It could not be trusted, the old clerics of Jex Toth had told her. She must become its master or be driven mad by its constant scrabbling for the ship’s wheel of her mind, the endless pressure to grant it control of the body they shared.
As if they knew the first thing about it. For all their talk of having broken their angels, each and every one of the Vex Assembly slipped up at times, speaking in tongues not their own, indulging appetites that ran counter to their waking hungers. In point of fact, they were all barking mad with little connection to reality; they claimed their kingdom had been transported to a paradise beyond the First Dark for countless eons, for example, when any uneducated bumpkin in the Star could tell you Jex Toth had vanished a mere five hundred years before.
Bold and brash as these heathens had been when Y’Homa had first arrived, with the audacity to imply she was the one who had misunderstood the gospel, now she knew better. Even after half a millennium of cohabitation the other angeliacs warred against their divine halves, whereas Y’Homa had made peace with her own celestial passenger after only a brief if intense adjustment period. Everything happens. Whatever minor details the Burnished Chain had gotten wrong, that highest scriptural truth had prepared Y’Homa for her own Day of Becoming in ways the Tothans would never understand, had allowed her to accept her transformation absolutely, for indeed, everything happens. The difference between Y’Homa and her saviors was that she sought only to love that piece of the Fallen Mother that had fused with her soul, even if she could never understand it, while the rest of the Vex Assembly sought to exploit and control that which was by its very nature beyond their ken. This was why their minds had been fractured, she surmised, because their souls were unworthy—only the purest vessel could contain such intense power and not crack.
Despite her superiority over the rest of the Vex Assembly she was nevertheless bound to Sherdenn, the high priest who had sacrificed her to the Fallen Mother. By dropping her into the Tothan Gate he had transformed her from a mere window for the eyes of the divine to a living door for a higher power. For this she owed the ancient cleric far more than just her resurrected life—she owed him the very salvation of her soul, and that of the angel who had entered her. Imperfect though he and all the other Tothans were, they had been chosen by the Fallen Mother, the same as she, and together they were remaking the Star as their maker had ordained. Everything happens, and when the time came Y’Homa would supplant Sherdenn and the rest, rising to her rightful station as the Fallen Mother’s sole hierophant.
For now, however, they must all proudly work together to serve the Allmother. They were the key that would turn the lock that would open the door that would—
Come and see.
Y’Homa blinked her eyes, her breath falling out of rhythm with the pulsing walls of her chamber as she rose from her reverie to answer Sherdenn’s summons. The Vex Assembly had little need for the imperfections of the spoken word, casting their very thoughts into each other’s skulls across even vast distances. Each silent communication carried its own complex scent, which their soldiers could interpret more readily than word or even thought, and as her eyes watered from the oily cockroach reek Y’Homa answered her mentor with a simple affirmation. As she did she felt in the back of her mind the stirrings of another presence, one that had become so much a part of her it was increasingly indistinguishable from her own. Soon there would be no she and it, no and at all, just one perfect child of the Fallen Mother. In the meantime she strove to become more divine even as its angelic means of thinking became increasingly mortal … or at least comprehensible.
Dress.
She doubted she would have need of her armor anytime soon but nevertheless indulged her angel’s desire to gird itself, allowing it to summon her swarm with a breath of musk. The spiny insects swept over her raw skin, grey legs slipping into the red indentations and puckered furrows in her creamy flesh as they harmoniously locked into place. Her royal armor was far more ostentatious than that of the legions in her command, and a far cry from the simple scuttling robes they had cloaked her in before she recovered from her resurrection. The queen skittered up the back of her neck, thick legs wrapping around Y’Homa’s face to form her mask. The Black Pope smiled as the comforting warm weight settled atop her skull, a bloom of black quills falling luxuriously backward from her living crown as she strode though the glistening aperture that opened in the wall.
