Chapter Twenty-Nine #2
I closed my eyes once more, and we were back on that endless wagon trail, walking together with the sun on our shoulders. It was warm. We were filthy. And Julian was unusually talkative, explaining something about Maggie Taylor’s research and the potential for water and radiance to form a bond.
Sharing that memory with Julian, I tiptoed through his consciousness, unlocking doors and releasing floodgates. I could feel his awareness returning, along with all the discomfort that came with being aware.
Navigating the unending landscape of Julian’s mind, I knew I’d misunderstood radiance my entire life. It was no different than the wildness in Ezra. The House of Industry had simply distorted it and made it into something that went fundamentally against its nature.
It felt so obvious now. Magic wasn’t meant to be hoarded and stored. It wasn’t meant to be bought and sold. It wasn’t meant to amass wealth.
It was meant to pulse like lifeblood.
Magic. That’s what I had.
That’s what the three of us had.
“Huh,” I mumbled, my tongue feeling clumsy. “That makes more sense.”
I felt Ezra shifting. “Jo,” he was saying, a thousand miles away and right here, his fingers tightening around my hand. “Jo.”
I tried to tell him about our magic, but I couldn’t quite recall how to speak. Smiling, I felt Julian’s consciousness unfurl around me. He was irritated. I’d never felt anything as beautiful in my life. He was going to wake and experience the future he’d helped shape.
“I’m going to pass out,” I announced.
And then I did.
When I woke, I was fairly certain only a little bit of time had passed. I was still in the bed with Julian, though Ezra was nowhere to be found.
Julian, now sitting up, stared down at me. I hadn’t noticed before that he was wearing a nightgown and looked very silly in it. “What did you do?” he asked impatiently.
He sounded so gloriously like himself. Whatever I’d meant to say dissolved into a choked sob of relief.
“Oh no,” Julian said, waving his hands in the air around my face. “Oh. Stop.”
“You’re back,” I managed to say, hiccuping.
Cringing, he nodded. “I am. Though I feel quite rearranged.” Swallowing, he asked rather accusingly, “Were you rummaging around in my mind?”
“I wasn’t rummaging as much as … repairing,” I said. “They did something terrible to you in the catacombs.”
“Stop—” Julian shuddered, his breath catching. He shook his head, and it looked frighteningly similar to the way he’d shied away from us in the cell where they’d left him alone, broken. “Not yet.”
I clasped his forearm, silently promising to tread more carefully. “Of course,” I whispered.
He didn’t shake off my grip. “And what happened here?” he asked, gesturing at my thigh, where blood was seeping through the bandage and staining my clothes.
“The Elders didn’t have radiance. They were impostors all along. And one of them shot me. And nearly killed Ezra, but you …” I searched his expression for signs of distress.
“Go on,” he urged.
“You saved him.”
“Are you saying I killed an Elder of the House of Industry?” Julian asked, clearly amazed.
I couldn’t help grinning. “There is no House of Industry.”
His eyes widened, but before he could ask another question, Nikola slammed the door open and threw herself onto Julian. Ezra followed her in and narrowed his eyes when he spotted my reopened wound.
I surrendered to the resulting chaos, to a sensation I’d never known until now:
Joy.
In the weeks following Julian’s reawakening, we fell into a rhythm of quiet domesticity.
Julian worked day and night in Nikola’s laboratory, sleeping only when he tired himself out. He didn’t want to talk about what had happened to him in the catacombs, so we waited, giving him space to heal in the sorts of ways that no amount of magic could hasten.
Sometimes he woke up screaming, and in the hazy aftermath of his nightmares, he’d whisper things that were far worse than what I’d imagined. The man who’d tortured him had died too fast. I told him that.
“You think you have an unlimited capacity for violence,” he’d said in return, exhausted and curled up between me and Ezra in the dark. “But you do not. I am glad for you that it was quick.”
I resolved not to tell him what Master Hayes’s death had been like. But in my bruised soul, I knew he was right.
While Nikola and Julian worked on the very beginnings of widespread infrastructure for electricity, Ezra and I took on the arduous task of healing the Generators.
It was much more difficult than it had been to fumble my way through repairing Julian’s mind.
