Dreamstrider (28 page)

Marez tilts his head. From the back, he looks much younger. Is his charismatic, easy nature a mask, just like Brandt’s? “You don’t speak much of your dreams, for a Barstadter.” He looks back at me expectantly.

“I thought you found our chatter about dreams intolerable.”

He holds a hand out to me. “Actually, I find Barstadt chatter in general quite insufferable. You, dear Silke, are an exception.” His smile flashes, clear and bright in the murky fog. “Come, let’s check on how the constabulary’s preparations are coming along.”

We head north from the harbor. In the constabulary’s office, I take a seat while the head constable rattles off a lengthy list of contingency plans to Marez, coupled with improbably high numbers of policemen who have been called in to maintain order in the streets. My guess is he mainly intends to cower behind his desk and let the Farthing army clear the streets, if it comes to that.

I’m trying to pay attention to their conversation, really I am, but the wall behind me beckons, and the chair eases itself around me like an embrace. Keeping my eyelids open seems so unnecessary, so cruel. Memories of Marez’s kiss play through my head, interlaced with the turmoil of the past few days and not nearly enough sleep. My thoughts are fuzzy as my lashes flutter against my cheek and—

I’m sprawled in a field of daisies, their leaves a luminous emerald under white lacy petals. The sky overhead sings with crisp azure, and the occasional cloud streaks through in perfect counterpoint harmony. The smell of cool grass surrounds the picnic blanket, and the whispering breeze is just enough to make the world come alive.

A safe, shallow dream, not one in the dreamworld. I look down at the picnic blanket and find Brandt by my side, head propped on his arms folded under him. “Hello, beautiful,” he murmurs. His skin glows golden under the sourceless sunlight.

A bowl of berries sits between us. I pluck one up by the stem and let it pop into a juicy symphony in my mouth. Such a strong, glorious taste, with dark notes in all the right places. I reach for another, and then one more.

A hand snatches my wrist, grasping at me from inside the bowl.

“No!” I tip backward on the blanket, but the razor-wire grip is too strong. The hand reaching from the bowl roils like a boiling stew of meat. Many fingers—claws, really—sprout from it, coiling around my wrist and slinking up my arm, growing longer by the second. My skin rips open as I try to pull away.

“Didn’t you know?” Brandt asks, still basking in the sun. He closes his eyes with a contented sigh. “This is a nightmare.”

I try to scream again, but the sound turns into a swarm of bees, chattering and buzzing as they leave my mouth. My throat swells shut. The hive buzzes inside me; my skin vibrates as they try to break free.

Another arm grows from the bowl, and another. The bowl stretches wide, excreting the horrendous spidery demon that has me in its grasp. The gaping hole left behind reveals what looks like the world of Oneiros below us, its avenues awash with blood.

“Nightmare is awakening,” Brandt says, and then settles onto the blanket for a nap.

The spider flings me into the air. Its barbed claws send venom coursing through me as it releases me—venom laced with misery. Mother’s empty eyes gush with blood as my half-siblings tear chunks from her legs and arms to stuff in their shriveled guts. The Dean of Theosophy, Hesse’s boss, traps me in his office while I burnish his trophies. Every ring of his heels on the marble as he approaches is a fresh lance in my heart.

“Silke,” the ground coos as it rushes up to greet me. The spider pins me to the earth with one claw and joins the earth’s chorus. My legs spill over the edge of the tear in the ground, instantly rimed with frost from the Nightmare Wastes that have overtaken Oneiros far below.

“Silke!”

“Silke!” Marez rattles my shoulders. I jerk forward, nearly falling from my chair in the constabulary.

“Where did it—” I squeeze my eyes shut. No spider beast, no rivers of blood, no cruel Brandt. “I’m sorry. I must have dozed off.”

“You poor dear. The Ministry must be working you to the bone in this time of crisis.” He offers me his arm. I lean on him as I stand, my limbs still rubbery from sleep. “Let’s get you some fresh air.”

I can still smell rot from my dream as we exit the constabulary, but I push it from my mind. I focus on the clean scent of dusk and the sweet gas fumes from freshly lit lamps. Only a nightmare. I’d glimpsed Oneiros in it—but had I really started to slip into the shared dreamworld, or was I only dreaming that, too? On the mountain ridge above us, Nightmare’s bones lay strewn like garland, and about as deadly. We’re safe for now.

