Tell the Wind and Fire (27 page)

“Thank you,” said Carwyn. “Perhaps I shall.” He stoppered the vial, and it disappeared into a pocket.

I did not thank him. There was too much between us that he had not apologized for. I could not find it in me to be grateful, but I did find myself concerned about him, feeling as though I had been right about him the first time, that he was the person I had thought he was and not the nightmare creature I had feared.

I put my back to him and faced the burning world outside the window.

“Where are you going to go?” I asked. “Nowhere’s safe.”

“If I could choose where to go . . .” Carwyn began, but stopped.

Ethan was gone, and Jarvis was gone, both where I could not find them. I did not have the patience for this.

“You can choose. That’s what giving you the collar meant. You’re free to go. You’re as free as I can make you. You can go anywhere you want to go in the world, and I hope you find somewhere safe. I can’t tell you what to do. You have to decide, and I have to go after Ethan.”

“If I could choose where to go,” Carwyn resumed, as if I had not spoken at all. “If I could go anywhere in the world, I’d want to go with you. I don’t want to be where it’s safe. I want to be where you are.”

I froze, still holding on to the windowsill. “What did you say?”

I turned away from the fire outside. Carwyn met my eyes with a level gaze. He looked different than I could have imagined anyone would while saying something like that. There was a look of fixed despair about his face, as if he was gazing at someone dead, as far away from him as that.

“They say that doppelgangers don’t dream,” said Carwyn. “That you have to have a soul to dream.”

“I don’t understand what you’re saying,” I said, slowly. I had slept in the same bed as him, his head on a pillow beside mine, and he had not slept any differently than anyone else. “I don’t know whether doppelgangers dream or not. I have never known any doppelgangers but you.”

“I haven’t known many either. There aren’t many,” said Carwyn. “The hood is license for any cruelty. The faceless are as good as voiceless: nobody would listen if any one of us called for help. I told you this already. We look like those who would have died young without the Dark magic that saved them and made us. We die young instead of them.”

He almost never seemed or sounded serious. Even now, when he was talking about the death of his own kind, his lip was curled and there was an uncertain wicked flicker in his eyes that made me think he was about to make a joke. I felt wary, waiting for the twist, waiting for the doppelganger’s trick.

“I know as much about doppelgangers as you do,” said Carwyn. “All I know about doppelgangers is what I’ve been told. I never knew if I had a soul, and while I was buried I lived in a wild, degraded, disgusting way. I remember hating the way I lived sometimes when I was younger, but more and more I didn’t care. I thought I couldn’t care and that nothing mattered. And then I met you, and you tried so hard to make things right for Ethan and for your family and even for me. I could not figure out why you did what you did for me. I was a stranger. I thought . . . it might be because you liked me, but now I know you don’t. I’m glad you don’t. There have been a couple of people who were kind to me because they thought I was interesting or good-looking or useful. You were kind to someone you didn’t know and shouldn’t have trusted. That was what taught me who you are. You woke all the old shadows in me that wanted to be something like a person. I thought I would never want that again.”

I was held still with utter shock.

I felt as I had on the balcony
in the Plaza Hotel, the whole world turned upside down and the pieces falling together to make a picture entirely different from the one I had expected. The doppelganger under my window looking up, the doppelganger’s sharp voice on the phone, concerned about me.

Not a trick. A romance.

Carwyn took a step back, leaning against the door frame, and I could not believe how badly I had misinterpreted the restless glitter of his eyes. He covered his face with one hand, but it was too late. I knew he was crying.

“So—you’re going to be a good person from now on?” I asked helplessly, stupidly.

No more of his random cruelty, the way he had tormented me over Ethan out of bitterness or malice even though now he said he cared about me. If he felt like this, then acting like that hurt him, too, degraded him, too. If he was not what people thought him, he should not behave like he was.

Even as I had said the words, I did not think they were true. I could see no hope in his face, and I could find no hope of my own.

“No,” he said, unshading his face and looking at me. His eyes were clear now. “I will never be better than I am. The collar was just a symbol. It wasn’t what people were shrinking from and punishing me for. They were afraid of me. I will always have someone else’s face and not enough heart. You set me free, and look what I did to you. I am going to be worse someday. I’m going to be so much worse.”

He spoke as if it was a foregone conclusion, and I could see his pain at the idea. I didn’t know if what he believed was true or if he was making it true by believing it, but I didn’t care. I was angry at the waste and angry with him.

