The first night was chaos. Nate, bewildered, didn’t even try to sleep as Limley Square filled with the sounds of panic. The courtiers had been given twenty-four hours to leave the city with whatever they could carry, but based on snatches of conversation Nate overheard through the drafty windows, most of the servants dispatched to fetch horses from the city stables were returning empty-handed or not at all. Those courtiers who actually managed to find their horses didn’t fare much better. Near midnight Nate heard cries; peering through the front window, he saw a man in fine clothes lying in the street near a stopped carriage, being kicked by a guard. Other guards were emptying the carriage, while the man’s wife and daughters stood by and wailed. When the goods were gone, the carriage itself was driven away; the wife and daughters fled into the night. The man’s body lay where he had fallen. When all was silent, Nate took his satchel and opened the front door.
Two guards stood on his front step, well-armed and wearing the Seneschal’s white badge. They nodded politely at him. “Best you go back inside, magus,” one said. “Bit risky out here tonight.”
The Square looked eerily normal except for the man in the street. Standing on the manor doorstep, pulled equally by his urge to see to the beaten man’s health and to protect his own, Nate could hear desperate cries and a steady percussion of splintering wood and breaking glass. The smoke in the air was denser than usual. In the distance, something exploded.
The guard who’d spoken followed Nate’s gaze to the fallen man. “Don’t worry about that. Someone will be along to get that eventually.”
“Is he dead?” Nate said.
The guard laughed. “Oh, yes.” Then, reassuringly, “You just go back inside, magus. Seneschal sent us to stand guard. You’ll be safe enough.”
“What’s happening inside the Wall?” he said.
“Nothing for you to be concerned about,” the guard said.
If the courtier was dead, there was nothing for him to do. If Judah was—
Nate went back inside.
Around three, he heard a faint but insistent tapping on the back door, and opened it to find Bindy, wearing Canty on her back and surrounded by three other girls who looked very like her: one a few years older, and the other two considerably younger. Their eyes were all wide and exhausted. He hustled them into the kitchen. “Oh, magus, the city’s gone mad!” Bindy burst out before he could even say hello. “Things are burning and people are killing courtiers, and—”
“They deserve it,” the older girl said with bitter satisfaction.
Bindy ignored her. “We stayed in the house but none of us could sleep. And there’s a moneylender near us, they hung him. Right from a lamppost. And he wasn’t a courtier at all, he just did business with some, and Rina and me started to think that people might—because I run errands to courtiers—” She glanced at the little one holding her hand, and clearly amended what she had been about to say. “Well, anyway, Ma’s at work. And I figured you’d be safe. So we came here.”
“I’m glad you did.” Nate discovered that he meant it. His throat felt tight and his eyes burned. “Is your mother working the long shift?”
“She’s all right. I ran to check,” said the older one, who Nate guessed was Rina. Her face was rounder than Bindy’s, her eyes wider, and her hair fiercely curly. Different father, probably. “They’re taking the factories back from the courtiers. The managers are going to run them now. The managers are going to run everything. And they’re appointing workers’ committees and they asked Ma to be on one and I want to be on one, too. Isn’t it exciting?”
The young girl clinging to Bindy’s hand started to cry. “It will be, maybe,” Nate said. Then he crouched down to the crying girl. She didn’t seem to be hurt. In her arms she clutched a grubby doll with a matted thatch of badly-dyed red hair. Nate’s heart hurt to see it. “What about you?” he asked the girl as gently as he could. “Are you all right?”
“She’s fine,” Rina said, but Bindy gave the girl an encouraging nudge and said, “Say hi to the magus, Kate.”
“Your name is Kate?” Nate said to the little girl, who nodded. “Well, Kate, I’m Nate. Our names sound the same, isn’t that funny?” He pulled his face into an exaggerated beam of surprise and delight. “Nate and Kate! We’ll have to be friends, with names like that.”
Some of the fear melted out of Kate. She smiled. Then she yawned.
“Are you sleepy, Kate?” he said, and she nodded.
With Bindy’s help, he got them all settled in the three guest bedrooms upstairs. Rina caught sight of the dead man in the Square and kept going back to the window with a regretful expression, as if she were sorry she’d missed the murder itself. “Ignore her,” Bindy said quietly when Nate frowned. “She worked for a courtier for a while. He was nasty to her. She’s a good person inside.” Then, fatigued as she was, her face broke into a grin and she covered her mouth to hide a giggle.
“What’s funny?” he said.
“Nate,” she said. “I knew you had another name besides Gate Magus, but—Nate.” She giggled again. “Sounds like a little boy with a slingshot.”
“Once upon a time, I was a little boy with a slingshot.” He bowed low, like he’d seen the courtiers do. “Nathaniel Clare, at your service.”
“Belinda Dovetail, at yours,” she said with a small, merry curtsy, “but I’m still going to call you magus.”
When she and the others were all breathing quietly in their beds, Nate still didn’t go to his. The manor full of sleeping children was soothing and daunting all at once; he no longer felt quite so lonely, but the weight of responsibility was heavy. At least it weighed down the sick feeling inside him, and stifled some of his fear. He wondered where Derie and Charles were, how they were faring in the pandemonium. This was not a part of the plan. He did not know what to do next.
The Wall was very high. Anything could be happening beyond it. Anything.
The children stayed through the next day. Taking turns with Canty, the older girls each marshaled one of the younger ones and began cleaning the manor from top to bottom. Nate told them, repeatedly, that they didn’t have to do it—in fact, it made him uncomfortable, having them poking innocently into the corners of Arkady’s decadent old life—but Bindy ignored his protests. “Gives the littles something to do,” she said. “Better than having them sit around fretting.” In truth, he was glad of the distraction. Retying aprons and cutting slices of bread and butter kept him busy, too. The idea that Judah might be dead, and he wouldn’t know, was nearly driving him mad.
Charles arrived just after nightfall on the second night, barefoot and bedraggled. The guards were still on duty in front so he came to the back door, like Bindy’s family had. Nate hadn’t seen him in weeks. He was shocked at the change in his old friend: the hollow cheeks, the sunken eyes. Charles’s chin was covered with a bronze haze of stubble and there was a sizeable bruise under his left eye. He carried nothing with him, not even the satchel he’d brought over the Barriers. “Lady Maryle’s dead,” he said.
