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“HELLO, MA.” FACE TO face with his mother, Ade could feel all his insides slipping away into nothing, a little dead lizard drying up in the sun.
“What’s happened?” Her fear battered all around the room, sparking the air as she grabbed at Ade’s collar. “What’s going on—your sisters—why are you here?” She stopped shaking him to step back, her face slowly changing as she looked from Ade to Tabeth and back to Ade. Wide-eyed rage and fear battled for supremacy.
Tabeth had her arms crossed over her chest, and she watched Ade and his mother in silence.
“You—” Ade swallowed hard, and tried to talk. He felt ill, as though the itch of Tabeth’s spark had became a monster trying to scratch right through his skin and down to his bones. It was worse even than when he’d met her for the first time in the towerhouse. “D-door didn’t explain?”
“Doreen?” Ma looked dumbfounded for a moment. She put her hands to her hips and squared off at Ade, as though he was Doreen himself, about to get a lecture seven miles long. “What has she done, and how could she have told me anything?” Panic made her voice rise. Ma knew.
Ade wouldn’t leave the Stilts for much, let alone go trekking all the way up to a strange city far from home and family. Ade could see the knowledge in her eyes, the fear of everything that could go wrong.
More than that, Ade was the Onnery-Next and Onnerys don’t travel with sparked Hobs.
“Ma?” Ade’s hands were sweaty, and he could hear the thudding of his pulse loud in his eardrums, like a warning. Everything was too bright—the light bouncing off the faces in the room. “Ma, Door was supposed to be here...” His insides were constricting. Lungs too small to breathe, heart too small to beat. Gasping sounds battled under his words, that catch of too little air and too much panic. But it sounded like the sea inside a shell, shrunken and far-away. He blinked and focused, blocking out the shuffle and breath of the other people in the Grinningtommy’s house, and the fiercely doubled itch of Tabeth’s spark. All he had to do was concentrate on Ma, on getting the words out, and wait for the panic to pass. Except Ma looked all wrong, and the sound of his breathing caught against his teeth, and Ade shivered.
Ma had been ill before, and she always carried on, pushing her illness aside and acting like it was nothing more than just another bag she had to carry. Only once had Ade seen her too sick to do anything more than lie on her bed and vomit into a wooden pail while he and Perry had brought her cold cloths and wiped her face and hands. She looked like that now, grey and lined, the skin all around her eyes dark as bruises.
“Ade.” Her voice came out slow, every word careful. “Where is Doreen?” She stepped forward and rubbed at Ade’s arms. “What has happened, and why are you here? Tell me everything. Just breathe, you fool. And sit down.” With one hand clamped to his shoulder, she steered him to a small round table with four mismatching wooden chairs, and pushed him gently down onto the nearest chair. “One thing at a time, Ade.”
“I’ll bring him something to eat,” said the Grinningtommy.
Ma managed to twist her face into a tight smile in thanks.
“I’ll help.” Tabeth went to the kitchen and left Ade alone with Ma, and the sleeping sickly child in the corner—though Ade didn’t think she would care much that some stranger was having a panicking fit.
“I don’t know where to start,” Ade whispered. The room still buzzed and hummed around him, the shadows pulsing, but there was a feeling of settling. The attack was passing.
“The beginning’s always best.” Ma sighed and sat herself down, slow like an old woman.
Should he tell her about Nan, Ade wondered, or would hearing that her mother was dying just be cruelty on top of cruelty? What was the beginning? “Door got into some trouble with the Sharif.” He folded his hands tightly together on the tabletop. The wood was oiled, kept shiny and clean. Ade could almost see his reflection all hazy and golden like a snake in oil. “And Tabeth,” he stumbled over her name, “helped her break out, but things went wrong so I came with Door— We came up here where maybe things would be safer, and you could help.” He glanced away from his reflection, forcing himself to face Ma.
She stared stonily back, all her strength collapsed. “I see,” she said, as the Grinningtommy came back in with bowls, followed by Tabeth with a pot of sweet-aloe tea.
Ma made no move to pour anything for herself, so Ade poured hers, then his own. His hands shook so much he splashed tea onto the polished wood. “Sorry.”
