Courage Is the Price Read online

  Breathe, Rue tells herself. Breathe. Which, of course, does nothing to help her breathe at all. It never has, but she’s not sure what else she can do to try and keep calm. She’s supposed to focus on nice things, isn’t she? Think about all the things that she enjoys? She’s not sure. It’s never worked, anyway. Not for her, at least, and she wishes people would recognise that when she tells them. But there is no one here to recognise it if she tells them and that might even be worse. Perhaps she isn’t in a room at all. Perhaps she’s been buried alive. It’s dark enough. She doesn’t want to be buried alive. Shouldn’t have been buried at all. The soil is far too precious to use that way. A tombed coffin perhaps. Amaranth would find a way for that.

  But. No. Rue can move. She’s already sitting up. Gods, Rue, she thinks to herself. How stupid to think she’s lying in a coffin when she’s already sitting up. So stupid that Rue has to gulp down a cry because she’s never thought such things to herself before. But it’s still dark, and she doesn’t know how to turn on the lights because calling for them doesn’t work and she doesn’t know how else to turn them on.

  Trying get a sense of her surroundings, Rue feels around the room. It’s small, just a little bigger than a bed as Rue can touch three walls if she scoots around a bit. When she slips onto the floor to find the fourth, she whimpers because one of her legs almost buckles from under her. Still, she manages to keep standing and holds out her apparently uninjured hand to make sure she won’t bump into anything. She can’t see, but at least a stab of pain through her bad leg distracts her.

  She’s limping. Was she limping yesterday? Maybe her leg needs to be amputated and replaced with a mechanical one. It won’t, will it? Her father once told her that Uncle Goodluck has one and she doesn’t remember it looking scary. Unnatural, though. Even more of a pariah in society than she already is. In the dark, with only the muffled sounds of conversation, the mechanical leg seems a distinct possibility.

  Ghost is there, right at the edge of her consciousness. Rue hasn’t even thought of her friend until now. Ghost isn’t far. Isn’t in pain. Though still fainter than Rue would have liked, would have been reassured by. But she can find the door and the pad that opens it easily enough now that her eyes have adjusted and she can make out shapes. It isn’t a very big room. She has no idea how anyone would manage to do anything in it.

  As the door opens, Rue has to squint and shield her eyes with her good hand. She hasn’t expected it to be so bright on the other side. She probably should have; she knows this. Blinking away the circles through her vision, she can make out Priti, Ghost and, presumably, Priti’s mother. The attention makes her aware of the fact that she’s wearing a nightgown. Not even a set of pyjamas like she’d have expected, but a thin nightgown made out of flimsy material. Rue tells herself, firmly, that she’s only imagining the itch because it distracts from the ache and because she’s used to more… expensive fabrics, not whatever this is made of.

  Still, the gown makes her feel dirty and unclean, and she wants to go home to her own rooms with their fine silks and the two-person-sized bath she could soak in all day if she truly wished it. Rue knows that she’s being uncharitable. She knows she’s being unfair, but she doesn’t know how to help it. It’s what she’s used to, what she’s only just realised she does truly want.

  “I’m glad you’re feeling better,” Priti’s mother says to her and smiles. Amaranth could learn a million things from that smile.

  Rue finds herself smiling back, shyly, but it doesn’t last long as Priti’s mother continues speaking, “We have a lot to talk about.”

  “We’ve told mum a lot already,” Priti cuts in and Ghost nods vigorously. Rue wonders how much better her friend is truly feeling as she limps over to the nearest chair. Thankfully it is one that comes with a table near it and Rue slumps onto that, resting her forehead against the cool surface, and moans.

  “You need to eat something first. You’ve slept for almost an entire day.” Rue isn’t sure who said it, is very sure she doesn’t care and just about manages to eat the soup when it’s placed in front of her. She is, in fact, ravenous and she’s soon asking for another helping that she’s not given because it might be too much.

