Between Smoke and Shadow

Prologue

PROLOGUE

Cycle 892 / Blizzard Season / Day 47

Rune

“It’s time, Rune.”

I ignore my dad, watching blood pool around the drain. I should still be at work, not soaking my blistered hands in the sink. I grimace before glancing in my sliver of mirror. It’s a small and misshapen shard, slim enough to fit up my sleeve but big enough to watch for descendants–and apparently, overbearing fathers.

“Come,” he insists. His voice is soft and kind, and I hate it. He’s staring at me with worry and pity, but not with anger. Gods, I wish he’d be angry.

I lift my fingers from the sink, inspecting their gruesome blisters. A bored guard had infused my rag with magic, forcing me to clean with it for eight hours. Only he grew bored before my shift ended and dismissed me. Eight hours, mutilated skin, and no pay.

Blood drips to my wrists. I slip the mirror back up my sleeve and dry my hands on the hanging towel. It’s stale and stinks of something sour. Now, it’s also stained with blood and pus.

Dad touches my shoulder and guides me from the bathroom. I let him pull me down a twist of corridors, keeping my head lowered. My mask, a pathetic scrap of veiled fabric, dangles loosely from my ears. I should tighten it, but I can’t see the point.

Servants filter around us, their faces made sickly by yellow walls and dim lighting. I barely register them, instead focusing on the cracked floors and cheap wooden doors. When we reach our quarters, marked with numbers 246 and 247, Dad leads us into the darkened room. I catch a final glimpse of his appearance: blonde hair, stained coveralls, and ratted shoes before he disappears into the shadows.

I’m sure I look similar, if not worse.

“They took my pay,” I tell him. I’m sure he already knows. His magicked brand should have lost a half mark today. Instead, only a quarter mark is gone. My portion remains.

Dad doesn’t respond. He sits on the edge of his bed, springs creaking against his meager weight. I force myself to move, leaving the doorway open. My bed is a mattress on the floor, squished between Dad’s narrow cot and my long-broken metal frame. I’ve insisted on the floor bed, because Dad’s knees are too bad. Honestly, every bone in his body is too bad.

“I worked all day ,” I say, voice cracking. I clench my hands, letting the pain of it scorch through me. “All day, Dad. I scrubbed and scrubbed, even though I knew it wouldn’t work. He made me scrub for eight hours , watching my hands blister, only stopping when he was bored of it. And then, a sweep of his hand, a thread of smoke. And it was gone. Every drop. Gone.”

Dad rests his elbows on his knees, his gaze drifting to my drenched shoes in the corner. He looks at me, half of his face remaining in the shadows. Dark circles line his eyes, surrounded by too many wrinkles for a man his age. A large bruise, purple and black, blossoms just below his ear. He still won’t tell me what happened.

“And then—then he took my pay,” I say. A sob chokes my throat, but I swallow it, grinding my teeth to keep it contained. “He said I wasted his time. As if—as if it was my fault that their blood is demonic?—”

“Don’t speak like that,” Dad hisses, head snapping toward me.

I don’t respond. He’s right—and I know better—but I can’t admit that. I can’t admit anything beyond the fact I’ve been wronged and I’m angry for it. I want Dad to be angry too, not at me and my dangerous words. At them, at the guards and the royals and the crown, at all the monsters who take, just because they can.

“We will make it through,” is all he says. His words are soft and empty, a hollow lie in the dark.

“Saying it does not make it true,” I whisper. I sit on my mattress and hug my knees to my chest, as if squeezing hard enough will keep me whole.

“Rune—”

“They are going to kill us, Dad. They are going to torture us until?—”

He surges to close the door, letting darkness swallow us—servant quarters do not have lights. I fidget in discomfort, but I don’t argue.

“You must stop,” he says as he returns to his cot. My emotions twist and choke, suffocating in their loneliness. There must be someone, anyone , who feels this poisonous rage—and actually wants to do something about it.

