Dark Metropolis (21 page)

F
reddy took Sigi’s hand, and then Arabella’s. Sigi’s was cold, but her face was almost back to normal now, her eyes bright and strong.

In theory, he knew precisely what to do. He needed to take the thread connecting him to Sigi and connect it to Arabella. He thought he could use the threads as a conduit, trading her life for Sigi’s fated death. Then he would sever both threads. If he was able to do this, he would no longer be just a reviver. He might find other ways to save lives in the future, use his magic in ways Gerik and Uncle never imagined—redeem himself for all his unintentional sins.

“Have you said your good-byes?” he asked Arabella.

“Are you sure this will work?” Sigi grabbed Nan’s arm.

“Yes,” he said, even if it wasn’t quite true.

Arabella lay on the floor and shut her eyes. “I don’t want to
fall
when I die,” she said. She reached for Sigi’s other hand. “I’m ready.”

“Oh, Mother, stop,” Sigi said, starting to cry. “I can’t stand it.”

Arabella almost—
almost
—looked pleased, as if all she had wanted in life was to hear Sigi cry on her deathbed.

He let the magic flow. Warmth spread to him from Arabella and then into Sigi, much more vibrant than the magic he felt when he revived the dead. He had always given life, and now he was taking it first. His body felt as pliable as jelly, his senses fuzzy, his connection to the ground weak. But none of this was bad.

This was the strongest magic he had ever felt.

And now the threads. He severed them, breaking the spell. Arabella was gone. Sigi was still here. He had done it.

His head was still full of the dizzying magic, and he reached for the ground. Where was it? This was as bad as when he brought Nan back. No…worse. His stomach convulsed, his eyes blurred.

“No,” he spat out. It was always this—the thing he loved, the thing he was best at, was also his undoing. He loved his magic, and yet it was killing him. The room spun worse than ever. “I need to—”

He felt an arm—probably Nan’s, thin as it was—support his shoulders.

“Freddy,” she said firmly. “You look like you want to faint.”

“I won’t,” he insisted, but she was right. He was so very weak. “I’m…fine,” he managed, and she helped him find the floor.

“
H
e’s out.” Nan was holding him up.

“Well, I can’t blame him.” Sigi was staring at her mother. “He did it.” She bowed her head. “I—I can’t believe—”

“We have to get Freddy out of here.” Nan spoke softly to Sigi, but she looked at the Valkenraths. “Just wait here a moment.”

Nan stalked over to Rory. He was sitting on the ground—something she doubted he’d done in a while—with his hands crossed over his knees. He was profoundly quiet while Gerik kept going on about “that time when” and “remember how Father…” He sounded apologetic and distressed, but when Nan approached them, he broke off and looked angry.

“If you hadn’t started all of this…” he said. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now. Everything’s going to hell. And you—”

Nan was standing, patient and strangely calm.

“Stop looking at me like that,” Gerik snapped. “You won’t be so pleased when you see what you’ve unleashed—when we’re dealing with civil war and more starvation. Oh, the people will certainly appreciate what you’ve done then.”

Behind Gerik, Rory slowly stood and put a hand on his brother’s shoulder, quieting him. “You said I was dead inside, Nan Davies.” Rory always said her last name, softly, almost mockingly. “But I saw the glittering world of my youth disappear when the empire fell. I fought for what I believed in then. I saw men die in front of my eyes. I saw arms and legs blown off. This war I opposed, because I already knew what war could do. You would have been a little girl. You might recall the starving children in the streets, the people peeling bark off trees to make soup. I was willing to do whatever it took to help the city prosper, and I don’t regret dying with that choice on my head. I hope your revolution has a plan, or you will see it all happen again.”

“I wouldn’t have shot you,” she said. “I was willing to work with you. But this magic had to stop. And I think you understand that.”

“I believe what you have told me. I just hope your powers will carry you past this point, because all you’ve created tonight is chaos.” He turned away. “I won’t be here to find out. Freddy needs to let me go.”

“Not yet,” Gerik said. “What do I do about all this mess?”

Rory looked at him. “You’re resilient, Ger. Just run like hell and lie low. The people aren’t going to be kind to you when they find out what’s happened.”

Gerik made a grumbling sound and glanced back. “Freddy…” he said, tugging the tip of his mustache. Freddy was coming to, Sigi offering a hand to get him to his feet.

Rory walked over, with Gerik just behind him.

“Finish the job, Freddy,” Rory said. “I don’t want to watch all this break down.” He noticed the prone remains of Arabella a short distance away, her face frozen in what was almost a smile, and he frowned.

“Just—like that?” Freddy asked. The pain of this responsibility was plain on his face.

“Just like that. I want to die standing.”

“It’s easier”—he held out a hand—“if I can touch.”

Rory looked at Gerik one last time. He shook his brother’s hand. Gerik looked crumpled, his face quite red. Then Rory touched Freddy’s fingers. Freddy’s breath caught, and the life seemed to be drawn out of Rory, deadening his eyes and loosening his stance. Gerik caught him as he fell.

“Lad, I—I’m sorry—” Gerik began.

“Don’t try to turn around and apologize now. There’s nothing you can say to me.”

“I’m going straight to your parents’ house,” Gerik said. “I’ll make sure they get out safely. They might need protection until the dust settles.”

Freddy nodded curtly. “They’d better be safe. None of this was their fault.”

