CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Shironne followed Deborah to a room farther down the hall. She sensed the colonel waiting wakeful in one corner. Mikael’s mind fluttered in fear, like a bird in a cage.

“Is he dreaming?” Deborah asked softly.

“Not that I can tell,” the colonel returned.

“He will be in a while,” Shironne told them. “He knows that and he’s panicking in his sleep.”

“The sensitives told me that he screamed for a time before his dream began,” Deborah said, placing Shironne’s hand on the back of a tall chair. “Is he doing that now?”

Shironne sat down, trying to hear this the way her mother might have. “I suppose they might perceive it that way. If they don’t hear him well, they probably wouldn’t know exactly what’s wrong. He just doesn’t want to do this alone.”

Her response started Deborah thinking hard again, the doctor’s mind spinning down in tight spirals, hiding all her feelings inside.

Shironne slipped off one glove and touched a linen shirtsleeve that bore the sense of Mikael. She located his hand, gone chill in slumber. His knuckles were scarred, his hand calloused but clean. He had a scar slashing across his palm as well, rather like the one she had. She tried to wish reassurance at him. His anxiousness calmed then, as if he’d only been waiting for her to arrive.

He started slipping away from her, the dream pulling him down. It tugged at her as well. Shironne slid with it, not aware when she passed into sleep.

•   •   •

Shironne stood on a cobbled street under the dim lamplight, clad in her worn pink tunic. She glanced down at herself, seeing orange petticoats, startlingly bright against the brown of her leather slippers. She glanced down at her gloveless hands. Her fingers looked slim and elegant, like Mama’s. In her dreams they usually looked plump and shorter, the way she recalled seeing them last, before she’d lost her sight. She turned them over and saw that her left palm lacked the scar that should mar it. Mikael had never seen it, she realized.

I’m not seeing anything. This is what his mind sees. This is what I look like to him.

Then she shook her head. She wasn’t here to stare at her hands.

Where is he? She should see Mikael somewhere, shouldn’t she?

She glanced up and down the street. Nothing seemed familiar, giving her no answer. She supposed it could be the northwest quarter of the city, past where the wealthier Larossans lived; a newer section of town, with stone streets and sidewalks and gaslights—possibly the Seychas District. Why here?

Rows of houses three and four stories high lined both sides of the unknown street, close together and dark now. Little traffic moved on the street, only a few pedestrians bundled heavily against the chill wind. She spotted a couple of coaches heading away from her, and then turned about to inspect the other side of the street.

A man stood almost directly behind her. Shironne took a startled step back when she saw him, but he ignored her. He remained standing under the lamppost, appearing lost in thought.

“Who are you?” she blurted out, too surprised for courtesy.

He failed to react, as if unaware of her presence. She tried again, reaching out to shake his sleeve, and he ignored her. He must not be able to perceive her at all.

This had to be the victim. I’m looking at a man who’s about to die.

Shironne swallowed, feeling her breath shorten. She couldn’t save him, could she? Mikael watched in his dreams but couldn’t interfere. All she could do was observe. Frustration welled through her, making her grind her teeth.

Who was he? His clothes told her nothing about him. They were casual, and not a wealthy man’s, but well tailored. His face appeared more angular than those of most Larossans, that and his height hinting at some Anvarrid blood. Otherwise, she couldn’t see anything distinctive about him.

He appeared to be debating something in his head, his eyes lowered. Shironne lifted her left hand to his cheek, lightly touching his unresponsive face, and his anxiety swarmed around her.

There were two men inside that worried mind. She sensed the one, his thoughts tortured by a decision he fought to make. Mikael’s consciousness twined through the other’s like two vines growing together.

The first man worried, thinking he needed to talk to her first before reporting it, that it would only be fair to discuss it with her. He didn’t even know what he’d say, his thoughts argued. Just come out with my suspicions?

This was a soldier, even if he wasn’t wearing a uniform.

Shironne lowered her hand, staring into the man’s face. She wished he’d surrendered a name to her, so she’d have some idea of his identity. She tried again, drawing from his conscious mind only the same circular pattern of worry and responsibility.

