She found herself in a shifting, writhing curtain of ash and red-hued smoke, strewn with setstone fragments and hissing sheets of grit. The Nahorans were twisted shapes ahead of her, wreathed with flaking auras and spun from cinders. In the distance, black masses peeled away from the tower’s silhouette and plummeted to distant cobblestones, shattering up through Anna’s soles with every impact. She tore her gaze from the nightmarish sprawl and trailed the fighters, keeping her ruj slung tightly and tucked against her back. Dark, flailing shapes flitted through her periphery; they weren’t swirling grit, she soon realized, but an evacuated stream of coughing and shrieking diplomats. Their origin was the high, arching doorway just ahead, burned into the haze like a black iris.
Scattered groups of Nahorans staggered past Anna’s unit as they entered the marble atrium. She paused, jarred by the surreal display—the soaring architecture, the sweeping boughs and lush vines, the chandeliers still pulsing through the smokescreen. Her ragged breaths were lost to clapping footsteps and the walls’ deep, resonant groans.
Yatrin spun, waving Anna toward their cluster of fighters. “They said the central circuit sustained too much damage,” he explained. “The northern lift is our only way up.” His frown deepened and his eyes flickered back and forth between Anna’s. “You should wait by the outer ring, Anna. We don’t know what we’ll find up there. Command isn’t even allowing ordained scribes to enter.”
Anna sighed and stepped around Yatrin’s broad shoulders, moving toward the capsule’s parted grating. She whistled at the gathering of fighters. “Shara.”
* * * *
When the capsule’s gilded grating swung outward, revealing immaculate, yet empty, corridors, Anna knew precisely where she was. In fact, she recalled it from the reverberation of her steps alone. She glimpsed Nahora’s ever-guarded secret, which had now been laid out with bruised eastern pride in the state’s weakest moment, too broken to resist her probing. A secret that explained the blast, that put fear into the highest echelons of command, that wrenched Anna’s stomach into knots:
They’d come for the Council.
Not even the urban fighters seemed to understand, including the captains among them. They broke into a measured run down the central path, scanning branching halls and parlors with the curiosity of the ignorant. Yatrin himself, for all his awareness, followed in the same blind manner.
There was no way to explain what they’d find. Not that she knew herself, truly. Yet the air was too still here, almost shattered, and it whispered promises of the carnage ahead. Anna slid her ruj from her shoulder, checked the firing lock, and jogged after the unit.
Corridor by corridor, the air grew thicker and more acrid. It all returned to Anna in flashes of déjà vu, in her innate recollection of the floor shifting from carpet to tile to carpet once more, flowing over the path Konrad had used to guide her so long ago.
Cries of alarm rang out ahead.
Anna pushed aside her exhaustion and sprinted to make up ground, only noting the walls’ ruj-gouged plaster and bloody freckling when she came to a halt. A set of enormous interlocking doors, once joined by embedded metal rods and hooked cogs, had been cracked open by crude explosives, leaving their gold-leaf slabs ajar and rivulets of dark, fused metal frozen mid-drip. Moving closer still, she saw four bodies sprawled out before the doorway.
Beneath the blood and innards were sets of ceremonial armor—rich violet cloaks, gilded helmets, polished leather boots, vests laden with jade and amethyst slivers. They were all young men, as handsome and lean as any other in the training halls Anna had visited.
Deep, still-oozing symbols had been gouged into their faces—northern Hazani curses to obliterate the soul along with the body.
Smoke wafted through the parted slabs in tendrils, joined by the uncanny humming Anna now remembered so vividly. It must’ve occurred to Yatrin too, because the easterner wilted, his brows creasing, chin bowing, shoulders settling into a broken ridge. Anna reached out, but before she could touch his arm, Yatrin lifted his ruj and slipped through the urban fighters. She’d barely opened her mouth when he disappeared through the doorway.
Panic flared though her.
“Follow him,” Anna urged the fighters, already shouldering onward in pursuit.
