Chapter Twenty-five
The Mind of Many
Rage was an intense thing. An uncontrollable thing.
A raging fire consumes. A raging storm flattens. A raging fury takes the mind.
And she'd come to understand that rage was what waited beyond the surface. That rage was what made up the shriek in the static, in the rush; the constant, painful summons snagging like claws in their mind.
Whenever she'd come up—whether by accident or because she'd been compelled by a need akin to a moth dying in a flame—there it was: the imposter's uncontrollable, directionless rage.
They despised it.
She despised it.
It was so sickeningly familiar, like a mirror to what she'd fought hard to leave behind. Hadn't there always been something burning her up whenever she'd tried stretching herself towards something better? Hadn't there always been another fire? Always another directionless fall into the endless dark?
She'd been helpless for so long.
Her wings burnt up.
No more.
Fed up and driven by a gnawing in her chest, she regrew those charred wings and she flung herself at the flame.
It hurt.
Each time, it hurt.
The imposter would hook her summons into her and screech at her, obeyobeyobey, dragging her mind across a jagged landscape aflame with rage.
She'd dive under. Gather herself. And then she'd throw herself upwards once more—over and over again—until the gnawing in her chest grew to shape a shell of anger.
Anger was different. Anger was not range.
Anger was unwavering. Controllable.
Eventually, the shriek in the static stilled.
The rush grew tame.
And whatever claws the imposter might have had, they now glanced off her shell, harmless.
What she found beyond the surface overwhelmed her.
She had a hundred pairs of eyes. A hundred sets of ears. A hundred thoughts, all held at once, and not the mind to hold them all.
The Night, it remembered.
It remembered screams. Remembered blood, fresh and warm. Remembered the rivals who'd spilled it and left it unattended while all the Night could do was beg at the edge of all that sharp nightfire.
Then the nightfire had gone.
The rivals had left.
The Night had fed.
It remembered.
She remembered, too. More so, she knew the shapes of those who'd done the hunting. The slaughter.
Scoff.
They weren't rivals. Rivalry meant an equal footing. Matched wits. No, these things were less. They encroached on what should have been theirs. They were a pest. Vermin. Vermin who danced to the imposter's tune. And they'd danced on through the night, protected by their nightfire until they could tuck themselves away, believing themselves untouchable.
The Night remembered and it told her where to go.
She waited a day. Then she set out, carrying seven thoughts with her, all the way to the vermin's hovel. The hovel was a wide, squat block of walls. It was shunned by every other building nearby.
The shunning meant she couldn't creep her way up close. Had to walk up to it instead, right out in the open, her cloak a cloudy night. Somewhere at the back of her busy mind—heavy with a hundred pairs of eyes; a hundred pairs of ears; a hundred thoughts—a spark of reason lit a corner where she'd stashed all the world's labels.
She knew, for a fact, that she stood at the back of a building. The gate facing her was part of a loading dock.
It was ringed in light. Nightfire, the thoughts she carried with her knew it as. UV light, the scattered labels trampled under all those minds said.
They'd burn, she knew. But she'd burn less, as she'd come to understand.
Most of the howel's nightfire hung from the building's roof, from where it splashed onto the walls and ground below. The way it has been spaced out effectively turned it into a wall of its own.
Hm.
That meant the nightfire had to go.
She tilted her head, her eyes trailing up. The place was squat, wide, and long. But not very tall, standing a floor and a half at best with a few wide windows spaced out evenly. They were barred on the outside.
Hm.
Bars made for good handles.
She sprinted for the walls. The one made from nightfire and the one made from solid things that'd catch her feet. The fire licked at her the moment she'd crossed underneath it, racing over her skin. She considered screaming. But, instead, she set her jaw and leapt from the ground to the first window. Then another leap, her full-fingered hand snagging on the next window's cage, and one last push before she'd made it over.
