Children of the Bloodlands

by S. M. Beiko

  When I met Killian again at the bowl, now devoid of the squabbling Council members, he bounced to his feet. “Right. Rest, is it? I’ll take you to the sleeping corridor, so you —”

  “No.” I had made sure Mala was well beyond earshot and turned down a distant tunnel before I answered. “The woman who was here. She had scars . . .” I swallowed. “Her name is Ruo. Where did they take her?”

  Killian hesitated. “She’s back up in the infirmary. But I don’t think —”

  “Think what you like,” I said, brushing past him, remembering all too well Ben’s throat in his hand before Killian murdered him. “I can find my own way.”

  He didn’t try to catch up with me, and I didn’t look anywhere else but ahead.

  The place seemed a bit more deserted now as I climbed the steps, carefully retracing the path I’d walked to get here. I assumed there was some kind of communal meal in which everyone participated, which allowed me now to move a bit more freely without the thousand-stare judgefest. It made me realize that I had no idea of the time and couldn’t remember when I last ate (or felt like it) but most of all I felt lost without seeing the sun —

  I stopped dead, the edges of my vision and the world peeling back, because I was suddenly back in that memory — the one where Cecelia was on a sandy arena ground, locked in combat, and the sun I’d missed only a second ago was beating down on the back of my neck.

  I stayed still, calmed the blood roaring in my head. All I needed to do was watch. The stone was showing me this for a reason.

  “Get up.” Cecelia stood over the boy, blade at his throat. She sounded exhausted. “Get up and return to your master. It should have been you. But I guess . . . it is what it is.”

  The boy got to his weary, trembling feet, and Cecelia grabbed him before he could tip over. “It was an honour to submit to you,” he mumbled as if it were practised, before returning to a cluster of onlookers that had come down to the arena now that it was over. That it was decided.

  Four acolytes came out, bearing a brazier. In it sat the stone, and in the shining sunlight came Deon Herself bearing the stone up, moving towards Cecelia like a glittering mirage.

  Her grin was the worst to stomach. “Dear daughter,” the goddess said. “It is time.”

  Cecelia was a hard woman. She had become that way mostly to survive. But even now, in her twenties, and after having survived much, this was one thing she knew she couldn’t. She felt scoured inside. She wouldn’t look at the god or the proffered gem.

  “Please,” she tried one last time. “Please don’t give it to me.”

  A clawed hand found her chin, tipped it up. “You spoke of a need for reform. I do not dwell in your world but through you, and so those choices are up to you. But you will be great, if only you allow yourself to be. There is more ahead for you and this stone than your present regret. Keep this stone safe. Use it wisely. Prepare your blood, because it is for her you must keep this stone — and the world you occupy — safe from darkness.”

  “Her? You mean this child —”

  “Not this one. Further still,” Deon said. And Cecelia opened her hands, the stone warm in her cupped palms.

  The memory peeled back again, and it was just my hands outstretched before me — empty but still warm. Further still, Deon had said. Had she meant me? Everything she had said to Cecelia stirred my heart, as if she’d been talking to me and not just my grandmother.

  There was one person who hadn’t been in that crowd, either revelling in Cecelia’s triumph or consoling her in her misery. One who might have answers for me, though her mind seemed splintered beyond use. The urgency to see her now threw me into motion, and I bolted for the infirmary.

  The Scars Beneath

  Barton sighed, thumbing through his phone as he waited on the train platform. He didn’t know what he was expecting — a call, a text. There really hadn’t been a point to getting that roaming package, had there?

  “Listen,” his dad had said, too many time zones ago, back at the Winnipeg airport where his parents were seeing him off, “I’m sure Phae is fine. And you have to admit . . . Alberta is just a tiny bit closer than Magadan for a finding-yourself road trip.”

  Barton had shifted his duffel back onto his shoulder, glancing between the NEXUS special entrance, where he could be scanned with his prostheses, and the exit back into the airport parking lot. Only days ago, Phae had refused to join him. Had backed away from him and the bond they’d built. Natti had spirited her away on some other side quest. I’m sorry, she’d texted. I know what you’re thinking. But maybe this is where I can figure things out.

