chapter sixty-six

"Maybe I'll offer your friends a better deal," Lena said lightly. "Isaac and I will do everything in our power to restore Bi Wei, and in return, they'll stay out of the way while I kick your ass."

"After so many centuries, do you think they're going to trust a Porter and his slave?" Harrison asked. "They need me. I can give them the location of every Porter archive and network server. I can provide personnel files on the Regional Masters, or the psychological assessments suggesting who in Gutenberg's organization could most easily be turned against him."

"None of which will bring back their dead," Lena pointed out. "If they want

me to try to help them—"

"This isn't a negotiation." A portion of his magical hive poured off of his body and flew onto mine. Metal feet poked through my clothes, and tiny barbs tugged my skin. "The only question is how much pain you'll put your lover through before you cooperate."

Lena stepped toward Harrison, and suddenly a hundred metal stingers were stabbing my body.

I've read a lot of books where people get tortured. Conan the Cimmerian was unbreakable, enduring whatever his captors inflicted through sheer, testosterone-fueled barbarian rage. The Jedi from Star Wars could separate their minds from their bodies, surviving torture through mental discipline. In Feist's Riftwar books, torture led the character of Pug to a magical breakthrough, making him more powerful than ever.

What few of those books ever bothered to truly explain was how much torture hurts! I tried and failed to keep from screaming. My muscles were rigid. I tried to physically pull the bugs away, tearing cloth and skin, only to have their hinged legs reverse and dig into the meat of my fingers. I clenched my fists, but that only drove their stingers deeper.

I tried to stand, though there was nowhere I could run to escape. Even as I pushed myself upright, they crawled into my shoe and stung the bottom of my foot, making me stumble. Others crawled up my pants legs to attack the skin behind my knees.

I had no books, nor could I have concentrated long enough to use them if I did. I could hardly breathe, let alone read. The knife Lena had given me wouldn't do anything against these bugs. I did manage to scoop a rock from the dirt and hurl it at August Harrison's head between spasms. I missed, but the gesture made me feel a tiny bit better.

My muscles began to give out, and I curled into a ball, covering my face with my hands and praying they wouldn't crawl into my ears or…into anything else. As the assault dragged on for what felt like hours, I thought about the wendigo outside of Tamarack. He had fallen into the same agonized position right before he died.

"Enough," said Harrison.

The insects stopped moving, but it still felt like the barbed slivers of metal were thrusting obscenely into my skin, an echo of pain that refused to end. I gasped and blinked tears from my eyes. Lena was walking toward the tree, escorted by two wendigos. Her fingers sank into the tree. The roots curled around the book.

Guan Feng started forward, but an older woman caught her by the shoulder.

Neither spoke, but the subtext was easy enough to read. Guan Feng was terrified. She brought her hands together, fingertips touching her chin, as if in prayer or meditation. She paced slowly, each step careful and deliberate, but it didn't ease the tension in her body. She never took her eyes from her book.

Lena reached deeper, stepping into a parody of an embrace with the tree.

This was my fault. I looked at Harrison, at the hybrid wendigos he had created with frozen chunks of skin, and fought to keep from throwing up. Whoever Lena helped them create, whatever Bi Wei and the others did once they were restored to this world, I was the one who had given them the key.

I started to push myself to my hands and knees, but a series of warning stings killed that idea. Instead, I curled tighter and slipped the wooden knife from my sock, transferring it to my sleeve.

As Lena stepped into the tree, a handful of insects rose from Harrison's body and flew toward her. They landed on her back, and then she was gone, taking the insects with her.

Guan Feng whirled. "What did you do?"

"You know what she is," Harrison shot back. "What she could do to us from within that tree. I'm protecting us all."

Green leaves sprinkled down. A branch as thick as my arm fell to the earth, barely missing Guan Feng. The wendigos backed away, but she remained at the base of the tree, crouched protectively over her book.

"What's happening?" asked the woman who had stopped Guan Feng.

"All magic has a cost," I said before Harrison could answer. I remembered how much it had taken for Lena to pull me back from the automaton, and I was someone she had known and loved. How much harder would it be to restore a stranger, one who had been gone for so many years? "You can't create life from nothing. That life comes from the tree."

And from Lena herself.

The roots shifted, and the book sank deeper into the earth.

"Bi Wei!" Guan Feng grabbed the book, but it slid inexorably downward. "How long does this take?" Harrison asked. "You, drag Isaac over here.

Perhaps when her roots taste his blood, she'll try to speed things up."

A wendigo yanked me upright. Cold, foul breath puffed against the back of my head as she hurled me forward. My foot caught in the roots, and I fell hard on my side. Dozens of metal legs pierced my skin, driven deeper by the impact.

I looked like a victim from a bad horror movie. My shirt was red with blood, and my skin was swelling, making my movements stiff. Individually, the stings I had suffered were relatively minor, but there were so many. One bee sting was an annoyance, assuming you weren't allergic. A thousand could kill a

full-grown man.

I had landed less than a foot from Guan Feng. My fingers tightened on the knife beneath my sleeve. I was close enough to stab her before anyone reacted, but what good would it do?

Looking up at her, I wasn't sure I could have done it. She had released the book, and now twisted her fingers into her shirt. Her lower lip was trembling. She reminded me of a frightened child.

"They'll be all right." I placed my hand on the base of the tree. "She knows we're here."

The look Guan Feng gave me suggested she would happily take over for Harrison's insects and finish skinning me herself, but after a moment, she reached out and touched the roots closest to the book.

"We're waiting," Harrison said. "Bèn dàn, indeed," I muttered.

A flash of emotion—amusement, maybe—passed over Guan Feng's features. It vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

Lena's hand pushed out through the bark, knocking chunks of dry, dead wood onto the two of us. Her arm muscles strained as if she were trying to scale a cliff. I reached up to take her hand, but the insects stabbed my wrist and elbow, killing that plan.

Slowly, Lena emerged from the tree. Normally, the bark would have re- formed behind her, but not this time. Branches broke away with every movement, and the entire tree creaked, drawing nervous whispers from around us. Neither Guan Feng nor I budged.

Lena gasped for air and stopped, one leg and arm still trapped within the wood. Her eyes narrowed when she saw me. "Get those damned things off of him."

My head sagged. "I love you, beautiful." "I know."

"You have Bi Wei?" asked Harrison.

Lena wrenched her other arm free. A slender bronze-skinned hand clasped

hers.

Metal wings  vibrated  against  my  wounds,  and  then  they  were  gone,

returning to their master.

Lena braced her other hand against the tree and pulled, like she was hauling Bi Wei out of a pit. The woman she dragged forth was naked, roughly Lena's height, but emaciated. Her skin hugged her ribs and hipbones. Atrophied legs collapsed, and she clung to Lena's arm to keep from falling.