Dreamstrider Page 3

  Hay, I smell hay and the tang of manure flooding General Cold Sun’s nose. Please, Dreamer, protect me for just a moment longer. I can’t feel the general’s feet or his hands; I don’t know if we’re close enough yet for my soul in Oneiros to seize the tether to my own body. His consciousness presses in on me like all-consuming flames. And still I cling to his body. I can’t be cast out, open to the Wastes.

  Then I catch a glimpse through Cold Sun’s eyes—I want to weep at the sight of me, crumpled in the stall. I take a deep mental breath and prepare to seize my body’s tether to return to myself. Just a bit closer.

  But the general’s body swings around, and he turns on Brandt, his thoughts crackling like flames. No! I try to scream at Brandt, because I’m not certain we’re close enough for me to seize the lead to pull me back into my body.

  Cold Sun is awake and forcing me out.

  “What is the meaning of this—”

  Brandt cocks his fist, swings it at us—

  And everything goes black.

  Chapter Two

  I’m swimming through blackness with the scent of blood heavy in my nose. The general is unconscious again after Brandt’s blow, but now my soul is completely out of his body, vulnerable to the Wastes. They call to me like rocky cliffs, begging for fresh meat dashed across their faces. Disappoint your friends no longer … Surrender to emptiness …

  Visions dance before my eyes—some memories, some not—of my life back in Barstadt. The way the other Ministry operatives fall silent and move to another room whenever I’m around. The Incident, with the crackle of flame and scent of charred meat hanging thick in the air. A glimpse of my mother’s milky eyes, roving the tunnels in search of help that never comes. Other illusions appear, too, of failures I fear are yet to come—Brandt, his throat slit by a gang leader’s blade when I’ve botched yet another operation. And always, always, the fear of Brandt disappearing into his other life, the life of aristocratic dinners and alliance building, a world I can never know.

  “Livia.” Brandt’s voice pierces the veil of whispers and sorrow. “Livia!”

  I reach, desperate, scrabbling, for the lead that will pull me back into my body. Almost close enough … I can see my body’s tether dangling down into Oneiros now that we’ve moved closer to my body in the real world. I fight against the Wastes for just another second—

  You’ll destroy him—

  Brandt. They’re right. I’m only going to cause him harm—

  “Livia!” Brandt calls.

  I bump into the tether, take hold, and snap. I plunge into myself and awaken with a gasp.

  “Livia!” Brandt seizes me by the shoulders—my shoulders, with my hair draped over them, crusted with hay. He brushes his fingers along the side of my face as a pent-up breath escapes his lips. “Are you all right?”

  I flow back into my body a little more with each hammering of my frantic heart. I try to grip his forearm, but my fingers flop against his elbow. My skin feels scrubbed raw; everything is too loud, too smelling, too feeling.

  “Water,” I wheeze.

  Brandt fumbles a waterskin free from his belt and holds it to my lips. The sweet, cool water is just what I need, though my mouth isn’t working right yet and half of it sloshes down my chin. I drink my fill, then slowly, carefully bring myself to my legs, tottering like a foal.

  “You’re safe,” he promises me, but I know him too well. He’s stern-faced and matter-of-fact, but I see the white rimming his too-wide eyes. His fingertips linger against my cheek. “Will you be all right on your own?”

  I manage a nod. “I just … need a moment to come back to myself.”

  “I can buy you a moment.” He tucks a stray curl back from my face, then stands up. “I’ll fetch the carriage and give the general and his valet another dose to make sure they stay asleep.”

  I can’t stop shaking, though I don’t know whether it’s from cold or panic. The Commandant’s guards are surely coming for us, but he shouldn’t know what I really am, what I was doing. No one beyond the Emperor, Professor Hesse, and those I work with in the Ministry of Affairs know about dreamstriding. I study the unconscious general’s chin, where a nice welt is forming, courtesy of Brandt. Please, Dreamer, don’t let him remember Brandt’s face.

  By the time Brandt returns, I’ve adjusted well enough that I can help him wrestle the slumbering general and his valet into the coach. No thunder of boots approaching the stables yet, but we’re out of time. Brandt helps me climb to the driver’s bench, and steers us away from the Citadel.

