Incarnate (12 page)

“You know to check your equipment.”

“Go away.” My voice was surely lost beneath the crowd’s cacophony and the pounding of my heart. “You’re not part of my life anymore. Leave me alone.”

She pinched my chin and turned my face up. “On the contrary, I’ve asked the Council to return you to my care. You’re my daughter, and there’s so much I should teach you.”

I shook my head. “You can’t.” I hated this, feeling pitiful, feeling unable to fight back. After everything Sam and I had talked about, and as many times as I’d called him rude names when I actually
liked
him, why couldn’t I face Li? “He won’t let you.”

“He won’t have a choice.”

“The Council won’t let you.”

“Do you think people would coddle you as much if they realized what you really are? The beginning of more nosouls. The end of us. I doubt Sam would treat you so nicely if you’d replaced Stef. You’ve already replaced Ciana, though she might have been a phase for him. Like you are.” She smiled and sailed off.

No telling how long I stared after her, paralyzed, but Larkin said, “Ana, your things,” and I tried to thank him before I fled to the place I was supposed to meet my friends.

Friends? Earlier they’d felt like friends, but if Li was right, if the Council was right, Sam was my guardian and the others were doing him favors. I
knew
he cared about me, but still.

I dug the heels of my palms against my temples, struggling to compose myself before anyone found me.

“Ana?” Hands closed over my shoulders and I leapt backward. Sine released me, alarm on her face. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” I hugged my bags to my chest and started south, toward Sam’s house. He could meet me there. I didn’t want to see anyone.

Sine kept up easily. “You looked scared out of your mind. What happened?” She was on the Council. Maybe she could help.

“It’s Li.” I led her away from the crowds and checked the area for Sam or the others. No one. “Please don’t make me go back with her. I can’t do that again.” My throat ached from holding back sobs. “Please.”

“Why would I make you go back?” Sine shook her head. “Tell me everything that happened. Trust me, we have no plans to remove you from Sam’s care. Everyone says you’re doing fine.”

Shivering, I told her what had happened by Larkin’s stall, but even as I did, I felt stupid. Li hadn’t done anything. She’d barely touched me. She’d just been herself. “I’m sorry.” My head throbbed. “I shouldn’t go on about it. She just rattled me.” I should have kept my mouth shut.

Sine ignored my attempts to wave it off. “Li can be intimidating,” she started.

Beyond her, Sam and Whit arrived at the meeting spot. Sam glanced around. Just as he saw me, raised his hand and noticed my distress, thunder shook the sky.

The market went silent as everyone looked up. All at once. They seemed to be holding their breath.

That was weird. The sky was as clear as it had been this morning, only geyser and hot spring steam misting over the wall. The thunder came again.

“Get inside.” Sine shoved me toward the southwest residential quarter. “Meuric’s house is the first one on the corner. Hide in there. You’ll be safe.”

“What?” Before I realized, everyone was moving, shouting. Most sounded like they were giving orders, but they grew louder and more panicked with each second. People surged toward the Councilhouse, toward the residential quarters. I looked to where Sam had been, but he was already hidden behind the wall of chaos. “What’s happening?”

“Go to Meuric’s house.” She pushed me again. “We don’t know what will happen if you die. Go now.”

I looked up again, but there was nothing in the sky. Everyone was panicking about thunder, but—

“Dragons,” she hissed, and even she looked terrified. “Dragons are about to attack Heart.”

THE FALSE THUNDER punctuated the din of panicked people fleeing every which way. I feigned retreat to Meuric’s house while shoving my shopping bag inside my coat. But when Sine was out of sight, I zipped up and darted into the mass of people. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find out all million citizens of Heart were here, not with the way I had to elbow people aside.

“Sam!” I scanned the crowd for his face, tried to remember what he’d been wearing earlier. My mind was blank, so I kept shouting his name.

The thunder grew louder, more distinct. It didn’t sound like thunder anymore, but growling and whapping of leathery wings.

