CHAPTER
2
Her view of sky and flowers jostled chaotically as Tristan thundered toward what looked like a stand of trees rimming the horizon, but no matter how hard Tristan ran, the trees didn’t seem to come any closer.
“It’s too far!” she yelled. Tristan only dropped his head and ran harder.
Lily looked over his shoulder and saw one of the emissaries catching up to Tristan. He was waving his arms over his head and shouting, “Wait!”
Tristan wasn’t waiting. But there was something about the emissary that made Lily beat against Tristan’s chest, some combination of surprise and openness that made her believe that there was more to this situation than peril.
“Tristan, stop,” she yelled. “Let’s talk to them, at least.”
Tristan finally slowed to a stop. Lily slid out of his arms, avoiding his eyes. She watched the emissary instead.
He was about Tristan’s height, but his build was less bulky and his bone structure much lighter. He had black hair and eyes, and Asian features, although Lily couldn’t quite place his heritage. She guessed he was only a few years older than they were. The emissary wisely came to a halt several paces away from Tristan.
“I know it’s a shock, but please come back and let us explain about the Hive,” he said in a thoroughly rational tone. “I promise no harm will come to you.”
Tristan hesitated, but Lily stepped forward, avoiding contact with him. “Let’s at least hear them out,” she said, still not looking at him. “Not like we’ve got any other choice.”
They followed the emissary back to the group and Grace explained the strange arrangement between the people of Bower City and the Hive. For over a hundred years the Hive had been “choosing” people, flying them to the coast as they had with Lily and her mechanics, and leaving them there. The Hive had allowed those chosen humans to build a city and go about their lives as long as they did so in a diligent and orderly fashion. “That’s all they want?” Caleb asked, sneering his disbelief. “Order?”
“I swear it,” Grace replied. She gestured down to the bright blossoms at her feet. “They don’t even demand that we maintain these fields of flowers to provide them with food. We do it voluntarily. It’s our gift to them for giving us so much.”
Lily looked around at her coven, silently asking them what they thought.
“They’re right there,” Una said, gesturing toward the Warrior Sisters hovering around the gate. “They could have killed us at any time.”
“She’s right,” Breakfast said, backing her up.
Tristan nodded reluctantly, but Caleb was the hardest to convince. Lily could feel his hatred for the Hive, and for all Woven, like a hard lump inside of him—an infection that had calcified. She couldn’t blame him. The Woven had killed most of the people he’d ever known.
Where else are we going to go? Lily asked him in mindspeak.
I don’t like it. There’s something off about all of this, Caleb replied.
I don’t like it either, Lily replied. Then she shrugged a defeated shoulder and followed Grace, who was leading the rest of her coven toward the walled city.
Skittish as a herd of spooked horses, Lily and her coven had to pass under an arch of hovering Warrior Sisters in order to enter Bower City. The hum of their wings puckered her skin and sent bolts of static down her legs. Lily looked up. The Sisters’ black-faceted eyes glinted with oil-slick rainbows and their bulbous heads twitched lightning fast atop their long stalk necks. They looked back down at her, and Lily couldn’t tell what they thought or felt—or if they thought or felt anything at all.
“It’s okay. Really,” Grace soothed. “The Hive craves order above all things and, if you behave peacefully, they won’t bother you. All we need to live in harmony with them is to live in harmony with one another.”
Caleb didn’t argue entering the city, but as they walked through the gates, he couldn’t help but comment. “Harmony,” he whispered as he ducked under the dangling tips of a Warrior Sister’s cat-o’-nine-tails whip. “You sure they’re not tone-deaf?”
Lily curled up a cheek in a wry half smile, thinking that Caleb had struck on what was bothering her about them. The Sisters may have some of the physical attributes of people, but there was something distinctly alien about them. Lily couldn’t read emotion in them, nor could she imagine them understanding and enjoying something as fundamentally human as music.
When Lily got her first good look at the inside of Bower City, she had the nagging feeling she’d been there before. The brightly painted buildings were topped with terra-cotta roofs, and every windowsill and trellis spilled over with flowers. Blossoms dripped from every gable, and the pristine streets were edged not with grass, but with carpets of wildflowers. Even the trees that lined the street—each housed in its own enormous pot—were of the flowering kind, and the air tasted bittersweet with pollen.
“Do you like our city?” Grace asked after an appropriately long pause.
“It’s so”—Una looked around, her face puckered with confusion—“clean,” she finished.
Grace laughed—a throaty, warm sound—and flashed her straight white teeth. “I told you. Order. Symmetry. Peace. The Hive is diligent about keeping things neat, to the benefit of all who live under them.”
