Tell the Wind and Fire (4 page)

But they had tried to kill Ethan. It was Ethan or them.

“Thank you,” Mark told me. “I am certain a private conference with these fine officers will clear everything up.”

Some of his men, trained both to be subtle and to kill, depending on which was required, split from the protective unit around us and surrounded the Light guards from the train. I saw one of the guards’ faces, pale in the stark light of the train station, as scared as I had been, and then they were lost in the crowd.

“In the meantime, I am afraid that you were recognized on the train, and it has caused some upheaval among our civic-minded Light citizens,” Mark said. “There were rumors that the Golden Thread in the Dark had been taken off the train by the
sans-merci.
If you would be so kind as to spare some time to put the public’s mind at rest . . .”

He smiled at me. I smiled back at him.

“Of course.”

I grabbed Ethan’s elbow. “Don’t let Carwyn out of your sight!” I hissed.

Letting Carwyn disappear in the same way my mother had, the same way those guards would, was no way to repay him.

I left them both and went to Mark’s side.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” called out Mark Stryker. “The Golden Thread in the Dark.” Applause crackled, brief and abrupt as the clash of swords meeting. “As you can see, she is quite safe, and we intend to keep her so.”

He took my hand and turned me to the crowd, a gesture that read as protection unless you could feel his owner-tight grip. I blinked and added another sheen of distress to my face—wet eyes and parted lips.

“Thank you all so much for your concern for me,” I called. I did not know what the story about the
sans-merci
was, and did not dare risk contradicting whatever people were saying. I kept it vague. “I was scared for a while back in the train, but I had Ethan with me”—people laughed a little, indulgent about young love—“and now I’m back with Mr. Stryker, so I know I’m safe.”

I smiled up at Mark. He smiled down at me. We had perfected our smiles by then. This was easy.

Mark cleared his throat. “When the French scientist Louis de Breteuil discovered Light, he lit the world, changing and illuminating everything. Light replaced old and crude technologies with power that transformed a world. Nobody lives who remembers the world as it was, as a savage and lawless place where men used their limited resources to kill each other for those same resources. Light has saved us and spared us from such knowledge. Yet ever since Light has existed, it has had a shadow: the Dark, who use our blood in their spells, who benefit from our power and yet who think to rise up against us. The Dark are ungrateful and vicious, and they have forgotten the natural order. But I promise you, Light citizens, they have risen up in the past and failed. The Dark is always defeated. The Light cannot be quenched. Ever since the Garden, the serpent has existed. Ever since knowledge came into this world, evil came twined around it, and time and again evil has always been crushed. No matter what new measures we must introduce, our Light Council will remain dedicated to the protection of this city from dangerous insurgents. We will keep you safe.”

The cadence of Mark’s voice had changed from his earlier announcements, becoming low and persuasive. This was a very familiar speech, the essentials of which were so well known to me that they seemed like a prayer or a children’s story. Since I knew it by heart, it seemed true.

Light magic commands all things on this earth. So long as the sun burns in the sky, we rule the world.

All we need is the sun . . . and to be drained. The use of Light builds up in our blood, begins to be painful. It feels like burning in our veins, in the same way muscles burn when overstrained, but it does not stop there. If a Light magician is not drained, the pain gets worse. Eventually the magician will burn away from the inside out, bones turning to ash, and blood to flame.

Long ago, people used to drain patients’ blood with leeches to restore them to health, a barbaric ancient practice that did not work at all. Now the ancient lie has become truth. A practicing Light magician has to have their blood drained by a Dark magician. The more often we use magic, the more often we have to be drained. If we do not get drained regularly, we die.

They use our blood for power. But we need them in order to live.

That is why Dark magicians and all those whose families have produced Dark magicians live in Dark cities, rounded up and kept close to centers of Light, confined and controlled. We cannot afford to be without them.

We need them. That is the truth everybody knows and nobody speaks. That’s why we resent them and fear them and tell stories describing how they are evil, how they deserve all they get and we deserve all that we have.

People always hate those they rely on.

