Hope and Red

by Jon Skovron

  “This is your last—” began the soldier.

  Brigga Lin lifted her arms, splaying her fingers wide, and the rifles exploded. The soldiers screamed as they clutched at their powder-burned faces.

  “Gunpowder is so nasty. I wish they wouldn’t use it.” Brigga Lin moved smoothly toward the gate. She turned to regard Hope. “Once I take down this door, we will be wading upstream in a river of soldiers. More than I can possibly handle on my own. Are you ready?”

  Hope looked up at the soldiers on the wall. They wailed in pain, their faces a mess of burned and smoking flesh. Something flickered within her. Pity, like she’d felt toward Ranking at the end. Victims of a biomancer. This time, a biomancer on her side…

  But these men wore the same uniforms as the men who had slaughtered her village. She focused on that, and the pity was drowned out by that old, familiar darkness. So she made the choice she’d always made.

  “Yes,” she said. “I am ready.”

  * * *

  “You made the right choice,” said Sadie after she’d let Red cry awhile. As soon as he’d come to the ship, without Hope—his face pale, his glinting cat eyes haunted—she’d shooed everyone else away. Now the two of them sat in the captain’s quarters, which Hope still hadn’t used. And it sounded like she might not ever.

  “It doesn’t feel like the right choice,” said Red. “It feels like I left my heart back there in that tavern.”

  “I know. You’re young yet. And you got that soft artistic side that’ll never let you be. Can’t help that. Nothing for it but some pain, I’m afraid.”

  He wrapped his arms around his torso, his shoulders hunched and his head low. “It’s never been this bad before. Not even with Nettie.”

  “I know, boy. I know.”

  They were silent, with only the occasional sniffle from Red. That sound, and being on a boat, brought old memories back to Sadie. Bittersweet thoughts of times gone by. It was surely a sign that she was getting soft in her old age, but she didn’t mind. She was just glad her boy was alive. “She made the right choice, too.”

  “What?” Red’s eyes widened. “She’s got a pissing death wish!”

  “I mean about not asking you to stay with her. I’m sure she wanted to. If you’re going to die, who wouldn’t want to do it side by side with your own tom, right?”

  “I was never her tom.”

  “That so?”

  “Yeah. We never tossed.”

  “And you think that’s what seals it? Wet bits of meat pressing on each other?”

  “Well…”

  “No molly I ever knew needed to get her cunt stretched to know she was sotted with her tom. Comes from deeper in, that sense of knowing.” She shrugged. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s sunny. I’ve bent many a cock in my day, and rarely regretted it. But it ain’t necessary to calling something between two people love.”

  “No. I suppose not.” His eyes turned to the window like they could pierce through all the buildings between them and the palace.

  “If she’d asked, you would have stayed. I know it. She knew it. And when it came down to it, she loved you so much, she let you go.” She patted his back. “That’s a special thing, Red, my wag. You best not forget it ever.”

  They were silent again. Sadie noticed he wasn’t sniffling anymore. Maybe what she said had comforted him. Maybe after years of mostly failing, she was getting good at this parenting thing.

  He stood up, his shoulders back, head high. “You’re right, Sadie. It’s too special to leave behind.”

  “Now wait, there, Red, I didn’t—”

  But he ran out of the cabin, and a moment later she heard his boots hit the dock.

  Okay, so maybe she still mostly failed at parenting.

  * * *

  It was difficult to know sometimes if the choices you made were truly right. It was tempting, for example, to see early signs of success as God or the universe (the Vinchen did not differentiate) showing approval by opening the way before you.

  That was how Hope felt as she and Brigga Lin made their way through the gate, across the courtyard, and into the palace keep. Soldiers by the score rushed at her, and she struck them down as if they were merely grass in the rolling meadows of Hollow Falls. The Song of Sorrows echoed in the white halls of the palace, and it wasn’t long before soldiers shied away from its sound. She’d lost the blood magic on the first strike. She’d felt the sword shudder, and the gentle but persistent tug dissipated. But it hardly mattered now. There was nowhere for Teltho Kan to run.

