by Scott Hale
Alexander Blodworth would beg to differ, Audra thought.
“If you believe they are truly innocent and worth saving, and value your relationship with them more so than with the Disciples, then they are yours to take. You will have to find your own way out of the city.”
Audra could practically hear Joy’s evil smile stretching across her face, because Edgar’s option was nothing more than a death sentence. Felix, Justine… everyone would be killed before they left the courtyard.
“But if you wish to sit at our table and share your ideas and beliefs with us on how we can work together and make this world a better place, then I need every single cabalist and Compeller. They will be arrested and imprisoned, and they will rot in their cells until the day of their execution.”
Felix stuttered out syllables to words he knew better than to form. He looked to his left and right, behind him, at Sloane and Hex, then finally at Justine.
To him, she said, “You are god’s voice. What sayeth god?”
Audra couldn’t believe it. Her hands became fists. She wanted nothing more than to bludgeon the bitch into the ground. Felix was what? Twelve? Thirteen? This was her doing. This was her game. And she was going to make him give these people up? Regardless of what they’d done, Audra could tell this decision was destroying him. It was destroying him because… Oh no, there were cabalists he cared about weren’t there? Of course, there were. Whether on purpose or accident, they’d wormed their way into his heart, and he’d been giving them the benefit of the doubt ever since.
Felix started to tremble. His eyes retreated into his skull as he tried not to cry. He kept tugging on the fabric of his robes, where his thighs were; where Audra knew he cut himself to feel better. Again, he glanced back at Narcissus, then to Edgar, who gave him nothing but this still-standing, one-sided offer.
Justine leaned into Felix’s ear and said, “Remember why we are here.”
Felix stared at her, and to her, not Edgar, he said, “Okay.”
It happened immediately, because it’d already happened. Led into the courtyard, bound by the wrists with rope, with swords at their backs, was a handful of men and women. Some were wearing robes—Compellers—while others were wearing plainclothes—cabalists. It wasn’t until the soldiers forced the traitors apart that Felix almost lost it.
There was a giant man who was nothing more than a walking piece of muscle. It took six guards to move him, and his hands were so tightly bound, they were turning purple. He couldn’t stop staring at Hex.
There was another man that came after him. He was much smaller, and prettier. The bottom of his pants were covered in mud and his arms scuffed up, like he’d tried to run away. He wasn’t staring at anyone.
And then there was a little girl, in a green dress with a red collar. She looked pained, and kept trying to drive the guards moving her into the shadows, as if to escape the sun. Felix stared at no one else but her.
The guards moved the cabalists past Felix and Justine.
The giant man said nothing.
The pretty man, still staring at the ground, only whispered, “You know I wouldn’t do that. You know I wouldn’t.”
But the little girl was more animated. She tried to hurl herself at Felix. She spat and bit the air and screamed, “You idiot! All you had to do was leave last night! What did you expect? What did you fucking expect?”
With these three joining Hex and Sloane on the steps, Edgar nodded at the guards, Isla, and Lotus, and with a wave, sent them and the prisoners away.
Then, he turned to face Felix and Justine and said, “Our home is now yours.”
Audra looked at Felix and tried her best to tell him without words how sorry she was, but she couldn’t do it. She’d never seen someone so sad before; except, perhaps, for the shadows; those sinners who’d rejected God and now suffered an eternity of agony for it; those cruel and cold shapes cast out for their convictions; driven now only by the hope that one day, they’d have a chance to kill it all.
The Sinner and the Shadows. The Speaker and the Bespoken.
CHAPTER XLI
If Vrana lied to herself long enough, she could make Aeson appear in anything. From shapes in the sand to rocks rising against chitinous sky, she saw him. Whole and healthy. Bright and beaming. If she held out her hand, he took it. If she puckered her lips, he kissed them. If she thrust her body, his met hers halfway. His fingers were patient. Hers were not. She guided them across her skin, to the places that’d forgotten what it meant to be touched. In these lies, there were no feathers or wings, talons or beaks. Only the tenderness of rebirth, and the muscle memory from a life once lived.
“You’re going to have to wake up soon,” Aeson told her, breathing in the air she exhaled.
