Mercurial by Naomi Hughes (ebook reader with built in dictionary .txt) 📕

thick, musty scent of unwashed bodies. Tal struggled to breathe through it. Claustrophobia clamped itself around him. He wondered if this was what drowning felt like, and that thought led him back to the icy lake, to Elodie’s limp and half-frozen body in his arms, to the feel of her cold lips beneath his and the terrible relief he’d felt when she had begun to breathe once again. He had realized then that he’d wanted the Unforged God’s promise to come true after all. He wanted to save Elodie, and wanted to save the empire through her.

“God’s hammer,” swore one of the rebels. “What are we to do?”

“The empress shouldn’t even have rightfully survived the explosion,” another protested. “She was right in the middle of it. What must we do to finally end her?”

He didn’t tell them that Sarai would be dead soon anyway, as must happen if Elodie was going to be crowned. He would have to tell them soon. Not yet, though.

“We can’t reach the base in time to warn them. Not with a caravan like this,” Nyx cut in, her eyes flashing.

“We could send a single sled ahead. One musher, minimal cargo. They would make it in time to give the evacuation order.”

Nyx ground her teeth. She ran her hand over her head, pressing the pads of her fingers into the short, dark stubble that had grown there. When she then grabbed her pack and rummaged through it to come up with her razor, Tal at first wondered why she would choose this moment to shave the stubble away. Then she lifted the blade and said, “We kill her now.”

Tal’s breath caught in his throat.

“We cannot risk the empress rescuing the Destroyer,” Nyx continued, “and we will run out of laudanum sooner or later—we can’t keep her a prisoner on the run indefinitely. And if the base is going to be attacked, she can’t have a proper trial there either. We kill her now, then later we can say her death was in retribution for the raid of our headquarters. That way maybe we’ll even get the bonus of making Sarai think twice before she messes with us again. It’s the only way the rebellion has a chance at some sort of victory if the base gets wiped out.” She turned to her girlfriend. “Hel, hold Tal back.”

Tal and Helenia looked at each other. She gave him an unbearably gentle look that meant the time had come to tell Nyx the truth, and his stomach churned in a way that made him want to find the nearest bush and be sick behind it. But he owed his sister the truth, so before he could allow himself time to think of how to evade the question, he turned to face her squarely and said, “You do not need to hold me back.”

Nyx had taken a step toward the far side of the fire where Elodie lay, but stopped now and turned. “What? Have you…have you found a way to fight the oath?” Her eyes lit with hope.

Too miserable to face her, too ashamed to face his own words, he closed his eyes. “No. I am rid of it. She died at the icy lake. She drowned. My oath is gone. And so is yours, or at least the part of it that requires the Destroyer’s death.” At least there is that, he thought desperately, grasping for something good. At least there was one less vow to bind his sister.

There was silence for a long moment. “But,” Nyx said slowly, “She’s not dead, not yet. She’s right over there.”

“Because I saved her after she drowned. I breathed for her,” he admitted. “I brought her back.”

The silence turned slow and thick and deadly, a poison sap that glued them all in place until it began to turn hard and brittle. All at once, it shattered.

Nyx was shouting. He couldn’t make out words past the tremors of fury and confusion and grief that ravaged her voice, so he didn’t respond, but he did open his eyes, because he at least owed it to her to witness her anger. Hel stood behind her now, whispering quiet calming things into her ear that seemed to have almost no effect, holding her arms back as she tried to lunge across the space to Tal.

“How could you?” Nyx managed at last, eyes alight with tears, face twisted in disbelief. The words were knives, daggers, arrows. The trees caught her cry, dulled it against their leaves, absorbed the weight of it until Tal could almost bear it.

He struggled to find a way to explain his reasoning but of course couldn’t do such a thing when he didn’t understand the logic of it himself, so instead, he told her—he told them all—of the other visions. Elodie, small and afraid. Nearly killed by her own parent. Poisoned without her knowledge. The moon arced higher in the sky as he talked, explaining each detail of his dreams until his voice ran hoarse. At some point, the soup nearly boiled over and Helenia rescued it, ladling stew into each of their bowls and insisting they eat; good plans weren’t made on empty stomachs. Tal let her fill a bowl for him but couldn’t take even the thought of eating. Nyx watched lifelessly, all emotion drained from her expression. She wouldn’t look at Tal. She also wouldn’t let go of the razor.

“How could Albinus have kept the mercury in the Destroyer’s system for so long?” Helenia asked when Tal had finished explaining his visions and the remnants of the stew had gone cold. “He wouldn’t have been able to change her bone marrow—that’s what creates new blood when the body needs it. So her blood would have slowly changed back to red over time, the mercury used up bit by bit as she used her powers, diluted by the new blood as it was generated.”

“Her treatments,” Tal realized. His voice cracked from overuse and he had to clear it before he