In Veritas

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In Veritas Page 27

by C. J. Lavigne


  The waves of sound are back, pulsing in low rumbles and washing up to Verity’s chest now, a rising tide that fades into drifts; she knows when the group behind her has broken, scattering farther down the hall.

  “She and Jihan,” murmurs Alan, “just as I remember. They look right past me—I’m not that little boy anymore—but I know them, just the same. How curious, to feel the years fall away.” Sanna curls in his lap, watching the remnants of his youth wind through the pale bush of his beard.

  “What was she after?” Santiago still stands with Colin, a hovering shadow over the angel’s faint, skeletal glow. The dog is gone; the snake undulates up the magician’s sleeve.

  “Hell if I know. Look, Vee. What I was asking—please. We need the truth. Where do we go from here?” The hand Colin extends is trembling and just slightly translucent. The glow of his skin is not even strong enough to reach her, but Verity feels the warmth when she relents and touches her fingertips to the back of his hand, as delicately as she can. Light floods her. Colin shivers, and she jerks her hand back, looking away before she can see her guilt lash him. The hallway settles to stillness around her, and she can breathe. She focuses on the line of the magician’s shoulders.

  “It’s an ember,” she offers, after some thought. The clarity of her own voice is flat to her, all sound, no colour or texture across her skin. “Jihan may give you the flame you want, or a conflagration. Privya ... she can only breathe on it, to coax a flare before it dies.”

  “We knew that,” says Santiago, impatient. “What kind of conflagration? How bad is this game?”

  “I’m not a fortune teller.” Verity looks Santiago in the eye for a moment, and she sees him flinch. The shadows that creep on his face mark an exhaustion half set to rival the angel’s. “There are seventy-four lives in these walls, and they’re dying more quickly than most, and you’re all, um, playing with fire.” She rubs at the bridge of her nose. “I don’t like metaphors, usually. I’m sorry. Jihan is....”

  She trails off. In her silence, she sees a length of darkness wind itself around Santiago’s throat and open golden eyes.

  Colin says, “What?”

  “Possibilities.” Verity watches Ouroboros. The snake is tiny now. It might as easily be a strip of leather. “She had a knife again,” she says slowly. “In her hand today. Does she often have a knife?”

  The angel frowns. “She always has one. Last time I saw it out—well, I’m guessing you remember.”

  Santiago’s brows have drawn downward. Ouro’s tongue flicks.

  “She was going to see Jacob.”

  “You think she’s going to hurt him?”

  “I think Privya’s people were watching the house today.”

  There is a pregnant pause.

  “Ah,” says Colin. “Hell.”

  [IMAGE: Jihan, perched on the back of an old broken couch. She’s sharpening a knife. She looks straight out at the reader, expressionless. Below her, Colin is a mess of blankets, but light is visible glowing from his hands and any parts of his face that are visible.]

  17

  I’m not sure how to tell this part.

  i probably cant help you sorry i want to which part

  Jihan. I’m trying to fill in all the details, but then there’s Jihan. What was it you saw when you looked in her eyes?

  sorrow and a setting sunset all the sunsets on water glistening but also a black hole and a single perfect leaf

  nothing everything

  every leaf and the exact pattern of its fall

  ...I have no idea what to do with that.

  i said i probably couldnt help

  COLIN (SAN FRANCISCO)

  Colin followed a strange girl and her lantern through the dark. The more the walls solidified around him, the more the girl’s quiet anguish splintered his bones. Her pain swept him as surely as the tide, and since he could not touch her, he stumbled onward in her wake. His coat was heavy and dragged at his wings. His walking stick was light and he leaned on it, balancing against the ache of his leg.

  The girl looked younger than he did, but it had been a while since he’d been sixteen, and he was pretty sure the same was true for her, too. She still moved like a child—easy, thoughtless. She kept a few paces ahead.

  The four people following bled auras tainted with the sickly sweetness of the dying, though they were stronger in the between. Colin had seen spaces like this only a few times before, and although he could breathe more easily, he didn’t like the way the walls rose seemingly forever, their narrowness pressing in on him.

