PART 3

TEN YEARS LATER

Abbee emerged from Graywall and stepped out onto a narrow rock outcropping. The city of Akken lay below. It was early evening, just after sunset, and a gray rain sifted down onto red slate rooftops. The neat grid layout looked unnatural.

Abbee tilted her face up. Closed her eyes and stood there, feeling rain on her face for the first time in ten years. It almost didn’t seem real. Maybe this was a trick. This wasn’t the twenty-three years that Whimsy had told her. This was early. Abbee had just seen Whimsy three weeks ago for their monthly visit. Abbee knew her time in the woods with Ipsu had prepared her for a decade mostly alone, but Whimsy’s visits were the only reason Abbee was still sane. The other woman’s face had shown the steady march of time, picking up wrinkles around her eyes and a few gray hairs. Abbee had never seen anyone else in her entire time in Graywall. Just Whimsy and the washers.

“Watch your head,” Sergeant Ludd advised.

Abbee opened her eyes and saw a wooden platform floating in midair, dropping down from above. She backed up a step to avoid it hitting her. The platform reached the outcropping. Someone called “Hold!” above her, and the platform halted. Hovered in place, half on the rock cliff and half hanging off. Abbee eyed it, suspecting this was a trick and they were going to suck her back into Graywall.

“You getting on or what?” Ludd asked.

Abbee ignored a sudden impulse to jump off and free-fall to her death. She sighed and stepped onto the platform. It wouldn’t work, anyway.

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“Ready to lift?” a man called overhead.

“Ready,” a group answered.

“Lift.”

The platform rose beneath Abbee’s feet. Ludd stayed down on the outcropping. Abbee stood alone. She was halfway up when she realized the movers could just tip the platform vertical and throw her down the escarpment. Even though she’d just considered hurling herself off, the idea of it being done to her gave her anxiety.

The platform reached the top, and Abbee stepped off into a covered shed of some kind. More like a freestanding roof. Something to keep the weather off the six movers arrayed around the platform. They wore the black Graywall uniform and watched Abbee as if she were a rabid lion.

Whimsy was waiting for her on the other side of the station. She was out of uniform and looked odd to Abbee. The woman had always worn a constable jacket, even when off duty. Today she wore a light sweater over a collared shirt. She’d cut her hair short. Looked recent. Whimsy opened her arms, and Abbee stepped into them. Their embrace lasted a few seconds, then a few moments longer when Abbee didn’t let go. She hung on. No walls was overwhelming. Abbee felt tears of joy leak down her face. She was out. I’m out. It’s over. Is it over?

Abbee disengaged from Whimsy. “Ten years is early.”

“I guess I finally got through to Parn.” Whimsy snorted. “I think it was when I compared him to Sera Togrim. I wish I’d known that earlier.” She shoved her hands into her pockets. The wind caught her shortened locks and blew strands across her face. “I also quit.”

“You quit?”

“The constables,” Whimsy said.

“What for?”

Whimsy flicked her head to clear her face. “I can’t be part of something that man touches. He poisons everything.”

Abbee felt taken aback. Whimsy had been a constable for … well, forever. Her quitting felt more seismic than getting out of prison early. “What’re you going to do?”

“I dunno yet,” Whimsy said. “I haven’t thought that far ahead.” Her brow wrinkled. “But that’s not what I want to know at all. I want to know what you’re going to do.”

“I’m going to do what I came to Akken for in the first place,” Abbee declared. “I’m going to find Ipsu.” And a wizard. “I’m going to find the truth.”