“He’ll be all right,” Lehrer said at last. “A few months under suppressants...”
“Those are illegal.”
“They are. But to save Dara’s life... he’s like a son to me.” Lehrer turned his face up as well, toward the lights. “I have him on a constant IV drip of suppressants and steroids to calm the inflammation. My personal physician is very discreet.”
“Will that... work?” It felt like too much to hope.
“Eventually,” Lehrer said. “Most likely. I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this. There’s a reason suppressants are illegal—depriving a witching of his magic is a terrible thing...” He trailed off, and Noam didn’t ask. Everyone knew what they had done to Lehrer in those hospitals. The torture, the experiments. Probably worse things, too, that Lehrer had kept quiet.
“Can I see him?”
“No. Not yet.”
“When?”
“Soon. I promise.”
They sat there in silence after that, twin minds floating in space.
Eventually, it started to rain.
That night, Noam dreamed about Dara again.
It was his building, where he grew up. The same wood floor creaking underfoot, the shadows peering from between the bookshelves. It was August 2120, cicadas in the window, too hot. Once, this scene was all Noam saw when he shut his eyes. And so Noam knew, he knew down to his bones, before he even saw the body.
But it wasn’t Noam’s mother hanging from the ceiling light. It was Dara.
Ghostly hands fell upon his shoulders, golden magic flickering through the night like heat lightning. A soft and familiar voice murmured in his ear:You will do whatever I say.
The next morning, Noam skipped basic. He sat on the edge of his bed and stared across the room at Dara’s empty one. The duvet was unwrinkled, but a book lay open near the foot; when Dara had put it down, he’d planned on coming back.
What if he didn’t come back?
When Noam thought back over that conversation with Lehrer in the courtyard, he felt like he’d swallowed grease, oil sloshing around in the pit of his stomach. He couldn’t figure out what about it felt wrong.
Noam had the distinct sense there was something he ought to remember, something hedidn’t. The effect of shock, maybe.
Or maybe it was the way Lehrer had said,You’re going to have to trust me, and Noam realized, in that moment, Lehrer easily could havemadehim.
Perhaps Noam should leave. It wasn’t too late. He could pack his things right now and steal a car and drive until he broke past the border into the QZ. Until he was lost in the wild and fatal wilderness.
But then he went to the Migrant Center and saw the same faces he always saw—children who might be citizens but were still starving. Noam couldn’t abandon them.
And what about Dara? Can you abandonhim?
In the fear-splattered tumult of Lehrer’s coup, Noam felt so sure that going back to Lehrer was Dara’s best chance at survival. If Dara didn’t get treated, he’d keep making antibodies, and those antibodies would keep attacking his own tissue. The brain now, but then his kidneys, his liver, his heart. Dara’s body would fail in pieces.
But if Noam let him stay here, Dara would die anyway.
Noam didn’t see the signs with his mother. One day she was smiling, singing in the kitchen and kissing Noam’s cheek. The next night she’d killed herself, and Noam still, still,stilldidn’t understand why.
He wasn’t making the same mistake again.
He didn’t plan anything. There was nothing to plan—he didn’t have contingencies, no connections in clandestine places who knew how to make a man disappear. All he had was impulse and the flash-fire certainty that yes, yes, this was the right thing to do.
It was the middle of the workday when Noam grabbed a bag from his trunk and stuffed in several sets of civilian clothes, socks, and the copy ofLaughter in the Darkfrom Dara’s bed. Ames was the only one in the common room as he went out, lying on the sofa with one arm slung over her face to block out the light, still sleeping off the previous night. She hadn’t been sober since her father died.
He couldn’t undo the wards to Lehrer’s apartment, but he could pick the lock to the study—and then all he had to do was knock.
