CHAPTER 83 ROHAN
ROHAN
River water hits the dock. The boy can hear it, but he can’t see it—not the water, not the dock.
He can’t see anything. The woman holds him close, hums a quiet, soothing song, and in that song, he hears what she is not saying, words she has said before: Don’t cry, don’t cry.
Whatever you do, my beautiful boy, don’t cry.
The boy knows: This is her punishment as much as his.
Rohan had always been able to wake himself up—always. But this time was different. Half-conscious, sluggish, drugged, he couldn’t pull himself all the way out. He couldn’t make it stop.
“Give him to me.”
“Please.” The memory of the woman begging tore into Rohan like teeth. It washed over him like dark water, until there was nothing except the memory.
“We both know you’re going to give him to me eventually, and if you fight me on it, if you disobey me again, it’s going to be so much worse when you do.”
The woman touches her lips to the top of the boy’s head, then she hands him to the man.
“Maybe I should let him drown this time.”
The woman doesn’t argue. She doesn’t even hum.
“Choose a stone, woman.”
As small as the boy is, he knows: She’s going to do it. The boy doesn’t know what the man is planning to do with it, not at first—
And then the man shows him the twine. The woman’s hands are shaking too hard to tie the rock to Rohan’s ankle, so the man does the job himself, and then he tells the woman to choose another stone, a bigger stone, for the boy’s other ankle, and when she shakes her head, the man backhands her, turns on the boy, and makes him choose.
“This time,” the man says, “you’ll sink all the way down.”
No, a voice roars inside the boy, but he knows that if he fights, the man will hurt the woman worse—the woman who is soft and warm, the woman who kissed his head and gave him to the man.
Don’t cry, don’t cry. Whatever you do, my beautiful boy, don’t cry.
The boy doesn’t. He doesn’t cry, and he doesn’t choose a rock. He chooses two: one the size of the man’s fist and one much larger. The smaller of the two, the boy holds under his arm, thankful—for once—for the dark.
The larger rock is so large the boy can barely haul it back—large enough that it will take time for the man to do the job, and he’ll have to bend down to do it.
Don’t cry, don’t cry. Whatever you do, my beautiful boy, don’t cry.
The man crouches, and the boy moves oh so slowly to close his right hand over his remaining rock.
He doesn’t cry.
And he doesn’t hesitate, either.
The woman is screaming.
There’s blood everywhere, and the woman is screaming, and the boy is on top of the man, and the man is not moving.
But the boy—he does not stop. He just keeps hitting the man with the rock again and again and again, as hard as he can, until the screaming woman stops him, and suddenly the only thing the boy can think, over and over again is: You never stopped him.
“Wake up.” A rough, low voice pierced Rohan’s consciousness. “I said wake up, damn it.” Water splashed on Rohan’s face, and that did it. He opened his eyes to find himself in a white room—white ceiling, white floor, white walls.
Toby Hawthorne hovered over him. “Good,” the man grunted, stepping back. “You’re awake.”
“Awake,” Rohan replied in his poshest accent, “and dripping.” It took him only a second longer to register his bare chest. He and Toby had both been stripped of their shirts—and vests.
So much for plan A.
“That was our only drinking water,” Toby informed Rohan. “I could have left you here and taken it with me, but I didn’t. The maze on the walls of this room—it isn’t a maze.”
Rohan stood. He hadn’t even realized there was anything on the walls.
“We’re looking for the place all three paths converge,” Toby told him. “I know this room—or one like it, anyway.”
Focus, Rohan told himself. Build the labyrinth back up and lock it all away.
Rohan managed to find the convergence before Toby did and pressed it.
The wall parted just enough for Rohan’s body to slip through, for Toby’s to do the same.
There was no light in the next room except for what little spilled in from the chamber they’d just left, but even that was enough for Rohan to tell that this room was lined with mirrors.
Floor, ceiling, walls—all but one. Rohan walked toward that wall, one measured step at a time. “You know what this is, don’t you?” Rohan said, his voice echoing off the mirrors.
“Another puzzle.” Toby stood very still. “Another test.”
“That long-ago Ascendant called it the Culling in her letters,” Rohan said. “It’s one of the early stages of the Crucible, puzzle after puzzle, challenge after challenge, chamber after chamber, designed to make sure that only the truly extraordinary make it out to compete in the rest.”
As Rohan’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, he registered that the back wall, the one that bore no mirrors, was not entirely solid.
What little he could make out of it resembled a massive spiderweb.