“So why tell me any of it, then?” I demanded. “Why would you load another burden on me when I have enough? I am not responsible for your heart! Are you just this selfish?”

“Yes,” said Carwyn. “I wanted you to know. I am selfish enough to do it for only that reason, but there is another. I wanted you to know something else.”

The city was burning and Ethan was in danger, and Carwyn was a lost soul.

“I’m not interested,” I said loudly. I let go of the windowsill, crossed the floor in one stride, and shoved him so his back knocked into the door frame. “I’m not interested in listening to anything you have to say.”

Carwyn grabbed one of my hands, his grip too strong for me to escape from it, and I thought for a moment that he was going to wrench my arm out of its socket. Instead he raised my hand to his lips and kissed it, roughly, so his lip split open under one of my rings. It was so far from what I had expected that I did listen to him after all.

“You were not the first dream I ever had, but you were the only dream that ever felt real. You were the dream that taught me I did have a soul. I don’t know how low I will fall or what evil I will do, but I know you. I know there is nothing between us and there never could be. But I would do whatever you asked. I would do anything you want. If I had anything worth giving to you, I would give it. If I had anything to sacrifice, I would sacrifice it for you.”

I didn’t try to pull away from him.

“I don’t want you to sacrifice anything.”

“Don’t think well of me,” Carwyn said, and smiled his dark little smile, though his lashes were still wet. “Not for a minute. This is selfish too. It’s useless. You don’t need me, and I can’t do anything for you. One day you will be happy, and I will sink even further. I’ll be the lowest scum of the streets and you’ll never see me again, but I wanted you to know that wherever I end up, I will still feel the same about you. If you ever think of me then, I want you to remember me as someone who would cut out his heart to spare yours. This is the last thing I’ll ever ask of you. You were always kind to me, even when you did not mean to be, even when you wanted to be cruel. You were angry for me when I would not have thought to be angry for myself, you warned me that cupcakes were too sweet, and you healed my wrist. You treated me like I was a real person, and I almost felt real. Be kind to me again, let me be real to you one more time: I beg you to believe me.”

He was too close to me, his grip not tight enough to hurt and yet somehow still hurting me, as if his skin was hot and his hold on me could burn. I was trembling.

I looked away from him and said in a low voice, “I believe you.”

I was not looking for his reaction and I did not see it. The next moment, the door opened, and Penelope and Marie came through. They were both beaming wildly, their footsteps clattering in a frantic chorus of joy. Someone else walked in with them.

It was not Dad. It was Jarvis. He was holding tight to Penelope’s hand, and he looked gray and thin and old. Until he saw Carwyn. Then he simply looked afraid.

“You’re not Ethan,” he whispered.

“Would you believe I’m Ethan’s twin,” Carwyn asked, “and that they kept me in the attic my whole life because they didn’t want Ethan to be shamed by how much handsomer I was?”

I looked at Penelope and Marie, who were staring in confusion and growing horror. I glanced at Carwyn and saw him smirking, showing no trace of tears nor any sign that he had been making an emotional confession. I didn’t spare any of them more than a glance.

“You knew he wasn’t Ethan,” I said slowly to Jarvis. “You knew Ethan couldn’t be here. So you know where Ethan is. He found you, didn’t he? Where is he?”

“Lucie,” said Jarvis.

“Tell me! Tell me where he is.”

“Lucie, I’m so sorry,” said Jarvis. “He found me. He gave himself up in my place. He told them he’d do whatever they wanted as long as they let me go. He is in the hands of the
sans-merci.
”

He had accomplished his mission, my hero, my knight. I was sick with terror.

I swallowed. “And where’s Dad?”

“He’s with your aunt,” said Penelope, her face very serious. “But I swear to you, he’s safe. The
sans-merci
are hailing him as a hero and a martyr. And, Lucie, the
sans-merci
have commanded you to go to them as well. Your aunt wants to see you.”

Nobody swore to me that Ethan was safe. None of them wanted to lie to me.

I took a deep breath. “And I want to see her.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

They had Ethan and I had to save him, and I’d promised Aunt Leila I would come if she asked for me. I did not know what she wanted with me. I did not know what the
sans-merci
wanted from me. I could not stop hearing them calling for the Golden One, their voices echoing through that great hotel that had become a palace of the dead.

