The battle was over. My father was sprawled at my feet. Dreya stood close to me, Griska, Kenzi, and Tabor all with us in a small semicircle.
All around us, the Conduits were starting to shine. Their energy pulsing, illuminating the darkness brighter than any of the torches or remaining city lamps possibly could. The remaining Citadel Guards, those who were wounded and still alive, struggled to their feet, helping one another.
“Caenum,” Tabor said, nudging me. “Caenum!”
“Hmm?” I muttered, trying to shake off the shock. “What?”
He shrugged. “Orders?”
A few Conduits held Citadel Guards, ready to strike. They looked at me expectantly.
“No,” I said shortly, “we’re finished here. Let them go.”
“But—” someone in the mob of people protested.
“Don’t argue with me,” I said. “Let them be.” The wounded Guards immediately began picking up weapons and discarded pieces of armor off the ground, small verbal spats breaking out while they made their way toward the city’s entrance. The gate rose with a squeal and a resounding crash. As the Guards left the city, a few Conduits followed and stood by, keeping an eye out as the agents of the Citadel disappeared down the road.
We had won.
Apparently.
There were so many uncertainties the next morning.
When it was that I wandered over to the city wall and leaned against the thick cold marble, and fell asleep, I have no idea. But I awoke that morning, the ground beneath me covered in a thick, soft moss that was almost comfortable.
The buildings in front of me still smoldered, the air full of the noxious odor of smoke and blood. I rubbed my eyes, blinking furiously, as the ruined world came back into focus. My mouth was parched, my stomach empty to the point of nausea.
Tabor, Kenzi, and Griska mulled about, peeking in the shells of homes, checking on the bodies of people strewn about the ground. I saw Ryst cradling a ball of flame in her hand, ready to set a thick pile of brush ablaze, Dreya standing right next to her at the place where I had concealed Rausch.
“Wait!” I yelled, scrambling to my feet. Ryst’s hand extinguished immediately, and she looked at me with the same irritated gaze I’d become so accustomed to. Dreya smiled softly in my direction as I ran toward them. “Don’t…” I huffed, exhausted and famished, throat dry and cracking with each gasp for breath and attempt at speech. “Don’t burn it.” I pointed at the brush, which, I’ll admit, looked incredibly conspicuous and out of place. I couldn’t blame them.
“Why,” began Dreya, looking from Ryst to me and back to the brush.
“Rausch,” I said, my heart sinking. “During the battle, he didn’t make it. I wrapped him up in there, I didn’t want anything to happen to his body, this was before Dreya—” I stopped. “Where’s Tabor?”
“He’s fine,” said Ryst. “Tending to the wounded with some of Spiritrend’s doctors and a few of our Healers.”
“Are you okay?” asked Dreya, coming over and taking my hand.
I looked down at the ground sheepishly. How could I possibly be okay?
“Why aren’t you over there, with the rest of the Healers?” I asked, looking back up at her, trying to shake off the awkwardness.
She shrugged. “They’ve got it under control. I wanted to check on you.”
“Thanks.” I nodded, looking sadly at the brambles that held Rausch.
“Your father was wrong, Caenum,” Dreya said, reaching out and pushing my head up by my chin, looking me right in the eyes. “You are ready to be a leader.”
“I don’t—” I began.
“She’s right,” Ryst said, almost begrudgingly. “Your father . . . ,” she broke off, “he practically raised me. He was misguided, but a good man. But you’re going to be a great one.”
“The Citadel tries to force people into roles, into walks of life. Gives them assignments based on what they are born with,” Dreya said, as Ryst knelt down and gingerly touched the vines that wrapped around Rausch’s body. “But leaders aren’t born. They are made. All of your confusion, all those questions, they brought you here. According to the Citadel, you might have been born to work the land. But according to the fate you’ve made for yourself, you were meant to save it.”
“It’s so damn unfair.”
“I know, I know,” Dreya said, holding on to me, trying to be of some comfort.
“I still had so many questions,” I muttered, trying to work things out. “Did he really not mean to cause the Glacialis? I mean, with the way he treated those people . . . ,” I broke off, shaking my head, the memory of the shattered bodies at Spiritrend. We were inside the large longhouse back at the Sanctuary, gathered in the central room. It reminded me a bit of the great hall in the Unprinted Village. But there was more order here. Order I was now responsible for. Kenzi, Dreya, Ryst, and I sat at a large, long table in the center of the room, planning out our future.