Looking down at cobbled streets that were so spotless she reckoned she could eat off of them, Lily couldn’t find one thing that was out of place. Not a hinge on the cheerful shutters leaked a red stain of rust. No flaking paint or loose tiles on any of the vaguely Italian-villa-style houses. Everything was picture perfect.
“Like Disneyland,” Breakfast muttered.
“Exactly,” Lily agreed, nodding. That explained her déjà vu. She stifled a memory of singing animatronic dolls before she got that saccharine tune stuck in her head. She hated Disneyland.
“Except with a vaguely Mediterranean flair instead of storybook-Swiss-chalet,” Breakfast added.
“I wonder where we are, exactly.”
Breakfast shrugged. “Somewhere between San Francisco and LA, I’m guessing. Where all the farms and vineyards are.”
Tristan gave Lily and Breakfast a puzzled look, and Lily averted her eyes and shook her head as if to say that it didn’t matter. He seemed entranced with Bower City, and Lily had to agree it was a beautiful place. Even the sunshine seemed, well, shinier than it did back east.
As they threaded their way through the grid system of the streets, Lily saw open-air trolleys gliding soundlessly up and down the center of the road. People wearing brightly dyed tunics and kimonos hopped on and off the rail system with ease, the men’s voluminous capes and women’s silk ribbons trailing behind them. If the beautifully attired and heavily perfumed citizens thought anything was odd about the bedraggled appearance of Lily’s coven, they hid it well.
Questioning glances were quickly followed by averted eyes as the busy people went about their day. Occasionally, Lily would catch a glimpse of a Warrior Sister perched high on top of a building, but they seemed to stay away from street level. They were there, though. Lily could feel their presence echoing down the scrubbed streets, like the mounting pressure of a storm that had yet to break.
Lily wondered how large the city was. She glanced up the street, but couldn’t see an edge to it. She noticed that the grid system curved ever so gently in a pleasing fashion, rather than adhering to boxy ninety-degree angles. It struck Lily as being a more organic, although still highly structured, way of building a city. Rather like a honeycomb.
“Is anyone tired? Do you need to rest?” Grace asked.
Lily shook her head. She just wanted them to get wherever it was they were going so she could be alone for a few moments. Her frustration passed to Juliet.
I think she’s taking us the scenic route, Juliet said in mindspeak.
I have a feeling this whole city is the scenic route, Lily replied.
After a few more minutes of striding by manicured buildings and down immaculate streets, they came to a large plaza with a huge fountain in the center. Skirting around the plaza were a number of gracefully columned buildings, the largest of which had a sprawling staircase. Many groups of people stood on the steps, talking in clusters.
“This is our Forum,” Grace told them. “Where we make government policy. Or try to, at any rate. Mostly we just argue.”
All eyes seemed to turn toward them and conversations stopped as they entered the plaza. Grace led the newcomers up the grand staircase, and as they passed, the chatter struck up again in urgent undertones. Lily nodded to herself, finally understanding why Grace had chosen to walk a bunch of battle-weary, shocked, and grieving people through the city. She and her coven were on parade. This wasn’t about them. It was for the people of Bower City.
Lily glanced up and tried to make eye contact with the members of the closest cluster, but they all looked away nervously. They were playacting. Pretending that this was just another day, but their forced nonchalance carried more tension than if they had gathered around, pointing and staring.
Grace and her attendants brought the coven through a forest of marble columns, and into a huge domed room. It was a colossal building, something that belonged on top of a hill in Italy or Greece.
Lily craned her neck to look up at the oculus in the center of the dome, which flooded the room with air and sunlight. Something large flew past, sending a swift shadow across the gleaming marble floor. The faintest hum followed, tickling the back of Lily’s neck.
They’re watching us, Una said in mindspeak.
Lily nodded, and glanced at Caleb, who was eyeing the oculus warily.
“This is the Governor’s Hearing Hall,” Grace told them.
“Nice office, Gracie,” Breakfast muttered under his breath. The acoustics of the room amplified his voice, and his mutter came out loud and clear to everyone in the room. Breakfast cringed.
“And we call it the Hearing Hall because you can hear even the slightest whisper,” she continued, smiling at him. “So even the smallest voice matters.”
They crossed the circular expanse of the Hearing Hall and went through one of three doors that were evenly spaced along the curved back wall. They walked down a long hallway, through another door, and into a private home.
Finally, Juliet said. The rest of the coven echoed her relief.
“You’re welcome to stay with me for as long as you like,” Grace said as she led them into a palatial living space. “I’ll give you a chance to clean up and rest, and we’ll speak later.”
