There were two other Vigil Adepts out there. Csorwe and Shuthmili needed to end this before they could arrive, or else before the effort drove Shuthmili over the edge.
Csorwe struck Qanwa’s shoulder. The blade struck a plate of mother-of-pearl at an odd angle, and as she tried to recover, she felt a blow to her midsection, and heard Shuthmili cry out.
Qanwa’s corpse had punched her in the stomach. Its hands were golden claws, as sharp as knives. The corpse withdrew the claw, shining with blood, and drove it in once more. She felt the pain remotely, dully, and her head began to spin. She struggled, slashing wildly with the glass sword, but the world was receding—her vision darkened—her hand slackened—the sword slipped from her grip, and she fell.
25
Glass and Ashes
THE UNSPOKEN ONE COULD sanction many things, but not the breaking of a bargain. Oranna reminded herself of this as dawn broke over the Traitor’s Grave. Apostate, deceiver, killer, yes, when necessary, but she had never been a breaker of promises. Nor did she intend to lose out on the favour Csorwe had pledged to her.
Still … she had been looping the cutter in circles all night, like a nervous vulture sizing up the suspect carcass of the prison island. Now the sun was up, she had already used the cutter’s spare fuel supply, and it was only a matter of time before someone spotted her. She didn’t intend to spend any amount of time in a Qarsazhi jail. If Csorwe didn’t signal in the next few minutes, she would have to leave.
Satisfied with the reasonableness of this decision, she settled herself at the wheel. A moment later, she was startled halfway out of her seat by an unearthly shriek of rage. It came to her beyond sight and sound, on the same level that she heard the whisperings of the Unspoken.
Oh, good grief, thought Oranna. She’s killed a Quincury Adept.
She wheeled the cutter at once, turning in toward the prison. No use worrying now about setting off any alarms; she doubted they would register high on the guards’ list of priorities just at that moment. The scream went on and on, rising in spikes of outraged intensity, wailing wordlessly of mutilation and loss.
As she neared the Traitor’s Grave, it became clear that things were worse than she had imagined. Some kinds of magical conflagration were visible from miles off, like the pillar of ash cloud before the volcano coughs up its poison.
Once or twice, Oranna had seen a practitioner deliberately burn out. Most of her kind who lived to adulthood were good at moderation, always careful to maintain their resources, weighing out each expenditure carefully against the desired result. Sometimes, though, someone would decide that the desired result was a gigantic explosion, and never mind that the price was more than they could pay.
The screaming ended abruptly.
At the same time, the engine of the cutter began to cough. Oranna checked the fuel gauge and cursed: the hand of the dial was pressed almost flat against the edge. She had only a matter of minutes before the vessel fell out of the sky, and only one place she could possibly land.
That was her decision made for her, then. An interesting situation had always been her weakness.
Unspoken and Unspeakable One, if this is to be the day of my death, don’t think I have forgotten the bargain we made, she thought. She remembered the silence, the quiet girls lined up to form an honour guard, her sister enthroned in darkness. I am yours.
The sky above the Traitor’s Grave shimmered as she brought the cutter in. There was a scorched and oily haze in the air. The roof of the prison was distorted beyond recognition, whipped up in glassy sheets and spikes like rose petals curled in around the heart of the flower. These petals were scattered with corpses, some in lively states of disassembly. One Quincury Adept was pierced through with a spike of stone, and now dangled a foot above the ground, robes fluttering in the wind.
The only one still upright was a thin girl in white, on the last piece of flat ground at the centre of the devastation. She was kneeling over a crumpled body that might have been Csorwe’s.
Ah, thought Oranna. Aha.
She landed the now-useless cutter and leapt out, feeling the charge of recent death in the air, the veins of power beneath her feet. She couldn’t help thinking how easy it would be to give up all control, to let the power crackle through her, to let her cells return to dust. The urge to self-immolate must be contagious.
Qanwa Shuthmili looked up at her. Her eyes were dead black. Her face and robes were smeared with blood, though probably not her own. The power poured off her like smoke. Oranna abruptly recalled the nature of Shuthmili’s patron.
