Valan led her into the circle containing a blanket of undyed wool. ‘Sit, sweetheart,’ he said and helped her down. ‘There, just relax. I’ll be back soon.’ Rillirin’s fingers tightened on his arm without volition. ‘Don’t be scared. I promise I’ll come back. Stay here, all right?’
He stepped carefully over the chalk line, then gestured and a Mireces lit the candles around the circumference. ‘Don’t leave,’ he told her and then vanished into the gloom, his hurrying footsteps echoing and bouncing from the walls.
Don’t leave? Fat fucking chance.
Rillirin clambered back up to her feet and stepped off the blanket, but when the final wick flared into life the hairs on her arms and legs stood up as though she’d walked inside a lightning bolt. Her fingertips brushed the boundary of the circle and there was a spit and a hiss of sparks like knives rammed into her hand. She shrieked and pulled away and seconds later it didn’t matter anyway – another contraction seized her and she was adrift on the sea of it, lost to its crashing rhythms, its great waves rushing down on her. When it was over she was on all fours, panting through the final seconds of the muscles easing.
Footsteps. She looked up, blurry with sweat, and a blue-clad figure stepped into view, moving slowly as if in pain. ‘So,’ the Blessed One said, her voice a rasp harsh as a death rattle. ‘The time has come.’
TARA
Tenth moon, first year of the reign of King Corvus
South barracks, Second Circle, Rilporin, Wheat Lands
Before the door was fully open, Tara was on her feet and backed against the far wall. Her fists were up, the fingers bruised and stiff, a couple broken, and her sudden movement had set off a coruscation of hurts inside and out. None of it would stop her fighting them. Nothing would ever stop her fighting.
This was the day she said no.
‘No games,’ Valan said and gestured. Two men staggered into the room with a huge wooden tub between them. Steam rose from the water that half filled it. ‘Bathe.’
She didn’t move, didn’t lower her fists. ‘What?’
‘Bathe or Tomaz loses an eye, an ear, his tongue, his right hand—’
Tara choked on her helplessness. ‘All right! Stop, I’ll do it.’ He wanted her clean. It sparked sickness in her, but it also meant Tomaz wasn’t being hurt today. Valan and two others stood across the exit and if they thought Tara was going to be embarrassed they were very much mistaken. Moving slowly because of her broken ribs, she stripped the blood-encrusted shirt and trousers, slipped out of her filthy breast band and linens and stood facing them for a moment, head up and shoulders back. This doesn’t break me.
You can’t break me.
Valan was silent, examining the damage he’d inflicted with his fists and feet, the scars that were the legacy of her life as a soldier. He jerked his head at the bath and she climbed in, holding her breath against the glorious warmth. She sat with her back to them and quickly splashed her face, ducked her head under and scraped her fingers through the asymmetrical lengths of her hair. She came back up and flinched when a hand touched her bare shoulder.
Valan knelt at the side of the tub. He dipped soap into the water and then stroked it across her hair, massaged her head with gentle hands while she sat rigid, barely breathing. Had he done this for Neela? She snatched the soap and lathered her skin, ignoring the bruises, cuts and broken bones in her eagerness to keep his hands off her.
The water was filthy when they were done. Valan handed her a rough swatch of cloth and she scrubbed herself dry. He passed her fresh underwear and a gown, a rich purple darkening to blue at wrists and hem. It was truly beautiful and that made her nervous. This felt like more than Valan deciding to make her his bed-slave. This felt … big. But whatever it was – death, rape or something else – if Valan thought she’d walk meekly to meet it he was very, very wrong.
The other two Mireces restrained her while Valan attached a chain to her collar and manacled her hands together in front of her. They pulled her out of the room that had been Dorcas’s for so long and into the main barracks, crammed with every slave who’d rebelled and still lived: Merol the mason, chained at ankle as well as wrist to subdue him; Captain Salter of the West Rank and a few hundred soldiers; a score of slaves from the palace kitchens and more from across the city.
Most of them winced and wouldn’t look at her, assuming she was being taken to witness more of Tomaz’s torture, the torture all of them heard and none could prevent, including her. Shame wormed in her and she smothered it. Shame was their weapon and she wouldn’t let it get its teeth in her.
