by Faith Hunter
When the human was gone, he settled slowly to his severed feathers and lay face-first in the down. The smell of them was sweet, the remembered scent of freedom, of flight, of holiness. A state of grace he had thrown away, thinking it slavery, and now longed for as the perfect liberty. Because intense pain opened something in his mind, and was the only time he could reach them, he marshaled his thoughts and called to the seraphs. “Zadkiel. Amethyst,” he whispered.
“We are here,” they belled, their words and tones a sweet harmony.
“Little time has passed,” Zadkiel said, his emphasis on the second word. “How are you able to call again so soon?”
“It’s been over twenty-four hours,” he said, raising his head in alarm.
“Not here. Less than an hour,” Zadkiel said.
“How? Unless Forcas has found a way to dip into the river of time.”
“Danger,” Amethyst said, a paean of distress. “His plan is close to fruition.”
“Seal the covenant, then,” Barak said.
“You ask much,” Zadkiel said. “In return for our freedom we can promise to free you. That is acceptable.”
“Not enough,” Barak said, taking the chance he had been hoping for, waiting for. “I ask your oath, by feathers and fire, in the river of time and beyond. Your oath to intercede, to speak for me before the Most High, to seek a return of my seraphic gifts, transmogrification, a return of true seraphic power, a regifting of my place in the High Host of the Seraphim.”
“The time limit you propose is foul,” Amethyst moaned. “You ask perpetual intercession. Everlasting. Such has never been granted to the Fallen. And the Most High has never granted redemption to your kind for your sin.”
“This for your freedom,” Barak bargained. When they didn’t reply, he ground out, “Agreed then. For your freedom, I ask only your oath for intercession between the Most High and this Fallen one, such negotiation to last one decade in the river of time.”
“If the Most High does not consent, the Host may imprison you,” Zadkiel warned, “until the end of days.”
“I understand,” Barak said. “And I accept.”
Zadkiel breathed out in resignation. “Mate?”
“I agree to all he asks. I long for paradise.”
“Don’t we all,” Barak snarled. “You have been apart from the Most High, lost in the river of time on this accursed world, for a century, cherub. I have been lost for all of human history.”
Knowing their time was short, neither answered that it was his fault, his choice, his failure, and for that he was both resentful and grateful. Instead they belled together, “A covenant is sealed between me and thee.”
“A covenant is sealed between me and thee,” he said in return. A covenant between seraphs of the Light and one of the Allied, once an impossibility. “Who is this mage?”
“We have memories of her. We can share our knowledge. And perhaps we can show her to you,” she said.
“We shall try,” Zadkiel murmured.
A vision opened in his mind, of the surface of the world. The sun’s rays blazed across the sky in a golden wash. Snow, crusted and coarse, glistened with the light. A soft mist traveled across the ground, pale and white, touched with the brightness of the sun. It was winter. But his mind didn’t linger there, in the cold air and the sunlight, but swept with the swiftness of flight, down to a town, and inside a building made of stone.
Instantly the sweetness of winter was replaced with the heat of sex and mage. He focused on the woman, the magewarrior, her body radiant, scars shimmering brighter still. She stood before a sink, her hair loose and curled in a scarlet tangle, a worn wool robe belted over her. She wasn’t lovely. Wasn’t beautiful and perfect of form. But there was terrible strength to her, and a fragility as well. The dichotomy was arresting. Intriguing.
Water poured over her hands. Suddenly her head came up, nostrils flaring. In a burst of mage-speed, she raced to a window. His perspective moved with her and followed her gaze out into a street. Below her, standing on the snow, was a man, his face tortured with desire and need and the agony of . . . transmogrification. A kylen.
Barak remembered his sons, the children he had sired on the neomage he cherished. This being belongs to me. Speaking quietly, so softly that his breath barely brushed the feathers near his face, he said, “Zadkiel. Amethyst. A new bargain. I can bring unto us the mage. And gift to you a kylen as well. What would you give me for this?”
“A kylen?” the cherub belled. “One lives among men?”