  Rue finds she doesn’t care much about that either. She doesn’t care much about anything, not even discovering what happened the day before. She wants to go home. She wants to stop hurting and be done with everything. She wants to return to the same, safe life she’s always had. With perhaps a little less grumbling about how her future is shaping up because it could be much, much, much worse.

  “You can’t go home,” Ghost says and Rue blinks, then realises that she must have been speaking aloud. “You’re a part of this now.”

  No, I’m not, she thinks. She’s only Rue, a cowardly, useless chit. But deep down she knows that her friend is right. She got involved. She saw Libby. She could do something. And Libby knows she’s Ghost’s friend and in every story Rue has ever encountered that would mean she is involved. She’ll have to see it through. “I’m tired.”

  “We know,” Priti’s mother says from where she’s making more food. Rue wonders who it’s for. It smells like pancakes. She hasn’t had pancakes since she was seven years old. “But we need you.”

  “No, you don’t.” She’s so tired. It takes her a while to realise she’s just talked back at someone. She’s never done that before in her life. But Rue only feels numb. There’s no fear, no elation, nothing. There aren’t even any repercussions beyond Priti’s mother and Ghost telling her not to be silly simultaneously.

  “I’m not being silly.” She’s tried to snap it, but she doesn’t quite have the energy to make it work. It’s more of a sharp whisper. “I want to go home. I want to forget this ever happened.”

  Ghost moves to where Rue is sitting and squats down in front of her, right through the table, so that Rue has no choice but to look into those grey eyes. “We know, Rue. But you need to see this through first. I need your help.”

  That gets Rue’s attention faster than anything. Her friend needs her help? Her friends need her? Of course Ghost has needed her help before and see where that’s got her so far. Beat up and injured and wearing fabrics she didn’t even know existed until now. But Ghost is her best friend. Up until possibly Priti her only friend. Rue has to try.

  “What do I need to do?” she asks, and if her voice isn’t enthusiastic, if it isn’t cheerful, if it’s flat and resigned and sounds like she’d rather do anything else… Well, that’s true isn’t it? She hasn’t exactly made a secret of that fact. She’s never done anything to suggest that she’ll enjoy any part of this. But she’s helping. Surely that counts for something.

  25

  “WE NEED TO FIX THIS.” Priti’s voice. Priti’s smooth hands in front of Rue as the other girl holds out a small, rectangular box to her.

  “I don’t understand…” Yes, Rue would like to think that she’s good with her hands, but not electronics. They’re a part of everyone’s daily life, but she’s never studied them, doesn’t know how they work. Besides, one of her hands is in a cast.

  “I can do it,” Priti says. “If you tell me what to do.”

  Rue looks up. “I don’t know.” She takes the device from the box with her good hand and studies it, then looks up at Ghost. “Why are you asking me? You know I don’t know anything about this.” She’d shake the device and the little box, but she’s scared of damaging things further. Quickly, she puts the device back into its container. “I work with wood. Doesn’t Priti take electronics classes?”

  “I don’t. We just thought… If you know how wood patterns come together, maybe you’d know how to fix this too. It’s so fiddly and your hands are the smallest. Maybe wood being fiddly will help you with this. You’ve got a better chance than either of us.”

  “Please look.” Ghost’s voice is desperate and little more than a whisper.

  Unhappily, Rue nods. Maybe they’re right and her knowledge can help them. It can’t hurt to l
ook. Can it? It probably can.

  Rue drags her mind away from such thoughts as best she can, picks up the device again and studies it. There’s a break in the outer shell that looks easy enough to fix, but she has no idea what to do with the circuitry of the interior. She can’t even tell whether any of it looks broken, though the torn wire is obvious enough. “I think we just solder it back together?” She isn’t sure. Expecting her to know anything about electronics because she knows how to work wood is stupid.

  She’s tired, so tired, of being afraid. Rue knows it won’t last, but she also knows she’s pushed past it before and she can push past it now. She’s watched her parents interview people, before they decided she is worthless as an heir or a daughter, depending on who you ask, and she tries to put everything she’s learned from them into her own voice when she asks, “What’s it supposed to do?”

