Magic Binds

CHAPTER 10

BIRDS WERE ASSHOLES. I pulled the ski mask off the nice warm spot in the ruins of a high-rise, where I had laid it out to dry after washing it in a nearby stream, and packed it back into my backpack. Sugar enjoyed flying back and forth through the bird flocks, and they retaliated by diving at me and doing their best to claw and peck the skin off my face and scalp. It took some serious scrubbing against a convenient rock in the stream to get the bird poop off the wool before the mask could go back on my head for the trip back. I’d have to thank Teddy Jo if I made it home. I should’ve brought one of those antique motorcycle helmets.

When my father had cobbled Mishmar together out of the remnants of Omaha, he’d moved high-rises one at a time, fusing them into a monstrous building. The one I waited in now must’ve failed to make the cut, because Dad had left it lying on its side atop a low hill fully two miles from Mishmar. From my vantage point, I could see the prison, towering like some citadel of legend over the plain, massive, wrapped in a ring of walls.

The magic was down, but I could feel it, still. Somewhere deep within its walls my grandmother’s bones waited. Her bones and her wraith. Or was it wrath? Probably wrath.

My grandmother longed for the banks of the rivers, where the sun shone and vivid flowers bloomed, shifting softly in the breeze. Instead my father had stuffed her into a concrete tomb and used the magic she emanated to power up Mishmar. She hated it.

Sugar clopped over and nudged me with her nose. I patted her and offered her a carrot.

The winged horse neighed.

“Too much sugar is bad for your teeth.”

She took the carrot, but her snort made it plain she wasn’t grateful. She was probably bored.

Curran and I had agreed on a simple plan: I would wait until the magic hit and go in just after sunset. If I tried to break in while technology was on the upswing, my father might not feel it or he might decide to stay where he was, since without magic he had no way of getting here fast enough.

Sugar and I had landed at the ruined skyscraper twenty-four hours ago, but the first night tech held the whole time. It was the second night now, and the big red ball of the sun was merrily rolling toward the horizon, so unless the magic decided to reassert itself in the next hour or so, I would be spending another night curled up next to the winged horse. Right now, that didn’t seem like a terrible thing. Being away from Atlanta cleared my head. It felt liberating.

At least I had stopped worrying about Sugar flying off and leaving me to fend for myself. She seemed to find me amusing and stuck around. I’d learned to sneak off before taking a bathroom break, however, because she decided that pawing at me with a hoof after I found a secluded spot to pee was the funniest thing ever.

The one good thing about the wait was that it gave me time to think of what I would say. Even if it worked . . . I wasn’t even sure my grandmother could understand me. If I failed, there was no Plan B.

“No Plan B, Sugar,” I told her. “If I screw this up, Curran dies. The city burns. All my friends will be dead.”

Sugar flicked her ears at me.

“It’s occurred to me that this would all be much easier if I were evil. I would have serenity of purpose and none of these pesky problems.”

Sugar didn’t seem impressed.

The light turned red as the sun rolled toward the horizon.

The world’s pulse skipped a beat. Magic flooded in.

“Yes.” I grinned and grabbed the blanket. “Onward, my noble steed. To our inevitable doom and gory death.”

Thirty seconds later we took to the air. The tower of Mishmar grew closer, the different textures of its parts flowing into each other as if melted together. Red brick became gray granite transforming into slabs of natural stone, then into gray brick. The amount of magic necessary to pull this off boggled the mind.

Winged shapes rose from the crevices at the top of the tower and bounced up and down on the air currents.

“You’re going to drop me off in the courtyard,” I told her. “On the bridge. We’ll have to do it quickly. Don’t go and play with those flying things. They aren’t birds. They have long beaks studded with sharp teeth and their wings are leather. They’re not nice and cuddly like that flock of geese that tried to take my head off when you flew through it. They will hurt you if you get too close, and I don’t want that to happen. I like you.”

Sugar snorted.

“If I manage to make it out, I’ll release the moth I showed you before. Don’t come looking for me unless you see it, and if I’m not back in a day or two, I’m dead and you need to go back to the herd.”

Was any of this getting through to her or was I talking to myself? I hoped she understood me, because if she didn’t, I’d have a really awkward family reunion when my dad arrived with lightning and furious thunder or whatever other theatrics he would bring to bear.

The wall loomed before us. We cleared it and Sugar swooped down, flying low. Mishmar was a deep pit surrounded by a wall, with the tower rising from the center. A stone bridge stretched from the gates to the tower. Sugar landed straight into a gallop, carrying me toward the enormous door, the hoofbeats of her steps scattering echoes through the vast empty courtyard. She stopped, and I jumped off her back and pulled the saddlebags free.

“Go.”

Above us the monster birds shrieked.

“Go!”

She reared, pawing the air, then ran back along the bridge and took flight. I turned toward the massive door. The last time I saw it, we were running out of it, after Curran, Andrea, and the rest came to rescue me. Never thought I would be going through it again.

The memory of me dying slowly of exposure in lukewarm water shot through me. Thanks, brain. Just what I needed.

A new bar secured the door, a thick strip of steel controlled by a wheel with eight handles protruding from it. Things moved inside the tower, crawling through the walls, their half-atrophied brains feeling like painful pinpricks of red light in mine. Vampires. Loose and driven near mad by bloodlust. They killed the weak that Roland imprisoned in Mishmar, wore down the strong, and without prey, they fed on each other.

My knees shook. I didn’t want to go in. I would do almost anything not to go in.

“Lovely place,” I said to hear my own voice. The stone echoes made it sound puny.

Curran was counting on me. I was counting on me. I didn’t have time for post-traumatic stress.

I could feel the memory of water on my skin, leeching my will to live. I could hear Ghastek’s labored breathing next to me. I could almost see him nodding, his mouth too close to the water as he hung suspended from the metal grate that prevented us from climbing out.