“It’s been six cycles,” I say. My voice wobbles with the words, struggles beneath the weight of them. “It was only meant to be five.”

“We are almost there,” he says. He believes the lie. I can sense the surety of his tone, as if we haven’t built debt faster than we’ve cleared it.

“Six cycles,” I repeat. “For a crime that didn’t deserve to be punished.”

The springs shriek as Dad moves again, coming to kneel on the mattress beside me. His hands find my shoulders through the darkness, his overgrown nails digging through the fabric.

“Enough,” he says. No, he begs . “Rune, there are ears everywhere. If they hear these accusations, they?—”

“They’ll what? Lock us up for eternity?” I don’t know when I started crying, but my words break with choppy sobs. Now that I’ve begun, I don’t know how I’ll stop. “I know you want me to trust you, but I’m going to die here. I can feel it. I don’t—I don’t want to die here.”

Dad pulls me to his chest, and I sag against him.

“I love you,” he whispers.

I’m crying too hard to say it back. I only burrow my head against his shoulder, letting the tears fall until I run out of them. When he finally pulls away, I grab his left hand. It’s the only thing visible in this blackened room. Dull magic shines through it, the red glow twisted into the shape of an Old World wolf. Magic that bears no use to him, except to trap us here. Within its mouth, dozens and dozens of marks symbolize our debt.

“Do you regret it?” I ask, the question I’ve never dared to voice. I don’t know why I do now, if I’m so desperate for compassion I’m willing to hurt him for it.

“No,” he whispers. “I loved your mother too much not to try.”

My hands shake as I hold his fingers. I was eight when Mom fell ill, when Dad attempted to steal a medicinal root to save her life. After he failed and was arrested, but before the guards came to take our family as collateral, I sat with Mom at her bedside. I counted the seconds between her last breaths, reaching nearly one thousand before I allowed myself to believe she was really and truly dead.

“I wish you loved me that much,” I say.

They are the cruelest words I’ve ever spoken, but I don’t take them back. I release my father’s hand and lay on my side, turning to face the wall instead of him. He leaves a few minutes later, and I fall asleep, waiting for him to return.

Cycle 892 / Blizzard Season / Day 48

Harrick

When I was young, I had a servant named Quil. I considered him my closest friend, but I didn’t really know him. I was always too busy talking. I’d tell him how I hated my brother and how desperately I wanted to be king. I complained about my annoying sister and the tutors who made me feel stupid. I’d seek his help when the Architect beat me and forbid me from getting a healer. He’d do his best to tend my wounds, and he never laughed if I cried.

Even now, I don’t know if he had family or why he was working as a crowned servant so young. I knew his clothes were too small, and that he was skinny and skittish. And yet, I never realized I should help him.

Instead, I took everything he offered and only tried to give when it was too late. He had stolen bread, a foreign concept to someone like me, and had earned twenty lashings. The Architect demanded I deliver them, setting us up in the courtyard with a crowd of servants watching. And when I refused, when I publicly defied him, he removed his mask and killed Quil in front of me. He killed my friend in a matter of seconds, and I stared at the mangled body like I could will it back to life. I might have tried, had the Architect not cuffed my ear and dragged me from the courtyard.

We do not show mercy , he told me. I hadn’t responded. I only trembled, feeling my body grow distant, as if it was no longer mine. My mouth wouldn’t move, even as I tried to speak. The Architect pinched my chin, hard enough that it bruised by nightfall. He said again, louder. We do not show mercy, Harrick. Especially not to them.

I think of Quil now, as I sit on my throne in that same courtyard, surrounded by a cocoon of magicked heat. Beyond this stage, the early morning air is brittle and stark, paled by an onslaught of heavy snow. My brother and sister sit to my left and my mother to the right, with the red-suited Architect across the platform. His throne, a horrible thing of cleaved bones—animal and not—is raised to shadow ours.

