Evan Burl and the Falling, Vol. 1-2 (23 page)

I felt myself shrink under him. "Father?"

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Terillium

Friday

5:40 pm

5 hours, 9 minutes until the falling

I stared at Evan Burl. Aperti sunt oculi mei. I might have been looking at a younger version of myself. I opened my mouth, but found no words.

My eyes wandered. The Caldroen. The apparatuses, what was left of them. Just like I'd left this place so many years ago, like I'd stepped through time. Like everything had been frozen in a sheet of ice, just waiting for me to arrive. To bring it back to life.

Several girls stared at me.
The
children
. My head oscillated like I'd finished a bottle of 1292 all on my own.

"Cevo wanted to slaughter them..." My voice slurred. I felt like one of those people who can't stand silence, people who fill the uncomfortable quiet with things that shouldn't be said. "But I wouldn't stand for it. I made him send them here." Or maybe I saw the way Evan looked at me. Abhorrence mingled with disquietude. "I knew he'd never look for you where he sent the girls. It was all so impeccable."
 

"You're hurt." Evan came to me. I leaned over him, smelled his hair. Below us, Claire slept. I'd placed too much on her shoulders. Any child would have fractured under such an encumbrance. Anyone. She would be better once I was gone. She was tenacious.

And Evan Burl? He seemed suddenly innocuous. I wondered if I had been wrong about him. I should have kept him out of this. If I'd just let him live a natural life. "The Spider? Do you have it?"

"I-I don't know what you mean."

I found Mazol. "Brother? Where is the Spider? Bring it to me quickly."

"It's gone."

"And the ember?" I said to Mazol.

"It was just like you foretold. Cevo arranged everything."

"I must have it now."

Mazol hesitated.

"It could save my life." I collapsed next to Claire.

Mazol ran from the room; I had a feeling he would not return. Evan crouched next to me. I put my hand on his face. Blood marred his cheek.

"Take care of Claire. Tell her I was wrong."

"But the falling—"

"Tell her I still love her. And that, I must go away for a while, but it's not forever. We'll see each other again."

"You told Mazol to kill me."

"Yes. I did."

"And now you want me to help you?"

"I was afraid. I don't know what to make of you Evan Burl."

"So you just left me here?"

"I thought you might grow up strong enough to use the Spider, to rule the Cultures when I was gone, to ensure that sapience lives on un-abused. Cevo would have done anything for the Spider. I knew this was the one place he'd never look." I felt my face crack from smiling and fell into a fit of coughing.

"You didn't have to leave me."

"You're lucky to be alive. If I'd known what I know now, I'd have smothered you while you still slept in your mother's womb." Talking lacerated my lungs. I had to stop. I had to breathe.
 

"How can you say that?"

"It would have been mercy. Sapience is growing; I can't explain it. My brothers and I required decades to master the easiest of tasks, to make an orange hover above our hand or to crush a flower without touching it. I've seen people do more with just weeks of practice now. And you, the most powerful of all, I feared sapience would tear you to pieces." I couldn't feel my legs. Death crawled through my bones, searching for my defenseless heart to squeeze until it beat no more. It's felicitous, I suppose. Ironic maybe, that I will die in Evan's arms, like his mother died in mine. Requiescant in pace.
 

"Isn't there any hope?"

"In honesty, no. I stand by what I wrote to your uncle. I still believe you will become an abomination. I think you will bring harm to your own friends and much, much worse. But I yearn to be wrong."

"You came to kill me."

"I never wanted to see you, I knew it would make my choice too difficult to bear. And now I can see I was right. It's easy Evan—you'll understand this if you live long enough to walk my path—but it's easy to order the execution of someone with whom you've never shared a glass of wine or felt the warmth of his presence flowing through his veins." I coughed again, felt blood drool down by chin.

Evan was silent. Claire didn't move. The other girls stared. I put my hand on his chest. "Be strong Evan Burl. I have the faintest glimmer of hope that I'm still wrong about you."

"But—"

"I won't say I'm sorry for leaving you here. But I will say this: prove me wrong."

