by Anthony Huso
“I thought you were going to go to Stonehold and start that church you’ve been talking about,” said Sena.
“Yeah. I probably will. Aviv would never marry me anyway. Not now.” She pulled the black chitinous derringer from the wall and slipped it into her pocket.
“I heard you were in the hospital—” said Sena.
“Oh. Yes. I had some complications. Everything’s fine now.” Taelin smiled. “My father wants me out of the house for good. He’s giving me a stack of money.”
“What will you do with it?” asked Sena.
Taelin laughed. “I want to help people. I want to keep the faces on the street corners bathed and warm and fed. I want to do something right for a change.”
“I know,” said Sena. She leaned forward and kissed Taelin who was sobbing. The witch’s lips burned against hers like battery terminals. Then Sena gave her a friendly hug.
“You’re going to do great things in the north,” Sena said.
“Thanks for believing in me.”
“You’re going to do incredible things. Things you never thought you would.”
When Taelin released from the hug, she found herself standing on a Pandragonian zeppelin. A cold wind struck her in the face. She was flying north. Every minute, it seemed, the temperature dropped.
The airship moored at West Gate, over Isca City. Taelin went down a rusting lift that squealed inside the fortress walls.
There, amid the steaming reek of sewer fumes and trash that tumbled out of Gunnymead Square, Taelin hailed a cab. When she got in, the driver greeted her in Trade. He offered her a tiny bottle of Pink Nymph Whisky. She’d never heard of the brand but she bought three because she had plenty of money and because she was nervous to be in a strange town. Thank gods I’m rich. She opened the first bottle and knocked it back. The driver was nice. She tipped him well.
Wait. That’s not true.
“Yes it is,” said Sena, who was sitting in the cab with her.
“No, it’s not. My driver. The chemiostatic car I rented got stuck in the mud. I had to walk. I had to fight through freezing rain…”
“No. You arrived in West Gate, warm and dry. You took a cab all the way to Lampfire Hills.”
“No! I walked in the freezing rain! I never rode an airship before in my life! I walked all the way from Pandragor! And my father loves me. He gave me that money! Not Aviv! Aviv raped me! That’s why I have the money. Because my father loves me.
“Aviv would have taken me to that horrible tiny island in the middle of nowhere and forced me to have his babies.”
Sena’s face looked like a ceiling. White and square like the shape above her hospital bed. The doctor was gone. The soft white straps around her wrists prevented her from wiping her eyes. She needed to wipe her eyes. Her whole face was wet.
“I’m not lying! It happened! It happened! I saw Nenuln. She talked to me in a cloud of light! She’s real! She’s real! She’s real! And I’ll prove she is. I’ll go to Stonehold where they make gods. They make gods in Stonehold. Haven’t you read the papers? And then you’ll see. I’ll make my own church. Just like you did. Just like Sena Iilool did. But I’ll help people. Not like you! Not like you who lock people up in rooms and tie them down!
“I’ll buy a bing-gun if I have to. I’ll come back here for you! I’ve had lovers who taught me how to shoot! I’m a deadeye!
“And then you know what? When I go north … I’m going be queen someday!”
* * *
TAELIN sat in her bed, in her stateroom, on the Bulotecus. The High King’s witch sat with her, on the edge of the mattress. She was finally, truly awake. Her head felt clearer.
Sena smelled delicious. In one hand the witch held a glass of water, in the other a lustrous purple-brown pill. Perfect, like a baby grape.
“I’m not taking it.” Taelin coughed.
“It’s your antipsychotic,” said Sena. “You haven’t been taking them. That’s the problem. You need to take it.”
Taelin wanted to die.
“You’re not a bad person.” Sena held out the pill.
“Yes I am.” Taelin tried not to think about anything.
“You’re just sick, Taelin.”
Taelin couldn’t tell if any of this was real. She didn’t care. She just wanted to sleep. She reached out and ate the pill without water and shook her finger at Sena. “You don’t know me. You think your book and your holomorphy let you know me. But you don’t know me.”
“I’m going to take you with me now,” said Sena. “While the tincture still has you loosened up.”