I dig at the rough carvings on my armrests. They’re twisted into the shape of Old World creatures: growling bears and open-mouthed lions and cackling hyenas. My scarlet attire is a drop of blood against the black throne, and the latter is a blot of ink against the snow-swept sky. I finger the rough edges as I stare out at the crowd, a shivering mass of white and yellow. There is not a blanket of heat for them. There is only crushing snow and relentless wind and the choking smell of death.

The cobblestone yard is hidden beneath a layer of thick ice, and a trail of blood traces from the prisoner holding area to the center of the square. The final man, a gaunt prisoner with startling blue eyes and blond hair so filthy it looks brown, walks barefoot to his death. His pale skin is sickly, as if the afterlife would have caught him soon, even if our guards hadn’t.

“Number 246,” the lead calls. Dressed in all-encompassing black, our guards look more like shadows than people. These ones, the royal guards, wear masks shaped like wolves.

“You are charged with conspiracy to abscond,” says the guard. His voice is deep but flat, and I try to decide whether he loves or hates this role. After many cycles, I’ve learned there’s not often an in-between. “For your attempt to evade debt owed, you now face immediate execution.”

I study the prisoner from where I sit. He wasn’t supposed to be on the death toll this morning. He was a late addition, caught by an undercover guard mere hours ago. He’d been inquiring about a smuggling operation, one that doesn’t actually exist.

Now, the man’s hands are bound behind his back, and I can make out the red outline of his indebted brand from here. His legs remain untied, but he makes no move to run. I’m sure the Architect is disappointed. It is only when they run that my father plays with them. Coils his magic between their ears as they flee, infecting their thoughts with every terrible thing they’ve ever done, until they can’t bear their own existence. They inevitably return before they reach the fenceline, and when the Architect offers them a blade, they eagerly slice their own throats.

None of our prisoners have died like that this season, but the memories are as visceral as the real thing. I steady my breathing and still my twitching hands, ignoring Mother’s heavy gaze. She has an unnatural sense for weakness, especially when it comes to mine. I don’t let myself look at her.

Instead, I study the commoners and servants. They stand in a huddled mass, their eyes covered by varying styles of masks. The commoners wear white ones, narrow but thick. The servants wear yellow, eyes covered less by a mask and more a scrap of thin veil. Above us, in the looming Tower, royals and elites watch from their viewing rooms.

“Your remaining debt shall fall to your estate,” the guard says, startling me. When the man winces, I again look through the attending servants. He has surviving family then, but they’re not here. They probably don’t know.

Prisoner 246 shifts, and the movement catches a glimmer of sunlight. His brand, a red wolf with a gaping mouth, has less than two dozen gem marks between its teeth. If I had to guess, he owes one more cycle of servitude, maybe two.

“For thievery of Amarum in Cycle 886, four hundred and twelve beryls. For attempted evasion in Cycle 892, ten thousand and two hundred sixteen beryls. All remaining debt…” the guard pauses, consulting the device on his forearm before continuing. If he notices how still the man has gone, how utterly pale and withdrawn, he doesn’t react. He only faces the crowd, announcing, “All remaining debt to prisoner 247.”

I squeeze the armrests hard enough I might crush the animal carvings. My breath stalls as I work not to make outward movements. Ten thousand is an insurmountable sum, surpassing fifty cycles if there is only one person carrying it. I watch the servant, and then the guard. He stands tall, chin tipped high, and I have my answer from earlier. He is, without a doubt, relishing in this man’s torture.

“No.” The word is whispered, yet it somehow vibrates through the entire courtyard. I look back to the servant. His body is stiff and there’s no touch of emotion on his expression. But there’s something in his eyes, barely visible from behind his ratted veil. “I only have one—one daughter. The debt is too?—”

“Fifteen thousand,” the Architect interrupts. He rises from his throne, striding to stand above the guard and his prisoner. “Question my guard again, and it will be twenty.”

