Shadows of Divinity

by Luke Mitchell

  I searched her face, looking for any sign of deeper meaning. I saw nothing but professionalism—albeit warm and kind—and my heart sank.

  “Yeah, I can see where afterward wouldn’t work so well. Pleased to meet you, Lady Sanders.”

  “Barbara, please.”

  I inclined my head. “Well I’d offer you my hand, Barbara, but…” I glanced pointedly down at my lack of free limbs.

  She forced a polite smile, and I thought I saw empathy in her eyes. Or was it sadness? Or guilt? Probably, I was just reading too much into her every facial tick, hoping against hope I’d see some sign there.

  “You’re aware we normally record the repentance the day before the ceremonies, yes?”

  I nodded. Those slated to be ceremonialized by rope and gravity were always afforded the chance to confess their sins the evening before said ceremony took place, as well as to say any final words and farewells.

  I glanced at the doorway. “You’re not gonna bring your crew in to record this? I’m sure I could find a tear or two close by.”

  She shook her head, once again striking that balance of distant yet affected. “No, I simply wanted to ask you a few questions while I could. You’re also aware your repentance day has been waived for, quote, ‘matters of planetwide security?’”

  I nodded again.

  “Do you happen to know why?” she asked.

  Probably because Zar’Faenor and his bloodsucking compatriots wanted to make sure I’d be dead in time for humanity to cheer them on as they went forth to rebuild their race from the ashes of Enochia. Somehow, though, I didn’t think Barbara would buy all that, so I went with, “Maybe they were worried the world might fall in love with my good looks and boyish charm.”

  She didn’t laugh. Just fidgeted with her hands, suddenly seeming nervous. “I was thinking it might have something to do with the footage you tried to push through the emergency broadcast system last night.”

  That caught my attention good and proper. It caught the guards’ too, judging by the uncertain look they traded.

  I forced myself to breathe. To pretend it was all well, no cause for concern in their eyes. “Rumor has it there was an uprising.”

  It wasn’t an answer, exactly, but I prayed she’d understand what I was trying to tell her.

  “So I’ve heard,” she said, studying me. “I’ve heard a lot of interesting rumors, actually. I want to know what you believe happened.”

  I glanced at the guards. They were watching me. Closely.

  “It doesn’t matter what I believe. All that matters is the truth.”

  “You would have made a fine reporter.”

  I searched her expression. She seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say—enough that the guards were growing uneasy now. Was that simply her professional curiosity at work? I couldn’t be sure. But something about her nature made me want to convince her anyway.

  “Let me ask you this,” I said slowly. “When’s the last time you saw a teenager sentenced to hang by the High Cleric himself just for trying to spin tall tales?”

  One of the Sanctum Guard took a half-step forward, clearly debating putting a stop to the whole thing.

  Barbara was frowning. “You did break into a Legion base, Mister Raish. A base that’s apparently so badly damaged from… well, badly damaged enough that they closed the gates for repairs.”

  “That wasn’t our doing, I can tell you that much.”

  It was, however, a snippet of news to me. I could only assume Al’Kundesha had closed Sanctuary to hide the fact that the hybrids owned the base and that most of the Legion forces were quite possibly dead.

  The real question was how the other Legion bases were responding to the development, and to their High General’s insistence that it was all the work of renegades.

  Barbara was watching me with a guarded expression. “An ill-timed uprising then. Fine. But that doesn’t explain the multiple other counts of terroristic activities on your file. Are you suggesting those claims are inaccurate?”

  “Do I seem like a terrorist to you?”

  I couldn’t keep the heat from my voice.

  I’d fought and bled only to be criminalized by the very people I was trying to defend. And now to be sentenced to die by a holy man who’d never even met me, never heard my story… It was too much.

  Barbara’s expression was troubled. “I…”

  “Yeah, yeah,” an unfortunate voice drawled from just outside the door. “Work the sob story, kid. See what good it does you.”

  I tensed as Smirks walked into the cell, scraped up and stepping tenderly, but very much alive.

