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THIRTY

DANTE LEADS US ON A SHORT TOUR of the facilities, past instrument panels and groups poring over blueprints.

“What are they working on?” I ask.

“The grid,” Jax says, pointing to the panels. “We’re getting close to self-sufficiency.”

“You’re building a power grid?”

“The only way the Icebox—or any future city on Earth—can exist is with a power source,” Dante says.

“But Kincaid—”

“Is shortsighted,” Dante interrupts me. “He can only think of destroying Arras. He’s never considered what it will take to rebuild Earth after that. If we’re going to repopulate civilization, we’ll need access to power, and the last thing I want is to rely on Kincaid when that day comes.”

“We’re experimenting with an exclusively solar-based system,” Jax tells us. “We don’t have access to coal at this point. That’s still under Kincaid’s control, but I’ve built a photovoltaic array that is entirely dependent on solar energy. It will be easier when we have a power station with permanent arrays, but we’ll have to wait until the Interface comes before we can fully utilize my system.”

Jax and Dante answer more questions about their plans, but I stay silent. Not only is the Agenda alive, it’s growing. Dante and the other revolutionaries aren’t planning for war, they’re preparing for what comes after. As annoyed as I am that Dante hid this from me, I admire his foresight. It’s not something I’m naturally gifted with.

They take us to the aeroship and we step inside it to find a spacious viewing area that overlooks the ocean below us. Outside, a corridor exits onto an open-air deck, with ladders onto the rigid body of the ship. I can’t bring myself to ask the question waiting on my lips as I look around.

“They’re pulling the tethers,” Falon says, coming up to us. “I checked with the pilot and we have a confirmed rivet set up along the gathering route.”

“How many are coming through?” Dante asks.

“Only one with credentials, but he’s ensured passage for a few others,” Falon says.

“And what are we going to do with them?” Dante asks. “Kincaid is watching the Icebox too closely right now. It will be hard to get them safely established inside.”

“You’ll figure something out,” Falon says, her words more threatening than supportive. She won’t look at Dante, clearly still angry with him over the last few weeks.

“I don’t have the sway,” Dante says, grabbing her arm.

“Since when?” Falon demands.

“Since Kincaid got ahold of her,” Dante tells Falon. Their eyes swivel to me.

I love being in the middle of fights.

“Well, we can’t leave them now. They’re safely in the slub and they’ve been promised passage.”

“They’ll have to stay with the Agenda then, until we can distract Kincaid,” Dante says.

“Kincaid is already distracted,” Falon reminds him.

“But he won’t be for long, and your trick won’t elude him. He’ll be on the lookout for activity.”

“Anyone care to fill us in on what you’re talking about?” Erik asks. I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s having trouble following the conversation.

“Kincaid is on a fool’s errand,” Dante says in a grim voice.

“A fool’s errand?” I repeat, my heart dropping into my stomach.

“The intel on the Whorl was a distraction to get him away from the Icebox,” Falon says. “We needed to be sure that he was busy.”

“Why?” I demand, feeling sick: not only had I pinned my hope on them coming back with the Whorl, but, more important, Jost had as well.

“We have good reason to believe the Whorl is under Guild protection, and we couldn’t look for it with Kincaid nosing around,” Dante tells us.

“Does that mean you know where it is?” I settle into a chair, waiting for answers.

“Not yet, but we’re closing in on it—” Dante says.

“The most important thing”—Falon interrupts him—“is that we get to it first. We can’t risk the Whorl falling into Kincaid’s hands.”

“Why not? Kincaid wants to use it to sever the worlds,” I say. Getting to the Whorl was my best option for escaping the Guild once and for all. Even if Kincaid couldn’t be trusted, he could be used as a resource.

Falon’s head swings to the left and right as she looks to see who’s around, and then she shakes her head. “Kincaid isn’t Agenda.”

I suck in a breath. “Then who is he?”

“That should be obvious,” Falon says.

“Humor me.”

“He’s the bad guy.”

“Then we can’t go back to the estate,” Erik says.