Within the chamber, the walls’ veneer of webbing throbbed wildly, vibrating like conscious flesh within the shadows. A crumbling, blackened amphitheater waited on the other side of the weavesilk bridge, now framing the twirls of Yatrin’s cloak as he crossed. The entire right side of the chamber had been blown out, its scar extending deep into the recesses of the cavern, gushing smoke and embers and blackened strands of weavesilk into the storm. Lightning’s white prongs flashed through the gap. Rainfall sizzled into mist upon glowing metal.
Anna hurried to catch Yatrin, cognizant of the others fighters’ steps falling away as their disbelief set in. Sickly bleats and clicks rose on the screeching wind. The laments of a dying Council, she imagined. “Yatrin!”
But her broken voice wasn’t enough to keep him from entering the ruins.
“Kretin,” Anna tucked under her breaths. She trailed him through the stonework, emerging into a—
The Council’s blood left a dark sheen upon everything: the stones, the webbing, the stringy flesh of what had once been its speakers. The creature’s face was pitted and oozing black fluid, its mandibles dangling on shredded tendons. Bits of its legs lay discarded in scorched, shriveled heaps. It lay shuddering upon the stone, spastically tapping its forelimbs and croaking.
The assembly area itself was littered with dozens of bodies, some torn apart and others wide-eyed, gazing dully at red tiles. An enormous, smoldering pit waited at the center, ringed by black charring and smaller gouges.
A blood-soaked woman knelt within the pit, her head bowed and black hair falling in long sheets to her mid-back. She was thin, naked, shimmering with oval sigils. “You’re too late,” she called out in flatspeak. A high, sweet voice, reminiscent of the carnival singers that had once visited Bylka.
Yatrin’s ruj snapped up, but Anna rushed to his side, slapping the barrel down before his finger tensed.
She flashed a warning look at him, then returned her attention to the woman. “Who are you?”
“It doesn’t matter now,” she replied. “But you know my kin, Kuzalem.”
“Face us.”
Rising on graceful legs, the woman turned to show her youth. Her eyes, golden Hazani droplets, burned bright in the gloom. Mottled skin covered her in patches, but her rune’s glow meant they were old, long-healed marks of flame.
Healed upon the flesh, anyway. Memories rarely scabbed over.
Yatrin aimed his ruj once more. A herd of footsteps and gasps and muttered Orsas followed as the urban fighters streamed into the amphitheater’s confines, fanning out and stepping over mutilated bodies. Within moments, they’d leveled their ruji on the woman.
“The others died once for this sacred task,” she explained, gesturing to the wall’s smoldering gap. “They failed, but I carried their burdens. I know what abuse of the flesh awaits me. My mind is prepared and always has been. My entire life has led to this moment.” She began to laugh, overtaking the roll of thunder and the Council’s death knell with saccharine echoes. “The cycle must end.”
“Take her,” Anna whispered to the surrounding fighters. As they advanced, their ruji never swaying, Anna cleared her throat. “You said I know your kin.”
“Of this, I’m certain,” the woman laughed.
“Then be open with me.”
The fighters closed in on the woman, occasionally losing their attention to the withering creature before them. Their state, their unity, their godhead, bleeding away under their watch—the stuttering in their steps spoke of the anguish in their hearts.
“Just know that the state’s reign of corruption is over,” the woman said, offering both hands
for waiting manacles. “My sister will not be your pawn.”
Lightning tore through the smog.
“Give me your name, at the very least,” Anna told the woman, leaning forward in a minister’s hardwood chair. It hadn’t been the Nahorans’ wish to leave her alone with the captive, nor her own, but there weren’t enough bodies to operate effectively as it was. There was little she could do for the dying creature, but plenty to be learned from its killer. Especially now that her rune had evaporated. “Whatever you neglect to tell me will be extracted forcibly. If you know Nahora’s heart, you understand that.”
