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The first thing Booker said to Nile when they were sat by the fire in the cave, when they were alone, was, “Don’t ask about Andy’s daemon.”
It was an odd thing to say because, well, Nile had already seen Andy’s daemon – a patterned snake that wound around her neck and didn’t ever seem to move. She’d even introduced him, saying, “Andromache the Scythian, and this is Ngọc.” And, it wasn’t as though Nile’d been going to ask anyway, except maybe how to pronounce his name because she wasn’t sure she’d caught it the first time; it was unbelievably rude to ask about another person’s daemon, and her Ma had raised her right.
She was going to ask why she shouldn’t ask, why Booker said it with such finality, but something about the way he was sitting – the way Jeanne was huddled into his jacket – and something about the way he was looking at her, the way he suddenly looked like someone that was two hundred years old, made her swallow the question.
She buried a hand in Kuiseb’s fur. “Sure,” she said. “No asking. Got it.”
--
When Nile had died, Kuiseb had stayed. It was the only reason the rest of her squad hadn’t been more upset than they already were – Nile couldn’t have died, not really, not if Kuiseb had stayed, had howled over her, had hidden under her hospital bed. She’d only been unconscious, or asleep, not dead.
Nile had even believed it herself for a while. Kuiseb had known better.
“You left me,” he’d said, when she woke up, when she’d been trying to deny it, trying to convince herself it was just some really good medicine. “Nile, you were gone.”
And then Andy had shot her in the head, and she hadn’t been able to deny it anymore. Even if you survived being shot in the head, you didn’t heal that quickly. And Kuiseb hadn’t even been affected. People could survive if their daemons died – you could quibble over words, could say it wasn’t really living, not really, but you couldn’t deny that people could go on living and breathing without their daemons. But daemons didn’t survive if their person died.
She’d asked Andy, when they were sat in the plane, why Kuiseb hadn’t died when she did.
“They don’t,” Andy answered, with a look on her face that Nile wouldn’t understand for days. Would maybe (hopefully) never understand. “Not until it’s our final death. They stay.” She’d reached up to touch Ngọc as she spoke; Nile wouldn’t understand that until later, either.
--
Nile had dreamt of a woman in an iron coffin, drowning beneath the sea. She had been hammering her bloody fists against the iron, screaming. She’d felt like something mad, something furious, something terrified.
And the thing was –
Kuiseb had dreamt as well.
--
Nile’s father’s daemon had been an eagle. When they were young, Kuiseb would mimic her, change into an eagle every time they came home. Nile had expected him to settle as an eagle, once. But he’d always been happiest as something with four feet, and Nile was glad she didn’t have to deal with the spike of grief that she knew would have come if he’d settled as something with wings.
Her mother’s daemon, Gabriel, was a fox. He was fast and light-footed and always ready with a quip. Once it had become clear that Kuiseb would settle into something four-footed, they’d always teased that it was Nile and Kuiseb taking after them. They’d stopped saying that when her dad didn’t come home anymore.
Her brother’s daemon had been called Amira. The last time Nile had called her brother she hadn’t settled yet. He’d been a bit worried about it, the way people always were if their daemon took a while to settle, and she’d teased him that Amira was just waiting until her and Kuiseb came home.
Now she’d never know what Amira would settle as.
--
The thing, the thought, the thing Nile didn’t want to think –
The thing was, the thing was, the problem, the reason Nile had looked at Booker and not asked was–
She’d met people, before, who didn’t have daemons. Who’d been severed. Veterans, or refugees, or survivors of horrific abuse – there’d been a centre near where she lived that had tried to help them make a life, afterwards, and her mother used to volunteer there. So it wasn’t like Nile didn’t know what it was like. It wasn’t like she hadn’t known the risks, like she hadn’t thought about it, had nightmares about it. Because she had. And they’d always been careful, her and Kuiseb because –
They’d always seemed half-alive, the people at the centre. Like they didn’t know what was going on around them. Kuiseb had admitted, once, that he could feel the absence, somehow.
Most daemons didn’t survive severing, even if their person did. But one of the men had still had his daemon – a small bird he held cradled in his palm. And Nile had been able to see from his eyes that it was worse, in a way, to have his daemon still, without really having her. She hadn’t moved, hadn’t spoken, just sat in his hand.
So, yes, that was one thing, was one reason, that was why Nile hadn’t asked. When Booker had been looking at her, Jeanne hiding in his jacket, that was why she wouldn’t ask. Because Ngọc didn’t move, didn’t speak, just wound around Andy’s neck, tangled in her necklace. But – she still wondered. Because Andy didn’t act like someone with a severed daemon.
She laughed, she’d joked with Booker, she didn’t look at the others and their daemons with that awful look of jealousy and grief.
But –
The other reason that Nile wouldn’t ask, when she was sat across the fire from Booker, the reason she’d reached for Kuiseb, the reason she’d just nodded –
Nile had woken up, and grabbed at Kuiseb, and he’d climbed on top of her and shivered and acted like he wasn’t too big to sit in her lap. And Gianna had said, “Tell us,” and she had and –
And Ngọc had said the first word Nile had ever heard him say. He’d said, “Quỳnh,” –
And Andy’s expression had twisted into something terrible, something raw – like a mask had been peeled away, like a bandage exposing a wide, gaping wound –
And the beginning of a thought – a dark, awful thought – had begun growing at the back of Nile’s mind because –
Because Kuiseb had dreamt as well. Had dreamt of a daemon, trapped down there in the dark.
--
When they were stood in the elevator, watching the floors tick past, Nile said, “What did you dream?”
