by Kim Smejkal
Diavala spoke to the people, starting onstage with her mistico and then going down into the audience. She walked among them, talked to them in small groups. The parallel between this new display and Anya’s and Celia’s act blazed. There hovered the angel, walking among the people. Onstage stood a defeated devil. Unwittingly, she and Anya had taught Diavala exactly how to work a crowd.
So practical and precise, Anya excelled at planning, at logic. She could take fragments of information and make detailed schematics. Wisps of ideas becoming thick swirls becoming tangible threads. She’d talked it all out for Celia just that morning, sending every detail to Celia’s forearm, including contingencies. How could this perfect plan of hers have gone so wrong?
Celia didn’t know exactly when her mind betrayed her, but by the time she realized what she realized, her face was wet and her eyes burned. Captain Andras kept telling her to shut up, as if grief so huge could simply be swallowed back.
With extreme effort, Celia straightened and looked at Anya. It wasn’t Anya anymore, but it was. “What do I do now?” she whispered to her one true love, hoping she’d hear.
But Celia already knew what Anya would want, and that’s what flayed her worse than any whip ever could.
Anya’s plan hadn’t gone wrong at all: she’d known it would lead here.
Anya wanted Celia to follow through—Profeta falls, no matter what—and kill her.
Since Celia had always been so good with lies, it was profoundly strange to see the truth. She lifted her trembling hands—the first sign of her body revolting—to her eyes, trying to block it out.
Such it was, when you saw everything right-side up for the first time. When you stopped tilting your head and didn’t like what you saw.
Anya had taken the plan to the end and hadn’t brought Celia along.
Celia knew what she had to do next, but not if she could do it. It had been bad enough when it was to be High Mistico Benedict’s neck, and now . . .
After having every plan to outplay Diavala go sideways on them, they’d learned that they needed to push further. They both knew, with a sharp insistence, spiked and vicious, that there’d been no turning back the moment they’d plotted murder.
That was the moment of damnation for both of them. Make peace with it, Cece, Anya had said.
But this was even worse than damnation. This was the end of Celia’s everything.
Celia turned around and threw up all over the devil mask she’d tossed to the ground and kicked away earlier, coating its hideously shiny horns with the wretched depths of her stomach. People watching might have thought it was fear of the whip that reduced her so; they couldn’t know that she would have seen the whip as a mercy.
Celia had only one choice to make now: listen to Anya, or let her down.
Returning to the stage, the angelic Divine gave Captain Andras the order she’d been waiting for. “Flog her for her crimes. Her attempt at rule ends with her death. And my rule begins.”
In the front row, the splash zone, Pia and Fallan cheered along with everyone else. Celia didn’t think they were bad people and didn’t doubt their intelligence; their faith was just that strong. They saw something different on that stage than what was actually happening.
And it would always be so.
“Be strong!” Kitty Kay shouted her strength, trying to give it to Celia. And she started singing again. Loud and far her lone voice stretched, demanding this horror of Celia, lifting the curtain on her damnation.
“Yes, be strong,” Diavala said as other Mob voices joined Kitty Kay.
Or maybe Anya said it.
Celia would never know, and that was the moment that killed her.
Infuriatingly, some of Vincent’s last words echoed, She’s so desperately lonely, but Celia threw them away. She would waste no effort on pity or regret. She was dead already, and dead she would stay.
“Enough nonsense. Let’s get this started, shall we?” Captain Andras muscled Celia around, took her dagger out, and sliced a line up the back of Celia’s costume. It peeled away like a second skin.
Looking over her shoulder, Celia met Captain Andras’s gaze. “This is bigger than us,” Celia said. “I need your dagger.”
Captain Andras swept a hand down Celia’s back, her fingers tenderly moving around the black image. Celia was reduced to another prop. Another pawn. She hadn’t existed for them as a person before, and she didn’t now. She was an easel holding up a work of art.