Vrana shook her head. Her nose brushed against his. It was nice to be able to do that again without scrambling his skull.
“You’re getting better. I can feel it.”
She laughed, threw her arms over his shoulders, pulling his head against her breasts. “Nursed back to health by a maggot. Just when you’ve think you’ve done it all.”
Aeson kissed her chest. She felt it in her heart.
“This is just the fever breaking, isn’t it?”
“Yep.” He ran circles with his thumb around her belly button. “Now, for the hard part.”
She girded herself against him. “Is that so?”
“Not… that.” He laughed. “Killing God.”
“I think that’ll be easier than anything else,” she said, twisting her legs around his.
“How so?”
“I mean, what can It really do to me?”
Aeson hummed, said, “Sad, but true.”
“Stay with me a little longer.”
His hands found the small of her back. “Not going anywhere, anyway.”
She smiled, kissed him. “Thanks. Even if you’re just the fragment of the Blue Worm fucking with me… Thanks.”
“No problem,” Aeson said.
Vrana opened her eyes. It wasn’t the first time she’d done it, but it was the first time it’d mattered. She’d caught glimpses of what the Maggot had done to her. Awake, and slightly more aware than a shitfaced amoeba, she sized up her surroundings and put the pieces together.
The Maggot had buried her. It’d made a grave, used its secretions to fortify the sands, and lowered her in. It’d taken away the mumiya wraps. She remembered cussing the bloated insect out for that, because it had no right putting its grubby… whatever… all over Sekhet’s and Sopdu’s bindings. Afterwards, the Maggot shoved a long reed down her beak and into her throat. She remembered trying to spit it out, and the shape of the Skeleton telling her to calm down. And she did, immediately. Not because she was afraid of him, but because if anyone knew Death better than Her daughters, it was the Skeleton; and if he was telling her not to worry about being buried six feet under in the Ossuary by a maggot the size of a carriage, then fine, okay, she’d allow it, because she trusted him, and she didn’t even know it.
Once the reed had been jammed into her stomach, the Maggot covered her in sand, but not enough to crush her, and lay across the grave, darkening it. Sensory deprivation set in, as if a switch had been flipped to off inside her. The sands became an extension of her skin; the sounds of the desert, her thoughts. In the dark of the grave, the Abyss found her, because she was dying. She’d been running on fumes—dehydrated and desiccated; decimated—but despite its pull, it couldn’t have her. The Ossuary was God’s bone garden, and Death no more than a weed here.
Also, the reed wasn’t simply to help Vrana breathe but to give her a steady drip of Thanatos. The liquid that could kill with a single drop. Knowing that Thanatos was found in the Maggot’s droppings, it’d made her wonder, as she lay there, half-conscious, just where the other end of the reed she was sucking on had been shoved into. Nevertheless, she took her medicine, washing it down with the occasional squirt of sanies, and let the liquid slowly kill her back to life.
Vrana blink
ed. Her senses were coming back to her. The reed, still down her throat, was starting to make her gag. Her mother had once told her that she had a theory that Thanatos could be used medicinally, if handled correctly; that it would act as a shock to the system to heal what it otherwise could not. Maybe the sanies had been the missing ingredient. Or maybe just sucking it straight from the intestines of the Maggot had done the trick. She couldn’t say, but she did feel a hell of a lot better.
Hallucinating moments with Aeson had helped, too. It wasn’t all just the Maggot juice. Most of the time, they didn’t say much to each other. They just lay there beside one another, the way they used to back in Caldera, touching their hands or their shoulders or their legs slightly against one another’s. That’d been before they decided to make their feelings official. It’d been easier then, too. There’d been no expectations, because there didn’t need to be. It was only when Vrana had left for Geharra to discover with Deimos, Lucan, and Serra what’d happened there that they decided to be in a relationship. She wished she hadn’t. It was pretentious, but it put a label on something that couldn’t and shouldn’t have been labeled. Some things were simply better felt than said.
The Maggot must’ve sensed her stirring in the grave. Light flooded the plot as it moved aside. Vrana clawed the sides of the hole that’d crusted over, shook off the sand that’d settled on her. She felt as if she were waking from centuries of sleep, but given the pressing nature of their mission, she doubted her friends had let her get anything but forty winks.
