Schisms

by James Wolanyk

  “You really showed her your respect,” Anna whispered.

  “Do you think that strike was some vendetta against you?”

  “I don’t know what it was,” she said, “but we never found him. It was hardly an objective. Before you say another word, think about our agreement. A deal is birthed in two halves.”

  “What sort of war do you imagine we’re fighting?”

  “A war in which the state uses anything at its disposal. Or anyone.”

  “Look outside yourself.” Konrad rested his elbow on the table. “Why do you think we went there, Anna?”

  She recalled, seemingly for the first time beyond the mirage of pain, the basin’s clustered towers, homes, caches, machines, serving staff, children. It had undoubtedly been a Volna compound, supervised by marked Dogwood captains and spawning the flying creations responsible for the horrors at Sadh Nur Amah and elsewhere.

  But it hadn’t been the target in her vengeful mind.

  “You knew what it was before we went, didn’t you?” she asked. “You knew exactly what it was, and that he wasn’t there.”

  Konrad’s brow scrunched. “Until today, I didn’t know what it was. Our operatives did.”

  “So you lied to me. Again.”

  “Perhaps I did,” he said. “But our deal can still go through.”

  “You stand for nothing. Don’t pretend to honor anything, sukra. Spare me that much.”

  “I put this strike over my own family.” Something within him had given way. He was glaring now, forcing a civil edge into his voice. “My own son, Anna. Say what you like, but don’t accuse me of standing for nothing. I’m willing to give everything for Nahora.”

  “And they’ll take it from you!”

  The southerner paused, drawing a sharp breath and leaning away from the table. He sipped his brandy and looked outside once more. “We went to that site for something a tad more urgent than your games with the tracker. And we found it.”

  Anna folded her arms. “I didn’t lend my hand for the state’s gain.”

  “It isn’t just about the state,” Konrad said. “You ought to be more pragmatic, Anna. If Nahora falls, who raises their hands against Volna? Who buries the bodies?” He took in her silence with a hard nod. “As I thought, panna.”

  “Any hired blade can show their worth when it fills their coffers.”

  Konrad scoffed, finishing his brandy and pouring another brimming cup. “You were right to say that estate didn’t belong to the tracker. It was the Toymaker’s.”

  Anna’s fingers went cold. “The Toymaker?”

  “As soon as you showed me those coordinates, I knew what they were. Volna knew there were leaks in the Dogwood, so they did their work on our operatives. We figured the entire thing had been burned out. Obviously, they found another way to get their information into the world.”

  “Our breakers were certain that he had the tracker’s location.”

  “Your breakers were certain of other things,” Konrad chuckled. “Otherwise they wouldn’t have pointed you to Viczera Company.”

  The breakers. Anna froze, piecing together the masses of information and encoded symbols that flowed through their den each hour. How much else did they know? “You never knew where the tracker was, did you?”

  “I do.”

  “Tell me,” Anna snapped, bridling at his coyness.

  “Our deal will proceed,” Konrad replied, “but you won’t need fighters to get what you’re seeking. You won’t need much at all.”

  Anna narrowed her eyes. “Don’t treat me like a child, Konrad. I haven’t been one in years.”

  “The world’s never treated you like a child.” They were both quiet then, glancing at the table and the brandy and the dark tufts rolling over the peaks. “The strike wasn’t in vain, you know. We learned exactly how to prepare our defenses. The defense councils will show you their drafts tomorrow, but take my word now: What she did matters.”

  “Did you even get him?”

  “Narrow escape, it seems,” Konrad said. “He was supposed to be there. Our information was good.”

  “We all want someone, then.”

  “Do you have any idea what’s coming?” Konrad asked. “All things in due time.”

  Lightning flashed across the western skies in branching white veins.

  “The emissaries,” Anna said in the ensuing lull. She could feel her rage slipping away as she ignored the tide of venom, focusing on the warmth in her hands and how it pulsed up into her wrists. “Have they said anything about ceasing it all? Scaling back, disarming?” It was a forlorn hope, but she held onto it regardless. The most prudent war was one avoided.