“For you to keep such a one free breaks a covenant only now sealed. Are you not allied with the Light?” Zadkiel asked. “What game do you play here?”
“What game? Long, long ago, I was a member of the High Host. Then, a Watcher of men,” he said. “Tempted, I was lost from the Most High. Yet, in the War of Heaven, I fought with the troops of Michael. In the Last War for Earth, I was allied with the High Host fighting with the winged-warriors. Though I gave my body to be burned, I remain unredeemed, unforgiven. It is the way of my kind to renegotiate.” Barak smiled into the crook of his arm. In the hallway, the smell that caused his most recent sin grew. A mage had been placed nearby. Humans laughed.
Small red lights appeared in his irises. And began to grow.
Chapter 21
I rolled over, reaching for him, to find the sheets warm but empty. His smell was heated, comforting, and my body tired and at peace. Lucas wanted me back. How could he want me back? And how could I possibly be so stupid as to want him? So stupid as to spend the night with a cheat and a scoundrel? a wiser part of me asked. That was a question I couldn’t answer. He claims to be a changed man. I banished the tempting thought.
Once again, Audric didn’t come after me for savage-blade practice. Maybe bruises from real battles were as good as bruises from play battles. Stiff and sore, I rolled out of bed and got ready for the day.
Downstairs, Jacey and Rupert were standing at the remaining front window, staring out into the street, the aromas of coffee and tea strong on the air. Though it wasn’t yet ten, they were dressed for work in the back, as was common on Mondays, when the shop was closed. Spawn blood and broken glass had been cleaned up. From somewhere they had found plywood and covered the missing windows, which made the shop darker than usual. In the confusion that had followed the battle, I had forgotten the mess in the shop. They had done a mountain of work while I was elsewhere, working on the injured.
I stopped in the doorway to the stairwell and stared at them. They had to have heard me come down, yet neither turned. Something was up. “Morning,” I said.
“You missed Ciana. I walked her to school with Cissy,” Jacey said without looking my way.
“Oh. Sorry,” I said, trying to interpret her strange tone. Her body was tense, stiff. Something about the two made me wary. “I’ll catch her later.”
“We’ll continue to clean up in here. You can work in back today,” Rupert said, his back still turned.
I folded my arms, sensing a scheme to keep me out of sight. “Why?”
“Did you reset that thing you did last night, to protect the shop? During the battle?” she asked. “That shield that glowed?”
The ward. Oops. No, I was too busy having really good makeup sex with my ex-husband. But I didn’t say it. And I remembered that I still had to find out how Ciana got through the ward without an explosion, and where the energies went when Jacey and Polly walked out. “No. Why?”
“After you risked your life fighting for the town, and healed the survivors, someone paid us a visit,” Rupert said, his shoulders hunched, voice bitter. “They left a little warning.”
I walked across the shop and peered between them. Swathes of red paint marked the unbroken glass. Grabbing Rupert’s new blue cloak from the coatrack, I went into the cold. During the night someone had painted slogans on the walls. DIE MAGE WHORE. DIE MANLOVERS. DIE UNBELIEVERS. It wasn’t very original, but it got the point across. Rupert’s cloak dragging in the slick slush,
I turned in a slow circle and surveyed the street.
The road had been plowed, something the town fathers did only rarely, as snow-el-mobiles and horses could navigate over most anything, and cleaning out the accumulated snow several times a week wasn’t practical. The asphalt was scorched in places: large circular spots, where humans had battled behind barricades; smaller areas where flamethrowers had melted the snow and singed the road; where the seraph had stood or walked. Smoke blew down Upper Street in gusts, reeking of charred spawn. Windows up and down the street were boarded over. Only ours had been decorated with slogans.
I bunched the cloak in front of me and walked down the middle of the street, passing numerous townspeople: some I recognized from business, some from school years ago, some from kirk, some from my trial. Fewer from the fighting. None met my eyes. Not one.
He may not have actually said so, but Rupert was right. It wasn’t fair. There was an old saying among mages. Give humans your best and they’ll kick you in the teeth.
