Wicked Saints

by Emily A Duncan

  “Because there’s no proof that mortals have ever reached higher than what they are?”

  Malachiasz pointed to himself.

  “So you’re like a god?” she said dryly.

  He grimaced. “Obviously not. You see the problem?”

  “I think your entire argument is based on semantics.”

  “Isn’t that what everything is, though? Concepts that we give unnecessary weight. For all you know, you’re merely communicating with incredibly powerful beings, but they are only that. Not beings that had any hand in this world’s creation, or beings that determine the course of your life. Our kingdoms are falling apart, have been at war for a century, and it’s because of these things.”

  Nadya straightened, shooting him an incredulous look.

  He noted her reaction with a shrug. “There’s no other blame to place for a holy war that’s gone on this long. For just a moment, let yourself consider without your current religious hang-ups,” he said. “What if the gods were unseated from their thrones?”

  “Impos—”

  He held up a hand, lifting an eyebrow.

  She ground her teeth. “Who would remove the beings of power, then?”

  “Another being of equal or more power, clearly.”

  “And what will that fix? Remove a foundation for how thousands of people structure their lives—for what?—the chance for blood mages to stop having their feelings hurt when we call them what they are?”

  “Kalyazin is dying,” Malachiasz said, and Nadya shivered as their hypothetical conversation stepped too close to reality. “Tranavia is, too. And you expect me to believe that removing the forces that have toyed with us for thousands of years wouldn’t save us all from the ashes of what our kingdoms will soon become?”

  She swallowed. “It’s moot,” she said, her voice too soft because she didn’t want to even consider what he was implying.

  He smiled cheerfully. “Impossible, of course. Musings, nothing more. Regardless, your power is only that. It’s not like your people have been limited to only this so-called divine magic in the past,” he continued.

  He was referring to witches—apostate magic users outside the gods’ approval—but there had been no witches in Kalyazin for decades. Their route of magic was considered just as heretical as blood magic and they had all but been eradicated by the old clerics during the time of the Witch Hunts. How did he even know about that? The chill of discomfort was gone and now she was righteously heated again. He was talking circles around her and she couldn’t keep him still for long enough to show him how he was wrong.

  “You’re using heretics as an example,” she said. Witches and blood mages, it was all the same. “It’s not particularly compelling.”

  “It’s proof that your holier-than-thou attitude about magic isn’t all there is!”

  “I don’t have an attitude about magic.”

  “You keep calling me a heretic.”

  “You are a heretic. You just laid out sheer heresy in front of me. And my power is divine; calling me ‘holier than thou’ is just trite.”

  He sat down beside her and she stiffened, suddenly acutely aware of … him. The way he folded up his lanky frame to sit, one knee glancing against her leg because he was so close. She swallowed. He took her wrist, his touch unbearably gentle, and pushed her sleeve back, exposing the still visible cut his claw had dragged down her forearm. There was a beat of silence, the road suddenly eerily quiet as they both stared down at the culmination of Nadya’s own heresy.

  “Well,” he breathed out softly, a flicker of something feral at his lips, “perhaps you’re right. Maybe not so holy, after all.”

  This should not be happening. She should not be leaning close to this boy, his touch warm against her skin. Her gaze caught against the shape of his mouth; her brain slowly coming to register what he said.

  She yanked her arm away and continued scrubbing at the altar, trying not to seethe and failing. Trying not to think about the way it felt when his fingers curled around her wrist, the way his leg was still pressed against hers, and failing at that, too.

  Malachiasz was quiet for a long time before he spoke again. “You never feel trapped?”

  “Trapped by what?”

  “The path you have to follow for your magic. That it could be denied at another being’s whim. You have so little say in the direction of your own life. Isn’t that stifling?”

  “When you frame it that way, yes. Except my life isn’t like that. My magic isn’t like that either.” But … for a flickering instant, she let herself consider just how carefully she had to tread with the gods, how a decision to survive had already cost her hours of guilt. She shoved the thoughts away.

  “But you have all these rules and guidelines. What happens if you break them?”

  “I don’t.”

  He frowned. “What keeps you from testing them?”

  She leaned back on her hands and her fingers brushed against his, heat burning up her arm. She shifted away. “What are you trying to say, Malachiasz?” she asked, too mortified to look at him directly.

  He drew one knee up against his chest and rested his chin on it. “I’m trying to understand.”

  “Why?”

  He appeared genuinely puzzled by the question. “Am I not supposed to be interested?”

  “You’re not supposed to care.”

  He opened his mouth, and closed it again, looking thoughtful. “I do care,” he finally said, voice quiet.

  Nadya swallowed hard. “Why?” she asked. He was Tranavian, a heretic, a Vulture, every part of him was in opposition to what Nadya believed, and yet …

  There was something else. She didn’t know what it was. She was unnerved to discover she wanted to find out.

  “Because I have known nothing but the Vultures my whole life,” he said reluctantly. “And we have both spent our lives preparing to kill, well, each other, but here we are instead.” He didn’t need to indicate the decided lack of space between them.

  “The Vultures destroyed Kalyazin’s clerics,” Nadya said.