“It’s best not to think about it too much, I think,” said Kenzi, trying to be helpful.
“Where did he come from originally? Why’d he stay with my family if he didn’t really care about us?” I laughed and snorted. “What does my damn name even mean?”
“Mud,” said a voice I’d never heard before.
I looked up and caught Tabor staring intently at Griska. The two of them had joined us while we were talking.
“Griska?” Tabor said, his voice inflecting up, surprised.
Griska cleared his throat and sat down at the table, and then he spoke in a string of syllables I couldn’t write if I even wanted to. The words he spoke floated through the air like music, sweet and light, gentle despite his demeanor, yet with an air of authority.
“All this time you could talk?” Tabor asked, and laughed loudly as he sat down next to his old friend. He shook his head, catching our confused gazes. “That’s the old tongue. He said it means mud. Mud seems shapeless, but can be made into a lot of things. On your face as cover for battle, laid as bricks for warm hearths, or as foundations for homes.”
Griska said something, this time short.
“A good name,” Tabor translated. He laughed and slapped his friend on the back, but this time Griska just smiled softly and nodded his head.
“Right,” spat a cold voice toward the front of the hall. “A good name.”
A chill ran down my spine as I turned around slowly. Molivar stood by the open door, his Citadel cloak billowing in the breeze as gusts of wind seeped into the hall. The once-brilliant shade of burgundy was stained with dark, deeper notes of red and the gold symbols, once bright and shimmering against the dark fabric, were faded and fraying. And maybe it was just the way the light was shining in from the outside and framing his coat, legs, and body, but he looked slimmer. Unhealthy. And the scar that cut down the side of his face and across his lid looked like it had reopened recently, with thick scabbing down his cheek and an eye patch covering his once-intimidating dead eye.
I stood to face him, and though Ryst, Kenzi, Tabor, Griska, and Dreya joined me, I turned to Kenzi and said, “I’ve got this.” He nodded.
“Molivar!” I shouted, taking a step forward. “You aren’t welcome in my home.” As much as I was trying to sound authoritative, calling my father’s town, my father’s house mine, it felt a bit unsettling. But still, I pressed on.
“You had best explain yourself,” I said, curtly. “And then be on your way.”
“Explain myself?” Molivar snarled, taking a few steps into the hall. Conduits on both sides stood up and looked as though they were going to make a move. I held up a hand, motioning for them to wait. “To you? I once held you under my boot, boy. Let’s see if you still fit.”
“Just leave,” I pressed. “This is the Sanctuary, one of many across the Realm. The Citadel doesn’t come here. You should know—”
“You should know,” Molivar interrupted, taking more steps into the hall, “that things are going to change around here. You think you can just take a city from us? We’ll take Spiritrend back and burn it to the ground with your kind in it.”
“You think we’re not your kind?” I shouted, talking a step toward him. My friends behind me rustled once more and I held my hand to stop them. “Maybe if you spent some time with—”
“Ha!” He guffawed. “The only time I’d like to spend with you is a minute or so, as long as it takes for you to try to pry your neck from my cold hard grasp.”
With that, he swung his cloak off, as the room gasped and Conduits scrambled for the exits. He wore the usual uniform of the Citadel Guard: thick brown boots with leather straps, dark pants. Only these were fraying and ripped at the knees, and topped by what was probably once a brilliant white shirt, now stained with blood and grime, and had been custom tailored for the device that sent everyone running.
Where his left arm should have been, was an Extractor.
The terrifying brass piece of Citadel machinery cast a dark contrast to the rest of his human body, a dull luster on each of its parts. Dials and gauges were sticking out of the forearm and his shoulder, and where the joint met his body, the brass dug into his flesh. Long black tubes trailed down the side of it churning inky fluid more like smoke than water.
He swung the arm out, the clawlike hand grasping as it made an angry grinding noise.
I heard the resounding crackle of Kenzi’s Magic starting.
“No,” I said, and then turned around to look at him. I felt the Magic flow through me as I became aware of the earth beneath the longhouse, the roots under the floorboards, and the ivy climbing the walls outside. I felt them twist and turn, stretch out and bend.
“He’s mine.”
I turned just as Molivar let out a maddening roar and ran toward me, his Extractor arm raised. With a wave of my hand, I sent thick tan roots bursting through the floorboards and slamming up into him. He hit the ceiling hard and fell back to the splintering ground like a rag doll thrown by a child, landing with an angry thud, and a clang of his mechanical arm.
