Two Breaths Owed

The dead arrived while Arthur was explaining how to save the world.

Jonah Subramountian heard the hidden Guild door grind shut, followed by the scrape of bodies across stone. Arthur kept speaking about wounds between worlds and the power that might close the Void instead of tearing it wider.

Jonah stopped listening when Valara said, “Table. Clear it.”

Vic laid the raccoonfolk thief across a scarred map table. Valara carried the crow-bodied Guild member herself, one arm beneath the shoulders and the other beneath the knees. Black feathers dragged through dust. Neither body moved.

Emmy stood beside the door with her copper route token clutched in both hands. Blood had dried across one side of her face.

“How long?” Jonah asked.

Valara looked toward the sealed entrance. “Not long enough for this to be impossible.”

“That is not a unit of time.”

“It is the best one I have.”

Jonah climbed onto a stool so he could work over the table. The raccoonfolk had a burned hollow beneath the ribs where a Castro blast had passed through leather, fur, and flesh. The crow had a broken neck and a thin gray cut across the throat. Void residue darkened the edges of both wounds.

He placed two copper coins over the raccoonfolk’s eyes and whispered the prayer of stillness. The air cooled around the body. The final distance between death and whatever came after stopped widening.

“One is held,” Jonah said. “I need a diamond for the other. Then another diamond.”

No one answered.

Gold was hidden throughout the thieves’ refuge, yet the room became silent at the mention of diamonds.

“Phoenix feather? Wish magic? Anything?” Valara asked.

“Diamonds,” Jonah said. “Time. Quiet.”

Valara emptied a purse onto the table. Coins, lockpicks, and a ruby scattered across the wood. “Not enough.”

A wounded Guild member pulled a chain from beneath his shirt. A small diamond hung from it, cloudy and chipped.

“My exit fund,” he said.

Jonah took it. “I intend to return the people who might help you need it.”

“That was not a promise.”

“No. It was better. It was optimism.”

He pressed the diamond against the crow’s chest. Her feathers were cold beneath his palm.

Jonah had performed miracles in cleaner places. This refuge smelled of wet stone, smoke, blood, and stolen lamp oil. Beyond the wall, Gravenhurst was still being torn apart.

He bowed his head anyway.

“This person was taken,” he said. “Not offered. Not finished. Not yours to keep.”

The diamond flashed white and vanished into heat.

The crow’s body arched. Her beak opened, but the first sound was not a breath. Black vapor spilled from her throat and formed the suggestion of another face above her own.

Jonah caught it between both hands.

The vapor pulled toward him, searching his skin for a voice, a posture, and a name it could wear.

The Crown of Thorns tightened against his brow.

Pain cut through the false memory. Jonah held on.

“You do not get to come back with her,” he said.

Stone answered beneath his boots. The vapor flattened against an invisible weight, broke into strands, and disappeared between the floor stones.

The crow inhaled.

It was a terrible, ragged sound. It was also the finest sound in the room.

Her eyes opened. She clawed at Jonah’s sleeve, saw Valara, and stopped fighting.

“Emmy?” she croaked.

“I’m here,” Emmy said.

The crow closed her eyes again, breathing fast but breathing.

“One,” Jonah said.

The raccoonfolk still lay beneath the prayer of stillness.

“Second diamond,” he said.

The Guild survivors looked at one another.

Then Emmy placed her copper route token on the table. “There is a cache behind the third marker in the east tunnel.”

Valara stared at her. “That cache is for rebuilding routes.”

“He was the one who taught me the routes.” Emmy nodded toward the raccoonfolk. “Rebuild him first.”

A Guild member ran.

Jonah kept one hand over the preserved body. Arthur lowered his voice. For once, the plan to heal the Void waited behind the smaller work of returning one person to it.

The runner came back with a velvet pouch. Inside was a diamond cut into the shape of a tiny key.

Jonah removed the copper coins.

The raccoonfolk’s wound was worse than the crow’s. The Castro blast had left a hollow road through the body. When Jonah began the prayer, something far away noticed the opening.

Cold rushed through the room. The lamps bent their flames toward the corpse.

Jonah understood. The Castro had made death part of their invasion. A ruined body could become a doorway if someone called the soul back carelessly.

He closed his eyes and searched past the hollow.

“Tell me something true about him,” Jonah said.

Emmy answered first. “He never let me take the front route.”

Valara said, “He complained about every lock, then opened all of them.”

The wounded thief with the empty necklace said, “He cheated at cards and denied it badly.”

Jonah smiled.

“There you are.”

He called not to the wound, but to the shape made by those memories. The diamond key dissolved. Golden light filled the hollow in the raccoonfolk’s chest from the edges inward.

Something struck the other side of the opening.

Jonah struck back with prayer, stone, and stubborn refusal.

The doorway closed.

The raccoonfolk coughed and rolled onto his side.

Emmy laughed once, then covered her mouth as the laugh became a sob.

Jonah sat heavily on the stool. Blood ran from beneath the Crown of Thorns and into his beard.

The revived crow looked at the revived raccoonfolk. “Did we win?”

“Not yet,” Jonah said.

Arthur’s map of the wounded Void waited in the next room. Gravenhurst burned above them. Castro still hunted Ash, Hollow, and anyone else whose power could widen the breach.

Jonah wiped the blood from his face and stood.

“That is why you are awake.”