Siege and Sacrifice (Numina)

by Charlie N. Holmberg

  He straightened. “Do you know how? It . . . hurts to do it myself.” He tipped his head toward his bandaged arm.

  Sandis nodded and scooted behind him, gathering the long locks in her hands. “My hair was long, before Kazen. I always wore it braided or pinned up, so it wouldn’t get caught in any of the equipment.”

  “At the gun factory, right?”

  “Mm.” After helping him turn toward the window, she split his hair into two sections and began taking pieces from each and crossing them over, making the fish-bone braid she had favored when she was younger. She’d gotten a few inches plaited before Bastien spoke again.

  “I-I’m sorry, Sandis.”

  Her hands stilled. “What for?”

  “For Rone. If I hadn’t woken him, he’d still be here.”

  Sandis shook her head, resuming her work. “And I wouldn’t be.” She plaited another inch before adding, “I don’t know if the amarinth would have solved anything or not. I don’t know what will happen tonight. But we can’t move forward if we’re tied down by regret.”

  Bastien turned just enough to see her. “You should take your own advice.”

  He picked at his meal as Sandis continued to braid. She had almost reached the end of his hair when Rist opened the door. He looked around, his forehead tight, before kicking the door shut and sitting on the floor in front of it.

  “What’s wrong?” Bastien asked, handing Sandis a tie for his hair.

  “What’s wrong?” Rist scowled. “Your rescue maneuver was less than subtle. Everyone knows I’m a vessel, and I’ve been threatened with Gerech if I try to harm my brand. I’m a slave again, just to different people.”

  Sandis was slow tying off Bastien’s braid. “I’m sorry, Rist. Maybe it really is over, and—”

  “I don’t want to hear more of your nonsense, Sandis.”

  “Hey,” Bastien snapped.

  Rist smacked his head against the door. “If you’d left me alone, I would have run rampant and tired out, then woken a free man.”

  His words cut deep. Sandis’s throat constricted. “You would have hurt people. You might have been shot,” she managed.

  “Maybe that would have been better.”

  “Shut up.”

  Sandis started at the hardness is Bastien’s voice.

  Rist’s expression darkened.

  “Just shut up, Rist. We risked our lives for you.” He pushed his plate aside, gripped the edge of the bed, and tried to stand.

  “Bastien, no.” Sandis moved to grab his shoulders, then saw the bandages on his left side and reconsidered.

  “We didn’t choose any of this.” Bastien’s breath quickened.

  Rist stood and strode to the bed. “And the only reason I’m choosing you is because it’s better than being on the street. The second the food is gone, so am I—”

  Bastien leapt and sent his fist into Rist’s jaw.

  Rist stumbled back. Bastien cried, “Ow!” and cradled his hand, then hissed as the action pulled on the burns on his arm.

  “Bastien!” Sandis cried, easing him back onto the mattress. “You’re going to tear something!” She took his left hand and checked its bandages, waiting for something to ooze through them.

  “I-I’m fine.” Bastien winced, opening his right hand and prodding his thumb. “Something p-popped.”

  Rist rubbed his jaw. “God, you punch like Kaili.”

  The unexpected comment tempered Sandis’s worry. “Kaili hit you?”

  Rist dropped his hand. “More than once. Curl your thumb on the outside of your fingers next time, idiot.”

  Bastien smirked. “Good thing I didn’t try that this m-morning.”

  Confused, Sandis asked, “Why?”

  “Because then this would be . . . break-fist.”

  Sandis gaped.

  Rist groaned.

  A laugh so raw it hurt clawed up Sandis’s throat. She gritted her teeth against it, knowing that if she let herself laugh, she’d start bawling and never stop. And so, hand pressed to her stomach, she left to fetch the doctor.

  He remembers, too, Ireth said, holding Rone’s gaze. I do not think he ever forgot.

  “Kolosos,” Rone said carefully. “Kaj.”

  Ireth gave a mew of confirmation. He has waited for someone like Kazen. Just as I have waited for someone like Sandis. Someone who can free us.

