THE DOORS OF the quarantine hospital swung open as I mounted the front steps. A dozen or so people rushed out, led by a middle-aged man—Dannix, the living father of one of my revenants. He ran down the steps, straight past me and to Ronan, his son whom I had raised from the dead the night I became a necromancer.
The other people followed Dannix’s lead, running into the crowd of revenants and reaching for their dead loved ones. I paused, and so the revenants paused. My eyes went to Ronan, who stood awkwardly in his father’s embrace. Dannix pulled back from the hug, wiping a globule of drying blood from his son’s face, then picking at his hair, where gore clung to the dark strands. He gagged as he withdrew a chunk of flesh that must have been severed from a soldier during the battle.
Dannix whirled around on me. “Where did you take my son?” he roared, advancing.
Calm, I told my revenants. I did not need them to protect me from a single angry man.
“You made him get up in the middle of the night, you forced him like he was in some sort of trance to follow you, and you come back hours later like this?” he said, thrusting his hand, smeared with old blood, at me.
“I needed Ronan’s help,” I said evenly. I looked out at the other living people, each simmering with rage but too afraid to stand up to me as Dannix did, their eyes sliding away from mine as I met their gaze coolly. “I needed all their help.”
“To fight a battle?” Dannix shouted incredulously.
“Yes,” I said. I turned and headed back up the stairs toward the hospital. My revenants followed, even Ronan, and Dannix scrambled after us. He grabbed his son by the wrist and dragged him closer to me.
“He’s a child,” he hissed at me, anger seething through his voice.
I didn’t pause, but my look made Dannix stumble back. “Don’t be simple,” I sneered. “He was no longer a boy the second he died.”
The look on the man’s face was as shocked and horrified as the one Governor Adelaide had given me as I sliced into her heart with a steel blade. A part of me wished I could wrap the spoken words around my fingers, like I could grasp a soul, and slip them back past my own lips, swallowing them down forever. But of course, I could not. I let the silence hang between us as Ronan slipped his hand free of his father’s grip and followed me through the open mahogany doors into the hospital. Once all the dead were inside, the living followed.
I headed to the stairs leading up to the clock tower, the place I had claimed as my own. I knew that there was a bed with blankets waiting for me beneath the steady ticking of the giant clock, but the idea of climbing all those stairs suddenly wearied me. I pushed the exhaustion away, but I could not summon the strength to mount the steps.
“You can’t just do this!” Dannix was not yet done with me. He strode across the tiled floor, stopping several meters before he reached me. “I’m his father! If you want to wage war on the Empire like Wellebourne, fine, but not with my son!”
I stared at him coldly, and I could see his courage falter. Every single one of my revenants turned to face him, their dead eyes leveled on his face, twisted with rage. I strode forward, and my revenants parted before me, each one moving in perfect sync. I stepped uncomfortably close to Dannix, and he backed away from me, stopping abruptly against the stone wall. I could smell his breath, count the individual hairs sprouting from his cheeks.
I felt rather than heard the warning from my revenants. Not about Dannix and his silly fight with me, but a real threat. I whirled away from the angry man, striding back to the mahogany door, my exhaustion forgotten for the moment.
Small ships floated on the black water, their bows pointed toward the quarantine hospital. Six—no, eight.
“What are they doing?” Dannix had followed me outside.
Set a watch, I whispered silently in my mind, the words echoing in the minds of all my revenants. They streamed out in formation, some along the steps, others heading around the shore on either side of the hospital’s island. In moments, I had eyes watching each direction.
“Are those ships going to dock?” Dannix asked. “What do they want?”
“It’s a warning,” I whispered. I hoped.
News of the battle at the castle must have traveled quickly. Why else would they be here, now? It did not matter that I had killed a necromancer. I was a necromancer. I had stopped the plague, but did these people in their threatening ships know that? Did they care?
“Are they going to attack?” Dannix asked warily.
The ships didn’t move.
“Not tonight,” I said finally, turning to go back inside.
In truth, however, my certainty was false. I could only hope that, at least for now, their fear of me outweighed their indignation. Because that was the only weapon I had left.
Fear.