Chapter 5
I dump Tarik’s hand down a scarcely used, predesignated rubbish chute, waiting with my head pushed through the hole until I hear a whistle from another member of Fíur du Ath deep in the Undercity. Confirmation the package was caught. That the others will now work to free the younglings.
Being an Elding Blade, I kill. Nothing more. I certainly don’t rescue — that task left to others not so comfortable getting bloody. But part of me almost … yearns to this time.
This mission has been so personal to me. A large-scale passion project I fought hard to have approved. One that tunneled the Ath’s resources away from our regular missions that focus on implicating The Crown.
I turn, lean against the wall, close my eyes, and smile, a pleasant warmth spreading through my chest as I imagine the light igniting in those younglings’ eyes when they realize they’re free. Truly free—in a way I doubt I’ll ever fully understand.
Make yourself indispensable and folk dig their claws in. Doesn’t matter if they’re good or bad or somewhere in the middle. If there’s anything I’ve learned from this life, it’s that.
Still …
I hope those younglings like it at The Flourish. I’ve never been to the underground safe haven ruled by the Elding, and though I’ve heard it’s somewhere in the south, I don’t think I’ll ever know for certain.
See it with my own two eyes.
That would be considered retirement, and I doubt the leader of the Fíur du Ath has any interest in relinquishing my usefulness, instead plying me with placating missions I’ll happily accept. Especially ones that end like this, filling me with this warm feeling of momentary contentment. Like I’ve just scrubbed one of the many stains from this big, beautiful world I so desperately want to love.
Besides, I’m not so sure retirement would suit me. Not the sort that would undoubtedly come with a one-way trip to The Flourish. I think my fingers would get itchy.
There’s too much trash to take out.
I step out onto one of the perilous skybridges that stretches between both halves of the wall—the silent city so far beneath me. At thirty-three levels up, this one is the highest, never used by others and crusted in layers of snow that crunch beneath my boots.
Reaching the middle, I lie on my back—as close to the clouds as I can get—letting the cold sink through my gown. Into my flesh and bones.
Deeper.
My eyelids flutter shut.
Fat flakes of snow patter upon my face and the lax scoops of my hands, and I focus on each icy point of contact, loosening the muscles beneath, releasing some of the tension I’d collected throughout the slumber.
Picturing myself as a dragon, wings outstretched, I tip and churn through the puffy pink clouds, so far above the world that all I hear is my heartbeat and the heavy thump of my imaginary wings. All I feel is the flexing strength of my body. Untethered.
Free.
An icy calm settles within me like a nesting beast, and I wiggle my toes, my fingers, slowly bringing myself back to reality.
Opening my eyes, I look through a gap in the clouds to the moon of a perished Moltenmaw resting above the city. Perhaps the biggest one I’ve seen—bound in a tight ball, head tucked beneath its wing, its stony plumage brushed in shades of purple, pink, and blue.
I stare at it, recalling the time Ruse mentioned the sad story about how that dragon got there, not that I probed for details. In fact, I think I turned around and walked straight from her store without looking back.
Sadness is like stones that stack inside you, making it harder to move. Ignorance is my self-preservation tonic, and I’ll swear by it until I die.
Sometimes, however, when I’m lying on what feels like the top of the world with a sleeping city beneath me, I wonder if that moon is ever tempted to fall. To crush Gore in a strike of spite for whatever caused it to soar up there and perch atop The Fade’s decorated capital like a lingering threat.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe every last wisp of a dragon’s cognizance dissolves the moment they solidify, and they don’t decide to fall at all. Maybe something else rips them from the sky.
And maybe that dragon didn’t consider much of anything when it decided to curl up there. Maybe it wasn’t fueled by thoughts of revenge, as I like to believe it was.
Maybe it was just a convenient spot to die.
Gaze still cast on the moon, I wiggle my hand into my pocket, retrieving the parchment lark I received at the Hungry Hollow and lifting it above my face, unfolding its wings, beak, and body until I’m left with a crimped square scrawled in Essi’s handwriting.
I hope you got your hand, since I know you won’t read this until after you’re done. Which is anxiety-inducing, just so we’re clear. What if I desperately need a stick of porthonium to prevent the world from crumbling and you’re too busy carving words into somebody’s chest to unfold my lark still stuffed in your pocket? Think of the world, Raeve. And the hyperfixation I’m currently nursing.
Anyway, here’s a very important list I’m sending because I know how you feel about me going to the Undercity alone. Patience is my biggest and most impressive virtue.
I snort-laugh.
Essi has the patience of a waif hungry for a soul to sink its teeth into, and not a pinch more. But good for her thinking otherwise. Enthusiasm suits her.
· A hand-sized lump of iron
(so I can make more pins for your boot)
· Three shaves of Sabersythe tusk
(ideally from a mature beast well past their tenth shed)
· A 0.0112 etching stick reinforced enough to scour diamond
(just hand this list to Ruse because this probably makes no sense)
“Wise beyond your lifespan,” I say, gaze skimming farther down her list.
· A jar of fluffy sowmoth powder. Or if there’s none in stock, can you catch me one? Please? I’ll collect the powder myself, then set it free. Promise.
I cringe, remembering the last time I leapt around the Ditch, armed with a glass jar and a holey lid.
A full-body shudder almost rattles me to the core.
I’ll never forget the way the sowmoth squeaked. I didn’t even know they could squeak.
“Catch your own damn sowmoth,” I mutter, knowing damn well I’ll catch her a bloody sowmoth if the bloody store has no jars of bloody powder.
My eyes narrow on the last request half concealed by a blotch of Tarik Relaken’s blood.
· And lastly, please go to the Undercity and
— SPLAT —
It’s very, very, very important.
Course it is.
I sigh, trying to scratch off the blood despite knowing full well it’s not going to work.
According to Essi, there are many important things to be found in the filthy, rotten Undercity. Which makes sense for somebody whose world once revolved around the deep, craggy cleft in the ground beneath the wall.
My mind tunnels back to the moment I found her dashing from the miners’ muck hall with a stolen lump of stale bread in her filthy hands, undernourished, dressed in rags, hair shorn because she’d learned that males get heckled less than the females down there.
She’d told me she was born in an abandoned shaft, and that her parents set off for a shift in the mines and failed to return—long ago. That she’d never seen the sky. Didn’t know what the aurora was, or that we wake and sleep in rhythm with its rise and fall.
I was still covered in the blood of a supervisor I’d caught doing terrible things to a miner when I took Essi to meet the sky, then promised to keep her safe. Harder than it sounds when everything she needs seems to come from the fucking Undercity. Contrary to her boast, she’s rarely patient enough to send me a supply list.
Frowning at the flattened lark, I try to scratch the blood off again—unsuccessfully—then pocket it and set my sight on the moon, hands clasped over my waist.
Even if I did know what’s scrawled beneath the splat of blood, I’m supposed to be keeping my distance until I get word the younglings from Tarik’s cells are out of Gore. I can, however, fetch Essi everything else if I stay out past the rise. Best I don’t head straight home anyway, considering I chose not to eliminate the nice-smelling, mysterious loose end who may or may not believe I killed Tarik Relaken.
Creators.
Why did I do that?
I usually cut first, don’t think later. I much prefer myself that way. Now I have to spend a small eternity checking over my shoulder, making sure the decision doesn’t swing around and bite me in the ass.