  “This is it.” Rone shifted onto his knees. “This is what you wanted to tell her. The amarinth. The Noscon records. The dreams. You wanted her to know who you were so she could free you.”

  Another nod. I have never been able to communicate with other humans. Not even when they give me their bodies as vessels. Not until her.

  Rone considered this a long moment. “Could . . . I tell her? I can go a day without water. If I could reach her, couldn’t I tell her?”

  Even if you could use words, as I cannot, it is too late now.

  “Why?”

  The ground rumbled beneath them.

  Because Kolosos has been unleashed, Ireth said matter-of-factly. He will either destroy or be destroyed, and that will end everything. Ireth’s ears flicked as he lifted his head. Even now, he prepares to descend. We should move.

  “But Kazen is dead.” Rone found his feet again. “We watched him die.”

  Ireth shook his head, sending sparks from his mane into the air. Kaj was a master sorcerer. It was he who made the first amarinth. He who bound us here in his leap for immortality, not realizing it would destroy our bodies and lock us in this eternal prison. Ireth began to walk, and Rone followed him. He has tied himself to the amarinth you once called your own, and the boy who wields it. He will return to the mortal realm and try to take back what he lost.

  Shivers coursed down Rone’s arms. “Take back the physical world. Take back his ability to live, as we do.”

  Yes, Ireth agreed. And in doing so, he will destroy us all.

  Chapter 18

  He cracked open eyelids rough as scratched glass. He shouldn’t be alive. He didn’t want to be alive. But when he wasn’t a monster, he was watched, chained. Every moment, every breath guarded.

  It was dark. Always dark. No light, no dreams. He tried to move leaden arms and barely managed to rake his hand across the ground. Sand? Where was he?

  Blinking hurt. There were no tears left to wet his eyes, so he closed them. There was nothing left to see, besides. His stomach rolled, despite it feeling like stiff leather. Where was the water? The soup?

  And then he listened. Took in the silence of the surrounding darkness. Held his breath to complete it. No voices, no footsteps. The man and the other vessel were . . . gone? But how?

  He tried to push himself up and fell teeth-first into the grit. Tried again and got an elbow beneath him. Something small crawled over the back of his naked thigh. Every muscle in his body was sore. Even the hardest day on the farm hadn’t left him feeling this pained, this spent, this empty.

  If he wanted to die, now was the time to do it. He certainly couldn’t run.

  A dry cough escaped his throat, ripping up his neck like embers. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he reached a hand out again. Sand, sand, more sand. He opened his eyes, but there were no candles, not even starlight. Was he underground again?

  A groan escaped him as he dragged a knee beneath him, and he gasped as the muscles stretched. Don’t pass out. Don’t pass out. This might be his only chance to defy his captor. He just needed something sharp. A knife, a shard of glass, even a long nail would do. Anything to stop the summoning. Anything to stop it.

  He pushed himself forward and fell again. Swiped out one hand to nothing, swiped out the other—there. He touched something cool and metallic. He grabbed it, pulled it close . . . Wait, was this—?

  The center of the device glowed in his fingertips, burning his eyes. Illuminating the charred underground cavity around him. But something was wrong. It didn’t glow white this time, but red.

  And then he felt it—the heat, the pressure building
in his veins and his skull.

  “No . . . please,” he begged.

  Anon screamed.

  Chapter 19

  Bits of dust fell from the ceiling. It was dark anyway, so Elfri kept her eyes shut and listened. Strained to hear beyond the shaking earth and the groaning of her underground hideaway, currently stuffed with more civilians than mobsmen. Some of the folk had nowhere else to go. Most were too afraid to try. It wasn’t like the government would do anything for them. Even in crisis, they just wanted their factories run. The people had rebelled, and no wonder, but Elfri had convinced many of them to put down their clubs and metal bars and join her men. They needed order, just not the government’s.

  Someone whispered to her left, and Elfri held up a hand, silencing them. The monster had never come this close to the boardinghouse before, but . . . yes, the footsteps were finally moving away. South. Toward the Innerchord. But that place had already been demolished, hadn’t it?