I’d had the benefit of knowing Julian, whether he’d wanted to be known or not.
Sifting through a stranger’s shattered mind was like walking blindfolded through a room full of glass sculptures.
But once Ezra became more familiar with the process, he took on more of the strange labor of it, and I stopped passing out every time we succeeded.
The children were the easiest to heal. Their young minds were malleable in a way that felt more like strolling through tender shoots of grass than navigating a twisting, fathomless maze.
After our first successful attempt with one of the adults, we’d learned that all of them had been subjected to the procedure at such an early age that they were more or less children in a world that had gone on without them.
Ezra developed a routine for each reawakening, careful not to overwhelm them.
He’d spend days warming them up to new people and new sensations—to the very notion that they were free, with free will.
By the fourth awakening, I could see the toll it was taking on him.
I decided to enlist help.
Calling on Gertrude was easy, considering she’d taken up residence in the Far Bank only a few blocks away from Nikola.
Several boarding houses had offered rooms to refugees from the House.
Tabitha and Grace, having returned to Sterling City in the aftermath of the House’s fall, were sharing a modest room with her.
Strolling the short way down the winding cobblestone streets of the Far Bank, I passed several memorials to those who had been killed in the massacre at the exposition.
Stopping before each, I read the names written in careful script.
Nothing would bring them back, but I hoped we would honor them with our work.
I refused to admit it, but I also needed the moments of rest. Even with a cane, I walked with an unsteady gait, and the muscles in my thigh seized up and protested. Ezra massaged my leg with herbal oil every night, but he was honest with me—I’d never regain full strength or range of motion.
I was out of breath by the time I made it up to Gertrude’s room. The girls flailed behind Gertrude when she opened the door. They called out my name and peppered me with questions, but she shooed them off and stepped into the hall.
“You look well,” Gertrude said carefully, eyeing the cane. “We all thought you were dying.”
“So I’m told,” I said, uncomfortable with how upset people looked when they said that.
Silence stretched between us for so long that I wondered if I’d been mistaken in thinking Gertrude might be willing to help. I cleared my throat, considering what to say, but before I could speak, she threw her arms around me.
We were both crying by the time she finally let go.
“The Generators,” I began. “Stars, I’ve got to figure out what else to call them.
We’re making progress reversing what the House did to them.
But they’re like children. They need caregiving, teaching.
We’ve been giving them names.” My voice coarsened with emotion.
“They can’t remember what they were called, before … ”
Gertrude scrubbed her eyes with the base of her palm and collected herself. “None of us knew it was that bad.”
“I’m not telling you this to shame you,” I said hurriedly. “I’m telling you because I need your help. I saw the way you were with the little ones. You’re far more patient with children than you are with—”
“You?” she interrupted, smirking faintly.
I grinned. We were both sniffling. What a sight we must make. “Exactly,” I said.
“I’ll help,” Gertrude said. “On one condition.”
It was far more inconvenient to ask Professor Dunn for help.
Not because I didn’t know where she was, but because she’d already gotten herself so embedded in the newly formed Ministry of Progress that I had to book an appointment to talk to her.
Ezra accompanied me there, driving me in Nikola’s snappy little two-wheel chaise.
Surprising no one, Nikola’s horse preferred him to anyone else.
I had no doubt he’d been sneaking it treats.
I was not yet accustomed to being recognized around Sterling City.
Even when I covered my bright red hair with a bonnet, people stared at me.
The papers had identified me as the resistor who had killed Master Hayes in self-defense.
Being called a folk hero made me feel like a fraud.
I’d lost control. That didn’t make me a hero.
Julian and Nikola were the ones who had forged a path for electricity to replace radiance and free the world from the wasting’s merciless grip.
Ezra nudged me, as he often did when he caught me in a morose mood. “Why don’t we drive to the river after your appointment?” he asked. “Almond was just telling me she wants to have a picnic.”
I rolled my eyes, but I couldn’t bite back a smile. “Almond said no such thing.”
“I’ll take that as a yes. Perhaps we can swing by and get Julian.”
