Chapter Thirty-Two
“THE GATE OF HEAVEN IS NOT FOR MORTAL EYES OR MINDS. IT IS BEYOND OUR COMPREHENSION, AND WE ARE ONLY PREPARED TO EXPERIENCE IT IN DEATH, AFTER HAVING SPENT OUR LIVES IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE HERALDS’ LAW. TO LOOK UPON IT BEFORE THEN WOULD BE TO ENDANGER OUR VERY SOULS.”
The blue of the sky is starting to darken again into a brilliant red-orange sunset when we reach a cluster of rundown shacks and small buildings, rusted and weathered by wind and dust, slouched together a few steps away from another rift of the Elysian Depths, although the span between the two alloy continents is narrower here.
Maybe half a mile across at most, and there’s a rough metal bridge arcing across it.
More than anything, the place looks like it serves as an intersection; water and naphtha aqueducts meet in a knotted cluster and shoot off in several different directions.
Liren pulls the carriage to a stop in front of a sloping shack with a little sign hanging from the eaves of the front porch that reads THE LAST OUTPOST. It squeaks in an unsettling rhythm as it swings in the breeze.
The carriage’s automaton mounts go dark as Liren places their hand against the crystalline pad, and my bones practically creak as I clamber out, stiff from disuse and the cramped quarters of the carriage.
My skin feels sticky all over from dried sweat, and my lips are so cracked, my mouth so parched that I’d be tempted to stab my knives into one of those water aqueducts just to get at the liquid inside if I thought I’d actually be able to puncture them.
Trinity’s song curls around me, clear and welcoming after all the hours in the carriage, tugging my gaze northward out across the Plains.
A pall of silvery clouds hangs in the air, maybe ten or so miles away, and the air all around it crackles with lightning, arcing downward in vibrant blues and yellows and pinks.
A stagnant magnastorm, just hanging there above what looks like empty alloy.
But the song says otherwise. It’s ringing in my ears at a fever pitch, and I know with certainty that the Gate is nearby.
Orion comes up behind me and touches my elbow. “Val? You okay?”
“We’re close.” My hands tighten into fists at my sides.
“Hold up, don’t go getting any ideas.” Orion takes me by the arm, pulling me toward the shop. “We’ve been driving for two days. We all need to rest for a hot second and maybe eat something.”
I don’t want to rest. I want this over with.
I want to claw my way into the Gate and shred whoever or whatever sits at the heart of it to pieces, and it feels ridiculous to delay another second.
But my empty stomach growls loudly and exhaustion tips the world around me, making me lightheaded, so I reluctantly let him lead me toward the door.
It’ll be easier to make my move after nightfall anyway. When everyone is deep asleep, so they won’t be able to interfere with what I know I have to do.
The interior of the shack is just as neglected as the outside, with a counter in the middle of the room and shelves full of dust-covered jars and wares behind that. If anyone lived or worked here, it obviously hasn’t been occupied for a long time.
Atlas and Liren start unpacking their rucksacks, clearing away space and laying out bedrolls on the floor.
Kelda climbs up on the back counter and starts looking through the jars of preserves and packets of dense hardtack crackers on the shop shelves, holding each one out to Ember to sniff and give the okay before she hands it down to Dani.
I stand at the grimy front window, my eyes fixed on the thick, shadowy line of the Depths.
A little shiver trickles down my spine. I can hear the hum of Trinity’s song reaching up to me from the alloy.
It sings in my bones, soft but insistent, digging at me, and for a second, I think I see a flash of blue-white light on the horizon.
“Hey.” Orion tugs at my elbow again, pulling me away from the glass. “Kelda found hardtack. Take a load off for a minute and try this”—he shakes one of the packets of hardtack in my face—“Sweet Cracker Tack Delight.”
I snort, rolling my eyes, but I also pluck the packet out of his fingers and slide down onto the floor, settling myself beside Kelda, who’s feeding little bits of hardtack to Ember, and Dani, who’s squeezing a small ration of water from the canteen into her mouth.
