by S. M. Beiko
The Cinder Plague had started with kids, hadn’t it? I pulled my finger out of my mouth, watched it bleed freely from the nail bed I’d pierced. The children are coming for you.
I know it’s you! The blind woman — she’d used Cecelia’s name. She’d have to have known her, from some time before, maybe when she’d lived here. I snatched up the letter, reread it despite knowing it by heart. The letters had, at first, been the only clues to what Cecelia had been up to before sending her body, and all its baggage, back to Winnipeg. To where she had been when her own daughter was defying the tenets that sent Denizen children to slaughter-by-darkling and had died herself trying to find a way to stop it.
I was still thinking about that woman, though, days later . . . how had she mistaken me for Cecelia? It had all happened so fast, and I hadn’t consciously turned my spirit eye on. Had she been a Denizen? Had she heard the stone somehow, like I did? What the hell was going on?
My chest tensed up, as if the clockworks of my heart and lungs had suddenly seized. I fell forward, catching myself on my bed. The voices surged. I covered my ears, but I knew it wouldn’t help; the voices were inside of me, tangling with my own thoughts, rattling the cage.
“Stop it!” I begged through gritted teeth.
The children are coming . . .
You thought you could leave me behind?
Even with my spirit eye closed, there was no escaping the rush of images, either; I couldn’t close anything off. Extrasensory pinpricks jolted out of my pores like sparks. Seeing jumbled fragments of memories that weren’t mine. A waking manifest nightmare I had no say in backing out of — terrible and frightening and too much.
“No!” I screamed, lurching and knocking into my coffee table, which I picked up without thinking and smashed into the wall. Then the lamp. Then I upturned the sofa, strength surging through me. “Get out of my head!” The heat was rising, and I felt myself expanding with it like a rippling cloud of ozone. I threw more furniture into the walls to redirect the sensations, if only temporarily. Was my neighbour banging on the wall, telling me to keep it down? I was close to cratering those walls, so soon whatever noise I was making would be incidental to the damage I knew I was capable of. Maybe this time I’d take the whole building down and the tenants wouldn’t be so lucky.
The voices only got louder, battering back against me and bringing me to my knees. “Please,” I tried, and in the roar, just as I was about to give in, to let the fire consume, I heard it — like an afterthought. Like a question.
Roan.
I latched onto it. Focused. The tidal wave of screaming and rage in too many languages with too many demands still roiled, but I took a deep breath. Took control, turned them down. And they faded around that one keystone, my name, and suddenly it was quiet.
Roan.
I opened my eyes. I was standing. The flat was gone. The space was dark and mercifully silent. I looked down. The floor was black granite with silver marbled veins, becoming clearer the longer I stared. Flashing underneath me were three concentric gold circles.
I looked up.
Cecelia stood before me. Not the shrunken woman in the hospital bed I’d known. Not the little fox or the warrior. It was the formidable and almost too beautiful younger version I’d only lately seen in this waking dream world I suddenly had access to. She stared at me, her eyes keen and knowing.
There was only one name I could call her. The only name I trusted.
“Sil?”
She smiled. The darkness faded into light, and the summoning chamber was gone, and Cecelia wasn’t smiling at me. I shifted to a layer behind this world, to what I knew immediately must be her memory, and saw the woman named Ruo coming down some pillar-lined steps towards her.
“You clean up nicely,” Ruo remarked, and Cecelia gave a mock bow. The two of them were dressed smartly and in matching gear — a black double-breasted tunic belted over red and gold trousers, collars high and crisp. Ruo’s black hair was a tidy frame around her neat features, while Cecelia’s flowed down her shoulders to the small of her back. Ruo’s eyes flicked to Cecelia’s feet. “Are you immune to wearing sensible shoes?”
Cecelia ran a finger around her tight collar and winced. “I always hated this getup. We aren’t acolytes anymore. I won’t get a dress code slip for mules. Unless you’re giving them out now.”
