15

Whatever was under Cabal’s hand scraped against the table as he slid it over to her. Sabi raised an eyebrow as she looked into his emotionless face. Time passed but his hand stayed there with him extended across the table.

The kitchen around them looked like Times Square during the holidays. There were more bodies than room to fit them as food teetered over heads to get it out of the way. When two pots collided and something sloshed over the side of one the dodging dance ended. People flitted by and bumped into the table all the same, as if the Criers weren’t even there.

“Take it,” Cabal whispered, half the words lost in the clang of a dropped pan.

Sabi stretched her hand out and reached for the thing Cabal was hiding. His hand slid out slowly and a course thing press into her palm. Half the size of a golf ball, its texture was rough and prickled her skin. She brought her hand back, the object fisted until she could safely tuck it into a pocket on her nightdress.

“Swallow it whole,” Cabal said but Sabi could barely hear him. She leaned forward and focused on his lips. “A half hour before they come to dress you. It’ll absorb the poison when you drink it.”

“What is it?” She could barely hear herself over the din.

“A sponge.”

The thing rested heavily against her leg and it felt like anything but a sponge. And its size . . . She was going to choke to death before she could even get out of her room. Her throat clenched just thinking about it.

Tonight was the night. She couldn’t pull the escape off if she couldn’t move her body. It was even more trust to put in Cabal’s hands and it made her nervous.

He hadn’t been able to show her the hearts. In the weeks leading up to the Western Wane there were more people around preparing for the event. At all hours. Getting out was a lesson in spy craft before. Now it was nearly impossible. Still, she could almost taste the air on the other side of the walls. Only a few more hours.

He sat on the other side of the table as if it were any other meal, picking at his food with a quiet reserve. Trust was an issue with Cabal, and something about him made her uneasy. Aside from the whole ‘let’s leave Anya behind’ thing. There was something he wasn’t saying and it filled the silence between them.

When they were finished eating he followed her to her cell. She no longer needed him to lead her; she was well aware of where she was going. It took everything in her to hide her smile from the workers around them. He lingered in the doorway even after she walked in, but she didn’t turn around until he cleared his throat. A shifty nervousness filled his eyes that kept him from looking directly at her. His hand worked the handle, as if trying to mold it into something it wasn’t.

“A half hour.” His voice shook slightly and he swallowed hard to try and hide it.

The unfeeling front he tried to put on cracked more and more and it made him look more human in Sabi’s eyes. She wasn’t about to fall over herself trusting him just yet, but he’d gone from cold to luke warm.

“How would I tell that? I don’t have a clock in here,” she said. Not even the sun could help her. It would be long set before anyone came to dress her.

“Use the stamp,” he said.

“Am I going to shake people apart?”

Cabal gave a disgruntled sigh. “The same projection we’ve done?” Sabi didn’t need him to elaborate on what and when on that one. “Without projecting you just reach.”

“Reach . . .”

He stepped all the way into the room and shut the door behind him. “Close your eyes and try it. Reach the magic toward the kitchen.”

Sabi closed her eyes and let the thrum of the stamp run through her veins. It was like holding onto an oiled snake as the power nearly slipped away from her and her muscles shook as she reined it back in. A picture of her room filled her mind and Cabal was there staring expectantly at her. His lips moved and words filtered to her ears in a muffled haze.

“Project what you see. Walk with it.”

Literally? He couldn’t mean that. Instead Sabi reached with her mind around Cabal and toward the door. In half a breath she was through it, in the corridor. It was less a vision of reality than a feeling. People walked around her, talked around her. There was a buzz in the air. She pushed through the moving people, back toward the kitchen, and felt vague shapes. Memory filled in the blanks.

“What’s going on in there?” came Cabal’s distant voice.

A little more reaching and Sabi saw movement, but felt anxiety. Frustration. Panic. A faint scent of something burnt tickled her nose.

“Someone burnt the bread,” she said. Her own voice dream-like in her head.

With a gasp everything went black and she opened her eyes to see Cabal and her cell once again. He stood close, a hand on her shoulder, as he watched her face.

“Use that to find those who dress you and you’ll know,” he said with a smile.

She looked up to him, a small frown hovering over her eyes. “They’ll know something’s up when they come up here and find me still panting and sweating on the bed.” The cool air chilled her dampened skin and she shivered.

His eyes narrowed. “That shouldn’t cost you that much by now,” he said as he wiped away a drop of sweat from her temple.

Her face jerked away from the touch but it still trailed a feeling down her skin. “It’s not doing that projecting thing that does me in. It’s keeping everything from exploding out of me. The longer I’m locked into the stamp the more effort it takes.”

