She didn’t jump the gap. Not the way he had. He’d gone out over it in a long flat arc, scars blazing, and landed in a crouch.
Ilka Dorne ran at it, and at the very edge she planted one foot on the lip of the torn deck plate and pushed, and he heard the steel of the plate bend under her boot with a sound like a hopper-lid slamming. And she went over the twenty meters of nothing not in an arc but in a line. Flat. Fast. Like a slug out of the gun-sword. He barely had time to see her coming before she was on his side of the gap and still moving.
She hit him.
He’d been hit before. By a greyling. By a bleeder’s whip. By a lance in the shoulder, a blade in the thigh, a spike under the shoulder blade. He’d been hit by a slab of falling vault. He’d hit the steel bands of the marrow line, two seconds at a time, forty meters at a time, all the way down from Rib Seven.
Nothing had ever hit him like Ilka Dorne.
Her shoulder took him in the chest. No weapon. No technique he could see. Just her whole body, square and dense and moving faster than anything human should, all of it behind one shoulder. He felt his ribs go. Not crack — go, three of them, on the left side, folding inward, and the air went out of him all at once, and he was in the air, backward, and then he wasn’t, he was on the deck, on his back, sliding, the steel plate grinding under him, and the sword was out of his hand and spinning away across the deck.
He came up on one knee. He couldn’t breathe. His ribs were already knitting — he felt the crawling, waking heat of it — but slowly. Slowly. Slower than they should. Much slower.
She was already there.
She didn’t use a weapon. That was the thing he would keep coming back to, after, lying in the dark. She’d walked across the bridge with nothing in her hands and she fought him with nothing in her hands.
She didn’t need anything.
Her fist came at his face and he got an arm up and the fist hit the arm and the arm broke. He heard it. Felt it. The bone in his forearm snapping like a dry rung. She was already turning, already bringing the other fist round, low, into his side, into the folded ribs, and he felt something inside him tear, and he went sideways into the railing of the bridge and the railing bent under him and he was hanging over the gulf with one arm hooked around a stanchion.
She caught him by the collar of his father’s jacket and pulled him back onto the deck.
Not gently. Not cruelly either. The way you’d pull a sack back onto a cart. She set him down on the steel on his knees, and stood over him, breathing hard — not hard, he realized. Steady. She wasn’t even breathing hard.
He looked up at her.
The red-gold threads in the whites of her eyes were blazing now. Bright. All of them. And under the skin of her square hands, the same. A fine web of red-gold, lit. Like his scars. Like the grooves of his sword. But in her, not on her. In the blood. Moving.
He reached for it.
He did it without deciding, the way he’d reached for every heart since the pit. He reached into her, the way he reached into a Gilt’s channels to stop them, the way he’d reached into the bleeder’s blood-blade in the lab to pull it. He took hold of the red-gold moving in her blood —
And it knew him.
He felt it. The way the sword had known him in Sere’s reliquary. The red-gold in Ilka Dorne’s blood felt his touch and recognized it — turned toward it — the way the pattern in his marrow had turned toward Mirelle’s verse.
And then refused.
It pushed back. Not like a Gilt’s channels, crude and tame, that froze when he told them to. Not like the bleeder’s blood, that answered his pull because it didn’t know any better. It pushed back like a living thing that knew exactly what he was and wanted nothing to do with him. Like a hand slapping his away.
It was his blood. A drop of it. In her. And it didn’t want to come home.
He let go, gasping.
Ilka Dorne looked down at him. Something moved in her plain hard face. Not surprise. Interest.
“You felt it,” she said.
He didn’t answer. He couldn’t.
“The Prior said you would,” she said. “If you tried. He said you’d try to do to me what you do to the Gilt. Reach in. Stop it. Pull it.” She flexed her square hands, and the red-gold under the skin flared and dimmed. “He said it wouldn’t work. He said it’s his own blood, Captain, it won’t take orders from him any more than his own hand would.” She tilted her head. “He was right, wasn’t he.”
