“Evening Transition. Return then,” the Shadow commanded. Sequa bowed to her, to the Voice, to the Commander and fled to her lodgings to lie awake on her narrow cot and taste a burning man in her mouth.
For the rest of the endless day, she huddled there without food or drink. She striped off her damp and soiled clothing and laid naked in the cold room. The veils she would never wear again; she could not bear the thought of burning them, so she flung them out the window to fall or soar as the wind caught them. She had nothing left to cover her face but her helmet and mask and the thought of being seen in public, being recognized, had become abhorrent. The slightest hint of violence would push her over the edge.
She wasn’t even sure what edge she feared anymore, madness or destruction.
When the room dimmed toward Transition, Sequa rose and drank a little water. Every muscle and joint ached as it had during the worst moments of the Run. She had gone for days without sustenance but a few strips of dried meat. No sleep and the constant presence of enemies and friends at her back, drove her onward.
Her soul filled with sick emptiness and turgid fear. She had no one, nothing to protect her here. Alone. Facing something too big to fight, too all-consuming to flee.
She wore her leather armor, gloves, and her full-length cloak to obey the most basic of the sumptuary laws. There were other reasons to wear the cloak. She would not walk the streets this night without some kind of steel to hand, even if only a small, subtle blade indeed.
~ * ~
As she exited out the window of her room and looked into the darkening sky, the pattern suddenly locked into place, sending the world spinning. She balanced and swayed on both ledges, the physical and the spiritual. For the first time since she learned her trade, Sequa nearly fell from a high place.
Look up and see the Feathers sprout in the east. Look up and see the face of the Great, Good Goddess at Her Fullness shining down. Remember that same face smiling down over a pool of bright blood and broken promise; remember Her waning as you enter Ressen to preserve a life that belongs to you.
So she looked up and at last she saw the connection. The Noble boy had died at Her Fullness, so had the whore. She would lay her life that all the deaths came at Fullness. Brightest and darkest, the pregnant moment of each turn.
With each death under Her gaze, power swelled. It had carried the wave of corruption that she and the avatars had sensed today. It had gripped her in Anem’s rooms a Turn ago, palpably weaker then.
Her hands clutched convulsively at the rim of the window, knuckles going white with strain.
This. Whatever wielded this power had tried to banish her from the city before Cur’s execution. She fought against it each night as she roamed across the city’s roofs, as she lay sleepless while the God danced, as she trained, as she stalked the streets in rough disguise. When it failed to scare her away it drained and exhausted her, nearly driving her to kill. First herself then others.
Finger by finger, joint by joint, Sequa unclenched her hands from the rough wood and looked up into the face of the Divine Mother. She straightened to her full, unimpressive height, standing unsupported on the tiny ledge. Her hands rose and sketched the holy circle against the Face of the Goddess.
“My thanks, Great Mother, for thy gifts—wisdom, clarity, patience, endurance.”
Then Sequa leaped into nothing.
She struck the wooden wall of the building across the lane with both palms and feet, letting the rough surface hold and drag for an instant. The slide started and she pushed off her right foot; her left foot found the sill of a long-boarded window and like that her faltering ended. Sequa’s knee bent and she went up the vertical surface in two strides, driving the side of each foot into the old, craggy wood, walking up a staircase.
At the top, she grasped the edge of the roof and flipped to balance a moment on her hands. Then she found her feet and took off in a straight line across the even stretch of landscape that spread out from here at the boundary of Under Roof. These were modest family lodgings, several to each floor, more expensive and better maintained than similar places Under, but from the style and materials built all of a piece and at the same time. They gave her several blocks of even surface to use.
Sequa had not been a Runner by choice or desire, but she did not scorn the skills her time in the Michelian Stable had given her. Flat out there were very few people in the city who could have kept up with her; perhaps only Cur. Even the best the Iron Quarters could produce did not challenge her. At the end of the stretch, she faced a several body-lengths break, open air over an open street, and a building a full story shorter. She took the jump into thin air as easily as shallow staircase, rolling over one shoulder and continuing onward.
