Power had a price. Seeing the dust, the sweat, the blood, the sheer exhaustion, the looks in people’s eyes, and the damage that had been done, nobody would dare say we hadn’t paid a price.
Grandmother had created Rose and I to work against the system. A snarl or a tangle in the pattern. She hadn’t predicted the future, I was pretty sure; this degree of collateral damage was likely beyond her expectations, especially if we counted Toronto, but she’d achieved her goal.
Mags stopped, turning, and looked back to the others, who were slower to make their way down. Rose was between Peter and Paige, and the trio were still having trouble keeping up with Mags and the hostage.
Ms. Lewis’ gaze was level, her expression oddly serene as she briefly glanced across to me, though she had drool and blood running from the corner of her open mouth, with what seemed to be tissues stuffed inside it.
While we waited, a shadow moved below. I shifted position, poking Mags, and she turned her head.
A false alarm. Green Eyes. She’d been caught against the side of the building, and she’d made her way inside.
She was tense, her attention on Rose.
“Blake is with us,” Rose said.
Green Eyes frowned, but didn’t speak.
“Come on,” Rose said. “Keep moving.”
Green Eyes made her way forward, favoring one arm over the other.
She noticed me and paused. I stared into her eye with my own, measured the nuances of her expression. Relief, fear, concern, all together. Enough for me to feel confident that she was the same Green Eyes. Those blades that had nearly killed her hadn’t cut her in two.
The mermaid looked back at Rose, and I wasn’t sure even she was aware of how her hands had flexed, fingernails scratching the floor. A tell, as such things went.
Green Eyes took the lead, going down the stairs headfirst.
It would have been a lie to say that we were quick to reach the ground floor. Too many people were hurt, and by the time we got that far, the stairs were impossible to see, layered with enough particulate matter that footing seemed to be an unsteady thing.
The others were waiting for us. Ainsley and Lola were on their feet. The kids were all there, too. Evan was perched on a kid’s head.
“Green!” Evan greeted the mermaid as she came down the stairs. “What happened? Where’s Blake? Is everyone okay? Is the world going to end? What’s- Lawyer! And Rose! Rose, you’re hurt! Where’s Blake?”
“Mags has him,” Rose said. “The-”
“That’s not Blake, that’s wood!”
“-Barber-” Rose said.
I moved.
“That’s moving wood! It’s Blake!”
He flew over to me.
My eye hadn’t changed size, but the ease with which he flew so close to me, it drove home how small I was.
“The Barber,” Rose tried again, without the sparrow going a mile a minute. “He fell?”
“He’s out there,” Lola said. “I wasn’t sure what to do. We reinforced the wards to the outside and hunkered down. He hasn’t made much fuss.”
“What happened?” Ainsley asked. “Everything’s falling apart. Not just in here. You have the lawyer, but… that doesn’t tell me much.”
“We won,” Rose said. “I think. We should go.”
“With the Barber out there?” Lola asked.
Rose’s face was grim. She pointed at the door.
“You’re sure?” Lola asked.
“If we stay, we’ll get pulled into the deepest reaches of the Abyss. If we go, the worst thing that’s likely to happen is that the Barber is waiting for us and subjects us all to a fate worse than death.”
“Can we hold a vote?” Peter asked.
“No,” Rose said. “Open the door.”
“You’re being bossy again.”
But the vestige kids were obeying Rose, and they pulled the door open.
“Hang back, follow at a distance,” Rose said. “It won’t do to let him play the pipes for you and lose this now, after everything.”
We made our way outside as a mass. The Barber wasn’t visible, at a glance.
The entire city was… I might have said it was smoking from every surface, but the smoke flowed down. Already, the upper floors of other buildings had started to break down, rooftops sinking or sloping.
The street itself was fractured, and it continued to break down. Large planes of pavement had broken in half, folding into zig-zagging ‘waves’ where one piece leaned against another. Here and there, larger pieces broke down further, and plumes of debris were sent skyward as they landed heavily amid dust.
Had it been a perpetual thing, breaking down without ever ceasing to be, I might have thought the Abyss had decided what form Johannes’ domain should take.
This wasn’t that. The decay was too fast, too measurable.
Blades that the Barber had summoned had fallen and broken like glass. Bodies of wretches had wedged into cracks not yet big enough to swallow them. In the gaps between sections of road, the dust was thicker, burying smaller ones and ones that had been dead for longer.
“He’s there,” Lola said.
The practitioners seemed to notice, turning their heads before Peter, Green Eyes, Evan or the vestige kids reacted.
The Barber.
I was one of the last to see. Too many people in front. He moved in a sideways direction, dragging the sickle behind him, and he’d elected to keep the damaged, broken body of Johannes. The demonic taint of the Barber crawled all over the man. Only the basic shape remained. Scraps of hair and clothing.
He held the pipes, and we had children who were maybe in earshot. He made no motion to play the instrument.
Instead, he drew the sickle back, as if he was about to swing it at someone just in front of him.
He threw it, aiming for us, except the ground beneath his feet cracked as he finished the motion. Too far forward, too far down. The sickle sank into the road, point first.
The ground beneath him caved in further. A crater, with him at the bottom.
Heads turned. All eyes were on Rose. Her hand extended, fist clenched.
Slowly, she relaxed it.
“You’re doing that?” Lola asked. “You took over?”
Rose shook her head. “I’m asking nicely, as the conqueror who has just unseated the king. Riding momentum. But this place isn’t truly mine.”
She gestured at the shears. The road splintered. Where it splintered, it folded down. The shears were drawn in, partially buried.
“Makes me really want a demesne of my own,” Rose said.
“It’s done, then?” Lola asked. “You’re talking about the future like this is over.”
Rose didn’t reply immediately.
“Almost done,” Rose conceded the point.
“Almost,” Lola said.
“We’re not in any shape to fight, and he doesn’t die. I’m suspicious he can, if we wanted to defy that convention and go to war with him, but we’re not in a position to make him. He’s still there, and he’s not out of tricks yet. He’ll want to sneak out. He’ll try things. He might even attack, and I’m not sure we can put up a proper fight, even with all of us together.”
Nobody spoke.
Rose continued, “Move forward, carefully. If you have anything reflective on you, now’s the time to get rid of it. Toss it aside, push it into the dust between bits of road to hide it, or hide it inside your clothes. If he gets another body, he can essentially start fresh, only with a new bag of tricks. More resources.”