  At her side, Brigga Lin stalked like a vengeful ghost, her hands constantly weaving, her sleeves whirling, as one by one she brought death from afar. One soldier fell to the floor screaming as his rib cage burst from his chest, splaying out like a blooming red, pink, and white flower. Another could not scream at all as his entrails turned inside out and spilled from his mouth onto the floor.

  Was this the right choice? The question popped into Hope’s mind as she hacked off one man’s head, then disemboweled another. All this horror and death they were sowing? Was it right? In the distance she saw a man try to claw out his own eyes because they had turned to boiling pitch in his head. And she did not know the answer to her question.

  But then in her mind’s eye, she saw fat white larvae burst from her father’s skin. She heard her mother calling out a name that to this day she could not remember. She saw Ontelli from Murgesia, an owl’s beak emerging from his mouth, and heard his bones cracking as he became a beast before her eyes. She saw Thorn Billy turn to ice. She saw the people of Paradise Circle turn to dust.

  So she hardened her heart and fought on.

  * * *

  Despite Stonepeak’s luxuries of cleanliness and underground sewage, there were hardly any gas lamps lit. Compared to New Laven, the streets were eerily empty after sunset. The taverns, though occupied, were not spilling over with the rowdy enthusiasm of Paradise Circle or the passionate expression of Silverback. Everyone seemed subdued. Red wasn’t sure if it was like that every night, or only on those nights the biomancer council was in town.

  Either way, it freed up the path for him. He thought he had gone fast during the day, but it was nothing compared to his speed now. In the dark, his vision opened even further, allowing him to not only take in everything around him but also to calculate and plan his route several blocks ahead. His eyes seemed to absorb the darkness. He wondered what he must look like to those few people he passed in the street. A red-eyed demon? At the moment, he didn’t care. He only cared about getting to Hope before she was killed. Maybe this fight of hers was impossible. But maybe his throwing blades could be the thing that tipped the scales into possible. One thing he was sure of: He couldn’t live the rest of his life wondering about it. He would find out tonight, right or wrong. That resolution filled him with burning exuberance, and he ran on.

  When he neared the palace wall, he saw that the gate had been broken into pieces. The metal was corroded through with rust that had not been there that afternoon. No doubt Brigga Lin’s doing.

  The courtyard was strewn with the bodies of soldiers, some horribly disfigured, some hacked to pieces or run through. There was so much to take in, even his new vision had trouble processing it all. So he didn’t notice the two soldiers off to one side, still alive and armed with rifles. One of them took aim, but as Red’s gaze finally turned toward them, the other soldier’s eyes went wide and he knocked the rifle aside, sending the shot into the night sky.

  “That’s him,” said the second soldier. “Look at the eyes!”

  “Oh, piss!” said the rifleman.

  “We survived those two horrors, and you almost got us worse than killed anyway,” said the second.

  Red reached for his throwing knives, not sure what was going on. But they both threw down their rifles and raised their hands in the air.

  “Spare us, please!” the first one begged. “I’ve got a little girl at home!”

  Red’s eyes swept through the piles of b
odies in the courtyard again. Whether it was right or wrong, he couldn’t add two more, especially unarmed. “Don’t follow me.”

  “On my honor!” the man said.

  Red turned and entered the palace. They’d identified him somehow. There was another plan at work here. He would need to go carefully from this point. Stealth was really more his thing anyway.

  * * *

  When things had been going well, Hope was tempted to see it as a sign that she had made the right choice. Now that things were turning against them, did that mean her choice had been wrong? Did one cancel the other out?

  These thoughts flitted through her mind as she and Brigga Lin fought their way up the staircase, level by level, waves of soldiers pressing down on them from above. The soldiers were desperate now, driven by the biomancers, who had finally joined the fray.

  They’d come first singly or in pairs, looking flustered and disheveled, as if roused from sleep or meditation. Those first biomancers did little more than add to the chaos, shouting at the soldiers to stand their ground even as Hope cut them down.

