Maybe he was already dead.
Zahra? She sent her thoughts into the chaotic night. Are you there? Is Harkan alive?
Simon caught her elbow hard. They’d stopped at the edge of small dunes overlooking the white shore.
The beach was a wide crescent-moon smile, its docks snaking into the water like long rotted fangs. The air was ripe with confusion. The people of Festival who’d managed to escape the streets’ bloodbath clamored across the sand, fighting their way toward the docks, swimming out into the shallows. They attempted to climb aboard merchant vessels, cargo carriers, even tried desperately for the Empire warships, resplendent with black-and-crimson sails. They screamed for mercy as the angels cut them down, a ruthless storm of gold pushing out from the city.
Simon pointed at the water, sweat dripping beneath his mask. “The Dovitiam. It’s arrived.”
Eliana saw it—a plain cargo vessel, squat and battered, waiting quietly in the shallows. A runt compared to the sleek warships. But its first mate was Red Crown, and the captain was smitten with her, would do anything she asked.
She started forward, ready to run for it, but Simon held her fast.
“There are too many people crowding the beach,” he muttered. “We won’t be able to reach it without getting trampled.”
Then, cannon fire to their right, and a fresh cascade of gunfire. Eliana turned and saw the ghosts of white cliffs around the rim of the beach—the mouth of a canyon, narrow trails winding down the cliffsides. The spark and glint of weapons, armor, gunshots. Another river of the imperial army, flooding down to the beach from the south.
Eliana reached for Zahra once more, her eyes stinging. Harkan? Zahra? Please, say something.
But her mind remained empty and her own.
“We have to run for it,” she said, forcing her voice past the terrible fear sprouting tendrils inside her. “The Dovitiam is the rendezvous. Everyone will be meeting us there. Remy’s there.”
“I don’t much care about everyone else, if it means safely getting you off this continent,” Simon said sharply.
She glared at him. “If you think I’m going anywhere without my brother, you’re insane.”
“And if you die trying to find him somewhere in all of this?” He flung out his hand at the swarming shore below them. “Everything we’ve done will have been for nothing. I can’t allow you to risk your life for him, or for anyone.”
“You can’t allow me?” She laughed. “I thought by now you understood how this works.”
He looked away from her with a foul curse. “I can’t see how we’ll get through that mob without you getting killed.”
Eliana gave him a hard grin and ripped off her gloves. Her castings sparked, ecstatic to be set free. “I know how.”
Simon went very still. “You’re still recovering from your fight with Rielle. You have to save your energy.”
“I think I know my own strength better than you do.”
“Your castings are a beacon. Using them will draw the army right to you.”
“And will give our people hope,” she countered, flinging off her mask. “They’ll see my light and run toward it, their courage renewed.”
“And then every angel standing will know exactly which boat you’re on.”
“I’ll sink any boat that follows us. I’ll summon a storm. I’ll summon ten storms.”
“You’ll exhaust yourself. We’ll be attacked somewhere else on the water, and you’ll have no defenses left.”
She took his face in her hands. “Trust me. I can do this.”
Beyond his mask, his eyes were cold and flat in a way that frightened her. For a moment, she couldn’t be sure that it was truly him standing there before her.
“Eliana, please,” he said, his voice pulled thin with an emotion she couldn’t name. “We’ll find another way. We’ll retreat and regroup.”
“There is no other way,” she said, and then she turned and ran down the grassy dune to the shore. When she stepped onto the sand, she clapped her hands together, her castings sparking, and then flung her fingers up to the midnight sky, clenched them into fists, and pulled sharply down.
Her palms filled with sunlight, twin blazing gold stars. She tossed them into the air, and they flared to enormous life, lighting up the beach as if it were midday. Then she knelt and slammed her fists against the ground. A bolt of energy sprang to life beneath the sand, flying fast across the beach toward the Dovitiam. It knocked everyone it touched off their feet, human and angel alike, clearing a path for her.