Ruo sighed. “Well, if the Conclave wasn’t expecting you before, now they’ll hear you coming from a mile away.” They’d started the long trek across the black marble court towards the Dragon Grounds, and they definitely drew stares from the young trainees and council masters alike. Ruo openly admired Cecelia’s squared shoulders, her defiant stare ahead, as she tried to keep up with the taller woman’s determined strides.
“Let them look,” Cecelia replied to Ruo’s unspoken anxiety, though her cynical tone seemed thinner than usual. “I know what they’re thinking. And I don’t care.”
“And what exactly is that?” Ruo shot back under her breath. “There might be too many rumours to name them all.”
“I know they’re all expecting me to put myself forward for the stone. I’m looking forward to soaking up their shock and disappointment.” Cecelia corrected her scowl — on the flight here, she knew that her greatest weapon was coaxing her features into placid apathy. To show the Conclave she didn’t care one way or another who the next Paramount was, and that she was only here to pay her respects to her deceased master — and whatever else he’d been: former confidant, bitter political adversary, one-time bedmate. “They think I had some kind of attachment to Chartrand and that it would put me higher in the pecking order. But coming all the way here to deny them is worth much more.”
They’d avoided talking about it any further on the long flight, through too many time zones before landing in Aleppo, but anything could happen today, and there may not be another chance. So even though it was painful, Ruo finally brought it up. “But you slept with him, anyway. Surely you knew there’d be talk.”
Cecelia stopped. They were at the edge of the outdoor sanctum, the Middle Eastern sun punishing, but she turned her face towards it regardless, soaking up the light, the original fire, as any Fox may have.
“I was curious, honestly. And Chartrand was weak, for all his power and bluster and proselytizing. I wanted to show him I didn’t fear him. That I was more than him. It made me feel strong — and it’s the ’60s, for gods’ sake. Surely a woman can do as she pleases.” She took a breath. “I didn’t love him. You know me.”
“Do I,” Ruo said dryly.
Cecelia blew out her cheeks. “Anyway . . . people thought we were going to marry, or something. That it was some likely outcome for the benefit of our bloodlines. Yeesh. If our dalliance had yielded anything, I would have gotten rid of it. Me with a kid! The idea of bringing a child into this kind of world . . . having tremendous power, hiding it from the rest of society for ‘their own good,’ maintaining balance from the shadows in a world consumed by greed and destruction, all for a silent, thankless god? No thank you.”
“Here we go.” Ruo laughed, and she started walking ahead, Cecelia catching up with hurried strides.
“What?”
“You complained about Chartrand’s proselytizing, but ranting in general was always your favourite pastime.”
“Because he was insufferable. Both he and the Conclave think they can control us all under the guise of the greater good . . . we talk about the Owls being high and mighty, but the Foxes are no different.” Cecelia sighed raggedly. “This Family doesn’t own me. Or you. That’s the message I wanted to send by leaving.”
“Yet here you are.” Ruo had lowered her voice as they stood out of the way of a group of acolytes being guided down the great staircase, bearing fire in the palms of their hands. Cecelia peered down the steps, hewn from the shifting sandy earth, that descended into the canyon’s chamber, lit by shadow and flam
e. It mimicked the Den of Deon, the astral place where their power came from and returned. The more Cecelia saw the Fox Family and their intentions for what they were, the more she thought of their sacred meeting grounds as less a temple, and more a tomb.
She had last been here with Chartrand and, so sure of herself as usual, she’d pledged it would be her last time stepping foot here. The sun would be at its zenith shortly, and her pledge to cut all Family ties would soon be sorely tested. Chartrand had laughed in her face then, and she’d pounded him across the mouth for it — but he was probably still laughing now, from beyond the grave, as she stood on the precipice once more, word broken for Ruo’s sake more than anyone’s.
Cecelia looked aside when Ruo twined her fingers in hers. “It’s really too bad that you need a man to make a baby,” Ruo said finally. “I wouldn’t have minded being a mother. If I could have shared the title with you, I mean. For all your blockheadedness.”
