A Season of Rendings Page 59

  He launched into an open sprint, tearing after Marcus.

  iv. Lyseira

  She bounced off something on the way down, twisting her leg out of its socket. Something else speared her through the stomach as she slammed to the ground. She collapsed, her body a tapestry of screaming pain. But even in the midst of it, she knew two things:

  Her hands were well, and she could still speak.

  She'd landed on a broken barrel; one of its jagged staves now jutted from her gut. She dragged herself, gasping, off its remnants, and reached behind herself to pull out the filthy plank of wood.

  Akir's fire flooded her. The wounds closed. Only then did she notice the handful of wide-eyed urchins, crouched in the alley to watch the mob pour out its violence in the square, now watching her instead.

  The hawk flapped noisily down to the street. It cocked its head at her as it landed.

  There was no transition. First, it was a bird of prey; then, it was Ignatius.

  The urchins gasped. One screamed. A couple laughed and clapped.

  Iggy put a hand to the wall, steadying himself. Then he looked at her. "You're well," he said—half question, half observation.

  Lyseira got to her feet. "The Preservers―" she started, but he shook his head.

  "They went back for Marcus as soon as the mob started."

  The mob turned on Marcus, she realized. In the chaos of battle, she had barely noticed.

  "Look." Iggy pointed at the square. Already the crowd thinned, a fault line splitting it in two. One group headed north, screaming, "Majesta!" The other churned south, around the scaffold. Bodies littered the square as they left, many of them clerics.

  Maybe she should've felt pity for the dead, but in that moment, she felt only vindication. "We have to find Seth."

  "He was first onto the scaffold," Iggy said. "This way."

  The square emptied as they crossed it. By the time they reached the smoldering ruin of the scaffold, only the looters remained—darting from body to body, swift as gulls.

  The execution stage had collapsed at one end, where it still bled a thin trail of smoke. "Syntal," Iggy explained simply. "But the crowd thought it was Akir, striking Marcus with lightning. That was when they really got going."

  "Seth!" she shouted. "Are you here?"

  "I can fly ahead," Iggy offered. "See where he is."

  She remembered the hawk on the rooftop, assaulting her attackers; the same hawk suddenly becoming Iggy in the alleyway. Her mind spun. It was too much. "I . . ." she began, at a loss, when someone beneath the scaffold called for help.

  A collapsed beam had pinned his leg; he lay in a deepening pool of his own blood, his face drained of color. "Help," he wheezed again when they saw him. "Please, help."

  Iggy ducked beneath the drooping scaffold frame and took hold of one end of the beam. He strained, but couldn't lift it alone. "Lys," he said.

  But Lyseira's guard had gone up. "What were you doing down here?" she said. "Who are you?" Then the only question she really had: "Are you with the Church?"

  "No," he gasped. "No, I swear, they were trying to kill me." He bit his tongue and looked away, as if he'd revealed more than he meant to.

  "Blesséd sehk," Iggy breathed. "You're the Prince. You're Prince Isaic."

  "Prince Isaic?" Lyseira repeated, dumbfounded. Here? Pinned beneath the scaffold?

  "Yes," he admitted. "Please."

  Together, they lifted the beam. The Prince rolled free, hissing in pain. Lyseira called the fire and healed his leg as he looked on in wonder.

  "You . . ." Recognition stole into his eyes. "You're the one from the roof. The Grey Girl."

  Lyseira nodded. There was no reason to deny it.

  "Thank you." he said earnestly. "Thank you for what you said. I think you saved my life."

  I didn't mean to, Lyseira thought. "I was just . . . I couldn't be quiet. I just couldn't."

  "We need to get you out of here," Iggy said. "Is there somewhere we can take you?"

  "The palace is Marcus's. I can't go back there." Isaic gained his feet. "Do you live here in Keswick? Is there anywhere you can―?"

  Iggy snapped his fingers. "Yeah. Yeah. It's not pretty," he warned, "but yeah." He climbed out of the scaffold's ruins.

  "You're thinking of Harth's hideout?" Lyseira said as she followed.