If the poor girl was possessed it would be an additional complication that Oranna had not predicted, as much as she would be interested to meet the Dragon of Qarsazh in the flesh.
“So who am I talking to?” said Oranna. No point mincing her words.
“Go away,” said Shuthmili.
Still mortal, then. She was very close to the brink, but holding steady. Like a cracked glass, nothing but the potential to shatter. The Traitor was not gentle with her vessels.
Before Oranna could answer, the body on the ground twitched, giving a dry, ugly gasp. Csorwe looked the way corpses always looked, but her body still sparked faintly with the defiance that distinguished living flesh from dead matter.
“I can’t fix her,” said Shuthmili. She was trembling. She kept her dead eyes fixed on Oranna, as though she couldn’t bear to look down. “I’ve got nothing left.”
Csorwe’s belly was torn open as though some kind of wild animal had got hold of her; her shirt was dark with blood and ichor.
“I stopped the bleeding,” said Shuthmili. “But I can’t—”
“You have flown close to the sun,” said Oranna.
“I’m not leaving without her,” said Shuthmili.
“If you try to lift her, your rib cage is going to explosively decompress,” said Oranna, omitting to mention that there was no way for them to leave now, anyway. “I do not need that. Sit down. I’ll see if I can help her.”
Shuthmili’s Church training paid dividends: she sat down among the corpses and stared into space. Thank goodness for indoctrination.
Oranna knelt over the body. It really was a shame to get more bloodstains on this nice gown. Csorwe was still breathing, but Oranna could feel the outrage of ripped tissue and ruptured organs, the body struggling to manage without the blood it had already lost. She chewed her lip. She’d never studied medicine. Anything she tried might make matters worse.
Csorwe groaned faintly, as if she was far away from her body, and still receding. Nearby, Shuthmili twitched. Power sparked in her fingertips, writing itself across Oranna’s perception like after-images of the sun.
“Don’t even think about it,” said Oranna. She suspected that if Shuthmili tried to channel now, her heart would burst, or the Dragon would come slithering out of her, or both.
No response. Oranna had never been good at dealing with young people.
“Don’t be a fool,” she said. “You need to eat, at the very least, before you try anything.”
“I know,” said Shuthmili. “Can’t you—”
“I can give her an easy death, if it comes to it.”
“No,” said Shuthmili. The skin around her mouth was cracked and bluish, and her eyes were turning milky. She looked almost as bad as Csorwe, falling faster than anyone could pull her back.
“If you’re sure,” said Oranna. “A stomach wound is a bad way to go. It would be a mercy.”
“No.” Another surge of power crackled and faded as she spoke. Oranna let it go. Not a good idea to goad her.
Shuthmili shouldn’t have survived what she had done to the prison and its inhabitants. But then, Oranna hadn’t expected her to survive the workings in the Hollow Monument, either. Did Qarsazh know what it had lost? The girl had destroyed at least three-fifths of a Quincury, so if they didn’t know before, they did by now, and there was no chance they’d let her run. So, the Inquisitorate would be here soon, and in the meantime, Ora
nna was trapped in the middle of the ocean with the most dangerous practitioner she had encountered since Belthandros Sethennai.
Their prospects were not bright, but despair was not in Oranna’s nature. The shard of rock crystal bound into her bosom bled power into her like a cold heartbeat, and it was a waste not to use it. It was even more of a waste for a Chosen Bride of the Unspoken to die far from home, to nobody’s benefit.
“Let me look at her again,” she said. Shuthmili was kneeling over the near-corpse herself, like a beast of prey guarding its kill. “Maybe there’s something I can do—at least keep her alive until you’re back up to strength.”
* * *
Death was the caress of dry sand and cool water. The waves swelled, crashed, receded. Thought and memory slipped away like little fishes.
After some time it came to Csorwe that this was a dream, and that she must wake. She was flat on her back on the ground. She could feel her wounds healing. Skin and flesh simmered as they mended.
