The Hidden Twin Read online

  Through the fog, I catch sight of a spotless red duster. Though she wears sunglasses and a linen bandanna like everyone else, Nara Blake hasn’t made much of an effort to disguise herself. I feel my shoulders relaxing. And when she arrives with delicious fruit drinks for both of us, the scene is almost pleasant. Almost.

  “Here,” she says curtly, shoving a glass bottle at me. I have rarely tasted any beverage other than the warm water that runs from our kitchen tap, and I watch Nara sip first so I don’t behave like too much of a glutton.

  “First of all, stop asking people about bonescorch orchises,” she says, putting her drink down and adjusting the bandanna over her mouth again, red to match her duster.

  “Excuse me?”

  I can’t see Nara’s eyes through her gold-rimmed sunglasses, but I know the exact exasperated look she is probably giving me. “You asked me—the bloody editor of the Daily Bulletin—if I thought the bonescorch was real. As though you’re worried about redwings.”

  “Oh!” Redwings. That word, out loud. Out here. “Curiosity, I guess,” I say more casually than I feel.

  “Curiosity, my foot,” she says. “I’m not stupid.”

  My stomach reels. How much does she know? How much have I told her?

  We sip our drinks. A group of children play a ball game under metal trees nearby. I look for escape routes. Papa is on Roet Island, Jey at the college; they have no idea I even left the house. Nara Blake could have accomplices everywhere.

  “Nothing has given me the slightest impression that you’re stupid,” I say. “But why the cryptic note? And please don’t say you belong to a centuries-old secret organization dedicated to the slaughter of eighteen-year-old girls who ask too many questions.”

  Nara’s bandanna creases in a smile. “Absolutely not,” she says.

  I sit back. “That’s a relief.”

  “My centuries-old secret organization has only ever killed priests. Mostly. Although we do try to avoid that.”

  A cry escapes me as my bottle falls to the ground, cracking on the paving stone under the bench.

  Nara gives me a stern look. “There are children playing right over there. I’m not sure their parents would appreciate them coming home with that language.”

  “You kill priests?” I whisper.

  She blinks slowly. “Well, that’s not exactly in the mission statement, but it does happen. Not that you’d know anything about something like that, of course.”

  I answer in a hard voice. “Of course.”

  “Anyway,” she goes on, “I’m sorry if homicide bothers you, but I think you of all people should agree that Caldaras City should be protected from those who would do it harm. Like the monster Bet-Nef, for instance.”

  I pull down my linen bandanna. “The monster—? What the hell are you talking about? A thousand-year-old legend?”

  “Ah, legends,” Nara says with a cold smile. “Bet-Nef and Dal Roet, humans and Others. They have woven the fabric of Caldaras, have they not?”

  I huff. “Most people don’t even believe in Others.”

  “Most people don’t.” Nara’s matter-of-fact voice is punctuated by the splash of the waterfall behind us. “But you and I do. Don’t we.” It isn’t a question.

  I study the intricate form of the nearest metal tree, the light through its burnished leaves dappling the park’s barren ground.

  I know what you are.

  My fingers are cold, a strange sensation in this burning, humid city. I open my mouth to speak, but I can’t think of what to say.

  Nara leans back against the bench, the light reflecting silver off her sunglasses. “Look, the bonescorch is real. As real as you are. But I can protect you. If you will help us. We … need your help.”

  I swallow. I can fix this. Or I can run—follow the railroad tracks down into the plains, hide out in a barn somewhere. “Protect me?” I raise my eyebrows. “What are you talking about?”

  Nara looks toward the park. I can see her eyelashes in profile behind her glasses, stiff and prettily curled. After a moment, she says, “It might occur to you that I have far more reason to fear you than you do me, if the stories are to be believed.”

  I clasp my hands. “If you’re accusing me of something, I wish you’d spit it out.” Everything is so raw here. Too much open space. Too many people.

  “Did you think I wouldn’t follow you?” Nara looks at me through blank, silver lenses. “I’m very good at my job.”

  I stare back, just as blank. “Are you implying that I know something about Others and redwings? I’m afraid I’ve outgrown fairy tales.”