I should know. As Mark spoke, I held his hand fast, leaned against him, smiled for the cameras in the circle of his protection, and I could not imagine hating anyone more.

“My nephew and his dear friend Lucie Manette have just been through a terrifying ordeal. They are in no condition to speak in public as yet. We will of course be releasing a statement in the very near future. We thank you for your consideration at this trying time,” Mark said as the bodies pressed in and the lights flashed, hot and close and relentless.

Nobody challenged Mark Stryker. Nobody ever did.

We didn’t have to speak. We were moving out under the glass dome, almost through to the escalators of Thirty-Fourth Street, when we caught up with the others. Ethan had tight hold of Carwyn’s elbow; I ran up and caught Carwyn’s free hand, linking my fingers with his. I saw Mark strip off one glove, the supple leather crumpled in his fist, and touch Ethan’s shoulder with a heavy ringed hand.

Then I saw Penelope, my father’s best friend. She was running down the passage lined with small stores, past a bakery with a bright yellow sign. Her coat was flapping open and her rings were blazing, and I knew why she had come. I knew who she was there about.

“We had the television on,” she said breathlessly, “and the news started talking about you and Ethan. There wasn’t any warning, no way to prepare him, and he’s having one of his spells again.”

The one thing that could have torn me away from Ethan right then: my father.

“I have to go to him,” I said. “I have to show him that I’m all right.”

Mark Stryker did not look devastated to be parted from me. “Naturally you do. I’ll send you and Dr. Pross in one of our cars.”

“Thank you.” I didn’t spare him much of a smile. We were almost clear of the cameras.

I waited until we were out on the streets, people pushing impatiently past us. The purring and screeching of cars, the tap of men’s business shoes, and the click of women’s business heels formed an orchestra of city sounds that would screen what I had to say.

“Ethan, a word,” I said, and dropped Carwyn’s hand.

It felt like a betrayal, like letting him down, when he hadn’t let Ethan down. I looked away from him, dark-hooded and silent on that bright busy street. I did not look at Mark. I looked to Ethan.

I dragged him a little away from Mark, Penelope, and the doppelganger.

“Go to your dad,” Ethan said. “I’ll sort everything out with Mark. Don’t worry about me.”

“I’m not worried,” I said. “Because I know I can count on you to do the right thing and take care of Carwyn.”

Ethan’s eyebrows rose. “I’m pretty sure Carwyn can take care of himself.”

“I’m pretty sure he can’t,” I said. “Because he’s a doppelganger in the Light city, and that means he is in danger. He helped you when you were in danger. I have to go to my father, but you have to promise me that you will help him.”

Ethan bit his lip. I looked back at Mark Stryker and saw how far he was standing from Carwyn. People on the street, those determinedly indifferent city people, were looking at Carwyn’s hooded head.

I wanted to say,
I know what it’s like to be buried, to be scheming in the Dark and scared of the Light. I know that saving someone else comes at a price.
But I didn’t want Ethan to think of the similarities between the doppelganger and me.

“Ethan,” I said instead. “Please.”

Ethan looked at me, his eyes amber in the city lights. “Lucie,” he said, “I’ll do my best. I promise. For you.”

Penelope and her husband, Jarvis, lived in a vast brick building in midtown, not too far away from the theater district. Their apartment was a narrow snake of a living place, scarcely more than one large room divided into slivers. So, basically, it was a nice modern New York apartment and would have been nicer if they had not given their second bedroom to two people who had stumbled in from the Dark and stayed.

Dad and I had a curtain separating our bedroom into two rooms. Penelope and Jarvis had a Japanese screen between their bed and little Marie’s.

I knew we should find a way to move out, but I didn’t know how to voluntarily give up the comfort of having other people around, the small, simple happiness of coming home to find dinner waiting or the television on. Penelope and Jarvis had never mentioned wanting their home back, never even hinted; they always acted as if they wanted us to stay forever.

“I’m sorry that I had to drag you away,” Penelope said as the car sped through the glittering streets.

“It’s no problem,” I said, and forced myself to smile. “Well, it’s my problem. I can deal with it.”