  "Harth?" Isaic looked at both of them. "You're Harth's witches?"

  "He's a friend of ours," Lyseira said.

  "This way." Iggy led them back across the square, through the mass of looters. "Keep your head down," he muttered to the Prince, "just in case."

  He seemed to know the way so Lyseira stumbled after him, her mind reeling as they cut through a city gone to Hel: burning homes and storefronts, looters smashing windows, mobs beating clerics to death in the streets. I did this, she realized, feeling sick. This violence, this ugliness.

  But her guilt only ran so deep. I might have unleashed it, she thought, but the Church created it in the first place.

  Her own defensiveness appalled her. There could be no excuse for such rampant bloodshed. But her own urgent need to survive the moment, to get the Prince someplace safe, allowed her to shove her moralizing aside. There would be plenty of time, if she survived, to wrangle it later.

  Suddenly, Iggy pulled them to a halt. "Sehk," he muttered. They'd come to another wide square, this one with a breathtaking marble temple. A platoon of city guards held the broad stairs, separating a host of clerics from a crowd that screamed and booed, brandishing weapons and torches.

  The mob had come to the Church's greatest temple in Keswick: Basica Majesta.

  v. Angbar

  Angbar waited with Harth and Helix in the stinking dampness of the sewers. He nodded off now and then, but every time he found himself back in that torture chamber, gagged and helpless, waiting. So whenever he felt his eyes start to droop, he knocked his head against the wall to wake up.

  I wonder what the narrator would have to say about that, he wondered, but the narrator had been silent for a long time now—and nothing he'd ever said had mattered anyway.

  "Wait," Helix finally said to the silent room. Angbar couldn't tell if he was awake or dreaming. "It's beautiful. Marble and diamonds and gold, it—it shines."

  Harth exchanged a quick glance with him. Neither spoke. Helix lapsed back into silence. Just as Angbar began to assume he'd been talking in his sleep, he spoke again.

  "They're gonna kill them."

  Angbar drew a shaky breath, trying not to snap at his friend. These were the kinds of things Helix had been spouting all night: macabre warnings about no one and nothing in particular, too vague to acknowledge and too mortifying to ignore.

  Harth shrugged. Angbar nodded, rolled his eyes.

  "They're after the star. They want to bring it down. They're trying. So angry. But they can't. The clerics—there's too many. There's just too many."

  The star. Was he talking about the God's Star, the sign of the Church? "Who?" Angbar asked despite himself, feeling a fool even as he did. Helix never answered these types of questions. "Who's after the star?"

  "Everyone," Helix breathed, and Angbar sat bolt upright, his attention suddenly fully engaged. He actually answered me. "The people. They want to tear it down."

  "The mob?" Harth leaned in, eyes narrowed. "The mob . . . turned on the Church?"

  "The Grey Girl is there," Helix said. Angbar's blood ran cold. "The Church kills her. The crowd can't protect her. There's too many clerics. She needs you."

  He lurched forward and grabbed Angbar's arm, his blind expression fighting through some invisible nightmare. "Angbar, she needs you!"

  vi. Lyseira

  "We have to go around," Iggy said.

  "Where?" Isaic demanded. "Where are you trying to go?"

  "There's this . . . place, underground, it's―" Iggy pointed. "West of here, but―"

  A Justicar stood on a balcony above the city guards. "Stand down!" he shouted. "Return to your homes, or there will be
violence!"

  "Oh, there'll be violence!" someone in the mob screamed back.

  "My son is in there!"

  "Let us in!"

  "Stand down!" the Justicar roared again, lifting his right hand. Then Lyseira noticed the other balconies dotting the temple—all bearing archers in black boots.

  "Kill him!" someone screamed.

  "Do it!"

  "Look out!" she shouted. "There's archers on the―"

  The mob surged forward, crashing into the armed Blackboots at the stairs. The soldiers above unleashed their arrows, peppering the horde with death.

  Behind, the clerics whispered their dark prayers. More people in the mob fell, Bound, trampled by those behind. And worse—

  The air went thin. The hair on her arms rose. The world seemed to hold its breath. Some recognition or intuition seized her. "Back!" she screamed, hauling the Prince around the corner. "Get ba―!"

