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  A Dark So Deep

  Book II in The Madness Method

  by

  J. Leigh Bralick

  Published by SisterMuses

  Copyright 2015 © J. Leigh Bralick

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and events are the creation of the author, and any resemblance to actual events, locations, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  For Whitney, Julia, and Maria

  In loving memory of Mary Bralick

  “Where is the lightning to lick you with its tongue?

  Where is the madness which you should be cleansed?

  Behold...he is that lightning, he is that madness!…

  Behold I am a prophet of the lightning and a heavy drop out of the cloud.”

  Friederich Nietzsche, “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”

  Part I: Captive

  Chapter 1 — Tarik

  We buried Bugs just inland from the river, in a copse of trees that seemed too green and vibrant for the dead month of the year. It was fitting, I thought, because Bugs always seemed too alive for the bleak streets, too.

  A voice in the back of my mind whispered that it was me they should be burying, but I drove the thought back, deep down into the pit in my heart where the blackness lingered—where I had shackled it, locking it up tight to keep it from driving me mad.

  The half-veiled sun had already settled low on the horizon when we’d set out from the aluminium smelter where we’d taken refuge after Esobor; now nothing remained but a faint halo framing the hilltops and the last gleams of gold on the broken water of the river. As the shadows deepened in the copse, we stood in a silent ring around the makeshift grave.

  There was an ancientness to the whole procedure. Here there were no fire and cold marble and faceless officials like in the Mausoleum of State, where death was catalogued, stamped, and notarized. Instead we, his family, all took turns with a stolen shovel to dig his bed in the rich, damp earth. The earth was good—life and death interwoven in roots and fallen leaves. That seemed right to me. I imagined Bugs would be pleased, if anyone could be pleased about the place he would sleep forever.

  Only one thing seemed wrong.

  That hole we dug, that deep bed under the trees…it was too small. The body I held in my arms, waiting to deliver him to the earth, was much too small. Too small, too young. If I could have died to save him, to stop him from saving me, I would have.

  At least, I wanted to believe that I would have.

  Maybe I was too much of a coward.

  My throat burned and I held my breath clenched in my teeth to keep from weeping. At least the veil of funereal blue had hidden him from me. I never could have held him, never could have deposited him in that nest of dirt if I’d been able to see the mask of death on his face, the blood-stained wound in his heart from the bullet that had been meant for me. I knelt on the edge of the grave and lowered him into the shallow hole, and when the first shovelful of earth scattered over his body I winced and caught in a sharp breath that tasted like grief.

  When dusk stole the last of our light no one moved; no one wanted to. The older girls Kite and Gem held hands with little Pika and Kitty, but the boys stood stoic enough, facing the shadows with stern faces. Only Hayli was missing from our group, and my heart ached as I thought of her. That, too, was wrong. I knew Hayli would never forgive herself for not being there to say goodbye.

  Finally Derrin settled his hat on his head and took a step back.

  “Well,” he said. “That’s that.”

  He swung away and the others filed after him one by one without complaint, even Pika and Kitty with tears on their cheeks. I didn’t. I stood with my arms tight across my chest, waiting until the sound of snapping sticks and rustling leaves finally faded under the weight of somber twilight.

  “You can’t bring him back, Shade. Not even you.”

  I jerked around, only to find Jig crouched in the shadows behind me. He wasn’t watching me; he had his gaze fixed on the broken earth of Bugs’s grave. I imagined he would still have a hard time looking at me, as I stood there with Shade’s spirit and Prince Tarik’s face—a face and a name he’d despised for so long.

  “Why are you still here?” I asked.

  “Why are you?”

  “Here?” I asked, feigning obtuseness.

  “You know what I mean,” he said. “You dan’ belong here. With us. Why dan’ you just gan away already?”

  I sighed. “What do you want from me, Jig? What do you want me to say?”

  He rose to his feet, flighty in the darkness, like he meant to vanish. His face seemed paler than usual, drawn with a sick kind of look.

  “You turned away from him,” he said. I frowned, not following. “You turned away from him. And I shot him, and then you turned away from me.”

  Kantian, I realized, my mind flashing back to that image of the Hole boss sprawled at Jig’s feet the moment after I’d vowed to let him live—live and witness the failure of all his anarchist plans.

  I drew a thin breath through my teeth. I didn’t know if Jig wanted an apology from me, or forgiveness, or if he wanted me to explain away what he’d done. Not that it mattered. The apology felt false; there was nothing to forgive; I couldn’t explain anything. I couldn’t rewrite time. Couldn’t put the bullet back in the gun any more than Jig could. I couldn’t even make him feel remorse if he didn’t feel it already.

  Part of me wanted to pity him, but somehow I thought he’d hate my pity even more than he hated my turning away. The one thing he wanted from me I couldn’t give. I couldn’t leave.

  I had nowhere left to go.

  I racked my thoughts for something to say that would give some—any—comfort, and finally remembered the words Kor had told me once in one of the darkest moments I’d ever known.

  “Jig, listen,” I said. “Sometimes we do things, in this life. Things we would never do otherwise. But they’re done, and you have to let them go.”