Come on, weakling. Open the fucking door. How hard can it be?

I could turn around and leave. Walk away, keep walking, and never come back.

Open. The. Door.

The wheel looked impossibly large now and I knew somewhere deep in the core of my being that if I touched it, horrible things would happen.

Open the door.

Curran would’ve begun moving his people in by now. He was en route. If I didn’t open the door, my father wouldn’t leave for Mishmar.

I grabbed the wheel and spun it. Metal squeaked and clanged, invisible gears turned, and the bar slid aside.

I exhaled and pulled the door open.

Darkness.

I stood in the doorway, letting my eyes adjust. A dark stone foyer, cavernous, its roof supported by two rows of columns. Probably used to belong to some hotel or bank. There had to be an exit that would lead deeper into Mishmar, because we had crossed this lobby the last time I was here, but I couldn’t see it.

I moved to the side, away from the sunset light, and waited with my back against the wall.

The vampires stayed away. They had to have heard the bar slide aside and the creak of the gate. They should’ve come running, but instead their minds hovered above me and to the sides. That meant only one thing. Something lived in this foyer, something so dangerous that the awareness of it penetrated even the bloodthirsty, crazed minds of the bloodsuckers.

I waited, breathing quiet and slow. There was a trick to staying invisible: stop thinking. I cleared my head and simply waited, one with the darkness and the cold wall of stone touching my back.

Moments ticked by. I watched the foot-wide line of daylight cross the stones of the floor as the sunshine slipped through the gap between the two halves of the door. The chamber was roughly rectangular, the columns running along the two longer sides. Most of them had survived, but at least three had fallen, breaking into pieces. The walls weren’t perfectly smooth. A shelflike decorative molding ran along the perimeter of the lobby at about twenty feet high. Above it, at even intervals, large reliefs interrupted the stone, depicting modern buildings and people. The floor was polished marble, now dusted with dirt and grime, but still slick. I would have to be careful running.

I stayed completely still.

The attack came from above, fast and silent. I felt it a fraction of a second before the javelin hit, and I dodged right. The short spear clattered on the floor. I jumped back—two shurikens whistled through the space where I was a moment ago—and leapt left behind a column. The column was four feet across and left me two choices: left or right. Not much of a cover.

Open lobby to my left, sliced in half by the narrow light streaming through the gap in the door, a wall to my right. Down wasn’t an option; up wasn’t either. The vampires squirming above me were too far. Concentrating on drawing them close would split my attention too much.

A shuriken clattered against the column from the left. Judging by the angle, the attacker had to be either twenty feet tall or above ground.

Shuriken were nuisance weapons, meant to distract and panic. Even if dipped in poison, they rarely killed. The attacker was trying to herd me toward the wall.

I lunged right, but instead of running to the wall, I dashed around the column and sprinted into the open space in the center of the chamber.

Shurikens hurtled at me from the darkness, from the spot in front of me and slightly to the left, coming from above. I dodged the first one, drew Sarrat in a single fast move, and knocked the second aside.

The darkness waited. So did I.

Done? Let’s see what else you’ve got.

The beam of light coming through the door painted the floor behind me, not really illuminating the gloom, but diluting it enough to see movement. The angle of the shurikens pointed to a spot on the wall near the column. If someone had jumped up and perched on the molding, it would be about right. The twilight was too thick to see clearly, and the wall didn’t look any different.

All was quiet. Nothing moved in the direction from which the shurikens came.

I breathed in even deep breaths, Sarrat raised. If the attacker used magic, I couldn’t sense it.

Come closer. You know you want to. Come see me. Say hello. I’m friendly.

The texture of the wall by the column changed in a single sharp moment. Something was there, then disappeared.

I spun on pure instinct, swinging. Sarrat connected with the blade of a long knife aimed at my ribs, batting it aside, left to right. For half a second, the attacker was wide open, a tall figure in a gray cloak, his right arm thrown to his left by the force of my blow. I lunged into the opening and grabbed the cloak, yanking him toward me.

The fabric came free with no resistance, light and silk-thin under my fingers. The attacker vanished.

Movement, right side.

I jumped back. The knife sliced the air two inches from my throat. The attacker lunged, slashing at my neck with insane speed. “He” had breasts. A woman. I thrust Sarrat’s blade up, blocking the dagger. She reversed the strike, and stabbed at my ribs. I danced out of the way.

Stab. Dodge.

Stab. Dodge. She had crazy reach.

Stab. Dodge. Her blade fanned my face.

I let it slice way too close for comfort, stepped in, and hammered a punch to her right ear.

She stumbled and somersaulted backward, putting a full thirty feet between us and landing in a half crouch.

She wore a skintight black catsuit. Black wrist guards and shin guards shielded her limbs, made of durable synthetic fabric, probably with steel or plastic inserts, hard enough to stop a blade and prevent a cut. Some band-like pattern over her torso. Soft black boots, almost slipper-like, a sole with some fabric to hold it to the foot. Swirls of gray camo decorated her skin. The cloak had hidden her hair, but now it was out in the open, so pale blond it was nearly white and pulled back into a short high ponytail. Thin long arms, thin long legs, long neck—room for a good cut if I could get close enough. Long legs were normally an asset for a woman, but not for her. Their length and shape put them past the point of attractive and straight into creepy. There was something deeply disturbing about her silhouette. Inhuman, almost alien. Adora had said there was one other fae among the sahanu. I’d bet my arm that she was standing in front of me, holding a foot-long Teflon-gray tactical knife.

“Sloppy, Irene.” I turned toward her and flicked imaginary blood from my sword. “Do better.”

