clod of mud came loose and she vomited it into a bloody pile on the ground and gasped and gasped the hot, dusty, life-giving air.
“Thought you were a goner for a minute there, girl,” Mr. Jameson said, kneeling beside her with a bucket. She had seen him, going from house to house, taking the last of the rations to the Sick before heading up to the wall to fight.
“Th… thank you,” Lucy managed, wiping the gritty blood from her mouth. More blood than mud now. It wouldn’t be long. The curse would have its way with her yet. She looked at Mr. Jameson, prepared to thank him, but his brows were furrowed in concern and his eyes were on the ground between them. Something golden and small sparkled in the dust near her bloody vomit pile.
“My brother’s cricket thing,” she said, picking it out of the dust. “What’s it doing here?”
“That’s no trinket,” Mr. Jameson said, eyes on the golden thing in her hand. “That’s… that’s the Master Stone! The one I took out into the desert back when the walls went up.”
“The stone that can end the Dust Sickness,” Lucy breathed.
When her brother had picked it up the night Sal and Asa had been exiled, it had seemed nothing more than an oddity. But now she could feel its power, its darkness, radiating like heat.
Mr. Jameson took his rifle from its spot and put it on his shoulder. “Come on,” he said to Lucy as the war raged beyond the wall. “Let’s go make this right.”
CHAPTER 28
THE END
OF THE
WORLD.
In Mother Morevna’s room, the smell of sickness, of blood and soap, hit us like we’d run into a brick wall. Her cane leaned against the dresser. The low doorway to the roof was open.
We ran to it and climbed the narrow stairs beyond, through the dark, until we saw the swirling sky overhead. We climbed out onto the roof of the church, that flat area behind the steeple, and for a moment, all I could do was stand and watch.
Death had won the Game, and now She was trying to claim Her prize. The Dust Soldiers’ speed and strength was terrifying as they lunged and swiped with their enormous black scimitars. But every so often, we saw an explosion of black dust as one of them was run through with a spear or shot by an enchanted rifle.
Out in the middle, we could see Susanah on her painted horse, jabbing this way and that with her spear—chopping one Dust Soldier to the ground and then another as Mowse hung on to her waist. And on the wall, just above the doors, I could see Cassandra casting her copies, and Asa, nearby, hurling blue flames down from the heavens. Another and another Dust Soldier exploded in bursts of black sand. He was fighting with everything he had. Hold on, Asa! I thought. We’re coming!
“There she is,” Olivia said, pointing.
Mother Morevna was standing by the steeple, her shape a dark, bent outline against the swirling sky. She was laying something down, pebbles maybe, to prepare some sort of spell. When I saw her, all the anger I’d been holding began to simmer in my belly. Everything had changed for me now. This woman with all her dreams of equality, with her perfect society, whom I had once wanted so desperately to be like, was the one who had killed my mother, who had cursed Lucy.
I have to make it right again, I thought. I was her Successor. Her mistakes are my responsibility to fix, or what am I fighting for?
I secured my components belt. My penny glowed hot around my neck.
She must have felt our eyes on her somehow, because she turned. When she saw us, she didn’t seem surprised or frightened or angry. Her face was expressionless, and up close, I saw how hollow her cheeks had become.
“What are you doing?” she said. “You should be down there, fighting, as was your own idea. Leave me. This spell may still win Life the Game!”
She bent again, put another small something at the end of the row she was making.
“But Death has already won!” I said. “That’s why we built the horses!”
“We were just buying her time,” Olivia said darkly. “What are the marks, Morevna?”
“Precautions, set in place long before I took either of you under my wing.”
“Precautions?” Olivia stopped in her tracks.
“When you lead, you must be able to choose between the many and the few. And I have. Now go