Folding the Sky

-49-

He had never at once felt so out of control and so in control.

Sorin's whole body was trembling, he realized, equal parts fear and adrenaline building and building until it released with the force of an earthquake. He wasn't sure what to do or to say to the man in front of him. He wanted to slice him to pieces, to crush his head beneath a heavy stone. He wanted to hear him scream, to watch him bleed.

And still some part of him, the part he hated, the part he tried to ignore, still wanted Vernon to stop, to smile, to tell him that at least he was enough.

That only built his hatred more.

"You're a resilient son of a bitch, aren't you?" said Vernon from where he sat in the center of the floor. They were in a meeting room, it seemed: dimly lit by a circular array of flickering candles whose flames dipped and swayed in rhythm with the ship. The room was spacey, free of any tables or chairs, of anything but Vernon's loom and the tapestry that dangled precariously unfinished upon its weft. "I thought for sure you were lying dead somewhere, flattened beneath that old mill."

Zuri squeezed his wrist. No, thought Sorin. Someone refused to let that happen. Someone refused to let me go. "There was more I had left to do," Sorin said, his voice echoing off the dark, mildewy walls.

Vernon's lips quirked into an amused smile, but the expression was brief. He shook his head, getting slowly to his feet. "No one understands," he said. Candlelight slid across his face, turning it to all shadows and angles: a reanimated skeleton. "You don't. Liesel didn't. I have no choice, Sorin. Wendell was all I had, and I ruined him. Don't you see? I will do anything—anything to get him back."

Sorin gritted his teeth. He did understand. He understood it so well that he knew there was no apt way to explain it, even—how integral one person could be, how the world paled into a blur of senseless nothing in their absence, how without them life was utterly colorless, without meaning. He understood the willingness to kill and burn and destroy if only he could get her back.

And he understood, mostly, the futility of it all.

He stepped forward, edging closer to Vernon. Zuri's fingers tightened around his wrist, but slowly, like it pained her, she released him. "You fucking idiot," he roared. "You idiot. That's not how it works! Believe me, I wish it were, but it's not. Once someone is gone you can't get them back, Vernon. And even if you did, would it be worth it? Are you willing to risk it, that they might come back hating you, despising you for what you've done?"

"You're talking about Liesel," said Vernon.

Sorin swallowed, hesitating. "I—"

"After all this time, you still don't see it." Vernon turned his back, then, running his hand along the tapestry, fingers tracing the blue-black threads of the sky, the white and gold of the moon and stars. "She didn't love you, Sorin. She loved the idea of you, of having another son to devote her life to since she lost the first. You were a stand-in for what she really wanted; she settled for you. Did you really not know?"

That's not true. The words bubbled up in Sorin's throat, but stuck there, choking him.

How did he know that?

The cold filled him, swallowed him whole. He didn't know.

"Sorin," Zuri said, her voice firm. "Don't listen to him, he's just trying to—"

"I don't remember asking for your opinion, little girl," Vernon snapped, sending a glare at her over his shoulder. "Such questionable company you're keeping, Sorin. I thought you worked alone."