The woman’s gaze lingered on the walls and their geometric patterning. “Beauty always lurks in the most heinous places.”
“Am I not treating you well enough for respect?” There was some truth in that, after all; Anna had given the woman her cloak as a simple kindness, though it hadn’t been repaid in the slightest. “At least look at me.”
Her golden eyes flashed ahead, lancing through Anna with a chill. “We have nothing to say to one another.”
“I’m not your enemy. I’m not Nahoran.”
“Clearly.”
They were almost the same age, or so it appeared to Anna. But they existed in separate worlds, perhaps separate dimensions altogether. It was as though the woman was oblivious to what she’d done, or to the scene unfolding at the end of the corridor.
It had all happened in a nauseating blur, rife with shouted Orsas and dying croaks and the pattering of footsteps up and down the bridge. Yatrin had done his best to organize the fighters, but they were startled by the creature, especially without its vocal humanoid appendages. They’d been dispatched to fetch aid, stuff their wadded bandages into raw gashes, and secure the rest of the tower, respectively. Packs of Azibahli had even started streaming into the tower to the Council’s aid, patching the deepest wounds with weavesilk film. But the bustle unfolded around a gory mess, forcing the fighters to wade through dismembered limbs and strung-out organs. It had smelled of acid and burned hair.
Soon enough, all of Nahora would become accustomed to such a scene—by choice or otherwise.
“When you said your sister,” Anna pressed, “you meant Ramyi, didn’t you?”
“Is this the height of your wit, field-whore? All of your precious scrolls brought you to this end?” Anna didn’t deign that with a reply. “Yes, she’s my sister. And now I’ll die contentedly, knowing that she was spared from this mindlessness.”
“Are you cracked?” Anna hissed. A torrent of rage poured through her, thick with questions she couldn’t bring herself to form. She practically lunged forward, fighting to keep her hands off the woman’s throat. “You’ve only managed to spark a war.”
“You pressed your assault on my home.”
“Your home?” Anna whispered. “What are you talking about?”
“Did you not see the eastern blood in those you cut down?” she asked. “That compound was a place of refuge for Nahoran defectors. But you had to destroy them because you disliked the checkering on their banner.”
“Defectors?”
She nodded. “Defectors, informants, runners. Whatever you term them, their nature remains. Those who spoke too much for Nahora’s liking.”
“It was the Toymaker’s estate.”
She scoffed. “Do you really believe in such myths? It seems they set their hound upon their frayed threads, and the beast leapt.”
Anna struggled to control the twitching in her jaw. “Where do you think Ramyi will be now, after what you’ve done?”
“Safe in the west.”
“No,” Anna said, “she’ll be fighting to stay alive.”
“Because of what I’ve done?” she laughed. “Do you trust in the Kojadi principles of reverberation, Kuzalem?”
As waves mold shores, hatred molds hearts. Forth and forth, the vibrations of intention ripple. As you are acted upon, so too do you act. She’d come to know that teaching experientially, as happenings that arose in meditation and spoke a language beyond words. “I do,” she whispered. “I believe you’ll suffer immensely for what you’ve done here.”
“Trace this horror back to its seed, and you’ll find what created me.”
“You had a choice!”
“Choice is a luxury for those beyond suffering.”
“You’ll cause Ramyi to suffer,” Anna said. “Take refuge in that when you’re dying in Gal Asur.”
For a long while the woman was silent, her head tucked to her chest and a wry smile plastered across her lips. “Did Ramyi ever tell you that she had a sister?”
“No.”
“She thought me dead,” the woman explained. “Perhaps rightly so. What a burden it is, Kuzalem, to live as a shadow. There are few pains that surpass surrendering those you love.”
Anna fought to keep compassion from her eyes. “If you cared for her, you wouldn’t have done this.”
“You speak of things you know little about.” The woman looked up with flared nostrils. “I visited her cycle after cycle, year after year, watching her grow in a place that nourished her with love. And every night I counted my salt and my bars, waiting for the day that I could buy her back and feed her better than the sisters she’d come to know.”