  On the road. With some prophetic polar bears instead of her boyfriend. He didn’t even know if they were broken up or not . . .

  Barton dropped his eyes from his dad’s openly concerned face. “I do kind of wish you guys were coming.”

  He should’ve kept that to himself. His mother was already having a hard time not crying. “This will be good for you,” his dad went on. “For the both of you. You’ve got a lot to figure out. Time apart never hurt anyone. And remember you’ve got your whole life ahead of you. So much to look forward to.”

  His mother took his face in her hands, and he let her. Things had been tough since coming to terms with the power they had kept from him all his life. But they had done it to protect him and had made inroads back to strengthening their insular family.

  “I am so proud of you,” she’d said, this time letting the tears go. “You make this Family proud.” And this time he knew she meant the Rabbits, too.

  A train on the opposite track blew by, its horn blast smacking Barton back into the present. Maybe his dad was right. So much had happened since last year, maybe too much to process. It’d be good for him. As the train passed, the ground rumbling beneath him, Barton knelt carefully and put his hand to the platform, shut his eyes. Felt the earth stretching and groaning beneath the weight of the train, the station itself. Felt further still, past the roots of concrete and rebar into the bones that kept the world turning. It calmed him, that subtle tectonic energy coming back up into his arm. He was a part of something now that he’d always known he was meant for. Phae would be fine. So would he.

  “Barton Allen?”

  He raised his head to the woman above him and gingerly got back up. She didn’t offer to help, seeming to know he didn’t want it. “And you’re Kita?” She matched the description he’d been given before arrival — shaved head, big hoop earrings, almost as tall as him.

  “That I am.” She nodded, flashing a bright smile that contrasted well with her loam-coloured skin. “You are from Kenya, yes?”

  “Canada,” he corrected. “My parents are from Kenya, though. And you?” He hazarded a guess from her accent. “South Africa?”

  “That’s right,” Kita said, adjusting her own pack. She seemed built like a soldier. “Parents are from Somalia. We didn’t go as far as yours.” She looked him up and down. “I have heard the stories of you and your friends. Sealing a darkling. That is a feat. And you — you opened a Bloodgate on your own. After being severed.”

  Her bluntness caught him off guard, but she wasn’t wrong. “Yep.”

  “Hm.” Kita turned back to the platform, looked down the tunnel. A light was gradually drawing closer. “I am glad you’ve come. We will need all the help we can get. And it would not hurt to have the best on our side.”

  Barton straightened his spine as their train rushed by them, standing steady. Wherever this train went, it was down another tunnel, cutting through the Earth — his Earth. Steady beneath him, whatever happened.

  ~

  Of course I got lost. Typical. Start out cocky and you end up paying for it. The admonishment was almost in Sil’s voice, too, but I was already being hard enough on myself without needing her to remind me.

  I’d ended up in an open space, flanked by pillars and flickering flame
on platforms of varying heights. Targets? Another of the stone’s many problems was that I felt an itching sense of déjà vu, though I knew I’d never been here before.

  I stood in the centre of the space. There was a skylight, high above, filtering in sunlight. I shut my eyes and tried to let that light inside me, to remember that no matter what, it was that light I followed. I felt a rare moment of calm. Lately I’d been driven by one impulse — to run away rather than towards anything. Especially this legacy I’d had dumped in my lap. Talking with Mala hadn’t exactly assuaged the myriad worries crushing me, but there had been a kernel of hope there — that now I could belong somewhere, with people, with a Family. Maybe this was a start of a course correction. Maybe things would be okay. Maybe they could show me how to be a better me, one who wasn’t impulsive and who could, for once, accept help when I so desperately needed it.

  My head snapped in the direction of the oncoming voices and footsteps hurrying across the stone floor and into the chamber. I reacted too late to run off, so I looked like an idiot in the spotlight instead, a group of kindergarten-age kids in what looked like oversized training gi, staring at me agog. They were led by an aged but alert female master. And someone I still hadn’t quite figured out: Killian.