  It didn’t come out sounding quite as comforting as when Kor had said it, I thought. Then again, I recalled how angry I’d been at my uncle at the time. So it rather didn’t surprise me when Jig gave a cold laugh and retreated a half step back into the darkness.

  “This life?” he asked. “What th’ hell do you know about this life, Shade? You knock about a few nights in the cold, you break a few laws, start a few fights, and you think you got a ken what this life is? You dan’ na nothing. Leave us be, Your Highness. Go play at belonging in someone else’s world.”

  I let my breath hiss out as he stalked away, angry more than anything because I knew he was right.

  The wind picked up, skittering through the tree branches and rustling the fallen leaves like footsteps. I waited, heart in my throat, but it was only the wind. Somehow I’d been hoping—foolishly—that Hayli had escaped, that the wind had carried her back to me, but I knew better.

  When Derrin disappeared after confessing to me that he’d sent Hayli to the Science Ministry, I’d half-expected King Trabin’s army to come bearing down on the smelter that very afternoon. Part of me wanted to believe he’d gone to call them down on us himself. But the afternoon had passed and night had come, and still we waited in that awful expectation. We’d all gone about half-mad with it when Derrin came back and told us to take care of Bugs.

  Now that we had, I could feel the madness looming up again. Fear, rage, regret. I couldn’t bear the thought of Hayli spending a single night at the Science Ministry, but I couldn’t think of a single way to get her out.

  Finally I sighed and turned away from Bugs’s g
rave, threading my way through the treacherous darkness until I could see the sprawling outline of the aluminium smelter beyond the line of trees. The Court had cut the gas and electrical lines from the city of Brinmark to the smelter when it had closed down, so the only light I had to go by was the occasional flicker of a sentry’s torch sweeping over the grounds.

  As I reached the chain fence that caged the facility, I recognized Zagger’s familiar trenchcoat-and-hat silhouette pacing the length of the smelter rooftop, torch in one hand, revolver in the other. The nervous paralysis of the afternoon had driven him stir-crazy, so it rather didn’t surprise me that he had volunteered for sentry duty. Not to mention it gave him a reason to stay out of the way—if the kids were skeptical of me, having learned my real identity, at least they’d gotten to know me in some way first. Zagger was an enigma to them, known only as a fixture of the monarchy that symbolized all their problems and everything they hated. By all appearances he’d taken his change in fortunes in stride, but I knew him well enough to see how lost he really felt. Like moons out of our orbit, both of us.

  I climbed the ladder to join him, grimacing as the cold, rusted metal of the rails burned my hands. At least the roof slates were dry and stable, so I managed to pick my way to the edge without my stomach turning traitor on me.

  “Any sign of…anyone?” I asked Zagger, stopping beside him.

  “No,” he said. “Nothing at all.”

  I chewed on a ragged fingernail and stared at Brinmark’s lights flickering to the north. “Has anyone figured out how to get news from the city yet? I want to know if the Istian envoy got away safely.”

  “If they didn’t, do you think that information would be public knowledge?” Zagger asked. “You’d have to be on the inside to get that kind of news, I’d wager.” He paused, shooting me a dangerous kind of look. “Don’t get any ideas, Your Highness.”

  I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes. “How many times, Zagger,” I muttered. “I’m not the Prince any more.”

  “How many times, yourself,” he retorted. “You’re the bloody Godar of Istia, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t think the Istians call their Godar Your Highness,” I said, sour.

  “Well, I don’t know about that. So this is my best guess.”

  I grinned and turned back toward the ladder. “Fine, as you like. Let me know if you see anything.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, without even turning around. “We both know I won’t find you if I do.”

  I bit my tongue on asking if he meant to stop me. No reason to press my luck. I picked my way down the ladder and headed into the main wing of the smelter where everyone had taken to congregating. Because maybe I was reckless enough to want to go back to the palace, but I wasn’t stupid enough to go alone.

  In the eerie half-light of the chamber, the massive potlines cut ribbons through the shadows, looming up like half-buried buildings nearly twice my height. They hadn’t been abandoned long enough to start to rust, but they were well used and had nothing shiny or new about them. The curious corners of my mind wanted to know how they worked, how they turned stone to liquid metal like some kind of strange magic.

  I didn’t like to admit it, but the place rather terrified me. I’d toured factories before, of course, but I’d never seen the inside of an aluminium smelter. I’d never seen anything like its size or scope. Compared to this place, the old Troyce & Fallon factory where we’d lived before seemed like a miniature, and under the sprawling roof I felt uncomfortably small. In some way I was claustrophobic in all that space; I wanted nothing more than to escape.

  At least there was room enough for everyone, from the Hole rats who’d scattered about and claimed more space than they needed, to Rivano and his Clan and the mages we’d gathered in from the city, who withdrew to the dark corners and abandoned offices and kept wary eyes on the rest of us. And me—I didn’t know where I fit in, in the whole mad mess of it.

  I found Coins perched up on the hopper of one of the smelter pots, a battered hat slanted low over his eyes and the unlit stub of a cigo in one hand that he was regarding with morose disappointment.

