Gates of Thread and Stone

CHAPTER 16

MY JAW SNAPPED shut. Magic was the only explanation for why he could do such extraordinary and inexplicable things. Like me.

But I had a feeling he wasn’t like me. Or rather, I wasn’t like him. This was way beyond my own abilities. Was this what a real mahjo could do?

“Wait,” I said, stepping back and forgetting that I was standing at the top of a staircase. Fortunately, Avan’s hand kept me from tumbling backward.

Irra chuckled. “Is it so hard to believe?”

After what I’d just seen him do? No. And yes. Because as much as magic remained a vital element in Ninurta, as much as I was reminded of it every time I watched a Gray in motion, I had never seen magic do this.

Suddenly, I could understand how powerful the mahjo must have been before Rebirth.

“How did you do that?” I gestured to the hallway still shifting around him, although the speed had slowed. “You just . . . How?”

I knew it was a difficult question to answer, but I still wanted to know. Even though, if someone asked me how I could sense the threads, I would say, “Beats me.”

“I am Infinite,” he said, as if that explained everything instead of confusing me more.

I shook my head. “What is that, like . . . immortal?”

“Generally, yes.”

What the drek was that supposed to mean? “You can’t really think you’re immortal?”

“Among other things,” Irra said breezily. “But no matter. Most of my hollows aren’t sure what to believe, either. I suspect a few of them still think I’m simply a demented mahjo and that Etu Gahl is a lunatic’s magic gone wild.” He didn’t seem bothered by that fact. If anything, he sounded amused.

“Are you mahjo?” Avan asked.

“No,” he said. “But we are connected.”

Seeing what he could do, I was tempted to believe him. But immortality seemed like something much bigger than wielding magic.

Avan’s fingers flexed against my back. “What are you doing here,” he asked, “hiding in the Void with a bunch of hollows?”

“They’re human, right?” I added. I remembered G-10’s smile, the girls we’d passed in the hallway, and the tattoos on their necks.

“For the most part,” Irra said. “And I’m here because my brother—Ninurta, your Kahl Ninu—built his city to spite the laws of our kind.”

The floorboards groaned beneath Irra’s weight as he joined us on the landing again. Behind him, the hallway and the room had stopped changing, and settled into the same state of general disrepair as the rest of the fortress.

“The laws,” Irra continued, “that forbid direct interference with humans.”

“Kahl Ninurta the First?” Every Kahl took on the name of Ninu, and the current one had ruled since before I was born.

“There has only ever been one Kahl.”

How was that possible? I didn’t know what any of the Kahls looked like, but I’d been taught that each Kahl ruled for his lifetime, schooling his heir in relative seclusion until it was time to pass on leadership. Wouldn’t someone have noticed if he was immortal?

“The Infinite are constant in number,” Irra said as we followed him back the way we had come. All the turns and passageways made the route difficult to memorize. “We lost one some time ago—Conquest, as we knew him—and Ninu was chosen to succeed him. He is the youngest of us. When a child is given restrictions, he grows rebellious.”

“Ninu created Ninurta because he was having a tantrum?” I said. “That’s ridiculous.”

Irra gave a delicate shrug. I suspected there was more to it—a lot more—but he wasn’t sharing the information.

“Absurd or not, Ninu has fashioned himself into a leader of men. As to his sentinels, they are mahjo, the result of our dalliances with humans.”

“Ninu isn’t the last mahjo?” Avan asked.

“Ninu is not mahjo at all,” Irra said. He turned a corner, and I hurried to keep pace with his much longer legs. “The mahjo are mortal descendants of the Infinite. Once, they carried our magic in their blood. But their petty war changed that.”

“That ‘petty’ war decimated the world,” I said.

Irra waved a dismissive hand. “And for what reason? To prove which side was the superior force? It was a conflict born of little more than pride and conceit. The Infinite decided it would be too dangerous to allow the mahjo to retain their powers. However, by stripping them of magic, their blood became poison to their Infinite parent. It was, I believe, nature’s way of maintaining balance.”

“So when Ninu discovers any descendants . . . ,” Avan began.

“He snatches them up and transforms them into his toy soldiers, both to protect himself and as weapons against the rest of us. I’ve managed to recruit my own, mostly by stealing them from him, but I make do with my resources.”

“Ninu has Reev?” I asked.

“Is that all you’ve taken from this conversation?”