Kuiseb answered, “There was a bird, trapped and drowning, beating his wings against the iron and the water, his claws tangled in someone’s hair.”
And Nile said, “I thought so.”
Because – it wasn’t like they hadn’t noticed.
Andromache was a Greek name, as far as Nile could tell, and Ngọc – wasn’t.
--
There were several moments in his life that Nicky would never forget, no matter how old he grew to be: when Gianna first settled; meeting Joe on the battlefield, shortly followed by his first death; the first time Gianna had died and he hadn’t, and he’d been covered in Dust waiting for her to come back; the first time Djamila touched him; the first time Gianna touched Joe; and the night after they’d met Andy and Ngọc after Quỳnh and Alkaios had been taken.
They’d been fine to begin with – scared and angry and trying to hide it, but relatively fine. And they’d made plans to rescue Quỳnh and Alkaios, and they’d gone to sleep, and woken up to the sound of screaming.
Andy had been bent over, clutching at her chest, Ngọc writhing where he was sitting coiled in her lap. Nicky would realise later that Andy knew then what the rest of them wouldn’t know for weeks – that there would be no finding Quỳnh and Alkaios though their bonds, because the shock of their pairs dying again and again, and their panic and pain, overwhelmed any sense of direction.
If it had just been one death, it would have been easier – they could all deal with that, mostly. It was the coming back and dying again, and coming back and dying again, and again, and again, and again.
Nicky had never seen Andy cry before, not in all the years he’d known her.
He’d helplessly reached for her, and Gianna had gotten to her first and pressed against her, only for Andy to shove her away, to twist away from him, and clutch at Ngọc as though he was the only other living thing on earth.
She’d stared at them, distant and terrified, tears streaming down her face, and said, “They’re drowning. They threw them into the sea, and they’re drowning.”
--
It was a comfort, sometimes, to have Ngọc wrapped around her neck, or her arm, or even just coiled up near her. It wasn’t like having Alkaios back – nowhere even near to having Alkaios back – but comforting all the same. Having someone else who knew. Who understood.
If either of them had been thinking at all in that horrible moment, when Quỳnh had been hauled to her feet and taken away from them, when one of the men had thrown Ngọc aside, it had been Quỳnh will be alone.
Later, Andy had thought she might be able to find them – she had always known where Alkaios was, had always been able to feel the bond stretched between them.
Ngọc was fast, but he was a snake, easily kicked aside, or even held back, no matter how he fought or bit. But Alkaios was a falcon. The fastest thing on wings, Quỳnh had joked once.
“I wasn’t quick enough,” Ngọc said, after Nile’s dream. “I wasn’t quick enough.”
“No,” Andy said. “Neither was I.”
--
“We shouldn’t do this,” Ngọc said, when they were laying their plan to rescue Nicky, Gianna, Joe, and Djamila. He was unusually agitated, twining back and forth around her neck. Andy ignored him.
“Andromache,” he insisted, “this is a bad idea.”
“I won’t leave them,” she said.
Ngọc reared up to look her in the eye. “I won’t be parted from you as well!”
Andy stopped, and ran a finger down his scales. “And leave them to the same fate as us?” she asked softly.
Ngọc shuddered and she kept stroking him gently. “You always were too reckless,” he said finally, bitterly. “Both of you. You never stop to think things through.”
Andy didn’t answer.
--
Before he had been a falcon – before he had been Alkaios – he had been a horse, Andy thinks. She can’t really remember. She made a joke about how she would never lack for a horse again. Or maybe she just thought about making a joke. Or maybe it’s just something she’s made up now, later. He’d unsettled when she left her people; she remembers that. She’d been annoyed, at first, having to get used to riding a real horse again, but as a falcon he could soar above her and keep a look out, navigate for her even. And horses were part of a herd, weren’t they, whereas falcons flew alone.
She wonders sometimes if he’s still a falcon, down there in the dark.
--
She had thought they’d be able to find them. Be able to use the bond to track them down. But they were dying. Alkaios and Quỳnh, entombed together beneath the sea. And all Andy could sense from their bond was pain and fear and an awful echoing emptiness that tore her into pieces. Until there wasn’t a them anymore, wasn’t Andromache and Alkaios. There was just Andy, and an gaping, aching absence.
--
Quỳnh came back to life, and breathed in water. She could feel Ngọc, faintly – alive still. And then she felt Alkaios move, and knew that he was with her, and started hammering her fists on the coffin again. One day, she thought, one day. This coffin will break before I do.
--
Quỳnh and Ngọc hadn’t spoken the same language as Andromache and Alkaios when they’d rescued them, not that they’d been called Andromache and Alkaios then.
The first thing they’d asked, when they’d managed to start communicating, was, “What’re your names?” because neither of them had taken the hint, even when Quỳnh and Ngọc had introduced themselves.
The woman had shrugged, and looked at her daemon. “We left them behind,” she had said. Even years later, Quỳnh would never be sure if they’d forgotten their first names, or deliberately left them behind.
Quỳnh had looked at Ngọc. “We’re going to call you An,” she had said.
“And you can be Linh,” Ngọc had added to the hawk.
An and Linh had looked at each other. “Suits me,” Linh said, and An had shrugged and nodded.
And that had been that – at least, until Lykon.
--
The second thing Quỳnh had asked, once she felt that they knew each other well enough, was, “Doesn’t it hurt?”
An had looked up at Linh, who was circling above them. “No,” she said. After a few moments, she’d added, “Not anymore.”