Rina, who had been spooning potato soup into Canty’s mouth, froze when she heard this, her face bright and vengeful. “Wait, Charles,” Nate said, and pulled him into the parlor.
Charles barely seemed to notice the interruption. “Set fire to the manor, with everyone in it. Said she couldn’t bear to lose a single thing more, not one thread of tapestry. Gainell and her sister and I made it out. But they couldn’t get the old woman to move.” Charles’s eyes were haunted. “I couldn’t help her. Her own daughters couldn’t help her. She was too big for us to carry out. We barely made it ourselves. There was a crowd outside and I ran. We all did.”
“Maybe you should have run faster,” Nate said, nodding toward the bruise on Charles’s face.
Charles blinked without comprehension. Then, remembering, he touched the bruise. “Oh. That. I cut through the Bazaar. Stupid. Of course they were looting it. Fortunately for me, a better courtier came along. Not fortunate for him, poor bastard. Although if he were poor, and a bastard, he might have had better luck.” A high, nervous giggle escaped him. “The Seneschal’s arrested the heads of all the best families, you know. It’s the ones in the middle they’re stringing up. Figures, doesn’t it? We worked for five generations to bring Elban down, and practically the moment we get here, he’s deposed.”
“The power is still bound,” Nate said. “We’re not done yet.”
“You might not be, but I am,” Charles said. He pulled a vial out of his pocket and disappeared into Arkady’s bedroom. Nate bit back his anger—Charles had abandoned his satchel and Lady Maryle, but saved his drug—and let him go.
The rest of that night was no quieter than the one before. The dead courtier still lay where he’d fallen across the Square. The weather was warm. Nate knew the body would soon start to rot.
On the third day, Nora came to get her children, walking confidently past the guards to the front door as if she’d done so a thousand times before. She wore a white sash across her chest, bound in brown embroidery that looked hastily done. Nate made tea.
“I thank you for taking in my children, but they’ll be safe enough now,” she said, and pointed to her sash. “I’m on the worker’s committee for Paper. Nobody will bother us.”
“Rina mentioned the committee,” Nate said. “What does it do?”
“Everything. Factories always ran this city, you know. Only difference will be that now the money’s actually going to the people who work in them, instead of some courtier’s pocket. Managers know the running of the factories better than the courtiers ever did, anyway.” She called out to the children, and the manor was suddenly full of the sounds of running feet as the littles blasted through the kitchen door to leap on her. Bindy and Rina followed at a slower pace, with Canty on Bindy’s hip. Something in Nora’s eyes released when she saw them, and her voice was brighter than Nate had ever heard it when she said, “Hello, my lovelies! You’ve not been making trouble for the magus, I hope?”
“They’ve been a huge help,” Nate said.
“They always are.” Nora took Canty from Bindy; delighted, he wove his little fists into her hair, and she kissed his soft cheek. “And I’ll tell you all, the first thing the committee’s changing is the schedule. No more long shifts. No more days spent at one task, never seeing sunlight, no time to rest or breathe or have your own thoughts, begging for privy breaks and eating while you work.”
“It’s a new world,” Rina said, her eyes glowing, and Nora said, “We’ll see.”
“Have you heard anything about what’s to happen to Lord Gavin and the other Children?” Nate said.
“No lord anyone, anymore, magus,” Rina said.
“They haven’t been children for years, now,” Nora said. “Seneschal put Elban’s corpse in the Lord’s Square so we could all see it and know the old bastard was dead. But he hasn’t announced what’s to become of Elban’s House, or his family.” She shrugged, resigned. “Not their fault where they were born, I suppose. But neither was it my Darid’s, nor any of the other children who’ve disappeared inside the Wall over the years.”
“Magus knows the Children, Ma,” Bindy said. “He goes inside, remember?”
“So he does.” Nora gave Nate a measuring look. “What do you say of them, then, magus? Since you know them so well. Should they live?”
His mouth dry, Nate said, “I would hate to see anyone die who didn’t deserve it.”
“Deserve it?” Nora’s eyebrows went fierce. “I watched them grow up same as anyone. Made my own children dolls of them, took them to see the puppet shows. But don’t you talk to me about deserving. Did my Darid deserve to be sold like a side of beef into that House, to be mistreated however they like and hung when they felt like it? All the House staff are out now, you know. The stories I’m hearing would curl your hair. Told us they’d be well fed and well cared for, they did, but they cut my Darid into pieces and threw him on the trash heap. Deserve it, indeed.” Bindy put a hand on Nora’s shoulder. Nora leaned her head against it and then gathered the littles closer around her, reaching out for Rina’s arm; holding everything she had left in a death grip to make up for her vanished son.
Her son wasn’t gone, not the way she thought. The sadness in her eyes made Nate’s heart ache, but if word got back to the Seneschal that the head stableman hadn’t been executed after all, he was going to want to know how Darid had escaped. Nate couldn’t risk that. He wondered who was making sure the four young people had food and wood for their fire, if the staff was gone; he wondered if Judah was hungry and cold in this amazing new world where the managers ran the factories and corpses rotted in the streets. He wondered if she was already dead.
And then he felt bad, because of course Nora was right. He wouldn’t be here if Highfall had ever been fair, and when there was unfairness on the table, the weakest were always served the biggest helping. Which made him think again of Judah, and the cane-marks on her back, and he was sick and conflicted and wished the Seneschal would send word. He wished he knew something. Anything. He had been so close. She almost trusted him.
When all of the children were gone, the manor seemed painfully quiet and painfully empty. The next morning, the courtier’s body had vanished.
Worry chewed on the edges of Nate like a dog with a shoe. He signaled Derie, but received no answer. To make up for the food they were eating, Bindy and her sisters had made loaf after loaf of bread. Nate didn’t have much appetite and Charles barely ate—as the drops wore off, he began to weep, constantly and uncontrollably—but by the fifth day after the coup, even the most misshapen and oddly-textured loaves were gone. Finally, Nate ventured outside.
The streets were quiet. People walked quickly, heads down to avoid seeing anything around them. Guards watched from the corners of every square, every major thoroughfare; on the lesser streets, Nate noticed more than one person wearing a white sash like Nora’s. The colors of the embroidery varied. Different factory committees, Nate guessed. They held themselves with an air of grim importance, and Nate found himself walking quickly, too. He found that he didn’t want these people to look at him for long.