She smiled, showing a mouth full of human-sized but sharp teeth, each pure white and pointed, like someone had studded her gums with thirty-two narrow canines.

I had a handful of iron powder in both pockets.

Not much exposed skin. If I used the powder, it would have to be on her face. Right now she didn’t know I had it and once the element of surprise was lost, thrown powder was easy enough to avoid. I had to use it when I had a sure shot.

“Today,” I told her. “I have things to do.”

She tossed her knife into her left hand and pulled out a short tactical sword. Same dark finish, same profile, almost a steak knife but with a sixteen-inch blade. There went my reach advantage.

Irene charged. I dodged the sword thrust and raised Sarrat to parry, but not fast enough. The knife caught my left biceps. The cut burned.

She jumped back, grinned, and raised the knife to her mouth. Her tongue licked the blood.

I pushed.

She screeched as the blood in her mouth turned into needles and pierced her tongue.

“Dumbass,” I told her.

She lunged at me, swinging, her blades flashes of movement. I dodged, blocking and waiting for an opening. Left, right, left—her blades rang, meeting Sarrat. Cut, cut, cut—she nicked my right forearm—right, left—searing pain, she cut my left shoulder again—cut, cut . . .

I had trouble keeping up. She was too damn fast. A person with arms that length had no business being that fast. I was blocking at the peak of my speed. A few more moments and I’d get tired enough to slow down.

Cut, cut . . .

Now. For half a second she was in front of me, left arm with the knife extended, right rising up for another slash. I sliced at her left wrist, stepped back, and got my left arm under her right, trapping it. I jerked her forward onto my blade. You’re dead.

She wasn’t there. One second I had her locked in and the next she vanished.

A teleporter.

The knife sliced across my back. I whipped around and barked a power word. “Aarh!” Stop.

The power word clamped her. Magic shot from her in a short concentrated burst, shattering my hold. She stabbed at my stomach and made it an inch in. I spun out of the way and kicked her.

She fell, then rolled to her feet, but I was already there, slicing. Sarrat’s blade kissed the skin of her long neck, drawing a drop of scarlet. Her eyes darted to the right. She vanished.

Short-range teleporter, line of sight. I spun right and sprinted, darting back and forth, turning myself into a moving target. She’d have to chase if she wanted a shot.

Irene popped into existence in front of me and charged. I blocked her sword with mine. We clashed in the middle of the floor, metal screeching. I muscled her back. She vanished. Damn it.

I jogged right, zigzagging, moving in a rough circle. My stomach hurt. My left arm burned. I was breathing too fast.

She popped up on my right. I dropped to one knee, her long blade whistling over my head, and stabbed to the side. Sarrat nicked her thigh. She leapt back and vanished.

I kept moving, breathing a little faster than I had to, walking a little slower. I let the point of Sarrat droop a hair too low.

Come on in. I’m nice and tired.

A hint of movement sliding soundlessly in the gloom to my left. Hello, Irene. I spun to my right and dramatically sliced the empty air. That’s right, I’m scared and chasing ghosts. Enjoy the show.

I spun back, then front, the sword raised, and kept moving. I really was getting tired. This had to be it.

She trailed me, quiet, patient, a strange creature, shaped like a human but so far from it.

I stopped and took a deep breath, as if to steady my breathing.

She vanished.

The thrust came from the left. I spun away the moment I saw her disappear and she came into my spin, her teeth bared, eyes wide open, expecting easy prey.

I hurled a handful of iron in her face.

Irene screamed. I lunged and buried Sarrat in her stomach, sliding the blade between the reinforced plates of her suit. She screeched higher, her voice sharp. I twisted, ripping her insides, and threw the remaining powder into her gaping mouth. The scream ended, cut off by a choking gurgle.

Translucent wings snapped out of Irene’s back. She leapt up, the wings beating in frenzy, sped all the way to the ceiling, then plummeted down, hitting the floor with a wet thud. Not enough power to truly fly, but she must’ve been a hell of a jumper.

Dark blood wet my blade, brown, almost rust-colored, as if the normal bright red of human blood was tinted with green.

Irene lay in a crumpled heap on the floor.

I wanted to lie down, too. Instead I caught my breath and walked over to her. Rust-colored liquid poured from her mouth. She squirmed in a puddle of her own blood.

I raised my blade and finished it.

EVERYTHING HURT.

My left arm hurt. My right arm hurt. My stomach hurt. I’d stopped to slap some bandages on the cuts. I could control the vampires of Mishmar, but if enough of them got together, enticed by my blood, they would be difficult to deal with and I was tired.

Nobody bothered me as I walked down the long hallway. If any other monsters skulked in the darkness, they must’ve decided I’d be too expensive to kill.

The last time, when we fought our way out of Mishmar, getting from my grandmother’s tomb to the door took almost an hour, or it had felt like an hour. We fought the vampires, we moved slowly because I was at the end of my strength, and we had gotten lost at least twice. Now it took barely fifteen minutes.

In front of me the walls parted into an enormous cavern-like chamber, its ceiling lost in darkness, its floor shrouded in fog a hundred feet below. A narrow spire rose from the bottom of the chamber, fused together from concrete, stone, and brickwork. An identical but inverted spire reached down from the ceiling. They met in the middle, two hands clasping a rectangular stone box thirty-five feet high. A metal breezeway encircled it and a narrow metal bridge led to the breezeway from the stone ledge where I stood. Inside the room a magic storm howled, a power so ancient, so mad, that it made me shiver.

“Hello, Grandmother,” I whispered, and took the first step onto the bridge. It seemed longer than I remembered. I reached the breezeway and circled the room, my steps too loud on the metal, until I reached the doorway. It glowed with a pale purple light. I took a deep breath and walked inside.