  It’s Ghost who answers, who explains. It’s Ghost who tells Rue that her kind gains strength through eating other ghosts and that she’s been sent onto the station to prevent that. That there are beings in ths galaxy who don’t want humans to destroy planets and some who would like to see another kind of life flourish again.

  “I’m not a ghost,” Ghost says softly. “I just… don’t live here. It’s hard to explain.” And Rue doesn’t want to press. She doesn’t really want to know what’s going on. She wants to go home. “It’s why nothing lives in this system but people and carefully curated animals,” her friend continues. “We can take over living beings and eat their essence too. That’s what happened to Libby. That’s what I almost did to you.”

  The device falls from Rue’s hands. “You tried to eat me?”

  “No! I tried not to eat you, to not take over your body and push you out. You humans… dissipate without a body. I think. Maybe you go elsewhere like you believe. I don’t know. I’m not an archivist. I just… protect.” Rue’s friend sighs, audibly, and pulls a ghostly hand through ghostly hair. “You were – are – attractive to people like Garbrath. Easy to take over. So I stayed with you. He seems to have found someone else instead. I’m sorry. This is my fault. I shouldn’t have stopped hunting him.”

  Before Rue has a chance to respond, ask how this is in any way her friend’s fault, Ghost is talking again. “That device… It harms us. It could harm him as much as it did me. It might, perhaps, even bring Libby back. I don’t know. I don’t know how long it takes to consume a host. I’m too weak to do anything, Rue, and he’s not. I need that device working to weaken him, to stand a chance.”

  Rue lets herself take that in. It isn’t like in the stories where people come up with good ideas immediately. She has none and Priti has turned to help her mother with cooking. It doesn’t feel like everyone in the room is staring at Rue, waiting for her to say the wrong thing. The pans Priti and her mother are using are sizzling and Rue would desperately like one of those pancakes she can smell, but she doesn’t dare ask. She looks at her friend, now having moved out of the table again, looks at the faint blue rim to Ghost’s edges. “There’s something else, isn’t there?” It’s a guess, but even Rue knows that nothing is truly free.

  “I’m going to have to leave, Rue.”

  Well, of course. How else are they going to get at this Galbrath ghost? It takes a moment for her brain to catch up and that Ghost doesn’t mean leaving to track down an enemy, everyone’s enemy, but disappearing forever. Never be in Rue’s life again. She’ll be alone, entirely, without any friends.

  “Eat me,” she says. “You’ll get stronger if you take over my body, right?” Rue doesn’t care about the horror on her friend’s face or the clatter of… something coming from the kitchen. A plate? Rue hardly cares. She does care about the fact that Ghost protests by telling her it wouldn’t work because her body is too injured. It worked before; it’s how her body got injured. Neither Priti nor her mother offer, so Rue insists. And insists again.

  She does it enough times that someone sighs. It has to have been Priti since she’s the one to speak next. “I’ll try to fix it. Tell me what I need to do.”

  “I don’t understand.” Do what? Rue waves Priti away with her good hand and looks at Ghost, trying her absolute hardest to imitate Amaranth when her mother is angry with someone. “Tell me.”

  “Someone needs to try.”

  “But.” Rue looks to Priti and back at Ghost. “Why do you need to possess anyone for that? You can just tell us what to do.”

  “I can’t and I don’t. That’s what you suggested.”

  “But.” Rue gives up. She’s too tired to make sense of this and she’d need help anyway since delicate work would require more than one hand. “You do it,” she tells Priti. It stings more than she wants to admit even to herself. Ghost is her friend. She should be the one helping with the device. She wants to help. Do something.

  But Priti has already taken the box without a word of explanation and vanished off into another part of the house with Ghost. It’s amazing how big such a small building can be.

  When Priti’s mother — Elisa, Rue remembers; what a time to remember — puts a plate of pancakes in front of her, Rue groans. Whether with pleasure at the scent or in despair at being left alone, she isn’t sure. Both perhaps. She can hear Elisa move around the room, can hear a door, but it’s only Priti’s sibling.

