Tell the Wind and Fire

  I was not expecting who came first.

  I saw her coming from far away, the saffron yellow of today’s hijab like a small sun, and her eyes sparkling beneath it. I expected her to stay a discreet distance away, but she kept moving closer. I thought she had come to watch, but she had come to speak.

  Others made the same mistake I did, and they let her push to the front of the crowd. She did not stop there. She only stopped when she was standing beside me with her feet planted and her chin up.

  “I am Nadiya Zamani,” said Nadiya. “The Golden Thread in the Dark is my friend. And Ethan Stryker was my comrade in arms. We were the ones who passed out pamphlets against the rule of Light in the Village, who discovered where the Esmond girl was being kept, who helped the Robesons get to the Light city when the guards were after them. Ethan Stryker is our ally.”

  She glanced at me, her eyes glinting in the afternoon sun, and she grinned. I saw brown-brick buildings in the distance, saw the glitter of sunshine on the tin warehouse roofs, but mostly what I saw was a sea of people, and the tide turning our way.

  Nadiya knew how to work the crowd as well as I ever had. She made it sound as if we had been a pair, me and Ethan, comrades in arms as well as lovers, fighting for fraternity, liberty, and equality.

  It made for a beautiful love story, the idea of us working together smoothly, instead of all the jagged misunderstandings that made up the truth of our lives.

  Approving murmurs rippled through the crowd, like we were being surrounded by a sea turning calm.

  A voice burst out. “Is that how it was?”

  I could not finesse them the way Nadiya did or command them the way Aunt Leila did. I had tried that. I was trying something else now.

  I took a deep breath and decided to be brave and stupid. I said, “No.”

  And around me the sounds of a storm rose.

  “She’s lying to spare Stryker.”

  “They’re all liars, and worse.”

  They wanted it to have been as clear-cut as heroism, or as straightforward as villainy. Anyone who said that it was not simple branded themselves a villain, guilty of not telling people what they wanted to hear.

  “No, but it isn’t what you think,” I shouted. “He’s not what you think. Listen.”

  “Why don’t you shut up instead?” a man’s voice asked.

  “Don’t tell the Golden Thread in the Dark to shut up!”

  A woman snapped, her voice as sweetly sympathetic as a blade, “You should be ashamed of yourself!”

  “Make way,” called a voice in the teeming, jostling crowd, over the shouts of reprimand and support, “for the hero of Green-Wood, for the man escaped from the cages!”

  I caught my breath as I saw the stooped shoulders and silver head I loved. I had forgotten that when my Aunt Leila made me a hero and a symbol of revolution the day Mark Stryker had died, I had not been the only one up there on that stage.

  “There, girl,” said the nervous-looking guard, “maybe you’ll listen to your father.”

  I’d had enough staying quiet at the Light Council and quiet on the platform with Aunt Leila’s hand on my wrist. The only thing I had ever truly regretted was submitting.

  “Why should I?” I said.

  “There’s no reason in the world for you to listen to me,” said Dad in his soft voice. “It’s my turn to listen to you.”

  The guard looked at Dad the same way he had looked at me, shocked and angry, as if Dad was a child the guard had expected obedience from. “You ungrateful creature of the Light,” he said under his breath.

  “I’m very grateful,” Dad told him. “I’m grateful to Lucie.”

  He stepped toward me and then behind me, his hands on my waist, anchoring me, making himself another target but not making himself so vulnerable that I would have to worry about him. His whisper stirred my hair.

  “Take courage.”

  “Already got it,” I said, and heard my father laugh behind me.

  “Yes, you do. I’m so sorry, Lucie.”

  “What for?”

  “I’m so sorry for all my bad days,” he said. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t be stronger for you, that I didn’t see when you were hurting. I didn’t see a way to do it, I couldn’t think of how to make it work—to make our family work without her.” His eyes dropped to the diamond shining around my neck, and I felt his fingers tremble. “I knew how much I owed you,” he said. “I tried to tell you that, and I’m sorry if I made it another burden for you.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, even softer, “that I am a burden to you.”