The seething sensation of the healing wound began to fade, giving way to the likelihood of pain. Cautiously, Csorwe felt under her shirt. Someone had bandaged her up. As long as she didn’t move, it scarcely hurt at all. She could hear wind and waves, and the sound of someone crying, not far off, and trying to be quiet about it.
Csorwe swallowed a sluggish clot of blood and tried to lift her head. She was very stiff, but not so much worse than you’d expect after sleeping on a stone floor.
It was Shuthmili, curled up on the ground nearby, at the base of a jagged spike of concrete. She was holding the bloody sleeves of her dress up to her face, clamped over her nose and mouth to dampen the sound of her sobbing.
Watching any longer seemed indecent. Maybe she would prefer to be left alone. Csorwe was trying to decide whether to say something when she managed to twist the wrong way and had to bite down on a cry of pain.
Shuthmili heard the noise and turned, lowering her sleeves. Her eyes were hollow and red with weeping, her whole face gaunt. She said nothing at first, her lip twitching as she tried to compose herself, until Csorwe spoke her name.
“Csorwe!” she said, coming to sit beside her. “How long have you been awake?”
“Only just now. You healed me?” said Csorwe, wishing she’d had time to prepare for this conversation.
“Me and Oranna. You’re going to be fine. It’ll hurt badly for a while, that’s all.”
“Where are we?” It was hard to see much without moving. They were surrounded by a crown of concrete spikes, each much bigger than Csorwe and tapering to a vicious point.
“Still on top of the Traitor’s Grave,” said Shuthmili. She followed Csorwe’s eyes to the nearest spike. “After you—after I thought you were—I lost control for a while. But your cutter ran out of fuel. Oranna had to land before she crashed. She’s just … uh … just attending to the bodies.”
“Are you all right?” said Csorwe.
Long pause. “Gods preserve me, Csorwe,” said Shuthmili eventually. “You saw what I’ve done.”
“Yeah.”
Shuthmili bit down on her lip to keep it from trembling. “Death is better than corruption,” she said. “I was going to throw myself over the edge. Once Oranna was gone and you were safe. It would be the honourable thing to do. But I can’t seem to make myself do it.”
“Well … good,” said Csorwe, feeling all over again like the bluntest of blunt instruments. “You don’t—you don’t want to die, do you?”
“No, I don’t,” said Shuthmili. “That’s the worst part. Or—no—the worst part is that I don’t even feel very bad about it. I hated Zhiyouri.”
“I can’t say I was too sad to see her go—” said Csorwe.
“But I killed her,” said Shuthmili. “And the others. And it felt good to do it—I mean, not the killing, that was nothing, it was like picking flowers, but I can’t help thinking it proves they were right about me, all along.”
“Right about what?” said Csorwe.
“That I’m just—all this time—whatever I do—” When she broke off, she stared at Csorwe in defiance for a few seconds before rubbing her eyes with her sleeve again.
“Look,” said Csorwe. “I know about living with something you’ve done. However it happened.”
“I just wish I could feel guilty at all, but I … I don’t know what else I could have done.”
“I know,” said Csorwe.
“You must think I’m some kind of monster,” said Shuthmili.
“Shuthmili,” she said. “Whatever kind of monster you are, so am I.” Before she could think about it too much, she reached out and took Shuthmili’s hand in hers.
She had expected Shuthmili to pull away, either in shock or out of awkwardness, but she didn’t. Neither of them said anything, and the moment went on.
“You can let yourself live with it,” said Csorwe eventually, not daring to meet her eyes.
“I hope so,” said Shuthmili.
A long moment passed. Shuthmili’s fingers uncurled, little by little, and she traced her thumb over Csorwe’s knuckle.
Before Csorwe could think how to respond to this, Shuthmili sprang back. Oranna was approaching.
“You’re awake,” she said to Csorwe, with rather less interest than if she had been commenting on Csorwe’s haircut. “That’s for the best. We don’t have long. I suspect our time here will be numbered in hours rather than days, and a small number of hours at that. It seems Shuthmili did not have the wit to exterminate the guards as they fled this place.”
“My apologies,” said Shuthmili, sourly.