  We sit side by side for our trek back to the port village across the splintered, barren earth. Feeling has returned to my legs and arms, but my nose and fingers are still numb as though I’m intoxicated. I’m grateful for the casual riding breeches and blouse I wear in my coach-driver disguise; I haven’t the wherewithal to sit up like the proper lady I’m usually forced to play.

  Neither of us dares speak until we meet with our contacts at the oceanfront town—two coachmen and a physicker, all native Iron Winders, all of them desperate for the bags of grain we promised them in exchange for their cooperation. The Ministry had authorized us to pay these associates in gold, but we learned quickly how little value Iron Winders ascribe to things they can’t put in their growling stomachs.

  “He was having an audience with the Commandant,” Brandt tells the physicker, coaching him for when General Cold Sun awakens. “He felt faint, became violent. You’re certain it was a migraine. He had to be knocked unconscious so he would not harm himself or others.” Brandt gestures to the general’s rosy welt. “Give him clues—help him remember. Whatever oddness he remembers, assure him it is a side effect of the migraine.”

  The physicker nods, eyebrows raised but unquestioning. Brandt has that effect on people when we’re on a mission. We make our way down the stairs carved into the ocean cliffs to where our catboat waits, guarded by more bribed Iron Winders.

  Once we’re safely aboard with the sail rigged, and the Land of the Iron Winds is a sullen gray speck at our backs, Brandt joins me on the catboat’s bench and tilts his head back, letting the setting sun spill across his freckled cheeks. He’s calm now; there’s none of his usual radiance from the thrill of a successful mission, or his grim determination when things go wrong. “I’m sorry,” I say, settling in beside him. “For getting us into that mess. I’d be lost without your quick thinking.”

  “Nonsense.” He tips his head forward and smiles at me. “There wouldn’t have been a mission if not for you. And then where would we be?”

  I clench my teeth, but make myself smile back. “Staring down a fleet of Iron Winds ships, from the sound of it.”

  “And we know all about it thanks to you.”

  Brandt wouldn’t understand what went wrong in Oneiros, but I can’t help wondering what more we’d have learned if I’d been a more skillful dreamstrider; if I could have manipulated General Cold Sun more subtly. I wonder if Brandt would be so impressed if he knew how little I really achieved.

  He closes his eyes for a moment before he speaks again. “You know, the Dreamer gave me dreams of you last night.”

  Perhaps to a Farthinger, or anyone unfamiliar with Barstadt ways, such a statement would unsettle or even allure. I’m told other nations find it rude to speak of dreams—that all but the dreamer finds them insufferably dull. But in Barstadt our dreams are sacred, and we share them as readily as we’d share a greeting or a comment on the weather. In the northern isles, I hear they only worship in great halls, surrounded by their gods; Barstadters worship in every street and parlor and corner shop when we speak of the dregs of night.

  “You were an oak tree,” Brandt says, “surrounded by mothwood in a field—”

  “An oak tree?” I laugh, and pinch at my scrawny forearm.

  He grins and nudges me with his shoulder. “I’m serious. Your roots went all the way into Oneiros, just like the mothwood that grew around you. The dreamworld nourished you. You glowed and glowed in the fore
st, filled with a light from the Dreamer himself.”

  Maybe he thinks it is a sweet reaffirmation of my talents as a dreamstrider, but I know the truth—I’d nearly succumbed to the siren call of the Nightmare Wastes. They’d been so much more insistent than I’ve ever found them before. I’ve always been able to shrug them off, but this time, they’d gotten their hooks into me.

  Reading the scowl on my face, Brandt’s smile dims and he edges toward me until our knees touch. “Liv.” His gaze holds mine. “Are you feeling all right?”

  I break his gaze and lean into the wind, letting it toss my curls around. Something to make me feel alive, solid, real—far from the bodiless soul who nearly got gobbled up by the Wastes. “I pushed too hard, is all.” I’m about to say I’ll know better next time, but I suspect I said exactly that after the Incident.