  “Don’t feel too bad,” Elisa says as she sits down beside Rue and pats her on the shoulder. “This is what we do.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “That’s all right. But you’ll be on your own soon.”

  “I don’t want to be.”

  “You’ve got us.”

  Rue almost laughs at the impossibility and the absurdity of it all. Be on her own and have ‘us’ at the same time. She knows there is a point to what Priti’s mother is saying, though. Even if she’ll no longer have Ghost, she’ll have other people. She’ll have Priti. Maybe. If they’re truly friends. Priti’s life at the Academy makes that possible. Unfashionable, but possible. And so Rue manages a thin smile back.

  She’s gone out into the city on her own for the sake of her friend. She’s wandered through streets and gotten lost and unlost for the sake of her friend. She’s battered and bruised from breaking into a building and fighting her very own nemesis for the sake of her friend. If she could do those things… Perhaps, with help, she could learn to do others on her own too. She could try. Maybe. After she’s hidden away in her rooms for the rest of her life. The thought makes her laugh and cry at the same time. Elisa does not offer her any comfort, but neither does the woman leave. She only sits beside Rue until the tears have stopped and the gulps of laughter subsided.

  “Will they die?”

  A sigh. “Of course not. But they’ll need you later.”

  “Why can’t you help?” Rue asks, slightly wary. If Priti’s mother can see ghosts too and deals with them... Why let her daughter take the risk? Rue pokes the pancakes with a fork. Elisa has already cut them up into bite-sized pieces. “Why don’t you help Ghost? Why does it have to be me and Priti?”

  “Because this Galbrath has seen you. He’ll want you both. Best use that to our advantage.”

  Something in Elisa’s voice snags Rue’s attention and she looks over just quickly enough to catch a grimace before the woman’s face smoothes into calmness, like she thinks nothing of sending her daughter to fight an incorporeal creature capable of eating her soul.

  Joining Priti and Ghost will be dangerous to all of them, but they’ll need her. Three against two. Use Rue’s injuries and fears to their advantage somehow. Rue’s voice is small, barely there and wavering, and her heart is thudding so fast in her chest she feels it might snap in two, but she speaks.

  “I can help.”

  26

  AND THAT IS how Rue finds herself back at the far edge of civilisation, though this time she hasn’t had to walk. Priti’s family has a beat-up old hovercar that Elisa dropped them off in before continuing on to the hospital. Priti and Elisa spent a good ten minutes arguin
g while Rue, not wanting to pry, huddled against the fence. She’s not too proud to admit she’d prefer an adult with her. She’s never been too proud to admit that and she still desperately wishes she could have traded places with Priti’s mother and gone home. What adult would leave them alone to face a murderous ghost? When asked, Priti only spits out the word ‘money’.

  They’re at the edge of the abandoned grounds now, a steel frame Rue didn’t notice the night before looming over the entrance. Priti is standing beside her and Ghost is standing slightly behind. In daylight, her friend consists only of half-seen outlines. Only Rue and Priti are solid. Real. Able to do anything.

  It’s Priti that calls out into the silence, in a tongue Rue doesn’t understand, but feels she might like to. Or perhaps not, if it will bring her closer to these events again. She might, if she needs to be, want to stay involved in the background. Perhaps. Make things like what Priti and her friend adapted, learn about electronics along with sculpture and wood-carving. Combine them. Be a shadow that does something with her life. Be a hidden heroine. Silent and secret.

  Anything to keep herself from thinking on the fact that she’s back here, ready (so not ready) to face Libby, the creature that took over Libby, something. She’s not sure. But Rue is standing here as the UV-shields slide open, with her friends beside her. And she is trembling. She can barely keep the device in her good hand steady.

  And then Libby is there. She still looks like Libby, but… gaunt. More sickly. Like she hasn’t been sleeping. She probably hasn’t. If she’s been working as hard as they have on making a new ghost-torturing device then at least they’ve had most of the work already done and all the parts already assembled. It didn’t need to be made from scratch, possibly cobbled together from whatever materials were available.