Chapter Forty
“DO THE OTHERS TRULY REALIZE, AS I HAVE, WHAT WE HAVE ACCOMPLISHED HERE? I FEAR THEY CANNOT UNDERSTAND THE TRUE SCOPE OF IT. THERE IS NO PLACE IN OUR WORLD THAT HASN’T BEEN REVOLUTIONIZED BY WHAT WE’VE CREATED.
NAPHTHA IS NOW INEXTRICABLE FROM LIFE. AND WE ARE THE ONES WHO SUPPLY THAT LIFE. IT MAKES ME FEEL AKIN TO A GOD.”
—FROM THE PERSONAL RECORDS OF HORACE J. COOPER
All my life, the Heralds had loomed over every aspect of existence on Trinity. They permeated everything, but it had always been in the way you might think about the sky or the sun. Ever present, but distant, intangible.
But this person—Horace Cooper—is extremely tangible, even as he is perfectly impossible.
He seems made out of gold, hair and skin luminous, and his blue eyes are wide and earnest, crinkled at the corners.
Tall, young-looking, somehow unchanged by a single day since founding the Herald Power Company thousands of years ago.
But maybe that’s what happens when you survive long enough to become a god.
Maybe you’re reborn into some kind of eternal youth.
His expression is a strange mix of sympathy and relief, and my head is too full and spinning to realize how close he’s gotten until he reaches out to touch his fingers to the side of my face, a gesture that’s too intimate, too familiar. It sends a shiver through me, and I pull my head away.
He steps back, folding his hands behind him. “My apologies if I seem overly familiar. You must understand that I feel close to every soul who lives and breathes on Trinity. I watch over them. My Archangels aren’t just my hands—they’re my eyes and ears as well. Everything they see, I see.”
His gaze on me is so steady it could anchor airships, scanning my face like he’s reading it, like every bit of information about my life can be found in my eyebrows, my hairline, the lines of my mouth. I inch back from him a little.
“And what about the souls who die on Trinity?” I ask. “Do you watch over them, too?”
“Of course I do,” he says without hesitation. “Being the Last Herald is an enormous burden and responsibility, one I do not treat lightly.”
“Sounds rough.” I glance around at the original Archangels—the Herald-angels—quiet and dark in their recesses and think of the gaunt, empty faces hidden inside them. “I think the others might have it worse, though.”
He follows my gaze, his lips pressing together. “That is very arguable. I walk the hard path, the path of never-ending, unrecognized labor, while they now get to rest, canonized in immortality. I think many would prefer that fate.”
I point at Gabriel, suspended above me, and despite my best efforts, my hand trembles, just a little. “What are you doing to him?”
Horace raises his eyebrows and looks up, maybe surprised by my question or maybe he’d forgotten he had a human child trapped up there. “Oh, yes. He is simply going through the process all saints do, returning the power you were never meant to have back to Trinity where it belongs.”
I snort. “For his own good, I take it?”
“Absolutely.” He sighs, like I’m an idiotic child.
Which maybe I am to someone like him. “Storm-touched children are a danger to themselves and all those around them if they aren’t dealt with.
I mean … just look at you.” His words cut, sharp enough to draw blood.
“Gifted, but dangerous, yes? A murderer who lost their own sister.”
Halle’s face, incandescent with rage and betrayal. “How many people have you killed? You’ve been doing this for years, so I have to think it’s a lot.”
Self-loathing coats my tongue, too thick to swallow. “One of your Archangels killed Halle.”
He steeples his hands in front of his face, his expression grave and piercing. “But you don’t actually believe that, do you? Not in your heart, where it matters most. You and I both know that you’re the reason why she fell into the Depths.”
I cross my arms over my chest, like maybe that will be enough to keep him from seeing inside me.
“I read Samuel Covenant’s journal. I know what the naphtha did to Trinity.
How many tens of thousands of people died because of it.
Millions, even. How are you any better than me? One killer recognizes another.”
For the first time, annoyance twists his face, and his calm, benevolent demeanor cracks a little at the edges. I don’t know if it’s because I called him a killer or because I compared us like he and I were equals.
“Sacrifice is the nature of transformation and progress. Naphtha revolutionized our world, our industries, making energy easier and more accessible than ever before.” He shakes his head, looking sorrowful.
“What happened out there was very unfortunate, but that was no reason for us to change course. Who’s to even say if it would have helped if we had?
The people needed guidance and order and naphtha, and I was the only one who could give them that.
” He reaches out and puts his hands on my shoulders.
“You are so young, too young to understand the difficult decisions that true leadership calls for. Acceptable losses are just part of the price of living.”
Acceptable losses. Like the dusters getting slowly choked off their water and naphtha rations.
Like Mama and Liza and all the other magdalenas and shop owners, boardinghouse matrons and dock workers turning prophet and drifting away.