The mistico, lined up so nicely behind Celia, had a wonderful view of the ink on her back. Some openly wept. Some had their heads bowed. A few collapsed to their knees.
So quickly, they reacted. So absolutely without doubt.
Anya had planned it—of course she had—that the meaning of the image would translate perfectly.
Celia turned and showed Ruler Vacilando what they were reacting to.
Diavala didn’t understand why Celia was not being whipped. She closed her eyes, and Celia imagined her sifting through Anya’s thoughts and memories, pushing aside what she didn’t need in search of the one thing she needed now.
What is this new scheme? What image could possibly compete with meeting their Divine in the flesh?
Diavala would know the plan as soon as she found it. She would understand their clever end goal. The realization was coming that her ink had betrayed her.
Celia nodded to the Mob without making eye contact with any of them. Kitty Kay and the plague doctor left the line and went to stand with Diavala.
Anya.
Diavala.
Celia couldn’t look at Kitty Kay—that final, horrible song of death still dancing at her lips—but Celia imagined Griffin behind his plague doctor mask: the dark, angry sadness in his eyes, the salty water leaking on his Leonus constellation. Still, he was an excellent actor, and this was the role Anya had cast for him.
“Ah, I see,” Diavala said, realization dawning like a sigh. And she opened her eyes and pierced Celia with a rage so absolute it was miracle it didn’t shove Celia immediately into the underworld. “Really. You know you can’t kill; I made sure of it. And if it was impossible before, how can you do it now, when I wear this face? How utterly ignoble and desperate of you to keep trying, Inkling.” All she saw was the inkling who’d been some fun now making a last, desperate play. Her rage simmered at the loss of her grand entrance, not because she believed that Celia would do the thing they’d set out to do.
“There was always a fundamental flaw in your test,” Celia said, holding out her hand to Captain Andras, who fumbled with the nine-tailed whip she’d tucked back into her belt. For a moment Celia thought, Thank you, yes please, use it on me before . . . But the captain held out the leather grip toward Celia, the tails dancing like a waterfall of hair.
Celia recoiled and almost threw up again. “No. I said I need your dagger.”
“I’ve born centuries of inklings,” Diavala said. “There is no flaw. You’re embarrassing yourself.”
But there was a flaw, and Celia and Anya were proof. “Can’t kill and won’t kill are very different things,” Celia said. “Remember that, after all of this: you’re the one who chose us.”
By now the crowd’s alarm rang loud. With the devil freed and holding her hand out for a dagger and their newly unveiled Divine suddenly looking like a captive, this was taking a turn they didn’t understand. How was the devil making demands? And why was everyone listening? Confused guards moved in.
Captain Andras barked orders at the guards to hold steady, Ruler Vacilando stood and flung desperate words at the people to “wait and watch the wonder,” and Celia almost laughed, the alliteration so unintentionally poetic it tasted like a poisoned dessert. Woe to the inklings who cannot escape, but wait and watch the wonder . . .
Celia’s outstretched hand trembled. Violent convulsions took over her body. Her teeth rattled. Still covered in black paint and glitter, and though she’d dropped the mask long ago, her forked tail still swished
back and forth with her movements. The scales on her dress were sharp compared with the delicate white lace on Anya’s.
They both remained perfectly in character: Diavala and the Divine.
Celia spoke the truth:“I am Diavala. You are the Divine. This is exactly what you wanted.”
Chapter 36
Celia could have harnessed strength by imagining saving Wallis and the other fleas, in exacting revenge for Vincent, Salome, and so many other deaths, or even in mourning those strange casualties of Profeta: Lupita’s eyes, Fiona’s neck, Fallan’s child. So much despair and manipulation to fuel her hate.
But all she thought of was Anya.
Celia bowed to her—a grand gesture that saw her almost fully prone—deference to an extreme. As she rose, she held her hand out again and asked Captain Andras over her shoulder, “Will you disobey the ink?”