A rectangular room lay in front of me. At the far wall a simple stone altar rose from a raised platform. Five stone steps led to it from the right. Between the altar and me lay my grandmother’s body. Long sharp blades, opaque and white, grew from the massive, nine-foot-tall skeleton, some branching, some isolated, some in clusters. One of these blades was now on my back, attached to a hilt.

In life my grandmother was Semiramis, the Great Queen, the Shield of Assyria. In death, her body was no longer a human thing; instead, it had become a magic coral, neither fully bone nor metal, stretching upward and outward, blooming like a lethal chrysanthemum. It burned with the cold fire of magic.

I could still turn back. There was still a chance.

No, I’d come too far to stop now.

I approached the bones. The magic brushed against me light as a feather, and the potency it carried gripped my heart into a fist and squeezed all the blood out of it. The world turned black.

Breathe . . . breathe . . . breathe . . .

The magic let go. She recognized me.

I knelt, opened the bag, and gently laid the bones of my aunt by her mother’s side.

A wail tore through the chamber. Magic slammed into me, throwing me across the room. I smashed into the wall, every bone in my body rattling.

Ow.

I blinked and saw the gossamer shape of my grandmother. She wore a thin red robe with glittering gold threads running down the length of it. A waterfall of black hair fell in soft curls down her back. She knelt by the bones, her face with its bronze skin and bottomless brown eyes twisted by grief.

I rolled to my feet and stumbled back to the bags. She let me approach. I knelt by her, took out a thermos filled with Erra’s blood, and poured it over the bones. They glowed weakly with pale red. I opened the second thermos and emptied it. The bones glowed brighter and dimmed.

Third thermos. A weak glow and then nothing.

It didn’t work. I came all this way, did all those things, and it didn’t work?

The tempest that was my grandmother stared at me, expecting something. I kept my gaze down. Looking into her eyes was like staring into an abyss. It would swallow you whole.

I had no more blood. Everything that the Pack had collected lay right there in front of me, like a fire laid out to burn. It needed an accelerant . . .

I pulled my sleeve back, peeled off the medical tape on my forearm, and squeezed some of my blood out. Why not? Everything else our family did was connected to blood. I let the hot red drops slide off my fingers onto the bones.

Nothing.

Work, damn you. Work!

My grandmother wailed. The magic slapped me and I rolled back across the chamber. My head swam.

I needed this to work. My son would die unless I did this.

I rolled to my hands and knees and crawled back to the body.

How could it not work? I was so sure . . . She was such a stubborn bitch, it should’ve worked.

The bones lay inert. My blood made no difference. I looked up at my grandmother. The awful gaze of Semiramis drained my soul.

“Help me.”

She kept looking at me. She had all this magic. The two of us were bathed in it and I knew that if she could have, she would’ve helped me.

I sat on the floor next to my aunt’s remains. It was over. I was done. I’d tried my best and failed.

I’d failed Curran. I’d failed my unborn son. I’d failed the Pack, the Witch Oracle, the city, everyone in it. She was my last hope. Only two options were left now: become my father’s tool like Erra did before me, or die fighting.

I would go back to Atlanta and I would fight. I would fight till my last breath, but I had already failed.

I looked at the specter of my grandmother, bent as if to cradle what was left of her daughter’s body. How terrible must it have been for her? At some point my grandmother must’ve been young and Erra must’ve been a toddler. I could almost picture them walking together through the gardens my father was trying to resurrect. Idyllic and peaceful, just a young woman and her daughter in a place full of water and bright fishes and beautiful water flowers, before the war. Before my aunt turned into a monster. Before she watched all of her children grow up and die, killed by the curse of power and magic that was our blood. I had seen my son through the curtain of time. I didn’t even know him and already I mourned him.

How in the world did it end like this, in an empty stone shell? This couldn’t be what either of them had hoped for. They must’ve wanted love and family. They must’ve wanted happiness. Instead my grandmother died after seeing her daughter become a living plague, and my aunt was never happy. She destroyed and killed in impotent fury, and a part of her must’ve realized that she was trapped by her past and her blood, and so she raged harder and harder, but she could never break free. Even in this age, she awoke and hated being herself so much, she looked for a way to die again.

Tears wet my cheeks. I pulled Sarrat out of its sheath, hugged it the way I used to do with Slayer when I was a child, and cried. I cried for my grandmother, shackled in this concrete tomb so far from home. I cried for my aunt, because I finally understood her. I cried for myself, because I hated feeling helpless and I was so fucking tired of not being able to breathe, and now all my anger was leaking out of my eyes in tears. I cried and cried, my tears falling into the blood. I had nothing left.

Nobody would see it. Nobody would care. I could cry all I wanted and nobody could call me on it.

Finally, I had run out of energy. I wiped my eyes. Time to pick myself up and move on.

My aunt’s bones glowed with ruby light.

I froze on my knees.

The loose bones of Erra’s body shifted, twisting into a round pile. Blades burst from it, stretching straight up and curving, pressed together into a bulb. The red glow flashed and turned bright. The bone blades curved and opened like the petals of a flower.

My aunt stood within the glow, clad in her blood armor. Sadness shadowed her translucent face, her dark hair falling down to her waist.

Oh dear God. It worked.

Her eyes snapped open. The Eater of Cities saw me. “You!”

She charged me and tore right through me. It was like being passed through a fine sieve made of pain and cold. She whipped around, her face shocked. The red fire around her shot out and gripped my body. My feet left the ground. I flew backward and smashed into the stone wall of the chamber. My head swam. Someone set fire to my lungs. The invisible magic hand ground me into the stone. My bones groaned under the pressure.

“You!” Erra snarled. “I should’ve killed you. I will now.”

Red circles swam before my eyes. There wasn’t enough air. I was going to die.

“I wanted to die. You couldn’t even do that right. You’ve raised me with your wailing. How dare you mourn me? Now I’ll take you with me.”

