In Veritas

by C. J. Lavigne

  Privya makes that snorting sound again, an amused puff that sparkles in the night air. “No. You can just listen and try not to lose any appendages to frostbite. I told you about the Chalice, right?”

  “The, um, gathering time. Alan mentioned it too.”

  “Right. The last time it happened was San Francisco. We were ready. Jihan was going to open some sort of new portal, or make a new world, or—I don’t know. The great escape. Alethea was going to help her. It was a bad time. The industrial revolution killed so many of us. There were just … factories everywhere. Machines. Cars. The air changed. I’m used to it now, mostly, but I remember how many of us fell under the weight of it. The stragglers still came. They were dusty and bloody and hurting, but they came. They gathered in the walls of the city and thought they were safe. They had so much hope in their eyes.” Privya shakes her head, eyes glittering. She leads Verity over the parking lot and through a stand of trees, down a short side road toward the rough banks of the river. Ahead and to the right, the lights of the Chaudière bridge gleam through a curtain of white flakes, snow drifting across the expanse of ice below. Verity can see hints of low islands and the gleam of the power plant. Past those markers, only darkness reigns—Parliament is lost, and even the next bridge is barely visible. Across the ice, the tall windows of Gatineau now haunt the snow’s steady swirls.

  Privya says, “The thing you have to understand about the Chalice—it’s not entirely a metaphor. It’s a reservoir of energy that fills over time, all these dribs and drabs of power trickling in until it spills over. It comes in strange cycles. It’s older than I am. It’s a remnant, I think—some heirloom rippling down the years from our ancestors, back when we had a heritage to speak of.”

  Behind Verity, the city seems to vibrate softly, each brick shuddering. There’s a cola sign, still lit in a closed diner a block back, that is a stab through her temple. Ahead, she sees two distant figures huddled and waiting on the riverbank.

  Privya raises a gloved hand in the air; through the fall of snow, one of the figures waves back. “These are my people up here. No one’s here to hurt you.”

  Verity has to force herself to keep pace through swirls of winter and the gnat-like nag of the sleeping downtown core. Above, she can just make out a sliver of moon. Their footsteps crunch in snow and a thin layer of ice. “Should I be worried? About people hurting me?”

  “Well, you already got knifed once. I thought you might be nervous. Okay; let’s get this organized.”

  As the river looms closer, Verity must pick her steps more carefully; a path has been trod, but when she strays off it, the snow comes to her knee. As the people standing by the bank materialize more clearly in the frosted night, Verity makes out a tall, very thin man with a moon-pale face beneath his chunky knitted toque, and a shorter, stockier woman almost as black as the sky. The woman’s face is screwed tight, mouth pinched at the corners; it is a look Verity has grown to recognize, the sign of illness eating from within. “This is Brian,” says Privya, and the tall man nods. “And Shauna.”

  The look Brian is giving her prickles across the back of her shoulders. Shauna doesn’t move at all. Still, Verity says, “Hi. I’m Vee,” and tilts her head to look up at the lonely moon. A cloud is beginning to obscure the lower half of its crescent. The snow is falling faster now. She blinks white flakes from her lashes.

  “Nice.” Privya sounds approving. “Okay. Bring it harder.”

  At first, Verity doesn’t understand, but then Brian turns his hands palm up and looks up at the sky, a strained smile stretching cheek to cheek. The wind comes up immediately, burning with cold; the snow it whips grows thick, obscuring and refracting the city lights in a fog of diamonds.

  “Some of us,” notes Privya, “still have a little power, now and then in the dark and the quiet, when no one is around to deny us. It’s getting easier, with the Chalice approaching. Our heritage—the three of us you see here—is stronger than most. Imagine what your magician would have been, a few thousand years ago. Or that long-lived man. Or everyone’s precious Mr. Warner.”

  Verity doesn’t need to feel the word everyone slinking down her spine to observe, “You don’t like Colin very much.”

  “I would rip his lungs out with my teeth if I could,” says Privya. Her voice is light and pleasant, and it tastes of truth like strawberries. “But he’s keeping half of that sad little colony alive. In fact, our little excursion tonight is going to help him. That should please you.”

