Unraveled

  “She was deemed unsuitable in more ways than one.” Cormac leans forward, steepling his fingers thoughtfully. His cold black eyes stay on me.

  “Maela?” I assume. She was the person most likely to ascend to the position, and the person most likely to fly into a murderous fit of rage and lose her chance. I’d seen her instability more than once while she lorded over my training at the Coventry. I relied on it during my escape, when I couldn’t reach Erik by myself. I let her push him into the tear I had created. All I had to do was mention kissing him.

  “Never,” he said with a groan. “She’s too … eager.”

  “She’s too cunning,” I correct him.

  “Either way, Maela would be a poor candidate for the position.” Cormac laughs as though we’re playing a new game.

  I’d suspected from my interactions with her at the Coventry that something had gone wrong between Cormac and Maela. Now I’m certain I was right. I’d been on the bad end of Maela’s temper while I was under her watch. She had often abused her position training the incoming Eligibles. I can’t imagine the destruction she’d have caused as Cormac’s wife.

  But if it wasn’t Maela, that left a frightening possibility.

  “Not my … sister?” I ask, dreading his answer.

  “Much too young,” Cormac says. It should be reassuring that he sees her this way, but I also know this means Amie is still the same giddy girl who mooned over a bakery cake on my retrieval night. And Cormac has been molding her—altering her—for over a year to trust him and the Guild.

  “I had an arrangement with Pryana,” Cormac admits, drawing a long breath that says, I’m guilty. “My men—”

  “Your Tailors.”

  “My Tailors,” he says, barely missing a beat, “thought they could splice her with Loricel’s genetic material. But she’s never shown the natural talent Loricel—or you—had.”

  “Pity,” I say carefully. I don’t want him to see I’m upset over what he did to Loricel, the Creweler who guided me during my short time at the Coventry. Cormac collects information the way some men collect old Bulletins. But with him it isn’t a harmless habit. Cormac knows which stories—which inconsequential facts should be held on to—so he can use them against you later.

  Cormac’s mind stays on Pryana, though. “I’ve placed her back within the Western Coventry and canceled the wedding.”

  “I hope you hadn’t sent the invitations,” I say.

  “Would it matter?” he asks with a snort.

  Of course not. The Tailors under his command could remove the memory of the invitation, alter the information in the minds of the people fortunate—or rather, unfortunate—enough to have received one. Every action Cormac takes has a built-in fail-safe. He never has to worry about making a policy mistake or averting a disaster because he can wipe the memory of it away.

  Tailors were the nightmares you couldn’t remember the moment your eyes opened.

  “Well, you are too old for me,” I say, searching for something to talk about that doesn’t revolve around that ring. In the end, I give up. “Why? Tell me why I should accept your … offer?”

  “There’s the little matter of your sister. Need I remind you she’s currently in my custody?”

  I shake my head. I’m well aware that he has Amie.

  “Good. I knew she would come in handy, but there’s more,” he says. He straightens in his chair, ready to talk business. “The reason you should agree to it is fairly simple. There’s trouble in Arras. If we’re going to work together to ensure both worlds survive, we need to give the people something else to think about, obsess over—and what’s better than a celebrity wedding?” He flashes me a blinding smile that’s meant to be charming. Too bad it’s never worked on me. But I know he’s absolutely right. The wedding of Cormac would be the talk of every metro in Arras. It would occupy the Bulletins and the Stream for months, even years, or however long it might take to divert people’s attention from what’s really going on.

  “You want to distract them,” I say.

  “I need them in their places, Adelice. Our plans won’t succeed if the citizens are scared.”

  “Exactly what is happening in Arras?” I ask.

  “Nothing that can’t be handled,” he assures me, but he blinks as he says it.

  Except he needs a wedding—a huge distraction—to handle it.

  I push the plate away from me and rub my wrists. I don’t know how much time I have until he puts the gages back on my hands, now that he’s pitched his idea.

