by Danie Ware
She found herself lifted onto shields and shoulders and paraded about the courtyard like an icon of the force’s victory. It was overwhelming. It made her feel giddy, and slightly sick. With one outburst of fury, she’d become some creature of great deeds…
A symbol.
These people need this.
Some part of her wanted to scramble down and run and run and run until she found the summer again, until she could hide in the long grasses of her youth.
Where Redlock was waiting for her.
But another part understood, now, those days would never return. As if her younger self had finally died out there with the axeman, she found – at last – that she welcomed her age and the strength it brought with it.
There was darkness to be faced, and fought, and beaten.
“You’ve high courage, Tan Commander.” Out of the lines of tents, the voice belonged to Nivrotar.
The warriors carrying Triqueta muttered, “My Lord.” They set her down and backed off like naughty children.
The Lord of Amos hadn’t bothered with a cloak, and her arms were lean and pale and bare. A silver band encircled one bicep, and her white face seemed thinner, almost hollow. “And brave wit, and flawless timing,” she said. “And I am sorry for your loss. Faral ton Gattana was a good man, fierce and high-hearted. We will remember his victory – and yours. No warrior will wish for a greater monument.”
“A monument?” Triqueta said. The word sounded like a wound. “I did as you asked, my Lord. I brought you Roviarath. And the Banned. And some extras, just for fun. And apparently a hero, to boost your morale.” She swallowed the bitterness, scratched at her flaking hands.
“We’re going to win this,” she said.
It’s going to be worth what it’s cost.
The Lord of Amos smiled, and Triqueta tried to remember if she’d ever seen the expression on the woman’s face before.
“Let us hope so, Triqueta of the Red Rage,” she said. “Or your monument will stand beside Redlock’s, headless upon a plain of death.”
* * *
Dusk swallowed the walls of Tusien, stretched sullen shadows across the courtyard.
As the light died upon the peaks of distant Kartiah, the clouds gathered close. They clustered as if they awaited the outcome of the world’s fate, bulging heavy with the threat of new snow. Lost somewhere in their bellies, the unseen moons glimmered, rippling highlights, hinting at the cold sky beyond.
Secure beneath their cover, fires had been lit at last, and the warriors’ mood was lifting. They’d all come far, and fought hard. They’d won the day, and a party was rising now, a swell of necessary laughter against the red and flickering stone.
New friendships were being celebrated, toasted with leather mugs and exaggerated with tall tales. Hands gripped wrists, and faces gleamed with battlefield recognition and drunken embellishment.
Triqueta went looking for Taure, and for his waterskin. She wanted to find Ecko, too, but not just yet – her memories of their farewell were odd and out of place, in this cold where Redlock had died.
Right now, she wanted family. Needed to remember why they were fighting, what all this was for.
As the party rose into the night, the beaten force at the base of the hill remained motionless, curled up and sulking like some wounded nartuk.
But Tan Commander Mostak never left the wall.
* * *
Amethea rested her back against the heavy tentpole, then slid wearily downward to the cold and filthy floor. She wiped her hands down her trews, said, “Is that all of them?”
“For now.” One of her helpers smiled, passed her a cup of nvuri tea. “Though the patrols are still out. They say the retreat is always the worst.”
She shook her head and sipped at the restorative, then wrapped her hands around the cup’s heat, and let the warmth of it spread through her. It was less cold in here, but her breath still rose like she’d exhaled her soul.
Put your shoulder to the wheel…
I’ve tried, she told Gorinel silently, as if he stood behind her in his grubby apron, with all the nameless Gods ranked at his back.
Around her, the murky light of the hospice resembled some outer chamber of the rhez – bodies slumped on pallets, reaching hands that flickered shadows on frosted fabric walls, echoing cries of pain and hopelessness. They’d come in here in numbers, in panic, in suffering and in agony. They’d come to her crying out, and bleeding out, cursing and staggering, carrying those who couldn’t walk.
