Kill the necromancer, kill the necromancy. The words moved my feet forward, filling me with determination. It didn’t matter that the necromancer was the most powerful person in the world.
He had to be stopped.
I went to Blackdocks. The factories loomed along the bay like hulking giants, blocking out the stars on the horizon.
“Come on.” A man’s voice carried through the night. “You have to take me.”
“Not for just a silver,” another man said.
The fog thinned as I reached the water’s edge. Usually there was a large cluster of flat-bottomed boats that ferried people up and down the coast. But tonight there was only one.
“Where you going?” the skipper called to me. His accent was thick and heavy, making it all sound like one word: waryougwan?
“The quarantine hospital,” I said, looking past him. The tall brick building was barely visible in the dark, only identifiable by the illuminated clockface.
The skipper spit a stream of blackleaf juice into the bay. “Told him,” he said, jerking his head to the other man. “Ain’t going there. Not without proper gold.”
“Please,” the first man begged, his voice cracking. He stank of alcohol, but he seemed sober. My eyes drifted down to the large lump at his feet. I gasped—it was a woman, her body covered by a cloak but clearly dead.
“That place is cursed!” the skipper said. “I ain’t gonna—”
“Ten gold,” I said.
The skipper gaped at me. “Yeah, all right,” he said.
“Him, too.” I nodded to the other man and the dead woman.
“For ten gold I’ll take whoever can fit.”
The other man turned to me and grasped my hands. “Let’s go,” I said, more abruptly than I meant to, but his effusive thanks made me uncomfortable. That, and the corpse.
None of us talked. With every bump in the water, the dead woman’s head lolled. Her mouth was open, her tongue fat and heavy. The man kept adjusting her cloak, as if keeping her warm mattered.
As soon as the boat touched the stone steps leading up to the hospital, the skipper started rushing us off. I got out first, looking toward the hospital. The man grunted, awkwardly trying to get the dead woman from the boat onto the step. The skipper pushed away with his oar, and the woman’s feet splashed into the icy water before the man could pull her up to a step.
I watched the boat fade into the darkness.
“Hello?” the man called. “Hello? We need help!”
I turned. The doors to the hospital opened.
A woman stepped out. She carried herself stiffly, her chin tilted up.
“Nedra,” I whispered.
As if she could hear me, she looked down, her gaze intent. She stumbled on the step, but regained her balance quickly. My heart plunged. She’d thrown her arm out to try to catch herself—but she no longer had her entire left arm. I tried to recall if she had signs of black in her skin when I’d seen her in Master Ostrum’s office. How had so much changed in such a short time?
“Hurry, hurry,” the man pleaded under his breath, but Nedra’s pace was slow.
And then, behind her, more people emerged from the hospital. Dozens—just under fifty or so, I guessed. These people moved as one, flowing like liquid over the steps, a wave of people that surrounded her.
The man started to pray.
The crowd behind Nedra seemed a random assortment of people, male and female, all different ages. Some had blackened limbs, but they didn’t show pain.
They didn’t show any emotion at all.
I sucked in a breath, my eyes watering. I hadn’t wanted to believe it was true. Not my Nedra.
But when she stopped, they stopped. When she looked at the dead woman, they looked.
And when she turned to me, every dead eye focused on my face.
I opened my mouth to speak, but Nedra turned away without a word, crouching down to inspect the body of the woman at the man’s feet. The man’s hands twitched nervously as Nedra pulled away the cloak, revealing no sign of plague. Instead, she had bruises blossoming on her throat.
My head jerked up to the other man’s face. “It was an accident,” he said. “I swear. Can you save her?”
Nedra still didn’t speak as she reached under the collar of her cloak and pulled out a chain. At the end of the necklace was a small iron bead, dark and whole, unlike the broken bead Governor Adelaide had held. I sucked in a breath. Would it be enough to take down the Emperor?
Nedra’s eyes cut to me, narrowed and fierce. She raised an eyebrow, as if daring me to comment on her necromancer’s crucible.
When I didn’t respond, she reached toward the dead woman with her residual arm. Nedra’s eyes softened, but her focus intensified. Behind me, the man’s babbling stopped. He stared in horror at the revenants. Whatever they were looking at, it was the same thing Nedra’s attention was focused on.
“Can you bring her back to me? I love her,” the man said. “She’s my wife.”
“She’s not.” Nedra’s voice was tight, and I could tell she was angry. “And she doesn’t want to come back to you.”
She stood.
The man’s face purpled. “You will bring me back my wife, you—” he started.
Nedra held a hand up. “I only bring back people who want to come back,” she said. “And besides, I don’t see why you want to bring someone back after you murdered her.”
The man sputtered, rage overwhelming him. “I would never murder her!” he snarled. “I love her.”
Nedra cocked her head. “The dead don’t lie,” she said simply. “You killed her. I’m not bringing her back against her will just so you can pretend to apologize.”
“I’ll make you—” he started, lunging for her.
I jumped to protect Nedra, but I needn’t have. Her revenants circled the man, and he couldn’t break through them. “Come along, Grey,” Nedra told me, heading back up the stairs.
“What are . . . what are they going to do to him?” I asked. The revenants were so tightly packed around the shouting man that I could barely see him.