“Thank you,” Lily replied, finally stepping forward to stand next to her sister.
“My pleasure,” Grace said, and left them with one of her emissaries.
It was the same young man who had chased after her and Tristan. He stepped forward and smiled at her. Now that they were no longer running for their lives, Lily couldn’t help but notice that he was extremely attractive.
“We have two rooms ready for you upstairs, if you’ll follow me,” he said in a pleasing voice.
“I didn’t catch your name,” Lily said, looking at his willstone. It was a deep rose color—almost burgundy. He’s a healer, she thought. A powerful one.
“My name is Toshi Konishi,” he replied. “And I’m up here,” he said, pointing to his face. Lily tore her gaze off his willstone and met his amused eyes, her face flushing.
“Sorry,” she stammered, “I’m just surprised by the color of your willstone. Is it common here for a rose stone to be so pigmented?”
“No,” Toshi replied. A slow smile crept up his face as he held Lily’s eyes. “Bedrooms,” he said, turning suddenly, “are this way. We’ve readied one apartment for the men and one for the women, but you’re welcome to make your own adjustments to the sleeping arrangement as you like.”
Toshi pushed the doors open to the first suite of rooms and revealed a common area with deep-seated leather club chairs and furniture made of dark, glossy wood.
Lily and her coven looked at the wealth and comfort around them blankly.
“The two sitting rooms are connected,” Toshi said, leading the girls through the man cave and opening up a set of double doors.
The girls’ sitting room had a large white couch and a velvet settee, and it was made bright and airy by a large balcony and many fresh flower arrangements.
“Your rooms are on the other side,” Toshi told them. A worried frown creased his forehead as he registered the listless expressions around him. “Is this arrangement not to your liking? If you don’t find the rooms suitable, just let me know what you require.”
“They’re lovely. We’ve been traveling for a long time,” Lily said in explanation. “And we’ve lost . . . a lot.”
“I’m sorry,” Toshi replied, his concern deepening. “I’m sure you need your rest. What you’ve done—just getting here—it’s amazing.”
Lily’s head filled with the mountains they’d climbed, the rivers they’d crossed, and the lives that she had lost along the way. She smiled at Toshi uncomfortably and went out onto the balcony as her coven broke away from one another silently and went off to be by themselves. Lily took a deep breath. A wisteria vine framed the wrought-iron casement and spilled over the railing like lavender locks of hair tumbling down a woman’s shoulder.
She felt Toshi join her on the veranda. “I mean it,” he said softly. “What you’ve accomplished is nothing short of a miracle. Those you’ve lost would be proud to see that at least you made it.”
Lily didn’t turn to look at him. She thought of Tristan’s body lying somewhere in a burnt-out field, probably already rotting in the sun, and wanted to say that pride had nothing to do with it. I did that, she thought.
Lily trained her dry, staring eyes on the city that rolled out in front of her. Like a patchwork quilt, interlocking blocks of color were saved from looking too busy by the orderliness of the pattern, and beyond the bright blanket that was Bower City, Lily saw a ribbon of sparkling blue.
“The ocean,” she whispered.
“I can take you there if you’d like,” he offered carefully.
Lily kept her attention on the view, neither accepting nor declining his offer. “Are those ships?” she asked, squinting into the distance.
“Yes.”
Lily turned to face him. “From where?”
“All over,” he said, shrugging. He suddenly understood. “The east is cut off from the rest of the world because of the Woven plague. No other countries will risk contamination through contact with you, but there’s no chance of that with Bower City.” His brow creased with a thought. “There are restrictions, of course, and immigration is carefully watched, but we trade with the rest of the world.”
“Carefully watched by who?” Lily could feel heat rising to her cheeks. She gritted her teeth, resisting the urge to scream.
“The Hive,” he said. “The Hive watches over everything in Bower City.” Toshi’s worried frown was back. “I should warn you to watch you temper. They react strongly to anger.”
Lily looked down at the purple blossoms surrounding her. The bees buzzing in and out of them began turning their attention from the flowers to Lily. More came. Toshi didn’t notice, but one had landed on his sleeve. Lily pointed at it.
“Careful,” she warned.
Toshi didn’t even look. “You don’t have to fear being stung accidentally. As long as you don’t attack them, they’ll leave you alone. But you must try and maintain a calm demeanor here in Bower City.”
Lily moved her elbows away from the wisteria. “And if you step on one?”
“They’re smarter than that,” he assured her. “I’ve lived here my whole life and they’ve never stung me.”
