The Invasion of the Tearling

  “Let me tell you something, Queenie . . . my drugs are the only reason you haven’t had panic or widespread suicide down in that camp. People have to cling to something.”

  “I see. You’re an altruist.”

  “Not at all. But it’s foolish to blame the dealer for catering to his market.”

  “That’s Thorne talking.”

  “Yep. Thorne was a little shit all his life, but he was always right about that.”

  Kelsea looked up, suddenly forgetting the drugs, and even the Regency bill. “You knew Thorne when he was young?”

  “Lord yes, Queenie. He’ll tell you that no one knows where he came from—”

  “He’s dead.”

  “—but there are a few of us, if you take the trouble to look.”

  “Where did he come from?”

  “The Creche.”

  “I don’t know what that is.”

  “Deep under the Gut, Queenie, there’s a warren of tunnels. God knows what they were built for; they’re too deep to be sewers. If you want something too fucked even for the Gut, and you know the right people, you go down to the Creche.”

  “What was Thorne doing there?”

  “Thorne was sold to a pimp when he was barely born. Lived his entire childhood down there . . . such as it was.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Don’t look at me like that, Queenie. I had to go down there on business once or twice, early in my career. They need a fairly steady supply of narcotics, for obvious reasons, but I got out of dealing down there a long time ago.”

  “You got out.”

  “Yes, I did. It’s a bad place, the Creche. Kids for sex, for—”

  “Stop.” Kelsea held up her hand. “I see.”

  “A bad place,” Arliss repeated, shuffling the papers on his desk. “But Thorne was smart and quick. He was practically a king down there by the time he was eighteen.”

  “Was Lazarus there too?”

  “He was, though he’ll not admit it if you ask him.”

  “What was—” Kelsea’s voice died, and she swallowed, feeling the words slip around a dry place in her throat. “What was he doing down there?”

  “The ring.”

  “Explain.”

  “Children fighting children.”

  “Boxing?”

  “Not always. Sometimes they gave them weapons. There’s value in variety.”

  Kelsea’s lips felt as though they’d frozen solid. “Why?”

  “Gambling, Queenie. More money changes hands over kidfighting than any other betting matter in this kingdom, and the Mace was one of the greatest contenders they’d ever seen, a juggernaut.” Arliss’s eyes gleamed with memory. “He never lost, even in his early years. Lazarus isn’t even his real name, you know, just a nickname his handlers came up with when no one could bring him down. The odds got so high by the time he was eleven or twelve that I nearly stopped taking bets on him at all.”

  “You took bets?”

  “I’m a bookie, Queenie. I take bets on anything where I can calculate the odds.”

  Kelsea rubbed her eyes. “Didn’t anyone try to put a stop to it?”

  “Who would, Lady? I saw your uncle down there several times. Your mother too.”

  “How did they decide who won?”

  Arliss met her gaze steadily, and Kelsea shook her head, feeling ill. “I see. Lazarus never told me.”

  “Of course he didn’t. If some comes out, it all comes out.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning that the Mace was almost an animal by the time he was done. No one could wrangle him, except maybe Carroll; it was Carroll who got him out of the Creche for good. But the Mace was still a danger to others, long after his days in the ring were over. He’s ashamed of his deeds. He doesn’t want anyone to know.”

  “Then why are you telling me?”

  Arliss raised his eyebrows. “I don’t answer to the Mace, Queenie. You’re a fool if you think I do. I don’t even answer to you. I’ve reached the good time of life now, the time where I’ve made my money, and if someone is fool enough to threaten me, I don’t need to care. I do and say as I please.”

  “And it pleases you to be here? Now? Why haven’t you fled to Mortmesne? Or Cadare?”

  Arliss grinned. “Because I don’t want to.”

  “You’re a pain in the ass.” Kelsea got up from the armchair, wiping off several puffs of dust that had settled on her skirt. “Will you draft my bill?”

  “Yes.” Arliss sat back, crossing his arms over his chest, and eyed her speculatively. “So you’re going to die tomorrow?”

  “I think so.”

  “Then what in the happy Christ are you doing sitting here talking to me? You should be out getting drunk, getting laid.”

