by James Bennet
…any Remnant found in breach of this clause shall face swift and lawful execution.
The thought turned him to the woman at his side, the frost in his guts returning. She leant weakly against his shoulder, her straggling hair streaked with oil, her tattered gown brushing the sands. The hieroglyphs on her face, her arms, her neck and chest, carved deep enough for the welts to show under all the oil and ash. He didn’t catch the scent of bergamot now, only blood and exhaustion. He was not the same person who had sat in the Legends bar in New York, downing Jack and feeling sorry for himself, but his feelings for her had not changed. The ache was deeper now, a combination of shame and fear, curdling with new heights of vigilance. For all the good it would do him. He couldn’t kid himself any longer. At the best of times, the worlds of Remnants and humans didn’t mix well, and Rose had almost been crushed in between them.
“What they don’t know can’t hurt them,” he said. Unknowingly, he was wincing, clutching the back of his neck. “And they don’t know, do they? Any more than I did.”
Von Hart looked uncomfortable. He shifted a little, crossing his arms.
“Nein. But—”
“Then take her away, far from here. Somewhere the Guild won’t find her. Somewhere my enemies can’t reach. If your stupid council raise the matter, we’ll tell them that she died in the fire. The Guild never needs to find out. Take her and put her in an ivory tower. A palace in the clouds. Behind a rainbow. You’re Fay, after all. Isn’t that what you do?”
The envoy opened his mouth to protest, but the reply came from the woman at his side.
“No.” Rose pushed away from Ben and staggered a few steps up the dune, creating some distance between them. Coldness flooded into the gap, her shoulders tensing against pain, the moonlight silvering her scars. “You can take me away,” she said to Von Hart. “But only as far as the US Embassy. I’ll make my own way from there.”
“Rose!”
Her spine stiffened at Ben’s dismay. Throwing off the dregs of her trance, the smothering heat of the fire, she turned to face him, her eyes like stones. Smoke and oil masked her expression, but Ben could not mistake her resentment.
“I told you before, you don’t own me. You don’t.”
“Rose, you don’t know what you’re saying. I—”
It seemed that she did, however.
“You’ve lied about so much. You said that nothing and no one could hurt us. Christ, you’re not even human.” Her tongue clicked, a bitter blade. “A Central Park thing? Really? Fuck!”
Rose was no fool. He knew that. That day by Cleopatra’s Needle had left her with her fair share of doubts and suspicions. Ordinary men didn’t have the strength to throw thugs up into trees. Or swell up like rhinos under the skin. He had hoodwinked her over other things too – flames that somehow failed to burn him and perfume guessed from five floors down – but all his excuses were pointless now. However much she had wanted the truth, it no longer mattered. The struggle on the tank had exposed him. What more was there to say?
“I thought it was for your own good.”
“No. No you didn’t. I was a trinket to you, and bait to them.” Her winter-cloud eyes were full of ice and her voice held the same flat tone, telling him that this wasn’t a debate. “I’m neither of those things. And I don’t belong here. I don’t belong with you. I should never have let you…” and here she faltered, “buy all those stupid books.” She swallowed, hard. The fists at her sides betrayed her resolve. “I just want to go home.”
“Rose, I’m sorry. It isn’t that simple. What about…” He tried to muster the words. “What about…” He couldn’t bring himself to say it.
“This burden you’ve given me?” She raised a hand and cupped her stomach. Gently, though, he thought. “That isn’t your decision. You know I’ve made mine. When the time comes, I’ll figure out what to do.”
“You said it was what you wanted.”
“Was it?”
“You can’t just turn your back on me!”
“Yes I can. That bastard, he…I felt the knife on my skin…” Her wounds held the memory, and she winced, choking it down. “Your friend here is right. This isn’t over. And I won’t go through it again.”
“You need time.” Ben hated the whining sound of his voice, the way that the sand sucked at his feet. “Time to heal. Time to think. When I’m done with this shit, I’ll come and find you. I’ll find you and we’ll talk.”
But Rose was shaking her head.
