Eleven

By that evening, I had read through the first five contracts in his book. They all involved the odd red dirt from the Door, testing different ways to destroy it or parts of it. He hadn’t succeeded, the dirt reforming itself no matter what he sacrificed, and I traced the slightly frantic words of the latest contract. Carlow and Creek argued the whole time, their grumblings a reliable backdrop to my reading. Basil seemed to be the only person who remembered I was there.

“None of us really formed a bond with our noblewrights like you have with yours,” they said. They’d been asking me questions every few minutes and taking note of my answers in the margins of an old tome on wrights and wrought, going so far as to define what I meant by prayer. “It’s why unbound and untrained wrought are interesting. You work differently. Your wrights work differently. It’s fascinating.”

I didn’t feel fascinating; I felt picked apart.

“How do you know it’s not your bindings that require such specific contracts?” I asked. “To let your employer know exactly what you want?”

“We don’t,” said Carlow darkly. “Which is why I find myself dead so often. I don’t like being told what I can and can’t do.”

She could create the most wonderful things, from bridges that folded up on themselves to let boats pass beneath to hinges that allowed prosthetic hands to work more nimbly than ever before. She couldn’t heal so much as a paper cut, though, and she pushed the boundaries of what she was allowed to do until her binding bled and oozed. She couldn’t alter oxygen—it was too dangerous to allow the noblewrought to mess with something so important—and even iron was hard for her to work with. Changing the composition of metals to better suit her needs left her exhausted and sobbing. Ink and blood almost always stained her clothes.

“If not for your curse, you’d be dead five hundred times over,” said Creek. “Your utter disregard for yourself is a thorn in my side.”

“Why?” she asked. “Because I’m not dying fast enough? Perhaps putting up with you is the sacrifice I make.”

“And what a good lesson that is—just because you cannot see the sacrifice or price doesn’t mean it’s not there,” Creek said, coaxing an avens flower the same blue as his eyes from the dirt on his desk. It grew so quickly, dirt scattered across the floor. “You must always consider how your wrights interact with our world and how others perceive them. Seeing something doesn’t mean it’s here. Seeing nothing doesn’t mean nothing is here.”

He gestured to the stool in the corner, grinning when it squeaked and spun as if someone were sitting in it.

“If only Delmond Creek were neither visible nor here.” Carlow sighed, stretched, and stood. “Or dead for good.”

“I don’t think this lab could take any more deaths,” Creek muttered and turned a page.

Carlow inhaled.

No one spoke of the last wrought who had worked here, but it was clear they were dead and that Carlow and Creek had not forgiven each other for whatever had happened.

Basil cleared their throat. “We’re supposed to be teaching Lorena. That’s what His Majesty asked us to do today.”

“I don’t have any questions as of yet, so it’s fine,” I said, and Basil shot me a look. “I mean, will he be here today?”

“Most likely,” said Carlow, creating a metal wire thinner than a strand of hair and studying it through her goggles. The right lens, I’d learned, was a monocular. “His mother makes him attend court and council meetings, but he’s probably bored of them by now. He’ll go back to being here every day soon.”

I shook my head. It was unthinkable, being so powerful and calling that power “boring.”

“Do you think when he’s the Crown, we can call him the Vile Crown?” Carlow asked. “Like the old ones?”

The most powerful of the Noble and Vile had been called Crowns and ruled over their weaker fellows, and we had borrowed their terms after they were banished.

“How infuriating do you think it is for them to know we use the term Crown?” She whined and rubbed her eyes. “I hope it’s very. I hope they seethe every day thinking about us weak little mortals calling our leader the Crown.”

“I’m sure they do,” said Creek, rolling his eyes to the ceiling.

“You know, the rumors say some of the Vile Crowns weren’t evil, just unpredictable and powerful,” said Basil. “The Crowns could even possess dead mortals and take control of their corpses.”

Carlow scoffed. Basil, bless them, had a penchant for taking things apart, history, and telling the same story over and over. Their eyes lit up when they did, though, so it was hard for even her to be mad. She must’ve heard this history many times from them.

Creek chuckled. “Powerful? Vilewrights are fragments of Vile souls and grant unimaginable abilities when used properly. Imagine what a proper Vile Crown could do and you’re still thinking too small.”

“Powerful enough that I’m still cursed even after they’ve been gone for centuries,” muttered Carlow.

“Yes.” Creek, smile falling, tucked a pale-blue bud behind Carlow’s ear. “Perhaps they were so powerful they forgot what eternity and death meant to mortals.”

She shook her head. The bud tumbled to the floor, rolling away under her desk.

“Rumors say the Noble weren’t nice either.” Basil tugged Creek away, pointing to his stool, and said, “Sit down and shut up, or I’ll attach you to it.”

Creek sat.

“They cursed folks too,” I said, hiding my laughter with my hand. “Felhollow’s named after one, you know. It was killed there after killing a bunch of townsfolk after they made a deal with the Vile to save themselves from the plague. The Noble didn’t care about mortals. They only cared about keeping the balance between life and death.”

“Death is the only discerning god, the stories tell,” said Basil, “and will take everyone no matter who.”

I let out a bark of a laugh, and Basil startled.

“Take it from an undertaker,” I said. “Death’s only as discerning as we are.”

Sure, it took rich folk in due time, but it wasn’t peers dying every day from exhaustion, disease, and accidents. They could pay noblewrought to heal them. My mother hadn’t even been able to pay for her funeral plot, much less healing.

