The Hidden Twin (14 page)

Mol's blisters, he's looking at my lips. Could he be considering kissing me? My mouth is dry. Is it possible? Has a human being ever kissed a redwing before?

“I—” I start. “Are you going to kiss me?”

He doesn't blink. “I was thinking about it. Would that be all right with you?”

I swallow. “I might burst into flames.”

“Is that supposed to dissuade me?”

“Is it allowed?” I glance toward the closed door. “Haven't you taken a—a vow of—?”

He rests his mouth against my cheek. “Have you?”

“Holy Rasus,” I say.

Zahi whispers into my good ear. “You don't have to take that vow until they give you the purple robes. You know that, right?”

I tingle, my mind in disarray.
I shouldn't be here.
He thinks I'm Jey. What will I do if he finds the real Jey Fairweather, out there in the world, wearing her elegant clothes? My stomach twists.

And then
growls
with the ferocity of a territorial raptor. I feel the color drain from my face. In all the penny pulps I've read, the sweeping romantic scene has never once been preceded by the heroine's stomach growling.

Zahi bursts into laughter. “Sweet Ver, are you hungry?”

I bark out an awkward laugh. “I suppose I am.”

He throws his head backwards and slaps his thighs. “Why didn't you say so? Come on.” He rises, fiddling with the belt of his robe. “Forget meditation. Let's get some food.”

“I—” I get to my feet. “Well—”

“We're surely late for the evening meal,” he says. “We'll just have to go elsewhere. Are you up for venturing out into the wide world?”

My mind fizzes. If the evening meal is under way, Bonner is no longer lurking in the vestibule. Leaving the temple with Zahi might be my best chance at remaining undetected. My stomach growls again.

“All right.” And it's not just my stomach or my nerves; right now, I want to follow Zahi Zan into the outside world. To eat food with him. To—

Mol's butt, he's taking off his robe. And … he's wearing clothes under there. The rust-colored waistcoat I can still picture against a backdrop of impossible green.

I blink. “You've got your regular clothes on,” I point out helpfully.

“Yes, you can hang your robe in here.” He shakes the creases out of the blue fabric. “I promise no one will take it.” Now he sees my face. “What's the matter?”

“Nothing, I just—this place we're going—could I just wear this? Do they allow priests?”

Some of the candles have nearly burned down, their guttering casting sparks in the shadows. Zahi gives me that puzzled look I remember from the gardens on Roet Island. “I'm not sure I've ever seen a tavern displaying a ‘No Priests Allowed' sign,” he says. “But just leave your robe here and wear what you've got on under—”

I shift uncomfortably.

“Under—” He swallows. I wonder if he can see how red my face is in the low light. “Yes.” He clears his throat. “I, uh, I see. I mean, I don't
see,
I—” He opens the door, wiping his hands on his thighs. “It's fine. Just wear that.”

*   *   *

The Feather & Scuttle must, in some way, be a tavern. The bodies in the shadows—leaning, laughing, raising glass to mouth—are familiar. But it all seems just a little off. A furtiveness to the shiny eyes, a jagged edge to the music, the flutter of the nearly invisible in the veiled corners of the room.

We descend. Outside, twilight lingers, but in here, it is already night, black walls glittering in a strange orange light that pulses between fan blades on the ceiling.

I adjust my folds of blue fabric. I am certainly disguised, but that doesn't mean I don't stick out. The scars on my back itch. I mustn't stay long.

I follow Zahi to the bar, where he leans on his elbows, twisting his head toward me. “Snowflake?”

I raise one eyebrow. “Yes, darling?”

He laughs and turns back to the pale, stooped man wiping glasses with a rag. “Two snowflakes,” he says. “And a private room, please. And food. Dear Rasus, get us something to eat.”

“Your Excellency.” The man nods. I lean back against the counter, watching hair, shoulders, arms, teeth, all pulsing in the orange light. Someone shrieks and spills a drink. A cluster of people laughs. Fashion here mimics the streets above with a sneer. Collars are high, necklines are low, and more than one person sports gauzy wings with wire frames and a naked back streaked with red.