The Grand Bazaar was closed, the stalls inside shuttered tight. Some of the locks had been broken. Ruined goods were scattered over the wooden floor. The air in the empty aisles smelled the same as it always had, like nutmeg and wine. A poster had been tacked up next to the entrance: a map of the city, divided into uneven slices like a badly cut cake. Nate stopped: the old neighborhood names were gone. Each wedge was labeled with the name of a factory. Paper. Textiles. Steel.
The managers are going to run everything.
The slices were uneven because sometimes there were two factories close together, and of course none of them were anywhere near the better parts of the city. It was clear that a lot of deal-making had taken place as the map was drawn. Limley Square was probably closer, as the crow flew, to Textiles, but for some reason it was included in a lump growing off the eastern edge of Paper. The map had been made on a press, quickly and not very neatly. The letters across the bottom—Know your factory district! Please cooperate with resource inventories! Your New Life in New Highfall!—were blurred.
Your New Life in New Highfall. As revolutionary slogans went, Nate found it a bit vague. It didn’t even have a verb. He didn’t know what the resource inventory was, but assumed he would find out.
He skirted the Lord’s Square, not knowing if Elban’s body was still on display there and not caring to see it if it was. Not far away, a crowd gathered in what had once been a lovely garden. A decorative statue—something graceful and lithe—had toppled off its plinth; it lay in pieces in the mud, and a man with wild eyes stood in its place. “They cut out their tongues!” he cried. “They cut off their fingers! When a courtier was barren and needed an heir, they chose one of your daughters or sons, anyone they liked the looks of—and why not, since it was what they did anyway, aye? But woe betide the girl who came down with a child unwanted. Did your daughters not come home? Like as not, they lie in the great trash heap, holding the tiny bones of a courtier’s lust!”
Nate kept walking.
The Beggar’s Market had fared better than the Bazaar. It still seemed mostly the same, although the piles of food were a bit smaller, the carrots a bit spindlier. But there was still milk, and butter and lamb; Nate bought some of each, and a bit of cheese. He wanted coffee, too, but the prices were ridiculous. Everything was more expensive than it had been. The vendors all told him that his House account was no longer good. They were polite about it; he knew them all, and they seemed happy to see him. But something was missing, something was off. It took him a moment to realize what it was. The traders, the ones from outside Highfall or across the Barriers: they were gone. All the people he saw were pale and golden-haired, with round blue eyes.
“Where are all the traders?” Nate asked the dried fruit man.
“Gone.” The man threw a few more apricots on Nate’s pile.
“With the courtiers?”
He shook his head. “On their own. By sundown the day Elban died, wasn’t a single foreign trader left in the city. I had friends among them. Folk I’ve known for years.”
Nate wasn’t surprised. No matter how big the city or small the village, when trouble came and people were scared, their eyes fell on the outsiders. No better way to learn that lesson than to grow up in a caravan. Nate, Caterina and the others had been run out of more places than he could even count. The makeshift market by Harteswell Gate might never have existed; the plague shrine was still there, but the offerings—like everything else in the city—seemed a bit paltry. Nate waited there for an hour, long enough for the guard keeping watch over the shrine to begin eyeing him curiously, but Derie didn’t show up.
When he came back to the manor, Charles—wiping the still-uncontrollable tears from his cheeks—met him at the door with a summons from the Seneschal.
The Seneschal’s new headquarters were in one of the big manors on the Lord’s Square. The courtiers who had surely lived there before were gone now, either fled or ejected. A guard at the door directed Nate to a dim hall full of closed doors and a sense of harried activity. A low hum of indistinct voices underlay all of the normal noises, as if every room held a busy meeting, and a constant stream of guards flowed through the front door, up the polished wooden staircase and back down. People wearing white sashes bustled from room to room. They carried water jugs or stacks of paper or baskets full of food; they opened doors and slipped through on waves of animated conversation that cut off as soon as the doors shut. For all he knew, Nora was behind one of the doors, but he didn’t see her. Finally, one of the sashed people—a woman around Caterina’s age—asked him what he wanted. When he showed her the summons from the Seneschal she led him upstairs, down a bare corridor to a door flanked by white-badged guards. Neither of them spoke or moved to stop her as she knocked; a voice called, “Come in,” and she gestured to Nate, so he did exactly that.
The massive wooden desk where the Seneschal sat gleamed with hours of hard polishing, but the surface was covered with loosely stacked paper, flat and rolled. A half-eaten sandwich on a plate was wedged in among the mess, along with three empty mugs. The room smelled like meat and old coffee. It wasn’t a particularly pleasant smell, but the presence of old coffee hinted at the presence of new coffee. Nate hoped he would be offered some.
“Magus,” the Seneschal said, sounding genuinely pleased to see him. “Delighted that you could come. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to send for you earlier, but—” he gestured to the piles “—I’ve been busy.” He pointed to a chair.
Nate sat down. “I would think so. Congratulations.”
The gray man lifted an eyebrow. He still wore the same clothes he’d worn under Elban, but he seemed more relaxed. “I don’t think congratulations are in order. All things come to an end, do they not? And new things emerge.” He sat back in his chair. “If you want to congratulate someone, congratulate the people of New Highfall. They’re the ones doing the work.”
“And the factory managers, from what I hear.”
“Who better? Now that they’re no longer hampered by the outdated mindsets of their former owners, New Highfall’s factories will be more prosperous than ever.”
“And who will benefit, now that the courtiers are gone?”
“If the factories prosper, everyone prospers. Higher profit means higher pay. And the courtiers aren’t gone. They’ve merely returned to their own provinces to manage their own industries. Under the watchful eyes of their new ministers, of course.” The Seneschal smiled with satisfaction. “I have such amazing plans, magus. You’ll see. This city will be the vanguard of a new world.”
“Very exciting,” Nate said, and then could restrain himself no longer. “How are the Children?”
“Well into adulthood, as you’re aware. Confined to their rooms while my resource assessors finish with the House, and perfectly safe.”
A dizzy rush of relief washed over Nate. He wasn’t sure how well he hid it, so he said, “I’m glad to hear it. I’ve grown rather fond of them.”