  “You’re finished with your meal,” Cormac says. He looks at the gages, and I sigh, raising my hands to him. An aeroship caught in the Interface between Earth and Arras is no place to try to escape. If only Cormac could see that.

  “These protect me from you,” he says, picking up the gages. “I saw what you did to Kincaid, which was admirable, but I’m not eager for a repeat performance. Not yet. There is another option, though.”

  He glances toward the box on the table. I still haven’t touched it.

  “If I say yes, no more gages?” I ask.

  “When you put on that ring, Adelice, you’ll be making a commitment. As will I,” he reminds me. “To show you I am serious about our endeavor, as long as you wear that ring, there is no need for these.” He waves the gages around and I look from them to the ring.

  It isn’t until I reach out for the blue velvet box that I notice my fingers are trembling. Are all girls this scared of a marriage proposal? It probably doesn’t help that mine comes with a real till-death-do-us-part clause attached. I stare at the ring. It’s flawless, but its loveliness is tainted by what it stands for: control.

  Over me.

  Over Arras.

  “Allow me,” he says, slipping it onto my finger. “I know you think of this as a means to an end, Adelice, but remember, there is no shame in compromise.”

  There is shame in lying, I think. But I swallow the words deep inside me with a frantic gulp.

  “Perfect,” he says. The ring fits precisely as though it were made for me. It probably was.

  I fan my fingers in front of me, noticing the ring’s weight as the stone catches the light and blazes with fiery life, sending flickers like stars around the room.

  “Do we have a deal?” Cormac asks.

  “The proposal every girl dreams of,” I mutter.

  “I’m not getting down on one knee.”

  “Thank Arras.”

  I stare at him. Then I stare at the ring. Cormac needs a wedding to distract the citizens from trouble, whatever that means, but a wedding could buy me time as well. Time to figure out what Cormac is keeping from the people. Time to allow the Agenda on Earth to organize. Because time is a precious thing there, and I need to buy as much of it as I can for my friends.

  “Yes,” I say, pushing Erik’s face from my mind and ignoring the twinge of fear I feel.

  We regard each other for one wary moment and then I reach out and grip his hand in a firm shake.

  “How businesslike,” Cormac says, and he pulls my hand up to his mouth, but before his lips can touch it, the door zips open and Hannox enters. He freezes for a moment, no doubt stunned by Cormac’s romantic gesture. Or maybe by the horror on my face.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt, sir.”

  Cormac waves it off. “What’s the trouble? Are those Agenda fools coming after us?”

  I tug my hand from his at the mention of the Agenda, wondering if he’s referring to Dante, Jost, and Erik.

  “The problem isn’t on Earth, sir,” Hannox says, pausing to let this information sink in. “It’s Arras. There’s a blackout over the Eastern Sector.”

  TWO

  I’VE ONLY EVER SEEN ONE BLACKOUT—when I was a child—but I’ve never forgotten it. The disappearance of the sky isn’t something to be taken lightly, and past instances had been highlighted on the Stream as part of cautionary programming. The message in those programs was clear: stay calm. Blackouts lasted minutes at the most. At least,
they were supposed to.

  We had been warned about them during my training at the Coventry, the effect they had on citizens. Being responsible for a blackout was a sure way to lose your position at the loom. But a simple blackout didn’t require the attention of the prime minister.

  “Take her,” Cormac commands Hannox, and he’s out the door before I can ask him what I should do to help.

  The gages are back over my fingers despite my protests and Hannox marches me out of Cormac’s quarters.

  “I don’t need these,” I say to Hannox.

  “I’m in charge of your safety.” His response is even, but he doesn’t bother to look at me.

  “And how do these keep me safe?” I ask him.

  “Cormac placed you under my guard. I’ve been studying you for years, Adelice. I tracked you on the surface of Earth, and in that time I’ve come to one conclusion.”

  This should be good.

  “The person who poses the most danger to you”—he pauses and meets my eyes—“is yourself.”

  I wish I could argue that point, but I can’t.

