by Scott Hale
Audra gasped, but didn’t stop him from his work. “What the hell was it doing there?”
“I heard the Anointed One say that they were planning on bringing it here, but something went wrong. He believes it is also possible the Marrow Cabal turned on the Holy Order and let it loose on purpose.”
“Valac is telling you all this?”
“Yes. I think he believes he can get to you if he is nice to me.” Deimos squeezed her head through the towel, dabbed a few wet spots on her hair, and then stopped. “He believes we are in a relationship.”
Audra snorted. She turned around and, with Deimos, started to laugh. “What a little dumbass.”
“Yes,” Deimos said, smiling. “Yes, he is.”
When Audra and Deimos stepped out of the bathroom, they found Edgar waiting in her room, Valac at his side. Edgar was already turned around, to avoid seeing his sister naked, but Valac was eager. He eyed her hungrily, not with lust but interest. If she had to guess, the vermillion imitation had never see a woman’s body before. She let him get his fill of her form, though she still wasn’t happy with how fragile she looked, and wondered, as she slipped into a black and gold-flecked sleeveless dress that stopped just short of the floor, now that Valac knew what woman looked like, what would he do with that information? He seemed so desperate to be human. Would he ask God for a companion? In trying to be a so-called “man,” had he become like so many men who saw women as accessories to their completion?
“What is it, brother?” she asked, going to her vanity in search of a comb.
He turned around. “We have guests.”
She stopped what she was doing. Her heart picked up its pace. Felix? You’re here already?
But that couldn’t be right. Edgar wasn’t happy or triumphant as he might’ve been had he had the Holy Child and Mother Abbess trapped within his city. No, Edgar’s face was pallid; he was sweating; and somewhere inside his darkened eyes, plotting.
Saying no more, Edgar and Valac left the room. Audra and Deimos exchanged glances, and he gestured to let her know he was unarmed.
Going into the hall outside her room, Audra was immediately struck by how badly it smelled. The hall stank like a stagnant lake on a hot summer day; that sharp, rotted odor of fish bones and gnat-infested waters. Edgar and Valac stopped a few feet ahead of them, where the hall let out to an area filled with pillars and furniture. Then, sighing, he put his hands together and shouted, “Enter!” At the hall’s farthest end near the bend, there was a rustling; the sticky sound of wet feet padding on tiling. Metal, too—Audra heard metal, and the distinct swish and lumbering of Ghostgrave’s guards. They had visitors, but it seemed as if they were treating them more as prisoners.
Visitors, prisoners, whatever they were or might soon be, they rounded the corner. With an armed escort at their backs, Isla Taggart and the woman beside her walked down the hall, completely soaked to the bone. The high-and-mighty social justice sycophant that Audra remembered of Isla from her time back in Pyra was gone. Like Edgar, she appeared as if she’d come down with something, like a terminal case of remorse.
But who was this woman? This woman with her white satin dress and her long, oddly flowing hair, as if the fingers of an electrical current were constantly running through it. When she walked, she appeared to glide instead, and unlike Isla, she couldn’t have looked healthier. She had a glow about her, and the way she sized up the hall, it was almost as if she were remembering it from a time before this possible homecoming.
Edgar held up his hand. The guard stopped, but Isla and the woman kept coming. When they were no more than a few feet away, Edgar held up his hand for them to stop as well. Isla did so immediately, but the woman took her time.
“Nephew,” the woman said to Edgar.
Valac rubbed his belly, nervously.
“This is Joy, or Crestfallen, or the Maiden of Joy,” Edgar said.
Joy curtseyed, and as she did so, she leaned forward more than necessary than to give Deimos a deeper look into her cleavage.
“I believe you have already met Isla Taggart,” he said.
Audra remembered Isla very well. Audra remembered how she had mistakenly reached out to Isla with her shadows, thinking that she might help her escape from Pyra. She remembered how Isla had attempted to use Audra’s imprisonment as a bargaining chip for her own personal gain, and she would’ve been content to let Audra rot down there forever until she agreed to Isla’s terms. Oh yes, she remembered Isla well. How could she forget when she came to Rime with all those Winnowers and slaughtered the Night Terrors? And then, to add insult to injury, she’d planted the seeds of heaven, which completely destroyed the village and tainted the land.