“Don’t mind that.” The Grinningtommy wiped it away with a rag pulled from her skirt pocket. “I’m used to it, what with those two.”
As though aware that she was being discussed, the little girl on her cot began to cry—a thin, shaky sound. The Grinningtommy sighed and went to her, leaving the two Onnerys to their conversation.
“Door was supposed to be here,” Ade whispered. “We caught a wherry and she took the first one—”
“Alone?” snapped Ma.
Ade shook his head. “N-no. There was a boy with her—”
“Wonderful.” Ma stood and put her palms flat on the table and leaned in close. Ade couldn’t help bowing his head to avoid her wrath. “You put your sister on a wherry to MallenIve, with some strange boy—”
“He’s not that strange,” said Tabeth.
At any moment now, Ade thought, someone’s head was going to go flying. And he wasn’t taking bets on whose it was going to be—the two women were facing each other off like jackals at a hare carcass. “I don’t need chat from the likes of you,” Ma said in a falsely calm tone. “Now clear off, before I’m moved to do something you won’t like.”
“Not even a thank you?” Tabeth sauntered closer. “After all, was me who broke that stupid brat you call a daughter out of her little pen.”
“Shut. Your. Mouth,” said Ma.
“And I did it with what you would have taken right out of my head, if you’d known about me.”
“Ma—” Ade said, uncertainly. If the two of them went for each other’s throats, he didn’t know who would need his help more. Or whom he’d give it to.
“She would have lost a hand,” Tabeth continued. “It was a good thing your boy there came to fetch me. He’s smarter than you credit. Smarter than you, at any road.”
“Shite,” Ade said, just loud enough for Ma to hear. The room seemed to shrink all about him, the walls drawing in tight. “I— I didn’t know,” he said lamely. “Not until...” When? It was a lie, and Ade knew it. He’d realised from the moment they met what Tabeth was. “I needed to save Door.”
“And where is she now?” asked Ma, sweeping one hand wide to encompass the room. “Fine job you did of saving the ungrateful wretch. And you left Perry alone to look after Nan?”
“Nan’s fine.” Ade looked at his feet. “And Perry’s sensible. She will be all right.”
“Your mam’s right though.” Tabeth turned away from Ma as though to dismiss her, though Ade could hear the slight nervous burr under her apparent calm. “We need to be worrying about the problems at hand. Where is your sister? That’s what I’d like to know.” She scowled and leaned back against the wall in a display of nonchalance, even though all around them her spark crawled and ticked and itched.
It was enough to make Ade rub at his upper arms, just to stop himself from scratching like a dog with fleas. “Maybe,” he mumbled, and they both looked at him as though he’d begun shouting. He coughed. “Maybe the Sharif got her,” he said, though spilling the words out made his heart cramp down small, a frightened rat dug out of its hole.
Ma looked sickly. She sat back down in her chair with a solid thump. “Don’t say that.”
“Boy’s probably right. Looks like I wasted my time.” Tabeth’s face twisted. Ade could tell that however flippant she might sound, she didn’t mean it like that. She’d wanted them all to get here safe and sound, even if she thought Door a fool. “If the MallenIve Sharif have her, and they know she’s wanted, there’ll be no getting her out. MallenIve’s not soft—and the Lammers here snort scriv like it’s chalk powder—”
“I don’t need you telling me how MallenIve works, thank you very much!” Ma’s anger snapped back, swamping out her fear and despair. Her voice rose sharply. “And I no longer require your help in this affair, and I never did. You will kindly leave my family alone before you do any more damage.”
“Damage?” Tabeth stepped away from the wall. The itch from her spark worsened, digging into Ade’s pores and making him shiver even though outside it was hot enough to melt sand into glass. “You don’t talk to me about damage, you jackal-spawned bitch. I grew up in a hole because my own family didn’t want your kind coming and ripping everything out of my head.” She stopped. “I’d suggest you speak to the Sharif, if you’re that worried.” Her voice was calm again, her rage a wind that blew through her and was gone now.
“I will at that.” Ma stood stiffly, eyes fierce on Tabeth. Her brow was furrowed, as though she didn’t know what to make of this adult monster, this sparked abomination.
