The Fate of the Tearling

  “Carlin!” she called. But there was no answer, only the sleepiness of the empty cottage on a Sunday afternoon in her childhood. She used to love the times when Carlin was gone, when it was just her and Barty and neither of them needed to look over his shoulder, anticipating disapproval. But at the sight of the blank books, she felt the cottage’s familiar quiet tilting into nightmare.

  She took down Carlin’s Shakespeare—surely that bulwark of language was too indelible ever to be erased—but it was blank as well. In a panic now, Kelsea pulled down book after book, but they were all empty. It was only the semblance of a library, nothing more. Without words, the paper held no value.

  “Carlin!” she screamed.

  “She’s not here.”

  Kelsea turned and found William Tear standing behind her. His presence seemed quite reasonable, as things always did in dreams. Only the empty books were too awful to be true.

  “Why are they blank?” she asked.

  “I would guess because the future is undecided.” Tear picked up two of the discarded books and placed them gently back on the shelves. “But I’m not sure. I never tried to dabble in the past.”

  “Why not?” Kelsea demanded. “The pre-Crossing . . . you could have gone back and changed it, couldn’t you? Frewell, the Emergency Powers Act . . .”

  “It seemed easier to control the future by changing the present. The past is an unwieldy thing.”

  His words tugged at Kelsea’s memory. Someone else had told her almost the same thing, hadn’t they? Something about butterflies . . . it seemed decades ago.

  “You think I have no right to meddle with the past?” she asked.

  “I didn’t say that. But you should be prepared for the decision to cost you.”

  “I am prepared,” Kelsea replied, not sure whether it was true. “There’s no other option. The Tearling is wrecked.”

  “The Tearling,” he murmured, his voice musing. “I told them not to name things after me.”

  “They didn’t listen.” Kelsea looked around at the library, the empty cottage. “Why are we here?”

  “To speak, child. I used to talk to my ancestors as well, though not in this place. We would go to Southport, to the promenade where I grew up. It used to scare me, seeing the prom so empty . . . but then, I was younger than you.”

  “Do you know who I am?” Kelsea asked.

  “I know you’re my blood, else I wouldn’t be here. But are you Tear, or Finn?”

  Kelsea considered this question for a long moment, then admitted reluctantly, “I don’t know. I don’t think anyone does. Why did you cast Row off?”

  “We didn’t tell him. His mother was supposed to keep it a secret.”

  “Why didn’t you tell him?”

  “I didn’t know Sarah was pregnant until after the Landing. I couldn’t stay with her, not once I knew that Lily was more than a vision. Sarah demanded that I choose. I chose Lily, and so lost my son.”

  “But Row knew.”

  “Yes. She was a weak woman, Sarah, and Row a consummate manipulator. She never kept anything from him for long.”

  “You were proud of him.”

  Tear frowned, troubled. “I was proud of his potential. But I foresaw ruin.”

  “Ruin is upon us,” Kelsea pressed. “Can you not help?”

  “What is your name, child?”

  “Kelsea Glynn.”

  “Glynn . . . I don’t know that name. I see that you have many stories to tell, and I would like to know what became of our town. But I sense that your time is short. Come.”

  He led her out of the library and down the cottage’s tiny front hallway. Everywhere Kelsea saw items she remembered: Carlin’s silver candlesticks; the vase that Kelsea had chipped when she was twelve; the shoe stand that Barty had carved to hold their boots. But there were no candles in the sticks, no boots in the rack, and the vase was brand-new.

  Tear opened the front door and beckoned her on. Following him, Kelsea expected to see the same raked patch of dirt that had always fronted the cottage, but when she stepped outside, she gasped and clapped her hands to her ears.

  They were in a howling tunnel, Kelsea’s skin buffeted by wind that seemed to blow in all directions. She was reminded of the tunnels from Lily’s memory, fast cars and deafening sound, but this tunnel was empty, no cars or people. Instead of the concrete walls of Lily’s time, Kelsea saw the tunnel as a broad vista, people and places, all of them constantly in motion. Her vision seemed to stretch for miles.

