“If you touch me, I will gut you,” she hissed.
Then Cur did something he had never done before. He surprised her. Continuing forward, hands to his sides, he loomed over her radiating rage. “Who?” His coarse low-born voice crackled with command.
Sequa twitched, lips pressing shut.
“The same man who nearly cost you your life,” The Voice answered. Cur turned toward him with careful motions, as though he balanced an egg on his head.
More respectful, though no less wrathful, he asked “How?”
“The usual way,” Sequa bit out, shocked and sick and made reckless with it. “And how, Holy, do you have the right to say this?”
The Voice rose himself, hemming her in on all sides by indignant male energy.
Calm, calm. You are no child, no stripling. Calm. This is the Avatar of the God and him… the other one you own.
“Because it is true, Champion. I am the conduit of the Father’s truth. I need no other reason.”
“Aye!” Sequa laughed, half-mad with it all. “What is the Great God to me? What am I to him? What truths has he ever spared me from?”
And the madness broke inside her. Sequa dropped the hem of her ridiculous garment and attacked the living avatar of the God.
Anem did not draw steel, knowing the weapon would become Sequa’s in the next moment, but she could not prepare for the sheer ferocity of Sequa’s frenzy. She interposed herself between them. Sequa struck her back in a handful of blows with bare foot and fisted hand. Anem fell winded and weeping to the floor.
Fingers clawed, Sequa slashed at those pure, blue eyes in a charging leap.
Cur caught her in midair, turned and pinned her to the floor with his knee in the small of her back. She rolled to the side, shedding his weight for an instant and hooked his near foot in both hands, pulling hard.
She’d knocked him down like that a few times. He anticipated it. Cur stamped his other foot backward, dropping his weight to set himself firmly into the ground.
But he couldn’t anticipate the things she had learned in her time out of the kingdom. Sequa arched her body upward, using his own leg as a leverage point and kicked Cur squarely in jaw with the heels of both feet. He went down like a poleaxed steer, crushing a chair as he fell and lying stunned for the instant it took her to roll up and slash her fingers across the Voice’s truthful mouth. The thin skin of his lips split, spraying blood like spilled paint against her modest, pale garment. He staggered to one side, gasping in pain.
She struck for the back of his neck, to grasp and twist. To kill.
The over-long fabric tripped her and she flailed past him into the wall face first, feet tangled in some small stool or furnishing.
Behind her, she heard Anem bellow, “No, out! Get out!” and the sound of feet retreating into the corridor.
Sequa turned, sighted the wreck of the chair and dove forward in a shoulder roll that brought her up with a length of leg in her hand. Her holy prey still cowered behind her, leaning against the wall with both hands over his face. She stepped forward lightly, delicately, her weapon rising into position.
Cur slammed his shoulder into the back of her knees, artless, brutal. She fell forward, her descending club missing the Voice’s head by the space of a hair. She landed at his feet with the full weight of Curran on her back, driving out breath and sense both. By sheer force of will, she managed to turn toward the Voice just a little, teeth bared as though to bite.
The tall, blond man rose to his full height. The air in the room grew thick and sharp with the smell of flame.
The Voice of the God leaned down and placed both his hands on her temples. His hard, panting breath sprayed blood from his mouth onto her face. She could taste it, salt and metal. It tasted like all the other blood she’d spilled.
“This is your Truth, Sequa d’Kimerian.”
The God flowered inside her mind like mushrooms growing from a corpse.
~ * ~
When Sequa had stopped screaming and writhing on the ground, the Voice of the God picked her up and carried her into the bedroom. He wiped the foam off her lips and blotted up some of his blood from her throat. Cur, still a little bleary and resentful from the kick in the face lurked in the doorway but did not come inside the little room. Anem summoned servants to clean up the mess and replace the furniture.
The Voice of the God sat on the floor, as far away from the bed as he could get and just stared at the small figure mumbling and twitching on the narrow pallet. Strange currents chased each other across his face, achingly strong to show at all.
