We Rule the Night Read online

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Claire Eliza Bartlett

  Cover art copyright © 2019 by Billelis. Cover design by Karina Granda.

  Cover copyright © 2019 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

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  First Edition: April 2019

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  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Bartlett, Claire Eliza, author.

  Title: We rule the night / Claire Eliza Bartlett.

  Description: First edition. | New York ; Boston : Little, Brown and Company, 2019. | Summary: Seventeen-year-olds Revna, the daughter of a traitor, and Linné, the daughter of a general, must use forbidden magic to fly planes in wartime despite their deep dislike of each other.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018022805| ISBN 9780316417273 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780316417266 (ebook) | ISBN 9780316417280 (library edition ebook)

  Subjects: | CYAC: War—Fiction. | Women air pilots—Fiction. | Air pilots—Fiction. | Magic—Fiction. | Fantasy.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.B37287 Our 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018022805

  ISBNs: 978-0-316-41727-3 (hardcover), 978-0-316-41726-6 (ebook), 978-0-316-49259-1 (int’l)

  E3-20180212-JV-NF-ORI

  Contents

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  1 NIGHT WON’T PREVENT US

  2 I GIVE MY SON GLADLY

  3 SEIZE YOUR CHANCES

  4 FOR EVERY GIRL A PLACE

  5 OUR SOLDIERS MARCH ON YOUR FAITH

  6 KEEP FAITH IN YOUR UNION

  7 COOPERATION IS INFORMATION; INFORMATION IS VICTORY

  8 STRIVE FOR YOUR UNION

  9 UNITY IS STRENGTH

  10 PRACTICE MAKES PREPARED

  11 NEVER RETREAT

  12 WE WILL BRING THEM WAR

  13 OUR REALM IS THE NIGHT

  14 VICTORY COSTS

  15 FAITH AND LOYALTY

  16 FIRE AND GLORY

  17 OUR REALM IS THE AIR

  18 THE MOTHERLAND IS CALLING

  19 WE WELCOME THE ADVANCE OF COMMANDER WINTER

  20 YOUR BROTHERS WON’T ABANDON YOU

  21 LIES ARE THE ENEMY OF THE UNION

  22 YOUR SOLDIERS, YOUR COMRADES, YOUR FRIENDS

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To my grandmother Lorene Bowling, who worked for the US Air Force and never let her male-dominated society—or anyone, for that matter—dictate how she would manage her life.

  1

  NIGHT WON’T PREVENT US

  Revna didn’t realize the war had come to them. Not until the factory stopped.

  She sat at her conveyor belt like a good citizen, oblivious to the oncoming storm from the west. The organized cacophony of industry filled her to the brim. Shining war beetle parts drifted past, twitching and trembling with fear and faint traces of magic. As the belt slowed, the voice of her supervisor emerged from the din. “Girls!”

  The hissing, ratcheting, and clanging died away. Revna’s fingers were half-buried in the oily bones of a leg that shivered and twisted of its own accord. She soothed the living metal, trying to keep the sudden spike in her heartbeat from infecting it with her own unease. In her three years working at the factory, she’d never heard the machines go still.

  She turned her wheelchair away from her workstation and pushed toward her supervisor’s voice. Machines towered around her like trees, frozen in the act of spitting out legs, carapaces, and antennae. Revna rounded the base of an enormous sheet press to find Mrs. Rodoya standing at the door to her office, hands clasped over her belly. Other factory girls crept out from behind conveyors and riveters, ducking under cranes. They clustered together in front of the sheet press, gripping one another with slick fingers.

  Mrs. Rodoya took a deep breath. “We need to evacuate. Get your things.”

  God, Revna thought reflexively, even though Good Union Girls weren’t supposed to think about God anymore. They would evacuate for only one reason—the Elda. She imagined regiments of blue-and-gray men marching through the smoke, bringing the hard mercies of conquest. But the Elda wouldn’t march into Tammin. They’d obliterate it from the sky with Dragons of steel and fire.

  And when they came, they’d aim for the factories.

  Mrs. Rodoya sent them back to their workstations for their War Ministry–approved survival kits. Revna strapped her kit to the back of her chair, then wheeled over to the factory door. She could walk, but Mrs. Rodoya had doubted her ability to stand on prosthetics day after day, and Good Union Girls deferred to their supervisor’s judgment.

  The girls lined up in pairs at the door, clasping their survival kits in one hand and their partners’ hands in the other. Revna went to the end of the line. She had no hand to grab, no one to whisper that it would be all right. She wasn’t going to the shelter for good citizens, for Protectors of the Union, but to the alternate shelter for secondary citizens and nonworkers. She’d sit in the dank cellar and play with her little sister, Lyfa, and try not to see the worry in every line of Mama’s face.

  Revna heard a low hum, like an enraged cloud of insects. Elda Weavecraft. Her heart jumped. The primary citizens’ shelter was a five-minute trip, but hers was ten, and Mama worked even farther away. Revna wanted nothing more than for Mama’s hand to be the hand that clasped hers now.

  Mama would find her in the shelter, she reminded herself. They’d be together there, and surely safer than out on the street with the Elda and their aircraft.