  “With whom?”

  Arliss smiled, a sudden and gentle smile that sat oddly on his twisted face. “You think we don’t know?”

  “Shut up, Arliss.”

  “As you like.” He pulled a blank sheet of paper from the stack at his left hand, and his next words were muttered down at the desk.

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing. Don’t throw in the towel yet, Queenie. You’re a clever piece of business . . . smarter even than your grandmother, and that’s saying something. This is a gutsy thing you mean to do.”

  “Mad, perhaps. I’ll be back to sign the bills before dawn.”

  Leaving Arliss’s office, she wandered up the hallway, feeling lost, not knowing what to do now. Tomorrow morning she would walk out of here, and chances were that she wouldn’t be coming back. She wondered whether Arliss was right, whether she ought to simply spend the entire night in bed with Pen.

  Kelsea.

  She halted in the middle of the hallway. The voice was Lily’s, not words but a pleading grab for help. It felt as if a drowning woman were grasping at the edges of Kelsea’s mind.

  Kelsea.

  Lily was in trouble. Terrible trouble. Kelsea stared at the asymmetrical pattern of stones on the floor, her mind racing, moving from point to point. Lily had called, and Kelsea had heard her. In the span of history, Lily Mayhew’s life meant nothing; she was not even a footnote. Whatever was happening to her, she was long dead and buried now, but Kelsea couldn’t turn away. Yet she didn’t know how to reach Lily. They were separated by three centuries, an endless gulf. Kelsea had always thought of time as a solid wall behind her, blocking out everything that had already passed . . . but the world she now inhabited was greater than that.

  Was it possible to create one of her fugues?

  Kelsea stilled, arrested by this idea. The distance might be vast in time, but Kelsea no longer lived in pure time, did she? She had moved in and out of it for months. Could she step off the edge of one age and into another, as neatly as pre-Crossing passengers would have boarded a train? She called up the outlines of Lily’s world: the dark storm-filled horizon, much like the Tearling, threaded through with inequality and violence. A burst of fire seared through Kelsea’s chest, sending her staggering against the wall.

  “Lady?”

  Pen, behind her, his voice muffled as though Kelsea were swimming in deep water.

  “Pen. It’s going to be a long night, I think. I need you to watch out for me when I fall.”

  “Fall?”

  Kelsea’s vision had blurred now. Pen was a kind shape in the torchlight. “I don’t know where I land.”

  “Lady?” Pen grabbed her arm. “Is it your fugue?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We’ll get you to your chamber.”

  Kelsea allowed him to lift her along, barely even noticing. Her mind was full of Lily: Lily’s life, Lily’s fright. What had been waiting for her when she got home from Boston?

  “What’s wrong?”

  Elston’s booming, bearlike voice, but now Kelsea heard it from a great distance. Pen was carrying her, she realized, and she had no idea when it had happened.

  “Fugue,” Pen muttered. “It came
on fast. Help me get her to bed.”

  “No,” Kelsea whispered. “Can’t afford to sleep the night. Just stay with me and don’t let me fall.”

  “Lady—”

  “Shhh.” Kelsea was dreaming now, awake and dreaming at the same time. Lily had called, and Kelsea had heard her. Everything had darkened; Kelsea groped blindly in the shadows, seeking the past. If Kelsea could only reach them, Lily and William Tear. She could picture them standing before her, their eyes kind . . . but all around them swirled a maelstrom of violence. Lily—

  Lily.”

  She spun around, hearing a whisper behind her, certain it was Greg. But there was nothing, only early sunlight streaming through the living room windows. The nearly silent motors of the house’s internal processes hummed along inside the walls. Had her house ever seemed so small before? The furniture she had bought, the carpet she had chosen . . . there was a falsity to these things, a sense that she could push them aside and see chalk markings, a bare stage.

