51
Poltroons
“There is a magnetic field between the anchors and the citadel,” Mouzaive, the natural philosopher, was telling Kether, artist of siege engines, in the guildhall dining room. “But it’s like nothing I’ve seen before.”
Drave, who was irrationally furious to find mushrooms on his plate, sat at the next table. The sullen look on his face gave no hint that he was listening.
Mouzaive had invented an instrument he called a cryptochromometer that used a protein extracted from birds’ eyes to detect the presence of magnetic fields. It sounded like a lot of flummery to Drave, but what did he know?
“Magnetic anchors,” mused Kether, wondering how he might appropriate the technology for his own engine designs. “So if you could shut them off, the citadel would just . . . float away?”
“That’s my best guess.”
“How’s it floating, anyway, something that big?”
“A technology we can’t begin to fathom,” said Mouzaive. “Not ulola gas, that’s for certain.”
Kether, who was keen on appropriating that technology, too, said sagely, “If anything’s certain, it’s that nothing’s certain.”
Drave rolled his eyes. “What’s making it?” he asked, gruff. “The magnetic field. Is there machinery inside the anchors or something?”
Mouzaive shrugged. “Who knows. It could be a magical moon pearl for all I can tell. If we could get inside the damned things, we might find out.”
They discussed the metallurgists’ progress, and Thyon Nero’s, speculating who would breach the metal hulls first. Drave didn’t say another word. He chewed. He even ate the mushrooms while phrases like “breach the hulls” rang in his mind like bells. He was supposed to sit back while the Fellerings and Nero vied for the reward? As though Nero even needed it, when he could just make gold any day of the week.
He’d be damned if this bunch of poltroons were going to keep him from throwing his hat in the ring.
Or more like blowing the damned ring up.
52
Amazing, but Scorched
Sparrow had, in fact, tried to visit Sarai, but ghosts blocked the corridor and wouldn’t let her through. The little girl ghost, Bahar, dripping with river water and dolor, told her solemnly, “Sarai can’t play right now,” which sent a chill up her spine. She went to the Ellens in the kitchen to see if they knew how she was, but she found them grim and silent, which sent another chill. They were never like this. It had to be Minya’s doing, but Minya had never oppressed the nurses as she did the other ghosts. Why now?
Minya was nowhere to be found, and neither were Ruby or Feral.
Sometimes they all just needed a little time to themselves. That was what Sparrow told herself that afternoon in the citadel. But she needed the opposite. She needed her family. She hated not being able to go to Sarai, and she was furious that she couldn’t even find Minya to appeal to her. She went to the heart of the citadel and called out through the narrow opening that had once been a door. She was sure Minya must be inside, but she never answered.
Even the garden couldn’t soothe her today. Her magic felt feeble, as though some river within herself were dry. She imagined herself weeping, and Feral holding her to comfort her. He would smooth her hair with his hands and murmur soothing things, and she would look up, and he would look down, and . . . and it wouldn’t be anything like when Ruby had kissed him, all sucking noise and storm clouds. It would be sweet, so sweet.
It could happen, she thought. Now, with everything so fraught. Why not? The tears were easy enough to produce; she’d been holding them back all day. As for Feral, he could only be in his room. Sparrow wandered up the corridor, past her own room and Ruby’s, all silent behind their curtains.
She would feel very stupid later for imagining that Ruby wanted time to herself. She never did. To Ruby, thoughts were pointless if there was no one to tell them to the instant you had them.
She came to Feral’s door, and all was not silent behind his curtain.
“How do I know you won’t burn me?” Feral had asked Ruby days earlier.
“Oh, that could only happen if I completely lost track of myself,” she’d said. “You’d have to be really good. I’m not worried.”
It had been something of a slap, and Feral had not forgotten it. It created a conundrum, however. How could he make her eat those words, without getting burned up for his trouble?
These were dark days, and it was good to have a challenge to take his mind off ghosts and doom: make Ruby completely lose track of herself, while not ending up a pile of char. Feral applied himself. The learning curve was delicious. He was keenly attuned to Ruby’s pleasure, in part because it could kill him, and in part because . . . he liked it. He liked her pleasure; he’d never liked her better than when she was soft against him, breathing in surprised little gasps or looking up at him from under her lashes, her eyelids heavy with hedonic contentment.
It was all very, very satisfying, and never so much as when, finally, she made a sound like the sighing of doves and violins, and . . . set fire to his bed.
