“No.” Jael stepped back. “No message. I’m returning to Astrae. But no doubt we’ll meet again.”
“I can’t believe you went downstairs without me,” Karou said, exasperated.
“What?” Zuzana was impenitent. “I was starving and our hostess was passed out on the bed with a hot monster boy.”
Hot monster boy? “God. That makes it sound…” Karou threw up her hands and shook her head. It was silly to be so retroactively anxious about something that hadn’t happened, but when she thought of what Zuzana and Mik had walked right into, it made her cold. When she had finally gone down to the court she’d found Zuzana sitting between, of all possible chimaera, Tangris and Bashees, having much the same sort of pointing-and-charades “conversation” one has anywhere while traveling and meeting people who don’t speak your language. Only… these weren’t “people.”
“You don’t understand.” Karou hadn’t wanted to freak her friends out before, but they were obviously not freaked out enough. “Do you know what they’re called? They’re the Shadows That Live, Zuze. They’re assassins.”
“Like me,” said Zuzana cheerfully.
Karou thought maybe she should hold her head so it didn’t come apart. “No, not like you. Not pretend assassins. Real assassins. They slit angels’ throats in their sleep.”
“Yikes.” Zuzana grimaced and grabbed her throat. “But the angels are the bad guys, right?”
Karou really didn’t know how to respond to that. None of it was real to Zuzana. “They’re just really creepy, okay?” she said, hearing how lame she sounded, then hesitated. How could she be sure of anything, in light of the fact that she’d been living in a theater of Thiago’s lies? “Aren’t they?”
Zuzana shrugged. “I don’t know. They were cool.”
Cool. The Shadows That Live were cool. “And I suppose Thiago is a peach, too.”
“Eww,” said Zuzana with a shudder. “No. Nonpeach. Wormy peach.”
Well, at least they agreed about that.
“You should get some sleep,” Karou said.
Mik was already stretched out on the bed, barely conscious, and Zuzana’s energy looked to finally be winding down. “I know.” She yawned. “I will. What about you?”
“I slept already,” Karou said. With Ziri. How strange. And now they were allies with a shared secret. Thiago didn’t suspect. They’d heard him coming and had time to pretend sleep before he walked in—in a less intimate arrangement than before, with Karou on the chair beside the bed. They had already decided that Ziri would tell the general about the gleaned souls, and that Karou would somehow manage the resurrections in private so that she could give Balieros and the others their cover story when they woke. If all went well, Thiago never needed to know that they had disobeyed orders. She wasn’t sure what she’d do with the extra soul Ziri warned her she might find: the Dashnag boy who’d fought and died with them. Stasis, she guessed.
Of course, this was all only the beginning of the problem. The large and looming issue was: What now? This terror campaign. Karou had believed—as far as she had peered out of her misery to really think about it—that the objective of the rebellion was the protection of chimaera. Thiago was protecting no one. Maybe it was true that he lacked the numbers to do any more than that, which he would say was her fault, but… had he given up on everything else?
“That can’t have been enough rest,” said Zuzana. “You can sleep here. I’ll scooch over.”
Karou shook her head. “Be comfortable. I wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway.” There was too much spinning in her mind. What to do? What to do? “I think I’m going to go for a walk while it’s still cool. In the morning it’s back to work.” Zuzana’s face brightened, and Karou said, “Yes, Igor. You can help. And thanks for earlier. You were awesome.”
“Me? You were awesome. Holy. Karou. You’re my hero.”
“Yeah? Well, you’re mine, so we’re even.”
Mik, contrary to appearances, was not quite asleep. He rallied to say, “I want to be someone’s hero, too.”
“Oh, you are,” Zuzana assured him, throwing herself on top of him. She kissed him with a smack. “My fairy-tale hero, one task down and two to go.” Karou didn’t know what that was about, but she backed away as Zuzana continued to plant noisy assurances all over his face.
54
RECOGNITION
Karou expected Ten to be waiting outside the door and follow her, but the she-wolf must have assumed she would stay in with her friends tonight; she was nowhere to be seen.
With a thrill at the unexpected freedom, Karou wove her way quietly toward the kasbah’s back gate, through the narrow lanes of the ruined village, hearing the scurry of rats at her passing. Several times she had to go airborne and drift over obstacles and collapsed walls, but was careful to keep below the roofline and out of sight of the sentry tower. She had a moment to herself and she was not going to risk it.
Once or twice she got the feeling that she was followed and looked back, but saw no wolfish slink in the shadows. She did catch a glimpse of white and for an instant feared it was Thiago himself, but it was only some of his clothing, laundered and draped on a roof to dry. She breathed. The White Wolf was the last person she wanted to see right now.
Well, maybe not the very last. That position was reserved for Akiva, but there she was safe. Akiva was far away in the Hintermost, apparently, and what the hell was he up to? Had he really saved Ziri? The evidence was flimsy.