The mucus-slick passageways that had seemed so intimidating when she first arrived on Jex Toth now put her at ease, the floor shifting to help her keep her footing as the walls swayed and lurched from side to side. It felt almost like being back in the First Dark, surrounded by a vast nurturing pressure. Sherdenn was not in his chamber, and she followed the path he had mapped out in her mind, her nostrils flaring from the lingering psychic scent. From the sweet tang that now complemented his sharp fragrance Y’Homa could tell that Lagren was with him, which meant something important must indeed be afoot—the spider-frocked priestess had kept to herself of late.
Deeper and deeper they wormed into their enormous host, and finally a pulsing curtain of tissue spread itself wide for Y’Homa to join her fellows. Sherdenn had dressed for the occasion in layer upon layer of gem-bright vermin, and Lagren’s gown of cobweb lace beaded with egg sacs was even more ornate that ever, but neither Y’Homa nor her angel paid them any notice, staring at what lay beyond the pair. The outer wall of the narrow chamber bulged outward, and through the translucent shell she saw that their leviathan had at long last surfaced, and their target filled the horizon.
The war begins, Sherdenn murmured in her mind as Y’Homa stepped past him, staring out at the blue waters, at the other leviathans rising like sunken kingdoms all around them, and the helpless green shore beyond.
Before she had become host to the heavenly, Y’Homa had been terrified of being sent away from Jex Toth. To be exiled from the corporeal manifestation of the Fallen Mother felt like nothing short of damnation … yet now Y’Homa understood her greater purpose. She had not been drawn to Jex Toth because it was the Garden of the Star—it wasn’t. The Vex Assembly’s attempt to transform their homeland into heaven had been thwarted by their jealous enemies, the ritual interrupted, the miracle compromised, and the faithful banished. Y’Homa had resurrected Jex Toth and sailed to its shores not to merely assume a place of power—she had fulfilled her destiny because the Fallen Mother needed her favorite daughter to retrieve that holiest of seeds that had survived the ages of darkness and bring it back to the world, to plant the true Garden of the Star and see that this time it took root.
The righteous did not hide in heaven. The righteous carried heaven with them, even as they sojourned down into hell. Y’Homa was not leaving the Fallen Mother behind in Jex Toth, she was bringing Her to the Star.
The enthusiasm of her angel was contagious, and when the question of who would lead the assault on the Star came to a vote Y’Homa had joyously volunteered. Now they had arrived, the living holds of their leviathans pregnant with both angelic soldiers and the malformed spawn of the Deceiver they had kept in ravenous captivity, eager to be loosed upon the wicked world, desperate to offer the final sacrifice …
And now the wait was over.
PART II
INFERNAL FREEDOM
The devil tempts us not—’tis we tempt him,
Beckoning his skill with opportunity.
—George Eliot, Felix Holt, The Radical (1866)
CHAPTER
1
In the end it took three barbers, seven varieties of bugs, and twelve hours of surgery to save Zosia’s life. All that, and the assistance of the beefiest militia thug in that quarter of the castle to remove one of the arrowheads from where it was lodged in the Stricken Queen’s clavicle. The oak shaft had splintered off before either steel or bone would yield, requiring the brawny volunteer to wrench it free with pliers after none of the surgeons were able to wiggle it loose. That arrowhead, along with the rest, were reverently collected so that t
hey could be later incorporated into the memorial statue raised to all of Zosia’s countless victims; the five crossbowers she had murdered with her hammer before succumbing to her wounds in the Upper Chainhouse were the final martyrs of the revolution.
Or so the story went. Boris suspected the actual arrowheads were already on the black market, priceless relics to the right collector, or potent components to would-be witches or alchemists. Everything else she’d touched—or that had touched her—was probably long gone, too, he assumed, though even with his connections he hadn’t been admitted to the royal residences of Castle Diadem, where she had left all of her things while attending that fatal first council meeting.
Ah, but he did know where her hammer was—that was going to be used during the public execution, once both queens were recovered enough to be skinned alive.
