by Rachel Dunne
He could also feel the ones who weren’t staring—or were staring in a different way. All his mages, fragile as newborns, nursed so carefully . . . and gone as suddenly as a candle’s flame. Because of her, because of what she’d done—draining their power by twisting Aro’s spell. The wall had been fed by a trickle of their power, a trickle that flared stronger when challenged so that the wall would hold. By continually channeling her unnatural power at it, Neira had forced the wall to pull more and more power from its sources, to pull until there was nothing left to pull.
The second thing a mage was taught by the masters of the Academy—after learning to control the wild power—was that a mage was nothing without their power. It was a foolish mage indeed who chose to or let themselves be drained of their power; one should always plan for the next thing, when a spell might be necessary and a mage, unable to perform said spell, would put their own life and the reputation of the Academy at risk. But there was something beyond drained, something not seen very often, where a mage poured out all the power they had and then gave more, gave the last that they had to give. And a mage who had given everything was dead.
Neira, using the wall, had pulled all their power, and then pulled a little more.
Now they all stared at Anddyr, the living and the dead, as he finished tying Neira’s hands, tied them tighter, perhaps, than he needed to, tied more knots than were strictly necessary. He was unwilling to take any chances—it was only by sheer force of will, and no small bit of luck, that Anddyr was still alive.
I’m learning how to fight, he thought with grim pride, hoping that one day soon he’d be able to say the words to Etarro himself. Etarro had been the one to free him, and the one to teach Anddyr that freedom had to be fought for. Anddyr had been fighting every day since, against the poison in his blood, the madness in his mind. He had gotten so good at fighting.
Anddyr tied the last knot he could and sat back on his heels, twisting his own fingers around each other to hide the way they still shook. There was a welling need in him to cast a spell, to cast any spell—but the shock of realizing that Neira had drained his power still resonated in him, and that empty feeling kept him from drawing any sigils.
He knew her, from his time in the mountain. She’d always been on the periphery of the leaders of the Fallen—an assistant to Dirrakara for a time, one of Joros’s secretive shadowseekers, rumored to be the lover of a variety of the Ventallo at any given time, rumored to dabble in things that wiser people avoided dabbling in. Some had called her a true fanatic, and a small subsect of the shadowseekers had formed around her, secrets wrapped within the larger secrets. Others claimed she was mad, and that was why she’d spent so much of her time around the mages she’d helped enslave. Everyone had agreed that she was too smart for her own good, and not to be trusted, and an invaluable ally.
She’d been kind to Anddyr—mostly. Even the times when she had been unkind, she’d at least been polite about it—like adding a grinning “please” as she leaned away from whispering in his ear the command to seal a recalcitrant mage, still living, in a tomb of stone.
“She’s trouble” had been the general consensus, and Anddyr had avoided her kind of trouble whenever he could.
Now, though, he knew the truth: she was dangerous.
“What now?” It was one of the fists, dependable Skit, who asked it. Anddyr didn’t have to turn to know he would be looking to Tare for an answer, and his hands shook harder. She had no reason to believe Neira was what Rora claimed, no reason to believe that a single mage had overpowered all the others and broken free. Given how distrustful Tare was of witches in general, and of Rora in particular, she was just as likely to suspect Rora of colluding with Anddyr on searching for some loophole in the shield that her own brother had made. There was no reason for Tare not to leave them both trapped in the cellar with Neira and the corpses of his poor flock, to wait for her to wake up and have a chance at defending herself, but by that point it would be too late—
“Take them up,” Tare said, voice hard as it broke through Anddyr’s rising panic. He twisted toward her, knowing an expression of unabashed shock stretched across his face, but she’d already turned away to make her own way up the ladder. He found Rora’s eyes instead, and she actually held his gaze for a few moments before hers slid away, and she moved to follow Tare up the ladder.
Anddyr’s hands still shook, but it wasn’t even noticeable when he wrapped them around the ladder’s rungs. He climbed up, leaving behind Neira, leaving behind the mages he’d failed to save, and climbed into the clean air beyond the cellar.
