Firewalker (22 page)

I'm here, Lily.

You've won, Lillian. I'm coming back.

This isn't a contest between us. You could have gone to your authorities and revealed your magic. You could have cleared your name and had the police hunt Carrick for you. But you didn't choose that. You chose to be known as a murderer in your world. You chose your world's safety over the safety of you and your coven—the good of the many over the good of the few, even if one of those few is you. You will be thought of as a murderer and a villain in your world. Like me.

I may be you, Lillian, but I don't make the same choices you do.

This choice proves otherwise. The reason I killed the shaman and the reason I hunt the three scientists is because they did exactly what you won't—what you're willing to leave your world in order to avoid doing.

What are you talking about?

Do you really think three Outlanders, no matter how intelligent, would have the ability to invent and to build nuclear devices out of thin air?

Explain.

In a moment, but you must worldjump now, Lily, or you'll die. Gather your mechanics and find me in the worldfoam. I will be your lighthouse.

A vibration too large and too complicated to ever store in her willstone buzzed through Lily's body like a swarm of bees. She called to the unique patterns in Rowan's, Tristan's, Breakfast's, and Una's stones as the heat and the pain of the pyre catapulted her leap up and out into nothing.

One shining light called to Lily. She followed it through the numbness between the worlds and found Lillian. Her mission completed, her physical body tired and charred, Lily's spirit gladly wandered into the Mist, where Lillian met her.

Let me show you what I meant about the shaman, Lily …

… I heave into the basin until I'm shaking.

“You should be in your bed, Lady, being tended to by Lord Fall,” Captain Leto scolds. He steadies me as I lean back against the side of his cot and dabs at my sweat-streaked face.

“He isn't back from the Outlands yet,” I rasp, shaking my head. And it's a good thing, too. If Rowan had been at the Citadel, rather than out looking for me when I returned from the cinder world two days ago, he would know everything that had happened to me. He would have seen what happened in the barn.

Never. He can't. I can't ever show him that, even if it means he never touches me again.

“You have other mechanics,” Leto presses as he helps me off the floor and onto his cot. “Surely their care would be better than mine.” He gestures helplessly around his spare quarters on Walltop. He has little more to offer than a fire and tea. I can hear the wind howling at his door.

“It doesn't matter now,” I say. “There's a tipping point with this disease and I've already passed it. I spent too long being exposed to something that damaged too many of my cells. I can keep this sickness at bay for a long time, but there is no cure for me now, Leto. Sooner or later it will take me.” I see genuine sadness in his eyes. I touch his arm and try to smile.

“Captain,” a soldier calls from the other side of the door. “The shaman is here.”

Leto leaves us, and the shaman joins me on the cot. He moves more slowly than he did just a month ago. He seems older. Tired.

“Shaman,” I say, getting right to my point. “We must stop searching other worlds for a way to get rid of the Woven.”

He studies my face, reading death there, and closes his eyes. “I'm sorry I got you into this, girl.” I see his wiry hands grip his bony knees. “But we can't stop.”

I'm confused. It takes me a moment to reassemble my thoughts.

“I'm not saying this because of what happened to me but”—I falter and pause, taken for a moment by the savagery that crawls through my thoughts—“but because that cinder world I was trapped on was not of their own making. The few people left there—if you could call them people—told me that their destruction came about because of something that didn't belong there. It was technology
stolen
from another world and it wound up being their destruction.”

The shaman nods, but he won't look at me or reply.

“Do you understand what I'm saying?” I ask, unable to accept his indifference. “If we keep seeking a miracle solution for the Woven on other worlds, we could end up a cinder world like them. That's how it happens, and I think that's how it
always
happens on the cinder worlds. They start off thinking they're doing good—”

“I understand what you're saying, but it's too late,” he says, cutting me off. “We must press on.”

“No,” I say, my brow furrowing with dismay. “I won't do it. And I forbid you from continuing this madness with another witch. I'll imprison you if I have to. I'll throw you in the deepest oubliette I can find—don't think I won't just because I care for you.”

“I've never doubted your ferocity. Your will to do what's necessary.
Will
is what makes a great witch, and I believe you'll prove to be the greatest witch in history, Lillian,” he says softly, finally meeting my eyes. I don't think he's ever used my given name before and it startles me, as does the look in his eyes. There is as much death in his face as I suspect there is in mine. “But it's too late. I've already stolen from other worlds.”

I stare at him. The room seems to fall into a hole. “What did you steal?”

“Equations. Plans. Schemes for building devices and power plants. Everything I could see or read on a spirit walk and then copy down later on the subject of elemental energy,” the shaman said in a dull voice. “It took decades. And it turns out it's much easier to build bombs with this kind of energy than it is to build a power plant, like I'd originally hoped.” He swipes a weary hand across his face. “I started stealing to find another power source for the Outlanders so we could drag ourselves out of poverty. So we could have electricity and build cities of our own—anything to sever our dependence on the witches who treated us like we were less than human. I didn't mean for them to turn it into a bomb.” He turns his eyes on me, pleading. “You believe me, don't you? I never meant for them to make bombs.”

My hand shoots out and I slap him, trying to knock the words back into his mouth. It doesn't work, but I slap him again anyway. He takes my wrists in his hands, gently pushing my arms down.

“If that would help, I'd gladly let you beat me to death,” he says.

“Who else knows?” I demand, my voice low and shaky. “Who have you told?”

“For years I've been giving all the numbers and drawings to a woman of my people who understands them. Her name is Chenoa Longshadow.”

“Professor Longshadow?” I say, nearly shouting. “Head of the department of Fundamental Laws of Nature at
my college
?”

“She's been using your laboratories, your resources, and your students at the school to develop what I've stolen. She has two students in particular—acolytes, really.”