“Whatever they want,” Nedra said, shrugging, not slowing her pace back up to the hospital. “They all saw the poor woman’s soul, too. They all heard what she had to say about him.”
The man’s voice went from angry shouting to terrified screams, but all I could hear was what Nedra had told him before: The dead don’t lie.
I glanced behind me once before I stepped inside the hospital after Nedra. I could not see what the revenants were doing, but the man’s screams had stopped.
Nedra didn’t pause as she made her way sedately to the spiral staircase leading to the clock tower. I followed, my mind a riotous mess, caught somewhere between panic and fear. Those monsters outside—they had worn the faces of humans. There had been children. My dread grew with every step. I could not tell if I feared the monsters inside more than the one I followed.
Nedra is no monster, I told myself firmly, but I could not calm my heart.
Someone waited for us at the top of the stairs. I gasped and stumbled down a step, my eyes unable to comprehend the exact mirror copy of Nedra standing beside her. The real Nedra had an edge to her I’d almost forgotten, something rough like splintering wood. This other girl didn’t have that. Behind her eyes, it was as smooth as glass. My Nedra was missing her left arm; the other one’s right arm had been amputated above the elbow. But other than that, they were identical.
Identical . . .
My gaze dropped to Nedra’s hand, wrapped up in the hand of the creature that seemed to be a mirror copy of her. The monster’s fingers were loose, resting in Nedra’s grip, but Nedra had white knuckles, she was holding on so hard.
All of Nedra’s stories about her family came flooding back to me.
“Nedra,” I said slowly. I looked at the empty shell of a person who stood placidly beside her. “You didn’t tell me your sister was your twin.”
She sniffled. For the first time, I realized Nedra was crying. Nedra, the feared necromancer who raised revenants and clutched their souls in her hand, was silently crying, fat tears slowly leaking from her eyes, one after another.
I acted without thinking. I reached for her, cradling her face with one hand, my skin immediately wet and warm from her tears. “Nedra,” I whispered, “why didn’t you tell me?”
“Why didn’t you ever ask?” she growled, jerking her face away. Her hand slipped out of the monster’s.
She reached for me with what remained of her left arm, the residual limb twitching. Nedra looked down at her shoulder as if angry at its betrayal, but she didn’t try to touch me again.
Instead, she looked at her sister, who, I realized, was not a monster at all.
“I’m sorry,” I said. It wasn’t enough, it would never, ever be enough, but I had to say it.
“Go,” she whispered. I hesitated, but then the reanimated corpse of her sister walked placidly down the stairs. Nedra had sent her away, not me. Nedra sank to the floor, her head resting against the clock, the minute hand ticking by. I sat down beside her, and she didn’t object.
For a long while, there was nothing between us but silence.
“I thought you wouldn’t follow me into the darkness.” She threw my words back at me, but her voice sounded tired and defeated.
“This is wrong, Nedra,” I said. “You shouldn’t be playing with life and death.”
“You know nothing of death.”
“But why?” I asked. “You can’t give them life. Not really.” Even if the other revenants hadn’t been as hollow as Nedra’s sister, it was still obvious they weren’t truly alive.
It took her a long moment to answer. “They didn’t ask for life. They asked for more time.” She paused. “‘If love will not stop for death, time should.’”
My lips twitched into a shadow of a smile. That line came from the poem I’d recited on our first day of lessons at Yūgen, in Master Ostrum’s office, for our first report of the semester. She had remembered it. I loved her for that, for the way she noticed things no one else would bother with.
The thought came quickly, unbidden, but I knew it was true. The first words lingered within me. I loved her.
I love her.
It was an emotion I no longer recognized. Love wasn’t sweet and pure. Love crept slowly, like a river rising, seeping into the earth, saturating it, spilling over the banks, drowning everything in its wake.
Nedra stood and shrugged out of her cloak. I scrambled up and helped her with the fasteners. The cloth fell away, exposing a plain beige chemise underneath. I looked at the snaking scars on what remained of her left arm, unusually long and puckered, as if the arm had been ripped from her, not cut.
I made myself look at the scars, still fresh, raw, and pink. At first to see if there was infection or any pain I could help take away. But then to make myself imagine how it had felt. I wondered, not for the first time, what had happened to her.
When I looked up from her arm, I saw Nedra watching me. Waiting for me to comment.
“You’re still beautiful,” I said.
She shook her head, disappointed. “Oh, Grey,” she replied. “How do you always know to say just the wrong thing?”
I frowned, unsure.
What was this thing between us? It didn’t feel like before, at school. It was different, deeper and darker, but perhaps more real. My eyes drifted to the chain that held her iron crucible. We needed to talk about the plague. What Lord Commander Ostrum had told me.
As soon as I spoke, I knew the spell between us would be over. We would not be able to face each other anymore; we would have to face our mutual enemy. Selfishly, I wanted to do nothing but stay here, the heavy ticking of the giant clock wrapping around us, and forget about the world and death and necromancy and everything, everything else forever.
But I couldn’t let the plague continue. I opened my mouth to speak.
Nedra sighed and leaned toward me, resting her head on my shoulder.
We had kissed—many times—before. We had come close to doing more than kissing. But that moment, with her hair falling down my back, her skin’s warmth seeping through my shirt, her weight leaned against me, was more intimate than anything we’d done before.