Lily relaxed a little, and then considered that maybe she shouldn’t. Watching the Worker go back to picking her way through the petals was not reassuring. They were always there. Always watching. No matter how much she wanted to find a room, lock the door, and start crying and throwing things at the wall, she couldn’t. She had to remain “calm.”
For all the fresh air, this place is more suffocating than the oubliette, she said in mindspeak to Lillian.
When she looked up again, Lily noticed that Toshi was standing very close to her. He seemed to notice it, too, and jerked away from her, embarrassed.
“Well, I’m sure you’re tired,” he said, taking his leave. “Would you like me to send up some food now?”
“Yes. Please,” Lily said, following him back inside. “And thank you, Toshi.”
He opened the door and paused before going through it. When he looked back at Lily he seemed surprised. “It was my pleasure,” he said, and then left.
Lily stayed at the closed door, replaying the conversation in her head.
“Thinking of adding him to your collection?” Tristan asked. His hair was still wet from a shower and he was dressed in one of the silk tunics the men here wore, the laces at his wrists still undone. He looked furious.
“No! I was—he was—” Lily stammered. “It’s not my fault.”
“Forget it,” he said, turning away in a huff and going back to his room.
“And I don’t have a collection!” Lily called after him.
She heard him shout, “I said forget it!” from deep within the other apartment and sighed.
Caleb came through the adjoining doors, cringing at Tristan’s wake. “That could have gone better,” he said.
“It’s not my fault,” Lily repeated.
“It’s a weird witch-mechanic thing. I know that,” Caleb replied. “Tristan does, too. He’s just angry that the line to you got longer.”
“There’s no line,” Lily argued, but Caleb continued as if he didn’t hear her.
“Don’t worry about Tristan. He’s just mad at you because it’s a convenient distraction. It’s easier to be angry at you than to be sad about, well, everything.”
“Not here it isn’t,” Lily said, noticing that more Workers were coming in through the window. She pointed it out to Caleb and told him how the Hive had reacted when she’d started to feel anger.
They can feel our emotions? Caleb looked disturbed.
I doubt that, but they can certainly sense them somehow, she replied. And they don’t allow anger. Tristan’s blocking me. Tell him to calm down and show him why.
Caleb took a moment to converse with Tristan in mindspeak, and then turned back to her. I really hate this place.
Get ready to hate it some more.
Lily brought Caleb out onto the balcony and showed him the ships in the harbor. She told him they were from all around world and watched as he stared at them, his breath stalled in his chest and his jaw lax with surprise. His eyes flew out over the water as he imagined other countries, other continents—all of them Woven-free.
“How does Bower City keep the Woven from contaminating other countries?” he asked. “Because all you need is one to climb inside a crate that gets loaded on a ship—”
“The Hive,” Lily replied. “I’m pretty sure that, apart from them, there are no Woven out west. I don’t think they let anything past them, maybe as far to the east as where they picked us up. That’s about halfway.”
“No Woven over half of the continent,” he whispered. It was almost too much for him to accept. “How could we not know that?”
The Workers had settled down after Tristan’s outburst. They went back to gathering nectar, buzzing in and out of the wisteria, their brightly striped bodies weighing down the blossoms.
Toshi mentioned “restrictions” on immigration, Lily told him in mindspeak. If the Hive only allows a few people to come to the city, I doubt it lets many out.
Caleb’s eyes angled up the edge of their roof as a Sister escaped out of his line of sight. Many—or any? he asked.
We’ll see.
A porter arrived with a rolling cart piled high with food, drawing Lily and Caleb back inside. The smell of hot food drew the rest of the coven out of their beds and baths and into Lily’s sitting room. While they passed plates around, Lily shared in mindspeak what she had learned from Toshi.
Una eyed the nearest flower arrangement warily and saw a Worker waddle out of the wide throat of a bloom. She elbowed Lily and tipped her chin at it.
Lily gave a faint nod and stood. They’d been sitting there silently for too long. “I think I’m the only one who hasn’t had a bath yet,” she said.
Converse out loud, but be careful, she told her coven in mindspeak. I don’t know how much the Workers can or can’t understand and I don’t want the Hive to know anything private about us—especially not about where Breakfast, Una, and I come from. As far as anyone in Bower City is concerned, we come from this world.
Does that include Toshi? Tristan asked in mindspeak.
Lily didn’t bother to respond. She knew he was fishing for something to feel other than sad, and he needed someone to blame. It wasn’t helping matters that Lily couldn’t look him in the eye. Not yet. Not so soon after.
