The line stopped. Someone at the front gasped. “Girls—” Mrs. Rodoya said.
A man stood in the road. A man in a silver coat.
Revna’s living metal prosthetics shook. His coat made him unmistakable, as did the blue star pinned below the collar. He was part of the Skarov unit, the Extraordinary Wartime Information Unit. The last time Revna had seen a Skarov up close was the last time she’d seen her father. In the years since, she’d wondered if they would come back for her, too. The Information Unit was always in and out of Tammin, carrying messages and supplies. Occasionally carrying off people.
The man’s eyes flicked over the group. “Get on with it,” he snapped. “You haven’t got all night.” Above them, the hum grew louder.
Compared with a Skarov officer, the threat of the Dragon was less immediately terrifying, but direr in consequence. The girls in front took the risk and edged past him. When he did nothing but roll his eyes, the line began to speed up. For once it didn’t bother Revna so much when Mrs. Rodoya pushed her chair.
No two people agreed on what the Skarov could do. And since GOSSIP WON’T HELP BUILD WAR MACHINES, they discussed it only when their supervisors weren’t around. Even though the memory of her father’s arrest was a fresh scar in her mind, Revna couldn’t recall any proof of their alleged magic. She’d heard they could read minds, change shape, know a girl’s name by meeting her gaze. Revna didn’t believe all that. But when the Skarov’s eyes locked on her, she couldn’t look away. His eyes were a strange brown, almost tawny in the dying light. A thousand fears and confessions raced through her brain.
The Skarov looked down to where her prosthetic feet poked out of the cuffs of her work trousers. For a moment his lofty arrogance was replaced with a more familiar but no less unwelcome expression: pity. The chair rolled past.
The humming around them grew higher, more urgent. The girls ahead broke into a run. “Don’t—” Mrs. Rodoya began.
Revna didn’t see the Dragon. But for a terrible moment she heard its deep, haunting cry as its port opened and the bombs fell. It sounded like the mating call of some haughty creature. A creature that brought dust and fire.
The street next to them exploded.
Revna threw her arms up as heat rolled over them. Mrs. Rodoya released the back of her chair and the world rocked, trying to shake them from its surface. A spray of gravel tore through her factory uniform and bit at the arm beneath.
Someone gripped her shoulder and Revna opened her eyes. Mrs. Rodoya bent over her, lips moving soundlessly. “Revna,” she mouthed. A flurry of words poured out of her, lost in the haze and the high whine in Revna’s ears. Then she turned and ran down the road after the others, disappearing into the smoke.
Dust and panic lodged in Revna’s throat. Buildings leaned out over the road. Garbed in their peeling propaganda posters, they looked half-demolished already. She tried to take deep, slow breaths, but how could she with the wreckage of Tammin threatening from all sides? She pressed her hand over her mouth. She had to identify the problems, as Papa used to tell her. Clear thought led the way to real understanding. And you can’t overcome a problem if you don’t know what the problem is, he’d said.
Problem: Mrs. Rodoya was gone. If Revna wanted to get to the shelter, she’d have to move herself. Which had never been an issue before, when the skies were clear and the Dragons were a distant threat. She tried to push herself into the street, but her wheels caught on the rubble.
Problem: If she didn’t get to the secondary citizens’ shelter soon, she’d be locked out.
The city was silent for a breath. Maybe the Elda and their Dragon had already gone. Maybe they’d left a little greeting as they made their way to some other target. Or maybe she couldn’t hear them dipping through the smoke to come find her. In the gray half-light of the world, she could hear nothing, see no one.
Which meant that no one would see her if she used the Weave.
The Weave sat like an extra sense in the back of her head. Invisible strings aligned the world, crisscrossing like crowded threads on a loom. Loose threads hung ragged where the bomb had torn them apart, though they already reached for one another, trying to smooth over the gap. Revna could feel the threads, even grasp them. They shivered with magical energy. She could make it to Mama if she used its power.
But the Weave was illegal magic. While spark magic gave energy to the world, Weave magic distorted it. The Union declared it immoral and unlawful. Tonight, it might be the difference between life and death. And what did it matter if using the Weave warped the fabric of the world? The world was a mess as it was.
A better daughter of the Union, the good girl who took her cues from propaganda posters, wouldn’t even think about it. She would place her own life far below the well-being of the land, and not for dread of the Information Unit or of a long sentence on a prison island. She would do it for the love of the Union. But Revna didn’t love the Union. It had taken her father and worked her mother twelve hours a day. It had put her in a dirt-lined cellar for secondary citizens instead of one of the strong, concrete shelters built for the other factory girls. To the Union, she was a burden.
Revna pushed herself out of her chair and started up the street. She picked her way around the debris scattered over the road with her hands extended, ready to grab the Weave if she lost her balance.
An explosion rumbled somewhere behind her, and she caught a high scream through the cotton feeling in her ears. Her heart pumped liquid terror. Mama might still be out here, fighting to reach the shelter through closed-off roads and Skarov checkpoints. The shelter would close soon. But if she made it there, and Mama didn’t—
The world thrummed. The Dragon was making another pass. Ash fell on her upturned face like snow, the little flakes clinging to her sweat-soaked forehead.
The old half-timber house next to her sagged, as if hundreds of years of standing upright had taken their toll at last. Fire bloomed behind its windows. Shingles tumbled from the roof. Revna stopped, transfixed.
A silver blur grabbed her by the arm and the Skarov officer began to haul. His fingers dug into her shoulders hard enough to leave a bruise. “Come,” he shouted.
His voice seemed so far away. Revna stumbled after him, wheezing as ash filled her mouth, bitter and hot.
She didn’t know whether to pull the Skarov closer or push him away. Her hands clawed at his coat. My mother, she tried to say, but when she opened her mouth nothing came out. Her ears filled with the sound of her heart.
The world began to darken. A massive shape dispelled the dust and ash—death streaming in for a final kiss. Certainty seized her like a vise, certainty that she was going to die. And it might be her fate—it might even be what the Union expected of her. But it wasn’t what she wanted.
The cloud parted. The sky fell.
She didn’t think about finesse or delicacy. She didn’t think about whether she’d be shot later. She wanted to live.
Revna reached for that sense at the back of her mind. She grabbed two threads with one hand and looped her arm around the Skarov’s waist. Then she pulled with everything she had.
They shot forward. Revna clenched her fists until her knuckles pushed against her skin. The threads slid against her fingers, trying to break free and rejoin the Weave. She didn’t dare let go. She floated in her own thin universe of dust, of smoke, of destruction, and for that moment it was hard to tell whether she was living or dead.