“Where?” Taelin still felt the drug in her head.
“We’re going to Soth,” said Sena. “We’ll be gone just a little while.”
Taelin blinked as Sena started talking. She felt so strange and cold and sticky. She heard voices. Thousands of voices. An icy electric buzz filled the air.
“Don’t be afraid,” said Sena. “I’m pulling holojoules down into our equation.”
“Holojoules?” Taelin watched the light from her stateroom window turn to molasses. “Don’t you need blood?”
“Yes. I drew blood. I’ve drawn plenty of blood.” Then Sena shifted back to the Unknown Tongue and a force reached in through Taelin’s mouth and yanked her breath out of her chest like a rag on the end of a hook.
Taelin gasped and fell forward. The impact with her mattress punched clean through, an explosion of white, and jettisoned her out of the zeppelin where she found herself unable to scream. The world came up at her, threatening to bury her at high velocity in an oval patch of blue sand. But the fabric of the world stretched like burlap, in every direction, opening coarse pores.
Taelin fell through.
Daylight vaporized. She found herself in darkness. A cold, damp, cracked surface pressed her hands. She inhaled, choked on dead air.
A woman’s voice spoke. It was not a language she was familiar with. The tone behind it sounded hard and cold, like the surface under her fingertips.
A hand gripped her by the elbow and pulled her to her feet.
PART TWO
If I were a god, I’d make myself believe.
—YACOB SKIE
CHAPTER
34
Taelin stood up. Behind the disembodied, flinty voice that came out of the darkness, she could hear the rattle of a metal buckle. Someone was fastening? Unfastening. Now they were rummaging in a sack.
I’m in Ihciva, she thought, to pay for my sins with Aviv and Caliph Howl, Palmer and—
A bit of brown smudged the darkness. It looked like a filtered glow seeping through fabric. Taelin began to reach for the demonifuge under her shirt when Sena’s voice interrupted.
“Here. Take this.”
Taelin tried to answer but the air was too thin. Thinner than in Sandren. She started wheezing, which led her to realize that she couldn’t be dead.
A small, tacky block pushed itself into her palm. She could feel Sena’s fingers behind the delivery but the connection didn’t register until half a second later, when Sena’s hand withdrew. Only then did Taelin panic. In the almighty darkness, losing her physical link to another person—even if that person was Sena Iilool—felt like desertion. Then the brown smudge disappeared.
Without its point of reference she lost her balance and sat back down.
She started to adjust to the thin, dead air. “Sena?”
“It’s all right,” said Sena. “Just don’t take out your necklace.”
The witch’s voice gathered numbers that roasted a cotton cord. Taelin could smell it. A sickly yellow flame touched off right in front of her face, wagging on the block-shaped candle Sena had pushed into her hand.
Sena was crouched a short distance away, blue eyes rolling with the flame. It unnerved Taelin that the witch was staring at her. Her guilt became too much to bear. “I’m sorry,” Taelin said. “I didn’t mean for it to happen—I didn’t mean for it to go so far … with Caliph.”
Sena was smiling like somet
hing that wanted to eat her.
Taelin moved the candle’s orange glow toward her butt in an effort to learn something about her surroundings. The ground she was sitting on seemed to be a hill of buckled or broken masonry. There were dripping noises all around but the ground here, at least, was dry.
“It’s all right, Taelin.”
“But I—”
Sena stood up and took a step in the direction of the flinty voice, which had spoken again.
Taelin felt too out of her depth to argue or even ask questions. All she could do was listen to the strange voice and the echoes of the underground space. She smelled mud. Not the normal gaminess of river mud but the putrefaction of salt-ooze ripened beneath the black bottom of the world. It was a stink suggestive of spoiled shrimp, sewage and gods knew what else.
Taelin buried her nose in the crook of her elbow while Sena talked to the voice in the dark. The language sounded difficult. Sena was stuttering. Or were those simply the phonics of an alphabet she had never heard? Taelin lifted her candle above her head, hoping for a glimpse of the other speaker.