  “Listen,” he said to Barbara, “this kid’s not some harmless little pup who accidentally scudded the carpet. He’s put half a dozen guys I know into the medica. Scud, he threw me out of a damn lev tram and left me to die in an abandoned underway tunnel. He’s dangerous, and you should just be glad he’s not out there to hurt anyone else.”

  “Barbara,” I said, “allow me to introduce you to Garrett, the human scudspout who’s willing to sell his own kind to—”

  Smirks leaned in and gave me a firm cuff to the mouth.

  I glared at him, tasting blood.

  “Hey!” Barbara cried. “Merciful Alpha, let’s be civil here!”

  For a moment, I thought about spitting blood at Smirks’ stupid face. I decided to take the high road, for civility’s sake. And because he was almost certainly out of range.

  “That’s quite enough, Garrett,” someone called into the cell, his voice thin but full of authority.

  Sweet Alpha, how many people were lurking out there?

  Smirks backed away to stand with the two Sanctum Guard and joined them in bowing their heads toward the door. A second later, Barbara did the same.

  But that meant…

  Sweet Alpha, indeed.

  The High Cleric shuffled slowly into the room, supported by the arm of—

  Son of a bitch.

  Zar’Faenor.

  My mind took off like wild fire.

  The High Cleric? I’d accepted that the raknoth probably had strings in high places in the Sanctum. But the gropping High Cleric? Was it possible?

  Much as I didn’t want to believe it, I couldn’t help but wonder the opposite.

  Why not?

  Now that I saw them there, Zar’Faenor escorting the shuffling High Cleric like a good humble servant—so silent he was barely there at all—I felt foolish for having ever allowed myself to hope that maybe the High Cleric of all people would be beyond their reach.

  And if Zar’Faenor had his claws in the High Cleric…

  Breathe. Think.

  If that was the case, it was just one more obstacle to overcome.

  Zar’Faenor betrayed nothing. The raknoth didn’t even bother looking at me as the High Cleric paused to allow Barbara to wish him good blessings and kiss the ring of his office. In person, the High Cleric looked older and frailer than he did in the WAN broadcasts. I imagined he was little but skin and bones beneath the voluminous folds of his ornate robes.

  “We will speak to the fallen alone,” he said to Smirks and the guards.

  The three of them left the room without question. Barbara lingered, looking at me with an expression of uncertainty—maybe even concern—then hurried to follow the others when the High Cleric turned his gaze on her.

  The door closed behind her, leaving me alone with the leader of the raknoth and the High Cleric of the Sanctum.

  I waited for a victorious sneer or something of the sort from Zar’Faenor, but he paid me no mind. The High Cleric studied me with rheumy blue eyes.

  Did the old man know what manner of creature stood beside him? If not, I could only assume Zar’Faenor had him so twisted around his clawed finger that any attempt at talking would be pointless. But I didn’t have anything else to try.

  “Your Holiness,” I said, “I don’t know what this man has told you, but he is no friend to the Sanctum or to Enochia. He and his ilk woul
d see us enslaved or worse if they had their way.”

  The High Cleric blinked, a frown forming across his features. Zar’Faenor was finally looking at me now, his golden-brown eyes impassive.

  “You must’ve seen some sign of what happened at Sanctuary last night,” I continued, half-expecting Zar’Faenor to reach out and stop me. “Our people, the loyal servants of the Legion, fought to defend their base and their lives against his army of engineered monstrosities. My team was only four. Do you really believe we could be the cause of so much destruction, or that half the Sanctuary forces would simply turn on their own?”

  A shadow of doubt hung over the High Cleric’s face.

  I fixed him with a desperate stare, hoping the one man who might still turn the tide with a word would somehow see the truth in my eyes. “We’re in danger, your Holiness. All of Enochia is.”

  The High Cleric slowly turned his wary gaze from me to Zar’Faenor, who met his stare calmly.

  “I see why the General likes this one,” the High Cleric said. The words turned my stomach upside down. Before I could even start to unpack the full implications, though, the High Cleric lowered himself to sit at the edge of my cot, moving with the painstaking effort of old joints and atrophied muscles. “Soon, my child, you will be free of these troubled notions and at rest in the afterlife.”

