Chapter Twenty-Three
“FOR THE POWER OF A SAINT IS NOT TRULY THEIRS, BUT THE HERALDS’. IT IS NOT MEANT TO BE HELD NOR UNDERSTOOD BY MORTAL HANDS. AND IF NOT RETURNED TO THE HERALDS, A SAINT’S POWER WILL GROW AND BECOME CORRUPTED. A CANCER TO THE SAINT AND TO EVERYONE AROUND THEM.”
Once again, everything around me is light.
Once again, I feel it filling me up, streaming out of my eyes and my mouth and my skin. Just like it had out on the Copper Plains. It lances into the night sky, cutting through the carpet of skyliner airships and homesteads to get at the stars beyond.
I stare and stare at the impossible, brilliant color of it.
The more I look, the more I think I see other hues mixed in with the blue-white—light purples, pale greens, soft pinks, gentle golds.
Like all the colors of lightning in a magnastorm.
But richer somehow. Purer. Brighter, even, than it was before.
I reach out a hand and almost feel a give to the air, as if this light is real and tangible.
Where are your wings, Valene? The voice sounds like me but also isn’t me. Why can’t you fly?
And then it’s gone. As suddenly as it came, it sputters and goes out, sinking back into the Crater, and complete darkness drops over us, so thick my skin crawls with the weight of it, with how close it presses against my body.
It’s more than just the absence of the flare; it’s a lack of light in general.
The few naphtha lamps in here have been snuffed out, and outside …
I blink hard, willing my eyes to adjust, trying to make out the haphazard shapes of the Shipyards on the other side of the window.
The streets have all dropped into absolute silence, even the chapel bells have gone quiet, and there are no lights anywhere.
No signs of power. Like all the naphtha to this parish has been cut.
Someone nearby shouts. Another person screams. I spot people pointing up, and I follow their gazes.
My heart plummets into my stomach.
Skyliner ships are falling out of the sky.
I drop to the floor as a small luxury airship smashes down into the building next door, the sound of rending metal shattering the air and blasting out the glass panes of the windows above me.
Kelda screams, and I scramble over to her and Halle, throwing my body over theirs as a shower of rust and tiny shards fall from the ceiling.
What in every version of hell is happening? Shock ricochets through my bones. The other flares had been strange, alarming even. They had pulled at me in inexplicable ways. But they hadn’t done anything close to this.
Behind us, the door to the warehouse slams open, and Orion and Dani duck through, jogging across the space toward us. I see the relief hit Orion’s face as he spots Halle and Kelda crouched beside me.
“What happened?” he asks me as they reach us. “Where did you go? We tried to find you, but you disappeared.”
“He tried to find you,” Dani corrects. “I was too busy being greedy and untrustworthy.”
“We heard the bells.” Orion plows ahead, ignoring her. “Are they for you? Did someone see you?”
I flick a glance at the rucksacks he and Dani are carrying, no doubt stuffed with cash and records and that blasted Aaldenberg knot, and I turn pointedly away. I’m not going to dignify his questions with answers.
“Orion!” Kelda cries and wriggles free of Halle’s tight hold only to fling herself onto him instead. “I’ve missed you!”
He hugs her back with his one free arm. “Missed you, too, Baby Bruinn.”
She pulls back a bit and slugs him in the shoulder. “I am not a baby.”
“Not anymore you’re not,” he says, and the look on his face is soft and wistful. I suddenly realize that he hasn’t seen her since that night, when she was eight years old, and she has changed so much since then. Hell, sometimes I feel like she changes drastically between bedtime and morning.
“Yes, great, love the heartfelt reunion,” Dani snaps. “But we need to get out of here right now. Everything is falling to pieces out there.”
I get Halle onto her feet and make for the door, but I have no idea where we can even go, where we’ll be safe right now, with every little drift ship, junk tow, and airship that had the misfortune of being in the air over the Crater plummeting downward.
I crane my head up as we step out into the street.
Fire and smoke bleed across the sky. Pockets of the parish are already burning, and airships are still falling—no power, no naphtha engines, nothing keeping them above the skyline anymore.
“Holy shit,” Dani breathes, so close behind me that her breath brushes my ear.
I follow her gaze just in time to see a fancy hover island and two luxury liners tumble downward, right into the Crater, where they’re swallowed up by the darkness.
An old warehouse several blocks away from us crumbles into ash as an airship slams into it.
The air is filled with parachute pods, stuffed with skyliners, floating toward the relative safety of the surface.
All around us is noise and confusion. The panicked shouts of people, the hiss and roar of fire and smoke, the distant wails of steam teams. Everything is shrouded in filmy gray clouds, like a thin veil, so it’s almost impossible to see much farther than a dozen or so feet in front of us.
All I can make out are dark figures darting back and forth.
“Did you have any kind of getaway plan?” Dani asks.
“Walking is a plan.” Orion catches her incredulous expression and scowls, waving at the rising chaos all around us. “It’s not exactly like I expected this!”
