by Mur Lafferty
Julie covered her mouth to stifle her gasp. The door opened silently and then closed with a click.
She knew relics from before the Fall existed; she had just never seen one in action.
The letters lay on her bed.
She had left her last letter under the gargoyle after she had seen him die. There shouldn’t have been an answer.
She cradled the sealed final letter in her hands.
After Amadeus’ knife had descended into Adam’s chest she had broken from reality. Nothing seemed true. She had descended from their spire as if from a dream where Amadeus’ second, Polly, waited for her. She gave herself up to the bigger girl, and walked without struggle to Amadeus.
He had come to her that night, tried to shower her with kisses, and she gave him neither passion nor revulsion. He had left, confused rather than angry, and then she had dreamed the words of holy Kate that night. They gave her a glimmer of hope.
She broke the seal and read Adam’s last letter to her.
PART TWO:
GAMES
From the Holy Book of Three
You cannot kill a god. It would be easier to kill the wind, or the sea, or an idea. If it can evolve, change, and adapt, it cannot be killed.
• • •
AFTER JULIE’S SOBS OVER ADAM HAD SUBSIDED, she tried something new. She tried to force herself to go back to sleep, or at least enter a deep state of meditation, to see if she could channel the goddess and finish the lingering thought on the page. It didn’t work.
Living in a commune of orphans in the ruins of what used to be a shining floating city doesn’t leave one with a lot of time for introspection. Their days were spent scavenging for supplies or food, raiding the farms of Lathe, attempting to work in or protect their own farms from scavengers, or fighting with the rival gangs. When they had down time, they would gather around Amadeus and he would preach to them of the days before the Fall, when the scientists would create wonders, when Meridian floated, and when gods walked the earth. Before the gods died.
The city had fallen fifteen years earlier. Julie had been a baby, and had no idea how she had survived. A man named Moore had cared for them, teaching some of them how to care for infants, and some how to forage for food. When a child would reach age eighteen, he would send them out into the world to search for a way to restore Meridian.
Moore had died when Julie was ten, his head crushed by a falling rock. It happened a lot in the rotting city; falling stones and beams were always a hazard, but recently Julie had wondered if Amadeus, who had taken control at Moore’s death, had a hand in his death.
Julie wondered where Amadeus kept his information, since he, like most of them, was very young when the city had fallen. It was clear he had access to some of the holy books, but the temples were too dangerous to excavate.
In Amadeus’ flock, the children were safe. He grew up to be larger than many of the other children, tall and broad of chest.
He didn’t always believe Julie’s channeling of the goddess. He scoffed when she said Kate was alive and embodied as the sun, and Daniel was the moon. He asked where the previous gods were: Barris, the sun god, Morrigan, the moon and death goddess, Gamma, the war goddess. Ishmael, the sea god. Chaos, the god of creation. And the others.
No one else was trying to help the world heal — the stupid priestesses in Lathe just worshipped, and the other gangs in Meridian weren’t worshippers of anyone.
Amadeus’ plan was brutal and final and he was just charming enough to convince the children it would work. What Julie wanted to know, and was too afraid to ask him, was why he needed to hold a second Games if Adam and Penny weren’t doing the job he needed them to do in the afterlife. Julie feared that he wouldn’t stop until all of the children had been martyred, with
Amadeus as the last one standing, sacrificing to his dead gods everyone he had ever nurtured.
No matter how much she tried to calm down, she couldn’t stop her mind from racing. The games. More people dead. Whatever Amadeus had planned for her. What Marcus had planned for her. And what Adam had put in his last letter.
She opened her eyes in frustration and tossed the pencil down on her journal. She couldn’t get back to sleep, but Amadeus wouldn’t like what she had stopped with. She had never woken up in the middle of channeling the
goddess before. He would grill her for more information, and she was worried she might just give it to him.
She pondered her problem, and then slowly smiled, the movement feeling odd on cheeks that had displayed nothing but despair for weeks. She felt silly she hadn’t thought of this before.
With her ear focused on the door, listening for anyone coming to bring her breakfast, she took up her pencil and began writing.
• • •
If you didn’t know Amadeus, if you hadn’t learned to fear him, you’d think he was handsome. His skin was the color of the leaves of the wandering orchid, a deep brown with reddish undertones. His eyes were soft and kind, his jaw strong. His smile was radiant, and his laugh infectious. Even at only sixteen, he stood very tall at two meters, and could lift Julie easily.
However, there was no kindness in his face as he scanned Julie’s dream writing. He read it through, then turned the page back and started again.
Julie tried to focus on her breakfast and not watch him closely as he read her prophesies, both the part that Kate had sent her and the part that she had crafted herself. Breakfast was not her usual fare of oats and milk; they had sent eggs, bread, and butter, rare treats stolen from Lathe, no doubt.
Amadeus began to frown, and Julie focused on her eggs, suddenly not tasting them. In her writing, she had tried to play to both his not—so—secret desires as a prophet in his own right, and his disbelief. It was a trick to both reinforce what he knew to be true and still manage to edge on blasphemy to challenge him. It couldn’t be too crazy, nor could it be too close to what he already believed.
