In Veritas

by C. J. Lavigne

  Immediately, Verity shifts to block Jacob’s view of the street and the angel. “Don’t look,” she demands, and his eyebrows furrow.

  The circling wind pulls at Verity’s hair, and the storm strengthens. Several struggling patchwork spots of sunlight are obscured in a flurry of snow and tiny claws. The city dims. Covering Jacob’s eyes with her hand, she looks back to see the angel’s glow brightening.

  In that space of breath where the blizzard struggles to coalesce, several things happen.

  Jihan is the one who moves first. From her half-crouch in the trampled, bloody yard, she slices toward the foot of the townhouse’s wooden stairs.

  An instant later, Brian cries out—a ragged shout of triumph that tastes to Verity like sweat and cayenne. The sound is nearly obscured by a crack of ice both sudden and sinuous. A strand of ice pries itself loose from the walkway, shards twisting together and weaving themselves in bloodied frost. Brian gestures sharply, and the ice spear launches itself toward Jacob and Verity. It looks so much like a striking snake that for one panicked instant, Verity thinks Ouroboros has betrayed them.

  Verity grabs Jacob’s shirt with both hands and shoves him from the spear’s path, blocking his body with hers. He’s too tall. His arms go around her seemingly by instinct, though he, too, is making a sound that starts with a grunt and is probably the beginning of a question. She feels his weight press down on her, and she braces herself, boots sliding against the rough wood of the old porch. Trying to wrench them both aside before winter impales her spine, she whips a frantic look at the street.

  The storm tastes like panic. She sees snow and rolling fog. Her hair is in her face. Colin is glowing, and in the stillness of his light, Verity catches a glimpse of clarity. The world quiets and slows.

  Privya has grabbed at Brian’s chill arm—too late, it seems, to stop the spear of ice from launching toward the porch. She is staring at Verity, and her eyes are wide and ringed with white.

  Jihan is more than halfway up the stairs; her face is streaked with splatters of blood. Knife in hand, she has angled herself so as to slam sideways into the spear of ice, timed just so; she cracks it with one remorseless elbow and twists to the side, driving her knife into Brian’s flashing, frozen weapon so that the ice spear splinters, a chunk snapping off to the side. Flying ice stings Verity’s cheek.

  She sees Santiago emerge from the edges of the storm, where he has been making his way along the houses at the other side of the street. He takes three long strides toward Privya. He holds one hand low, curled around something hidden. Simultaneously, the dog Ouroboros breaks away from Jihan’s side and bolts across the snow-covered pavement, darting toward Brian and Privya from the other direction.

  Across the street, Privya turns just in time to raise an arm, partially deflecting the rock that Santiago has clutched in his fist. It sends her staggering backward, away from Brian, as Ouroboros hurls toward the small of her back. The girl grimaces, knocked to her knees. Brian still stands, stiff as the ice statue he now resembles, one hand stretched toward the porch and his features gone to frost within the hood of his coat.

  On the porch, Verity manages, “Thank you,” but she is hardly stunned when Jihan ignores her; the taller woman steps to the top of the staircase, leaving the bloody ice spear broken behind her, its body still arcing like an ice bridge from the pavement. It is momentarily static, but at its base, the snow ripples inward.

  Jacob groans in Verity’s ear, his hands moving to grip her shoulders as he gathers his feet under himself. “What,” he says, and she is grateful when the press of him alleviates, though he slides as if on ocean waves, lifting and then slipping down on her again. The gash at his hairline has dripped crimson lines to his chin.

  “Careful—” Verity isn’t entirely certain how she intends to end that, but Jacob isn’t listening; Jihan has grabbed his chin, lifting his head, smearing his face with his own blood and the gore of her sticky hand.

  Jacob straightens, enough that Verity can see his eyes roll, then settle into focus on Jihan. Confusion pulls the line between his eyebrows, and then something like wonder glimmers on his face, innocent and utterly surprised. “What,” he says again. It’s an invocation now.

  Verity is still responsible for half of Jacob’s balance, and she can feel the way his breath stops in his chest before sucking in one great gasp. She can taste Jihan like smoke, and Jihan’s bloody fingers, cloaked in granite death. For half a heartbeat, the mad mirrors of Jihan’s eyes reflect Jacob’s, but then she drops her hand and takes one step to the right, a single sharp wave directing his attention to the street behind her.