  I bit my tongue before I could tell him that he was not a burden, and said instead, blood in my mouth and truth on my lips, “It doesn’t matter. I was always so glad you were there. I was so glad I saved you.”

  I had always been glad, and always thought he was worth everything I had done for him.

  I had tried not to blame him when his pain had kept him from being there for me. All the resentment I had hidden and could not help did not seem to matter now, when I could feel his warmth at my back and I knew that he loved me. My pain must have stopped me being there for him sometimes too.

  It did not mean that pain did not matter. But there was something besides pain between us.

  I would not have done anything differently, so perhaps it was time to stop regretting what I had done.

  “I can stand with you now,” said my father. “I can do that.”

  The pain of it all had seemed such a waste, once. Now it seemed like the sharp fire that had forged me into a weapon, into a sword, into a battering ram that could break through the prison door.

  “We can stand together,” I said.

  I had spent so long trying to be something I was not. I knew I was something quite different from what I had been: innocent, unformed, terrified, the girl who was lovingly overprotected by both her parents and who wanted to be just like her aunt.

  I was not like those polar opposites who had somehow circled around to the same savage place, Aunt Leila and Mark Stryker. I was not like Ethan, always trying to be good, or Carwyn, who believed he was bad. I did not feel as though I would ever have any of their conviction in the rightness or wrongness of their actions. All I knew was who I loved and what I wanted. I did not feel good or bad, and I did not feel guilty anymore. I felt strong enough to do what needed to be done.

  I felt that sometime while I was trying to shield others and trying to shield myself, I had become all that I ever needed to be.

  The sans-merci guards looked dumbfounded that my father had not stopped me. I saw their hands go to their weapons again, heard the crowd hum, torn between approval and condemnation.

  None of the guards dared to strike me down. But then my Aunt Leila arrived to deal with the Golden Thread in the Dark, shoving through the crowd with her hair flying like a preemptive flag of mourning, and I knew she would dare to do anything. She came striding toward me, and I saw her draw a long knife from her belt, its blade edged with wavering Dark magic.

  My rings sizzled and shone with power. Our blades leaped to meet each other.

  “Why are you doing this?” Aunt Leila hissed.

  “Why don’t you even recognize me?” I hissed back. “You think I’m a child or a doll and you are unstoppable? I’m a force of nature too. You thought you were teaching me something else, to be something lesser. Try teaching fire to do anything but burn. It’s time for you to learn better.”

  The crowd could not hear us, but I could hear it, drawing in closer as people strained to hear what we were saying. The sound of their muttering was like a storm building, far off out to sea but coming closer.

  For the first time, I saw fear on Aunt Leila’s face. She knew the mob was a beast, and it might turn and go for her throat as easily as anyone else’s.

  “Let Ethan Stryker go,” I continued, “or cut down the Golden Thread in the Dark in front of everybody. You said you came to the city on a
mission to free me. Go ahead—kill me. Show everybody you were lying.”

  None of us were safe. But Aunt Leila had taught me how to appear in front of the media and the crowds. I had to believe that she cared more about how things looked than I did.

  “What will it take for you to stop this mad defiance?” she snapped.

  I held Aunt Leila’s gaze. “Oh, tell the wind and fire where to stop,” I said softly. “But don’t tell me.”

  “Go to your committee,” said Dad. “Grant him a pardon or cut us both down.”

  As Dad spoke, I could feel him shaking at my back, feel the scrape of his rings against my skin. I had to take him home and make sure he rested. I could not let him break down in front of all these people.

  I held my breath, and held my sword locked with Aunt Leila’s blade, and I waited.

  “We will delay our procession of revenge until tomorrow!” Aunt Leila called out to the crowd.

  “And Ethan won’t be in it,” I said in a low voice.

  “Very well,” Aunt Leila said at last, in a voice as low as mine. “You’ll have your pardon.”

