Ahmadi took it so well that when Zhang awakened in the middle of that night and heard through their shared wall the muted, strangled sounds of her sobs, it frightened him. He had heard her cry before, like when they lost one of the carriages to fire. But he had never heard her cry like that, and he didn’t know why she was. The next day she gamely introduced herself to Vienna and shook her hand when Malik brought her around, and then did it again every time they dropped by House 33 or the library. Every time they “met,” Zhang heard Ahmadi sob again in secret later that night.
Things started to change. Vienna got confused more often. Instead of rolling their eyes at him, Ahmadi and Malik stopped saying that Zhang was being overly protective when he scrambled to follow her around. They had started trading off, in fact, so she was never alone.
“I know you’re there, Zhang,” Vienna said to him the next time he tried to eavesdrop on her from the hallway outside the communal kitchen.
Zhang sighed and walked into the room. “I’m just worried,” he confessed. “I don’t want you to feel alone or scared.”
Vienna was at the sink, standing with her hands on the chipped ceramic lip, but the water bucket was untouched, the drinking glass in front of her empty. Its shadow sat lonely on the counter, without the company of the silhouette of Vienna’s hands beside it.
“I’m not her,” she said gently.
“Who?” Zhang asked. Vague pain hovered in his chest, an old hurt.
“Whoever it was,” she replied. “Whoever it was who forgot, and then disappeared.”
They didn’t say anything for a time. The glass shone in the afternoon light, so bright it was almost hard to look at. Zhang wondered if Vienna had meant to get a drink and forgotten, or if she’d never intended to drink at all, and was just using the room as a way to escape the constant, crushing love they all were smothering her with. It’s not our fault, he wished he could tell her. You know only what you’ll lose, not what we will.
“It’s a strange feeling,” she finally added.
“What is?”
“To feel completely in control of your motivations, but know that at any second, absolutely nothing could make any sense,” she said. “What if I’d come in here in a panic because my dad had just been shot and I needed a towel to make a tourniquet?” She glanced at the limp rectangle of fabric draped over the front of the stove. “Honestly, that actually could be the reason I came in here. How would I know I forgot something if I’d forgotten it?”
“Your dad is fine,” Zhang said.
“I know,” she replied. “That’s not the point.”
They both looked out the window, at the backs of Ahmadi’s and Malik’s heads on the far side of the porch. The sun slipped slowly across the sky, its white light beginning to yellow. Vienna finally moved the glass a few inches so it stopped gleaming so sharply. We’ll get you back, Zhang wanted to say, but it wasn’t true, or might not be. Gajarajan had seemed confident when they’d talked, but he hadn’t figured all of it out yet—otherwise the rumors would be different. He would no longer be looking or he would know what it was he sought. The strange living shadow was the closest anyone had ever gotten to understanding the curse, but he wasn’t there yet, not quite. And Zhang didn’t know how he could ever get there. If Gajarajan didn’t stop seeking something and go back to trying to attach new shadows, he would never understand exactly what kind of shadow was the type they needed to gather more of to help him. But if he kept trying in order to figure it out, he would kill a shadowless every time he failed.
“I’d like to go,” Vienna said suddenly. Zhang turned to her. “I’d like to go to the sanctuary sooner rather than later,” she continued, almost as if she’d read his mind. “I’d like to volunteer.”
Mahnaz Ahmadi
YOSHIKAWA WAS ALREADY IN THE GUARD TOWER ON THE WALL when Naz arrived for the dawn shift. “Captain Ahmadi,” he said softly as she was almost to the top of the ladder.
“Oh, Yoshikawa,” Naz said, surprised to see him there. “Where’s Davidia?”
“With Gajarajan,” he answered. “He came here just a few minutes ago and asked that she meet him at the altar.”
It was finally time. “Transcendence,” Naz said.
“They’re only a day away. Gajarajan spotted their forces from his altar this morning at first light, about twenty miles to the north.”
For a moment, she could again feel the singeing heat of the flames on her as she had ridden past Zhang’s burning carriage of books, her bow glittering like molten black lava as she doubled back, urging her horse closer and closer, until she thought the tips of her hair would catch fire. Looking into the red blaze for any sign of life and not being able to see Zhang at all. “Are we ready?” she asked. “Zhang told me that he offered our soldiers as help, and Gajarajan declined. He told him the shadowless would fight. That—that only eight of them would.” She didn’t understand it, but that’s what Zhang had said.
Yoshikawa nodded. “Yes. They are called The Eight.”