  He lightly traced his fingers over Alpha’s sigil on his breast, then wrapped his hands behind my head and pulled me gently up to kiss my forehead.

  My mind raced. I’d lost him. Probably before he’d ever even entered the room. I looked up to meet his eyes, searching for some glint of hope.

  And froze as those pale, rheumy eyes flashed fiery red.

  I stiffened. Recoiled. But his grasp was like an iron vise on the back of my head. Then, as quickly as it had appeared, the red fire was gone. His grip softened, and I was once again staring at the faded, cloudy blue eyes of the High Cleric.

  “What is it, child?” he asked. “Does my touch startle you so?”

  Had I imagined it?

  For one awful second, I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe I was losing my mind—if maybe I’d been cracked this whole time. But no. That was ridiculous. I knew what I’d seen. I trusted that much.

  Which meant the High Cleric of the Sanctum was a raknoth.

  “Come,” Zar’Faenor said. “You have had your fun. Let us finish our preparations and be done with it.”

  The High Cleric stood from my cot with a wheezing groan, once again moving as if it cost him a great deal. “Very well,” he said. “Very well.”

  Zar’Faenor was waiting at the door when the High Cleric turned back to say the words that paralyzed my diaphragm as surely as any gut punch

  “I look forward to meeting your friends this evening, Haldin.” He paused long enough to savor the sight of the blood I could feel draining from my face, then he turned for the door, chuckling to himself. “Such a bright new dawn for Enochia, tomorrow will be.”

  Zar’Faenor tapped twice on the door, which hissed open immediately. With that, they shuffled out, the raknoth bastard of a High Cleric grasping the crook of Zar’Faenor’s arm for support like a kindly old man.

  The door hissed shut behind them, leaving me alone with my thundering heart.

  42

  Gallows

  The lonely afternoon hours did not pass kindly. The silence dug at me like a slow, ruthless torturer, reminding me that the people I loved were probably getting ready to fly straight into a trap. Reminding me that it was my fault—that I was the one who’d set them on this course.

  Reminding me that, in all likelihood, I really was about to die at the gallows.

  Now, the despair came for me. How had I ever convinced myself—and Carlisle, no less—that we had any part of this under control?

  How in the name of Alpha had this happened?

  I stifled a manic laugh at the thought, imagining that, the way things were going, maybe even Alpha himself would turn out to be a raknoth by the end of the day. The High General of the Legion, the CEO of Enochia’s largest biotech giant, Carlisle’s old mentor, and now the freaking High Cleric of the Sanctum.

  Why not the one true deity, too?

  I needed to warn Carlisle. But how? Even if I could somehow sleep long enough to let my mind drift, which in itself sounded impossible right now, what were the chances Carlisle would be hanging right there, doing the same? He and the others had a foolhardy mission to be preparing for.

  I kind of doubted he’d listen anyway. He’d gotten a scary glint in his eye just listening to how vulnerable our plan left me. When I’d tried to ask him to tell Elise that I loved her, just in case, he’d refused to hear of it.

  “You’ll tell her yourself once it’s over,” he’d said, closer to losing his composure than I’d ever seen. I hadn’t pressed the matter.

  I wished now that I had. Wished I’d said the words myself when I’d had the chance. Because there was nothing for it. I’d gropped us all with my softsteel-sipping, scud bucket of a plan. And there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.

  I spent the hours trying anyway.

  Too soon, the Sanctum Guard came for me. Smirks was with them, looking punchable as ever. The guards hauled me to my feet and prodded me out to the less than uplifting sight of the White Tower subbasements.

  “What’s a guy gotta do to relieve himself around here?” I asked, in part to stall, but mostly because, whatever happened, I didn’t want to be one of the ones who left a mess behind when I went. Not really sure why I cared about that little detail when most of the people in attendance would be under the impression that I was some deranged lunatic terrorist, but there it was.

  Either way, at least my bowels and bladder were relieved as I went to meet my death.

