Zuri didn't consider herself to be a worrier. Just from watching her father, she'd seen well enough what worry could do to a person, how it could devour them from the inside out, turn their dreams into nightmares. That being said, she couldn't ignore the anxious pit in her stomach as she watched the sun go down from within the warehouse, Sinje slowly succumbing to the blue-black inkiness of night.
When the sun rose again, they would be at the paper mill, finally meeting Schmitt face to face. She should've been giddy, excited to accomplish the task they'd come so far to achieve. Yet all she felt was dread—dread, and the beginnings of exhaustion she knew she could only stave off for so long.
They'd discussed their plans in detail on the journey back from the bakery, including how they would approach and how they would leave again. Kalindi had raised every possible question and scenario, and Zuri and the others had worked through them ceaselessly until their heads hurt. Jem was already sleeping it all off, though how she'd managed to fall asleep atop the heavily-splintered wooden pallets currently serving as their mattresses, Zuri didn't know.
Kalindi and Chike sat beside Jem, discussing something in low, hushed voices, Schmitt's letter between them. They'd been doing so for the past hour, it felt like, but there was a small knit between Kalindi's brows and a calculated anxiousness to Chike's expression that scared Zuri off from breaking their focus.
So she sat alone in the growing dark, perched on the windowsill, one leg bent close, the other stretched in front of her. She touched a hand to the grimy glass, cracked in one corner. It was lukewarm, like a tepid bath.
A face appeared on the other side of the glass then, making Zuri jump before she realized the face was Aldric's. He was grinning at her, holding up a paper bag.
A strange sense of déjà vu rolled over Zuri as she leaned forward, shoving the window open. It gave with far too much ease. She asked immediately, "What is your obsession with windows?"
"They make for better entrances, don't you think?" Aldric answered, clambering inside. At the noise, Kalindi looked up, met Zuri's and Aldric's gazes for a moment, before exhaling and turning away again.
Aldric's eyes returned to Zuri; he settled himself across from her. "Hope you're hungry."
"I wouldn't mind eating. Why?"
"Get this. There's a restaurant on this side of the bridge that serves traditional Meathean cuisine," he said, his eyes glittering with an excitement Zuri had never seen in them before. The look on his face reminded her inexplicably of a puppy. "We passed by it when we were walking earlier, but Kalindi was rattling on—"
Kalindi looked up again, her brows like two dark blades.
"Very helpfully going over the plans," Aldric amended, waiting until Kalindi huffed and looked away before adding, "so I didn't have time to stop. But I decided to run back there."
Zuri had to admit that the cultural details of Aldric's birthplace were a bit lost on her. After all, before the Queen's request, she'd never once stepped foot outside of Naino. The little she knew about the eternally cold land of Meathe came from articles she'd read in the paper, or the occasional traveler she rode beside on the trolley. The Winter State, the Land of Knowledge—it had a lot of nicknames, but she could tell by the utter solace in Aldric's expression that, to him, it was just home.
"Here," he said, reaching into the bag, and pulling out what looked to be a small, circular loaf of sourdough bread, about the size of Zuri's palm. He handed it to her, and she took it, however warily. It wasn't quite hot enough to burn her, but it was certainly close.
She looked at Aldric, questioning. "Bread?"
"Yes, and also no. It's not just bread. Bite it."
Zuri took a tentative bite, and tried to mask her surprise. The center of the loaf was hollow, a pocket filled with a steaming mash of potatoes and spices and cheese, and it was absolutely heavenly.
Aldric must have read her expression, because he beamed. "Good, isn't it?"
"It's delicious," Zuri said, taking another bite, the dread within her draining away the more she chewed. "What...what is it, exactly?"
"Chive cake."
Now, Zuri frowned. "It's not really a cake, though."
"No. No one has any idea why it's called that, besides the fact that its primary ingredient is chives," Aldric said with a shrug, pulling another of the rolls from his bag and digging right in. He leaned back against the sill, his braid tossed over his shoulder, blue as the sea in the moonlight. "My father used to work in the center of the city, at one of the big universities. They make the very best chive cakes there, say it's good brain fuel for all the students and researchers. So my father would bring a bag of them home to my sister and me, every single night. He used to joke that we were happier to see the chive cakes than we were to see him."