Orion kneels in front of me, rooting around in his rucksack.
“Good. You managed that without hurting yourself. How about we check those injuries next?”
I scowl at him. “Not me. I’m—”
“—fine, yes, I got that part.” Orion waggles his eyebrows at Dani. “You want to go first, Morales?”
She winks at him. “I don’t have any injuries, slick, but if you feel like poking at me just for fun…”
Kelda squawks, clapping her hands over Ember’s pointed little ears. “Gross! There are children present!”
Orion laughs, rich and deep, and something about that exchange—the ease, the friendliness—lights a warm little spark underneath my ribs. Reassures me that they’ll be okay, all of them. They’ll have one another to lean on if somehow I don’t come back from this.
“Okay, just you then, V.” He flicks me on the arm as I start to protest. “Don’t say it. I know for a fact you’ve got an injury or two, so let me see.”
Scowling, I ease my vest from my shoulders and take off my belt. Orion works with gentle fingers to pull the edge of my shirt up.
“Liren’s patch jobs on these stab wounds are still holding up.” He pokes and prods at them, and I grit my teeth. “Pretty impressive considering you haven’t exactly been taking it easy.”
I hiss as his fingertips find the bruises along my rib cage from where the Archangel’s metal hand had squeezed me. “I’ll take it easy when this is all finished.”
“You can’t sell me lies like that, Valene Bruinn. I know your secrets. Kel, can you help me out here?”
Kelda brushes crumbs off her hands and grabs the little sack Orion gestured to, dumping a handful of medical supplies on the floor.
One by one, she hands him the items he asks for while he cleans the wounds and changes the bandages and reminds me over and over to sit tight and stop grumbling.
He spreads a salve over the multicolored bruises, his warm hands moving over my bare skin in smooth, gentle strokes.
“There,” he says finally. “That should last you awhile longer.”
I roll my shirt back down, moving my torso around gently, feeling the motion of it, the only minor twinge of pain.
I open my mouth to thank him, but he’s already grinning at me knowingly.
So I shoot him a look and sit back against the wall, snatching up the hardtack and biting off a stale hunk of it angrily.
Kelda giggles, and I loop an arm around her in a loose, playful headlock, poking her in the rib cage where I know she’s the most ticklish.
“Watch yourself, smalls. I’m still bigger than you.”
She squirms free, swatting my arm away. “For now.”
A shudder ripples through me. Through the floor and the walls of the shack. I go still, listening for … Nothing. I hear nothing outside. Not a single gust of air. Not the creaking of that sign swaying in the breeze.
Everything is still.
I don’t even realize I’m phasing until I’m suddenly outside, standing in front of the abandoned shop, my face pointed north toward that churning storm. All the world around me feels frozen, suspended.
When the light flares up from the black slash of the Depths, I open my arms, welcoming it and how it washes over me like cool water down a parched throat.
Valene …
I close my eyes and see wings, burned like afterimages into my vision. I see rain pouring from the sky, so vivid I can almost feel the drops on my skin.
A moment later, the light stutters and then dies away, sinking below the alloy once more. Wind cuts down the street, ruffling my cropped hair.
“Val?”
I open my eyes and turn to see all of them—Kelda, Orion, Dani, Atlas, Liren—watching me from the steps of the porch.
“Val,” Kelda says again. “Where are you going?”
They wait, their gazes heavy on my skin.
Wanting some kind of explanation or response.
But I don’t know what to tell them, how to explain the shape and heft of everything I’m feeling and hearing and seeing.
The song and the light and the voice that might be coming from inside Trinity or might be coming from inside me.
This unmaking season keeps spooling out in all directions, but there’s a piece at the center of all the threads that I’m still missing.
But I don’t have the words for any of that. So I just shake my head and tell them, “I honestly don’t know.”
I go inside, lie down, turn my shoulder to them, and let exhaustion pull me into sleep.
