This Golden Flame Page 14

  If they find us... If they trap me...

  I cannot let that happen.

  Zara leads us down the shadowy streets, each one looking like the last. Behind us the din and the stench slowly dim. We must be getting close to the edge of the village by now.

  “Stop!”

  I whip around. Three of the magistrate’s soldiers stand behind us. One of them raises a gun, the runes on it glinting like fire.

  “Run!” Zara shouts.

  A crack splits the air. The shot goes into the building a foot to my left, clay and straw peppering my skin.

  Karis dashes down a side street. I follow to provide cover. My skin can stop bullets. Hers can’t.

  A hand snakes out from the dark and grabs her arm. It’s one of the magistrate’s men. He knocks her to the ground, her knife clattering away.

  “Karis!” I slam into the man, tackling him to the ground. He twists out of my grasp and rolls to his feet.

  Our eyes meet. His widen.

  “You...” He steps back, glaring. “You’re not being controlled by a tome. How?”

  In that moment of hesitation, I move. I throw a punch, aiming for the man’s temple, just hard enough to knock him out, but he jerks his hand up. He’s holding something and before I can stop myself, my hand touches it. Every rune on my arm flares bright and the limb falls limply to my side.

  I stare at the small bronze seal the soldier holds, the stop rune cut into it. The man advances on me, an ugly sneer on his face. Panicked, I stumble back, trying to reach my arm. Behind him Karis, still on the ground, scrabbles for something I can’t make out.

  The soldier lunges, this time aiming for my seal.

  There’s a thunk and the soldier freezes, his arm still extended. I don’t understand what’s happened until he tilts, falling to the ground as I scramble out of the way.

  Karis stands there, a rock clasped in her hand. She stares down at the man as if she isn’t quite sure what she did.

  “Is he...?” She trails away.

  The soldier lets out a moan.

  “Not dead,” I say.

  Karis stoops down and picks up the seal the soldier dropped and then we’re running again, away from the soldier’s prone body, even though I know what this means. He’ll tell. The magistrate will know.

  We break out from the houses, back out into the scrubland, and a sharp whistle splits the air.

  Dane and Zara stand there, not too far away.

  “Hurry,” Zara calls.

  The path before us has been swallowed by the dark, making it treacherous. I’m half afraid that when we finally reach the water, the dinghy will have disappeared, but it’s still there. Kocha is already inside. Kocha, and a young girl, clutching at his waist. I barely get a glance of a small, scared face, before she buries deeper into Kocha’s tunic.

  “Captain,” Kocha says. “You made it.”

  “Did you doubt it?”

  Dane unties our boat and pushes it off, clambering inside as it pulls away. Despite the child still clinging to him, Kocha grabs the oars and takes us out. I look back over my shoulder. I can’t see the village past the cliffs but I can make out the thin trails of smoke, and a scream carries through the night.

  We brought those soldiers here. I brought them here.

  Guilt tears me apart. This happened because of me. I caused harm, like automatons always do.

  Now all I can hope is that most of the people we left behind were able to run.

  17

  * * *

  KARIS

  We’re barely over the railing when Zara shouts at her crew to cast off. She pulls her ledger from her pocket and writes a rune in it. The sails flare so suddenly that I grab a crate to stop myself from falling.

  Ash coats the back of my blazing throat and burns scald my skin but I join the others, throwing myself into the work so I don’t have to think about anything else. Not the screaming and the cries of children we just left. Not the homes so shoddy they didn’t stand a chance against the flames. I never wanted to get involved in the lives of others.

  Caring. Zara’s voice in my head mocks me.

  She’s wrong.

  We streak out over open water, racing against the dawn that fights to lighten up the sky. Dane and Alix work beside me, and as the hours go by, I see Alix beginning to be able to flex his fingers. I still have no idea what that soldier did, but at least it wasn’t permanent. My own fingers brush the seal now in my belt pouch.