Fury and hurt welled up, a noxious brew in the back of my throat. I pulled the cloak tighter, feeling cold.
“Miz St. Croix?”
I turned to find Do’rise, Shamus Waldroup’s wife, behind me. The old woman wore the shapeless black dress of the orthodox, but with a white apron over it. The apron was embroidered with bright red strawberries, a pie with slits in the top through which steam escaped, and a blue-bird on a stem, an odd combination, but pretty. Her gray hair was in a bun and she was stooped, a widow’s hump rounding her back. She held out a long loaf of bread wrapped in paper. I caught the smell of yeast, hot and fresh over the scent of rancid smoke.
“You and your partners probably haven’t had time to eat this morning,” she said loudly. “It’s just out of the oven.” Softer, she said, “Shamus chased the kids away. The ones who did that.” She indicated the graffiti with a jerk of her head. “He’ll be speaking to their parents today. My husband would consider it a personal favor if you would accept their apologies when they make them. And attend the funeral.” At my blank look she said, “There’ll be a mass funeral for our dead tomorrow. You should be there.”
Funeral. Right. The town had lost citizens, elders, men, women, children. I blinked against a momentary image of a teenage girl being eaten in the street. I couldn’t seem to stop the words but I felt selfish and arrogant when I said, “Apologies don’t fix the hurt.”
“No,” she said gently. “But they are a step on the road to forgiveness.”
After a moment I heaved a breath in agreement, and Do’rise extended the loaf. Reluctantly, I accepted it. “Thank you for the healing,” she said, again speaking so her voice would carry. “Some fools haven’t realized that you saved the town when you called the seraph. And the ones who died in judgment did so because of their own sins and choices.”
Her piece said, the wife of the most powerful elder and most powerful town father turned and walked back into her shop and out of the icy morning. Only then did I notice that she hadn’t been wearing a coat. Flaunting the bright colors on her apron.
Smoke blew across my path, and I turned upwind, seeking its source. Keeping my mage-attributes hidden, I opened mage-sight, the extra cells in my retinas that humans lacked, allowing me to see creation energies. The town was a bright place, constructed mostly of brick, stone, and mortar, but the smoke that drifted through was tainted with Darkness. I followed the wind, and knew they still burned spawn near the Toe River that bisected the city.
Below my feet something caught my eye. Buried in the street, a part of the rocks, tar, and the frozen slush that was freezing into black ice, there was a dim shimmer forming a perfect circle. The contour incorporated Thorn’s Gems, the bakery, and large parts of Upper Street. Seraph stones. It was a seraph’s sigil, embedded in the earth.
The cloak tight against me, I rotated in a tight circle, trying to see what it said, or what it did. It was too weak for me to be certain, but it looked familiar, flames jutting toward the center. And then I knew. Cheriour had twice stood in the same place in the street, the first time after he judged me, when I was revealed as a mage before the town, and last night when he fought. I had never heard of a seraph leaving a copy of his sigil anywhere, but the Angel of Punishment had left his twice, once in the shop, on the display cabinet, and now in the street. I didn’t know what it meant, but I guessed it was a sign of a verdict, a legal ruling. It might not mean the town was doomed, but it gave me the willies.
I shook my head and spotted Romona Benson, the reporter for SNN, standing in front of the shop. In the last weeks, she had come by Thorn’s Gems several times, but Rupert had always managed to divert her before she could bother me. Now, unless I was willing to pull the cloak over my head and run like a scalded dog, I was going to have to speak to her.
Romona stood in the cold, arms crossed, one foot angled out. She looked haggard, hair mussed, no makeup, her clothes wrinkled as if she had slept in them, or hadn’t slept at all. Strangely telling, her cameraman was nowhere to be seen. Her back to the street, she was studying the slogans painted on the remaining shop-window glass. I stopped beside her, our reflections wavering in the glass.
“Imaginative little cusses, weren’t they?” she said. I said nothing, and after an uncomfortable pause, she went on. “I had a several times great-grandfather who was killed at Auschwitz. That was a place the Nazis killed Jews in one of the World Wars.” Having studied world history in school, I was familiar with the war and the atrocities and genocide that took place. “It started like this,” she said. “With hate.”
