In my heart, rage and relief mix—a sickening concoction, though I have no time to be ill. As the adjutant stumbles back against the wall, the soldat reaches for his gun—but Akra is quicker. He elbows the man in the face, and I wrest his weapon from his belt. The adjutant lurches back into the fray, but stops when I aim the gun between his eyes. The lantern swings wildly from his fist, throwing shadows across the stone. His eyes are wide and white in the dark. I do not shoot, and he does not move, until Akra strikes him across the back of his head with the butt of his own weapon.
The adjutant slumps to the floor beside the soldat, lantern oil leaking out across the stone. Around us, the prisoners continue their wild cacophony. The fight can’t have lasted more than thirty seconds, but my heart is louder than any drum and the taste of blood still fills my mouth. I wait for the sound of footsteps—the jailer, more soldiers—but nothing comes. Then I turn to Akra, and my heart falters.
In the dim light from the hall, the harsh set of his jaw is smoothed into shadow. He looks more like he did when he left two years ago—nothing like the man with the gun on the dock. Still, I cannot bring myself to reach for him.
Maman does, though, springing at him with a cry, pressing her face into his chest, clinging to the strap of his bandolier. “I thought we’d lost you,” she murmurs. “I thought you were gone.”
“How did you find us?” Papa says, breathless. He is still leaning against the wall—too weak even to stand. But the lines of pain around his eyes have eased into a wan smile. Akra leans down to touch his face, to inspect his arm.
“I saw you on the ship,” my brother murmurs. The words are quiet as a closing door.
“I saw you too.” My own hands are slick on the butt of the stolen gun. Could I have shot the soldier with it, as Akra shot the refugee? “I had hoped I was wrong.”
“Why were you aboard Le Rêve?” My brother’s face is unreadable in the dark—but is that an accusation in his tone?
Before I can answer, another sound drifts in above the strange symphony of the men in the cells: the low clanging of a gong. Akra stiffens, standing. “What’s that?” I ask.
“The city alarm,” he says, his voice brusque. “We have to hurry.”
“An alarm?” A chill goes up my spine; I glance at the soldiers, out cold on the stone floor. “For this?”
“I don’t know,” Akra says. “But we’re not staying to find out. Come.” He goes to the door, drawing his gun and peeking into the hall. “It’s clear. For now.”
“What about the jailer?” I ask. “How are we going to get past him?”
“I’d hoped to get you all outside before starting this little fight.” Akra nudges the adjutant with his boot. “But we have his lantern, and the guns. The cordon sanitaire will be more of a challenge.”
My heart beats faster. “What do you mean, a cordon?”
“Since the attack on the king, there’s been trouble in the capital. Rebels and riots. The armée is lined up to protect the palace block, and the temple along with it. We could go up and over the ridge behind the temple,” he adds. Then, with a glance at Papa, “Or, three of us could.”
It takes me a moment to understand. His words shock me—so cold, so simple. “Akra . . .”
But he turns to me quickly, his eyes gleaming. “If you have a better suggestion, out with it.”
My mouth hangs open as I try to come up with a plan—shooting our way past the guards, out across the plaza, carrying Papa between us. Then what, if we made it that far? Through the cordon? To the city streets? Past the manned gate? Or down into the tunnel, where the dead man stands guard? I shudder, but Papa wouldn’t make it down those stairs, either.
I do not answer—but Papa does. “It’s a good plan, Akra, but don’t forget the costumes.” He nods toward the fallen soldiers. “Jetta, you and Meliss take the uniforms. Quickly. And pull your hair under the caps.”
I swallow—despite the water, my mouth is dry. “What about you, Papa?”
He smiles a little. “I’d like to rest here awhile. It’s been a very long road.”
Akra takes a deep breath, though he doesn’t protest—none of us do. But my brother holds out his hand to me, his palm open. I stare at it, unsure what he wants, but he only repeats the gesture. “What?”
“Give me the gun,” he says, but I hesitate, so he takes it from me and tucks it into Papa’s hands, wrapping his fingers around the weapon. Then he stands. “Get dressed, Jetta.”
I frown. “Why the gun?”
“Get dressed.”
“Akra—”
Quick as a bullet, he grabs my arm and pulls me close to his ear. “You want me to leave him with no way out? They sent me here to bring you to the questioneur.”