He had almost forgotten what it was like. He stood with his eyes closed, feeling the wind against his cheeks, tugging at his oil-heavy locks of hair; feeling dirt under his feet that moved when he curled his toes, rather than dirt so hard-packed it might as well have been stone. He reveled in the smells of nighttime and growing things and anything that wasn’t just stale sweat and urine; the smell of flowers nearby so heady he could taste them on his tongue. He almost laughed; he almost sobbed.
“Put him in the stables,” Tare said. She stood some distance away, her arms crossed and her stance wide, as though she were waiting for a fight. But the only one near her was Rora, sitting cross-legged on the ground and holding her wounded hand, blood from her wrist making a sleeve down her arm. Anddyr’s fingers itched with the urge to heal her, to stop any pain she might be feeling, but he couldn’t do any of that, even if she’d let him.
Skit took a step toward Rora, hesitated, took another step, and hesitated again. “What about her?” he finally asked Tare.
“I don’t care,” Tare said, and one of the fists pushed Anddyr into the stable before he could see Rora’s reaction to that.
When the fists closed the stable doors, though, leaving Anddyr enclosed in darkness that at least smelled better than the cellar, Rora wasn’t there with him.
This time, the skytower comes to him. This time, the boy inside it is alone. And this time, the boy does not wear the eyes of a god.
He is only a boy, a boy Anddyr knows. He sits calm as summer, calm as sunlight, and Anddyr knows the things he holds as well: in one hand, a stuffed horse, lumpy and ragged and dirty; in the other hand, a small earthenware jar that Anddyr can smell, no matter that he is incorporeal, that he is dreaming. He can smell it, and it makes his insides try to tear themselves apart.
“Do you want to be free?” Etarro asks. He has asked Anddyr this question before, but the last time, Anddyr hadn’t been in a place to understand what freedom meant.
He still doesn’t, not really. “I don’t know.” It is the same answer he gave the first time.
“Free is something you have to fight for.” Etarro extends his hand, the one holding the jar. His eyes are not the eyes of a god, but far older, and they see far more than they should.
Anddyr swallows hard. He can smell the skura, hear it calling to him, feel his stomach clawing toward the jar. He is not in this place, this place does not exist, but he can hear the roar and wail of his stomach. “I . . .” The clouds from which the skytower is built are firm beneath his feet; if he has weight, the clouds will support it. But there are clouds at his back, too. He can’t step away, and so the best he can do is press himself against the wall of the skytower. He says, “No. I . . . I don’t want that.”
Etarro pulls his hand back, the jar and the horse at a level once more. He stares at Anddyr.
Anddyr swallows again, and whispers, “I’m sorry. I should have chosen you. You . . . you don’t deserve this.”
The boy’s other hand moves forward, and his fingers are curled around the stuffed horse’s lumpy neck. Her name is Sooty. It’s a good name for a horse. “You have to come back for her,” Etarro says.
All the boy’s words are echoes from the past: words Etarro said to Anddyr inside Mount Raturo, the last times they talked. This isn’t real, Anddyr realizes, none of it; it’s only a dream, his sad and desperate subconscious spewing forth guilty memories. “Yo
u’re not real,” he says out loud, because saying a thing makes it true. At the least, naming a thing as false denies it its power.
“You have to come back for her,” the boy says again. “Find me.”
“They all said you’re probably dead.”
Etarro rolls to his knees, stretches the horse out closer to Anddyr. “Find me.”
“I . . . I don’t think you’re dead, but maybe it would be better if you are. Dead has to be better than trapped.”
“Find me.” Etarro stands, and walks forward, the horse brandished before him like a talisman.
Anddyr remembers how, before, he sank through the wall of the skytower as though it wasn’t there, or as though he wasn’t there. This time, though, no matter how hard he presses himself backward, no matter how desperately he thinks, I want to leave, I don’t want to be here, the wall stays solid, and he stays solid.
“Find me.”
“I don’t know how!” Anddyr wails as Etarro stands directly before him. “I don’t know how to find you. I don’t know how to help you.”