Zuri allowed a brief laugh, before a tense silence enveloped them both. From the first time she'd seen his memories, Zuri had known Aldric had a younger sister, but now was the first time he'd ever spoken about her out loud. "You miss her?" she asked, knowing it was a stupid question, but somehow unable to stop herself.
Zuri regretted it in an instant as Aldric's face fell, the glitter in his eyes evaporating like a light flickering, flickering, disappearing. "Aurora," he said, like it was something holy, omnipotent, holding so much awe and so much fear at once. His eyes slid away, towards the ground. "That's her name, though if you've been in my head, you probably already know that."
Zuri winced. She had known that.
"Of course I miss her," he said. "More and more everyday. And most of all I'm afraid for her—my parents have threatened her life more than once to get me to do their bidding."
"How could they?" Zuri gasped, Aldric's words roiling a sensation much like nausea within her stomach. "Use their own children like that?"
"As long as it's for profit, it doesn't matter. Isn't that just how the world works?" Aldric snapped, and when Zuri flinched, a tiny twitch of her shoulder, he looked at her sadly. "I'm...sorry. Anyway, I know I shouldn't worry about her so much. She told me to have faith in her. That even if she didn't have power like I did, she could make her own way in the world. So I just have to trust her. I just have to trust that she's okay."
Even if Zuri had once seen the complicated map of Aldric's memories play out before her, one glimpse was hardly enough to understand him. It was one frame of a much longer film, one stanza of a much more profound poem. She didn't know what to say to help him, to ease the unrest he no doubt wrestled with every waking hour of his life.
Still, she had to try.
She flattened the paper bag, resting her chive cake on top of it and scooting forward, till the sole of her boot nudged his. Her voice quiet, a melody in the dark, she said, "Aldric?"
He said nothing, just tilted his head against the glass, midnight strands of hair falling against his mouth.
"You will see each other again," Zuri said, slowly. "I'm...an only child, so I may not know how siblings work. But I know that if there are two people who want nothing more than to be with each other again, there's nothing that can stop them. Okay?"
Aldric frowned, but for another painfully long moment, he was quiet, as quiet as he had been when they'd first met in the prison. Then he lifted his hand, awkwardly tapping Zuri's knee with his knuckle. "You seem tired," he said, keeping his gaze out the window. "You can get a few hours of rest in before we head out if you lay down now."
It was true—Zuri was tired—but at the same time, sleep felt impossibly far away from her now, like a ridge of land on the other side of a deep, rocky chasm. In the end, however, she didn't have any time to rest at all, because Chike stood, noisily clearing his throat.
"Chike?" Aldric said, and grinned, his voice playful. "What's going on? Are you going to recite a poem for us?"
Chike sighed. "If I had any available energy, I'd deck you, Finck, but lucky for you I'm saving it."
"Saving it?" Zuri asked, swinging her legs around and hopping off the sill.
"I've been thinking about it," Chike said, and there was something in the intense glow of his coffee-black eyes that told Zuri thinking about it was an understatement. He'd been agonizing over it, more likely. "And I think Sorin might've been listening in on our conversation at the bakery earlier."
Instantly, the playfulness in Aldric's expression dissipated. He dropped the remainder his chive cake down atop the paper bag, jumping to his feet. "Are you sure?"
With the toe of her boot, Kalindi nudged Jem awake. Jem groaned and rolled over, tossing an arm over her eyes. "No," said Kalindi, nudging Jem with much more force. This time, Jem let out a noise that sounded like a cross between a death throe and a war cry, which Kalindi ignored. "We aren't sure. But Chike says he saw something, and I think...I think we're better off safe than sorry."
Zuri exhaled, fluttering her fingers, bouncing up and down on her toes, as if she needed to settle the words in to every inch of her frame. She didn't like the idea of traveling in the dark, and liked the idea of sneaking into the paper mill in the dark even less. When she considered it, though, arriving to the mill only to find Sorin had beaten them to it was the absolute worst option of them all.
Jem was struggling to a sitting position now, her hair a mussed, dark halo around her face. "Why am I awake?" she murmured. "Is the world ending?"
"No," Aldric answered. He was crossing the floor, going in search of his satchel. "Not if we bring Schmitt home, it won't."