“Flayed with a hammer?” Zosia asked him and the three heavily armed guards who were her constant companions in the cell where she lay loosely shackled to a cot. “Cruel and unusual, and also a decent metaphor for your revolution’s back-asswardness.”
“Ah, no, the idea’s they break your feet with Sister Portolés’s maul, but you’re chained upright so you can’t help but have your weight on ’em, and then the skinning starts,” Boris clarified, leaning back on the stool he’d brought along this time. “Indsorith’s got some treasured sword they’ll use for the flaying, make sure you’re both taken apart with your own weapons.”
“Subtle,” said Zosia, not looking up from the lump of briar she was carving, the vise clamped to her bed frame making her whole cot shake, her lap scattered with tools and wood shavings. She’d been a little surprised they’d granted her last request, seeing as it involved pointy things, but Boris smirked at her reaction when he’d brought the pipe-making kit—as if the revolution had anything to fear from her. With the guards always watching her and the carefully supervised packing up of the tools and vise at the end of the day, it would have taken far more effort than it was worth to properly shank one of the bastards. And knowing how hard they were managing the story of Cold Cobalt’s final hours they probably wanted her to try to kill herself, just so she could fail and be proven a coward. “Think once I’m done with this you can bring me a navy twist? Some folk swear by straight burly or red vergin leaf to break in a briar, but I always like my cake with a sip of rhum … or is letting me carve a pipe but denying me tubq part of the torture?”
“I don’t expect you’ll live long enough to see that thing through,” said Boris. “Briar’s the toughest wood there is, aye? Now that you’re strong enough to properly turn it I expect you’re fit enough to pay for your crimes.”
“Oh,” said Zosia, setting her rasp down as her hands began to tremble. So that explained it.
“Don’t let me stop you,” he said, popping another piece of the roast chicken he’d brought her into his sore-marked mouth. He’d already eaten most of the small bird, as he usually did before leaving her with a plate of greasy bones. “I’m but the eyes of my betters, not brains nor mouth—just ’cause I think you’re fit for the flensing hardly means the council will agree. They might want you able to dance before they call you out on the floor.”
“No brains, but plenty of mouth in my experience,” said Zosia, the words leaving her lips as easily as the shape of the briar revealed itself in her hands, despite how foggy headed she felt.
“You ever experienced my mouth you’d show me a bit more respect,” said Boris, licking a dimpled piece of skin off his fingers as he turned to the guards crowding the cell. Zosia’s accommodations were so dank and small she suspected it might be the same dungeon she’d rescued Indsorith from. “You know this old she-goat wanted to hit up a brothel tent just afore we came over? Tells you what kind of a person she is, the thought of blood and fire and the deviltry of the First Dark getting her randy as a spring ram.”
The guards were too well disciplined to ever participate in the little man’s nonsense, but as usual they looked on with a mix of amusement and embarrassment at his treatment of the prisoner who had once been the very symbol of their uprising. Zosia cocked her head at him, considering. There wasn’t enough give in her shackle to actually reach Boris, but if she flicked a file at his face she might just get lucky and take out an eye.
“Yeah, I’m such an asshole, offering to buy you a lustworker before asking you to stick out your neck,” she said, deciding to wait until she was definitely losing her tool privileges before going after him. “No wonder you don’t like me, Heretic, all I ever did was treat you ill.”
“Told you not to call me that,” he said, slurping on the end of a drumstick.
“Right, only your war nun girlfriend got to use that pet name, I forgot,” she said, which got the fucking stoat to drop the bone back on the plate and stand to leave.
“Always a pleasure, Yer Majesty,” said Boris, offering a ridiculous bow as he rolled the chicken carcass off the plate and onto her sawdusty bedding. “Enjoy your dinner, and we’ll see if tomorrow brings breakfast or a pair of broken heels.”
“I’m on pins and needles,” she told him, which was true enough—besides having painful, itchy holes sewn up in her chest and shoulder and hip and bicep, the rest of her was near-constantly tingling.
