Page 21 of City of Stone and Silence

“I don’t know you! Where have you taken me?”

“You’re safe. This is Grandma Tadeka’s sanctuary. You remember Grandma?” I edge farther, putting my arm across my mouth and trying to breathe through the fabric.

“I … don’t…” Grandma can be hard to forget, and I feel his mind waver. Then the fear returns. “What have you done with my friends? I want to see them!”

“Your friends aren’t here right now.” My throat is thick, for reasons that have nothing to do with the cloying smoke. “Sewa, please. I’m going to come over so we can talk, all right?”

“Don’t.” I hear a crackle of flames. “I’m warning you!”

The brass jangle of his mind gives me plenty of notice to throw myself flat. A wave of fire passes overhead, hot enough to frizzle my eyebrows. I hope Hasaka is keeping the kids back.

“I’m sorry,” Sewa says. “I just … I want to see my friends.”

I scramble forward, through the smoke, and reach the common room. Sewa is standing in a circle of scorched floor mats, small fires still smoldering around him. He’s an old, wispy-haired man, still straight-backed and solid from years in the Legions. His eyes go wide when he sees me, and I can feel his mind fighting through confusion, trying to remember.

It’s not his fault. The only ways out of the Invincible Legions are death or the end of a forty-year term of service, and those who reach the latter milestone are kept on at Legionary forts and away from civilians. Desertion is punishable by execution, of course, but even so Sewagauri is far from the only former soldier Grandma has taken in. For the most part they keep to themselves, happy never to venture outside the confines of the sanctuary. Sewa is like that, most of the time.

“You’re safe,” I tell him. “Just calm down, please. Everything will be fine. Grandma won’t hurt you.”

His hands, swathed in Myrkai fire, drop a few inches. “What about my friends?”

I try to keep my voice soothing, and fight back a cough. “They’re fine. Everything’s fine.”

“I remember…” He blinks. “Mika. She—she’s dead.” His hands come back up, fire roaring. “What did you do?!”

This time, there’s no room to dodge. Instead I reach for him, Kindre power snapping out and wrapping itself around his mind. If sensing his feelings is like a distant prickle on the skin or a whiff of a smell, this is plunging my arm into ice water and taking a long draught of something vile. I throw myself on his rage, smothering it, pressing his fear back into the dark crevices. He’s tired, unaccustomed to drawing on his Well like this, and I bring that to the fore, filling him with the feeling of exhaustion.

Sewa blinks, and the fire fades away.

“I…” He looks at me, and there’s still no recognition in his eyes. “I’m…”

“It’s all right,” I manage. “Go to sleep.”

His eyes close, and he topples over.

That night, I have the dream again.

I wake up in my bed, arms and legs still aching. When I go out into the hall, the maids are waiting. Normally they would bow and go in to change the bedding, but now they just stand and stare at me, blank-eyed.

I stare back. Wave to them. Step closer. And then I see the strings. Impossibly thin wire, gleaming like fishing line, running from every joint on the bodies of these two women up into the air. When I step backward, they move toward me in lockstep. I raise my arms to ward them off, and find the other ends of the lines looped around my fingers.

My hands move of their own accord, and the maids step back and bow, going into the bedroom with eerie synchronicity. I run away, leaving them behind.

My tutor Ridatha is waiting for me at the breakfast table, a book open in front of her. She looks up, trapped in a web of glistening strings, and I trace the movement back to my crooked little finger.

“Is something wrong?” she says, and I speak the words with her, for her. I let my hands fall to my sides, and she slumps across the table, as inanimate as a doll.

I run to Ofalo’s office, on the other side of the building. On the way, I pass other servants. Puppet guards, marionette footmen, gardeners going about their business, and I feel my fingers twitching to direct their every move. They call out to me, and I’m talking to myself.

Looking over my shoulder, I run into Ofalo in the hall. He bounces off me with a wooden clatter, his limbs swinging wildly as he bobs on his gossamer strands. I clench my fist, and he twists as though in pain, though his expression doesn’t change.

“Lady Tori?” he says, and I can feel my lips moving. “What’s wrong?”

There’s a clatter by the front door, a carriage arriving. I race out onto the drive. The mannequins are getting cruder, less lifelike, unpainted toys with fixed expressions. Two of them bob around the carriage, opening the door.

Isoka gets out. Her Melos blades are ignited, brilliant green energy crackling and spitting as she moves. Very deliberately, she raises one of them above her head and brings it sideways in a decisive stroke. There’s a twang like a piano string breaking, and threads cascade down all around her, their severed ends drifting in the breeze. I look down at my hands, and they’re covered in blood.

“I’m here, Tori.” I mean for Isoka to say it, but the words come out of my own mouth, and she only cocks her head.