“It is done. We must assume that word will reach the mainland soon, if it hasn’t already, and that a whole pack of Inquisitors will be here before nightfall. The only choice left open to us is to fight or surrender. I hope it is clear which path I favour.”
Shuthmili’s features set, like wax, into an expression of strain. “I thought perhaps the two of you might be able to get away, if the cutter might still float on the sea.”
“Without you, you mean,” said Csorwe. “No.”
“Please,” said Shuthmili. “They’ll chase me forever. But they won’t bother looking for you once they’ve dealt with me.”
“No.”
“Csorwe, you don’t have to do this. You can’t fight like this.”
“I can’t walk like this. But I’m not leaving you again,” she said. She thought—hoped—that Shuthmili looked faintly relieved, just for a second.
“Then you should surrender,” said Shuthmili. “Both of you. Tell them I put a compulsion on you.”
Oranna laughed. “I’ve seen how your people treat their prisoners.”
“If you run and they catch you, they will kill you,” said Shuthmili.
“I was raised for death, and death has been my lifelong study. I have no fear of the end,” said Oranna, as though that settled the matter.
“Csorwe?” said Shuthmili, becoming desperate.
“Think I spent long enough with your auntie to figure out how much I’d enjoy a Qarsazhi jail,” said Csorwe. She reached out and took Shuthmili’s hand again, no longer caring whether Oranna saw it or not. “All three of us were raised for death. I’d rather we chose it.”
After a moment, Shuthmili nodded. “Well, then,” she said. “I’m glad, I suppose. That we’re all here together.”
“You may be glad,” said Oranna. “I am significantly pissed off.” She grinned. “Well, all strength fails. But not just yet.”
* * *
As Csorwe rested, Oranna took Shuthmili to ward them in. If the Qarsazhi intended to take them alive, rather than scouring the roof of the Traitor’s Grave in cleansing fire, Oranna meant to make their lives difficult.
They moved from one concrete spike to another, scoring lines with shards of rock. Shuthmili picked up the technique almost immediately. She really was capable. Oranna reflected that it was pleasant to be able to rely on someone else’s work, for once.
The Quincury Adepts lay in
a neat row. One of their masks had come loose, and before Oranna replaced it she had seen the face of a woman no older than herself, fair for a Qarsazhi, with a dusting of freckles. At the end of the row was a pile of jewels and glass and feathers in the vague shape of a corpse.
“This one made you angry,” said Oranna, indicating the heap. There were two real diamonds in it, each the size of an eye. Oranna pocketed them.
“Yes,” said Shuthmili, tracing a line with clinical precision. “My aunt.”
“Ah,” said Oranna. “Family.”
Oranna cast around for something else to talk about, feeling strongly that she had borne enough silence, and didn’t intend to spend her last hours in stoic contemplation. Before she could think of anything, Shuthmili spoke up.
“What is it that you wanted from the Unspoken? I mean, once you’d achieved your unprecedented union or whatever it was?”
“Oh, you know about that?” said Oranna. She supposed it didn’t matter who knew, now that it was never going to happen. She needed to resign herself to that. “Why? Are you considering an approach to the Dragon of Qarsazh?”
Shuthmili looked shocked, though not actively disgusted. “No. Csorwe told me. And I don’t think it’s possible.”
“I think Pentravesse managed it. But I suppose it’s the dream of a child, really. The Unspoken One and me, conquering in eternity, never dying. So it goes.”
They went on around the roof of the prison, making a garland of wards among the ruined parapets. Shuthmili was a very inventive practitioner. It really was a shame they were never going to get a chance to compare notes properly.
“I could have stayed in Tlaanthothe,” said Oranna, tracing her final control sigil. “Belthandros would have kept me kindly for as long as I could outlast the mage-blight. It would have been very pleasant. I suppose there is some version of me who could have been happy with him. Consider it a cautionary tale, if you wish,” she added. Csorwe and Shuthmili had been holding hands, after all. Not that it was likely to end well for them. The gods made no allowances for young love, but perhaps it was worth having it while you could.
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