She went through to the bedrooms and found that Juliet and Una had left her the largest room, and understood why when she studied the flower arrangements. The bouquets were made up exclusively of every different kind of lily that Lily could recognize. Her smile at Una’s and Juliet’s sweet gesture to leave this room for her turned hesitant as she considered whether or not their host’s flower choice had been intentional or coincidental. Lilies are commonly used in arrangements, so it wouldn’t be a stretch of the imagination to think that this was just a happy accident. More to the point, there was no way anyone in Bower City could have known Lily’s name ahead of time. Still, it nagged at her.
Lily undressed self-consciously while she filled the generous soaking tub. One of the casement windows had been left slightly ajar and a tall glass vase held a bunch of enormous, long-stemmed tiger lilies by the full-length mirror. Lily couldn’t see them, but she knew the Workers were there, free to come and go out the open window.
The bath soap she drizzled into the water was so heavily perfumed it made Lily sneeze. The scent was lovely, but so concentrated she knew that her skin would smell like it for the rest of the day.
Either the Workers liked it, or it made the people easier for the Hive to track. Either way, Lily found herself unable to enjoy it knowing that it was, somehow, for the Hive.
As she soaked, Lily watched as the last of the burns on her hands faded away. She looked more carefully at the decanter of soap, and saw that it contained a strange chemical that was almost like the burn salve, but that she had never encountered before. The water grew cold as she tried to pick its composition apart with what she had learned of medicines. The most she could discern was that it had regenerative properties. She was so engrossed in trying to figure it out she nearly called out for Rowan to come and take a look. The thought of him stopped her breath, and she dropped the image of him as if it had stung her.
He betrayed me.
Lillian was listening. The memory of Rowan taking her willstones and locking her in a cage flew from Lily’s mind to Lillian’s.
He didn’t want you to turn into me, Lillian replied. After what I did to him, can you blame him?
Lillian shared a memory of her own . . .
. . . I can hear Rowan coming down the hallway. Gavin is trying to stop him, but it’s like a sparrow trying to distract a bull. I’m aching to see him, and I dread it. All I want is to be held and comforted, healed and cared for by Rowan. But he can never touch me again or he’ll see. He already knows something’s wrong because he keeps reaching out to me and I won’t let him in my mind. If I let him touch me, he’ll see the illness I brought back from the cinder world, and there’s no way I’ll be able to keep the whole story from him. No way I’ll be able to hide what happened in the barn.
He bursts through the door, his riding clothes still travel stained from the Outlands. He’s been looking for me since I disappeared three weeks ago and his eyes are tired and his skin is pale with worry. He’s gorgeous. My throat closes and I swallow the urge to say his name. I want to beg for him to come to me and make it all better, but I’m not a little girl anymore, and no one can make it all better ever again.
The only thing I can do is take steps to make sure that my world doesn’t become one of the millions of cinder worlds I see closing in around us. I’ve seen that the number of cinder worlds is growing as versions of Alaric detonate their thirteen bombs inside the Thirteen Cities. It’s only a matter of time before that happens here. Unless I am ruthless.
“Where have you been?” Rowan asks. His voice is shaking. He knows something is terribly wrong. He knows that we, and everything we ever were to each other, are over. He just doesn’t know he knows it yet.
“I can’t tell you,” I reply.
He laughs, like the thought of one of us not being able to tell the other anything is ridiculous. I stare at him until his face changes. “You’re serious,” he says, still not really believing it.
He enters the room and tries to come to me. I do something I haven’t done since I was eight and he was ten. I possess his body and stop him in his tracks.
“That’s far enough,” I whisper. When I let him go he draws a panicked breath, not because he’s winded, but to reassure himself that he can breathe again on his own.
“What’s going on?” He’s terrified. Now he knows. I’m going to break his heart, and he has no idea why. It’s like watching someone fall—his panicked face slipping farther and farther away as he tries to hold on to nothing. I’m thin air, less than smoke, and he slides right through me.
If I love him more than I love myself, he’ll never know. Not even when he finds out that I’ve arrested his father and sent the order to hang him at dawn . . .
That’s enough, Lily said, ending the memory. I don’t want to think about him. She pushed the image of Rowan’s face forcibly out of her mind.
You never want to think about him anymore.
No. I don’t.
Lily had shelved all thought of him since he betrayed her. The entire trip cross-country she’d skirted around the mountain of emotion any thought of Rowan entailed, and she still didn’t have the strength to climb.