“Mule,” said Snake. In his chest. Low and hot and frightened. Not hungry. Frightened. “Mule, get up. Get up. Get UP. She can’t be stopped, she can’t be drunk, she’s you, get UP —”
He got up.
The sword was eight meters off, on the deck, against the railing, where it had spun when she hit him. Its grooves were dark. It needed his hand.
He went for it.
She was faster. Not by much. But faster. She was between him and the sword before he’d taken three steps, and he went into her anyway, because there was nothing else to do, low, the way the greyling had come at his legs on the dunes. And she stepped. Not back — sideways. The way Sabine taught her crews to step. And put her knee into the side of his head as he went past.
The bridge went white.
When it came back he was on the deck, on his side, with the steel cold against his cheek and the taste of blood in his mouth. His ears were ringing. His broken arm was knitting, slowly, so slowly, and his ribs, and something inside his side that was worse than ribs, and every one of them was knitting slower than it should, and he didn’t know why.
“Her blood,” said Lamp. Quiet. Sharp. Behind his eyes, clearer than the ringing. “When she strikes you, a little of her blood goes in with the blow. Through the skin. You can feel it. And it’s your blood. Your own. Fighting your healing the way it fights your hand.” A pause. “Every wound she gives you heals as slowly as a wound you gave yourself.”
He lay on the deck and understood.
It turns hard, his mother had said. The key has to turn.
He’d never once been hurt by anything that was him.
He rolled over. Got a hand under himself. Pushed. Got to his knees.
Ilka Dorne was standing by the railing with his sword in her hand.
She was holding it the way Mirelle had held it on the chapel floor, the first time. Carefully. By the blade and the rubber-wrapped hilt. Looking at it. At the carved grooves, dark.
“This is the thing that eats the bolts,” she said.
He didn’t answer.
She turned it in the gold light of the last lamps. “Quill said every bolt she fired went into it. Down the carvings. Into you.” She ran a square thumb down the flat, over the grooves. They didn’t light. “It’s just steel. For me.”
“It’s not yours,” said Creed. His voice came out a wreck.
“No.” She looked at him. “It isn’t. Is it.”
She threw it.
Not at him. Over the railing.
He was moving before it left her hand. He didn’t think. He didn’t decide. He went across the deck and over the railing after it, the way he’d gone over the railing of the Root Gallery — and his broken arm hooked a hanger cable and his good hand went out, and out, reaching, past the edge of the deck into the gulf, and closed on the rubber grip cut on the bias, a meter below the bridge, falling.
He hung there. One arm hooked through a hanger cable. The other arm stretched down over four kilometers of dark, the sword in his fist.
The grooves lit. The moment his blood touched the hilt. Red-gold. And the heat came up into him out of the steel, the way it had in the pump-house when he turned it back — and he took it. He didn’t choose. He just took it. Like a drowning man.
And he hauled himself back up over the railing onto the deck with the sword blazing in his fist, and stood up.
She was waiting for him. She hadn’t moved. She’d stood by the railing and watched him go over it and watched him come back, the way she’d watched him the whole fight from the middle of the bridge. Her red-gold eyes went from his face to the sword in his hand. Blazing.
“Good,” she said. Flat. “I wanted to see it lit.”
She came at him.
He met her with the sword.
He’d never fought anyone who knew how. That was what he understood, in the next minute, on the Long Bridge, under the last gold lamps. The bleeders had been fierce and the Gilt had been fast and the Lancers had been precise, and none of them had known how. Not the way she did. She’d been fighting for eleven years. In the streets of the Eighth, in the militia, against whatever came. She knew where to put her feet. She knew where his blade would go before he did. She knew that he didn’t know any of it.
He swung. She wasn’t there. He swung again. She was inside the swing, too close for the blade, her elbow in his throat. He went back. She came with him. He got the hilt up — the gun — and pulled the trigger, point-blank, a blood-round, at her chest —
And she moved. The way Mirelle had moved in the chapel, before the shot. Before. As if she’d heard it coming. The slug went past her and out over the gulf, blooming red in the dark, and she was beside him, and her fist was in his broken ribs again.
