I nod, but Dante steps between us to appraise my harness one last time.
“We’re here,” he says. No one appears on the deck to throw the tethers, and I look to him, confusion written across my face.
“We can’t stop,” he says. “We don’t know the nature of this situation and we can’t risk the aeroship. It’s the only one the Agenda has.”
Because I destroyed the other one, I realize. I nod my head, trying to look brave, but I’m failing miserably.
Dante leads me to the only side of the deck without a railing. Four ropes are waiting in coiled piles. He yells but his words are caught in the wind. Then he grabs a rope and slings it over the side of the ship. It unfurls in the air, staying anchored to the deck. He pulls the rope between his legs. Positioning his hands, he leans back into the open air and jerks his head as if to say
Join me
. Erik and I look at each other. He winks.
“Any advice?” I ask Jax as we near the ropes.
“Slide fast,” he says, patting me on the shoulder.
I wrap the rope around my thigh and then clip the carabiner around it. My hands grip the rope tightly.
“Go!” Dante shouts over the rush of air around us.
He disappears over the side along with Jax.
“I can’t do this,” I call to Erik.
“You have to,” he says, and then as if to dare me, he lets go, sliding furiously from my side.
I relax back into the wind and close my eyes, feeling the rope in my hands. It’s just a strand, I tell myself as my blood pounds through my veins and into my frenzied heart. The breeze kisses my cheeks and roars in my ears. Retightening my grip, I push off the deck and into the air.
THIRTY-TWO
I’M SUSPENDED IN THE AIR, THE ROPE anchoring me. As I fall back, my body twists until I’m hanging upside down.
So much better.
I’m hovering above Earth, swaying with the forward movement of the aeroship. Using every bit of strength I can muster, I heave my body up until I’m clinging, right side up, to the rope. Taking a deep breath, I relax my fingers for an instant. I plummet several feet before my fingers tighten over the rope and stop my progress.
“Okay,” I say to myself—because I’m hanging from a rope, alone in the middle of the air, “you know how it works, now let go.”
I have to repeat it several more times before I let myself slide. The effect is instantaneous. I zip down the rope, and despite my gloves and suit the friction burns across my skin, leaving a trail of fire running through my body. Gravity pulls at my hair, loosening it to fly around my face. I dare to look down at the ground hurtling up to meet me. The rope tears at my gloves, but I control my descent until I’m dangling several feet from the ground. The aeroship continues to glide overhead and it pulls me slowly through the air as I try to convince myself to let go and drop the last few feet.
“Took you long enough,” Erik calls out.
“I stopped for tea—what took
you
so long?” I respond with a shrug of the shoulders. I can’t help feeling a little full of myself at the moment.
“Let go,” Erik calls. “I’ll catch you.”
I stare down at Erik, who’s jogging along to keep up with me.
“Ready?” I call, and despite my better judgment, I release my grip on the rope.
It is not an elegant landing. Erik catches me, but he buckles against my weight and we both crash to the ground.
“Way to stick the landing,” Dante says, looming over us.
“Shut up and help me,” I say.
Once we’re on our feet, we survey the situation, discovering we’re not far from the estate.
“I sent Jax in,” Dante explains. “We shouldn’t show up at the same time.”
“Let’s not sit around talking then,” I say. “We’ve got an estate to save.”
* * *
At first nothing seems wrong, but the closer we get to Kincaid’s, the more uneasy I feel. The first sign that something terrible has happened is a hole blasted in the large perimeter fence.
“Explosives.” Dante kicks at a pile of debris around the shattered portion of the fence.
“Guild,” I murmur.
“It’s probably Remnants, but the Guild might not be far behind. Cormac knows that you’ve been holed up here,” Dante says.
I’m not prepared for the scene we stumble upon once we reach the main grounds of the estate. Several of Kincaid’s precious statues lie in ruins on the ground, marble heads and arms sown along the brick walkway. As we get closer to the great house, we discover something far more disturbing though—bodies.