I flushed, first out of embarrassment and then frustration. To think that Reev had never left Ninurta at all . . .

“Why would Reev’s boss believe he sold him to you?” Avan asked.

“Ninu does have to keep up my reputation if he doesn’t want an uprising on his hands.”

We reached the hall where Irra’s study was located, but he led us past it. I slowed outside the door to the courtyard again, lulled by flowers as big as my hand and the scent of grass—real grass, not the dry, straw-like weeds in Ninurta.

“There will be time later to explore,” Irra said.

I looked away, annoyed with myself, and spotted the knife in Avan’s hand. I had completely forgotten about it. He gave it back to me, and I stuffed it into my bag.

“Come,” Irra said, “you must be hungry.” He grinned, a dark, almost derisive gleam in his eyes. “Fed by Famine. What has the world come to?”

The mess hall was full. It was probably about lunchtime now, and there had to be at least fifty people gathered around the wooden tables and benches. They talked loudly, laughing and leaning into one another as if they were all old friends. Several of them waved when Irra dropped us off at the entrance.

In the food line, Avan and I received trays, and an enthusiastic chef allowed us to pick what we wanted to eat. I stared at the display of food. My stomach grumbled loudly, but I was completely at a loss. Our meals at school were picked for us and usually consisted of a clump of mashed potatoes, watery pea soup, overcooked carrots, and sometimes milk, if we were lucky. The vegetables tended to taste a little sour, but I was happy to eat. Food was food.

“Tell you what,” the chef said, brandishing his spatula. He wore a blinding-pink apron, and his wavy brown hair was covered with a matching hairnet. He was almost as riveting as the mounds of food. “I’ll let you sample everything, and you can decide what you like best.”

Despite my objections, he piled my tray with enough food to feed a whole level in the Labyrinth. And then he did the same for Avan. I tried not to gape.

The chef winked at me and said, “Come back for seconds.”

“So wasteful,” I muttered as we searched for an open table.

I kept one eye on Avan and the other on my tray. The bread roll actually steamed—it was fresh. The beans were covered in a brown sauce that didn’t look like mud. I’d never seen carrots that were so orange, and the corn glistened with what could have been real butter. I had tried butter once when a friend brought it to school, but it had been rancid.

How could the Rider afford these quantities of food? Where did it come from? I sniffed at my tray. Everything smelled delicious. My stomach growled again.

“Then we better eat up,” Avan said.

We sat near the wall, and I hunched over my tray. Everyone around us was dressed in similar tunics. But like the girl from the hallway, many of them had altered the clothes to suit them. They also had no reservations about staring. I felt distinctly out of place.

“What do you think of Irra?” Avan asked, seemingly oblivious to the dozens of eyes on us. “Crazy or immortal?”

“Maybe both.”

“You believe him?”

“I don’t know yet.”

If Ninu wasn’t mahjo . . . If he and Irra really were immortal . . . then what did that make me?

The mess hall, like the courtyard, was spared the decay of the rest of the fortress. Someone had swept the stone floors and dressed the walls with colorful drapes. Sweet and savory aromas and the heat from the kitchen wafted throughout. It felt comforting. Safe. Like Reev.

My chest tightened. I focused on my laden tray instead.

I took my time eating, sipping my soup and trying bites of everything. I wanted to relish each new taste.

“You know,” Avan said, picking at a bowl of bright fruit slices, “after my final exams last year, I got an invitation from the Academy.”

I put down my spoon, my eyebrows rising. This was news to me. Sometimes, if students did exceptionally well on their final exams, the Academy scouted them for enrollment. If we had stayed in Ninurta, I would have taken my finals at the end of the coming school year.

“And?” I said.

He looked down. “I considered it. I mean, I heard even the lowest-ranking Watchmen make about thirty thousand credits a year. My dad could close his shop.”

That was probably more than what his shop made in two years.

“Why did you turn it down?” I asked. It was a hell of a deal, but no amount of credits could have persuaded me to devote my life to serving the city. I would rather be poor and free, but that didn’t mean Avan felt the same.

His lips quirked. “I couldn’t stomach being one of them.”

I grinned and began to reply, but was startled by a clatter to our left, followed by laughter.

Two tables away, a group of women were talking animatedly. One of them had her hair up in a ponytail, exposing her scarred tattoo—her collar, as G-10 had called it. From what I could tell, Avan and I were the only people in the mess hall without collars.