“Ah, and almost forgot,” he said as the guard posted outside unlocked the barred door of the cell. “Indsorith prayed me deliver a message to you.”
“Mmm?” Zosia tried to remain unreadable but the hand that had reached for the ruins of the bird was shaking worse than ever. On his first visit she’d made the mistake of asking what had happened to Indsorith and Choplicker, but when it became obvious he was only going to fuck with her she’d stopped giving him the satisfaction.
“Aye, and it sounded important, so maybe if you’re nicer to your only friend the next time I call I’ll remember what it was.” Stepping out into the corridor, he blew her a kiss, and then was gone.
And that’s why you don’t help strangers. Zosia cleaned what meat and marrow he’d left her from the mess on her sheets, trying to remember just how long she’d been down here. Tried to remember what she had ever seen in Boris to make her think she could trust him, and why she had thought it was important to stick around to help fix things here in Diadem, instead of just cutting out with Indsorith as soon as they opened up the castle. Tried to remember what Kang-ho’s stupid daughter was named, General Tip-of-the-tongue still not showing up with the Cobalt Company to liberate Diadem. Zosia tried to remember a hundred other little things, and gave up on the lot, focusing on scavenging enough flesh from a scrawny chicken carcass to keep herself going until her enemies came to kill their enfeebled old nemesis. She couldn’t stop them from trying, and in the meantime she had a briar beauty to finish. She would be devildamned if her last smoke was out of a corncob fucking pipe.
CHAPTER
2
Devils and the First Dark. Two things any sane mortal sought to avoid at all costs. Even if you didn’t have superstitious motivations for shunning them, simple old horse sense advised against meddling with blatantly dangerous powers you had no way of understanding. Then again, as of tonight Purna was officially a dead woman, so what did she have to fear from anything?
“Before we begin I need to make sure we all understand exactly what is going to happen,” said Hoartrap as he stepped up onto the creaky pulpit of the ruined church and overlooked his meager congregation. “Once I begin the invocation the walls between worlds will grow thinner and thinner until there is nothing at all separating ours from theirs, and that is not the time for you to interrupt my focus with inanities.”
“All we have to do is lay hands on the sacrifices and repeat your words, but not disturb the circle,” said Keun-ju, looking down at the hypnotized rat at his feet. The animal stood just within the band of red sand that composed the outer ring of the pentagram, staring at the candle mounted on a giant bird skull in the center of the symbol. The red wax taper had turned black as it burned halfway down. Across the pe
ntagram from Keun-ju’s rat was Best’s badger, the woman herself outside on a natural errand, and at the front of the star was the three-legged hound Purna had carried in here.
“Where’s your cat?” Purna asked Hoartrap, nodding at the three remaining animals. “With Sullen dipping out I get why you let his go, but don’t you still need a sacrifice for yourself?”
“Four is a very inauspicious number,” said Hoartrap, as if everybody ought to have known that already. “And devils are bad enough luck without trying to get cute with how many you draw in at one time. No, circumstances dictate a slight change of plans but to the same end result—we call forth the devils, you bind them to mortal flesh, and then as soon as the ritual is complete you transfer their ownership to me. I use them to clear our path to Jex Toth, and that’s a good night’s bad magic.”
“Transfer ownership?” asked Purna, the one cool part about this plot being the part where she got to loose a devil in exchange for a magical voyage to Jex Toth. “You can do that, like they were what, a thoroughbred yak you were selling with proof of pedigree?”
“Less paperwork but about the same, yes,” said Hoartrap, juggling a round clay jar from hand to hand. “It’s how Ji-hyeon came by her father’s owlbat—Kang-ho granted the devil its freedom from his will, so long as it faithfully served his daughter instead. Strange though they seem to us, most devils are no different from any simple creature, beholden to their own laws of nature, and once you learn how to exploit their innate behavior you’ve come a long way toward domestication.”
A War in Crimson Embers Page 26