Gates of Thread and Stone(3)

Safe.

I hadn’t wanted the weekend to end. I wanted another day. I wanted it so badly that when I woke up the next morning to find Reev still home, I thought I’d gotten my wish.

The thing was—I had. It was Sunday again.

Reev had gone to work only to discover that no one else realized it was supposed to be Monday. After the confusion wore off, chilled anger had crept into his face—his mouth went flat, and his eyes hardened into gray stones. He’d never looked at me that way before.

“Promise me,” he’d said, “you won’t do that again. Ever.”

I couldn’t speak because the change in him scared me so much. We’d seen the Watchmen take people—drag them away on their Grays, through the gates of the White Court, never heard from again. In the Labyrinth, we had a saying: Keep silent, keep still, keep safe.

But only Reev had noticed. There were no Watchmen pounding down our door.

The threads moved around me, growing more tempting the more they came into focus. Rebirth had wiped out nearly all the mahjo, the magic users. The Kahl’s line was supposed to be the last of them, and he used his magic to help the city. If I had a special ability, one that didn’t hurt anyone, why shouldn’t I use it, too?

“Kai,” Reev had said. “Promise me.”

We stared each other down, but the flicker of fear in his eyes finally made me nod.



I had broken that promise too many times to count. I couldn’t help myself. That had been the first time I’d realized I was different. Once I knew what the threads were and that I might be the only person who could see them, they fascinated me.

The next day, time had adjusted itself by continuing on with Tuesday. All around me, people muttered about how Monday had flown by, and they couldn’t remember a thing they’d done that day. It didn’t seem as if even Kahl Ninu had noticed. I’d never been able to repeat that level of manipulation, and I still didn’t know how I’d done it.

Every source of energy in Ninurta came from the Kahl’s magic, but nobody had ever seen him at work. New energy stones were available for purchase every month, and the Grays, constructed of magic and metal, continued to run the streets like shining beasts. Who were we to question it? I couldn’t do anything half as useful, but whether my abilities were magic or a freak of nature, I couldn’t say.

I didn’t dare call myself mahjo, even in my head. That status felt too attached to the Kahl, and I had no delusions about being his equal.

And now, with a hefty tax headed my way, maybe I should practice some control.

After the stop at the runners—who were so slow that they should have been called crawlers—I hurried to the DMC to dump off my bag just in time. I should’ve been more worried about the woman who had almost died than the state of our credits. But I wasn’t.

As I left the DMC, I stared straight ahead and walked quickly past the Watchman standing guard at the double glass doors. He followed me with his eyes.

A few days ago, that same Watchman had trailed me into the back room where I store my bag and offered me twice my weekly pay for “personal service.” Fortunately, my boss popped in a second later to see what was keeping me, and I escaped.

Outside, a stream of human traffic blocked the sidewalk. Walking was the only way to get around the city without a Gray, and the streets were fairly crowded this time of day. I waded through the pushing bodies to reach the other side of the street. I kept close to the shop windows, most of them dark or boarded over. A row of pigeons fluttered away as my shoulder bumped a sagging awning. I looked up, but they only flew far enough to find a new perch across the street.

For 358 days a year, the birds didn’t fly any higher than the buildings. As if they had forgotten how. But in five days, the clouds would part and release sunshine into the city. For one week a year, the river danced with lights. The trees dared to bud. And the birds took flight, becoming brown specks against a gray sky.

The Week of Sun was my favorite time of year. I couldn’t wait.

Up ahead, a shop sat on the corner of what was once High Street and 6th Ave, but the street signs were so mangled they were no longer legible. As far as buildings went, it wasn’t the worst. It had been painted green at some point in the last twenty years, but now the paint looked like flaking mold. Above the shuttered window front hung the shop name, “Drivas,” in peeling, yellowed letters.

Kahl Ninu had been promising renovations to the North District for years, but nothing had been done. All Ninurta’s resources came from a closed-off district in the White Court, so there was little anyone could do but wait and hope for the best. And suffer ridiculous charges just to request help from the runners.

I sighed. I would need to budget carefully over the next weeks to make up for the tax. And I’d keep a close eye on the mail. A notice would be sent with three days’ allowance to turn over the credits ourselves, or they would be taken automatically. I’d have to snag the notice before Reev found out. Good thing it was summer, which meant more hours and more credits to earn. During the school year, Reev let me work only on weekends.

Kids were required to attend school, but no one enforced it. I once tried talking Reev into letting me work full time so we could save more credits. He didn’t even humor me with a response. Since most of my friends dropped out, going to school was a chore. An unpaid, monotonous, nine-month-long chore. The only real friend I had left was Avan Drivas, whose family owned the shop. But since he graduated last year, I didn’t have much to look forward to once school started in a couple months.