The cold metal of the dagger hit her palm, and Celia wrapped her fingers around the hilt. Captain Andras, now a solid ally.
Diavala shook her head in disappointment at Captain Andras. She swept a dancing hand toward the rows of mistico; the still captive Mob, some on their knees with daggers pointed at them like arrows; the people of Asura. You still see who’s the devil here, don’t you?
Celia trembled. She silently swore. She had to do it.
She looked behind her to mistico. “Will you stop me?”
Stop me!
She asked the same of the guards. “Will any of you stop me?”
Please! Stop me!
Her gaze went up to Ruler Vacilando. “And you? What does the Ruler say?”
Intercede, intercede, intercede . . .
No one moved until Ruler Vacilando nodded. Immediately, Kitty Kay grabbed Anya’s shoulders and held her immobile. The people hadn’t seen yet, but they listened. They watched. They’d turned to stone, an integral part of the same morbid tableau.
The ink was too strong to argue with. Celia was a slave to it, right to the bitter end.
The rest of the night fell away, and there they were. Celia and Anya, linked pinkies since the beginning, and a true interloper between them.
That was what fed Celia. “I always knew you’d steal her from me,” she said through her chattering teeth. “From the moment we met, I knew we were doomed. Such a gift you have, to make children terrified of holding hands and playing and laughing. Right from the beginning, this monster’s den taught us that connection and trust are your enemies if you want to keep breathing. I was six when I realized that Anya would kill me. It always felt dangerous to love her.”
Celia took a step forward, breathing hard. “You think I can’t do this, but you forget one crucial thing: we’ve known this was coming for ten years, and that’s plenty of time to say goodbye.”
And she looked into Anya’s deep blue eyes and finished her goodbye. I’ll always love you, Anny.
Diavala struggled against Kitty Kay’s solid grip. Her slow hatch of understanding had taken some time, but something in Celia’s face had finally triggered a long-dormant emotion.
Terror.
She’d seen her future written in black ink. She tried to call to her guards, her mistico, the Ruler, but nothing was as powerful as a Divine tattoo.
Inktrava sel Immorti: Always listen to the ink.
The dagger had to come down.
I’m sorry. Celia held Anya’s gaze, hoping she was there somewhere in that deep blue ocean.
A burst of blue and purple flame erupted in the plague doctor’s palm, hovering there, flitting and dancing as he acted as gatekeeper between the crowd and the deliverance onstage. He swept the flame behind her, illuminating her back to the masses. “Would any of you go against this command?”
No one moved. No one breathed.
On Celia’s back was the Ascension—an image of death everyone recognized, of the Divine leaving the mortal plane—but instead of a lightning bolt representing the transformation, it was a dagger.
And the date.
The day the Divine died, the day Anya died, the day Celia died.
The image of the prophetic Return looked so much like the Ascension, almost as if the Divine had vowed to leave the people twice. And Profeta’s story had never continued after the Return—it had always been an image of finality. A countdown: four, three, two, one.
The plague doctor addressed the crowd. “The time of the ink is over.” If there was any tremble of uncertainty in his voice, the make-believe megaphone in his throat disguised it. “The Divine has served you faithfully for centuries, but we need to release her. She has given us her final message. She revealed herself because she needed to make sure you heard it. Live on without her. Live well and live passionately. Your destinies are up to you. Sastimos futura.”
The trembling blade came up, removed from Celia even though she knew her hand was the little thing holding it. A shell, just a shell. Anya didn’t exist anymore. She’d died the moment Diavala had taken her over; there’d never been a way for any of them to walk away still breathing that night. Halcyon was a dream. An impossibility.
“Your ink wins, Diavala. As I should have known all along.”
As long as it existed, the ink would always win.
“No, wait.” And, though nothing had changed in her appearance, Celia knew that Diavala had retreated.
And given her Anya.
More manipulation, to let Anya come through for a moment. Celia almost dropped the blade.
Anya’s eyes widened, her body trembled.