Lily got out of her bath and wrapped a thick towel around her. She opened the closet and found three light kimono-style dresses for her to choose from. As she slid her fingers across the buff-colored silk of one of them she imagined how perfectly this particular shade suited her redheaded complexion. A sapphire-blue kimono, and one more in jade green, hung next to it. She took the green one off the hanger, slipped in on, and stood in front of the mirror to tie the darker emerald obi around her waist. It matched her eyes perfectly.
She rubbed some conditioning cream into her curls and wound them up into a twist. She stabbed the twist with one of the many ornate pins, combs, and clips that were in a tray by the sink. A strange thing to offer, she thought. Unless you knew your guest had a lot of unruly hair.
Lily took one last look at herself, resisting the urge to sneer at the pampered woman reflected back at her. The way she looked couldn’t have been more at odds with what she felt, and the disconnect disgusted her. She wanted to look as warped as she felt.
Hide two of your willstones, Lillian reminded her.
Lily tucked her pink and golden stones into a fold of her obi and adjusted her smoke stone so it lay prominently on her breastbone.
On her way out of her room, Lily passed by the bed with its crisp linen sheets and wondered why she wasn’t tired. Instead of resting, she went back out to the sitting area and found her coven fed, bathed, and dressed in their hosts’ colorful clothes. Toshi had rejoined them, and he must have just said something funny because everyone was laughing. Even Tristan, she noticed. Laughter didn’t feel right, and Lily stepped into the room irritated by the sound.
“Lily,” Toshi said. He stood and smiled, his eyes washing up and down her. “That color looks lovely on you.”
“I was just thinking that it’s a tricky color, jade green. You almost have to be a redhead to pull it off.” She watched Toshi carefully. “Are there many redheads in Bower City?”
“No,” he said. “There are some fairer people of Russian descent, but mostly we have darker complexions.”
“What an amazing coincidence, then,” Lily remarked.
“I guess so,” he replied. There wasn’t even a flicker of discomfort in him and Lily wondered if maybe that’s all it was. Coincidence. “I was just telling your coven that I’d be happy to show you some of the city,” Toshi continued when it became clear that Lily was not going to comment further. “You seemed interested in the docks.”
“I’d like to see them,” Juliet said.
Lily looked around at her coven and saw that they were curious about the city. They should have been tired, but no one was. She gestured for Toshi to lead the way. He brought them down the grand staircase they had come up, but then took them in the opposite direction across the high-ceilinged entry room and out through a different door rather than going through the Hearing Hall. It let out onto a wide boulevard. Across the street was a well-manicured park, surrounded by stately villas.
“So is this the nice part of town, or the nicer part of town?” Una asked.
“Nice-er, I’m guessing,” Breakfast said. He waved the air toward his face and inhaled. “I smell money.”
“Right?” Toshi flashed his ready smile, his eyes crinkling around the sides. “This area is where most of the legislators have their homes because it’s close to the Forum,” Toshi told them. “But where I grew up, we called it Bullshit Row.”
He won a chuckle from Una and Breakfast.
“Where’d you grow up?” Lily asked, purposely interrupting the light moment. The sound of laughter grated on her.
“I’m bringing you near there, actually,” he said, his eyes drifting down. “We have to catch a trolley, though. It’s a long way away.”
At the end of the block they crossed a street busy with foot traffic and waited at the curb. Lily studied the tracks that ran parallel to the sidewalk, but couldn’t find a third rail. There were no wires overhead, either.
“What fuels the trains?” she asked.
“They’re electric,” Toshi answered. “Rechargeable power packs on the bottom allow for about twelve hours of use before they need to visit an energy depot.”
“And what powers the energy depots?” she asked.
“Electricity from crucibles and witches, just like in your city,” he answered with a shrug.
“And mechanics?”
“Since we can’t transmute, we aid them by monitoring their bodies while they work, but mostly mechanics focus on creating new materials, medicines, and other things the city needs. We may not be claimed, but we contribute.”
“Like the bath soap,” Lily said.
“Interesting stuff,” Tristan agreed, his eyes hooded in thought.
“That formula was created by a mechanic. Many years ago,” Toshi said. He watched the street as he spoke, his expression neutral—even disinterested.
Lily smiled at the trick. The quickest way to make something seem boring is to act bored by it.
“What else does it do?” she persisted. “Besides heal and energize?”
“Slows aging. Helps the body fight off sickness . . .” He trailed off. “It’s something all citizens have in our baths.”
A trolley swung into view and Toshi turned to it and pointed. “They only stop completely every fifteen blocks, but they slow enough for people to hop on and off if they see you waiting. Is everyone okay to jump on?”
They all nodded their assent. As the trolley neared, it slowed just enough for their party to step up into it. Lily felt Toshi take her elbow as she hopped aboard.