  Mrs. Rodoya opened the factory door and counted each pair with a bob of her head as they went through. Then she grabbed the wooden handles of Revna’s chair and began to push without asking. Anger boiled up like an allergic reaction, mixing with Revna’s nerves and making her feel sick. She could get herself to work every morning—she could walk it, for that matter. Her living metal prosthetic legs had been called a work of art by Tammin’s factory doctors. But Mrs. Rodoya didn’t care what Revna or the doctors thought. “Now, now. We want speed over pride, don’t we?” she’d said in early practice raids. A different Revna would have punched her. But this Revna wanted to keep her job. As long as Revna had a job, there was money to set aside and extra rations for Lyfa.

  “I’ll take you the first part of the way. But once the routes split I’ll have to look after the other girls. You’ll be on your own,” Mrs. Rodoya said. She’d said this every drill. But now her voice had an edge to it and climbed a little too high as she called out to the rest. “Quickly, now.” The factory girls began to move. Mrs. Rodoya and
Revna followed, lurching as the back wheel of Revna’s chair caught on a loose stone at the edge of the road.

  The factories of Tammin Reaching spat out legs, carapaces, rifles, helmets, all that was needed for the churning Union war machine. Oil and dirt coated everything—the brick walls, the windows, the streetlamps that never turned on anymore.

  Even the propaganda posters developed a coat of soot a few days after the papergirls plastered them to the sides of the factories. Revna rolled past image after image of Grusha the Good Union Girl, her patriotic red uniform already spattered with grease and mud. DON’T CHAT. GOSSIP WON’T HELP BUILD WAR MACHINES, said one, showing her scowling with a finger to her lips. NIGHT WON’T PREVENT US FROM WORKING, said another. PRACTICE MAKES PREPARED, declared a third.

  Revna found that laughable now. She’d practiced her trip to the shelter so much that she could go there in her sleep. But real life had surprises. Real life had Dragons.

  The eternal lights of the factories flickered out around them and twilight deepened the cloudless sky above. The moon hung like a farmland apple, fat and ripening and surrounded by stars. A few palanquins scuttled from place to place, grim-faced officials perched at their fronts. There was no army waiting to protect Tammin, no squadron of war beetles assembled and ready. They’d have to wait out the attack in shelters and hope something was left when they emerged.

  The line of girls undulated as their unease grew. “Calm,” Mrs. Rodoya said.

  Calm was easy during a practice raid. With the hum of aircraft resonating against the buildings, calm became a whole lot harder. Revna clenched her hands until she couldn’t feel them shake. Don’t be such a coward, she told herself. But she hadn’t been brave in a long time. Sometimes she thought when the doctors cut off her legs, they’d amputated her courage as well.

  Maybe the Elda would pass overhead, on the way to do reconnaissance or bomb another target. She knew how selfish it was, hoping that someone else would die so that she might live. But she wasn’t thinking only about herself. Every quiet moment meant that Mama was closer to the shelter, too.

  They made it to the end of the street before the first explosion hit the edge of town. The ground trembled and a sound like thunder washed over them. Two girls screamed. Revna’s pulse throbbed in her ears, drowning out the whine of aircraft. The girls ahead quickened as the balance between order and panic began to destabilize.

  “Calm, girls.” Did Mrs. Rodoya have to keep saying that? “Left,” she called, and they turned, joining the current of workers who emerged from the factories and hurried, heads down, toward their designated shelters. Maybe PRACTICE MAKES PREPARED after all. A few men and women sped ahead, carrying rifles. Every Protector of the Union took required rifle practice, and some were designated first responders, on guard for any opportunities to fire back during a bombardment. Mama had excelled with her rifle until Papa was arrested and their Protector of the Union status got revoked. Now their guns were in someone else’s hands.

  A crack split the sky and the ground shook again. The Elda were getting closer now. Smoke blotted out the twilight and Revna heard a faint buzzing, like a swarm. Her nose twitched as she smelled the sharp heat of burning metal. Open flame was the enemy of a factory town.

  The line stopped. Someone at the front gasped. “Girls—” Mrs. Rodoya said.

  A man stood in the road. A man in a silver coat.

  Revna’s living metal prosthetics shook. His coat made him unmistakable, as did the blue star pinned below the collar. He was part of the Skarov unit, the Extraordinary Wartime Information Unit. The last time Revna had seen a Skarov up close was the last time she’d seen her father. In the years since, she’d wondered if they would come back for her, too. The Information Unit was always in and out of Tammin, carrying messages and supplies. Occasionally carrying off people.

  The man’s eyes flicked over the group. “Get on with it,” he snapped. “You haven’t got all night.” Above them, the hum grew louder.

  Compared with a Skarov officer, the threat of the Dragon was less immediately terrifying, but direr in consequence. The girls in front took the risk and edged past him. When he did nothing but roll his eyes, the line began to speed up. For once it didn’t bother Revna so much when Mrs. Rodoya pushed her chair.