  A pillar of fire roared from heaven and into the crowd, igniting everyone it struck. The square exploded with renewed shrieks of pain, with the stink of burning flesh.

  Monsters! she cried. Murderers! But even burning, even being massacred under a hail of arrows, the mob pushed forward. There was no turning back for them.

  Like her, they would find justice, or they would die.

  She pushed around the corner, leaving Iggy and the Prince behind, and called for holy fire. It flooded her with heat and power, lifted her hair from the back of her neck, and she felt Him: not as an idea, like Marcus had claimed, but as a person. An ally. He was with her—roaring, and charging, and righteous. He was her Father, the Creator of all things, and for the things the Church had done, for their lies and their murders, for their fundamental betrayal, He was furious.

  She screamed out an answering column of fire that roared into the archers; sent many of them plunging, burning, into the swarm of clerics below.

  "The Grey Girl!" the Justicar captain shouted, pointing, and so she prayed again. "Open fire! All men, open―" And a new pillar of fire lashed into him, ripping a hole in her sight but incinerating him before he could finish.

  My daughter. A voice swelling with love, with giddy pride. Oh, my glorious daughter. Bring them justice.

  Tears streaked her cheeks. This, she realized. This is it. This was always it.

  This is my calling.

  And a shower of arrows ripped into her, blasting her to her back and plunging the world into a red scream of pain.

  vii. Melakai

  Somewhere in his restless slumber, an angel's voice found him. He flinched from it, covered his head, and it spoke again. No, he thought. No. Go away. Then it said a word he recognized:

  "Papa."

  He opened his eyes. He could only make out a silhouette in the dungeon's dim light, but he knew only person he could ever hope would use that name.

  "Takra?" The sleep burned off and he came wide awake. "Takra, is that you?"

  She murmured a quick invocation; brilliant light spilled from her fingers. "There's something going on outside," she said as he flinched from the glare. At first the light created an aura of divinity—but once his eyes adjusted, her haunted eyes and limp hair gave the lie to it. "People are really mad. It's not safe here."

  His lips wouldn't move. I'm so sorry. It's my fault you're here. It's my fault your father's dead. If I had just kept my mouth shut around Trius, none of it would have happened. His heart wanted to throw itself at her feet like a beggar. He craved self-abasement.

  But she had lived in Majesta half her life, now. He had no idea what they'd told her, or what she believed. And no one should be forced to watch an old man grovel, he thought, especially not his granddaughter of seventeen.

  While he struggled with himself, she produced a key and unlocked his cell. Finally, he came back to himself.

  "Takra, no. You can't do that. You'll get in trouble, they—they could kill you for that."

  "The Bishop says you freed some witches. I don't believe it." She tried to open the door; he grasped the bars and held it closed.

  "But it's true." He wouldn't let her die for him. He wouldn't. "I did do that. I deserve to be here. Don't you dare open that door."

  Her face twisted through a dizzying array of emotions: shock, sadness, desperation. "What? But―"

  "I did what I thought was right." Maybe someday I'll get to tell you why. "But I can't let you do this. I just can't." Leave me here. Like I left you.

  "But that . . ." She sputtered and shook her head. "You don't understand. I think it's an army outside. They'll kill you. They're killing everyone. And Father Shephatiah, he—he won't leave. He won't let me leave."

  "What?" An army?

  "I'm going to sneak out, and I . . . I can't leave you here."

  "What army? What are you talking about?"

  "They're really mad." She swung the door open wide—this time, he let her—and held it for him. She's a grown woman, he realized anew, and I have no idea who she is.

  She turned and led him out. Voices from the other cells chased them down the halls; the pleas turned to shouts as they reached the stairs.

  "Help me, too, please."

  "I didn't do anything, I swear."

  "Don't leave us to die down here!"

  When she opened the door at the top of the stairs, he heard distant screams and the whistle of arrows. Crackling fire. Takra gave him a significant look, and he nodded: I hear it.

