by J. C. Staudt
“Be silent.” Dominique extended her hands once more. The lightning blitzed from her fingertips with a violent shriek. It struck the door and lit the thing’s face in a ghastly glow.
Next Bastille knew, Gallica was gathering her up by the arms and dragging her toward the exit. Dominique came after, shutting the heavy hatch and engaging the seal. She whirled to face Bastille, pallid skin drawn in anger across her cheekbones. Her words, however, were gravely calm. “You are never to enter that room again. Do you understand me, Sister Bastille? Being the only priestess trained to perform the Enhancements will not save your life if you ever set foot beyond this door. I will end you myself, if he doesn’t do it first.”
“I only wanted to know him.”
Dominique sighed heavily. There was something tired in it, like the groan of an old tree before it falls. “You could’ve come to us for that. Maybe it was a mistake on our part to let you remain in the dark for so long. The basilica has been a frenetic place lately. If anyone knows that, it’s you, kind Sister. We should’ve made time.”
Gallica disagreed. “Ignorance is no excuse. Sister Bastille has been warned once already. She has defied me by returning here.”
“I would know the Order’s ways,” said Bastille. “The true ways, which I gained the right to know when I was elevated. What is that thing in there? You call me Esteemed, yet I’ve been told nothing I didn’t discover on my own. Tell me about… him.”
“Him,” Dominique repeated, almost to herself. “If it’s truth you want, there’s no better source of it than him. He would tell you the truth, and it would break you.”
“Who is he, and what is he doing in there?”
“He is fate.”
“Fate?”
“One of them.”
Bastille didn’t understand. “One of whom?”
“The fates are more than an idea of what is meant to happen. They’re physical beings from beyond our world, each with a will and purpose of its own.”
Bastille snorted. “That’s absurd.”
“Yet it is true. Our world was meant to be destroyed, Sister Bastille. Not ravaged, or laid waste, or damaged, as it has become. Destroyed. Utterly. We are not supposed to exist.”
“Why do we, then?”
“Because of the one who saved us. The Aionach was meant to be a paradise, lush and green and full of life. This world—the world that came to be instead, the False World—was a mistake. A failed attempt. The fates want only one thing: to tear our world asunder and pave the way for the True World, the paradise that was intended. They can only achieve that if they’re able to gather in close proximity. The closer they are to one another, the more their power grows. So he scattered them across the Aionach, buried in living tombs. He saved us from them. Now we live on a razor’s edge.”
“How could he allow something like this to go on existing? Why didn’t he destroy them?”
The corner of Dominique’s mouth drew upward. “Why don’t you?”
“I have no power like yours, Sister Dominique. I heard the thing’s voice inside my head. He wouldn’t have let me harm him if I’d wanted to.”
“The moment you looked into his eyes, his will took root inside you. That’s why you were tempted to come to him again.”
“I wasn’t tempted. I came down here on my own. To find answers.”
“That is what he would have you believe. His purpose is to make you think you want what he wants. He will not stop until you’ve released him.”
“The fates can’t be killed, then…”
“The fates are as much a part of this world as the world is a part of them. They don’t live or die like we do. They simply are. The best the ancient hero could do was to keep them apart, where their power is weakened. Their influence has by no means ceased, however. It spreads even now, while they rot in their man-made prisons. Whether it’s possible to destroy them… we don’t know. We’ve been searching for the answer to that question.”
“How many are there?”
“No one knows. We’ve uncovered evidence of a handful, but I have little doubt there are more. They manifest on the mortal plane in many ways, few of which are known to us.”
“That’s why we’ve sent Brother Mortial in search of the other Catacombs,” Sister Gallica added. “We hope his findings will better prepare us for the struggle ahead.”
“What struggle?”
“Just as a world cannot be knit together in moments, so we believe it must be destroyed over time. Though the fates are separated, they are weakening the Aionach—testing its limits. They are shaking the very pillars on which rest the foundations of the world. Sooner or later, the pillars will give way.”