No one here displayed the same guardedness about it as Reev and that sentinel outside the Labyrinth. I guess there was no shame in something everyone shared. After the talk with Irra, it was easy to figure out what the collars meant. And what that meant about Reev.

Why hadn’t he told me he was a sentinel? I didn’t even know how it could be possible, but there was no other answer.

A heavy body dropped into the space beside me. G-10 beamed as he placed his tray next to mine. His held a modest portion of soup.

I gave him a small smile in greeting. He brushed his sandy hair out of his eyes and then thrust out his hand. After a moment’s hesitation, I took it.

“We should have proper introductions this time,” he said. The smattering of freckles on the bridge of his nose made him look young. “I’m G-10. For now.”

“Kai,” I said. “This is Avan.”

He shook hands with Avan as well and nodded to my tray. “Best thing about this place: the food. We’ve always got more than enough to eat.”

Considering Irra’s unlikely claim that he was the personification of Famine, the irony didn’t escape me.

“It’s different than what I’m used to,” I said. I bit into a green vegetable that resembled a tiny cabbage. Sweet juice spilled over my lip, and I licked at it. I never knew a vegetable could taste like this. “Mmm. In a good way.”

When G-10 didn’t say anything else, I glanced up. He was looking at my mouth. Warmth crept into my cheeks even though I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. He could’ve been thinking about what a slob I was. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, glancing quickly at Avan. He was watching us with an inscrutable expression.

G-10’s eyes lifted to mine. He looked amused by my reaction. “Did the Rider fill you guys in?”

“Some of it,” I said. Maybe G-10 could fill in the many blanks that Irra’s explanation had left. “Were you a sentinel?”

G-10 made a broad gesture. “We all were. Irra saved us. Severed the leash.” He touched his neck. “But he couldn’t take off the collar. The magic is too complex. It’d kill us to remove it.”

DJ’s information had been considerably off, but I couldn’t blame Irra for keeping him in the dark. DJ wouldn’t hesitate to spill Irra’s secrets for the right price. It still irked me that I’d given him most of our life savings.

“You’re all descendants of people like Irra?” Avan asked. He leaned against my side to talk to G-10, his arm pressed against mine.

Even now, after all the time spent clinging to him on a Gray or sharing his body heat on the cold dirt, his touch sent ribbons of warmth spiraling through me. I fixed my attention on what G-10 was saying.

“They call themselves the Infinite,” G-10 said. “And yeah. Finding out I was mahjo was hard to believe, especially since I don’t have any real magic. Still, being a descendant of immortals does give us some pretty convenient abilities. Rapid healing. Strength. Superior reflexes, that sort of thing. It’s the reason Ninu can brand us with collars. Normal humans wouldn’t survive it.”

The description fit Reev well—my indestructible big brother. Not once in all the years I’d been with him had I seen him hurt or sick.

“What does it do?” I asked, gesturing to his neck.

“The collars are like magnifiers. They seek out whatever traces of magic remain inside us and enhance them so that we can work harder and tire less. After Ninu is done with us—” His gaze slid away. “Can’t really say how much of what’s left is human.”

“Of course you’re human,” I said. Because Reev was human, too.

G-10 looked as if he wanted to smile, but he smothered it behind a spoonful of soup. After swallowing, he said, “The collars also connected us to Ninu. He sent us commands with a thought, and if we disobeyed an order, he could kill us immediately.”

“Charming guy,” Avan said.

“Disobedience was rare. Most sentinels exist only to obey Ninu,” G-10 said bitterly.

“My brother, Reev, who we came here to find, has a collar like yours. He never told me what it meant,” I said.

G-10 looked impressed. “I’ve never heard of anyone escaping Ninu before, not without the Rider’s help.”

Reev had possessed a collar for as long as I could remember, which meant he’d been a sentinel since before he’d found me. He must have been so young when Ninu found him the first time. Then, somehow, he had escaped the Kahl on his own.

“If he was already one of them, what’ll they do to him now that they’ve caught him?” The possibilities made me ill. If I’d known that Reev was in hiding, I would have been more careful. I would have used my powers less. Why hadn’t he trusted me?

“Since he’s already escaped once, Ninu will probably brand him with a new collar, one that’ll completely burn his mind.” G-10 said it so matter-of-factly, as if his words hadn’t just shattered me. “Your brother will no longer exist.”