  “No!” Verity moves to cover Jacob’s eyes again; Jihan, without looking, grabs her wrist, immovable and implacable as stone. Jihan is watching Jacob, who, puzzled, is obligingly peering at the mess past his front steps.

  Beneath Jacob’s gaze, the surge of snow at the ice spear’s base quells instantly, a gust of white flakes that scatters in the next bitter breeze. Verity feels Jacob stiffen at the sight of bodies littering the walkway and the bloody marks trampled in the storm; she squeezes her free arm around him, and his fingers tighten on her shoulder, but his attention is all for the massacre in his front yard. His line of sight crosses Brian, at whose motionless feet Privya struggles with black shadows.

  “Don’t look—” Verity is yanked back; Jihan’s iron grip pulls her away, and then Jihan herself has stepped in, sliding her arm around Jacob, keeping him upright. Jacob apparently doesn’t notice; he is still staring. Verity twists a frantic glance back over her shoulder to see Privya on the ground kicking her booted foot. Though Privya is small, Santiago goes flying, thrown back ten feet against the wooden siding of the duplex directly across from Jacob’s townhouse. Privya rolls, ripping at the long snake that now coils around her; she wraps her fingers around Ouroboros, just below its head, and pries its jaws away from her shoulder. Pushing to her knees in the snow, she holds the snake away left-handed, ignoring the inky coils still squeezing around her.

  Brian is nearly solid ice—his hand is outstretched toward the porch, and beneath the winter wool of his coat, his eyes are white and spiked with hoarfrost. Ice grays his skin and hides his eyebrows; where his hood has fallen back, his hair is locked in sculpted waves of snow. Verity can just taste the cold lime of Brian’s consternation at the fractured ice spear; snow-covered asphalt stretches between them, but Verity is certain she sees Brian’s fingers curl slightly inward, conjuring some new weapon.

  Verity lunges back toward Jacob, but Jihan’s hand blocks her again, bloody and impassable, holding her at bay. Jihan’s attention is fixed on Jacob; as his confused gaze falls on Brian, Brian’s frosted fingers tremble and stiffen. Around them all, the storm hesitates, drawing back like the receding tide in the moment before the waves crash in.

  Verity can’t see any dragons, though the memory strikes her, abruptly, of a sad beast that became a pigeon and died.

  Across the street, beneath Jacob’s stunned regard, Brian goes still. To Verity, he is suddenly pure: the pillar of him smells of ice, tastes of ice, sends a winter frisson across the skin. The wind tugs at the hood of his coat, but beneath the fringe of fur, his face is carved and perfect. In the break of the storm, a hint of sunlight highlights the inhuman translucence of his cheekbone.

  Santiago, shaking his head, is just staggering to his feet, the side of the townhouse splintered behind him.

  Privya makes a sound that tastes like the bloody ice spear breaking. She is still forcing away the snake, her thin arm against its inky rippling, but she betrays no strain, only holding the shifting reptile away from her throat. She flashes a single look toward the porch—across the bloody street and the fallen bodies of her people. Her eyes scorch Verity’s skin. “Hey!” she spits—it might as well be acid. Verity instinctively raises a hand, ducking.

  It isn’t Verity whose attention Privya calls, though. She waits for Jacob’s puzzled horror. She offers him her best flash of teeth. Then, beneath the fall
of his gaze, she sets both hands to the writhing Ouroboros and cracks its neck.

  The snake goes limp. Privya drops it. She makes entirely sure that Jacob sees it die.

  Santiago makes no sound. Verity hears it clearly.

  Vee? A little help here?

  a noise that was silent i dont know how to tell you

  Try. I’m going to get this one wrong.

  loneliness laced in the wings of a dead dragon. a desert weeping

  As Ouroboros falls to limp coils, the magician also drops bonelessly, another puddle of ebony in the snow. His fingers spasm as though he might claw his way into the ground.

  Simultaneously, a crumpled form on the sidewalk shudders, jerking upward with back arched from where he had fallen across a dead woman’s chest. His eyes are electrified, staring at the sky, at nothing; his wings flare ragged and impossible from under his coat, and Verity is stunned—how did she forget about Colin—but he was so brittle and silent. Now she sees Santiago’s agony rip the very last of the light from his bones.