“Then why save ourselves? If we were never meant to be, why exist?”
“Maybe you’ve never considered this before, kind Sister… but your life is the only thing you have.”
“I’ve considered that often. A great deal more often than any other thing. That’s why I pledged my life to the Order.”
“As do many others whose health has fallen casualty to this shadow war we’re fighting.”
“How do we win a war against an impossible enemy?”
“We don’t have to save the world, praise the Mouth. The savior has come and gone. The world has been saved. What we’re here to do is keep it that way as long as we can. We are merely guardians.”
“I’m nothing compared to you, Sister Dominique… as much as it may disappoint you. When you touched me, I…”
“When you’ve been touched by a healer, nothing else compares,” said Sister Gallica. The look on the woman’s ugly pockmarked face was the fondest, most pleasant look Bastille had ever seen there.
She remembered the soldiers, the Scarred Comrades who’d come to take Mortial and Jeanette and Adeleine to the city north. They’d spoken of a prophet, a man in the north who could heal the sick. “You’re a healer? Why are we breaking our backs over artificial organs and brain-stem therapeutics if you have the power to cure our ailments yourself?”
“Long ago, I gave up using my gift in all but the direst need. Infernal’s wrath began to take its toll on me then, and I have only continued to diminish with time. The liniments I apply to soothe my aches and pains can only do so much. It’s grown worse with each passing year.”
“Then perhaps a NewNexus is the solution for you,” Bastille suggested. “You and Sister Gallica both should be next in line as inheritors.”
“I’ll never inherit,” Dominique said. “I didn’t come to the basilica with the goal of achieving Motherhood. I became a servant of the Order because I couldn’t sit idly by and watch the world crumble. I have an obligation to protect it for as long as I’m able. To do that, I need all my wits about me. I need all the humanity I have left. Without compassion for the souls who inhabit this world, I would become like the fates, who are incapable of seeing what is, and who see only what ought to be.”
“What will become of the Order when you’re gone?”
“I plan to be around for a long time,” Dominique said. “After that, my hope is that another will come to take my place.”
“Another with your powers, you mean. Another healer.”
“Yes.”
“And if no one comes?”
“If the Order fails, the Aionach will be destroyed.”
“What would happen to us if the Aionach were destroyed?”
Sister Dominique spoke in the rhythmic chant of something long-memorized. “Before the True World of paradise is made, the things of the False World will be unmade. We are the offspring of doom. When Arcadia comes, we are lost.”
“How do you know all this?”
“The fates themselves have spoken many of our words. There are scriptures hidden in the basilica, disguised under the given names of priests and priestesses, which are said to contain bits and pieces of their collective awareness.”
“I would read these scriptures, if I may,” said Sister Bastille.
“I’ll show them
to you, on the condition that you never remove them from their hiding place. Were you to do so, the repercussions would be the same as if you were to revisit this place.”
“Sister Bastille is not to be admitted to the labyrinth or the Catacombs,” said Gallica. “I’ll hold onto this for the time being, as well.” She brandished Bastille’s iron key before tucking it into her robes.
Dominique gave the she-mutant a patient look. “I will bring Sister Bastille there myself. I’ll see to it personally that the rules are followed. If anything goes wrong while she’s under my supervision, I will accept the blame.”
“I should think that an unwise promise to make, Sister Dominique.”
“I’ll decide the wisdom of my own promises, kind Sister.”
“The Mouth absolve you both, then,” said Gallica. She stormed down the tunnel and climbed the ladder to the gardens above.
Bastille and Dominique followed her, but they turned a different way down the garden path. Soon they’d lost Gallica in the underbrush. The smell of breakfast was heavy in the gardens now, and they could hear Sister Deniau’s morning staff bustling through the kitchens.
“How did you know I was down there?” Bastille asked.
“The entrance is closely monitored,” said Dominique. “And before you ask, that’s all I will tell you about it.”
Sister Usara and her tree-loving cadre of gardeners, Bastille suspected. One would think the conservatory a place of peaceful solitude, but one is never truly alone here.
