Skyfire (7 page)

‘Come off it,' Teddy says. ‘What is this, the tattoo inquisition?'

‘You're too damned interested in temporal proclivities,' Bastian says, his eyes still fixed on me. ‘And I
will
see your neck, whether you like it or not.'

‘Leave her alone!' Clementine says.

The others step protectively towards me. I want to tell them to back down, to leave it, but my head is throbbing like alchemy fire and I can't think clearly. Anything I do or say might cement the man's suspicions.

‘Turn. Around.' Bastian's tone is suddenly cold. ‘Turn around, or I swear I'll make you.'

On the far side of the room, the flower vase shatters as Bastian's proclivity clenches around the water. Dead petals and stale liquid spray across the floor. He steps forward, his hands raised.

I turn.

When he sees my tattoo – the moon, the stars, the swirls of darkness – a slow hiss escapes his teeth. ‘Night,' he whispers. ‘A temporal proclivity.'

‘No! It's not –'

‘It isn't Night? Then what else could it –'

I cut him off. ‘Darkness! My proclivity's Darkness. It's not temporal – it works all the time. Nothing to do with the time of day.'

‘Darkness?'

I swallow hard, my throat painfully tight. ‘I swear it's not temporal. The moon and stars are just symbols of the dark.'

‘It's true!' Lukas says.

‘I've seen it too,' Clementine pipes up. ‘I've seen her use it – it's definitely Darkness, there's nothing temporal about it. She used it all the time when we were … um …'

‘Back in Rourton!' Teddy says, always ready with a lie. ‘Any time of day, I swear, she'd just melt into the shadows to sneak up on the guards. Should've seen their faces when she popped out of an alleyway wall – just about carked it from shock, I reckon.'

Teddy tries to maintain his confident smile, but it slips with every passing second.

Bastian stares at me. I watch the emotions cross his face. The distrust. The uncertainty. ‘Perhaps I believe that,' he says slowly. ‘Or perhaps not. But tomorrow will show the truth. If your power's really Darkness, you'll be able to prove it in the morning. Won't you?'

I force a nod.

‘Good,' Bastian says. ‘I'll send your dinner shortly.'

The door swings shut behind him.

I drop my head into my hands. This is bad. The magic of my Night proclivity will only last until
dawn. But tomorrow morning, the Víndurnics will want a demonstration. They'll want proof that my power is ethereal, not temporal. Proof that I'm not a threat.

And all I can picture is Tindra, dead and bloody under the morning sky.

‘All right,' Teddy says. ‘We nick off now, while it's dark. I reckon we could make it halfway across the country before the sun comes up.'

‘And go where?' Clementine throws open the curtains and peers into the night. ‘We've given up everything to reach this place! We'll just have to paint over Danika's tattoo, disguise it somehow –'

‘How's that gonna help?' Teddy snaps. ‘Bastian's already seen the damn thing. Our only hope is to scarper while it's dark. Wish I hadn't given him that firestone thing – I bet we could've flogged it to some other village on the road …'

I sit in silence as the argument rolls around me. My head throbs. My bones ache. They can argue all they like, but I won't let them risk their lives for me.

This village is a place of refuge. If we flee, we'll be out on the road again, and with King Morrigan's hunter on our trail. Where would we run? North, south? Even further east? We've no idea what lies beyond the borders of Víndurn. I can't drag my friends on such a hopeless journey.

Besides, this is their chance to be safe. I picture Teddy growing old here. Laughing around a cooking fire, raising squirming children and grandchildren on his knees. I think of the twins, safe and content in their quiet new lives. And Lukas upon a foxhawk, soaring beneath a starlit sky …

Yes. My friends could be happy here. But not me. When they test me at dawn – when they find out my proclivity stops working as soon as the sun rises – it'll all be over. A bullet to the back of the neck, most likely. Right through my Night tattoo.

I must leave alone. Tonight. I'll wait until my friends fall asleep, then I'll strike out into the wilderness. Out beyond the boiling craters and scraggly forests. All the way to … what?

A cold night breeze sneaks in through the window and ruffles the curtains. Every gust brings the scent of the forest. The argument rolls on around me, as fervent and frothy as a geyser.

After a while, a middle-aged woman in a green cloak brings broth and bread. Her name is Annalísa, and her hair and skin are eerily pale, almost white.
I wonder how much time she spends beneath the canopy.

‘Do not leave the huts, my dears.' She speaks in the same strange Víndurnic accent. ‘You do not want to touch the earth at midnight.'

‘Midnight?' says Teddy.

‘At midnight, the earth cannot be trusted.'

‘Yeah, we got that.' Teddy says. ‘Bastian kept banging on about it. But what's it mean – another earthquake?'

‘Not exactly,' Annalísa says slowly. ‘You shall soon be seeing for yourselves.'

As Annalísa passes me a bowl, I turn my back to the wall. A strange prickle curls in my belly. I almost wish I had a neck-scarf to wear. I know I'm only imagining it, but I can't help thinking that she's trying to see my proclivity marking.