She had said what she thought was on the other side of the world: many oceans and a scattering of islands sheltering tinkers unaffected by the war of the gods. She predicted a blacking out of the sun by the moon this morning, which would bring back the power of the destroyed god, Chaos. With Chaos awakened, a new legion of holy warriors would be needed to fight what He brought back with Him. But the children would have to leave Meridian to do it.
She hoped her role as pet prophet would place her as part of Amadeus’ retinue at the Games. There was no way he could leave her here, shackled, waiting for Chaos.
At least, she hoped not.
She ate another piece of bread and chewed slowly, trying to act tired and groggy after a long night of prophesies. Amadeus finally slammed the book down on the bed, making her jump.
“Lies,” he said.
She tried to hide her shock, but was afraid that her plan was written all over her face. She forced herself to hold his gaze.
“Everyone else, all they do is lie,” he said. “They say the Games won’t work, but I know they will. I know it.” He leaned forward, his voice low. “After I go swimming, Prosper tells me things. The same things you wrote about here.” He shook her journal at her.
Julie gaped at him. Had Prosper truly been talking to Amadeus? She had been making up the bit about Chaos, but what if she had still been channeling Kate? Her hand shook, and she hoped she looked awed instead of terrified.
“What does He say?” she asked.
Amadeus stood abruptly and clenched his fists. “It’s hard to make out. He’s intense, and so loud it’s like he floods my head. But I know he talks about
Chaos and revenge, a lot. And he tells me what to do.”
“The Games,” Julie whispered. Prosper really was telling him what to do. It’s possible each sacrifice was really to bolster the god in the ocean.
Amadeus smiled at her and took her hand, warm to her chilly panic.
“Exactly. He made me start the Games to find the dead gods, but he also wants me to find sacrifices to him. He will come
back soon, Julie.” His eyes shone with glee. “Today we’re going to be at the games together so Kate and Prosper can see through our eyes. They can see their sacrifices through us.”
“Yes,” she said softly, trying to mask her shock in the face of his zealotry. “Did the race to Lathe and back start already?”
“At dawn,” he said proudly. “You should see the crowds! The race should be over in a couple of hours, then we can go out.”
The first event in the Games was the run to the city of Lathe, circle it, and come back. It took about three hours for the fastest runners among them.
Amadeus seemed to notice Julie, truly look at her, for the first time in a while. His eyes scanned her, stopping on her greasy hair and her dirty nightgown. “Gods, you can’t go out like that. You stink. You don’t look like Her prophet. You don’t look like anyone’s prophet.”
Julie bit her tongue at the accusation — were she not attempting an escape, she would have loved to point out that being restrained by chains did not lend itself to good bathing habits. But instead she hung her head in what she hoped looked like shame.
“Get a bath, then meet me in the kitchen!” he said with the air of finality.
The kitchen was the bottom level of the tower, half buried in the ground. Julie had never been there.
“Oh, and we’re getting married before the sacrifices. I have to be wedded before I go, it’s tradition.”
Tradition? There was no tradition, she wanted to yell at his departing back. Their world was seventeen years old; they hadn’t had time to make traditions.
“Go?” she repeated, her hands icy cold as she caught the key he tossed at her.
“Of course. We’re going to lead the sacrifices in the afterlife,” Amadeus said, winking.
He was gone, leaving her to unlock her chains with shaking hands.
• • •
Any thought she had of stealing away once she got free of her chains was put to rest by her door guards. Polly was identifiable by her heavyset frame and her long black braids, but she wore a hood over her head that matched her blue robes. She nodded to Julie and put an iron grip on her upper arm, leading her carefully down the stairs to a lower level, lavender—scented bathroom.
While bathing, she kept the leather pouch full of sand around her neck. She pulled the cord tight to bring it up close to her throat to keep it from falling into the water. Polly didn’t seem to notice her care of the sand.
As she bathed, she thought about Amadeus’ plan, and wondered if Marcus would be able to get through with his plan.
Julie had been so ready to find the Reach with Adam by her side, and now that the thought came to mind that it could happen today, she wasn’t so excited about it.
Julie watched the soap slide off her skin and into the tub, clouding the water. Blood would also cloud the water, she thought, turning it red. She could die right now, in this tub, if she could find a knife. Death on her own terms didn’t seem so bad, but Marcus had promised to get her free. It seemed she was always making choices based on boys and their promises.
• • •
The feeling of a clean body and a clean white robe were so wonderful to almost distract her from the morning’s upcoming events.
Her writing she had hidden beneath her robe, her journal and the letters strapped to her stomach with a length of cloth. Polly had given her perhaps too much privacy, Julie thought, and was grateful for.
Polly led her, hand still tight on her upper arm, to the kitchen. Amadeus was also dressed in white, and he toyed with a dagger, something too clean to be an excavated treasure. He sheathed it and took her hand.
“It’s time. Are you excited?” he asked, but he didn’t even look at her. He had already decided she was excited, apparently.
But Amadeus’ ravings were lost to her when they opened the door and walked up the slight tunnel that led to ground level. The noise was deafening, and when Julie saw the crowd, she stopped cold.