I yank my arm free of his grasp—my skin is crawling at his touch. How many others has he walked to their deaths? I want to yell at him, to spit in his face. But I don’t . . . because I don’t have another solution. Still, I remember the voices—Help me—and the rebel’s bodies cut to ribbons and left on the side of the road. Then Papa’s voice chases the echoes away.
“Long the hours through till dawn,” he sings. “We cannot wait, we carry on.”
“Papa . . .”
“But if we stop, the midnight breeze will bring us rain and memories . . .”
“We’ll come back for you.” I throw my arms around his neck and make promises I don’t know how to keep. “We’ll come back.”
He pulls me close to his heart for just a moment. I can feel it beating through the thinness of his shirt—the heart we share, if not the blood. Then, so gently, he lifts me from his neck and pushes me toward the door. His smile never falters, nor does his song. It carries us up to the light as we leave him behind in the shadows.
My vision is blurring, but I keep my face impassive, staring over Akra’s shoulder as we stride down the hall. To my right, Maman does the same thing, her eyes as hollow as dead shells. We walk like soldiers to the altar, though my feet slide in my stolen boots. None of us acknowledges the jailer as we approach. The man salutes nervously as Akra sets the dark lantern down with the keys on his desk. “You’re out of oil,” my brother says coldly, as though it is the man’s fault. He is still a good actor.
“Sorry, capitaine,” the jailer responds, shifting on his feet, but Akra has already turned to leave. Maman and I scramble to follow. “Sir!” the jailer calls as we depart, but Akra doesn’t even slow down. “What about the prisoners?”
“Still in the cell, blaireau!” Akra throws the words over his shoulder like étoiles to a ragman. “You think I have time for them now? Don’t you hear the alarm?”
If the jailer is suspicious, he doesn’t dare show it; we walk out of the prison unmolested. The guards at the main door even salute as we pass. Beside me, Maman shudders as we leave the temple behind—is she relieved or hurting? She does not say. She does not say anything—but my own heart is breaking. I was so foolish to think we had nothing else to leave behind.
Akra does not falter. The gong is still sounding, and people are running to and fro in the dark streets. Uniformed soldiers and half-dressed citizens, some heading toward the fort, others toward the palace, others every which way. But as a young soldier crosses our path, Akra seizes him by the arm. “What’s going on?”
“The rebels, capitaine!” The man gives him a nervous salute. “They’ve set off bombs all over the city!”
Akra swears. “How many?”
“Half a dozen reported. The soldiers are sweeping the streets, but the locals are angry. We might have another riot on our hands.”
With another muffled curse, Akra releases the soldier, who stumbles off toward his post. “The rebels have bought us some time,” he mutters as he leads toward the street. I have to jog to keep up. “But the fort will be overrun. I’d hoped to steal some horses there.”
“For what?”
Akra looks at me askance. “We have to get out of the city.”
“And go where?” Maman says. The words are distant, numb. “Where is there to go?”
“Into the jungle,” Akra says. “Away from the armée. We can make our way north,” he adds then, his voice wistful—and there he is again, the boy who was my brother. “Back home.”
I cannot bring myself to tell him the truth—that the home he remembers is not ours anymore. But Maman speaks instead. “We should try the docks. We could sneak onto a boat.”
“The docks are past the cordon,” Akra says grimly. “And after the riots, all the ships pulled anchor and retreated to the bay.”
He turns on his heel, heading away from the heart of the city, toward the ridge of the caldera that rises behind Hell’s Court. As we scramble to follow, Maman’s face twists—her footsteps falter. And I know, suddenly. Leaving Chakrana was never about the cure. At least not entirely. Even all these years later, Maman was still trying to escape Le Trépas.
We pass the dark heap of the temple and make our way through the ruined garden. As we get farther from the plaza, from the court and the confusion, the sounds of the city fade, muffled by the foliage, though the distant ringing of the gong continues like the beat of a metal heart. Stone statues peek out of dense camellias and sprays of ginger; there are souls here too—flitting through the still air. Sweat beads on my brow as I watch for a hint of blue fire, for anything following us, but mercifully nothing comes.
Near the ridge, the ground slopes gently up, until the overgrown garden turns into a tangle of jungle. But rather than plunge inside, Akra leads us along the tree line. Though the shadows are deep and the armée is busy, I still feel exposed. “Where are we going, Akra?”
“There’s a path,” he says. “Halfway up the side of the ridge.”