Ade felt the same, so he half-understood his Ma’s twisted confusion.
“Ade.” Ma took her bag and slung it over her shoulder, as though it were a shield and she off to do battle. “You’ll come with me.”
“Ma?” His face heated. “I can’t go, Ma, if they see me, they’ll know—” Ade’s hand jerked up to his cheek, though there was no way he could cover it all. The mark would always show.
“They will know nothing,” she said. “Don’t argue with me.”
Just like it had always been, Ade closed his mouth up and did as she said. Only...only instead of it feeling right and good, it made his insides squirm, made his blood heat, and Ade realized he wasn’t scared like he’d been when Door was caught, or when they were on the run from the Sharif. He was angry.
The feeling surprised him, and he forced it down.
One corner of Tabeth’s mouth twisted up in a hooked smile. The other side of her face was smooth, like it wasn’t interested in the little play being performed before her. Ade wondered if there were two halves to the way she thought, and unlike other people, if she could keep both going at the same time. She cared and she didn’t care. “That’s right,” she said. “Don’t argue with your dam.”
The words ringing mockingly in his ears, Ade followed Ma out, like a little ratting-terrier on a lead, keeping to her heels, his head down and his hat pulled low.
Outside the Grinningtommy’s roundhouse, the sun baked the roads. The heat dropped down like firepit rocks, crushing Ade’s bones right down into dust. His throat dried, and he thought he’d never been in such a terrible place. All he wanted now was the wind coming in off the ocean, tearing against his face and making the trees grow in strange flattened shapes, tugging at his clothes and making words impossible to say. The wild winds of Pelimburg were better than this flat dead heat. Ma strode on, her chin held high, and she didn’t look to left nor right. Ade scurried after her.
“Do you know where you’re going?” he asked as they went down the dusty street, with all the MallenIve Hobs watching them curiously.
“Of course I do,” she snapped as she turned down a side street. “I’ve been here before.”
“Before?”
“Before you were born, and after.” She slowed and looked back at him, and for a moment a little smile slipped onto her face. “I know The Grinningtommy from old. All Onnerys do.”
“Not me.”
She sighed. “I suppose not.”
The thought came to him clearly. “You don’t want me to be the Onnery?”
There was no answer as they walked out into a little dusty square hemmed in on all sides by more buildings. These ones weren’t round and thatch-roofed. They had a squat, angry-faced look of houses put up fast and without feeling. People sat on the wide verandas and hawked their wares—groundnuts, little boiled sugar sweets and glass beads on knotted silk. There were broken-down nillies tethered to some of the houses, and small dog-carts tilted and waiting. Even a few hand-pull carts, their owners leaning back in the shade of their carts, chewing at sticks of dried goat meat. Ma approached the house with the most lively looking nillies, and a few moments later, the owner had the beasts hitched up, and Ma and Ade were sitting high up on the plank seat, watching the towers and bridges of MallenIve proper draw nearer.
Ade looked back as the cart jolted over the ill-kept streets. The slums seemed less oppressive as they grew smaller, and a dry breeze brought some relief, wiping the sweat from his forehead and neck. He thought about how even though he was supposed to be the Onnery-Next, Ma had never brought him to see The Grinningtommy, had never even mentioned that he was supposed to. She didn’t believe he was her first born, with her self-same spark in his head. She pretended he wasn’t the Onnery at all, Ade realized. “But I am the Onnery-Next,” he said quietly to his ma, “even if you don’t like it.”
She kept quiet for so long Ade began to think maybe she hadn’t heard him. “But you shouldn’t have been,” she said, just loud enough to be heard over the clop of hooves and rattle of wooden wheels. “And I don’t have to like it.” She turned, glowering. “And maybe I was wrong to not just take the spark out of you when you were born, like I should have. Like your nan wanted me to. Maybe if I’d done the right thing, Doreen would have been born with the mark, and I wouldn’t have had to worry about you, or her, or any of this.”
Ade felt as though he’d just swallowed a whole cone of shaved ice. Would she have— Would his own ma have Quietened him and left him empty-headed and only half of what he was supposed to be? The coldness sank into his bones, spread out under his skin.