She should be able to pull more out of him.

She hadn’t touched him at all, she realized—she couldn’t. She’d left her overly sensitive skin behind in that room where her body slept. She rubbed one hand along her tunic sleeve and felt nothing other than the normal texture of the wool, the embroidery and beading around the cuff. Her presence in this dream existed only through her link with Mikael, and he’d reached this man with his mind, not his skin. She could access only what Mikael was accessing.

Movement caught her attention, and another man passed them by in dark garb. He had a heavy coat pulled close around him and was apparently unaware of Shironne’s presence. The first man stilled suddenly, his thoughts going awry, scattering like marbles dropped on the ground. His face went slack and his mouth fell open.

Shironne stepped away from him, perplexed. His left hand brushed his neck and he swallowed with a pained sound. Shironne backed farther away, frightened now.

He put his hand to his throat. A whisper feathered out between his lips, too indistinct for her to catch. She touched him again, but his mind only chattered with fright and anger.

He knows. He knew exactly what had just happened to him. He knew what would happen, just as it had to the others. The man in front of her knew he’d been chosen to die.

Who is he? He seemed so familiar, but she couldn’t place him because it was Mikael who was touching him, not her. This new limitation frustrated her.

The creaking rumble of a coach approaching warned her. Shironne scrambled away to get out of its path, not certain what it might do to her dream-self. A lumbering traveling coach slowed to a halt only a few feet from where she stood. It bore no crest—the sort of vehicle a nobleman might use when he wanted his identity hidden.

The door opened and two men jumped down. Their victim watched them come, his knees giving out as they neared him. He slumped to the stone pavers.

Shironne gazed at them, trying to find something distinct about them in the gloom. Their faces and clothes told her nothing, as nondescript as their victim’s. The victim’s panic turned to frustration, leaking through Mikael across her senses. His captors raised him to his feet again.

A third man stepped down from the coach then, his presence drawing her attention as if he was now the center of the dream.

His features looked Larossan. She would guess his age to be around forty, but she wasn’t particularly good at that. A touch of gray marked his temples. He seemed a man accustomed to getting what he wanted. His clothes were of the finest quality, clearly better made than those of his two associates. The cut seemed odd to her, though.

He laid one bared hand against his captive’s cheek. Then he looked at her . . . and, unlike the others, he actually seemed to see her.

Shironne forgot everything else when his dark eyes stared into hers. Mesmerized, she watched as the distance between them seemed to disappear. The rest of the dream slowed to a halt. The two other men dragging their victim to the coach appeared to stop, suspended in time, the horses unmoving.

The only sound she heard was her own terrified breathing.

The man reached out with his other hand, almost as if to caress her face. She wanted to back away but remained frozen there. One of his fingers slid down the curve of her bruised cheek.

I’ve come looking for you.

His lips moved, words coming forth that her ears didn’t recognize. She was learning it thirdhand, like an old rumor, passed via the victim through Mikael to her. The words’ meaning whispered into her mind all the same, things he wanted repeated. He wanted her to bear his warning, claiming that she alone would come out of this dream with the memories he wished. As if he knew her, as if he recognized her, he understood what she could do better than she did herself. The familiarity of his touch terrified her.

Shironne jerked away, almost shredding herself out of the dream to escape him. She fell to the pavers and then scrambled up. She ran to a nearby house and crouched down by the steps, making herself as small as possible, hoping to escape the man’s attention.

He hadn’t moved from where he stood. He watched as the others—three of them now—struggled to lift their burden into the coach. They climbed up, clambering over their victim’s body. The older man turned, gazed at her again, and smiled.

Shironne ran, turning into an alleyway that was weirdly unformed. The buildings faded off into blackness, leaving her nowhere to go. Fear beat in her blood, so she leaned against the alley wall, trying to calm herself. Somewhere in the dream she still sensed Mikael’s presence, but she didn’t want to be where he was—not if that man was there.

