CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

FARID

“There’s nothing here.” Farid looked around the abandoned marketplace that still carried the old smells of fish and vinegar. He felt more comfortable in the city, where he had never worried about his speech or his manners, than the Tower, but that also made him sad. He did not think he would ever return to his tiny apartment over the fruit-market. He tightened the belt over his robes—he was constantly worrying that they would fall open and reveal his nakedness, and he spent a lot of time arranging them carefully so they would not get tangled or caught in his sandals.

“Are you certain? Look more closely at the stones.” Grada leaned against the wall, her eyes flicking over the few brave hold-outs who were still buying and selling in the tiny clearing between the buildings. Farid was not sure whether she was his guard or his boss, or something else entirely. She was clearly an Untouchable, but she had equally clearly been elevated by the emperor into a position of high prestige—her comfort in moving through the palace and the barracks told him that much. She had interrupted his work marking the soldiers to tell him about the destruction of Meksha’s temple, and to pass on the emperor’s order: that he look for patterns that might warn of another attack.

And so he looked.

“Look, I don’t have to crawl around on the ground to know there’s nothing here. I could see a pattern if it was all the way at the corner.” He pointed. He had not slept yet, and she had dragged him around the empty streets for hours. Exhaustion set an edge on his every word. He wanted to return to the Tower and its promise of old patterns written on parchment, though that was beginning to feel like a distant dream.

“All right,” she said, pushing off from the wall, “on we go.”

“And what do we do if we find one?”

“You get rid of it.”

“I don’t know how.”

Grada ignored him and walked off. He ran after her. “I can’t undo one of those without … making it happen. If I can even do that.”

“Stop worrying. We haven’t found one yet.”

Farid sighed. “I thought I would be taking lessons from the duke.” More than that, he wanted the duke to undo whatever it was Adam had done to him. He felt healthy enough, and he certainly didn’t feel controlled as the Patterned had once been, but it nagged at the back of his mind all the time, that Adam might still hold some part of him.

“There will be talks and more talks before that happens,” Grada told him. “In the meantime, make yourself useful. I want you to check for patterns on a manse I’ve been watching.”

He did not reply, but he kept his eyes open, looking at every street-stone and wall they passed for pattern-marks. In this part of the city the roads were narrow and every alley looked like night-time. He remarked on how empty the streets had become—without people to distract him he could see the cracks in the stones, the sand lining the edges of buildings.

As they approached the Blessing he saw fading paint, crooked doorways, leaning buildings. The whole city gave off an air of decay—his great city. He could not remember when that had started to happen.

“Stay near me,” Grada ordered. “We’ll have to cross the river to get to the Holies.” They couldn’t use the Asham Asherak Bridge, for it had fallen in the quake, but Farid’s steps slowed as she turned and headed north. The massive grey blur stood closer now, rising over the northern walls and stretching up towards the sky, and he could feel its pull, even from here.

Either through bravery or ignorance Grada paid it no mind as she made her way to the next bridge, Farid following reluctantly in her wake. She looked at the other side of the river, where they could see Blue Shields engaged in a battle with rebels, and stopped. He watched them, five soldiers against twice that number, but the five had the upper hand. Occasionally a shout carried over the water, but otherwise the swordplay was strangely silent, like a moving painting. One man lay on the bank, his head covered with blood.

“We’ll have to go further north,” said Grada.

She started to move off, but Farid remained where he was. “Can’t we try south?” There were plenty of bridges there, five in all, between Asham Asherak and the Low Gate.

Grada said only, “Come, we cannot linger.”

At the next bridge, she considered a luxurious boat drifting south. Its gunwales had been gilded, and instead of nets or fish buckets, plump silk cushions filled its length. Men in fine robes lay across them, sharing a bottle of wine. “One of them might recognise me,” she said. “We will go further north.”

Still Farid followed, though every part of him warned against it. The next bridge was barred for repairs and Grada slowed, looking around. They had reached the northernmost section of town, near the Worship Gate, and Farid felt a prickling along his skin: the void, that grey fog that his gaze could not hold, was near.

Grada must have known it too, for she glanced towards the wall and cursed under her breath.

Hiding his shock at her unwomanly language, he said, “Perhaps that boat has moved further south now and we can cross down there?”