  “Oy, Shade!” he called. “Just thought about looking for you. Lend me a light?”

  I pulled the ferrosteel lighter from my pocket and tossed it up to him. He caught it deftly, giving a soft whistle as he examined it.

  “A bit dafty up here, but how’s it work?” he asked.

  I mimed grating the rod and he gave it a few goes, almost falling off his high perch when he got a flicker of flame. For a few moments he just lit the thing again and again, watching the flame dance up and die away. When I wondered if he’d ever make up his mind to actually use it, he leapt down from the pot and dropped it into my hand, flicking the cigo away into the dusty shadows.

  “Between the two of us,” he whispered, conspiratorial, “I can’t stand the bloody things. You won’t say aught about it to the lads though, right?”

  I managed to hide my smile as I pocketed the lighter. “Right. Listen, Coins, I’ve got to get back into the city before things blow apart around here.”

  “Hayli?” he asked, even quieter than before. He tugged my elbow and jerked his head toward the door. “C’mon, Shade. Need a word.”

  I followed him out, feeling the gazes of some of the other Hole rats tracking us as we left. Vim and Red, I noticed from the corner of my eye, and a few of their lackeys. I gritted my teeth. Those were the ones I’d need to watch. We’d never moved beyond a wary level of trust, and the revelation of my identity couldn’t have helped my case. But I couldn’t bother about them now. Not when so much else was on the line.

  Coins took me all the way out to the fence, even though we hadn’t seen anyone around since we’d left the potline. But Coins was a sneak himself; he’d know how to avoid prying eyes and ears.

  I leaned back against the chain-weave fence, the metal squealing in protest. For a few minutes Coins stood beside me without talking, wrapping his fingers through the links and peering out into the darkness beyond. He was chewing the inside of his cheek, so, I knew something had him bothered.

  “Well,” I said, “are you planning on stopping me?”

  He flashed me a quick look. “Not a bit. I’d offer to go with you.”

  “But…?”

  “Here’s the thing,” he said, but then he just clashed the fence a few times against its post, watching the panel ripple from the impact. “Look, it’s not me who’s saying it, right?”

  “What?” I grabbed the fence weave and jerked it once, hard, to make him stop. “What’re you talking about?”

  “Some of the kids are spooked. Scared of what’s coming, right? And…some of them started blaming her. Blaming Hayli, Shade. Saying it’s on account of her we’re on the run.”

  I snorted. “That’s a daft thing to say,” I muttered, but that didn’t keep a little worm of anxiety from creeping into my mind.

  “I know, right?” he cried. “But look, some of these same lads…they’re not too keen on you, either. Not just yet. I mean, they’ve lived their whole lives thinking about you one way. Now all on a sudden they discover that the bloke they’ve started to trust and respect is actually the bloke they’ve knocked all along. Right? So now…now they’re all fuzzed. Fuzzed, yeah? You like—”

  “Coins,” I said, cutting him off. “Maybe you’re right. But maybe I don’t really give a damn what they think about me right now. I’m worried about Hayli. I’m more worried about what Kippler will do to her than what the lads will do to me. Got it?”

  “Yeah,” he said, but his complacency didn’t convince me. He sighed and kicked the fence. “Well? What’s your plan?”

  I held up my hand to silence him. Something felt…wrong. I couldn’t say if it was something I’d heard, or some strange taste on the wind that made my skin crawl, but…there was something…

 
For one moment, everything was still.

  Then the world exploded.

  Chapter 2 — Tarik

  The blast threw me off my feet. Vaguely I felt my face slamming into the metal fence pole a half-second before my hands hit the gravel. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t hear. My ears rang and I felt my voice tearing from my throat; I think I was shouting for Coins. The world convulsed and I threw an arm up, scrabbling desperately at the chain links for support.

  Everything swam in shadow…shadow, and rust red flame.

  “Shade! Shade!”

  Finally the voice registered, and I felt Coins’s hand clawing at my shoulder. He was leaning over me, his face bloody, terror in his eyes.

  “Coins! What the hell was that?” I shouted. I probably didn’t need to shout, but it was the only way I could hear my own voice.

  I used the fence to haul myself to my feet, but that was as far as I got. Behind us, the smelter roof was a raging inferno. Flaming mounds of debris littered the factory yard, the closest just a few feet from where we stood. And I stared, and kept staring, because I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing.

  The smelter. The skitters. The mages.

  The smelter roof.

  Zagger.

  That was my voice, screaming his name. I couldn’t feel anything at all. I didn’t even feel it when I started sprinting toward the factory and Coins tackled me to the ground. But I coughed, my lungs empty from the fall, head spinning.

  “Don’t even think it!” Coins was shouting in my ear. “Go! Get out of here! Run!”

  “Get off me!”

  I fought free of his grip, but as soon as I’d gained my feet he grabbed my arm. I didn’t even think; my other fist flew on its own. Coins staggered and fell to his knees, his hand cupping his chin.

  “You want me to run?” My hands knotted in fists, ready to strike again. “Am I supposed to run away? Zagger…I’ve got to do something.”