In time, Sequa roused from her stupor and sat up, coughing wetly into her palm and dropping it to stain the rough blanket with a red handprint. She squinted at Cur in the doorway, now standing with his back to the room. Raw, naked emotion twisted her mouth and clenched her jaw.
“I am not dead,” the Voice said softly from the floor and suppressed a smile when she jerked away in shock. He felt viciously satisfied to see her discomfited for once. She had no control over her expressions for a little while. When she looked him full in the face, he could see relief, bolstered by…respect? Admiration? Spasmodically, Sequa reached out a hand and pulled it back, a smear of darkening red staining it.
“Is that what you see, when the God takes you?” Her voice became high and slow, the voice of a child presented with some wonder unexpected.
“I do not know what you saw. Your truth is not mine.”
“Not that. I meant—” She swung around unsteadily to face him. Outside the little bedchamber, Anem and Cur stilled. They could hear her clearly. Sequa quirked her mouth at him and made an aborted hand gesture. It might have been “speak freely.” He thought she meant it for herself.
“The speed and pressure? Are they the same for you?”
“Oh. Yes.”
“How is it you are not run mad?”
“I did, for a time. You learn to bear it, or you die under the weight and the God falls on another. Most of us…do not fail. The God picks His Voice with care.”
“How did you know I would bear it?”
“I…didn’t. I tried to kill you, with the only weapon I had that you could not take from me. Afraid for my life, I tried to kill you.” He repeated it as though he could make it untrue by force of will.
She smiled wanly, the least sardonic expression he had ever seen on her face. “Most people do at some point. It is no impediment to my regard.”
Outside the room, two throats spasmed, swallowing laughter.
“Madness took me, there,” Sequa continued, “but it is no excuse. I laid hands on the Voice of the God. I think my life is forfeit now, as it should be.” She bowed her head as though waiting for the axe to fall here and now.
He shook his head sharply. “I do not ask it. I will not speak of it, and I trust those who shared the moment will be silent as well. If nothing else, Champion, you bore the Truth and did not die—it is no mortal right to slay you now.”
He stared at her openly for a long time, seeing once more her youth, the vicious scars, the hovering darkness. He looked at a woman barely a day from being raped, her mind damaged by whatever foul magic had compelled her. Nothing less could have let her attacker walk away unscathed.
The taste of sorcery had been on his tongue from the moment he had entered the room and wondered if he should tell her what he sensed. Some part of him wondered that she had not thrown off the coercion as she threw off the influence of the God; some part of him thought perhaps she had not been unwilling at all.
The shame of those thoughts as much as fear for his life had driven him to lay the Truth upon her. For that he would seek confession and penance from the Shadow. He had much to atone for this day, and all at once he wanted no more than to be on the roof of the Temple, praying.
“Sequa,” he said in his deep, musical voice, “if you transgressed in spilling my blood, you paid for it under the hand of the God. Do not think it will not have its toll. It will return to you in flashes at od
d moments. I have found it best to simply hold and ride it out, as one would grasp a tree trunk in a flash flood. If you can remember anything you see, you might perhaps come to me, to the Shadow. We can sometimes interpret it. For now, rest. We will speak again in time.”
In his heart, he prayed then that the God let him conceal some small part of his soul, as long as he told her this greater truth. “You did not fight him, Sequa, because you could not fight him.” The Voice of the God stared at her, willing belief.
“Oh.” She gave him the most naked and honest look he had ever seen on her face. “Yes. I know that… I mean, I know that now. After… the God. Thank you, though.”
The Voice of the God left, shaking his head. In time Anem returned, lingering half in and half out of the door. Sequa looked up from her renewed reverie and raised a hand in thanks and acknowledgment. “I owe you for this place where I can rest… and attempt the murder of the Avatar of the Great Good God in private. How can I ever repay you?”
“Well, not succeeding in murdering the Avatar of the Great Good God in the Iron Quarters would suffice. So I am already thanked.”
