Gates of Thread and Stone(30)

Irra’s lips curved into a smile. His eyes, golden brown and an odd match to his gaunt face, wrinkled at the corners. He bent over his table and began building a tower of bread bites again.

“And what brother might that be?” he asked, his voice like the wind sighing across the Void.

“Reev,” I said, shivering. The weirdness of this place was getting to me. “You kidnapped him a few days ago.”

“Did I?” His eyes cut to me, and I realized my initial thought had been right: Even armed, we weren’t a threat to him. The moment we stepped onto his bridge, it had been the other way around.

I resisted the urge to step back and put the knife between us.

“You’ve been misled,” he said.

A weight lodged in my stomach.

“Are you saying he’s not here?” Avan asked.

Hearing the question made that weight grow unbearably heavy.

“That’s correct. I like to stay on top of our new arrivals, and there have been none since G-10 five months ago.”

That couldn’t be true. “What did you do with my brother?” I demanded. If the Rider could turn gargoyles into guards, who knew what he could do to people?

“I assure you that your brother, whoever the unfortunate fellow might be, holds no interest for me.”

“But what about the hollows?” I asked. “What about your war with Kahl Ninu?”

“DJ said you were kidnapping Ninurtans,” Avan said.

Irra looked unimpressed, his eyebrows raised over hooded eyes. “DJ is not the most reliable of sources.”

“You’re lying,” I said. He had to be. Because if he wasn’t, then—I breathed in through gritted teeth. If he wasn’t lying, everything we’d done to get here had been a waste. Leaving Ninurta, accepting the reality that we might never go home again, crashing into the forest, and nearly getting killed by gargoyles—this entire journey would have been for nothing.

Had I exiled myself and Avan to chase a lie? If Reev wasn’t here, then what the hell was I supposed to do now?

Something nudged my hand. Avan pried the knife from my fingers. They’d been clenched around the hilt for so long that it hurt to move them. I covered my face, which felt hot against my cold hands.

“Not at this moment, no,” Irra said. “Lying has always been a distinctly human trait.”

Whatever that meant. All that mattered was whether he was telling the truth about Reev.

“If you’re not kidnapping them, then who is?”

Irra pinched one bread bite between his thumb and forefinger. Then he popped it into his mouth. He straightened and approached us, his presence overwhelming as he drew closer. I had to crane my neck to see his face.

“Do you know why the Tournament is kept a private Academy event?” he asked.

“What does that have to do with anything?” My neck hurt, but I didn’t look away. I wasn’t ready to give up. I would never be ready to give up on Reev.

His smile was much too wide. “Everything.”

“Almost everything inside the Academy is kept private,” I said impatiently. “Cadets aren’t even allowed to leave the campus until they’ve completed their two years.”

“True,” Irra said. “But the secrecy, particularly surrounding the Tournament, is because Ninu wouldn’t want you noticing any familiar faces.”

He couldn’t mean—

“Ninu is taking them to play in the Tournament?” Avan said.

“But . . . ,” I began. The Tournament was the final challenge that Watchmen Academy cadets had to face. It was their last chance to improve their ranking and placement after graduation. Ninu selected his sentinels from the cadets who won the Tournament. I’d read about it in school. Every year, a bunch of high school graduates left the district to join the Academy. I didn’t know any of them personally, but once they left, the chances of seeing them again were slim. The Watchmen were rarely assigned to their home neighborhoods.

“Are you saying Ninu kidnaps his own citizens and puts them in the Academy? Or right into the Tournament?” I asked. “Why would he need to do that? It’s not like they’re short on cadets.”

“The answer to that is a bit complicated,” said Irra.

“Well, we’ve come all this way, so I think we can spare the time.”

Irra scratched his cheek, looking thoughtful. Then he pushed past us and threw open the wooden door. “I’d like to show you something.”


He disappeared down the hall. After a quick look at Avan, I hurried after him.

Irra led us down hallways that could have been pulled from the Labyrinth, except the smell was musty instead of damp. Stained walls had progressed well beyond peeling, the puckered seams so brittle that they looked about to disintegrate at the slightest touch. The floor creaked and convulsed underneath us. We encountered a couple of girls in the halls. They both wore the same belted, faded-blue tunics with fitted pants, although one of them had altered her tunic by cutting the baggy hem and tying it tight above her hips so that the material hugged her curves. If these people were the Black Rider’s hollows, then DJ was seriously misinformed.

The girls nodded politely to Irra and then to us. When I glanced back, the same red tattoos were visible at the bases of their necks, beneath their matching ponytails.