Romona turned and studied me. “Some of the elders think you saved the town,” she said conversationally. “The rest think you brought down judgment on it. Which was it?”
I still didn’t reply, and she added, “There are also rumors that you melted the ice cap on the Trine, then vaporized the snowmelt to prevent a flood.” I shook my head, not denying it, but not responding either. “If so, that makes you a hero. You saved the town and didn’t charge the town fathers a hefty mage-price.” When I pressed my lips tight, she turned back to the window and sighed, trying to smooth the blond chaos of her hair.
“I’d like to tell your story,” she said more softly, finger-combing a snarl. “Add it to the footage I have of you fighting and healing. You and your champards were pretty amazing. I’ll sweep this year’s awards without it, but an interview would complete the story of what happened here. I admit it’s a self-centered motive, but that and curiosity are all I got.”
“Where’s your cameraman?” I asked, almost idly.
She opened her mouth, hesitated, and I could see her riffling through possible answers. She dropped her hands from her hair and settled on a reply, but when she spoke, the word was strained, as if pulled out of her by force. “Dead.”
I held her gaze in the reflective surface, waiting.
“He went with one of those things,” she said, her tone for the first time revealing emotion. “Had loud, crazy sex with it in the hallway, on the floor outside my door at the hotel, while I filmed the fighting from the balcony. When he got quiet, I turned off the camera and peeked into the hall.” She looked a little sick and I guessed what she had seen. Succubi were reputed to eat their conquests. “I ran down the stairs into the night and started filming again. But I still can’t get the picture of him out of my head.” She made a fist, knuckles white in the morning light. “And I still—” Her voice broke. “I still don’t know why.”
“That’s why I won’t talk to you,” I said. “Because I don’t have any answers. I don’t know what’s going on in this city. I don’t know what’s going on up the Trine. I don’t know any more than you about why I’m here.”
She searched my face again in the glass. “May I quote you on that much?”
“Sure. Why not.”
“Thanks.” She started to walk away, but stopped and pressed a business card between the folds of cloak bunched at my waist and the loaf of bread. “If you ever decide to talk, re
member me, okay?” I stared at her. “You can call the number on the card and my service will get back to me. Your story is important.” This time, she didn’t look back.
I was left standing alone in the cold, gazing into the glass at words that called me a whore, that condemned Rupert and me both. In the reflection, I saw a man walk down the street and enter the bakery. Lucas, dressed for the weather in a bulky vest and layers. My heart went from cold to warm in an instant and a smile pulled at my mouth. Through the layers of glass I watched him as he leaned over the counter and pointed inside, and I wondered if he was buying lunch for us. Maybe a picnic on the floor in front of the fire. On a down coverlet. With wine and grapes and more fresh bread. My skin warmed at the thought and I knew that there were some things that were still good in my life.
The girl on the other side of the counter laughed at something he said. She had dimples and a sunny smile. And bouncy breasts straining at her dress. Lucas shook his head, pointed at something else in the case, and leaned across the counter, weight on one elbow. She cocked her head, pushing back her hair. The girl bent into the display and then held her hand over the counter to Lucas, offering him a taste. I turned to watch, faint disquiet stirring.
He took her hand in his, directing it to his mouth. He bit into the sample, holding her hand, smiling into her face. And then he kissed her fingers. I watched as she blushed, her perfect, unscarred, unblemished skin glowing with simple human health, blushing with frank sexual attraction. She giggled. Pushed back her hair, fingers lingering in the tresses.
Around me, the smoke of burning spawn blew in, adding a putrid fog to the murky day. It reeked of rot. Silent, I turned and entered the shop.
I changed clothes and went to the workroom, turning on the gas logs. Though the expenditure of energy was unforgivable, the stock was frozen and my equipment was stiff. My breath blew clouds and the cold was searing on my exposed fingers. I was afraid the saw and drill would heat the crystalline matrix unevenly and cause any stone I worked to shatter.