“They’re not unlikeable,” the Seneschal evenly. “Much like yourself. You’re a striver, magus. I was a striver, when I was young. Also, you’re a good magus, and worldly. I thought about asking you to represent the magi on the leadership committee, but it turns out that the other magi in the city don’t particularly like you. Apparently they felt it was a bit presumptuous of me to appoint you House Magus.”
“I don’t have time for politics.”
“Not while treating all of Marketside and Brakeside for free, you don’t.” The Seneschal waved a hand. “It’s fine. It’s your time and your herbs. Elban didn’t want to bother treating the poor when they got sick, but Elban’s dead. I say if they have the wherewithal to find medicine, they’re welcome to it. We need a working class. Just don’t neglect your official duties.”
“I’m still House Magus, then?” Nate said warily. “For how long?”
The Seneschal stared at him, then said, “Oh. You’re wondering if I’m going to kill the Children. It would be the usual course of action after a coup, wouldn’t it? My guards risked a great deal, turning on Elban and taking down the Lord’s Guard, and now they have to risk even more, fending off delusional loyalists who want to put Gavin on the throne, gods help us all. The boy may look like Clorin, but what little he knows about governance he learned at Elban’s knee.”
“The story about Elban’s death was a lie, then,” Nate said. “The Nali didn’t try to retake their chieftain.”
“Oh, they did. They just didn’t get very far. My men were on the lookout for an opportunity. They killed Elban, they killed his guard—now, I think, nothing would make them happier than to kill his heirs, and end the empire once and for all.” The Seneschal seemed to notice the sandwich, then, and pulled it closer. “But I have bigger plans. And as you know, killing Gavin is no simple matter.”
“So Judah dies, too.” Just speaking the words made Nate’s skin crawl. “Why do you care?”
“Well, for one thing, I’m not a monster. I do like the girl.” He lifted the top piece of bread from the sandwich, contemplated the meat inside and pushed it away. “But it’s the bond I’m interested in. I doubt I can figure it out by cutting into their dead bodies. You haven’t seen anything like it before, have you?”
“No.” At least, not exactly like. “I thought that was Elban’s great quest, to figure it out.”
“Elban’s great quest was to destroy it,” the Seneschal said. “Oh, before he died he started to develop some broader ideas, but ultimately, he had no vision.”
“You’re different, of course.”
Amused, the Seneschal said, “Do you know what I see at night, when I close my eyes?”
Nate didn’t answer.
“I see the House,” he said. “Not the building; the entity. The machine. So much material in, food and goods and bodies; so much material out, influence and power and wealth. And what did the City Lords do with that influence and power and wealth? Wasted it. Gorged themselves on it, and accomplished nothing. The courtiers liked to play at politics, but for the last few generations it’s been the trade ministers and factory managers who’ve been Highfall’s real motive power. They’re the engine. Elban and the others were—” his mouth twisted with distaste “—a pretty gold casing that hid the real work. What I’ve done is strip the casing away. Give the provinces to the ministers and the factories to their managers. Let the engine run as fast and far as it’s capable of going—but now, instead of wasting energy fueling the House, it will power itself. Do you know what hampered Elban most, magus?”
Nate was impatient. He wanted to know what would happen to Judah; he didn’t care what happened to Elban’s empire. “A profound lack of humanity?”
That got a smile, albeit a cold one. “Time. It takes a man on a fast horse three weeks to ride from here to the farthest reaches of Elban’s empire. A carriage, with any kind of burden, half that much again. His forebears made court life attractive specifically so the families that controlled the provinces would keep a member or two inside. So instead of a sending an envoy who’d be gone for months, the Lords could send a page for the appropriate courtier. Whatever decisions needed to be made could be dispensed with in a matter of minutes, once the courtier sobered up and put their clothes back on. The courtier could choose to send an envoy home, on their own coin, or not. Most of the time they went with not.”
“I’m told you’ve abolished the courtiers,” Nate said.
“The city courtiers, sure. We took their factories and manors, and so forth; that makes for a good show and fills the coffers without doing any actual damage. But the provincial courtiers, whose home provinces have something useful to trade—iron or metalfiber or food—we sent them home, as long as they were willing to sign new trade agreements, and abide by the decisions of my ministers. I even sent guards with them to protect them along the way. Unlike Elban, I don’t actually enjoy the idea of slaughtering people I’ve known for years. Which is not to say I won’t do it, if necessary—I will, obviously—but my hope is to hold the empire together by mutual benefit, not force. Which brings us back to time. As it stands, it takes weeks for me to hear about problems in the provinces, and weeks more to respond. The delay isn’t acceptable.”
“And what do you propose to do about that?” Although Nate knew. Of course he did.
“Gavin and Judah,” the Seneschal said. “Elban went after the Nali because the way the Nali fight—it’s like fighting a hive of bees, or a flock of sparrows. They move as one, silently, without any apparent means of communication. They can still think for themselves, but it’s said that each fighter knows at all times not just where every other fighter is, but what they’re seeing. They have a rather poetic name for it, which doesn’t quite translate, but which means something like seeing from inside the reflection on the water. Not quite what Judah and Gavin can do, but not entirely unlike it, either, don’t you think?”
Water and blood and tide and the moon. He had never seen such a Work done, and he wasn’t anywhere near knowledgeable enough to know how to perform one himself, but it seemed possible. It surprised him that none of the Slonimi had ever tried it—but they hadn’t needed it, had they? They never fought organized battles; if they ran into trouble on the road, they fled. Perhaps it would have been useful to them now, in Highfall, but he could practically hear Derie scoff. Waste of good Work. We’ve got mouths to talk with, don’t we?
Everything the Seneschal was saying terrified him.
“But Judah and Gavin can’t actually communicate, can they?” he said calmly.
“Not in words. But over the years, they’ve developed a code. Scratches on their skin, specific patterns that mean specific things. Judah’s idea, I’m sure. Gavin’s not nearly clever enough. We never knew about it, all these years, although I suspected they had something. Anyway, Judah told Elban about it right before he left on his final campaign.”
Nate couldn’t hide his horror. “Why would she do that?”
“As a bargaining chip. Elban was playing one of his games with the four of them. Setting them on fire to watch them run in circles—pushing Gavin, primarily. Most people have no idea how cruel the old bastard could be.” The Seneschal’s distaste for Elban was clear. “She’s very lucky things happened the way they did. I was quite angry with her when I heard about it. If she’d just been patient—anyway, the point is that the chieftain the army brought back could sense the bond between them. He wasn’t willing to do anything about it, then, but after further reflection, and a few weeks in Highfall Prison, he’s beginning to change his mind.”