  He met her gaze before he nodded. There was no shame in his eyes, nothing like remorse.

  “I will not harm the last,” he said.

  Nadya’s heart felt erratic in her chest and she didn’t know how to make the feeling go away. “We have no idea if I’m the last,” she said finally, primly, hoping it would break the spell that was keeping her trapped here with him, even though she knew magic had nothing to do with it.

  “Don’t you wonder what it would be like? To be someone else, with no expectations upon you or the fear of retribution keeping you on the same path.”

  No. Yes. It’s more complicated than he could ever know.

  “You grew up in a monastery.” He fidgeted, fingers picking at a hang nail. “And that’s just a different string of rigid rules, isn’t it? How to live, who to love, what you can and can’t think.”

  “I don’t mind rules, or having grown up in a monastery, but I can grant you that the magic, the destiny, knowing most clerics are killed young…” she trailed off. “It’s hard living your life knowing you’re probably going to die horribly. But this is who I am. It’s a blessing, not a curse.”

  She hoped it didn’t sound like she was rationalizing to herself, too. What was happening to her?

  He seemed to be considering that.

  “You disagree,” she said.

  He nodded.

  “This is why our countries have been at war for nearly a century,” Nadya said. “And I do feel a little like killing you right now, so I can see why.”

  “Just a little?”

  “Don’t press your luck.” She returned to the statue.

  In a flash, his hand was underneath her chin, thumb brushing against her jaw. He turned her face back to his. “I plan on doing exactly that,” he murmured.

  If Nadya hadn’t been sitting down she suspected her knees would have given out on her.

  Then, just like that, he let her go.
He stood up and nodded to the altar. “Are you finished?”

  She had been done for some time. She nodded, clearing her throat. He held out a hand. She hesitated before letting him pull her to her feet. He let go as soon as she was standing, digging his hands into the pockets of his coat as he started down the road to where the others had decided to camp. She watched him go. Something had shifted between them.

  * * *

  Spending days speaking only in Tranavian did wonders for Nadya’s understanding of the language but little to mask her accent. It was frustrating Malachiasz more with each passing day, but she wasn’t sure what she was doing wrong.

  “It’s soft. Your words are too soft. Like,” he waved his hand in front of his mouth, “your words are mush. Tranavian is hard.”

  Nadya let her horse wander instead of tying it up, sending a short prayer up to Vaclav to keep an eye on the animal so it didn’t stray too far.

  “You’re not making any sense.”

  “We could lose this whole game at the border because it’s desperately obvious your native tongue is Kalyazi.”

  She waved a hand. It was out of her control. The only way to get any better was to continue doing exactly what they were doing. They still had plenty of time until they reached the border, anyway. “Then I’ll keep my mouth shut. All they’ll see is a Tranavian soldier split from his company, two Akolans seeking refuge, and a mute peasant the Tranavian picked up for pleasure. Because they’re like that.”

  That earned her a dirty look. Anna snorted.

  They reached the point where Anna would part with them and Nadya wished she could pretend it wasn’t happening. She understood why Anna was staying behind—if they were successful, Kalyazin needed to be ready—but she hated it nonetheless.

  Anna’s final words to Nadya nestled down within her bones. “Don’t be a martyr. We have no use for yet another saint.”

  Afterward she walked into the military camp where Nadya could not follow. Nadya watched as she spoke with a soldier at the perimeter, the soldier’s eyes scanning the woods behind her. She watched as the soldier waved Anna inside, and watched as she disappeared. It wasn’t fair that Nadya had to lose everything for this, but she should know better. She had read the Codex enough times; her goddess demanded sacrifice.

  Parijahan hooked her arm through Nadya’s. “You’ll see each other again,” she said softly.

  Nadya didn’t believe that, but it was a small comfort.

  The mountains gave way to fields bitten by the frost of the long winter gracing Kalyazin. As each day brought them closer to the border, soon there was nothing but the burnt and blackened remains of what were once Kalyazi villages. Ravaged fields and decimated buildings where homes had once been. How much death had to sweep through these countries before someone finally said enough?

  Nadya distanced herself from Malachiasz during those days of travel. She would rather lose the time learning about Tranavia than look him in the eyes and pretend she didn’t want to murder him.

  Rashid was a gift from the gods during the bleak stretch where they were surrounded by the constant taste of death in the air. Nadya would spend her evenings next to him as he spun tales with a skill Nadya wouldn’t have expected from the flashy Akolan. Kalyazi legends of princes and saints and old magic, Tranavian stories of monsters and shadows, Akolan tales of sand and intrigue. Every time Nadya learned something new about Rashid she found she was surprised; she wouldn’t have ever thought him a scribe or a storyteller.

  Parijahan would listen with her head leaning against Malachiasz’s shoulder or her hands idly braiding his hair, and Nadya would forget they were probably doomed as soon as they reached the border.

  * * *

  It was early evening, the setting sun creeping through the gaps in the trees and flooding the clearing with warm, amber light. Malachiasz and Nadya agreed that the moment where they cast magic on each other should be kept between them, so they had separated from Parijahan and Rashid.

