by Dave Rudden
“Daniel,” the unFavored son said, stepping past Abucad and sticking out a flabby hand. Uriel stared at it until he put it away.
“Don’t bother,” Abucad murmured, fixing Uriel with his cold gaze once again. “So She’s speaking, is She? And tell me, nephew, when She speaks, does everyone hear it? Or just Father?”
Daniel smiled ruefully. Uriel did not.
“Scratch that,” Abucad continued thoughtfully. “I think you’d all hear it if he did. That’s how far things have gone.” He shook his head. “Uriel, you might not understand what I’m about to say, but I want you to listen.”
He gestured at the barren hills, the white gleam of the Garden, and the black bulk of Eloquence, and when he looked back at Uriel there was something unexpected in his eyes.
Pity.
“This is not everything there is,” he said. “I know that might seem difficult to believe, but there’s so much out there, beyond this ... tomb. Had I my way, I’d sell this island to whatever idiot would buy it, and forget it ever existed.”
Uriel’s eyes widened at such blasphemy, but Abucad wasn’t finished.
“I recognize that our Family is … different, but for too long there’s been a core of madness in the heart of the Croits, and I don’t know if I can stand by and ignore it anymore. I didn’t come here to kneel. I came here to see if any of you could be salvaged.”
Uriel swallowed, bile burning his throat. The taste had been a constant since Her awakening—pervasive and cloying, as if the air itself had soured. Sunlight took away some of the sting, which was why Uriel had spent the morning out here, relishing the open space, trying to identify the rankness on his tongue.
Madness. That was what it tasted like. It tasted like madness.
“Big brother,” a voice interrupted. Tabitha was stalking down the slope toward them, her ragged dress stained with dust. Ambrel walked with her, hair shimmering colorless in the sun.
Uriel felt a rush of shameful relief. Abucad’s words had shaken him. He didn’t know why, but they had. But now that Ambrel was here ...
Since the Redemptress had awoken, there had been a sizzling, bright vitality to Uriel’s sister. Not just the fire beneath her skin—a change Uriel understood all too well—but as if some other light shone through her, making her somehow bigger and more real than she had been before.
Let her talk to Abucad; meet his dry contempt with the fire of her belief. Uriel could hide in her shade. Ambrel took her customary place beside him, and immediately he felt stronger, one piece of a whole.
And yet a voice in his head ...
Why is she with Tabitha?
Daniel had taken two steps backward. You didn’t need a childhood in Eloquence to see the dangerous purpose in their advance.
“Tabitha. Ambrel,” Abucad said warily. It hadn’t escaped him either. It was ever this way with the Favored—as if fire knew fire. Two Croits together was an argument. Three was a tinderbox.
Tabitha’s voice was cold.
“You bring unFavored here?”
Abucad’s eyes narrowed. “He is my son, and every bit your relation as well.” A strange expression crossed his face, as though he’d thought of smiling and then immediately reconsidered. “Sister, this is—”
“I don’t care,” Tabitha said flatly, and Abucad’s eyes narrowed. She didn’t seem to notice, fixing her brother with a slow, mad grin. “But it’s good to see you, Abucad. How long has it been?”
“Someone has to run our ventures Outside, Tabitha,” Abucad said, his voice guarded. He even said the word Outside differently, like it was familiar, a known thing. “Spending your whole life in one place is ... unhealthy.”
“I remember.” Tabitha’s voice was dark with mirth. “Father’s rage was incandescent.” She practically purred the word. “Your. Little. Rebellion. Spending time Outside is a necessary evil, but you’ve made a life out there, haven’t you?”
“A lot of us have,” Abucad said stonily. “You should try it.”
“Why?” she said. “Everything is here. The time has come, Abucad. The Favored must return home, and when next we visit Outside it will be to storm it with fire.” She sighed. “Only someone as utterly rigid as you, Abucad, could know that magic exists, and yet view it as an unnecessary complication.”
“Tabitha, you’re a lunatic,” Abucad said, and there was only weariness in his tone. “You’ve always been a lunatic. And this lunatics’ garden is where you belong.”