“That’s exactly what you have to do,” Dante says in a rush. “What do you think will happen if you disappear from the estate?”

“You expect us to wait around and pretend we’re on Kincaid’s side?” I ask.

“If you place any value on the Agenda—” Falon begins.

“I don’t even know what the Agenda is planning!” I explode. “Where are we going now? Why should I trust any of you? You never came for us, and Dante’s been keeping secrets from us the whole time.” The questions and accusations flood from me, unleashed in a tidal wave of recrimination.

“I couldn’t tell you about this,” Dante says in a low voice, trying to draw me down from my rage. “It wasn’t safe.”

I wiggle in my seat, folding my arms over my chest. “And now was the right time?”

“No,” Dante admits, “but you were going to get yourself in trouble. You’ve both made that clear.”

“Maybe a little trouble is needed around here,” Erik says. I nod in agreement.

“We have enough trouble without a bunch of kids adding to it,” Falon says.

“Don’t get self-righteous with me,” I say, leaning forward and jabbing a finger in her direction. “I don’t care if Dante is my father, you and I are the same age.”

“You been in a lot of gunfights? Have you watched your best friend die in your arms?” Falon asks.

“I’ve watched more than one friend die,” I seethe. “I’ve seen people I love made into monsters and I’ve escaped Cormac Patton. Let me know when you manage to rip yourself out of the Coventry.”

“So the rumors are true. You aren’t only a Spinster,” Falon says. For the first time since we met, approval glints in her eyes.

“No, I’m the goddamned Creweler,” I say with as much venom as I can muster.

“Well, she certainly has your attitude problem,” Falon says, leaning back in her chair and looking at Dante.

“Don’t get me involved with this,” he says, putting a hand up.

“You got yourself involved when you left me in Arras,” I say, jumping from my seat and crossing to the first door I see. Erik is at my heels, but he doesn’t stop me when I exit into the next corridor.

“Who is he to treat me like that?” I mutter.

“He’s your dad,” Erik says.

I turn and hit his shoulder. “He will never be my father.”

“I know that,” Dante says, closing the door behind him. “I’m not trying to boss you around. I wanted to protect you from this.”

“You had no right to keep this from me,” I say.

“I’m sorry,” Dante says. “I kept it from you at first because it was protocol. I wasn’t about to drop this into your lap, but somewhere along the line, I didn’t want to tell you.”

“Because you don’t trust me,” I accuse.

“No, it’s more than that. I may not have been there when you were born. Arras, I might have a hard time wrapping my head around this—you aren’t the only one struggling with what this means,” Dante says. “And despite all of it—despite the fact that I knew you deserved to know—I couldn’t tell you.”

“Why not?” I demand over my swollen throat. Erik wraps an arm around my shoulder and steadies me, which makes it harder to hold my tears hostage.

“Because—like it or not—you’re my daughter, Adelice.” Dante pauses and dares to bring his eyes up to meet mine. “And I love you.”

He doesn’t offer me any more placation; he quietly exits back to where we left Falon. Erik pulls me into his shoulder and I free my tears, sobbing.

“I don’t know who to trust,” I whisper.

“Me,” he says, rubbing my arm. “And Jost. No matter what, you will always have us.”

I know that, but even as I cry in his arms, the distance between us feels like too much to overcome. It’s a distance we’ve created out of necessity, and if we breach it, I can’t guarantee I won’t lose Erik, but I know one thing.

I will lose Jost.

“Erik, I can’t lose you,” I say. “I can’t lose either of you.”

His arms tighten around me, and for one second I want him to storm the wall we’ve built between us. I want him to help me forget this. But instead he only whispers, “You won’t. I won’t let that happen. I promise I’ll never let you go.”

And even now, wrapped in an embrace, we’re a million miles from each other.

We stay on the observation deck, watching the aeroship pass along the Interface. A series of hooks and pulleys built along the ship’s external skeleton grip and gather the strands of the Interface. We’re not flying, we’re crawling across the web of strands. Dante approaches us as the skeleton’s gears and hooks latch and lock, tethering us to the Interface semi-permanently.

