Nameless: A Tale of Beauty and Madness (19 page)

Huntsmen
, Tor had said.
Okhotniki
. Gripping the arms of his chair, shaking. Giving her poisonous presents, scars all over him.

Scars like hers.

The boys are Okhotniki.

Ruby kept up a running commentary. Cami just put her head down and did as she was told, washing dishes while Ruby dried and put them away. She was thinking so hard she even let Ruby bully her upstairs into the blue guest room, and the mirror at the vanity with its frame of enameled water lilies gave her a chill all the way down to her bones.

R
UBY SWITCHED HER
B
ABBAGE OFF WITH A PRACTICED
flick. “Ell’s sneaking out a window, the Strep is on a charmweed bender and won’t notice until tomorrow. Now’s the best chance I have to spring her, and then we’ll fix this right up.
All
of it.” She shrugged into her black woolen school-coat, pulling her hair free of the collar with a quick habitual yank. “Don’t open the door to
anyone
.”

Cami nodded.

“I mean it. Don’t answer the doorbell or the phone. Just hang tight.”

Cami nodded again, following her down the stairs. Her scalp itched. She wished she’d had time to take a bath, at least. But the idea of water dripping from the tap made her cold all over.

“It’s iced over bad out there, so it might take some time to get her out and back here. Take a nap, paint your nails. You can wear anything in my closet.”

You must really be worried.
Cami assayed a bright smile, picked a piece of invisible lint off her friend’s shoulder.

Ruby bit her lip. “Stop trying to look so brave.” She picked up her schoolbag, swung it once or twice to gauge its weight.
Supplies
, she’d said grimly, shoving various odds and ends into it.
I don’t care if I have to break a window or two, I’m getting Ellie. I’ve had enough.

“S-sorry.”

“We’ll figure something out.” But she was pale, and she only had one gold hoop earring in. The asymmetry bugged Cami—it was Ruby’s version of a nervous breakdown. “You know where the liquor cabinet is. I’ll be back soon.”

“I kn-kn-know. G-go on. I’ll b-b-b-be f-f-fine.”
Go, so I can think. I need to figure out what to do. Coming here was fine temporarily, but . . .
The inside of her head tangled, and she traitorously wished Ruby was gone already.

Gone, and safe. The more Cami thought about it, the more she realized bringing all her trouble here wasn’t a good idea.

“You’d
better
be. Look, don’t drink
everything
, all right? Save some for Ell. She’s gonna need it.” And with that, Ruby was gone through the utility room. The garage door opened and the Semprena slid out, its chains and grabcharms rasping against churned-up, broken ice and packed snow. Cami made it to the living room window to watch, and was just in time to catch a flash of the sleek black car disappearing around the corner at a reasonable speed.

Never thought I’d see that
.
But there she goes, to rescue the fair maiden.

Was this what it was like to be a ghost? To watch everything arrange itself neatly without you, like a puzzle without the misshapen lump of an extra piece forced into it?

She took a deep breath. The ghost of breakfast lingered all through the cottage. Everything in here was trim and tidy, except for the explosion of Ruby’s room. The living room was deep blue starred with gilt-silver and touches of full-moon yellow, overstuffed chairs and a tapestry of a charmer’s sun-and-moon along one wall. The hearth was wide and scrubbed clean, a burnished copper kettle set precisely on the stone shelf before it and firewood neatly stacked in a holder shaped like clasped hands.

Sometimes, imagining where she came from, she’d pretended she was the heir of a great Sigiled charming clan, stolen by a competitor. She would daydream about her faceless birth-parents living in a cottage very much like this, searching for her tirelessly, only the evil competitor had sent her to another city across the Waste, and it would only be through some stroke of luck that they saw her and recognized her. Then there would be crying and hugging, and she would have a family of her own, and . . .

That was a kid’s dream. Like playing
banditti
in the barn.

Cami wiped at her cheeks. Stood staring at the empty fireplace. Gran, like most really strong charmers, didn’t want a lot of open flame while she was working. There was too much Potential that could just latch onto a fire and do odd things.

She could go up into the spare bedroom and lay on the tightly made blue and white bed, maybe. Or take up Ruby’s suggestion about the liquor cabinet. Go up to Rube’s room and turn on the stereo, hope that the noise would drive away the sound of Nico screaming inside her head. Or . . .

A chill raced down her spine, drawing every inch of skin tight. She hugged herself, and the cottage shivered too. The tapestry rippled, and from the kitchen she heard dishes clinking and rattling.

What is that?
But she knew. Instead of a daydream of a Sigiled charming clan, the nightmare of reality was slinking closer and closer. You couldn’t run from that. It would sniff you out.

Like a dog.

Three raps on the front door. Cami’s mouth went dry.

Another two. It was four steps to the window, and she made them on rubbery legs. Tweezed part of the curtain aside—the Semprena’s tracks were already lost in a mess of churned-up white. The front garden was just the same, still and secretive under a white blanket.

And there was a shadow on the front porch. The angle was wrong, she couldn’t see.