“I made a mistake with you, Ade.” Her voice was bitter as dandelion tea. “And I’ve been paying for it ever since.”
A sour taste coated Ade’s throat and mouth, and his chest constricted.
After a while Ma asked, calm as if she’d not just wished that she’d never had Ade, “Who is this character Doreen was travelling with?”
His throat worked, and a moment later Ade managed to say, “His name’s Gil.” A shudder passed through Ade. It was fear, or something like it. It wasn’t just Door he was worried about, but Gil with his sour-milk skin and wine-red hair. Gil was just a ragged little low-Lammer, a thief and a nightrake. He gambled with cards and he was slick with the girls who hung around the Swartmarches. And Ade wanted nothing to happen to him.
He’d watched his sisters drive themselves silly about boys before. Even Perry had her moments where she came over all foolish because of a smile and a wink, and Ade wondered if this was how they felt. This unexpected smash of excitement and hunted-malkin terror and a guilt that heated him all the way from his bones to his skin. A fire to burn out the ice. It took him so completely by surprise that all Ade could was sit here, thinking, Oh.
Because, Door is in love with Gil. And he’s not in love with her.
“He’s a friend of Doreen’s,” Ade said, his voice blown all the way back to Pelimburg by the weak desert wind, and by the time it reached the sea, Ade’s thoughts about Gil would be scratched and worn and wind-tumbled and softened. Because, I’m mollycot and I always have been and I’m not interested in girls. And I’m not interested in boys. It’s safer like that.
“And how did she meet this ruffian?”
“He’s not—” Ade began, before hunching shoulders and lowering his head, because isn’t he? “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about him.”
She sighed loudly and leaned forward to the driver. “Can’t they go faster? I need to be at the Sharif offices as soon as possible.”
The man clucked at his nillies, and flicked his leather whip across their backs. The goatish things snapped and stamped and skittered, but the cart did go faster, and they reached the edges of MallenIve, both silent and Ade clinging to the edge of the seat, scared that if he unclenched his fingers even the slightest he’d tumble off.
And Ma would sit straight-backed, and not even turn her head while the cart rattled on and left him behind.
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THE CITY OF MALLENIVE proper was not as hot as the scrubby flatlands of the Hob slums outside. The tall houses cast long shadows over the streets, drowning them in cool darkness, and trees planted all along the wide walkways, dropping lilac flowers everywhere, turning the roads into sticky brown and purple carpets. The clean clip-clip of the nillies’ split hooves was muffled by rotting flowers, and Ade let himself be lulled by the slow creak and whistle of the wheels sliding over the mulched cobbles. Plenty of other carts filled the streets, and people trotted in all directions, jabbering and shouting and ignoring each other. No one looked at the travellers. twice, but even so, Ade wished it was colder and he could pull on his jacket, with his collar up high and his cap low, so no one could look at his face and whisper behind their hands.
Ma sat straight and proud, daring these MallenIve idiots to just go ahead and try say something about her own mark. No one cared about two Hobs on the back of a nilly-cart. In a city like MallenIve, Ade and Ma might as well be midges.
The knowledge was comforting. Ade eased his shoulders a little. He was nobody here, and there was a kind of power that came with the anonymity. He almost understood why someone might run from Pelimburg to this shite-hole. Just for the chance to start over, to grow themselves a new long tale to weave through. He took his cap from his head and wiped his damp hair, ruffling it to dry the sweat a little. A river wind blew through the sepia alleyways, and while it didn’t smell like salt and seaweed, there was something homelike in the muddy sweetness of it. Even though he was worried about Door and Gil, Ade found himself relaxing a little. Ma would sort this. That was why he and Door had come here. And all that stuff about him not being meant to be the Onnery-Next and taking the spark out of his head—well, she hadn’t done it, had she? It was just words. He couldn’t live his life wrapping the same threads round and round his fingers, tying himself up in could haves and might-haves and should-haves and what if.
Da, when he used to spend any time in the house, he used to tell Ade that ships don’t have time for panics, and when Ade had his worst fits, Da would say, “One, Ade,” and make him breathe in until his lungs were fit to burst, then Da would let Ade breathe out again. Two and Three were always easier, and by the time they were done, Ade would feel that crashing wave sweeping away. Seemed easy, but it was hard to remember to do it. By the time Ade was caught up in his fears, counting out breaths was the last thing he’d think of doing, but he could do it now. Instead of letting his mind race in circles, Ade imagine his da’s voice, tarry as ropes and sea-rough, counting him through the worst.