  Piles of brick made the way difficult. Everything was brick here—it rose endlessly on either side and paved the floor beneath. Sometimes, the walls bowed inward, and the way was so tight it made Colin swallow, but the girl was no larger than he, and they both slipped through. Behind, more than once, he heard someone swear.

  His wings flexed beneath the folds of his coat, but there was no room to stretch them. He would have liked to shed the heavy fabric, but the set of the girl’s shoulders screamed need and pulled him on. His stomach roiled, and his cane slipped on unexpected bits of wood and broken stone.

  The girl’s lantern burned with a steady pale flame. Colin’s world extended only to shadows and the tricky footing of the crumbling floor. He had a headache. His mouth tasted like a cotton ball soaked in bourbon and bile.

  When the girl stopped walking and raised her lantern high to expose the mess of fallen beams that blocked their path, Colin limped up beside her. The raw impetus of her need was worms writhing under his skin. He raised a hand, unable to stop himself, but when his slight glow fell across the back of her neck, she gave him a sharp look. Her eyes were as glossy as agates.

  He stopped himself. He let his hand drop back to his side and clenched his other hand around the head of the cane, mentally casting back to a hazed conversation in an ill-lit bar. “Okay,” he said, awkwardly. “Look. This doesn’t seem like the best spot for your sick friend. Why are we here?”

  “It’s the right place.” The girl’s voice was light. She studied the mass of fallen wood and shattered brick, lifting her lantern high, then she stepped back, gesturing to the figures following. “You may want to move out of the way.” She continued to hold the light up for her people as they came forward. Colin saw ragged coats and soiled hats. He smelled oil, urine, and dust. Otherwise, he had only impressions: two men, he thought, and two women, but he wasn’t sure. He wanted to lay hands on their dying bones. They dug at the blockage like moles.

  “How did you find me?” he asked, standing again next to the girl. Her name was Privya—syllables uttered as she’d smiled at him in a booth that smelled of stale beer and ancient smoke. “I mean, you said Nathan. But Nate’s not a chatty guy.”

  “I know people.” Privya shrugged one shoulder. “I hear things.” She glanced at him sidelong. The perfect smoothness of her bun was coming unravelled in the crowded dust. “I’ve been waiting a very long time. I wasn’t sure we had any healers anymore.” It was hard to hear her over the sound of hatchets in wood, and rock crumbling. “Not one who could help, anyway. How much do you know about San Francisco?”

  “Only been here a week or two. Where are we?”

  “In the ruins of the between that was.”

  A deafening rumble heralded the collapse of the barrier; Colin stumbled back three steps, coughing on dust. Privya didn’t move, except to catch his elbow when he might have fallen. Her grip was implacable, but not cruel. The lantern was steady in her other hand. “Careful. This hall hasn’t been stable in a century.”

  “No shit.” Colin coughed again and muffled the sound in his sleeve. Privya’s grip fell away from his arm. He could see the shadows of her people scatter in the murk, though motes of sawdust glittered in the lantern light and obscured his view. More importantly, he could feel that their alarm was only faint. He sensed no spikes of pain, only determination. The yawning need of the girl next to him was more agonizing.

  “Let me help you,�
� he said, impulsively. He lifted his hand again, palm up. He could see her shiver as his gleam touched her, though it was less than the light in her hand.

  “Help me by helping her.” Privya turned away from him and walked to the narrow gap in the collapsed hall. Her people made way before her, pressing themselves to the wall. She touched them, one by one, as she passed. Then, casting her light ahead into the gap, she said to Colin, “This way.”

  There was really only one direction, unless he wanted to head back. Colin wasn’t sure whether he did, or whether he’d even be allowed. It didn’t matter. Privya’s anguish wrapped invisible strings around his lungs and pulled him forward. He was careful on the rubble. His own growing glow almost gave him enough light to see.