Bastian must have told her his suspicions about me. She wants to know if I'm evil, whether Lord Farran's stories are true and my tattoo is somehow …
tainted.
Maybe she expects the mark to leap up and sting her fingers, or to burn like acid beneath her gaze.

Annalísa's eyes meet my own.

‘Thank you,' I say, trying to sound as normal as possible. ‘I don't know how to thank your clan for their help. You and Bastian, and –'

‘We have only done our duty,' Annalísa says. ‘You
are newcomers to our land. Lord Farran requires that we take you in until your proclivities are assessed.'

Her gaze lingers a moment too long. There are heavy bags beneath her eyes, I notice. Not just signs of age, but of a more recent stress. A lack of sleep. Exhaustion. She leans forward a little, and the bags of her skin sag deeper.

‘My dears,' she says quietly. ‘I must ask you something. Something important.'

We all nod.

‘When you were out in the wilderness … did you see anything? Anyone?'

Almost unconsciously, my hand roams to my pocket. My fingers pick out the shape of Tindra's pendant: a dead chunk of wood inside the fabric.

‘We saw Bastian,' Lukas says. ‘And … there were people in the air. People riding foxaries with wings.'

If possible, Annalísa pales even further. Her skin looks as wan as snowflakes now – or the ash that fell when the earth erupted. She steeples her fingers, presses them under her chin, and takes a shaky breath.

‘A girl,' she says. ‘Did you see …?'

She trails off, and my stomach clenches so hard that I can't breathe. Piece by piece, it all falls together. Annalísa must have known Tindra's proclivity. She must have known the girl was planning to flee the country.

And I know what she's going to ask. The thought of delivering this news strikes harder than a rock upon my skull.

‘We saw her,' I say. ‘Tindra. Her name was Tindra.'

Annalísa jerks at the name. It's like she's been shot: a body crumpling, collapsing back into itself. Then I realise that it isn't the name that's stung her. It's the word
was
. Not
is
, but
was
.

‘Was?' she whispers. ‘No. No, it can't be.'

‘I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.'

Annalísa's eyes snap up to meet my own. Her expression has changed again now – not fear, or shock, or horror, but something else. Something … cold. Cruel.

Hatred. That's what I'm seeing in her eyes.

‘You talked to her,' she says, the words like acid. ‘She told you her name. You could have saved her. You could have saved her!'

I shake my head, my mouth dry.

‘It was too late,' Maisy says. ‘We're so sorry, we didn't have a chance to –'

‘You could have saved her!'

Annalísa doubles over until her chest meets her knees. It's like watching the slow collapse of a house of cards. I don't know what to do. My fingers touch the wooden shape of Tindra's pendant. Shaking a little, I hold it out to Annalísa, flat upon my palm.

‘She wanted me to give this to her family,' I whisper. ‘Is that you?'

Annalísa looks up at me. Her eyes flare. She snatches the pendant so viciously that I half-expect her fingernails to leave claw marks on my palm. She gazes at the wooden shape, as though unable to process what she's seeing.

‘My daughter. She was my daughter.'

I let my gaze fall. I can't stand to look at the pain in her face any more and I'm so tired that I want to collapse.

Annalísa releases a hissing breath. ‘My daughter liked this cabin. It was empty, most of the time. She came here to be alone. And now
you
are here, in her place, and she is gone.'

There is a long moment of silence. Then: ‘You could have saved her.'

I don't respond.

‘You have a temporal proclivity,' Annalísa says. ‘If my daughter deserved to die for her powers, then so do you. What right do you have to live, to breathe, when my Tindra lies dead in the wild?'

I shake my head. ‘My proclivity is –'

‘Night! Don't try to deny it. Your magic is –'

Lukas cuts her off, his voice tight with tension. ‘It's not Night! It's Shadow. Darkness. That's what the markings show.'

The others murmur their agreement, but Annalísa's glare doesn't waver.

‘I can prove it!' I offer. ‘If you want, I can melt into the darkness now, and –'

A bitter laugh emerges from her lips. I recognise that bitterness. I felt it once myself, a long time ago, in those terrible nights after the bombing. I had huddled in an alleyway, cold and alone, and wished death for the woman who had provoked King Morrigan's wrath. The woman who let my family die.

I lost my father, who read quiet stories by lantern light. My brother, who whistled bawdy folk songs in the hallway. And my mother, who coaxed tendrils of light down to wake our sleeping forms each morning. Her proclivity was Daylight. Just like Tindra.

‘Of course you can do it
now
,' says Annalísa. ‘It's the perfect time to use a Night proclivity. But the guards will come at dawn to test you – and the darkness then, I think, will prove less obedient.'

She presses Tindra's pendant to her lips and kisses it, so hard and ravenous that for a second I think she's going to eat it. Then she lowers it slowly and presses it against her heart.

‘Sleep well, my dear.'

As she leaves, her footsteps clap like gunshots.

I stare after her. Tendrils of Night crawl across me, dark and damp and cold. My head is throbbing again, as though I've stabbed a climbing pick
through the wound. But I sense the time in those crawling tendrils, and the thickening of the dark.

‘It's almost midnight,' I say numbly. ‘We should go outside to see … whatever it is.'