Doubling-over, Vrana’s birdlike nature kicked in and she regurgitated the reed out of her stomach. A black creamy bile built up on her beak from the leftover Thanatos. She wiped it away. Stronger, but starving, she kicked off the grave-bed, gave her wings a mighty flap, and rejoined the others in the light.
She got a few feet in the air before the heat grounded her. She landed, braced herself against the nearest boulder.
The Skeleton was sitting on his own rock. Neksha was staring into the distance at a sandstorm ravaging the rim of this world.
“Fuck, it’s still too hot,” she said, grabbing a canteen out of the pile of supplies and guzzling the sanies. “Put me back under.” She wiped her beak, drank some more, checked her surroundings: “Where’s Elizabeth?”
The Maggot dipped its rotted bulb of a head towards a pile of sand.
Vrana dropped the canteen. Her voice cracked. “No, no. What happened—”
“Don’t get your feathers in a bunch,” the Skeleton said, picking at his leg bones. “She’s just resting like you were.”
“How long was I under?”
“Half a day,” the Maggot said, in that eerie, accented female voice. The upside-down crucifix on its head gaped when it spoke.
Her stomach growled. “That’s it?”
“Time runs differently in the Ossuary,” it said. “Sometimes it runs much more slowly than on the mainland, sometimes very fast. Sometimes…” the Maggot moved to a dead length of vermillion vein uncovered in the sands, “… I can hear news in the network. It’s early spring in your mainland. There’s a Bloodless in Cathedra that, minutes ago, was about to be freed.”
Vrana’s eyes widened. “A Bloodless? A fucking Bloodless?”
“World’s gone to shit,” the Skeleton said. “Show of hands: Who’s not surprised?”
Elizabeth’s hand shot out of the pile of sand under which she’d been buried.
Vrana smiled, but said to Neksha, “I’m so sorry.”
The mumiya kept his attention on the sandstorm. “I would say it was my decision, but now that I have had some time to think, I am not sure that it was. The voice inside me drove my people to extinction.”
Elizabeth rose like the dead she’d almost joined. The wind kicked up and dusted her off. She didn’t have a reed rammed down her throat. It seemed she’d weathered the journey better than Vrana had.
Already drenched in sweat, Vrana searched their gear for the mumiya wrappings. She found Sekhet’s and Sopdu’s, and then carried the rest to Elizabeth.
“Thanks,” she said, voice hoarse, eyes bloodshot. She glanced at the Maggot, eyes slits under the sunless sky. “What the hell did you do to me?”
The Maggot’s girth inched along the sands. “Gave you a second chance.”
Vrana and Elizabeth wrapped themselves up at the same time.
“Maggie here says we’re not too far from the Deep,” the Skeleton said. “Says you’d see it from here, if you could, but since it’s another plane and all, got to be right up on it.”
“Yeah?” Elizabeth asked, her bared tattoos painfully vibrant from sunburn.
“The viracocha surround the Deep with their ‘village.’ We will have to fight our way through,” the Maggot said.
“Why haven’t they killed you yet?” Vrana said, nearly dressed.
“Anything that touches my body is disintegrated,” the Maggot said, its crucifix spreading like a charred womb. “It took them a few thousand of their own to realize I’m not worth the trouble. I, alone, am no threat to God.”
Elizabeth finished her headwraps, leaving a space for her eyes. “So, you’re saying when we’re done doing deicide, we shouldn’t go patting you on the back?”
The Maggot shuddered out a viscous secretion.
“What is Mr. Haemo?” Neksha finally turned away from the sandstorm. “Why do I hear his voice?”
The Skeleton shrugged his shoulder. “Just a guess that’s who it is. Big mosquito. Been around for who knows how long. Powerful son of a bitch. These aren’t my stomping grounds, though, so I defer to Maggie.”
The Maggot slung its girth towards Neksha. “I haven’t seen Mr. Haemo in a very long time. Occasionally, portals to Exuviae will open for no more than a few seconds. He would be in the portals, watching the Ossuary. If you hear his voice, it’s possible he’s the one responsible for placing the mumiya here.”
