Gates of Thread and Stone

CHAPTER 36

A SHADOW EMERGED from the alcove and focused into the shape of a man. He wasn’t as tall as the one I’d just stabbed, and he was slender, with thin lips, a beaky nose, and white-blond hair cut close to his scalp. He looked young, not much older than Avan. His eyes were a cool green that reflected the same emptiness I’d seen in Irra’s.

He frowned at the body leaving a bloody puddle on the mosaic tiles.

“I liked him,” he said. His voice crept through the room. It skittered across my skin in a way that made me want to rub my arms and shake it off. “Now what am I supposed to tell the public about their fearless leader?”

I looked from the man on the floor to the one standing over him.

“You’re Ninurta,” I said.

He gave me a brittle smile.

“And he’s what?” I asked, gesturing to the body. “A puppet?”

Ninu touched his forehead, his lashes fluttering as he briefly shut his eyes. The door behind me opened. I shuffled back as a pair of sentinels entered. I didn’t relax my grip on the knife even when they walked past me.

“Well,” Ninu said, “it would be a little alarming to have a leader who never died. Human minds are fragile things. Supply them just enough magic and miracles to keep their reverence, but not enough to challenge what they think they know of the world. Can’t have another self-inflicted cataclysm, can we?”

The sentinels gathered up the body, carrying it between them like a plank of wood.

Ninu grunted as he surveyed the mess left behind. “I do hope that won’t stain.”

I forced my eyes away from the blood on the floor, the same blood that ran in dark-red rivulets down the blade of my knife, gathering around my clenched fingers. The knowledge of what I’d just done swarmed inside me, threatening to make me sick all over the tiles. But I held myself in check. I couldn’t think about it now. There would be time later for breaking down.

If I survived this.

I was a fool. I hadn’t considered a puppet leader. I assumed Ninu could change faces. He was Infinite—I couldn’t begin to fathom what he could do. But I had hoped, because the knife had scared off the gargoyles, that it might be able to hurt him. Maybe even kill him.

Well, it had done its job, just not on the right Ninu. And now I’d lost whatever minuscule advantage I’d had. Maybe I could slow time again and— But would the same tactic work twice? I’d have to get Ninu closer. I wouldn’t be able to hold the threads long enough to cross the room.

I shifted sideways to keep both Kalla and Ninu in my line of sight. I wanted to drop the knife and wipe my hands on my tunic, to rid myself of that awful stickiness, but I couldn’t let go of the last thing standing between us, no matter how useless it might be.

“If you want my help, then let Reev and Avan go. Safely,” I added in case he tried to twist my words.

“Of course,” he said. “In time.” He smiled, a gradual stretch of his lips, as if whatever thought he found so funny was slow to form. “Time.”

“Now,” I said.

“You’re a lot like your father. Both annoyingly stubborn.”

Father? Was this some sort of trick?

“Your abilities are much rougher, though,” he went on. “Lack of practice, I think. And your mortal body obviously holds you back.”

Irra had said Ninu was the youngest of the Infinite. He couldn’t possibly know more about their ways than Irra. Ninu must be trying to mislead me. “Let my brother and Avan go now, with the promise that they won’t get hurt, and I’ll take you to Irra.”

Ninu cut his hand through the air. “Irra is nothing but a fly that needs to be swatted.”

The anger in his voice vibrated in my bones.

“He can play hide-and-seek all he wants. I’ll find him soon enough,” Ninu said.

What? I gritted my teeth and lowered the knife. Kalla had draped herself across a plush white sofa, apparently ignoring the conversation.

“Then what the drek do you want from me?” I shouted.

“What do I want?” His question echoed across the room. “No one but Irra could have helped you infiltrate the Tournament. So when R-22 reported your presence, I saw an opportunity finally to catch him.”

It had been Reev. Ninu’s wall in his mind had allowed him to recognize me and still betray me.

“But you tried to have Reev kill me,” I said.

“We needed only one of you,” he said simply. “Your friend’s information would have sufficed. And what better way to demonstrate our power than to let him watch his friend die by her brother’s hand? But then I saw what you did in the arena.” His eyes closed again, head tilting. “Irra must have suspected who you are, and yet he sent you anyway.”