  But once enough of them had arrived, they organized and formed a plan of sorts. They didn’t have Brigga Lin’s ability to cast at a distance, and they seemed unwilling to come within range of Hope’s blade. Instead they began to change individual soldiers into mindless beastlike people with fangs or claws or pinchers. Those creatures were much harder to put down, continuing to attack even after mortally wounded.

  Hope noticed that the beast people didn’t seem to care all that much whom they attacked, though. They would bite or slash at whatever was moving in front of them. So rather than fight them, she spun them around and shoved them back up the stairs at the soldiers. It was not precise, but it cleared the way to wet her blade with biomancers. And that was why she’d come, after all.

  The two women continued to climb with slow but relentless progress. When they finally reached the tenth level where Brigga Lin said the biomancer council was supposed to be convened, Hope was surprised to see moonlight streaming in through the windows of the vast, open chamber. Was it still the same night they had begun this fight? She was bleeding from at least twenty different wounds, and every muscle in her body screamed. Brigga Lin did not look much better. Her beautiful dress was more red than white. A steady stream of blood leaked from her nose, most likely the constant efforts of her biomancery, and her skin was ghastly pale.

  But the tide of soldiers had finally turned. Hope and Brigga Lin killed the few who remained in the hallway, and when they reached the council chamber, they found it nearly empty. Hope had lost count of how many white robes she had cut down. They had seemed endless. But now she wondered if they might actually be close to accomplishing their goal.

  “Where is the council?” Brigga Lin raged at the lone biomancer in the chamber. Her hands swept sideways, and his legs broke outward at the knees. He dropped to the floor and when he screamed, his hood fell back and Hope saw his face. It was Teltho Kan.

  “Wait!” said Hope. “That one is mine!”

  Brigga Lin’s hands froze in mid-gesture. “This is the one who murdered your people?”

  “Oh yes, I am!” shouted Teltho Kan, his voice constricted with pain. “I used them as incubators for a breed of giant wasp I was perfecting.” He laughed, a desperate, high-pitched sound.

  Brigga Lin stepped back a few paces. “He’s yours, then. But make him tell you where the council members are hiding.”

  “None of the others we killed were council members?” asked Hope.

  “They were only novices,” hissed Teltho Kan. “Unimportant and easily replaced. In fact, you did us a favor, thinning out their ranks like that. Most of them were barely worthy of the order. Those few who survived will be the stronger for it.” He laughed again.

  Perhaps it was just the pain of having both legs shattered, but he looked quite mad with that grin on his face. Again Hope felt a curl of pity around the edge of her vision. It had been creeping up all night, and each time she fought it off. But it was hard, now, to truly know what was right. When witnessing the horror of what the biomancers did from the outside, it had been easy to point to them and say, You are wrong. But now that she had her own biomancer—her own horror-maker—it was not so easy. She looked down at herself and saw that her black leather armor gleamed wet with blood. Her hands were sticky with it. How could any choice that was truly right bring so much death and pain?

  “Where is the rest of the council, Kan?” asked Hope, her voice weary.

  “Where is your red-eyed lackey?” He looked around.

  “He isn’t here.”

  He nodded. “You’re a good liar. Especially for a Vinchen. But we both know that couldn’t be true. He could no more leave your side than you could abandon your oath.”

  “Truly, Kan. He isn’t here.” Hope didn’t know what Teltho Kan had planned for Red, but she was grateful he wasn’t there to find out.

  A look of dread swept across Teltho Kan’s face. He shook his head vehemently. “No, no, that can’t be. He must be here. I told them he would be here. I swore it!” He glared up at her. “You knew, didn’t you? You cunt, how did you know? How did you…” He turned desperately around, scanning the room. His broken legs cracked further, but he didn’t seem to notice. He looked lost. Terrified. Pathetic. “How could I be wrong…”

  “Anyone can be wrong.” Even as Hope said that, she realized she was telling not just him, but herself. She had been fighting off the doubts since they began this night, but seeing the man she hated most in the world rendered broken and helpless before her gave her the courage to finally let them in. To a Vinchen warrior, carrying out vengeance was the most important thing he could do. The Vinchen code was quite clear on that point. But it had been celebrating Carmichael’s life, not his death, that had felt right to her. Would she be honoring her parents and her village by all this death? Thinking back on it, Hurlo had never explicitly condoned her thirst for vengeance. Perhaps even he had doubts that the code was always right. After all, he broke it when he accepted her as a pupil.