  She had to see for herself.

  “Stay put,” she ordered, her voice carrying in the stiff silence of the room. “Snuffs, Rufus, with me.”

  The mobsmen fell in line behind her, and the crowd parted to allow them into the maze that led back to ground level. The earth still trembled rhythmically, but it softened with each beat.

  “Sherig,” Rufus said. She didn’t think a single man here remembered her real name. They’d used the nickname even before her husband, Grim Rig, died. She didn’t mind. “Let me go first.”

  “Take your chivalry and shove it between your legs, Rufus,” Elfri snapped, and she pushed her way to the concrete stairs.

  The night sky seemed so bright compared to that dark basement, even with the extinguished lamps hanging outside the buildings of what used to be a busy street. She could even see a few stars; the drastic decline of working factories had cleared some of the haze that perpetually loomed over the city like an umbrella. But stars didn’t matter.

  She could see the monster’s shadow, even from here. It took shape against strips of clouds highlighted by the numen’s natural glow. The curve of its wings and the top of its head. It wasn’t knocking buildings down this time, wasn’t roaring or throwing a fit. Pat had said Kazen had been killed. Then why was the monster the grafters called Kolosos still here?

  Elfri slipped into the boardinghouse, where yet more terrified citizens took up space, many pressed to windows to watch the numen trudge across the city. Elfri took to the stairs, her men close behind her. She climbed until her thighs ached, and opened the door to the roof with a smack of her large fist. This high up, she could see the monster to his shoulder blades, moving with a strange calmness toward the Innerchord.

  Snuffs scoffed. “There’re still lights on the wall. Even now, they won’t let anyone escape.”

  Soldiers had been running through the city, demanding men join the army. If so much as a child slipped past the four-story wall, he’d be labeled and charged as a deserter.

  They sickened her. All of them. She was recruiting her own men, preparing the Riggers for whatever the future held. But none of them would wear the blue uniform.

  Elfri squinted. What are you doing?

  She had to get closer.

  “Get the horses,” she ordered.

  “The army will see—” Rufus began to object, but one sharp look from Elfri silenced him. He nodded and hurried back down the stairs.

  Gold.

  That’s what the enormous fire bull had collected. She recognized the precious metal that had been stripped from the remnants of the cathedral, Degrata, and Lily Tower scattered among other bits and chunks piled in the open space in front of the demolished Innerchord. Elfri watched from atop the library. She wasn’t alone; a smattering of other brave souls had climbed to watch Kazen’s rogue beast. Elfri thought she saw a few soldiers below, but it was too dark to be sure. Maybe they’d finally figured out it was futile to stand around shooting cannonballs at a walking volcano.

  Kolosos bent and extended a massive hand, pressing it into the pile of gold. It hissed and squealed loud enough that, even from this distance, Elfri needed to cover her ears.

  A man on the far corner of the roof gasped. He had a telescope held to his eye.

  Elfri made her way to him, grateful for her size in a way she never had been as a girl. She tapped him firmly on the shoulder. “Give that to me.”

  He eyed her. “But—”

  Elfri snatched the telescope and shoved him aside, where her ever-faithful Riggers caught him.

  Pressing her eye to the telescope, Elfri centered it on the monster as soon as it straightened. Move, you blundering—

  And it did, revealing its creation. Was that a . . . plate? A platform of gold? But why—

  Then the screaming started.

  Elfri nearly dropped the telescope, and despite herself, sweat pooled in her palms and under her arms. She set her jaw and stiffened her shoulders—she hadn’t shown fear once during all of this, and she would not relent to it now. Everything would fall apart the moment she showed fear. Her men, her efforts to keep the civilians alive, her sanity.

  But the monster didn’t seem to notice them on the roof. Its focus was elsewhere. Moving swiftly for its size, it whipped out its fiery arms and grabbed someone in its now-blackened claws. The person screamed and screamed, but the monster didn’t crush or burn him, merely dropped him onto the plate. And waited.