  “Supposedly it isn’t out of the question. Shocking, isn’t it? As soon as we find their linchpin, there’s room to jabber.”

  “Tell me the truth of it.”

  Konrad scrunched his lips. “War is coming, Anna. It always has been. A few pleasantries in a marble chamber won’t stop it.”

  “You don’t sound displeased.”

  “I’m a realist. The state has been making concessions, and a hearty lot of them. There have been mutual agreements not to mark diplomats or their escorts. Strange times, don’t you think?”

  “Nobody knows how the world will turn, Konrad.”

  “Not turn,” he said. “Fall apart.”

  Hearing it aloud turned her stomach. “Do you think those machines could’ve struck at Golyna’s heart?”

  “Perhaps, but not now. Just the outlying cities.”

  Anna stirred in her seat, suddenly charged by the gentle twist in Konrad’s lip. “We have time to prepare them.”

  “Every brawler has to pick his bruises,” he explained. “Hedilam and the others are swipes below the ribs. Anyone with half a mind will see the whole picture.”

  “Do you know how many people live there?”

  He shrugged. “Do you know how easily it would bankrupt Golyna and its lenders, dredging up all of those coins and bars and salt pouches for some stain on a map? How many columns we’d need to wash out of the capital and tuck into tents in the badlands? Be reasonable, Anna.” With a muted scoff, he looked to his brandy and took a shallow draw. “It’s not my decision, nor my words. This comes from the tacticians. The men who know their numbers.”

  “And you just sat there,” she whispered, “nodding and currying favor for yourself.”

  “Don’t pretend that you understand Nahora’s ways.”

  “I know the way of a decent man,” she said, practically spitting her words. But she found herself hesitating, catching on the word decent. Her memory was a barren, vile landscape. “You’re not good, Konrad. You’re a liar. But you’ll always find some shroud of goodness to hide your sins. That’s what makes you so repulsive.”

  He nursed his drink, all the while appearing oblivious to Anna’s words. But she could sense the tension in his jaw, working in hard, strained circles between swishes of liquor. “Sorry you feel that way, Anna.”

  Thunder broke the fresh silence. Rainfall began as a light pattering, joining the wind that rippled through trees and high grass by the river gardens.

  “You’re not,” she said, gathering up the hem of her dress to stand, “but someday you will be.”

  * * * *

  The aspens and oaks and eucalyptuses of Orasa nir Zaket shook madly in the storm, shedding leaves and rattling their branches’ ornamental bells as the downpour thickened. Overhead it was gray, verging on black, bleeding a thin blue mist over the grove.

  Anna waited on the side of the scarred, waterlogged footpath, watching the wagon’s wheels thump through puddles and muddy ridges. As the diggers and planters shambled past in the gloom, shrouded in flapping cloaks, bickering about keeping saplings lashed to carts and seeds tucked under burlap covers, she searched for Yatrin’s black beard and pockmarks. She�
��d seen a sizable amount of fighters enter the sacred copses, many of them from the recent strike, but there was no solace in their gazes, whether Nahoran or Hazani or Rzolkan.

  An army full of comrades, yet lonelier than ever.

  The mind was a powerful thing.

  Standing like a charcoal smudge over the northern thicket were the ministers’ towers, where the fate of the world was being toyed with like a treaty amendment. Those born into lives of writs and ledgers had no concept of the nonsense they put to paper, Anna considered as she stared. They were loutish, blind creatures, more keen on saving face than their own people. She envisioned them in their meeting chambers, gibbering on and grinning, serving tea to the same men who’d orchestrated genocide through ink and hand-waving.

  No better than the butchers.

  “Anna.” Yatrin’s raspy voice cut through the drumming rain as he wandered off the path and onto the grass beside her, grasping the sides of her arms. “Are you well?”

