It was almost nice, talking to Alistair Wyrslaine, during the moments when I forgot he was the Heir. He was intense but no more so than Mack when he got talking. He didn’t try flirting with me again, and I was thankful for that. We couldn’t both be playing each other.
It was harder to think of him as the Heir now that I was committed to using his name with him. He was barely older than me but so much bloodier.
The next morning, there was a flask of tart lemonade—barely any sugar and no poison—outside my door. I drank it sparingly as I left for the laboratory. Carlow’s door was shut tight, voices whispering behind it, and a sound that might have been sobbing broke through. I stopped and touched the door. I’d never thought of Carlow as a crier.
I withdrew my hand and kept walking.
I didn’t know her well enough. She would hate being caught crying by me. I decided to send Creek after her, but by the time I got to the laboratory, she was already there. There must have been a less winding path between our quarters and here.
“Within three months, the sacrifices necessary to keep it shut will equal the population of Port Altiver,” she said, nose so close to her journal there was ink smeared across it.
“Well,” drawled Creek, peering over her shoulder, “at least that’s not a very large town.”
I’d passed through it with the Heir on our way to Mori. Port Salt-Swallowing-the-River was as old as Felhollow and as deserving as any other town, no matter how many lived in it.
“We’re going to have to decide how many people we’re willing to let die before we try to replace the Door,” I said. “We’re at three a month now. Is five too many?”
“Not if they’re rapists and murderers,” Basil muttered.
“But what about when we run out of those?” I pulled the bowl of red dirt toward myself, hand shaking. “What about when we no longer have time to judge folks with wrights and must guess if they’re guilty or not?”
“The more pressing question you’re avoiding,” said Carlow, “is how many innocent people are we willing to sacrifice to the Door so that we can buy ourselves enough time to replace it and save the rest of Cynlira, and how do we choose them?”
“Risk everyone now or sacrifice some to lessen the risk?” Basil groaned and closed the book they had been reading. “We can’t decide that.”
If we didn’t, who would? The Heir? The Crown?
“I do not like either of those choices,” said Creek. “Let’s just not make a choice.”
I laughed a bit too loudly and sent my quill nibs rolling across the floor. I stumbled from my stool, shooing the others away from my mess. Carlow snorted as I crawled under her desk. I swept all the odds and ends beneath it into my pockets.
“What is our number?” I said, kneeling. “What number of survivors makes the number of dead worth it?”
The door swung open. Hana entered first, followed by the Heir. He was dressed as he had been yesterday, as if he had an identical outfit for each day of the week, but his glasses hung around his neck from a thin gold chain. Basil dropped their inkpot, and Carlow screwed up her face. Even Creek stared at the Heir as if they had never met.
Then the Crown entered, and we all dropped to the floor.
“Since you seemed more accustomed to intangible sacrifices, I grew curious.” The Crown wore white again, a tightly fitted bodice that showed off the carved binding on her chest. A few stray beads of blood welled across the tangling lines of Life’s and Death’s sigils. “I would also like to go over your numbers, Franziska, but first Lorena.”
So the Heir had told her. She led me into the washroom and then behind a curtained door I hadn’t noticed before. The little nook was hardly big enough for the desk shoved into it and seemed to be nothing more than a closet. I sat on the stool nearest the door. She laughed.
“Relax,” she said. “I have two simple tests for you, hardly anything at all, and then you may return to fulfilling my Alistair’s curiosity. He is only researching this because it is a great puzzle and he has no self-control when it comes to things that intrigue him.”
I crinkled my brow and feigned confusion. “But what if Carlow is right? What will we do then?”
“We continue on as we have been, albeit slightly less populated.” She pulled an old set of scales from the shelf beside us and walked her fingers along the top. “There are always people not valuable enough to keep around.”
A chill crept down my spine.
“Of course,” I said, afraid I’d pushed her too far already. “What were the tests, Your Excellency?”
“Ah,” the Crown said with a sigh. “When I was your age, people always asked me why I did things, and they hated that my answer was ‘because I wanted to.’ Nothing I wanted was ever right, and then I realized that all I had to do was take what I wanted. I owed no one answers. I have read your contract with my son. You gain nothing from it.”
How unsurprising that caring about someone else was such a strange concept to her.