“Who are they?” I ask, my lips twisting into a snarl.

“I don't know their names. Alaric keeps the particulars compartmentalized—even from us who are most involved. We each just know bits. All I know is that Chenoa has two students who're special. They know everything she knows, just in case something happens to her.”

I'd never interfered with the science department at my college, and in fact, I'd never even met Chenoa. Never toured her labs. Never took the time to concern myself with anything except student enrollment. I thought it was my job to bring as many of the disenfranchised to my school as possible, and to fight for their right to an education before the Council and in the Coven. The actual schooling I left to the professors.

“I trusted them to teach,” I say feebly.

“She did teach. She taught Outlanders to hate the Covens,” he says. “And for the past two years she's been using your money and your laboratories to make and store parts of the bombs.”

“But I was trying to help.” My eyes dance around frantically, not really seeing anything. “How could they?”

“Did you really think one little school was going to erase centuries of injustice?” he asks, an eyebrow raised. “Too many Outlanders have watched their children starve to death or die in the mines or be torn apart by the Woven for too long. That kind of bone-deep hatred doesn't just disappear because one witch builds a school.”

I've never felt such a weight pressing down on me. I feel so sick I'd vomit again if there were anything left in me but bile.

“I won't let her,” I whisper.

“How can anyone undo what's already been done?” The shaman shakes his head sadly. “The only way to stop the Outlanders now is to give them another way to get rid of the Woven. If we do that, I know Alaric will abandon elemental energy.”

“Alaric Windrider? The sachem who has sworn to destroy me?” I say incredulously.

“He's not a madman,” the shaman insists.

“But he can't use elemental energy against the Woven,” I object, confused. “He'd have to bomb the whole continent. I understand this energy—every witch knows what powers the sun and the stars—and I tell you it causes more damage than the enemy you would use it against.”

“He doesn't want to use the bombs against the Woven. He wants to use them against the Thirteen Cities.”

“Why?” I whisper.

“What choice do we have? The Covens won't allow Outlanders to own property and build walled cities of our own. If we continue having to fight both the Woven and the laws of the cities, the Outlanders will die out. Our very existence is at stake, Lillian. What would you do if you were caught between hammer and anvil as we are? If we can't get rid of the Woven, Alaric will get rid of the cities.”

“I can't make the Council and the other twelve Covens change the law!” I shout defensively. “I've tried! I only have so much power, shaman, and quite frankly too many people make too much money off the mines that the Outlanders work.”

“The mines the Outlanders
die
in,” the shaman corrects quietly. “You need us to be poor so you can get rich. Is it any wonder some of my people want to see every single one of the cities burn?”

“So what's stopping them?”

“The bombs aren't finished,” the shaman admits. “We need to find a way to get rid of the Woven before those bombs are complete or Alaric will blow you to hell.”

Seconds crawl by, each getting heavier than the last. I've never thought of time as having mass before, but it does. When time slows down it takes on so much weight that even one second could drag a star down into darkness.

“Are the bomb parts still in my school?” I ask calmly.

“I don't know. Maybe.” He makes a frustrated sound. “You're focusing on the wrong thing. No one person knows where all the bomb parts are except Alaric. You gotta focus on finding the world that got rid of the Woven to end this.”

“Getting rid of the Woven isn't going to stop Alaric and Chenoa now,” I reply. “They'll just wait until after I deliver the Woven solution, and then they'll use their bombs. Not because it makes sense, but because they hate us. You said it yourself. They want to see the cities burn. I've seen what elemental energy does to cities. I've
lived
it, and I know there's only one way to keep the Outlanders from detonating your stolen poison.”

“What are you talking about, girl?” the shaman asks fearfully. But he knows. He's not naive. “Look, there's no telling how many students, teachers, and science-minded folk Chenoa has shown a little bit of this and a little bit of that over the years. It could be hundreds of people.”

I am dead inside already. I've let go, like a child letting go of a beautiful birthday balloon. It was only ever full of air, anyway. All that's left for me to do is clean up the mess.

I'll save as many as I can by killing the rest.

 

CHAPTER

9

Lily had a vague sense that she was moving. She felt a steady flow of air rushing over her singed skin and the occasional jolt of a misstep. She was having trouble catching her breath and, as she wiped away the cobwebs still connecting her mind to Lillian's memory, she realized she was having trouble breathing because she was slung over someone's shoulder.

“I think she's coming around,” Breakfast whispered frantically.

Lily peeled her eyes open and saw a chaotic mix of upside-down limbs and woodland landscape bouncing around as if someone had thrown her in a dryer. She propped herself up against Rowan's back and saw Breakfast's panicked face huffing and puffing as he ran through the milky light of a snowy dawn.

The world righted itself as Rowan swung Lily around and looked in her eyes. “There you are,” he said, relieved. He was still running and he suddenly ducked, careening to his knees as he clasped Lily painfully to his chest. “Everyone down,” he ordered.

The little group huddled together against the rocky side of a cliff. The trees were bigger here, and the air crisper, but even with these differences Lily recognized this cliff. They were at the Witch Caves—they just weren't at the Witch Caves in Lily's world. It always stunned Lily how quickly a memory exchange could happen when the memory itself seemed to last ages. She felt like she had been inside Lillian's memory for at least half an hour, but only minutes had passed.

“Shh,” Rowan breathed. His eyes went up to the treetops. Lily huddled close to his chest and looked at the faces of her coven, wild-eyed and bleached white with cold and terror. Rowan's head snapped around, and then Lily heard it—a hooting, bellowing sound echoed through the forest. “Woven,” he whispered. “Simians.”

Lily saw the trees shake. She heard the crack of brittle branches as the animal calls rose to a frenzied chorus. They were surrounded.