Dearest

by Alethea Kontis

  16

  Demolished

  BY THE TIME Gana returned to the hold to check on her prisoners, Tristan had restrung another loom and was weaving once more. It was Christian’s idea to continue the project instead of attempting to clean up everything they had so obviously destroyed. There was no need to mask the act of weaving, he pointed out, just that they had sent the first as a message.

  Rene and Bernard took the game to heart and began decorating the cage with whatever they could pull out of the carton. Elisa joined in, laughing and criticizing their choice of colors and patterns. François selected the sturdiest yarn and fashioned a sling for his wounded arm. He and Christian sat in the dead center of the cell, suggesting ideas for how they might overpower Mordant and his forces. Christian listed their assets: not much beyond Elisa’s power over wind and Tristan’s wings. François invented ridiculous and impossible methods of attack. Normally, Tristan would have reined him in, but they truly had no idea what they were in for. None of them had set foot on the Green Isles for almost a decade.

  Unfortunately, Sebastien’s absence was the one thing they could not cover up. They would simply have to deal with whatever punishment Gana doled out when she realized he was missing.

  The sorceress’s smell preceded her. When the air turned cloying, the siblings immediately huddled together in the center of the cell. They would not let another of them be caught unaware by that shadow-hugging assassin.

  The sorceress’s first reaction was laughter. “I underestimated you.”

  “Never underestimate our ability to take a joke,” said Bernard.

  The sorceress considered the scene as she stroked the gleaming scales of the once-more dormant cockatrice around her neck. Tristan waited for the humor in her eyes to turn to stone. He did not have to wait long. The bars of the cell began to smoke, and all the decorative yarn was reduced to cinders. Even the loom and its contents turned to ashes in Tristan’s hands.

  “Where is the bird?” She did not ask politely.

  “He’s a bird,” Rene said boldly.

  “He doesn’t do well in cages,” said Bernard. “So we encouraged him to go.”

  “It wasn’t an easy decision,” Christian said solemnly. “Our family draws its power from being together.”

  Tristan turned to his older brother in surprise. This wasn’t something he’d considered before, but it was certainly plausible. He only hoped it wasn’t true. Gana seemed pleased at the concern on his face; if Christian had been saving that little gem for just this sort of reaction, he’d done extremely well. Tristan hid the remnants of the expression behind his wings and concentrated on soaking up the heat from the cage bars.

  “Bind them.” Gana said the command to thin air, and from that invisibility strode the Infidel. He waited for the sorceress to wave a hand over the lock to disenchant it, then turned the key and opened the door. The brothers sucked in a collective breath as the Infidel’s hand gripped the still-glowing metal bars. Even with his gloves, the heat should have been unbearable. Tristan could detect the stench of burnt leather on top of soot and corpse rot, but the Infidel did not so much as flinch.

  As the masked man approached, Tristan could make out the exact quantity of red in his eyes, so much more now than the mere outline that was present only a few days ago. The iris was almost completely obscured by the color, as if all the blood had burst inside his eye sockets. Blood that glowed.

  From a sack, the Infidel pulled not rope but chains: shackles with great manacles and a separate key for each. He lifted them as if they weighed no more than one of Tristan’s feathers, and never selected the wrong key as he locked them tight.

  Satisfied, Gana marched them up the stairs to where Mordant’s soldiers stood waiting. For a moment Tristan’s wings got wedged in the opening; the Infidel pushed them into his back and shoved Tristan up, scraping his wings painfully. He cried out and fell to his knees on the deck. It was a moment before his eyes adjusted to the bright light of day.

  Mordant stood before them as if he were posing for a portrait. He still wore the red robes of office that had been his uniform while he was advisor to Tristan’s father, the uniform he’d been wearing when he stood over the fallen king’s body in triumph. He’d used that same bright red to decorate his soldiers and his mistress.

  Mordant grinned, a gesture that pulled lines in his pockmarked cheeks. Everything about Mordant was slimy: the mustaches sprouting from his mottled skin, his limp black hair; even his eyebrows looked damp with malevolence.

  “I informed Gana that I did not want to kill you before this moment,” Mordant said without preamble. “I wanted to see your faces when you laid eyes on your homeland once again.”

  This time, Tristan did scream. He dove for Mordant with every intention of strangling him to death with the chain between his manacles. The Infidel leapt on him from behind, pinning his wings, and Mordant’s soldiers tripped up his feet, slamming him into the deck. Unsatisfied, Tristan thrashed and pounded at the wood until he felt Gana’s spell of stillness wash over him. From then on, he could do nothing but look.

  The pain was greater than if Mordant had pulled out each of Tristan’s feathers, one by one.