“No. Stay away. From me. From us. I don’t even know who you are any more.” With this, she started up the dune, leaving ragged footprints. There was a horse on the crest, he saw, white in the moonlight, waiting. “I’m a survivor, Ben. And I have survived you.”
Ben reached out. Then his hand fell to his side. He watched Rose walk away. Not because he wanted to, not because his heart wasn’t breaking, but because he knew she was right. He had flown across half the world to save her, clinging on to a slender hope, two worlds joined as one. A normal life with the woman you love. And in the end, she had saved him. Saved him and left him with the truth, bitter and beyond doubt. They were different creatures on different paths. Until Remnants and humans learned to coexist, until the Fay returned, the sleepers awoke and the severed world was one, tomorrow could hold no peace for them. As long as he loved her, she would be in danger.
Maud, Rose and a thousand damsels. It had taken him too long to find out.
He barely heard Von Hart approach. Barely felt the hand on his shoulder.
“Say it,” Ben said. He blinked away tears. “Like trying to catch the wind, right? Just say I told you so.”
Instead, the envoy sighed and squeezed Ben’s arm, a brief, cool comfort.
“I’ll see that she gets home safe,” he said. “Cairo is a mess, but the dead have all returned to their graves. All but one, that is.”
“The Queen.”
“Atiya is going home. Will you follow her?”
Ben wiped his face. After a breath, he nodded.
“Good. Then this is auf Wiedersehen. You know where I am if you need me.”
The envoy moved off, heading up the dune. His silk kimono fluttered with stars and he appeared to leave no footprints in the sand. Before he drifted out of earshot, Ben called out after him, his admiration reluctant and gruff.
“You play your cards close to your chest, but you knew all along, didn’t you? Ghosts from limbo. The living and the dead trading places. You knew that Kamenwati had risen. You knew what the CROWS were up to and still you let me blunder into this. Why? To wake me up? To teach me a lesson?”
Von Hart paused for a moment, appearing to consider. Then he smiled and replied over his shoulder.
“Never trust the Fay, Ben.”
He continued up the dune.
Ben didn’t know how long he stood there, counting his losses and waiting for the pain to subside. The numbers seemed endless and the flames, he knew, would only cool with his last breath. He watched the envoy gallop off towards the city, bearing the damsel with him, a plume of dust in their wake. He watched the moon rise a little higher and the stars wheel by overhead, blind or indifferent to his tears.
Then he turned to the south, the only place left open to change. He spread his wings, embracing the wilderness. Had the Age of Myth truly ended? Lately it didn’t feel that way. With a sweep of his tail, Red Ben Garston took to the sky, into nothing that resembled a happy-ever-after.
Noqo
Sanaag Region, Somalia
A girl had crossed the desert and woken a god.
For three days, Khadra had looked through serpent’s eyes as Atiya spanned the cloudless sky. Through sunlight and moonshine and with barely a pause to rest, the Queen had beaten her wings for home, the Land of Punt. For Ta Netjer. God’s Land. Together, bound spirit to flesh, the dragon and the girl soared high above the earth. Far below, the yellow teeth of the Red Sea shore narrowed to the Bab-el-Mandeb, the Gate of Grief, the rocky and perilous strai
t that churned between the Horn of Africa and the Arabian peninsula. The Queen’s shadow was a dot upon the waters where the two great continents strained to kiss. It flowed across the waves and the tiny traffic, the ships and planes that crossed the Gulf of Aden. South and south they went. South and then veering east, Khadra feeding on spirit and spirit on flesh.
