Halle’s face, incandescent with rage and betrayal. “How many people have you killed? You’ve been doing this foryears, so I have to think it’s a lot.”
Self-loathing coats my tongue, too thick to swallow. “One ofyourArchangels killed Halle.”
He steeples his hands in front of his face, his expression grave and piercing. “But you don’t actually believe that, do you? Not in your heart, where it matters most. You and I both know that you’re the reason why she fell into the Depths.”
I cross my arms over my chest, like maybe that will be enough to keep him from seeing inside me. “I read Samuel Covenant’s journal. I know what the naphtha did to Trinity. How many tens of thousands of people died because of it. Millions, even. How are you any better than me? One killer recognizes another.”
For the first time, annoyance twists his face, and his calm, benevolent demeanor cracks a little at the edges. I don’t know if it’s because I called him a killer or because I compared us like he and I were equals.
“Sacrifice is the nature of transformation and progress. Naphtha revolutionized our world, our industries, making energy easier and more accessible than ever before.” He shakes his head, looking sorrowful. “What happened out there was very unfortunate, but that was no reason for us to change course. Who’s to even say if it would have helped if we had? The people needed guidance and order and naphtha, and I was the only one who could give them that.” He reaches out and puts his hands on my shoulders. “You are so young, too young to understand the difficult decisions that true leadership calls for. Acceptable losses are just part of the price of living.”
Acceptable losses. Like the dusters getting slowly choked off their water and naphtha rations. Like Mama and Liza and all the other magdalenas and shop owners, boardinghouse matrons and dock workers turning prophet and drifting away. Like the children touched by the storms we didn’t make, weighted with power we didn’t ask for.
Weare the expendable ones.
He steps right up to me, gripping my chin and jaw in one hand so he can twist my head back and forth, studying me from all angles. “I’ve never had a saint go undetected like you did before. And a duster at that. It’s very strange.”
I smack his hand away, wiping his touch from my face. He’s unnerving, disorienting, to be around. He moves about this space with pure confidence and entitlement. Everything is his.Everything is available for perusal. No one in the dust functions like this, without any set of boundaries. The only person I’ve ever met who came close was Bloody Bill, and even he had a line or two he wouldn’t cross.
Something rumbles through the Gate, vibrating the metal underneath my feet. Trinity’s song surges up, loud enough it makes my teeth ache, and a flash of light fills my eyes.
It’s gone half a second later. I blink at my surroundings, at the Herald standing in front of me. The fervent energy around him seems suddenlyhungrier.
“You heard it? The song, just now?” I give him the barest nod, and his face twists with pain, with longing. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? I used to hear it, too, in the beginning. It made it easier to bear the solitude after the other founders were gone.” He swallows hard in the way people do when they’re trying to hold back tears, and it somehow makes him look even younger. “But I stopped being able to hear it. Hundreds of years ago. I can barely remember what it sounds like anymore.”
For a moment, I don’t see a Herald. I just see a man, crushingly lonely, rattling around in a globe at the top of the world forever. I see me, staring at my warped reflection in my blades, giving them names because they felt like all I had left.
Then he whips around and claps his hands together, the sound sudden and loud in the vaulted chamber, and the image shatters. He’s a god again—and me, his wayward child. “Well, then, Valene Bruinn, I suppose we ought to figure out what we’re going to do with you.”
Wariness tenses my muscles, and my hands immediately goto my hilts, slipping Mercy half out of its sheath. “You’re not going to do anything with me.”
Horace freezes with his back to me. “Ah… I would be careful with your threats,” he says, and then waves offhandedly at the twelve Herald-angels around the room. In an instant, they light up, golden mechanical hearts blazing to life in their metal chests as they step out into the chamber and turn their blank metal masks toward me. They suddenly look much, much bigger than they did tucked into their recesses.
I go very still, and then, with slow, smooth movements, I sheathe Mercy and hold my hands up in surrender.
Horace turns back to me, smiling again and waving me forward. “There, now. Much better,” he says, and drops into the embellished golden chair behind the desk. “I’m assuming that what brought you here was some form of revenge, correct?”
I keep one eye on the Herald-angels as I move toward the center of the dais. “I wanted to make the Archangels stop coming for me. So that we’d be safe.”
He nods solemnly, his expression drawn and serious. “Quite understandable, given everything you’ve been through. On the other hand, you understand my predicament in having a saint loose in the world, wielding power that risks real harm. The other saints, when I explained the situation to them, were fully willing to feed their power back into Trinity, regardless of the cost to themselves.”
“The other saints werechildren,” I snap.
“You’re all children as far as I’m concerned.” Horace shakes his head. “You cannot tell me that your power hasn’t been changing?Growing?” I tighten my jaw because I don’t want to give him an answer to that—I don’t want to give him anything at all—but he doesn’t need me to. He makes a littlehmphof satisfaction and sits back in his seat. “I see the truth in your eyes, and I am telling you now, Valene Bruinn, that is how it starts. The song gets louder, your storm-touched abilities get stronger and easier, you start to be able to do things you never could before… But it does not end well. It ends in you becoming the instrument of destruction for everyone you love.”
He folds his hands in front of himself again, drawing up to his full height so that he’s looking down his nose at me even though he’s still seated. “You understand that I do not want to force you and I do not want to fight you. But I will if I must. The good of the world is my greatest priority.”
I throw back my head at that and laugh, loud and harsh, waving an arm wide, gesturing at all of Trinity. At the Copper Plains and the mirage towns, the dusters and the skyliners. A whole world transmuted by greed—broken, unjust, harsh, but also sometimes excruciatingly beautiful, just when you think you might completely give up.
“The good of the world. Yeah, it looks great out there. You did a bang-up job of it. Really keeping us little people in mind.”
Horace contemplates me for a long moment, the lines of his face tight with disapproval. “Like I said, you are achild, so I cannot expect you to fully grasp the value of what I’m providing here. The insight and wisdom that only comes with age and the level of success I have achieved. But I do believe I have another way of convincing you to be reasonable.”
He touches something on the underside of the desk in frontof him, and on the other end of the chamber, a crystalline pad activates, opening a seam in the wall that splits, revealing a small antechamber beyond.
And sitting in the middle of it, her arms wrapped tight around her knees, her dark hair spilling wild all over her shoulders, is Halle.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