  “By tomorrow morning, before the executions,” I said. “I’ll have his pardon by tomorrow morning. I have your word?”

  “By tomorrow morning,” Aunt Leila spat, spinning on her heel and turning her back on me. “You have my word, and my curse.”

  I could trust her word. Aunt Leila and the committee would never make anything less than a public spectacle of Ethan’s death. They wouldn’t kill him in the dead of night, in any secret hole or hidden corner. My wrists ached: I had been holding my sword for too long. But my mother’s diamond was shining.

  I let myself look up and search for Ethan’s face in the distant window.

  I could go home and rest for a moment after a day of standing and fighting. I could put the sword down. I had saved him.

  Nobody was home. I hoped blurrily, barely able to think through my exhaustion, that they had not been called back to the hotel for even more questioning.

  “Do I need to heal anyone?” Dad asked as I helped him into his room and got him lying down.

  Even the confused query made me feel better. He had never implied before that there was a possibility nobody needed healing, that there was a chance we could be all right.

  “Nobody needs healing tonight,” I whispered, and I smoothed his pillow like a nurse, but he caught my hand and pressed it as if I was his child.

  I staggered out once I was sure he was sleeping. I did not look out the window to see if the city was burning or if Carwyn was outside, watching. I sat down on the sofa and thought that I would stay there for a little while, just until the others came home, so that I knew they were safe.

  Sleep hit me like a grandmother’s purse that turned out to have a brick in it. I was out almost as soon as I sat down, and I slept heavily, determinedly, until the door opening pulled me up like a puppet and yanked me back into awareness. There had been too many disasters in too short a time: no sooner were my eyes open than I found myself shaking and sick with tension, as if I was held together with a wire pulled so taut that I could do nothing but shake and hope the wire would not snap.

  It was not Penelope, Jarvis, or little Marie. I stared at the hooded figure in the shadows of the doorway. The hood and the shadows did their work—I could not see anything below the hood but a blank to be filled in by fear or hope. He did not move for a moment, and then he did. He took one step forward. I saw the line of his nose and the gleam of his eyes.

  I flew into his arms and covered his face with kisses.

  “Ethan, Ethan,” I said, pushing back the hood and pushing my fingers through his hair.

  I had not doubted for a moment that it was him. I knew the diffident way he moved, never presuming he was welcome. The only thing I did not know was how this had happened.

  “Ethan,” I said. “I’m so happy. I’m so sorry.”

  His face, uncovered now, was flushed, his eyes slightly dilated. He put a hand on my rib cage as if he had to steady himself, but then his hand moved down, slowly and with more confidence, until he had a sure hold on my waist.

  “I’m sorry. I lied to you, I got my father killed, I did everything wrong. I’m the one who’s sorry. You have nothing to be sorry for,” he whispered, and his voice sounded as rusty as a prison door that had not been opened in a long, long time.

  I clung to his shirt and kissed him again, pressing our foreheads together as much as our mouths. I wanted to be pressed up against him, anchored by him, sure of him.

  “There is,” I said, and tasted tears on my lips, on his lips as I kissed him, and realized we were both crying. “I know everything now, Nadiya told me about the resistance. Carwyn told me about you going to find Jarvis. You meant it all for the best. You meant to save people. You’re a hero.”

  “Well,” said Ethan, “that makes two of us.”

  I smiled so hard that I thought my face would crack.

  “I saw you down there, with your sword barring the way,” Ethan told me. “You looked like . . .” An angel, I thought. “Like a knight.”

  I kissed him for that.

  “I’m not a hero,” said Ethan. “I couldn’t let everything stay the way it was, I couldn’t let my family keep doing what they were doing. But this is no better. I ruined everything. My father and Jim and so many other people are dead, and it was all for nothing.”

  “You wanted to help. You tried. I didn’t try.”

  “You did better than try,” Ethan said. “You did it. You accomplished something.”