  “You three.” Zara comes toward us across the deck. “Time to take a break.”

  I straighten, my back protesting, and push my fingers through my hair, only to get a handful of ash.

  “Is there any sign of a Scriptorium ship, Captain?” Dane asks.

  Zara shakes her head. “Not yet.”

  My tired gaze wanders around the deck and lands on Kocha. He’s still with that little girl, kneeling before her as she sits on a crate, head down. Her hair reminds me of straw, so thin and dry. The ends are ragged, cut short beneath her earlobes. She’s so skinny it’s hard to tell her age but she can’t be older than ten. There’s a detached glaze to her eyes.

  “Who is she?” I ask.

  Zara follows my gaze. “She’s the package Kocha went to get.”

  Those words are as close as Zara’s ever gotten to telling us her crew’s secret. I need to know what’s going on here. What all of them aren’t saying. Why her crew has runes inked into their skin. How Zara got a pendant with Script ink. I’m sick and tired of the lies and half-truths. She kept us on board because she wanted answers. I want answers, too.

  “Captain,” I say, “you have to tell us what’s going on. You owe us that.”

  Zara’s eyes narrow. “No, Karis. This is my ship and I don’t owe you anything.”

  A flash of temper lights in my chest. I didn’t leave the Scriptorium behind to put my life in the hands of yet someone else who won’t tell me anything. I’m opening my mouth to snap back when Alix says quietly, “Please, Captain. We just want to understand.”

  We both stop. He looks tired, ash and dirt smudging his runes. But there’s still this hopeful light flickering like the flames in his eyes, refusing to dim.

  Zara sighs, something relenting in her expression. “The truth isn’t pretty,” she says. “And there’s no unlearning it once it’s out there.”

  Life hasn’t given me the privilege of ignoring hard truths. “I don’t care,” I say.

  She studies us for another long moment, and then with a shrug she turns toward her cabin. “Come with me.”

  * * *

  Zara takes us back to the front room and gestures for us to sit at the table. Ava and Finn follow us, taking up spots by their captain’s chair. Zara stares across the cabin, fiddling with her pendant, and that makes me even more uneasy than if she’d been glaring me down. Zara isn’t the type to avoid someone’s eye.

  “I ought to tell you my story first,” she finally says. “I grew up far from here, in Ariza. My parents were scholars there, experts of the Arizan Script.”

  “What was it like?” Alix asks eagerly. I forgot how little of the world Alix has seen. Not that I’ve exactly seen much of it. “Your home, I mean.”

  “Ariza? It’s a country of hills and highlands, of sandstone and a night sky that goes on forever.” Zara’s voice takes on a faraway tone, almost wistful. It makes her sound so soft I almost don’t recognize her.

  She shakes her head, her tone going hard. “Then the Scriptorium in the City of Scholars invited both of them to go there. My parents were experts at Elder Imari’s work, which influenced early Arizan and Eratian runes. The Scriptorium wanted to see what they could make of the automatons. At first my parents settled into their work well, but then I noticed how troubled they were becoming. In Ariza, the Script is used differently. It’s a tool all have access to, that make
s people’s lives better. Our cloth and our weaving reflect us all. The Script is not a power to be manipulated by the few who have money and a position. I still remember the arguments I overheard, not just between my parents but also with other Scriptmasters who would visit our villa. They didn’t agree with what the Scriptorium was using their Scriptwork for.

  “Then one day my parents brought this home.” She dangles the pendant from her fingers. The light of it casts harsh shadows against the planes of her face. “Most of the Script ink was destroyed all those centuries ago, but some vessels survived. I still don’t know where the Scriptorium found this or what they’d been planning with it, but it was bad enough that my parents decided to steal it. We tried to run, but the soldiers caught up to us. I got away. My parents didn’t. They were hauled to the Magistrate’s Library, and they never came out.”