Tomaz’s cell door opened and she stiffened, balked, but this time Valan didn’t shove her forwards. They waited as more Raiders emerged, dragging Tomaz between them. He was barely conscious, stripped to his linens so she could see every welt and deformity of shattered bone and torn muscle. A sob burst from her. ‘Tomaz?’ she whispered.
Tomaz’s head came up in response and he peered at her from one swollen eye. He tried to smile but his jaw was broken. ‘Tara,’ he slurred. She took a step forward and Valan’s hand found her upper arm and dragged her to a halt. He shoved her into the embrace of the nearest Mireces.
‘You are responsible for this,’ he said to her. ‘Your betrayal of me. Your betrayal of him.’ His knife took Tomaz under the ribs, sliding up into his chest cavity and cleaving stomach, liver and lung as he twisted and shoved. Tomaz stiffened, coughed, tried to inhale but managed only a sick wheeze.
‘No!’ Tara screamed and fought her way free, but Valan dragged her back again and Tomaz smacked into the stone, making no effort to save himself. She fought Valan, manacled hands clubbing at him and it took two more to hold her still. ‘Tomaz, Tomaz don’t go. Don’t leave me,’ she begged instead. ‘Please, love, please don’t go.’ He was bubbling, hands moving weakly on his chest.
‘Honoured Valan, I beg you. I beg you, honoured, let me go to him,’ Tara said, tearing her gaze from the dying man to plead. ‘Anything you want afterwards, but please, please let me go to him.’
His eyes were narrow with calculation, but something in her face convinced him. ‘Don’t get blood on the gown.’ He let her go and she fell to her knees by Tomaz’s head, cradled it in her hands and leant down to press a soft kiss against his brow, her tears sparkling in his hair. ‘Hush, my love. Relax. Dancer’s grace, Tomaz.’
He tried to speak and blood, black and carrying his life within it, flowed from his mouth. She wiped it away. ‘Sshh, it’s all right. Look for the Light, Tomaz. Can you see it? It’s right there. Go on now, love. Go and be free.’
His lips moved and she pressed close to listen to the last words he’d ever speak. When she sat back he was dead. When she sat back, the last restraint on Tara’s vengeance was gone.
‘Rankers!’ bellowed a voice from the far end. ‘Rankers, atten-shun!’ Dotted among the prisoners, scores of beaten, stick-thin figures rose from their beds and stood, staring straight ahead. The Mireces shouted threats and drew steel, but the soldiers didn’t so much as blink.
‘Rankers, honour!’ Every soldier raised his right hand – or his left if his right was missing – and tapped it three times against his heart.
‘Rankers, about face!’ With some shuffling, the soldiers turned their backs to Tara’s grief, to Valan their enemy, respect for Vaunt perfectly balanced with insult to the Mireces. Slowly, grunting at the pain of it, Merol the mason stood and turned his back, and then dozens of others joined the soldiers. Not everyone – most were too frightened, too traumatised – but some.
‘See the honour they do you, my love?’ Tara whispered, but Tomaz couldn’t see. Tomaz would never see anything again, not this side of the Light. ‘Wait for me,’ she breathed. ‘I won’t be long.’ She kissed his brow and laid him down and advanced until she was toe to toe with Valan.
‘King’s Second, Valan of Crow Crag, coward and murderer. I am going to kill you.’
An unknown emotion flickered across his features and was gone too fast to
identify. ‘And there she is,’ he said softly. ‘The real Tara Vaunt. A pleasure to meet you.’
‘My name is Major Tara Carter of His Majesty’s West Rank, though it was my honour to call Tomaz husband in all but name. Now get the fuck out of my way.’
‘Rankers, about face,’ Captain Salter shouted again and they moved like a shoal of fish to face inwards. ‘Officer present. To the front … salute!’
She nodded at Salter as she passed and then, for the first time in days, she was outside, in cold wind and grey rain. Tara tilted her head back and breathed in the clean air, unmindful of Valan and the other Mireces crowded around her.
