Tell the Wind and Fire(87)

The guards called in reinforcements. With every extra soldier, the mob increased by ten or twenty people. One of the sans-merci drew a weapon, and then glanced toward a light—not the light of my rings or my sword, but the light of someone’s camera.

Everyone in the crowd knew that a picture or a video of me being murdered by someone wearing the colors of the city’s liberators would be seen by every soul in both cities within a day.

I lit my sword with fire and struck down the guard’s weapon, and nobody else drew one. I let myself breathe.

I looked up at the tower, at the shining glass and gold. I wondered if Ethan could see me. I had never hoped more that he could.

The mob grew and grew, greedy for a spectacle. I knew how easy it would be for the mob or the rebels to get out of hand, for someone to decide that eliminating me would solve more problems than it caused. I knew that I did not have long before Aunt Leila came.

I was not expecting who came first.

I saw her coming from far away, the saffron yellow of today’s hijab like a small sun, and her eyes sparkling beneath it. I expected her to stay a discreet distance away, but she kept moving closer. I thought she had come to watch, but she had come to speak.

Others made the same mistake I did, and they let her push to the front of the crowd. She did not stop there. She only stopped when she was standing beside me with her feet planted and her chin up.

“I am Nadiya Zamani,” said Nadiya. “The Golden Thread in the Dark is my friend. And Ethan Stryker was my comrade in arms. We were the ones who passed out pamphlets against the rule of Light in the Village, who discovered where the Esmond girl was being kept, who helped the Robesons get to the Light city when the guards were after them. Ethan Stryker is our ally.”

She glanced at me, her eyes glinting in the afternoon sun, and she grinned. I saw brown-brick buildings in the distance, saw the glitter of sunshine on the tin warehouse roofs, but mostly what I saw was a sea of people, and the tide turning our way.

Nadiya knew how to work the crowd as well as I ever had. She made it sound as if we had been a pair, me and Ethan, comrades in arms as well as lovers, fighting for fraternity, liberty, and equality.

It made for a beautiful love story, the idea of us working together smoothly, instead of all the jagged misunderstandings that made up the truth of our lives.

Approving murmurs rippled through the crowd, like we were being surrounded by a sea turning calm.

A voice burst out. “Is that how it was?”

I could not finesse them the way Nadiya did or command them the way Aunt Leila did. I had tried that. I was trying something else now.

I took a deep breath and decided to be brave and stupid. I said, “No.”

And around me the sounds of a storm rose.

“She’s lying to spare Stryker.”

“They’re all liars, and worse.”

They wanted it to have been as clear-cut as heroism, or as straightforward as villainy. Anyone who said that it was not simple branded themselves a villain, guilty of not telling people what they wanted to hear.

“No, but it isn’t what you think,” I shouted. “He’s not what you think. Listen.”

“Why don’t you shut up instead?” a man’s voice asked.

“Don’t tell the Golden Thread in the Dark to shut up!”

A woman snapped, her voice as sweetly sympathetic as a blade, “You should be ashamed of yourself!”

“Make way,” called a voice in the teeming, jostling crowd, over the shouts of reprimand and support, “for the hero of Green-Wood, for the man escaped from the cages!”

I caught my breath as I saw the stooped shoulders and silver head I loved. I had forgotten that when my Aunt Leila made me a hero and a symbol of revolution the day Mark Stryker had died, I had not been the only one up there on that stage.

“There, girl,” said the nervous-looking guard, “maybe you’ll listen to your father.”

I’d had enough staying quiet at the Light Council and quiet on the platform with Aunt Leila’s hand on my wrist. The only thing I had ever truly regretted was submitting.

“Why should I?” I said.

“There’s no reason in the world for you to listen to me,” said Dad in his soft voice. “It’s my turn to listen to you.”

The guard looked at Dad the same way he had looked at me, shocked and angry, as if Dad was a child the guard had expected obedience from. “You ungrateful creature of the Light,” he said under his breath.

“I’m very grateful,” Dad told him. “I’m grateful to Lucie.”

He stepped toward me and then behind me, his hands on my waist, anchoring me, making himself another target but not making himself so vulnerable that I would have to worry about him. His whisper stirred my hair.