Something about the Seneschal’s tone suggested that the chieftain’s so-called reflection was both involuntary and painful. Distantly, Nate thought he should care, but he didn’t. “You think he can break it?”
The Seneschal looked surprised. “I don’t want to break the bond, magus. I want to replicate it.” He considered. “Well, I want to break it, then replicate it. I want to be able to break it or forge it at will. What I really want—” and his face was alive now, like an unlit torch bursting into flame “—is to build a new Guild. The Communicators. Or perhaps we’ll call them after Judah. The Judanese, maybe, or the Judanians. The Nali bond only works in relatively close proximity, you know, but we haven’t found a physical limit with Judah and Gavin. I took him two weeks’ travel out of the city when he was a baby—when Arkady cut Judah’s heel back in the nursery, the cut on Gavin’s foot appeared instantaneously.” The Seneschal’s eyes were alight with fervor. “Imagine: instantaneous communication. Pairs of communicators, sent throughout the empire. Bond them when they’re children, raise them together if that seems to be important. Maybe we could even bond more than one person together, like the Nali. Or maybe it can be passed down to offspring. You’ve seen the bond, magus. You know it works. Why shouldn’t we use it to our advantage?”
Because to do so would be a perversion of the Work and a crime against all that makes us human, and the invalidation of my entire life. “No reason, I suppose. But why tell me all of this now?”
“Because I need your help. According to the chieftain, the formation of the Nali bond is difficult; not everyone lives. They’ve never deliberately tried to break it, but of course people do die in battle. The rest of the group survives—it wouldn’t be much use, strategically, if you could take out the whole unit by killing one member—but sometimes one of the survivors goes mad. I’d prefer that Judah and Gavin not go mad, and obviously, I’d rather they not die. From what the chieftain says, the entire process will go more smoothly if they’re willing participants. Which is where you come in.”
Hope fluttered in Nate’s chest. “Where I come in?”
“Judah trusts you. Convince her to consent to the chieftain’s experiments. Once she’s on board, Gavin will follow, weak-willed as he is. You’ll have your work cut out for you. She doesn’t like me at all, and the chieftain predicted that the process will be painful. But she’s strong. She can withstand quite a bit of pain.” He spoke casually, as if discussing Judah’s favorite kind of cake.
“I don’t know how I’d do that.” Nate forced himself to sound reluctant, but the flutter of hope was growing, unfolding. Convince. That sounded like the sort of thing that had to happen inside the Wall, in person.
“Just carry on the way you have. My men are taking the crops and livestock and anything else of value from the House; it’s a bit absurd to leave all the fertile land inside the wall unfarmed, but right now the managers are focused on the city, and they’ll accept house arrest for the Children. That place wasn’t built to be lived in unstaffed, though. Just getting water will be an ordeal, particularly once we strip the pipes from the aquifer. The four of them have lived comfortable lives; after a month or two of hardship, I expect they’ll be very receptive to an alternate arrangement.” He leaned forward. “Ultimately, I’d like to move them all out of the city—which is another reason it would be better if they were willing, so Gavin could give a speech before they left. Leaving for the good of New Highfall, or something. The place I have in mind is very remote, and we could work on the project in earnest, without distractions.”
That was unacceptable. Gavin and Judah had to be in the House. The power could only be unbound in the place where it was bound. Nate realized that everything would have to move faster now. Stalling, he said, “What about Eleanor and Theron?”
“Gavin and Judah are attached to them. I didn’t particularly enjoy Elban’s games, but they did demonstrate the usefulness of love, as either carrot or stick.” He shrugged. “If an opportunity arises to get one or both of them out of the way, cleanly, I wouldn’t refuse. Eleanor has an independent streak, and Theron is impossible to keep locked up. I swear, that boy can pick a lock just by looking at it, addled brains or no.” There was something close to admiration in his voice. “At this point, the guards are just there to keep him from letting the others out.”
“Judah has an independent streak, too.”
“I’m counting on it. That girl has spent her entire life being reminded at every moment how little she matters except as a body with a pulse. It was always the others who were important, not her.”
“She’s important now,” Nate said, which at least felt true; and the Seneschal said, “Magus, as far as you’re concerned, she’s the most important person in the city.”
On his way home, he felt like he must be glowing with panic and frustration, but none of the passersby seemed to notice. There was no time. He checked the Harteswell gate but found no sign of Derie. Back at the manor in Limley he signaled her again, but she didn’t respond. There was nothing to do but wait.
Two days passed. Charles wept, and moaned and—once—drove his head against the floor, over and over, begging Nate to make it stop. Nate did not want to give him opium and exchange one addiction for another; there was nothing he could do. He barely slept. The coup had been chaos and screaming, but it had fallen on the residents of Highfall—sorry, New Highfall—like an ice storm in summer: something entirely unnatural and out of their control. They were left dazed, unseated. Some of them, like Bindy’s sister, had latched onto their New Lives in New Highfall with ferocious enthusiasm, but most of the people Nate saw in the streets were merely trying to get through their days, to sell their bread or weave their cloth, to brew their beer or drink it. Those patients who came to the front door did so with an almost childish daring, as if racing through a burial yard at midnight. Those who came to the gate wouldn’t discuss the coup. They seemed to feel that even speaking of it was dangerous, and it was best to ignore the entire thing.
New people moved into the manors on Limley Square. Rina told him that factory managers and employees were being moved into the districts the managers controlled “because they’ll care more for their own neighborhoods, of course.” She was at Arkady’s manor for the resource inventory, which turned out to be a half-dozen workers from Paper going over the manor from top to bottom, writing down everything they found and taking any goods they deemed valuable or luxurious. Once it was established that the lab—and Charles, huddling on Nate’s pallet inside it—would be left alone, the inventory didn’t bother Nate at all. The search committee could take what they wanted; nothing in the manor was his. Rina, in a white and brown sash like her mother’s, had clearly found herself in a position of some power. Eagle-eyed and efficient, she followed the workers from room to room, making sure they didn’t miss anything. She could not be less like Bindy; there was no merriment in her, no music.
