I STEPPED OUT of the clock tower and toward the iron staircase, Ernesta following me silently.
From this vantage point, with the crystal knife in my hand, I looked down at the gory remains of my revenants. They deserved a better farewell to this world than this.
Now that the shock had worn off, I saw not the debris of death, but the pale golden glow of life. Even ripped asunder, bits of soul and energy still clung to the chunks of flesh and exposed organs. I didn’t want their souls to suffer any longer. I could send my revenants to the afterlife.
Whoever had come to do this—vigilantes or the Emperor’s men—had acted in the cruelest way possible. In an attempt to decimate my army of the undead, they had rendered helpless the souls of these people trapped in the decaying remains of their bodies. I held out the crystal knife with my shadow arm and my iron crucible with my right hand, calling the golden light to me.
While before souls had seemed like threads weaving into my crucible, now the dead were so far gone that their souls were little more than a mist. The untethered souls rose slowly, first melting into my iron crucible. But then the power and energy bubbled out, sliding down my shadow arm. I felt each soul pass through me as it moved into the afterlife, impressions of each person, leaving behind nothing but the raw energy of their shorn lives.
This was what I had learned from the Collector’s books. When a necromancer raised the dead, the body became merely a container, holding the energy that gave it a second life. This was separate from the soul, which held the essence of the person, the memories and personalities and emotions. The soul could move on to the afterlife, but the energy . . . it was power for the taking. All life had this energy—the books even hinted that I could manipulate the living with theirs. And it was what made Nessie a shell; her body was animated with this life force, but her soul was trapped inside my crucible.
I said my farewells to my revenants’ souls as best I could as they passed into the afterlife. I mourned the loss of time I could have spent with them in death.
Their energy buzzed through my shadow arm, passing through it and into the hilt of the crystal knife. The blade felt like it contained lightning, brimming with possibility. By the time all the flesh on the floor was nothing more than meat, the crystal knife radiated with warm, soft light.
My hand vibrated with the power contained inside the knife. This was what most necromancers wanted from the start. None of them cared about revenants’ souls fading; they wanted only the residual energy from their forced lives. Feeding off of this energy would make me even more powerful.
I grazed the tip of the blade over the knuckle of my shadow finger, the one that had evaporated at the knife’s touch. It reformed, and my hand was whole again.
And strong. I gripped the blade harder, feeling the power fill me, crackling in my blood. My senses sharpened; my entire body was alert. I had never felt so alive. With a wrench, I pulled the tip away from my shadow hand. My muscles were shaking in anticipation; I felt as if I could pull the hospital apart brick by brick and still have the energy to rebuild it again.
But I didn’t need this power.
Nessie did.
My shadow hand gripped the glittering hilt. I would not waste this last gift of those I had raised.
I turned to my sister, whose normally passive eyes watched the blade. I wondered at that connection—her soul was wrapped up in the mysterious dark power woven into the iron, and it seemed to react to the crystal blade. Maybe if I gave Nessie more power, she could wrest her soul free from my crucible.
“Hold out your hand.” My voice was stronger now.
Nessie offered her left hand, palm up.
I touched the crystal knife to her skin, and I pushed. Not the blade—it’s tip still rested against her palm. I pushed at the energy inside the blade. My shadow hand shook. The dark power seemed to rage against the loss of the golden energy inside the crystal; it had wanted to consume it. But I fought the black, focusing instead on the light.
The little cloud of golden, sparkling light floated through the crystal knife, down into Nessie’s open palm.
My eyes were on my sister’s face. I saw the exact instant her body filled with life—just a moment, but impossibly and undeniably real. Her eyes snapped to mine, her mouth opened. “Ned,” she whispered, and it was her voice, real and true.
And then gone again.
I turned the blade over in my hand. The light was gone. There had barely been a wisp of it to start with.
More, I thought. I need more.
The clock tower’s bell rang out, the sound deafening. I thought I could almost hear the echo of Yūgen’s matching clock in Northface Harbor.
And past Yūgen—the Governor’s Hospital. A place full of death. If not there, the morgues. The whole city offered possibility. If I drained the energy from a new corpse into the knife’s blade, it would likely be much stronger than the wisps of light from my revenants. Maybe enough to give Nessie more than mere snatches of moments. I could go across the bay and find fresh corpses full of potential energy. I would take what I needed.
Time to go to the city.