The Orphan Queen (37 page)

There was only one thing I needed to find: a signet ring, far too small for my finger now. My father had given it to me on my seventh birthday, after I'd made a few too many attempts to take his much larger one. I'd been wearing it when I'd awakened that night, and since then I'd kept it on a chain, hidden among my most personal belongings.

I squeezed the small ring in my hand, the ridges sharp even through my leather gloves, and then looped the chain over my head. The ring thumped on my breastbone. “Let's go!” I called.

Rain misted across the bailey as we lit candles and tucked them inside rusted old lanterns. As quickly as we dared in the
dark, in the storm, we hurried down the mountain and raced toward Skyvale below.

On a ridge overlooking the city, I halted, breath steaming in the cold air. The other four stopped at my sides. Hands fell into mine as they gasped. Theresa let out a sob.

Flames lit the western sky, all red and orange and gold as they reached toward the swirling clouds. Sparks scattered like stars. The forest was burning, whipped into a blaze under the shrieking wind. Heat billowed over the valley, brushing the mountainside, bringing with it the stink of smoke and wraith, a miasma that coiled up the back of my nose and made my head spin. Even from here, I could hear the roar of the fire, and the screams that wouldn't be drowned out.

Every streetlamp glowed in the city below, as though it, too, had been set alight. Though the mirrors of Skyvale faced away from us, the glow of the fire's reflected light shone all around them like a halo. Streams of people flowed from the city gates, pouring into the refugee camps and toward the mountains.

“What's happening?” Connor shielded his face with his forearm.

“They're fleeing.” I urged the Ospreys onward. “I need to hurry. You four don't have to go with me. You can help people to safety in the woods. Try to organize them and find others who can help you. I'll find you after it's over.”

“After
what's
over?” asked Kevin. “Are you going to fight the wraith beast?”

I glanced at the lit city, the palace, the clock tower, the darker patches of the Flags and Greenstone. “I'm going to find it, anyway. It's calling my name. I'm the only one who needs to go.”

“I don't want to leave you,” said Connor. “What if you get hurt?”

I squeezed his shoulder. “It's all right. Help people. I'll find you at one of our usual spots in the city. You know them, Rees?”

Theresa nodded. Smoke, or something else, made tears glimmer in her eyes. “Be safe.”

I hugged each of my friends and left my bag with them; I wore my weapons on my hips, my notebook in my pocket, and my ring around my neck. Black Knife's mask waited in a belt loop.

Gravity pulled me down the mountain. I ran as fast as I could until I hit the first wave of refugees—they were all refugees now—and stopped to point them toward where I'd left my Ospreys.

“There are people who can help you find shelter.” I had to shout over the wind and rain and roar of fire devouring the forest beyond the city. How long would this side be safe? Even the driving rain wasn't dousing the fire with the wind stirring everything so thoroughly.

Wet and shivering, the refugees thanked me and pulled one another farther up the ancient road.

I ran, pausing to urge people onward, promise them hope waited just above.

The minutes stretched longer. My flight down the mountain seemed to take twice as long as the hike up, but every time I spurred myself faster, my feet caught roots and tangles of brush, as though the mountain conspired to keep me up here.

“Wilhelmina!”
The unearthly voice boomed from somewhere below, louder than thunder.
“Wilhelmina Korte!”

The sound of the wraith screaming my name made me
shudder, but I didn't stop. I didn't slow. I didn't let anything break my stride until I finally reached the base of the mountain where a thick mass of people pushed and shoved their way into the forest.

Babies and children wailed as their parents pulled them along, urging them not to look up or behind, or anywhere but the road straight ahead. People carried baskets and bags of clothes and supplies. Others attempted to herd horses and cows with little success. Screams and sobbing blended into the terrible cacophony of Skyvale falling apart.

“Stay on the road!” I cupped my hands around my mouth as I moved along the edge of the crowd. “There's help on the mountain. There's shelter. But stay on the road.”