A little quirk ticked up the corner of his lip, there and gone in an instant. It didn’t take a genius to know where his mind went. It went to the same place every time he was reminded of her nearly uncontrollable magic.

“Hopefully you won’t have to exert that kind of effort tonight.”

His hand slid from her shoulder, leaving a cold spot where his warm palm just was, and he left the room.

Sabi stayed staring at the door for a moment, letting his words sink in. What she wanted to think was that he hoped she wouldn’t have to use her magic at all. But what she knew he meant was that she’d let it rip. She ran a hand over her head, her scalp freshly shaved that morning for the Western Wane.

The stamp pulsed, or maybe it was her blood thumping under her skin. Her heart pounding inside her, waiting for what was coming. When she brought her hand down it was shaking. A bone-deep cold crawled over her and she had to bite her tongue to keep her teeth from shattering.

She crawled onto the bed and wrapped the blanket around her like a cocoon, trying to fend off the arctic chill. The world outside had always been green since she’d gotten to Raydin. The trees have always had leaves. Unless this world worked differently it hadn’t been cold outside. Yet ice crept through the castle with insidious intent, making sure she’d never find comfort.

A feather tickled her cheek as it poked from the pillow and she burrowed deeper. The pounding in her stamp grew louder and she squeezed her eyes shut, desperate to ignore its call.

 

***

 

Hours later and it was time. She popped the hardened sponge Cabal had given her into her mouth and felt it settle like a rock on her tongue. Swallowing became near impossible as her throat constricted and she breathed as deeply as she could through her nose. On her last deep breath she grabbed the pitcher of water on her vanity.

Water sloshed under her nose and ran down either side of her mouth as she tipped it back. She gulped like she’d just stepped out of the desert. The lump floated in her mouth and began to taste soggy and used. In one final push she opened her throat as far as it would go and swallowed the biggest gulp she could take.

Her eyes bulged as the lump stopped halfway down and for an infinite second no matter how hard she swallowed the thing didn’t budge. Just as her eyes were beginning to prickle with tears the lump dislodged, scraping along like the edge of a potato chip.

The lump was physical inside her, a tangible weight that she felt anchoring her down. Her nerves vibrated with the thought, that it could help her and hinder her tonight. What if it soaked up so much that it actually did weigh her down? No. She was being stupid. And way too nervous. Cabal wouldn’t have given it to her if it were just going to end up a bowling ball in her stomach.

She sat at the edge of the bed and stared at the closed white curtains made dark by the night behind them. Eyes glazed as she stared at the window, her brain overrun with thoughts crashing into each other. There was no making sense of them, no trying to pin them down to see what they said. Everything was in such a whir her mind almost felt blank. Stillness settled over her and she felt the air thickening, wrapping her in itself. It felt like a blanket trying to calm her. She let it go. For the first time there was nothing but quiet. Even her pounding heart was muffled out. Her anxious breaths were stilled.

Peace. Different than spring in Central Park. Different than a summer afternoon. Different from anything she’d ever felt. This was acceptance, consignment to the hours ahead. The end. It was escape or death and in this silent moment, where not even her damning eyes blinked, Sabi allowed her brain to say ‘okay.’ There were no other alternatives. No other choices.

When the door behind her clicked open without so much as a knock she didn’t even flinch. The cackle of women barely penetrated her zone. She allowed them to lead her to the chair where they painted her up like a clown. Her feet barely touched the ground when they led her to the platform and draped her in a tarp even more obnoxious than the last one. None of it mattered. It was all getting left behind.

The sounds of the ballroom were louder than last time, the laughs cacklier, the tinkling of glass clinkier, the mood buzzier. Music was festive and upbeat and Sabi had to push its notes away from her heart. She wasn’t going to absorb it. She wasn’t going to feel it.

She could barely muster the anger to sneer as she stared at herself in the opposing mirror. Gaudy orange and yellow flames snaked around her head, gathering into red and purple bruises around her eyes. Maybe there was something else in the lump, something other than a sponge that sucked up immobilizing poison. Or maybe this was what criminals walking the last mile felt like if they weren’t completely freaking out. Maybe not at peace, but accepting the fact that this was it.

As if beckoned the immobilizer-filled glass appeared in front of her face and was pressed to her lips. She sipped the cool liquid slowly, the familiar disguise of tropical flavor playing on her tongue.

After a few minutes, when she could still blink on command, that zombie-like numbness drifted away, replaced by a slowly building excitement. Instead of her twitching slowly stopping against her will, the feeling intensified and a fullness took over her stomach. Now she had to fight back a smile. Her body was fully hers.