“What will they do with it all?” he asked her, as Arkady’s favorite chair left the manor feet-first.
“Sell it,” she said promptly. “Reinvest the profits in the factory.”
“Sell it? To who? Nobody has any money anymore. It’s all been confiscated.”
He spoke without thinking. Rina’s eyes turned to flint. “Surely, even where you’re from, farmers expect to be paid for their crops, and miners their ore. For once, they’ll be getting a fair price.”
Nate almost asked how those farmers and miners would feel about being paid in confiscated furniture, but Rina’s glower told him he’d better not. Every citizen over the age of fourteen had to work now, and each position had to be approved by the factory committee. Bindy was just fourteen. Nate had applied to the New Highfall Productivity Board for her to be named his apprentice, officially, but he hadn’t received confirmation yet. Rina and Nora had argued over the apprenticeship; Rina had wanted Bindy in the factory, where she’d have more opportunity for advancement. Nora said Bindy was just fine where she was. He didn’t know why Bindy’s mother had intervened, but he was grateful. Also, and more worrisomely, Rina had warned him that even Charles would need to find work, and soon. He didn’t know if Rina could make either process more difficult, but he knew that he didn’t want more trouble to fall on people he cared about, so all he said was, “I’m glad to hear it.”
Rina gave him an arch look. “A lot of outsiders have been sent back where they came from, you know, magus. But you needn’t worry. Seneschal has you on his list of indispensables.”
“I’m glad to hear that, too.”
“Yes,” Rina said. “You should be.”
Three days after his visit to the Seneschal, Derie came. As he let her in the garden gate, he said, “Where have you been?” and the question was part anger, part curiosity. He didn’t know where she was living or how she was surviving, but she seemed no worse for the wear.
“None of your business,” she said harshly, “and don’t grouse at me, boy. I couldn’t answer, and that’s all you need to know. Get inside.”
“Charles is here,” he said as he closed the kitchen door.
“I know. I don’t care.” She reached into her skirt pocket, took out a knife. “Now shut up and sit still. Let’s see what’s going on.”
So he had to endure it again: having her inside his head, tossing his memories the way Rina’s crew had tossed the manor. It was worse this time, and he hadn’t thought that was possible. When it was over he lay on the floor and discovered that his words were gone. He wanted to communicate, and knew that he’d once known a way to do it, but the means simply weren’t there anymore. He couldn’t think of her name. He couldn’t think of his own, either. She seemed very tall, perched above him on a sort of frame that he’d once known the name of, made of something he could no longer identify. A long piece of the same stuff was in the nameless one’s hand. It made small noises on the floor. He’d once known the name for those, too. The sounds. The long thing.
“Nasty piece of work, that Seneschal,” the nameless one said. “Well, we’ll just have to be nastier, that’s all. No more dancing around.” There were brown things at the end of her body nearest to him. One of them moved and he felt a pain. “No more wasting time, you, boy.”
You, boy. Was that him? It felt familiar. The nameless one made a sort of grunt that he knew meant she wasn’t happy with him. He curled around himself in case she hurt him again. She took a soft, floppy thing from the flat thing next to her and tossed it toward him. It hit the part of him that saw and breathed. He flinched.
The nameless one cackled. “Sick on yourself. Oh, a mess, you are. Well, we’ll put you back together again.” He did not want that. He did not want her touching him. He tried to push her hands away. “Fine, we’ll do this the hard way,” she said, and did something, and he found himself frozen. Her Work wrapped around him, tied him down, held him. He could barely breathe.
It was not pleasant this time, either, but when she was done, he had snapped back into himself like a dislocated shoulder going back into joint. The hand holding him vanished. All the elusive words came back in a rush. Derie, table, chair, towel, cane. Boot. He picked up his glasses where they’d fallen to the floor—not broken this time—and slipped them on. The world around him came into crystalline focus and his brain was crystalline, too. He saw more clearly than he had in days: what was coming, what he would have to do, how best to do it.
Derie watched him. “Better?”
“Yes, thank you,” he said.
“I suppose I could have been a bit more careful. But I put things back neater than I found them.”
“I guess you did.” There was vomit on the floor. On his shirt, too. He stood up—only a bit unsteadily—and went to the lab, where his things were; leaving the door open, he stripped off the filthy shirt and put a clean one in its place. At the washstand, he splashed his face and cleaned his glasses. He could hear Derie stomping around the kitchen. Making tea, probably.
Sure enough, two steaming cups waited on the table when he returned. He wiped up the vomit on the floor, then took his cup and settled himself into the chair across from her. That nudge in the ribs she’d given him with her boot had been within a hairbreadth of a kick. He could still feel it.
“What was that you did to me?” he said eventually.
“Needed you still, so I made you still,” she said. “I’ll show you how later. You can try it out on that wastrel Charles, he might as well serve some purpose. You’re infatuated, you know.”
He stifled the urge to flinch again. The new clarity she’d left in his brain didn’t let him lie, not even to himself. “With Judah? A little, I suppose. Can you neaten that up, too?”
“I could. I left it be for now. Might work in our favor.” She put a soft, cold hand over his. “You’re a good boy, Nathaniel. You know what you need to do, and you’ll do it.” Kind touches from Derie had always been rare, even when he was a child. She patted his hand and stood up. “We can always fix you up afterward. Whatever needs to be done.”
“Of course you can,” he said, and there was no doubt in him whatsoever. She could, and would. Whatever needed to be done.
The crystalline clarity lasted through that day and into the next. Late that afternoon, Nate heard the rattle of the phaeton outside his door. His whole body came alive, like a wild creature sensing prey. He met the guard at the door, already holding his satchel. “Am I needed inside?” he said.
“No, it’s the prison,” the guard said. “Seneschal said you could be trusted, if a magus was needed,” and, still sharp-edged and hard with the force of his new clarity, Nate answered, “Yes. I can.”
The phaeton had been denuded of all Elban’s insignia. Only ghosts remained: bare silhouettes, cleaner than the rest of the phaeton’s surface but marred by careless prybar work and empty bolt holes. The bell was still there, and the driver rang it aggressively as he drove through the city, yanking hard on the chain so the bell clanged harsh and tuneless, a vicious pleasure visible in his face as people scattered before the phaeton like dried leaves. The guard hanging on the foot rail said nothing. Empty storefronts with broken windows gaped like missing teeth in each street. Some of them had been burned. There were blackened places on the cobblestones, too, and at the bases of some of the lampposts: bonfires, or worse. Whatever had been burned had already been cleared away. He saw lots of white sashes, embroidered with different symbols and different colors, but he also saw a number of matching white caps. He asked the guard what they were.