  No two people agreed on what the Skarov could do. And since GOSSIP WON’T HELP BUILD WAR MACHINES, they discussed it only when their supervisors weren’t around. Even though the memory of her father’s arrest was a fresh scar in her mind, Revna couldn’t recall any proof of their alleged magic. She’d heard they could read minds, change shape, know a girl’s name by meeting her gaze. Revna didn’t believe all that. But when the Skarov’s eyes locked on her, she couldn’t look away. His eyes were a strange brown, almost tawny in the dying light. A thousand fears and confessions raced through her brain.

  The Skarov looked down to where her prosthetic feet poked out of the cuffs of her work trousers. For a moment his lofty arrogance was replaced with a more familiar but no less unwelcome expression: pity. The chair rolled past.

  The humming around them grew higher, more urgent. The girls ahead broke into a run. “Don’t—” Mrs. Rodoya began.

  Revna didn’t see the Dragon. But for a terrible moment she heard its deep, haunting cry as its port opened and the bombs fell. It sounded like the mating call of some haughty creature. A creature that brought dust and fire.

  The street next to them exploded.

  Revna threw her arms up as heat rolled over them. Mrs. Rodoya released the back of her chair and the world rocked, trying to shake them from its surface. A spray of gravel tore through her factory uniform and bit at the arm beneath.

  Someone gripped her shoulder and Revna opened her eyes. Mrs. Rodoya bent over her, lips moving soundlessly. “Revna,” she mouthed. A flurry of words poured out of her, lost in the haze and the high whine in Revna’s ears. Then she turned and ran down the road after the others, disappearing into the smoke.

  Dust and panic lodged in Revna’s throat. Buildings leaned out over the road. Garbed in their peeling propaganda posters, they looked half-demolished already. She tried to take deep, slow breaths, but how could she with the wreckage of Tammin threatening from all sides? She pressed her hand over her mouth. She had to identify the problems, as Papa used to tell her. Clear thought led the way to real understanding. And you can’t overcome a problem if you don’t know what the problem is, he’d said.

  Problem: Mrs. Rodoya was gone. If Revna wanted to get to the shelter, she’d have to move herself. Which had never been an issue before, when the skies were clear and the Dragons were a distant threat. She tried to push herself into the street, but her wheels caught on the rubble.

  Problem: If she didn’t get to the secondary citizens’ shelter soon, she’d be locked out.

  The city was silent for a breath. Maybe the Elda and their Dragon had already gone. Maybe they’d left a little greeting as they made their way to some other target. Or maybe she couldn’t hear them dipping through the smoke to come find her. In the gray half-light of the world, she could hear nothing, see no one.

  Which meant that no one would see her if she used the Weave.

  The Weave sat like an extra sense in the back of her head. Invisible strings aligned the world, crisscrossing like crowded threads on a loom. Loose threads hung ragged where the bomb had torn them apart, though they already reached for one another, trying to smooth over the gap. Revna could feel the threads, even grasp them. They shivered with magical energy. She could make it to Mama if she used its power.

  But the Weave was illegal magic. While spark magic gave energy to the world, Weave magic distorted it. The Union declared it immoral and unlawful. Tonight, it might be the difference between life and death. And what did it matter if using the Weave warped the fabric of the world? The world was a mess as it was.

  A better daughter of the Union, the good girl who took her cues from propaganda posters, wouldn’t even think about it. She would place her own life f
ar below the well-being of the land, and not for dread of the Information Unit or of a long sentence on a prison island. She would do it for the love of the Union. But Revna didn’t love the Union. It had taken her father and worked her mother twelve hours a day. It had put her in a dirt-lined cellar for secondary citizens instead of one of the strong, concrete shelters built for the other factory girls. To the Union, she was a burden.

  Revna pushed herself out of her chair and started up the street. She picked her way around the debris scattered over the road with her hands extended, ready to grab the Weave if she lost her balance.

  An explosion rumbled somewhere behind her, and she caught a high scream through the cotton feeling in her ears. Her heart pumped liquid terror. Mama might still be out here, fighting to reach the shelter through closed-off roads and Skarov checkpoints. The shelter would close soon. But if she made it there, and Mama didn’t—

  The world thrummed. The Dragon was making another pass. Ash fell on her upturned face like snow, the little flakes clinging to her sweat-soaked forehead.

  The old half-timber house next to her sagged, as if hundreds of years of standing upright had taken their toll at last. Fire bloomed behind its windows. Shingles tumbled from the roof. Revna stopped, transfixed.

  A silver blur grabbed her by the arm and the Skarov officer began to haul. His fingers dug into her shoulders hard enough to leave a bruise. “Come,” he shouted.

  His voice seemed so far away. Revna stumbled after him, wheezing as ash filled her mouth, bitter and hot.

  She didn’t know whether to pull the Skarov closer or push him away. Her hands clawed at his coat. My mother, she tried to say, but when she opened her mouth nothing came out. Her ears filled with the sound of her heart.

  The world began to darken. A massive shape dispelled the dust and ash—death streaming in for a final kiss. Certainty seized her like a vise, certainty that she was going to die. And it might be her fate—it might even be what the Union expected of her. But it wasn’t what she wanted.

  The cloud parted. The sky fell.