nodding to sleep.
The ring itself was made from nothing more than luminescent mushrooms that glowed softly against the blackened grass. A dead tree, branches reaching skeletal fingers to grasp the moon and cradle it, drooped over the mushrooms, and the guard leaned against it, humming under his breath.
“Stay here,” Draven said, crouching low.
I tried to stop him, but he came up on the soldier before I could do anything, and wrapped an arm around his neck, cutting off his air supply. I heard the man gasp and struggle for a second, before a crack like a twig snapping echoed in the still night air.
The soldier dropped in a heap, and Draven stood, chest rising and falling rapidly.
“It’s been a while since I got my hands dirty,” he said. He pointed to the ring. “Your turn, Aoife. Show me what you can do.”
I walked to the ring, careful not to crush any of the mushrooms. The part of me that was connected to the Gates, the pathways that linked one world to the next, came to life and lit up behind my eyes.
Draven stood with me and put his hand on my shoulder. His eyes clouded and he frowned, no doubt feeling the gut-wrenching pull of the magic that linked the Gates to the fabric of the universe.
“What is that?”
“Gates slow down time,” I said. “You get used to it.” I didn’t tell him that if you lingered too long inside a
Draven’s grip became a vise, grinding the bones of my shoulder, and I gasped in pain. “Get moving,” he growled in my ear. “I never want to see this muddy hellhole again.”
I opened up my mind, and there was no resistance before the Gate rushed in to fill it.
2
The Encroaching Sky
I CAN’T EXPLAIN WHAT it’s like to travel by Gate. Not really. Imagine your entire body being stretched, loose and wobbly, and then snapping back and falling an infinite distance. You feel all this at once, and see everything there is to see, and then you hit the ground as if you were made of lead.
Using my Weird always took a heavy toll. There was intense pressure in my skull, and my nose usually bled at least a bit. Mostly, though, I felt the echoes of the Gate inside me, the vastness of it, and it made me curl on the ground and lie very still until I realized I was being pelted by a light rain. I fished in my pack for my slicker.
I raised my head, seeing low rolling hills bordered by stone walls, a small white farmhouse in the distance, and the cotton-wool sky overhead. I smelled earth and mud. It was spring in the Iron Land. I’d been gone for at least four months.
That thought spurred me more than anything. I had to find out where I was and devise a way of getting home. My accuracy with the Gates wasn’t the best—I could generally hit close to a target, but sometimes I’d be radically off and have to try again and again before I stepped out where I meant to.
This time I’d gotten only one try. I prayed I wasn’t somewhere halfway around the world from home.
Next to me, Draven rolled over and looked up at the sky. “Fresh air,” he said. “I did miss that.”
He got up and frowned at the mud on his tattered black uniform. Once, I’d been terrified of the figure Draven cut. He had worn his Proctor’s uniform like it was his skin, and his boots had gleamed as bright as the wings of the clockwork ravens that swept in his wake.
Now his uniform was a mess, faded and shredded, and he wasn’t wearing shoes. He’d lost weight, and his pants sagged in the seat.
“I brought you back here. Now tell me how to find Dean,” I said. I couldn’t stand just yet—I felt, in using the Gates, as though I’d left part of myself back there in that great nothingness. “Tell me how to get to the Deadlands.”
“Don’t waste any time, do you?” Draven smirked. I hated how he could stand there, dirty and bedraggled and alone, and still act like he’d gotten the best of me.
“Just tell me,” I said. “And then we can walk in opposite directions and never have to see each other again.”
Draven laughed, the dry bark of a crow. “You really think it will be that easy? You think I’ll just tell you what you want to know?”
“Listen,” I said. “I could have dumped you in the middle of the ocean or the cold of space, but I didn’t. In spite of what you are, I brought you back here.” I folded my arms and forced myself to appear brave. “So it seems like you owe me, Draven. There’s nobody else here besides us. What do you have to lose?”
His face twitched, and I could see he’d been planning to run. I hoped I wouldn’t have to chase him to get what he knew.
“You have any idea what they did to me in that place?” he ground out. “What they did because of
I watched him while he watched me. His arms and what I could see of his torso through his ripped uniform were scarred and pale, the result of months of torment, spent in the dark. His hair hung greasy and lank, and his handsome face was covered with bruises and scabs.
My mother had once told me that Octavia allowed nothing in the court more beautiful than her. Disfiguring Draven had probably been some kind of game.
“About what you would do to me if you managed to throw me in one of your prisons,” I said. “And I know you would, if the situation were reversed.”
“That’s fair,” Draven agreed, but he still tensed to spring at me. “But I’m afraid my time among the Kindly Folk has left me just a bit less forgiving than I used to be.”
“Look, Draven.” I sighed. “I don’t care about you. I just want to get Dean back. I’m not going to apologize for turning you over to Tremaine, because you would have done the same to me.”
Draven took a step toward me, and I darted back. “Don’t,” I said, my voice grinding like mismatched gears. Even skinny and broken, Draven still had the ability to scare me.
“I could leave you here, you know,” he said. His hand darted out and grabbed my wrist. “Knock you on the head and leave you for the crows.”
Rather than pull away, as every instinct in my body was screaming at me to do, I yanked Draven closer, matching the force of his grip. “And I could send you somewhere so awful, mud and crows would seem like paradise.”
After a moment Draven started laughing, a genuine laugh, tinged with hysteria. “Aoife, you and I are so much more alike than you realize.”
“The Deadlands,” I snarled, not rising to the bait. “Tell me.”
“It’s very simple,” he managed between peals of laughter. “I can’t believe you haven’t figured it out.”
“Figure what out!” I gave him a shake, trying to quell his laughter, but it didn’t work.
“To go to the Deadlands, you have to die,” Draven said. “Stone and sun, it’s so simple.”
I let go of him, shoving him back with disgust, and he sprawled in the mud, laughing so hard he disturbed a flight of birds from the nearby field. “Run on, Aoife!” he shouted. “Run away to die!”
I should have guessed he didn’t really know anything, that he’d be useless and only out for himself, but I just turned my back and walked away to the east, rather than act out my rage by sending him through another Gate.
It was more than Draven ever would have done for me.
There was a road next to the stone wall bordering the field we’d landed in, and I jumped the wall and followed it.
After a time, I came to a signpost and nearly wept in relief. The post announced NEW CANAAN, 5 MI. I was in Connecticut. I could sneak aboard a train or a steam jitney, lay low, and in less than twelve hours, I’d be home.
