Another quiet beat stretches out between us, and I wonder if she’s done talking, if she wants me to go. But she finally turns to me again, her eyes studying me, a little furrow between her brows.
“What does it mean anyway?” she asks. “The fact that you’re storm-touched, you’re a saint, but you never went with the Archangels to the Gate of Heaven. I thought all saints had to go, that it would be bad or dangerous somehow if you didn’t.”
I rub my hand over my short hair. It’s grown a little bit, almost long enough to grab ahold of now. I’ll need to shear it again soon. “I don’t know. Dusters aren’t even supposed to become saints in the first place. Maybe I’m a mistake. Maybe I don’t count.”
“Or maybe that’s what that flare was.” I shoot her a confused look, eyebrows raised, and she shrugs. “It’s got to be connected to you somehow, right? You knew it was coming. Maybe Trinity is reacting to you or something.”
I’d never thought about it in that way. When had Halle gotten so wise? So perceptive? Why did it seem like she had become so much older in the few days we had been apart?
Something about the way she says that—Trinity is reacting to you—puts an idea in my head.
All this time, my plan was to get my sisters back and carve out a new life for all three of us together, somewhere far away. But the Archangels are afterme. Trinity might be reacting tome. Maybe it would be better if I didn’t go with them, especially with good people like Orion and Atlas around to look out for them. It wouldn’t be hard for me to sneak away, maybe steal one of the mounts or jump on a lightningrail that’s passing through.
Or even just turn myself in, if it comes to that.
But you lied to us, Val. And worse than that, you left us. You pulled away when we needed you themost.
Halle’s words. From back in the Shipyards. Even just the memory of them is harsh enough to savage my insides. Ever sinceMama went prophet, I’ve been making choices, choosing our path, never asking my sisters what they wanted. If I take off now without telling them, even if it’s for the right reasons, it’ll be the same betrayal all over again. Lies. Abandonment. Pulling away.
I chance a quick glance at Halle, but she’s deep in thought and I can’t read her expression. If this is really about them and not just me, I have to at least give her the option.
“If you want,” I say, my voice just a little too hoarse, too choked, “you and Kel can stay here with the Bookers, and I can go. Anyone coming after us would follow me. You guys would be safe.”
Halle doesn’t answer right away, and dread kicks my heart down into my stomach.
“No,” she finally says. Relief and surprise wash through me, and Halle rolls her eyes, waving me away dismissively. “It would make Kelda too sad, is all. I don’t care or anything.”
I duck my head as a small smile creeps onto my face. I’ve known Halle all her life—too well to be fooled by her playing at indifference. Which is fine. She’s still mad at me; I get that. But she also still wants me here, with them, and that means something. That means everything.
Halle grabs my hand suddenly, squeezing it. “Val, look.”
I tilt my head back, following her gaze, and suck in a breath.
There’s a magnastorm forming above us.
Silvery clouds pour out of a crack in the sky, spreading in a ragged, unfriendly circle. The center of it flickers with pale-green lightning once, twice, and then the lightning reaches splintered fingers downward. They flick across the air, touching down outside of Concord.
I reach an arm across Halle’s body, nudging her behind me, back toward the window. Putting my body between her and the storm.
Webs of lightning lance down again, hitting a statue in the middle of town, sending up a shower of sparks, but then the wind kicks up and drives the storm clouds before it, moving it off north and east until it’s no longer visible.
Halle lets out a breath and sinks back against the window frame. I keep my eyes on the sky, still tense, still tasting ozone and metal on the air. Trinity’s song keens in my bones, the same tempo as my racing heart.
“Try to go get a little more rest,” I tell Halle. “We need to be leaving soon.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“I SYMPATHIZE WITH THOSE WHO DOUBT THE EXISTENCE OF WHAT OTHERS HAVE DUBBED AN AALDENBERG KNOT (OR KNOTS, AS MAY BE THE CASE). I CAN ONLY SAY THAT, IN MY EIGHTY-FIVE YEARS ON TRINITY, I HAVE GROWN EVER MORE SURE THAT OUR WORLD HOLDS DEEP SECRETS, AND THE AALDENBERG KNOT IS LIKELY LEAST AMONG THEM.”
—FROM THE WRITINGS OF ELSJE AALDENBERG (YEAR 1000)
I leave Halle snuggled underneath that yellow quilt, her arm around Kelda, and move through the row house on stealthy footsteps. Halle and Kelda and I need a plan for getting out of here as quickly as possible. One or two of the Bookers’ automaton mounts would be ideal—that way we could move freely, without being tied down—but I’m not sure how keen they will be to hand them over and I don’t know how competent I would be at steering them in the first place. There’s the lightningrail, but they’re crowded and unreliable. I need to know our options in this little mirage town.
Atlas is sitting with Liren and their parents, talking quietly, and Dani has stretched out on the couch in the parlor, her rucksack under her head as a pillow, one arm thrown over her eyes to block out the light. I hesitate in the doorway, wondering if I should wake her up, demand to know why she’s still here, tell her to go back home. But her home was the Shipyards, and who knows how much is left of that place now?
I leave her to sleep, telling myself it’s fine, that we’ll be putting everyone else behind us soon anyway, so what’s one more person?
In a small room at the back of the house, I find Orion hunkered down at a table, bent low over the Aaldenberg knot. It looks smaller than it did back in the vault, and all the etchings across its twisted surface seem a dozen times more complex in the full afternoon light. Orion has his ear trumpet out again, pressed to the top of the device, as he works his fingertips slowly and steadily over the surface.