The flimsy wooden spoon snapped in my hand. I dropped the broken pieces. Avan grasped my hand before I could hide it in my lap. He rubbed his thumb against the stinging skin—another mark to add to my collection—and I closed my eyes, letting the motion soothe me.

“But how did they find him again?” Avan asked. “Reev was pretty well hidden in the Labyrinth.”

“Ninu found most of us through blood donations,” G-10 said.

I grew still. “What?”

He gave me a shrewd look. “Ninu’s energy drives. I didn’t find out until I came here. The blood is used to create energy stones, but Ninu also has it tested for traces of magic. We have just enough magic to identify us, nothing we’d notice on our own.”

My head spun. “But Reev has never . . .”

The day I was attacked, Reev mentioned an energy drive. But he wouldn’t have— He promised not to— I covered my face, my breath coming fast and broken against my fingers. He promised. Why would he do it after promis—

And then it hit me. He’d done it for the same reason I had considered it: to pay the tax. The tax notice I couldn’t find, because Reev had gotten it first.

I finished eating on autopilot. Avan noticed the shift in my mood, but I brushed away his questions. Keeping my promise to the prostitute, I asked G-10 if he knew anyone named Tera, but he said he didn’t. It made sense. If Reev wasn’t here, then there was little chance the other kidnapped people were—unless, like G-10, they’d been rescued from Ninu’s ranks.

After lunch, G-10 offered to give us a tour of the fortress. The tour lasted hours because G-10 lost his bearings in the new wings that were constantly popping up at the edges, like what we’d seen earlier with Irra. Once G-10 found a familiar hallway again, he scratched his head, embarrassed, and took us to the dormitory floor above the mess hall.

He gave us neighboring rooms. Mine felt like a cave. The walls were rough stone, and only a few tattered rugs covered the floor. Against the wall were a narrow bed and a standing lamp. A sliver of a window had been set too high up for anyone to look through, but it brought in some natural light.

The room was half the size of my place in the Labyrinth, but it felt far emptier.

I grabbed my bag and left. Avan opened his door after the first knock.

“Can I stay with you?”

At first, he didn’t react. Then his mouth curved into a slow smile that made my heart jump to attention.

“Not like that,” I said. “I just . . . I . . .” I felt stupid admitting I didn’t want to be alone.

Still looking amused, Avan swung the door wide. His room was identical to mine, including the narrow bed against the wall.

“I’ll sleep on the floor,” I said.

“You can have the bed.” He pulled some clothes out of his pack and wadded them against his stomach. “I’m going to wash up.”

I waited until he’d left before digging out my own clothes and heading for the girls’ bathhouse on the floor below. There was an aisle with private stalls on either side, closed off with sliding curtains. The bathhouse had a pleasant humidity from all the steam and was filled with the raised voices of girls trying to have a conversation above the sound of running water.

A girl wrapped in a towel with dark-red hair piled on top of her head was coming down the aisle. I moved aside, but she stopped when she saw me.

“Hey! You’re the new girl,” she said. She had pretty golden skin and a warm smile. “I’m Hina.”

“Kai,” I said. Apparently, word of new arrivals spread quickly.

“Nice to meet you, Kai.” Hina propped her arm against a stall divider, looking perfectly comfortable talking to a stranger in nothing but a towel. “You and your friend are the first people to make it out here without Irra’s help.”

“Really?” I tugged at the collar of my tunic. The humidity was beginning to make my clothes stick to my skin. “Does that mean we’re the only ones here who weren’t . . . you know, sentinels?”

“Pretty much,” Hina said. “We’re not really sure if others have tried, but we’ve found remains. The gargoyles get everyone who isn’t riding a scout.”

They almost got us, too.

“Anyway, catch you later?” she said, brushing a damp red strand from her cheek.

“Sure,” I said, and squeezed to one side of the aisle to let her pass.

I found an open stall and snapped the curtain shut. Then I undressed, bent over the spotted tub, and peered at the knobs.

Once the tub was full, I braced my hand against the slick wall and climbed inside.

There was only room enough to sit with my legs crossed, but the hot water felt heavenly. The water in the East Quarter bathhouses was either lukewarm or frigid depending on the time of year. I’d mastered the art of washing quickly. But here, I decided to take my time. The amount of dirt that had accumulated since leaving Ninurta was embarrassing, even by the Labyrinth’s standards. I dragged a soapy rag across my skin, scrubbing even after the dirt had been washed away.

