In Veritas

by C. J. Lavigne

The ice in front of Brian gives, not with a gunshot crack this time, but with a hissing bubble as it vomits a cloud of steam into the air and melts away, leaving a neatly-edged hole in a slightly skewed circle. Verity feels the mist of it on her skin, a lukewarm drizzle that turns to pinpricks of frost across her cheeks and inside her nose.

  Verity takes an involuntary step backward, but Privya says, “We’re okay,” and another dragon—a different one, Verity is fairly sure, this one with pigeon feathers just edging its wings—swoops its way gleefully into the hole and up again.

  The river is a steady rushing now; in the hole, it froths against the foot of ice that edges it. In the night, it is bottomless. Verity can feel its merciless wriggle through her bones. She wraps her arms around herself and looks futilely back toward the shore she cannot see.

  “I said don’t move.” Privya’s voice is a little sharper this time, though she softens it when she adds, “Brian keeps everything safe for us where we’re standing. I can’t make guarantees if you wander off.”

  “I—I still don’t know what we’re doing.” Verity looks at Brian, but the man hasn’t shifted. He crouches there, his knees in the snow and his palms on the ice, his flesh indistinguishable from frost.

  “I wanted you to see a little of what it used to be like, back when we had a place in the world.” Privya, too, crouches at the edge of the river hole, facing the storm-lost bridges. Ill-dressed in her bright sweater, she nevertheless keeps her sleeves pushed to the elbows. She looks young again, the wind tugging loose strands of her hair, her bones delicate beneath dusky skin. She is pulling things from her pockets and laying them beside her: a folded penknife, a tiny glass tequila bottle, a sprig of something unseasonably green placed just under the anchoring weight of her knee. “Alethea always wanted to know things. Are you so different?”

  Verity looks at the slim figure of the girl in the blackness, and she finds herself unexpectedly wishing for the dog, or Jacob, or blue eyes and the spread of tattered feathers. But there is only the circle of blowing snow, filled with dragons.

  Privya waits through the next few beats, then nods once and focuses her attention on the gleam of dark water. She picks up the knife and folds it open carefully, dextrous despite the cold. “Like I said, the Chalice is filling; there’s energy in this city for the taking, for the few of us who remember how. It’s the only reason your angel isn’t dead yet, though I doubt if he realizes it. It’s how Brian can give us a little privacy tonight. Now. I met a man several weeks ago—just an average man, not one of us, but I learned some things I hadn’t thought about before. Down this river are the falls, and past the falls there are power collection stations. Do you know how a power plant works?”

  “Not really.” Verity tilts her head, frowning. She can feel the energy if she thinks about it—the same harsh vibration she gets from Jacob’s computers, pulling, circling, somewhere out of sight.

  Privya waves a hand. “The water turns some turbines, and—honestly that’s all I had from him that I could process. Outsider science will suck the years from my veins if I let it. Of course it works. A million people in this city know it. They don’t give it a second thought. But there are things we can do here, where no one notices.” Knife now held in her right hand, she turns her left palm up and calmly nicks the blade across the ball of her thumb—not deeply, but enough for a line of blood to bloom there and pool between her fingers. In the darkness, it too is black.

  Verity inhales rotting cranberry and the slide of something long and warm across the backs of her calves. “What are you doing?”

  Brian, undisturbed, continues to kneel. Verity has the impression he is holding the ice still beneath them.

  “Setting starlight in opposition to steel. It’s not enough—it won’t last forever, but it will hold for a time. There are too many people around us who wouldn’t believe that this works. Is ‘believe’ the right word? Alethea never quite liked it.” Privya fishes the sprig of improbably green herb from the snow and lays it across her bleeding palm, then reaches down for the little tequila bottle. She unscrews its lid with one hand and something blooms to tiny glowing life within the glass.

  “It’s ... furry,” says Verity after a short pause. “Vague against the top of my mouth. Things are possible or they are not; I don’t think it’s a matter of faith.”

  “True. There’s a whole city here full of people who know that the river runs, and power comes from the river, then something makes electricity.” Privya’s face is smooth in the whirling dimness. “I, on the other hand, know that lightning is balanced with blood and sage and—” she pauses to spit downward— “water, and starlight. There are a hundred and sixteen uses for sage, by the way. I hope to share them with you someday.”