One dead hummingbird-moth.
Deep memories stirred: the feel of the living shawl that Akiva had gifted her that night at the Warlord’s ball, the fanning of those soft, furred wings, and then the tickle as the creatures began to eat the glittering sugar that dusted her chest, neck, and shoulders. She still felt shame for the sugar, all these years later—that it had been meant for Thiago, and she had let herself be dusted with it, not quite admitting to herself that she was ready to surrender to him, to let him… taste her. She shuddered to imagine that fanged mouth on her flesh.
Instead it had been hummingbird-moths that tasted her, and later… an angel.
How strange and cruel life was. If there had come a whisper in her ear that long-ago morning that by nightfall she would be in the arms of the enemy—and want to be there—she would have laughed at it. But when it came to pass it had felt as natural and right as the steps in a dance that she had always known.
She wondered now: What if Akiva had never come to Loramendi, with his beautiful, startling talk—love is an element—his soft touch and sweet magic, his heat and humor and his firelight eyes, if she had never have known any suitor but the Wolf?
Had she been such a pliant thing that she would have let herself be taken by him, tasted and claimed? She wished she could believe that she would have awakened to her foolishness even without Akiva’s coming, but her shame would not subside. She might have cringed at Thiago’s touch and shaken herself awake, but… she knew that she would most likely have let the tide carry her along until it was too late.
Well. Her people would still be alive if she had. What was her own happiness compared to that?
She reached the river and slipped down to the bouldered place on its bank where she could sit hidden from view from the kasbah. She kicked off her shoes, put her feet on the cold-splashed stones, and watched the reflection of the stars pull into long, dancing streaks on the moving surface of the water. The scope of that glittering sky had a way of making her feel so small—minuscule, insignificant—and she realized she was relishing that feeling as a way of relieving herself of the pressure to do something.
After all, what can I do?
Really: What? The chimaera were loyal to Thiago, and Thiago would never compromise.
What, Karou wondered, would Brimstone do?
Her longing for him in this moment was so profound that it made her slip into hope—that malingering, wretched hope that he was not truly gone. She let herself imagine, just for a moment: If Brimstone were here, what would be different?
One thing, at least. I would be loved.
“Karou.”
It was only a whisper, but she jumped at the sound of her name. Who—? She saw no one, she had heard no approach. Only…
A draft of heat.
A drift of sparks.
Oh god. No.
And then like a dropped veil, his glamour vanished and he was before her.
Akiva.
Light coursed through Karou and darkness chased it—burning through her, chilling her, shimmer and shadow, ice and fire, blood and starlight, rushing, roaring, filling her. Shock and disbelief. And rancor.
And rage.
And she was on her feet. Her fists were clenched, her fists were stones, so tightly clenched, her whole body was taut with rage at the sight of the angel, every sinew stretched and her skin drawn tight so she felt the blood in her temples, pounding, and the fury in her fists, pulsing, and in her closed palms: the scald. Her hamsas burned and she was opening her hands and lifting them and Akiva did not defend himself.
When the magic of the marks hit him, he lowered his head and endured it.
Magic poured off Karou, and Akiva shook under the onslaught but didn’t move—not away, not toward—and Karou knew that she could kill him. She’d wished she’d done it before and here he was to give her another chance. Why else would he be here—why else?—and what else could she do but kill him?—there was nothing else—after what he had done—after what he had done—after what he had done—but… how could she kill Akiva?
How could she not?
Hadn’t he done enough without forcing yet another impossible choice on her? Why was he here?
He dropped to his knees, and the air between them rippled with Karou’s crippling magic and with memory. The day of her death, this is what she had seen, this: Akiva on his knees, sick with the weight of this same magic coursing off Thiago’s soldiers, and he had struggled to hold his head up and look at her—just like this—with horror and despair and love—and she had wanted more than she had ever wanted anything to go to him and hold him, whisper to him that she loved him and was going to save him, but she couldn’t, not then, and she couldn’t now, not because of shackles or pinions or the executioner’s ax but because he was the enemy. He had proven it beyond any horror she would ever have believed, beyond any betrayal she could ever have dreamed, and he could never be forgiven, not ever.
But… then… her hands fell to her sides.
Why? She hadn’t meant to drop them. Her hamsas were hot against her own thighs and her breath was ragged and coming in gasps and she couldn’t make herself raise her hands back up. Akiva was shaking and racked with magic, and the pair of them were again in the eye of a storm of misery—their world was a storm of misery and they were caught in its center, in the deceptive stillness that had allowed them to forget, once upon a time, that all around them was a stinging whirl of hatred that would catch them—it was everywhere and everything and they’d been fools to think they could leave their small safe place and not be caught in that vortex like every other living creature in Eretz.