The stuffed horse presses against Anddyr’s hand, and his fingers close around it reflexively, around the horse and the boy’s hand. But Etarro slips away, back to the center of the room, leaving Anddyr holding the stuffed horse.
“Find me,” Etarro says, and the skytower opens beneath Anddyr’s feet and returns him to the world.
Anddyr woke with damp cheeks, and when he lifted his hand to wipe away the tears, he found his hand was full.
He sat up, staring, silent and utterly dumbfounded. And Sooty, his old stuffed horse, stared back. Squeezing his fingers, he could find all the familiar lumps, could feel her dirty patches coarse beneath his finger pads. Either his madness had taken a sharp downward turn or she was, impossibly, real.
Anddyr slowly lay back down, stretching out on the pile of moldy hay he’d claimed for his own. He held Sooty cradled against his chest, the place she was used to sleeping. It wasn’t her voice, but still, she seemed to whisper, Find me.
And Anddyr held her tight, and promised, I will.
Something poked into Anddyr’s leg—it felt like a stick, or a broomstick, and when he cracked an eye open he saw it was the latter, wielded by a pack member he didn’t recognize. She was smaller than fists usually were, and she didn’t have the same coiled-spring strength as Rora and the other knives did. Digging through his memories, Anddyr managed to pull up a fragment of Aro babbling about the hierarchy of a pack, everyone with their assigned role, all working to be the most efficient their pack could be. Eyes are for watching, nimble fingers can take anything they want, feet make distractions or run messages—
Yes. This woman looked like a foot.
To emphasize it, she poked him again with the broomstick and said, “The Dogshead wants to see you. Don’t make any trouble and you won’t get no trouble.”
“That’s not accurate,” Anddyr muttered, staying tightly curled around the lumpy fabric ball at his center.
“Feck you say?”
“Nothing.” Anddyr tucked the stuffed horse—the impossible stuffed horse that was—into his ratty robe. It wasn’t quite falling apart, and the waist was still tight enough that Sooty could sit down near his hip without needing to worry about falling out. Once she was secure, he uncurled and sat up, brushing hay away from his arm and side. The foot, holding the broomstick like she expected she’d need it for bashing soon, poked him again.
Anddyr stood up, moving slowly so he wouldn’t startle her. He didn’t want her need to bash something flaring up too suddenly. She brandished the broomstick at him and jerked it in the direction of the main stable door; he happily complied, walking to the open door with his fingers spread nonthreateningly at his sides. They itched with the need to weave a spell, because a night of sleep should have at least restored a modicum of his power and not testing it was almost like a physical pain, like a nagging toothache. He didn’t think his foot escort would appreciate a magelight to guide their way, though.
The foot was replaced by two fists outside the door, neither of whom he recognized. They deftly tied Anddyr’s hands behind his back, finger-winding loops and firm knots that did nothing to ease the itching, but at least made the urge to cast a spell a nonstarter.
Tucking the broomstick under her arm, the foot streaked off ahead, and Anddyr resisted the impulse to compare her to a flying star—madness lurked at the edges of such a comparison. Instead, he counted his steps as the fists led him after her trail.
The first time he’d been to the estate, Anddyr had hardly set foot in the house. Joros had declared the place belonged to the pack, and that they should keep it and themselves in good order, since they might both prove useful or even necessary. And then the cappo had whisked Rora, Aro, Vatri, and Anddyr away, along with their new complement of fists and knives. That first time, at least, sunlight had streamed through windows, lighting up the dusty halls, illuminating the corners of the large bedroom Sharra Dogshead had claimed as her own and from which she had negotiated terms with Joros. Now those same hallways were bathed in shadow, and the Dogshead’s room was lit only by a flickering lamp whose light didn’t reach the corners.
The Dogshead sat behind the heavy desk that dominated the room, looking more like a stern banker than a criminal leader.
The foot stood inside the door, broomstick planted at her side, and Tare leaned against the wall a few paces away. That one had a way of looking deceptively casual—her arms were crossed over her chest, and one foot was tucked behind her calf, but Anddyr had no doubt that, if he were to make any remotely threatening sort of move, she could put a knife through his throat before he had a chance to draw breath.