  Verity takes an uncertain breath, but looks to Brian, whose eyes are still closed and whose hands coax the wind higher, bringing snow that rises in a slow cyclone of white around them. If Verity lets her own gaze go a little unfocused, she thinks she can see what the man is doing—casting glittering strands of energy out in a sort of spider web tornado, drawing the white flakes in. She realizes, with something of a start, that Shauna has vanished.

  “Okay.” Privya takes Brian by the arm, guiding the man carefully toward the banks of the river. “Careful. Everyone all right?”

  Verity tucks her own gloved hands into her pockets, then reconsiders and takes them out again, keeping her arms wide for balance. She paces after the man and girl and finds that the snow makes it easier; the falling whiteness obscures Ottawa’s chrome-stone sliding. They are safe in a cocoon of growing storm.

  They cross over a guard railing, and snow whirls past the sign that reads: NO SKATING. DANGER THIN ICE. It repeats again in French. Verity hesitates.

  “No worries. Brian has it covered.” Privya’s words are warm tea and marmalade, so Verity follows. Even through the gloves, her fingers are cold. She turns to look behind, but the blizzard has already half-obscured the late-night glow of Little Italy. There is no sign of Shauna.

  “Um.” Verity half-slides down the bank, catching herself on the dry snap of winter-dead reeds. She hesitates at the edge of the ice. “Your friend?”

  “She’s running an errand for me. Or did you mean Brian? He’s fine.” Privya is graceful, even in her quilted coat. She is already three feet out on the river, her hands in Brian’s. “Stay close, Vee. We’re just taking a quick hike out on the river.”

  There’s more to it, of course—Verity can taste spring pollen, entirely unlikely in the night’s chill, but she sucks in a frigid lungful and edges forward through the snow. She is startled when Brian opens his eyes and turns his head; the man’s eyes are frosted over, as though death had crystallized in his lashes. It isn’t clear that Brian can see anything, with ice creeping in shining lines through the crow’s feet creasing his face.

  “None of them can see us right now,” murmurs Privya. “Not in our little storm. No people, no cameras. This is a little of what it used to be like.” When she is finished speaking, she starts humming instead; it follows some tune Verity can’t quite catch.

  Privya keeps hold of one of Brian’s hands and leads the man forward. The crystals on Brian’s face are still spreading, a slow icy mould that runs over his eyebrows and down to his mouth. Verity pulls her hood up and follows. The wind blows unforgiving across the broad expanse of the river.

  The ice is black beneath their boots, covered in places by drifts of feathered snow that alternately breezes at their footsteps and crunches beneath their feet. To Verity, it’s a cinnamon distraction, but she is looking at the river—or rather trying to, as the storm dances in flurries around them. Where they walk is peaceful but for softly falling flakes; they move in the eye of a winter hurricane. Verity thinks she can see Brian’s weaving drawing the flakes in and twisting them in a steady, thick circle. She is not certain how far out the snowfall extends.

  The ice beneath her feet cracks suddenly, loud as a gunshot, continuing in several short, sharp echoes around them. “Hold up,” says Privya, but it isn’t really necessary, because Verity is standing very still. Her breath clouds half-expelled, misting the seize of her heart.

  Brian lifts his free hand; the man wears no mittens, and his fingers are frosted as white as
his eyes. They look as though they should splinter off and fall at the slightest motion, but he gestures easily, and the ice groans around them.

  Only Verity flinches. Privya’s smile is a dancing flash.

  Small shapes ghost by in the snow; it takes Verity a moment to recognize the darting shadows of dragons, circling. She counts three, then five. “I didn’t think they liked cold.”

  “They don’t. They like power.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To the middle, or so.” Privya continues to balance easily as the surface of the river thickens beneath them; Verity isn’t certain what to make of the sensation, but she can breathe the heaviness of the ice that firms beneath Brian’s outstretched hand. The river goes white at the edges of her boots, spreading outward in a widely frosted trail toward the centre. Privya steps forward without the least hint of concern, Brian lumbering at her side, and continues, “Anyway, San Francisco. Jihan talked a good talk then. She thought she could use the Chalice to get us somewhere else. Separate the worlds. Make everyone happy. Alethea was going to help her. She was the one who could see what was true—which truths belonged where, was what she told me. Whose was whose. She believed in Jihan. I believed in her.”