She did not reply, so he occupied himself by looking for pattern-marks, first on the docks and then in the alleys leading east into the city. It was then he saw two bare legs, sticking out from a shadowed doorway. His unease deepened, but he motioned to Grada and said, “Someone’s hurt.”

“We do not have the time,” said Grada, but she followed him when he went to investigate.

Even as he moved closer he was dreading what he might find, for he was no healer—he had been a mage for only six days.

Inside the doorway a woman was lying on her back, staring at the sky. She was not dead—not yet, at least—but had succumbed to a strange illness that drained all her colour. Her hair had turned white, as had her skin, which was nearly translucent under the sun. Blue veins tracked the curve of her cheeks like pattern-lines.

The woman moved her mouth as if to speak, but no sound came forth.

Grada took a step back. “It’s the pale sickness,” she said. “I have not seen this for some time.” When Farid moved away too she added, “It is not caught from person to person, else everyone in the city would have died months ago.”

Farid looked from one end of the street to the other: there must be a temple of Mirra somewhere nearby. He did not wish to stay near the emptiness for any longer than necessary, but he could not just leave this woman on the ground. “We need to take her—”

Before he had finished his sentence the pale woman arose, moving as if pulled by strings. She turned her face his way and a dreadful smile cracked her lips. Her eyes, which had been white, now shone icy-blue.

“A djinn,” said Grada, drawing a knife from her belt. “The djinn take the empty bodies. Get back.”

He obeyed at once, pressing himself against the opposite wall, and Grada faced the pale woman, slightly crouched, her strange, twisted knife at the ready. The woman laughed, a high, keening noise, and swiped at her with a claw-like hand. Grada ducked, then swung—and frowned when the knife made only a shallow cut. He got the impression she did not miss her mark very often.

“Stay back,” she repeated, though he had no wish to get involved in this fight.

Farid watched in horror. The pale woman passed in and out of the sunlight swinging at Grada, and in the barrier between light and dark he made out a shimmer over her shoulders, a ghostly shape that was arching its back and crooning in ecstasy. “Higher, Grada,” he murmured, not believing his eyes. “The djinn is above her.”

The pale woman turned his way, fury in her eyes, and with a high shriek she rushed at him, brandishing clawed fingernails, her teeth bared.

Grada took aim and threw the knife over the woman’s head. The blade caught in the air, scintillating with blue light, the djinn’s form writhing around it. Grada grabbed the knife by the hilt and pulled upwards, slitting open the transparent creature. No blood fell to the ground, but a darkness showed along the edges of the cut as if she had sliced through to some lightless place beyond. The pale woman crumpled to the ground.

Farid blinked: the darkness was gone. Grada bent to pick her knife from the stone, then stood and looked towards the end of the alley. He followed her gaze and saw more colourless people, their mouths twisted into sadistic grins, their fingers curved forwards.

Grada backed up, pulling him with her. “Come; this way,” she murmured, and they started moving eastwards now, away from the river and the bridges—and away from the Holies, where they had meant to go.

They reached another corner and took their bearings. Grada turned, but Farid pulled at her arm. “Not north,” he said, “please.” No sooner had he spoken than he saw three more people who had been emptied: a man in clothes so ragged they hung off him in shreds, a pale Blue Shield, and a young boy, all cackling, their own wills gone now, their bodies subject to the pleasures of the djinn who rode them. Grada pushed Farid back beneath a wooden stairway and ran to meet the attack.

The ragged man swung at Grada first, the soldier right behind him and both cawing with delight. Grada dodged out of their way, then jumped as the boy ran at her, pulling out her knife and spinning, cutting through the ragged man’s neck. He fell in a spray of scarlet, his djinn detached now, rendered powerless, its face contorted with rage in the shadows where Farid could see it.

Grada backed off, glancing at the street behind, giving herself space.

The boy whooped and got on all fours like a sand-cat. His eyes had turned bright blue, like the pale woman’s before him, but a crack ran down his irises, as if they were made of glass and had been broken. The boy ran at Grada at the same time the soldier took another swing; she crouched and extended her arm and her knife glowed blue as the boy slid limply to the stones. Without stopping, she pulled up on the soldier’s leg, tripping him. When he fell she slid her blade through his ribs. Throughout the fight she moved with economy and precision, her body, which had once looked ungainly to him, now moving in a smooth dance.

