Give the Dark My Love(91)

Rage pricked at my eyes, and I slammed my fist into the face that looked like my twin sister. I felt her nose crunch; her flesh gave way beneath my pummeling. She didn’t move to defend herself. She stood there until my force knocked her over, and then she fell to the ground, and still I raged, kicking her viciously in the ribs, stomping her weak body, crouching over her and driving my knuckles straight into her face.

I stopped when I grew exhausted. Her body was bent and broken, bruised and bleeding.

I touched the crucible, spoke the runes. White light encased Ernesta’s body, and, in a moment, she was healed and whole again.

She stood up. She looked at me.

She waited for her next command.





SIXTY-TWO


    Grey



Kill the necromancer, kill the necromancy. The words moved my feet forward, filling me with determination. It didn’t matter that the necromancer was the most powerful person in the world.

He had to be stopped.

I went to Blackdocks. The factories loomed along the bay like hulking giants, blocking out the stars on the horizon.

“Come on.” A man’s voice carried through the night. “You have to take me.”

“Not for just a silver,” another man said.

The fog thinned as I reached the water’s edge. Usually there was a large cluster of flat-bottomed boats that ferried people up and down the coast. But tonight there was only one.

“Where you going?” the skipper called to me. His accent was thick and heavy, making it all sound like one word: waryougwan?

“The quarantine hospital,” I said, looking past him. The tall brick building was barely visible in the dark, only identifiable by the illuminated clockface.

The skipper spit a stream of blackleaf juice into the bay. “Told him,” he said, jerking his head to the other man. “Ain’t going there. Not without proper gold.”

“Please,” the first man begged, his voice cracking. He stank of alcohol, but he seemed sober. My eyes drifted down to the large lump at his feet. I gasped—it was a woman, her body covered by a cloak but clearly dead.

“That place is cursed!” the skipper said. “I ain’t gonna—”

“Ten gold,” I said.

The skipper gaped at me. “Yeah, all right,” he said.

“Him, too.” I nodded to the other man and the dead woman.

“For ten gold I’ll take whoever can fit.”

The other man turned to me and grasped my hands. “Let’s go,” I said, more abruptly than I meant to, but his effusive thanks made me uncomfortable. That, and the corpse.

None of us talked. With every bump in the water, the dead woman’s head lolled. Her mouth was open, her tongue fat and heavy. The man kept adjusting her cloak, as if keeping her warm mattered.

As soon as the boat touched the stone steps leading up to the hospital, the skipper started rushing us off. I got out first, looking toward the hospital. The man grunted, awkwardly trying to get the dead woman from the boat onto the step. The skipper pushed away with his oar, and the woman’s feet splashed into the icy water before the man could pull her up to a step.

I watched the boat fade into the darkness.

“Hello?” the man called. “Hello? We need help!”

I turned. The doors to the hospital opened.

A woman stepped out. She carried herself stiffly, her chin tilted up.

“Nedra,” I whispered.

As if she could hear me, she looked down, her gaze intent. She stumbled on the step, but regained her balance quickly. My heart plunged. She’d thrown her arm out to try to catch herself—but she no longer had her entire left arm. I tried to recall if she had signs of black in her skin when I’d seen her in Master Ostrum’s office. How had so much changed in such a short time?

“Hurry, hurry,” the man pleaded under his breath, but Nedra’s pace was slow.

And then, behind her, more people emerged from the hospital. Dozens—just under fifty or so, I guessed. These people moved as one, flowing like liquid over the steps, a wave of people that surrounded her.

The man started to pray.

The crowd behind Nedra seemed a random assortment of people, male and female, all different ages. Some had blackened limbs, but they didn’t show pain.

They didn’t show any emotion at all.

I sucked in a breath, my eyes watering. I hadn’t wanted to believe it was true. Not my Nedra.

But when she stopped, they stopped. When she looked at the dead woman, they looked.

And when she turned to me, every dead eye focused on my face.

I opened my mouth to speak, but Nedra turned away without a word, crouching down to inspect the body of the woman at the man’s feet. The man’s hands twitched nervously as Nedra pulled away the cloak, revealing no sign of plague. Instead, she had bruises blossoming on her throat.

My head jerked up to the other man’s face. “It was an accident,” he said. “I swear. Can you save her?”

Nedra still didn’t speak as she reached under the collar of her cloak and pulled out a chain. At the end of the necklace was a small iron bead, dark and whole, unlike the broken bead Governor Adelaide had held. I sucked in a breath. Would it be enough to take down the Emperor?

Nedra’s eyes cut to me, narrowed and fierce. She raised an eyebrow, as if daring me to comment on her necromancer’s crucible.