  Around us, officers in various styles of tactical gear rush in and out of corridors. Some carry weapons and others are in rappelling equipment. This is what a state of emergency looks like. Cormac can lie about the severity of the issues in Arras, but seeing this I know the situation is spinning out of his control. I wait for someone to give me directions but instead I’m led to the aeroship’s observation deck, which is full of bustling crew who push past me and around me without a second glance.

  “What am I supposed to do?” I ask Hannox as he turns to leave me.

  Hannox isn’t quite what I expected. I’d seen him before at the Guild mines on Earth, but now that he’s up close to me, I don’t know what to make of him. He’s got a soft face with large brown eyes that crinkle in concentration. He’s not smooth and polished and slick like Cormac. But Hannox is deadly, I remind myself. I can’t trust his kind face. It’s always Hannox that Cormac calls to handle his dirty work. He must be good at it.

  “Sit tight and let us observe you,” Hannox says to me.

  “That’s it? I can’t … help?”

  Hannox’s eyes stay soft but his words are cold as he checks the settings on the steel cuffs that bind my fingers. “I don’t know what deal you’ve struck with Cormac, but when we need your help, we’ll ask for it. We have a full-blown revolution happening in the Eastern Sector. I’m not about to parade the queen of the rebels in and trust her to help us out.”

  “What if I escape?” I ask him, a burning resentment bubbling through me. But I immediately regret my question. Hannox will certainly report it back to Cormac.

  “I would love to see you try to escape with those on,” Hannox says, gesturing to the gages, “but if by some miracle you do”—he turns my wrist and traces the control panel—“I’ll blow your hands off. A Creweler isn’t much use without her hands.”

  “No, she isn’t,” I say. I withdraw my hands and turn away from him so he can’t see my face.

  Hannox leans in to my ear. “And don’t forget we have your sister.”

  I don’t respond. I keep my focus on the activity around me, trying to discern what they plan to do once we get to Arras. We’re moving across the Interface faster than I’ve ever seen before and in doing so we catch and rip at its strands, damaging many of them in the process. To my right a man is barking coordinates, his head tipped to the side, communicating via complant to someone far away. Men ascend the ship’s overhead envelope, scaling its rungs with tethers and ropes hooked over their shoulders.

  “Hold on tight!” The command comes from Cormac as he whistles past me. I follow him, desperate for more information about what’s going on.

  “Why?” I ask.

  “Because we’re about to brake,” he calls over his shoulder.

  “My hands are kinda engaged at the moment,” I remind him. This stops him and he turns to stare at me, cursing under his breath. Before I can react, he flings his arm around my waist and pulls me to him as his left hand grabs a nearby railing.

  “Your hands are engaged in more ways than one,” he says as the aeroship brakes hard across the Interface, throwing me backward. But Cormac’s grip stays tight around my waist, holding me to him. He presses me close to his chest. The ship makes a sharp scratching noise as we are forced to a stop, and all around us, several men lose their balance and crash into the deck of the ship. My eyes fly up to the men who were scaling the envelope a moment ago and I find them there, clinging to the steel ribs of the aeroship. As soon as the ship comes to a full stop, they spring into action, scrambling higher, until they can touch the Interface.

  “What are they doing?” I ask, extricating myself from Cormac’s too-eager embrace.

  “No girls are working the looms in the Eastern Coventry, meaning we’ll have to enter Arras in an undesignated space,” Cormac explains.

  “Why not have another Coventry do the work?” I ask.

  Cormac rounds on me. “This event must be contained. The less people find out about it, the better.”

  “But how will we get into Arras through the Interface?”

  “The men will create a passage,” he says.

  “A loophole?” I’d seen a loophole before, on an Agenda trip. The temporary tunnel allowed refugees from Arras to escape to Earth, but on that occasion the loophole had been created within Arras.

  “Is that what your rebel friends call it?” he asks, beginning to walk the length of the deck. I follow as he checks the crew’s progress. “Loophole—how poetic.”