An often spoke in bits and pieces, as though she had to think through each phrase before she said it. Quỳnh and Ngọc had waited. Eventually she had said, “We didn’t mean it to happen. It just did. Bit by bit.”
Quỳnh had reached for Ngọc, and smoothed a hand over his head. “Will it happen to us?” she had asked.
An had given them a sympathetic look. “Probably. Time, distance, and the endurance of pain; that’s all it takes.”
Ngọc had hissed in agitation, and Quỳnh’s hands tightened around him.
An had looked up, finding Linh, circling in the setting sun. “Linh flies far from me because that’s who we are,” she had said. “Ngọc will stay with you however far you can separate; that’s who you are.”
--
In the moments that she could think, Quỳnh wondered whether Alkaios was still a falcon – whether he might unsettle one day, and change into something that could swim and breathe underwater. But in her few moments of lucidity, she knew that was unlikely. Andromache’s soul was something that flew, that circled high above, and guarded. Not something that swam into the depths and confronted what it might find there.
--
Quỳnh comes back to life, and breathes in water. She can feel Ngọc, like a fire in her heart, like the one warm thing in her life. Andromache’s got him, she thinks. Alkaios moves next to her, and she hammers her fists on the iron coffin. Soon, she thinks, soon. This coffin will break before we do.
--
Joe had never been able to separate very far from Djamila. Andy and Alkaios had been the best at it – Alkaios easily winging his way into the sky – and Nicky and Gianna could separate a little, but that was one way in which Quỳnh and Joe were similar. Neither of them were comfortable separating from their daemons.
Joe could remember, vividly, Andromache watching them over the fire, Alkaios circling above them, after their failed attempt to try and separate themselves. Joe had been clutching Djamila tightly, and Andromache had said, “You’ve got to be prepared. In case it ever happens.”
Quỳnh had been stroking Ngọc’s head, and had added, “I don’t like it either. But it would be worse to have it happen in battle and not have done it before.”
Joe thought about that a lot, when they were looking for Quỳnh. He’s thinking about it a lot now, staring at where Djamila and Gianna are caged on the other side of the room.
He can feel the bond aching, like a hook buried under his skin, and he finally admits to himself that Andy may have had a point.
--
“What are you saying,” Nile demanded, “that I can’t ever see my family again?” Her hands were clenched into fists, Kuiseb’s hackles up.
Andy remained relaxed. “No,” she said, her voice still infuriatingly calm, “you can take that car and go to them now, if you like. But you need to think this through.”
“Yeah? Think what through?”
Andy watched her with old eyes. “What are you going to say to them?” she asked, sitting on the car’s bonnet, Ngọc wrapped around her neck, terribly still and silent. “And not about this,” she waved a hand around vaguely, “I mean in ten years, in twenty years. What are you going to say to them?”
Nile squared her shoulders, her muscles tense and ready for a fight. “What does it matter?” she snapped. “I’ll think of something.”
Andy sighed, and tilted her face up to look at the sky. “I can’t remember my mother’s face,” she said quietly. “Can’t remember how many sisters I had.” She held out Nile’s phone, and Nile took it with shaking hands. “You’ll outlive them, Nile,” Andy continued, her voice terribly gentle. “Do you want to watch them grow old and die? Keep thinking up excuses for why they’re aging and you aren’t? Whether you say goodbye now or in thirty years, you’ll lose them sooner or later.”
Nile twisted her phone in her hands, and stared at her mother and brother’s smiling faces, and didn’t answer.
--
“Sébastien,” Jeanne whispered, when they were laying their plan to “capture” Copley. “We don’t have to do this. Just tell Andy. We can still back out.”
He shook his head. “Do you want this or not?” he hissed back. Jeanne ruffled her feathers and didn’t respond. “We can’t keep on like this,” he said, rubbing a hand across his eyes. “Je suis si fatigué, Jeanne. Je veux juste me reposer.”
She hopped onto his shoulder and preened his hair with her beak. “Je sais,” she murmured. “Je sais.”
--
There is a moment that Booker and Jeanne will remember for the rest of their lives. They had been hiding in a cave somewhere with Andy and Ngọc, laying low for a while. It was one of Andy’s old hideouts, and the heavy way she’d said it told them everything they needed to know about how old it was.
They’d come back in after heading out to find food, and had found Andy with a bow in her lap, made of some dark wood, wrapping a grip around its centre. There was a bowstring coiled up on her knee as well, and she’d laid a cloth on the ground before she sat, which was unlike Andy. She’d looked up when they came in, half defiant, half embarrassed.
Booker had tried to make a joke – said, “Didn’t know you still used a bow, boss. Bit old fashioned, isn’t it?”
Andy hadn’t smiled. She’d looked down at it, carefully running her hands over the wood. No, reverently. That was the word for it. “It’s Quỳnh’s,” she’d said softly. She’d looked up at Booker again. “I like to keep it ready for her,” she’d admitted. “Make sure it’s maintained.”
Booker had looked away. For when she comes back, were the words that hung unsaid in the air, and Booker had realised with a blow to his heart like a knife, that he was looking at his own future. That Andy had spent five hundred years carefully cleaning and maintaining this bow for a woman who had probably lost her mind to drowning centuries ago. And that one day it might be him, carefully rebinding and rewriting his wife’s favourite book, as though she was going to walk in the door any second.
And he wondered how he could endure an eternity of love and grief that raw.