He turned to the twins, Tabitha so thoroughly dismissed that for a moment Uriel couldn’t help but admire him.
“I stood where you stand now,” Abucad said, his eyes fixed on Ambrel and Uriel. “My sister speaks as if I didn’t, but I did. I heard the old man’s words, I knelt before Her, and I have been carrying Her Favor for twice as long as you’ve been alive. I was just as ready for our great rise, the War we would fight ... and then I realized, as you will, that we’re waiting for nothing.”
He had never looked more like Grandfather than he did at that moment. Their clash had been legendary—long before Uriel and Ambrel’s time, but the Family spoke of it in hushed tones all the same. The story went that Grandfather had been outmaneuvered, that Abucad had argued with such passion that, just for a moment, he had seemed to know what She wanted more than Grandfather himself.
“Whatever we are, children, whatever our power is—curse or genetic quirk or malady—there is no future in it. No purpose. We can do things. Yes, amazing, unbelievable things … but, every time we do, it uses us up. Even the old man knows that. You could marshal every Croit out there, every branch of our twisted Family tree, and all we’d amount to is a pack of thugs with a neat trick each.
“We’re not chosen: we’re shackled to this place and its old stories. We could be better than that. We should be better than that. Our money, our influence ... we could build things.”
He glared at Eloquence’s broken husk.
“All your Grandfather wants to do is burn things down.”
“You’re wrong,” Ambrel hissed, and there was the crackling of fire in her voice. Daniel was staring at her, his eyes wide. Had he never seen the Favor unleashed before? “We are chosen. We’re different. And She will show us what we’re meant to do.”
“Or you could choose,” Abucad said. “You don’t have to stay here. Nothing grows in this valley. There’s so much else you could do with your life.”
Uriel didn’t say anything.
“Your parents miss you,” Abucad said. His voice was soft. “They tried to hide you from Father because they didn’t want you to end up like him. Trapped in the past, praying to a goddess that doesn’t ...”
His voice trailed off, his eyes fixed on the castle. Daniel’s shocked exclamation was drowned out by shifting rubble.
Wires were rising through the corpse of Eloquence. Like vines seeking the sun, they twisted upward, growing and growing and winding and weaving until the Redemptress swayed ten meters above the castle’s remains—a jagged, skeletal flower atop a black metal stalk.
The nausea in Uriel’s stomach doubled as she raised one slim arm. Beckoning or accusing, it was difficult to tell. Tabitha knelt, and a sudden smile split Ambrel’s face, like the sun coming out on a cloudy day.
“Get back to the dock,” Abucad whispered to his son.
“But—”
“Now.”
Daniel began to back away, down the slope, even as Abucad started to scale it. Tabitha and Ambrel didn’t spare a glance for the unFavored. It was like he’d never existed.
“You came,” Tabitha called. “Remember that, brother. You didn’t have to, but you did.”
Abucad didn’t reply. When Uriel finally dragged his gaze away, Tabitha was staring at him.
“What?” he snapped. The Redemptress still swayed in his peripheral vision, like the scaffolding of a tower that had not yet been raised. She didn’t look right in the sun—it bounced off Her in odd ways, and when it did, the edges of that sunlight were greasy and heada
che-bright.
“We’ve been attending Her for days,” Tabitha said. “Teaching Her of our rituals and the War That Will Come.”
There’s so much else you could do with your life. Abucad’s words were still echoing through Uriel. There’s so much out there, beyond this ... tomb.
“Get to the point, Tabitha,” he said flatly. “Stop circling whatever insult you’ve prepared.”
“No insult,” Tabitha purred. “Just a question. Where were you?”
Uriel went cold.
“What?”
“Where were you?” his aunt said, with that wheedling sweetness that usually meant she was about to come at you with terminal velocity. Uriel turned away from her searching gaze and saw that the Redemptress had unraveled, slinking back into the stone and taking the icy knot in his stomach with Her.
It was scant comfort.
“Had to greet Abucad,” Uriel said. “That’s all.”
