him, and in compensation for his lost beer, I drank the rest of the water. I had several sips before I said, “Can’t you catch her sleeping, and deepen her rest to a coma so she doesn’t wake?” It was an Earth Warden skill, but it was tricky, and required constant monitoring to ensure that a false coma didn’t become a true one.
“I could,” he said, and frowned unhappily. “No, I should be able to, but honestly, I think she’s on guard against stuff like that now. Pearl’s training was thorough. I’m afraid she’ll wake up, either as I’m doing it or when we’re traveling, and all hell will break loose. I can’t keep somebody down who’s fighting it without serious risk. She doesn’t really trust you, and we can’t afford to make her feel the same way about me. If she starts distrusting me, I don’t see how we can be sure she won’t be able to block us.” He drank some of his water, not very eagerly. “You think you can get to her quickly enough to take her down without problems?”
I was even less likely to succeed, and I shook my head. “Yet it must be done.”
“Yeah, I know.” Luis was deeply troubled, not only by the risks of keeping her here, or moving her elsewhere, but by the emotional cost to the girl. “Cass, I can’t help thinking that maybe this is what Pearl wanted. To have us rescue Ibby and bring her out here, into the human world, where she can do maximum damage. She could use Ibby to keep all of us pinned down and working twice as hard as we should. She could set these kids off like time bombs.”
I had a difficult time deciding what Pearl’s motivations might have been, at any point; she had always been hard to anticipate even when I had not been her enemy, though that was aeons ago, in a very different world. She could be cruel for cruelty’s sake, or cruel to a purpose, and it was impossible for me to know which her abduction of Isabel had been. But she had a plan; I knew that.
And it ended with the destruction of the Djinn, which was an insane goal; it meant ultimately the death of the world itself. Pearl hated everything, and hated it enough to be willing to sweep it all away in her blind rage. Humans, Djinn, animals, plants, the rich life force of the planet itself. She might expire with the rest of it, but she would survive long enough to look on a barren, dying ball of rock, and the death of all that lived. Dying last was her definition of winning.
There was a simple enough way to stop her, if I had the courage to choose it; it would mean the destruction of Isabel, of Luis, of all humans with whom I shared this strange, fragile life—a kind of firebreak, cutting Pearl off from the source of her power. But one species sacrificed for the sake of the planet ... one species out of so, so many. It had been done before.
In dooming me to mortal flesh for refusing his orders, though, Ashan had inadvertently convinced me that killing humanity was the last thing I wanted to do. I was determined to find another way, any way, to defeat my former sister.
But I still didn’t see what that way could be.
“Cass?” Luis’s hand closed over mine, drawing me back from the cold reaches of speculation to a warm, surprisingly sweet present. I felt an instant spark to him, an opening of my attention that surprised me, and I felt myself smile. “We’re going to figure it out. Don’t go there.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Where?”
“To that closed-in, dark place where you always go. Sooner or later, if you go there, you won’t come back to me, and I can’t stand that. I really can’t.”
I knew what he meant, and laid my other hand over his in a silent promise.
I would always come back.
For him.
The solution presented itself to me in an odd way. Ibby herself suggested it the next day, when she grew bored with the things that used to interest her, before her abduction. First she wanted movies, then books, then stories told to her. Toys failed to entice. By noon, she
“I could,” he said, and frowned unhappily. “No, I should be able to, but honestly, I think she’s on guard against stuff like that now. Pearl’s training was thorough. I’m afraid she’ll wake up, either as I’m doing it or when we’re traveling, and all hell will break loose. I can’t keep somebody down who’s fighting it without serious risk. She doesn’t really trust you, and we can’t afford to make her feel the same way about me. If she starts distrusting me, I don’t see how we can be sure she won’t be able to block us.” He drank some of his water, not very eagerly. “You think you can get to her quickly enough to take her down without problems?”
I was even less likely to succeed, and I shook my head. “Yet it must be done.”
“Yeah, I know.” Luis was deeply troubled, not only by the risks of keeping her here, or moving her elsewhere, but by the emotional cost to the girl. “Cass, I can’t help thinking that maybe this is what Pearl wanted. To have us rescue Ibby and bring her out here, into the human world, where she can do maximum damage. She could use Ibby to keep all of us pinned down and working twice as hard as we should. She could set these kids off like time bombs.”
I had a difficult time deciding what Pearl’s motivations might have been, at any point; she had always been hard to anticipate even when I had not been her enemy, though that was aeons ago, in a very different world. She could be cruel for cruelty’s sake, or cruel to a purpose, and it was impossible for me to know which her abduction of Isabel had been. But she had a plan; I knew that.
And it ended with the destruction of the Djinn, which was an insane goal; it meant ultimately the death of the world itself. Pearl hated everything, and hated it enough to be willing to sweep it all away in her blind rage. Humans, Djinn, animals, plants, the rich life force of the planet itself. She might expire with the rest of it, but she would survive long enough to look on a barren, dying ball of rock, and the death of all that lived. Dying last was her definition of winning.
There was a simple enough way to stop her, if I had the courage to choose it; it would mean the destruction of Isabel, of Luis, of all humans with whom I shared this strange, fragile life—a kind of firebreak, cutting Pearl off from the source of her power. But one species sacrificed for the sake of the planet ... one species out of so, so many. It had been done before.
In dooming me to mortal flesh for refusing his orders, though, Ashan had inadvertently convinced me that killing humanity was the last thing I wanted to do. I was determined to find another way, any way, to defeat my former sister.
But I still didn’t see what that way could be.
“Cass?” Luis’s hand closed over mine, drawing me back from the cold reaches of speculation to a warm, surprisingly sweet present. I felt an instant spark to him, an opening of my attention that surprised me, and I felt myself smile. “We’re going to figure it out. Don’t go there.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Where?”
“To that closed-in, dark place where you always go. Sooner or later, if you go there, you won’t come back to me, and I can’t stand that. I really can’t.”
I knew what he meant, and laid my other hand over his in a silent promise.
I would always come back.
For him.
The solution presented itself to me in an odd way. Ibby herself suggested it the next day, when she grew bored with the things that used to interest her, before her abduction. First she wanted movies, then books, then stories told to her. Toys failed to entice. By noon, she
Similar Books