Dozens more were stationed outside and Valan ordered them to bring the prisoners chained in lines of fifty. It’s coming, Tomaz, I can feel it. Whatever this is, it’s the final cast of the dice. I’ll be ankle deep in their blood before I’m done, I swear it.
They never should have killed you, my love, not if they wanted to live.
Tara wouldn’t let the ice inside her melt and spill its load of hurt as they made their slow march east through Second Circle. Instead she focused on where they were going, and was dully unsurprised when they took the gate into the temple district in First Circle and headed for the main temple, joining the slow trickle of Mireces and slaves moving in the same direction.
Her mouth was dry as Valan pulled on the chain and dragged her forward. She was going to be sacrificed, then. She flexed her fingers. She was fast, despite everything they’d done and all her wounds, and she was righteous. She’d have his knife out and in his throat before he felt her on him. It didn’t matter what happened after that, but she’d taste Valan’s death on her tongue before they killed her.
A guttural wail sounded up ahead and Valan quickened his pace and they came to the centre of the temple, brightly lit with flame and bunches of herbs burning in braziers. The light was enough to show her Rillirin, writhing in pain in a chalked circle.
‘Rillirin? When did …’ She trailed off as she identified the woman standing close by, leaning her weight on a staff and sallow beneath the black swirls of blood. Lanta.
The ice cracked and flashed to steam beneath a torrent of red-hot rage. At Valan, at Lanta, at herself. ‘No. You said she was dead,’ Tara snarled, turning on him.
Valan looked back. ‘No. You said she was dead; I just let you believe it. Like I said, you could have had everything I could give you, a place in our world, a place at my side. Instead you betrayed me. Your own actions led you here.’
He unlocked the chain and manacles and Tara snatched for the knife in his belt as she rammed her knee up into his groin. The blade came out and she stabbed back upwards for his throat as he doubled over. Valan swung the chain at the same time she kneed him and the heavy iron manacle smashed into her head and threw off her aim – the knife fish-hooked him, slicing through the corner of his mouth and splitting it wide in a bloody smile.
Three men wrestled her into the circle next to Rillirin’s, and another hurriedly put a lit candle in its place around the edge, completing a ring of fire that danced over Tara’s skin, a sudden taste of metal in her mouth and a fierce pounding at her temples gone as quickly as it had come.
She lunged for him but fat sparks of lightning erupted and flashed through her bones as she reached the boundary and she fell back with a shriek. She threw herself at the barrier again, and again the shock of light and pain stopped her. She probed the edges, growling and stalking like a caged animal, but there seemed no way through. The Mireces mostly ignored her – they trusted the barrier.
‘I thought you were dead!’ Rillirin called, sitting up on the blanket. There was such hope blazing in her face that Tara almost had to look away.
‘Seems I’m not the only ghost here,’ she said, trying for confidence and falling far short. ‘Chin up; it’s not over yet.’ If Valan and Lanta heard her, they gave no sign, but Rillirin brightened. Poor girl obviously thought Tara was here to help her.
‘You’re sure, Valan?’ Lanta was saying. ‘Once you cross the barrier, you cannot come back until the rite is complete. The circles are tuned to the gods Themselves, but the lightning will hurt to pass through.’
‘I understand, Blessed One,’ Valan lisped, hand pressed to his face. ‘There’s no midwife, but I was at the births of both my girls. I know what to do.’ She nodded and Valan pinched the lips of the wound together, took a deep breath and then crossed the chalk line into Rillirin’s circle. Lightning flared as it had around Tara’s. Rillirin cried out, but then Valan was by her side and the wound in his face had burnt shut. He was shaking uncontrollably, but he was through. So it was possible – for people, but apparently not for gods.
Interesting.
‘Bring me that babe,’ Lanta said huskily. ‘I will bring Holy Gosfath. I will bring the Dark Lady and we will have victory over Gilgoras and the so-called Gods of Light.’
All right, Carter, you’re a stubborn bitch. You’re not going to let something like a blood ritual and an almost impenetrable circle stop you, are you? Get to work.
The rest of the prisoners were shuffling in, in long lines joined by a chain through the loops on each collar, herded by Mireces armed with spears. Each end of the chain was locked to a steel spike driven into the ground: the prisoners could move along the line but not off it.