No more knocks, but she could feel the waiting. A deep pool of it, ripples of silence spreading out.
Don’t open the door
, Ruby said.

But where could you hide when this came knocking?

And if I don’t answer, will they tear the house down?
The trembling was all through her. She realized she hadn’t taken her coat off, though the cottage was warm and snug, and she still had her boots. The same boots that had carried her through snow and filth and the holding cell.

I wanted to know where I belonged. Now it’s calling me . . . home? Is that the word for what you can’t escape?

Her hand reached for the knob. The foyer rippled around her, and the charms in the cottage walls made a low warning sound.

The locks slid back, each with a faint definite sound, bones clicking together. A sliver of white winter sunlight glared through a crack, widened, and Cami blinked in the sudden assault of light.

They regarded each other for a long few moments.

“I’m sorry,” Tor whispered. The bruises on his neck were livid, and the cut across his cheekbone had leaked blood, dried to a crust. He was shivering too, steam rising from his skin—he wore tattered jeans and the remains of a white T-shirt, sliced and burned. “I’m sorry.
She
knew I could find you.”

Cami’s hands were numb. His hair was stripped back, plastered down with crud she didn’t even want to
think
about, and she finally saw what had snagged her gaze on him all along.

His jawline was heavier, but it was familiar. So was the arc of his cheekbone, and the shape of his mouth, especially the space above his top lip. There was the shape of his eyes; their color had distracted her, but they were catlike and wide.

And just like hers.

I look like him. We’re the same.
That was the feeling of hand in glove, of broken-in trainers. They looked . . . similar.

Related
.

His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Don’t step outside.” The whisper came through cracked lips. “Please. She can only push me so far. You’re safe in there.”

I’m not safe anywhere
. She found herself touching her face, wonderingly tracing the shape of her upper lip. Just like his.

Why hadn’t she seen it before?

“Run.” Tor coughed, and something moved in his black eyes. Sharp alien intelligence peered out of his drugged gaze, and he shuddered. “Please. I don’t . . . don’t want . . .
Run
.”

I ran once, didn’t I. Ten years ago, Mithrusmas Eve. Not far enough, though.

Never far enough. What was it the Family said?

Blood always tells.

If he went back without her, what would happen to him? And what would the Queen send next time?

I have to stop this.
Cami braced herself. She slid out of her coat, and stepped outside into the cold. It was too small for him, but she wrapped her coat around his shoulders as his shivering infected her.

Tor’s hand closed around her wrist, unhealthy feverish heat scorching her skin. He let out a tired, hopeless sigh. Their footsteps crunched on the charmed path, and as soon as they stepped past Gran’s gate, his head dropped forward like a tired horse’s. Woodsdowne was deserted, and in the distance, the baying of dogs began.

The first fat flakes of the day’s snow began to whirl down.

T
HERE WAS NO SNOW
U
NDERNEATH.

The dogs hadn’t come after all. Instead, Tor had led her through the maze of Woodsdowne, west toward the core. Not for very long, though—he’d stopped at the intersection of Columbard and Lamancha Avenue. The piles of snow and ice to each side, broken by titon-plows, imitated small mountain ranges. The buildings were tall and dark here, festooned with icicles and whispering with the chill breeze. Any one of the boarded-up windows could have exploded outward, giving birth to a jumble of dog-shapes salivating and snapping their steelstruck teeth.

But it was in the very middle of the crossroads that a round slice of frozen street had silently opened its dark eye—a manhole cover, ice crackling away from its circumference, pushed up by an invisible force. Tor moved her toward it, not ungently, and she’d seen the iron rungs going down.

New Haven’s surface swallowed them, pleating closed overhead and smoothing itself like a freshly-laid sheet.

Tor took her wrist at the bottom of the ladder again, and her coat fell away from his shoulders, landing on a sodden pile of something stinking. It was almost warmer down here, but her breath still came in a cloud and thin traceries of steam. Cami stopped, and he tugged at her arm.

“N-n-n-no.” She tried to peel his fingers away, but they wouldn’t come. “I’m n-not g-g-going to r-r-run.”
She would follow me. There’s no point.
“H-Here.” Her voice echoed oddly, and she managed to work his hand down so his fingers laced through hers.

We’re Family, too.
Every scar on her twinged heatlessly, and she wondered if he had nightmares too. Who held him when he woke screaming?

Did anyone?

A curious faraway look came over his face. There was no shadow of the garden boy there. This was an automaton, stumbling like a broken-stringed puppet through a labyrinth of concrete passageways. Pipes ran overhead and alongside them, some groaning and hissing; the floor kept steadily sloping down. She had to duck to avoid some of the pipes, Tor ducking as well with weird mechanical grace. Icicles dripped down from the infrequent gleams of light above, turning to a crusted seeping on the walls.

He took a hard right, and his fingers tensed. “Hard,” he muttered. “Interference Underneath.
Bring
her.”