Basil shrugged. “I like the stories. They tell us we can be more. If they overthrew the Noble and Vile, we can do this.”

They gestured to my desk and the bowl of odd red dirt from the Door.

“Stories say a lot of things and rumors even more.” Carlow groaned and shut her book, pressing her palms hard into her eyes. “Rumors say moss only grows on the north sides of trees, but I’m not stranding you in the forest to check.”

“And I thank you very much for that,” Basil said.

“It doesn’t matter what the Noble and Vile were,” said Carlow. “We must be whatever tools this world needs.”

“Who the world needs,” whispered Creek. “You are a ‘who,’ Franziska, not a contrivance.”

She stilled and nodded. “We should get back to work.”

“Sure,” I said slowly. “Basil, could I see one of your contracts? I want to compare it to the Heir’s.”

“Oh, of course.” They shuffled through a stack of papers on their desk. “Anything specific?”

“You could say that.” I grabbed the Heir’s book of contracts and flipped to one of the attempts he’d made at destroying the dirt-like pieces of the Door. “How specific are your contracts?”

“Fairly specific,” they said. “If what I’m creating is complicated, I have to state the makeup of what I want.”

They showed me a page that included a steel beam for a bridge, and I frowned.

“You can just specify steel?” I asked. “You don’t have to provide the percentage of iron and carbon?”

“No, not so long as I have it in mind. Why?”

“The Heir’s contracts are far more detailed.” I flipped through the book. Every single contract listed components and directions to an exactness that made my teeth ache. “I don’t even do what you do, but should I be doing this?”

Basil sucked on their teeth and tapped their fingers against their desk. “Maybe. I’m not sure. I think you probably know what’s best for your vilewright, but you should talk to His Majesty about it.”

The door opened, and the Heir stepped through, a book under one arm and a knife in the other.

“Speak of the Vile,” said Creek.

I froze, but the Heir only smiled.

“Ah,” he said, “talking about me?”

“It was either that or work.” Carlow jerked her head in the direction of his desk. “Lorena has been going over contracts and has some questions.”

“Then I shall answer them,” said the Heir.

I let him settle before approaching. He kept his coat on, buttoned from hip to throat. He adjusted his glasses, pinching the bridge of his nose, and the shadows beneath his eyes were as black as his hair. I leaned against his desk so the others couldn’t see either of us and rested my hand on his arm. His muscles clenched beneath my fingers.

“You care about them,” I whispered. It was hard to imagine this boy caring about anything with a heartbeat.

“They are my wrought,” he said. “I have little choice.”

He did, but I didn’t say anything.

“All your contracts can’t be this convoluted.” I flipped to a random page from his book. The contract was three full pages, specifying the amount of red dirt to destroy down to the weight and exactly where it was in the palace. He had even written out what similar things his vilewright shouldn’t destroy. There were caveats in case his vilewright needed more of a sacrifice to accomplish it: take the first layer of flesh or one pint of blood. The precision felt unnecessary.

“I have certain contracts that can be executed with only a word and a sacrifice,” he said. “Destroying bullets fired at me is doable because my vilewright is familiar with the wording of the contract. I need only know I have been shot at. Of course, my vilewright is only one wright. It can only destroy three to five. Anything more and I’m a mess for the healers to deal with. Bolts and other projectiles require a different contract and sacrifice. Sacrifices work best when the wrought enacts them, of course, but on those occasions, my vilewright will take the sacrifice without my having to lift a finger. I have it well trained.”

Magic was always more powerful when the wrought did the sacrificing, cutting an arm or offering up a memory. It was why he had Hana—stabbing her was more powerful than his vilewright simply claiming the blood from her without the Heir’s intervention.

My wrights weren’t as finicky as this though. A projectile was a projectile, and my vilewright would’ve known what to do with either a bullet or a bolt.

“That’s all well and good, but what about this? The red dirt-like substance in the oak bowl in the center of the room in the east wing of my quarters,” I said and held up the journal. “What’s your vilewright going to do? Destroy the other wooden bowl full of dirt?”

“It’s done similar things in the past,” he said. “It’s not me. It knows a bowl holds things, but bodies hold blood, do they not?”

I shuddered. “Why do you care if it hurts someone?”

He had killed so many. Did one more death matter to him, or did he simply not want to deal with the political consequences?

“I’m not a monster,” he said slowly, as if the words were too heavy for his tongue. “I admit to having leveraged my past and the rumors about me to my advantage, but I take no joy in killing. Some deaths are simply necessary sacrifices. Why waste a life if I can avoid it?”

“What about Hila?” I asked.

“Hila was a tragedy of my own making, but I was told at the time it was a necessary one. I know what it’s like to fear your own home,” he whispered, shoulders stiff. “The peers fear me now, but that is a needed fear. They are the ones who can do damage, and through their fear of me, I get them to obey without question. Perhaps I am a monster, but what good are dreams if you’ve never known a nightmare?”

I did not need to have been stabbed to know that I preferred not being stabbed.

“You didn’t want a dog,” I whispered.

A pale pink rose in his cheeks. “There are a few who, like you, do not fear me—Carlow, Baines, Worth—and I have no desire to harm them. They are as important to me as my vilewright. Sometimes it is nice to be accepted, not feared.”

And yet everyone in this lab used his title and not his name.