“You stay safe, too,” Gerik said.

“We all need to go,” Nan said, taking Freddy by one rigid shoulder. “Freddy, come with us.”

T
hea and her father made it to the top of the stairs, the people behind them shoving Thea in their rush to escape. The workers were pouring out of every door and window, and Thea saw people in plain clothes stopping them as they emerged, gently questioning some, directing others. She recognized the man with the mustache from the Café Rouge.

The revolutionaries
were
here. Thank heavens. But what were they doing? A man was standing on the hood of a car, shouting, “This is your one chance to fight back! Everyone in uniform is your enemy!” A delivery truck pulled up, and a man hopped out and opened the back to reveal piles of bats and sticks. He began pressing them into every empty hand. Some of the revolutionaries themselves had pistols and shotguns in plain sight. Thea covered her grubby purse with her hand, conscious of the unused gun she carried.

Her father had stopped in his tracks when he came out into the open air. The sky was scattered with clouds that broke just to reveal half a moon, and he was staring upward.

“Father, we have to hurry. We have to find Mother, and it’s dangerous here.”

“We are…we are,” he said. He kept looking up as she tugged him forward.

“I remember this,” he murmured. “The city—the sky—” He wiped his eyes. “Your mother…I can almost feel her.”

“She’s just a few miles away,” Thea said. “We’ll see her soon.”

A siren howled in the distance.

She ran for the front gate, which was flung open to the street.
The asylum was a few miles away, but if they could just get away from the crowds and keep moving, they’d be all right.

Thea kept expecting that they’d soon reach the city streets she knew, the lonely streets where the only sounds were distant, the windows were dark, and dew clung to the occasional patches of grass. But these streets never seemed to appear. The revolutionaries were everywhere, forming loose barriers of humanity, and the workers were joining them to fight. It was more mob than army, but some of them held serious firepower, and she saw a girl forming balls of light from thin air. Thea had never seen anyone work magic out on the street before, and it seemed to promise more to come.

She heard an increasing amount of distant noise—shouting and gunfire. Flustered, she turned east when she meant west, and they had to backtrack a block.

The noises seemed to be getting closer quickly, and then she heard gunfire ahead, on Kline Street.

“Oh no,” she said, turning back around the way they’d just come. “Maybe we can go around. The asylum is near the hospital, and it should be safe there.”

They hadn’t gotten far when they heard a disconcerting rumbling behind them, like an automobile but deeper and slower, and a group of workers came running, one clutching his chest with a bloody hand, another with blood trickling down his head. Thea had barely registered this when her father suddenly shoved her to the ground. She stayed down, scraped up and gasping, as he knocked a trash can in front of her. The rumbling was very close, and a volley of shots sounded all around her.

I’m going to die, I’m going to die—

The shots rang in her ears, and her mind was empty of everything but the thought that it could all end, any second, one bullet to her head or her heart—

Then the shots ceased, and the rumbling moved on.

She peered out beyond the trash can. Her father was on the ground. She let out a cry, checked behind her to be sure it was really safe, and ran to his side. He was flat on his back, a big bloody hole punched in his chest, close to his heart. He was still moving and conscious.

An ugly sound of fear came out of her throat. It wasn’t just that he’d been hurt. It was seeing it—seeing him live through this. Seeing him move his arms and sit up and clutch his chest. That wound would have killed anyone—unless he was already dead.

For all the explanations she’d heard of how her father was dead, for all that she’d told Freddy she understood she must let him go, a part of her had still brushed aside the truth of it.

Seeing him live through this told her more clearly than words could have that he was truly, truly dead. She was alive and he was dead, even though both of them were moving and speaking.

He was clutching his chest, his breathing rough.

“Does it hurt?” She didn’t know what to ask. “Should I do something?”

“No, I—” His voice sounded like something blocked it, and he cleared his throat and coughed blood into his sleeve. “I’ll manage. It’s not much longer—is it?”

She bit her lip hard and shook her head. She helped him to his feet.

He wasn’t the same anymore, though. He didn’t speak now; it seemed to take all his concentration to keep moving. He didn’t appear to be bleeding as much as a living person would, but he still kept his hand covering the wound. He put his other arm around her.

“I love you, Thea,” he said. “I’m so sorry…all those years growing up without me—all the things we won’t have time—”

“No—don’t say those things! Father—”

“I need to rest,” he said.

“But Mother
must
see you! She’s the one who is sick because of you; she’s the one who knew you were alive….” Thea buried her face in her hands.

“I can’t—” The words came painfully, and she didn’t want to cause him pain, but she also needed him to speak; she wouldn’t be denied his voice so close to the end. “I can’t die this way, but I can be hurt. And I am hurt. I need time to knit back together….I know I don’t have that time. I don’t know what awaits me on the other side, but I know there will always be love between you and me and your mother. And sometimes…we just have to accept the way things are. We have to accept that I’m leaving you. And we have to accept that maybe…we can’t get to your mother.”

“It’s not far,” she insisted, trying not to choke on her words. “It’s not far now. I—I could bring her to you. But I don’t want to leave you.”

He walked into a narrow alley and sat down heavily. “I’d like that,” he said, his eyes glazed. “How I’d like to see her. I can just rest a moment.”

“Okay,” she said. “Okay. Stay here.” She quickly kissed his head. “I love you, too, Father. I’ll be back very soon.”