Tell the Wind and Fire (8 page)

I leaned my weight against my drawn-up legs, fingers laced in the ties of my shoes, and met Carwyn’s gaze straight on. I couldn’t tell if it was challenging or suspicious, hateful or simply curious, but it didn’t matter what he thought of me, not really. It didn’t matter what he felt about me, if he could feel anything at all: my mother would have said he could, and the whole Light city would have told me it was impossible. None of that mattered. What mattered was that I had come to this hotel to do whatever I could for him.

Carwyn was silent for a while. I stretched my legs out, and curled my fingers around the arms of the chair.

I started a little when Carwyn kicked the side of my shoe with his own. When I looked up, he was smiling a bit: a small and not entirely reassuring grin, nothing like Ethan’s, but it looked genuine nonetheless.

“So,” said Carwyn. “Charades?”

“Ethan said they gave you money,” I told him. “And that you’re set to stay here for a week and you have a pass. Is there anything else that you want? Is there anything else I can do for you?”

The doppelganger hesitated.

“Come on, Carwyn,” I added. “I dare you not to be predictable.”

“Well,” said Carwyn, “I’m a growing avatar of darkness, and I’ve been waiting for room service a suspiciously long time. Like, two hours. I’m wondering what to do about it.”

He didn’t need to say any more. I’d seen doppelgangers in the Dark city not being served in shops and cafés, until they slunk away. The best way to encourage doppelgangers not to linger was not to make a fuss but simply not provide what they needed.

I could have called Ethan—even if I didn’t want to make up with Ethan at that moment, I could have called Ethan’s dad or his uncle—and demanded that they sort out the situation with the hotel. It was in their best interests to keep Carwyn quiet and content.

I intended to do just that, but I remembered something, suddenly, about my mom, and it made me smile. Whenever anything like that happened in front of her, my mom would always order whatever it was the doppelganger had asked for herself, then hand it over.

I thought that it would cost me nothing to be kind and mean it, just this once. To be like my mother, just for one night.

“You said you wanted to see the Light city,” I said slowly. “Let’s go out and see some of it. I can show you around, and we can grab something to eat as we go. My treat.”

Carwyn put his head to one side. I wasn’t sure if he was assessing the sincerity of my offer or simply weighing the amount of fun he could have getting pot stickers in the Village with me versus checking out what the hotel cable television had to offer.

“All right, golden girl,” he said slowly, “lead me to the light.”

CHAPTER FIVE

It was clear even before we reached the street that I had made another terrible mistake.

Carwyn had put up his hood before we left the hotel room, and we got a judgmental stare from the receptionist as we walked out. Matters only got worse from there.

We took the subway to the restaurant I’d decided on. It was only a few stops, but that was long enough. One woman who had seemed sleepy a moment before we stepped onto the train, her kid resting his sticky face against her shimmering Light-reinforced raincoat, went rigid as soon as she saw Carwyn. She stood vibrating with distress by the doors and exited, making for the next car, at the next stop. Other people were less obtrusive, melting away off the seats and through the doors or into the corner.

One guy in pink suspenders, who I thought might be trying to impress a beringed woman whose shoes were twined with Light magic so the spike heels became small bright towers that would not hurt her feet, stayed where he was. He sat only one seat away from Carwyn. The bright-shod woman watched Carwyn with obvious apprehension. The man in suspenders, I saw, was pretending to be nonchalant, and playing a hand-held game. He was a lousy actor. We could all see his shaking hands.

Carwyn shifted, and the guy dropped the game with a clatter and a flash of light that blinked out like a tiny supernova. He stared, and from under Carwyn’s hood came a soft, sinister sound, something like a hiss, and Carwyn’s pale fingers went creeping over the empty seat.

The guy made a low sound in the back of his throat and slid hastily along the row of slick orange plastic seats until he was at the other end of the car. I leaned over and rapped Carwyn’s hand with my knuckles, making sure my rings were involved so it would smart.

“You’re not helping yourself.”

“No,” Carwyn murmured, “I’m amusing myself.”