Now the man lets out an animalistic sob. His face barely moves, but that look in his eyes flares into something recognizable. Not anger or ferocity…no, it’s hopeless devastation.

The Architect tips his chin down at the prisoner, much like he’s looking at an unidentifiable bug. Like the guards, my father wears a form-fitting suit that hides his entire body. But where theirs are black, the Architect’s is the color of dried blood.

The servant’s knees buckle as he sobs again, and though I can’t see the Architect’s face, I know he’s grinning. He descends the platform, letting the harsh snow and wind overtake him. With a gentle sweep of his hand, he removes the servant’s off-colored veil. It breaks away all too easily, flitting to the ground and settling over the ice. Behind the quivering man, the crowd averts their gaze to the cobblestone.

“May your magic be more worthy than you,” the Architect says. With a twitch of his head and a spark of magic, his mask vanishes. From the side, he looks like an ordinary man of no more than forty cycles. Dull brown hair, lightly weathered skin, a sloping nose. I’ve often wondered if we look alike, or if our only similarity is in our eyes. Dark blends of violet, so deep they’re almost black.

The Architect cups a hand around the back of the man’s head with taunting gentleness. The servant trembles to the point he could be seizing. Darkness spreads over his pants—he is not the first to wet himself today.

I tighten my jaw, hard enough my teeth should crack. If I was mortal, maybe they would.

“Tell her?—”

The servant’s words cut off, replaced by his choking scream. The Architect leans into the hideous sound, a tight smile straining his lips. With gloved hands, he forces the man’s eyes open, paralyzing his once thrashing body. I watch him work, as if he’s solving a complex problem and not murdering a man.

Pieces of dull magic, so thin they look like strands of hair, twist from the servant’s eyes. It is not outward magic, nothing he could have used. It is the magic of his soul, of his very being—and the Architect devours it in a single breath.

Once it stops, when the man is nothing but a corpse, the Architect releases him. His body collapses with a heavy thud and his head lands upon his killer’s boot. Those startling, unseeing eyes stare up at me. The Architect, with his mask back in place, kicks the servant’s head to the ground. He steps over his victim’s body and wordlessly returns to the stage.

I’m still staring at the servant, at his gaping blue eyes, when I hear her. I have seen more than a hundred mourning children in my lifetime. I have heard them sob and wail and plead uselessly to the sky. But this girl isn’t crying—she’s screaming. A tortured but ferocious scream, high pitched and painful.

The crowd parts for her. The girl has darker hair than the dead man, but her eyes are the same unmistakable blue. She’s not wearing a mask, and I’m almost too distracted to process anything else. Beautiful. Her eyes are stunningly beautiful. Her voice strains against her scream as she collapses at her father’s side. With shaking hands, she pats his face like she’s trying to wake him.

This is how I would have looked, I think, had I tried to save Quil.

“Ahh, and you must be the daughter,” the Architect says. His words are lazy, almost amused, as he turns away from her. Settling back into his throne, he nods to the guard, who captures her without hesitation. “Thank you for saving us the trouble.”

The guard presses the girl’s palm against her father’s hand. Magic sparks from the guard’s gloves, and slowly, the brand disappears from the man’s cold skin and carves itself into his daughter’s instead. New blisters, violent red and throbbing, join old ones, until her left hand is more wound than flesh. She sobs and thrashes, face twisted in raw panic, and I make myself watch.

The girl slackens when it’s over. With her mangled hand lifted toward the sky, she studies the burned mark. It is identical to her father’s, only its mouth now overflows with debt. Her scream vanishes as she traces the wound, as she realizes just how many cycles she now owes.

When her eyes lift, they find mine. It’s no more than a second, her vibrant blue against my dark violet. And yet, in that brief moment, her shocked rage burrows into my bones and tells me I’m a coward. I force myself not to react, to look on with only that unimpressed expression.

Once they have taken her away and I have returned to my quarters, I finally allow myself to cry.