  She is afraid she is seeing the moment when his heart stops. It slices through her as surely as the memory of the knife.

  “What,” says Jacob again, this time tinted with sugared wonder, and Verity feels the air slacken with his next inhalation. Too late, she thinks again to push herself in front of him, shoving her hand at his eyes and her body between man and angel.

  Perfectly timed, Jihan takes one pace back, descending a step from the porch, not bothering to look away or behind herself. As she does, she releases her hold on Jacob, who huffs out his lungful of air and sways once before sagging against Verity. When Verity can’t hold the sudden flour-and-sun weight of him, he slides back down to the porch, long legs splaying.

  “Are you in a gang?” There’s blood on Jacob’s lips. It still drips from his hair. His voice is both incredulous and blurred.

  “You should—” go inside, she wants to tell him, because it is safer and because his solidity is jarring in the midst of the snow-winged storm. She wants to break him apart. She wants to hold him in her cupped palms. The snow struggles less when his eyes flutter shut, but the storm is already dying.

  Verity keeps a hand on Jacob’s shoulder and turns, crouched on the wooden porch.

  Colin’s wings are mostly hidden now, just poking out from within the folds of his massive coat, but his body slumps over the still-prone form of the woman he failed to save. Verity feels the last of his gleaming settle in her pulse, but she can see only the shattered line of him. He is broken glass, a pile of dried leaves, the husk of a long-dead insect.

  The snow is abating; the dragons have gone. Verity watches the wall of white fade and sees a curtain twitch at a window two houses down. Privya still kneels, now at Brian’s iced feet, grasping futilely at the coat that wraps the frigid statue that was once a man. The dead snake lies like a coil of rope. Santiago is a fallen mass of black behind them. Bodies are scattered across the frozen street.

  Jihan has descended to the foot of the stairs and stands there crimson-spattered, vital fluids caked on her clothing and the smooth steel of her braid. Her blood-wet hands are empty. For an instant, her eyes meet Verity’s and there is almost—maddeningly, almost something—there, behind the blankly uncaring mirrors of her irises. It shifts, this hint of consciousness, primordial and flinty and terrifyingly alone. Verity finds herself reaching out a hand, but then Jihan’s attention (such as it is) slides away, gliding once across Jacob’s leggy form before she turns her head and stalks toward Colin.

  “Fine.” Privya’s voice is flat and low, and somehow carries across the sudden stillness of the street.

  It isn’t fine. The word slices into Verity, just between her third and fourth vertebrae, a blank whiteness punctuated by a low, directionless moan. Verity isn’t certain if it’s someone in pain or the last remnants of the wind.

  Verity freezes, struck, but Privya is already continuing: “This was desperate and stupid. Save them.” She pushes herself to her feet, heedless of the blood or the cold or her ragged skirt, and lets go of Brian’s stiff hand. Watching Colin struggle, she snarls, “Save Brian, at least. It can’t be too late.”

  Colin’s wings shiver beneath the folds of his coat as he braces himself against the chest of the dead woman before him. He doesn’t answer Privya; he doesn’t even turn to look at her. The breath that shudders through him might as easily tear him apart.

  “He can’t.” Verity is the one who speaks. “More will kill him.” The knowledge is clear and certain, though the words are cold on her tongue. The fire in the storm has abated, leaving her with memory scorched across her skin. “The storm—people will see you. A car will come. Someone will be calling the police. Colin, your coat....”

  Jihan is already there. She drops to one knee, scoops Colin up in one smooth motion, and stands easily again. He makes as if to cling to the body on the ground, one hand grasping. He might choke a denial. One of his wings trails. He curls into Jihan, then, pressing his face to the no-longer-pink sweatshirt that leaves gobs of crimson smeared across his skin.

  “These are your people too,” snarls Privya. Verity thinks that Privya might leap forward—her eyes are wild and her teeth bared—but the girl looks hard at Jihan before she moves, circling wide, toward the nearest living form: Shauna, dusted with snow, just stirring in a bloodied pile. “These are her people too!” She’s talking to Verity now. “These were all I had. They gave everything they had to stop her.” Reaching the half-animated form of Shauna on the ground, she leans down, grasping the stockier woman by the shoulder. Her hands are more solicitous than the tabasco of her tone. Shauna is shaking her head, hands pushed flat on the red and white ground.