“You’re the only doppelganger that they have ever seen in person,” I said as we left the train, to the visible relief of its remaining passengers. “Spreading fear and distrust is only going to contribute to the false idea of doppelgangers that they’ve built up in their heads.”

“Please inform me on the subject of doppelgangers,” Carwyn said humbly. “They sound like such interesting yet widely misunderstood creatures. Is it true that they only drink human blood?”

“I hope not,” I said. “This place doesn’t serve it.”

The Star Bright was already in view, with its white façade and gleaming, tilted windows, the star on the black sign a burst of Light magic that looked almost like a real star. I’d had brunch there with Ethan a couple of weeks ago, and it was a warm, comfortable place to eat and talk. I smiled at the woman with the short black tie and moved toward an empty table.

“I’m terribly sorry,” said the woman, stepping in front of me. “But these tables are reserved.”

“What, all of them?”

The woman nodded, a jerky motion that made her earrings dance, jeweled little fish leaping into shimmering blue circles.

“All right,” I said slowly. “Can we wait? How long will it take?”

“Could be hours,” she said, twisting her hands together.

I glanced over my shoulder at Carwyn, a silent shadow at my back. He made no sound or movement, as if he really was a shadow.

“It’s not my decision,” the woman said, her voice very fast and very low. “It’s just the policy of the management. They have to think of the other customers.”

“Being thoughtful is so important,” I snapped. “Come on, we’ll go someplace else.”

I stormed out into the dark street, banging the door shut behind me, and walked on with Carwyn following in my wake. We walked eight blocks, until we reached a Thai place I knew, where the bathrooms had shimmering curtains of magic light instead of walls. Tourists flocked there to use those bathrooms. I thought the whole thing was a little creepy, but the food was good, and outside the bathrooms the lights were low.

They must have seen us coming, because the man waiting at the door had the air of a manager and shining rings on every finger. Rings took money as well as magical talent.

“Miss, please, you can’t come in here,” he said. “This isn’t that kind of establishment.”

“The kind of establishment where people eat food and then pay for it?” I asked. “Because I’ve done that here before, and that’s all we want to do now.”

A woman eating nearby said, “Light’s sake,
I
don’t mind if the doppelganger wants to stay and give us a show!”

Her voice had a Midwest twang and she was looking at Carwyn with undisguised fascination, as if he were a combination of a dirty picture and something she might see at the zoo.

“You’re welcome here, honey,” she said, peering up at his shrouded face.

“Thanks, honey,” said Carwyn, mimicking her accent. She jumped.

“Miss.” The man touched his forehead with one hand and gestured to the door with the other, sparks cast by the stones trailing the motion.

I clenched my own hands, rings pressing hard against my palms, and fought back the urge to do what I had done at the train station for Ethan: shout who I was and demand better treatment. But I couldn’t, of course. I couldn’t link my name with a doppelganger’s any more than it already was. Word would spread. That would be bad for Ethan.

Even going out onto the streets with Carwyn was a risk I should not have taken. I could have been recognized, and that would have reflected on the whole Stryker family. Ethan had already been accused of a crime. I was afraid for Ethan, fear cold as the knowledge that I was letting down the boy who had saved Ethan in the first place.

“Fine,” I said, and whirled out the door.

I had taken a few steps down the street when Carwyn’s voice sounded behind me.

“You were right,” he said. “Once I stop upsetting people with my bad behavior, the world is all strawberries and sunshine. Or do I mean puppies and cream?”

“I’m sorry, all right,” I told him angrily, as if the world’s and my own cowardice were his fault.

“Sorry about what?” Carwyn asked. He drew level with me rather than being the shadow at my back. “Lucie, come on. It’s not like anything’s different in the Dark. The revolution you ignited hasn’t changed things that much, not yet.”

“The revolution
I
ignited?”

“The child who spoke out against the cages?” Carwyn asked. “They chant your name down in the Dark. The
sans-merci
paint it in blood on the streets. There are whispers that say the Light city kidnapped you and the Light Council is holding you prisoner, that it is the
sans-merci
’s mission to free you. You’re their princess in a tower. You’re their excuse for the tower to be torn down.”