  She looks at Ava, standing nearby, who pulls her sleeve up, not just past her wrist but all the way to her elbow. Runes create a track down her skin. But unlike Alix, where each rune is unique, every one of Ava’s says obey. They all look different, as if written by many hands, or maybe one that just couldn’t get it right.

  “That’s what the Magistrate’s Library is,” Zara says, and for once her tone hides nothing. It’s cold and dark. “They didn’t have enough Script ink left to make more automatons or to wake the old ones up, so the magistrate decided to see if he could control people with runes. He takes criminals, rebels, anyone he views as lesser, and he inks these runes into their skin. All to see if he can make the perfect, obedient soldiers.”

  Horror creeps like ice water over my skin. Matthias. I think of him. Of that easy smile he had even after our parents were gone. Of the curiosity that always won over his common sense. And they sent him there, to ink those runes into his skin.

  “But people can escape, right?” I lean forward in my chair, the wood digging into my palms.

  Zara nods. “There are cracks in the system. Ava managed to steal a key and get out. Finn found her and the two of them hid out on that island until we came across them. Others are taken out with the magistrate’s soldiers to test them in the wild. As far as I know, the runes have never worked, but some escape that way, too. We try to find those people, to get them to safety. That hideout you first stumbled into is one of our pickup places.” She looks across the cabin, and past the hardness in her eyes there’s something else: rage. Choking rage. “They don’t always make it out in time, though. I’ve seen people come out of there who refuse to eat, to speak, to sleep. That’s what happened to that little girl’s father. He managed to get out. And he died anyway.”

  I’m having a hard time breathing. It’s not rage I feel. It’s despair. Matthias could be in that place right now, while all this time I was living on a safe little island. All those years I wasted, because I wasn’t smart enough to find a way to him. He could already be gone.

  As soon as I have the thought, I reject it. I’d know if my brother was dead. I don’t know how, but the world would feel different if that happened. Matthias is a survivor.

  “Why are people allowing this?” Dane’s voice shakes. “There must be some who oppose the man.”

  “Not many people even know,” Zara says. “It’s his personal project. His secret project.”

  The way Zara is speaking... “Is he the one who actually does the work?” I whisper.

  Ava looks away. And there’s something about seeing her shy away like that that fractures my chest.

  “Yes,” Zara says. “He is.”

  This is it, the great secret behind Zara and her crew. What they’re really doing. The silence in the cabin is so thick it’s oppressive. I’ve always hated the Scriptorium and the magistrate. But I never thought that even he would be capable of something like this. Now he’s hunting us. I’ve never felt fear like this before: a cold, slimy thing coiling around my lungs, suffocating me.

  “You two should consider yourselves lucky,” Zara says. “If they didn’t think you’d be of use in the Tallis Scriptorium, you might have ended up there.” She shakes her head. “People aren’t meant to have commands written into their skin.”

  Alix glances down, running his fingers over the runes on his arm. Remembering the bronze seal in my belt pouch, I pull it out.

  Zara frowns. “What’s that?”

  I slide it across the table to her, as far away from Alix as I can. Zara picks it up and rubs it with her fingers.

  “That soldier had it,” I say. “The one who—”

  “The one who attacked us,” Alix cuts in.

  I look at him, startled. The fire in his eyes flares, and I’m reminded of those moments on Tallis when he just didn’t seem to be able to control himself.

  “The seal knocked my arm out. Because I’m not a person. I’m just a thing that has to obey commands.”

  Alix stands up so suddenly his chair falls, hitting the floor with a clatter. I open my mouth but Alix is already gone.

  18

  * * *

  ALIX

  I stalk over to the railing. Aiken and Het give me startled looks as I pass. Fear lights their eyes, fear that I thought they’d almost lost when it came to me. That should bother me. Only the anger and pain claw up my throat, shiver down my limbs, and I can’t stop it.