“You never went back for her.”
“Because you stole her!”
Anna paused, stunned by the sudden outpouring of raw feeling. It was a wave that broke her, gripping her in the deepest sense. “If you’re telling the truth, then I feel even worse for you. You threw away everything you sought when you went under their banner.”
“Do you think I’m a hired blade, a killer?” She shook her head. “Look at my fingers, Kuzalem, and you will see the marks of a tinkerer. Even I didn’t know my destiny until I found out where you’d taken her. I did what I had to do.”
“You’ll see her killed.”
“I’ll see her returned,” the woman said softly. “If you care for her as much as you say, you’ll send her back to Hazan. She’ll live and die in peace.”
“That’s not an option. Certainly not now.”
“You have a choice,” she whispered.
“So did you,” she said. “You could’ve stayed with her.”
For the first time, the woman’s brows creased with rage. Her manacles jangled beneath the cloak. “Did Ramyi ever tell you how she came to be a foundling?”
“The sisters told me.”
“The sisters know what a caravan told them. What I told the caravan, no less. An accidental blast during a raid, wasn’t it?” Her eyes leveled on the cube-shaped lantern near Anna. “Our family’s plot bordered the peaks, and our land was almost arid. Cursed, some of the Gosuri wanderers said we were. We barely had enough to survive from one spring to the next. But we lived near a pass that the Nahorans seemed to fancy. Some clashes were escalating in the northern region, making them antsy to find succor on the flatlands side—not that I knew at the time. They paid well and they stopped at our home often, even when our father was away. My mother served them coffee and licorice twists. But the men who visited us were very hungry.” Her eyes grew glassy, unfocused. “One of their officers took a liking to my mother, you see, and it’s a difficult thing to turn down a Nahoran. On one occasion, though, my mother did. So they proved a point.”
Anna found it hard to swallow.
“I was young, but I knew about death,” the woman continued. “What I watched from the attic was beyond death in every sense. It was an affront to life. I had to cut my sister from my mother’s womb, long after the men had done their work and passed onward. And when I found the first caravan on the road, I made them promise to deliver the girl to Malijad. I was going to find her there someday.”
“I didn’t know,” Anna whispered, and that was all she could manage. She studied the woman again, her own jaw trembling, hands cold. “I just—”
“It’s not that simple.”
“It could be,” the woman said. “You could go with her. Teach her a craft away from war, away from marking flesh. You could.”
“There are good people here,” Anna said faintly.
“Spare me your sentiments, please.” She bowed her head once more. “I’ve made peace with my gods and the stars, Kuzalem. This world is a passing shadow to me.”
“I know,” she whispered. “I’ll do what I can for Ramyi.”
“I always knew that you weren’t like them. That you had some mercy in you.”
“Tell me one thing: Are they truly coming? Is this how it starts?”
The woman gave a grim nod.
Teardrops, long abandoned in Anna’s memory, throbbed along her lower lids. “Have you ever seen Nahoran ceiling mosaics?”
Frowning, the woman glanced up. A crooked smile emerged.
Anna’s hand burst out from beneath her cloak, glinting with her short blade as it slashed across the woman’s throat, a thin red line creeping from right to left, flapping open with a startled breath, gushing blood over the violet cloak and pitter-pattering onto the carpet. She sat back in her chair and watched the woman twitch once, twice; gasping and sputtering for wet air, before falling still and relaxing her shoulders.
Her sigils vanished.
When everything was silent, Anna sheathed the blade and stared at the empty golden eyes. “She’ll see you again someday.”
The door burst open, startling her.
Yatrin stood in the threshold, huffing as though fresh out of a sprint, his ruj dangling at his side. He glanced at Anna, then her work. He pursed his lips, moved closer, and shut the door.
She’d never seen his eyes so hollow. “I had to do it.”
Schisms Page 18