  Greg was not in the house. The kitchen floor had provided no answers, only a large smear of dried blood. Had Greg gotten up, called an ambulance? There was no way to know. The stain on the kitchen floor had the thick, viscous look of menstrual blood, and it reminded Lily that she had forgotten to take her pill the night before. She headed for the nursery, leaving Jonathan in the kitchen. Did she have anything to do today? Yes, lunch with Michele and Sarah, but that could be canceled. If Security came for her, it would be better to have it happen here than downtown or at the club. Lily didn’t kid herself that she would hold up well under questioning, but she thought she had the parameters clear now. She would break, one way or another; her job was simply to make sure that she didn’t break until September first. Could she do that? She closed her eyes, looking for the better world, but instead she found William Tear, standing beneath the streetlights.

  The nursery faced eastward, a wash of light in the early sun. Lily darted over to the loose tile, suddenly aware of the sun moving, of the fact that Greg, or Security, could show up at any time. After she took her pill, she would run upstairs and take a shower, put on a good dress and some makeup. Security would come, and when they did, the way she looked would matter. She would appear as respectable as possible, a woman who couldn’t possibly be involved in midnight journeys, in separatist plots. She would—

  The space beneath the tile was empty.

  Lily rocked back on her heels, staring in disbelief. Yesterday she’d had ten boxes of pills in there. Cash too, over two thousand dollars, her emergency stash. Lily’s stomach seemed to contract in on itself as the meaning of the empty hole socked home. Her pills were gone.

  “Lose something?”

  Lily croaked in fright and nearly fell over, clutching the arm of her sofa for balance, as Greg emerged from behind the nursery door. The left side of his head was caked with dried blood; it had matted his hair and trickled down his neck to stain the shoulder of his white shirt. He was grinning.

  “Where’ve you been, Lily?”

  “Nowhere,” she whispered. She wanted to speak up, to be strong, but she seemed to have no voice. When Greg wasn’t around, he became diminutive in her mind, but in real life, he wasn’t small at all. In the light, airy space of the nursery, he seemed about ten feet tall.

  “Nowhere,” Greg repeated smoothly. “Just out and about, all night, outside the wall.”

  “That’s right. I got carjacked too, in case you care.”

  “All night, outside the wall,” Greg repeated, and Lily shuddered. His eyes were wide and empty, dark orbs that seemed to reflect no light. “My dad was right, you know. He said all women are cunts, and I said no, Lily’s different. And look here!”

  Greg held up a box of her pills, pinching them between two fingers, the way he would something diseased. And now something utterly unexpected and wonderful happened: at the sight of her pills, Lily’s panic melted quickly and silently away. She straightened, took a deep breath, and tipped her head to one side, cracking her neck, as he loomed closer. She had to fight the urge to jump up and grab the small orange box out of his hand.

  “All the bullshit I had to listen to, all the jokes they made at my expense. Do you know what I’ve had to put up with because of you? I lost out on a promotion last year because I didn’t have a son! My boss calls me Blank-Shooting Greg.”

  “Catchy.”

  Greg’s eyes narrowed. “You want to be careful, Lily. I could turn you over to Security right now.”

  “Do that. Better them than you.”

  “No.” Greg’s mouth twisted upward in a wide, spitless grin. “I think we’ll keep this just between us. Where were you?”

  “None of your business.”

  He slapped her, and her head rocked backward on her neck, a flower bobbing on its stalk. But she kept her feet.

  “You need to learn to watch your mouth, Lily. Where were you last night?”

  “Sucking Arnie Welch’s cock.”

  She didn’t know where that had come from; it was merely the first thing to pop into her mind. But she watched, amazed, as Greg’s eyes narrowed into tiny slits and his cheeks turned white.

  He believes it!

  For a moment Lily teetered on the edge of hysterical laughter. An image popped into her head: kneeling in front of Arnie Welch, poor old Arnie who was as dumb as a bag of hammers, and Lily began to laugh. She barely felt Greg grab hold of her hair—should have put it up, her brain remonstrated—and draw her up, making a square target. She giggled at the sight of his face, the tiny burning red spots in his white cheeks, the bared teeth, even the emptiness of his eyes.

  “Stop laughing!” he shouted, spraying spittle across her face, and of course this only made Lily laugh harder.

  “Weak,” she giggled. “And you know it too.”

