Tell the Wind and Fire Read online

  I snapped the compact shut and saw Carwyn giving me one of his flat looks, mouth curled in what looked a whole lot like contempt.

  “You look beautiful,” Ethan told me, which I didn’t care about, and, “We can do this,” which I did.

  The train pulled into Penn Station with a creak and a rattle. I stood up from the bed without letting go of Ethan’s hand, and I reached for Carwyn’s and grabbed hold, pulling him to his feet as well.

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s get this done.”

  We went up the elevator into a maelstrom of reporters. One of the guards had told somebody, I thought, or someone had seen what almost happened to Ethan and recognized him. The station was packed.

  Carwyn’s hood was up—people did not take kindly to a doppelganger brazenly displaying a stolen face—but all it would take was a guard spilling the secret before he could be bribed into silence, or someone making a lucky guess about who the doppelganger next to us was.

  Ethan’s father was on the Light Council. Ethan’s Uncle Mark led it. There had been a Stryker on the council ever since it was formed.

  They were the most powerful family in New York. But there were other powerful families, waiting for their chance to take the Strykers down. People were voted onto the council—nominated from only a small pool of the wealthiest and most influential Light magician families, but voted on. If the Strykers were implicated in a crime like creating a doppelganger, their power would be lost. All the protection they could offer Ethan, and me, would be lost.

  We were in dangerous waters, the flashing light of every camera a threat. I was prepared to hold on to them both and push my way through, but I wasn’t looking forward to it.

  And then Ethan’s uncle stepped out of the crowd.

  It was the first time in my life I had ever been glad to see Mark Stryker. Not that he had ever been unpleasant to me. On the contrary, he had always been flawlessly, almost ceremoniously, polite. I knew how people acted when they were being recorded. Mark was like that all the time.

  He was like that now, but we were in perfect accord. When he put a hand on Ethan’s shoulder, loving and concerned for the space of three camera flashes, I sent him a perfectly distressed and grateful smile.

  “My dear girl,” he said in a loud voice, “I’m so relieved you’re both safe.”

  His security detail swept unobtrusively after him, dark-clad and official-looking without being official enough to answer for anything they did. We were effectively cut off from the crowd of reporters.

  “There’s been some kind of terrible mix-up,” I responded. “I’m so glad you’re here to sort it out.”

  Mark Stryker raised his eyebrows, smile fixed in place like a picture on a wall. I’d never thought he looked like Ethan in more than the superficial way all the Strykers resembled each other: they practically had tall, dark, and photogenic trademarked.

  Now that I had met Carwyn, I saw that Ethan looked more like his uncle than I would have dreamed. I saw now how different the same features could seem when they were illuminated by a different spirit. Same hawk-like nose, same high cheekbones, same thin mouth with the potential to be pitiless. Same dark eyes, which could look so flat.

  Mark’s frightening eyes locked on the sight of my hand linked with Carwyn’s.

  I knew that it would only call attention to the fact that he was with us, attention we did not need, creating questions we could not answer. But I was afraid of letting him go. I didn’t want to lose him.

  “A doppelganger,” said Mark, with what seemed to be mild surprise and nothing more. The skin on the back of my neck crawled, as if stroked by a hand too cold to be human. “Here illegally?”

  Oh God, I thought. He must be, and that meant he could legally be executed if he was caught. And thanks to us, he was well and truly caught.

  “You shock me with that implication!” Carwyn said, and showed the inside of his wrist, where the date—September 12—burned with Light magic. A perfectly legal pass, inscribed by a Light magician official.

  “But you said—” Ethan began.

  “Be fair,” Carwyn told him. “I just expressed my enthusiasm for crime in general. I didn’t say I was committing a crime right that minute. I was given a pass to come and assist another legal Dark magician with the draining of the city’s best and brightest.”

  “You must be very good,” I remarked, almost involuntarily. He was young, and a doppelganger. To be sent to the Light city indicated enormous talent.

