The plan was skeletal in its simplicity. At the center of the rose garden was a small fountain, a little over a foot deep. It was as far from large trees as one could hope for in the city; there was no evidence that Bryde could receive information from roses. Carmen Farooq-Lane was going to climb into the fountain, lie down in the nearly frozen water, and breathe sips of air through a straw that reached to the surface. She would wait there in the inhuman temperature until the Moderators texted her that the Zeds had arrived in the garden. And then she would leap from the water with Hennessy’s sword like an avenging angel, killing Bryde with a single moonlit stroke.
Her phone was only rated for an hour of underwater use, but the cold would kill her before that anyway.
“Is this how you saw it?” she asked Liliana again.
“It will be all right, Carmen.”
It will be all right.
It did not feel all right as she lay in the bottom of the fountain. She tried to keep her hand from shaking as she held the breathing tube steady in her frigid lips. She focused on a black feather that floated on the surface of the water above her.
She was waiting to kill. Waiting to kill. Waiting to kill. She had to think of him as not human. As not living. As simply a tree to hew down.
The trees were on his side, though, which meant the trees had feelings, too. Nothing was simple anymore.
She was that feather. She was that feather.
Her phone buzzed against her.
The Zeds were here.
Four seconds passed before she could animate her cold body. She plunged from the water, sword already alive with light and swinging.
The blade missed Bryde by several inches.
Ronan Lynch’s raven screamed into the air.
Bryde’s eyes met hers.
This was wrong. This was already wrong. It had to be immediate, or it wouldn’t work. She couldn’t fight them. Anything beyond the single stroke got messy, and anything messy meant she couldn’t guarantee her promise.
Ronan had his sunfire sword out in a second, but Bryde snatched it from him.
“Get out of here!” snapped Bryde. “You know what to do!”
Farooq-Lane didn’t have time to see if Ronan obeyed, because Bryde fell upon her with vexed to nightmare.
They fought.
They fought.
The rose garden was alight with the weapons’ eerie glow.
Farooq-Lane’s hands were so frozen that she could barely feel the hilt, but it seemed to her the sword wanted her to succeed. Even as her fingers were too numb to guide it, the blade chose an effective path for itself. However, Bryde’s blade wanted him to succeed, too, and so a battle waged. It did not matter that neither Farooq-Lane nor Bryde were swordsmen. The swords were made to fight, and they would fight, and Farooq-Lane and Bryde would wield them.
Rosebushes shredded.
Stone planters cleaved.
Trellises sprung in all directions like split rib cages.
But neither the sunfire blade nor the starlit blade took any damage.
She had been right when she guessed the only match for FROM CHAOS was this other sword.
She was tangentially aware that outside the vivid light of the blades, Moderators and Zeds fought. Gunfire sounded. The swords’ furious dreamt light both warmed Farooq-Lane’s chilled body and repelled bullets, slicing them as easily as they sliced anything else.
Bullets!
She was breaking her promise.
Declan Lynch had come to her and asked for her help and gotten her word. She’d really believed it when she promised him Ronan would be untouched. The Moderators had been killing Zeds and now they were going to kill her integrity, too.
This felt more intolerable than anything else to this point. She’d promised.
“I only want you,” Farooq-Lane shouted to Bryde as the swords met again. “If you really want the others to get away, you’ll give up. We know it’s you. I know it’s you.”
Bryde said, “You don’t know anything you think you know, Carmen Farooq-Lane.”
“Don’t play your mind games with me!” she shouted.
“I don’t play games,” Bryde said. “I just turn down the volume on the shit that doesn’t matter.”
Suddenly, she was hit from behind.
The blow hit the middle of her spine so sharply that her knees buckled. There was no arguing with it. She was down on her knees, and then she was down on her face. Gravel bit her lips. She felt the winning sword tumbling from her hand. She felt her vision flicker.
She felt everything going wrong.
Gunfire speckled like the sound of castanets behind a dancer. She heard someone shout.
She had trusted Liliana. It was supposed to be all right.
Three Zeds bolted from the rose garden.
They were on foot; they had to be. One of them had smashed their dreamt hoverboard across Farooq-Lane’s back. This was why her spine stung, why she still felt pain shooting up to her neck and her fingertips. This was why Hennessy’s sword burned the dry grass a few inches away from her as she gingerly sat up.
This was how Bryde had gotten away.
She could hear shouts, more gunfire, sirens, all moving farther and farther from her. This was wrong. All wrong. The Moderators were driving the Zeds to ground and breaking her promise all in one. Declan Lynch had trusted her. She had trusted Liliana. She’d trusted herself.
The deepest wound was one she didn’t even understand. Bryde’s voice said in her head: You don’t know what you think you know.
Just words. Just words from a Zed. Then why did she want to cry?
Liliana leaned to help her up.
“It will be all right,” she said.
Two of them stood in the rose garden. Farooq-Lane leaned over and replaced Hennessy’s sword in the scabbard. The grass beneath it was a burned ruin. The entire garden was a ruin. These old roses torn up. The gravel path shredded deeply. The fountain tinted an ugly shade with just a bit of someone’s blood.
Everything was worse off than when they’d gotten there.
The Moderators had vanished, chasing after the Zeds, but Farooq-Lane knew it