The arterial red curtain behind her wavered and then slowly ascended. She swore she could feel her ribs crack as each thud of her heart slammed into the bone. All she could do was take deep breaths through her nose and focus on her own face in front of her. Everyone needed to see her for the good little lobotomized Crier she was, barely functioning except for a few blinks.

Behind her was a mass of blinding oranges and yellows with some fuscias splashed about. And flesh. Lots of flesh. Parts were barely covered and the soft breezes from passing bodies fluttered fabric enough to peek at what was underneath.

Jeviar’s voice boomed over the crowd before she saw him. When she did she quickly looked away, focusing on her own eyes. Too bad she could still see his image reflected, shirtless with obnoxiously colored fabric just barely covering parts she never, ever wanted to see on him. Words blurred into little more than noise as she focused on not moving. On her next move.

A door opened up just below her and she could just barely see flitting, fleshy images dancing out, presumably into the center of the room. The music that jilted to life could have been moans. Or the moans she heard could have been harmonic. It started to twist noise out of her pores. A sick, nauseated worry crept in and it was getting harder to ignore. It would suck her into the unfeeling darkness if she didn’t stop it. A great place to hide but no place to run.

Sabi held her own gaze, forcing out the flailing, wild limbs twitching and writhing behind her. She sang songs in her head, screamed them, to keep out the sickening orgiastic noise bouncing around the room. She had to stay focused, feeling. The thrum of her stamp was active but heavy, as if it were bored with entertaining. It gave these people what they wanted, but it wanted more. Sabi could feel it nearly begging her to grab hold of its power and use it. The more she used it the more interactive it became. Or more intuitive. Now it was nearly yelling.

A tug pulled at the base of her brain and a short clip of the scene behind her played out as if she were turned around. Cabal. This was it. She grabbed hold of that image, as much as it made her gag to look at, and blew it up to Imax size and shifted it around behind her. She saw Cabal, his stamp illuminated on the other side of the hall, rippling around the room of mirrors in their imaginary room.

Sabi focused on herself, drowning out every detail with her mind, plugging the lights into her stamp to make it shine. When she twisted in that last bulb her head lit up like the Griswold house at Christmas, joining Cabal’s in the endless echo around the room. For a heartbeat she felt the two stamps pull her. She saw them lift off the backs of their heads, saw them swirl. Then she slapped herself from the inside and focused. The magic needed her to focus. Now was not the time to lose control.

Like lifting an enormously heavy box, she and Cabal mentally shifted the looped image and settled it over the gyrating crowd. She realized she wasn’t shaking nearly as badly as last time. The image-making wasn’t as hard. It moved with little effort.

The scene snapped into place, the last piece of the puzzle, and the thrum subsided. Her stamp was no longer engaged. Slowly she blinked and turned her head, afraid to find someone sitting on the edge of the platform. No one was there. Against her better judgment she turned around.

A knot of flesh and sweat, matted hair and body parts defined the room. Moans fed into slaps fed into a sadistic melody that coaxed it all on. What they saw was in their heads, but flickering around them, just on the edge of reality, Sabi could almost make out the loop of images. Like a phantom haunting the crowd, it settled on their shoulders.

Sabi slouched down, the stiff fabric of the rainbow vomit tarp staying up as she sank below it, her head ducking through the hole and disappearing in the folds. Her knees hit the floor with a thud and she froze, afraid the noise shattered the illusion. The moans kept on. She crawled her way out from under the fabric, shoving the tarp away and standing in nothing but a nightdress on the exposed platform.

Modesty and revulsion and fear all collided and she didn’t know what to react to first. Across the room Cabal slipped over the edge of his platform and fear promptly won over. A spotlight might as well have been honed in on her for how exposed she was, but no one looked. No one cared. As far as they knew the Criers were still serving their purpose.

She crept to the edge of the platform and watched as the ground dropped away a hundred feet. Staring out the window of the pretty cell she didn’t even so much as get butterfly flutters in her stomach. Ten feet up and she was ready to faint. As she crouched she listened to the hall, grunts and moans that would wake her up from a dead sleep for the next twenty years. They weren’t fading. Her stamp movie was holding.

With her knees to her chest she turned around. Slowly, she backed herself over the edge, her butt hinging over, before she had to use her arms and lower herself down. She dangled only a couple of seconds, the ledge gripped awkwardly between her fingers, before it started slipping. All she could see were puffed up pieces of nightdress below her.

She let go and her feet were on the ground before she even felt the drop. Despite just having thrown off her shackles she was afraid to move. Fear was back, tearing pieces off of the slowly forming image of freedom. She had to move. Now.

The door was right there. Without a second look she swiped her hand across her made up face and left it all behind.