The tempest behind Erra shifted.

Her eyes widened. “Mother?”

The magic pressure vanished. I crashed to the floor, desperately sucking in air. My lungs burned and refused to expand.

The magic storm coalesced into Semiramis, standing before Erra’s translucent form. My aunt stood still, her mouth open, her expression soft.

“Ama,” Erra whispered. “Oh gods, Ama.”

The magic of Semiramis embraced her. Erra hugged her back, their power mixing. The walls around us trembled from the pressure.

Tears wet my aunt’s eyes. She looked past her mother at the bare walls. “Gods, what has he done to you . . .” she whispered. “What did he do . . .”

I finally rolled over onto my back and managed to take a breath. Everything felt bruised. Someone had turned my diaphragm into barbed wire when I wasn’t looking.

Erra loomed over me. “Talk.”

Great. I had to say the most important thing first, before she squeezed the life out of me.

“He’ll kill my son.”

“You have a son?”

“No, but I will.”

Her magic jerked me upright. If she bounced me off the wall again, I swore I would set her damn bones on fire.

“How certain are you?”

“It’s been foretold by several oracles. I have seen it in a vision. There’s a battle. He runs my baby through with a spear and hoists it up like a standard.”

She’d had sons. She’d loved them, even though they were violent and mad. She had to understand.

“And so you brought me here, into this tomb, and called me back into existence with your tears, weeping by my corpse like some weakling?”

That was my aunt for you.

“To do what?” Erra stalked in front of me, back and forth. “To kill my brother?”

I didn’t answer. It didn’t seem safe.

“Where is he now?”

“He built a castle on the edge of Atlanta, near my territory.”

“Your territory?” Erra barked a short laugh.

“I claimed Atlanta.”

She stopped and looked at me. “Claimed it how?”

“He tried to make it his, and I stopped him and made it mine.”

“How? Describe it, you imbecile.”

Screw you. “He made a giant magic spear and tried to stab me with it. I blocked it, then I levitated, and released a big pulse of magic.” I waved my arms. “Poof.”

“Poof?” Erra turned to my grandmother. “Ama, are you listening to this?”

Semiramis smiled.

“So you are Sharratum now? A queen?”

“I’m not a queen.” I had to keep reminding myself.

“And he let you do this?”

“He didn’t have a choice.”

“What are the terms? There must’ve been terms.”

“He promised me peace for a hundred years and then he built a castle on the edge of my territory. He’s taunting me, kidnapping my people, meddling, wanting to control every aspect of my life, getting offended over my wedding reception, sending assassins to . . .”

Erra raised her hand.

I shut up.

“How long?”

“How long what?”

“How long has this been going on?”

“About six months.”

“He’s been sitting by your territory for six months and hasn’t moved against you?”

“Yes.”

“You’re lying.”

“Why the hell would I lie?”

My aunt pondered and flicked her hand. An invisible magic hammer crashed into me. This time I curled before hitting the wall. Bonus points.

“You say you claimed this city. Prove it.”

I rolled to my feet.

“My land. My city,” Erra mocked. “Little baby princess. Pretender. Weakling.”

“Stop mocking me or you’ll regret it.”

The magic swept me off my feet. I rolled across the chamber. “You own nothing. You possess nothing.”

I got up to my feet.

“Liar.” She was getting ready for round three. I felt the magic shift. “Imposter. You bring shame to our name.”

“Enough!” I let my own power tear out of me and smash into my aunt’s. “I’ve fought and bled for that city. It’s mine and I have nothing to prove to you. You and my father brought enough shame to the family name. People cringe when they hear it. If you hit me one more time, I’ll throw your bones in the deepest sewer I can find.”

Erra’s eyes narrowed. “I’ll take your land and rule it as it was meant to be ruled.”

“No! It’s mine!”

“There it is,” Erra said. “Do you even know what this thing is that’s rearing its ugly head? Of course, you don’t.”

I opened my mouth.

“Quiet. I’m thinking.”

This was the stupidest idea I’d ever had.

Erra sighed. “It’s called the Shar. It’s an ancient word that came to us from an old language. A word of Adam. It means the right to rule. The urge to obtain and hold land was bred into our family. Do you know why dynasties fall?”

“Because they eventually produce an incompetent heir.”

“Yes. The Shar is the insurance that the strongest of our line is always in power. Once you have a taste of it, either it will devour you or you will triumph over it.”

“Is my father . . .”

“Consumed by the Shar? He was for a time, but he learned to control it long ago. It is a force within him, it does drive some of his behavior, but there were times he walked away from the land he claimed and stayed away for years. Im is a prince of Shinar. He received proper instruction in the use of his gift as soon as he was able to understand words. But you have very little defense against it. For one, you’re too young. You claimed too soon and too much. Second, you have no training. A child should be allowed to claim a small piece of land to become accustomed to the pressure. And third, the Shar is at its peak when two members of our family hold adjacent land. It is its very purpose: to force us against each other until a winner emerges victorious. This is why I chose to make no claim. I had no desire to rule.”

“And my father . . .”

“Your father is cruel. He’s torturing you. Sooner or later the Shar will drive you to move against him. All he has to do is wait, and he has all the time in the world.”

“But why go to the trouble? If he wanted war, why not break the treaty? Nothing stops him.”

“He’s given you his word,” Erra said. “The word of Sharrum is binding. It’s the bedrock of his kingdom. The real question is why go through the charade of the agreement in the first place. It makes no sense . . .” She paused. Her eyes shone. “Why should I help you?”

“You are my aunt.”

“And?”

“Look around you,” I told her.

“What about it?”

“It’s the tomb of our family.”

My aunt turned slowly, taking in the bare walls.