  “What is this?”

  “Time,” said Tear beside her. “Past, present, future.”

  “Which is which?” Kelsea asked, looking right and left. She could not distinguish the scenes before her.

  “It is all one,” Tear replied. “The past controls the future; is that not why you’re here?”

  Kelsea’s gaze fixed on one scene, and she walked down the empty tunnel to have a look at it: a small room with wooden floors and stone walls. A group of men were holding the door closed with all of their might, and behind them, on the floor, a woman sat cross-legged, her eyes closed, her bowed head circled with a crown. As Kelsea watched, a crack appeared in the door, and the wood began to split.

  “Very little time,” Tear repeated. “You could go back there. Or you could choose something else.”

  But Kelsea was already searching, reading the scenes in front of her, faster than she had ever read any book.

  So much time here!

  And there was, but it was Kelsea’s time, for in the seemingly infinite number of scenes before her, there was nothing she did not recognize. She saw the shipment rolling through the Almont, nine long cages snaking their way toward Mortmesne. She saw the White Ship going down in its terrible storm—Great God, if she could only have prevented that!—saw President Frewell standing behind a podium; saw a much younger William Tear jumping from an airplane; saw Lily watching in tears as her younger sister was marched down the hall by four men in black uniforms . . . on and on it went. And now Kelsea saw scenes even more distant, further and further back, to a time without cars or electricity or even books. It frightened her, the howling emptiness of that world, most of humanity locked into a bare struggle for survival. She didn’t want to go back there.

  She turned her attention to the future, but what she found there was even more terrifying. She would die in the Keep, torn apart by Row’s creatures. They would be a constant torment to humanity, but one day they would be eradicated when someone invented an inoculation; Kelsea’s vision broadened, and she saw the Tearling, hundreds of years along, a despotic kingdom that had built on Kelsea’s legacy and extended its dominance into empire, the entire new world under Tear control. This new Tearling was no better than Mortmesne, bloated with its own power and driven by a sense of superiority so well-honed that it bordered on manifest destiny. And that made perfect sense. The danger of empire, after all, lay in the character of emperors.

  “Choose quickly,” Tear said, his voice dispassionate.

  Kelsea looked back and found that Row’s children were on her Guard, moving faster than their blades could follow. One of them finally succeeded in toppling Mace, biting into his shoulder. Kelsea felt a crack open inside her, wide and deep, and she clamped her mouth shut to keep from wailing in grief. Pen went next, his sword no use against the creatures that swarmed his ankles and pulled him down. Within a few seconds, the woman with the bowed head was left unguarded, and they swarmed toward her.

  “Even here, time doesn’t hold forever,” Tear told her. “Choose.”

  Kelsea turned numbly back to the panorama before her, skipping through the scenes, her mind moving faster than it had ever moved, until she found what she was looking for: Katie and Jonathan, sitting in a dank room. The room was lightless, but Kelsea could see them, both asleep, Jonathan with his head on Katie’s shoulder.

  “This,” Kelsea told Tear. “I choose this.”

  She held up Finn’s sapphire. The Queen of Spades was there, hovering, bu
t Kelsea did not fear her any longer. The things Kelsea could not do, the things that needed to be done, these were her province. Both of them had been born in anger.

  Coming home.

  “You’re sure?” Tear asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then luck to you, child.” He patted her shoulder. “One day, perhaps, when your time is done, we will meet again. I see you have a story to tell, and I would like to hear it.”

  Kelsea’s eyes filled with tears. She turned to thank him, but Tear was gone.

  Chapter 15

  The Tearling

  —The Early History of the Tearling, as told by

  In the dark of the cell, Katie woke with a start from the strangest dream of her life.

  She had been talking to Jonathan’s mother, the two of them wrapped in mist, not the white mist that covered the Town when autumn crept down from the mountains, but a thick curtain of dark grey. You could stare into that mist for a hundred years, in a hundred directions, and not be able to find your way out.