  She simply nodded—she couldn’t find the words for feelings. But there was a warm swell from seeing him again after so long, a gap of time now registering to her like eons. His eyes quieted the rainfall and pulled her back to the calmness of his touch.

  “I heard about the events of the strike,” Yatrin said. “Take pride in your resolve.”

  “We can talk about it another day,” she said weakly. “This is her time.”

  “And the time of others.” Yatrin turned her gently to face the gathering at the edge of a nearby clearing. They were hanging scraps of shattered iron from ribbon-wrapped poles and arches. “The death of every being must be rectified.”

  Anna couldn’t fathom some aspects of Nahora’s rites. In Rzolka, they’d shown respect to dead fighters by severing eyelids, taking teeth, or tearing the skin into flaps like an open tome. The Hazani had even more heartless ways, depending on their banner. But here there was no celebration of death, nor any triumph of killers. She studied their most accomplished fighters as they hung remembrance trinkets and hauled saplings from carts to freshly dug pits, singing their chants aloud, shuffling mud and dirt around the trunks with their boots. Each life they took was replaced, on some level.

  She wondered if the serving girls would receive an offering.

  “The Huuri augurs made their rounds yesterday evening,” Yatrin continued. “Shem would have wept at its beauty.”

  “I’m sure,” Anna said. Rain was fizzling over cloaks and tarps and flowing eucalyptus canopies, breaking in spastic little shells. “I’m glad to be back here, Yatrin. With you.”

  He pulled in a long, controlled breath. “It’s mutual.”

  “I wanted to write you more often, but—”

  “I understand.”

  “Things are going to change,” she said. “So I’m glad that I’m here with you now. Because there won’t always be that now.”

  Yatrin’s frown was tense, cutting. “There’s always room for faith in the world.”

  “Perhaps the Toymaker thinks the same thing.”

  Wind howled westward through the forest, slashing the rain down in hard sheets and stripping leaves from the highest branches. The gathering near the ceremonial circle, which was rife with robed Huuri, sacramental chests, unfurled scrolls, and other artifacts with purposes well beyond Anna’s knowledge, had begun a Kojadi chant that seemed to vibrate within the raindrops themselves.

  Rest your weary bones in every hollow of the earth, young rabbit.

  Dwell amid every pocket of blackness, scaled and immaculate walker of the waves.

  Seize every joy and catastrophe within your heart’s folds, Venerated Ones.

  To picked ends we must come.

  Formation breeds cessation.

  Each time a new sapling was lowered into the pits and packed in with black soil, it was accompanied by another repetition of the chant. Yatrin whispered along with them, softly but still breaking the shushing of the rain, unfazed by the thunder that burst over the sea and left ringing in Anna’s ears.

  Just before they began the fourth recitation, Anna’s mind strayed to the coming business of negotiations and plan reviews. She struggled to recall the names of her liaisons for each department, her go-betweens for go-betweens, all of those eastern titles and ranks and orders that only complicated the—

  A blast louder than thunder punched through the torrent.

  Black smoke erupted in roiling plumes from the ministers’ towers, raining massive fingers of ash and dust over the eastern districts and boardwalks. The earliest screams rang out with the shock wave’s clap, but rain buried most of their clamor. Then the gray haze took on a reddish pulse, humming and ebbing behind veils of writhing smoke, mounting as wind howled through the blast site and fed the flames. Muted pops and crackling followed.

  “No,” Anna whispered, blinking away frigid raindrops as she stared. Breaths shriveled and withered in her lungs. “This isn’t happening, is it?”

  Yatrin squared his shoulders, examining the tower as more screaming broke out. “Is Ramyi safe?”

  Her mind was working in heated circles, shoving back against a tide of urgency and rage. How could she think of specific places, people, things? “Yes,” she managed breathlessly. “She’s still in the Nest. Is this happening, Yatrin?”

  “It could be.”

  A red filament arced across the sky, spreading to strings of crimson emergency lanterns that hung from Azibahli scaffolding and capsule lines. Hooded figures came rushing up from the darker stretch of the grove, diggers and fighters and masked diviners alike, all shouting at one another in Orsas. An urban unit’s shrill whistles joined the rumbling.