“I’m still of the royal family,” Audra said.
“Yes,” Edgar said.
“It wasn’t a question.”
Audra side-eyed Deimos, and Deimos, getting the hint, went around Isla. Before she could react, Deimos quickly grabbed her by both arms and held them behind her back.
Thinking that Joy might intervene, Audra was about to tell her to back off. But Joy was ahead of her. She’d already moved aside, closer to Edgar. She was grinning, looking forward to what was to come.
“G-Get off me,” Isla said, trying to wriggle free.
Deimos said to her, “Do you remember the Bat when you first came to Rime? The one you were going to trade for?”
Isla stopped fighting. She gave herself to his restraint and cringed.
“Isla Taggart had every opportunity to save me, but she didn’t.”
Audra stepped up to her. With all the strength she had and all the strength the shadows leant her, she smashed her fist into Isla’s face.
Blood exploded from Isla’s popped lip. Her nose, broken, jutted to the right. A single tooth—too small to have anything but to have been her milk tooth—fell out of her mouth. Brow wrinkled, body shaking, and still Isla didn’t fight back.
Audra took Isla from Deimos and wheeled her around.
“You killed my people, and you almost killed us,” he said.
Deimos came in hard and buried his fist in Isla’s gut. She gasped, sprayed blood all over his face. He wiped it off with his Corrupted arm.
Audra released Isla.
She dropped to the ground like a sack full of rocks and cradled herself, gasping for air and hacking up blood in equal measures.
Audra signaled for Deimos to follow, and to the others said, “When you have something worthwhile to show me, brother, you know where to find me,” and with that, and Deimos, went into her room and shut the door on them all.
CHAPTER XXXIII
Deimos had told Vrana once to know her limits.
She knew them now.
After all the torture and murder the witches had put her through, this was worse.
She hurt so badly she could barely breathe. Lodged within, the egg of agony Pain had put there so long ago finally started to crack. She’d suffered enough. The incubation had finished. Madness was about to be born.
Prostrate in the shallows, knees tucked under her, Vrana dug in the sand while the Sanies lapped at her feet. The restorative waters kept her body temperature from spiking into a fever. She drove her beak into the ground, ate the ground bones that comprised the Ossuary. She stuffed herself with the dead, as if that’d somehow help her pass this terrible feeling inside her. Whatever she did, she dare not look up. In this desert night, beneath the twelve-moon sky, nothing was left to interpretation.
It’s my fault. She retched, vomited. Sand poured out of her mouth, like the hourglass from her dreams. And like the hourglass, she was shattered, split in two; quickly losing herself to consuming darkness, the byproduct of unbalance. She made fists and held herself. Her mind flirted with betrayal, and she imagined Aeson’s arms, not hers, wrapped around her. Screaming, she bashed her head into the ground, over and over, until, at last, they were her arms again.
Aeson, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Bone clung to Vrana’s eyes, from the tears she
wept. She didn’t blink the sand away; whether she did or didn’t, she’d still see death all the same. It was all she ever saw, ever since she was too young to know it had a name. Everything she’d ever done that’d ever been worthwhile had always ended in finality. Decapitating the Cruel Mother, murdering Samuel Turov, fighting the Horror of the Lake; maiming the bandits at Ødegaard’s hospital, being the lynchpin in Pain’s plan to attack Caldera; butchering the missionaries in the west; attacking the mob outside Nora, and watching them fall to the Ashen Man’s flies; inadvertently summoning the Red Worm; putting the Horror of the Field out of its misery; putting the men near Keldon’s Hill out of R’lyeh’s misery; going to Lacuna, and letting Mara die on their behalf… Even her birth had brought her father to madness, and ultimately, the killing end of Bjørn’s ax.
But that wasn’t all. That didn’t begin to cover it. The terrible deeds she’d done on behalf of the witches, they were here now. She’d buried them in unmarked graves all across her mind, where all the dead things go to die, but Aeson’s death had dug them up and put them on display.