“Will he fit?” I asked hopefully, eyeing the bench made for two. As much as Julian thrived while engrossed with his work, I knew he needed time away. Time with us. And I missed him.
“He’ll fit if you sit in my lap,” Ezra said with a wink that made me slap his knee, flustered. The slap startled Almond, and the chaise lunged ahead, making both of us laugh.
For a few minutes, my mind had been at ease. But when we pulled up in front of the House of Order, with its sprawling front steps that reminded me of the House of Industry, I sobered. “I won’t be long,” I told Ezra. “Try not to grow anything while I’m inside.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said, batting his lashes obnoxiously.
The receptionist in the lobby directed me to a cramped basement office with REPRESENTATIVE OLIVE DUNN emblazoned on the door. It had never occurred to me that she had a first name.
“Josephine,” she exclaimed when I entered, rising from her desk and hurrying to clear books off a chair for me. “I was so worried about you.”
“I know, I know,” I said, grateful for the opportunity to rest my leg. “Everyone thought I died.”
“You must be hearing that often,” she said, sitting on the edge of her desk and looking at me as if my red hair had turned blue. I was glad I’d slept through whatever gruesome activities it had taken to keep me from bleeding out. “I’m told Julian Gray has made a full recovery.”
I was hesitant to characterize his ongoing trauma as a full recovery, but I nodded. “That’s what I’m here about, Professor. Gertrude Faircove, you remember her?”
“Of course. Clever girl. We’re prosecuting her former Senior. And please, call me Olive.”
That took me aback for a moment. Despite the Elders’ ongoing trials, I was still getting accustomed to justice that didn’t come from my own hands.
“Oh,” I said, blinking. “Yes. Good. Gertrude is going to help the reawakened Generators recover, and she’s asked for your assistance in teaching them how to use their radiance. ”
Professor Dunn—Olive—took several slow breaths, seeming to absorb what I’d said. “I would be honored,” she said. “But, Josephine, what are you doing?”
“It will take us weeks to heal the remaining Generators,” I said.
She shook her head. “After that.”
After that.
After that was something I’d been avoiding thinking about. I hadn’t asked Ezra about his plans, and I knew that Julian would stay in Sterling City with decades of work ahead of him. Considering anything further than the very next day made me feel anxious, unmoored.
“Let me contextualize the question. I’m proposing a plan for a Magic Guild,” Olive said.
“The House might have fallen, but people like me and you will always have radiance within us. Our power should be regulated, used ethically, nurtured. Children need to be sheltered and taught. I’d even like to include Animators among the ranks, considering I heard some fascinating tales of a boy who brought dead plants back to life the day the House burned. ”
“Interesting,” I said, making a poor attempt at sounding like I didn’t know precisely which reckless, frustrating boy had done exactly that. Who was probably outside right now making hedges sprout flowers.
As if sensing my hesitance to include Ezra in any of this, Olive softened her voice. “What the House did to the Animators was wrong. I will make sure the people know that.”
“One proposal at a time,” I said, hating the way my voice shook. Every little thing rattled me these days. “But a Magic Guild sounds prudent. We can’t close our eyes and pretend that Children of Industry disappeared.”
“I’m glad you understand. I’d like you to consider leading it,” Olive said.
I thought I’d misheard her, and blurted out, “Leading?”
She studied my face. “I sympathize if you’re reluctant after all that the House has done, and done to you. If you need more time to rest …”
“It’s not that.” I swallowed. “I don’t know what I’d be able to contribute. I wasn’t exactly your star pupil.”
“Nonsense. You, more than anyone, know how difficult it is to change the entire foundation of your thinking. We need that perspective. You would be a voice for justice, and empathy.”
I wondered if Gertrude had known what Olive planned on springing on me. It wouldn’t surprise me if they’d colluded. “You’re talking about ethics and regulations to someone who went on a murder spree and inadvertently convinced two little girls to set the House of Industry on fire.”
Olive smiled. “Most people are aware of that. But I would encourage you to share your truth however you feel comfortable.” She held out a very thick binder of papers. “At least read through my proposal and consider it?”
Tired, as I so often was these days, I hummed a noncommittal sound. But I held the binder against my heart, and I carried it home.
And I read every page.