Zuri watched the clarity seep into Jem's face, which took a moment. When it did, she let out a theatrical groan and rolled over again, pressing her face into the pallet. "Hang on. I was supposed to have more time to sleep. I'm not in the mood to be a hero right now."
"No one asked you to be a hero," Kalindi scoffed, crouching and offering Jem a hand. "We're just asking you to do your job."
The journey was long, but Zuri had been expecting that.
Some quick intimidation tactics courtesy of Aldric and Kalindi earned them a ride in a pub owner's automobile. They headed east, out of the central district, nearly to Sinje's border with the broad, forested state of Janu, where people lived in intricate arrangements of treehouses and wooden huts. As they climbed out of the automobile, Zuri's legs tired and achy from sitting still for so long, she made out the shadows of the trees in the distance, like the silhouettes of giants huddling on the hills.
From there, the group walked. The paper mill sat at the crest of one of the hills. The mill was a long, rectangular building with rows and rows of square windows, a rusted silo towering in front, all of it blocked off by a tall, wire fence. To Zuri, it almost looked like a dangerous watchdog, laying with its belly low to the ground, eyes ceaselessly roaming the terrain for potential threats.
She shuddered. She didn't much care for being watched.
By the time the five of them reached the fence, the densely-populated, narrow walkways of inner Sinje were distant orbs of gold light, far behind them. The unforgiving night sky was brightening, a faint purple where it had been black before—dawn was approaching.
"Will you do the honors, Kalindi?" Aldric asked, his hands planted on his hips, "or shall I?"
"You'll make less noise," said the princess matter-of-factly, taking a step backwards, "and the longer we can go unannounced, the better."
Everyone else murmured their agreement, and Aldric obediently stepped forward, cradling the gate's lock in both hands. He sucked in a long breath, and let it go again. The lock cracked and fell to the soft, muddy earth, encrusted in a case of ice.
Aldric glanced at them over his shoulder, running his tongue over his chapped lips. "This is where we split, then," he said, as the group arranged themselves—Zuri and Aldric to search the lower levels, Chike, Kalindi, and Jem to search the upper ones. "Twenty minutes and we're back outside. If you take any longer than that, I'll assume something happened, and we'll come looking for you guys."
"Same to you," said Chike, nodding his head at Aldric, then Zuri. "No more than twenty minutes or we'll come running."
The ghost of a smile flickered across Aldric's lips. He held out a hand in Chike's direction, moonlight glinting against the watch on his wrist. "Twenty minutes, then."
Chike shook it. "Twenty minutes."
With that, the clock started ticking.
Aldric and Zuri started for the main entrance at a pace somewhere between a walk and a jog, careful to keep their steps light, sticking to the shadows wherever possible. For sake of better movement, Zuri had traded her usual dress and corset for a pair of Jem's linen shorts and one of her blouses, and she felt awkward and bare, like an imposter wearing someone else's skin. As Aldric blasted through another lock, Zuri shook the sensation from her bones. If this retrieval was going to go well, she had to focus.
The door fell inwards with only a minimal creak, and Aldric shuffled inside, turning briefly to beckon her forward. For a moment, his hand was like a poltergeist's, waving her into the darkness. She shivered, and followed him anyway.
Aldric bent, wrestling a lantern from his satchel. He struck it a few times and the light flickered to life, suffusing the area around them with a sickly yellow glow. "What I would give to have Jem's eyes right now," Aldric muttered, turning in a slow circle, his head tilted up. "We might've just announced our presence. If this were a hit, we would've failed already."
Zuri craned her neck, examining the collage of rusted pipes and the old, towering pulp vats that sprang up around them. "But it's not a hit," she said, and hesitated. "Is it?"
Aldric lowered the lamp, the glass clinking as he did. "Would you blame me?"
"Aldric—"
"It'd be fast, and he wouldn't suffer. I could make it look like an accident."
"Aldric," Zuri said again. "Don't be stupid. Killing Schmitt would mean death for you, too. You'd lose your pardon. They'd hang you the second we got back to Naino."
Aldric looked at her steadily, blue eyes black in the darkness, and walked away, his shadow gliding along the wall as he got further and further from the door. "Who said anything about going back to Naino?"