“Take the rail,” he said, guiding her hand to the brass rail that stood out at about head level.
“What about old people, or the handicapped?” Juliet asked. “How do they get off and on?”
“See the inside track?” Toshi pointed to a rail line that ran down the middle of the street. Awnings with benches under them were provided every few blocks and Lily saw a woman with a baby and an armload of packages waiting at one of them. “That one stops completely every five blocks. It goes much slower so it can be accessed by people who are less mobile. But we don’t really have that many people who need to use it because of an infirmity. Our medicine is quite advanced here.”
“You got that soap,” Una said.
“We got that soap,” he agreed, chuckling.
Lily’s eyes fell down to his dark garnet-colored stone and guessed that he must have been part of some of the medical advances here. There was so much potential in his stone she could see it glimmering inside the facets of his willstone, like whispers shushing down a dark hallway. The train slowed for more pedestrians to jump aboard, making them sway where they stood. The motion tipped her closer to Toshi, and jarred her out of staring at his stone. She looked up to meet his eyes and saw a slow smile spreading on his lips.
Caught, she looked away quickly and busied herself by searching the crowds for anyone that could be considered less mobile. She saw older people, but no one seemed infirm. Even the most silver-haired among the citizens had straight backs, robust complexions, and the vigorous strides of much younger people.
So this is what you can accomplish when several generations of mechanics are free to focus on healing rather than fighting, Lillian said. Rowan would love it here.
Lillian shared another memory of Rowan before Lily could block her out . . .
. . . I sneak up behind Rowan. The room is darkened. His shoulders are set with concentration, and the magelight coming from his willstone is a deep red. He’s casting a complicated spell that has all of him ensorcelled. I hate that something other than me has so much of his breathtaking focus. I admit it. I’m jealous of anything that takes his eyes off me, and I’m going to punish him for it.
I still the air around me. I place my feet delicately. I quiet my breathing, ready to pounce—
“I know you’re there, Lillian,” he drawls without even turning around from his workbench.
“How do you do that?” I huff. I’ve never once been able to surprise him.
“You’re louder than a herd of buffalo,” he teases, spinning around on his stool to face me. I launch myself at him anyway. He catches me, already protesting as I pepper his face with kisses.
“Come on, Lillian,” he groans. “I have so much work to do.”
“It’s so late, though. Come to bed,” I reply, pouting as he pulls away
I don’t have time to work on this during the day,” he says, hassled. “We’ve been so focused on keeping the other Covens in line. I’ve had to officiate three duels in the past two days.”
“Exeter and Richmond are at it again,” I say, sighing. “It’s lucky for us they’re content with singular duels instead of demanding to send their mechanics against each other in full skirmishes.”
“I don’t think that’s far off,” he says, a troubled frown creasing his brow. He rolls his eyes. “Witches. Always looking for an excuse to fuel your mechanics.”
“We do like to fight,” I admit with a shrug. The beakers in front of him catch my eye. “What are you working on, anyway?”
“Well, I don’t know yet,” he says, smiling sheepishly. “I’ve isolated an interesting compound from a squid—”
“A squid?” I interrupt scathingly. “You’re throwing me over for a squid?”
He chuckles, shaking his head. “I can’t win with you.”
“Of course you can,” I say, pulling on one of his hands and tugging him along with me toward our bedroom. My smile is a promise. “I’ll let you win right now.”
His laugh is a purr in his throat. He stops short and pulls me back to him, wrapping me up against his chest. “You always get your way,” he whispers as he lowers his mouth to mine. . . .
Lily snapped back to the here and now, a flush staining her cheeks. Enough, Lillian. Why show me that?
To remind you how much you miss him. You should forgive him.
Lily blocked her other self out.
Rowan. He had been younger in Lillian’s memory. There was so much they had shared that Lily didn’t know about. They’d essentially run a country together. Lily felt herself choking on the wild, sick feeling that thought gave her. She didn’t know if it was jealousy or longing or the shock of feeling physically close to Rowan again, but it threw her and left her feeling bare and off balance. She looked up to see Toshi watching her, the barest hint of a smile on his lips. Lily looked away uncomfortably and trained her eyes on the scenery scrawling past. They rode the trolley for over twenty minutes, passing through different neighborhoods. The style of the buildings changed from Italian villa to downtown loft to Japanese wooden temples, complete with rock gardens and sliding screens rather than walls. There was even a Chinatown, teeming with people. All of the neighborhoods were orderly, perfectly maintained, and immaculate. Flowers were everywhere, spilling from windows and rooftops and lining the streets. There were many parks, and Lily noticed that in each of the parks were four towers, one in the vicinity of each corner. The towers were taller than any building, but still shorter than the greentowers in the east, and they weren’t covered in vegetation. They were thin structures, barely noticeable, with a flat surface on top.