  “Speak o’ the devil.” He smiled. I closed my mouth and tried to relax my body — I’d automatically fallen into a defensive stance.

  “Whoa, is that really her?” said a gap-toothed girl in the front of the group, breaking away and rushing towards me.

  “Felicia,” the master snapped, and the girl pulled up short of me but didn’t look away.

  “Err. Hi?” Awkward wave, hand dropping.

  Killian sidled up, though he kept his distance. “Don’t crowd the poor girl. She’s been through enough without yer caterwauling,” he said to the gathering, then he turned to me, face wry as the student hurried back to join the group. “This is the junior class. Wee trainees just getting their start. Ye have a bit in common, I expect.”

  I resisted spewing a retort that wasn’t remotely kid-friendly. “Thanks.” I glanced from the awestruck kids to their teacher then bowed my head. “I’m sorry for interrupting your lesson.” I turned to go.

  “There’s no need to rush off!” the master reached towards me, coming forward. “In fact, it would be nice for you to stay. If you so choose.”

  I stiffened. The woman, wiry but strong, had a shy look on her aged face that belied her obvious years of experience. A reverence I’d never get used to or feel I’d earned.

  I rubbed the back of my neck. “I mean . . . sure, I can watch?”

  “Excellent.” She turned smartly on her heel, and the kids froze. “Now I expect you all to pay extra attention. Be mindful of your behaviour and focus — especially in the presence of your Paramount.”

  I could see the kids grow redder with anxiety, and I interjected, “I’m not —”

  Killian grabbed my elbow and steered me to the sidelines. “Och, now, just button it. They need to learn discipline whatever ye think yer not.”

  The children went into formation, and the master went through the lesson. It looked a simple one — a lesson about control, about calling up the fire, which some seemed to be struggling with.

  My eyes darted away from the training circle to the far edge of the great hall. There were men and women wearing the red, gold, and black tunic I’d seen Cecelia wear in the stone’s memory. Their faces were impassive, and they didn’t wear weapons, but they were alert, scanning.

  They all seemed to be watching me, too.

  “Guards,” Killian whispered, before nudging me in the ribs. “Ignore them, pay attention to this.”

  I frowned, glancing back to the lesson, the kids. “Why are there so many of them?” I’d counted almost twenty in this hall alone. Sure I’d seen a few in my super-lost wanderings, and given what was happening, security was a given. But twenty guards for a kindergarten class?

  Killian didn’t look at me directly. He only smiled, with a hint of a sneer. “Can’t be too careful with outsiders about.”

  I blinked. Did he mean me? Or him?

  “. . . of the Five Families, ours is an element that has a mind of its own,” the mentor was saying. “Sometimes you will need an outside spark to get going, and that’s all right. Soon you will be able to call the flame to you obediently — but it has to trust you first.”

  I surveyed the group, trying to ignore the guard presence. They were all so young and here they were learning something I’d barely been able to grasp only six months ago, give or take. Sil really did have her work cut out with me, and I was surprised she hadn’t given up on me sooner.

  “I’m sorry,” Killian whispered to me. He’d been quiet as we watched, the children moving through stances and tai-chi-esque drills. I raised an eyebrow but didn’t answer.

  “That boy, in the park,” he qualified. “I know ye knew him. He was yer friend. I’d seen ye with him before, outside that restaurant. That’s where I first saw ye, y’ken.”

  I tried to conjure the memory from when I’d seen Ben and Athika at the Pint’s smouldering ruins, when I’d already surmised something had been wrong. I’d bumped into a man I’d just as soon forgotten in my haste to get away.

  I turned back to the kids, folding my arms tighter. “I see.”

  “Ye don’t, I don’t think.” I heard him sigh heavily. “It’s a terrible place to be, having to take a life, even if it’s to save another. I think ye’ve been spared that so far, maybe, but it will only get harder. Ye will have to make the call sooner or later, though, especially with the responsibility ye have now.”