“You don’t have to deal with it alone,” Penelope told me. “Are you all right?”

“Never better,” I said, and kept my hand against the Light panel in the car door, the square of magic that would brighten when the car stopped, waiting for it to release.

I owed Penelope and Jarvis better than this. When the car pulled up outside the building, I saw the lights blazing in every window in their apartment on the sixth floor. I pressed the panel before it had woken into full light, hurled myself out of the car before it had quite stopped, then ran up the stairs and through the door faster than Penelope could follow me. This was my responsibility and not hers.

Dad was sitting on the sofa, rocking back and forth. Light was cupped in his palms, building and building. The glitter of his rings had a sparking, restless quality, like electric wires gone wrong.

“Dad, I’m here. I’m so sorry I left you, but I’m all right. I’m absolutely all right.”

Dad stared at me, his eyes vacant but for the glitter of magic.

“Dad,” I said pleadingly.

Dad stared a little longer, then reached out and touched my hair, the shining golden length of it.

“It’s like her hair,” he said. “What is your name, sweetheart?”

“Lucie, Dad. It’s Lucie.”

“Oh,” Dad said, slowly. He lifted a hand to my face, and the rings on that hand burned brighter, brighter, so he could see me. My eyes stung, but I wouldn’t close them: I squinted and tried to keep my focus on him, past the harsh light and shimmering tears. Gold obscured my vision, the glitter of rings and the shine of magic on the walls, everything gold but my father’s hair. That had gone silver back when they put him in the cage.

“You remember me, Dad.”

“It was so very long ago,” Dad muttered, and his other hand clutched my hair, like a child clutching a teddy bear. “Lucie! Lucie, you have to help me find her. I have to go to her and help her . . . heal her. She needs to be healed. She went to heal someone. I need to heal someone.”

He’d had fits like this before, even while he was in his cage. I’d probably given him the idea. He wasn’t a fraud like me. He was really good, and he really tried. He tried to heal people as if he were still a medic. He’d put his hand out through the bars of his cage to heal people; he’d run up and down the train healing people when we were making our way to the Light city. He’d collapsed in public over and over in the first few months, but he hadn’t been like this for a year.

I’d thought he was better now.

It was my fault. I’d scared him, I’d reduced him to this state where he was fumbling after memories of a time when he’d been happy, when he’d thought he could help people and find my mother. We’d been idiots, once, fools in the dark together.

“She’s dead, Dad,” I said, and tried to keep my voice level. I helped him up from the sofa and kept his steps steady as we went into our room. I led him to his bed and made him lie down. His eyes closed as soon as his head touched the pillow, his body curled up in a trembling comma shape on the bed. I pulled the sheets over him and murmured, “She’s dead, but we’re alive. Don’t you want to live?”

“It’s been so long,” Dad murmured back. “I don’t know.”

Good people are always ready to die for a good reason. It’s only people like me who say,
Yes, I want to live. Yes, at any cost.
I had said yes for both of us, two years ago.

Dad’s eyes opened, then fluttered shut, then repeated the gesture a few times before he settled. His eyelids looked as thin and fragile as yellowed old pages in a book whose story would soon be over. He muttered in his sleep, like an unhappy child, and I hung over him, knowing that his sleep might be disturbed.

I did not let myself cry for my father who was alive, or my mother who was dead. I had things to do besides cry: I had debts to pay.

I waited until I was sure my father was slumbering peacefully, then left to visit the Strykers.

CHAPTER THREE

I didn’t begin this story right. Penelope told me that I should explain everything, because soon the world might be very different.

I don’t see how I can explain the whole world, though. Am I meant to go back in the story to when there was one united New York, before any of the cities were divided in two? That happened before my father’s father was born. It happened after the magic came.

When the power of Light and Dark was discovered, the world was transformed. There was no going back: the shine and shadow of magic swallowed the old world up.

That was when the world was torn between those who practice Light magic, born of sun and moon and stones, and those who practice Dark magic, which comes from life instead of light. Dark magic uses blood, and the dead.