  “If you come with me, I can offer you protection,” she says, “from those who would do you harm.”

  I stare into the distance. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Stop lying to me.” Her voice is steely now. “I know what you are.”

  That phrase again. My jaw tenses. “I’m sorry,” I say, “I don’t think we have anything more to discuss.”

  She rises abruptly, patting her duster. “The point, Miss Fairweather—for I assume you do not have a first name, nor a last for that matter, but I will assign you the name of your family—the point is that if we know you are here, it won’t be so very long before they know you are here. Possibly they know it already. And they will kill you. I promise you that. And if you die, it’s entirely possible all of Caldaras City will die with you, including your father and your sister. But I will not take up any more of your time. Good day, and breathe easy.”

  “Breathe easy,” I say, though my own lungs are tight.

  Her golden sunglasses shine. “May you always walk under the fog.”

  * * *

  It’s dark enough for me to venture out to Jey’s garden and take stock of its brown, dry little prisoners. I prune here, water there, weed, and pinch the dead faces of flowers. The pale clouds I can just see in the fading light will reappear tomorrow morning, but soon they will darken into a black shroud that will cover all of Caldaras for a year.

  The Deep Dark. Our one dark year out of every thousand, this Deep Dark will be the first since the War of the Burning Land. I have found myself tending to our gardens more lately, not just my charges in the Dome, but also Jey’s house garden, and even the sad flower beds near the street. Maybe it’s because everyone else is doing something. The rest of the world is busy harvesting, storing, drying, salting. Making candles. Going over the boilers and pipe joints and valves and turbines. His Holiness the Salt Throne—highest priest of the Temple of Rasus and more powerful, some say, than the Empress herself—has decreed that the Deep Dark is a test from the gods to determine our worthiness. That everyone is to work together as sisters and brothers to endure the coming night.

  Everyone except me, of course. I press my hands to the crumbly dirt, press myself to the living ground. My skin tingles from head to foot. As the Deep Dark approaches, my blood is changing. The scars on my back have started to burn, and my lungs are so ravenous, I feel as though I could inhale all the mist in Caldaras City and send it hissing back into Mol’s Mouth like the scalding steam from a burst pipe. I am afraid of what I will become.

  ARE REDWINGS REAL? the headline of the Bulletin shouts at me again as I dig my fingers into the ashy soil.

  I don’t know, I tell it. Was it a redwing who melted bricks and mortar with her passion? Was it a redwing who elicited such fear and panic in that alleyway? Was it a redwing whose cursed existence drew Corvin Blake into the fight that almost killed him?

  Was that really me?

  The bonescorch orchis has exposed me, and I hate it. I have never hated anything green and meek in my life, yet if I found myself face-to-face with that plant, I would rip it out by its traitorous roots. But the orchis is being kept at the Copper Palace in preparation for its unveiling, and I must remain on Saltball Street in preparation for nothing but my eventual trip to the Eternal Garden. If that’s where redwings go.

  “There you are.”

  Jey pokes her head arou
nd the side of the house. I pat the dirt from my hands onto my old trousers. My sister float-dances over to me and sits on the edge of a raptor-poop–encrusted rock like an Other princess alighting on an alabaster throne. Warm light from the kitchen window illuminates several strands of her dark hair that have escaped their bobby pins and lounge against her cheeks.

  She tips her head back and rests a beatific gaze on the grime-covered buildings across the street. Even with an identical face, I don’t think I could ever look that soppy.

  She sighs. “You will never guess—”

  “Your young man,” I say wearily. What is this new one’s name again?

  She turns to me, smiles. “Did I tell you he’s been selected to introduce Master Fibbori himself at his upcoming lecture on root vegetables at the college? Bonner knows so much about root vegetables!”

  This she says completely straight-faced. Jey in a nutshell.

  “He certainly seems to have many talents,” I say. Jey’s young men always have amazing talents, according to her. Wine tasting, art appreciation, philosophy. Introducing lecturers. “Speaking of root vegetables,” I say, “these poor snaproots are begging for a quick death.”