  “You helped them?”

  “I should have known better. We were desperate. Desperate and very tired.”

  “What happened?” Verity is careful to plant her feet where Brian has left tracks in the snow. She is beginning to feel the cold as a slow burn up her thighs.

  “The Chalice happened, and I led them—down, through the walls, under the ground, to a cavern so deep and vast it was lit by algae that climbed the stone. I don’t know who built it—or carved it, or first found it. It was a lot older than any of us.”

  The storm tingles at the back of Verity’s throat, an electric promise that lingers when she exhales.

  Privya peers forward into night snow and phantom dragons. “So Jihan was going to open the way,” continues the girl mildly. “Alethea was going to show her the right path. There were a few thousand more in the city, clustered in the walls, waiting and hoping. Jihan plunged her hands into the pool, started gathering all that power into herself—then the earthquake started.”

  “Bad timing?” The frigid wind snatches Verity’s voice and whips across her cheeks.

  “No.” Privya’s grim tone tastes of ashes and a cobwebby regret. “This is the part where I want you to listen. Nothing I’ve said to you is a lie. Right?”

  “Shades of grey.” Verity shakes her head. “Words and connotations and shadows, no more than most.”

  “Okay then. So listen: when Jihan tried to open a door, she started the quake. And the quake just ... grew. The cave shook. There were all these cracks—a few at first, and then we couldn’t keep our feet. It was like a hole opened and tried to suck the city in. It was spreading, and it was going to keep spreading, everywhere, forever, and she couldn’t stop it.”

  Privya looks very small holding Brian’s arm, her boots braced for balance. Beneath her snow-spotted scarf, the lift of her chin is resolute. “I was there. I saw it happen. Am I lying?”

  Verity wants to be clear. She offers, “Red. Crimson and the taste of cut diamonds.”

  Brian’s entire face is ice now, rigid as a sculpture. He plods stiffly forward, paying Verity no attention at all. Privya moves with him, and continues, “I wasn’t close enough. I tried to run forward and the ground threw me back. Everything was shaking. Rocks were falling. Someone was screaming. A stalactite fell; there was a crash, and the screaming stopped. I had blood in my eyes, but I still saw Jihan standing there, all that power pouring out of her. She couldn’t control it. I saw it break her, and break through her. I knew the world would end.”

  “What happened?” Dragons swirl in the storm around them; the river ice beneath is frozen in low, wind-whipped ripples. Verity has lost track of the riverbank and the city lights, though she moves forward steadily, keeping close to the two figures that threaten to vanish in the night-blizzard blur.

  “Alethea happened.” Privya’s voice is muffled by wind, but there is pride in it, and a grief not wholly suppressed. “She was right there. I saw her take Jihan’s sword and drive it right into that idiot. It was the last thing she ever did. The earthquake died, but not in time to save the city. We lost so many when the walls fell in. There were thousands of us in San Francisco. Are there even a hundred here now?”

  “I don’t ... how is Jihan alive?” There’s something missing; Verity wraps her tongue around the ache of its absence. Nothing Privya has told her is wrong; the conversation is smooth on her skin, contrasted with the burning of the cold air.

  “She’s the angel’s now.” This time, Privya cannot conceal her bitterness. “Or whatever mad part of her he dragged from death. I won’t weep if she disembowels him in his sleep. The terrifying thing I’m trying to tell you is that she almost destroyed us all, and she could do it again.”

  Verity stares at the night and the pirouetting snow. She thinks more dragons have joined the storm; she counts at least seven, maybe eight. Lights loom very suddenly out of the gloom, glowing electric amber. She makes out the vague shape of the power station on its island downriver. She can see the lines of the bridges, free of traffic at this late hour. An instant later, the blizzard surges anew, obscuring her vision.

  Verity realizes that Privya is expecting an answer. “You are saying,” she offers, slowly, “that I shouldn’t help her. Whatever it is she wants me for.”