“Is it?” Tabitha said, her fleshy lips parting in a smile. “This is a time of great change, Uriel. No one would blame you for ... wavering. For letting the rust in. Maybe that’s why you wanted to meet Abucad. Maybe you hoped he would take you with him when he left.”
She’d stepped closer now. Uriel felt the sword in his heart waiting to be drawn.
“There’s nothing wrong with doubt, Uriel….”
Yes. There was. And Tabitha would cheerfully betray every word Uriel said to Grandfather for one more moment in Her presence. All the Croits were encouraged to do so.
It is all our responsibility to make sure the faith is kept.
Was there doubt in him? He had sat for hours, asking himself that same question.
Ambrel’s terror at being judged for something that wasn’t a sin.
The cold smile on Tabitha’s face as Family sat in judgment of Family.
The lost, confused look in the Redemptress’s eyes.
She hadn’t risen like an avenging angel, full of burning Croit certainty. She’d been a frightened little girl calling for Her lost love. Even the times when She did speak like a conqueror seemed somehow false, like a mask She was forced to wear.
Thoughts were spiraling in Uriel like mayflies, born and dying in heartbeats, and no answers had been found. Except one. Rust was everywhere. It sought to sneak in through doubt and through fear. It was a disease.
And Uriel felt sick to his core.
“Tabitha.”
Uriel had never heard Ambrel’s voice so calm, so cold.
“We each serve Her in our own way. It is not your place to question that.”
She sounded like Grandfather.
“Go.”
Without a word, Tabitha bowed and stalked back up the slope. No arguing, no insults ... She just left. Uriel stared at her retreating back in shock.
“Yeah, I don’t know what that’s about either,” Ambrel said. “But I’m finding it very useful.”
A sudden image burned its way into Uriel’s head—the Redemptress and Ambrel eye to eye, his sister soothing the terror of a deity.
“I think I do,” he said. “You have a way with Her.”
Ambrel blushed. Uriel didn’t think he’d ever seen her do that before. “Well. I just want Her to know how much I love Her. How much we love Her, I mean.” Her voice turned sly. “Though it is nice watching everyone scramble around, pretending they haven’t been horrible to us all these years. I walked right up to Tabitha holding her Accusers’ Red robe and said, You dropped this. You should have seen her face.”
She cackled. Uriel forced a smile.
“And have they ... said anything about the trial?”
Just for a second, Uriel was back there, watching tears roll down his sister’s face. The memory was so strong that he had to turn away.
“Not a word,” said Ambrel. “But this is a time of—hey, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Uriel said, a little too quickly. “I’m fine.”
“That’s what I told Tabitha,” Ambrel said, and frowned. “I don’t know what she thinks she’s doing. You’re fine. Of course you’re fine.”
The simple belief in her voice made Uriel’s chest ache. “Really?” he said, forcing some levity into his tone. “How do you know?”
She pushed her hair back from her face. “Remember the first time Grandfather told us about the Favor? And I cried because I was afraid at the thought of all that fire inside me?”
“I ... yes.”
“And you told me that it would be all right because it was one fire, and that all Croits shared it, and if it got too much you’d become that little bit stronger, just for me.”
“Is that what I said?”
It was. He remembered it perfectly—Ambrel’s hiccuping sobs, the patterns the lone candle had made on the wall. Uriel had been just as frightened as her for exactly the same reason, but he had said the first thing he could think of to make it OK.
That was how being a sibling worked. If Uriel was worried, Ambrel became more confident. If Ambrel faltered, it was Uriel’s strength she drew on to pick herself back up. Abucad had thought to provoke some sort of reaction from the twins by mentioning their parents, as if either he or Ambrel had ever wasted a thought on a pair of unFavored who had sought to keep them from their destiny.
They didn’t need parents. They had each other.
“That’s how I know you’re OK,” she said. “If you weren’t, you’d tell me.”
She slipped her hand in his, and for a moment they just stood in silence, their grins mirrors of each other. She was right. What was he fretting about? Ambrel wasn’t worried. She seemed to have forgotten the trial already, as if it had happened to an entirely different girl.