And on the other side of the room, in one of the lightless corners, sat Rora.
Anddyr swallowed. She’d clearly bathed, her ear-length hair clean if tousled, and the clothes she wore, though too big for her frame and certainly not new, were at least clean as well. Her hand was bandaged where she’d dragged her wrist free of the manacle, and the visible wounds along her arms and face and neck had been tended to. His eyes darting to Tare, Anddyr wondered if she’d been the one to nurse Rora’s wounds, and a pathetic jealousy growled in his stomach.
The fists pulled him forward to stand before the Dogshead at her desk, and stayed at his side. He didn’t like having Tare at his back, or Rora out of his sight, but there was nothing for it. The Dogshead cracked the knuckles of one hand, slowly, methodically, as she stared at Anddyr, and no, she wasn’t like a banker, she was like a teacher, like one of the disapproving masters of the Academy, and he felt like a guilty-twitching student before her—
“What,” she finally said, scattering his thoughts, “am I supposed to do with you now?”
Anddyr opened his mouth before realizing he didn’t know how to answer, and realized when he closed it that he probably wasn’t supposed to.
“Everyone tells me the woman now trapped in my cellar is dangerous, not to be trusted, and as crazy as you are. They say she’s the one who killed all the witches . . . except you. So I can’t put you back in the cellar, not until I get her sorted out. But I’d be a fool to let you roam around my house, among my people, when I know you’re dangerous and not to be trusted and crazy.”
The Dogshead began to crack the knuckles of her other hand. Anddyr, his own fingers aching in their knots, still tried to flex them anyway. He looked back at her in silence, no answer to give even if she’d wanted one. Finally she reached her last joint, and then laid her palms flat on top of the desk, fingers splayed.
“Rora tells me I should trust you,” the Dogshead said, and the words were nearly enough to knock him down. His eyes scanned over to Rora, but the Dogshead pulled him back with a sharp snap of her fingers before he got more than a glimpse of Rora’s face, canted away. “She says you, at least, have a bit of sense behind your stupid eyes, and that you kept all the witches from killing each other or any of my people. That you kept ’em as organized and calm as you could.” She lo
oked over Anddyr’s shoulder, to where he knew Rora was, but when he tried to look, too, her eyes snapped back to him with a fierceness in them that made Anddyr swallow hard. “She tells me neither of you is the traitor Joros branded you. Normally I wouldn’t care to listen to a traitor squawking about not being a traitor.” Another slide of the eyes, but this time Anddyr didn’t twitch, staying focused on the Dogshead. “But I’ve had my own doubts about your master. There’ve been enough things he’s said that haven’t lined up with the things I hear from people I trust more. So when I have to make a choice between two people I don’t trust, it comes down to the actions.”
Anddyr shook with the need to turn, with the need to weave his hands. And every shred of him ached to run, because there was an impossible horse at his hip, and the words Find me pulsed through his blood. “What is it you want from me?” he said, voice carefully inflectionless, the same tone he’d always used with Joros.
The Dogshead stared at him, level as his voice. “Right now I’ve got two witches in my home, and they’re both a problem. That’s one too many witch problems.” The Dogshead stood slowly. Anddyr remembered she had a bad leg, but it didn’t show in the measured way she rose to her feet. She wasn’t taller than Anddyr, very few people were, but he still felt loomed over as she stared him down. “We can take care of the problem right now, if you want to be difficult—I couldn’t give two shits if you die. Or you can prove that you’re worth keeping around, and you go take care of the other witch—then I can stand having you be my problem. You do that, and I won’t even put you back in the cellar when it’s done. I’ll let you roam free.”
The words were like a double punch: the word “free” shuddered through him, delirium-hot, intoxicating—and then the price of freedom struck home. They would have him kill? Of course they would, they were cold-blooded, coldhearted, they thought nothing of taking a life, but—There was a third punch, or perhaps a parting kick: Rora had been a part of this decision. She would know how much the ultimatum would shake him, which meant that she hadn’t cared, or that she had given it to them.