What if Ninu really did know something about my past? “Who am I?”

“Irra had no information to offer you?”

“He didn’t know,” I said. The flicker of uncertainty in Ninu’s face gave me a brief moment of satisfaction. He might be just as confused by all this as I was.

“You are an answer to a question,” he replied confidently. “A means to an end. A bridge to the other side. Take your pick.”

I decided he had no idea what I was. “If you don’t care about finding Irra, then what was the point of sending Istar to intimidate me? And your puppet’s threats?”

“My human counterpart was told only about your significance to Irra. And his threats still stand.”

“But what do you want from me?”

Someone tapped at the door behind me. “Perfect,” Ninu said.

The door opened. Two sentinels guided Reev and Avan into the room. Reev entered by his own will, as distant and cold as his guards. Avan had to be supported. I struggled not to show the way my body went weak at the sight of them.

Avan was still in his cadet uniform, which now hung off his shoulders in bloody shreds. Physically, he looked okay, but the state of his clothes was evidence of what they’d done to him. And when I searched his face, the damage was clear. His eyes wouldn’t meet mine, but I could see that they were weary and dark with pain. His gaze darted around the room. Alert but uncertain. Haunted.

I rushed forward, choking on his name. The sentinels stepped in front of him.

“Get out of my way!” I shouted, shoving the bloody blade up beneath one sentinel’s jaw. She didn’t move; she just looked to Ninu for orders.

“Please, Kai,” Ninu said, his voice crawling beneath my skin. “You’re not helping either of them.”

“Stop it!” I pointed the knife at him. “Quit trying to get inside me.”

His mouth curved in a predatory expression. “Good, you have enough of your father in you to be immune.”

“And stop talking about my father! He’s dead.” What I really wanted to say was “What do you know?” But I couldn’t care about a dad I couldn’t remember. Reev was the only family I had, and he stood next to Avan, awaiting Ninu’s orders like a dog.

“Oh, believe me, no one would prefer that truth more than I would,” Ninu said. “You have his eyes, do you know that?”

I glared in response.

He laughed. “On you, they’re kind of beautiful. Like the pale blue of the River.” He stepped closer to me despite the knife pointed at him. “How much do you know about your powers, Kai?”

I didn’t touch the threads. I wanted to hear more.

“Your father trapped you in a human body and abandoned you to a confused sentinel without even a note of explanation. He’s always been so difficult.”

“Tell me what you want,” I said again.

“The River, of course. Access to it, to be precise.”

Did he mean the threads?

“I thought the Infinite could already feel it.” Or rather, they could feel when I manipulated it.

“That doesn’t mean we have access,” he said flatly.

“I don’t know how to teach anyone—” I paused because Ninu was waving his hand at me.

“No, no, I need access to the actual river.”

“A real river?” I assumed Irra had been speaking metaphorically.

“As I’m sure you’re aware, it exists all around us. But it also has a physical location, hidden in a place only Time can grant access to.”

Well, then I had no idea how to get to it. But I crossed my arms and pretended otherwise. “Why do you need it?”

“Time flows forward. Only ever forward.” His lashes lowered, and he looked almost melancholy. “But you were born of the River. You have the power to manipulate its flow. To move it backward.”

“I can’t.” Of everything he might have asked from me, he wanted me to perform the impossible. “I’ve tried, but I’ve never been able to do anything more than slow it down.” Except that one Sunday, but Ninu didn’t need to know that.

“In your current form, yes,” he said. “But you can free yourself. You’re his daughter. Time wouldn’t bind you permanently to a mortal body.”

“You’re crazy,” I said, because it was the only way to make sense of his words. I glanced at Avan and Reev. Reev remained unresponsive, but Avan was glaring blearily at Ninu. “I’m not one of you.”

He gave me a pitying look. I couldn’t tell if it was real or more mockery. “We’ll see how long you can cling to that lie. It was cruel of him, allowing you to know a human’s life.”

“I am human.” I was different. A freak. But I was still human. I wouldn’t let him take that away from me.