“My father, your brother, brought your mother here, because he was afraid she would rise and challenge him. He locked her in this stone box so he could control her. Do you know where we are? We’re in the heart of Mishmar.”

Her face jerked. She’d recognized the name.

“He’s using my grandmother’s power to fuel it. She suffers. He knows this and does nothing. To him we’re tools to be used.”

The line of her mouth hardened. I’d hit a nerve.

“Why did you want to die?”

Derision twisted her face.

“Tell me, City Eater. Why did you want to die?”

“Because this wasn’t my world,” she snarled. “There is nothing for me here.”

“It’s not his world either. If he isn’t stopped, he’ll be the last of our line, because I’ll fight to my death to protect the man I love and my future child. He’ll destroy me, and after I’m gone, he’ll murder my baby. Even if he takes the child and lets him grow, sooner or later he’ll kill him, because my father can’t stand to share even an iota of power. Ask yourself why none of your children survived. Why none of his? It’s because he is a creature who eats his young. Our family has no future. He has devoured it.”

Her face was completely flat.

“Sooner or later all of us will end up here, and he won’t stop until he chokes the life out of the rest of the land. He’ll turn this world into a copy of the old one, until it too collapses under his weight, and the cycle will begin anew. Ten thousand years from now, when you’ve been awakened for the third time, and another girl stands in my place asking for your help, will you ask her why?”

I couldn’t tell if any of it sank in.

“Look at it.” I raised my hands, indicating the stone box we stood in. “Just look at it.”

Magic flared. The image of my grandmother vanished and an inferno of pale purple light blazed in her place, bleeding magic. Erra’s translucent form melted into it. I raised my hand to shield my eyes. Magic raged around me, boiling and twisting.

Silence stretched.

“Good speech,” Erra said from somewhere within the inferno.

“It’s not—”

“What else do you have?”

What else? I grappled with the question, trying to think of something—anything—to convince her.

“He’s rebuilding the Water Gardens.”

“What about it?”

“He told me you used to love them. You used to play there together. That you had a happy childhood.”

“And?”

“Take my memories. I know you can do it, because my grandmother has done it. Look into my head. See the childhood my father has given me.”

The light splayed out and licked me, seizing me into a tight, hard fist. Pain seared my mind, pulling me apart, as if my soul were fabric and it was unraveling thread by thread. I let it hurt me and melted into it, giving up everything, all my memories, all my fears, and all of my dreams.

THE SUN WAS warm on my face. Such a hot welcoming sun. A shallow pond lay before me, only ankle deep, a jewel cradled in the green hands of proud cypresses. Small fishes darted through the clear water, golden and white sparks against the turquoise bottom. In the middle of it a pavilion of pink stone rose with a domed roof, no walls, only four arches. A delicate mosaic of colored tiles lined the ceiling, showing the sun, the planets, and the stars, as if a Persian carpet of incredible beauty had been stretched across it. A dark-haired woman sat on the steps of the pavilion, her feet in the water, her blood-red dress floating on the surface of the pond. She beckoned.

I stepped into the pond and walked to her. The turquoise stones felt smooth under my feet. My white dress floated, swirling in the water.

The woman patted a step next to her. She was so beautiful, my aunt.

I sat. She reached for my hair. It was long again, the way I liked to have it. She ran her hands through the brown strands, pulled out a tortoiseshell comb, and gently brushed it.

I saw our reflection in the water. The girl in the white dress had my face but she seemed so young and pretty. Soft, like she had never opened another human being with her blade and let their blood flow on the sands of the pits. Someone had brushed gold on my eyelids. Someone had lined my eyes with black. Someone had put a delicate gold chain around my neck with a red stone full of fire.

Was it really me?

My aunt put a white flower into my hair. “This is what you were meant to be,” she said. “The princess of Shinar. Not a mongrel without family. Not some man’s attack dog. Not the mindless weapon I saw in your memories. You didn’t know about it, your father kept it from you, but it is yours.

“Is this what it looked like? The Water Gardens?”

“Yes.”

I could stay here forever. It was so peaceful here.

“This was my favorite place. I wanted to bring my daughters here the way my mother brought me,” my aunt said, her dark eyes soft like velvet. “The war destroyed everything you see and I never had any daughters. He rebuilt the gardens, but they weren’t the same. It was never the same. All gone now. The splendor of Shinar is dust. We are all that remains.”

“I don’t want it to disappear.”

“It must,” she said. “It lives only in my heart. Now it will live in yours.”

I turned to look at her. The pavilion was gone. I sat in a room. Gauzy red curtains blocked my view, and in the gap beyond them I saw a trellised balcony. A sticky dark puddle slowly spread on the floor, inching toward my feet. I had seen too many puddles exactly like this. The smell hit me, hot and metallic. An awful crunching sound came from somewhere beyond the veils of red gauze.

“What is this?”

“You wanted to share,” my aunt said. “You showed me yours. I’ll show you mine.”

I drew the curtain aside. The sound got louder, a sickening, chewing, slurping sound.

I pulled the last curtain aside. A bed strewn with a child’s toys and colorful pillows. A thing glared at me from the floor. Hairless, gray, awful, with huge owl eyes and bloodstained teeth. It clutched a child’s headless corpse in its front limbs. It stared at me and chewed.

“This is the way your uncle died,” my aunt said. “Also two of your aunts.”

I lunged forward. The thing shrieked, dragging the child’s body with it. I chased it. I had to kill it.

“They came from the sea,” Erra said. “You won’t find their names chiseled into any stone. We obliterated them and their memory. We erased them from existence. They had attacked the kingdoms like a plague, bringing their magic and their creations like that thing you’re trying too hard to kill.”

If only I could catch it, I would crack its skull like a walnut.