  Elfri held her breath. By the time she needed to gasp for air, the man on the plate simply walked off it. No screams, no hesitation. He didn’t even run.

  What on earth? She passed the telescope to Snuffs and squinted.

  The monster lashed out at someone new, and another volley of screams filled the air. The soldiers did nothing. The scarlets did nothing.

  And it was about time somebody did.

  Sandis glared at the uniformed men guarding Triumvir Var’s back door. Two of them, with Helderschmidt rifles slung at their sides and short swords at their hips. One ignored her. The other glared right back.

  They were everywhere, at every door and in the yard. Now that Kolosos had returned, the powers that be were keeping a close eye on all the vessels.

  From what Sandis could see from her distant vantage point, he was not recklessly destroying the city as Kazen had done.

  The thundering of boots near the front of the house drew Sandis’s attention from the men blocking her exit. “It’s gone! Kolosos is gone!”

  Turning so quickly it hurt her ankle, Sandis ran toward the front of the house, to the kitchen, where all three triumvirs paced across expensive tiles. A map of the circular city lay open on the dining table, with different colored pins and weights strewn across it. General Istrude and Chief Esgar had left to watch the monster with their men. Oz was on the roof with his vessels, guarded by more soldiers. High Priest Dall, along with Cleric Liddell and Priestess Marisa, had been given permission to hold vigil for the local citizens, to “keep up their morale,” as Triumvir Holwig put it. But the Angelic hovered over the corner of the table, staring at the map, the lines of his face deeper than Sandis had ever seen them.

  She wondered if he worried for his son at all.

  Triumvir Var’s narrow gaze focused on the blue-clad messenger. “Where? Is it being followed?”

  The soldier saluted. “The monster headed south, sir. Leapt the wall and crumbled part of it, but it stands. General Istrude himself is in pursuit with his company.”

  Sandis’s heart thrashed in her chest. Anon. She wanted them to find him. And yet fear dug its claws into her.

  Would they kill him if they found him, even after reclaiming the amarinth?

  He hadn’t chosen this. None of them had. But life was often cruel and unfair—his lack of culpability might not save him.

  She wished for the millionth time Rone were here. He’d know what to do.

  Pushing her sentiments away, Sandis strained to focus on the conversation between the soldiers and the triumvirs.

  “Who is controlling him?�
�� Triumvir Var asked.

  “None of the scouts found a summoner close to the numen.” The soldier went on to describe a massive gold disc in the Innerchord, formed by Kolosos himself.

  “It placed civilians on it, sir. It squelched their will to fight completely. We’ve apprehended several of them to be questioned.”

  “Where?” asked Triumvir Peterus.

  “Gerech, sir. They . . . They won’t communicate with us. Not the way they should. I don’t know much; I was sent to inform you of Kolosos’s vanishing. They . . . They don’t see us. They fight against us, muttering about gold.”

  Gold. Sandis’s brands itched. She scratched them. Fought the memory of Kaili laid out on that cursed table, her script ripped from her back. Of Alys, hers bottled and sold.

  Why gold?

  She thought she heard the whirring of the amarinth and turned to look, but of course there was nothing there.

  Triumvir Var growled. “I want a full report by dawn, do you understand me? I want identification of all these people and any who weren’t apprehended. I want Kolosos’s vessel found!”

  The soldier saluted and held the stance until Triumvir Var dismissed him.

  Once he’d left, Triumvir Peterus said, “We should empty Gerech. Fill our ranks.”

  Triumvir Var clutched the countertop. “With half-starved criminals?”

  “They may not all be half-starved.”

  The counter, which came from Jachim, startled Sandis. She’d forgotten he was there.

  “The numen is altering Kazen’s tactics,” the scholar said, oblivious to the stress thickening the air in the room. “How interesting.”

  Triumvir Var grumbled and rubbed his forehead. “You find interest in stupid things, Franz.”

  “No.”

  They all turned toward the Angelic, who remained hovering over the map laid out on the table. The holy man didn’t meet their eyes. “No, it is interesting. Because it means Kolosos is using strategy. It has a plan.”