North, just over the city wall, I saw a deep black shape that separated into three as they drew closer. They had long, serpentine bodies with wings that stretched wide. Sunlight glittered off scales. They were sinuous and elegant, deadlier than sylph. I stared, stupidly enraptured.

People slammed into me—“Move, girl!”—and jolted me back into reality. When I ducked and tried to push against the flow of people heading toward the residential area, my breast pocket chirped. I fumbled for the SED.

“Ana!” I could barely hear Sam over the double cacophony. “Go home.”

“Where are you?” I had to shout, and my throat was already raw with cold. “I can’t find you.”

“Go home.” The connection dropped. Of course he wouldn’t tell me where he was; he knew I’d go after him.

I stuffed the device away and kept going. Surely he realized I wouldn’t leave him in this chaos, no matter his orders.

The market tents were bright bruises against the Councilhouse and temple, cloth mazes that made every turn a wrong one. People scrambled about, some with purpose, most with panic. Still no Sam.

A high-pitched wail rippled through the city, emanating first from the Councilhouse, then shrieking through other buildings before silencing. The alarm was just an attention-getter, as if anyone could be unaware of the attack. Surely even the deaf could hear the dragon thunder.

Three incredible bangs came from the north wall. I strained to see, but the Councilhouse blocked my view. I pressed my palms over my ears, but it didn’t muffle the noise. “Sam!” My voice was lost among everyone’s, and I couldn’t see over hundreds of people taller than me.

I jammed my coat-cushioned elbow against someone — who didn’t seem to notice — and wiggled between two others. There, on the Councilhouse steps. A head of dark hair in need of cutting. Sam? I pushed through and forced my way up the stairs, but he was gone.

The throng finally thinned as everyone either reached safety or — I could halfway see from atop the stairs — reached weapons. At the top of the northern guard station, which was as tall as the city wall itself, a line of cannons had been raised, aimed toward the dragons, now mere yards from Heart.

Another series of thundering bangs, and metal and fire shot from the cannons. One hit the lead dragon, who buckled and tumbled through the air, but the other two flew sideways and dodged easily, in spite of their wingspan.

Cannons swiveled on their mounts as the two dragons flew over the walls, but they didn’t shoot, not toward the city. Blue targeting lights shot up from the ground, followed by invisible laser blasts, but the damage was minimal. The dragons’ hide was stronger than iron.

While one dragon headed straight for the center of Heart, the other spat globs of green something — not mucus, but something that sizzled through the North Avenue cobblestones. Acid. It spread in huge, slimy puddles toward houses and farms.

When a laser finally got more than a glancing hit, it seared through a giant wing. The reek of cooking flesh ripped through the city, and the dragon spiraled toward North Avenue, flinging acid as it went. Hurrah, but by then, the dragon that had been hit by the cannon recovered enough to follow its fellows into the city.

“Ana! For the love of Janan, what are you doing out here?” Stef emerged from the Councilhouse, carrying a laser pistol. “Get inside. Now.” Without checking to make sure I obeyed, she hurtled off the stairs and shot a beam of blue light at the nearest dragon, which had reached the temple.

I couldn’t move. The dragon was right over the Councilhouse, and the other followed close behind, taking laser blasts as though to protect the first. Globs of acid rained on the market field, burning through tents and tables. People converged on the fallen dragon, firing weapons as it thrashed and spit. Humans and dragons all screamed.

The one above began wrapping itself around the temple, shrieking wildly as it bit at the building. Acid drooled downward, but neither it nor the knife-sharp teeth harmed the stone. I covered my ears at the scraping and keening. All these people with weapons, and it went after the temple? Futilely? Its protector wouldn’t last long, even with the rain of acid.

Lights shot upward, fast and blinding. More people, who only minutes before had been selling pastries, surged from inside the Councilhouse with weapons. They bounded down the steps, careful of the seeping puddles of acid that glowed green.