“We were betrayed by our neighbors. We had left to broker an alliance. When we returned, the palace of Shinar was silent. We found only half-eaten corpses.”

The thing darted toward my aunt. She looked at it and its bones broke, the big dome of its skull caving in on itself as if stomped.

“Look outside,” she said.

I stepped onto the balcony. A vast plain unrolled before me. An army charged at me. Shaggy, huge armored mammoths; strange beasts, their hindquarters striped, their heads too large for their bodies, their jaws filled with oversized hyena teeth; creatures for which I had no name; and people in armor. I glanced behind me. The dark room was gone. My aunt strode onto the field in front of her troops. She wore blood armor. Her loose hair streamed in the wind. Behind her the emerald standards snapped, pulled taut. She began to run, at first slowly, then picking up speed. The troops behind her broke into a charge. To the right, a man in blood armor on a white horse raised a spear and shouted. His horse reared and I saw his face, impossibly handsome and alight with magic. Father . . .

My aunt charged across the field, magic twisting around her.

The first line of the enemy was almost to her.

Erra opened her mouth. Power tore from her, an unstoppable blast that sent the armored mammoths flying.

At the other end of the field, my father raised his hands. The earth split, swallowing the enemy.

The two armies collided. A sword landed next to me. I grabbed it.

“This is also you,” Erra said next to me. “This is the wrath of Shinar. They who thought they would murder us, take our cities, and eat our children, they met our anger and it consumed them. It consumed us too, but not before we obliterated their very memory from history. We wiped them off the face of the planet. It is as if they never were.”

Around me the battle raged. My father spun in the center of a magical maelstrom. Behind him the earth shuddered and broke loose. A creature of metal and magic, a beautiful golden lion a hundred feet high, burst onto the field. My aunt twisted and sliced the head off an invader. It went flying.

“This is what you are asking me to betray,” Erra said into my ear.

I closed my eyes and imagined the weight and warmth of a child in my arms. When I opened them, my son looked back at me with Curran’s gray eyes. The battle was gone. We sat in the pavilion again.

I held my son out to Erra. “This is what I’m asking you to save.”

She took the child from me and looked at his face.

“I just want him to live a happy life,” I told her. “The war is terrible. It will never end, as long as my father is allowed to be free. He can’t stop. Maybe a part of him wants to, but even if it does, he doesn’t know how. Someone has to end it.”

A woman appeared behind us, regal, tall, her wrists heavy with golden bracelets, her flowing dress a deep emerald green. Black kohl lined her eyes, her eyelids and lips dusted with gold. Semiramis reached down, took my son from Erra’s hands, and smiled at him.

THE GARDENS FADED. The grip of the magic released me, its pain an echo in my bones. The arcane inferno died down. Semiramis withdrew, revealing Erra.

“He created an order of assassins to kill me,” she whispered. She had seen sahanu in my memories. There was something almost vulnerable in her face.

My grandmother reached for her, wrapping her ghostly arms about her daughter. Magic swirled around them.

“I know,” Erra whispered. “I understand.”

She turned to me, all tenderness vanishing from her face like a mask jerked aside.

“You will do two things for me. Once this is over, I will choose the burial place for myself and my mother. You will move us there.”

“Done.” I would’ve done it anyway.

“And you will abandon the city.”

“What?”

“You will agree to never rule the land you’ve claimed.”

I opened my mouth. Everything inside me rebelled at the idea. It was my city, my land, my people, mine . . .

No. It was not mine. I took it, but it was never mine.

I raised my hand.

It was so hard. I wanted to charge across the room and beat her head against the stone until I saw the color of her brain for even bringing it up.

This wasn’t me. I wouldn’t become my father.

I could lie.

I crushed the thought.

“I promise that the day my father is dead or contained, I will walk away from the land I claimed.”

It hurt to say it.

“Not good enough,” Erra said. “I don’t want you to walk away. I want you to swear to never rule it. You’re a queen like your grandmother and her mother before her. Swear to me in the true language.”

I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.

“What’s the matter, little squirrel? Want to kill me for daring?”

Yes. Oh yes. So much.

I needed to reach deep down and find the strength to do it.

“Your land or your lover and your son. Choose.”

It wasn’t even a choice.

“I swear . . .” Each word was impossibly heavy. The room around us shook. Little chunks of mortar fell from the ceiling. “. . . to never . . .” It felt like all the ligaments in my throat would tear. The tomb shuddered. “. . . rule the land I claimed.”

It hurt so much.

“The word of Sharratum is binding,” Erra said. “So witnessed.”

The room stopped shaking.

A cool rush swept through me. Suddenly the air felt lighter.

“The Shar is a persistent bitch,” my aunt said. “Giving up the land you claimed is the first step. Watching it being taken by another is the second. Letting them live is the third. If you survive, we will do this over and over, until you reach your equilibrium or it drives you mad.”

“Thank you.” Universe help me, I meant it.

My aunt waved her hand. “Why did he let you live?”

“According to him, it’s because I’m his treasured daughter, his Blossom, the precious one, the one he loves above all others.”

I heard my own words and cracked up. Erra guffawed. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. The laughter came and came, pouring out, until I had tears in my eyes. We stood there and laughed and laughed.

“Oh, that’s good.” Erra sat on the steps. “That’s good.”

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d laughed so hard. My stomach hurt. I must’ve needed it.

“Why do you think he let you live?”

“I have no idea.”

“There must be something.”

“I don’t know. He tried to kill me before. He said that he loved my mother and promised her that he would give her a child like no other, but then foresaw that I would become like Kali, the destroyer of worlds, and so he tried to kill me but failed. He glossed over that part.”

Erra pondered it. “If Im tried to kill you, you would be dead. He must’ve reconsidered. But why?”

“I don’t know. Also he inscribed the language of power on me in the womb.”