  The blizzard falters momentarily; Verity sees the glitter of the downtown core and, above, a sliver of moon obscured by a dragon’s wing. She takes a half step forward. “Wait—”

  “No.” Privya tilts the little bottle and pours what looks like a trickle of glowing sand into the ice hole. She drops the sage at the same time and curls her left hand into a fist over the water, letting blood drip. Taking up the knife again, she cuts with savage precision into her own flesh. Blood gushes anew, running down her wrist and racing along the inside of her forearm, tracing oddly glittering golden lines before staining the edges of her sleeve.

  Later, Verity will say there was a flash, but she will falter on the word, and make a sour-lemon face before she explains that she felt a flash, a glissando of sugar and insect wings that briefly made her blink. She did, she will add hesitantly, taste a hint of sage.

  Nothing visibly happens. The river runs on. Privya keeps her fist outstretched, and her blood streams eagerly; some splashes messily at the edge of the ice, freezing in abstract patterns, though most drips into the water and is swept away. The wind catches stray droplets and flings them in the air. A dragon flits gleefully through and away, spattered in a fine dark mist.

  Brian moves, finally—he throws his head back, both hands slapping down hard, and he draws in a breath that crackles in his chest. Verity is reminded of cubes being freed from a tray.

  “It’s okay, Bri. You can let the snow go now. Just don’t let us fall in the river.” Privya squeezes her fist, lowering it to the knee of her jeans. The blood has slowed but still runs, staining the denim. Her voice is strained but calm. She is looking toward the bridges that glitter between now-uneven gusts of snow. “Vee, you asked about the other option. When Jihan came, all those years ago—her idea of a door out was new. The Chalice’s power has been used at many points in human history, but never for escape. We use it for survival.”

  Verity watches the word ‘survival’ pass in front of her as though carved with a scalpel. Its crimson settles in the stains on Privya’s hands.

  Verity ventures, “I don’t understand.”

  “I know. Watch, though.” Privya pushes her sleeves back down to her wrists and sits back on her heels, now squeezing her wounded arm tightly with the opposite hand. Sweat beads on her upper lip.

  Brian mirrors her posture, sucking in another rattling-cold breath as some of the hoarfrost fades from his skin. The ice on the river groans but holds as the slow cyclone of snow lowers and drifts to a light dusting, revealing again the lights of the city—the tall buildings on either shore, and the graceful sweep of the bridges. Above, the crescent moon seems to have grown brighter.

  Privya notes, “It might not have been necessary—the snow, I mean, but better safe, and thank you, my dear. Waning as we all are, I can only work when they don’t know what I’m doing. It should be any—”

  Verity sees the city die.

  Not literally. I know, Vee.

  She feels part of the omnipresent weight of it lift from her shoulders—a frenetic, constant energy goes suddenly still. It is not dramatic; there is no sound, no explosion, no earthquake. The lights simply go out in Ottawa’s downtown core. The great clock tower at Parliament Hill vanishes and takes the copper gree
n roof of the Château Laurier with it. The nearer bridge goes dark, and then the farther. In a wave, the lights die, east and north and south. Verity whirls; behind her, she sees offices and streetlights blinking out. She can see the headlights of cars as they slow, and the red of their confused brakes, inconsequential as fireflies.

  It is, thinks Verity with mild amazement, wonderfully quiet.

  “Ahhhhhhhhhh.” Privya’s exhale is low and soft; her shoulders straighten as she, too, is divested of some great burden. She is only a shape now, illuminated by pale moonlight.

  Verity realizes the dragons have gone.

  Someone touches her elbow; she shivers past the gravel feel of it and turns her head, startled to find Brian there. The tall man has mostly reverted to pallid humanity, though ice crystals remain in his uncombed hair and his eyes are glittering white.

  “The river’s restless now. I can’t keep us safe much longer.”

  “Right,” says Privya. “Let’s head back.” She pushes herself up with a tired groan; for a moment, she wavers at the edge of the ice hole, but when Verity would dart forward, Brian is still at her elbow, pulling her back.