“I think we’d better attend the morning meal before I take you where I promised, so as not to arouse suspicion.”
They made their way through the gardens and entered the refectory together, parting when Sister Dominique went to take her place at the high table along the back of the room. Sister Deniau smiled as she heaped a formidable helping of porridge into Bastille’s bowl, then gave her a parting wink.
No sooner had Bastille taken her seat than she couldn’t wait for breakfast to be over. Brother Ephamar singled her out and sat next to her, diving into one of his historical lectures about the social implications of Ministry rule in the late pre-Heat era. While this was going on, Brother Travers glared perniciously at her from across the refectory as he spooned steaming porridge into his mouth.
The day Bastille had forced Travers to memorize the first chapter of his textbook, she had remained in her preparation rooms long past dayrise. When the tea had gone cold and the biscuits soggy, Travers had emerged to give it his first try. He had gotten less than two paragraphs in before stumbling and forgetting the rest. Bastille had had no choice but to dismiss him for breakfast. In every class period since, she’d sent him to the cold storage rooms, vowing he’d earn no respite until he’d completed his assigned task. “You’ll roost with the cadavers every day for the rest of your life,” she’d promised.
Bastille barely touched her porridge, too excited by the prospect of Dominique’s coming revelations to eat. She suffered the uncomfortable juxtaposition of her two troublesome Brothers not a second longer than she had to; when she noticed Dominique excusing herself from the table, she piled her dishes and sped out after her.
“Careful, Bastille. If you don’t slow down, watchful eyes will note your enthusiasm,” Dominique said when they were alone in the hallway.
Bastille was surprised to hear the high priestess address her in such an informal tone. She did not take the bait, however. What is your aim, witch-woman? “Watchful eyes will see what they want to see, kind Sister. Whether or not it is there.”
“And what do you see?” Dominique pointed toward the front of the sanctuary as they entered. “Tell me everything.”
“I see the stage. The risers where the tetrarchs chant to the Mouth. The pulpit where the word is spoken. The altar where sacrifice is made.”
“Is that all? Look closely.”
They were walking up the aisle, side by side. Stained-glass patterns fell over the pews and shone brightly on the smooth tile floors. Bastille studied the scene, but saw nothing she hadn’t mentioned. “That’s all,” she said.
“Wrong.” Dominique gave the sanctuary doors a backward glance as she ascended the stage. One of the panels along the wall, a painted mural of some long-dead saint, swung inward at her touch. They entered a small antechamber, and Dominique closed the panel behind them.
“I’ve known this was here,” Bastille said. “I’ve seen Brother Liero come in and out of this room hundreds of times during vespers.”
“Then you’ve seen this, as well.” Dominique removed a candle and striker from a low drawer in the narrow credenza. She lit the candle, then reached into the open drawer to manipulate something inside.
The room began to spin, and it wasn’t one of Bastille’s headaches this time; they were rotating on a disc of floor. The rear wall flipped them around into another, darker space—a stone-walled room no bigger than the last. A downward staircase led through an archway in the far wall. Dominique descended, and Bastille followed.
Sister Dominique navigated the labyrinth’s twists and turns with the ease of experience. They came to a dead-end in the corridor, where Bastille noticed a familiar pattern of studs in the stone sidewall. Dominique placed the Arcadian Star and turned it. A stone door glided open.
Inside lay a vast chamber where rotting shelves hung from the walls and free-standing bookcases sagged with age and moisture. Every shelf in the room was cobweb-empty save one. Two-thirds of the way back along the left-hand wall, no wider than a fathom from one end to the other, sat a stretch of books and journals on a wall-mounted shelf of new wood.
“This is everything we have on the nature of the fates,” said Dominique. “One small collection of data, quotations, studies. The entirety of our knowledge derives from this set of documents.”
“Did they all originate here in the basilica?”
“They’re from all over the world. Word-of-mouth histories passed down. Discoveries made by the proprietors of Ministry research programs. Eye-witness accounts. This is the aggregate.”
