Firewalker (Worldwalker 2)

Do you really think three Outlanders, no matter how intelligent, would have the ability to invent and to build nuclear devices out of thin air?

Explain.

In a moment, but you must worldjump now, Lily, or you’ll die. Gather your mechanics and find me in the worldfoam. I will be your lighthouse.

A vibration too large and too complicated to ever store in her willstone buzzed through Lily’s body like a swarm of bees. She called to the unique patterns in Rowan’s, Tristan’s, Breakfast’s, and Una’s stones as the heat and the pain of the pyre catapulted her leap up and out into nothing.

One shining light called to Lily. She followed it through the numbness between the worlds and found Lillian. Her mission completed, her physical body tired and charred, Lily’s spirit gladly wandered into the Mist, where Lillian met her.

Let me show you what I meant about the shaman, Lily …

?

?? I heave into the basin until I’m shaking.

“You should be in your bed, Lady, being tended to by Lord Fall,” Captain Leto scolds. He steadies me as I lean back against the side of his cot and dabs at my sweat-streaked face.

“He isn’t back from the Outlands yet,” I rasp, shaking my head. And it’s a good thing, too. If Rowan had been at the Citadel, rather than out looking for me when I returned from the cinder world two days ago, he would know everything that had happened to me. He would have seen what happened in the barn.

Never. He can’t. I can’t ever show him that, even if it means he never touches me again.

“You have other mechanics,” Leto presses as he helps me off the floor and onto his cot. “Surely their care would be better than mine.” He gestures helplessly around his spare quarters on Walltop. He has little more to offer than a fire and tea. I can hear the wind howling at his door.

“It doesn’t matter now,” I say. “There’s a tipping point with this disease and I’ve already passed it. I spent too long being exposed to something that damaged too many of my cells. I can keep this sickness at bay for a long time, but there is no cure for me now, Leto. Sooner or later it will take me.” I see genuine sadness in his eyes. I touch his arm and try to smile.

“Captain,” a soldier calls from the other side of the door. “The shaman is here.”

Leto leaves us, and the shaman joins me on the cot. He moves more slowly than he did just a month ago. He seems older. Tired.

“Shaman,” I say, getting right to my point. “We must stop searching other worlds for a way to get rid of the Woven.”

He studies my face, reading death there, and closes his eyes. “I’m sorry I got you into this, girl.” I see his wiry hands grip his bony knees. “But we can’t stop.”

I’m confused. It takes me a moment to reassemble my thoughts.

“I’m not saying this because of what happened to me but”—I falter and pause, taken for a moment by the savagery that crawls through my thoughts—“but because that cinder world I was trapped on was not of their own making. The few people left there—if you could call them people—told me that their destruction came about because of something that didn’t belong there. It was technology stolen from another world and it wound up being their destruction.”

The shaman nods, but he won’t look at me or reply.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?” I ask, unable to accept his indifference. “If we keep seeking a miracle solution for the Woven on other worlds, we could end up a cinder world like them. That’s how it happens, and I think that’s how it always happens on the cinder worlds. They start off thinking they’re doing good—”

“I understand what you’re saying, but it’s too late,” he says, cutting me off. “We must press on.”

“No,” I say, my brow furrowing with dismay. “I won’t do it. And I forbid you from continuing this madness with another witch. I’ll imprison you if I have to. I’ll throw you in the deepest oubliette I can find—don’t think I won’t just because I care for you.”

“I’ve never doubted your ferocity. Your will to do what’s necessary. Will is what makes a great witch, and I believe you’ll prove to be the greatest witch in history, Lillian,” he says softly, finally meeting my eyes. I don’t think he’s ever used my given name before and it startles me, as does the look in his eyes. There is as much death in his face as I suspect there is in mine. “But it’s too late. I’ve already stolen from other worlds.”

I stare at him. The room seems to fall into a hole. “What did you steal?”

“Equations. Plans. Schemes for building devices and power plants. Everything I could see or read on a spirit walk and then copy down later on the subject of elemental energy,” the shaman said in a dull voice. “It took decades. And it turns out it’s much easier to build bombs with this kind of energy than it is to build a power plant, like I’d originally hoped.” He swipes a weary hand across his face. “I started stealing to find another power source for the Outlanders so we could drag ourselves out of poverty. So we could have electricity and build cities of our own—anything to sever our dependence on the witches who treated us like we were less than human. I didn’t mean for them to turn it into a bomb.” He turns his eyes on me, pleading. “You believe me, don’t you? I never meant for them to make bombs.”

My hand shoots out and I slap him, trying to knock the words back into his mouth. It doesn’t work, but I slap him again anyway. He takes my wrists in his hands, gently pushing my arms down.

“If that would help, I’d gladly let you beat me to death,” he says.

“Who else knows?” I demand, my voice low and shaky. “Who have you told?”

“For years I’ve been giving all the numbers and drawings to a woman of my people who understands them. Her name is Chenoa Longshadow.”