“A path? For who?”
“The armée,” he says. “There’s a workshop up there. We can find supplies. Maybe guns. The jungle will be dangerous, Jetta.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Do you think I don’t know that?”
But he doesn’t respond. He only keeps walking, leaving me glaring at his back. Soon enough, the track appears: an opening in the jungle that leads to a rocky switchback road climbing up the side of the ridge. We make our way upward, keeping close to the side, under the shadows of the trees, and soon I am panting, light-headed. A week ago, the climb would have been easy, but lack of food, of sleep and water—all of it is a weight on my back.
Maman is suffering too, but neither of us wastes the air to complain, and Akra only continues forward—though mercifully he slows his pace. At last the path leads us to a long, low building perched on the face of the ridge: the workshop. The walls are made of bamboo and painted in drab green, and the roof is thatched with palm, but one side is open to overlook the city below, and a scaffold of bamboo juts from the wide opening, like a pier in midair.
“What do they work on here?” I say, frowning, but Akra puts his fingers to his lips and points. It takes me a moment to understand what he’s showing me: the light that glimmers in the building is not a stray soul, but a lamp.
Drawing his gun, he creeps closer to the door of the workshop; it sits slightly open on the jamb. Akra peers inside, and I try to see over his shoulder, wrinkling my nose. There is a strange smell in the air here—a chemical scent that tingles on my tongue. But the sight is stranger still: a room full of enormous contraptions, crafted of bamboo and iron and leather, each of them different, all in various stages of completion.
For a moment, the scattered pieces remind me of my own fantouches. But these machines are not built for show. There is one like a bat, fearsome and finely jointed, the pieces of one wing scattered on the floor. Another is a basket with some machinery inside—it looks like an iron furnace. Trailing on the ground beside it is a multicolored bag of silk at least two wagon lengths wide. Another creature has skeletal wings resembling a hawk’s, but missing cladding or feathers. Beside it, a black hawk is pinned to a board, wings outstretched, one plucked bare to see the joints. Its soul still circles through the rafters of the workshop.
There are half a dozen other half-built heaps scattered about. “What are they?” I breathe softly into my brother’s ear.
Akra wets his lips. “Flying machines.”
“Flying?”
Akra turns back sharply, raising a finger, warning me into silence. I swallow my next question—what are they for? I already know the answer: war. This is the armée, after all. My jaw drops as I imagine it—men with guns, raining death from the sky. “The rebels won’t stand a chance,” I whisper, and my brother twitches. But then the next thought comes, too quick to keep quiet. “Akra. We can fly Papa out of the city!”
He rounds on me, but inside the workshop, I hear the clatter of metal and a muffled exclamation. My stomach sinks, but Akra curses, kicking open the door and raising his gun. “Arret!” he calls. “Hands up!”
There, in the shadows, a large figure hesitates. For a moment, the form looks to me like some strange puppet, but when I blink, I realize it’s a person covered head to toe: heavy black boots, a thick leather work smock that reaches to the floor, and black rubber gloves up to the elbow. Something about the form is familiar—and about the golden hair.
“Don’t shoot, capitaine,” the girl says, nudging the goggles up onto her forehead with one elbow. “It’s only me, Theodora.”
I gape at the Flower of Aquitan in her oil-stained work boots, but Akra’s aim doesn’t waver. “Hands up,” he repeats, cocking his weapon. “Jetta, tie her.”
Theodora’s voice goes up an octave. “What?”
“Quiet,” Akra says. “Or I’ll have her gag you too. Jetta?”
My eyes are wide—I glance at Akra for reassurance, but he doesn’t take his eyes from La Fleur. Her red lips are sour as bayberries. I approach with caution, looking for something to use as a rope. Rummaging on her workbench in the corner, I see wire, but I cannot imagine letting it bite into her flesh. Akra pulls a short knife from his belt.
“Cut the straps from her apron,” he says, holding out the blade, but I’ve already found some rubber tubing.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Theodora hisses as I pull the gloves from her hands and wind the hose around her wrists. “The general is my father.”
“Which makes you a perfect hostage,” Akra says. He looks at her goggles, her apron, her boots. “You’re the scientist.”
“Are you surprised?”
“I’m disgusted,” Akra spits. “You build machines to kill innocents.”
Theodora glances at his gun. “And you use them.”
Akra’s eyes narrow, but Maman slips past him, toward one of the flying machines, running her hands over a bamboo wing. “Do these work?”