  “I’m saying you’re not Alethea.” Privya’s grip is still securely on Brian, who staggers slightly. The storm continues to whirl, touched by dragons. “Alethea told me she walked in a maelstrom, and I tried to understand. I can see it more with you, though. The little tics—the way you twitch. I can’t always feel the wind, but I can see you brace against it. You’re not as strong as she was. And Jihan is even less sane than before. I’m terrified the two of you will implode the whole planet. So you can see the stakes are pretty high here. Come on, just a little further.”

  Verity wraps her arms around herself. Swallowing the taste of iron, she follows Privya and Brian. She glances once behind, but the snow has obscured the shore. She has the sense she is much farther from solid ground than she might like. “Jihan wrote my name and then she cut me. She hasn’t asked me for anything.”

  “Maybe she forgets. Maybe there isn’t enough of her left. Either way, it’s like this: Jihan’s way was almost the apocalypse, for everyone. Doing nothing—well, this might be our last chance to do anything. The Chalice doesn’t fill itself often. Its power is less every time. We are less every time. So let’s say, do nothing, and we’re dead. The last of us will wither. I was immortal once. Now I wake in the mornings and I feel hollow and old. Okay, here. We’re far enough, I think.” Privya tugs at Brian’s arm and the tall man obligingly stops. When he turns, his hair is solid, his features immobile; beneath his hood, his face has acquired a cool translucence, as though he himself were made of winter.

  Verity stares a beat longer than she means to, then attempts to huddle closer in her coat and remembers to answer Privya. “So you don’t want me to help her and you don’t want me to not help her.”

  “There’s another option. It’s not anything you’ll like. It’s not anything we like. It’s just the only choice left.” Privya has none of Brian’s icy opalescence, though her black hair is frosted at the tips with clinging snowflakes. She adjusts her hat as she turns in a slow circle, gazing at the storm and the diving dragons. She unzips her coat; she is wearing an orange cardigan that’s slightly too long for her, over black corduroy pants and heeled boots that lace halfway up her calves. Verity notices she is not wearing gloves. It doesn’t seem to bother the girl, whose hands are steady as she shrugs the coat away, letting it fall to the ice as she drops her hat with it and pushes up the sleeves of her sweater. “Here’s good.”

  Brian moves stiffly, a hypothermic marionette who tilts his head to look down at the snow drifti
ng across the blackness of the river ice. Verity inhales the crisp scent of pine and isn’t certain whether it’s the man or the storm. “Wait.” She tries to speak quickly. She feels the syllables clinging sloppily to her frozen lips. “What’s the other option? Don’t—”

  “It’s okay. Right now, we’re doing something else. The way our people are struggling, most of them won’t make it to the Chalice—even with your Colin helping. Bri, you’re doing great. Just over here. Yeah.” Privya fishes in her pocket with one hand, and jerks her chin toward the hidden bridges. “Vee, you know what’s down there? I know it’s hard to see just now.”

  “Islands. The bridges.” Verity speaks slowly. She pushes hair out of her face and gazes at the wall of slowly circling whiteness. “Parliament Hill on the right. Gatineau on the left. The art gallery.”

  “Closer. That way. On the water.”

  The rushing rumble is low but steady. Verity frowns and feels it slide from her like green from a first leaf. “The waterfall,” she offers, hesitantly. “Or its ghost. Tamed. It curves like a hoof print in the river.”

  “Yeah, it’s right over there. Don’t worry—I think this is as close as we’re getting. Look, we debated about what to show you tonight, but I made that mistake with Alethea: trying to protect her. I’m showing you everything I can. Brian, how’s it coming?” Privya’s hair is gathering flakes of white that drift to her shoulders and sleeves. A dragon darts from the blizzard and circles her twice, fragile wings flapping. Its iridescent scales are uneven, marred by scars, and she sends it a tense smile before it darts away.

  Brian is rigid and brittle beneath the odd normalcy of his winter clothing. His formerly pasty features now glitter in the very faint light that manages to penetrate the whirling snow. If it weren’t for the deliberate steadiness of his movements, he would look as if someone had put a scarf on an ice sculpture. He kneels and places the palm of his hand on the frozen river.

  “Don’t move,” advises Privya.

  Verity doesn’t.