  “I thought swearing vengeance on you was an honorable oath,” she said quietly. “I thought your death would somehow bring meaning to the meaningless waste of life you caused. But now I understand that it wouldn’t make any difference. That neither my parents nor my teachers would have wanted me to squander my life to take yours.”

  “Bleak Hope?” asked Brigga Lin, looking confused.

  “This oath I made was the selfish and vindictive wish of a hurt child. Understandable, but not honorable. And I am no longer a child.”

  She lowered her sword.

  “No! Wait! You must kill me!” said Teltho Kan. “Don’t you see? I have failed them! You don’t know what they will do to me, how they will make me suffer!”

  “It is not my purpose to punish or save you,” said Hope. “My life has intertwined with yours long enough. Here is where we part.” She turned away from him.

  His face twisted in fury. “No…” He lunged out, reaching for her sword hand.

  “Hope!” Red’s voice rang like a bell.

  In the same moment that Teltho Kan’s fingers grazed Hope’s knuckles, a throwing blade embedded itself in his eye and he dropped to the ground.

  Hope looked down at her hand and saw the knuckles withering, shrinking, desiccating, turning to rot. Her sword clattered to the floor.

  She could hear Red calling her name. He had come after all. By his own choice. Even as the pain twisted in her hand, a part of her felt joy that he had chosen to join her on his own. And a part of her was terrified of what sort of trap Teltho Kan had laid for him.

  But then pain took over her body, wiping out thoughts of anything else. Red’s blade had killed the biomancer, slowing down the process a little, but not stopping it. The rot spread to Hope’s fingers. She felt them dying one by one, each death sending a blast of agony up through her arm and into her skull.

  Red was running toward her. Brigga Lin, too. But the rot w
as fast. It would finish her first. And even if they did reach her in time, what could they do? What could she do? She swayed, and her vision began to dim. She felt herself slipping away as the pain and rot traveled up into her palm.

  “Hope!” screamed Red.

  But she had made a promise to Red. Not to give up. Ever. That, she decided, was a vow worth keeping.

  She forced herself to concentrate. She looked down at her hand. It was a curled and blackened thing, oozing puss. The rot was reaching up toward her wrist. She dropped to her knees and picked up the Song of Sorrows with her good hand. Then she brought the blade down, cutting off her rotting hand just above the wrist.

  The rot was gone. She no longer felt its slow, withering death. Instead, there was a bright, hot pain, as blood poured from the stump of her forearm. The floor around her was suddenly slick with it. She pulled the strap tight on her sleeve to slow down the flow. Then she stared at the empty space where her hand used to be. That was when she finally screamed.

  Then Red was there and she sank back into his warm embrace.

  “Oh, God, Hope, I’m so sorry, so sorry!” His sweaty hand pressed her cold cheek as he held her. “It’ll be okay, we’re going to make this okay.”

  “You came,” said Hope, fighting to stay conscious.

  “I’m here. I couldn’t stay away. No matter what.”

  She smiled faintly. “Like we promised. You and me. Hope and Red. No matter what.”

  “That’s right,” he said, grinning through his tears.

  “I can fix you.” Brigga Lin cradled Hope’s stump in her hands. “Let me seal this now, and I’ll fix it later when I have materials.”

  Hope nodded, too weak now to speak.

  Brigga Lin brought the bleeding stump up to her lips. She kissed the white gleam of bone in the center gently, almost reverently. Immediately, the wound closed. Hope shuddered as the pain left her body, replaced by something cool and soothing.

  “Well,” came a voice that sounded as old as dust. “It appears that Teltho Kan was right after all.”