  Smirks rolled his eyes when we returned, but said nothing. We marched down the hall, my chains jangling glumly all the way, and piled into a mag lift. Smirks keyed the top floor. The Great Hall of the High Cleric. The lift hummed to life and greeted my already volatile stomach with the tug of upward acceleration.

  I couldn’t help but flash through fantasies of escape. If I had any hope of taking down three men with my mobility as severely limited as it was, the lift car was probably the ideal spot. It’d be pointless, of course, with no way to remove the scorcher and, in turn, the chains. I’d be caught within minutes. But I would’ve enjoyed knocking the smug look off Smirks’ face one more time.

  Except he didn’t look so smug when I glanced back at him. He looked… apprehensive? At least until he caught me watching and shot me a threatening scowl. He held it until I turned back around.

  I didn’t have long to wonder what was going on in his head. Distance-wise, the ascent was substantial, but the mag lift was fast. Too soon, I felt the lightness of deceleration, and a mild chime informed us we’d arrived. The doors glided quietly open, and I stepped out of the lift car before the guards could prod me along.

  The pinnacle of the White Tower was decadent, to say the least, beginning with the grand antechamber—fifty feet high, all regal ivory walls and ceilings and rich white tiles with intricate golden swirls. Our service lift emptied inconspicuously into the corner. I found myself wishing we could’ve taken one of the primary lifts, which I knew afforded wonderful views of the city throughout the entire ascent, courtesy of their wide duraglass windows.

  Next time, I wanted to tell myself.

  I swallowed a dry gulp instead.

  None of my guards protested as I took the lead, shuffling along in my chains for the dark stone pathway that funneled between two lines of thick columns into the Great Hall beyond.

  Under my bare feet, the dark stone was smooth and still pleasantly warm from the myriad squares of sunlight creeping through the duraglass ceiling high above. I closed my eyes for several steps just to focus on the feeling of it. The warmth reminded me of Elise. Which, in turn, only brought the weight of my cataclysmically stupid failure crashing back down.

  Why hadn’t w
e just run away together when we’d had the chance? We could’ve been up in the northern mountains or anywhere else right now, happy and safe in each other’s arms.

  But it wouldn’t have lasted.

  That was the only caveat that kept me from braining myself on the nearest stone column. Because there was no happily ever after as long as the raknoth were free on Enochia. I’d been stuck on this path since I’d witnessed Al’Kundesha savaging my mother and father. Since the raknoth had come to Enochia, even. It had always been my path to end up here, standing up to them. And if that path was truly drawing to an end, the least I could do was make damn sure it counted for something, grop-up or no.

  The thought made me stand a little straighter as I shuffled into the Great Hall.

  The contrast moving from the confined column path to the wide open space made it feel like the Great Hall exploded outward for miles. The duraglass ceiling only added to the effect, rising at an angle from the rear of the hall as if the skies were gradually opening up before you. Even without the trick of design, the hall was enormous. And, I had to admit, beautiful in its own right. Unnecessary and ostentatious, maybe. But majestic and wondrous nonetheless.

  The gallows staring me down from across the expanse, though—and the primal bolt of fear it shot through me—dimmed that grandeur.

  The archaic wooden structure had been erected on the second of the four great plateau steps that rose from the dark stone floor at the head of the Great Hall. One each for the four facets of life as seen by the Sanctum: mind, body, spirit, and Alpha. The last tier, Alpha, was reserved for the High Cleric alone. The second tier, body, was traditionally where apostates met their worldly ends.

  The guards indicated that that was exactly where we were headed. As if maybe I’d forgotten what we’d come here for.

  Judging by the position of the sun and the emptiness of the hall, we were still well over half an hour away from show time. I was glad to see Barbara’s crew busy setting up. Not because I was eager to have my execution broadcasted—I was starting to think my mom had been all too right about the practice being nothing more than a morbid maneuver to keep the authority of the Sanctum above question. No, I was glad to see them because it reminded me that, death trap or no, we still had a fighting shot at hitting the raknoth where it hurt this evening.