  “That’s what the ladies all tell me,” Carwyn said.

  Mark looked disgusted. “Who else saw . . . the creature?”

  I knew what Mark meant: Who had seen his face? Carwyn had had his back to the train. I was certain the passengers had not seen him.

  “Just these guards,” I said honestly. I heard my voice shake, and Mark nodded as if confirming that it should. We both knew that I was signing the guards’ death warrant.

  But they had tried to kill Ethan. It was Ethan or them.

  “Thank you,” Mark told me. “I am certain a private conference with these fine officers will clear everything up.”

  Some of his men, trained both to be subtle and to kill, depending on which was required, split from the protective unit around us and surrounded the Light guards from the train. I saw one of the guards’ faces, pale in the stark light of the train station, as scared as I had been, and then they were lost in the crowd.

  “In the meantime, I am afraid that you were recognized on the train, and it has caused some upheaval among our civic-minded Light citizens,” Mark said. “There were rumors that the Golden Thread in the Dark had been taken off the train by the sans-merci. If you would be so kind as to spare some time to put the public’s mind at rest . . .”

  He smiled at me. I smiled back at him.

  “Of course.”

  I grabbed Ethan’s elbow. “Don’t let Carwyn out of your sight!” I hissed.

  Letting Carwyn disappear in the same way my mother had, the same way those guards would, was no way to repay him.

  I left them both and went to Mark’s side.

  “Ladies and gentlemen!” called out Mark Stryker. “The Golden Thread in the Dark.” Applause crackled, brief and abrupt as the clash of swords meeting. “As you can see, she is quite safe, and we intend to keep her so.”

  He took my hand and turned me to the crowd, a gesture that read as protection unless you could feel his owner-tight grip. I blinked and added another sheen of distress to my face—wet eyes and parted lips.

  “Thank you all so much for your concern for me,” I called. I did not know what the story about the sans-merci was, and did not dare risk contradicting whatever people were saying. I kept it vague. “I was scared for a while back in the train, but I had Ethan with me”—people laughed a little, indulgent about young love—“and now I’m back with Mr. Stryker, so I know I’m safe.”

  I smiled up at Mark. He smiled down at me. We had perfected our smiles by then. This was easy.

  Mark cleared his throat. “When the French scientist Louis de Breteuil discovered Light, he lit the world, changing and illuminating everything. Light replaced old and crude technologies with power that transformed a world. Nobody lives who remembers the world as it was, as a savage and lawless place where men used their limited resources to kill each other for those same resources. Light has saved us and spared us from such knowledge. Yet ever since Light has existed, it has had a shadow: the Dark, who use our blood in their spells, who benefit from our power and yet who think to rise up against us. The Dark are ungrateful and vicious, and they have forgotten the natural order. But I promise you, Light citizens, they have risen up in the past and failed. The Dark is always defeated. The Light cannot be quenched. Ever since the Garden, the serpent has existed. Ever since knowledge came into this world, evil came twined around it, and time and again evil has always been crushed. No matter what new measures we must introduce, our Light Council will remain dedicated to the protection of this city
from dangerous insurgents. We will keep you safe.”

  The cadence of Mark’s voice had changed from his earlier announcements, becoming low and persuasive. This was a very familiar speech, the essentials of which were so well known to me that they seemed like a prayer or a children’s story. Since I knew it by heart, it seemed true.

  Light magic commands all things on this earth. So long as the sun burns in the sky, we rule the world.

  All we need is the sun . . . and to be drained. The use of Light builds up in our blood, begins to be painful. It feels like burning in our veins, in the same way muscles burn when overstrained, but it does not stop there. If a Light magician is not drained, the pain gets worse. Eventually the magician will burn away from the inside out, bones turning to ash, and blood to flame.