  “I need your help,” Lily told her, and Katie nodded; it was only a dream, after all. She should have been afraid, for Lily was long dead, three years. But Katie was not afraid. She had always loved Lily in life, and she could not believe that Lily’s ghost meant to harm her now.

  This was not to say that this version of Lily was not frightening. From time to time, Lily would blink and Katie would glimpse something else beneath the surface, something terrible. This Lily was not kind, not understanding, but vengeful . . . but Katie did not think it was revenge against her that Lily sought. She hoped not. She felt as though, at any moment, Lily might shed her skin and reveal something entirely other, a black and slumped shape that wore Lily as a mask.

  “What kind of help?” she asked, but she was only partly listening. The other half of her mind was tuned back in to the cell, waiting for the click of a key in the lock, the sign that Row had come for them. She thought she would promise Lily anything, if only it would get her out of this place and back to Jonathan. Katie stared at Lily’s face, seeking clues, but she saw only a deadly sort of patience. And now she noticed something else: Lily was wearing a crown, a silver circle studded with blue jewels. Row’s crown! And Katie suddenly relaxed, because this seemed the most indisputable proof that this was a harmless dream. Row’s crown could not be here, on Lily’s head. Katie had buried the thing in the woods, and it would remain there forever, unable to harm anyone.

  “I need to be here,” Lily said. “I need you to allow me to be here.”

  Katie’s brow furrowed, but she nodded, almost in a trance, allowing Lily’s voice to drift over her. For a few moments she became confused, thought she was speaking not to Lily but to William Tear; then the world locked solidly back into place and she blinked stupidly as light flared above her head. She had spent hours waiting for the click of the lock, and she had missed it. Gavin and his four flunkies stood above them, all of them holding torches in one hand and knives in the other. Too many for Katie to take, even if she’d had her own knife.

  “Get up,” Gavin ordered tonelessly. “He wants to see you.”

  He bent down to take her arm, but Katie shook him off.

  “Don’t touch me, traitor.”

  “I’m no traitor. I’m helping to save this town.”

  She gritted her teeth, wondering how he could be so blind, so stupid. Katie wasn’t sure of what the Town needed either, but she knew that whatever it might be, it would not come from Row, who only wanted all things for himself. But Gavin’s face was smug and certain. Katie longed to punch him; she clenched her hand into a fist, then froze, puzzled, as her hand unclenched of its own volition. Something shifted, restless, inside her mind, and then was still.

  Did I dream? Katie wondered. Did I dream all of that?

  “Come on,” Gavin said. “Follow Lear.”

  Katie did, wondering why they didn’t bind her hands. There had been a dream, she remembered now, but she was damned if she could remember what it had been. As she tromped up the staircase—a long staircase, many more stairs than any similar structure she had ever seen in the Town—she felt a thud as something heavy bounced off her breastbone. Tear’s sapphire; of course, still tucked beneath her shirt. Jonathan had given it to her, during that long, dreamlike interlude in the dark. Katie wondered whether she was dreaming now. If only she could wake up in her own narrow bed, her book next to her on the bedside table and Mum in the next room. If only that were how this ended.

  She glanced at Jonathan and found him pale, but composed. The torchlight flickered and for a moment, every line of his cheekbones was limned in grey, his face a skull. Katie nearly gasped, but remained quiet as she felt his hand twine with hers in the dark.

  “We tried, Katie,” he whispered, the words nearly inaudible. “We did our best.”

  She turned to stare at him, but Jonathan was looking straight ahead, focused on the future, hardly noticing that his words had stabbed her in the heart, put her right back in the clearing, fifteen years old, that day when she and Jonathan had been the only ones left behind. If only she could go back there! There was so much they could have done differently, starting with Row. Katie could have strangled him in the woods, buried his body with no one to know.

  Tear wouldn’t have wanted that.

  Tear is dead. Why should he bind us any longer?

  There was no answer, only that sense of movement, deep in her mind, a slither of thoughts that were not her own. For a moment the tangle loosened, and a single thought came through

  —spades—

  and then it was gone.