Though she had started late, and been delayed by revelation, Sequa had to wait for the Shadow, the Voice, and Anem on the roof of the Temple. They appeared eventually from the narrow staircase. She sat comfortably against the wall of the skylight above the altar, inhaling the scent of the still-blooming Goddess-breath.
She watched with interest as the Commander emerged first, scanned the open flat surface and remarked to the pair behind her “She’s not here.”
Intriguing.
True, she wore her mottled, grey cloak pulled up over her head. She sat small, with her knees drawn up to her chest, but she should have been fully visible.
The Shadow came next. The scan repeated and a slight pressure flattened out her lips in irritation.
Then the Voice… and at his first glance he too did not see her. But when his head turned away, something pulled it back to her resting spot. He opened his mouth.
Sequa rose with an unnecessary and dramatic flair of fabric, letting it flip out and settle around her in a swirl.
Anem actually startled. The Shadow, able to control her physical reaction, exclaimed slightly. Clearly she was shocked too.
For the first time that day, Sequa’s burden of fear and grief lifted for a moment.
The Voice looked at her as one looks at a naughty child. Under the shadow of her hood, Sequa’s lips quirked.
“By the light of the God, where did you come from?” Anem snapped.
Sequa stalked across the roof in silence, enjoying herself utterly. Coming to rest a few paces from the others, she folded her hands against her stomach, drawing the edges of the cloak with them until she became only column of grey fabric. Her grating voice sounded nearly gentle when she spoke to the Voice. “You did not see, at first.”
“No,” he said reluctantly. “You were not there.”
She knew this pushed the edge of proprietary, blasphemy, and possibly reason itself, what she thought to do, but no force in the universe could have stopped her.
Sequa smiled slightly. “What did you see?” Something outside of her pushed at him; his aura bent and gave and the words came visibly against his will.
“Empty darkness. Nothing. You were nothing.” The man’s mouth started to twitch, pulling a little on the left. The power of the God on him now, here in the Lady’s light.
“The darkness is not empty,” whispered the Shadow then and her face too went slack, taken by divinity. It swirled there, on the roof.
As it had swirled on the wall that morning, when a man died in fire.
The God gave truth, in all its harshness, so he could be trusted; the Goddess’ gifts offered wisdom and clarity; there would be deeper meaning to her words.
Anem stood breathless and aghast as the Gods rode Their avatars.
The Voice’s golden tones grew stilted and slow. “Blood the gift of the Hawk and His price. Blood shed. Blood shared. Blood bond.” He coughed red-flecked spittle onto Sequa’s face; she did not flinch.
“Nothing grows in the heart of the city, empty darkness to take the light,” said the Shadow, her voice as labored as his. “Darkness empty and full of tears.” The twitching of her mouth, the side of her eye, increased. Sequa felt the air like the blade of a knife against her tongue. Her lungs seized, unable to
draw breath.
She flipped her hood back, looked the Shadow and then the Voice directly in the eyes. Pale blue to misty grey and shadowed gold. “Leave it now. It will avail nothing to break your minds over me.”
The Shadow shook like a dog shedding water and gave the little Runner a haunted stare. The younger woman loosed her full, twisted, horrid smile. “We are all trapped here by different forces, saving the Commander. I do not want to lose my only allies.”
“You have the Gods, Champion. I can only think you must know their love for you,” said the Shadow. She reached down and laid one soft hand on Sequa’s scars, a transgression the Runner would have slain any other over. The small woman shied back, her face jerking in mirror to the avatars. A snapping sound shattered the air and a blue spark flashed from fingertip to cheek.
They made a trinity there for a moment, the Voice of the God standing breathless, the Shadow of the Goddess standing bewildered. Sequa just stood. Then she pulled her cloak closed again, diminishing.