But their bond was weaker, the girl sensed it. At the refinery, the holy man had torn them apart and their severance had taken its toll. The Queen’s wound would not heal and bled tendrils of smoke, a vapour trail in the atmosphere. Atiya must bring barwaaqo or everything was lost. If the Queen failed, Khadra’s quest would have been in vain. Every footstep on hot sand, from the village of Dhuroob to the tomb outside Elaayo, worthless and a waste. She might as well have flung the map sketched in charcoal on cloth to the jilal wind. Or simply stayed in Qardho, refusing to fulfil her destiny, offering herself to the toothless old hag. The girl hadn’t known that it was Long Ear at the time, waste haunter, demon, eater of children. A nightmare from folklore. A remnant from an older, vanished land. Nor had she believed the hag’s claim that she had given Ayan, her mother, the map and the sacred stone. The cylindrical shard of black rock, ringed by arcane symbols, had rested in Khadra’s shabby fur bag. At the time it had never occurred to the girl that it was perhaps a fragment, chipped from a talon equally black – the claw of the serpent Queen, no less – many centuries ago. At the time, she hadn’t realised how they were deceived.
Later, she had thought so. Later, she had found out.
The girl had crossed the desert and woken a god. It all seemed like years ago, but it had only been days. And now came the time for noqo. Now came the time for return.
The Queen swept over the ocean, above the long grey decks of supertankers and the pirates that dogged them, small rusty boats speeding in their wake. She passed above warships and fishing skiffs, UN vessels carrying food and the odd, brave cruise liner. She passed above tuna and sharks. Little escaped the eyes of the Queen and the girl she bore.
Together, Atiya and Khadra returned to Punt. Punt that was now Somalia. And the two of them returned with treasures. A Star. A Crook. A Pschent.
She held them now, this girl that was a beating heart, a heart inside a queen. They were the least of the wonders she’d seen. She had seen towers of light and glass scratching at the sky. She had seen fields as green as jade, lush rolling hills. She had howled into the driving rain high above the mountains and touched the snow carpeting their flanks. She had seen great rivers longer than years and forests wider than dreams. And she had seen the darkness too. The factories and the sleepless smoke. The sprawling cities that growled and screamed, gnawing at the earth. She had seen the people in fancy clothes with sad and empty faces, who jammed the roads with endless cars and tossed food from open windows like jewels from a bottomless bag. She had seen places where the gods still smiled and no one looked up to notice. Bright, dirty, blind places.
Khadra had seen the world.
Had it all been for nothing?
No, she couldn’t believe it. The CROWS might have spun a web, but the Queen had managed to break free and Khadra would never give up. There was still a chance for them. Severed or not, a chance. If doubt was leaking into the crack left by their unbinding, the girl did her best to ignore it.
Still the air whispered and sang, rushing past her ears.
You broke the Lore. The…Pact…
No. She wouldn’t listen to him either. The red stranger had found her in the Alps, briefly sharing the void where she hid, the soul with which she communed. And the stranger followed them still, a weary speck in their wake.
There’s a balance to things.
No, she wouldn’t listen. The only balance that mattered was the love between the Bull and the Cow. That and that alone. The Cow had long since turned her eyes away, blighting the land with famine and drought. It was Khadra’s destiny to set things right.
And yet…And yet…
She must not think about it.
I am not the same, Khadra thought. I am not the same as before.
Now, on the morning of the third day, the Queen soared over the Gulf and reached the burning shore. Khadra looked down through serpent’s eyes and saw that they had returned.
I am not the same, the girl thought. But the land. The land is the same.
In the distance, a dark line marked the crests of the Surud mountain range, rising to meet Shimbiris, the country’s highest peak. Navigating by the knife-like heights, the Queen glided into the east, passing over the plateaus and plains of the Sanaag hinterland. All Khadra saw was dust. Dust like a dying cough. Dust like the seas of the moon. Dust on dust on dust. Down there, where the rivers trickled through thick mud. Down there, where the cracked wastes scowled at the sun. Down there, where the corn withered and the cattle slumped and the huts huddled in the heat. Down there, where the flies danced on the swollen children and all the wells ran dry. Down there, where Huur, the Reaper, the Old Marabou, stalked and called and pecked.
Down there, people were waiting. Waiting for her.