“Intangible sacrifices were never really accepted or considered until recently. When I was learning, memories were untouchable. Only tangible sacrifices were known, taught, and allowed.” She took my hands in hers and ran her thumbs across the backs of my knuckles. It would’ve been loving if I didn’t hate her. “I was tempted the moment I realized destroying memories and creating new ones was possible. Alistair opened my eyes with Hila. There was so much more possible than I had previously thought. I considered letting Beatrice live. She was the best fighter in Cynlira, and I could have destroyed her loyalty to my husband and created a whole new life for her where she was loyal to me.”
My vilewright growled. For all the terrible things I had heard about the Crown, I had never heard of her destroying memories and creating new ones like that. When the Heir had destroyed the free will of the people in Hila, that had been the first time such a blatant intangible sacrifice had been made publicly.
“Did you ever alter someone’s memories and free will?” she asked. “Did you ever want something enough to try?”
I knew want better than anything. I had grown up hungry, and food had never filled that need. My wrights were ever-growling with longing for something, anything, more than this, and my parents, too, had wanted. My mother had wanted to live. I had wanted to live.
I so rarely indulged, but I had. Altering a healer’s memories so they wouldn’t remember me stealing supplies to save my mother or a guard’s so they wouldn’t know which kid had robbed them. Memories made a person. What was the difference between altering them and changing someone’s will?
“No,” I lied, “but I thought about it quite a lot. I didn’t think I would be able to pull it off. Those soldiers were my first. I panicked.”
“Disappointing.” She pulled away. “What do you want, Lorena Adler?”
“I want Will Chase alive,” I said. “I want Felhollow to be left alone.”
“I don’t believe you.” She took a breath, and the scales crumbled. A minute later, a knife appeared in her open hand. “What do you want?”
I forced myself to flinch, but this was good. Her contracts with her noblewright, just like those with her vilewright, took longer than mine to enact.
“I want to go home. I want to forget all about you and your son and your rotting city, and I want to live a life that never crosses yours again.”
She pressed the blade into the back of my hand.
I hissed. “I want to tear this entire fucking city from its mountain. I want all your court to drown in the waters I was born in. I want to break you down like you lot break us till not even the historians remember your name, because I know what it means to survive, and for all your talk, you wouldn’t last a week in your own city.”
“Finally,” said the Crown, grinning. “Honesty. You lie so often I was afraid I would never get the truth.”
“You’re not as terrifying as you think,” I said, eyes on my blood welling around the blade.
“Have you been able to destroy any part of the Door?” she asked.
I jumped at the change of questions, and the blade sunk deeper.
“No,” I lied.
She jammed the knife through my hand.
Pain.
My vilewright took my ability to feel pain, and I sighed.
Knife.
The blade in the Crown’s hand slowly degraded till there was nothing there at all but a wound beneath her fisted hand. She reared back.
We sat in silence for a long while, our wrights working between us, and none of my blood spilled from the wound. Her vilewright was a whisper against my sore skin.
“That’s better,” she said, face pale. “I have destroyed your ability to lie. It seems that was all you ever did. I may not hold my son’s interest for intangible sacrifices and destructions, but I am not inept. If you attempt to destroy the Door and create a new one, I will kill you. I will kill Willoughby Chase. I will kill Julian Chase. I will kill Mack Sarclaw. Felhollow will cease to exist. Do you understand?”
My tongue stuck to my teeth. Everything hurt. I nodded.
“Good.” She rose and dragged me to my feet. “Alistair’s contract with you will be difficult to destroy but not impossible. I like you, and Cynlira needs another dualwrought. Your less useful inclinations we will work on.”
The rest of the laboratory was pretending to work, Creek going over Carlow’s calculations and Basil reading a text upside down. They all looked up when we entered. The Heir stood.
“Now,” said the Crown, letting go of my arm. “I must take my leave and deal with those calculations of yours.”
“Perhaps I would be of help with them,” said Creek, sliding his gangly body between Carlow and the Crown. “You know how she is sometimes.”
“Unnecessary—the talking and the offer,” the Crown said, crossing her arms. “Come, Franziska. Let us see about your guess of five months.”
“Estimation,” said Carlow, one hand clutching the back of Creek’s coat. “My calculations are always correct. You know this.”
“One day, your need to be right will get you killed.” The Crown crooked one finger at Carlow. “Come.”
I held back a shudder. At least Carlow couldn’t die.
If only the rest of us were lucky enough to be cursed.