My shouts were hardly worth it. No one listened. People pushed and shoved, trampling one another to reach the safety of the mountains. What could I do? I had to get into the city, but this exodus was on the verge of becoming a riot. But who was I? No one to them.

Unless I was Black Knife.

I pulled his mask over my head, immediately enveloped in the soft musky scent of boy. With my sword out, I stepped into a shard of light.

Someone pointed. “It's Black Knife!”

Immediately, people began to crowd me, reach for me, and touch me as they had before, but I shouted for them to back up and brandished my sword.

“You, you, and you.” I pointed to a handful of people who looked my age. “Gather everyone you know and get this crowd under control. Get people back on their feet. And you four”—I
nodded at a clutch of children, maybe Connor's age—“tell everyone that Black Knife is promising safety in the mountain, but they must stop fighting one another. No one dies tonight.”

The children and teenagers ran off, and I moved down the mob of people, giving others the same instructions. I couldn't tell whether the crowd was calming, and I couldn't hear much over the din of voices and fire and roaring thunder, but I hoped with everything inside me that the people I'd recruited to help would be successful.

At last I reached the city wall. The gate was blocked, too many people trying to escape, so I hurled my grappling hook over the parapets and climbed up.

“Wilhelmina!”
The deep voice came from everywhere, rumbling through my head until it pulsed behind my eyes.

I gasped as I grabbed hold of the stone parapet, hooked a leg over, and finally rolled onto the walkway.

There was no time to catch my breath. I scrambled to my feet and looped my climbing line, and once it was secure, I began to run along the edge of the city. Guard tower doors hung open, leaving my path unblocked.

My sword in one hand, a stolen torch in the other, I rounded the easternmost district, sparing only glances for the chaos that waited inside.

Red Flag burned, homes and shops and inns. Wraith wolves and bears lumbered through the streets, fighting, chasing people as they ran toward the city gates. People cried out for help, splashing through blood in the streets. A wraith cat yowled and pounced on a fleeing man, who threw his young son out before him. The boy tumbled to the ground, froze, and reached for his
father, already half disappeared into the beast's jaws.

I hesitated, struggling to decide whether to leap down and help, but this was far from the only horror happening in the city. Somewhere, my wraith creature screamed for me.

Trumpets stole the decision. Indigo-coated men raced into the street, brandishing swords and crossbows and torches. They fell on the wraith beasts without mercy, slicing and stabbing the howling creatures. A few men hurried to pull the boy away from his father's corpse.

I continued onward, uncertain where I was going. Somewhere high. Somewhere I could defend myself.

Rain poured down my face and neck, making the mask stick to my skin. I pushed myself faster through the wet night, coughing against the smoke and stink of wraith.

“Wilhelmina Korte!”
The voice came from deeper within the city, and I pursued it through the drowning city of mirrors. Glass gleamed and glowed with the blaze to the west, illuminating the city as surely as sunlight. My heart was thunder in my ears, matched by the beat of my boots on the stone ramparts. My sword weighed me down, bouncing on my thigh, but I didn't throw it off; I might still need it.

Who knew what waited for me down there?

I kept running.

More gruesome scenes played within neighborhoods below, people fleeing the prowling wraith beasts. Glowmen ran rampant through the city, urging the beasts onward. Several buildings were gutted, hollowed out by
something
rampaging through them. Stone and wood and bricks littered the cracked streets. Here and there, it looked as though the pieces crept toward one
another, as though to reassemble; but that might have been the mist and rain playing tricks on my eyes.

“Wilhelmina!”
The keening that followed pierced the noise of fire and screams and rain. Pitched higher and higher, the voice shrieked and rang in my ears.

From Hawksbill out, every mirror in the city shattered. Glass blew from windows and frames and walls, and rained into Skyvale in gold-glittering shards.

I threw my torch in front of me and collapsed into a ball on the walkway, covering the back of my neck with my linked hands. Sparks of pain flew across my back and hands and head, coming from the mirror I'd been standing next to. I squeezed my eyes tightly shut, clenching my jaw against the fire of glass slicing open my skin. My gloves and clothes took the worst of it, though; I was lucky.