“Are they … are they dressed as redwings?”

Zahi snorts, casting a dismissive eye. “Real rebels, aren't they? This place attracts them. Dark, low, hidden. Never doing anything
real
for this city. They're like bugs.”

I breathe, flexing my nervousness out through my fingers. “So now would not be a good time to show you my antennae?”

He looks at me incredulously as the bartender pushes two slender blue glasses toward us. “You're not going to lecture me on how beneficial bugs are for our soil? You're flirting instead?”

“My mistake. I thought lecturing about soil health
was
how one flirted. I was trying to avoid it.”

He laughs and hands me a glass. It's cold.

I feel eyes, orange in the light, follow us as we cross the room. Zahi pushes aside a generous curtain to reveal a bare table, clean, and a curved, cushioned bench against the wall. A woman with long, spidery lace cuffs follows us and leaves a tray of bread and pickled vegetables.

I devour them. My snowflake, which I think is just ice water with a bit of mint, also disappears quickly.

Zahi sips from his own blue glass. “So tell me about your family.”

“I'd rather hear about your family,” I say, crunching a briny carrot.

He tips his head back. “Everyone knows all about my family, don't they? I think it's actually required knowledge to graduate Third School.”

I move closer to him. “I failed Third School.”

“Ah, I knew you had a dark secret.” He touches my face. I want to steer the conversation toward the bonescorch, maybe the Beautiful Ones. But I also want him to keep touching my face. “Well,” he says, “my mother is the leader of the nation and my father commands her armies. A love story as old as time. I've got an older brother, who isn't nearly as handsome as I am, who is next in line for the throne, and I hope he lives a very long time so I never have to have any responsibilities.”

“Except the Temple,” I say.

“Right, the Temple.” He leans in and presses his lips against mine. And just like that, everything is dull and muffled and far away except him—warm, close, real.

It doesn't last as long as I'd like, but it is a kiss the world can never take away. Zahi leans back. “I think this whole Temple thing might be a phase I'm going through.”

And his smile is so pretty, and so sly, that suddenly I can do nothing but lunge forward for another kiss, which turns into two and three and more, each deeper and more searching until I realize I've worked all the buttons on his shirt open and he has his arms around me and his fingers are starting to slide the smooth blue fabric of my priest's robe away from my neck—

My scars.

I can't let him find my scars. It takes all my will to pull away from him. He blinks, relaxes, pulls back.

“I'm sorry,” I say. “I—”

“No, please, I'm sorry,” he says. “I must have misread your … signals.”

We both unconsciously look down at his naked chest. And laugh.

“Oh, Rasus,” I say. “That shirt's probably worth more than my whole wardrobe.”

“It probably is,” he says.

I get to my feet. “I should go.”

He rises as well, and nods. A sad half smile flickers. “I understand.”

I take his hands. “No, you don't,” I say. “But maybe someday you will.”

 

eleven

The sun is well below the horizon when I approach our house on Saltball Street. I don't mind traveling in darkness; as well as these blue robes disguise me, they are rather conspicuous. At least the hood hides my face, though it is not customary for brothers and sisters to wear their hoods up all the time.

I am surprised to find the house dark, and a queasiness slips around in my guts for just a moment.
Calm yourself. No reason to think anything is amiss.
Despite Bonner's threats, the human sibling of a redwing is blameless. Anyone who has ever read Mother May can tell you that. That child is as innocent as a sunrise and, if anything, is to be pitied and protected because of her despicable twin. Now that I am dead, Jey has nothing to fear.

She has gone out with friends tonight, taking advantage of Papa's absence to exercise her freedom, that is all. Just as I have. I must confess I am a little hurt she can be out reveling while I am, as far as she knows, still missing.

But my mind is uneasy as I walk the path to our door. Some part of it sees the overturned flowerpot, the kicked-up stones, but I don't let myself admit something is wrong until I depress the latch on our door to find it swinging from one hinge.

A strange smell hits me as I enter the kitchen. No, more like the absence of smells. Papa's earth-covered boots, the floral fragrance that clings to him, Jey's perfume, coal dust from the cookstove, the lingering scents of breakfasts and suppers.