She ran, heard Simon following her. “Stay close to me!” she cried over her shoulder.
Gunfire chased them toward the water. Flaming arrows came arcing out of the crowd. But her eyes were trained on the Dovitiam, and the sight of it pulled her inexorably forward. Remy, Remy. She thought his name with each pump of her legs. She flung up her fists as though blocking punches, knocking every bullet and arrow out of the sky. An angel flung himself into her path, fired his gun. She thrust out her fist, launching a shield of energy that sent him and his weapon flying twenty yards away, into the foaming shallows.
And then they were at the Dovitiam’s dock. May God forgive me, she said and sent a gust of wind racing across the crowded planks, knocking every citizen running toward the boat toppling into the water.
“Are our people coming?” she shouted to Simon. They were almost at the boat, the gangplank free and open. A figure stood on the deck, waving them frantically on. “Are they following us? Do you see them?”
But Simon did not respond. She heard a grunt of pain and whirled to find him.
It was Jessamyn—Jessamyn, impossibly, and Simon, locked in combat. Daggers flying, bodies whirling fast. Simon had dropped his gun. Jessamyn stomped on his foot, then knocked him in the jaw with her elbow. He staggered back, stunned.
Then Jessamyn turned and saw Eliana. Her left arm and right leg were bleeding; sweat slicked her face. And yet her eyes sparked, and when she ran at Eliana, she was fast, swift with fury, and Eliana, in her shock, didn’t have time to properly react.
She barely managed to avoid Jessamyn’s jab, ducking just in time. But then Jessamyn’s boot caught her in the stomach. She stumbled back, nearly blacking out, and reached for her castings, but Jessamyn was relentless and fell upon her too quickly. She punched her in the jaw, jabbed her hard in the throat.
Eliana fell to her knees, choking—and then she looked for Simon and saw the impossible.
He had recovered from Jessamyn’s attack and was standing a few paces from her, facing the beach. He had retrieved his gun and was shouting something at the angels still on the shore. Not in Venteran, nor in the common tongue, but in one of the angelic languages.
She recalled Zahra’s instructions from the Nest, those frantically memorized words, searching for the unfamiliar lettering in that basement room full of drugs. She recognized the cadence of what Simon shouted, the harshly lilting syllables.
Lissar. He was speaking Lissar.
And the angels on the shore were listening to him.
They gathered around the pier’s entrance, shooting their arrows, unleashing volleys of gunfire. Not at Simon, but at a crowd of people trapped between him and the angels.
Gasping for breath, her vision blacking in and out, Eliana at last understood what she was seeing. Time slowed, an endless push and pull between the life she had known and the life she would now lead.
There were Dani, and her three boys, and Ester. Darby, Oraia. Patrik.
They had followed her light to the pier, ready to join her, desperate for the ship that would bear them away to safety. Remy would be somewhere among them.
And now they were being slaughtered.
Each one of them fought desperately to the last—Dani, shielding Ester with her body. Patrik, charging at Simon with a roar. And each one of them fell. Ten. Twent
y. Thirty. Red Crown soldiers who had helped plan her escape, who had fought through the city to protect her for as long as possible. Some ran, making a break for the broader beach. Angelic arrows caught them in the back. Any who slipped past the angels’ line of fire were picked off by Simon’s efficient gunfire.
And Jessamyn kept on, kicking Eliana in the ribs, in the stomach, yelling furiously over her head. Words Eliana didn’t understand, and one word, over and over: Varos.
Her vision tilting, Eliana called out Remy’s name. Vainly, she searched for him in the darkness. She tried reaching for her power, but it was like trying to navigate the froth of a nightmare. Her mind wouldn’t focus, shattered by pain. She shouted for Remy, screamed for Simon to stop.
Then swift footsteps crossed to her. She heard the meaty slap of a fist against flesh, and Jessamyn’s abuse abruptly ended. Her head spinning, her lips hot with blood, Eliana lay there half-alive, listening to Simon utter something in furious, rapid Lissar.