“What are those?” Lily asked Toshi, pointing to one of the spindly towers.
“Oh, those are for the Hive,” he said, unconcerned. “The Sisters rarely come down to street level.” He turned toward the ocean. “Just a few more blocks.”
The light was lying long across the city by the time they arrived at the docks. Ships of all shapes and sizes crowded into port, some of them so gigantic that they rose up from the water like windowless skyscrapers, hemming in the horizon. Cranes unloading shipping containers, and warehouses to store goods stretched past Lily’s field of view. From every high vantage point a cluster of Sisters hovered, barely visible, their whips ready at their sides.
Caleb and Tristan took in the enormous scope of the port with a mixture of awe and anger.
“So, is every other country in the world in on this?” Tristan asked, his bitterness strangling him.
“Most of our trade is with China, Russia, and Japan, but yes,” Toshi answered. He was sensitive to their charged emotions, but not pitying. “The whole world knows about Bower City, and they know about the thirteen ‘untouchable’ cities in the east. They also know about Outlanders, and how you live out in the wilds with the Woven. You’re legendary, actually. There’s a lot of respect for your people around the world.”
“But no help,” Caleb said. His mouth twisted into a sneer. “Not one country has ever thought to try to lend us a hand? My people are dying out there.”
Toshi didn’t try to make excuses. “Everyone knows,” he repeated gently.
Caleb made a sound between a laugh and a sob and turned away. Breakfast started to go after him, but Una’s hand shot out to stop him.
“Let him be,” she said aloud. Lily could tell by the jumble of emotions that played across their faces that Una and Breakfast were sharing mindspeak, but they didn’t include her.
Tristan was staring at Toshi, his anger at the world distilling into one person.
Come on, Tristan. It isn’t Toshi’s fault, Lily said in mindspeak. Tristan didn’t answer. He broke away from the group and wandered, still reeling, down to the water’s edge. Juliet, who was hiding her shock with silence, followed him. Una and Breakfast slowly peeled off to go their own way. Lily found Toshi watching her as they walked to a more open-looking part of the wharf that had smaller ships that didn’t loom over them and block out the sky. Lily looked down at a few bobbing docks that were unoccupied by vessels but teeming with sea lions. They barked at the humans and flapped their flippers.
“I have a feeling a lot just happened between all of you,” he said. “Especially Caleb and Tristan.”
“Somehow it was easier to think the rest of the world had disappeared, or that they didn’t know, rather than own up to the fact that they’d abandoned us to genocide.” She gestured to the huge ships, the signs of progress. “We all suspected that the world was still turning, but it’s hard to swallow when you see just how much.”
Toshi nodded, his lips pursed. “And you can feel what your coven feels right now?”
“Some of it.”
“What’s that like?” He was trying not to seem too eager, but his eyes were hungry. Lights danced inside his willstone like a tingle. Lily looked away at the tidy dock and the scrubbed hulls of the ships. Even the sea lions looked well groomed.
“It’s annoying,” she snapped, her tone intentionally harsh. “Are we done here?”
“Sure,” Toshi said, his face falling. She remembered, too late, that he had said he was going to show them where he grew up.
“You were raised down by the docks?” she asked, trying to salvage the situation. “That must have been—”
He shook his head once. “Some other time.” He flashed one of his dazzling smiles and Lily wondered if he’d been insulted at all. He started leading her back up to the street. “We should get going, anyway. We have other plans for you tonight.”
“We do?”
“New arrivals, chosen by the Hive? The whole city wants to meet you. Unfortunately, you only get to meet the boring half tonight.”
“Ah. Bullshit Row?” she guessed.
“Exactly. Important people first, I guess.”
“I thought everyone was important in Bower City.” She was baiting him, hoping to find a crack in the high-gloss shellac that coated everything here. “What did Grace say when she paraded us through the Hearing Hall? It was built like that ‘so even the smallest voice can be heard.’ ”
“Oh, the smallest voices are the most important,” he said impishly. “Especially mine.” Lily couldn’t hold back a laugh. Pleased that he’d gotten what he wanted, Toshi started looking down the street for a trolley. “So, do we call for your coven, or . . . how does this work?”
“I already did. They’re coming.”
He looked away. The hungry shine was back. “Convenient.”
“For some things.” Lily sought out the hole that had been Tristan, worrying it like a hangnail. “Most of the time it just hurts.”