“This is a loophole,” Dante says.

As he speaks, strands of the Interface rotate violently, curling in on one another in rapid and graceful precision until a long funnel of chaotically woven strands extends in a gentle diagonal toward the ship, opening a few feet from the deck. I take the risk and look up into the mouth of the loophole. It’s hollow as I expected, a perfectly round shaft of strands that stretch and swim in a kaleidoscope of color. My eyes squeeze shut and I listen for the music of the strands. It comes in a surge of violins, the notes sharp and lingering. This is all I need. I could climb through there and go back. But back to what?

“How did you do this?” I ask.

“Arras doesn’t control every talented person,” Dante says with a shrug.

That’s the understatement of the century.

“You have people on the inside,” I surmise.

“Of course,” Dante says, “a resistance wouldn’t be much good without spies.”

“What do your spies say about me?” I ask, recalling that Falon recognized my name immediately from her intel.

Falon appears at my side. “It’s my job to keep tabs on what’s going on up there. And girl, you’re all over my stream.”

“They put me on the Stream?” The color drains from my face. There’s no way I’ll ever make it back into Arras safely if everyone there is looking for me.

“A stream of information,” Falon assures me. “I have a web of spies, people who pass info to me from inside the coventries and ministry offices.”

“The same people that pass Kincaid info?” I guess. “You sell it to him.”

“Information is good business,” she says. “I can control what Kincaid hears and use the money he pays me to buy some people off him.”

“Buy people?”

“Refugees don’t come here for free. If they don’t have the credits, they owe their sponsor,” Falon says. I detect a note of disgust in her voice.

“That’s how Valery wound up at the estate,” Dante says.

“Speaking of, how is Deniel?” Falon asks him.

At the mention of his name my stomach constricts as though a wire is coiling tight around it.

Dante hesitates and shakes his head. “Gone.”

“Gone? Where?”

“Not where,” Dante says. “He was unwound.”

“What?” Falon asks, unmistakable anger in her voice.

“He attacked Adelice, tried to alter her. He was a spy,” Dante says.

“A spy?” Falon echoes. “Who authorized his credentials in Arras?”

“I’m not sure,” Dante says.

“Too bad,” Falon says, sighing. “He was talented. I should have known when he asked to go to Kincaid. We could have used a Tailor like him.”

“A crooked Tailor does bad work,” Erik reminds her.

“True. I guess we got lucky,” Falon says.

“How does this work?” I ask, still mesmerized by the tunnel of swirling light and color.

“It’s a convolution of space-time. They’ve twisted the strands of the Interface with those naturally occurring on Earth,” she explains.

“The slub is at the other end,” Dante says.

“Who puts in the slubs?” I ask.

“We make some, but others are pre-existing,” Dante says. “There were slubs in Arras when it was created.”

“We’ve been utilizing this slub for months, but if Deniel was a spy it may have been compromised.”

“What happens if the Guild discovers the slub?”

“Sometimes nothing,” Falon says. “They use it to send spies through. Sometimes they send a battalion of Remnants instead, if they want us to know they know. Worst-case scenario is Protocol One. They adjust the whole metro.”

My mind flips back to a hazy memory. The night of my retrieval. “They change the citizens’ memories.”

“Yes,” Falon says. “It’s a combined effort. Spinsters reweave the whole piece, removing the slubs, and meanwhile the Tailors adjust the collective memories of the population. All without ever knowing what the other group is doing. And then the passage is closed. There’s no way for the refugees to get through.”

I turn and stare into the loophole, watching the colors swirl and the light shifting around the twisted strands. It calls to me. But that’s only a space between. Arras isn’t my home anymore, no more than Earth is. If I could, I’d lose myself in the raw beauty, build a life in the very fabric of the universe, among the possibility. But I have plenty holding me here and plenty calling me home. There’s no time for staying in the space in between actions.

“They’re coming,” Falon announces.