  There was no longer anything green about the islands that lay before them, hugging the churning blue sea. The land was dead. Demolished. It looked as if a dragon had ravaged the once beautiful city, but there were no dragons in the world anymore. The instrument of this devastation was Mordant. Edifices that had stood tall, honoring Kassora’s achievements beneath the eyes of benevolent gods, were now nothing but sad ruins, one pile of rubble indiscernible from another. From beach to horizon, the land was naught but one solid mass of brownish-yellow dust.

  This was someone else’s kingdom in someone else’s world, a nightmare where demons and dragons still roamed free. There was no solace for a man in this place. Even if they somehow did triumph over Mordant, Tristan could never bring Friday here.

  “What happened?” whispered Elisa.

  “I happened,” said Mordant. “I proved to the subjects of this land that I was not a power to be trifled with, and they trembled before me.”

  Tristan squinted into the wreckage, half expecting to see lines of shackled citizens, but there was no one. No children played in the streets—if there were still streets beneath the never-ending piles of debris. No buyers or sellers called to one another in the market that once stood on the nonexistent pier. Not so much as a gull dared breathe a sound over Mordant’s sad playground, so awesome and terrible was his power.

  “Where is everyone?” It was Bernard who whispered this time. Nor would Tristan have dared raise his voice—it felt like yelling in a church. Or a graveyard.

  “The agreeable were allowed to live,” Mordant said graciously. The red guards among them nodded proudly. “The disagreeable were . . .”

  “. . . put to better use,” Gana finished.

  Judging by the complete absence of anyone, it seemed the people of the Green Isles had found Mordant as agreeable as everyone else did. Tristan only hoped the empty harbor meant that most of the population had escaped before Gana “put them to use.” He cut a glance to the Infidel, who stood quietly behind Mordant. He wondered how much innocent blood the slave had shed on behalf of his dark mistress . . . and if the man trapped inside that body had been forced to witness it.

  Tristan and his siblings were lowered onto the docks by their shackles. Tristan’s toe caught a rotted board and he toppled over, forcing Mordant’s guards to help him to his feet. He might have spread his wings to keep his balance, but they hadn’t plucked him yet; he didn’t want to draw attention to himself and give them any ideas. For now, he was content to play the useless, grotesque half-man.

  The twins took Tristan’s lead. They tripped on every other step in the dock and knocked their guards about, all the while apologizing profusely. His brothers were not insubstantial in human form; the twins were the broadest and the tallest of them, a full head and shoulders above Mor
dant. The ginger mops glanced at each other and smirked over the red guard before tumbling again. They only stopped when Gana threatened to turn them into swans once more—or some other, less desirable creature. She stroked the animal around her neck again, forcing Tristan to wonder if the cockatrice had once been human as well.

  Slowly, painfully, Mordant and his sorceress led them up the hill. Tristan’s tender feet tried to avoid cracks where the grass had grown up through the unattended path, sometimes creating razor-sharp edges in the pavement. On either side of the main road they traveled, there were no buildings left to speak of. Tristan tried to remember each one as he passed so that he might honor their fallen memories, berating himself when he could not recall a certain corner or lane. The least the fallen heirs could do to honor their parents was pass on the stories of the great kingdom that had flourished under two great rulers. Tristan felt keenly the responsibility for every person and shop lost due to his faulty memory.

  Behind him, Elisa sniffled. Her tears fell quietly in the dust at her own bare feet.

  “May the gods lift them to their breasts,” Tristan whispered to her.

  “And find them worthy enough to be rid of their burdens,” Elisa finished the litany.

  At the crest of the hill lay the largest ruin: the Temple of the Four Winds. All the brothers to a man fell to their knees. Tristan lowered his wings into the dust of what was once the four great statues and sought forgiveness from his patron gods. Elisa clasped her hands together, her knuckles white, her face red. She might have created a waterspout or a tornado with her fury, but something was suppressing her elemental magic. Gana pulled Elisa up by her dirty hair and dragged her forward. The guards were less kind to Tristan and his brothers. The sharp pommels of their daggers left welts.

  They passed through the steppe behind the temple, and Tristan’s sore feet enjoyed the blissful reprieve through the meadow. Farther they went, down into what was once the lower city, just outside the castle walls. Here one temple did remain, its red-and-gold-adorned tower standing brazenly against the cloudy sky. The Fire Temple.

  Priests and priestesses of Fire were zealous and unpredictable. Dedicates of Fire by and large were beautiful, worshipped the God of Passion, and catered to the baser needs of the public. The Fire Temple of Kassora had been tantamount to a pleasure garden, its more powerful celebrants little more than troublemakers. It was no surprise that Mordant had collected his sorceress from among the more promising dedicates of that house.