“How can you rely on any of it being true?”
“The supernatural world is fraught with inaccuracies and misinformation. The anomalies that make it so difficult to understand are the very things that define it. The fates speak with one voice; though they are separated by long horizons, they each tell us their own version of the same thing. They all predict the same calamity. We have chosen to believe them; to do otherwise is to deny our own destruction. If they lie, their purpose in doing so is beyond our reckoning.”
“Why are we working so hard to keep this a secret if we can’t be sure it’s true?”
“Let me ask you this, Sister Bastille… now that you’ve been told something better was meant for the Aionach, do you feel any differently about our world?”
Bastille pondered briefly. “No. Not about the world. Though I do feel somewhat differently about the Order…”
“How so?”
“I’m disappointed that the Mouth is a farce. It saddens me to think there’s nothing more. Nothing… after.”
“There is. It’s only that what comes after isn’t for us to enjoy.”
“Then who’s it for?”
“We don’t know. All we know is what the fates have revealed to us. And according to the fates, the True World involves a total erasure of everything that’s come before it. That includes us. So, to answer your question… we’re keeping this secret because there are those who don’t believe this False World is worth preserving. Those who are either in denial about the part we’ll play in the next world, or who hate living in this one. Who hate it so much they wish to end it for us all. A mass suicide, performed by the few on behalf of the many.”
“So… we have to believe what the fates tell us. And we must keep them a secret, or we all die.”
“That, Sister Bastille, is the exact essence of what you, as a member of the Esteemed Order, are purposed to do.”
And what if I want the False World to end? Basti
lle thought, but dare not say.
CHAPTER 19
A Revenge Sewn
Nichel Vantanible hurled a glass of cognac at the wall, where it shattered in a spray of amber liquid. Droplets fell from a yellow stain on the wallpaper. “Why does this keep happening to me? These nomads have got to be stopped.”
Toler Glaive gulped, felt his face grow hot. He knew why this was happening. He just didn’t know how.
“I change the routes, and they strike with the same frequency,” Vantanible continued. “I change them again, and still they strike. I purge my company of possible spies and let dozens of good workers flee into exile; I increase the guard, I require my merchants to hire extra shepherds—and still the nomads decimate my trains and savage the scraps like wolves to a carcass. My own daughter has fallen victim to the nomads’ terrors. How can this be happening? What am I doing wrong? Is someone reading my mind? Do those filthy nomads have some sorcerer or witch who can discern my thoughts? It’s as if they know my every step before I take it.”
Toler squirmed in his seat. He was the guilty party here; not some sorcerer or mind reader. His carelessness had resulted in at least three of his route maps falling into Daxin’s hands—and thereafter, into the hands of the nomads. Those were just the ones he knew about.
This last map, though, he’d retrieved from his brother; it was sitting on the table in front of him now. Blatcher had even checked Daxin’s bags for copies the day they caught him in the scrubs. Either Daxin had hidden a copy somewhere Blatcher hadn’t checked, or he and his nomad buddies had found some other way to foresee Vantanible’s plans.
Toler knew he couldn’t admit his guilt. No matter how much the guilt ate away at him, he could never say a word. Nor would he make the same mistake again. Sitting at the long conference table while Vantanible threatened to burst a blood vessel and tear the room to shreds, Toler swore a silent vow to himself. He’d find his brother again, wherever he might be. And this time, he’d make sure he killed him. “We need to change the routes again,” Toler said. “As many times as it takes.”
Nichel Vantanible shot him a look. “How many possible routes do you think there are? How many different detours can we take across the Inner East before the routes become too inefficient to justify? We’ve got seven major cities, dozens of towns, and who knows how many hundreds of villages and hamlets to supply. We don’t even trade with Celios or Nebulai anymore. Stubborn bastards. I’ve run out of ideas, Toler. Changing the routes is a given. We need something more. Something different. Anyone else have any bright ideas?”