  Zara was right; people aren’t meant to have commands written into their skin. Except I’d be nothing without my runes. Nothing but dead metal. These commands are all that I am. I reach the railing, wrapping my hands around it so hard the wood splinters beneath my palms. It’s all so breakable. This ship. Everyone on this ship.

  And me. I might be the most breakable one of all.

  “Alix?”

  Karis steps up to the railing. I hadn’t heard her follow me across the deck. Her voice is soft. It makes me want to crack, but then I don’t know how I’d put myself back together. “Are you all right?”

  “Am I all right?” I repeat, my voice tight. I touch the rune near my shoulder. “If I’m not, it’s only because of this.”

  “Your runes don’t mean that your feelings are any less real, Alix.”

  I spin on her. “Even when you had that bracelet on, you didn’t have to obey it. You could still choose what to do. When someone writes in my tome, my body moves without me telling it. My mind is trapped inside, screaming, and I can’t do anything about it.” My voice rises, and I can’t stop it. I don’t want to stop it. “I don’t know what I am, Karis. If I was made to be real or some puppet.”

  The last time I spoke to Karis like this, we were in that cave, and I hadn’t known her, only that she looked small and scared. She’s scared now, too.

  Perhaps I want that. Then she’ll leave. Being alone has to be better than standing here, letting her see that in the end, I’m only an automaton, with obey etched into my back.

  She looks at me, and when she speaks her voice quavers, but it’s still determined. “Alix, you’re not a puppet. Your father didn’t make you as a puppet.”

  “Then why did he give me a tome?” I yell.

  Those words, which I’ve never let myself say, slip out before I can catch them.

  Karis stills. “What?”

  My anger leaks away, leaving only black despair. I slump over the railing. “If he didn’t want me to be a puppet, why did he make my tome?”

  Silence stretches between us. I’m sure that where my temper didn’t scare her off, that admittance will. Who would want to be friends with someone like me? Something like me?

  Karis’s footsteps come closer. She presses a hand against my shoulder, warm despite the night air. It reminds me of when we first met. Her touch brought me back then, too.

  “Did you ever ask him?” she asks quietly.

  How are you supposed to ask a question when the answer might destroy you? “No.” I was always too scared. Scared he’d admit it was a mistake and that I’d hate him for it. Even
more scared that he’d admit it wasn’t a mistake at all.

  The words were always there, underlying every conversation we ever had, every moment we ever shared, but it was the one question I was never brave enough to ask.

  Now I’ll never know.

  “Alix,” Karis says. “No one who thinks and acts and feels like you do, who cares like you do, could possibly not be real. Different doesn’t mean lesser. We’re here for you. Me and Dane and even the captain and her crew. And maybe it’s out there. A way to protect you from your tome. We could find it if we just look for it.”

  I raise my head and meet her eyes. They’re steady. Stubborn. Passionate.

  She didn’t leave. She’s still here, standing beside me. I’m not sure I want to give my heart that hope of freedom, when I don’t know if it will ever come true, but I feel it anyway. Throbbing inside of me like the heartbeat I don’t have.

  I want it. I want it more than I can bear.

  “Alix.”

  We both turn at Zara’s voice. I shift, awkward. Having Karis see me like that was one thing. I’m embarrassed Zara saw it, too. I’m opening my mouth to apologize when she tosses me something. I fumble but catch it and stare down at the leather-bound volume in my hands, my seal flaring in my chest.

  My tome.

  Zara grins. “You don’t have to look that surprised.”

  “But...why?” I ask.

  “I shouldn’t have taken it from you in the first place. I shouldn’t have used it. I didn’t realize who you were when we first met, and that’s on me. I’m sorry.” She nods at Karis. “She’s right. You’re more than those runes in your skin. All my crew are, and being made of metal doesn’t change that. Don’t ever let them define you on their terms. This is your life to live.”

  My life. I want to believe those words desperately, that no matter what I am or how I started, that what I have right now is mine. Standing here beside them, on this ship, I am so far from anything I imagined possible. For the first time I think it is.