Kincaid left a skeleton crew behind when the mission went after the Whorl, and it had often felt like we were the only three people left on the estate, but now I see how wrong I was. I trip over the legs of a corpse, falling onto a body covered with thick alteration scars.
“Remnants,” Dante says, helping me to my feet.
Most of the other bodies scattered across the grounds are Kincaid’s men and a few servants I recognize from mealtimes. My heart leaps into my throat when I spot the corpse of a blond woman, still wearing the face from the play Kincaid put on a few weeks ago. Apparently the Tailors never got around to altering it back.
“It looks like we missed all the action,” Erik says, but as if to prove him wrong, a blast booms from the main house, sending showers of brick and tile ricocheting in our direction. Erik throws me to the ground as Dante sprints toward the building.
“He’s not armed,” I cry. “He’s going to get killed.” I rush forward, but Erik grabs my arm to stop me.
“He’ll be fine. He’s got powerful skills at his disposal,” Erik says. “Let’s stick together, Ad. We don’t know what’s going on in there.”
Inside a battle is being waged on Kincaid’s ornate carpets and marbled floors. There’s too much smoke to see who is who and we’re only in the house for a few minutes when Erik pushes me into an alcove previously occupied by a statue. Before I can process what he’s doing, he’s grabbed a Remnant. A crack shatters the air and Erik momentarily loses his grip, but then his fingers sink into the Remnant’s flesh with a wet
split
. The man looses a shrill wail as his shredded skin opens in a torrent of crimson. But Erik doesn’t unwind him. The Remnant turns on his heel to escape, and we rush through the hallway.
“Where’s Dante?” I call to Erik.
“Doesn’t matter. We need to get you out of here,” Erik orders me.
“I’m not leaving him!”
“Ad, the Guild might be after you, but these Rems don’t have the self-control to capture someone,” Erik argues, shoving me behind him until we’re near the stairway that leads to the upstairs guest rooms. But instead of directing me up, Erik reaches out to press a carved face in the woodwork. A panel swings open like the one Deniel pushed me through when he attacked me. I stare at Erik in wonder.
“How—” I start.
“I figured it might come in handy to explore,” Erik shouts over the clamor of gunfire in an adjacent room. “I’m a bad houseguest. I snooped. There’re hidden passages all over this place.”
“Where do they go?” I ask, unwilling to enter the dark passage.
“It doesn’t matter.” Erik pulls me into it, and before I can respond, the panel swings closed behind us. The insulation muffles the sounds of battle and I grope along the walls, wondering what terrors lie hidden in the dark. Erik’s hand closes over mine and he guides me.
Then Erik drops my hand, and suddenly the wall shifts, swinging to reveal another passage. I catch myself against the frame, which is a good thing because behind me a well-lit set of stairs curves down, spiraling toward an unknown destination.
“Sorry,” Erik says, reaching out to steady me. “I’ll go first.”
“I’m not helpless, you know.”
“Never said you were. I just know where the stairs go,” he says.
The stairs empty into the basement of the estate, and I recognize the passage leading to the cell block. My mother is there, and regardless of everything that’s transpired between us since I found her on Earth, my feet fly toward her cell. Erik follows. The familiar buzz of the electrified bars is absent.
“The security system is off,” I whisper. I turn to gauge his thoughts and notice he’s holding his left arm.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he says, shifting away from me.
I turn to face him and stare at the blood seeping through his sleeve. “You’re bleeding!”
“That happens when you get shot,” he says. He tries to smile and fails magnificently, the grin faltering into a grimace of pain.
“We need to get you medical help.”
“There are people worse off right now,” he says. “Let’s find your mom and Dante.”
I start to protest, but he pushes past me toward the cell block.
There’s no guard stationed outside. The hair prickles along my scalp like a biological alarm, but the sound of Dante’s voice turns my panic into curiosity even as ice fills my veins. I press against the wall and listen, hoping to understand why he’s here instead of fighting with the rest of Kincaid’s men.
“Meria, I can’t change what they did to you,” he says.
“Don’t pretend to care, Dante. They didn’t take my memories. I know you left me. Left us.”
“I am sorry,” he says.
