It tasted sweeter than I had expected. The paste had a grainy consistency, like poorly milled flour mixed with thick oil. I suspected it was derived from a kind of tuber or nut, grown perhaps in a remote region of Aytrium. I imagined stooped old women harvesting roots from hidden gardens and parcelling them out to scared customers who came knocking in the dead of night. Maybe that was sentimental of me; maybe the stuff was cooked up by some flint-eyed merchant—a trader who spied an opportunity to fleece the desperate with a furtive solution.
I swallowed it.
“You okay?” Millie asked.
Was I okay? Maybe. I felt guilty, to be sure, and afraid. I was worried that we would get caught, and terrified about what that would mean for Millie. A lifetime of the Sisterhood’s teachings rang in my ears, litanies about sacred duties and purpose, about the gift of motherhood.
But I also felt, for the first time in a very long time, that I was in control. And that felt like it was worth a lot.
“I think so,” I said.
I began to notice the effects after an hour. I grew shivery and restless; I paced around the kitchen, one moment cold and the next too warm. When I caught sight of my reflection in the window pane, my eyes were bloodshot. The whites had turned entirely red, and brilliant bursts of colour dyed my eyelids whenever I blinked. I drank glass after glass of water, but remained thirsty.
Then the pain set in.
I lay on the couch and gasped for air. It felt like someone was carving through my abdomen with a rusty hacksaw. I threw up, begged for water, threw it up again. Millie’s hands were freezing on my forehead when she tested my temperature. Her face shimmered like a mirage.
“This is the worst part,” she said. “After this, it gets easier.”
“Okay,” I whispered.
She stayed with me and helped me to drink. The pain abated by degrees. Eventually, I stopped vomiting and fell into an exhausted doze, wrung out and wretched. A little after nightfall, I was dimly aware of Millie speaking to me saying something about needing to talk to a friend of hers. I opened my eyes when she kissed my forehead.
“Don’t leave me,” I croaked.
She smiled. “Not for long. Just sleep, you’ll be fine.”
I did. She had not returned by the time I woke up again, but I did feel better. A little unsteady, I walked to the kitchen sink and drank straight from the faucet. Through the curtains, I could see the glow of the lamps outside. What time was it? I rubbed my eyes. My skin was sticky with old, sour sweat, but it was cooler now; the heat of the day finally broken. A moth beat against the inside of the window, powdered wings fluttering. I opened the latch and cupped my hands around the creature to usher it free.
Someone pounded on the front door.
I froze. Like I had been drenched in ice water, fear flooded my veins. The Sisterhood? How could they have found me so quickly?
The knocking grew louder still.
“Open the door, Elfreda! I know you’re in there.”
It took a second for me to recognise his voice. I breathed out shakily, then staggered over to the door and unlocked it.
“Took you long enough, you—” Osan caught sight of me and broke off, startled.
“This is not a good time,” I rasped.
“What happened to you?”
“It’s personal.”
“You look like death.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, but we need to go. Now.”
“Do I look like I’m going anywhere?”
“It can’t be helped. Where’s Kamillian?”
“She left earlier.” I sagged against the door frame. “What’s going on? What are you doing here?”
“The other side is making their move.” Osan’s usual laidback, unflappable demeanour had vanished; he stood taller and his face appeared grimmer than I had ever seen it. “They’re looking for you.”
“What?”
“And your friend Jesane Olberos, but we’ve already managed to hide her. I’m going to take you somewhere safe, all right?”
I held the door for support. No, I wanted to tell him, no, I’m safe here, you’re mistaken. And what about Millie? What if she were to come back and find me gone? Osan saw my reluctance.
“You have to trust me on this,” he said. “Staying here will place Kamillian at risk too.”
I ground my teeth together. “Why are you so sure they’re looking for me? What do they want?”
“If I knew, I’d tell you. Rhyanon can probably explain, but we don’t have much time to reach her. They’ve already searched the dormitories; it won’t take too long before they start asking around for your friends’ addresses.”
I shivered, my resolve wavering. Osan glanced over his shoulder, like he expected trouble at any moment.
“Okay,” I said in a small voice. “Okay, let’s go.”
The streets were quiet, and a cool breeze swept over the still-hot cobblestones. I felt feverish and weak; my muscles ached right down to the bones. A few people wandered around, stumbling home from the bar or off on some late-night escapade. Osan sized each of them up surreptitiously.
“I’ve got lace,” I muttered.
“Good to know.” He looped his arm through mine. I suppose that we must have looked unremarkable—a couple out for a midnight stroll. “Although we aren’t going too far; there’s a cab waiting four blocks from here. With luck, we’ll make it without any trouble.”