--
Andy fought her way through the church – through two churches. She had to get to Joe and Nicky and Djamila and Gianna (she had to get to Quỳnh and Alkaios, she had to make it to the ship, she had to get there in time) and she went through the soldiers without a second thought, without a moment of remorse. Ngọc was limp around her neck, unmoving, and she knew the echoes were affecting him just as strongly. How could it have happened again? (How could this have happened? How could she have let this happen?) She has a sword and a gun (she has nothing but her bare hands) and Ngọc around her neck (Ngọc writhing and hissing as he fights with her) and these soldiers do not stand a chance. Only one even manages to score a hit, stabbing her in the shoulder, a wound that heals almost as soon as it is inflicted.
It isn’t until she sees Nile – sees something like fear in her face, and Kuiseb with his ears down and his tail between his legs – that something like remorse stirs. She doesn’t regret what she did. They brought the fight to her, and threatened her family, and she has no pity or empathy for them. But, she does regret what it makes her into, in Nile’s eyes. She regrets the way Kuiseb skirts her, the way they are looking at her and Ngọc and thinking, will that be us, one day? She regrets that this, this bloodbath, this demonstration of what millennia of violence can forge, this example of the havoc she can wreak when she must, is their introduction to immortality.
There is a memory here that Ngọc doesn’t feel the edges of, because it was before she met him and Quỳnh – this is a memory that only Alkaios could share. Once, before they were Andromache and Alkaios, before they were An and Linh, while they were alone and nameless, they had not cared who they killed. Mortal lives were only flickers, so short as to be incomprehensible. What did it matter who her axe cut down, or how many daemons’ last sight was a falcon diving from the sky? What had they taken? A few decades? They had been alone, alone, and nameless and aching, and lashed out at anyone who had crossed their path.
That isn’t who Andy is anymore, but it was part of her, once. It was something her and Quỳnh had argued over, refusing to speak to each other for days, while Linh and Ngọc had shared commiserating looks and spoken softly outside of their hearing – their daemons, as ever, so much wiser than them. Andy will not regret their deaths, nor the violence with which she brought them, but she will regret the necessity of them, the way that Nile looks at her, the way that Ngọc is silent and motionless.
Nile and Kuiseb are young, still, and kind, and they haven’t yet learned all the ways that violence is sometimes necessary in their lives, if they are to protect who they love. They may care about Nicky and Joe and Gianna and Djamila, but they don’t yet love them as Andy does. And while they may dream of Quỳnh and Alkaios, they don’t yet know to fear their fate. Andy is almost glad when they walk away – with any luck, they’ll stay out of trouble for a few decades, and come back wiser and older, and less prone to giving Andy looks that make her feel every year of her millennia-old age.
--
When Booker shoots her, at first Andy doesn’t understand. The bullet goes straight through her, and Booker is on her a second later, wrestling her to the ground. For a moment, she thinks it’s Copley that shot her because that’s the only thing that makes sense.
Ngọc understands before she does. He hisses and rears up and bites Booker, who swears and shakes him off. Jeanne pounces, grabbing Ngọc with her feet and taking off again, and it crashes in on Andy like a tidal wave, like an axe to the back, like the family she has built falling apart again.
She starts fighting back as Booker clips the handcuffs around her wrists and she screams, echoed by Ngọc. Not again. Not again.
It isn’t like she doesn’t understand, when he explains. If Quỳnh died for the final time, if Ngọc vanished and she was alone, she’d be there beside him, trying to find a way out. But there isn’t one, and even if there was, it wouldn’t be like this.
--
Nile looks down at the empty gun. “Andy,” she says. She locks eyes with Kuiseb. Without needing to discuss it, they turn and head for Copley.
--
In the hallway of Merrick’s company, Kuiseb is shot. He’d been leaping for a coyote daemon and then there was the sharp retort of a gun and he fell to the floor, Nile feeling the bullet as though it had gone through her instead.
She presses a hand to her chest, her bond with Kuiseb aching and unravelling and she wanted to scream and scream and scream because Kuiseb was dissolving into Dust and it felt echoing and empty and wrong in a way she couldn’t even describe like she was falling or being torn in half and is this what Andy feels like all the time and Nile brought up her gun because she was still fighting she had to keep fighting and the guards were just staring at her in shock as she pulled the trigger and is this what Andy feels all the time and how could she bear it Nile could barely stand and there was Dust on her shoes there was Kuiseb’s Dust on her shoes because Kuiseb had died –
And then he was forming again and it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds and Nile dropped to her knees next to him and buried her hands in his fur.
“Don’t do that to me again,” she said, her voice shaking.
Kuiseb nosed at her face and didn’t respond.
--
“Fascinating,” the doctor muttered. Nicky opened his eyes blearily and saw that she was staring at Gianna, pacing back and forth in her cage. “They don’t die when you do.”
--
“Jeanne,” Djamila said quietly. The magpie ruffled her feathers and refused to look at them. Gianna was pacing back and forth, but Djamila was lying down quietly. Ngọc was still and silent in a container on top of their cages.
They were prepared for us, Andy thought bitterly. The thought was distant, without any real bite, like the rest of the world was; distant and unreal, like Andy was hearing it play out on the TV from several rooms away. They knew exactly what they were expecting.
“Jeanne,” Djamila pressed.
“What?” she snapped.
“I think we’d all like an explanation,” Djamila said mildly.
Gianna snarled, her tail lashing back and forth. Jeanne shot her a snide look and then turned back to Djamila. “What’s done is done,” she said shortly.
“But why?” Gianna demanded.
Jeanne rounded on her furiously. “What do you know of it?” she spat. “You and Nicky and Joe and Djamila – you’ve never been alone, not like we were! You never saw your family again! Well sorry we’re not like you, Mr and Mrs Crusader. We cared when we lost our family!”
