I motion for her to be quiet and I sit back, listening. I can’t hear much over the steady pounding of the rain. I walk over to the winding staircase. Take a few steps up, straining. And there is it. Dim but definite. Voices.
“Stay here, Ben,” I say as I start to shed myself of metal weapons: Böker, gun. I even unbuckle the scabbard and lay my sword near Rissa’s feet. The only thing I keep is my obsidian knife. “Watch Rissa. My guess is Aaron wanted to have a little one-on-one talk with his brother.”
“What are you going to do?”
I start up the stairs. “Interrupt them.”
“Maggie,” she says, her voice soft but urgent. I look back. “You don’t have to kill him. I know before I said . . . but it’s okay. I’m okay.”
The truth is that Gideon is going to be hard to kill. Conventional weapons won’t work, and the lightning sword is too dangerous and my control too erratic to wield it in such a small space. I’m just as likely to burn everything to ash—guard tower, Gideon, and everyone else inside.
“What about your purpose, Ben?”
She places Rissa’s head in her lap, cradling her gently. Her eyes are downcast. “I don’t know. I know before I said I thought it was my purpose, but I think I’d rather just get out of here and go home. With you and Rissa both alive. So if it means you could get hurt . . .”
Ben runs a hand over Rissa’s head, smoothing her hair down, and says, “Your life means more to me than his death. Does that make sense?”
A warmth spreads through my chest, that same feeling I got back at Twin Arrows when Rissa offered me her friendship. “It makes a lot of sense.”
“Okay, then.” She presses both hands over her heart, something I remember Hastiin doing with the Thirsty Boys before a bounty hunt. A blessing he learned on the frontlines of the wars.
“What does that mean?” I ask.
“It means come home safe. It means we’re family.”
Chapter 44
The staircase winds up through an opening in the center of the tower. I’ve never been in a lighthouse, but I’ve seen pictures, and I imagine the inside is a lot like this. I move silently upward, any sound I might make drowned out by the thunder outside. Each step seems to take me deeper into the storm. The rain that was a steady downpour now slashes violently against the windows, demanding to be let in. Lightning streaks across the sky, followed quickly by the boom of thunder.
Kai’s out there somewhere, the living heart of this tempest.
I have to trust that he will be all right, that he knows what he’s doing, or at least that he can take care of himself. And I have to trust that when this is over, I will see him again. Touch him again. I have to believe that.
The voices reach me now, barely loud enough to be heard over the growing gale. Gideon and Aaron, but mostly Gideon. Aaron’s voice is weaker, only a whisper compared to the roar of his older brother.
“Do you know what the locusts did to me?” Gideon shouts. “Out there in the desert? I was lying there. Within feet of the Wall. Covered in my own blood. Blood drawn by the hand of my own brother. And all I can think about is what that social worker said. That my mother was Diné. And if I was Diné, then why wouldn’t they let me in? Why couldn’t I get past that monstrous Wall?
“And then I feel this . . . pinch. Amid all the other pain, all the razor cuts you gave me. It was nothing. But then there were more, Aaron. And more. And then I realize they’re coming out of the ground. Insects. Hundreds of them. And they’re biting me. Attracted to my blood and eating me alive. And I’m so weak and so tired that there’s nothing I can do about it but lie there and let them.”
“I’m sorry,” I hear Aaron sob, barely a whisper.
Gideon moves, footsteps across the room. “I experienced a miracle that day,” he says, voice filled with wonder. “I suppose I should be thanking you. If you hadn’t betrayed me to Bishop, if you hadn’t given in to your baser impulses . . .” His voice rises, his emotions barely contained. “If you hadn’t murdered me!”
Silence, and when he speaks again, his voice is back to controlled, civil.
“A locust crawled into my mouth,” he says, “and I couldn’t stop it. I could feel its feet on my tongue, the flutter of its wings against my teeth. Their incessant chatter in my ears. Inside me. And I knew it would devour me . . . if I didn’t devour it first.”
A sound like a chair being dragged across the floor.
“Did you know that the Diné traditionally considered the locust a messenger? He led the way into the next world. And as I was lying there dying, Aaron, the guts of a half-chewed locust dripping from my lips, I realized I, too, could be a messenger. That I didn’t have to die. The locust could eat away that which was rotted and old and make way for the new. The new that was me. I could live. And if I lived, I could take you and Bishop and the whole of Dinétah down with me. I just had to have the will, the desire, the goddamn fortitude to persevere.”
“But why destroy it now, Gideon? We can go home.”
Silence, like the room is holding its breath.
“What did you say?”
“I made a deal, and you can come with me. We can start again, in Dinétah. Prodigal sons, like you used to say.”
I risk a peek around the corner. Gasp silently in horror. Aaron is nailed to the wall. Metal spikes through his shoulders, same as Caleb. Another through his abdomen, and he’s bleeding freely. Two more through his upper thighs, blood pooling under his feet. Gideon sits in front of him like a man studying a particularly fine painting hung on a wall. There are locusts in his hair, crawling on the collar of his metal vest. More on his hands, circling his wrist, climbing his arms. Boiling out over his bare feet.
Thunder booms outside, the rain still pelting the windows in a constant steady beat, the storm rattling the walls. So loud I almost miss Gideon’s words.
“You child.” He leans in close to Aaron, caressing his cheek. “You think I want their pity? That I would return a puppet when I can be a king?”
Gideon stands abruptly, and I drop back, out of sight. He strides over to the windows, throwing them open one by one. The storm roars in, sending papers flying. A bookshelf tumbles over loudly. Thunder cracks through the room.
“Dinétah’s days are at an end!” Gideon shouts. “Once I have cleansed the land, I will challenge the gods themselves. I will take what I was denied, what should have always been mine.”
He comes back to Aaron. Leans in and kisses him. Aaron struggles weakly, but Gideon holds him still. Gideon’s jaw unhinges and locusts pour from his lips, rushing down his brother’s throat, surging over his face like a shimmering black cloth. Aaron chokes on the insects, tries to scream, but he’s buried by the swarm.
I yell his name, but my voice is lost in the roar of the wind through the open windows.
“Good-bye, brother,” Gideon shouts as he backs away. I watch as he steps up on the open window ledge. His wings flare open, and I realize he’s going to jump. I take off running, and just as he launches into the air, I fling myself out the window after him.
Chapter 45
I catch him in midair. He grunts in surprise, and we tumble through the sky.
I tear at his clothes, his metal wings, grappling for purchase. He screams incoherently and tries to pry me loose. We fall, spinning, unable to tell up from down, blinded by the torrential rain. It seems like an eternity until we slam into the earth below.
The rain has turned the red dirt around the guard tower into a mudslide, and the once firm earth slips out from underneath us, sending us down the side of the hill, straight toward the dam and the drop beyond. We both fight to stop. Nothing is solid, everything is chaos, and we rush unhindered toward the edge.