Theodora’s eyes dart left, then right. “Not yet,” she says, too quickly, but though many of the devices are clearly half finished, some look complete. And while the machinery is far too complex for us to operate—with buttons and levers, dials and throttles—the soul of the hawk still circles over the structure inspired by its own flesh and bone.
“Akra,” I whisper to him. “Give me your knife.”
He hands it over without asking why, but Maman gives me a look. “Jetta, no.”
“You have a better plan?”
Her pained silence is my answer. I approach the skeletal machine, all long bamboo bones fused with bright bronze cartilage. No feathers nor webbing, not yet—but none are needed, not for me. As she looks on, Theodora’s lips twist, trying to hold back a laugh. “That will never fly,” she says. “Be reasonable. Leave now, and you might have a sporting start before my father tracks you down.”
I don’t bother responding, but at her words, Akra looks at me sideways. “What are you doing?”
“Just get in.” The blade flashes in the low light as I slice the pad of my thumb. Blood wells up in a thin line. When I lift my hand, the arvana stoops, and with a flare of fiery wings, she settles on my wrist.
“Jetta . . .” Akra’s uncertainty is plain on his face, but Maman wastes no time scrambling into the belly of the bird. I follow her, daubing the symbol of life onto the bamboo. There is another flash of light, and the soul clambers into her new skin.
With a metallic clang that makes me jump, the wings unfold, knocking the metal barrel on its side. The drum rolls sideways, spilling kerosene across the floor. Theodora leaps out of its path and my brother swears, tracking her with his gun, but she ducks behind one of the machines, disappearing into the shadows. Akra curses again, starting after her, but I call him back as the bird shudders under our feet. “Akra!” I shout. “Get in!”
He hesitates, still scanning the dark corners of the warehouse as kerosene seeps across the floor. “That machine isn’t finished. You heard her.”
“It doesn’t matter!” I call, but though he turns from his pursuit, he keeps his distance from the bird.
“Why not?”
I grit my teeth. “Just get in!”
He wavers for another moment. Then he curses again, shoving his gun into its holster and leaping with wide steps across the spreading chemical puddle. Maman reaches out to him, and he takes her hand, hauling himself up into the bird just as a shot rings out from the shadows of the warehouse. The hot breath of a bullet raises the hair on the back of my neck.
Maman screams and Akra swears, scrambling into the bird. “There’s no cover here!” he snarls at me, drawing his gun once more. But Theodora is well hidden in her workshop—and free of the binding. I should have tied her with the wire. Too late now.
Instead, I lean down to murmur to the soul. “Up,” I whisper. “Fly.”
With a lurch and a shudder, the creature lifts off the ground as another shot rings out from the dark. Akra ducks, though La Fleur’s aim is not as good as her craftsmanship. The shot whizzes past his head.
The soul of the hawk is eager for the open sky; too quickly, the roof descends. Maman tries to cover my head with her arms as we burst through the grass ceiling. There is debris in my hair, my eyes, the air around us, but it falls away back into the warehouse below as the bird hovers in the cool night air. Brushing leaves from my stolen uniform, I search for my bearings. Before us, the city is spread as though on a stage—there, the palace; beside it, the temple.
Akra’s eyes are as wide as mine, but he isn’t looking at the city. “How is this possible?” he says, watching the skeletal wings as they beat. But before I can answer, a great metallic screech floats up from the warehouse.
“What was that?” Maman says, but Akra pulls a lighter and a kerchief from his pocket.
“It won’t matter in a minute,” he says, knotting the kerchief and flicking the flame to life. Lighting the fabric, he drops it down through the hole in the roof. A moment later, a warm rush of heat buffets us from below as the pool of kerosene catches fire. With a curse, I urge the hawk toward the temple. We haven’t gone far when a deep bass boom shatters the air, and the grass roof of the workshop is flung like confetti in a ball of fire.
Debris rockets upward; we are shaken in the blast. The air turns to heat and light. My heart stops . . . my ears ring . . . my stomach lurches, but the soul of the hawk bears us into freer skies, and soon enough I can breathe again.
Then a buzzing sound rips at the air like a swarm of bees; I glance behind us and curse. Another creature has burst from the inferno, zipping down the bamboo pier and gliding toward us on great wings—and in the cockpit of the soot-black bird is Theodora Legarde.