3

It felt like drowning, unable to get a breath. Darkness weighed thick all around her; there was no seeing anything. Still she knew her mouth was gaping open, but there was no breathing. No air. The darkness was a weight on her chest and it was quickly smothering her.

Then it was gone. The gasp Sabi made as she inhaled echoed around her, but seeing wasn’t a priority at the moment. Breathing was. Sabi gulped in huge mouthfuls of air, not knowing if that vacuum of darkness was going to come back over her again. She fell forward, hands and knees hitting the floor with not-too-subtle cracks, but she barely felt it. Her lungs screamed with each inhale and she just wanted to get rid of the pain, to breathe normally again.

Red carpet blurred underneath her as her eyes watered. One tear dropped onto her hand and it shimmered in the low light of wherever she was. Her fingers twitched and the tear sparkled as it tracked against her skin. All this trouble just for tears?

Fingers dug into her arm and she was yanked to her feet. She grunted as her skin pulled under the man’s grip and she stumbled when he dragged her along the corridor.

“Where are we?” she asked, her voice echoing on the dark stone around her. A well-worn carpet laid under her feet, track marks running the length of it. “What do you want with me?”

“Normally I wouldn’t have the patience for stupidity,” he said without looking at her. “But seeing as how you haven’t lived in Raydin for more than a decade I’ll abide you this.”

“You’re so kind,” she said as she tried to jerk her arm free.

No dice. Instead the man swung her around and slammed her back into the stone. Precious air rushed out of her lungs and panic made her gasp, wheeze, scramble to bring the air back in.

“There is no escape, Sabina. Rest assured, you’re here for life. However long that may be.”

“Why?” She sneered at the immaculate face in front of her. Not a hair out of place. Not a blemish anywhere on his skin. She wanted to rake her nails across his perfection. “Why did you kill my papa? Why did you chase us out of our home?”

He smiled then, a look that crawled up his face and failed to reach his eyes. “Your home, little Crier, is here. Far south from this castle. That’s where you parents ran from the first time. Alas, they couldn’t run forever.”

Sweat broke out on her forehead. She didn’t understand, but Papa said the same thing. They weren’t from a world that had New York. They were from somewhere else. Nausea swirled in her stomach.

“I have all the powers of the stars,” he said as he brushed a piece of hair from her face. She jerked away from his touch. “Well, not all. Most. Most my family took from the Giver when they deposed him centuries ago. He was such a pacifist. It was almost too easy. All that power he just gave away to filth in this kingdom. Such a waste. We stopped that, though. We just couldn’t get diamond tears.”

Sabi’s head spun. “I don’t understand.”

The man frowned and leaned away from her. He yanked her off the wall and continued walking down the corridor. “No, I imagine you wouldn’t. We couldn’t throw a successful coup without money. Lots of money. We had it, of course, but not enough. Not enough to sustain us. With the Giver’s powers, especially diamond tears, our problem would be solved. Instead we were still at his mercy, the decrepit old man.”

No, she wanted to say. That’s not what she meant. She understood why power-hungry people wanted power and money. What she didn’t understand was this Giver, his powers. What this all had to do with her. Her back throbbed. Bruises formed knots along her spine and she already felt their ache.

“It worked out for us and for him. While he’s stored away, nice and safe, he keeps doling out diamond tears and we merely collect those with the power. If he stops, the slaughter of his people would be on him. You understand? Sabina, I asked you a question.”

Sabi choked on the answer and finally said, “Yes.” It was a lie, but this man didn’t seem like someone who was used to hearing no.

“At first he was generous with the gift. My cells were filled with Criers and I had more diamond tears than I knew what to do with. But the last fifty years or so the number’s dropped. What used to be a dozen per year has trickled down to only two. Then one. And once you were born there hasn’t been another. Givers aren’t immortal, you know. They can die like everyone else. It just takes far longer and I believe the old man’s on his way out. Drastic times cause for drastic measures, of course.”

Of course. Sabi wondered if her nails were long enough to gouge a cut large enough in his neck to bleed him out. Without magic Sabi had a feeling she could take him in a fight.

He kept her close as they walked and she kept brushing up against him. He was more fabric than flesh. She now saw the cloak around him laid across his shoulders as a way to fill him out. The black he wore took away lines, made finding his edges all the harder to do. Only his magic would cripple her in a second. A flick of his hand sent Matti flying. He hadn’t even done anything and he’d sucked her into another world. And her tears. Sabi took deep breaths but they did nothing to calm her hammering heart.