“I-i-it’s a-all r-r-right.” Cami squeezed his hand.
You can’t stop this. It’s not your fault.
It’s mine. I ran away, and everything is falling apart around me. Because of me. I went where I didn’t belong.
Cami’s chin raised slightly.
“T-tor. It’s ok-k-kay.”

“Don’t wanna.” He shook like a rabbit, but his legs kept going. “Don’t make me.”

Oh. He’s not talking to me.
So she simply followed him, going down and down, away from the light.

It never got completely dark, though. Once the glimmers from above faded and the concrete changed color, traceries of pale glowing fungus appeared on the walls. Growing in curves and sharp dots, they looked like decoration—but Cami did
not
want to brush against them. They smelled. Not of anything bad, just a faint breath of spice and fruit.

And smoke.

Another sharp corner. His skin was cooler now, and Cami had stopped shivering. A faint breeze, warmer than the knifing wind above, touched tendrils of her hair, fingered the walls with their glowing patterns. The fungus was like brocade, fuzzy flower-shapes soft and plush against the roughness. Down and down, and the breeze was redolent of fruit now, a summer orchard with a tinge of perfumed burning. It was warm and moist, and Cami’s skin crawled steadily. Little ant feet crawling all over her—tiny little feet of apprehension, nausea, familiarity.

I know this place
.

Stairs, going down. The concrete was ancient here, and New Haven crouched overhead. How deep were they? She had no idea. Her feet ached; her fingers, locked in Tor’s, were slippery with sweat. Her boots slipped a little, and they passed through an archway.
S**vAY
, it said overhead, except part of it had crumbled.

Dingy tiles that had once been white, cracked and falling. It was a much larger tunnel, the breeze whooshing through it with a low hungry sound. The floor was ancient and filthy, the domed ceiling draped with long shawls and gauzy runners of that pale glowing stuff. Was it a fungus if it hung in sheets like that, intricate glowing lacework?

It reminded her of the shimmersilk scarf and its poking, slashing tassels, but she was past wincing at the thought. Instead, she stared, wide-eyed, and her heart was an insistent drum in her ears.

I am. I am. I am.

Had she stumbled this way before, six years old and terrified, forcing her small legs to pump, smelling smoke and fury? The black hole in her memory would not tell her. It just pulsed, soft slithering sounds coming from its well-mouth.

No, the noise wasn’t from inside her head. Tor halted, a fresh thread of blood soaking into his T-shirt from a ragged slice on his back, and she heard rippling. The gleam on the floor wasn’t the fungus; it was a reflection of the light from the ceiling on slowly moving water.

A canal. And as the breeze chuckled to itself, creeping fringes of perfumed smoke stringing from the left-hand archway where the water disappeared, she heard another sound. A rhythmic splashing.

Oars, dropped into water.

The boat was coming.

Tor stepped to the very edge of the canal. Chips of ancient yellow paint under the crusted dirt leered up at them. She stared at the ceiling, her mouth slightly agape, and as the splashing intensified a sodden gleam appeared.

It was a small flat-bottom boat, its draping of rotting white velvet trailing the scum-laden surface. Dimples showed in the water where invisible oars dipped, disturbing the weird scrim of paleness, probably some algae related to the fungus all around.

The boat was empty—or anyone inside it was invisible, too. It nosed gently up to the side of the canal and halted. Cami’s throat had closed up. Her eyes prickled.

The worst part wasn’t the alienness of Underneath. It was the
familiarity
. No wonder the house on Haven Hill wanted another girl, a different girl.

This
was where Cami—or whoever she was—belonged.

Tor stepped off solid land and onto the boat. Her arm stretched out, their fingers linked, and he glanced over his shoulder at her. The bruises and welts on him showed up garish and hideous in this directionless foxfire light, and the rippling reflection turned him into a monster for a moment. A jack, or a Twist, the bruises peeling skin and the blood on him black.

He’s just . . . he’s like me.
Cami stepped forward.
He
is
me. We’re the same.
The boat gave a little underneath, swaying, and Tor steadied her. A splash and another lurching, and his arms were around her as if it were the most natural thing in the world. The boat almost-spun, righted itself, and drifted for the left-hand tunnel, where the wreathing smoke was incense, and the smell of it filled her head with blind numb buzzing.

The archway swallowed them.
Here
it was dark, except for the algae’s weaker glow.

“Princess.” His breath was hot against her ear. “I tried. Sorry.”

She shook her head, carefully, hoping he’d understand.

She
was the reason he’d been beaten like this.
She
was the reason the Strep had snapped and started in on Ellie.
She
was the reason Nico was screaming with blood-madness, locked away.
She
was the reason Papa Vultusino had Borrowed and come downstairs . . . and transitioned to Unbreathing.

If anyone should be sorry, Tor, it’s me.
But her tongue was knotting up, she could
feel
it.

Book. Candle. Nico.
The charm wouldn’t work now. She was going to fix the problems she’d made for everyone. Take the extra piece out of the puzzle, and throw it into the trash where it belonged. Where it had always belonged, no matter how far it had been flung.