  He stopped to offer his hand to a tawny girl whose short hair was mostly hidden under a giant woollen hat. She was shivering. “Let me help you,” he said. She blinked at him; her eyes were puffy in the bare light. Her gloves were fingerless and, hesitantly, she touched the back of his hand.

  Colin had never really found words to explain to people what he did. He simply reached into the girl—threw himself, really, into her—and found the things that were wrong. Her palm was cut. Her arms were bruised from the digging; her ragged nails were bleeding at the edges. More than that, the grey mass curling in her liver was reaching smoking tendrils through her body; it wasn’t enough, yet, to kill her. He trimmed it back. He couldn’t excise it—he never could, as much as he wanted. It had taken him a long time to learn to do what he could and slide back into himself, leaving the girl flawed but better. He soothed her trepidation with a thought, leaving her dreamlike, coming back to his own body with a ragged cough. He dropped her hand and gripped the cane as a wave of nausea took him.

  The girl blinked again and said, “Thanks.” It was the first time she’d spoken to him. He nodded and coughed again, then raised his head to find Privya still waiting by the hole, her lantern raised high.

  Privya’s lips were drawn sharp with impatience, but she nodded to him, even as every line of her leaned toward the gaping ruin and the shadows.

  He hobbled forward. His knee was killing him, and now his organs felt too small. Privya’s silent need wailed its clarion call.

  Privya would have moved back to allow him room, but Colin said, “Lady with the light goes first,” and she shrugged, ducking ahead.

  She warned him, “Stairs.” He moved forward cautiously, both hearing and feeling the followers gathering in behind him; the girl he’d healed was a soothing pulse of wonder.

  After he passed through the excavation, not without a dust-filled cough, he found the walls curving for the first time as a smooth set of grey stone stairs opened up and curled downward before him. If anything, it was more claustrophobic than before. He couldn’t keep the wings beneath his coat from rubbing the walls.

  Privya walked before him, her light tread muffled by the dust she stirred up with every step.

  Colin pulled a scarf out of his pocket, wrapping it around his mouth and nose. It didn’t help. “Christ. How long since someone was here?”

  “It was 1906.” Privya stepped without hesitation, but she was careful to cast her light so Colin could see. Behind him, a man in a worn leather jacket carried another lantern. Their shadows all crept along the walls, distorted by the haze in the air. The staircase continued down. Piles of fallen rock made the going awkward, but the way was passable. They were silent, except when pebbles dislodged or Colin swore under his breath.

  He found the stairs uneven, worn smooth by countless feet that had gone before, and he wondered at stone so much older than the brick and broken beams above. The descent was a growing agony on his knee; he felt bones grate with each step and already dreaded the upward return. The walls were too tight, and he had to hold his wings too close to his shoulders. He wanted to protest, but it died in his throat. The girl’s need pulled him.

  The texture of the rock grew rougher. The steps became smaller and more shallow until eventually, Colin found himself following Privya and her lantern down a steep slope. He braced a hand against the wall and found rough stone there, too.

  “Where are we?” he asked.

  Privya’s shoulders screamed her desire for haste, but she paused for him. The steady flame of her lantern illuminated her young skin and the shining darkness of her bound hair. “This is a way that opens for the Chalice—it appears where it wills. It happens rarely. This passage is meant to close again behind the last who leave.”

  “All right,” said Colin, slowly. There was a hint of an echo to their conversation here, words bouncing from walls long silent. Even the dust had faded, as if it didn’t penetrate this far, leaving the air empty and clear. “Why’s it still open?”

  “She’s still here. Come on. She’s been waiting a long time.” Privya turned away again. For the first time, as she moved forward, the walls veered away as the narrow passage widened to a tunnel, and a little further to a cavern. There, Colin stopped again, because even with the light spilling from Privya’s lantern, he could see only a circle of rough stone floor and beyond it, a seemingly endless blackness that stretched above, ahead, and to either side.

  He was moderately sure his knee was on fire. He savoured the moment to catch his breath.

  “Stay here.”