He went down.
He got up.
He went down.
He got up.
Every time he got up, it was slower. Every wound she gave him knitted at the pace of his own hand. His left arm hung at his side, the bone grinding. His ribs were a cage of fire. He was bleeding from his mouth and his ear and somewhere in his side, and every drop of it that hit the hilt of the sword went into the grooves and lit them, and every time they lit he took the heat back out and it held him up, and it wasn’t enough.
He was hungry. He’d been hungry since the eleventh tank. The pulls on the bridge had fed him, and the fight had burned it, and the gold had burned it, and now there was nothing in him but the hunger and the heat from the sword, and the sword was eating him to stay lit.
“Pull,” said Snake. Desperate. “The Gilt. On the deck. The stopped ones. They’re thawing. They’re right there. Pull them, take it, take all of it, you need it, you NEED it —”
He could feel them. The heaps of gold armor on the deck behind him, near the first hole. Thawing. Groaning. Channels bright and full. Twenty of them. Thirty.
He could pull them all. Through the air, the way he’d pulled the bleeder’s blood through the air in the lab. He could empty every one of them into himself, and the Catalyst would fill him, and he’d get up off the deck one more time with enough in him to put Ilka Dorne down.
And then he’d keep pulling. He knew he would. Past the blue, into the red. Thirty men. He’d felt it on the grating at Sump-Nine. He’d felt it on the pressing floor.
“No,” he said. On his knees. Bleeding.
“You’ll DIE —”
“No.”
Ilka Dorne stood over him.
She’d stopped. She was looking down at him, with her square hands at her sides, the red-gold under the skin dimming. Her face was hard and plain and it was, for the first time, uncertain.
“You could have,” she said slowly. “Couldn’t you. Them. The ones on the deck. You could have taken it from them. I felt you think about it.”
He didn’t answer.
“Why didn’t you?”
He looked up at her. Through blood. Through the ringing.
“Because then I’d be him,” he said.
She didn’t ask who. She didn’t need to. Something went across her face, fast. Then it was gone.
She bent down and took him by the collar of his father’s jacket, and lifted him off the deck, one-handed, like a sack.
“The Prior wants you alive,” she said. Close. Her red-gold eyes a hand’s width from his. “He says you’re his. He says he made you.” She looked at him for a long moment. “I don’t think he made you. I don’t know what made you. But he’s going to find out, on his slab. And then he’s going to make a hundred of me.”
She turned toward the Eighth. Toward the second hole, and the deck beyond it, and the far towers in the brown-blue half-light. Carrying him.
“Creed,” said Lamp. Very quiet. “Creed. Listen.”
He listened.
And from the Ninth’s end of the bridge, across six hundred meters of steel, across the gulf, someone was singing.
Mirelle.
He didn’t know where she’d come from. She’d been on the depot roof when the fight began, he’d thought, or at the barricade with Haske. She was at the barricade now. Standing on top of it, on the dead tram-car, in the light of the last three gold lamps, with her bandaged hands at her sides and her face lifted.
Singing.
Not loud, this time. Not the way she’d sung on the depot catwalk. Low. Carrying. The old words in the old language, the way she’d sung the Long Way Down in the great cavern, and the plain words under them, for anyone who needed them.
“Hush now, the lamp is lit.”
He felt the mark over his heart warm.
“Hush now, the god is near.”
He felt the pattern in his marrow turn toward it.
And he felt something else.
Ilka Dorne stopped walking.
She stopped in the middle of the deck, with him hanging from her fist by the collar, and her whole body went rigid. The red-gold under her skin flared — not bright, not blazing, but wrong, flickering, stuttering, like a lamp with a bad line. Her hand on his collar spasmed. Her breath went out of her in a sharp hiss.
“What —” she said. “What is — what’s she —”
“Sleep in the bone till the key is turned,” sang Mirelle.