Sam caught my shoulder as he came outside, also armed. “Go inside.” Fear and alarm contorted his face, and there was a darkness in his eyes I’d never seen before. “Please,” he rasped. “Be safe.”

Dumbly, I shook my head and pointed at the dragon guarding the one around the temple. Laser beams finally pierced the wide wings and armored hide, and the beast crashed downward, slinging a globule of acid toward the Councilhouse steps — toward us.

I yanked Sam behind a column just as the acid splashed onto the stone and began eating through. Spatters hissed against the back of my coat.

Shouting for Sam to do the same, I unzipped my coat and slipped my arms free. My bag of clothes and costume supplies dropped to my feet, safe. Dozens of holes appeared on our coats; the acrid stench of burning wool made my nose scrunch.

Holding my breath, I ran my hands along Sam’s back, but he was clean. He did the same for me, then drew me into a tight hug as the third dragon hit the ground and everything shook. I shook, too, with cold and fear of what had almost happened.

The acid ate through the steps quickly and neutralized. Sam stared at it as dumbly as I had at the dragons, that darkness in his eyes. That must have been how I’d looked the night he saved me from drowning, when I’d run from his tent and found myself staring at the lake with nowhere to go.

The darkness was memory. He’d probably died in dragon acid before, maybe within the last few lifetimes. I didn’t have to ask to know, so I wouldn’t. Instead, I touched his chin and drew his gaze away from the hole in the stairs. “It’s over.” They hadn’t even had time to launch the air drones, things specially made to defend against dragons.

I had no experience with dragons other than what I’d just witnessed. I’d only read about them: failed attempts to hunt the population into extinction, diseases and poisons introduced into their food supply, and experiments done on captured dragons. But still they attacked, as angry as they’d been five thousand years ago when humans first came to Range.

The people of Heart had endured these attacks for millenia — I couldn’t begin to imagine overcoming that kind of terror every time.

More people swarmed from the Councilhouse, parting around us as they wielded small hoses that sprayed chemical mist on everything the acid had touched. It smelled sweet, like crushed grass. The cleanup had begun and we should help, but I needed Sam to be okay first.

He lowered his eyes and kept his voice soft. “I wanted to be brave.”

I held my hand over his, which still gripped the pistol hilt. His knuckles were pale, and veins showed sharp and blue. “Why didn’t you stay in the Councilhouse?”

“I knew you wouldn’t go home. I had to find you.”

My chest tightened. “You
are
brave, Sam. You’re the bravest man I know.”

After we helped clean our share, we fetched our belongings and went back to his house. I read to him for an hour before he fell asleep, leaning against my shoulder. I put the book aside and adjusted myself on the sofa.

He shivered closer to me, one hand tight around mine. It was strange, being in this position of having to comfort someone when I’d only recently learned to be comforted. But I remembered how Sam held me in the cabin after the sylph, and that his presence had helped. I could do the same for him.

Breathing in the scent of his hair, I realized I’d needed him my whole life, before we even met. First, his music and the way he taught me through books and recordings. Then, he saved my life and refused to abandon me no matter how much I deserved it.

But as I pulled a blanket over both of us and combed my fingers through his hair, my perspective shifted.

There was no music in this quiet, and none of the tension of two weeks ago in the kitchen. Even with his body against mine, I didn’t have knots or yearning, just desire for him to be himself again, unhaunted by past lives and deaths.

He held on to me like I was a rock, the only thing keeping him from drifting out with the tide of dark memories.

It was the first time I realized he needed me, too.

“NO SAM TONIGHT?” Sine asked from across the library table. It had only taken her an hour to bring it up. She’d made it sound casual, but I didn’t have to be five thousand years old to know she’d been waiting for an opening. Apparently silence was as good an opening as any.

I gave a one-shouldered shrug and turned the page of my book. Philosophy. Lots of guessing why people were reborn. Why some took a year to return, while others took up to ten. No one agreed on anything, but because these were where my questions began, this was what I had to read. “We don’t do
everything
together.”