  Malachiasz leaned back against a tree, gazing up at a small murder of crows that landed in the branches shortly after they arrived.

  “The tolst is an omen,” Nadya whispered.

  “Good or bad?”

  She shook her head. “It could be either. It could be both.”

  His lips twitched into a smile. “You Kalyazi are certainly superstitious.”

  “Try my patience, Vulture boy, and I’ll tell Vaclav to send a leshy after you. No one will know you’re gone.”

  “No one would mourn my absence, either,” he said.

  Nadya blinked, faltering at his frank words. Her hands were trembling as she called on Veceslav and felt the holy tongue of the spell ease its way into her mind.

  “Stand still,” she ordered, lifting up on her toes. She rested a hand on his shoulder for balance. He stooped down a little so she could reach more comfortably.

  She took her other hand and pressed two fingers to his forehead just at his hairline, where the trio of black lines were etched into his skin. She slowly ran her fingers down his face. Something sparked underneath her touch, something that wasn’t magic at all. His lips parted when her fingers brushed against them, and the barest of sighs slipped through. She almost drew her hand back and away, frightened at the electricity jolting its way up her arm.

  He tilted his head back and she let her fingers brush down his throat. His pulse sped under her fingertips. Lifting her hand again, trying to ignore its shaking, she touched his ear, dragging her fingers horizontally across his face to the other side. She felt her magic sweep over him, pause, hesitate, then cover him, shield him.

  He looked the same to her. She recalled Veceslav’s word: enemies. It would shield him from his enemies. Not his friends.

  I guess that means we’re not enemies after all, she thought grimly.

  They were maybe something close to friends, skirting past that line into something else Nadya was afraid to consider.

  She wasn’t supposed to like him. He wasn’t supposed to be alive. She was helpless, all the control she had cultivated during her life crumbling because of this strange, wild heretic boy she should have killed. If she had done what she was supposed to none of this would be happening, her feelings wouldn’t be a tangled jumble of wanting him far far away and being perpetually drawn to his side.

  She wouldn’t be so tempted by the idea of freedom he seemed to be holding before her. Letting him any closer was a mistake she couldn’t afford to make.

  His eyes had closed and he opened them, locking on hers. “That feels strange,” he said, his voice thick. She pulled her hand away, shaking it as if that would help.

  She reminded herself of the burned villages, of the desecration the Tranavians had caused to Kalyazin. That he was part of the cycle, had a hand in the horrors done to her people. She reminded herself Tranavians had destroyed her home, killed Kostya, and that she deserved revenge.

  She reminded herself to blink.

  “You’ll have a false name, too?” she asked, trying to distract herself.

  “Jakob.”

  “Well, that’s certainly easier on the tongue than Malachiasz,” she said.

  He laughed softly. His laugh was so unexpected and came so rarely that it jolted her again. She felt her ears burning as a blush rose on her cheeks. She ducked her head to avoid looking at him.

  She heard him flipping through his spell book and tearing out the page with the proper spell. His hand was warm underneath her chin as he brought her face up. He pressed the spell into her palm, using his bleeding thumb to smear blood against her forehead, down her nose, and against her lower lip and chin. She kept her eyes on his face, watching as a frown pulled his eyebrows down. He tilted her head back farther, drawing a line of blood down her throat.

  At first, it was as though nothing happened. Then the blackened, poisonous touch of his magic washed over her. She let out a sharp breath, one hand reaching to grasp his forearm.

  “It’s all right,” he murmured, steadying her
as her knees buckled.

  “No, this is wrong.” It hurt to speak. Hot waves of fire roiled over her with each breath. She felt tears burning at her eyes and wrenched them shut.

  Then it stopped. The absence of pain was just as uncomfortable. She opened her eyes, realized slowly that her head rested against Malachiasz’s chest, and forced herself to pull away without making it obvious she was panicking.

  He bent down, dampening a rag in the snow, then straightened, holding it in his fist to warm it. He reached for her. She took a quick step back.

  A thread of tension stretched taut between them. They wore masks created by the other on their skin—magic binding them together.

  He didn’t speak, but the expression on his face was a question. He reached his hand toward her again and this time she let him wash the blood off her face, his touch gentle.

  “I should have warned you. You were probably rejecting my magic inherently because of what you are.”

  “It’s over now, don’t worry about it,” she said. “Did it work? You don’t look any different to me, how do I look?”

  He had stepped back to wipe the blood off his hands and his gaze flicked up at her. “You look lovely,” he murmured, and she wished she could put an adequate name to what she heard in his voice.

  “Oh?”

  He nodded, his expression perfectly blank. “Not quite so lovely as a Kalyazi peasant girl who spent her whole life locked in a monastery, though.”

  Nadya blinked at him, taking a step back. She turned and abruptly fled the clearing.

  17

  SEREFIN

  MELESKI

  Svoyatova Violetta Zhestakova: When she was thirteen, Svoyatova Violetta Zhestakova led a Kalyazi army in the Battle of Relics in 1510. A cleric of Marzenya, Violetta was a ruthless killer who ultimately fell in battle, killed by the blood mage Apolonia Sroka.