  “So did you,” I said. “You saved Jarvis. You saved someone—you did what you did because you believed in change and goodness, and you inspired me.”

  You were the light that showed me the way, I wanted to say, but I hadn’t wanted other people to see me that way. He was more than my light.

  He’d lied to me, he said, and it was true. He’d done worse than that. He had sent in Carwyn as a replacement for himself and clearly had not realized that if Carwyn had fooled me, every touch I accepted from Carwyn would have been a violation of trust. He’d risked his life for me but had not considered what it would have done to me if he had died. He’d lied to me but meant it for the best.

  I’d lied to him, too, and he knew it. We had each thought that we could replace ourselves with perfect facsimiles and fool the other. We had both been wrong. I was glad to be wrong.

  I saw how hard he had tried, and it was so easy to forgive him that it felt possible to forgive myself.

  “How are you here?” I asked him. “How did it happen?”

  “They were letting in people from the Dark city to mock and spit at me. Carwyn came to visit me. He was wearing a doppelganger’s hood, but it wasn’t fastened by a Light magician. He could take it off. He took it off, once we were alone. I thought he was there to laugh at me. I thought . . . Everything I thought about him was wrong.”

  Ethan swallowed.

  “He . . . he must have just fed from a Light magician, maybe someone he took against their will—”

  “No,” I said. “He’s not like that. It was me.”

  Ethan looked puzzled to hear me come to Carwyn’s defense and, at the same time, sorry that he had insulted Carwyn.

  “I didn’t know. Carwyn must have used Dark magic to confuse my mind. He came in, and I started to feel dizzy and strange. I could barely keep standing. He put the hood on me, and he whispered ‘I remember her’ and everything went black. I don’t remember anything else. I don’t even know who he meant.”

  I remembered what Aunt Leila had said, about Carwyn being confused when he was sick and mistaking my mother for someone else. “I think he meant your mother.”

  “Our mother?” asked Ethan, instinctively kind.

  I smiled at him. “Yeah.”

  “Did you two—did you plan this together?” Ethan sounded helpless.

  I could never have planned this. It would never have occurred to me that Carwyn would ever do something li
ke this.

  “No,” I said again. “It was all him.”

  Ethan shook his head, sounding even more helpless. “I came to in the street wearing this hood,” said Ethan. “I didn’t go back to him. I came to you.”

  “Let’s take it off now,” I whispered.

  I put my hand on the collar. I felt the dip and bob of his throat beneath my ringed fingers, just before Ethan was about to speak.

  The door was open. We both heard the steps on the floor of the hall outside. Ethan reached for me but let his hand drop when I shook my head. I went for the kitchen counter, where I had left the sword.

  It was my Aunt Leila. She had a furled paper in her hand that must have been the pardon. I did not dare even glance toward Ethan. I looked at the paper and her face, the severe black and white lines of both. Only the paper promised mercy.

  I tensed again, my hand touching the edge of the counter but not the sword yet. But I saw Aunt Leila had tensed too. She had not expected anyone else to be there.

  She looked at Ethan, and her eyes narrowed. She had seen Carwyn at the hotel, had seen he was not collared, and I did not want her thinking about why the same boy might be collared now. I could not speak. I could not risk her suspecting. I did not know what to do.

  “Send him away,” Leila said at last. “Lucie, we need to talk. You need to listen to me.”

  “That’s not what ‘We need to talk’ should mean.”

  “Look what you accomplished at the clock tower,” Leila said. “Think of how much you could do if you joined our cause properly. You have so much power as a symbol.”

  “It’s unlucky that I’m a person too, isn’t it?”

  Aunt Leila looked at me. There was so much distance in her gaze: the wall between us could not be broken down, no bridge could be crossed. “It would be a mistake for you to think you have enough power to stand against me. You may be the Golden Thread in the Dark, you may be my niece, but you are not more important than our justice. Every time you stand against me, you will be punished. There is no victory you can win that I cannot take away.”

  “What do you mean by that?” I demanded. “What have you done?”