And the red-gold in Ilka Dorne’s blood — the drop of his blood, that had refused his hand — heard it.
He felt it. The way he’d felt it turn toward him and push him away. It turned toward the verse. The way the pattern in his own marrow turned. But it wasn’t a pattern. It was just a drop of blood, mixed with first-draw, forced into a body that didn’t have the anchor his mother had built. It heard the song that was written for the anchor, and it tried to answer, and there was nothing in her to answer with.
It thrashed.
Ilka Dorne screamed. Not loud. Through her teeth. Her free hand went to her chest, over her heart, and pressed there, hard, the way the people in Mirelle’s ring pressed their hands to their chests to feel the warm thing under the frost. Her knees buckled. She went down on one of them on the deck.
She didn’t let go of him.
“— and wake when the blood is here.”
The mark on his chest lit gold.
Through the jacket. Through the blood and the dirt. A small clean gold light, over his heart. And the gold came up out of the center of him — not a flare, he had nothing left to flare with — but a swell. Slow. Deep. Like a breath taken all the way down. It went out along his scars. Along his broken arm. Into his folded ribs.
And where the gold went, the drops of her blood that had come into him with her blows — the drops that had been fighting his healing — quieted. Not melted. Not burned. Just — calmed. Settled. The way a frightened animal settles under a steady hand. And his bones began to knit. Faster. Properly. Like his own again.
Ilka Dorne looked at the gold on his chest, a hand’s width from her face.
Her eyes were wide. The red-gold in them was flickering, stuttering, wrong. And under it, for the first time since she’d walked onto the bridge, something that wasn’t hard or plain or flat.
Pain. And under the pain, something like recognition.
“That,” she said. Through her teeth. Barely. “That’s what it wants. That’s what it’s been — every night — burning, every night, wanting —” She stopped. Her hand on his collar was shaking. “What is that?”
“My mother,” said Creed. “She made it. For me.” He looked at her. At the flickering red-gold in her eyes. “Not for you. It wasn’t made for you.”
Ilka Dorne stared at him.
And from somewhere at her belt — a comm, small, Concord-issue, that he hadn’t seen — a voice crackled. Soft. Educated. Reasonable. An upper-cable Mid accent, all its edges smoothed off.
“Captain,” said Calloway Sere. “Captain Dorne. I’m reading a destabilization. Your blood is —” A pause. Something sharp came into the soft voice. “Captain. Disengage. Now. Leave him. Come home. That’s an order. If you stay in range of that song you’ll —”
She looked at Creed. At the gold on his chest. At the comm on her belt.
At the singer on the barricade, six hundred meters off, in the gold light.
Then she let go of his collar.
He fell on the deck. She stood up. Slowly. Swaying. Her hand still pressed to her chest.
“Captain —”
She reached down and switched off the comm.
She stood over him on the deck in the middle of the Long Bridge, under the cables, in the last of the gold light, swaying, with one hand pressed hard against her chest. The song had stopped. Mirelle was standing on the barricade, silent, watching. The red-gold in Ilka’s blood was settling — slowly, the stutter going out of it — but it didn’t settle all the way. It was still flickering, faintly, under her skin.
She looked down at him. He looked up at her.
“Every night,” she said. Quietly. Her flat militia voice, but rough. “Since the slab. Nine hours of boiling, and then — every night. In the dark. It burns. In the bones. Like it’s looking for something. Like it’s hungry for something. And I lie there and I don’t know what.” She pressed harder on her chest. “The Prior says it’s the stabilization. He says it’ll pass. He says I’m the first stable one.” Her red-gold eyes went to the gold on Creed’s chest, dimming now. “It’s not passing. It’s getting worse. And just now, when she sang —“ She stopped.
“It knew the song,” said Creed.
“It wanted it.” Her voice cracked. Just a little. “It wanted it so much I thought it was going to come out through my chest.”
He didn’t say anything.
