What does he know? Akiva wondered, feeling certain now there was something, and he would have given much in that moment to put a sharp end to Jael’s glee.
“She tasted of fairy tales,” Jael said. The words struck a chord of familiarity—and a note of dread, too—but Akiva couldn’t place them. Not until Jael added, almost singing, “She tasted of hope. Oh. What does that taste like? Pollen and stars, the Fallen said. He did go on about it, foul thing. I almost felt sorry for the girl, to have felt the touch of such a tongue.”
A roaring in Akiva’s ears. Razgut. Somehow, Jael had found Razgut. What had the creature told him?
“I wonder,” asked Jael, “did you ever find her?”
“I don’t know who you mean,” Akiva replied.
Jael’s smile unfurled fully now, and it was a nasty specimen, malicious and excited. “No?” he said. “I’m glad to hear it, since there was no mention of any girl in your report.” This was true. Akiva had said nothing of Karou, or the hunchback Izîl who had hurled himself from a tower rather than give up Karou, or of Razgut, either—who at the time Akiva assumed had died with the hunchback. “A girl who worked for Brimstone,” Jael continued. “Who was raised by Brimstone. Such an interesting story. Far-fetched, though. What interest could Brimstone possibly have taken in a human girl? For that matter, what interest could you have taken in a human girl? The usual kind?”
Akiva said nothing. Jael was too happy; it was clear that Razgut had told him everything. The question, then, was how much did Razgut know? Did he know where Karou was now? That she was carrying on Brimstone’s work?
What did Jael want?
The captain—no, Akiva reminded himself, Jael was the emperor now—said with a shrug, “Of course, the Fallen also claimed the girl had blue hair, which really strains credulity, so I thought, how can I trust all the other things he’s telling me about the human world? All the other fascinating things you left out of your report. I had to get creative. By the end, I believed he was telling the truth, strange as it all sounds, and what I can’t make out is how the three of you failed to report on their advancements. Their devices, nephew. How is it that you failed to mention their wondrous, unimaginable weapons?”
Akiva’s sick feeling was deepening, and it wasn’t just from the hamsas. It was all coming together. Razgut and weapons. Pure white surcoats. Harpers. Pageantry. To make an impression, he had thought when he’d heard the rumors, but it hadn’t made any sense. No one could imagine that the Stelians would be impressed by white surcoats and harps.
Humans, on the other hand…
“You’re not invading the Stelians at all,” Akiva said. “You’re invading the human world.”
73
THE SCREAM
Thiago seemed to not quite understand why all of a sudden he couldn’t breathe, or what the small pinch at his throat had to do with it. His hand flew to the blade, pulled it out, and as his blood poured out all the faster—onto Karou, all onto Karou—he looked at the knife with… condescension. Karou had the idea that his last living thought was, This knife is too small to kill me.
It wasn’t.
His eyes lost focus. His neck lost strength. His head came down heavy on her face; for a moment he floundered, then twitched, then stopped. He was dead weight. He was dead. Thiago. Dead and heavy. His blood kept flowing and Karou was pinned under him, her knees still splayed, her ankles caught in her pushed-down jeans, and her own panicked gasping breath was so loud in her ears she imagined the stars could hear it.
She pushed him off, partway anyway, dragged herself the rest of the way out from under him, kicking at his legs to get free, and then she rose, unsteady, and pulled at her jeans. She fell and rose again. Her arms were shaking so violently it was a few tries before the jeans were up, and then she couldn’t manage the button. She couldn’t stop shaking, but she couldn’t leave it undone, it was unthinkable, and it was this that brought the tears—her frustration that she couldn’t make her fingers perform this simple action, and she had to do it, she couldn’t leave it. She was sobbing by the time it was finally done.
And then she looked at him.
His eyes were open. His mouth was open. His fangs were red with her blood and she was red with his blood. Her vest that had been gray was sodden and black in the starlight, and the White Wolf, he was… exposed, he was obscene, his intention laid bare and as dead as the rest of him.
She had killed the White Wolf.
He had tried to—
Who would care?
He was the White Wolf, hero of the chimaera races, architect of impossible victories, the strength of their people. She was the angel-lover, the traitor. The whore. Those who would have stood with her were gone—murdered right here or sent away to die. Ziri wouldn’t be coming back. And Issa, what had they done to her?
Am I alone again?
She couldn’t bear to be alone again.
She still couldn’t stop her shaking. It was convulsive. She was having a hard time drawing breath. She felt light-headed. Breathe, she told herself. Think.
But no thoughts came, and scarcely more breath.
What were her options? Flee or stay. Leave them, let them die—all of them, all the chimaera in Eretz, and let the souls lay buried—or stay and… what? Be forced to resurrect Thiago?
Just the thought of it—of the skim of his soul against her senses, of life returning to those pale eyes and strength to those clawed hands—dropped Karou to her knees to retch. Both options were unbearable. She couldn’t abandon her people—a thousand years Brimstone had borne this burden, and she broke after a couple of months? “Your dream is my dream. You are all of our hope.”