“Work enforcement. Making sure everyone who can work, does. No work, no scrip.”
“Scrip?”
“Companies keep their own stores now. Scrip’s what they take. Stops the price gouging at the markets.”
It made perfect sense. But Nate found himself asking, “What about the old and the sick?”
“Most people can do something, if they try hard enough,” the guard said.
Highfall Prison was a crumbling brick tower crammed onto a lump of land in the Brake that could barely be called an island. It wasn’t a large building; Elban hadn’t favored lengthy prison sentences. The same guard who’d hung off the phaeton rowed Nate over in a tiny boat, greasy green water splitting sluggishly around the prow. At the best of times, a person didn’t want to look too closely at things floating in the Brake. These were not the best of times. Nate kept his eyes straight ahead.
The guard led Nate into a dingy hallway. Through open doors on either side, he could see two reception rooms, one fairly nice and the other less so; they were meant for important visitors, which Nate wasn’t. He was taken instead to a dank staircase at the end of the hall. The walls of the staircase wept and the stone steps were slick with dampness. At the bottom was a similarly damp corridor, or rather, a wet corridor. As they walked, the guard directed Nate around puddles of standing water that had seeped up through the floor. Occasionally, these were deep enough to warrant planks of moldy wood lying across them as bridges.
The cell doors were solid, with hinged slots permitting the passage of food. There was no way to tell if a cell was inhabited or not, but as Nate passed one cell in particular, the back of his neck broke out in prickles. Power, but an unfamiliar sort. He paused by the door. The guard stopped, too.
“Hear something? That’s where they keep that Nali they brought back.” A smile crept over the guard’s face. “Doesn’t say much. He cries a lot, though.”
Reflection, the Seneschal had called it. Nate nodded, and resumed walking.
Eventually they came to a room that was more or less dry, which held a table, a chair and a small, hard cot. Yet another door in the far wall bristled with locks, to which the guard applied keys from a large ring until it swung open. The room beyond stank of many unpleasant things—all the fluids that could be taken or expelled from the human body, as well as char and meat—but they all added up to suffering. Iron-barred cells lined both sides, and the large space in the middle was full of devices that Nate chose not to consider. A man greeted them, clothed in a heavy apron of stained leather. Nate chose not to consider the stains, either.
“Here’s the magus, Interrogator,” the guard said.
“Pleased to meet you, magus. This way.” The Interrogator spoke pleasantly enough, but Nate could feel invisible blades of malevolence radiating from him. He couldn’t tell if the blades or the job had come first, but he supposed it didn’t matter. The aproned man led Nate to one of the cells. The door was open and unlocked; inside, Nate understood why. The man who lay on the floor had two brutally broken legs. His toes, knees and hips all pointed in contrary directions. He was extremely unlikely to stand up and walk away.
Nate knelt next to the prisoner and saw that his hands were mutilated, too. The man’s breathing was loud and ragged. Both of his ears had been cut off, the wounds crudely cauterized to black char. Nate found a bit of uninjured skin on the man’s throat. It felt cold and clammy, the pulse erratic.
Nate stood up, grateful for whatever it was that Derie had numbed in his brain. “Where would you like me to start?”
The Interrogator seemed vaguely embarrassed. “Well, magus, I’m not exactly used to this sort of thing.”
“It looks like you’re used to it.”
“Trying to get information, I mean. Under Lord—under Elban, rather—we just killed ’em, however slow he wanted. But this one, he’s got a mouth on him. Said the crudest things. Not the things we wanted him to say, of course. Courtiers have filthy minds, the lot of them. And this morning—well, I’d just had enough.” He wore a look of mixed distaste and affront. The man he’d been torturing had offended him, Nate realized, and in his new icy state almost wanted to laugh. “It’s not as if I didn’t warn him. I told him a dozen times, he’d better watch that tongue if he didn’t want to lose it. He wouldn’t listen, so out it came.”
Forgetting that without a tongue or a hand that worked, the smashed heap of human being on the floor would find it difficult to share any information at all. “I can’t sew his tongue back in, you know.”
The interrogator chuckled. “Not after I threw it on the fire, you can’t.” Then, more anxiously: “I was thinking about his hands, maybe.”
Nate bent back down. He didn’t recognize the courtier, but he wasn’t sure he would have, anyway. Most of the bones in the man’s face had been broken, including his jaw—probably when he lost his tongue. He put a hand on the courtier’s shoulder. The man cringed and shuddered.
“Which hand do you write with?” Nate asked him.
After a moment the right elbow twitched. Nate examined that hand. Evidently, the Interrogator had started by pulling out the fingernails and then worked his way up, smashing each bone individually.
“He’s got jewels hidden in his manor,” the Interrogator said over Nate’s shoulder. “He was famous for them, wasn’t he? But those jewels belong to the city, now, and this selfish pig won’t tell us where they are.” His voice grew strident. “The managers could trade those jewels to the provinces for food to feed the city this winter. But that ain’t good enough reason for him. He’s holding out. Don’t know why. After we’re done with him, it’ll take more than jewels to make him pretty.”
For money. They had done this for money, and on the strength of hearsay. Nate laid the man’s hand down gently. “This man is in shock. He might be dead by morning no matter what I do. But I can fix his hand well enough for him to write, eventually, if you’ll leave it alone to heal.”
The Interrogator nodded eagerly. Nate opened his satchel. He preferred to lay out what he needed before he began to work, but he didn’t want any of his supplies to touch the mucky floor of the cell, so he worked directly out of the bag. He had a salve that would help the man’s bloody lips, which were as dry as paper (and of course he couldn’t lick them). But before Nate did anything else, the man needed opium syrup. Nate took out the bottle; then stopped and considered.