Anem appeared to lose the last of her patience. “Childish tricks aside, I understood we have grave matters to discuss. Perhaps we should discuss them?”
“This,” said the Voice slowly, returning to himself in creaking stages, “is part of what we are here to discuss.” He turned to the Runner. “Sequa. Do not flee from us this night.”
Just like that he spoke her name, and his voice danced in the air, became Jesan’s and Cur’s and father as well, and she could no more have left that roof without his leave than she could have presented him her own beating heart.
She rebelled in the small ways she could though; when they settled into the various seats grouped near the skylight Sequa crouched to one side, one knee down and the cloak pulled around to conceal her.
Anem snorted in her direction but held her tongue otherwise.
They all sat staring into the gathering gloom, silence falling around them like burning leaves. Anem could not start, having no knowledge of their purpose tonight. Sequa would not start out of sheer perversity. The Voice and the Shadow contended silently with each other for the privilege of beginning.
The Shadow spoke first, her tone grave. “This morning—as that poor man died in flames—there ran before him…power. A great wave of power such as I have never felt.”
“Wild magic?” said Anem, her eyes wary. Magic within the boundaries of the kingdom remained watched and guarded by the religious. Illicit practice carried a death sentence. Anem walked such a fine line of appeasement and moderation to keep Ressen a free city that a feral mage could bring royal wrath down too fast to resist.
The avatars looked to each other before the Shadow answered. Sequa knelt still and silent in the growing black.
“Wild magic,” the Shadow confirmed. “If wild means brutal and reeking of death.”
“And life,” added the Voice convulsively.
Sequa laughed, not a pretty sound. They all looked at her with distaste. From the blackness inside her hood her voice grated. “Rot replenishes the fields for the crops. Death and life walk hand in hand. The Great Good Goddess creates the Empty Darkness with Her Light.”
Anem spat sharply. “So says the heretic.”
“Commander, so say we all.” Sequa laughed again. “See, Voice of the God? I do not always resist the truth. So I say this, whatever struck this Godrise struck with purpose, with grave intent.”
“What in Her name do you mean?” Anem said, visibly losing patience.
Sequa flipped off her hood again and turned her eyes to the Goddess bright in the sky. “I wish I could say. I told you before, being here seems to have given me knowledge that I do not know. What happened today was woven with a purpose. I simply do not yet see the pattern.” She ducked her head. “Avatars, I told the Commander that before I rescued Cur something tried to drive me from the city. It felt the same as the power that washed over us all today, but weaker then.”
“I dislike that implication,” said the Voice.
“I dislike all of this, so what say you give me Cur, and we will quit the city? One fewer distraction for you all.” Sequa flipped her hood back up, grinning when she did it.
“Stop it,” snapped the Shadow. “I command you, Champion, speak plain. Tell us what you know.” She had never done that before, never invoked her own divine power to force Sequa to speak.
Sequa swirled to her feet, her face still covered by her cowl. The air grew thick as honey. Anem staggered backward, leaving the killer facing off against the Avatars of the Great Gods.
The small woman raised empty hands and took a step forward as though she walked into a wall of water. From the depths of her hood came a flash of blue. The Voice of the God straightened to his full height, just behind the Shadow’s shoulder. His power had joined to hers, pushing outward.
Sequa…contracted. Grew solid, still. Rooted to the earth. She had moved close enough to the others that they should have been able to see inside her cowl. Instead, it showed only blackness.
Anem reached for her weapon.
There came the sound of dry leaves falling into a fire.
Sequa shook herself as the Shadow had done earlier then fell forward onto her knees. “No. I will not do this again. I do not kill at another’s behest. Any. More.”
The Voice of the God dropped to his knees with her. “Now, you speak true.” He reached out and pulled back her hood. In the silver Goddesslight she looked young, pale and frail. “Be at peace here and now, Champion. Weak though I am outside of His sight, I give you what I have.” Then he kissed her on the forehead.