Moments of deafening silence chased the ear-numbing scream. The clatter of glass hitting the ground was faint, faraway.

My skin felt on fire as I grabbed my torch and sat up. The flame wavered in the rain, but didn't die.

All around me was a shining field of glass shards, bright in the firelight. The blaze in the west blew closer, billowing heat and sparks.

Aching, I climbed back to my feet and ran through the glass, which crunched under my boots, making me slip where slivers lodged into the soles. A few times, I had to stop and pry out pieces that sliced through, scraping my feet. My fingers throbbed from the pressure it took to remove the glass.

Finally, I found a good place to leave the city wall. A wash
line had been stretched from a cheap housing building to the wall—illegal, but not enough of a problem anyone cared to do anything about. I tested the line's strength—it would hold—and held my sheathed sword above my head, over the line. I abandoned my torch and zipped downward, onto the eastern side of a building.

I sprinted toward Hawksbill, gasping at the reek of fire and smoke and wraith. The odor only grew stronger as I leapt from rooftop to rooftop through Thornton. Everywhere in the streets, I saw bloodied people carrying one another to safety. The Indigo Army was spread thin, but there were always at least two indigo-coated men in sight. Though many of those men now lay dead in the streets.

The Hawksbill wall stretched before me, lamps still burning even with the windshields blown out. I took my usual route onto the wall, wincing when glass cut through my gloves and trouser knees as I reached the top.

I couldn't see much farther than the mansions nearest the wall, thanks to smoke and mist, but I had enough visibility to tell that the rich district had been devastated. Blackened gardens, shattered glass, toppled statues: that was only the beginning. Nothing was how I'd left it just hours ago.

“Wilhelmina!”
It came from so close now. Hot wind cut through the rain, and I couldn't help but imagine it was the beast's breath on my cheek.

“I'm coming!” The words ripped from my throat before I could consider the wisdom. But maybe if it knew I was here, it would stop this destruction.

Wind tore at my mask and pushed between my fingers; if I
lifted up my arms, I might be able to fly.

Tendrils of heavy, white mist wove around the cracked columns and statues of a nearby mansion, and the screaming became a whisper. My name fell into the cracks of other sounds: between the splashes of a fountain, the crackles of the fire, and the gasps of my breath.

“Wilhelmina. Wilhelmina. Wilhelmina.”

The whole world was calling my name.

No, not the whole world—just the wraith I'd brought to life.

All this mist was here from the wraithland, and it was
alive
. Sentient. I hadn't created a beast, but
living wraith
. It stank, sharp and acrid and toxic, and even as I watched, the stone statues twitched and began to move, while rose beds—those that hadn't yet burned—began to petrify.

Wraith was everywhere in this city, and it had come to find me.

I stretched out my hands to encompass the whole area, just as I had in the wraithland.
“Go back to sleep.”

“No.”
The world spiraled into a thousand voices.
“Please. We'll die.”

It was going to
argue
with me?

But even as I was about to give the order again, feathers of mist began to break off and sink to the ground, lifeless but still toxic.

No—no, this was a bad plan.

“Stop!”
I shouted.
“Wake up! Stay awake.”

The air shimmered and thunder struck, and life crackled down the tendrils of wraith.

“Become solid!”

The odor of wraith seared my nose so that my eyes watered and I couldn't see straight, but when I wiped at my eyes, the white mist was coalescing in the street. Heavy, pained groaning came from the wraith as wisps of mist flew at it from all over the city.

“Wilhelmina.”
Its voice grew less wild, more contained as the wraith amalgamated into a single, solid mass.

Head spinning, I hooked my grappling hook onto the wall and began descending to the street. If this corporeal thing was just as destructive as the incorporeal, I needed to be ready to command it—or fight it.

Powdered glass crunched under my boots when I landed and took a few tentative strides toward the swirling mist. My hand stayed on my sword. My glare stayed on the wraith. Distant were the sounds of flames and screams and thunder; my focus tunneled on the pitiful cries the wraith made, the desperate way it said my name as though I'd save it from this torture.