She concentrated on keeping contact with Mikael in her mind, sinking down until she sat in the vague alleyway. Darkness crept about her, unformed spots in the fabric of the dream. This must be a place in the city Mikael didn’t know, this alley, and therefore he couldn’t dream it well.

She could feel Mikael’s anger and fear coupled with the victim’s desperate worry, ever present, the very air of the dream. Time passed, and his fear settled. The victim understood that Mikael would be there, watching over him.

And then she was sure. Even though she wasn’t sensing the victim with her own mind, the perception she had of him through Mikael told her that this man, this victim, was Lieutenant Aldassa.

She put her head on her knees, unable to stop the tears. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t bear to watch Aldassa die. How did Mikael live through this, over and over? She put a hand over her mouth to hold in her sobs.

If Mikael could do this, she could.

She was here to protect Mikael, and she had to calm herself to do that. Shironne reached into her tunic pocket, trying to find her focus so she could anchor herself to it, pull herself out of the dream. Only she didn’t have it. The crystal was in the pocket of her blue coat, and Verinne had taken it away.

Her heart began to flutter. How can I pull Mikael out of this dream if I don’t have it?

But the crystal couldn’t exist in the dream anyway. Mikael didn’t know she had it. So how had she used it to yank him out of his memories before?

It was the idea of the focus. She slid her hand into her tunic pocket and felt the cool edges of the stone under her fingers. She felt its clean lines and simple structure. She drew the focus out of her pocket and stared down at it. It had the shape her fingers remembered. It was blue, as her mother had said when she gave it to her long ago, and it glowed softly, a beacon in this dark alleyway. She cupped her hands around it, memorizing it, fixing it in her mind so that it would be a tool for her to use whenever she needed it.

She took a deep breath and forced away the victim’s fear, Mikael’s fear. She had to keep a level head if she meant to control this dream world, to be the witness they all needed, that Aldassa deserved. She had to get Mikael safely out.

She pushed herself to her feet. She wanted to be where they’d gone rather than abandoned in this chilly alleyway of Mikael’s mind. She tried to make Mikael hear her, thinking that it was his dream and he must control it somehow. The world changed around her abruptly, showing her Aldassa being hauled from the traveling coach in a different dark alley.

Three men dragged him across the ground, his head drooping to his chest. One of their number stayed behind in the coach, his face reflecting anguish—the involuntary witness. The last man, the one who could see her, followed them at a distance, not taking part in the gruesome pageant. Shironne shrunk back into a doorway, caution overriding her need to witness the crime.

They were in the Lower Town now, a slum. The stench was less pungent in Mikael’s dream, but distinctive even so. There were no streetlights here. The police didn’t frequent this quarter, saving their efforts for those parts of the capital that made stronger demands. People here kept indoors at night, and those who didn’t had ill reasons for being abroad.

She watched as they dragged the man down the stone embankment into the shadows of the Lower Town Bridge. The fourth man trailed behind them as if too fastidious to soil his clothes. He followed the others to the embankment but went no farther, waiting with one foot up on the stone wall, looking as if he’d merely gone for a moonlit stroll.

She didn’t want to watch. Her heart fluttered wildly—the victim’s fright, shared with Mikael and thus transferred to her—and she forced it back down. How much time passed she didn’t know, but then the men returned from the embankment and strode into the shadows.

Was it over?

No, they were still in Mikael’s dream.

He was trapped in Aldassa’s dying body, counting on her to bring him back.

Forgetting her caution, Shironne ran across the dirt street and flung herself down the embankment, landing in the sludge that lined the edge of the river. Crumpled fabric lay near the flow of water and a rope snaked off into the darkness, tethering something away from the black water.

She screamed Mikael’s name.

She heard laughter and turned back to see the last man standing on the stone embankment, limned by the faint moonlight. He smiled warmly, almost affectionately, at her, the way Father used to smile at Perrin.

“Remember,” he said—a foreign word, but she knew it.

She grabbed for her sense of Mikael and the dream shredded, catapulting her back into blindness.