It was ill thought out with too few guards. Tara could already see how they could effect an escape, but the prisoners closest were civilians and she didn’t know how to tell them what she needed them to do.
The first prisoner’s collar was unlocked from the chain and he was brought forward and bent back over the altar by Gull. Lanta chanted a prayer as she plunged a knife into his throat and let the blood spill into a wide bronze bowl. A Raider snatched it up and sloshed it into the godpool. Fast and unfussy, more slaughter than ritual but no less obscene for all that.
Gull tumbled the man off the altar and beckoned for the next, but the prisoners were milling and scrambling backwards to the other end of the chain, those at the front fighting, clawing at their necks.
The next prisoner was wrestled free, those behind beaten on to their knees, dazed and docile for when their turn came. A woman this time and she was screaming before she even reached the altar, writhing in the Mireces’ grip and begging, begging. She died.
Tara looked at the faces of the prisoners – individual Rankers separated by civilians. Whoever had chained them had been trying to keep the soldiers apart so they couldn’t organise to fight back. Salter was there and he was pulling at the prisoners around him, talking urgently, gesturing at the chain, the spikes securing it.
Yes, Salter, yes. Do it, fucking do it – get off the line and kill them all. Come on, come on!
A guard saw what Salter was doing and smashed his face with his spear, kicking him on to his back, the collar cutting into his neck and the necks of those closest, pulling them all down to the ground. While everyone was distracted another’s collar was removed and he was hauled forward, drained and thrown to one side. Lanta’s droning prayer had yet to cease. In the next circle Rillirin was on her feet, Valan supporting her and massaging her back. Her red hair had darkened with sweat and her face was shiny with it.
‘She’s barely dilated,’ he called to Lanta. ‘Could be hours yet.’
The Blessed One lifted a hand in acknowledgment and signalled for the next sacrifice to be brought forward. There were plenty.
Eighty-six had died and the godpool was viscous with blood. Tara had probed every part of the circle again in the preceding hours and all she’d managed to do was give herself a vicious headache and make her fingertips numb from repeatedly pushing against the lightning barrier. She hadn’t found a soft spot in the barrier – it seemed Valan had simply muscled through.
She’d have to do the same, and do it now, because Rillirin needed to push.
Tara glared at Salter; he gave the smallest shake. They still weren’t ready. She stalked the circle some more until something grazed her foot. She
blinked, rubbed tenderly at her swollen eyes, blinked again, but the haze was still there. Columns of red mist were coalescing, swirling and fizzing with fat sparks of purple lightning darting within them. And they’d touched her.
‘He comes,’ Lanta called, throaty with need, with exaltation, and Gull gave an inarticulate shout of glee. ‘Holy Gosfath, Lord of War, answers our prayers. He comes to summon His Sister-Lover home.’ She wobbled away from the altar with a brass bowl brimming with blood and came to Tara’s circle.
‘Can you feel Him?’ she asked. ‘His presence grows. He has been summoned by blood and answers that summons. He comes to claim His reward.’ She threw the blood, a great scarlet arc that splashed Tara’s face and hair and chest, hot and sticky and clinging. She gasped and reeled back, scraping it from her eyes and spitting, retching. The red columns swirled faster, thicker, blunt questing snouts wavering through the air towards her. Tara skipped away from them, flicking blood from her hands.
‘Holy Gosfath, Lord of War,’ Lanta shrieked, dropping the bowl and raising her arms, ‘come to Gilgoras, to this holy temple dedicated to your glory. Come for your Sister-Lover. Come for your prize.’ Her left hand dropped and pointed at Tara. ‘Come and feed, Red Father!’
‘Oh, holy shit,’ Tara breathed as it all came together: why Valan had left her alone after the initial attack, the bath, the perfect gown. ‘You are fucking kidding me.’
One of the red snakes touched her ankle, oily and cold and hot at once. Alien and foul and somehow interested. Tara leapt back and three more slithered for her while in the centre of the circle a shape began to form, twice her height.
‘She’s crowning,’ Valan yelled and Rillirin was roaring as she pushed and then the Ranker had the chain free of the spike at the farthest end of the line.
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