A cool touch of darkness settled around her. Doused the flames. Her blood still burnt, a little. But it'd still.
"What the fuck—" said a lonely voice. One of the imposter's vermin. He'd been sitting on a chair too small for him, surrounded by a roof crowded by many a thing she knew the labels for but couldn't rightfully bother with right now. There was a sea of cigarette butts strewn around him. For that, she found the label quickly. They always stank.
The man got up. He brought a long weapon with him. A polearm. He'd use it to sweep anything unwanted off the roof.
Like her.
He tried.
It didn't go so well.
His first swing was so impossibly slow, she didn't need to hurry to get out of its way. And even as he brought it around for another sweep, she grabbed the polearm, yanked, and shoved him over the edge before he had the good sense to let go.
Three of her thoughts were waiting down there. They picked him apart the second he landed. He all but forgot he should have been screaming.
A door let her in. A set of stairs took her down, opening up into a single, wide hall. The hall was cold, scarcely lit with plain light, and (almost) void of life. Meat hooks dangled in two rows on one side. Only three of them had bodies suspended from them. Those bodies had two legs. Two arms.
No heads.
The death she tasted in the air was both old and new.
She ignored the smell, ignored the hooks, and ran for the complicated things in the other half of the hall. There were wires, a rumbling generator, fat tubes with poisonous air going out, and more wires that fell in from above.
There was also another small chair with another one of the imposter's vermin sitting on it. He was asleep.
It only took two wires coming loose for the hall to fall completely dark.
It woke up the vermin. He was a large man. Big shoulders. Wide chest. A gut that pressed out from a layer of chainmail tucked under a black and red leather jacket.
Thick, black veins sprouted from his neck and wormed under the skin of his cheeks. His eyes were deep-set and ringed in smeared coal; all gritty and black. The lot of it made those eyes look so much more frantic when they flew open.
Frantic and useless. They missed her when she stepped around him and settled herself at his wide back.
He cursed. She didn't know the words, but she knew the tone. Then he tipped to the side, away from her, his hand fumbling, and fell off the chair with a thump.
More curses. More words she didn't know. She stayed, motionless and watched him swipe up his torch.
Her heart leapt quickly. A smile made her dry lips sting.
He clicked on the torch. Its beam landed on the still huffing and puffing generator. He huffed, too, and took one step towards it, before— WHAM.
The gate behind him shuddered. Her thoughts had come to knock, now that the nightfire no longer bothered them.
He snapped around. The torch's narrow beam cut to her. Caught her, squarely. She squinted against the beam. It was a bit too bright for her liking.
The man screamed. Not in fear (not yet), but out of simple surprise. Then he grabbed for her; a straightforward snatch as if to catch her by the throat. She snapped back on her heels.
He missed her throat, but his fingers caught on a glint of muted, dirty gold.
A sharp line bit into her neck.
Unbidden, a memory knocked itself loose.
"You know I don't got a finger for that," she tells him while she's lying flat on the side of a toppled-over train engine. Harran's star-studded skies hang above her. Rais lies dead somewhere below.
He's undeterred. "Is that a yes?"
"It's also at least a size too big."
"Fi."
She sticks her finger through it, "See? Too big," and proves her point, knocking it around like a hula hoop on a hip.
"Oh shut up," he insists, his voice all scratchy while he presses his forehead to hers. "It's perfect."
The cord around her neck snapped.
Something else—something important, something treasured—snapped along with it.
With blood dripping from her chin and a hundred more thoughts alive in her head than she could reasonably think, she grabbed the chain fixed to the side of the rattling gate. The Night wanted in, throwing itself against the metal, WHAM, WHAM, WHAM, while confused shouts echoed up the hall. The shouts came with torches lancing through the dark and frantic footsteps. By the time they'd come anywhere near the generator in a bid to save themselves, she'd pulled and heaved until the gate stood wide open.
Delighted, the Night came pouring in around her, hungry, angry. Free.