I look but see nothing. I shut my eyes and listen. The strands hum and if I strain I can hear the twang of time running tinny through the soft melody of the matter around it. Combined, the sounds are quite lovely, but if I wasn’t paying close attention it would sound like static. I retrain my focus and hear voices. Shadows cast themselves down the convolution of the loophole and a small band of people slide through. There are only five or six of them.

“Evening, Walter, what ya got?” Falon asks, exchanging a salute with the man heading the group.

“Only a few. Five adults. One kid.”

I look closely at the group. I hadn’t seen a child, but then he’s there, clinging to his mother’s leg. He meets my stare, eyes saucer-wide. He’s dressed in a typical academy uniform, but he can’t be too old. He must have started academy this year. I smile at him, but he darts behind his mother’s skirt.

His mother is stoic, looking at us warily. Her dress is worn and I notice that she pulls her thin sweater sleeve up to hide a tear in it. She holds her head high, but I spy a few dark spots by her ear that stretch to her neck. Bruises.

“This is the one with credentials,” Walter says, leading a tall man over to Dante and Falon. The man turns his head so they can observe the hourglass techprint hidden along his hairline.

“What can you do?” Dante asks.

“Me?” the man says. “Nothing. I have intel for Dante.”

Dante doesn’t betray that the man has found him; instead he turns and looks to the woman and child. “And this intel secured your passage for six?”

“I wasn’t leaving her,” the man says. “Not after what’s been done to her. I know what happens to people who come here on credit, but believe me, my intel is worth our passages.”

“Fair enough,” Dante says, “but that still doesn’t explain what you know that’s important enough to grant you passage.”

“That’s for Dante to know,” the man says. He lifts his chin as if to press the point.

“You’re talking to Dante, ole windbag,” Walter calls over.

“Sir.” The man’s stance changes and he bows low, raising his fist to his shoulder. “I apologize. I thought you’d be…”

“Older?” Dante guesses. “I get that a lot.” His eyes flick to mine.

“I need to speak with you privately.”

“You can tell me here,” Dante says.

“No, sir, I can’t,” the man says. “I’m under orders from Alix to tell you alone.”

Dante stiffens at this information, but he inclines his head in agreement and the two return to the empty corridor inside.

“What can that be about?” I wonder out loud, but Erik doesn’t respond. When I turn to repeat the question, there’s a dazed look on his face.

“Erik?” I prompt, touching his arm lightly. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he says, but I notice how he swallows against the words.

Out of the corner of my eye, I spy the female refugee watching us, her son still huddled against her. She shivers in the breeze created by the slow movement of the aeroship.

“Hold on,” I say to Erik.

Approaching the woman slowly, I bend and run a hand over the boy’s finely cropped hair. He smiles at me. I shrug off my coat and move to wrap it around the woman’s shoulders. She steps back and shakes her head.

“I don’t need it,” I insist.

“I couldn’t,” she says simply. “I can’t pay you for it.”

Whatever happened to her in Arras, she’s unwilling to owe other people for favors, but there are going to be a lot of things she can’t pay for on Earth with that attitude. Thanks to Jost, I know the one way to get her to agree.

“I’m not doing it for you,” I tell her. This time she lets me wrap it over her shoulders. Jost taught me a parent’s love trumps everything else, even pride.

The woman swallows hard and mouths, “Thank you.”

I give her a small smile and turn away, tears pricking my eyes.

Warm, scratchy wool falls over my shoulders. “Adelice Lewys, you have a good soul.” There’s a trace of huskiness in the thick words.

I tug the corners of Erik’s jacket closed. “So do you, Erik.”

He shrugs and looks away, but I grab his hand.

“You do,” I say.

Erik opens his mouth to respond, but suddenly a group of men appear on the deck, shouting instructions and dragging the ropes that tether us to the slub in the Interface. They throw the tethers up and stop our progress. I catch Falon’s arm as she rushes past us.

“What’s happening?” I yell over the din of activity around us.

“The estate is under attack,” she calls. “Dante’s ordered us back.”

She doesn’t linger to answer any of the million questions I have. The estate is under attack? Has the Guild come after me? Do Kincaid’s men know I am gone? And then one question stops me cold:

What will happen to my mother?