The cart didn’t take them all the way in to MallenIve to where the Lammers had their palaces and courts, but to a Sharif’s court near the entrance closest to the docks. The building was not as big as the one in Pelimburg, nor half so fancy, but it was busy enough, and Ade and Ma had to stop and get out a few blocks from the entrance, paying the driver to wait for them. If Door and Gil had been fool enough to try and land like they were nothing more than regular visitors, then this was where the Sharif would have taken them. They drew closer to the building, and all Ade’s thoughts about his da and his wisdoms dried up like little puddles, leaving him shiver-shaking all the way down to his boots.
Ma stalked up the tree-lined streets, her shoulders square. Even though Ade was sure that any moment he was going to be clapped in irons and dragged off to some iron-barred cell, he also knew what happened when Ma got into a mood like this. There was nothing—no Lammer nor Sharif nor pack-Hobling who could get in her way now, she would trample right over them and not even notice.
They came to a halt outside the square-set building. A row of pillars held a triangle-shaped roof over a long, wide veranda. It was bigger than the buildings around it and marble clad, though the stone was grubby and dirty rain has eaten away at it. The name of the district was carved deep into the stone above the open doors. SHARIF EDDLERIM.
Even without the name Ade would have known it for what it was, like a broken-open white-ant nest. Men in white uniforms prowled this way and that between the people crowded at its doors, and it had the same self-righteous stink and sneer as the Sharif building in Pelimburg. The building was a reflection of all the people inside it.
“Don’t dawdle, Ade,” snapped Ma.
He wasn’t dawdling; it was her, slowing down as she approached the three steps that led up to the veranda, and the queues of people waiting to tell their stories, report crimes, lay charges, visit prisoners.
“Do you think she’s in there?” Ade crooked his head back, eyeing the crowd.
“Do I look like a Saint? We’ll find out soon enough.” Ma gathered her skirts and stepped up, not needing to push through the crowd. The lines of people split before her like the ripples of waves before the prow of a boat. Their whispers were rushes and weeds under the river’s surface, scraping at the wooden belly.
Ma marched inside and straight up to the Sharif behind the nearest counter, and Ade trailed in after her like foam in her wake. The Sharif was leaning on elbow and forearm, picking at his teeth with a sliver of wood, mostly ignoring the crying woman trying to talk to him. Finally he ended her weeping with a flick of his hand as he tossed the chewed-up toothpick at her. It hit her cheek and fell to the ground. She woman went quiet.
“No,” the Sharif said to her, “or are you people just too thick to understand? I’m not letting you down to see him—”
“But he’s my boy—” The woman faltered, and all the fight was leached out of her. She put a brown paper-wrapped package on the counter. “Please then. If I can’t see him, at least could you give him this.”
“What is it?” The Sharif prodded it lazily, already bored.
“Just some bread and a little cheese,” the woman said. “You wouldn’t deny a boy some food.”
“No.” He sat up straighter. “I’m not heartless, whatever you think.” He made a note on the register before him. “I’ll see he gets it.”
The woman was breathless in her thanks, and although her eyes were still wet when she turned to leave, there was relief in her tired features.
“Yes?” said the Sharif, looking at Ma and Ade. “What’s with you? We don’t want no diseases in here. We’re not a hospice.”
“I’ve come to see if my daughter is here,” said Ma firmly.
The Sharif frowned, his thick features crawling up over each other. “Name?” He squinted, studying them like bugs under a glass. Ade shifted nervously, waiting for the slow dawn of realization as the Sharif looked at the marks on their faces and put two and two together—but it didn’t come. Instead he began picking at the knots in the string on the paper package, opening it show a heel of yellow maize-bread and a salty square of goat cheese. He crumbled the cheese, and licked his fingers clean.
“Doreen,” said Ma. “Her name is Doreen Onnery.”