“For now. It was cruel, but also clever. It hid you from me. I needed a favor that Time refused to grant,” he said, his expression stony. “I almost trapped him; he escaped and hid you with the humans. But you were meant for more, because here you are. And now I will ask of you what I wanted from your father.”

I didn’t know why he pretended I had a choice. Not with Reev and Avan here.

“Throw away your mortal body, Kai. Claim your true powers, and give me back my past.”

I could hear the longing in his voice. It was real, as wistful and desperate as what I felt when I thought about my brother and a freight container we had called home only because we had each other to fill it.

If I closed my eyes, I could see Ninu’s longing take shape: Towers of shimmering stone and crystal, not like the buildings in the White Court but older, like the ones from the history texts. Trains that spat plumes of smoke, speeding across green fields that stretched for miles. The vermilion robes of the mahjo, magic heavy in the air and carried along the wind like spices. And the Sun. The Sun ever present in a blue sky more vivid than any poster. Beautiful and clear like a cherished memory.

Maybe he was still weaving magic. I shook my head. The last thing I wanted was to understand him.

“The world then—my world—wasn’t paradise. But it was better than this,” Ninu said quietly.

“But you’re Infinite,” I said. You’d think they would be used to changing times.

He laughed again. “Now, yes. But not always.” He gestured to Reev and Avan. “So? What do you say, Daughter of Time?”

I still wasn’t sure what he wanted from me. I had no idea where the River was or how he expected me to stop being human—which I had no intention of doing. Did he really think I could just drop him into the past? While I couldn’t argue that it would benefit all of us to get rid of him, I didn’t exactly have instructions for how to rewind time.

“Do you want to think it over?” Ninu asked. “I’m sure I could find something to entertain us in the meantime.”

The sentinels released their hold on Avan’s arms and retreated from the room. Avan wavered, but he remained standing. I started forward, but Ninu’s voice stopped me.

“R-22,” he said. Reev’s vacant eyes focused on Ninu. “Are you armed?”

“Yes,” Reev answered.

Ninu must have given him an unspoken order, because Reev withdrew the torch blade from his belt. The blade was a foot and a half in length and glowed as if the metal absorbed light instead of reflected it. He wielded the weapon in a flowing series of arcs. I wasn’t sure what Ninu had ordered him to do until Avan cried out and dropped to his knees.

A red line appeared along the length of Avan’s arm. Blood ran down his skin, outlining his knuckles in red. Then the bleeding stopped and retraced its path up his wrist and forearm, and the wound closed. Gasping, Avan bent over.

I lunged at Ninu. The torch blade cut into my path. I jerked back. I looked from Reev’s blade, which he had thrust between me and Ninu, to Ninu’s expressionless face.

I will kill you, I silently promised. For Avan and for Reev, I will kill you.

“Would you like to see another demonstration, or have you decided?” Ninu asked.

Reev lowered his sword. I looked down at my knife and the red streaks across the chipped blade. What was it Irra had said about the blood of mahjo? The price paid for stripping them of their magic: the sentinels and the hollows—their blood was poison to their Infinite ancestor.

What was the likelihood that Ninu’s puppet had been one of his descendants?

Worth a shot.

“Fight me,” I said. I made a point to tuck the knife into my belt.

Ninu’s brows rose.

“If you win, I’ll do whatever you ask. But if I win, then you let me, my brother, and Avan go free.”

“I’m not a fan of bargaining. And I’m fairly sure I didn’t leave room for it.”

“Why not? Afraid you’ll lose?”

He gave Kalla an amused look. I had almost forgotten she was there, still lounging on the sofa. To my surprise, she said, “What harm is there in indulging her? She can’t possibly win.”

“I think he’s afraid of a human girl,” I said, hoping Ninu’s grudge with Time would make him too proud to back down. “Daughter of Time, right? Bet you never beat my dad, either.”

Ninu began unbuttoning his tunic. A mix of triumph and anxiety shot through me. He shrugged off the sturdy black material, revealing a loose gray undershirt, and folded it neatly over the table. “I’m willing to play along. Feel free to use your powers if you think they’ll help you.”

The knife felt heavy against my side, but I didn’t grab for it. Not yet.

I planted my feet and waited as he approached. I would probably lose. But I would make sure to kick his ass in the meanwhile.