  “Oh, snaproots! Never mind them!” She kicks at some wire fencing. “Listen,” she says in a low voice, “I need your help. Tomorrow. You see, I’m going to meet Bonner in secret.”

  I cross my arms. “So Papa doesn’t approve of him.”

  She looks away. “He did at first. But Papa can be so judgmental. You know how he is.” Her eyes reflect the light from the kitchen window. “He thinks Bonner is too concerned with religion.” She turns back to me, dreamy-eyed again. “Isn’t that silly? Bonner’s just very devoted to the Temple. There’s nothing wrong with that!”

  I’d say there are several things wrong with the Temple, starting with the Salt Throne’s prime, albeit symbolic, vow to protect the citizenry from redwings. And ending with the two priests who jumped me in an alley yesterday.

  But I don’t dare mention this to Jey, so I just shake my head. “You know I don’t think it’s wise to get involved with the Temple.”

  “The godking protects us and watches over us,” she says, as though Rasus is likely to intervene on my behalf should the priests decide to execute me.

  I sigh. “Why can’t you meet your boyfriend some other time? You’re not supposed to—”

  “I know, I know,” she says, throwing up her hands. “I know I’m not supposed to do anything.”

  Poor thing. I bite my lip until the words slide back down my throat. Then I say, “Besides, tomorrow’s Restlight. You have to help Papa on Roet Island.” As caretaker of this sad little house garden, Jey needs the education. She needs to know about soil and light, to walk among the rainbows of petals and vines and leaves in the place people call the Jewel of Caldaras City. So my father says.

  “Yes, that’s the point. I have a plan, how I can meet Bonner without Papa knowing. I just need your help.” She has a wild look in her eyes I recognize, and it makes my heart buzz. Memories of brief snatches of freedom, scattered sparkles on a vast gray sea.

  It’s bittersweet. “Jey,” I say, “we can’t. Not anymore. Not with a bonescorch in the city.” Not with priests of Rasus looking for me.

  She swivels to face me. “How did you—?”

  I cross my arms, a hint of irritation coloring my voice. “I saw a copy of the Daily Bulletin on my way home today. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  A shrug. “Papa didn’t want you to be worried over nothing, I guess. But, listen, I only need you to switch places with me for a few hours. Papa won’t know! He won’t even be there—I’ll be dusting the peonies by the front gates and he’ll be all the way around back in the private greenhouse.”

  It’s a game to her, the secret me. And I used to feel that way as well, on those rare, special days when it was Jey who stayed home and I who ventured out into the burning mist of the city, clutching Papa’s hand. Don’t speak, he’d say, buckling my leather cap tight, fitting his enormous black goggles over most of my face. Don’t draw attention to yourself. Those outings were dangerous. But Papa never wanted me to be a prisoner. We’d go to a tea shop or an art gallery, and I couldn’t help laughing at all the new sounds and smells, and beaming at all the people.

  But under Papa’s black goggles, my eyes were as vibrant as the sun through purple-blue stained glass, not brown like his other daughter’s. And what Papa never said, what I know now, is that if an acquaintance had noticed his daughter’s eyes had mysteriously changed color, if I had cut one of my clumsy, little girl fingers on a broken teacup and strange black blood had come oozing out of me, then all those smiles—from the man on the street with the tall hat, from the crinkled old lady in the shop who sneaked me a candy—would have disappeared.

  Jey leans in. “You know you’re dying to see Roet Island.” And she tosses me what looks like an old rag.

  I look down at the yellowing thing in my hands—the peony from the glass bowl on my desk. When Papa brought the bloom home for me, it was milk white, and its fragrance filled the Dome to bursting. Now all I can smell on its dry petals is the earthy combination of books and bird.

  The lush gardens of Roet Island—a green paradise only half a lake away from our gray city on the Empress’s private estate. Who wouldn’t want to see them? But at the risk of my life? Ridiculous. I would never put myself in that much danger just to see the gardens.

  But to find the bonescorch? To rip its leaves off and toss its lifeless husk into the boiling water of Lake Azure Wave before it could truly betray me? To be safe forever?