“You said no matter what, Anny . . . ” Celia whispered it, her voice cracked. She didn’t even understand what she was asking.
But of course Anya understood her.
Anya closed her eyes. Her trembling stilled. She didn’t beg for her life. “Cece,” she whispered, and through supreme effort, Anya fought the creature inside her and grabbed Celia’s dagger hand. She wrapped her fingers around Celia’s.
Held the dagger with Celia.
Then looped her pinky around Celia’s.
Anya had always known it would end this way too.
Then another hand gripped Celia’s and Anya’s, gnarled and bony, wrinkled skin hanging in loose folds. Three hands gripped the blade, folding over one another to make a wall of fingers strong enough to overcome a trickster.
A cluster of other people pressed closer. Celia saw hands caressing Anya’s hair, heard whispers offering strength. The plague doctor made sure that no one crowded close enough to block the people’s view. This was still a performance, after all.
Those hands steadied Celia and guided her. And pushed for her.
Like going through butter. Once, twice. Twin slices on either side of the neck. In that perfectly efficient way Lupita had taught her so long ago, Celia closed the loophole.
“I’m sorry.” Celia repeated it over and over. Her daggerless hand went to Anya’s cheek and brushed it, to her hair and caressed it. Her gaze followed her fingers, taking inventory of every detail. “I’m sorry.” She cupped the back of Anya’s head, thinking of Diavala’s words, people aren’t worth it. But they were. Anya was.
Celia choked on her words, laced her fingers into Anya’s hair. “I’ll see you again.”
And she knew it was true.
Everything moved impossibly slowly.
But it was over in a moment.
When Diavala broke through Anya’s resolve, she tried to pull the dagger hand away, but the damage was done. Those wrinkled hands on Celia’s were a lot stronger than they appeared.
By the time blood spilled, warm and wet, over Celia’s hands, the truth was clear to everyone. It was written all over her back.
Inktrava sel Immorti. Always listen to the ink.
That was the signal for pandemonium.
Chapter 37
Nero grabbed Celia and tried to haul her off the stage.
Red lingered everywhere.
She tilted her head, trying to make sense of right-side up.
The Rabble Mob, in line at the front
of the stage, took their curtain call: holding hands, bowing deep, exclamations from Marco and the plague doctor booming.
Some still sang, if they could through their tears. Crying for Anya. For Vincent. For one another.
For what they’d just done.
Caspian and Sky lifted their linked hands again, and the Mob cut off their song to chant: “Sastimos futura! Sastimos futura!”
The spectacular finale, perfectly choreographed.
Diavala had set up a night to be remembered, and she’d gotten it.
The winged plague doctor, a tiny purple flame hovering near the center of his chest, delivered his final verdict.
For the first time, his judgment became Yes.
This is how it’s supposed to end.
The purple and blue flame erupted from his chest, consuming everything onstage in magical fire.
“Sastimos futura!”
To a world without the Divine. Without her guiding ink.
A thousand people screamed and wept, Celia among them.
Ruler Vacilando had descended from her balcony in a mad rush, her cape left behind. She pressed a hand to her tattoos, one after another, mouthing silent words, trying to understand. A mistico grabbed her in an embrace as she ran toward the stage. They clutched each other in a wholly inappropriate way, united in grief, nursing a disappointment so profound a new tapestry would need to be woven for it.
Lupita knelt by Anya’s side. Some mistico approached Lupita as if she were half Divine herself. She’d been brave enough to act on the Divine’s final, ultimate order when the devilish devil the Divine had enlisted hadn’t been able to do it on her own.
The Mob took more bows, ending the show of all shows. Remy bolted into a run, aiming straight for Celia and Nero, tears coursing down her face.
Diavala? Celia thought. With all the death Diavala had already experienced, she wouldn’t linger in a dying body. She’d already found a new host. Was it Remy?
Right-side up made no sense at all. Celia didn’t know which way to tilt her head.