“Don’t you? I don’t think I’ve seen you apart since the market.”

I’d been under the impression people in Heart valued their privacy. My alternate theory — that people already knew everything about one another, so they didn’t bother prying — sounded more likely now. I was the exception, of course. If I was involved even remotely, people asked questions. The afternoon I’d dragged Sam outside the city so he could show me all the nearby geysers and hot springs, gossip had spread like wildfire. I still couldn’t figure out what made fumaroles so scandalous, but maybe people were desperate.

“I’m just surprised he’s not with you, that’s all. You two have been spending as much time here as Whit, always off in your own corners, studying.”

I flashed a smile. “He said he wasn’t sleeping well and wanted to rest this evening. Everything should be back to normal soon.” Maybe. He hadn’t actually said anything. I’d
made
him stay in.

“Oh, good. I hope he feels more rested soon.” She ducked over her book again, pen scraping against the paper grain.

“I hope so, too.”

We worked in silence for a few minutes more, time dripping by like water from a leaky tap. But I couldn’t focus on the philosophy book in front of me. The author seemed conflicted on his views about Janan, whether he was real and responsible for reincarnation, or whether humans were doing it on their own, by virtue of being human.

“Sine?”

She glanced up, eyebrow raised.

“Do you believe in Janan? Do you think he created everyone and reincarnates them every lifetime?”

She lowered her pen and sat back. “Sometimes I think I don’t, simply because it annoys Meuric and Deborl. But honestly, I want to believe we humans aren’t at this alone, perpetually reincarnated in a world where dragons, centaurs, griffins, and rocs are always trying to kill us.” She shrugged and found my gaze. “Like you, I want to believe there is a beginning to all this. Life.”

My beginning was so much more recent, yet no one could tell me what had happened. People who’d been there.

“What about the walls? Do they feel strange to you?”

“The heartbeat?” She shook her head. “Everyone can feel it, certainly, but it’s comforting, and part of what makes me want to believe in Janan and his promise to return.”

Or maybe he’d never left.

The heartbeat certainly didn’t feel comforting to me. Sam seemed to think it was funny or cute how I tried to avoid touching the white stone, but it gave me the sensation of worms crawling beneath my skin.

“Thanks,” I said, turning back to the book with a sigh. I really wanted to find someone else who didn’t like the walls and see if they had any thoughts on it, but there seemed a definite connection between my newness and the creepy feeling.

“Perhaps philosophy and guesswork aren’t where you should be looking.” Sine eyed my book. “I never thought Deborl’s views were all that astute, anyway.”

I checked the cover of the book. Sure enough, Deborl, a Councilor who looked younger than me, had written it over sixty quindecs ago. Astute or not, these views were almost a thousand years old. I closed the book and slid it toward the middle of the table. “Maybe you’re right. I thought the answers were in the distant past, but I could be wrong.”

She slipped a marker into her book and nodded for me to continue.

Thoughts collated as I gazed around the dim library. “I know Li reasonably well.” Better than I wanted. “She’s a warrior. When I misbehaved as a child, she told me about the times she killed dragons. Before lasers and air drones were invented.” Having seen dragons recently, I could finally appreciate what a feat that was.

“Li has always been formidable.”

No doubt. “What about Menehem?”

“Not quite as formidable.” She stood, using the table to brace herself. “A brilliant chemist. I didn’t know him well, partially because we could never comprehend a word the other said.” She chuckled. I couldn’t tell if she was serious or not.

I followed her around a maze of shelves on the main floor. Mahogany and glass shimmered in the lamplight, and the room smelled of wood polish and pronghorn leather. “A warrior and a scientist. I don’t understand how you get me out of that.”

“Because you love music?”

I opted not to argue about a nosoul’s capacity for love. This time.

“Some things are inherited, certainly. Physical features. You look a lot like Menehem when I saw him last, actually, with the auburn hair and freckles. You show your mother’s fierceness and your father’s intelligence, but some things, like music and poetry, are passions of the soul.”

