The Ninth Circle. The worst prison on the whole of Trinity. A hellish construct suspended far down into the darkness of a section of the Elysian Depths. They say the Ninth Circle is so deep into the Depths that you can’t even see the sun when it’s directly overhead.
My head swims as I step off the corner, so distracted that I knock shoulders with someone and get an earful of what they think about me and my questionable parentage. The dailies are everywhere, flashing in my peripheral vision as I sweep by, and despite all my efforts to not look at any of the screens, I’m still hyperaware of the face that pops up again and again as the reels repeat.
Orion Booker.
I can still picture him as he was when we were kids—laughing, running the streets with me, stretched out beside me all those bright, warm nights that we’d lie on rooftops and watch the rhythm and flow of skyliner airships above us.
I remember, too, the last time we saw each other. I feel little echoes of the emotions that swamped me back then—the anger, the fear, the hollowness in my chest. That sense that something precious and real in my life was falling to pieces. Again.
Papa called themunmaking seasons. Told me that every quiet, stable period in your life would be followed by a season of unmaking, where upheaval and chaos and change would push at your edges and force you to grow.
I feel like I’ve had too many unmaking seasons already in my life. After Papa died in the dock accident. After we lost Mama. And then again, after Orion.
And now, all of a sudden, here he is, just as a giant crack appears in my—in the Butcher’s—relationship with the Gold Town Gang.
I scrub my hands down my face and suck in a deep breath, willing my feet to move a little faster, like maybe I can shake the ghosts on my heels if I’m quick enough. I’ve worked so hard to carve out this space and this life, but I don’t know how long the walls will hold.
I finally reach the steps of the boardinghouse in East Parish where we rent our lodgings, and just as I start to climb, I feel the change in the air. The taste of ozone, sharp and bitter. The shift in the wind. Harsh white clouds boil up across the southern horizon, and spidery forks of lightning, tinged with vivid colors, follow behind them.
A magnastorm. That came up fast.
We used to know about oncoming magnastorms hours before they happened. They’d boil up on the hottest days of high season in predictable ways. But the past few months, every day has felt like the hottest day, and the magnastorms have started coming from nowhere, with no warning, moving fast and whipping up winds that wreak havoc on the surface. Tearing at old, rusted-out buildings and kicking up a red-brown haze of dust and grit that coats your skin, irritates your eyes, and makes everything you eat taste a bit like rust for days afterward.
Another crackle of lightning, colored turquoise and pink, lances downward, and I shiver like I can feel its electric touch dancing down my spine.
And then, a flash of light slices across the edges of my vision, flaring up in the distance, far off to the north in the opposite direction of the storm. It’s enormous—a searing surge of blue-white light that shoots upward, reaching past the clouds to claw hungrily at the distant stars. It has to be miles and miles away, but for a second, it’s all I can look at, all I can see. It floods my eyes and skin, blotting out the town and the skyliners and the stars. Trinity’s song rises, sharp and loud in my ears, louder even than it is when I phase—
It dies away as quickly as it came. The song drops to barely a murmur, and I’m left, blinking, on my own doorstep.
It’s an unmaking season, Val.
I wait, breath caught in my throat, for one heartbeat after another. I don’t even know for what. For the light to come back? For the chapel bells to ring? Some sign—any sign—that I wasn’t the only person in Covenant just now who witnessed that?
But there’s nothing. And somehow that’s worse.
Somehow, it feels like an omen.
CHAPTER FIVE
“THERE IS NO DETAIL TOO SMALL IN THE HERALDS’ DIVINE PLAN. YOUR PLACE IN THIS WORLD HAS BEEN HANDPICKED BY THEM, EVERY MOMENT OF YOUR EXISTENCE ACCOUNTED FOR.”
—TREATISE NO. 1BY MOST HOLY PREACHER HAL LOURDE, ORIGINAL CHAPEL FOUNDER
I rip my gaze away from the magnastorm on the horizon and turn back to the boardinghouse, placing my hand flat against the crystalline oval embedded in the rusty, oxidized door. There’s a swirl of misty light under the crystal’s surface and then the door swings open with a metallic creak. Not many buildings in duster towns have coded locks like this one, which means the rent here is double, but it’s more than worth it. Before we could afford to live here, I didn’t just keep Wrath under my pillow—I had to feel the cold weight of it on my fingertips in order to fall asleep.
Inside, it smells like metal polish and old wallpaper and slow-cooked foods heavy with spices. The stately, curving staircase echoes with the voices of kids farther up, hollering and laughing and giving one another shit as they disappear behind their frontdoors with enthusiastic slams. There’s a vent in a dusty, shadowed corner back behind that staircase where I stow my Butcher kit, wiggling the metal grate free and shoving it deep into the darkness. I’ve used this hiding place ever since Kelda almost stumbled across the rucksack in my room and found me out.
Two halves of my life. A constant tightrope walk between them.
That nice, expensive rent also means this place has an ornate cage elevator that works 80 percent of the time—which isn’t half bad. It’s not necessarily skyliner fancy, but then again, nothing down here in the dust really is. I clang the cage shut behind me and listen to the clattering rattle as the elevator climbs all the way to the top of the building. I picked out this place for Halle and Kelda about a year ago. So much nicer than what we were used to, but also not so expensive that I can’t keep stashing some cash away as a safety net.
I pause just outside the door, wiping my fingers along my face and neck to make sure there aren’t any lingering blood spots. My mind drifts briefly—to the mess I left in that airship, to Orion’s arrest warrant on the dailies, to the sudden storm.
It’s an unmaking season, Val. Papa’s words ring in my head again.
I don’t want to hear them. No one is unmaking anything here. I’m going to go inside and my sisters are going to be fine and safe, and that’ll be the end of it. Everything else I can fix in the morning.
The hinges squeal as I shoulder open the door and step inside, kicking the door closed hard enough to make sure it latches and locking it behind me. Halle stands at the dish steamer in the kitchen, her back to me. Unharmed, unhurt. All the tension rushes out of my body, so quickly I almost feel a little lightheaded.
