Chapter 42

  Day 26

  “Why me?” asked Jeronimy. “Why here? Why can’t you all just leave me the fuck alone? Emmius, don’t fucking touch that.”

  Emmius’s outstretched robotic hand stopped within inches of the stabilizer panel. He contented himself with staring out the huge viewport windows at the colorful bullshit of Tengami, the Paper Moon, down below. Sections of it were on fire; rings of blackened paper glimmered with flame at the edges. “And were you aware that your fucking moon is on fire?”

  Akkama kicked herself into a spin on a swiveling chair that overlooked the dark command deck. She grinned as she spun around. “I don’t mind fire, Jeronimy,” she said.

  “Gonna be the fucking Ash Moon in a few weeks,” he muttered. Which would still be better than his moon, the fucking Mirror Moon, which was so gods-damned stupid, it and its quest and its ridiculous guardian, that he’d left it behind as soon as possible and never looked back.

  Akkama kept spinning. That chair could spin forever. Jeronimy knew; he’d tried it himself. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “We won’t be here in a few weeks.”

  “And that brings me back to my point,” said Jeronimy. “Why is everyone coming here, out of all the fucking places we could meet?”

  “You have the best spaceship,” said Akkama, as though this explained everything.

  “I fucking know that. And you know what else? It has been remarkably free of drama and bullshit. I worked hard to keep it that way, which meant never inviting any of you lunatics onboard. And now everyone just fucking invites themselves over…”

  “It was Anthea’s idea,” said Akkama. She stopped herself from spinning, crossed her legs, gave him that fucking obnoxious shit-eating grin. Like, ‘you’re not going to argue with Anthea, right Jeronimy?’

  “But it was your fucking idea to invite gods-damned Abraham Black onboard. Tell me, hey, you guys, tell me why I shouldn’t just shoot him down when he tries to dock.” Jeronimy appealed to Jacob Hollow and Leocanto Lockbreaker, sat against the wall playing some kind of strategy game.

  Jacob snapped his fingers in a flash of light. “He has the key?” Jacob suggested. The Lockbreaker frowned and glared at his cards. He had strong opinions on the subject of keys—specifically, their necessity.

  “Don’t play stupid, Jeronimy,” said Akkama. “He comes here, he gives me the key. Then everyone else comes, and I show them how I was able to do what no one else could. How I, Akkama, saved the day.”

  “Like I think it’s a pretty okay plan,” said Emmius. He shuffled up next to Jeronimy at the drone deployment console. Jeronimy kept a close eye to make sure Emmius didn’t fidget with the controls. “I mean bro she was saying that it’s like gonna be like an apology for everything that hap—”

  “Emmius!” Akkama hissed. Her arda flared red. “Shut up!”

  “Yeah?” said Jeronimy, “Well even if it’s some kind of apology, I’m not gonna fucking accept it. I don’t fucking trust you, Akkama, and I especially don’t fucking trust Black. Why the hell would he even come? Why would he give you the key? He’s the ruler of the damned Dark World now.”

  Akkama clicked her tongue. She sighed dramatically, put a theatrical hand to her brow. “Oh, Jeronimy,” she said. “Of course you wouldn’t understand. It’s about love.” A wry smile twitched at the corner of her mouth.

  “Love? The fuck are you talking about?”

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  She leaned forward in her chair, fangs gleaming as she grinned at him. “Black was in love, once. And now he’s bereaved and lonely and whatever, and he’s just…really damn easy to control, actually. Because apparently I remind him of that person.” She snorted with laughter.

  “Wow. Just fucking wow, Akkama. So you’re just gonna use him like you use Emmius?”

  Akkama leaned back and shrugged. “Look, if it gets us the key, who cares? We win. Story’s over. Hurray for the good guys! You think Black and everything else here will keep existing after we—after I—open that white door? I doubt it. Nobody here is really real, right? They’re all just tools. Narrative constructs. No offense, guys.” Leocanto and Jacob were giving her unfriendly looks.

  “And so,” said a new voice, a chilling voice. “Is that the truth, Hero of Fire?”

  Everyone in the room stopped what they were doing. Something about that voice…it seemed to echo from everywhere. It had a quality about it that made Jeronimy’s protean form shiver. And yet it was, unmistakably, the voice of Abraham Black.

  He was there among them, stepping out from a deep shadow in the corner of the command deck. He didn’t look much different from the last time that Jeronimy had seen him, except maybe that his clothes were darker, his shadows more defined as though he had been flipped into high contrast. And on his left hand he wore a jet-black ring.

  Akkama recovered quickly, but Jeronimy could see on the face of Black that it was already too late. “Abraham!” Akkama exclaimed with a pasted-on smile. “We, uh, didn’t hear you come in…”

  He came to a stop in the middle of the deck; his boots clacked strangely, ominously on the metal. He did not reply; he only kept his eerie, dark eyes upon Akkama. Jeronimy watched his hands, which hung casually next to those silver revolvers.

  “So…” said Akkama. “Congratulations! You got the key.”

  “Yes,” he replied softly. “I betrayed him.” He cocked his head to look up and out the window at the burning Paper Moon. “It’s a strange thing,” he said.

  A long run of silence followed. Leocanto and Jacob slowly put down their cards. Emmius slunk back. Jeronimy checked to be sure his angel, his shadow, was still with him. Only Akkama now appeared unaffected by the tension. She smiled at Black; her ruby eyes glittered. She held out a hand. “Will you give me the key, Abraham Black?” she asked. The way she said it made her meaning clear: would he give it willingly, or would she have to take it?

  Black sighed. “I should have known better.” He turned away.

  Everything happened at once. Akkama drew her sword and struck at Black in a single fluid motion. Jacob Hollow snapped his fingers, shredding the room with blinding light. Thunder boomed—huge, violent thunder that rattled the wiring of the command deck.

  Jeronimy tackled Emmius to the ground. His shadow flashed around them, scooped them up and hurled them through an open door and halfway down a dim, glossy corridor. “Stay here,” he told Emmius. Then, in another blur of motion, he retracted back into the command deck. He changed into an immense ebony dragon in imitation of Emmius’s deceased angel.

  But it was already over.

  Akkama bled from a wound to her side, but her sword had red blood on it too, and it wasn’t hers. Jacob Hollow lay dead, shot between the eyes. Leocanto Lockbreaker had been shot in the arm. He seemed pissed, but he didn’t say a word.

  Akkama glared up at her moon. “I’m going to get it,” she hissed to herself. “He’s hurt. He can’t run far.”

  She paced, frantic, desperate. “I have an idea,” she said. “We can make him cooperate. Jeronimy, I need your angel.”

  Jeronimy reverted to his normal form. “What? Fuck no.”

  She sheathed her sword and put a hand to her bleeding wound as though it was a mere annoyance. “I don’t have an angel, Jeronimy. I need yours.”

  “Go to the hells. Look at this. He killed Hollow. Zayana’s gonna be so pissed.”

  She ground her teeth. “We can end this, Jeronimy. Right now! We can get the key.”

  “How the fuck is my angel gonna do that?”

  “There’s a way. There’s this thing that angels can do. I heard it from a guardian. But I need to go after Black while he’s still on my moon!”

  “Fine! Whatever. Take my fucking shadow. When Black kills you, it’s your own fault. But I want my angel back.”

  She grinned. “Yeah,” she said. “You’ll get it back.”