  In a grateful burst, Colin thought Privya was talking to him, but he felt the shimmering hope of the girl he’d healed and heard Privya’s people pressing behind him. One of them muttered a quiet oath.

  Privya beckoned him, but it was her need that drove him forward; she burned, and he stumbled with it. Control lent her voice a preternatural calm. “They should be just up here, healer. This is why I brought you.” Her lantern was low at her side now, spilling light across the ground—Colin saw cracked stone, loose rock, and, finally, the rising ghosts of slender stalagmites.

  Privya touched his arm again, lightly, just at the sleeve. It was a polite gesture, but also peremptory; he stepped forward.

  She walked with him. He was careful, his cane uncertain on the uneven stone and her quiet desperation threatening to pull him off-balance. Resisting the urge to lay his hands on her brought beads of sweat to his forehead.

  A small part of him did enjoy the fact that she was an inch shorter than he. It wasn’t something that happened often. He concentrated on that small and incongruous pleasure while the ground sloped upward beneath his feet and he found himself climbing what appeared to be some low, underground hill.

  Privya’s hand was still on his sleeve, and now she pulled him faster, mindless of his awkward balance. Her light was raised high, a single star except for the glow of Colin’s own skin.

  Thankfully, it wasn’t a long climb, or a steep one. The ground merely rose several slow feet until it abruptly plateaued and they could walk easily again.

  “There.” The lantern trembled slightly in Privya’s hand, creating a ghostlike shiver of light across the two figures that emerged abruptly from the concealing darkness.

  “Christ!” Colin drew back; beneath his coat, his wings spread from reflex, but Privya’s grip was tight. After a breathless moment, he realized the people in front of him weren’t moving, and he could sense no life except the frantic conflagration of the girl beside him. “Christ,” he muttered again. He shook his head, then drew a breath, studying the newly illuminated tableau.

  The rock floor of the cavern rose again at what was apparently the centre of the unnatural mesa, culminating in a broken stalagmite column perhaps two feet wide and four feet high. Beside it, the figures of two women were locked together, motionless and just on the brink of falling. They were too lifelike to be statues, but the rigidity of their perfect imbalance was as solid as the rock of the cavern floor.

  As he moved closer, the top of the stone column came into view, and he saw it formed an empty basin, the edges irregularly rounded. The women were off-centre, as though they’d been first positioned on either side but one had lunged forward, pushing the other back.
r />   Privya hung back, almost a statue herself. Her mouth was set, but her eyes were black with wanting. Colin ignored the burning of her desire and leaned on his cane, letting his wings spread slightly as he shifted, taking his time to look.

  The first woman he studied was the one who had lunged; she had skin dark as sable, and her hair was a wild mane of tangled black, streaming back as frozen as the rest of her. She wore a thin white blouse over a long grey skirt, threadbare and torn at the hem. Her face was not old, but it was mature and knowing, beginning to crease at the edges of eyes and mouth.

  Her eyes were peculiarly clear, colourless as ocean spray on a cloudy morning; her lips were full but closed tightly, thinned in a grimace. She had a round nose and a round face to match the sturdy curves of her body. Her eyebrows were furrowed with determination, and the tears on her lashes looked fresh and wet, just on the verge of falling. She had a narrow sword in her hand, and she was stabbing it straight through the gut of the woman on the other side of the basin.

  This second woman—the one stabbed—was the figure most clearly off-balance, her knees buckling, her hands latched around the wrist of her attacker and the hilt of the weapon buried in her abdomen. The attacker’s muscles were tight beneath the thin linen of her sleeves, and she had not held back. Colin couldn’t tell exactly what kind of blade it was, except that it emerged from the victim’s back single-edged, slender and shining with viscera. He wasn’t very good with swords. He could see that, distinct from the wet sheen of the sticky-looking metal, a smattering of stains on the ground marked the long-dried spatter of impact. It was black in the pale light of the lantern, but when Colin stretched out a hovering hand, his own gleam illuminated shades of red in the mess.

  Privya made a sound. When Colin looked back, she was only a shadow holding a bright light. She said, “Help her.”

 

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