“Meria might have been once, too. But I don’t care now,” she responds. “Surely you have more important things to worry about than the next prisoner Kincaid is going to execute.”
“I won’t let that happen.”
“Why? I’d kill you if it weren’t for these bars,” she says.
“Would you?”
My mother lets loose a hollow laugh that’s nothing like the bell-like laugh I remember from my childhood. “I’m not Meria. No matter how much you want me to be. No matter how much she wants me to be. I am not your friend or your lover.”
“That doesn’t change anything for me,” he says.
His shoes click against the floor and I suck in a breath, sure I’m about to be caught. Instead a lock snaps open.
“What are you doing?” Meria asks in a suspicious tone.
“I’m letting you go,” he says.
I have to clap my hand over my mouth to keep from screaming.
“You want me to prove I’ll kill you?” she says, and I hear the smile in her voice.
“I’m drugging you first,” he says.
“This doesn’t change anything,” she warns him.
“That’s not why I’m doing it. Some things don’t change no matter what’s happened,” he says. “Even things that fade with time and distance aren’t ever really lost.”
Her shrieks grate on my ears and I know what he’s done before I hear her body hit the floor. This is my only chance to stop him. I take a deep breath and round the corner. Erik stands silently behind me.
“Ad,” Dante says in surprise. He’s hovering over her body. She looks like she’s sleeping—or worse. Dante looks from me to Erik, his hand running through his hair as he takes in our sudden appearance. “Erik—are you okay?”
“Fine,” Erik mutters.
“What are you doing?” I demand, unable to dismiss what he’s done to her.
“It’s not what it looks like.”
“It looks like you drugged her and are planning to drag her into the desert and leave her,” I say.
“Okay, then it’s exactly what it looks like,” he says, a note of confusion in his voice.
“I heard it all,” I say. Only some of her words stung, but I still feel their vibration on my skin. She isn’t my mother, I remind myself. “You can’t let her go. For Arras’s sake, it’s a war zone out there.”
“Which makes it my only chance to get her out without suspicion. I never should have brought her here. Once Kincaid returns he’ll blame her for this attack.”
“She wants to kill you,” I remind him, slowing down my words. “She wants to kill me.”
“I know.”
“And you’re okay with that?” I ask him.
“I would prefer she didn’t want to kill us,” he says. “Adelice, you don’t understand.”
“I’m trying to,” I say.
“Kincaid has humored me by keeping her here, but after a raid like this there’s no way he’ll keep harboring her.”
“Why does Kincaid care?” I ask. “He can’t supply the precious energy to keep the cell electrocuted anymore? He needs it to put on his sordid plays and watch his films? Even if you drop her off hours from here, sooner or later someone will kill her.
“Why won’t you save her?” I demand. “Alter her back—fix her.”
“You can’t patch in someone else’s soul,” Dante says, his fingers circling his temples. He leans against the disarmed bars that once held my mother captive.
“The Guild has the remains of her strand. They have the remains of all the Remnants’ strands. If we could get to them—”
“There isn’t time for that,” Dante interrupts me. “Whatever happens to her out there can’t be worse than what Kincaid will do to her.”
I touch one of the bars. It’s not dangerous now that the electricity is off. I need something tangible to hold on to. “What if she kills someone else? What then?”
“I can live with that,” he says.
“I can’t.”
“It’s not up to you. You think what the Guild did was bad, but…”
“But?” I press. “What will Kincaid do, make her into a doll to play with?”
“I wish it was something as nice as that,” he says.
“You brought us here. You told us Kincaid was our best option—”
“I told you Kincaid was your
only
option,” he corrects me. “You made a choice, and it brought you here.”
“You brought me here.” I step forward, wagging a finger at him.
“I had no other choice.”
“Really? Or was it simply to satisfy your curiosity?” I ask.
“Partially,” he admits. “But, Ad, things are happening. Kincaid is coming back. They have information.”
“Good.”
“I don’t think it is.” Dante hesitates. He stops and lifts my mother onto his shoulder. She hangs limp over him, like a rag doll on a child’s shoulder.