We don the cloaks on our beds. The fabric is ragged but startlingly warm. It sways and bends with my limbs, trapping pockets of my own body heat like bubbles.

Teddy forces a weak grin. ‘Pretty good, huh? You'd get fifty silvers for a cloak like this in Rourton.'

Together, we trek out onto the wooden balcony. The forest is dark, but for the scattered shine of lamps in the canopy. Most of the cabins are quiet, their occupants asleep. I scan the forest floor, half-expecting to see a sign of King Morrigan's hunter, but there's no movement. No hint of a flashing pistol, or a moving shadow. I settle a little, although my skin is still prickling. We must trust Bastian's watchmen to keep the village secure.

‘Hey, hear that?' Teddy says.

I strain my ears. I can just make out a tiny scrabble of claws – here and there, dotted around the surrounding forest. ‘What …?'

‘Rats,' Teddy says. ‘I can sense 'em, climbing up into the trees. They're twitchy too – don't fancy being on the ground when it happens.'

The sky roars.

There's a blast of distant fire, high above the canopy. I only glimpse it in specks – winks of light between leaves and branches – but it matches the sight from our rowboat last night. The blast of scorching red grows closer. And I can
hear
it. A roar, a choke, a growl …

‘Look down!' Teddy says.

Smoke rises from the earth, spiralling upwards like steam from a pot of boiling water.

At midnight, the earth cannot be trusted.

The steam ripples, awash with warmth. A flare of violent heat emanates from the earth and I'm suddenly grateful that my feet aren't touching the forest floor. Down there, the world is a whirl of smoke and heat. It froths and bubbles, awash with an unnatural shine.

‘The plants,' Lukas says urgently. ‘The trees. Why doesn't the steam affect them?'

Maisy shakes her head, her eyes wide. ‘It isn't natural heat. It feels … wrong.' She gestures at her body, indicating her Flame proclivity. ‘It's not coming from flame. It must be alchemically tainted – like the wastelands, or the borderlands. Perhaps it only hurts living creatures.'

‘Like rats,' I say. ‘Or people.'

‘Didn't Bastian reckon it was the Timekeeper that stuffed up the land?' Teddy says. ‘And that's why Lord Farran's up on Skyfire Peak, trying to fix it?'

I nod. ‘She tried to steal time from the land itself, but she destroyed the natural alchemical balance. That's why midnight's so …'

I gesture at the steaming earth, lost for words. Coils of smoke sway eerily like seaweed – like the murky vines that grew in Rourton's sewers, or sprouted from the wreckage of alchemy bombs.

But as I speak, the smoke flickers away – fading as quickly as it came. The forest falls dark. Cold. Silent.

Midnight is over.

‘We'd have been down there,' says Clementine quietly, ‘if Bastian hadn't found us.'

My stomach twists. She's right. If not for Bastian, we'd have camped in the wilderness. We'd have slept on the ground, hidden in the undergrowth or a patch of boulders. And at midnight …

‘The hunter!' Lukas says. ‘He would've camped on the ground, wouldn't he?'

I quickly glance at the others. Their expressions range from relief to horror, and the same confusion claws at my gut. Until now, the hunter seemed like an inhuman shadow. Now, he's almost certainly dead. But to die in such a terrible way: scorched and boiled, in those writhing gyres of alchemy …

I can't wish such a fate upon anyone.

‘No wonder they added wings to their foxaries,' Lukas says.

‘Oh yeah,' Teddy says. ‘Good idea, that. Can you
imagine dragging Borrash up a tree? You'd get your bloody head bitten off.'

My throat is too tight to speak. The hunter might be dead, but we're still far from safe. Every midnight, it seems, Víndurn becomes a scalding smear of smoke and heat. Perhaps it's even enough to scald a person's flesh from their bones.

At midnight, the earth cannot be trusted.

‘So, the earth burns at midnight,' Maisy says slowly. ‘And Lord Farran conducts his experiments on Skyfire Peak, to try to stop the earth from boiling. But those experiments, it seems, set the sky aflame.'

There is a long pause.

‘Well,' Teddy says, ‘at least it's a good spot for barbecues.'

In the ensuing silence, I stare down at the earth. It looks so harmless. So normal. No sign of smoke, or steam, or deadly heat. My crewmates' breath is the only movement in the dark.

My crewmates.
In the chaos of midnight, I've almost forgotten the real danger. This is our final night together. I'm the one who must flee this village. Not my friends. Not those whose proclivities are deemed acceptable. I have a better chance of survival now, if King Morrigan's hunter lies dead in the wild. But even so …

Lukas's hand slips into my own.

My throat constricts, hard and tight. I keep my eyes steadfastly on the ground. I can't look at Lukas. I can't. If I do, my resolve will crumble.

But part of me burns to bid him one last farewell. To meet his gaze and hold him tight before I sneak out of his life forever. And with that thought, the realisation of what I'll be losing really hits me. Not just Lukas, but the others. No more laughter from Teddy, or bossy scoldings from Clementine. No more of Maisy's quiet wisdom, or the invisible bond that holds our crew together.