  I clench my teeth to keep myself from saying something I’ll regret. I won’t get anywhere by reminding him of my ties to the Kairos Agenda, the growing rebellion intent on separating the worlds.

  “How can they do it?” I ask him, not letting myself be baited. “I thought loopholes, er, passages had to be created within Arras. Doesn’t the Interface prevent us from tunneling through it?”

  Cormac doesn’t answer me. Instead he paces the deck, waiting for the loophole process to complete.

  “I can’t create my own loophole,” I remind him, certain he thinks I’ll use the information to escape.

  “I’ve seen you rip through a world to get away from me.”

  “That was different,” I say. I know that the only reason my escape from the Western Coventry worked was because we were already close to the surface of Earth there.

  “Perhaps you’re right. You wouldn’t survive throwing yourself through an average passage, and I’ve made certain there won’t be a similar incident in the future,” he says.

  “We have a deal, Cormac,” I remind him. “I’m not running off.”

  His eyes swivel to regard me for a moment before he relents. “They’ll use a machine to create a temporary slub in the Interface between Arras and Earth and force a passage through. The Guild has the only technology to do so.”

  I know this can’t be true, because the Agenda has access to loophole technology. Cormac removes the gages from my hands, but I barely notice. Before I can decide whether or not to point this out to him, Cormac speaks again. “The Guild monitors all activity passing through the Interface.”

  If this is true, the Guild knows about every refugee who flees to Earth, something the Agenda is unaware of. But it does explain how easily Valery and Deniel had infiltrated Kincaid’s estate while working as Cormac’s spies. Kincaid might have been the most powerful man on Earth, controlling the vital solar trafficking trade, but he had a weakness for living toys. He collected refugees from Arras for his macabre theater productions. Both Valery and Deniel had sought asylum with Kincaid under false pretenses. Deniel had used his alteration abilities to find a place on the estate, but Valery, my former aesthetician, had become Kincaid’s lover. Deniel had died before he could fulfill Cormac’s orders, unwound by Kincaid’s men, but Valery fooled us long enough to inflict serious damage. It was due to her that I was here now.

  When the loophole is complete,
we’re separated into groups as an officer barks warnings. Given the circumstances, we have little time to get inside Arras before the loophole begins to collapse.

  “Passage will be based on priority clearance,” the officer shouts. “It is our mission to get these priority personnel safely to the surface. If someone tells you to run, run! Remember, the tunnel lacks a permanent rivet to ensure stability. That means you move fast and you move smart.

  “A team has been sent in advance of group one to rivet the entrance into the Eastern Sector,” the officer drones on as I half listen. “It’s approximately one mile between the entrance and the exit. Move quickly, follow your leader, and get through.”

  I’m in the first group permitted passage into the loophole, along with Cormac. Since the advance team declared the passage safe, Cormac isn’t wasting any time. I’m not sure if he’s unwilling to risk being caught in a passage collapse by going later or if he’s eager to get to the problems in the Eastern Sector.

  I study the silvery web of protection patched over the Interface as we wait for clearance to enter the loophole. The mouth of the passage hovers next to the deck of the ship and a plank has been placed to allow us to enter the vortex. I only have to walk up the plank and into the tunnel, which sounds easy enough, though it looks terrifying. The officers leading us through carry a giant stack of metal hoops at least eight feet in diameter. When they reach the end of the plank, they pop the hoops apart and then back together. This time they aren’t stacked, but fitted into an open sphere. A brass globe hangs in the center. It doesn’t touch the rings. It merely floats as if suspended by air.

  I’ve never traveled through a loophole before, and I have a million questions.

  “What’s that?” I ask Cormac, pointing to the strange contraption the officers are setting up.

  “A bodkin.”

  I stare at him, waiting for a better answer.

  “It’s an armillary sphere. It maintains the loophole as we pass through,” he says. “Stop asking questions.”

  A hundred butterflies take flight in my belly as we’re led up to the mouth of the loophole.