  Long ago, people used to drain patients’ blood with leeches to restore them to health, a barbaric ancient practice that did not work at all. Now the ancient lie has become truth. A practicing Light magician has to have their blood drained by a Dark magician. The more often we use magic, the more often we have to be drained. If we do not get drained regularly, we die.

  They use our blood for power. But we need them in order to live.

  That is why Dark magicians and all those whose families have produced Dark magicians live in Dark cities, rounded up and kept close to centers of Light, confined and controlled. We cannot afford to be without them.

  We need them. That is the truth everybody knows and nobody speaks. That’s why we resent them and fear them and tell stories describing how they are evil, how they deserve all they get and we deserve all that we have.

  People always hate those they rely on.

  I should know. As Mark spoke, I held his hand fast, leaned against him, smiled for the cameras in the circle of his protection, and I could not imagine hating anyone more.

  “My nephew and his dear friend Lucie Manette have just been through a terrifying ordeal. They are in no condition to speak in public as yet. We will of course be releasing a statement in the very near future. We thank you for your consideration at this trying time,” Mark said as the bodies pressed in and the lights flashed, hot and close and relentless.

  Nobody challenged Mark Stryker. Nobody ever did.

  We didn’t have to speak. We were moving out under the glass dome, almost through to the escalators of Thirty-Fourth Street, when we caught up with the others. Ethan had tight hold of Carwyn’s elbow; I ran up and caught Carwyn’s free hand, linking my fingers with his. I saw Mark strip off one glove, the supple leather crumpled in his fist, and touch Ethan’s shoulder with a heavy ringed hand.

  Then I saw Penelope, my father’s best friend. She was running down the passage lined with small stores, past a bakery with a bright yellow sign. Her coat was flapping open and her rings were blazing, and I knew why she had come. I knew who she was there about.

  “We had the television on,” she said breathlessly, “and the news started talking about you and Ethan. There wasn’t any warning, no way to prepare him, and he’s having one of his spells again.”

  The one thing that could have torn me away from Ethan right then: my father.

  “I have to go to him,” I said. “I have to show him that I’m all right.”

  Mark Stryker did not look devastated to be parted from me. “Naturally you do. I’ll send you and Dr. Pross in one of our cars.”

  “Thank you.” I didn’t spare him much of a smile. We were almost clear of the cameras.

  I waited until we were out on the streets, people pushing impatiently past us. The purring and screeching of cars, the tap of men’s business shoes, and the click of women’s business heels formed an orchestra of city sounds that would screen what I had to say.

  “Ethan, a word,” I said, and dropped Carwyn’s hand.

  It felt like a betrayal, like letting him down, when he hadn’t let Ethan down. I looked away from him, dark-hooded and silent on that bright busy street. I did not look at Mark. I looked to Ethan.

  I dragged him a little away from Mark, Penelope, and the doppelganger.

  “Go to your dad,” Ethan said. “I’ll sort everything out with Mark. Don’t worry about me.”

  “I’m not worried,” I said. “Because I know I can count on you to do the right thing and take care of Carwyn.”

  Ethan’s eyebrows rose. “I’m pretty sure Carwyn can take care of himself.”

  “I’m pretty sure he can’t,” I said. “Because he’s a doppelganger in the Light city, and that means he is in danger. He helped you when you were in danger. I have to go to my father, but you have to promise me that you will help him.”

  Ethan bit his lip. I looked back at Mark Stryker and saw how far he was standing from Carwyn. People on the street, those determinedly indifferent city people, were looking at Carwyn’s hooded head.

  I wanted to say, I know what it’s like to be buried, to be scheming in the Dark and scared of the Light. I know that saving someone else comes at a price. But I didn’t want Ethan to think of the similarities between the doppelganger and me.

  “Ethan,” I said instead. “Please.”

  Ethan looked at me, his eyes amber in the city lights. “Lucie,” he said, “I’ll do my best. I promise. For you.”