He leaped back up as if nothing had happened, blood trickling down his forehead. He wiped it away with his human arm and lifted the Extractor. The claw waved, motioning for me to come forward.
“Is that all you’ve got?” Molivar growled through the pain in his voice.
“We can stop this,” I said, holding up my hand, attempting a peace offering. “You can leave. We’re from the same place, Molivar. I know how they took you. I know how you wanted to run, how they branded you and made you an assassin. That’s not who you are. Your Ink . . . that’s not who you have to be.”
“Ha!” he barked back, swinging the Extractor up and slamming the claw against the floorboard, the vibration almost knocking me off my feet. “Who do you think made up those stories, about my Ink ‘controlling’ me? I did. Made people think that at some level all this?” He slammed the Extractor against the ground once more. “Wasn’t my fault.”
“Truth is, I like this, Caenum,” he said, smirking. “You wouldn’t believe how well the Citadel treats me. I made something of myself. I rose from the slum of Frosthaven. You just rolled around in the ashes that I left for you.”
“You think they treat you well?” I laughed, despite the Frosthaven comment striking me harder than anything he could possibly throw at me. “Like with that thing?” I pointed at the arm. “Looks like torture to me.”
He looked down at his shoulder where it was bolted in place with nasty-looking rivets against his skin.
“Greatness requires sacrifice,” he said. “And nothing you can continue to say is going to stop me.”
“You’re not going to convince me to stop trying,” I said, breathing heavily. “There’s good in everyone, Molivar. Even you. I know it.”
“You know nothing!” He ran at me again, and just as I inhaled, preparing to will the ivy outside or the trees near the windows and door to do something, anything, he slammed into me, the brass shoulder of the Extractor colliding with my chest. I heard something crack, like a dried twig snapping in half, and saw spots fill my vision, blossoms of pain bursting from within my torso.
I fell to the ground, skidding across the floor, as Molivar leaped into the air and jumped on top of me. He stared down at me, menace in his eyes, a mad grin on his face, the brass arm raised.
“I’m nothing like you,” he spat.
“You’re right,” I managed to say, my chest pounding with pain as I tried to pull in air. I looked out the window and saw my beautiful vines clinging to the glass. Molivar’s Extractor moved higher, and I heard the unmistakable sound of Kenzi crackling, of Tabor, Griska, and Dreya yelling, feet slamming against the hard floor.
“I’m better.”
As Molivar’s arm came crashing down, the viselike grip of the Extractor’s claw snapping shut around my neck, the ivy burst through the window, crashing through the side beams, and shattering the far wall of the great hall. I closed my eyes, unwilling to witness Molivar screaming in agony, his brass twisting and squealing as the greenery tore into it.
“I’m sorry,” I said, choking from the arm.
The ivy and vines ripped the Extractor from Molivar’s body and hurled him across the hall. The grip on my neck loosened immediately and I grabbed the brass arm, tossing it aside. I wrapped Molivar tightly in the greens, willing a bit of ivy to secure itself around the stub that remained near the shoulder of his left arm, stopping what would have likely been a deluge of blood from his open wound.
Kenzi dashed over to where Molivar was ensnared, Tabor quickly joining him. Griska ran to me as Dreya pressed her hands against my chest. I screamed as my broken ribs popped back into place, my mouth awash in spit and blood, and my head reeling from the pain. When the burning subsided, Griska helped me to my feet.
“Thanks,” I said, as I ambled over to Molivar. I pushed through the Conduits that stood around the ivy, all of them verbally lashing out at Molivar and bickering with one another about what to do with him. Dreya stood at my side, and when I turned to her, I didn’t even have to say it. She rubbed her hands together, and they pulsed with a golden light. She moved to press them to Molivar’s shoulder socket, and I loosened the vines. His breathing was hard and fast, and he gritted his teeth and closed his eyes. When Dreya was done, I let go of the vines quickly, and they fell to the ground.
He dropped to his knees and grasped at the half arm that remained.
“This,” he started, gasping and breathing harshly. “This doesn’t change anything. You didn’t save yourself by saving me.” He looked up at me, hatred burning in his eyes, but also confusion on his face.
I nodded at the door.
“Get out,” I said. “Don’t come back.”
He rose to his feet and snorted.
“Right,” he said, bending down to pick up his cloak with his good arm, slinging it around his shoulder. “I’ll be seeing you soon.”