“Jeanne,” Booker said wearily. “Don’t.” He glanced across at Andy as he said it, and she realised he had expected her to respond.
Djamila and Gianna snarled in unison, before Andy had thought of how to respond. “Don’t speak of what you don’t understand,” Djamila warned lowly.
“What we don’t understand?” Jeanne said, snorting bitterly. “What do you know of the weight of all those years alone? You always had each other! We had nothing but our grief.”
That stung a little, distantly, but Andy couldn’t bring herself to react.
“And now you have even more,” Djamila snarled.
“You know nothing of grief,” Ngọc hissed, at the same time, raising his head. “You have no idea what it is to be alone, so don’t you dare.” He twisted in circles in his container before settling down again.
Jeanne shifted from foot to foot, not looking at any of them. “We just wanted it to end,” she said quietly. “We just wanted to rest.”
Gianna hissed, her tail lashing back and forth. “If you wanted to die you would have sold yourselves out, not the rest of us,” she said bitterly.
Jeanne tucked her head under her wing. “What’s done is done,” she repeated.
--
It had been Lykon who had named them Andromache and Alkaios. They had met him and Ife during Alexandros’s conquest of Greece, and Anath had wanted a name that blended in more with the locals. Quỳnh and Ngọc refused to change their own names, but put up with Anath and Liroth’s changing tastes with a sort of bemused resignation. They always answered to An and Linh, anyway.
It had been a joke, initially, Ife naming her “Andromache”. Fighter of men, she had said, lounging next to Lykon around the campfire. It suits you. And the joke had grown from there, both of them adding and elaborating to it at every chance. Lykon and Ife would take any chance for a joke, and dragged their jests on and on until An or Quỳnh or Ngọc or Linh finally tired of them.
Andromache the Deathless, Lykon had called her, after a fight where he and Quỳnh and their daemons had died at least twice each, but her and Liroth had been untouched.
Indomitable Andromache, Ife had crowed, after she’d successfully called Lykon’s bluff at cards.
Andromache the stampede, Lykon had laughingly called her after they’d stolen some horses, moments before he’d fallen off.
And then it had been Alkaios the clear-sighted, after he’d spotted an ambush, because I wouldn’t want him to be left out, Anath.
And then, finally, one day it had been Andromache the Scythian, because they’d seen a play with Scythians in, and she had admitted they’d thought of them as a god, once, and that had been the joke, for decades and decades, no matter how many times they told Lykon and Ife that they were older than the Scythians, or complained that no one could distinguish between the different peoples who had lived on the steppe.
And then, one cold, clear morning, Lykon had been stabbed, and Ife had dissolved into Dust, and the joke came to an end.
Years later – centuries – Quỳnh and Ngọc had teased them about taking up the names, and letting people think they were Scythian, but only lightly, because it was a way to carry Lykon with them on their journey.
And then Quỳnh and Alkaios were gone, and Ngọc was silent and still, and the changing times were as good an excuse as any to drop the name that only brought grief in its wake.
--
Andy didn’t intervene when Joe and Booker started arguing, shouting at each other from their beds. The world was still distant and unreal, and it was easier to let her head lay back against the bed, and her eyes stare at the opposite wall, and let everything else just wash past her. She’d have to start thinking of some way to get out eventually, but half of her was still five hundred years in the past (was drowning under the sea), and she just needed a minute or two to pull herself back together.
Her one or two minutes turned into five, and then into ten, and then she realised she’d lost probably an hour or so, and Nicky started shooting looks at her whenever the doctor was out of the room, because she’d normally have started trying to come up with a plan by now.
Her first death had been a betrayal. It was odd, how she could still remember that, so many thousands of years later, could still bring it to mind as though it had happened yesterday.
So she just needed a few minutes, that was all. Needed to get herself together, needed to start thinking about how to get out, and not the look on Booker’s face when she’d called him a coward, and the way that memory was already coming to mind faster than thousands of laughs they’d shared.
She twisted her wrist against the restraints, and a thought floated into her mind – that if she could break a thumb she could probably free a hand (just like she had five hundred years ago, two days too late) – and then the next time she looked up more time had passed.
Ngọc was sitting with his head up, looking at her. He didn’t know how she was feeling, not like Alkaios would (Alkaios diving out of the sky the second she’d seen Lykon’s wound, seen that it wasn’t healing, feeling the world shatter around them) but he knew her well, like she knew him, and she could tell that he was worried.
The feeling of Alkaios dying tore through her again, and she shut her eyes against the pain.
She opened her eyes when the door banged open, and looked up to see Nile and Kuiseb stood in the doorway. For a moment she worried that she really was losing her mind, and then Booker shouted, “Nile!” and Nile turned in time to catch the doctor before she could stab her, hitting her in the jaw and knocking her out.
Kuiseb pinned the doctor’s daemon – a monkey – and Nile hurried to Andy’s bedside, freeing her hands.
The world still felt unreal, like it was happening in slow-motion, but the gun in Andy’s hand brought her back a little, even though firing at the soldiers bursting in felt like firing at a target in a computer game. Andy bent down to free her legs and Nile moved over to the others.
Once her legs were free, Andy went straight to the daemons, unlocking their cages and letting them out. She carefully scooped up Ngọc, and he wound around her neck again. “With us?” he asked softly.
“Just about,” she said grimly.
She turned, and the others were free as well. She checked the gun she was holding, and then walked over to the doctor.