Zuri's nerves were beginning to thrum with fear. She jogged after him, trying to ignore the tide of dread rising within her. "It's too much of a risk. The Queen said—"
"I know what she said. But it still doesn't explain why Kalindi's here, or how anyone figured out Kalindi was on that train," Aldric said, never stopping, never looking back at Zuri. "The Queen wants something, Zuri, and I don't think she told us what it really is. That makes me think what she wants isn't anything good, and if killing this Schmitt guy will keep her from getting it, then I think it's worth a shot."
"So you're just going to kill Schmitt, without even knowing for sure?" He kept walking, not answering, and finally Zuri couldn't take it anymore. She darted forward, grabbing Aldric by the hem of his shirt.
She wanted him to stop moving, to just pause and think, but that was the very opposite of what he did. He whirled, a sudden flurry of movement, so fast Zuri couldn't track him. He was close now, much closer than he had been a second before, and there was a cold emptiness in his eyes that frightened Zuri to her core.
Slowly, the warmth flooded back in, and Aldric was Aldric again. "I..." he stammered, raking a hand back through his hair. It came loose, pooling around his shoulders. "Sorry. It's—instincts?"
"Aldric." He started to move away, but Zuri hooked her fingers in his sleeve, keeping him there, frozen. "There's a better way to do this, you know. Killing Schmitt would be the equivalent of trying to throw darts in the dark. You might hit bullseye, but most likely you won't and you might end up injuring yourself or someone else in the process. So until we figure out what exactly the Queen wants, let's just do what we're told, okay?"
Aldric sighed, dropping his gaze. "We're running out of time, Zuri."
Zuri shook her head. "We have more than you think. You're just rushing."
He inhaled, exhaled, still so close that his breath stirred the supple hairs by Zuri's face. Then he looked up, his expression rife with a new conviction. "You're right," he said. "I'll just—"
The shadow loomed up out of nowhere.
"Aldric!" Zuri cried, shoving him out of the way. Sharply, she ducked to the side, a rush of air flying by her and a cling ringing in her ears. Her heart thudding fast and hard against her ribcage, she turned her head. A knife stuck in the wall just inches from her ear, glinting in the lantern's light.
Aldric was back on his feet again, facing their attacker. "Sorin."
"Oh, I'm sorry," Sorin said, stepping into the light. The smile on his face gleamed like the edge of one of his knives. "Did I interrupt something?"
Zuri opened her mouth to speak, but he cut her off. "Don't answer that, because I don't care. You're the ones who aren't supposed to be here."
"Sorin," said a voice: kind and soft, everything Sorin wasn't. A woman lingered behind him, with messy auburn hair and long, busily-patterned skirts that gathered dust from the floor: Liesel. What was she doing here? "Wait."
Sorin bristled with barely contained annoyance, never turning his face away from Aldric and Zuri. "I don't have a choice, Liesel. We're the ones leaving with Vernon. These two won't be leaving at all."
"Chike was right," Zuri gasped. "You were listening."
Sorin brandished another knife, as nonchalantly as someone might pull a pen from their pocket. "I'm always listening. As much as you think you know about me, mindreader, I know just as much about you. The things you do when you think no one's watching, what you say when you think no one's listening. We hold a lot of secrets within ourselves, sure," he said, and now his eyes, a flickering gold, as beautiful and deadly as a poisonous flower, slid towards Aldric. "But secrets are slippery things. They can get out of our grasp much more easily than we know."
Aldric gritted his teeth. "Enough talking," he said, throwing his hand up, as if he were tossing an object into the air. Ice crackled across the floor in Sorin's direction—Liesel yelped, hopping to the side—but he jumped, his body seeming to curl in on itself in mid-air as he flipped. When he touched the ground again, he was a cat, a dark coil of energy, pupils dangerously slitted.
Aldric let out an annoyed grunt, his breath leaving his mouth in a white cloud as he sent another glacier Sorin's way. He dodged that one, too, nimbly leaping backwards.
Zuri was tired of standing still. She turned, yanking the knife out of the wall beside her, and was just about to charge in to help when the mill's overhead lights flicked on.
Zuri flinched, her vision temporarily blurred as her eyes strained to adjust. She blinked, and blinked again, and the first thing she saw was the awe on Liesel's face, the woman's wide, starstruck eyes trained at something above their heads.
"Settle down, everyone," said a voice, and Zuri knew even before she turned around that it belonged to Vernon Schmitt. "There's no need to fight over me."