“We’ve been planning for this for ages. Everything’s nearly ready, but I want what’s mine. You understand, don’t you Sabina? You are what’s mine. Your tears are mine. They’re owed to me, to my family.”

Her face turned up and she looked him straight in the eye. His gaze was almost sympathetic. The corners of his eyes turned down and they almost shimmered with moisture. Only, no doubt, his tears were just tears. If she didn’t know any better she might think he had her best interests at heart. Except her dead Papa and the sister and mother he dragged her away from say otherwise. He was living in a world all his own and their two realities couldn’t be any more different.

“I owe you nothing. My family owes you nothing.”

The sting drilled into her teeth as his hand came down on her cheek. Sabi’s head whipped around and she brought her free hand up to gently touch the heated flesh of her face. Each of his fingers left a ghost of itself on her skin and she desperately wanted to repay him that particular haunting.

He looked down at her, his gaze flaming. That look burrowed into her cheek, heating up her sore flesh even more. A sneer twitched on his lip, but he didn’t allow it to mature into anything wicked. Instead he forced a smile and it was like cracking open flesh, too many too-bright teeth leering down at her.

“I care nothing for the concerns of property, Sabina. It would do you well to know that. Fenrick, good.”

Sabi turned her head and watched another man approach. At first she thought the man’s slap made her see spots, but after a few blinks the two glowing dots coming toward her from the other end of the darkened corridor remained. Two dots of glowing blue grew steadily larger until the second man was only a few feet away. Nothing else about him told Sabi he was anything other than normal. Except his eyes shined an unnatural blue that she knew she would to see even when she closed her eyes.

“My Lord,” the man said as he stood to attention just out of reach.

His dress was less formal, far less pristine. Pants were baggy around his knees, bunching over his boots. His shirt was dingy even in the low light and open to just below his collarbone. Streaks of gray marred his cuffs. This man worked for the one holding her. And he called her captor My Lord.

“Show Miss Petris to her living quarters.” The glow-eyed man nodded. “And remind her that if she doesn’t comply, her family’s heart is what will suffer the consequences.”

An arctic blast could have blown through the tunnel for all the cold Sabi felt. The man passed her off to his glow-eyed lackey and left her behind without a second look. One hand on her arm replaced another, only these new fingers were thicker, tougher, stronger. Muscle dug into bone and Sabi winced.

“This way,” he said as he dragged her in the direction the other man took.

Instead of heading straight they turned down a side corridor nearly hidden in shadows. They stopped at a wooden door and the man pulled a lever. Clanks and groans came from the other side of the door and they waited.

“Who was the man who brought me here?” Sabi asked.

Somewhere in the back of her mind a voice was telling her to keep her mouth shut. No way was she about to do that. The more she knew about this place the more she could use against it to try and escape. Escape where, she had no idea since she figured she wasn’t on Earth anymore. Anywhere had to be better than where she was.

“Jeviar of the Goquin rule, last of his line,” the man said as if reciting a script.

“And who are you?”

He turned his glowing eyes on her for a second before gazing back at the door. “Fenrick.”

“Are those eyes normal here?” Wherever here was. Raydin? Was that the name the other man, Jeviar, used?

A grinding lurch made Sabi jump and the man opened the door. On the other side was little more than a wooden plank and a pulley, all lit by a small torch. It looked more like a dumb waiter than an elevator and Sabi really didn’t want to step on the flimsy-looking plank of wood. And it was going to support the both of them? Fenrick shoved her in the shoulder and she stumbled into the tiny room, he stepping in behind her. Apparently there wasn’t anything to worry about.

He closed the door behind them and pulled a lever on this side of the door. The contraption jerked to life and Sabi’s stomach rocketed up into her throat before settling back down as they descended.

“Thanks to My Lord Jeviar I’ve been touched by the stars.”

She smelled fanatic and Sabi took a small step away from him. “The stars are gods?”

She could barely see him nod in the shadow-heavy elevator. “They guide us all.”

Indeed they do. The man, Fenrick, wasn’t standing on a street corner waving a sign about the end times, but she heard the devotion in his voice. The reverence for Jeviar, his ruler or king or whatever he was. Everyone always laughed at fanatics. They were entertainment. Many thought them to be harmless.

There was nothing harmless about the bulk of man in the elevator with her. Where Jeviar was small Fenrick was large. He took up the entire doorway when he walked through it. And the way he spoke of his ruler spoke of blind acquiescence. Whatever Jeviar gave to Fenrick was enough to hook him in good.