“Andy!” Kuiseb protested as she fired.
“We can debate morality when we’re out of here,” she retorted. “Booker, get up.”
He was still lying on his bed. “Just leave me here,” he said, one hand in Jeanne’s feathers.
Andy turned to him. Her balance still felt off, but the world was settling back in around her, the weight of Ngọc around her neck grounding her. She didn’t even feel angry – that would come later – just tired.
“You got us in this fucking mess,” she said finally, “so you’re helping us get out.”
--
Joe’s pulse was pounding in his head, Djamila pressed against his legs and growling lowly.
“I shouldn’t have sold you out,” Booker said. “I didn’t mean to.” Jeanne was tucked into his jacket, hiding her face. “It spiralled.”
“Spiralled,” Joe repeated, scoffing.
“It was just meant to be DNA,” Booker insisted.
“That would have been bad enough,” Nicky said softly. Gianna was sat next to him, perfectly still except for her tail that flicked back and forth.
For a moment Joe thought Booker was going to back down, but he didn’t, squaring his shoulders. “I meant what I said in the lab,” he said. “What do you know of being alone? Andy and Ngọc, yes, but you?” He laughed, strained and bitter.
Joe put a hand on Djamila’s head – to hold her or himself back he wasn’t sure. Djamila’s growl was vibrating in his chest. Booker shook his head. “And watching you two all over each other – I don’t know how Andy stands it! Are you trying to remind me of what I’ve lost?”
Nicky put out his hand and Joe held himself back. His temper had always burned hotter than Nicky’s, but that didn’t mean it was any less fierce.
Nicky stepped forwards and met Booker’s eyes. “If we hurt you it was by accident,” he said, quietly but intently. “You hurt us on purpose.”
--
Nile hadn’t meant to stumble across them. She’d just needed a moment to be alone, to grieve her family, and Kuiseb had nudged the door open.
They could see Andy from the crack in the door. She hadn’t been moving, just stretched out in the armchair, her feet up on the coffee table, Ngọc presumably around her neck.
From the little light coming in the window, they’d been able to see her face. She was staring up at the ceiling, her eyes open but distant. She hadn’t reacted to them opening the door, and for a moment, Nile was forcefully reminded of the severed people her mother had worked with once, seeing the thousand-yard stare they’d all carried written large on Andy’s face.
She glanced down at Kuiseb, and he looked back up at her. She wasn’t sure if it’d be kinder to disturb Andy or to leave her, but she didn’t think they had it in them to walk away from someone who was so obviously suffering.
“Andy?” she said, letting the door swing open. “I’m making hot chocolate – you want any?”
Andy’s eyes closed, briefly, and then she sat up, looking a little more present, but moving as though the weight of the world was holding her down. Or the weight of the sea, Nile thought silently.
Andy’s lips twitched upwards in a facsimile of a smile, one without any humour or joy behind it. “Sure,” she said, sounding tired. “I’d love some.”
Nile’s heart was twisting in sympathy, but she wasn’t sure what else she could do, and then Kuiseb moved. He walked slowly across the room, and nudged Andy’s hand with his nose. Nile almost felt her heart stop beating.
“You should come downstairs,” he said firmly.
Andy looked surprised, and then reached out and gently stroked the top of his head. Nile felt it like a shiver down her spine, like a sudden warmth after years of cold.
“I probably should,” Andy agreed. She sighed, and stood, brushing past Nile on her way out.
Nile was still frozen in the doorway. “What the hell was that?” she hissed at Kuiseb.
He shuffled his feet, and pressed his body against her leg. “I can help her in a way you can’t,” he said, finally, “and she needed me.”
A lump rose into Nile’s throat and she swallowed harshly. “That’s what got us into this mess in the first place,” she said quietly, and Kuiseb nosed against her hand and said nothing.
--
Quỳnh had held Lykon while he died; Andromache had held Ife, as though her two hands could stop her from dissolving into Dust.
Alkaios had dropped out of the sky as soon as Andromache had heard Quỳnh shout her name – he had felt the moment the world shattered around her – and he and Ngọc had been pressed against Lykon as he died.
They had waited for weeks, guarding his body. They’d tried to collect Ife’s Dust, as though having enough of it in one place would bring her back somehow.
Andromache can still remember the feeling of a daemon dissolving while she tried to hold them together. She wonders one day, if the same will happen with Ngọc.
--
Even while they were fighting their way out of Merrick’s lab, Nile noticed that Andy fought as though vulnerability was something that happened to other people. Obviously: she was immortal. At the time she filed it away and didn’t think any more of it.
But now, turning it over and over in her mind, she realises she was wrong – Andy fights as though someone is at her back. She fights as though she doesn’t have to watch her flanks, or her six, and Nile thinks of Quỳnh, thinks of Andy’s unnamed but flying daemon, and thinks about how Andy fights as though they’re at her sides, even now.
--
They exiled Booker and Jeanne for a hundred years. It felt like a sentence too long and too short at the same time, a third of their immortal life when it was done, but Nicky could still feel the shadows of needles in his arms, and was not inclined to be merciful. Djamila and Joe hadn’t slept, the night after they’d escaped, Djamila pacing back and forth while Joe sat up in bed, one hand on a gun.
Joe and Djamila’s anger burned bright and hot and fierce, but it also burnt out quickly – they had been the first to suggest a truce, all those years ago, while Nicky and Gianna clung desperately to their faith and their fanaticism. Nicky has no doubt that Joe and Djamila will reach out before the hundred years are up – he thinks fifty years, Gianna thinks seventy – and he knows that Nile and Kuiseb are concerned about Booker and Jeanne’s alcoholism and depression, and visibly have been since they’d all met. But he is slower to forgive.