Her face relaxed so utterly that the scarred side of her mouth fell into a normal position for an instant. She drew away from him, wrapping her arms around herself. “It seems to take me harder than even you, Holies.”
“That is disturbing to me,” Anem said softly. Her hand had not her sword.
“It pleases me even less. I do not want to be here. I did not want to come. Now I think I was moved here by something. Once I got here, something else tried to move me back, and I am so very tired of being a game piece on anyone’s board.” Sequa touched the spot on her forehead where the Voice’s kiss still burned. “I want to go home.” That came out sounding nearly a prayer.
“Sit. All of you. Commander, unhand your sword. Sit.” The Shadow spoke sharply and they all obeyed her. Sequa even took a seat on a bench. “It is clear to me now that whatever is happening here is not solely of temporal origin, and therefore, is not solely your provenance, Commander. Sequa.”
She looked up, her face still uncovered, still vulnerable. “Yes?”
“Tell us what you have learned.”
In as few words as possible to spare her aching throat, Sequa outlined what she had seen on the bodies, what she had felt at the deaths and her new revelation about the phase of the Goddess at each death. She told no deliberate untruths.
Anem grew more and more agitated, hissing and fidgeting her way through the whole speech. Sequa trailed off eventually, her whole body slumping with exhaustion. The Commander of Ressen stood up and paced back and forth.
“I accept that Cur is not guilty of the accused crime. I even accept what you are saying about wild magic in my city. What I do not accept is the idea that all this carnage has some sort of purpose. The monster who does this is insane.”
The Voice of the God ran his hand over his face. “That is inarguable… but you and yours deal with madness in those you arrest. Because a man’s mind is broken does not mean it cannot ever be right. I know you have seen that yourself. What of that woman who drowned her children those Measures ago? I recall she planned the whole senseless evil act in great detail and executed her plan flawlessly.”
Anem ground her teeth, seemingly unaware. “Indeed. But once she finished, she walked out into the street naked and sat in the mud. She did not go out and drown the children of her neighbor.”
Sequa answered that. “She stopped because her purpose was accomplished. The purpose of these deaths is not yet accomp
lished. So they will not stop.” She paused, tilting her head into the Goddess’s light again. “I am not even sure, in the usual way, that he…this person…this adversary is mad.”
“What do you mean?” The Voice sounded genuinely interested.
“I am not certain, even now. Almost I have read the intent here like a slogan chalked to a wall. We all felt the power that fell with the burning body.”
Anem spun toward Sequa aggressively, and for the first time since they had met Measures ago, Sequa did not react. She did not even move, huddled down and down into herself like a rock-walker pulling its head into its shell. Her eyes, no longer shadowed by the hood, looked haunted. Hunted. Her long, thin face seemed all bone and angle.
The Commander peered at her, and her expression softened just a little. “You look even worse than you did at the whorehouse,” she said baldly.
The Voice startled and looked at Sequa with something like reproach. That won him a sidelong glare.
“I needed the income,” Sequa muttered at him, her mouth in a mulish line.
The Shadow slapped her hand down on the stone bench and all three of the others looked at her, surprised.
“Enough. Enough banter, enough judgement. The Commander speaks truly, Sequa, for you look made of air and shadow. Are you eating enough? Are you eating anything? My brother, she is lying to vex you and you know it. Commander…I fear the Champion is correct.”
The older woman rose to her feet, graceful as a flower bending in a soft breeze. Here, bathed in the silver Goddesslight, her power gathered around her like a cloak, she took on more than a little of her patron’s majesty. Her round face, peaceful and serene as the night air itself, seemed that of the Goddess herself.
“We know people of the city are dying. There is wild magic swirling in the city, magic that either enticed the Champion here or seeks to drive her away or both. The magic and the deaths are both purposed, and I also feel as Sequa does that their purposes are harnessed to one another, if not with the same rider. This we know.”
As A God Page 16