  They reached the top and found themselves in a long, cramped hallway, lit by torches. Katie glanced behind them but saw only the beginning of the staircase, a wide mouth that yawned downward into darkness.

  How many people? Katie wondered suddenly. Row didn’t build that dungeon for Jonathan and me. Christ, how many people has he kept down there?

  As they neared the end of the hallway, a long, narrow shadow fell through the doorway and Katie tensed, preparing to go for Alain’s knife. He had always been the weakest fighter among them. Even though Gavin would likely knife her in seconds, perhaps she would have the time to put a blade through Row’s heart. It would be worth dying herself.

  But it wasn’t Row. Katie had been deceived by the shadow. The form that came through the doorway was a little boy, less than four feet tall, but Katie had to squint at him for a long moment before she recognized Yusuf Mansour.

  “What the fuck?” she spat at Gavin. “What have you done to him?”

  Gavin looked away, and Katie realized, disgusted, that he didn’t even know. The Yusuf Katie knew had been a sweet boy, bright with numbers and eager to please. The creature before her now had Yusuf’s face, but that was where the resemblance ended. He was pale, so pale that his skin almost appeared white, and his eyes were dark, fathomless hollows. He did not smile or show any other sign of recognition, only stared at the group, and as they moved toward the door, Katie saw with alarm that Yusuf’s eyes were fixed on Jonathan.

  The last thing she remembered was walking through the doorway.

  Rowland Finn had pictured this moment in his head so many times that when it came, he almost expected it to be disappointing. Here was Jonathan Tear, the favored son—oh, and his heart still burned at the unfairness of that; Tear had given the Town nothing—and here was Katie, her head bowed, and that was right too, because Katie of all people should have been penitent—

  Katie looked up, and Row felt his equilibrium vanish. The lightest touch of fear seemed to breathe on the back of his neck.

  Katie was supposed to be sorry. For years, whenever he had imagined this moment, he had known that first: Katie would be sorry that she hadn’t come with him. Her posture was right, cringing and defeated, but her face was all wrong. She stared at him with no expression, her face almost blank, as if with shock. She didn’t seem to know where she was.

  Row turned to Gavin, who stood nearby w
ith a pathetically eager look on his face. Unlike Katie, Gavin performed perfectly, like a puppet; only shake a string, and he would do as he was told.

  “What’s the matter with her? Is she drugged? Beaten?”

  “No,” Gavin replied. “We didn’t touch her.”

  Row dismissed that, turning to Jonathan. “You! Where’s William Tear’s sapphire?”

  Tear raised his eyes, and Row recoiled at the pity on his face. Jonathan Tear did not get to feel sorry for him, not now, not when Row had won.

  “You will give it to me,” he told Jonathan. “No one is beyond the reach of pain, not even a Tear.”

  At that, Katie stirred slightly, and Row saw something, a ripple beneath that drugged expression on her face. Then she was still. A distant alarm seemed to go off inside him. It was almost as though she were in a trance . . . but Katie didn’t have trances. She had never had any gifts. Row turned back to Tear.

  “Give it to me.”

  “No,” Tear replied, almost wearily. “If you’re going to kill me, may as well do it now. You won’t have it.”

  Row frowned. He didn’t dare actually take the jewel; that was the hell of it. His own sapphire worked, but only sporadically, inconsistently, nothing like the power he had felt when he held Tear’s jewel. And yet it had never occurred to him to simply kill Jonathan and take the thing. He knew it could not be that easy—nothing ever was—but beneath the knowledge was a deeper certainty: any magic that could be seized by force was hardly worth having. Row had earned his power, had been honing it for years. No one could simply walk in and take it away.

  He snapped his fingers at Yusuf, who darted forward, his face twisting in a bestial grin. That grin chilled Row, yet he couldn’t help but feel an almost paternal pride. This child, who was no longer a child at all, was his own creation. He had two more under construction, deep in the catacombs he had dug beneath the church, but even these three were nothing compared to what he could make. There would be so many more.