Triqueta had fought her war, and won. In here, Amethea had fought a war of her own – a war of tight and endless focus, a war without the release of naked rage. This war had been fought against hurt and grief and infection, against filth and stench and injury. This war against antagonism, against the curses of those she hadn’t been able to help, or hadn’t helped fast enough. This war against the Count of Time, against inadequate facilities and dwindling supplies, against increasing numbers and rising desperation.
Against death…
…and against her own despair.
Faith is in action.
She realised she was shaking, and put the tea down. She wanted to cry, but didn’t dare let herself go. If she opened the gates, it would never end. Instead, she closed her eyes, and took several gulps of the shit-stinking air.
She wondered what Gorinel would have said about her failures. About the bodies, those she hadn’t been able to save. About those who had died in agony, cursing her with their last breath. Were they symbols of faith? Of purpose? Were they the shoulder-to-the-wheel forgiveness that he’d guided her towards?
Or were they just Gods-damned dead?
Her mouth jumped, fighting the flood.
Then something moved in front of her, blocking the rocklight.
“Amethea.” Rhan was a cold colossus, all armour and shoulders. His long blade was sheathed across his back, and he was covered in gore as staining-dark as pure dismay. His helm was off, held under one arm, and his face and sweated hair were smeared with other people’s lives.
At the sight of him, her heart recoiled – she wasn’t even sure why. She scrabbled to her feet, tripping over her tea. It sank into the muck, steaming.
“Come to make yourself feel better?” she said. It was uncalled for, but she didn’t care – her weariness was spilling out of her like her tea into the ground. She understood why he needed to help – his need for absolution was the same as her own – but his presence made her uneasy.
Promise of Samiel, he was as close to the Gods as anyone could ever get… and somehow, he undermined everything that Gorinel had taught her about her faith. He made her unnecessary.
But he said only, “I came to see if you were all right.”
In the looming shadows, the statement lurked, a figment in a corner – as if he knew full well that he could have helped these people, sent them back to their tents and tans and commanding officers with nothing worse than a red scar and a tall tale.
Like she was so much extra baggage, useless to him and the battle both.
But I was trying! she told Gorinel, the gathered and frowning Gods. I was trying so hard!
“I’m fine,” she said.
“I don’t doubt your courage, Master Apothecary. Or your ability.”
He pulled off a gauntlet, one finger at a time, dropped it into his upturned helm. Then he touched his hand to the side of her face, smiled at her, and kissed her forehead like a father, a benediction.
With a shock that stood her hair on end, she felt his light in her skin.
Amethea had been unconscious when Maugrim had healed her; she’d had no memory of his elemental touch. This time, she could feel it, all of it, feel the Powerflux as it flowed through her body – a seething, sparking crackle. It was tremendous, ludicrous and elating. The light was in her head and heart and mind and soul, pure and brilliant. It illuminated all her secrets, everything she was, or had ever been, or had ever hoped to be. Every success, every failure; every life s
he had saved, and every life she hadn’t. It made her feel exhilarated and wild and sick… but there was something more, something familiar, something like—
Recognition.
It stunned her like a slap, and she pulled away. She staggered backwards into the tentpole, shaking her head like she’d been stung.
“What did you just…? Why did you…?”
“Easy,” Rhan said. “You need help too.”
“I’m fine,” she snarled at him, then coughed, retched bile and spat. She was dazzled. The light was everywhere: in her eyes, in all the cracks in her faith, in every question she had ever asked herself. It was in the Bard’s fireside tale, in Gorinel’s warmth and humour. It was in the face of every soldier who’d lost their life because of her.
Faith is in action.
Every soldier that Rhan could have saved.
No.
That first ripple was small, like a rattle of stones that foretold a hillslide. Master Apothecary. He was damned right she was, trained with solid and practical formality; she was worth her weight in terhnwood, the best they had. And she had to prove her faith and forgive herself with purpose, with…
But I tried!