Like the children touched by the storms we didn’t make, weighted with power we didn’t ask for.
We are the expendable ones.
He steps right up to me, gripping my chin and jaw in one hand so he can twist my head back and forth, studying me from all angles. “I’ve never had a saint go undetected like you did before. And a duster at that. It’s very strange.”
I smack his hand away, wiping his touch from my face.
He’s unnerving, disorienting, to be around.
He moves about this space with pure confidence and entitlement.
Everything is his. Everything is available for perusal.
No one in the dust functions like this, without any set of boundaries.
The only person I’ve ever met who came close was Bloody Bill, and even he had a line or two he wouldn’t cross.
Something rumbles through the Gate, vibrating the metal underneath my feet. Trinity’s song surges up, loud enough it makes my teeth ache, and a flash of light fills my eyes.
It’s gone half a second later. I blink at my surroundings, at the Herald standing in front of me. The fervent energy around him seems suddenly hungrier.
“You heard it? The song, just now?” I give him the barest nod, and his face twists with pain, with longing.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it? I used to hear it, too, in the beginning.
It made it easier to bear the solitude after the other founders were gone.
” He swallows hard in the way people do when they’re trying to hold back tears, and it somehow makes him look even younger.
“But I stopped being able to hear it. Hundreds of years ago. I can barely remember what it sounds like anymore.”
For a moment, I don’t see a Herald. I just see a man, crushingly lonely, rattling around in a globe at the top of the world forever. I see me, staring at my warped reflection in my blades, giving them names because they felt like all I had left.
Then he whips around and claps his hands together, the sound sudden and loud in the vaulted chamber, and the image shatters. He’s a god again—and me, his wayward child. “Well, then, Valene Bruinn, I suppose we ought to figure out what we’re going to do with you.”
Wariness tenses my muscles, and my hands immediately go to my hilts, slipping Mercy half out of its sheath. “You’re not going to do anything with me.”
Horace freezes with his back to me. “Ah … I would be careful with your threats,” he says, and then waves offhandedly at the twelve Herald-angels around the room.
In an instant, they light up, golden mechanical hearts blazing to life in their metal chests as they step out into the chamber and turn their blank metal masks toward me.
They suddenly look much, much bigger than they did tucked into their recesses.
I go very still, and then, with slow, smooth movements, I sheathe Mercy and hold my hands up in surrender.
Horace turns back to me, smiling again and waving me forward. “There, now. Much better,” he says, and drops into the embellished golden chair behind the desk. “I’m assuming that what brought you here was some form of revenge, correct?”
I keep one eye on the Herald-angels as I move toward the center of the dais. “I wanted to make the Archangels stop coming for me. So that we’d be safe.”
He nods solemnly, his expression drawn and serious.
“Quite understandable, given everything you’ve been through.
On the other hand, you understand my predicament in having a saint loose in the world, wielding power that risks real harm.
The other saints, when I explained the situation to them, were fully willing to feed their power back into Trinity, regardless of the cost to themselves. ”
“The other saints were children,” I snap.
“You’re all children as far as I’m concerned.
” Horace shakes his head. “You cannot tell me that your power hasn’t been changing?
Growing?” I tighten my jaw because I don’t want to give him an answer to that—I don’t want to give him anything at all—but he doesn’t need me to.
He makes a little hmph of satisfaction and sits back in his seat.
“I see the truth in your eyes, and I am telling you now, Valene Bruinn, that is how it starts. The song gets louder, your storm-touched abilities get stronger and easier, you start to be able to do things you never could before … But it does not end well. It ends in you becoming the instrument of destruction for everyone you love.”
He folds his hands in front of himself again, drawing up to his full height so that he’s looking down his nose at me even though he’s still seated. “You understand that I do not want to force you and I do not want to fight you. But I will if I must. The good of the world is my greatest priority.”
I throw back my head at that and laugh, loud and harsh, waving an arm wide, gesturing at all of Trinity.
At the Copper Plains and the mirage towns, the dusters and the skyliners.
A whole world transmuted by greed—broken, unjust, harsh, but also sometimes excruciatingly beautiful, just when you think you might completely give up.
“The good of the world. Yeah, it looks great out there. You did a bang-up job of it. Really keeping us little people in mind.”
Horace contemplates me for a long moment, the lines of his face tight with disapproval.
“Like I said, you are a child, so I cannot expect you to fully grasp the value of what I’m providing here.
The insight and wisdom that only comes with age and the level of success I have achieved.
But I do believe I have another way of convincing you to be reasonable. ”
He touches something on the underside of the desk in front of him, and on the other end of the chamber, a crystalline pad activates, opening a seam in the wall that splits, revealing a small antechamber beyond.
And sitting in the middle of it, her arms wrapped tight around her knees, her dark hair spilling wild all over her shoulders, is Halle.