  “Don’t touch her.”

  “Stay back.”

  The two snap simultaneously; Verity freezes in confusion, and it seems to her that Privya’s eyes are briefly bloody, a sullen red that flickers like the brake lights of the cars on shore.

  “Walk with me,” says Brian, more gently, and he tugs Verity with him, back toward shore. “Privya’s cranky when she’s tired. I, on the other hand, am a saint.”

  Verity wants to tell Brian not to exaggerate—that she almost misses a step because of it, the hyperbole slippery and yellow under her boot—but she didn’t expect the man to sound kind, and she is re-orienting herself against a city that has dropped several unexpected decibels in her mouth. She says, blankly, “You broke the hydroelectricity?”

  “I poisoned the well,” says Privya behind her, low-voiced and uncharacteristically hoarse. “Don’t turn around. Keep walking. But yes, there are things we can do in the dark, in the moments when our truth is strongest. It won’t hold. It’ll buy our people a little time. Is it the same for you as for us? Do you have more room to breathe?”

  “It’s cold,” says Verity. “People need heat.”

  “They’ll live.”

  The lie slides down Verity’s cheek and she shakes her head, but before she can object, Privya has already amended, “Most of them.” There is no regret in her correction. “I said don’t turn around.”

  Verity, faltering, doesn’t. “Is this what you mean by using the Chalice for survival? You’re going to hurt people.”

  “Jihan would have run instead. But we have always fought back.”

  Verity says, quietly, “You mean war.”

  “It’s always war—even now, when we scurry in the walls like rats. It’s a war the other side doesn’t know about and wouldn’t believe in if it did. But there are times, like I said, in history, when we have had power to push back. The Black Death. The Plague of Justinian. The bodies that lay in the streets of Athens, or Marseilles. The Chalice can be a weapon you help me wield. It seems cruel, I know—it is cruel—but when there are fewer of them, that leaves more air for us, more space in this world. If this is our last chance, we haven’t been fighting hard enough. We need that to change.”

  “How else do we survive?” Brian’s voice is bitter. “If we tell them that we exist, that we suffer, they laugh and say we’ve heard too many children’s stories. We scream and they do nothing.”

  “They’re innocent.” Verity wishes Brian’s hand weren’t under her elbow, but the guidance makes it easier to navigate the words littering the otherwise empty ice. On the shore, she sees a single light, small and white, turn in their direction. A dog barks.

  Privya is still somewhere just behind, just close enough that Verity itches between her shoulder blades. “So are the people dying in that theatre. Remember that Alethea tried to be noble; the Chalice was wasted, and a city fell. So did she. Shhh—keep walking. I’d say Shauna’s ready for us.”

  Verity’s eyes are starting to adjust to the sudden blackness of the city, but the white light shines into her face as she approaches, and she lifts her free hand in squinting protest. The dog barks again. She can see it, a small creature wriggling at the feet of two figures who wait at the shore. One of them is holding a flashlight. The light dies, and a man’s unfamiliar voice curses genially as he shakes it back to life. “Sorry, this damn thing—well, the whole city’s broken tonight, isn’t it? Are you okay? Your friend said one of you is sick?”

  “Me,” says Privya, before Verity can answer. “Thank you so much.” It tastes like raw meat, but when Verity would turn, Brian tugs at her again, implacable.

  “You folks really shouldn’t be out on the ice.” The man plays his flashlight across the DANGER sign in demonstration, then steps over the barrier at the edge of the walkway, leaning down the bank and extending a hand. “I have a car. Let’s get you to a doctor.” His other hand holds the flashlight and, Verity sees now, the leash of his indeterminately furred companion. Behind him, Shauna stands with her thick arms folded, her features indistinct.

  Verity does not entirely follow everything that happens next: the way Privya brushes past, feather-light and swift, hands outstretched, or the way the flashlight plays across the girl’s stumbling form. She has the abrupt impression that Privya’s fingers have gone thin and brittle as winter twigs, and that the light illuminating Privya’s hair plays across hints of bare scalp and streaks of white and grey among the blackness of her now-untidy bun. Verity thinks of indescribable weightlessness, a power worn to bone, and dreams of navy and starlit eyes, but Privya has no wings—only hands that reach forward and up, twisting in claws before the flashlight dies a final time and the riverbank, too, is plunged into night.