I had spent two years doing what I did not want to do and had to do anyway. Now I made my way up the gentle slope of the streets.

Aunt Leila had given Jarvis very specific instructions. She had told him that I should not head toward the hotel. She had told me to go somewhere else.

Nobody had told Carwyn to come with me, least of all me, but he had insisted, and I had not wanted to leave him with Penelope’s family.

He said nothing to me as we made our way, and I said nothing to him. I kept walking until Times Square came into view again, not in the light of morning but in the glow of the early afternoon, just beginning the sun’s fall. The square was a metallic glen, made of buildings and not trees. The tall rectangular towers shone like giant mirrors; the lines of gems affixed to several of them were like vast jeweled belts hung in the sky. Usually Light power showed images on screens and formed advertisements that walked among the denizens of the city—you only knew they were magic and not real people by their peculiar brightness and the occasional flicker.

Not today. The crowd of people today was all real, and there were so many of them, and so many were from the Dark city. Clothes were made differently in the Dark city. I remembered that now, how the very stitching of the seams and the colors of the materials looked different. There were fewer bright colors, and less material, because the Dark city did not have extra cloth to waste on full skirts or frills. I clenched my fists in the material of my long skirt, which swung around my legs like a bell. I must have looked like someone from the Light. It might have been safer to look like a Dark citizen.

Some of the audience were clearly from the Light, though, and their faces were just as rapt, and their eyes contained just as much promise of violence.

I began to shove my way through the crowd, breath stuck in my throat. Some of these people had weapons, but it was not the weapons I was concerned about. It was the hostility of the crowd, bristling like a pack of dogs that were going to attack.

I kept my ringed hands clenched and pushed on, waiting for someone to speak and strike me down.

A voice rang out, and Carwyn instantly vanished from my side and into the crowd. I barely even registered him going.

“Make way for the Golden Thread in the Dark! Make way for your Golden One!” called my Aunt Leila, and the people parted like water at the command of a prophet, clearing a path for me.

I could see Aunt Leila on a platform that looked hastily constructed, the wood still rough. There were others of the
sans-merci
there, wearing their bands of cloth. I did not see my uncle.

I could see my father. He was wearing the red and scarlet of the rebels. He looked as hurt and confused as a child forced into clothes that were not his own and that he was uncomfortable wearing. I ran toward him, up the creaking wooden steps. I was on the platform and had almost reached him when Aunt Leila set a hand on my arm. Her grip felt as heavy and inescapable as a manacle.

She spun me toward the crowd.

“This is the Golden Thread in the Dark!”

All the people seemed to blur before my eyes as their shouts blended in my ears into one indistinguishable roar. All that was clear were the cages hanging in the air, their chains attached to towers of Light. The cages shimmered darkly, and the memory of the old cages in Green-Wood Cemetery came back to me like a nightmare that had come to life even more terrible than I had dreamed.

These cages were full now. I could see the limbs jammed up, see the blood beading on the iron bars.

My aunt held my hand up high, and the people cheered again.

“You all know her. You all know her story.” My Aunt Leila paused. “Or you think you do. You don’t know the half of it, but now it’s finally time to tell the truth. You know the Strykers are tyrants, but you do not know this story of treachery and murder.”

An excited, anticipatory murmur chased her words, ready to be furious.

“Once I had a sister,” said Aunt Leila. “She was born with Light magic in the Dark city. She did not ever wear rings: she never wanted to be parted from her family, and she never wanted to serve the Light Council. She was a good girl, and by that I do not mean she sat by and was beautiful and harmed no one. Instead, she acted always to help and comfort. She met a Light magician from the Light city come on one of their brief errands of meaningless mercy, and he so loved her that he stayed, and healed and truly helped us. He did more than that. He taught my sister how to heal as well as any Light medic. She could have taken the rings, gone into the Light, been powerful and rich and unhurt. My sister instead hid what she could do, hid her marriage to him. She lived in the Dark where our parents died, our houses so close to each other, they seemed like one house. Her child would run through my gate for supper; my husband would help her husband with household tasks. And every night my sister, my Josephine, would go down to the east, where the least of the buried tried to eke out a living. She would go to those who could not pay true Light magicians, and heal them. She had such power. I saw her lay her hands once upon a dying man and he was well again. She could do marvels. And I asked her, I begged her, not to, because I knew the cost of marvels and mercy.”