Jessamyn fell to her knees before him. She whispered a few reverent words. An apology?
Eliana reached out blindly, her arms trembling. She tried weakly to summon her power. But Simon had been right. She wasn’t entirely recovered from fighting Rielle.
And now, after her flight across the beach, her head pounding from the fall of Jessamyn’s fists, she could barely make her castings spark.
And now, Simon had done this. The pier and the water were littered with the corpses of those who had trusted her to save them.
Harkan? She tried to find him once more. She reached for Zahra, her head throbbing. Harkan, where are you?
Someone was lifting her, shoving her to her feet. She decided she would make it more difficult for them to move her and gave into the rising tide of her pain.
53
Harkan
“Papa once told me that, when I lay dying—because someday I will, as will we all—I must not think of the things that frighten me, and I must not think of my pain. I must think of everyone and everything I have ever loved, for if I do that, those thoughts will follow me into death, and that far black place will turn bright and golden, as the world long ago used to be.”
—Collection of stories written by refugees in occupied Ventera, curated by Hob Cavaserra
Harkan knew something was terribly wrong.
He couldn’t articulate what, but he felt the wrongness like cruel eyes on his back, pinning him where he lay in the dirt. He couldn’t swallow quite right; his mouth was sour and aching, and strangely wet. He was perched at the top of a rocky crest of land, looking down upon a wide slope of shale. He held one of Dani’s loaned rifles, and he was picking off imperial soldiers as they marched up through the canyon beneath him, pushing inexorably toward the beach where Eliana’s ship awaited her arrival. The Dovitiam. A cargo vessel. Serviceable, yes, but not good enough for her.
None of them were good enough for her, and neither was he.
Not true, Zahra said gently. You are unkind to yourself.
Harkan shook his head, dislodging her. He wasn’t yet used to how Zahra’s thoughts felt slipping inside his mind, like an old dream he didn’t particularly want to remember coming back to life without his permission.
I must focus, he told her, though it was harder to form that simple thought than it should have been.
Again, a wrongness.
His team had this wave of soldiers bottlenecked. They were pushing up out of the canyon, and if they reached the cliffs where Harkan’s team was positioned, hiding behind boulders, firing shot after shot, reloading, ducking when imperial bullets came slamming into the rocks right over their heads—if the army reached the cliffs, that would be it. They would pour onto the beach. They would flood the shallows, forming a barrier between Eliana and her ship.
Harkan couldn’t allow that to happen. No matter what, they had to hold this wave here, in this narrow, white canyon, until Zahra told him that the ship had disembarked, that Eliana was safely away.
He stopped to reload. He looked left—Catilla and Viri, shouting orders at those downhill, providing them cover. He looked right—Gerren, crouched like a cat behind a rock, shooting down soldier after soldier. Never mind that the adatrox kept coming, dozens upon dozens upon dozens of gray-eyed imperial tools. And angels, too, among their ranks. Angels who, when shot, merely picked themselves back up seconds later. Whole again, and strong, with laughing black eyes and cruel smiles slashed across their faces.
Never mind all of that. Gerren was the finest sharpshooter Harkan had ever seen, a thought which made him deeply, unbearably sad.
We live in a world where children must learn to be killers, he thought, tears rising to his eyes. Where girls must grow up to become bounty hunters. Venerated saviors and frightened queens.
Harkan, stop shooting, Zahra suggested. Set down your gun.
I can’t, he told her.
“I can’t,” he whispered, wiping the dust and sweat from his face. “We must hold them here. We must hold them.”
Hold them in the mountains, he thought, over and over. Keep them from the beach. Protect her.
“Hold them!” he cried. He screamed it until his throat felt ready to tear in two. “Hold them here!”
Harkan. Zahra’s voice brushed across his brow, and the feeling of her was suddenly so near, so full and present, that he could hear the cracks in her words, despite the gunfire and the relentless rhythm of the army’s boots.
