She wondered how many of the ghosts in Minya’s army had been used that way by the gods. Plenty of them were women, most of them old. How many had borne half-caste babies they neither remembered nor wished to remember?
Sparrow kept her eyes on her hands and worked on her present, humming softly to herself. She tried not to think about whether they’d all still be alive by Ruby’s birthday, or what kind of life it would be if they were. She just focused on her hands, and the soothing sensation of growth flowing out from them. She was making a cake out of flowers. Oh, it was nothing they could eat, but it was beautiful, and it reminded her of their early years when there had still been sugar in the citadel and some measure of innocence, too, before she understood her own atrocity.
It even had torch ginger buds for little candles: sixteen of them. She’d give it to Ruby at dinner, she thought. She could light them with her own fire, make a wish, and blow them out.
Feral was in his room, looking at his book. He turned the metal pages and traced the harsh, angular symbols with his fingertip.
If he had to, he could replicate the whole book from memory—that was how well he knew it. Little good that did, since he couldn’t wring any meaning from it. Sometimes, when he stared at it long enough, his eyes sliding out of focus, he thought he could see into the metal and sense a pulsing, dormant potential. Like a wind vane waiting for a gust to come along and spin it round. Waiting, and also wanting it to come.
The book wanted to be read, Feral thought. But what nature of “gust” could move these symbols? He didn’t know. He only knew—or at least strongly suspected—that, if he could read this cryptic alphabet, he could unlock the secrets of the citadel. He could protect the girls, instead of merely . . . well, keeping them hydrated.
He knew that water was no small matter, and that they’d all have died without his gift, so he didn’t tend to waste much regret over not having Skathis’s power. That particular bitterness was Minya’s, but sometimes he fell prey to wistfulness, too. Of course, if they could control mesarthium, they would be free, and safe, not to mention a force to be reckoned with. But they couldn’t, so there was no use wasting time wishing for it.
If he could unlock his book, though, Feral felt certain he could do . . . something.
“What are you up to in here?” came Ruby’s voice from the doorway.
He looked up and scowled when he saw that she’d already poked her head inside. “Respect the curtain,” he intoned, and looked back down at his book.
But Ruby did not respect the curtain. She just waltzed in on her expressive, blue, highly arched bare feet. Her toenails were painted red, and she was wearing red, and she was also wearing an expression of intent that would have alarmed him had he looked up—which he didn’t. He tensed a little. That was all.
She scowled at the top of his bowed head, as he had scowled at her in the doorway. It was an unpromising beginning. Stupid book, she thought. Stupid boy.
But he was the only boy. He had warmer lips than the ghosts. Warmer everything, she supposed. More important, Feral wasn’t afraid of her, which would have to be more fun than draping herself over a half-paralyzed ghost and telling him what to do every few seconds. Put your hand here. Now here.
So boring.
“What do you want, Ruby?” Feral asked.
She was close beside him now. “The thing about experiments,” she said, “is that they have to be repeated or else they’re worthless.”
“What? What experiment?” He turned round to her. His brow was furrowed: half confusion, half irritation.
“Kissing,” she said. She’d told him before, “That’s an experiment I won’t be repeating.” Well. In light of their acceleration toward doom, she had reconsidered.
He hadn’t. “No,” he said, flat, and turned away again.
“It’s possible I was wrong,” she said, with an air of great magnanimity. “I’ve decided to give you another chance.”
Thick with sarcasm: “Thank you for your generosity, but I’ll pass.”
Ruby’s hand came down on his book. “Hear me out.” She pushed it away and perched herself on the edge of his table. Her slip hiked up her thighs, her skin as smooth and frictionless as mesarthium, or nearly.
Much softer, though.
She rested her feet on the edge of his chair. “We’re probably going to die,” she said matter-of-factly. “And anyway, even if we don’t, we’re here. We’re alive. We have bodies. Mouths.” She paused and added teasingly, flicking hers over her teeth, “Tongues.”
A blush crept up Feral’s neck. “Ruby—” he began in a tone of dismissal.
She cut him off. “There’s not a lot to do up here. There’s nothing to read.” She gestured to his book. “The food’s boring. There’s no music. We’ve invented eight thousand games and outgrown them all, some of them literally. Why not grow into something?” Her voice was getting husky. “We’re not children anymore, and we have lips. Isn’t that reason enough?”
A voice in Feral’s head assured him that it was not reason enough. That he did not wish to partake of any more of Ruby’s saliva. That he did not, in fact, wish to spend any more time with her than he did already. There might even have been a voice in there somewhere pointing out that if he were to . . . spend more time . . . with any of the girls, it wouldn’t be her. When he’d joked with Sarai about marrying them all, he’d pretended it wasn’t something he gave actual thought to, but he did. How could he not? He was a boy trapped with girls, and they might have been like sisters, but they weren’t sisters, and they were . . . well, they were pretty. Sarai first, then Sparrow, if he were choosing. Ruby would be last.
But that voice seemed to be coming from some way off, and Sarai and Sparrow weren’t here right now, whereas Ruby was very near, and smelled very nice.
And, as she said, they were probably going to die.
The hem of her slip was fascinating. Red silk and blue flesh sang against each other, the colors seeming to vibrate. And the way her knees were slung together, one overlapping the other just a little, and the feel of her foot nudging under his knee. He couldn’t help but find her arguments . . . compelling.
She leaned forward, just a little. All thoughts of Sarai and Sparrow vanished.
He leaned back just the same amount. “You said I was terrible,” he reminded her, his own voice as husky as hers.
“And you said I drowned you,” she replied, coming a fraction closer.
“There was a lot of saliva,” he pointed out. Perhaps unwisely.
“And you were about as sensuous as a dead fish,” she shot back, her expression darkening.
It was touch and go for a moment there. “My darlings, my vipers,” Great Ellen had called them. Well, they were darlings and vipers, all of them. Or, perhaps Minya was all viper and Sparrow was all darling, but the rest of them were just . . . they were just flesh and spirit and youth and magic and hunger and yes, saliva, all bottled up with nowhere to go. Carnage behind them, carnage ahead, and ghosts everywhere.
But here all of a sudden was distraction, escape, novelty, sensation. The shift of Ruby’s knees was a kind of blue poetry, and when you’re that close to someone, you don’t see their movements so much as you feel the compression of air between you. The slip of flesh, the glide. Ruby twisted, and with a simple serpentine slink she was in Feral’s lap. Her lips found his. She was unsubtle with her tongue. Their hands joined the party, and there seemed dozens of them instead of four, and there were words, too, because Ruby and Feral hadn’t yet learned that you can’t really talk and kiss at the same time.
So it took a moment to sort that out.
“I guess I’ll give you another chance,” conceded a breathless Feral.
“It’s me giving you another chance,” Ruby corrected, a string of the aforementioned saliva glistening between their lips when she drew back to speak.