The explosion tossed Kochin backward. He rolled across the floor, scrambling up only to shield Nhika’s body with his own. Around them, fire rained and there was the bone-rattling screech of metal against metal, but Kochin only kept his head bowed and his arms over Nhika as violent tremors shook the airship.
When he looked up, he found the explosion had taken half the bay, including its doors. A portion of the ceiling had collapsed atop Nem’s Guardian, which teetered on the charred edge of the airship. A metal cable had shot from its arm and embedded itself in the torn wall of the airship, the only thing keeping the Guardian from toppling off the edge.
Nhika stirred beneath his arms, blinking hazily. “Kochin…”
“The gas must’ve sparked,” Kochin said, pulling her up on her feet. “We need to get to the promenade and wait for the Congmis. This ship won’t last much longer.”
She nodded firmly and they started for the door. It was only when a pained cry came from behind that Kochin paused, turned.
Commissioner Nem had popped the hood of his Guardian. He squirmed but couldn’t free himself from it. Those flames encroached on either side, and maybe if Kochin were the poetic kind, he might’ve thought this was justice: the commissioner dying inside a machine of his own making.
Yet, Kochin halted, with Nhika caught at the edge of his arm’s reach. She glanced back at him with a quizzical look. “What are you doing?”
Kochin wasn’t sure. His feet would not allow him to move because when he looked at Nem, he saw not a commissioner, but just … a man.
A man holding a city on his shoulders.
A man who’d started an unwinnable war.
A man who would’ve done anything, anything, to protect the one thing he loved: his city.
In the fire, all that status and power between them had been burned away, and the commissioner was nothing more than a man who needed Kochin’s help. And Kochin understood deeply how it felt to need help. There had always been someone to save him at the last minute: Nhika, Trin, Lanalay, Vinsen, the Mother Herself. Save him from making a decision he’d regret and save him from becoming a bloodcarver.
Commissioner Nem didn’t have that someone. So right now, he needed a heartsooth.
“Kochin,” Nhika reminded him, pulling him toward the door.
Still, Kochin didn’t move. “I need to get him out.”
Her eyes flared. “No. No.” She grabbed his hand again and tugged, but he held fast. “Come on, we need to go.”
“Nhika, he’s going to die.”
“So might you.”
“Please, trust me.”
“Don’t be a hero, please.” She took his arm, dragged him with all her weight, but he pulled back.
“I’m not a hero, Nhika. I’ve never been. But I need to do this.” Again, he untangled his fingers from hers, moving his hands instead to cup her face. “This city—it needs us. If ever we want true peace and freedom, we need to show them that we’re heartsooths, not bloodcarvers.”
She glanced back at the commissioner. Maybe she understood, too—if a commissioner died on a ship with two bloodcarvers, how that might look. But she said, “We can disappear.”
Kochin shook his head. He couldn’t live in binds anymore, jumping from prison to prison. Leaning close, he kept her gaze. “Nhika, listen to me. Get everyone on the ship to the promenade for the Congmis. If I’m not there by the time they arrive, go without me.”
Her fingers curled around his wrists, not to pull him but just to hold him. He could see the reflection of the embers behind him in the dark canvas of her pupils. A thousand arguments passed behind those fierce, stubborn eyes, but her next words were only a question: “Kochin, why?”
“Because I can save him. You taught me how to use my heartsoothing again—this is what I need to do with it.” He grazed a thumb across her cheek, his influence pulling gently at her own in a parting gesture. “Do you trust me?”
The frustration in her eyes said no, but Nhika grabbed the collar of his shirt and yanked him into a rushed, messy kiss. When she released him, the anger in her expression was deadly. “Do not die, Mother damn it,” she warned.
“I promise,” he said through a smile. Only then did she release him. Nhika headed toward the collapsing door, Kochin toward Commissioner Nem. As a bid for luck, Kochin threw one last glance over his shoulder as she squeezed her way out of the bay.
And then it was just the commissioner and him.
Kochin approached the edge of the sinking floor, where the Guardian dangled just out of reach, one tread spinning uselessly over open air. Commissioner Nem was doing everything he could to pull himself up, but the Guardian’s support cable was quickly fraying.