In servitude to Pain and Joy, Vrana had killed fifty-three men, forty-one women, and ninety-nine children. With her beak, she’d impaled them; with her claws, she’d raked them. She’d split bellies open and choked the dying with their own intestines. More times than she could count, she’d ripped children from their beds, flown them high into the sky, and flung them at the ground, because Pain had liked the sound their little bodies made when they exploded. To Joy went the infants, and even now, she could hear their crying as the witch descended upon them, pinching their cheeks until there was nothing left but bone. Those that Vrana didn’t kill, she might as well have: They were dead the moment they’d been dragged off in a daze into the flesh fiend’s den, to be fucked and flayed into the horrible instruments by which the Choir played the only tune they knew.
Not even after cannibalizing Pain did the killing stop. She’d since lost track of the Corrupted she’d eaten, too. And the whole point of coming to the Ossuary? Again, to kill something, but this time, to kill something so ridiculously beyond her that anyone with a single functioning brain cell would see it as a selfish act of suicide.
Am I here because Mom died? she asked herself, shivering at the notion. Did I come here so we… me and Aeson… could die?
Feathers fell from Vrana. Those she’d seen out the corners of her eyes, she grabbed and held onto beneath her. She was bare enough; she couldn’t bear to show any more. The Sanies reached her knees, and it was hard to say if the lake had a tide of its own, or if it was trying to comfort her. The green water congealed around her limbs, like melted emeralds. Neksha had told them that the first mumiya had found a creature lying beside the lake, and Aeson had said sanies meant blood and pus from a wound. Perhaps the creature had died, and from its wounds, the lake had formed. Maybe it was still down there, at the bottom, bleeding out. If so, that meant the very thing every person who passed through the Ossuary relied on to cross the desert into the Deep, to carry out their deicidal missions, was nothing more than a corpse of something greater that’d come before them.
That’s why we came here. She sniffled, let the hot spit that’d been building up in her mouth drool out into the sand. The Trauma never ended. And it was only ever going to if God was put on display and bled out. That’s the only way this world is only going to…
“Shut the fuck up,” she told herself. “Just shut the fuck up.”
Someone said something to her, but she couldn’t hear them. The mountain of excuses under which she was having this pity party had begun to crumble. She wasn’t lying here in the sands on this nightmare frontier because of what she’d done and had intended to do. She was lying here because, for all the blood she had on her hands, it was the blood of before and the agony of after that’d finally stopped her in her tracks and brought her to her knees.
The past, the present, and the future. Adelyn, R’lyeh, and Aeson. In one slow, fell swoop, each one had been taken from her in the cruelest ways only a god such as the Vermillion God could imagine.
It didn’t take much for Vrana to remember the smell of Kistvaen’s eruption, the heat of the lava; and the way her mother melted in the fires. She’d been a diamond of a woman, hardened by the life she’d lived, and yet, somehow, she’d managed to find softness through the love she had for others. She was a shining gem—stalwart, priceless, and irreplaceable—who’d, by the flames of hate and fear, been reduced to nothing. All that she’d done for Caldera, all that she’d done for the Night Terrors; all of those she’d healed, all of those she might’ve inspired—it was all gone. All that remained was what Vrana remembered, and it seemed too precious to keep it on display at all times. She’d tried to bury the memories, but she knew now that it didn’t matter where they were, because in the end, the worms would get to them all the same.
I miss you so much. I’m so sorry. I should’ve known. I tried to get to our house as fast as possible. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I should’ve grabbed you. I could’ve flown you out of there. I should’ve taken your hand, not that stupid bag. You were so good to me. You were the best mom anyone could ever want. I love you so much. You didn’t even bat an eye when you saw what I looked like. Vrana let out a small laugh. Probably wasn’t even surprised. I love you, Mommy, and I’m sorry. Wherever you are, if you are anywhere, tell Bjørn I’m glad he’s keeping you company. Again, she laughed; the hot and snotty kind that was more choking than laughing. I love you. I’m sorry. I love you.