She had never seen so many people. What had to be everyone who lived in Lathe had come. Some extremely pale people stood with wide hats to protect themselves with the sun, visitors from Leviathan City. They all lined the streets to watch for the runners, and they cheered loudly. They didn’t even register Amadeus and Julie.
Amadeus pulled her forward, fingers tight around her wrist. She stumbled along behind him as he followed Polly, her bulk parting the crowd in front of them. Some people reached to touch her robe reverently, carefully, and then they would kiss their fingertips.
Their touch made her stomach turn, and the eggs threatened to return. She closed her eyes briefly and took a deep breath, but was interrupted by another yank from Amadeus.
He took her to the foot of the ruined temple, where some steps remained to form a sort of dais. The rest of the temple lay on its side, buried into the earth, all doors blocked. Amadeus often used the steps to address the group of them, but now his group was five times larger than usual.
The people at the foot of the she knew: friends, kids she had grown up with, fellow combatants in the games. But others— there were adults there, priestesses and priests of the seven gods, strangers.
Adults.
How can adults condone this? She thought with frantic clarity. Amadeus’ actions had sounded sensible amid the fervent zealousness and the panic over the death of gods. To the other children, his actions had seemed rebellious and free, truly following a god, but now with adults around, suddenly it felt
childish and frightening. Would they stop him?
But the adults looked on with the same spectators’ glee that the children did. They wanted to see the Games, and they wanted to see someone die. They wanted sacrifice.
Julie wanted to turn and run away from this madness. Amadeus’ hand tugged again at her, and at the same time, a green glint caught her eye in the crowd as the sunlight hit the stone atop Marcus’ cane. She focused on him, standing near the back of the crowd, watching her.
A friend. Or at least an ally. Someone.
She stiffened her resolve. She would do this. She was the voice of the goddess, and a girl who would take back her freedom, and she would do this. She would not fall to cowardice again.
“If I enter the Other Lands, by any path, I will be able to find Adam,”
she whispered.
“What was that?” Amadeus looked at her curiously.
“I felt the goddess move within me, that’s all,” she said, smiling.
“You sure it’s not indigestion?” he said, grinning.
Burp and fart jokes. He’s a religious leader, and still a boy. “Pretty sure,” she said. She tried not to look at Marcus, but the green glint caught her eye again. She wondered if it was so obvious to everyone else as it was to her. But no one paid him any attention, or any more attention than they paid anyone in the hundreds in the audience.
Amadeus raised his hands and the crowd fell silent. His command over them, Meridian children and visitors alike, was absolute. “My friends, welcome to this day of competition, this day where we find the best among us to fight our holy war! While this day will bring us many champions, it also helps us find our army to hunt the dead gods. He Who Waits, Prosper, has told me as much, and guided me here today. She Who Shines, Kate, speaks through my girl, here.” He held up Julie’s hand, offering her to the crowd, and they cheered. She managed a smile.
Her childhood friends cheered for her as if she were an unknown savior, not someone who ran with them, skinned knees with them, and foraged for food with them. She felt like a symbol, not a real girl.
Julie looked out among the crowd and saw that Marcus was moving along the outside of the ring of people surrounding them. She saw other movement— he had animals with him. The strange land striding birds, the ostriches. One was reddish purple and one blue, their feathers shimmering in the sun. She had heard they could be tamed, but had never seen them. Once, there were races in Dauphin, but never this far north.
It may have been better to choose som
ething that wouldn’t stand out. But no one seemed to notice him; all eyes were on Amadeus.
Nonetheless, she kept an eye on the boy with the odd birds.
Amadeus squeezed her hand tighter and addressed the crowd again. “Prosper, the god of all things that grow, told me he is not dead, and he is gathering strength to rise, to bring back his brothers and sisters, to rule again! But he needs our help. Who are we to deny a god’s wishes? Good people, the god is testing us, finding the strong among us to serve him. And that is what we are here to celebrate!”
They cheered again as one, and his smile was wide as he looked out among his people.
Marcus had edged his way around the throng of people until he was directly across from Julie — all she had to do was run fifty meters into the crowd and she would be free. If they would let her through. She shifted her feet, waiting for her moment.
“It’s time to announce our engagement.”
“Of course,” Julie said, pasting on her best smile and tried not to watch Marcus. He didn’t mention the “how” part of freeing me. Is he making the distraction or am I just running? Do I wait for him?
“One more thing before our runners return from Lathe!” Amadeus
continued. “This morning after the Games, the prophets you see right here will be married!”
“It’s destined to be,” Amadeus said softly, giving her hand a squeeze. He didn’t loosen his grip, and she tried not to squirm as she realized it was going to be tough to get away from him if he clutched her this tightly.
In the crowd, she could only see Marcus’s hat and the heads of the great birds, peeking over the crowd.
I’ll wait until the runners return. No one will be paying attention to me then. Amadeus looked off into the distance as the runners came into view on the field, sprinting down the slight hill from Lathe.
“And here they come!” shouted Amadeus. The crowd’s focus changed, then, and they cheered the runners.