“And Rhyanon is all right? She’s recovering?”
“She’s fine. I heard you went looking for her at the San.”
A sudden wave of dizziness caused me to stumble. Osan prevented me from falling.
“You know, you’re really quite a mess,” he said, but he sounded worried.
“Just sick.”
“That came on pretty quickly if you were running around the city this morning.”
“Heatstroke,” I muttered.
He shifted his grip from my arm to my waist. I leaned on him heavily. My pulse was erratic and my chest burned.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Don’t mention it.”
We cut down the alley behind the district clinic, moving toward the industrial sector of Major West. There were fewer people here. A scrawny rat fled down a drainpipe as we passed, and the lamps guttered low and faint, the panes streaked with years of old soot. Perspiration gathered at my hairline.
“Almost there,” coaxed Osan. He guided me toward another alley. “I wanted to avoid drawing attention to Kamillian’s place. If I had known the state you were in, I would have brought the cab clos—”
He staggered as something hit his back, and we both fell hard against the brick wall of the building. I scraped my arm bloody trying to stop myself from crashing to the ground.
“Osan!” I cried.
He breathed heavily and reached up to touch his shoulder. A slender iron bolt jutted from his skin, and his hand came away red.
“Oh.” He swallowed. “Not good.”
Another bolt hissed through the air and missed his head by inches. His knees buckled, and he slid sideways to the cobbles.
No, no, no. I wove lace around the wound. The head of the bolt had sunk deep into his shoulder, and blood seeped across his shirt. I tried to draw the skin tight, to stop the bleeding. “Osan? Oh Eater, please, Osan—”
“On the roof,” he gasped.
I turned in time to see the glint of the lamplight catch on a third bolt, just before the shooter pulled the trigger on their crossbow. I threw up a net over our heads. The bolt clattered to the ground, and the person on the roof cursed. They ducked out of my line of sight.
“Hang in there.” I tried to pull Osan’s uninjured arm over my shoulders and stand, but I couldn’t do it; he was too heavy and I was too weak. “Please, you have to help me, I need you to get up.”
My lace would only last so long; we had to find help before I ran out. Osan panted, his face screwed up with pain. He leaned on me, using my shoulder as a crutch to lever himself off the ground. Another bolt shot straight toward him. My net repelled it, the threads turning slick in my grasp, but Osan still recoiled instinctively and slipped back down.
“More than one of them up there,” he said through gritted teeth. “Can you pull them off the edge of the roof?”
“If I could see them, maybe.”
He closed his eyes. “We have to be aggressive, or they’ll just wear you down. Run for the emergency stairwell, face them up there.”
I shook my head.
“Come on, you know it’s—”
“If I leave you exposed, they’ll kill you.”
“If you don’t do anything, they’ll kill me too. And you.”
Two bolts hit my net, and I felt it buckle a little under the force. Maintaining a shield strong enough to repel the projectiles was draining my lace at a frightening rate; I did not know how much longer I could hold it up.
“Stop!” I yelled. I spread my arms wide to shield Osan. “Stop shooting!”
Silence, except for Osan’s pained breathing and the beating of my heart. I shook with anger and fear, my eyes scouring the rooftop for the shooters. But no more bolts were fired.
“They don’t want to hit you,” Osan whispered.
I could hear movement in the alleyway to the right of us. Careful to keep Osan in my shadow, I picked up a fallen bolt. The metal was cool. I coiled lace around it like a spring.
“Tell me what you want,” I called. “I’m willing to talk.”
Shuffling on the roof. I threw the bolt toward the sound, packing my lace behind the motion so that it shot forward with unnatural speed and power. All the same, it was a vain hope. The bolt hit the top of the wall, harmless.
“Or I will hurt you,” I lied. “No more warning shots.”
In response, a fist-sized rock flew toward my net. I stumbled backwards and tripped on Osan’s leg. A man jeered from above.
“They’ve got us pinned down,” I said.
Osan struggled to rise, but as soon as he moved, a bolt slammed into my lace. The last of my power trickled away and the net dissolved like smoke in my grasp. I lurched sideways to cover him again, and he caught my expression.
“No more lace?” he asked.
I nodded. “I can’t hold the—”
A stone grazed my left temple with a bright flash of pain. I cried out and clutched my head. The skin had split and blood trickled over my fingers, dripping onto my cheek.
“She’s out,” called someone on the roof. I heard footsteps in the alley.
Get up! I forced myself to my feet again. If I did not have lace, I would have to find another weapon, find another way to defend myself. My head ached fiercely. Had to fight. I picked up the sharp stone and held it tight in my fist.