I liked that. Sam had been born to farmers and woodworkers and glassblowers. Armande, his current father, was a baker. While Sam had learned hundreds of things out of curiosity and desire to help the community, he always came back to music.

Perhaps, if I was going to be reincarnated at the end of this life, I’d find myself similarly drawn, because there was music in my head, which sang me to sleep at night. It wasn’t Sam’s music or anyone else’s. That probably made it mine. What a frightening thought.

“We’re looking for Menehem’s diaries?” I asked as we came to that area of the library.

Sine swept her hand across the nook created by bookcases. “Since I cannot tell you about him, we might as well read Menehem’s words. It’s unfortunate he left Range so shortly after you were born.”

Yeah, unfortunate he was so ashamed he couldn’t even stay to help Li, who didn’t want to care for me either.

I touched a lamp, illuminating the alcove. Two thousand books waited in their shelves while I searched the spines for the home of the parent who’d abandoned me.

While there were a few older volumes still in place, the newer ones, the ones I’d have needed, were missing. His diaries had abandoned me, too.

I swore, drawing a look from Sine. “Sorry,” I said. “Would he have taken his books when he left?”

She scowled at the empty shelves. “It’s very unlikely. Books are heavy, and he had a lot of them.”

“And there are other copies.” Sam had shown me how to find digital copies. Well, he’d asked Whit to show me. “Will you do me a favor while I check the digital archives?”

Sine nodded.

“Look for Li’s diaries. I don’t need to read any — not right now, anyway — but I’m wondering if they’re still there.”

She gave me a queer look, but nodded again and headed deeper into the diaries section while I made my way out. If she hadn’t guessed my suspicions already, it wouldn’t take long.

I didn’t mind her knowing, either, but it felt weird to tell a Councilor I thought someone — maybe one of her friends — was trying to keep me from investigating my origins by removing the books I needed. Other than Sam, the only people who knew about my quest were on the Council.

The digital archives could be accessed in consoles upstairs, toward the alcove where Sam and I had watched archived videos. On my way up, I tapped on lamps and made a mental list of who might have taken Menehem’s diaries.

Well, anyone could have taken them, but it was the Council I didn’t trust. Most of them were against me. Antha, Frase, and Deborl didn’t seem to despise me, but I doubted they cared whether I lived or died.

Sine was on my side. I’d liked her even before I found out she’d been Sam’s mother in their previous lives. She’d died during childbirth, and was reincarnated when he was three. As a result, he’d spent his teenage years being mothered by a girl younger than him. Then she’d outlived him, and when he was reborn into this body, she was old enough to be his grandmother. I found it endlessly amusing and confusing.

As for Meuric, I couldn’t tell. He was always pleasant, but he made me uncomfortable. He watched me all the time, and always waited to hear what others thought or wanted before deciding what to do with me, like his own ideas wouldn’t be approved.

That left half the Council I didn’t know well enough, and therefore couldn’t trust. Any of them might be the one sabotaging my efforts — if there was any sabotaging after all.

I sat at the first data console and pressed the power button. When it gave a soft whir and a cursor blinked at me, I typed “Menehem.”

Hundreds of diaries appeared, most marked as lab notes and other scientific things. Perhaps, during some of all that free time Sam had scheduled for me, I’d have a peek at those. For now, I narrowed the search to more personal things.

I half expected the console to refuse access, but it offered diaries up until a few years before I was born, which had been the 330th Year of Songs. That put his latest in the 329th Year of Stars. He’d probably finished it and left it for archiving, and taken his current diary with him.

Still, this could be useful.

I read until the stairs creaked and Sine sat next to me. “Find anything?”

“Nothing quite like reading about how your parents barely cared whether the other existed.” I forced a smile. “The Council gave them permission to have a child, so they started planning it. Apparently Menehem calculated everything, because this was years before I was born.”

Sine snorted. “Yes, that sounds like him.”