Seeing him within Mrs. Lee's memories and seeing him there, standing atop one of the platforms that criss-crossed between the pulp vats, were two different things. While much of him was the same—his spindly body, like he had never known fullness, flaxen hair hanging in narrow, dark eyes—the look on his face was what stunned Zuri. He didn't seem frazzled; he didn't look lost. Up there, he was a victor, finally claiming his prize.
Aldric let out a breath of a surprise, but that was the only pause he allowed. He raised his hand, palm already sheened in ice, and Zuri tensed, preparing for the battle. But before Aldric could move further, a loud boom rang out, a plume of smoke rising in the air that stung Zuri's nostrils.
When the smoke cleared, she found Aldric sprawled on the ground, blood slowly pooling underneath him, his face twisted in pain.
Zuri cried out, running to him, pulling his head up onto her knees. His face was already ashen, cold sweat beading on his forehead. "Aldric," she whispered, her hands shaking as she pressed them over the wound in his side. The blood quickly seeped through her fingers anyway. "Oh, no, no. Aldric, you better stay with me, okay? Stay with me."
"You two, and the other three prowling around here somewhere," Vernon said, and Zuri glared up at him. He was leaning over the railing, rifle in his hand, smiling like the sight of Aldric writhing in pain amused him. "You're here on behalf of...who? A queen, or something?"
Zuri started to answer, but before she could, Vernon had already moved on.
"Amusing, but you're wasting your time," he said, and swiveled his gaze towards Liesel instead. "My business doesn't concern any of you. I'm here for her."
"Vern," Liesel said, more of a gasp than a word. She took a hesitant step forward, then another, a tremulous smile on her face. "Vern, you're...I...it's been so long."
"It has," he agreed, then turned his eyes on Sorin, who was human again, staring up at Vernon with an expression that was nearly blank. From what Zuri had gleaned from his memories, however, it wasn't because he was impassive. It was more likely that he was feeling so many things at once that they blurred: a symphony of colors all mixed together to form one black monochrome. "I see you're still keeping this one as a pet?"
Zuri cringed, but Sorin's face didn't move, as if he'd been expecting it. She glanced down at Aldric again. His consciousness was fading, quickly. Twenty minutes, they'd said. But what if he couldn't hold on until then?
"Vernon," Liesel was saying, her eyes flashing with rage. "That's—"
"Come back home, Vernon," Sorin ordered, and Zuri wished right then that she could disappear, that she could teleport herself and Aldric somewhere safe. This hadn't been part of their plans, of anyone's plans, and she felt weirdly as though she was infringing on a familial moment. "Whatever you're angry about, stop throwing a temper tantrum and just come back. Liesel needs you."
Vernon studied Sorin for a moment, his face calm—too calm. Then he sighed, slinging his gun over his shoulder. He traced the platform, fingers running along the dusty handrails. "I can't do that," he said, his footsteps echoing against the metal as he descended the stairs like a king entering his court. "You see, I'm here because Liesel stole something from me, and I would like it back."
"Stole something from you?" Liesel repeated, disbelief and anger coloring her voice. "I did no such thing, Vern!"
"You did," Vernon said. He paused, reaching the floor, now level with them. Closer, Zuri could see that there was something off about his calmness, like the peace was just a mask, a smile before venomous fangs unsheathed and jaws unhinged. "The Soul Binding Thread, Liesel. You have it, and I need you to hand it over."
Soul Binding Thread. Zuri had never heard the words spoken before, but regardless she had an idea of what they meant. The thread Vernon had been searching for, for which he'd been combing every market, for which he'd been asking every weaver or tailor in Sinje. The material that bound together one's heart and one's soul.
Zuri's eyes slid towards Liesel. Could it be that she'd really been harboring something that important this whole time? And if so, why hadn't Chike or Kalindi found it when they searched her home?
Zuri expected disbelief, confusion, on Liesel's face, but there was neither. She was gazing at Vernon, her face stern.
"I see," she said. "This was never about us, really, was it?"
Sorin was glancing between the two of them, his brows furrowed, nearly frantic as he asked, "Liesel? Wait. What's going on?"
Vernon just laughed. "So you understand now."
"It's about Wendell," Liesel said, rolling her shoulders back, as if to steel herself. Even Zuri could sense the trepidation in her tone as she said, "Our son. You want our son back."