“Sena?” She spoke into her sleeve.
“Just a minute.”
The High King’s witch stood in the extreme limits of her light. Taelin set the candle down and reached into her pocket. She pulled out her little tin and opened it. Inside were some of the beggary seeds Palmer had given her. She rationed five onto a sheet of rice paper along with a little of the fuzz. She quickly licked the paper. It crackled reassuringly between her fingers as she rolled it. Tincture, pill and smoke. Was that bad? She didn’t care.
She picked up the candle. The flame happily shared itself with the bent little package hanging from her lips. She inhaled deeply. It helped with the stink of this place.
A crunch in the stone-strewn dust did not sound like Sena’s graceful footsteps; Taelin lifted her candle again. Light spilled across a second person. A little cry escaped Taelin’s mouth and the cigarette almost fell out.
Rusted metal and rotting leather encased a body encumbered with archaic weapons. Dust filmed her. The woman’s hair was tangled. Despite her eyes, which had calcified into something like white stone, Taelin thought—in that timeless moment while the beggary smoke circled her head—that the woman stepping out of the darkness was even more beautiful than Sena Iilool.
The woman’s eyes were smaller, her body longer and exquisitely thin. All of her, from her triangular face to her slender limbs conferred a horrible but lovely gauntness. She was perfect.
The woman was paying close attention to Sena, who was motioning with her hands as she tried to communicate.
“What is she saying?” asked Taelin.
Sena ignored the question. She and the pale woman seemed to be agreeing, deciding on something—without her.
“What’s going on?” Taelin felt excluded. “I want some answers.”
“Arrian’s taking us to her room,” said Sena.
“Her room? Why? Who’s Arrian?” Taelin looked around at the darkness wondering how they would find their way.
“This is where the Ublisi … made her mistake.”
“Ublisi?” said Taelin.
“The being that called down the Rain of Fire on Soth.”
“Rain of Fire? That’s just a legend. I don’t understand why we’re here.” Taelin’s voice echoed. She reached into her shirt for her necklace and took another drag.
“Don’t—” said Sena. But it was too late. The molten aperture was already out in the open. It did not illuminate the darkness, but it was blinding. Its color jumped into Taelin’s eyes without traveling to get there.
Arrian’s face twisted. She sprang at Taelin wildly and brought her weapon down like a hammer. Taelin felt the metal. The pain was exquisite. Only a moment later did she realize that the blade had shattered. It had not cut her, but her arm was certainly fractured.
Arrian straddled her waist and raised the jagged shard. The candle tumbled away but thankfully did not go out. Taelin held her cigarette tightly between her lips and put her hands up as Arrian plunged the rusted shaft toward her.
The only thing that arrested the fatal blow was a trademark grip: cradled head, a razor-edged choker wrapped beneath Arrian’s chin.
Sena saved her. One moment the shard of rust had been her future. The next, Sena was in control, leaning back. Muscles cabled her slender arms as she threw her body into counterpoise. Arrian growled under the subdual, face fractured into discrete regions of bared teeth and white eyes.
Her fingers reached for the knife that was lifting her off the ground.
As Arrian’s weight came up, Taelin propelled herself backward, recovered the candle and scrambled to her feet. She watched Sena pull the blade hard against Arrian’s throat. But there was no cut. No bleeding.
Arrian’s fingers worked their way between the blade and her neck. She roared with a sound that traveled through bone. The candle nearly dropped again from Taelin’s hand.
Sena struck Arrian on the crown of her head with a sudden muscular blow.
Arrian twisted violently and bucked Sena off.
At that moment, Taelin looked away from the two fighting women. She thought she had heard something enormous sidle in the darkness. A sigh. It disturbed the whole sky that encompassed this black empty place. After that, a dull wet impact—as of mucus or falling blood—filled the universe.
For a moment, she imagined inconceivable shapes packed in the dark.
Then Sena burst back into the light and babbled fiercely at Arrian, drawing Taelin’s eyes once more to the battle.
