After all, he’d descended into a black ruin to help her. He still walked with her even though he could find his way back out.
Instead, Fingers asked her about Bran. As they shouldered their packs, she explained all she and Ōbhin knew, their theory on how Dje’awsa had created him with sorcery, a subtler craft than the crude work the dark man had performed on Ust. The impostor worked for the Brotherhood, a guardian sent to watch over Dualayn. It could mimic a person so well it became them.
“Injuries are the only thing it can’t fake,” she said. “I don’t think it can control its healing. It happens automatically. It’s fast and strong, but I think becoming Bran has affected its personality. We can use that to kill it.”
“Smiles is truly dead?” asked Fingers.
Avena nodded. “The night you went drinking with the new guards . . . We think it replaced him then.”
Fingers spat out a string of curses. “Poor Jilly. A month with that thing pretendin’ to be her husband. Wot, sixty or more days?”
“Yeah,” said Avena, her voice tight. “I’ll have to tell her and Joayne when we return . . .” She scrunched up her eyes. “She loved Bran.”
“Doted on her youngest son,” he said. Knuckles popped. “When we find that bastard, I’ll help you wring its scrawny neck.”
She smiled, feeling comforted by his presence. She wanted to take his hand like a little girl, to be that innocent child once again. To hold the doll he’d made for her with a face stitched on by her mother. To run through the fields with Evane laughing at her side. The other half of her stolen away.
You would have liked Ōbhin, Evane, thought Avena. The emptiness inside of her didn’t feel so wide today. Fingers’s revelation had filled in the pain in ways that Ōbhin couldn’t. He could make her forget, but he couldn’t help her forgive herself.
As they moved through the transmuted ruins in the direction of the Hall of Communication, she felt eyes watching her. She shuddered, fearing Bran lurked just out of sight. She didn’t know what the thing’s capabilities were. How far its abilities stretched. Did it need to eat and drink? To sleep? Could it see in the dark?
She kept glancing around, searching for the impostor. She never saw a sign, just felt that prickle at the back of her neck.
“This isn’t good,” she said as they reached the edge of the ruby transmutation. The debris held up by the streetlamps and transmuted buildings crashed across the road before them. “We’re so close to the Hall. Another few blocks that way.”
“Can’t help but detour around it,” said Fingers. He nodded to a building to their right. It would take them north. “That one?”
She sighed and nodded.
They ventured into the building. The collapsed floors above forced them into the basement. They found another carriage house full of the horseless carriages. A few lines of ruby transmutation knifed throughout while the floor boiled with cockroaches. They were big and brown, running across the debris in a vast wave.
She grimaced with each crunching step across the tide of the filthy things. She kept having to kick her boots to knock them off of her. Fingers slapped at his calf. One must have crawled up beneath his trouser leg.
Relief burst from Avena’s lungs after crossing the far end of the disgusting migration. Here a set of stairs led upward. To reach them, they had to wade through knee-high water. It spilled over the cuff of her boots, her wool stockings absorbing the brackish liquid. It smelled worse than a swamp, all rotten muck and filth.
I’ll need to take a bath for a month once we’re out of here. Two full turnings of all seven moons!
She climbed out of the foul liquid onto the stairs. It led to an underground path that took them almost in the direction they needed to go. One of the lizard demons lay dead in it, head crushed by a half-melted pipe. Bones lay scattered around it. Scavengers seemed to avoid eating the demons while having no qualms about humans.
The tunnel ended at another set of stairs that led to an alley between two buildings. The debris loomed over her head. A rusting girder thrust down before them out of the stone. She slid past it and frowned at a sound drifting through the air.
Whispers.
It was like people were talking just a room over. Her head cocked to focus on the noises. Fuzzy tingles prickled the tips of her toes and fingers even as hope surged through her. Talking meant other humans. Her friends.
“Ōbhin!” she shouted.
“What?” Fingers asked.
She darted forward down the alley to where it opened onto a narrow street that seemed mostly clear of rubble. A few large piles of it had crashed down from above, but it seemed to go for blocks. The prickling spread up to her hands and itched at her legs.
“It’s Ōbhin and the others!” she shouted, excitement mounting.
“Wait, Avena!” Fingers growled. “I don’t think that’s them!”
She burst out onto the street and held her lantern up high in her left hand. Brilliant light shone across the neighborhood. The buildings here were close enough together to provide the support to keep this area from being entirely swallowed.
“Ōbh—”
Fingers’s dirty hand clamped over her mouth. He pulled her back. Indignation surged through her. She thrashed, the whispers swelling. They were so close. Why was he stopping her?
The crystalman stepped out of the next alley down the street. Its diamond eyes shone bright and swept at them. An alarm blared loud