  “Our mission’s complete. We learned what we needed to know and escaped without giving ourselves away.” He laughs to himself—still the goofy young spy in training I met eight years ago. It makes me want to laugh, too. “When we get back, why don’t you ask Professor Hesse to help you work on your dreamstriding technique?”

  My innards are all knotted up. I hate keeping things from Brandt, but maybe I’m only imagining the Nightmare Wastes’ new strength. Memories of their frosty reach prick at my thoughts again, and the sun is too low to bake the chill away.

  Brandt studies me with those thunderstorm eyes. “Liv?” he repeats. “Is there something else?” That mischievous glint in his gaze always sees through me.

  “I’m just…” I glance out to sea, but the sun is fast slipping into the waves. “I wish we could have gotten more information, that’s all. That I could have done more.”

  “Well, this isn’t like breaking up street gangs and gambling dens.” He rests one hand on my knee; heat rises on my face, making me grateful for the twilight. “Of course it’s difficult. Maybe we could’ve both been better prepared, but we found out the Iron Winds’ plans, didn’t we?”

  But it’s not my lack of training. Doesn’t he know this? I may be the only dreamstrider, but I’m a sorry excuse for one. Dreamer knows how hard I try; how often I sink into the cleansing pools of his temples and pray for a little more grace and cleverness. I pray that someday I’ll be worthy of my gift.

  This has not been such a day.

  “You’re right. I just … wish I could do more,” I say. “Think on my feet like you, or even—”

  “We each have our gifts. And I always believe in you.” Even when the others don’t, I imagine him thinking.

  I force myself to lean back and shrug. “I’m more concerned about the Barstadter. Did you get a closer look at her?” I ask.

  He nods, letting his golden mop of hair scatter across his brow. “She’d gone to a sitting parlor back behind the dais. She was watching me while you and the Commandant discussed the battle plans, so I couldn’t look around nearly as much as I would’ve liked. There wasn’t enough light for me to see her clearly, but she’s definitely from Barstadt—she wore the facial jewels. Silver and sapphire.”

  I wince. “I was afraid of that. Could you make out the design?”

  “Not very well, but we can consult the House registries when we get back to the Ministry. Make a list of which Houses use blue and silver in their heraldry, and suss her out from there.”

  He’s restless, fidgeting like there’s more he wants to say. Whenever he’s not playing a role, he’s terrible at keeping his emotions in check, like the real Brandt he’d been hiding has to come spilling out. The real Brandt—he’s always first to smile, first to laugh; first to share his dreams with me and even his fears. This is the Brandt I can’t help but love, in the locked-up corners of my mind.

  But he is also Master Brandt Strassbourg, the future lord of House Strassbourg. The Ministry is only a playground for him—his father figures it no more dangerous than turning him loose on the gambling houses and ale halls where all the other lords-in-waiting bide their coin and time. One day he’ll claim his title and a bride, and leave me and the Ministry behind. All I can do is cherish my time with him until that day.

  Brandt pats my knee, then hoists himself down to the bottom of the boat. “I imagine we’ll have another busy day tomorrow, following up on these leads. I’m going to get some rest.”

  “Dreamer carry you into slumber in his golden embrace,” I say automatically, though it looks like Brandt’s already well on his way. I smile as he rumbles with a snore.

  I love him, probably more than I have even dared admit to myself, but I can’t keep relying on him—he won’t always be there to pluck me out of a tense situation or salve my wounds.

  The waves catch starlight in their peaks, and the salty air clears my nostrils and my mind as we cross the channel that separates Barstadt from the Land of the Iron Winds. For thirty years, it’s been enough to keep the uneasy peace between Barstadt’s superior navy and the ground-based forces of the Iron Winds as the latter pushed deeper south into their own continent. But now they’re setting their sights northward toward our empire, and one of our own is helping them. I can’t lose myself in thoughts of Brandt. We’ve only uncovered the first piece of the Commandant’s puzzle—our work has merely begun.

  *

  Though our dreams are sacred, they are flimsy things, changing colors with the lighting and shifting to match our mood. Sometimes they slip under the bed as soon as I wake, and other times they hang over me throughout the day like a threatening storm. I’ve dreamed enough to know that sometimes there is no sense to their form, and sometimes they are truer than the real world could ever be.