There was a flicker where the Sharif was caught between confusion and understanding, before his face went blank as a licked-clean bowl. “Wait a moment—”
“Hush,” said Ma, her voice full of echoes and spark, and all the hair on Ade’s arms and back of neck stood up and that prickle of magic, just like it felt when he was around Tabeth, crawled under his skin and his head felt too big, and at any moment it was going to burst like a blown-up goat-bladder. He reeled, clutching at the edge of the counter to stop from falling.
“Where is she?” Ma’s voice slipped right into Ade’s head, and he was ready to answer her, though he had no idea.
The Sharif stared at her open-mouthed, the food forgotten before him.
“Take me to her,” she spoke, still in that magic-heavy voice, and the Sharif stood, the feet of his wooden chair screeching against stone.
“This way,” he said, slow and distant.
Ade’s head ached. He covered his ears so Ma’s voice was muffled. He felt flea-bitten, mad with itching.
“Ade,” Ma’s glass-knife voice cut straight through his will. “Keep up.”
His feet dragged him forward, following after them. Inside head was full of screams, like a Pelimburg sea storm just let loose and was ripping all his thoughts out of place and rearranging everything he’d though was the truth until all he could think in this whirlwind was, Oh, oh, we are monsters. We are just like them. We are sparked—sparked-proper—and why did Ma never tell me this is what we were? At that last his head went silent and only a small thought remained, that maybe it wasn’t him, after all. Maybe it was just Ma.
The Sharif clumped downstairs, jingling a set of iron keys. He wore gloves so that he could touch the metal ring, and below the heat of the iron bars of the cells smouldered though the soles of Ade’s feet. A left turn down another passage and the prisoners called out and screamed and cried, and Ade ignored them, eyes forward because it was better not to look, better not to give them hope, better that they were just voices without faces, better that they were not real. The Sharif finally stopped before a small cell fronted with a lattice door of iron.
The girl inside looked nothing like Ade’s sister, but he knew it was she anywise. They’d beaten everything that made her Door right out of her, and her face was puffed and black with bruises.
“Open it,” commanded Ma, and there was not a drop of emotion in her voice, like she could barely see what had happened to Doreen.
“Oh, Ma,” Door said softly, with a dry croak to her voice that Ade had never heard before, and he thought it might break him, but he was still so dizzy with the knowledge of Ma and her spark, that it was a dream, disconnected and terrible. “Oh Ma,” she whispered, “I thought I was dead.”
Ma just watched the Sharif turning the key in the lock.
Door couldn’t know. She couldn’t feel the spark like Ade could, and he looked from Ma cold and blank and angry as a sword, to Door, broken and alone, and said, “Where’s Gil?”
“Who’s this Gil,” Ma asked. “The boy you travelled with?”
Door nodded, her face streaked with dried tears and snot. “He’s low-Lam, Ma, but he’s not like the others, I promise.” All the prisoners in this passage were women, and there was no sign of a red-headed Lammer whelp.
“Is he—” Ade asked Door. “Tell me.” He couldn’t say the words, make them real. The Sharif had broken his sister, and probably thought nothing of it. Had they just decided she was some lying little kitty-girl come here to the big city with no work or papers? Maybe they thought Gil was a pimp. Maybe they were caught stealing—anything could have happened.
“He—he was f-fine when we got here,” Door mumbled. “I don’t know where he is now.” She turned her battered face to Ma, eyes wide, and this wasn’t her usual calculated guilelessness, but real fear, real sorrow. “Ask them, Ma, please. Find him. He’s my friend.”
“I’m not here to set the whole place loose.” Ma stared at Ade, her face still, dead as a stone.
“Ma,” Door croaked out between her broken teeth. “Please?”
And maybe there was something in that request coming from Door and not from Ade, because Ma sighed and tapped the Sharif on the shoulder. “There’s another,” she said. “A Lammer boy, you took him at the same time.”
The Sharif nodded, eyes unfocused. “Yes, yes. I’ll bring you to him.” Then he smiled, a wide-open child’s smile like a newly risen sun.