“That bloodsucking son of a bitch created the mumiya?” Elizabeth cried.
The Skeleton shook his skull. “Doubt it. Would’ve seen him try it by now. But if he did somehow put your people here, what’s the end game?”
“Kill God,” Vrana said.
Elizabeth scratched her head, added, “Lure you here, Atticus. Get you to kill the heart. He got all bent out of shape when you didn’t leave it in the Membrane when you saved Clem and Will.”
“Or he wants it for himself,” Neksha said. His eyes zeroed in on the black mass growing along the Skeleton’s ribcage. “But he’d have to know the heart would come to this place one day.”
Vrana asked the Skeleton, “Can Mr. Haemo see into the future?”
“Don’t know.” He sounded concerned. He drew his cloak shut. “Don’t know about that.”
Neksha joined the others. “I do not understand why the voice drove us into the desert, or why this Mr. Haemo would want his servants to die.”
Thoughts creased along Vrana’s brow. She opened her beak to speak, stopped herself.
The Maggot noticed, said, “What is it?”
“The viracocha look… just like mumiya. Only difference is they have bodies beneath their bindings. You sure your brothers and sisters go to the Abyss when they die here?”
Neksha, offended, said, “You can feel the cold of the Abyss in the wraps you wear!”
“What came first? The mumiya or the viracocha?” Elizabeth asked.
“I don’t know,” the Maggot said. “Almost nothing is known about them. But the viracocha have aligned themselves with God.”
“And the mumiya inadvertently with Haemo,” the Skeleton said. “Maybe there’s no difference. God creates imitations. Maybe you and yours, Neksha, been fighting yourselves this whole time, except when you fall, you fall for good, and when they fall, It just makes more. Your species isn’t extinct. Just bastardized. Cheap knock-offs.”
Neksha shivered.
“Question is: What’s Haemo’s stake in this? I think there isn’t one.” The Skeleton nodded at himself. “I think son of a
bitch’s been around a long time and has his claws stirring shit up ever since. The mumiya here in the Ossuary might be one plan of many contingency plans he’s forgotten about or gotten bored with.”
“Damn, Boner,” Elizabeth whispered. “Full of revelations today.”
“All the same, he shows his face, and I’ll swat him straight into oblivion. Let you get a swing in, Neksha, if you want.”
Neksha let out a quiet laugh. “I would like that.”
The sandstorm died down. Clouds crept across the sky. For the first time since they’d entered the Ossuary, there was a moment of shade. It couldn’t have dropped the temperature more than a few degrees, but to Vrana, it might as well have been winter. She stretched her wings, waited for the moment to be taken away from her.
And then it was.
The Skeleton started packing up their belongings and Red Death weapons. Neksha joined in.
Elizabeth, however, wasn’t finished with the questioning. To the Maggot: “Why’re you helping us? I don’t do business with anyone unless I know who they are and what they want.”
“You came a long way, regardless,” the Maggot answered.
Elizabeth stood her ground, daggers in her eyes.
“We need to make the Deep by nightfall,” the Maggot said, “but I will tell you what you want to know along the way.”
The deeper they went into the Ossuary, the Deeper it became. Sand gave way to scales. Reason gave way to gravity. Vast continental islands disgorged from some undying land drifted along the firmament, hundreds of miles of vermillion veins dangling from their bedrock, like cut bridges. Great mountains of shadow bulged on their peripheries, warped not by surroundings but perception. Whereas there’d been no sun during the Ossuary’s day, and twelve moons at night, in the fringes between the desert and the Deep, a single celestial body reigned supreme. Purple bordering on black, the intricate, ovular shape accented the sky like a brooch, and from it, creases ran outwards along the heavens, like bunched up fabric or the sides of a carnival tent. This sun, or moon, didn’t emit light or darkness, but a diluted mixture of the two—a smothering gloom that broke all the gears of their biological clocks. Of course, there was a temperature, or that was what they kept telling themselves was a temperature. It wasn’t hot or cold, but like the light, a polluted combination that made them sweat and shiver in equal measures, and at times, feel as if their innards were boiling, or turning to ice.