“Save yourself, Kochin,” Commissioner Nem called from the controls. “A gift like yours is too rare to be wasted here.”
Ignoring him, Kochin leaned over the edge and extended his hand. “Leave the Guardian, Commissioner. I’ll pull you up.”
Looking uncertain, Commissioner Nem glanced between Kochin’s splayed fingers and the dashboard of the Guardian. At last, he saw reason and reached up to take Kochin’s hand. Their grips locked, Kochin’s bare hand in Nem’s gloved one, and Kochin pulled.
Nem let out an agonal cry as his body lifted from the Guardian; Kochin released him immediately. “My leg,” he said. “It’s stuck. I … I think it’s broken.”
“Take off your glove. I can heal you,” Kochin offered.
Commissioner Nem didn’t act. He only looked at his leg, Kochin’s hand, and the controls of his war machine. Even as the Guardian lurched, the wall’s metal panel giving underneath its weight, even as the inferno grew around them, he didn’t move.
“Commissioner, if you don’t let me heal you, you’ll die.”
“Go, Kochin,” Nem said. “I just ask that you use that gift to save this war, even if I’m not there to see it.”
“It’s never going to win you the war, but it can save you.” Kochin opened his fingers again, a gesture of earnestness. “Commissioner, you can either die here or we can walk out of here together.”
The hand remained an open invitation; Commissioner Nem needed only to accept it. When Kochin had first come to Theumas, it had been to change minds. To establish heartsoothing as something legitimate, something real. Everything along the way had been a setback—Santo’s research, Mr. Congmi’s murder, Nhika’s death. He’d resigned himself to lose his heartsoothing under the teeth of Theuman meritocracy. Now, he saw that change came only with time, but it came—and altering the opinion of just one man, even one as obstinate as Commissioner Nem, was all he needed.
“After all I’ve done, you would give me mercy?” the commissioner asked at last.
“That’s what heartsoothing means, to give,” Kochin responded. “I can’t turn the war like you want me to, but I can give you a second chance.”
At that, Commissioner Nem drew off his glove and took Kochin’s hand.
His uncertainty didn’t disappear. Maybe his desperation was just stronger. But when their skin met, Kochin soothed him all the same.
He tumbled through Commissioner Nem’s anatomy. For a moment, he almost felt he could see more than just the commissioner’s body, but his mind and emotions, too. The tight muscles of his shoulders—that was all his corded fear, the great regret of turning his small city-state toward an unconquerable enemy. And the hammering of his heartbeat, that was his distrust now, not knowing what heartsoothing could truly do. Finally, the pounding pressure against the arch of his aorta came with all his anger, his malice, his wrath—that Kochin could bring a girl back from the dead but refuse to do it again when all of Theumas was at stake.
Kochin could read the question still scrawled through his bones, his blood, his brain: Why?
As his answer, Kochin healed.
See how we are connected, his influence said as it collected the crushed shards of Commissioner Nem’s leg.
See how this cannot be manufactured or monetized, it whispered as it tied up vasculature with all the meticulousness of an artist.
See how it is a beautiful, wonderful, magical thing, it rejoiced as it sealed split skin.
At last, Kochin lifted his influence from the leg, taking Nem’s pain with him. See what heartsoothing means: a connection with family, with others, with oneself. See how it gives, and gives, and gives. See that it is a miracle.
His heartsoothing receded; the pressure of the flames returned, still just as oppressive. The look in Commissioner Nem’s eyes had shifted—not uncertainty, not fear, but awe, and Kochin knew he understood.
“Can you get out of the Guardian now?” Kochin asked.
With a look of intense concentration, Commissioner Nem tried moving his leg. The pain had abated from his expression, and with a heavy grunt of effort, he lifted himself up. Kochin grabbed him and pulled him firmly onto the sundered platform just as the Guardian’s cable snapped. Its frayed end whipped perilously over their heads as it trailed the Guardian into the ocean.
“I’m sorry, Kochin. I’m sorry,” Commissioner Nem was saying, but Kochin only shook his head—as the fire closed around them, they had higher concerns than apologies. Hooking one of Commissioner Nem’s arms over his shoulder, Kochin helped him toward the door.
“Let’s go,” he said.