“Anyway, he seemed more interested in a project for work, but there aren’t any details. I may have to look into his science journals.” I shrugged and tried to pretend I hadn’t expected anything more. “What about you?”

“Many of Li’s personal journals are gone, but if you found Menehem’s on the console, you’ll probably find hers as well.”

I sat back in my chair, arms crossed. If someone had been trying to keep me from looking into my origins, they’d have been more thorough. But if someone wasn’t trying to stop me, they were researching me.

That was an unsettling thought. Everyone else already knew more about me than I did.

“Goodness, it’s late.” Sine slyly checked the time. “I’d better head out.”

I managed something resembling a laugh. “Sam could use some lessons in subtlety from you.”

“Oh, I know. Don’t you think I’ve tried? Unfortunately, I think I’m too subtle about it.” She winked and grinned. “We can resume this research tomorrow, if you like. It’s a new direction from endless philosophy.”

“I agree. Thanks.” I switched off the electronics as we headed downstairs. Before I lost my nerve, I said, “Let’s say I have a friend who hasn’t been sleeping well.”

Sine hmm-ed. “I’ll pretend I don’t know you’re talking about Sam. Go on.”

“I’m worried about him. The only times he seems like himself are during music lessons and practice. He groans in his sleep half the night.” Once I’d gotten up to check on him, but as soon as I stopped by his door, the light flicked on and he shuffled into the washroom. I’d waited, but he didn’t emerge.

At least he’d stopped sneaking out every night, but I suspected it had more to do with how wretched he felt, and not… why he’d been sneaking to begin with.

Sine cocked her head as we stepped outside to the library. “And you want to know how to fix it?”

“I want to”—I wrapped my scarf around my neck and frowned into the darkness—“do something. Help him. He helped me.”

Her smile turned wistful. “He’ll sort it out eventually. Focus on your studies. He wouldn’t want you so distracted, especially with your first progress report coming up next week.”

Progress reports were the last thing I wanted to worry about. “What happened to him? Something with dragons?”

“Ana, if you don’t want to ask him, check his diaries. See how they end.” Her tone stayed flat, as much of a warning as I’d get from her. She always tried to be nice, but I’d upset her now.

I twisted my flashlight until a beam shot out, illuminating cobblestones as the library door shut. “I’m going to help him. Somehow. Anyone who thinks a progress report is more important can lick the bottom of my shoe.
After
my turn cleaning the pig rSine made a face. “You’re learning that from Stef, aren’t you?”

“I’ve gone along with the Council’s demands.” My breath misted on the chill air. “I like learning things. I probably would have asked, regardless of the Council’s instructions. But I’m just one nosoul. The only one. What does it matter to you if I know the best time for growing rice? What is the Council so afraid I’ll do if you don’t keep me busy?”

She just stared at me, wrapped in the armor of her coat and hood. “Curfew. Better hurry.”

Blinking away tears of frustration, which threatened to freeze on my eyelashes, I spun toward South Avenue and walked as quickly as I could. There was a shorter way Sam sometimes took us, but it involved more turns on unfamiliar roads, by unfamiliar houses.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been so harsh to Sine, but now that I considered my own words, it
was
a good question. Were they afraid of me?

I tried to imagine what Sam would say, were he in a mood to talk. The people of Heart had been… how they were… for five thousand years. They knew one another, and could more or less predict what everyone would do in certain situations. But I was a new thing. Unknown. I’d been tucked away for eighteen years, and they hadn’t had to think about me, but now I was back, filled up with my own thoughts and opinions.

What
would
I do?

Right now, I just wanted to help Sam. And, come masquerade day, I wanted to be invisible. Just a few hours of no one knowing me, judging me, and waiting to see if I would destroy everything.

I counted roads until I found the one that led to Sam’s. The flashlight illuminated nothing unusual, just my breath on the air and a few flakes of snow swirling on the breeze. I shivered as trees rustled, as though preparing themselves for blankets.