Rage flowed cold and waterfall-fast, mixed with and inseparable from fear. Mina stood surrounded by Caleb’s room. Shelves. Books. Cards. Blocks. Right angles and sharp edges, askew. The door gaped before her, where Temoc had stood a moment ago, and the black beyond.
She had not seen what she had seen. She could not have.
No. That was the reflex of a scared child’s mind, to reject reality that did not fit preconception. She saw the knife in Temoc’s hand. She heard him try to apologize, in that way he had of not apologizing. She saw him leave. She told him to leave.
And now he was gone, and she remained. Rocking on her feet. Her breath, and Caleb’s, both loud in her ears.
Caleb. She turned back to the bed, to him, shaking, asleep, covered in seeping wounds, in blood.
So much blood. Gods. The body contained what, eight pints, a child’s less, and how much spilled here? The sheets stained red. All the gods and devils watched.
She touched her son’s chest, his face. Caleb groaned. Eyes opened but did not focus. A sweet, dank smell on his breath: some soporific drug, mixed with the wine. He kept that kind of stuff around, for rituals and dream-quests. Out of the boy’s reach. Well hidden.
“Caleb. Caleb!” No response. “Caleb, can you hear me?”
No, again.
She wanted to cry. She was crying, big, racking sobs. Her eyes were wet. She wiped them with her hand, unthinking, and the blood stung. Qet and Isil. Damn them. Damn all the gods, and her husband, too.
She recognized the scars. She had written articles on their like, discussed their language and their relevance to modern Craft, had run her fingers over those very ridges on her lover’s, her husband’s skin. She had never seen them on her son’s body before.
Too much, too much, tossed by rage and frozen by fear.
She could not afford to be this person now.
Her body understood before her brain did. Stopped shaking Caleb, stood. Searched the room, found nothing, staggered out into the hall, realized when she reached the bathroom that she was looking for a towel. A cloth robe. Something to cover him. Grabbed both, and returned. Don’t drag the towel across the wounds. Whatever he had done—whatever Temoc and his gods had done—to heal the boy, his cuts were too fresh, scabs pink and raw where there were scabs at all. No longer bleeding openly. Not good, there was no good here, in this room, but good enough. Pressing with the towel, she mopped up blood. Some remained, smeared, dried onto his skin. A handprint. Hers, or Temoc’s. No. She refused to think that name. It made her freeze, and she could not afford to freeze.
Where to go? Hospitals would be full of riot-wounded. Could drive north, risk meeting rebels or Wardens or those dogs. Don’t worry about that, said the small part of her that was no one’s wife, no one’s mother, no one’s daughter even. Don’t worry. Get Caleb out of here. First, pull him off that bloody mattress. Scars on his back, too. Fuck. Sop the blood. Drape him in the bathrobe, white cotton with blue stripes and now red ones, too. Fine. Tie the knot at his stomach.
“Mom?” The voice soft, heartbreaking, weak as if through many layers of cotton.
“Caleb? Can you hear me?”
“Mom,” again, drifting off. Fine. Good, even. She lifted him, tested his weight. So heavy normally, grown big, but he felt like a feather now. All had gone out of him, everything but life. The life she’d keep, and strangle anyone who tried to take it from her. Drape his arms over her shoulders. Scabs ridged his skin beneath the thin robe. He moaned in sleep, from pain, from nightmares.
Alone. Alone with her boy in a city gone mad. She could walk the streets, try against hope to hail a taxi. Or she could fly. She closed her eyes, took inventory of her soul. She thought she had enough.
The King in Red would have forbidden optera from landing in Chakal Square, but the rioters’ need was great—it would poison the air, confuse the bugs hovering above the Skittersill. But her need was greater, and there was no price she would not pay.
She ran with her son clutched to her, out into the courtyard, out into the street. Feet bare against cobblestones. Craft-warped insects that hover in the clouds, chitin angels, hear me. No one has ever needed you as I need now.
The sky spread opalescent overhead, stained orange in the west by fire. Blank walls crowded her in, skyline scalloped black by roof tile. Dew-damp cobblestones slippery underfoot. Hot breath on her neck, Caleb’s breath, so rapid, his body rigid too, seizing up as she ran.
Shapes moved on the roof across the street. Humanoid forms, long-limbed. Copper plates glinted where their eyes should have been, like a cat’s eyes seen at angle. They leaned forward, watching. Their silhouettes showed claws.
She would not scream. She ran.
I need you.
Bug-legs struck her from behind, and she flew.