Not only is there his and Gianna’s own pain to weigh, and the moment when Joe and Djamila weren’t sure if he and Gianna would wake, and the pain they suffered as well, but there is also the way Andy lay in the lab silent and distant, her mind several hundred – or perhaps several thousand – years in the past.
And there is Nile and Kuiseb as well. They may well have said that they hadn’t been betrayed, but Nile has confided in him about the man they killed in Afghanistan, and the way his face haunts her dreams; the way his daemon turned to Dust, and how Kuiseb had been killed in the corridors of Merrick’s lab. Nile and Kuiseb are young yet, young in a way Nicky thinks he and Gianna could never have been. Capable, yes, he won’t deny it, but they are still coming to terms with their own immortality.
Joe and Djamila may reach out early, and Nile and Kuiseb definitely will. He doesn’t know about Andy or Ngọc, but he and Gianna will stay firm. And perhaps, a hundred years from now, they will start to think about forgiveness.
--
Nile looked up at the sound of shattering glass, and saw Andy standing in the hall, shards of glass at her feet. She had one hand pressed to her chest and as Nile watched she staggered to the side, putting a hand on the wall to catch herself.
“Andy?” Nile asked, getting to her feet.
Ngọc hissed, twisting around Andy’s neck, more agitated than Nile had ever seen him. Andy sagged against the wall like it was the only thing holding her upright. She dragged in a ragged breath, and looked up. Nile took an involuntary step back, reaching for Kuiseb.
The look on Andy’s face was indescribable. Something like hope or joy or desperation all mixed together, and Nile managed to put the pieces together as Andy said, “They’re out.” She pushed herself off the wall, and cupped her hands around Ngọc as though Nile and Kuiseb weren’t even there.
“They’re out,” she said again, and then something in a language Nile didn’t understand.
And then she moved. She spun on her heel and sprinted for the kitchen. Nile jolted into action, running after her. “Andy wait!” she shouted, just as Andy picked up the car keys. Andy didn’t even pause to put her boots on or grab a coat, just pelted out of the house barefoot. “Andy!” Nile shouted. “You need a passport! You need money! Andy!”
She reached the front door just as the car took off down the drive in a cloud of black smoke and swore. She heard footsteps and turned to see Gianna leaping the last few stairs, Nicky and Joe behind her and Djamila at the rear. “Quỳnh’s out,” she gasped.
Joe and Nicky clutched at each other briefly, and then exchanged a look. “Pack up,” Nicky said, and headed back upstairs.
--
“Where do you think?” Andy asked, her foot pressing the pedal to the floor.
“England,” Ngọc said. “Via Calais.”
Andy nodded, and wrenched at the wheel, tyres squealing as the car fishtailed around a corner. It was hard to concentrate on driving. Her bond with Alkaios was back. The aching, empty place inside her was bursting with life. If she stretched, she could feel the direction he was in, the bond stretched between them pulling her towards him.
She’d been getting herself a coffee, sleep still not coming easily to her, even after five hundred years, and then she felt exultant joy rising up in her like the sunrise, and then she was soaring skywards, spiralling high above the waves, sun on her feathers for the first time in half a century, Quỳnh’s laughter echoing up with her. And then she had been back in the hall, coffee mug in shards at her feet, her ears ringing, with Nile and Kuiseb staring at her in concern, Alkaios’ shriek of joy still resounding in her heart.
She could feel the bond stretching between them now, feel the direction Alkaios was in, and finally, five hundred years too late, she knew exactly where he was.
And then she felt a shiver down her spine, a warmth lighting up her nerves. The car screeched through a red light, oblivious to the other cars on the road. Andy gasped, one hand pressed to her heart.
Quỳnh was running her fingers through Alkaios’ feathers.
Andy choked on a sob and reached for Ngọc, running her hands over his head, letting him twist through her fingers. Quỳnh must have felt it because a second later that lightning warmth was spreading down the back of her neck, down her back, around her sides, her arms, where Quỳnh must have been holding Alkaios with both hands, curled against her.
Ngọc curled up in Andy’s hand, her fingers closing over him, holding onto him the way she hadn’t been able to hold Quỳnh in five hundred years. I’m coming, she thought, as hard as she could, I’ll find you, I’ll find you.
Ngọc shot out of her hand and around her neck. “The car, Andy!” he shouted.
--
Nile threw her hastily packed duffel into the boot of the car, and then hurried around to the side to slide in herself, Kuiseb jumping in after her. The car was already pretty cramped, with Djamila and Gianna squashed into the back seat. Kuiseb jumped over her lap and curled up next to them.
“How are we going to find them?” Nile asked, hastily plugging in her seatbelt as Nicky tore down the driveway.
Nicky and Joe exchanged a look. “They’ll be heading to England,” Joe said.
“Probably heading straight there,” Gianna chimed in. “They won’t think to fly a plane.”
“Is Andy even safe to drive?” Kuiseb asked.
“We’re counting on her crashing,” Djamila said dryly, “or we’d never catch up. Keep your eyes open for cars in ditches.”
--
In Andy’s defence, the last time she’d had to locate Alkaios by their bond, she’d been travelling by horseback, and horses didn’t tend to run into trees or off of cliffs or into other horses if you stopped steering them. She didn’t think the other driver would accept that argument, though.