Surprised, Cecelia smiled warmly. “It’s a brave new world,” she said as they started their descent. “And after this, I intend to enjoy every opportunity it affords.”
The crowd down in the great hall was thick, low chatter filling the close space like a beehive. Cecelia made sure to remain as close to the back wall of the temple’s topmost tier, and Ruo stuck to her side. The room dipped like an amphitheatre anyway, with a recessed bowl surrounded by graded levels, so wherever one stood the view was without compromise. The flame of the bowl burned low but visibly, and in the heart of the white-hot hearth was the Dragon Opal.
“I have to admit,” Cecelia murmured, “the stone really looks better without Chartrand hanging off it.”
Ruo elbowed her, cutting her eyes to the increasing number of critical stares shot towards them.
Cecelia turned her nose up but obediently hushed, looking back down to the bowl. The sunlight streaming through the skylight moved closer to the bowl with each passing second. The three gold circles incised in the black marble orbited the flames heavily — flames that would have appeared only when Chartrand died and would come to rest within the stone forever once his replacement was chosen.
Chartrand had been Paramount for twenty-five years, and this was the first Arbitration Cecelia had ever witnessed. Despite her spiritual skepticism, there was something kinetic in the air, an excitement beyond the grief of losing such a strong leader — flawed though he was. Even with the advantage of Denizen longevity and his own stamina, his death had been a shock — and due to natural causes. A heart attack in his sleep. A disappointing end for any warrior, especially the leader of a Family whose chief obligation was to fight to the last.
But the Arbitration meant opportunity for a new beginning with a new kind of leader. Perhaps the stone would choose someone young, someone not so tied to the old ways, someone with a fire fit for the modern view. Someone like me, she couldn’t help but think, but she shoved that aside, suddenly paranoid the stone could somehow hear her. Instead she looked for the next most likely candidate in the crowd. It wasn’t hard to find him, for he was surrounded by a handful of masters and a slew of his peers. They clasped him by the shoulder, shaking him as if in preemptive congratulations. But he only stared back at Cecelia with those hazel eyes, face impassive. For an eight-year-old, he had a gravity she never would have. It made her slightly ill to imagine someone so young willing to give up his life for that kind of duty.
Cecelia smiled, nodded. Looked away again. She was itching to get this over with. Whoever was chosen would have a hell of a time of it. Access to power and influence to support your ideals was one thing. But if she’d learned anything from Chartrand — from the Families in general — it was that power corrupts, no matter how good your intentions. And the responsibilities attached to the Dragon Opal, to any Calamity Stone, were too enormous to consider. The majority of the acolytes and masters here considered being chosen a great honour. But it was a curse. Cecelia was going to sink her teeth into the normality the Mundanes took for granted and hang on for dear life.
She took hold of Ruo’s arm then and pulled her closer, maybe squeezing a little too hard. No one was going to take her hard-won peace from her. Least of all that damn stone.
Then the three Fox elders entered the bowl, and the golden circles stilled underneath each of them. The crowd hushed, and though Cecelia had a rudimentary idea of how the ritual went, she didn’t have to wonder after the details for long.
“Sons and Daughters of Deon,” came the voice of the woman in the front, whose circle was directly at the lip of the bowl that bore the stone. “We honour now the latent flame of Paramount Chartrand Lavereux, and his devotion to his phrase in the Narrative. We place our grief upon his name and consign his fire to the Opal.”
The other two elders raised their hands, embers coming off their arms as they performed the rite, and the bowl’s flames rose in kind, seeping into the stone as it called Chartrand’s light to its core. The heart of the stone shone, and there was a sound like a gasp — though no one in the chamber had made a sound.
The second elder spoke: “The light of Deon shines on all Denizens, though it was the very flame taken from the sun that shines within her Fox kin.”