A wraith’s voice, breaking.
Fear gripped him hard. He tried to breathe through it, but it was too difficult, to breathe. There was a vise clamping his chest. He looked for that strange discoloration in the air, that blurry unevenness that marked Zahra’s presence. But he couldn’t find her, and he pushed himself up, off the ground, but then she was there, keeping him still. He felt her in his mind—a warm palm, pressing gently.
What happened? he asked her, choking on his own throat. I don’t understand.
Please, lie still.
“No,” he managed. He fought to raise himself up. He crawled across the hard-packed ground, trampled smooth and flat by thousands of marching feet. Red stains, white sand. His hands were caked with color, ghostly and torn. “What happened?”
He crawled to the cliffs’ edge, his vision spotting. And that’s when he saw the ruined beach, far below. The charred rut through the sand, stretching from the city to the water, left behind by some great scorching fire. The scattered bodies in the shallows, being pushed gently to shore by waves that knew nothing of death.
That’s when he saw the Dovitiam, still anchored in the bay, and burning. Someone had set it afire, and the pier connecting it to the shore burned as well. And beyond those flames, the admiral’s sleek black ship glided out into the water, chasing the rising moon.
Watching it leave the bay, listening to the sounds of the city called Festival once again falling to angelic swords—being cleansed once more, as it had been years ago; being wiped clean of disloyalty, of traitorous schemes—Harkan took a shuddering breath.
And, all at once, with the cold void of Zahra’s hand cupping his cheek, he remembered.
• • •
It had happened only moments before, but an entire lifetime had passed between then and now.
First, he saw the endless tide of the approaching army pushing past their paltry line of defense. Of course they pushed past. That he could have ever thought his teams would succeed in this, that a few dozen mere humans could actually hold back this tireless wave of monsters long enough for Eliana to escape…
No. Zahra said this gently, redirecting him. There isn’t time for that.
He moved on.
Second, the members of his team falling all around him. For a while, for longer than should have been possible, they had held off the approach of dozens of soldiers. The army was flooding into the city from all directions, but Harkan refu
sed to think about that. He must instead focus on this particular section of army, this particular canyon in which he must hold them. The beach below must be kept free and clear until Eliana was safely away.
How foolish he was, to have even for a moment entertained the thought that he would be able to join her before her ship disembarked. How foolish, and how eternally, fatally smitten.
Zahra created distortions in the minds of the army’s vanguard, distracting them. She cloaked Harkan’s team from view when she could, until at last, after an hour of this, her strength gave out. It was then that his team began to die, one by one. They had to have seen death coming for them; they had to have known when they left Willow that this was the likeliest ending, that none of them would be able to join the others on that ship.
But they didn’t run. Harkan remembered this now. He had ordered them to hold fast. He had shouted Eliana’s name at them, over and over.
For Eliana, he had cried. Hold fast! Hold them right here!
And they hadn’t run.
You led them well, Zahra told him, her voice brimming with pride. The feeling of it warmed his cold limbs.
Third, a man bursting out of the mass of soldiers, making straight for Harkan. He had determined that Harkan was the leader of this upstart group of rebels, this squadron of fools who thought they could prevent an imperial army from doing what they did best.
But they had prevented it, at least for a while, at least in this one small canyon.
Had it been enough?
Was it enough? Harkan asked, groggy.
Zahra sent him a feeling, a sensation—her own ancient fingers stroking his hair. I’m right here, Harkan.
He struggled to remember. Even with Zahra’s help, it was difficult. Slippery and elusive.
But he did see it now: the man, running for him. Lithe and swift, an efficient swordsman. Harkan had grabbed his sword and jumped to his feet, meeting the man’s blade with his own. They were well-matched for a few moments, nimbly dodging each other’s blades—until Gerren fell. Caught in the throat. His eyes widening, surprised. His hand flying to his neck. And then the boy was down, dying fast, and that moment of distraction was enough.
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