  Jihan ignores Privya completely. Still holding Colin, she has half-turned to look away down the street where the lights of the distant intersection are becoming visible, the fading scatter of white flakes pulling back like a curtain.

  Verity twists to look at Jacob, who lies with his eyes closed; she can see the steady rise and fall of his chest, so she pushes herself to her feet and picks her way down the steps. Two of them are cracked. “This was a plan? Just ... to fight in the street?” She walks toward Privya, carefully, but her path is winding; she needs to find her way around bodies. The staring eyes of the boy in camouflage are a jangle that stays with her after she has stepped past.

  “Do you think that’s what we wanted? I—I have had armies at my call. Assassins in the night. These are the last dregs of a dying people. I told them not to, but they were set in their course. Shauna, we have to go.” Privya tugs gently but insistently at Shauna’s arm and glares across several feet of trampled slush to where Jihan now stands cradling Colin. The other woman is merely holding still, a waterfall of fabric and feathers cascading over her arm and down the side of one leg. “We’re reduced to this, you and I. Stupid brute force. Do you even know me anymore? The monster I try not to be? The monster I would hurl at you if I could. Bring him over and save someone. Or come at me.”

  Verity sees lemongrass and the edges of sharp teeth closing. She wonders about the past and its secret ghosts. She half thinks Jihan will simply eviscerate Privya and leave her bleeding out on the ground with everyone else. She breathes the fragility of a moment.

  Something twitches across Jihan’s aquiline features. She nearly looks at Privya.

  Santiago, still on the ground, whimpers. It winds around Verity’s wrist like the memory of the broken snake.

  Half a breath later, the statue of Brian cracks, a jagged lightning line carving itself through his features. His outstretched arm breaks and falls off, held in the sleeve of his parka, dangling heavily. Privya doesn’t make any sound, but her lips go pale and thin. She pulls at Shauna again, this time in a short, smooth motion that lifts the larger woman to her feet and holds her there while she finds her balance on uncertain legs. Leaving Shauna, Privya walks back to Brian and looks up. She traces a finger across the line that now bisects the ice of his features, leaving a copper-pi
nk stain where she touches. Turning toward Jihan and Colin again, she is slim, proud, her skirt covered in blood. She might be a teenaged girl except for the exhausted rage of her stare. “Dangerous,” she says. “Useless. The two of you are quite a pair. Do you see what they’ve done, for fear of you?”

  Jihan only stands with her broken armful, gaze drifting over the rigid and shattered Brian; she half-turns to scan the porch where Jacob lies. She doesn’t acknowledge groaning bodies or Privya’s slender fury. She does pause to look at Verity. Her gaze is both nothingness and gaping maw. The ghost of a woman that was screams silently behind her eyes. Then she nods. It’s the barest incline of her head.

  Verity almost wonders if the gesture is imagined, but it prickles between her ribs, and she shudders. “You should,” she begins, but Jihan has already turned away. If she is not precisely solicitous of the angel she holds, she is at least smooth. She walks unerringly toward the east and the last dying flurries of snow.

  Privya’s glare presses on Verity with the dulled weight of centuries. “You could have stopped this. You could have joined us.”

  “I—I haven’t joined anyone.” Verity has to run her hands up her arms to brush away each clinging year. “People died. What you did at the river. This ... you attacked her. And Jacob.” She is trying to watch Privya and look past her at the same time, to where Santiago lies like he, too, had felt Jihan’s knife in his gut.

  “I couldn’t talk my people out of trying. I helped them as best I could. As far as that guy on the river ... there are billions of them, and what, two hundred of us? A hundred and fifty? How many made it to the city? We killed the power plant to let a few more of them live long enough to see the Chalice. I don’t regret it. I regret this—this stupid waste—but that’s all.”

  Verity runs her hands up and down her arms again, then shakes her head. “You,” she says slowly, “or her ... I don’t understand. I don’t know how to ‘choose,’ or what I’m supposed to do.”