He said nothing to me as we made our way, and I said nothing to him. I kept walking until Times Square came into view again, not in the light of morning but in the glow of the early afternoon, just beginning the sun’s fall. The square was a metallic glen, made of buildings and not trees. The tall rectangular towers shone like giant mirrors; the lines of gems affixed to several of them were like vast jeweled belts hung in the sky. Usually Light power showed images on screens and formed advertisements that walked among the denizens of the city—you only knew they were magic and not real people by their peculiar brightness and the occasional flicker.
Not today. The crowd of people today was all real, and there were so many of them, and so many were from the Dark city. Clothes were made differently in the Dark city. I remembered that now, how the very stitching of the seams and the colors of the materials looked different. There were fewer bright colors, and less material, because the Dark city did not have extra cloth to waste on full skirts or frills. I clenched my fists in the material of my long skirt, which swung around my legs like a bell. I must have looked like someone from the Light. It might have been safer to look like a Dark citizen.
Some of the audience were clearly from the Light, though, and their faces were just as rapt, and their eyes contained just as much promise of violence.
I began to shove my way through the crowd, breath stuck in my throat. Some of these people had weapons, but it was not the weapons I was concerned about. It was the hostility of the crowd, bristling like a pack of dogs that were going to attack.
I kept my ringed hands clenched and pushed on, waiting for someone to speak and strike me down.
A voice rang out, and Carwyn instantly vanished from my side and into the crowd. I barely even registered him going.
“Make way for the Golden Thread in the Dark! Make way for your Golden One!” called my Aunt Leila, and the people parted like water at the command of a prophet, clearing a path for me.
I could see Aunt Leila on a platform that looked hastily constructed, the wood still rough. There were others of the sans-merci there, wearing their bands of cloth. I did not see my uncle.
I could see my father. He was wearing the red and scarlet of the rebels. He looked as hurt and confused as a child forced into clothes that were not his own and that he was uncomfortable wearing. I ran toward him, up the creaking wooden steps. I was on the platform and had almost reached him when Aunt Leila set a hand on my arm. Her grip felt as heavy and inescapable as a manacle.
She spun me toward the crowd.
“This is the Golden Thread in the Dark!”
All the people seemed to blur before my eyes as their shouts blended in my ears into one indistinguishable roar. All that was clear were the cages hanging in the air, their chains attached to towers of Light. The cages shimmered darkly, and the memory of the old cages in Green-Wood Cemetery came back to me like a nightmare that had come to life even more terrible than I had dreamed.
These cages were full now. I could see the limbs jammed up, see the blood beading on the iron bars.
My aunt held my hand up high, and the people cheered again.
“You all know her. You all know her story.” My Aunt Leila paused. “Or you think you do. You don’t know the half of it, but now it’s finally time to tell the truth. You know the Strykers are tyrants, but you do not know this story of treachery and murder.”
An excited, anticipatory murmur chased her words, ready to be furious.
“Once I had a sister,” said Aunt Leila. “She was born with Light magic in the Dark city. She did not ever wear rings: she never wanted to be parted from her family, and she never wanted to serve the Light Council. She was a good girl, and by that I do not mean she sat by and was beautiful and harmed no one. Instead, she acted always to help and comfort. She met a Light magician from the Light city come on one of their brief errands of meaningless mercy, and he so loved her that he stayed, and healed and truly helped us. He did more than that. He taught my sister how to heal as well as any Light medic. She could have taken the rings, gone into the Light, been powerful and rich and unhurt. My sister instead hid what she could do, hid her marriage to him. She lived in the Dark where our parents died, our houses so close to each other, they seemed like one house. Her child would run through my gate for supper; my husband would help her husband with household tasks. And every night my sister, my Josephine, would go down to the east, where the least of the buried tried to eke out a living. She would go to those who could not pay true Light magicians, and heal them. She had such power. I saw her lay her hands once upon a dying man and he was well again. She could do marvels. And I asked her, I begged her, not to, because I knew the cost of marvels and mercy.”
My aunt’s hair streamed out like a black banner, and she spoke like a bard. I saw that everyone in the crowd believed her story as much as I, who had been the child running through the gate to her arms, who had lived it.