  “We should get you to the garrison,” Yatrin said.

  Anna shook her head. “I’m going with you. Those towers aren’t far off.”

  “It’s not safe.”

  “Nowhere is safe!” she snapped, startling Yatrin. “There’s a garrison in the lower districts, isn’t there?”

  “The fifteenth’s stationed there.”

  “Let’s move.”

  “Anna, listen to me.” He seized her wrist with a smooth, precise gesture. “There’s no sense in rushing into violence without knowing. For all we know, this could only be the start of something more severe. It has to be contained and dealt with.”

  “If not by us,” she said, jerking her wrist free, “then whom?” She strode after her fighters on the worn, drowned path, all the while gazing up at the black blossoms fraying into the mist.

  She thought of the bald man sealed away in the depths of Gal Asur, cackling and carrying on in the hard tongue of the mountain clans.

  Your violence has come home to you.

  Chapter 11

  The lower districts were stricken by chaos, not fear. Smoke was cascading down from the black rods of the ministers’ towers, blanketing the hillside in ash and gray fines, coating every cobblestone row and lush rooftop and hedgerow sprawl in a grotesque imitation of snow.

  Anna followed Yatrin’s silhouette through the haze as they ascended the narrow, walled stairwells leading to the tower complex. Her breathing was strained, worn down by constant jogging and screeching lungs, but the easterner’s presence kept her grounded. Tethered, perhaps. It was as though the world’s pull had been inverted, dragging her up into the depths of some formless sea. She began dimly tracking the swirls and twists of white-gray flakes drifting down from a barren sky, which had only grown more intense as they scaled the eastern ascent. Their edges were bits of bright ribbon, shimmering and smoldering, dancing like candlewicks before they were snuffed out upon a shifting, footprint-laden carpet. It was almost enough to distract her from the shouts and whistles, comfortably nestled somewhere in the slate void below her.

  Almost.

  She could still hear the towers fizzling, could still see them hemorrhaging embers and kerosene smoke within the throbbing red gloom.<
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  The Chayam’s urban units had already secured most of the hillside, carting setstone barriers into position and lining dust-smothered citizens up beneath awnings. Not that they could identify anybody or anything by sight: Everyone was pale, dissolving, shambling about like wayward spirits cast out of the Grove-Beyond-Worlds. Blinking, gasping, choking, carving dark eyes and wet mouths out of their chalk veneers.

  But the bewilderment of the citizens was mirrored in the fighters themselves. Anna moved past pairs of comrades huddled together on the roadside, some babbling under the shade of their helmets, others staring blankly as the ash rain continued to flutter down. For all their preparations and protocols, the chain of command now felt impotent, if not shattered. Each unit had their own certainty, called out in Orsas to Yatrin or their accompanying garrison fighters:

  “It was a sparksalt cache!”

  “The seventh said there’s another wave advancing from the north.”

  “It was done by a rune. It had to be.”

  But shadows of the truth were the most dangerous deceptions.

  Dark blots continued bobbing up the stairs above Yatrin, hemmed in by walls that trickled into the smog. The garrison’s reserve had moved with enough haste to overcome their initial delay, having first cited a lack of orders from their commanding officers. “Then they’ll order you to help bury more citizens,” Anna had snapped at them. Now they shuffled along in silence, dragging trampled bodies off the steps and passing orders to the units they encountered.

  At the height of the ascent, a towering brick ring encircled the crest of the hill. Its gate was a pale window in the smoke, crowded with rigid bodies and barricade blocks, overflowing with bitter Orsas and the rumbling crash of debris hammering down into the courtyard.

  Plumes of dust whipped past Anna as she shouldered through the press. She raised her hood, though it seemed to make little difference—faces beneath the arch were vague, featureless slates. Yatrin and the urban officers cleared their path, bickering the entire way with the checkpoint’s fighters, before emerging into the open ring.