R’lyeh—the name of a person that’d always been on the tip of her tongue—just as easily forgotten as she was to remember. How easy it’d been to assume she’d turned out alright, despite all the signs that said otherwise. It’d been that moment when Pain had forced her to take control of Hex to kill R’lyeh when Vrana gave up on the girl. It wasn’t Vrana’s love that’d saved R’lyeh, but merely seconds; those slivers of time we take for granted, in which Elizabeth had managed to knock Hex out before she cut the Octopus to bits. Like Adelyn, Vrana’s love hadn’t saved her. It’d doomed her.
I don’t know why I thought you’d be better off with an immortal skeleton. Vrana called to mind the memory of when she and R’lyeh had spent the night near the Elys, trading stories about this world and the Old. You got to go to the Dead City. That pretty much takes the cake when it comes to seeing the Old World. God, such a little shit. You thought you could be immune to everything? I swear, if you’d been with me… She choked up. I wish we had never met, yeah? Yeah. There I go, sounding like Elizabeth. After everything we found out about our people, it was good you were with the Marrow Cabal. I can tell they took good care of you. I’m sorry I had to do that to you at the Keep. I couldn’t put you through any more, not after everything you’d gone through. I hope you’re at peace now. I’m sorry, and I love you.
With past and present reconciled, all that remained was the future that couldn’t be. Aeson. Her best friend, her boyfriend. The shy, skinny wimp who used spy on her when they were little, and who’d always managed to outrun her no matter how hard she tried to catch him. The moody, brooding orphan who lurked beneath Caldera, trying to make sense of the world while doing his best to avoid it altogether. The unlikely hero, who’d crossed the continent and every line he’d ever set for himself to save the woman who, in the end, couldn’t save him.
Enough was enough. She’d been amongst the bones for far too long. Telling herself she was strong, that she could do this, that she had to do this—Vrana lifted her head from the ground, no longer content to leave it buried in the sand.
Remnants of Aeson were splattered before her. Dark and indistinct, they gathered shadows like flies from the twelve moons above. Vrana crawled towards them. Her stomach growled at the sight. She ignored it, caught fire from embarrassment. Inches from the pile of gore, she sat and leaned over it, and divined from his pieces the whole of herself.
I’m not a bad person, but I’m bad with people. This isn’t my fault, but I shouldn’t
have brought you here. To protect something, you have to make it unremarkable. I couldn’t do that to you, even if I wanted to. You were everything to me, and everything you did was remarkable. Even something as simple as… She wept, and her tears gave new life to his dried blood. Even something as simple as a look from you. Just a look. Or a touch. I knew you for so long, you were with me, even when you weren’t. The smell of you. The heat of you. I’m afraid of the me without you. I don’t know what that girl is like. I won’t bury you, though. I want you to haunt me and give me hell. Everything is going to get worse. Any of you will make it better.
Vrana steadied her breathing, until she was barely breathing at all. Her muscles ached from being tensed for so long. Coldness crept behind her eyes. Motes floated through her mind. Dried streaks of tears pinched the skin on her nose and cheek. She tasted salt in her mouth, and also, snot. She wept phantoms out of reflex, because even her reserves had run dry. Heavy handfuls of feathers fell from her back, forming a circle around her, like a tree that’d lost all its leaves.
There was nothing left to give nor shed. In the morning, it might be another matter, but for now, she was perfectly imperfect, contentedly empty.
“Vrana.”
The Skeleton stood in front of her, his hands outstretched; one was empty, the other held the Red Death ax.
She took his hand—
Millions like miners, like ants, eating their way through the Membrane.
—and once she was back on her feet, took the ax, too.
Elizabeth wandered over, a walking mess. Her face glistened in the moonlight with sweat and tears. She held out her arms, dropped them to her side; held out her arms, dropped them again. Getting up on Vrana, eyes shaking in their sockets, Elizabeth tried to mouth something to her, but even that, she couldn’t manage. Instead, she threw herself into Vrana, threw her arms around her, and held on tightly, making fists over her feathers.
“I’m. So. Sorry.” Elizabeth’s words traveled through Vrana’s flesh; she could feel them vibrating against her heart, and the sympathy in their syllables. “Tell us what to do.”