  Greg clouted the side of her head, sending her flying. Lily glimpsed a wall of sparkling sunlight in front of her and then she went through the patio doors, shattering both panes of glass. A million pinpricks seemed to needle into her arms and face. She pinwheeled for balance on top of the patio, then fell, rolling down three brick steps to land in the grass of the backyard.

  “How weak am I, Lily?” Greg asked, his voice closing, following her down the steps. Lily’s arms had been sliced open, her head ached, and it felt like her ankle was twisted. Greg kicked her in the ribs, and Lily groaned and curled up, trying to protect her sides. As she rolled, she saw something that made her go cold: the fly of Greg’s pants had tented outward. Lily hadn’t taken a pill in more than thirty-six hours, and the old Lily, the careful one, had read every word of the insert that came inside the orange box. The math came out bad. If he raped her now, she could get pregnant.

  She rolled over and lashed out with both legs, kicking Greg’s feet out from under him. Bright pain exploded in her bad ankle, but the move worked; Greg went down, an expression of almost comical surprise on his face. Lily tried to get up, but he had bruised her ribs, if not something worse, and her left arm wouldn’t respond to commands. She couldn’t get herself off the ground. She began to crawl, leaning on her right side, dragging herself sideways across the grass toward the kitchen door. In the center of the kitchen island sat a polished wooden block, and its gleaming surface hid more than a dozen knives. Picturing the smoothness of the big butcher knife, its weight in her hands, Lily felt a nearly dizzying excitement, and began to pant as she dragged herself along. Right arm out, as far as her shoulder socket would allow, and then drag her body to catch up. But her arm was already starting to ache. Lily had never been so conscious of her own physical weakness; she remembered Dorian doing pushups despite her stitches, thought longingly of the tough ripple of muscle along Dorian’s arms. She tasted blood.

  A hand grabbed her bad ankle, making her squeal in pain. Lily peered over her shoulder and saw that Greg had hit something when he fell; fresh blood covered his chin. But he was still grinning, even with the bright red stream slavering from his mouth. He squeezed her ankle, and Lily screamed
as she felt something grind together in there: muscle or bone, it didn’t matter which, it was all mixed up in a bright implosion of pain. She tried to kick Greg in the face, but there was no leverage while she was lying on her side. She yanked her foot from his hand and pulled herself closer to the kitchen door, thinking only how good the handle of the big butcher knife would feel, how smooth in her hand . . . if she could reach it. But she only made it a few more feet before Greg grabbed her again, by the calf this time, his fingers digging in.

  “Where you goin’, Lily? Where the fuck you think you’ll go?”

  His voice came thickly, almost bubbling behind her. Lily wondered if he had broken a tooth. She tried to wriggle forward again, but he worked a hand beneath her hip and flipped her over, neatly as a pancake, before crawling on top of her. He put a hand between her legs and squeezed. Lily screamed, but her screams were muffled against his shirt. She took a deep, gasping breath, filled with the sandalwood of his cologne, and felt vomit begin to work its way up her throat. And now, incredibly, Greg was muttering, “Say you love me, Lily.”

  He had managed to pin both of her wrists over her head with one hand. Lily hawked back and spat, feeling thin pleasure as he recoiled.

  “I hate you,” she hissed. “I fucking hate you.”

  Greg punched her in the face. His fist missed her still-healing nose, but the bridge tingled with warning pain. Greg unbuttoned her jeans and Lily struggled harder, screaming, furious that it could still be this way, right here, with her husband’s broad shoulders and thick arms pinning her down.

  “Get off her. Right now.”

  Greg froze. Lily peered over his shoulder and saw Jonathan, his dark eyes wide and furious, holding a gun to the back of Greg’s head.

  “Up, asshole.”

  Greg eased off her, sinking back to rest on his knees, and Lily scrambled away, panting hoarsely. She could already feel heavy pressure high on the ridge of her cheekbone, the beginnings of a shiner. She fumbled with her jeans for a moment before she got them buttoned.

  “What are you doing, Johnny?” Greg asked, blinking up at Jonathan as though trying to place him. Lily pushed herself to her feet, but found that her ankle would take no weight. She balanced on the other foot, tottering awkwardly.