The taalo rose from the sands, a crushed honeycomb of ancient rubble. Crooked pillars supported the sky, the roof caved in long ago, the stacks edging the shattered sanctum like broken yellow tusks. A group of men stood at the top of the steps leading up to the temple floor. With the benefit of bestial vision, Khadra picked out their military uniforms, the glint of their guns, the flash of sunglasses as they looked up, marking the Queen’s descent. A loose circle of large peaked tents fanned out from the bottom of the steps, white canvas flapping in the wind. The small encampment left the girl in no doubt that the men had expected their arrival. Beyond the tents, several jeeps and a couple of helicopters, their rotors still and bowed, crouching in the dust. She didn’t recognise the sword-over-shield motif stencilled on the sides of the vehicles, and neither did the Queen, but both of them could guess what it meant. This wasn’t a welcoming party.
Atiya did not turn back. She circled down over the temple, thrashing her wings in mid-air. Grit swirled across the space, forcing the soldiers back, their arms thrown over their faces. One of the men, blinded and stung, thumped into the side of a pillar, dislodging a chunk of hieroglyphic brick. Another raised his machine gun, but a barked command brought him up short, the barrel lowering as he skittered into the lee of the wall. Bullets wouldn’t help them here, would only bounce off scales. The edifice suffered a localised quake, the rock trembling and groaning as, claws stretched, Atiya alighted, a black hole swallowing the sun. Flagstones popped and splintered. Wingtips brushed pillars, threatening to topple them, bury the troops under debris. Static whipped along the colonnades like thin blue mooring lines, crackling and weaving from stone to scale, a frenzied aura scorching the temple floor.
In her breast, Khadra felt the brewing storm. The Queen’s horns, a corkscrew crown, reared above the tallest pillar. Her neck loomed, drawing back, a plated stem ready to bloom and incinerate the men beneath her. These foolish men and their flimsy Lore – yes, the Queen marked them now, her extraordinary senses reaching out, placing the agents of the Guild even as she raged at their gall. She had not invited them here. Where were their tributes? The insult shuddered through her. Though her throne was dust and her realm a memory, she was every inch the Queen of Punt, last of the First-Breed. She had not slept for three and a half thousand years to let mortals debase her.
Like a gate into night, her fangs slowly parted. Lightning whirled in her throat.
Then Khadra was reaching out, a spark of urgency in the Queen’s mind.
Sheel!
Atiya did not want to stop. She wanted to spew white fire, bring biriq to the Guild. She wanted to rend and tear, barge her way down the temple steps, her wings sweeping the tents aside, reducing them to shreds of canvas and rope. She wanted to grab the metal machines, rip the jeeps and the helicopters apart, hurling wheels and blades high in the air. She wanted to scatter their Lore and what she thought of it from the tips of her
claws. In a frenzy of violence, she would show these men just how little their authority meant. She would show them what it meant to challenge a queen…
But Khadra refused her. Muscle was no defence against the hands that gripped the Queen’s will. The girl could feel Atiya’s shock at this rebellion, the Queen roaring, her snout bucking, her forearms tensed. All the Queen could do was look down – Khadra could feel Atiya gazing through her eyes now – at the reason for her inner resistance.
The men had retreated, clutching their guns. A woman stood atop the temple steps, her skin blending with the Queen’s great shadow. A light-green dirac billowed around her, the long, sheer dress accentuating her bony chest, her arms like river reeds. Bones and beads clacked around her neck, the tribal gewgaws of sixir, the old magic. Her braids pulled her face into a skull, her cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass. Still there was a glint in her eyes. Fear, Khadra thought, but also patience.
Khadra spoke.
“Hooyo.” Mother.
It wasn’t a question. Khadra peered down at Ayan and tears prickled through the Queen’s fire. Atiya was fighting her, the girl could feel it. Her teeth ached and her skin burned. Wasps swarmed around her nipples and between her legs, stinging, stinging, stinging. But Khadra had a foothold now. She was not the same girl who had come to this tomb. Using a chain of will, she pulled herself out of her hiding place. Hand over hand, she climbed, her feet pushing down the Queen’s dismay.
No. You cannot. I am Queen of—
“Mother,” Khadra said.
Ayan nodded. She took a hesitant step forward, her stiff shoulders contrasting with her trembling lips.
“Must I die?” she said. “I am prepared. If I cannot reach you, daughter, then I have no reason to live.”