But… Doesn’t that mean you’re a saint?
A saint.
Legends. Holy figures. Gifted with special abilities for the glory of the Heralds and taken to the Gate of Heaven to serve their divine purpose. I remember seeing one on the dailies a year ago. A kid like me. Papa had said she’d run away after her parents told the chapels, but Archangels still found her, four days later. What was her name?
Sorcha. Sorcha Tannith. She’d had the brightest red hair I’d ever seen.
Couldn’t be, I tell him.I’m a duster.
Everyone knows you can only become a saint if you’re storm-touched. And the only ones who are ever storm-touched are skyliners, like Sorcha. They live up in the clouds on dirigibles andhomesteads, where the magnastorms are, and keep all the blessings of the Heralds to themselves.
I pick at the dry skin of my lips, frowning.I should tell Mama and Papa.
Don’t. Orion grabs both my hands, squeezing them.Don’t tell them, V. If anyone finds out what you can do, the Archangels will take you away. We won’t see each other ever again.
All the excitement starts to trickle from my belly. I hadn’t thought about that part. About being taken, snatched away from Mama and Papa and little Halle and Orion by towering metal figures that burned black and gold.
I stare into Orion’s big, dark eyes. Sometimes I feel safer with him than with anyone else, even Mama and Papa. Because Mama and Papa walk around heavy with worries, the kinds of worries that leave little bits and pieces everywhere, that cling sticky to my skin no matter what I do, weighing me down. Orion doesn’t have anything like that. I can just be myself around him, light and fast and free.
I twist my hands in his grip, interlacing our fingers.Okay. I won’t tell anyone.
And you can’t do it again, he adds.In case someone sees.
I nod.I won’t, I swear.
We lie down on the roof together, side by side, our arms touching, our hands still joined even when keeping them clasped together has made them all sweaty. We watch the shifting dirigibles and homesteads cluttering the sky above us and make up increasingly wild stories about the skyliners who live there until the sun starts to dip toward the horizon.
I don’t phase again after that, not even when the ache to do so floods my whole body, building underneath my skin like an itch I can never scratch.
I keep my promise.
Until eight years later, when I’m standing in front of my first kill.
CHAPTER THREE
“THERE IS NO TRUE RIGHT AND WRONG ON TRINITY. THERE IS ONLY PAPER AND POWER, AND THOSE WHO WIELD IT WRITE YOUR MORALITY.”
—EXCERPT FROMTRACTS FROM A REBEL PREACHER
I jerk away from the body so fast that my heels catch against another corpse and I fall backward, landing hard on my ass in a pool of quickly congealing gore. Panic scrambles up my throat, my breath coming fast, and I have to curl in on myself and force it to slow down. Not the cold, steel-skinned Butcher anymore; back to being Val. And Val needs to get their head on straight and figure out what the fuck just happened.
Breathe. Just breathe.
Getting back to my feet, I go to each of the bodies and fumble to take off their masks, my gloves sticky with blood, and try to decipher the scattered pieces on this metaphorical board. The shorter figure in red turns out to be Quick-Shot Jim, Kilpatrick’s right-hand man. Then there’s the preacher and the other one in white, who also looks to be a preacher or maybe an apprentice.Judging by the shape and model of their gold pulse pistols, the two in black are wardens of some kind or other. And the three in green? No clue. But they’re dressed so richly that my best guess is that they’re barons.
I lean against the cargo hold ladder, staring around the room without seeing it. I’ve heard rumors about shadow sessions where the power players of a city meet up in secret to make deals to keep everything running on their terms. The fact that someone like Kilpatrick is in this shoddy airship with preachers and wardens and barons certainly fits the bill.
But obviously, if that’s the case, Kilpatrick wasn’t the one who hired the Butcher for this job. So then who did? Who contacted Dani with a fake story and the cash to buy my services?
My eyes drift back over to Bloody Bill, staring, dead-eyed, up at the ceiling.
He looks so much smaller right now. Diminished. He was always a big guy, broad-shouldered, built like someone who was both accustomed to the finer things in life and also had never forgotten how to make people bleed to get those things.
In a lot of ways, Bloody Bill Kilpatrick made the Butcher.
My first job was for him, and he is—was—the Butcher’s highest-paying, most regular client. Which makes sense. Only the head of a group like the Gold Town Gang would have a consistent need for a killer.
Kilpatrick had been the boss of the Gold Town Gang since well before I was born, coming to power in the middle of the 2089 Riots, when naphtha and water had been even scarcer than usual and boroughs had exploded into fires and protests. Kilpatrickhad taken advantage of the chaos, bargaining and provoking and killing and threatening until, when the flames finally died, he was the ruling crime lord of Covenant.