Grada stood and examined her arms and stomach, as if looking for a wound.

“Are you well?” called Farid. He felt ashamed to have been hiding while the woman fought, though her skill was the greater. He stepped out from where she had shoved him.

Grada nodded, holding a finger to her lips.

He looked down the street and saw them, fifteen or twenty pale men and women. “How—?” But he stopped, the question unasked. He knew that the “how” never counted for anything. When his mother had died there was no understanding how blue marks could have taken her. There was no understanding this either.

Grada took his arm and pulled him up the street, further north, and he stumbled. Her callused hand was hard enough over his forearm to make a bruise. “I can’t fight all of them,” she said, her voice urgent. “We’ll need to hide.” They passed tall buildings, a shrine to Ghesh and a plaza with marble benches. As they approached the Worship Gate he stalled, the hair rising on his arms. “Over here,” she said, and gestured to a small building designed for storing crates and barrels that came south on the Blessing—little used of late.

But they did not go inside. Instead, she hoisted herself up to the roof and held down a hand for him. It was only when he’d scrambled up on the roof next to her that he realised they were the only people on this street who had not been emptied of colour and mind. Everyone else had fled.

The pale folk came at the storage shed, their mouths wide, their eyes fierce with unwholesome pleasure. The first three riders Grada dispatched with throwing daggers, her aim as remarkable as it was deadly. That done, she patted herself as if looking for further weapons. “I don’t have my bow,” she said. Her voice always held that same tone of regret, no matter the situation.

“I can do nothing,” he said, ashamed again, but his eyes caught smoke and he pointed. “Look.”

The fire had attracted the eyes of the pale folk too and now they lost interest in Grada and Farid. They turned from the building and headed towards the flames as if drawn by the warmth and colour.

“What is it?” asked Farid, but Grada only shook her head.

A ball of blue flame hit one of the pale women. She shrieked and flung open her arms as the blaze rose up to consume her. Only now did Farid realise the fire was not an accidental one, a spill of flame from hearth or candle that shifted as the wind carried it. No, this fire was moving delib erately, with purpose. An emptied man was taken next, the outline of his body lost in a bolt of yellow shot with blue—and then another went, and the next, each figure dissolving in an impossible tide of heat.

And behind the wall of heat was a man. Fire roiled from him like water from a fountain; it licked against his skin and spread blue fingers beneath his feet. White-hot flame shot from his fingers and tendrils of light played over his gleaming scalp.

Over each shoulder was spinning a ball of flame both terrible and lovely to behold; it was black cracked with crimson on his right and on his left, blue streaked with the brightest orange. Behind him followed a woman made of liquid brass, her hair yellow fire, heat shimmering from her nakedness. Wherever they stepped the stones turned red-hot beneath their feet. On either side of the street buildings crackled and caught, then roared into white-hot infernos. The man kept on towards the wall and the Worship Gate, consuming one pale person after another, until at last he sent a wave of liquid flame sizzling over the stones and the road lay empty and char-black.

It was then the fire-mage turned their way, his coal-bright eyes searching, his hand raised to take them in a pillar of flame. Grada pulled him back behind the peak of the roof, but Farid could not look away, for he recognised Govnan, taken by his magic, caught in a world of power and destruction. He had a sense of how sweet that might taste, and he wondered if the high mage would soon be consumed himself, just like those statues at the base of the Tower.

But after a moment the high mage lowered his hand and turned away to continue his march to the wall. So he had recognised them; somewhere inside the living flame, Govnan remained.

Govnan reached the Worship Gate and held out a hand to the chain. Red-hot metal ran down the iron bars, which warped and gave under the intense heat.

“He is going to stop the Storm,” said Farid.

“Time to leave,” said Grada, pulling him down on the far side of the structure, “before we burn too.”

Farid’s feet hit the street-stones, warm beneath his shoes, and he kicked at them, wondering at the heat. The Tower of Cerana was indeed powerful. A great honour had been bestowed on him along with these uncomfortable robes. He smiled and tightened his belt before letting Grada pull him along again. He would find a way to make himself useful. Those ancient patterns were the key.