  I … am thinking about it.

  Jey doesn’t know how risky her plan is, but she knows I’m considering it. There’s something else, though, that disturbs me—a desperation in her face I’ve never seen before. Her eyes implore me to help her, to risk everything for this new boy. I don’t like it.

  Now the night wind changes. It must bring some enticing news with it, because all the raptors—four of them right now—abruptly spring from the window of the Dome above us and launch into the darkening sky. I try to follow their dark wingspans against the clouds, but I’m distracted by my reflection in the kitchen window. The ghosts of purple-blue eyes look back at me: redwing under glass.

  My sister is carefully silent.

  three

  Jey would never be seen in this coat. I close our iron gate behind me and step from the gravel path of our tiny front yard onto the cobblestone street. Everyone wears dusters in Caldaras City and, by default, the rest of Caldaras. Here the fashion springs from necessity. The ash that swirls down from Mol’s Mouth clings and smudges, and stylish tweed trousers and silk jumpsuits must be protected all the way down to one’s toes.

  Jey follows fashion—stiff, embroidered collars up to the tops of her ears, ribbons and silver hooks down her front. Each of my coats is as low-collared and plain as the other, with dull brass buttons and hems that, rather than flirting with the ground, actually sweep it. But it would be pointless for Papa to waste money on flashy garments for his invisible daughter. It is Jey who would look unstylish in a too-long duster with old buttons.

  I’m not Jey yet, I remind myself. I could be anyone. Just arrived on the train from Drush to visit my aunt, or a new student at the college, or a daughter of nobility come to hobnob with the Empress and the Commandant and their reputedly beautiful family.

  Well, maybe that last one is a bit of a stretch.

  Saltball Street is lively for a weekend. It shimmers with smiling couples carrying bright umbrellas, haughty ladies with haughty parakeets perched on their arms, and grim laborers grasping their toolboxes with scabby fingers. Tall stritch birds, their stubby wings and long necks draped in vibrant linen, carry their riders and cargo in long strides, leaving behind the occasional cloud-soft feather, a puff of yellow sunshine on the gray cobblestones.

  I am vigilant, watching for robes of a vibrant blue—to most, the color of virtue, but to me, only danger. Luckily, I see n
o priests. The crowds will protect me today, I hope. Holy brothers and sisters wouldn’t attack an unarmed girl in the middle of the street, would they?

  I swallow. Would they?

  The city leans and I head up, dragging my fingers along the gritty bricks of the buildings that hug the street—a good tenement house, a grocery, the hissing corner of a long factory. The cobblestones slope away into sunlit, ashy mist so bright, it makes me squint to look ahead.

  I can see the outside world through the glass of the Dome, but it has been years since I’ve actually walked Caldaras City in full daylight without Papa’s dark goggles on. The city without shadows, without tinted glass dulling its colors and edges, is thrilling. A middle-aged couple greets me with quick, warm smiles. Two young boys carrying paper bags rush around me, one on each side, like I am a tree in a river. I don’t know which excites me more, being acknowledged as though I were any common person, or being ignored for the same reason.

  High Ra Square is one of the highest points in the city, where the oldest and most beautiful buildings stand against the cloudy backdrop of Lake Azure Wave. Jey and I know it well from our perch on the rusty aviary, but I have never walked the wide flagstones. It is more open space than I am used to. My nerves prickle.

  The flat, white expanse—a marvel in this sloping city of ash and coal dust—is lorded over by the massive Temple of Rasus, an ancient structure whose features are dimmed by the bright fog behind it. To my squinting eyes, it is a great bull’s head in silhouette, curved horns jutting into the bleak sky—a colossal creature that could swallow the entire mass of people swirling around the square in the late morning heat.

  Someone bumps my arm, and I’m lost in the new, strange feeling of being jostled. There are so many human connections here! Shoulders and elbows sliding across me, children bouncing off my legs, long hair brushing my face, replacing the scents of smoke and poison with those of flowers and soap. I just want to stop and stand in the middle of High Ra Square and revel in all these sensations.