I wake in the dead of night, clearheaded despite the anxiety and guilt churning in my gut.
With painstaking slowness, I gather my belt, my knives, my goggles and mask, my gloves and my half-empty canteen, so careful not to make a sound.
My eyes stray to Kelda, dead asleep in the bedroll next to me, and for a moment, I hesitate, trying to memorize everything about her.
The shape of her face, how tall she’s gotten, the little starbursts of freckles along her cheekbones.
Be good, smalls. I’ll be back as soon as I can.
And then I phase silently out of the shack, onto the slanted front porch.
The night sky is clouded and impossibly dark, the flash and rumble of the magnastorms off to the north calling to me.
“So no goodbye, then?”
I jump at Atlas’s voice, spinning to see him standing at the edge of the porch, leaning against the corner post. I was so focused on what I was doing that I hadn’t even noticed him there.
“You don’t look surprised.”
“I’m not.” He smiles a little, just enough to curl at the corners of his mouth. “They aren’t, either.”
He jerks his head over his shoulder, toward two figures standing on the north edge of town, waiting for me.
It’s too dark to make out their faces, but I don’t need to.
I know who they are. I should’ve guessed that this was never going to be as easy as I thought.
I was prepared to do this alone, but seeing them now, all I can feel is relief.
“Am I that predictable?”
Atlas chuckles dryly. “To me? No. But those two had you figured out before I think you even knew for sure what you were going to do.”
I glance back over my shoulder at the dark, quiet little shack. “I told Kelda I wouldn’t leave her behind. She’s not going to understand.”
“No, she’s not,” he says, and I appreciate that there’s no softness in his reply. It’s a hard answer delivered with the harshness it deserves. “But she won’t be alone. Liren and I will take care of her.”
I nod, swallowing the ache in the back of my throat. “Thank you.”
His eyes shine darker and deeper than the night, and for a moment, I think that might be all that passes between us. He has no reason to give me anything more. Even after all the help he’s offered us and his kindness to me back on that roof, I was still the harbinger of trouble he thought I’d be.
But just as I’m about to walk away, he puts his hands on my shoulders and bends down to touch his forehead to mine.
“Remember there’s divinity in all of us, Valene Bruinn,” he says. “Even you.”
I can’t find the words to respond to that; they all get clogged in my chest. So I just nod again and step off the porch, strapping on my knives and hooking my canteen on to my belt as I go.
Dani and Orion are talking to each other in quiet murmurs, but their conversation drops off abruptly as I get close.
They both have rucksacks tied tight and strapped to their backs, but not me.
I don’t want to be weighed down by anything extra.
Whatever happens out there, I’m facing it as is.
No more running from what I am. No more secrets that hang on me like weights. It’s time to settle this, once and for all.
I scan their faces, the dim silvery luminescence from the moons casting deep black shadows into the hollows of their eyes and their cheeks. “Both of you should head back inside. This is not your fight.”
Orion huffs, looking offended. “Now that is a hell of a thing to say to us. After everything we just went through together.”
“Speak for yourself,” says Dani. She studies her nails, sounding bored. “I’m only here because I bet Booker a hundred cash that we’re going to get all the way up there and find nothing.”
“I can’t…” I meet Orion’s gaze, but the rest of the words won’t come out. I can’t let you break yourself trying to save me.
“It’s not just about you, V,” he says gently. Then he straightens, tightening one of the straps on his rucksack. “Now are we gonna waste more time? Or are we gonna start moving?”
He turns and walks off, heading out into the Plains. Dani gives me a wry, half-hearted smile and then starts after him, jogging to catch up with his long strides.
I stare at their backs, knowing I should object harder, that where I’m going is too dangerous. I should be doing this alone, like I always do.
But look where going it alone got me. Maybe that was the problem all along.
In one phase, I catch up to them, and together, Dani, Orion, and I set off for the Gate of Heaven, just as the second moon clears the horizon.