Gil’s cell was on the other side of the entrance, on the right, the men’s section, and here they crammed them in, twelve to a cell. Ade didn’t want to think what happened when men were packed in like salted fish, rubbing their dead scales against each other, but they found Gil easy enough. The Sharif had cut his red hair close to the skull, like they did with all the men. It made his face look too young. The bruises were storm clouds lying over his face. His left eye was closed tight, swollen up like a bee-sting.
The Sharif pulled him to his feet, and Gil stumbled, swaying and spitting blood and milky-white vomit.
The other men in the cell muttered to themselves as the Sharif unlocked the iron manacles from Gil’s burned wrists. The metal left weeping black-and-yellow bangles on the skin. Ade could smell the seared meat, the burned hair. Gil’s fingers were swollen and crooked, like the bones had been taken apart and put back in the wrong order.
Ade’s tongue felt swollen. He reached out careful as he could and offered Gil his arm to help him keep upright.
Gil stared blankly through bruise-slitted eyes, as though he had no idea who anyone was.
“It’s me,” Ade said to him, and Gil swayed uncertainly. “Ade, remember? I’ll help. Don’t worry, all is going to be right as rain now, you’ll see.” He thought of Ma slicing right through the mind of the Sharif with her spark, and spoke louder to drown out his fear. “My ma’s helping us, everything will be fine now.” Moving slow, careful-like, Ade slipped a shoulder under Gil’s arm.
He stank of old sweat and puke and blood and shit, and shuddered when Ade’s arm slid behind his back to keep him up, but after that he came to his senses. “Ade,” Gil said. The name came out shaped wrong, thick and slurry.
The walked out of the holding cells, Door clung to Ma, limping, and Gil leaned on Ade, only half-awake and looking like he was caught in a nightmare. Ade’s heart raced. At any moment the Sharif was going to snap out of this trance and break the chain of Ma’s spark, and they would all be on the gallows come dawn.
Or maybe his heart raced because he could smell Gil’s skin and sweat and pain, and he was strangely hot against Ade’s shoulder, one arm flung across Ade’s neck for support, and Ade wondered whose nightmare this was.
No one stopped them, Ma’s magic enveloping them all the way through the Sharif building, out into the squinting sun and onto the back of the little dog cart, and only when they were streets away from that awful place did Ma sigh like the wind through the rushes, and the itch dropped from Ade’s skin.
All his life, Ma and Nan had told Ade that the Onnerys were different, that sparked Hobs were monsters, that the Onnerys saved them from themselves, that what the Onnerys did meant safety for the rest of the Hobs.
Now he understood that his mother was one of those monsters, and he was not, that he had never used—could never use—power in the way she had.
I am an empty monster. Ade tasted the words, mouthing them silently. They were sharp as broken mussel shells, slicing up the inside of his cheeks and flooding his mouth with blood and salt. He held tighter to Gil. A drowning man holding to a broken spar in a storm. Gil’s head was heavy against Ade’s shoulder. His ribs were too still, the rasp of his breathing gone silent, and fear filled Ade so completely it washed away the taste of blood and self-pity. I can’t feel him moving. However much Ade didn’t understand Gil, or himself, or Ma or anything, he knew enough to understand that he do not want Gil dead. Ade moved his hand up Gil’s back, shaking him just the slightest.
“Gil?” he whispered, and the Lammer moaned, twisting his head and his breath was hot and moist against Ade’s neck. Relief and the rushing thought, I think he’s just asleep, as Ade grabbed a tight hold on the back of Gil’s shirt to stop him from tumbling down. He held Gil like that until his fingers and wrist ached, but didn’t let go, because it was all he had: that connection of rough material clenched in one fist, and the slow, shaky idea that Ade holding Gil upright was near enough the same thing as holding him to this life. He didn’t know if Lammers had a Long Sleep that they slipped into when their time came—he knew nothing of their customs and deaths. Never cared. Ade would not let him go easily. He want to talk to Gil, to croon him through this like he would talk to a scared mam-to-be. But Ma was right there, and though she’d said nothing about Ade clinging to Gil and holding him close, Ade knew she’d be watching and thinking, and that sooner or later she would make Ade face her, and then she would drag some kind of truth out of him, whether he was ready for it or not.
And he wasn’t. He couldn’t talk to Gil about this, let alone Ma.