  The Dreamer’s priests say dreams are messages from the Dreamer himself: visions and orders and warnings. I cannot say if this is true. Still, the priests will interpret them for a donation to the temple; shadier folk will give you a different spin for coin. Debates over their interpretation fuel the parlors and ale halls each night as surely as Barstadt ale itself.

  Some dreams, though, even a Barstadter won’t share. Our nightmares—the dreams that frighten us in our very souls—we keep to ourselves.

  I had such a dream that night aboard the gently rocking ship. I don’t dare tell Brandt about it, so I only say I dreamed of the sea. But in truth, I dreamed I was a great bird circling Barstadt City’s harbor. At first I thought I must be a seagull, for the briny air tasted like home and I craved slimy fish scales between my beak. But then I spied a girl on the docks, her limp body spilled across the planks like honey. My cravings changed, and I knew I wanted to pick at her flesh. I swooped down to peck at her—

  The face that stared back at me, lifeless, was my own.

  I have to return to my body, I managed to realize somewhere in my tiny bird brain. Before the Nightmare Wastes find me. I reached for my body’s tether to try to leap back inside, but I couldn’t fit into myself—my body made no room for my soul.

  That’s when I realized I was inhabiting no mere bird, but a winged monster of rotting meat. Agony rolled off me like a foul stench, eager to envelop the body on the docks. I was of two minds: the first knowingly trapped in this monster, but the second filled with blind hunger and rage.

  And just as I started to cry, fearing I would lose my soul forever inside this beast, the eyes on my human body opened, and it jerked upward, animated once more.

  But it wasn’t my soul that was inside.

  Chapter Three

  The Dreamer must have blessed our voyage; it should have taken us a full day to return to Barstadt City, but the Itinerant Winds grease our course the whole way, and we reach the capital’s main harbor shortly after dawn. We pull in the sail, and our catboat drifts silently against the stream of fishing boats setting out to make their daily haul. Barstadt City engulfs the harbor with its craggy hills, buildings crammed onto them in muddled shades of cream crowned with steep black slate roofs. True to Barstadt weather, darkening rainclouds hang woolly in the sky, but I don’t mind. They’re as much a part of home to me as the Emperor’s pa
lace to our right, and the distant towers of Banhopf University to our left. I don’t look to the eastern mountains, but I know what looms there, as dreary and constant as the clouds: Nightmare’s ragged bones.

  I never like looking at that reptilian skeleton on the mountainside, so massive we can see it all the way from the docks. But after my brush with the Nightmare Wastes yesterday, I dread it even more. The Dreamer slew Nightmare and scattered his heart’s shards to the three corners of the realms, I remind myself firmly; the Wastes are only remnants. The Dreamer wouldn’t let them devour me, just like he didn’t let Nightmare bring further harm to Barstadt all those centuries ago.

  Brandt offers me a hand out of the catboat. “Back to proper gowns for you and frock coats for me, eh?” he asks, gesturing to our carriage driver costumes.

  “Well, the comfort was nice while it lasted.”

  The comfort isn’t all I’m surrendering, though, by being back inside the Empire. Brandt will slip back into his role as House Strassbourg’s heir, and away from me. I can’t help but wonder if each mission we embark on will be our last together. Still, if I smell anything like Brandt—sweat and sea and exhaustion, all baked too long in the sun—then I welcome our return, if only for the opportunity to use the Ministry of Affairs’s indoor plumbing for a bath.

  “Master Strassbourg,” the guard greets Brandt as we reach the Ministry’s gates. Then his gaze slides to me, and he offers me a stiff nod. “Uh, miss.” He looks back to Brandt. “Minister Durst has requested a full debriefing as soon as you’ve made yourselves presentable.”

  A tide of panic rises in my gut. Ever since my testimony following the Incident, each meeting with Durst feels like another interrogation. One more mistake, and I fear he’ll tear up my temporary citizenship papers and dump me at the nearest tunnel entrance.

  Brandt catches my expression before I have a chance to rein it in. His hand darts toward mine, quick as a lash, and he squeezes my fingers. “I’ll present the minister with what we found. There’s no need for you to go as well, Liv.”