Gates of Thread and Stone (2 page)

CHAPTER 2

WHEN I WAS
ten, Reev had spent one of his Sundays off work with me by the river. We’d scavenged for bugs on the muddy bank and wondered what mutant abilities we might get from falling into the murky water. He pretended to throw me in, and I had been so stupidly scared he would actually do it that I twisted my ankle fighting him off.

Reev had felt terrible. He promised not to be so rough, and I told him to shove his promise in the river because nobody put restrictions on my brother, not even my brother. It made more sense in my head.

He had carried me all the way to our box in the Labyrinth. I remember the way his hair scratched my face, the heat of his shoulder against my cheek, and the smell of the river—sickly sweet like rotten fruit—on his clothes. His voice murmuring unnecessary apologies had been the only soft thing about him. Everything else had been—still was—hard, unyielding, strong.

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.

I pushed into the shop. What I liked best about the place was that it was clean. While the stock wasn’t the freshest, they at least had the decency to toss out the rotten produce. The counters were wiped down, the floors swept every night, and the windows washed once a week. I knew this because even though Avan claimed he was just helping out his dad, he practically ran the shop and liked to keep it looking tidy.

“Hey, Kai,” Avan called from behind the counter. His cheek dimpled when he smiled.

I waved and ducked into an aisle, feeling like an idiot. He was a year older than me, tall and olive skinned, with dark hair. We’d been friends for long enough that he shouldn’t have affected me anymore, but try telling that to my stomach. As if to mock me, it did a little flip.

I perused the shelves, picking out a package of dried pear slices and a cucumber sandwich. Meat was difficult to come by, but it would have been too expensive for me anyway. Then I told my stomach to settle down and brought my items to the counter.

“How was the illustrious White Court today?” Avan asked as he rang up my items.

He had nice hands, slender but strong, with long fingers. The muscles in his forearm shifted as he moved. I watched a few beats too long and hastily looked away.

“Blinding,” I said. “I’ll have to roll around outside to get rid of the clean feeling.”

Avan smiled again, his dark eyes lingering on my face before he turned to place my purchases in a paper bag. A jagged black tattoo started under his jaw, crawled down the side of his neck, and disappeared beneath the collar of his shirt. He’d gotten the tattoo a few years ago, around the time I’d begun to think of him as a friend. I tried to imagine what the rest of it looked like.

He reached behind him and then tucked a couple other things inside the bag: a wrapped loaf of bread and a wedge of hard cheese.

“Came in this morning,” he said. “Haven’t put them out on the floor yet.” His voice was deep. When he spoke softly like that, I could almost feel it rumbling inside my chest.

I nodded my thanks. Avan liked to slip me fresh products. That was how it had started—our friendship. I’d always noticed him, of course. Impossible not to. But when I was twelve, he’d slipped me a few apples with a quiet smile. That was the first time
he
noticed
me
.

In the beginning, I objected. I wasn’t used to random acts of kindness, and I demanded to know what he wanted. But he never asked for anything and never stopped trying to help. I eventually stopped arguing. Turning down free food would be pretty stupid.

“How’s your brother?” he asked, placing my bag on the counter between us. I was grateful for the barrier, however small.

“Good. How—” I looked away, unable to help glancing at the door in the corner that led up to his parents’ apartment. “How are . . . things?”

Avan saw where I was looking and tensed. He didn’t really talk about his mom anymore, and asking about his dad wasn’t an option, not since I’d kicked him in the groin when I was thirteen. I’d gotten tired of coming in to find Avan at the counter with purple bruises and bandaged hands. So the next time I’d seen Mr. Drivas, soaked in liquor and screaming at him, I’d come up from behind and aimed between the legs.

Avan had tried to shield me as his dad went red with rage. Mr. Drivas hadn’t hit me, though. Even drunk, he knew that Reev would have put him in the hospital.

“My mom’s fine,” Avan said, interpreting my vague question. When he wasn’t smiling, he looked kind of somber. Even sad. I wondered if he knew that. “So have you heard the news?”

“You know you’re my best source.” More like my
only
source. I didn’t much care what was happening around the city if it didn’t affect me or Reev, but Avan had connections and was usually well-informed.

And I liked the excuse to stick around and talk to him.

“There was another one,” he said. “Upper Alley.”

My fingers fiddled with the bag. Nobody talked much about the disappearances. They happened a few times a year at most—not enough to cause mass panic but certainly often enough to be noticed—and people either reacted with fear and paranoia, or they looked the other way.

With our own survival to worry about, we didn’t have much concern to spare.

“The Black Rider strikes again?” I said with a hefty dose of sarcasm.

Neither of us believed Kahl Ninu’s claim that a rebel named the Black Rider was kidnapping Ninurtans. What kind of self-respecting criminal would call himself the Black Rider? And aside from the propaganda insisting the Rider wanted to overthrow the Kahl, no one had ever seen or heard of him.

Frankly, it sounded like a half-baked cover-up. Probably because the Kahl had yet to catch whoever was actually kidnapping people. Although with magic at his disposal, I would’ve expected it to be an easy task.

“Someone you knew?” I asked.

“Not really. Met her a couple times, but . . .” He shrugged, and that was really all there was to do.

In a couple of weeks or months, once her family accepted she wasn’t going to be found, they would go to the old
mahjo
temple at the center of the North District and hold a farewell ceremony. And then they would move on with their lives.

“Stay safe.”

He told me those same two words every day, and I gave him the same answer: “Always do.”

I thanked him again for the groceries and left. I turned down the hill toward the docks. The river separated the North District from the East Quarter, and while plenty of bridges connected them, only a few were safe to cross. The pimps ruled the riverfront, and you had to be careful there any time of day.

A thick wooden post stood next to the dirt road leading to the docks. I traced my fingers along the post and smiled when I found a new notch cut into the moldy wood in the shape of a
K
. Whenever Reev or I passed this post, we made sure to leave a mark to let each other know that we’d been there and we were okay. I dug a fingernail into the wood below the
K
and carefully scratched in an
R
.

The city odors took a noticeable shift as I neared the river. The docks smelled like damp wood and mildew. Trees dotted the banks, but their branches remained stark even in summer. The bark looked scarred, rotted in areas, forming strange depressions: lumps and rivets like its organs bared.

Along the bridge, couples lingered. That would’ve been sweet except I knew most of them were prostitutes with their customers. Some of them didn’t even bother trying to shield what they were doing. I wondered if anyone had ever fallen into the river that way.