him from fixing you before the memories took hold. How tricky the—What’s the word you used?”
“Neurons,” Sin said.
“How the neurons in your brain were damaged and how the memories were playing in a constant loop within your mind,” Eld said. “He convinced me that if we didn’t hide your memories of the fire completely, erase them, that you’d never return to normal.”
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