I take in the room. The heavy table askew. A chair on its back. The door to Jey's room open wide, as she never would have left it.

No.

I rush through the doorway to find her bed unmade and her armoire full. A graceful, curving vase—a prized birthday present from our father—is in pieces on the floor, Jey's meticulously ash-grown blue daisies scattered and broken.

She is gone.

Stomach churning, I gather what remains of the daisies and bring them into the kitchen. At the sink, I fill a tin cup with water and cut the broken stems with a pair of sharp scissors. My efforts don't matter; their lives ended days ago. Still, as my nerves prick my skin and my mind swirls, it helps to do something.

I right the chair and lean forward, nausea overtaking me in little waves. The wood grain squirms as I gaze vaguely at our kitchen table.

I should have run back here.

As soon as I woke up in that pile of worms, I should have run to Saltball Street. Why did I waste so much time at the Temple? What terrible things were happening to Jey while I kissed a young man who shouldn't even know I exist?

I sit, running my hands over the table's uneven wooden surface. I've never been connected to a name before, the name this house bears, and now people know who I am—the Beautiful Ones, Nara Blake, Zahi, who knows who else? I have taken risks and exposed myself, and now my sister is gone.

But I will find her. And the first person I'll ask is that son of a stritch, Bonner.

I rise, determination burning my lungs, and take two steps toward the door. A sudden crash from the Dome freezes me.
Someone is here.

I move carefully to the ladder at the back of the kitchen and place a hand on a metal rung at shoulder height. I cast my ears into the ringing silence. Nothing more. Probably one of the raptors knocking my books over again.

I peer up into the darkness. “Jey?” The Dome breathes only silence for another moment, then—

CLANG.

The ladder shudders as a body thumps down, two rungs at a time, landing with a jarring knock. The woman is thin-framed but formidable, towering over me in a long, tight coat as black as night fog. “There you are,” she snaps; then her red mouth frowns. “What the hell happened here?”

I cross my arms. “Uh—you trashed my house?”

“Enough of this.” She draws a dull-surfaced pistol from a holster around her hips.

“Mol's bulging coin purse!” I yelp, skidding across the floor toward the broken doorway.

“Damn it!” the woman yells, her voice edged with a rasp. “Get back here!”

No one in the history of the world has ever turned around in response to “get back here,” especially not when it is said in a menacing tone by someone holding a pistol. However, any inclination I might have had to accede to her request dies quickly when a bone-rattling explosion rocks my ears. She has fired the damn thing at me!

I kick the swinging door out of the way and stumble out into the night. A couple of raptors take off from the pitch of a roof across the street as I sprint through the beams of the streetlamp that guards our fence, the woman fast behind me. The cobblestones push on my feet, heavy with the gardener's boots that miraculously survived the boiling lake.

The second bullet doesn't miss. I feel the piercing flame the moment I hear the shot, an eruption of pain that staggers my whole body. At first, as I fall sideways into a low stone window frame, I don't even know where I've been shot. But when I try to push forward, my left leg buckles. The ball is lodged somewhere in my thigh.
Sweet Rasus, let it not bleed very much.
This is the first prayer my brain slings forth.
Boil me, slice my ears, cover me with maggots if you will. But black blood pouring from a bullet wound—no robes in all of Caldaras would cover that up.

I brace myself against the wall. No open doors, no busy market, no public park that might have offered a hiding place. I either run, or I—don't.

I run. Left and right, through lamplight and shadow, the tilt of Caldaras City keeping my mind slanted and my elbows flapping for balance. My thigh screams, dripping hot down my leg under my robes, but I have no other choice. I lurch past couples, ladies in deep conversation, and dapper gentlemen, some of whom look at me sideways as though I might be a purse snatcher. But my priest's attire is enough to keep the suspicious looks from becoming cries for a city guard.

The nighttime mist dampens my face. The woman in black keeps pace about a block behind me. Maybe she's waiting to see where I run to, which is a decision I need to make quickly.