“Anything else we need to assess?” I shift my weight back and forth while I wait for Marez to finish fussing with his leather duster. The Minister ordered me to spend as long as necessary with the Farthingers. Part of me thinks I should rush back to the Ministry and help Brandt search for the traitor, but I’m reluctant to be apart from Marez. I swallow, fighting down the nervous flutter in my gut. What comes next for us, now that we’ve kissed? Another evening playing Stacks, or does he expect more from me? How am I supposed to behave around him now? I try to think of something clever to say, but nothing comes to me.

“Actually, my dear, I’ve one more trip for us to make, but it’ll have to wait until this evening.” The faintest hint of red touches his cheeks.

I feel the color drain from my face. “Oh?” I ask, trying to temper the tremor of disappointment in my voice. “What kind of trip?”

Marez’s gaze crackles across me like a struck match. “I understand there are tunnels—hundreds and hundreds of them, running beneath Barstadt City. How are you at navigating them?”

My breath quails in my chest. The tunnels are the last place I want to go. “I … I know the basics,” I say carefully. “Why do you ask?”

“As you’ll recall, we were tracking a series of illicit shipments into the city, believing them to be related to Lady Twyne’s treason.”

I nod, but say nothing. I will not tell him what we found out in Birnau.

“We think we know who is working with her. But we’ll need to sneak into the High Temple to catch him.”

“Him?” I freeze in place. The rogue priest Brandt and I are seeking. The person capable of stealing Hesse’s research and using it to summon Nightmare by reuniting his shards. Is Marez really so close to unmasking the traitor? My heart pounds frantically. As much as I dread returning to the tunnels—that world of fear and powerlessness—I’ll do it, if that’s what it takes to save Barstadt.

“Yes, him. I got wind of a conspiracy that leads straight into the High Temple.” Marez’s expression darkens. “And we’re going to catch him in the act.”

Chapter Twenty-two

He’s found the rogue priest, operating in the Dreamer’s High Temple at the very heart of Barstadt. Marez thinks he knows who it is—who Lady Twyne’s confederate is. Back at the Ministry, I seek out Brandt to help me peruse the archives in search of more information on the High Priest’s acolytes, but he’s still off canvassing the acolytes’ schools. My heart twists at the thought of Brandt, but the pain feels duller now, more removed. I press one finger to my lips and recall the taste of Marez on them. The way he smelled, all leather and spice. Just like I wish to see the realms beyond Barstadt once I’m free, once this mission is done and my citizenship papers are in hand; it feels good to know I needn’t be chained up by my foolish yearning for Brandt.

I poke through the archives for a short time, but the Ministry keeps few records on the priests at the High Temple. Dantrim Jurard was a student of Hesse’s, but only for a few months, before joining the priesthood full-time. Evisand Brett—House Brett. It looks like House Brett did make several deals with House Twyne, but not for several years. I jot down notes on Jurard and Brett both to bring with me on tonight’s expedition.

“You’re smiling,” Sora says, as she clears away my dinner tray back in my quarters. “Should I be concerned?”

I touch my lips again, like pressing in a secret, and shake my head. “Not a bit.”

Finally, the night thickens, and I dress myself for an evening in the tunnels. I linger at the clerk’s desk in the barracks entrance. I know, deep down, that I ought to send word to Jorn, despite Marez’s warning. The tunnels are a dangerous place; even my intimate knowledge of them isn’t enough to protect us fully. But the threat of a traitor within the Ministry chills me to my core. The desk clerk eyes me with wet, toadish lips, and I shudder, wondering if it could even be him. “Heading out for the evening, miss?” he asks, in a syrupy voice.

I shake my head. “Only a brief stroll.”

Kriza and Marez meet me at the canal grate that feeds into the Temple Quarter tunnels. Kriza’s long, frizzy hair is wrangled into the brimmed bucket cap many tunnelers wear, and she’s coiled a length of rope around one shoulder. She studies me for a moment, then hops down onto the ledge with a grunt. “I sure hope you know what you’re doing,” she says, though I’m not sure if she’s addressing me or Marez.

“We’re headed for the center of Dreamer’s Square.” Marez shrugs into a dark, ragged coat. “The maps I found were incomplete, but this looked like the most direct point of entry, yes?”