Dani sighs. “Okay, move fast and stay right on my heels.”
I glare at her. “On your heels? Who said you were coming with us? Pretty sure I made it clear that you and I were done once my sisters were safe.”
“You call this safe?” She gestures to the chaos and then smirks when I have no real response. “Unless someone else in this little group knows every inch of the Shipyards as well as I do, you’re stuck with me, Valene Bruinn. Try to keep up.”
Dani takes off into the streets, Orion close behind her with Kelda on his back since she has the shortest legs.
Halle is with him, one hand on Kelda’s ankle—for her comfort or for Kelda’s or maybe both.
I bring up the rear, goggles back on so I can see a little better through the smoke; the air is thick with it, glowing a soft orange from all the fires.
Dani leads us on a winding path through crooked passages, down alleys that barely count as alleys, her footsteps steady and sure on these Shipyard roads.
Other paths are clogged with people fleeing wreckage and flames, but we flow past and around them on our hidden trails.
Halfway across the parish, I spot a flicker in the corner of my vision: a warden in a white longcoat and hat, aiming their golden pistol in our direction.
I’m gone in an instant and back seconds later, wiping Wrath’s blade on the leg of my pants and sheathing it without even breaking stride. Without having to time my breath or search for a drink of water. Fluid. Effortless.
Just like it had been at the Old Clock Tower, after that other flare had wrapped itself around me on the Copper Plains. That tingling that lingers on my skin and the sensation that I can phase much farther, much faster than I ever have before.
By the time we reach the edge of the Shipyards, the sky has gone quiet.
Any ship caught in that flare has either crashed to the ground or disappeared into the yawning mouth of the Crater.
Little drifts of smoke follow us, the wails of steam teams growing distant and muffled, the buildings and boardinghouses here all lit up with naphtha lanterns.
The outage apparently hasn’t spread beyond the Shipyards.
Orion drops Kelda back onto the ground but holds her hand as we work our way through the chaotic stream of people going in all directions, Dani still in the lead.
Halle stumbles, coughing a little from the smoke, and I put out a hand to steady her.
She shoots me a hard, hurt look over her shoulder, but she doesn’t shrug me off.
That’s something, I guess.
Orion stops suddenly, frowning through the haze. “Atlas!”
On the far side of the street, the older Booker brother whips around at the sound of Orion’s voice and crosses to us in three long strides.
He pulls Orion into a tight hug, exhaling with relief.
“We saw that light in the sky and then all the smoke and fire and I thought…” Atlas steps back, holding his brother at arm’s length to look him over. “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”
“We’re fine,” Orion says, patting his arm. “But we need to get out of town fast. As in, right now, if at all possible.”
Atlas cuts his eyes over to me, and all the tension snaps back into his face.
There’s an accusation in his gaze. Like, I knew you would make everything worse.
I knew you would put him in danger. It’s the same look and the same thoughts I had three years ago, when I cut Orion out of my life because I thought that Orion’s ideas and decisions would get my sisters killed.
He’s worried I may do that to his little brother.
And he’s right. I might.
“I can get me and my sisters out,” I tell him quietly. “Don’t worry about us.”
Atlas hums in the back of his throat, his gaze straying to Halle just behind me and Kelda next to her, dried tear tracks in her dusty, round face.
“It’s too risky,” he says finally, then adds with heavy emphasis, “for them.” Just so I don’t get any ideas about him worrying about my well-being, I guess.
He claps Orion on the shoulder. “Liren and I will grab mounts and meet you behind the dram shop in ten minutes. Keep your heads down and watch your asses.”
Then he jogs off in one direction, and we start off in another, taking a winding way to the meetup. Partly to throw off anyone who might be following, but mostly because we’re so tired and disoriented that I’m pretty sure Dani and Orion get mixed up about where we are once or twice.
By the time we make it to the abandoned side street behind the dram shop, nearly all of us are dead on our feet.
Atlas and Liren are already waiting, each of them on one of the mounts that I recognize from our prison train rescue, with two other similar mounts, sleek and silver and glowing, on leads.
Orion and Dani swing onto the free mounts, and I’m about to object again, point out that we’re clear now so there’s no need for Dani to stick around.
But before I can open my mouth, Atlas’s voice cuts in.
“You’re missing one, aren’t you?” he asks me with a raised eyebrow.
I look around; Halle isn’t with us. She’s back out on the street, staring at something with a sad, distant expression.
I jog back over to her, taking her gently by the arm. “Hey, what are you doing? We’ve got to get going.”
“Look,” she murmurs. “There you are.”
I follow her gaze to the dailies, blaring bright on the corner of the intersection.
It’s footage of me. Flickering like a dark ghost across that rooftop. A storm-touched duster, cutting people down.
And over it all, the loud, triumphant voice of the announcer:
A NEW SAINT HAS BEEN FOUND.