Metal? Closing in on it, Rohan lifted his hand to that web, but the moment he touched it, blood bloomed on the surface of his skin.
Blades. Whatever the puzzle in this chamber was, it involved mirrors, light, darkness, and a web made of razor-sharp blades, the space between one and the next not quite large enough for Rohan to stick a hand through.
A voice spoke from the darkness beyond those blades. “You bleed, Proprietor.”
Rohan registered the tenor of that voice: low, husky.
“It’s a fault of mine,” Rohan quipped, like he hadn’t a care in the world. “Bleeding. Poor decision-making, really, to have skin that’s less than invulnerable and so much unsightly red liquid in my veins. Inexcusably messy, really.”
On the other side of the bladed web, there was silence.
“Katalin Aquila Reyes, I presume?” Rohan said. The woman’s voice bore just enough resemblance to Lyra’s to justify Rohan’s inference.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve heard that name,” the woman said. “Who I once was, I am no more. Who I am, I was not before.” Those words smacked of rhythm and meaning—an oath, perhaps.
“You’re the Woman in Black,” Toby said. “The Hand. The Omega. The end.”
“And the two of you have not been judged, cannot be judged while the Crucible is in process.”
Rohan took that to mean Katalin was a rule-bound sort, a true believer in more ways than one. That suggested a certain level of black-and-white thinking he might be able to use.
“When the Crucible ends,” Rohan noted, “you will be the Judge.”
“Very good, Proprietor.”
Her second use of his new title gave Rohan all the opening he needed for plan B. “Care to strike a deal?”
A low, vicious sound escaped Toby’s throat.
“I am not here to talk to you,” Katalin told Rohan, and the next thing Rohan knew, she was standing directly on the other side of the web, so close that Rohan could make out the whites of her eyes through the gaps in the blades.
Nothing else—just her eyes.
“You’re here for me,” Toby concluded behind Rohan. He stepped forward, one heavy, audible footstep at a time.
“You,” Katalin replied, “should have been judged long ago, Toby Hawthorne. You should not be alive, let alone here. But then, she shouldn’t be, either.”
“Hannah?” Toby said immediately.
“Your Hannah is no concern of mine. I was speaking of the woman who was once your mother, the woman who is still your mother, the aberration who has never stopped being Alice Hawthorne.”
Even if Rohan had never heard the phrase true believer used in reference to the Gilded Blade, he would have understood, just from the way Katalin Aquila Reyes said the word aberration, that he was dealing with a zealot.
A dangerous one.
“There is a reason that most of us ascend when we are young,” the true believer continued.
“The older a tree, the longer its roots and the deeper into the ground they go. Katalin ceased to be the moment she ascended, but Alice? She persists even now.” It couldn’t have been clearer that the Omega considered that an unforgivable sin.
“A woman who is unwilling to disavow her worldly life, a mother who cannot or will not foreswear her own child—how could one such as she ever do what needs to be done? How could a woman like that ever be worthy of a place among the three?”
“Power must come at a cost,” Rohan said. The first step to manipulating someone was understanding them. “Always.”
“Those who cannot or will not pay the price were never meant to don the cloak,” the true believer murmured. “To ascend and maintain your worldly ties, that is an abomination. Anathema.”
Rohan wondered what lengths this woman would go to in order to root out what she saw as rot, what lengths she might have already gone to in order to try to get the upper hand on Alice Hawthorne.
“Hannah is also a mother,” Toby said.
Always Hannah with you, Rohan thought.
“Was,” their captor corrected. “Your Hannah was a mother, first and always. She made her choice and made it again. There is no shame in that, in recognizing one’s own limitations and refusing the call.”
Made her choice and made it again… Rohan recognized the clear implication there, and so did Toby.
“You’re saying that Hannah said no.” Toby paused, and in that pause, there was agony. “Twice. That she turned down the Crucible twice.”
“You’re saying,” Rohan interjected, “that Avery’s mother isn’t the Watcher.”
“Hannah Rooney is nothing now.” There was no compassion in Katalin’s tone, even as it turned a bit poetic. “Dust in the wind. There is beauty in that, I suppose. Death on one’s own terms. An ordinary death for an ordinary woman.”
Rohan moved in a flash, wrenching Toby Hawthorne back just as the man attempted to launch himself forward.
It took every ounce of strength Rohan had to restrain him, to keep Toby from cutting himself to shreds in a doomed attempt to get at the woman who was, Rohan deeply suspected, trying to bait him into doing exactly that.
Hannah Rooney is nothing now.
An ordinary death for an ordinary woman.