Page 66 of Odder Still
“Rubem?”
“I’m here.”
Tavish’s cane hits my boot first; then he finds my arm. “Was that Lilias?” He doesn’t wait for an answer—doesn’t seem to really need one. “We have to capture her again; this could be my chance.”
“If we follow her, we’ll run into the BA soldiers.”
“Then we’ll tell them what she’s done! We’ll take her back to my mother—”
“Tavish!” I grab him, a little more desperate than I mean. A little more angry. “What about the physicist? What about my aurora?”
“We’ll bring the physicist.”
“They can barely stand!”
The finfolk sits beside their walker, their legs shaking as though they’ve just run here all the way from Falcre.
“Then we don’t!” Tavish replies. “We wouldn’t need them. My family still has the better technology.” His words are made of graphite instead of diamond, brittle and grey.
“They will kill me. You know that.” Fear and anger cloud my thoughts, pulsing through me in time with every new flush of pain. The emotion seems to wrap around my parasite, tugging it inward. Toward my heart. Toward what little remains of me.
It shrieks. I echo the sound, high and nearly musical, a scream and an elegy wrapped into one. We sway, knees giving out.
Tavish scrambles to catch me. His cane clatters to the floor. I slip quickly through his arms, landing with a thud beside it. My lungs tighten, suffocating. My parasite takes them over, forcing them to fill and contract, fill and contract. Tavish crouches beside me, and I lean against his chest, clinging to that small part of myself that’s purely me and kicking back at the impending darkness.
“Ruby?” Tavish brushes back my braids, desperately patting my head and neck as though he might find a reset switch. “Ruby, please—”
“I’m here,” I manage.
A little sob leaves him. “We’ll go with Dr. Coineagan, aye? Can you move?”
“I’ll manage,” I say, because I’ll have to. I force myself to stand, turning my attention on the scientist I let Glenrigg’s ignit go for. “Dr. Coineagan—Elspeth—youcanhelp me, right?”
“If your problem has anything to do with that aurora, I can certainly try.” Their legs tremble as they lean so heavily against their walker that they seem to hold themself up on arm strength alone.
A second alarm rings beside the original bells, creating a spine-chilling harmony. This one means something different. Where the Glenrigg inhabitants had reacted to the first by hiding or congregating away from the town’s entrance; at this bell, the real panic sets in. Our server from last night rushes from a house three intersections down, a stuffed bag slung over one shoulder. He leaps through the open walls to avoid the walkway, where people scramble in all directions, some hauling belongings and others carrying makeshift weapons.
Tavish might not see the commotion, but the terror of it seeps through the air itself, requiring no interpretation. “Can we do something to help them?”
“Not anymore.” My chest pinches. I slap away the memory my parasite flings at me, the selkie shoving Glenrigg’s ignit into a satchel. But it keeps pulling it back up, molding it into a fresh blow with each repetition.
‘Done something,’it snaps at me in Sheona’s voice.
It wasn’t my fight!I want to shout that I helped when it was about my homeland and not some random town that nearly shot me instead of granting me shelter, but what I did for the Murk—stole from them—now winds through my brain, criticizing me. I try a different tactic:Saving Glenrigg would have sentenced Elspeth to death. What right do I have to sacrifice one person for the sake of a village?But that hadn’t factored into my decision in the moment, and we both know it.
My parasite’s disapproval lingers in the back of my mind; a rough, thick feeling like a blanket made of sandpaper.
Elspeth interrupts our internal feud. “If you’ll be wanting my help, there’s a few things I need from my lab across the firth. I assume an epic escape awaits us after? Or probable death, but I do have a preference.” Before I can respond, they roll off the edge of the walkway, plunging into the firth. Their head fins fanning around them as those tucked over their feet unfurl to the length of small paddles. “Carry Berti, would you,” they shout. “And keep up!”
I grab the walker in one hand and Tavish’s shoulder in the other as I jog after Elspeth.
The edge of the village comes up suddenly, the chaotic patterns of Glenrigg’s three-story buildings giving way to a dock. A few families toss their belongings onto steam-powered vessels, leaving a series of rowboats to bob sadly off to one side. Across the water a cliff made of natural black pillars surrounds a huge wooden door. Elspeth swims toward it.
I help Tavish into a rowboat. He sits at its center as I paddle, his arms tucked around his stomach. Scarlet fills in the space along the side of his pinkie nail, but he keeps picking at it anyway.
“We couldn’t have caught Lilias,” I say.
“Maybe the BA still will.” He presses his palm to my knee. A drop of his blood seeps into the dark fabric. “And maybe Elspethcanhelp you, the way my family couldn’t. I hope so, at least.” There’s something behind his voice, deep and heavy and hidden so well I can only see the outline. “And if they can’t, there will be someone else. There has to be.”