  She slipped into a hallway lined with rich, plum-colored rugs. "Past there," she whispered, indicating an open intersection. "Up the stairs at the end." She started forward, but just around the corner ahead, Kai suddenly heard an argument.

  "If they get in," Shephatiah said as if he were talking to a three-year-old, "it'll be over! So get out there and make sure they don't get in!"

  A conversational response, drowned out by the dull roar of the fight outside.

  "And I'm telling you, you can do that best out there! That is the choke point! Go!"

  Takra looked at Kai. "I'm going to distract him. You run past." Before he could argue, the girl had already run ahead and around the corner.

  Takra! He couldn't call after her without revealing himself—and probably getting her killed. He stalled, arm out, wrestling his heart—and his tongue—to silence. She was just like her dad. Headstrong and noble: the traits that cost him his life.

  No, he resolved. If I get past and she doesn't join me, I come back for her. She had saved him; he would never flinch from her again.

  He crept to the corner and peered around, careful not to be seen, to find Shef arguing with his Preserver as Takra approached them.

  "Don't talk to me about tactics!" Shef was livid, red in the face. "You are not a brain, you are a muscle! Get out there or God help me, I will report you to the Elders for violating your oath!"

  Finally the Preserver turned for the open door that led to the sprawling chapel and the sounds of battle. Takra darted past as if she were going to join him.

  "Takra!" Shephatiah roared. The Preserver glanced back, then turned again for the door to the chapel.

  Finally, all eyes were away from him. Kai hurried across the intersection, cursing his clicking knees, then stopped and looked back.

  Shef stalked after Takra, panting and flushed; grabbed her by the arm and spun her around. "I told you to stay in the initiates' dorms!"

  "Yes, Father, I was just worried about the―"

  He backhanded her so hard she nearly lost her feet. "You do what I say, you insolent bitch!"

  A good life. Trius's words echoed in Kai's mind alongside Takra's cry of pain. He gripped the wall, fighting the urge to charge the bishop. The Preserver will hear. That will just get her killed. Let her meet you upstairs, like she said she would. Let her leave, and then never let her come back.

  Takra brought her head back up, a spray of her brittle hair pasted to the sweat of her cheek. "I was," she said, voice trembling but defiant. "I just wanted to see what―"

  Shephatiah grabbed her lef
t breast through her robe and twisted, snarling. Takra curled in on herself, a wail of pain leaking from her lips. "Get. Back. To your room."

  The world became a bonfire of rage. Kai slammed into him from behind, screaming.

  Shephatiah pitched forward, his cheek slapping to the granite floor. Kai dove after him, grabbed him by the hair, and slammed his face down again, leaving a smear of blood on the polished stone.

  Then the Preserver burst back through the door, grabbed Kai, and hurled him into the chapel.

  viii. Seth

  He shot through the streets in an open sprint, quickly outstripping the mob. He didn't know the way to the palace, but he glimpsed its distant spires in the brief open spaces of boulevard intersections. In those instants he realigned and relaunched, pouring every bit of his energy into tearing over the stones.

  He had begun to pant when he rounded the final corner. In the distance, Marcus and his Preservers had just passed through the gate. A line of soldiers in black boots closed behind them, guarding the wrought iron fence that marked the palace grounds.

  The sight of his quarry renewed him. He surged forward, pounding uphill, intending to leap the entire obstacle. Then it exploded.

  Fire erupted from the ground at the gate, hurling flaming soldiers like ragdolls. The line shattered in panic, with half of the soldiers running for their lives and the others ducking and searching the street for some sign of the danger. They saw Seth. Pointed and shouted. But Syn's spell had sowed such chaos that no one heard their cries. Soon it didn't matter: a cyclone speared down and began tossing the survivors skyward while the remnants of the line fled for their lives.

  Seth should have joined them—Syntal's power terrified him. But his hate overpowered his fear and drove him up the hill, where he leapt the fence and left the smoldering corpses of its defenders behind.

  A blind rush through the gardens. A headlong charge up a broad marble stairway. It wasn't enough. Marcus vanished through the palace entry, leaving his two Preservers behind to guard the way.