  “A responsibility I didn’t ask for,” I seethed, but I wasn’t about to get into it here. I felt I owed it to these kids’ teacher to provide an example of self-control, something I needed badly to learn.

  “All the same,” Killian went on. “It wasna out of malice what I did. Your friend was too far gone. I’ve seen it before.”

  I thought of the first time I’d met Ben. We’d had a nice conversation about nerdy things and had clicked right away. He had an easy, friendly demeanour. But now my last memory of him was his twisted face, his tarry gnarled body, his need to kill me.

  “I think I knew it,” I said. “I wouldn’t have been able to do . . . what you did. I’m grateful for the good intentions, but I can’t directly thank you for it.” That’s as far as I was going to go with gratitude.

  “Aye. I’ll take it.” Killian’s good humour was returning to his tone. “How was your tête-à-tête with Mala?”

  I snorted. “Oh, about the same as that little tribunal. Scrutiny. Judgment. Disappointment that it’s me she’s got to answer to. I don’t blame her. I don’t blame any of them. Bad shit is going down and I wouldn’t want me leading the charge, either.”

  “Give yerself a wee bit more credit than that,” Killian said quietly. “Ye’ve done much for these people without asking anything in return. It’s them that owes ye.”

  “I wonder —” The teacher stopped and lifted a hand towards me, beckoning. “Might you be willing to demonstrate, Mistress Harken?”

  I felt my body flush with the panic of being put on the spot. “Uh. Demonstrate?”

  The woman bowed. “It has been some time since I myself have witnessed the Deon avatar shown by a Paramount. I’m sure the children would be thrilled to see it.”

  My pulse thundered in my ears as the kids stared back at me, eyes wide. So trusting and naïve. What if I blasted this entire place to kingdom come? They wouldn’t thank me for it, and my dwindling sense of personal pride wouldn’t, either.

  But I pushed down my fear, decided that if I was going to control this stone, it was now or never. “Okay.”

  The master ushered the children back as I stepped into the band of sunlight filtering from the faraway cavern ceiling. The warmth wasn’t just on my skin. It was undernea
th it. I shut my eyes and levelled my breathing, pushing my awareness gently into the stone’s as I had done before. But this time it wasn’t a matter of crisis. I wanted to take careful stock of how to go about this when I was present, in control. Something that I hadn’t been so many times recently.

  The voices came, tentative at first, then a rush over my synapses, demanding and furious. I winced, trying to search beneath them for that word that had brought me back from the brink, spoken by my only connection to all of this.

  “Roan,” Cecelia said. It was like an embrace, and I fell into it, and I felt the flames effusing out of me, shaping me, pulling me as I grew. Beyond it all, I heard a collective gasp of the children learning as I had that while fire could tear anything asunder, it could also light the way.

  ~

  Killian and I parted ways at the sleeping quarters a little bit later. “I could go with ye to see Ruo,” he’d offered after the demonstration.

  The lie formed quickly — that I wanted to go rest on my own before I saw her, and he demurred, showing me to a room similar to the one I woke up in. It didn’t matter if he believed I was going to stay there or not, he accepted that I wanted to be alone. Wherever I ended up.

  I waited for the sounds of his footsteps to diminish down the cavern hall before leaping to my feet. It was time to find Ruo. To find the answers I’d been looking for in Edinburgh in the first place.

  I thought about the young learners as I passed further groups of trainees and acolytes, and this time I didn’t break eye contact with them. I met their gazes full on, nodding, feeling a strange and sudden sense of belonging. Renewed purpose, maybe. I could do this. Everything was going to be okay.

  It was my second attempt at finding the infirmary now — the only place safe for her, for herself and others. I figured that she’d be rested by now, after the Council meeting so many hours ago. Even though I sincerely doubted what she could offer in terms of intel. Blind and maybe senile. Yet she had remembered Cecelia, had heard the stone. I’d probably need its help, after all.