I knew a little about the unrest in the Dark city. I knew about the riots, the fires, and the rumored assassinations, but there was always unrest in the Dark city. I knew all I wanted to. The chaos on the dark streets was not my fault just because they were calling my name these days.

The Light saw me as someone the laws existed to protect. The Dark saw me as someone who proved that the laws could be broken. But I didn’t want to be either.

Except that wasn’t true. I had stirred people up deliberately. I was responsible for some of the blood spilled on those dark streets. But I hadn’t caused a revolution, for Light’s sake. That was ridiculous. The buried were always restless, but they always settled in the end.

I shook my head to silence the voice of Ethan’s uncle, which didn’t belong in there. “It’s nothing to do with me.”

Carwyn just laughed. “Oh, right. You’re the Golden Thread in the Dark, but it’s nothing to do with you. The buried ones use you as a rallying cry, but that doesn’t matter to you.”

It wasn’t that it didn’t matter, I wanted to say. It was just that he was attributing power to me that I didn’t have. All I’d done was follow the plan Aunt Leila had come up with: all I’d done was play a role to get what I wanted. Nothing they thought about me was true.

An icon didn’t do anything of its own volition. A symbol didn’t act of its own accord. Both cities projected what they wanted onto me, and wanted me to stay still as they did it.

We walked on through SoHo in silence, past a closed-up antique shop, a club with a sign that said
SIZZLING,
and into an alleyway that had a wall covered in intricate graffiti— the shadowy face and scared eyes of a girl lost in a psychedelic forest.
Her eyes shone with Light magic, like a surprised animal’s in the night.

“I didn’t start it, and I can’t stop it,” I said at last. “I can’t even get us a lousy meal. You think that I’m responsible for a revolution? I managed to fool everyone long enough to get my dad out. That’s all. I’m not a hero. I saved one person. You saved one person last night. We’re even. We’re the same.”

“Are you starving?” Carwyn asked. “Because I’m starving.”

I walked into the alleyway with the lost-girl graffiti, then turned and stood opposite him. The hood obscured his face, so all I was looking at was featureless darkness.

“Put your hood down.”

He pulled it away from his face without a word.

All day, ever since I had woken to find the one person who meant love and safety to me in sudden danger, I had felt like I was back in the Dark. Like a rawly orphaned child, lying cold and exhausted and scared in Aunt Leila’s house, sure that I did not have enough Light in me to go on.

Carwyn looked like Ethan, but an Ethan shadowed and starved, bones standing out in high relief in his face and with the sweetness gone out of his eyes. He looked like an Ethan who had been through some of what I had. He looked as if he might, just possibly, be able to understand.

I said very quietly, “Do you think you might need to go to the bathroom at any point in the near future?”

“Uh,” said Carwyn, “what? No. What?” He paused. “I want you to know that was my first time,” he added. “Not knowing what to say to someone. I always have something to say.”

“Well, your first time didn’t last long, but I guess that’s always how it goes,” I said.

I concentrated on my left hand, the sinister hand, so the rings on it glowed: lapis lazuli, opal, vermarine, emerald, and diamond, the colors of green and blue and moonshine mingling pale and bright as light underwater. When my hand was glowing, I inscribed a circle onto the night sky and made a loop of brightness that turned solid, like water transforming into ice, and landed in my palm.

I pushed the link I had made over my hand, so it hung around my wrist like a bracelet.

Then I looked back at Carwyn.

“I have conditions,” I said. “This is only for one night. You’re not going to argue with me. You’re not allowed to beg or plead or try to make a bargain. You won’t leave my side all night. You have to do what I say.”

“You might be surprised at how often I’ve had conversations similar to this one,” Carwyn commented, but he spoke in as low and as quiet a voice as I did, as if speaking too loudly in this lonely alley might tip off the universe.

Outside the alley, the city went rushing heedlessly along, like a river made of light.

A doppelganger’s collar did not resemble any other collar in the world. It was a heavy strip of black leather, meant to last someone’s whole life, and it was inlaid with metallic fittings like studs turned inside out. Glittering spaces like the setting of a ring when the jewel had fallen out. The spaces waited for the jewels to return.