Maybe that’s how I should look at it too. Tabitha was right: this was a time of great change. Yes. Even his nausea had disappeared now, leaving only the warm glow of the Favor in his chest. It felt good. It felt right.
Being out in the fresh air helped. Darkness held no fear for a Croit, not with the Luster, but it was easier to think, even if the wind did sound like ...
Screaming.
Uriel’s fear folded in a heartbeat, a sun’s fire waking in his heart. He was moving before he knew it, tearing his sword from its sheath, running so fast he flew.
Ambrel was running with him. Of course she was. Underlying everything Uriel had been taught—the history, the scripture, the bladework—was a simple rule. The simplest.
Family was Family. You fought to protect that.
Us and them.
He didn’t even notice the shiver that spun through him as he passed into the darkness of Eloquence. It didn’t matter. He had brought light with him.
And the tiny little voice in his head—Why does this feel so right?
He leapt over massive blocks, slid down collapsed pillars, scraped his way between piles of rockfall. A tight, crazed smile danced across his face, and suddenly he held two swords—divine fire and mundane steel.
Ambrel’s voice rang out behind him.
“Uriel, what are you—”
And a wire, bare centimeters from his eye.
Only his reflexes saved him. Uriel stopped dead, his chest still heaving, his sword of fire disappearing in a slash of smoke. The other clattered against the broken flagstones at his feet.
The wire swayed like a cobra. Uriel felt assessed, weighed, judged, the point gleaming, though there was no light to reflect from it. The Luster touched everything but its slim length, its blackness total and complete.
“Uriel.”
Ambrel caught up to him, her eyes wild, but whatever she was about to say went unspoken.
The Shrine was full. Every Croit that lived in Eloquence was there. A sea of white, tired faces, all turned toward the Redemptress’s rightful spot above them in Her web of strands.
Grandfather stood in Her shadow, frost-pale eyes fixed on his son. An ugly smile lurked around the tombstone slant of his jaw, and, once again, he glowed in Judging White.
“For too long, Abucad, you have concern
ed yourself with Outside.”
“Yes I have,” he said, in a voice quiet with defeat. “Because—”
“Stop it,” Grandfather snapped. “Your reasons, your disobedience ... irrelevant. Everything is different now.”
That was why Abucad looked so lost. He’d spent his entire life fighting a different war from the one they had been promised—a war to move his Family into the light. He’d defied the old man in order to get a few Croits out into the world. Just a few, but maybe he’d hoped one day to have them all—living among real people, their Favor and Transgression hidden, the Redemptress a forgotten mystery time was never going to solve.
But none of that mattered anymore, because Grandfather had been right and Abucad had been wrong.
The Redemptress was real. Everything they had been taught was true.
We wanted to be safe. We took it to be safe.
The Redemptress’s voice was half a howl. It had been She who’d screamed—wretched and inhuman, disobeying every law of sound. The entire Shrine went silent, hanging on every syllable that fell from those wirework lips.
Was that so ... was that so wrong?
She looked around wildly for a moment, strands singing against each other, and then suddenly froze with the jump-start stillness of a spider. Her eyes found Abucad, and when She spoke, it was in the voice Uriel had always imagined the Redemptress to have: not tremulous and afraid but strident and powerful.
The voice of an empress.
Bring all who hold the fire. I have Favored you, and so you will serve.
“And if I don’t?”
Abucad’s challenge wasn’t a roar or a shout but a whisper that hitched on every breath. It was still the bravest thing that Uriel had ever heard.
In response, Grandfather twitched the emptiness of his left sleeve. The watching Croits parted, and a figure stumbled forward, half led, half dragged by the wire round its neck.
“Father!”
What little color Abucad possessed fled.
“Bring them back,” Grandfather growled. “Every Croit you’ve rusted with this poisonous regard for Outside. Tell them to abandon their lives and come here to gaze upon our glorious truth. Our War begins, Abucad. The faith must be kept. And if you are not strong enough to keep it ...”