“It’s close enough. I should be able to get us to the High Temple shortly.” I study him and Kriza—both of them standing tall, chins jutted up like a dare. “No, no. You have to carry yourself a certain way if you don’t want to attract the wrong kind of attention here. Head down, eyes and hands to yourself. Walk on the right side of the tunnels.” I hesitate; memories cascade over me like sheets of rain. Most of them are brutal, but each taught me a lesson—all the rules I followed to keep predators away from me and ensure my possessions remained my own. “Don’t look too meek, though. Mind your own business, but keep a look about you that says you know where you’re going and how to handle yourself if someone gets clever.” Brandt’s second rule of spy work—anyone showing too much interest in you is probably after something. Conversely, people—especially tunnelers—get suspicious if you look at them too much, and suspicious too easily boils over to violence.

Marez tosses his shoulders back. He’s far too handsome for a tunneler. Someone’s bound to want to see him sullied.

“Keep one eye in front of you and one behind,” I say. “Count the people we pass, and track their footsteps behind you. Watch their shadows across the tunnel walls. You don’t want to be caught unawares, especially if they’re working in a pack.”

Kriza groans. “Is this a bloody underground city, or the Farthing Timberwoods? Should I be on the lookout for bears?”

“Do you want this to go well or don’t you?” I snap at her. “Listen, it’s something you learn through trial and error. And we don’t have room for error tonight. I can’t put into words what tells me who I can steal from and who I should avoid. Which darkened tunnel is safer than the next.” My voice quavers; tears edge into the corners of my eyes.
Dreamer’s mercy, don’t let me fall apart in front of them.
“It’s instinct. If you live in there long enough, you have it. If you don’t, none will mourn you.”

I slip through the tunnel grate, and it’s like slipping on a familiar old robe. The walls smell of iron and moss and a tangy medicinal scent; the runoff trickles calmly through the channel in the tunnel’s center. Marez and Kriza have more difficulty fitting between the bars, because they are not little slips of people, shadows meant to fit through the gaps of respectable life. Tunnelers are brought starving into the world, and too often, starving we go out.

The tunnel slopes upward, following the curve of the hill like a shadow just below the surface. Luminescent paint, usually stolen from a constabulary or an artisan’s shop, coats the tunnel’s ceiling in a thick strip that casts us in an eerie blue-green glow. Wherever the tunnels branch, the paint is used, too, to mark the new tunnel with an elaborate system of markings. Their meanings rush back to me, like a strong gust from the sea. Circles for entry, spreading like leaves off a tree that approximates the next few branches from a given path. Circles with bars through them to indicate a tunnel collapse, or a wavy line to warn of sewage tracks.

Sometimes, smaller chisel marks warn about what sort of tunnelers make their homes in the alcoves of a given branch. But these are inconsistent and just as likely to lead into a trap as steer you away from harm. I pay them no mind—except when I feel I must. Again, it’s something that must be learned by instinct, and explaining it to my companions would be like describing the color of the sky to a blind man.

We march single file up the slope, the thick stone walls swallowing up the dull echoes of our steps. We only cross paths with a few rag-laden maids, their gazing caroming away from mine, until we’re almost ready to turn off the main trunk line. A line of tunnelers coming back from work clogs the path as they surrender tithes. “Tithes,” I whisper to Marez. “Pass me some coin.”

He fumbles in his pockets for a few moments, then distributes coin to Kriza and myself. I barely manage to catch the coin as he overshoots my palm. His eyes aren’t used to tracing shapes in the near-dark. The enforcer holds out his sack, and each tunneler drops their tithe inside, and shuffles along. That’s how it’s meant to work, yes. But too many times I’ve seen an enforcer call someone out for cheating; he could be trying to skim a profit for himself, or to add to his boss’s wealth to make himself look better to the gang. There’s a rhythm to avoiding getting scammed, of dropping your tithe not too slowly and not too quickly, of staying invisible to the enforcer. I pray I can remember the rhythm.

I’m next. I drop the coin in the sack. Don’t make eye contact. The enforcer grunts—shifts his weight, bag jangling with metal and wood. I start to walk away, shoulders taut as I wait for him to call me out. But it doesn’t come. He lets Marez through, and then Kriza.

I heave with relief and motion to the Farthingers. “Come on. Stick with me.”

A young man appears before me: I hear him in the shuffle of his soles against the stone ledge and the rushing water’s echo, warping to accommodate his form. His faint shape emerges from the darkness, revealing lanky, soiled locks of hair and an expression like it was carved into him. Kriza, though, doesn’t see him until he, walking on the wrong side, nearly plows into her, and she yelps like a beaten animal.