The elevator shuddered to a stop and he flung the door open before it settled completely. A scream ripped through the dank stone corridor ahead and Sabi jerked to a stop. Fenrick grabbed her arm and pulled her along, not allowing her feet to stick to the floor for a second. Sobbing followed the scream and then it rose in pitch again, an anguished cry that made her skin prickle and her neck turn to ice.

They barreled through the corridor, never stopping to see anything, but all doors were open and Sabi saw more than enough. One open door showed her little more than a small body strapped to a table, a contraption over his face. His arms were rigid, his fingers splayed. A high-pitched scream tore from the room and Sabi was dragged on.

In another room she caught another person on a table, a girl, her head tilted back and her mouth hanging open in a scream. Where her stomach was the sheets bulged, her knees bent, and people hovered at the end of the bed. Thin-looking blood splattered on the floor at the people’s feet and the view disappeared.

What the hell was going on here? The corridor swam and Sabi blinked to try and right her world, but everything turned upside down. She stumbled into the wall and Fenrick dragged her a couple inches along the stone before realizing she fell and stopped. She pressed her cheek into the cool stone and took deep breaths, desperately trying to keep her food down.

“Are you ill?”

Sabi looked out the corner of her eye and saw Fenrick hovering an arm’s length away, his grip still on her. She spit, not caring where it landed, and turned her face to her jailor.

“What is all this?” Her bile-stung throat was raspy and she cleared it.

“Crier tears are precious. Jeviar will do all he can to aid their flow.”

Images flashed into her mind and no matter how tight she closed her eyes they wouldn’t go away. “How?”

Fenrick looked over her, back toward the corridor they’d just passed through. “Tears are extracted. Criers are made.” He shook his head slightly, as if shaking away what he just said. “Tried to be made.”

“Is that what I’m . . .” She couldn’t bear to finish the sentence and she pressed her forehead into the stone.

“We must go.” He tugged on her arm, not as roughly as before, and she staggered forward, the corridor flashing in a haze around her.

They stopped in front of another door, which Fenrick opened. Inside burned a single lamp and the room itself was a small closet. On a stool in the far corner sat something gray and folded.

“You must change. All of it. You have thirty seconds before I open the door.”

Sabi stepped in and he closed the door behind her. Nearly. It remained cracked. Thirty seconds. She wanted nothing to do with him catching her naked. Quickly she stepped out of her sneakers, threw off her shirt and jeans, and grabbed the thing on the stool. One whiff and she gagged. It smelled like it’d been pulled off a corpse.

If Diamond Criers were a resource that was just about extinct, shouldn’t they be treated a little better? Make them live as long as possible? Judging by the rooms she passed Criers didn’t live long. That would not be her. She refused.

Just as she was pulling the smelly tunic over her head Fenrick opened the door back up. Sabi stood barefoot in the room, the smell of her new clothes digging into her nose.

“Come.”

The farther they walked the looser his grip became. She silently thanked him for that small reprieve, but as they walked down a cold set of stairs Sabi stopped in her tracks, causing Fenrick’s grip to tighten back up. A row of cells greeted her, the doors all a heavy iron. A chill settled in the air and she flexed her toes, trying to fend off the cold.

“All surfaces in the cell are made to absorb tears. Jeviar collects from the pools as he needs.”

“Pools?” No way could she believe there’s a giant pool of tears somewhere in this castle.

Fenrick dug into his pocket with his free hand and jangling keys fell into his palm. He sifted through them with his fingers and jabbed one into a lock on a cell. The door opened with an echoing creak and he ushered Sabi in. Without another word he stepped out and closed the door, the lock slamming into place.

She stayed standing in the darkened cell, nothing but moonlight filtering through a small window at the top of the wall to allow her to see. Something like a bed lay to her right, anchored into the wall. The same thing sat to her left, but the large lump on the mattress told her it was occupied.

With groping hands she found the empty mattress and lowered herself onto the bed. It was thin with scratchy fabric irritating her skin. Sabi shivered and she tried to find a blanket but she couldn’t feel anything.

Papa’s bloody stomach took over her mind. Mama screaming. Matti running toward her. The child attached to that contraption. The woman on the table. Jeviar’s hits. The man with the glowing eyes. Getting tears at any cost.

Sabi slapped her hand over her mouth and turned toward the wall. The smell from the tunic paled against the thoughts in her head and what lay ahead for her. Tears streamed down her cheeks but the fabric underneath her remained dry. Everything absorbed her tears. Jeviar was going to siphon everything out of her.

She curled further into herself, pressed her forehead against the stone wall, and wept.