“No one said I only had one try at it.”
Anem snorted. “You seem… more like yourself. I have never known anyone to walk away from the Truth of the God before—indeed, I believe it was used to execute criminals in times past. Of course it would serve only to heal you.”
“It hasn’t. It…distracted me.”
“Ah.”
Sequa shrugged, then plucked at the annoying tunic. “Can someone find me something else to wear? I can pay but I’ll wear a vegetable sack with arm holes rather than this.”
“I sent your old leathers and shirt out to tailor nearby and ordered new ones made. In a day or two you will have something more than just what you wear on your back. New veils, too.”
“I intend to retrieve my good armor, my mask. My swords. I will walk in skin and cloth no longer in this benighted city.”
“Yes. That might be…wise.”
“Anem?”
“Sequa?”
“You think my life is built with lies, brick by brick. And it is, now, but a good lie is bound in the mortar of truth. I must always see the truth, to speak the lie. Otherwise I am merely foolish, or ignorant, or misinformed. I think that is why the Truth did not kill me today. I do not understand why…he did not last night. I need to understand.”
“I understand I’m going to kill him if I ever get my hands on him,” Cur rumbled almost under his breath; he stood just to one side of the door. Sequa rolled her eyes. As if he had claim to the man’s life.
“If you touch him before me, Curran, I’ll kill you myself.”
“What did he look like? You are now the only person to have gotten within an arm’s length of him and lived.” Anem asked casually, watching the other woman with intent. Sequa nodded and closed her eyes, mouth moving in some unconscious protest.
“He was…” she paused, started again. “He had something strange about…” Paused again, her expression growing blanker and blanker. “He… Fire and Blood.”
Sequa jumped to her feet, her face radiating shock. “I don’t… I can’t remember. Not enough to violate my body, he took my memories like—”
The sharp stop brought Cur into the room, both of them staring at her.
Sequa cursed foully, fluently, and slammed her hand into the wall once, twice.
“Like one of the damned Gods!”
~*~
Sequa came to the Temple the day of the gathering of the high clerics reluctantly, dragging her feet like a recalcitrant child. The Capitol had sent a delegation, riding hard and fast; the Crown Prince would know for certain she had returned before the next Turn of the Dance. Only the near-constant chivying of The Voice and the Shadow brought her at all, and she planned to leave with the first insult. She thought she would be there for less than a glass.
Gathered on the roof of the great Temple, the highest clerics within half a Turn’s ride were a uniform group. Each set of white robes adorned with flashes of their Gods’ colors. Each with the appropriate level of skin bared for their genders and status. There were a few scions of the Noble houses who bared their faces but most were Merchant by their bare arms and legs. Peasant-born stood together, off to one side, and quietly. None of them would even look at Sequa, sitting on the edge of the skylight trellis and looking out at a far horizon to the north.
Sequa felt the old surge of anger, that even in those who dedicated themselves to the religious life, the old patterns of privilege and prestige held true. Her fingers twitched for the swords she had put aside in the Shadow’s rooms again for the day; violence rode through the edge of all thought, making the muscles of her arms tense and painful. She, who trusted no one, could no longer even trust herself.
The Shadow and the Voice cresting the top of the stairs damned the flow of savage turbulence. And perhaps that answered the question of why she sought out their company so much lately. In the presence of the Avatars, she could control herself again. And then the Voice of the God had tried to kill her the day after… her mind shed the memory, skittish as a newborn foal. For all that he had taken some part of her mind, the horror, the smell of blood and lust still wrapped hard hands around her throat and choked her at unbidden moments. She thought perhaps Cur—stranded today in those rooms Anem had lent her at the Iron Quarters—was the only one who saw her unease.
Behind them, Anem’s blunt figure, wearing her armor and helmet-mask veered off to the far side of the roof, scanning the group and then the visible city beyond. She did not start or pause when she saw Sequa. She, at least, had expected the former Runner to be present for this holy conference.