  The dog whimpers.

  There is a heavy crunch as a body hits snow.

  Brian lets Verity go. It takes her a moment to realize she is released, and even then she only stands. The night is cold in her chest. She can see her breath frost.

  “Vee,” says Privya, mildly. “Come on.” She sounds herself again, young and unbothered.

  Verity’s boots crunch as she steps slowly toward the bank. Closer, she sees Privya crouched before a goose-fleshed, loose-faced man in his middle years. His thinning hair is brown, streaked with grey, and badly combed over. He is wearing a beige overcoat over flannel pyjama bottoms and furred winter boots. He has fallen at the river’s edge and slid to a stop, half-sitting. A line of drool runs from his half-parted lips to streak his chin, and he stares straight ahead, eyes rolling very slightly in his head.

  He is still holding the leash. Above him at the railing, the dog whines.

  Privya turns her head to look at Verity, and her eyes are feral even in the dimness. She has gained a new sharpness to her movements; when she rises, she cleaves the air. Her teeth flash. Verity thinks of Santiago’s Cheshire smile and misses the snake.

  “What did you do?” She keeps her voice a whisper and hears it waver.

  “What I had to. Let’s go.”

  But Verity has stepped to the man on the ground; she leans down, putting her hand on his shoulder. His muscles are slack beneath her palm. In the chill night, he is boneless and warm.

  “I know,” Privya says, standing with arms folded. “It sucks.” The regret is gentle in her tone, but Verity sees the cheap veneer of it chip and crackle in the air between them. “It’s like I just said. This is war.”

  “Will he recover?”

  “No.” Privya exchanges a glance with Shauna. “I promised not to lie to you. I wanted you to see everything—every part of tonight. You have to know what war means. But you can’t help this guy, and you can’t make it better. We really do have to go.”

  Tasting lime and ashes, Verity straightens, wiping her palm on her thigh as though some residue clings there. She looks down at the drooling man as he twitches,
his head rolling forward and then flopping to the left. She says, quietly, “This isn’t okay.”

  “Nothing is. Nothing has been in a very long time.”

  “We don’t like it either,” adds Shauna. Above her, Brian nods; he has leaned down to scoop up the dog, holding it tucked under his arm as it whines. Shauna moves around Verity and reaches up to the railing, hauling herself up the bank and over. “We need Privya, though. I’d really like to live past forty.”

  “It’s worse for everyone if I don’t take some of them,” says Privya, accepting Shauna’s hand up. She scrambles lightly in the snow. “I wish it weren’t, but it is. Come on. We’ll explain as much as you want.”

  “We shouldn’t leave him here.” Verity kneels next to the stranger. She touches his forehead with one gloved hand. Above, the dog growls and wriggles in Brian’s grasp.

  Privya hisses between her teeth, but she only stands with her feet braced and her arms close around her body. “You can’t help him.”

  “I can take care of it,” offers Shauna. “Borrow your knife, Priv?”

  Verity says, sharply, “No.” The stranger’s right eye rolls to the white.

  Brian shrugs. “It’d be kinder.”

  He is not necessarily wrong. Verity filters through layers of grey, and shakes her head, clearing the wisps decisively from her hair. “No,” she says again. And, “We shouldn’t leave him. He’ll freeze.”

  “What would you have us do? Call a doctor? What would you tell them?” Privya shakes her head. “He’s one person, and you should balance that against the ones in the walls. We just bought your idiot angel’s life. I won’t excuse how it was done. I don’t think you expect me to. That’s all Alethea ever wanted: the truth.”

  Verity wipes at the man’s lips with the end of her scarf before his saliva can freeze on his skin. Crouching, she looks up at the three figures above her and hesitates. Finally, she says, “I’ll stay with him. You should go.”

  Privya’s sigh is explosive this time. “Vee—”

  “I just—I have to think about it. I don’t know what—you should go.”