“Amethea—”
“No.” She said it aloud this time. “You don’t get to do that. Promise of Samiel, whatever you are, you don’t get to just do that.” She was shaking her head, words falling out of her borne on the day’s howling horrors. “I’ve been in here. Saving lives. Losing lives. Taking lives. Taking abuse. Watching people die because I couldn’t save them.” She was angry now, shuddering with reaction. “And you can’t just… light me up like a Gods-damned rocklight. Fix me. Heal mind and body by just…” She waved an arm, scornfully casual. Her forehead was stinging, and she knew that there was one of those odd red marks where he’d touched her.
“Amethea,” he said, softly. “You’re exhausted beyond words—”
“No.” She couldn’t listen to him. His light had shown her the truth, the churning in her belly that was curling round the failures of the day. Gorinel had shown her faith, and had died anyway. Redlock had been her friend, and had died anyway. She’d struggled to save the lives of these people, and they’d died anyway.
Her presence, her training, had failed.
Her need for absolution had failed.
She had put her shoulder to the wheel and fallen anyway.
“I should’ve stayed in Fhaveon. Died with Gorinel. He understood – at least I mattered.”
Everything she’d done – was for nothing.
Cracks in her new faith.
And then shattering, falling.
She was backing up towards the cold draught from the doorway. As he moved, went to reach out to her, she turned and almost fell out into it. Anything to be away from him, away from the Gods, away from everything she’d failed to be.
Master Apothecary.
Uncaring of him calling after her, Amethea half ran and half staggered out into the darkness, and into her own loss of hope.
* * *
Ecko scuffed an awkward foot against the overgrown cobbles.
In front of him was the biggest of the circles of firelight; it radiated warmth that made the colours of his skin shift as if they ached to give him away. In that circle sat the warriors of Roviarath and the Banned. It was a circle of boasting, booze and laughter.
To one side of it, the stones in her cheeks glittering, sat Triqueta with a leather waterskin in one hand and a bared blade in the other. She’d been given one of Fhaveon’s blood-feather pennons and was holding it on the blade-tip out to the flame. She let the fire dance up its edge and consume it.
As the pennon flared and died, the circle around her cheered, and thumped their fists on their thighs. They raised drinking vessels and shouted her name. Ecko couldn’t take his eyes from her – he wanted to speak to her, to say something… some awkward gesture of sympathy, some “wish it could’ve been different” comment on Redlock’s death…
But his fucking useless social skills spiked him to the spot. He’d no clue how to approach the circle, let alone his feelings about the loss of the axeman.
Chrissakes. Grief: tick. Two outta ten, could do better.
What’s up next, table manners?
Savagely, he twisted a foot and ground a weed to death.
Redlock was gone. Assertive, bluff, wicked, Redlock had been exactly who and what he appeared to be. And Ecko… Yeah all right, I miss him, okay? He couldn’t get his head round it. He wanted to rail at Eliza that it wasn’t fair, that he hadn’t signed up for no Tragic Hero shit, that no one should hafta die like that. That if he’d been there, he could’ve stopped it. That it was his program and his – what? Responsibility? That if one pixel in this stupid bastard fractal had been in a different place, if the butterfly had flapped its wings in a different way, then everything after it could’ve been changed…
Chrissakes, he might be able to hand a major daemon its ass on a plate, but this shit? Stupid tests. Beat the bad guy – check. Emotional growth and learning – check. And Triqueta…
Her face danced in the firelight and with it his memories of Tarvi. He turned away, angry and baffled. He’d no bastard clue how to walk into that circle of light.
His oculars caught movement across the campsite: a figure running from the ruin’s sheltered corner. Amethea, uncloaked, fleeing in a stumble from the hospice.
What the hell?
Fearing the worst, he tuned his telos and saw Rhan standing under the open tent flap. Suspicion flickered, the images it conjured unpleasant.
Almost glad of the excuse, Ecko gathered his heavy wool cloak and headed out after the doc.