For the other clerics, her brooding menace had been unexpected. The instant the Shadow appeared, two of the Noble born had approached her and with outward respect spoke quickly and passionately about something. Sequa had good ears; the sibilance of her name was distinct even across the rooftops as well as a few choice epithets. Rising abruptly, Sequa raised her arms to the Goddess above, as She rode the rim of the world to Her rest, and walked toward the stairs. Nothing she had to gain here could be worth the disrespect and condemnation she would have to endure.
The Voice smoothly blocked her way. She stepped around him.
He put his hand on her shoulder to restrain her.
Sequa froze. From the corner of her limited vision she could see Anem go rigid. The low murmur from behind stopped as though everyone’s vocal cords had been severed.
The Voice almost laughed. “I would guess everyone now expects you to break my neck,” he whispered slyly to her.
“I very much dislike being touched, O Voice of the God. I disliked it even before you tried to kill me with your hands.” She kept looking ahead. If she moved at all, his jest might not be jest any longer.
His hand squeezed once, hard. “And I dislike watching clever people act stupidly. They may not want you here. But they need to hear your words.”
She looked at him sharply, having to turn her head almost past her shoulder to do it. “ I’m not simply here as a sword hand… “
“Not at all. And think of how uncomfortable you make them.”
“For that alone, Avatar, I will remain.” Sequa nodded slightly and slid to one side, out of the vision of most of those gathered. The Shadow made a decisive gesture with one hand, a sharp chop that meant the same everywhere. Enough. Her tormenters stepped back, visibly affronted but unwilling to argue with the Shadow of the Goddess. Anem stepped forward and assisted the older woman onto a low platform in the center of the space.
“Brothers and sisters under the Gods. Be welcome here. Be at peace in the home of the Great Good Goddess on this mortal earth.” She sighed and looked around the gathering. “We have tidings most grim to bring you, The Voice and myself. Old crimes renewed and inflicted on the people of the holy city here. There is wild magic staining the streets of Ressen with blood and death. I have called you here that we may bring th
e pure light of the Great Gods to bear on this darkness, to reveal and cleanse.”
Sharp gasps greeted her words, exclamations of fear and surprise. Wild magic had brought nothing but destruction to the kingdom. The Holy War of Founding had been fought to purge the wild mages, to drive them into the priesthood. Everyone assumed that was where they remained.
Sequa had seen things among the Children of Home that made her believe otherwise. She had survived more than enough in Ressen to know the truth.
Somewhere she had lost her concentration. A conversation she did not remember hearing start now surrounded her. The main speaker was the tall Noble cleric, the man from the capital and the Prince’s spy. Terriance. She remembered him quite well from trips to the palace with Jesan, standing demurely at her owner’s heel and watching the dance of privilege whirl around her.
“And why,” he snapped, shooting Sequa dire looks from the corner of his eye, “are we to believe this? A wild blood mage haunting the Holy City for over a Measure? And it takes an…outsider to recognize it?”
The Shadow must have told of Sequa’s part in the tale.
The Voice made no attempt to conceal his irritation. “Blood magic is subtle. Wild magic is quiet when it runs with the grain of the world. Yes, for nearly a Measure this man has been in the city. He has been hunting its people for some dire purpose. He has killed, tortured, raped.”
Sequa felt some bitter pride; even bare faced no one would have seen a reaction from her to that word.
It would not have mattered—everyone looked at the Voice. He stood taller than any of them, his golden hair still shining in the fading light of his God. He gathered some of his patron’s power, letting it infuse his voice as herbs infused a bottle of intoxicant. The air carried a crackling whisper of flame when it swept past his hair. Behind him, the Shadow drew on her own growing strength, her skin starting to gleam, pale, pearlescent. The mixed light made the air move strangely.
Feathered shapes flashed through the air above, high and higher, spreading wide wings to soar. Reflections against white and golden feathers speckled the sky above the Temple. A cloud passed across the face of the God, dimming Him.
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