Then the third: “One Fox’s flame is but a pinprick in the heat of Ancient’s furnace. Let now the heart of Deon wake and turn on they who is worthy to bear it in this waking plane.”
The sun touched the stone, then, above and below it consuming the bowl, the stage, and the elders, was a twisting golden inferno whose heat touched them all with its corona.
Cecelia had steeled herself for this, as bands of light shockwaved through the temple, but everything inside her seized as the brightest flame, like a whiplash, came straight for her and Ruo. Cecelia immediately let her lover go, spun, and smashed the blade of light aside with her own fire.
When she touched back down a breath later, balancing on her less-than-sensible shoes, another band of light struck out.
“No,” she snarled, her fury unbearable as she lurched aside, turning the flame as it cracked into a pillar. The shocked acolytes nearby scattered.
It was the third band that lashed out only an instant later that wrapped firmly around her extended forearm, nearly yanking her off her feet. She planted them and pulled back.
“Submit to the fire!” rang a voice from the lower bowl, and she knew it had been the first elder. “You cannot be unchosen!”
“The hell I can’t.” Cecelia managed to smirk, overconfident even now despite straining against the flame’s pull. She kicked her focus up and brought her other arm cracking down on the cable of light, shattering it with a kickback that made her shoulder feel it’d been hit by a cannonball.
Cecelia knew without having to look up that all eyes were on her, but she didn’t bother meeting any of them. She pointed down at the stone, heaving, as if it had come alive to challenge her.
“I refuse to take any part in this!” she roared. “I bear no loyalty to any Family of Ancient that blindly follows rules and rituals that suit no one but those in power. That drive a wedge between us and the rest of humankind. You have no power over me!”
“Insolent girl,” the second elder admonished. “The stone’s choice is absolute!”
Cecelia was as incredulous as they were, and she barked a laugh. “You’d want someone as a leader who wants nothing to do with you? You’ve just proven my damn point!” This time she whirled and addressed the temple, voice rising. “Tell me, brothers and sisters. Surely there are those among us here today who would not follow me, stone or otherwise. Who feel that they are more worthy of that miserable relic. Please. I insist. Step forward and claim your due, because I don’t want it. And I never will.”
Cecelia’s eyes landed directly on the young boy as they had before — there was something different in him now. An eagerness. She saw his feet shift. She knew that the hunger Chartrand had instilled in him, that brazen confidence of boys who know
they can be great, was probably like a flaming itch beneath his flesh. He glanced quickly between her and the stone.
They all did, even Cecelia, for the Dragon Opal was rotating, speeding up to a blinding hum.
And though the light did not fade, it grew into a massive figure, a kneeling one, that rose to its full incredible height, flaming tails a shivering halo behind her, bristling mane brushing the skylight, as if the sun itself had become a woman.
Not just a woman — but Deon herself.
No one moved. No one breathed. Some fell to their knees in shocked reverence. But Cecelia knew this, too, was a kind of test. And she stood her ground.
“Not lightly do I cross the Veil,” came a voice like a house fire, “but to have my gift refused three times warrants my coming.” Her enormous head surveyed the chamber, the fox snout of spark and hair, and the human mouth beneath curled in a hungry grin. “But it is so like a Fox to question a command. Even that of her Matriarch.”
The eyes burned to look at. The eyes of the sun. But Cecelia found her legs taking her down the steps to the bowl, to the warrior queen she had been taught had given her so much, yet she’d said Her name in vain too many times to recall. She stopped at the god’s feet, which were like a fox’s hindquarters, the legs clothed in the hides of the darkling beasts of the original wilds she had slain in all the myths Cecelia told herself she didn’t believe. Deon was large enough that Cecelia could clearly make out the pictures incised in the dried hides — the constantly moving record of the Narrative’s greatest battles.
She craned her neck up to keep meeting that unforgiving stare and said the words she never thought she’d have to use. “First matriarch of the Family that bears my blood, Your gift may be mighty, but it is not for me to have.”