But she couldn’t face the Wolf again, either, and if she stayed, they would make her bring him back.
Or kill her.
Oh god, oh god.
She retched again. It racked her, spasm after spasm, until she was a shell, as raw on the inside as the outside—a vessel, she heard his voice in her head, we’re all just vessels, and she retched again and it was just bile. Her throat stung, and when the rasp of her own choking finally died away, she heard a sound, and it was near.
And it was wings.
She panicked.
They were coming back.
“Invade the human world?” Jael looked affronted. “You malign me, nephew. Is it an invasion if we are welcomed?”
“Welcomed?”
“Yes. Razgut assured me they will worship us as gods. That they already do. Isn’t it wonderful? I’ve always wanted to be a god.”
“You’re no god,” Akiva said through clenched teeth. He thought of the human cities he had seen—images of lands at peace that had struck him as so alien when he had first arrived. Prague with its beautiful bridge, people congregating, strolling, kissing on the cheeks. Marrakesh, its wild square filled with dancers and snake charmers, the teeming lanes where he had walked beside Karou before… before they had broken the wishbone, and with it the fragile happiness he had known could not last. “They’ll take one look at your face and brand you a monster.”
Jael reached up and ran a finger down his scar. “What, this?” He shrugged, unconcerned. “That’s what masks are for. Do you imagine they’ll really care if their god wears a mask? They’ll give me what I want readily enough, I have no doubt.”
And what was that? Akiva didn’t know much about human battle, but he knew some. He remembered the strange cafe Karou had taken him to in Prague, decorated with gas masks from a bygone war. He understood that they could poison the air and make all things die gasping, and that they could pump each other full of metal in the time it took an archer to draw back a bowstring, and he knew that Razgut had not lied to Jael. Humans did worship angels. Not all of them did, but many, and their worship could be as deadly as their weapons. Bring the two things together—bring them into Eretz—and it would make the war of the last thousand years look like a shoving match.
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” he said. “It will mean the end of Eretz.”
“The end of the Stelians, anyway,” said Jael. “For the Empire, it will be a new beginning.”
“This is about the Stelians, then? Why?” Akiva couldn’t understand what stoked this hatred of Stelians. “Send me to them, as Joram wanted to. I’ll be your envoy, your spy. I’ll carry your message to them, but leave human weapons in the human world.”
Akiva hated abasing himself to Jael, and Jael just scoffed. “My message? What message could I have for those fire-eyed savages? I’m coming to kill you? Dear nephew, that was a fool’s mission, and Joram was the fool. Did you believe all that about serving as envoy? I just needed him to bring you here. For reasons that I think have been made clear.” He gestured around the blood-spattered, corpse-strewn bath.
Yes, his reasons were clear, all too clear now. While Akiva had been planning to deliver Eretz from Joram, Jael had been waiting in the wings, and not just waiting. Orchestrating. Maneuvering his bastard scapegoat right into place.
“And if I hadn’t killed him?” Akiva asked, disgusted that he hadn’t felt the jerk of puppet strings all along.
“That was never a risk,” said Jael, and Akiva understood that even if he hadn’t killed Joram—if, by chance, he had come here as a loyal soldier to receive his emperor’s gratitude and orders—he would have been framed for the murder anyway. “The moment you walked though that door, you were an assassin and a traitor to the realm. It helps that you are, of course. It’s good to have a true witness. The servant girl owes you her life. Hellas, alas, owes you his death. But don’t feel too badly. He was a viper.” Jael, calling someone a viper. Even he saw the hypocrisy in it, and laughed. Akiva didn’t know if he had ever seen anyone enjoy himself quite so much.
Hazael was the first to succumb to the sickness of the devil’s eyes. He dropped to his knees and vomited onto the blood-spattered tile. Liraz edged closer to him, looking soon to follow suit.
“You think we have no other allies?” Akiva asked. “That no one else will rise against you?”
“If you can’t succeed, nephew, who could?”
It was a fair question. A devastating question. Was this it, then? Had he failed his world—and Karou—so spectacularly?
“I’m a little sorry I can’t have you in my service,” said Jael. “I could use a magus, but it would be so hard to trust you. I can’t shake the feeling that you don’t quite like me.” An apologetic shrug, and his gaze slid past Akiva to lock on… Liraz.
Through his weakness and his nausea, Akiva felt a surge of fury and dread and helplessness, but there was the edge of something more, something hard and glittering that he hoped, he hoped might be the edge of sirithar, coming within reach once more.
“You, though,” Jael said to Liraz. “So lovely. It appears that I’ll have need of new bath attendants when I move into these quarters.” He looked at a dead girl on the floor and smiled that splay of a smile that tugged his scar white and pulled puckers along the remains of his nose and lips.