* * *
Triqueta left the fireside and went to find somewhere to piss.
As she headed, reeling slightly, towards the tower at the corner of the ruin, she became aware that she could see moonlight through the wall. Only a chink, but enough.
And that wasn’t going to end well.
Steadying herself with an effort, she checked her weapons and headed that way.
Tusien’s walls contained several cracks, splits where the ground had moved with the intervening time. The Amos force had blocked them with piles of shattered stone. Now, one of them was open.
Somewhere, her wine-addled mind said, Oh shit.
Struggling for sobriety, she reached the tiny gap and crouched to look through it. The back of her neck prickled.
But there was nothing there – no sneak attack, no creeping beastie. Only a long, pale grey curve against the darker grey ground: the graceful stone stairway that had once decorated Tusien’s gardens. In places, its creatures still stood guard, each with one claw raised. Monuments over a field of death.
She crouched, watched, then told herself it was too damned cold and she should just pee and go back to the fire.
Then she saw a slim figure in grey, all but invisible.
Amethea?
Carefully, Triqueta eased through the tiny gap, crept down to the top of the broken stairs. The sharp chill outside the wall woke her up pretty damned quick. Her breath steamed and she rubbed her itching hands.
She still needed to piss, but that would have to wait.
Amethea was not alone.
Betrayal? No…
As she came closer, she realised that the other figure was Ecko. He was cloaked, but making no effort to hide.
Her heart jumped; she wasn’t even sure why.
“…everything I’ve ever been,” Amethea was saying softly, her voice aching with pain. “It doesn’t matter now. Nothing matters. We can try our hardest, but we’ll fail in the end.”
“Will we fuck,” Ecko said. His voice was firm but hushed, lacking its usual rasp. “We do this shit. Whatever it takes.”
“Why?” The word sounded like heartbreak. Amethea held up a hand, looking at it in the faint light. “Why bother?” Her voice was empty, echoing like loss. “I can’t do this any more.”
“You hafta fix this,” Ecko said.
“You’re the fuckin’ doctor.”
She looked at both her hands, turning them over and back as if she’d never seen them before. “It’s not a disease,” she said. “It’s growing.”
Ecko put his hands over Amethea’s and closed them, stopping her looking. “You gotta fight this. You—”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said again.
“Everything matters,” Ecko said. “You most of all.” His voice was warm, human. It touched Triqueta to the core, made her bite her lip.
And, as Amethea slowly shook her head, a gesture heavy with resignation, Triqueta knew, like a cold stone sinking in her heart, she knew what had happened.
It’s growing.
She crept closer, fear clamouring in her throat. She tried to find something to say.
Growing.
In the darkness, Ecko turned. “Triq?”
“Yeah.” She moved forwards, knew he could see her.
Ecko’s black gaze held so many things, all of them unsaid. Then he turned away, and voiced the thing she’d been most afraid of.
“Amethea…” he said. “Amethea’s caught the blight.”
23: ELEMENTAL
TUSIEN
The winter night was smothered and still, silent on the edge of the end of the world.
They sat, their backsides freezing on cold stone steps, Amethea in the centre and sheltered by the cloaks and closeness of the other two. Under low cloud, the darkness was almost complete, but they didn’t need the light to see the discolourations that were already flowering in her skin.
She coughed, as if her lungs were filling with moss.
And she was talking, lorn and lost. “Do you remember the House of Sarkhyn?” she said. “There was a man there. He kept saying, ‘Help me, help me’.” She coughed again, her shoulders hunching. “I feel like that. It’s like… it’s like I’m nothing.”
* * *
On the far side of the jagged ruin, Tan Commander Mostak stood unflinching. The clouds had lowered, dark with threat, but the Commander paid them no attention. He watched his sleeping enemy as if he’d never blink again.
Behind him, Nivrotar stood in the command tent, pieces of knotted cord in her hands. With Roviarath here, their food and fuel was running dangerously low.