Her breath caught. She’d thought Ephesus and Bana-Mighdall were cities, but if that was the case, then maybe a different word was needed for the massive, spiky, dazzling thing before her. It rose in peaks and ridges, a jagged mountain range that should have run a hundred miles, but that had been crammed into a single narrow space, folded onto itself in hard angles and bright reflective planes like some grand formation of mica. And it was alive. Even in what should have been the still-sleeping hours of dawn, the city was moving. Motorcars. Electric lights blinking in different colors. People on foot with steaming paper cups in their hands, newspapers tucked beneath their arms.
It was like facing the Oracle all over again—the terror of staring into the unknown. The thrill of it.
“You all right?” asked Alia, pushing herself up from the dock and trying to wring some of the water from her bedraggled yellow shirt.
“I don’t know,” Diana said honestly.
“You’ve really never left that island?”
“You saw how easy it is to leave my home.”
“Good point.”
A man jogged by, wiping the sweat from his brow and singing loudly to himself. He was tall and lean and hairy.
“He has a beard!” Diana said in wonder.
“Yeah, that’s kind of a thing now.”
Diana cocked her head to the side as the man belted out something that sounded like “concrete jungles where dreams tomato” and vanished down the path. “Are males generally tone-deaf?”
“No, but believe me when I say you don’t want to hear Jason attempt karaoke.”
Diana took a deep breath, trying to clear her mind. She could not let this place overwhelm or distract her. She had a mission to complete.
“Where can we get an airplane?”
Alia limped past her down the running path and into the park. “We don’t need a plane. We need a bath, a hot meal.” She waved at her bare feet. “Shoes.”
Diana caught up and moved to block her route. “Alia, you can’t go home.”
“Diana—”
“The people who tried to kill you believe the Warbringer is dead. We need to make sure it stays that way until we reach the spring.” Alia opened her mouth to argue, but Diana cut her off. “I know you don’t believe me, but you also know the explosion on that boat was no accident.”
Alia paused, then nodded slowly. “I know.”
Diana felt a surge of gratitude. She’d feared Alia would try to deny everything that had happened now that she was on familiar ground. “Then you have to know it’s safer for everyone if your enemies believe you’re dead.”
Alia scrubbed a hand over her face. “You’re saying if I try to go home I could be putting Jason in danger.”
“Yes.”
“I can’t just let my brother think I’m dead. He could be a target, too.”
“Once we reach the spring—”
“Stop talking about the spring. We have no way to get there. We don’t have any money, and I’m guessing you don’t have a passport.”
“What’s a passport?”
“Exactly. Let’s deal with one thing at a time. I can call Jason—”
Diana shook her head. “Someone knew how to find you on that boat. They could be monitoring your location through your brother.”
Diana could see Alia’s disbelief warring with her desire to keep her family safe.
“I guess I—” Alia began. A bicycle whirred past them, and Diana yanked her from its path.
“Jerk!” Alia yelled after him.
The bicyclist glanced back once and held up his middle finger.
“Is he an enemy?” Diana asked.
“No, he’s a New Yorker. Let’s sit. I need to think.”
They found the nearest bench, and Diana made herself sit, be still. She wanted to act, not pause to ponder, but she needed Alia on her side if they had any hope of getting to the spring.
“Okay,” said Alia, chewing her lower lip. “We can’t go to a bank because we don’t have ID. And you’re basically telling me I can’t go home or to the Keralis offices because everyone thinks I’m dead.”
“And we want to keep it that way.”
“Right. So I’m home, but if I follow your rules, I’m still completely stranded.”
Diana could hear the frustration and fatigue in her voice. She hesitated. She knew she was asking a great deal of Alia, but she had to. The stakes were too high for either of them to flinch.
“After everything you’ve seen,” she said, “after what we just dared, can you at least trust me enough to try to keep you from harm?”
Alia touched her fingers briefly to the bracelet on Diana’s left wrist, a thoughtful look on her face. Was she remembering what had happened in the Armory?
“Maybe,” Alia said at last. “At least now Jason’s going to have something real to be paranoid about.” Her head snapped up. “That’s it!”
“What’s it?”
Alia leapt up from the bench. “I know what to do. And now that I know I’m not going to die, I’m starving.”
“But you said yourself we have no money. Do we have something to barter?”
“No, but I happen to know of a bank that doesn’t require ID.”
“Very well,” Diana said. For now, she had little choice but to follow Alia’s lead. She would get her bearings, gather her resources. “I’m glad to leave this place. The smell in this part of the city is intolerable.”
Alia bit her lip. “Yeah, this part of the city. I can’t believe I just swam in the Hudson and I’m about to go barefoot on the subway. I’m going to die of something nasty for sure. Come on,” she said, offering Diana her hand. “You’re on my island now. Let’s hop a train.”
—
Diana had read about trains. She’d learned about undergrounds and metros, bullet trains and steam engines, all part of her education, her mother’s attempt to give her an understanding of the changing mortal world. But there was a difference between those vague impressions left by long hours turning pages at the Epheseum and the reality of a New York City subway train screaming through the dark.
Alia had led her across the street from the park, past the bronze statue of a bull, and two armed men in military fatigues standing at the top of a long flight of stairs who had given them the barest glance.
“Weird,” Alia had muttered. “Maybe there was a bomb threat or something.”
They’d descended into the very bowels of the city and entered a large tiled chamber that emptied onto a train platform. Then they’d vaulted a boundary and slipped between the metal doors of a train, and now here they were, sitting on plastic seats beneath lights that seemed unnaturally bright, as the train rumbled and shrieked like some kind of demon.
At each stop, the metal doors opened, letting the balmy air of the platform gust through the train, and more passengers boarded, crowding in against one another. “Commuters,” said Alia.
The word meant nothing to Diana. These people were of every size, color, and shape, some dressed in fine fabrics, others in cheaply made garments. Diana noticed Alia kept her feet tucked under her seat, perhaps to hide that they were bare.
Diana and Alia drew a few stares, but most people kept their eyes glued to little boxes they clutched in their palms like talismans or stared off into the middle distance, their gazes blank and lifeless.
“What’s wrong with them?” Diana whispered.
“That’s the subway stare,” Alia explained. “If the first rule of New York is don’t swim in the Hudson, the second is do not make eye contact on the subway.”
“Why not?”
“Because someone might talk to you.”
“Would that be so bad?” The prospect of so many new people to speak to seemed like an unimaginable luxury.
“Maybe not, but you never know in New York. Take that lady,” Alia said, bobbing her head very slightly at a woman of middle age with carefully coiffed hair and a large red leather handbag in her lap. “She looks nice enough, maybe a little tightly wound, but for all you know she’s got a human head in that purse.”
Diana’s eyes widened. “Is that common?”
“I mean, not common. She probably just has a bunch of wadded-up tissues and a lot of pictures of her grandkids she wants to show you, but that’s bad enough.”
Diana considered. “Direct eye contact is sometimes considered an act of aggression among primates.”
“Now you’re getting it.”
Diana tried not to be too confrontational in her gaze, but she took advantage of the other riders’ blank looks and distraction to study them, particularly the males. She’d seen illustrations, photographs, but still they were more varied than she’d expected—large, small, broad, slender. She saw soft chins, hard jaws, long, curling hair, heads shaved smooth as summer melons.
“Hey,” said a young man in front of them, turning to the bearded, heavyset passenger behind him. “Do you mind?”