“Door,” Ade whispered. His sister and Ma were sitting opposite him. Ma stared over his shoulder, her mouth thin, but Door was quiet because she was frightened, and because she was hurt, and Ade wanted her to stop being quiet and hurt and start being Door again. “You all right?” Even though it was obvious that she wasn’t. He wanted her to talk, for careless chatter to fill up the space he didn’t want to look into. To hear his own voice and to hear his sister’s, and the truth about Ma to be swept away. Everything back to how it was before. He’d take all the apron strings in the world just to go back to the beginning and start over. “Door?”
Her eyes flickered then she closed them. For a moment Ade thought maybe she’d gone to sleep sitting poker-straight, but then she flicked her eyes open again and they burned green-gold with the colour of the falling sun. The bonnet she’d had when she parted from them was long gone, and her hair had come out of its braid, curling like black smoke around her face. She twisted her hands in the dull brown of her long skirt, and said in a voice that had no lilt nor song to it. “Yes, Ade. I’m perfectly fine, thank you.”
“Ah.” This wasn’t his sister at all. “Good, that’s good, then.”
Something slid across her face. If Ade hadn’t been staring, he would have missed it. “Where is she taking us?” Door said, as though Ma wasn’t sitting right next to her.
The sky was turning grey with smog as Ade swallowed past the thickness in his throat. “The Grinningtommy.” She was the only thing that gave him a little hope. The Grinningtommy was the head of all the MallenIve Hobs. She’d do something to fix Door, fix Gil, and Ma would go normal again, and between them they would smooth out everyone’s lives like clean sheets across morning beds. “That’s where we came from, now I mean, before we came to you.”
“Oh.” Door looked down at her scraped hands, grimaced, and looked up again. “What’s she like?”
“She seems...” Ade chewed at his lower lip. “The sort who won’t take nonsense, but all right, you know. Tall.” A thready panic wound itself around his organs, so Ade kept talking to drown out the thoughts about Door hurt and Gil shorn like a wool-goat and Ma being a monster. “She’s got little ones. A boy and a girl but I think the girl is sickly—”
“And Tabeth?”
Ade’s mouth stayed open while he tried to make sense of the change in direction.
Door sighed. “Did she make it?” There was a sudden flicksnap to her voice that made Ade glad. The old Door was still under that bruised skin somewhere. He glanced at Ma to see if the mention of Tabeth had moved her at all, but they none of them might as well be there. She was still looking past them, her mouth moving as though she whispered something over and over so she wouldn’t forget.
“Tabeth’s there too,” Ade said. Tabeth who had grown up in a hole because of people like his Ma. Like him too, the thought sour, though he was too young to have done anything about Tabeth—she was older than him by five years easy. There was still his payment for Door’s freedom and Ade wondered just what it was he was doing. Agreed to make a monster, and what then? Would it have to live in a cave, or in a hole somewhere so that no one like them could ever find it and take away its spark? Will it be a lie? Will it be like my mother?
“Ade?” Door sounded almost like Perry’s there, soft and a little too full of kindness. “You look done in.”
“That’s rich coming from you.” He made himself smile, fill his voice with fake cheer. “I’m good. You’re safe, Gil is safe; all I need now is a bite to eat and a night’s sleep and I’ll be right back to myself.” He kept that smile fixed there until his whole face was aching. “You don’t understand how worried I was. Now that you’re out of there, everything can go back to as it was.”
“Can it?” Door snaked out one hand and grabbed Ma’s, threading fingers through fingers.
“’Course,” he said. “Ma will fix it. We’ll be back home before you can say ‘fiddlesticks.’”
“Fiddlesticks,” said Door, but she didn’t smile, she didn’t let go Ma’s hand, and for the first time Ade could see how young his sister was, and that four-year gap had never felt wider.
Ma shivered, and finally seemed to see her children. She shook her head, and clutched Door back. “Hush. You’re safe now, little baby girl. You all are.”
Instead of relief, Ade found a different kind of scared growing in his chest, maybe that his Ma was more dangerous to him than any Sharif could be. This was an incomprehensible thing, too big to face or understand, so instead Ade shifted his aching arm and let the jolt of the cartwheels keep him from letting go of Gil.