Evan Burl stared at me as the room faded into darkness. I thought he would speak, either to hurt or to comfort, but he did neither. In the dim light, I think he began to understand me more than he would have liked. If anyone could understand me fully—in only the way that a son and sire can know each other—it was Evan Burl. The reflection of candle light in his bright eyes was the final vision to enter my senses as my heavy lids fell. Death wrapped its fingers around my heart. My frozen body didn't have the strength to shiver. My lips parted for their final words. I said what my sire said to me before he slept for the last time, what Evan Burl might have said to me, had he lived another life instead of the one I forced upon him.

"My blood for yours. Haec ego in te... I live on in you."

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Evan

Friday

5:49 pm

5 hours until the falling

My Father faded. No, he melted; like a water painting in the rain. The lines between where he began and where he ended blurred until parts of him became unrecognizable. The blade that pierced his chest turned to dripping globs of molten chrome until it had all seeped into the mountain of debris we stood on.

His face remained last, confusion and regret written in the lines on his forehead. His jaw stuttered, but no more words came. Then he was gone.

"I live on in you." His words made me warm and cold in waves. And his accent? The same as Henri's. Mazol and Yesler appeared at a door.

"It's too late," I said. "He's gone."

"You stay where you are gimp," Yesler said. He and Mazol climbed the mound.
 

Henri followed behind them, her fingers twitching on the satchel at her side. "Just do what they say and everything will be alright."

I lifted my hand.

"Don't move." Yesler snagging Henri from behind, pressed a razor to her skin. She fought him. I stretched my fingers; the shiv flew from Yesler's hand into mine. I pointed it at Yesler. He put his hands into the air. Henri stumbled back.
 

"Here's what's gonna happen," I said. "I want to know what's been happening to the Roslings. I want the skull. I want the Spider. I want whatever you were going to get for my Father—the ember. And I want it now."

I like this new you.

Mazol glanced at Henri.
 

The steel lifted from my hand, floating point first toward him. "I don't have much practice; I don't know if I'll be able to stop it."

He looked at Henri again. She fumbled with the satchel, slipping something out. I lost my concentration on the knife; it fell at Mazol's feet with a clank. Lunging, he twisted me by the ear. "I don't take no orders from no gimp."

I tried to push him away but couldn't think straight. A pendent hung from Mazol's neck. I'd never seen it before: a mechanized girl with burning red eyes. I imagined her staring at me, eating up my sapience, like the cage. A rubric made for protecting its wearer from the attack of people like me. I swung at Mazol. Missed. An oil-soaked beam rose into the air and exploded. I shielded my face from the splinters.
 

Mazol whispered in my ear. "She's going to get you."
 

"Shut up."
 

"She'll stab you in the back."

"She'd never..." But I felt only half as convinced of Henri's innocence as I sounded. I watched Henri, searching for signs of her guilt. Could she hurt me? Could she have hurt the Roslings? She stood next to Yesler, in her hand the object she had pulled from her satchel: a syringe, filled with murky dusk. She put a single finger to her lips, tested the plunger with her thumb. Three drops fell from the tip. Henri was going to stick Mazol in the back. She would prove her love for me, just as Mazol was trying to convince me of her guilt.
 

She raised the syringe above her head. Yesler tried to grab it from her. She pushed him off, more easily than I thought possible. Mazol didn't see; his eyes were locked on me. I had distrusted Henri—even if only for a moment. But it was more than that. I'd accused her of turning on me, of siding with Mazol. I'd even, if I was honest with myself deep down, accused her of murdering the Roslings. I had wanted it to be anyone but me. Even if that meant my best friend took my place.

I held my breath as her hand fell. Yesler lunged at her. They both fell toward me as the syringe came down in an arc.

Mazol turned. "No!"

But she didn't stab Mazol. She reached past him. Her eyes never left me. The tip of the needle plunged deep into the muscle between my shoulder and neck. Yesler grinned. Blood oozed from his cracked lips, dripping down the white mask. I staggered backward and grasped for the syringe. It fell, bursting at my feet. Someone screamed.
 

I fell next to Claire, my body sprawled in the puddle of my father.

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