Two people emerged from the alley, both hooded. One was shorter, a woman, and the other had broad shoulders and a heavy cloth sack tucked into his belt.
“Get rid of her friend,” said the woman.
My stomach dropped. I planted myself between the newcomers and Osan. “You don’t have to do this.”
The man walked toward us. There was a knife in his hand, an ugly old thing, a blade meant for butchering livestock.
“This is about me, right?” I said urgently. “Leave him out of it.”
I tried to grab the knife from him, but he gave me a contemptuous shove. As he did so, his hood gaped open and I saw his face, his swollen and split lower lip.
“Lucian?” I said in disbelief.
He stiffened.
“You?” I stammered. “How can you be doing this?”
I didn’t see the blow coming, not quickly enough. I was still too confused, too shocked—I’d known him for years, and now he was standing there with murder in his eyes. My reaction was slow; I only managed to turn my face away before his fist collided with the side of my head.
Like a flame doused in water, my vision went black. I collapsed. For a few seconds, I lost track of the world; there was a powerful ringing in my ears, and I could hear Osan swearing, but experienced the words only as vague, disconnected noise. Pressure around my neck, and I blinked. Blurred patches of light and shadow, yellow lamps, buildings, and then I found myself looking at Lucian’s face. He held me up by the fabric of my shirt.
“… new order is coming, corpse eater,” he said. “And there’s no room for your kind in it.”
“You bastard,” Osan hissed.
“She’s to be delivered alive,” said the woman impatiently.
Lucian’s lip curled. “I’m only tenderising their meat.”
My body had grown impossibly heavy, and my head felt like it would split open, but I was also dimly aware of a heat in my chest, a strange flickering feeling. I could taste it in my mouth too, coppery and golden and sweet, as if the sensation had taken wing from my lungs and now drifted out my lips and into the air.
I exhaled, and for a moment I thought I could almost see it—glimmering crystal beads like water in sunlight. Then Lucian screamed and let go of my shirt.
I fell, landing on my hands and knees. The world echoed strangely around me; Lucian’s howls reverberated in rippling waves. There’s something very wrong with me, I thought. I lifted my head. Lucian was clutching his hands to his chest, and I could see his skin had swollen and blistered. His knife lay within my reach. I stretched out for it, shaking.
“She still has power,” Lucian yelled. “She burned me with her magic, she tricked us. Filthy bitch, I’ll kill her!”
“You will not,” said the woman.
I closed my hand around the handle. Overhead, there was some kind of a commotion; someone on the roof shouted a warning. Running footsteps. The woman cursed. Lucian was still stumbling around—his hands curled up like claws—when someone swift and pale crashed into him. They both went down.
Everyone was yelling, but the wild tumult of sound and movement seemed far away. My own breathing was much louder; each inhalation caused black flowers to bloom at the corners of my sight.
“Finn,” I said.
Lucian had always been taller and heavier-set, but tonight he was outmatched. White as a sheet and furious, Finn slammed Lucian’s head into the ground.
“Stop,” I whispered.
Lucian’s ruined hands desperately clawed at Finn’s face and neck. Finn drove his own fist down hard. I heard the crack of a broken nose.
He’s going to kill him, I thought.
The woman shouted at Lucian, but she seemed reluctant to risk jumping into the fray. The crossbows on the roof were equally useless; they could too easily hit the wrong man.
The woman’s head turned toward me, and I gripped the knife tighter. She did not care, I realised. Lucian was nothing to her.
Through the clamour, a whistle rang out shrilly. The woman jumped.
“Enforcement’s coming,” Osan rasped. He had managed to stand, and now he leaned against the wall for support. His back was dark red with blood.
The woman cast a last look at Finn and Lucian. The two of them seemed oblivious to the lookout’s warning. Blood poured from Lucian’s face; he thrashed like a cornered animal. Finn looked completely focussed, as if all his attention was devoted to just this one task, as if he could not see or hear anything else.
The woman muttered to herself. From her pocket, she drew out a thin black rod the length of a pencil. With a deft twist of her wrist, she snapped it in two.
The effect was immediate and grotesque. Like a branch beneath an invisible boot, Lucian’s spine bent backwards and broke.
I shut my eyes, but the image was burned onto my mind. Finn swore. I could hear a soft whimpering sound, and realised it was coming from my own mouth. The woman’s footsteps rushed past me, back down the alleyway.
Please make it stop. My head burned. No more. Please no more.
“El?” Finn was beside me, wrapping his arms around me, cradling me to his chest. “El, I’m here. I’m so sorry. I’m here.”
I heard horses and wheels on the cobbles and Finn saying my name, and he had lifted me up, and he was still speaking to me and then I passed out.