The courtier was perched on the very edge of death, his bloodshot eyeballs staring right into the depths of the black river—but he might survive. It wasn’t likely, but it was possible. The injuries to the man’s face would not heal cleanly, though. Even with the best of care, any life Nate could help him back to would be misshapen and colored with agony. Nate’s thumb traced the edge of the cork in the syrup bottle. It would be a simple thing to empty it between the man’s cracked lips. He would be unconscious in minutes and dead in hours. Caterina would have considered it a kindness. But Caterina would also have checked the man’s lineage, to make sure his line would survive him, and conferred with the rest of the caravan. She might even have reached inside the man’s mind to ask his own opinion. Nate could do none of those things; he had nobody to confer with, and he wasn’t talented enough to read the man’s thoughts. But he could end his pain.
Behind him, the Interrogator laughed at something the guard said. Nate glanced toward them, to make sure they weren’t watching—and as he did, he heard again the words of the guard: Seneschal said you could be trusted.
With his new hardness, Nate knew he needed that trust. He had no choice but to leave the courtier here to suffer and—with any luck—die on his own. This hideous room with its hideous smells must be part of his life, now. He would set bones so they could be smashed again, stitch wounds so they could be opened anew. He would pump water from the lungs of the half-drowned while the bucket waited, amputate one charred limb while the fire was stoked for the other. He would loathe every second and he would loathe himself, but that didn’t matter. He had to stay in the Seneschal’s good graces. He had to have access to Judah.
One of the man’s eyes opened as much as it could. All Nate could see was a tiny slit of blue and black and bloodred. The man must have been in incredible pain. Nate didn’t even know if he understood what was going on. Reflexively, he gave the man a reassuring smile. The opium bottle was still cool in his hand.
He turned back to the Interrogator. “Can I give him anything for the pain?”
“Not much point,” the Interrogator said.
Nate nodded, and put the syrup away. He carefully cleaned and bound the oozing sores where the man’s fingernails had once been. The bones in the hand were not broken so much as obliterated. Judging by the bruising, the damage was several days old. He splinted and bandaged the fingers as well as he could. The courtier moaned at first, low and ragged, but soon the moans stopped and Nate knew he’d passed out.
Finished, he closed his satchel and went back to the Interrogator. “Leave that hand alone from now on. And let him rest until morning.”
The Interrogator eyed the courtier with distaste. “Will he live that long?”
“I think so. But call me earlier next time.”
“Thanks, magus,” the Interrogator said, clearly relieved. “Without your help, might be me in his place next.”
And then it would be the Interrogator that Nate put back together. He didn’t think that would bother him; but he said he was happy to help, and followed the guard out.
At the manor, all was quiet. Charles, thankfully, was asleep in Arkady’s room. Bindy had left Nate a piece of roasted meat, which he ate between two pieces of bread. He drank a beer that might as well have been water. He washed and shaved, and took the dirty water out into the garden to dump it.
Night had fallen. The moon was full and the garden was silvery and unreal. Carefully, he poured the water at the roots of some ferns that needed it. The air was warm and soft and damp, and it made Nate think of planting, and burial and renewal. It made him think of his mother.
Suddenly the ice inside him broke, and all the walled-away horror of the prison flooded through him. He smelled again the fetid cell and the courtier’s wounds and saw every single torture device in bitter, detailed clarity; and he was appalled. Who am I, he thought numbly. What have I done; what will I do? The memory of the courtier suffering in the Interrogator’s cell hurt him, ached in him like a bad tooth; like the worst tooth, like a tooth you would knock out with a rock rather than suffer with it for one second more. The Work Derie had done on him had not lasted. It happened sometimes. Things reordered themselves. He could go to her and tell her; he could ask her to redo it.
But he remembered, with a shudder, the feel of that unconquerable paralysis she’d put him under, his complete powerlessness in her grip, and something in him rebelled. He would go to the prison when summoned, and he would do the Seneschal’s disgusting bidding, because that was what he needed to do. Derie would do what she wanted to him, whenever she wanted, because that was what she’d always done. And he would let her, because that was what he’d always done—just as Charles let Nate practice the paralyzing Work on him, because Derie had ordered it—but he would not invite her attention, and he would not beg for it.
Still, without the numbness she’d Worked on him to shield him from what he’d done, sleep would be impossible. He went into the lab and mixed a strong draught: valerian, opium, anything that might wall the dying courtier away for a few hours. It tasted like acid and burned going down. By the time he made it to his pallet he was already stumbling, but it took several minutes of lying there, clenching and unclenching his fists, for oblivion to come.
He woke early. His brain felt a little tender, as if it had stumbled into a tavern brawl the night before, but the sky was clear, one of Highfall’s rare cloudless days. As Nate made tea, he knew he could go on.
Charles still slept, so Nate took his tea out onto the front step to wait for Bindy to save her knocking on the door. Normally if he wanted fresh air, he took it in the garden—which was considerably less dank and a healthier place in general since Nate had taken over—but today he wanted to see the trees in the Square, to feel a bit of space around him. The morning was brilliant with color: the gold-green of the light filtering through the leaves, the glimmers of blue from the sky above, the gray shadows on the white stone. The spires reaching up in the distance, which could seem cruel under overcast skies, seemed almost elegant. The sun warmed his feet in his boots, and he heard the tiny chip chip of the sparrows pecking the ground for crumbs. The air smelled of smoke and the faint stale must of the Brake.
He heard footsteps. They slowed, and stopped. Nate looked up.
Vertus stood at the end of the walk. His clothes were nicer than they’d been when Nate had known him; not the violent colors the courtiers had favored, but not drab servingman’s gray, either. The rich fabrics hung well on him. His eyes were as intent as ever.
“Good morning, magus,” he said in a knowing, amused tone. Like he saw a joke that Nate wasn’t quite clever enough to get. “Made it through the coup, I see.”
His Highfall accent was broader than it had been. “As did you,” Nate said.
“Indeed.” Vertus put his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “Indeed, I did.”
There was a long, evaluating silence. Nate was thinking about that last grim night with Arkady, aware that Vertus knew everything Nate had done. He was also considering the Seneschal, if his belief in Nate’s utility would outweigh his years’ acquaintance with Arkady. He was wondering, in short, how much damage Vertus could do. He would have been willing to bet that the former servingman’s thinking ran along the same lines.
“Well,” Vertus said finally, “just thought I’d see how you were getting on.”
“Good to see you.” It hadn’t been, but it was what one said.
“Don’t worry, magus,” Vertus said. “You’ll see me again soon.”