Luckily, Nicky and Joe pulled up before the argument could escalate into a physical fight. Joe hurried out of the car to calm down the man she’d crashed into, and Andy dove into the backseat. Djamila jumped into the back, and Gianna curled up in the footwell to make room for her.
“North-west, Nicky,” she said breathlessly. “And fucking floor it.”
--
Quỳnh drowned twice more that night, swimming for shore. Andy felt Alkaios’ grief like it was her own, and all she could so was hold Ngọc tightly and hope Quỳnh could feel it. She was far enough away from Alkaios that all she could sense were strong emotions – she couldn’t speak to him, or look through his eyes – but even that was beyond belief. It kept surprising her. She’d forgotten how to exist as one half of a whole, forgotten how to live without that empty place, walking around as though she wasn’t torn in half and bleeding out. And now she wasn’t anymore.
Gianna kept nudging at her leg, trying to comfort her, but Andy was beyond comfort. It had helped, over the years, to have the others’ daemons with her, a poor facsimile of what she was missing, but something nevertheless. But now she could feel Alkaios again? Nothing but having him in her arms would be enough.
She stroked her fingers over Ngọc’s head, and tried to breathe. Alkaios was still joyful in his flight, exulting in the rush of wind and the open sky, and each heartbeat of his she felt stole the air from her lungs. She pressed her hand to Quỳnh’s necklace. I’m coming, she thought. Five hundred years too late but I’m coming now.
--
It took them a week to get to England, following Andy’s bond with Alkaios. After the second day Quỳnh stopped dying, and the hope rising up in Andy was almost painful. She couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep; she was too close to it now, so close she could think of nothing else.
--
Andy was walking slowly across the docks when her vision suddenly inverted – she was miles above the earth, gliding on the thermals, looking down on an area of Plymouth that she recognised – and then she was back on the ground, Nicky holding her elbow and urgently asking her if she was alright. She wrenched her arm out of his grip and started running.
Alkaios dove for the ground – she could feel the wind in his feathers – and Andy’s feet slipped on the wet pavement as she tried to orient herself by what he was seeing. He kept looping back and circling around, and Andy could see a woman in a red coat – could see Quỳnh, she could see Quỳnh staring up at him in confusion – and then she bolted across a street, hurdled a fence, rounded a corner, ricocheting off the wall, and saw herself through Alkaios’s eyes, and he dove down towards her, and Andy wasn’t sure which of them was even moving, and she brought up her arms and he cannoned into her chest. She brought up her arms to hold him and his talons caught in her clothing and ripped her shirt and Ngọc shot out from around her neck, twisting around Alkaios and crooning to him and Andy couldn’t breathe, and Andy thought I’m sorry I’m sorry, and Alkaios thought, no, no, we didn’t want her to be alone, she wasn’t alone, and Andy thought, I tried to find you I couldn’t find you and then she was knocked off her feet.
Her and Quỳnh tumbled to the floor in a tangle of limbs, Andy cracking her head on the pavement, and Alkaios getting squashed between them. He squawked in indignation and Andy laughed like she’d never stop, her hands clutching him tight, and Ngọc was twisting around Quỳnh’s hands and Quỳnh was pressing him to her face and murmuring to him, and then she looked up and met Andy’s eyes, and Andy was looking at Quỳnh for the first time in five hundred years, and Alkaios’s feathers were under her fingers, and she felt dizzy. She had never known joy like this was possible, as though the world could break apart about them and it wouldn’t even matter, and she realised then that part of her had thought she would never see Quỳnh again, that Ngọc would dissolve into Dust and she would never get to hold Quỳnh, and it was only now that she could finally let go of that fear. Quỳnh reached forwards and grabbed Andy’s jacket and hauled her into a sitting position and kissed her on each cheek, on her nose, on her mouth. Andy grabbed onto her coat with one hand, still holding Alkaios with the other, and realised she was babbling, “I’m sorry, I tried to find you,” over and over when Quỳnh kissing her finally made her stop.
Andy pressed her forehead to Quỳnh’s, and sucked in a breath it felt like she’d been holding for five hundred years. “I missed you,” she said finally, hoarsely, in a language only the two of them spoke.
“I missed you,” Quỳnh returned, and the sound of her voice after five hundred years stole the words from Andy. She lifted the hand that wasn’t holding Alkaios, and pressed it to the back of Quỳnh’s neck, holding their foreheads together.
--
Later – much later, months after their initial reunion – Andy, Quỳnh, Ngọc, and Alkaios arrived in Ukraine. They crossed the Volga river, and headed off on foot towards the wide open steppes of Andy’s homeland.
As soon as they broke out from the trees Alkaios sprung off of Andy’s shoulder and took to the sky, spiralling upwards. Andy closed her eyes and tilted her head back, seeing the world as Alkaios did – the miles and miles of steppe. She couldn’t be sure that she’d been to this exact spot before, but it was familiar, in the way all the steppes was familiar, and she let herself relax into it, into the feathers under their wings and the world stretching away beneath them.
She opened her eyes and saw Quỳnh smiling gently at her. She had her bow, and a quiver of arrows; the plan was to cross the steppe, through Ukraine and Kazakhstan, across Mongolia, and then down through China until they reached Vietnam, heading to Quỳnh’s home in the Vӑn Lang. Andy hadn’t been to Vietnam in a while, so they would get lost together, traversing the once familiar streets.
It would be a journey of months, just the four of them and the world at their feet.
Andy smiled back at Quỳnh, and felt as though she was younger – thousands of years younger – and the world newly made. She held out her hand, and Quỳnh took it, and it felt as though no time had passed at all.