  Penelope and her husband, Jarvis, lived in a vast brick building in midtown, not too far away from the theater district. Their apartment was a narrow snake of a living place, scarcely more than one large room divided into slivers. So, basically, it was a nice modern New York apartment and would have been nicer if they had not given their second bedroom to two people who had stumbled in from the Dark and stayed.

  Dad and I had a curtain separating our bedroom into two rooms. Penelope and Jarvis had a Japanese screen between their bed and little Marie’s.

  I knew we should find a way to move out, but I didn’t know how to voluntarily give up the comfort of having other people around, the small, simple happiness of coming home to find dinner waiting or the television on. Penelope and Jarvis had never mentioned wanting their home back, never even hinted; they always acted as if they wanted us to stay forever.

  “I’m sorry that I had to drag you away,” Penelope said as the car sped through the glittering streets.

  “It’s no problem,” I said, and forced myself to smile. “Well, it’s my problem. I can deal with it.”

  “You don’t have to deal with it alone,” Penelope told me. “Are you all right?”

  “Never better,” I said, and kept my hand against the Light panel in the car door, the square of magic that would brighten when the car stopped, waiting for it to release.

  I owed Penelope and Jarvis better than this. When the car pulled up outside the building, I saw the lights blazing in every window in their apartment on the sixth floor. I pressed the panel before it had woken into full light, hurled myself out of the car before it had quite stopped, then ran up the stairs and through the door faster than Penelope could follow me. This was my responsibility and not hers.

  Dad was sitting on the sofa, rocking back and forth. Light was cupped in his palms, building and building. The glitter of his rings had a sparking, restless quality, like electric wires gone wrong.

  “Dad, I’m here. I’m so sorry I left you, but I’m all right. I’m absolutely all right.”

  Dad stared at me, his eyes vacant but for the glitter of magic.

  “Dad,” I said pleadingly.

  Dad stared a little longer, then reached out and touched my hair, the shining golden length of it.

  “It’s like her hair,” he said. “What is your name, sweetheart?”

  “Lucie, Dad. It’s Lucie.”

  “Oh,” Dad said, slowly. He lifted a hand to my face, and the rings on that hand burned brighter, brighter, so he could see me. My eyes stung, but I wouldn’t close them: I squinted and tried to keep my focus on him, past the harsh light and shimmering tears. Gold obscured my vision, the glitter of rings and the shine of magic on the walls, everything gold but my father’s hair. That had g
one silver back when they put him in the cage.

  “You remember me, Dad.”

  “It was so very long ago,” Dad muttered, and his other hand clutched my hair, like a child clutching a teddy bear. “Lucie! Lucie, you have to help me find her. I have to go to her and help her . . . heal her. She needs to be healed. She went to heal someone. I need to heal someone.”

  He’d had fits like this before, even while he was in his cage. I’d probably given him the idea. He wasn’t a fraud like me. He was really good, and he really tried. He tried to heal people as if he were still a medic. He’d put his hand out through the bars of his cage to heal people; he’d run up and down the train healing people when we were making our way to the Light city. He’d collapsed in public over and over in the first few months, but he hadn’t been like this for a year.

  I’d thought he was better now.

  It was my fault. I’d scared him, I’d reduced him to this state where he was fumbling after memories of a time when he’d been happy, when he’d thought he could help people and find my mother. We’d been idiots, once, fools in the dark together.

  “She’s dead, Dad,” I said, and tried to keep my voice level. I helped him up from the sofa and kept his steps steady as we went into our room. I led him to his bed and made him lie down. His eyes closed as soon as his head touched the pillow, his body curled up in a trembling comma shape on the bed. I pulled the sheets over him and murmured, “She’s dead, but we’re alive. Don’t you want to live?”

  “It’s been so long,” Dad murmured back. “I don’t know.”

  Good people are always ready to die for a good reason. It’s only people like me who say, Yes, I want to live. Yes, at any cost. I had said yes for both of us, two years ago.