“The first one died in nine hours,” said Ilka Dorne. “The one before me. Through the wall. I listened.” She looked away, down the bridge, toward the Eighth. “The Prior says I’m stable. He says with more of your blood he can make more of me. Better ones.” She looked back at him. “I don’t think I’m stable. I think I’m dying slower.”
“Oh,” said Snake, very softly.
Creed got an elbow under himself. His ribs were knitting. His arm. Properly now. He pushed himself up to sitting, on the deck, at her feet.
“Come down,” he said. “To the caverns. Mirelle knows the songs. She might —“
“No.” Flat. Instant. She took a step back. “No. My mother’s on the Eighth. Under blue lamps. Nine thousand people are on the Eighth, under blue lamps, and the Concord has told them you’re coming to burn them. And you are coming. Aren’t you.” It wasn’t a question. “Up. Through the Eighth. Because it’s in the way.”
He didn’t lie to her.
“Yes,” he said.
She nodded. Slowly. As if he’d confirmed something.
“Then I’ll be there,” said Ilka Dorne. “When you come. In the street. Between you and them.” She looked at him a moment longer. “You can’t stop me. You can’t drink me. You can barely heal what I do to you.” Her plain face did something that wasn’t quite a smile. “And next time, I’ll make sure there’s nobody on a barricade singing.”
She turned and walked away from him. Back along the deck. Toward the second hole.
At the edge of it she stopped and looked back over her shoulder.
“The Gilt,” she said. “On the deck. You could have taken them. You were dying, and you could have taken them, and you didn’t.” A long pause. “I’m going to think about that.”
She jumped the gap.
Flat, fast, like a slug. She landed on the far side and walked on, across the last stretch of the Long Bridge, toward the Eighth, toward the brown-blue half-light, alone. Not running. Not looking back again.
He watched her until he couldn’t see her anymore.
They came for him out of the barricade. Sabine first, with her switch-box still in her two-fingered hand. Then Haske, and three of her Lancers, and Hanne Dray with her crane-hook. They came across the deck past the first hole on planks Sabine’s crew had laid, and found him sitting in the middle of the Long Bridge, against the railing, with the sword across his knees and blood on his face and his left arm held against his folded ribs.
“Can you walk?” said Sabine.
“Give me a minute.”
She gave him a minute. She crouched down in front of him and looked at him the way she looked at a gallery face.
“She beat you,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Nobody’s ever beaten you.”
“No.”
Sabine Kettle looked at him for a long time. Then the burned half of her mouth pulled up.
“Good,” she said. “About time something did. You were getting cocky.” She stood up and held out her hand. “Come on. Up. Mirelle’s waiting. She’s got that face.”
He took the hand. She hauled him up.
Mirelle was waiting at the barricade. She had that face. She came down off the dead tram-car when he reached it and put her bandaged hand flat on his chest, over the mark, the way she had in the third cave, and held it there. Felt. Her grey eyes were very dark.
“It answered,” she said. “Didn’t it. In her.”
“It answered.”
“Your blood. The Prior’s vial. In her.” She looked out along the bridge, toward the Eighth. “And it heard the verse and it tried to wake the way yours does, and there’s nothing in her for it to wake into.” Her face was white. “Creed. That’s going to kill her. Every time it tries. Every night. Not fast. But it will.”
“She knows,” said Creed. “She said she’s dying slower.”
Mirelle closed her eyes.
“And he’s going to make more of them,” she said. “With more of you.”
“Yes.”
“Not if he never gets more of you,” said Snake. Quiet. Hot.
“Not if she lives,” said Lamp. Quieter. Cold.
Creed stood at the barricade at the Ninth’s end of the Long Bridge, under the last three gold lamps, with his ribs knitting and his arm knitting and his mouth full of blood, and looked out along six hundred meters of steel toward the Eighth.
He’d lost. For the first time. Badly.
And somewhere over there, under the blue lamps, a woman with his blood in her veins was walking home through the half-light with her hand pressed to her chest, thinking about why he hadn’t pulled the Gilt.
“She’ll be back,” said Snake.
“I know,” said Creed.
He went to find something to eat.