Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
Cáel isolates the tracking spell, but the link to the network is another matter—too deep, too old and too tightly woven into whatever I am now.
We cannot sever it.
Not yet.
At the warehouse doors, Vivian goes very still as we brief her. She listens without interrupting, and when we finish, she says, “We need a Thread specialist.”
“Thea,” Cáel suggests.
“She’s outside the city, though,” I say.
They exchange a glance.
“Isn’t she?”
“She isn’t,” Vivian admits, twisting her hands together.
I stare at them both. “Where are they?”
“In the city.”
“Why are they still here?”
“Because I’m here,” Vivian replies. “She won’t leave while I stay, and I won’t leave while you’re in the thick of this. So here we are.”
She reads my expression. “She has a full team of Cáel’s people.”
“And Mina.”
“Mina is probably the most competent one there.” Vivian almost smiles. “We can move to a secondary location. Thea and Mina will meet us. No communication needed; it’s all prearranged.”
Thea and Mina are somewhere in this awful city, on their way to a secondary location with a group of strangers.
What could possibly go wrong?
I rub my face.
We pile into the car. I head towards the driver’s door because I know these streets best, but Vivian waves me into the passenger seat and takes the wheel herself.
“No one will notice one more car,” she says.
The moment we pull away, I understand.
The dark streets are extraordinarily busy. Every vehicle in the Districts seems to be on the road. As soon as the government presence eased, people began moving.
Cars clog the junctions. Vans crawl past with possessions tied to their roofs. Families hurry along the poorly lit pavements carrying bags, bundled children and whatever else they can manage.
I glance back. Cáel watches the chaos with a careful, unreadable expression.
“You really did this?”
“My press secretary helped.”
He has a press secretary.
“All of this in a few hours?” I look at him. “Our government has had decades. You’ve had an afternoon.”
He says nothing. His gaze follows the crowds beyond the glass.
Vivian darts down a side street to avoid a cordon. I call the turns—right, then left—threading us towards a roadblock. The guards notice the diplomatic plates and wave us through.
“Can we swing by the Iron District before we meet Thea?” I ask. “Do we have time?”
I do not know how long the anchor has left, and my instincts are screaming at me to fix the botched repair.
“Yes,” Cáel replies.
He lifts his encrypted device, speaks quietly into it and sets it down two minutes later.
“I’ve arranged for a team to meet us there.”
I nod. “Thank you.”
I am growing accustomed to having backup.
To having him.
Yet I see more of Cáel now: not only the man who holds my hand and heals with quiet magic, but the governor who issues orders that are obeyed even in a country not his own.
I distrust power on principle.
But he wants nothing from this city except to help it.
I remind myself of that and keep my attention on the road.
We still haven’t untangled how they fit together: whether my parents stand above Preston, whether he acts alone, or whether it is some long-running partnership. Sooner or later, we shall have to ask him.
By the end of this, we may be looking at an entirely new government.
Such a shame.
Not that I am volunteering. It is well beyond my pay grade.
We pass the track worker’s cottage. It is locked, with several belongings abandoned along the path as though the owners left in a hurry.
Ahead, under the beam of the headlights, two large cordon signs read NO ENTRY. Cáel and I climb out and move them just far enough apart for Vivian to edge the car through. Then we drag them back into place.
“I can feel the network,” I say as I get back in.
I sensed it before we stopped: pressure sitting wrong against my skin.
I glance at Cáel. Goosebumps rise along his forearm.
“Can you feel that?”
“I can,” he says.
“I can too.” Vivian rubs both arms. “This is horrible. Is this what you normally feel around anchors?”
The fact that they can sense it at all, when they could not before, chills me.
“This one is particularly bad,” I murmur.
Almost as bad as the Ink District felt before it exploded.
Vivian accelerates along the newly smoothed road.
We park well back, far enough away to run if necessary. Cáel mentions a mobile ward he can raise as a shield.
I do not point out that no ward will stop a flying railway girder if the anchor fails.
Some thoughts are best kept to oneself.
Cáel’s team arrives in a military transporter, its engine growling along the deserted road. Five disembark. The driver swings the vehicle around and leaves it running.
Good. Trained backup, and a way out.
“Sir,” the nearest of them says, his breath misting in the cold.
“Elenora Morris,” Cáel says in introduction. “We are on a clock.”
“Elmo,” I correct, and do not stop walking. “Lights inside, please. Everything you have.”
Two of them go past me at a jog, carrying floodlights and battery packs.
Above us the sky is black and clear and thick with stars, enormous and far too beautiful for any of this, and I have no time for it.
Vivian falls into step at my shoulder.
“Wait outside,” I tell her.
“Should you?”
“I can see what I’m doing. I’m the only one who can.”
“We can all see the repair lines, Elmo.”
“Not the network’s runes. Not the ones that matter.” Ahead of us the doors groan open and cold white light spills across the concrete, bright enough to show every crack in the floor and every inch of chalk. “You have a wife somewhere in this city who loves you.”
“And you have a sister,” she says. “Funny, that.”
It costs me half a step, which she knows perfectly well.
“I can’t work if I’m worried about you. Please, Vivian.”
She holds my gaze while we walk, then gives one short, sharp nod. “All right.” She leans in, bringing the scent of clean soap and tea, and kisses my cheek. “I love you.”
“I love you too. Now go.”
She peels away with one of Cáel’s people.
Two others haul an industrial buffer and containers of cleaning supplies out of the transporter behind us.
“Battery-powered?” I call back.
“Yes.”
Good. No cables to trip over, and no live power inside a condemned building.
I would rather see exactly what is trying to kill us.
The chain from our last visit still lies where the goons dropped it. Loose concrete crunches beneath our boots as we go in through the front doors, into the light.