The heat soothed the bruises, but it also made every scratch sting, including the new welt on my palm from when I snapped my spoon. Still, it was all easy to ignore as I rested my shoulders against the lip of the tub.

This didn’t seem like such a bad place. Etu Gahl. G-10 had said it meant “to exist in darkness” in whatever ancient language was native to the Infinite. I hoped it referred to the way the fortress could remain hidden from outsiders, but I doubted it.

My house is a place of forgotten things.

I wasn’t sure what Irra meant, but the memory sent a shiver through me despite the hot water. Still, the hollows seemed to be happy here. They had full stomachs, a roof over their heads, plenty of water, and a community of people who understood one another. I wished Reev had been brought here.

I dunked my head beneath the water, my eyes squeezed tight.

I’m sorry. I didn’t know who my apology was meant for. Reev? Definitely. But maybe also for the woman who attacked me in that alley. Because if I had known then that it would lead to this—Reev kidnapped by Ninu, and Avan and me stuck outside Ninurta’s walls—I don’t know if I would have alerted the runners. It scared me to think it: that I might have left her to die instead.

Avan was wrong. I don’t always do the right thing. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

Back in Avan’s room, he had stacked the rugs into a makeshift bed on the floor and settled in with a threadbare blanket. His hair, still damp, clung to his neck in dark tendrils like the lines of his tattoo.

Without a word, I crawled onto the bed, on top of the covers, and leaned over to switch off the lamp. My stomach grumbled. I hadn’t been hungry when it was time to go down for dinner, and then I’d spent a long time in the bath.

“Kai,” Avan said, “have you . . .”

“Have I what?”

After a moment, he continued. “Have you considered the possibility that you might be like Irra?”

“I’m not like him. I can’t do anything like what he did.” I recalled how the walls shriveled at his touch. “And I really don’t want to.”

“What if you could find out for sure? Would you want to know?”

Something in his voice sharpened my attention. “Yes,” I said. “But what are you getting at?”

It was so quiet I could hear him breathing: slow, uneven breaths.

“Nothing,” he murmured. “I’m just thinking about everything Irra said.”

“A lot to take in,” I agreed.

“Yeah. You okay?”

No. Reev had been found because of me. I should have just told him about the tax.

I reached over the edge of the mattress and was met by Avan’s fingers. Strong and reassuring, they laced through mine. I clutched his hand, afraid he’d let go. But he didn’t. Even after my body finally relaxed and my fingers grew slack, he held on.

“Kai,” Avan whispered sometime later.

My name sounded different when he said it: a tender, velvety quality that I wanted to wrap around me. But maybe that was just the film of sleep. I fought the drowsiness that curtained my eyes.

“Do you know what tomorrow is?”

I thought about it but couldn’t seem to focus on much more than the timbre of his voice. “No.”

“The first Day of Sun.”

I counted back the days. How could I have forgotten? Tomorrow, the clouds would clear for the first time in a year, just enough to get genuine sunshine.

The texts told of a time when the Sun had been a constant in the sky—when the weather had been both varied and volatile. After Rebirth, a pall of clouds had taken control of the sky. The storms grew more violent, the nights darker. For decades, the Sun became nothing but a memory for the people left behind. Maybe that, too, had been punishment from the Infinite.

Then one day, the clouds broke and sunlight slipped through—only for a minute. And every year after, the Sun had appeared a little bit longer. Now, the Sun remained for a week. I liked to think that someday it would stay.

During the Week of Sun, Reev and I would climb to the roof of the Labyrinth, the highest point in the East Quarter. We’d lay on top of the metal freight containers, warm from the Sun. When it grew too hot, we climbed down to the bridge to watch the light skip across the river, heat shimmering above the surface. At night, we returned to the roof to observe the stars, a billion little suns more beautiful than anything I’d ever seen, more beautiful even than the White Court with its ivory walls and silver banners.

That this week should happen now, without Reev to share in it, didn’t seem right.

“We’ll meet with Irra again in the morning,” Avan said. “Figure out what to do next. Then we’ll find a place to watch the Sun.”

The courtyard. I wanted to go there.

“Kai?”

I whispered, “Okay.”