“And you didn’t start with that? Let’s hope your lion has some brains, otherwise your child will be a dimwit.”

Semiramis moved.

“Yes, I know, Ama. Your grandmother says that in this day and age, you could do worse. Show the inscription to me.”

“I can’t. It only shows up in certain moments. When I claimed the city, for example. He can make it appear by touching me, but I can’t.”

“Do you know what it says?”

“No.”

She rose and touched me. Her hand went through mine. She waved her hand back and forth through my arms. I’d tell her that it felt like being passed through an icy cheese grater, but she would only do it more.

Erra swore. “Being dead has its problems. Although it does give you a certain clarity. I felt my mother when I awoke. I asked him about it and he told me he had left her by the banks of the Tigris. I told him then that if he lied to me, he would regret it.”

“He will regret many things by the time I’m done.”

“Find a way to record the words and show them to me,” Erra said. “We must learn why you’re still alive.”

“Okay. I will.”

I turned to the doorway.

“Where are you going?” Erra demanded

“I’m escaping,” I said. “He’ll probably arrive in the next few minutes.”

Behind Erra the purple blaze of Semiramis flared.

“Yes,” Erra said, pronouncing each word very clearly as if talking to someone very stupid or hard of hearing. “That’s why you have to take me with you. Because you’re an idiot and you need help and I’m the bigger idiot for promising it to you.”

I stared at the mass of her bones. “How?”

She turned away from me. “It’s time.”

Magic raged through the chamber, a furious tempest, filled with grief. The walls shook. I curled into a ball, trying to hide, but it was everywhere.

“I won’t be long,” Erra whispered, melting into the magic, her voice carrying through the room. “I’m coming back, Mother. And then I’ll take you out of this awful place.”

My grandmother wept.

I clamped my hands over my ears, shut my eyes, and tried to keep calm.

The room shook and shuddered. My body bounced off the floor.

Suddenly it was quiet. I opened my eyes. A dagger had sprouted from the center of my aunt’s bones, a wickedly curved double-edged blade with a bone hilt. A thin line of blood-red script crossed the plate substance of the blade. My aunt’s name.

I reached out and took it. It came free with a light snap. The bone flower fell apart into dust.

She’d molded her bones and blood into a dagger and sunk her soul into it. I could never let my father see this knife.

“Hurry up,” Erra’s voice snapped. “I can feel him coming.”

I yanked my spare knife out and slid the dagger into the sheath. It didn’t fit exactly, but it would have to do.

“Thank you, Grandmother.” I bowed my head and took off.

At some point the fact that I was carrying my aunt the City Eater in my knife sheath would likely hit me and then I would have a nice nervous breakdown. But right now, we had to get out of here.

Outside, red lightning split the dark sky. Wind tore at my clothes and hair. I yanked the canister with the moth out and shattered it on the stone. The tiny insect floated up, growing brighter and brighter, a green spark against the darkness.

Come on, Sugar. Come and get me.

The gates of Mishmar’s wall flew open. A sphere of fire and light rolled onto the bridge and broke apart, revealing my father. His face was dark. A blood spear formed in his hand.

“YOU DISOBEYED ME AGAIN, MY DAUGHTER.”

I’d never seen him this pissed off. Not even when I fought with him at his castle. I pulled Sarrat out of its sheath.

Behind us, Mishmar trembled and bellowed like a tornado. I turned around. The tower shuddered. The strange birds took to the sky, their guttural cries swallowed by the noise. Car-sized chunks of concrete and stone broke loose and tumbled down.

“SHARRIM!” My father’s voice rippled with magic. If the bridge had been metal, it would’ve melted in fear.

“It’s not my fault!” I yelled back.

“STUBBORN, IGNORANT, IMPERTINENT CHILD! I TOLD YOU NOT TO COME HERE. I WILL KEEP YOU HERE UNTIL YOU LEARN TO OBEY ME!”

Oh crap.

Thunder punched my ears. A massive crack formed in the tower’s wall. The purple inferno of my grandmother’s magic splashed and coiled within it.

I turned back to my father and saw the familiar winged shape behind him diving toward me.

“Can’t talk now. Grandma wants to see you.”

My father snarled, pointing his spear at me. A chunk of Mishmar the size of a small house rolled off the top and plunged down. The entire tower rocked. The purple magic spilled out, its fury mind-numbing. The prison rumbled, threatening to collapse.

My father swore, each curse word charged with magic, and planted his spear on the bridge. Golden light burst from it, battering against the purple.

I charged past him.

Sugar landed and ran toward me across the bridge. I sprinted to her. She turned, stopping for a heartbeat, and I jumped and landed on her back.

Behind us the gold and purple magic tore at each other.

The pegasi took off, huge wings beating. I pulled all of my magic out of myself, trying to shield us.

The two spheres of light exploded.

“Higher, Sugar. Higher!”

The pegasi’s powerful muscles rolled under me. She beat her wings, climbing higher and higher. Below us the glow of magic splayed out, as if a second sunrise burned down below. The edge of the explosion expanded toward us. I held my breath. The glow fell a few yards short.

“Did he kill Grandmother?” I whispered.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Erra’s voice said in my ear. “She is already dead. Besides, your grandmother was the Shield of Assyria. Even if he committed every drop of his power to it, he couldn’t stomp her out of existence. She’s buying us time. He’s got a busy night ahead of him.”

“North,” I told Sugar. “Fly north.” He wouldn’t look for us in that direction.

The pegasi turned and fled north, as fast as her wings would carry her.

“And for your information,” Erra said. “I wasn’t always the City Eater. That’s the name our enemies gave me and you won’t use it.”

Oy. “What were you called before you were the City Eater?”

“The Rose of Tigris. Now shut up and make this horse go faster.”