My eyes stinging with sweat, I pulled the Orcus thread from my pack. It thrummed in my hands like a low B on a seven-string guitar. I imagined touching it was like taking hold of the woman’s soul whose streamers had given it life. After spooling out several lengths, I tried looping it around Cassius. The Orcus flared crimson and amber against the dark . . . but wouldn’t go. It was like the ward barrier again. Something was pushing back against the thread.
I blinked back sweat, hummed a few notes of my song, and tried again.
Closer. But the Orcus still wouldn’t go.
The thread will require something of you.
My mind raced. Whenever I invoked my song, the thread quieted, but not completely. So, whatever the Orcus required must have something to do with my wound, and I just wasn’t giving it enough.
I had to offer more.
And it had to be unique—for Cassius this time.
I thought about his primal moment and my own deep occlusion—both to do with family.
Maybe the ward-bond needed to understand why I would never break my oath to protect it. I believed Cassius and all thesouls inside him might already know that. But something told me it needed to be more than just words and music. It needed to be the raw moments thatledto the song, led to my fermata, led to the Ward telling me?—
You are good at staying, Jack.
I quickly grabbed my khopesh and hooked the tip beneath Lady’s Essiene sutures in my shadow. I hoped I was ready to deal with an open wound of the soul, like those I’d seen inside Henry. Either way, this would mean the forgiving path would have to wait a while.
“Jack,” said Cassius, “what are you doing?”
With a quick jerk of my knife, the Essiene thread slipped away, exposing my wound. Gold light spilled out. Hurt like hell. But I immediately sang my chorus, and the light pulled into a thin, radiant ribbon that wrapped the Orcus thread tight, flashing, fusing, then quieting it all to a still, bright band.
I then quickly began looping the thread around Cassius. The Orcus flared again—crimson, amber, and now with strands of gold.
“Stop this,” cried Brach. He beat his bow against his lantern, driving Chuey and Lady to the ground.
Each time I lashed Cassius with the thread, the soil rose up further around him.
“I won’t allow it!” Brach rushed me, khopesh glinting.
I pulled one last loop around Cassius’s chest, and a burst of golden light erupted from him, shimmering outward in all directions. A deep, descending glissando pushed outward with it, rolling over the
Shiguan army. Brach froze midstep behind me. All round us the battle ceased, my friends and the Shiguan standing like statues, their weapons clattering to the cracked earth.
Brach managed to raise his khopesh but was thrust back against the Steps, slamming into the wall.
Abandoning their weapons, Shiguan raced past him, clawing over each other as they hurried up the Strata. Iron Horse folk, some dropping to their knees, stared after them with weary smiles. Cassius’s earthen face nodded, then he raised a hand goodbye and sank down into a bed of loam.
It was done.
I looked over at Kincaid, who stood, hunched over, his rods gripped loosely. He’d put away those rods until all this started. Given so much since. Cassius’s friend. Mine, too. He wiped his face and started my way.
Church and Lady and the rest of my other friends gathered around me and together we stared down into the soil.
“Hell of a thing,” said Church.
I nodded. “Hell of a thing.” Then I pointed to Brach. “Lakshmi, get that piece of sh— Get Brach back to his box, will you?”
Lakshmi smiled and flashed the metal salute. She then marched over, grabbed Brach, and started shoving him up the Steps.
“Was that a country fan throwing me the horns, Chuey?” Chuey did the same. Then Lady and Church and Kincaid.
I’d never been so relieved in my life. I almost broke into song right there on the ancient soil—something triumphant like “Carry On Wayward Son” by Kansas. But I was too tired, too spent. It would take some time for me to process everything that had happened. I just wanted to be back topside lying on the old greenroom couch.
Almost too weary to lift my arm, I flashed my friends the horns.