The scent of smoke. A flash of heat. Her lips were parted and her eyes glowed like embers. Feral pushed himself away, already summoning a cloud; he had rehearsed emergency plans in his head. The air filled with vapor. The silk sheets, clenched in Ruby’s fists, burst into flame, and an instant later the cloud burst forth rain, severing the dove-and-violin sigh and dousing her before the rest of her bonfire could kindle.
She gave a little shriek and came upright in an instant. Rain lashed down at her whilst Feral stood back safe and smug. To his credit, he kept the cloud no longer than strictly necessary, on top of which, it wasn’t even cold. It was a tropical cloud. He thought this quite a nice gesture, but the romance was lost on Ruby.
“How . . . how . . . rude!” she exclaimed, shaking water from her arms. Her blue breasts glistened. Her hair sluiced rivers down her back and shoulders.
“Rude?” Feral repeated. “So the polite thing would be to uncomplainingly burn up?”
She glared at him. “Yes.”
He surveyed the scene. “Look,” he pointed out. “You’ve scorched my sheets.”
She had. There were sodden, black-edged holes where she’d clenched them in her fists. “Do you expect me to apologize?” Ruby asked.
But Feral shook his head, grinning. He didn’t mean to rebuke her. On the contrary, he was gloating. “You lost track of yourself,” he said. “You know what that means, don’t you? It means I’m really good.”
Her eyes narrowed. Still entangled in Feral’s sheets, she went full Bonfire, lighting up like a torch and taking the whole bed with her.
Feral groaned, but could only watch as his sheets, pillows, mattress—everything that was not mesarthium—flamed and were eaten up, leaving nothing behind but hot metal and a smoking naked girl with her eyebrows raised as though to say, How’s that for scorched sheets? She didn’t really look mad, though. A grin tugged at one corner of her mouth. “I suppose you have improved,” she allowed.
It felt like winning at quell, only much better. Feral laughed. He’d known Ruby all his life and been annoyed by her for half of it, but now he was simply amazed by the turn things could take between two people, and the feelings that could grow while you distracted yourself from the end of the world. He walked back over to her. “You’ve destroyed my bed,” he said, congenial. “I’ll have to sleep with you from now on.”
“Oh really. Aren’t you afraid I’ll incinerate you?”
He shrugged. “I’ll just have to be less amazing. To be on the safe side.”
“Do that and I’ll kick you out.”
“What a dilemma.” He sat on the edge of the bare bed frame. “Be less amazing, and stay alive. Or be amazing, and get scorched.” Mesarthium didn’t hold heat; it was already back to normal, but Ruby’s skin was not. It was hot—like a summer day or a really good kiss. Feral leaned toward her, intent upon the latter, and froze.
At the same moment, they became aware of a movement in their peripheral vision. The curtain. It had been pushed aside, and Sparrow was standing there, stricken.
53
Tarnished Hearts
Sarai’s dreams that day were not without their terrors, but, for a change, she was not without defenses. “We’ll chase them away,” Lazlo had said, “or else turn them into fireflies and catch them in jars.”
She tried it, and it worked, and at some point in the evening, she found herself striding through a dark wood in a Tizerkane breastplate, carrying a jar full of fireflies that had recently been ravids and Rasalas and even her mother. She held up the jar to light her way, and it lit her smile, too, fierce with triumph.
She didn’t meet Lazlo in the dream, not exactly. Perhaps her unconscious preferred to wait for the real thing. But she did relive the kiss, exactly as it had been—melting sweet and all too brief—and she woke exactly when she had before. She didn’t bolt upright in bed this time, but lay where she was, lazy and liquid with sleep and well-being. At dawn, solitude had greeted her, but not this time. Opening her eyes, she gave a start.
Minya was standing at the foot of her bed.
Now she did bolt upright. “Minya! Whatever happened to respecting the curtains?”
“Oh, the curtains,” said Minya, dismissive. “Why worry about curtains, Sarai, unless you’ve something to hide?” She looked sly. “Ruby and Feral do, you know. But curtains, well, they don’t block out sounds very well.” She made exaggerated smooching noises and it reminded Sarai of how they would giggle and gasp when she told them about the things that humans did in their beds. It was a long time since she’d done that.
Ruby and Feral, though? It didn’t really surprise her. While she’d been wrapped up in her own misery, life in the citadel had gone on. Poor Sparrow, she thought. “Well, I’m not hiding anything,” she lied.