Arrian’s body came fully up off the piles of broken masonry, twisting in midair, wild and impossible, like a rabbit in a snare. She gurgled as her arms and legs thrashed. Boneless it seemed. Her neck was bent back at what should have been an unachievable angle. When she landed, she landed hard, limbs whipping, churning up dust.
Sena spoke again and Arrian stopped.
Taelin coughed on the swirling particles and backed away. She blew out a stream of smoke. The pain in her arm where the sword had hit her was throbbing.
“What are we doing here?” She shrieked.
Sena was too busy to answer.
The sound of Taelin’s yell echoed back to her. Angry at everything, it sounded like there was a copy of herself out there in the darkness, screaming at her for getting herself into this mess.
As the echo faded, Taelin realized the fight was over. Sena spoke in soothing syllables, talking as if to an injured pet. The unruly animal had been pinned to the ground and keened under the stress.
It was awkward and touching at the same time. It deeply disturbed Taelin. She took a long hit of beggary smoke and knelt down. Sena seemed to be asking a question in the horrible language, over and over, insisting on something.
Finally, Arrian pulled herself up slowly against Sena’s firm but gentle embrace and answered. After that—bizarrely, determinedly—Sena notched her sickle-knife into Arrian’s neck like a hot blade against tallow. It went easy at first but quickly turned to work. Arrian struggled occasionally but Sena kept talking, reassuring her. She brought her full weight to bear as she started sawing off the girl’s head.
Arrian didn’t move. Her arms hung by her sides. It took a while. Taelin remembered her cigarette and took another hit. She took several hits. The candle seemed to brighten.
No.
Instead of blood, light seeped from the wound. Taelin felt paralyzed.
Sena’s movements were brutal. She put her back into it. And then, all at once, in a gush of light, Arrian’s body crumpled onto the pile of masonry and Sena stood up, holding the head.
It seemed small.
Taelin felt sick and guilty. As if she had been party to murder. As if she had taken turns with Sena on the blade. Soft gauzy illumination gushed from both stumps. The light poured over the ground from where the body had fallen and likewise splashed from the swinging head. It spattered portions of a dusty black wall that Taelin had just noticed.
What in the world had happened?
“We’re taking her with,” said Sena. She put her sickle away.
“But you killed her—”
“It’ll be okay,” said Sena.
“But you killed her.” Taelin, on the verge of tears began sinking to the floor. She couldn’t look at Sena. “How can it be okay?” She sucked as much beggary smoke into her lungs as she could.
And then, in the light that welled up from the carcass she saw a glitter at the edge of Arrian’s eye. Was the horrible thing crying? It made no sense. Taelin stayed where she was, sitting in the ashes. “You should take me back. I don’t understand any of this. I want to go home.”
“I’ll take you back after we’re done,” said Sena. “And we need to hurry now that you’ve brought that out for everything to see.” She gestured toward the demonifuge. “Please get up.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Get up.” Sena’s voice filled with power and a fierceness that shocked Taelin. It shocked her not only by virtue of its force but also because it contained a foil-thin undercurrent of compassion. That was how it felt. The compassion put her in a state where the fierceness was able to propel her.
She got up, staring at the gruesome trophy in Sena’s hands.
“That’s impossible!”
Taelin put a hand to her mouth and jerked the candlelight back from Arrian’s face, whose stone-white eyes had just blinked.
* * *
LIKE stammering picture shows that had opened on Isca Road and put fear into the owners of the Murkbell Opera House, events started clicking across the lamp of Arrian’s head. Taelin felt them in black and white. I’m watching a show. That’s all. I’m not really here.
She wanted another hit but her blunt was spent, which meant she could only look on nervously as Sena unslung a small pack. When the designer purse came off the witch’s back, a faint brown halo daubed the air behind her head as if a lantern had been strapped beneath Sena’s jacket.
Interesting, thought Taelin. She watched Sena undo the buckle. Chic black reptile skin parted and a folded plastic bag came out, stamped with Octul Box’s purple shopping dragon. It had rope handles. Sena snapped it open and put Arrian’s head into it. Then she reslung her purse, and handed the shopping bag to Taelin. “You can carry this.”