  As they neared, Tristan realized that the Fire Temple had not completely escaped the wrath of whatever (or whoever) had demolished the city. Here and there, a lintel was cracked. An ornament had shattered. Sections of stained glass were missing, leaving gaps in the crimson flowers and beasts that frolicked there.

  Inside, there were bones. Everywhere. Human bones.

  Bones formed patterns on the floor and hung from the chandeliers. Long bones lined the grand archway. Small bones made up elaborate designs in the moldings and cornices. The altar at the far end had been completely encased in skulls, their screaming grins staring blankly at what had become of the rest of their bodies, their brethren.

  “I believe we have found the disagreeable,” said Christian.

  Tristan shivered. It was a unique, artistic sort of gruesome, and it all smelled like stale death. Like Gana. Tristan imagined he could hear the voices of imprisoned souls calling from deep beneath the stone floor. Death reigned in the parapets as well, painted as they were with the images of the god himself. In the classic depictions, both sacred and profane, Lord Death was only ever accompanied by his Angels of Fire, those designated to deliver unjust souls to their ultimate retribution. Here, though, the Angels catered to their human penitents, bestowing upon them lavish gifts and worldly delights.

  Had he not been in shackles and surrounded by the bones of Kassora’s most loyal subjects, Tristan might have laughed at the unmitigated hubris.

  Gana strode forward and stepped onto the dais, standing before the altar. She spread her arms wide, her voluminous sleeves opening out like the wings of the angels she worshipped. The cockatrice at her neck stirred, hissed, and licked the air with its forked tongue. What vermillion light shone through the incomplete windows did not flatter her, and her position atop the dais made Mordant appear even more diminutive—and no less slimy.

  “Alight!”

  At Gana’s command, hundreds of candles throughout the temple burst into flame. Tristan had not noticed their presence for the bones, but the soft glow brought the skeletons in the architecture to a kind of life. Shadows danced in eye sockets and wax began to drip like sweat. The scent of smoke and tallow mingled with the stench of old death.

  “Bring them to me!” Gana’s cry caught in the domed ceiling and amplified into godlike tones. Dutifully, the red soldiers pushed Tristan and his siblings forward. “I would have you witness the power that brought this city to its knees.”

  Tristan could imagine Gana having the power to speed a ship across the seven seas, but he could not see her—or anyone beyond a god, for that matter—creating the wreckage that was their former kingdom.

  Mordant’s mistress crooked a finger at the guards. “Bring me the eldest.”

  “Sorry, but the eldest has flown the coop,” said Bernard.

  “Would you like to leave a message?” asked Rene.

  Both the twins were slapped by the guards for their insolence, but they bobbed back up, red cheeked and smiling.

  “She’ll settle for the eldest brother present,” sneered Mordant. With a wave of his hand, the guard beside Christian pushed him forward.

  As one, the siblings sprang into action.

  Rene and Bernard quickly overpowered their respective guards and ran to surround Christian, but François had already beaten them there. He leapt upon the back of Christian’s guard and, heedless of his weak arm, wrapped the chain of his shackles around the man’s throat. Elisa bit the guard who held her. When he yelped, she dropped to the ground, rolling her body so that he tripped over her petite form. When he fell, she grabbed his dagger and held it to his throat.

  Before Tristan could launch himself into the air, the Infidel had pinned his wings behind his back. Tristan’s body snapped down with a thud that rattled his bones.

  “Drop your weapons,” growled Mordant, “or he’ll rip his wings off.”

  Elisa’s dagger clattered to the ground. François released the guard. He did not leave Christian’s side, however. The brothers surrounded Christian, each of them facing out, hands raised in attack positions, despite the shackles.

  Suddenly, Tristan’s shackles began to warm. Elisa was the first to scream as her flesh sizzled beneath the hot iron.

  “Stop this!” cried Christian. He pushed his way out of the circle of his younger brothers and strode forward of his own accord. He bowed before Gana. “I will come to you willingly. Just please, stop hurting my family.”

  Mordant’s smirk mirrored the one on Gana’s face. “But of course. The hurting always stops in the end.”

  In the end. Meaning the hurting would stop when they were all dead.

  “Why do you need our blood?” yelled Tristan. “What difference does it make?”

  “The stronger the blood, the stronger the power,” said Gana. “You are children of the Four Winds. When I consume you, I will consume your power as well. In doing so, I can increase my own power greatly for a short time, or choose to stretch it out, savoring each of you to prolong my pleasure.”

  “‘Consume’ us?” asked Bernard.

  “Does that mean what I think it means?” asked Rene.

  “If it means am I going to drink your blood, then yes,” said Gana. “The temple will partake of you as well.” She indicated the bones in the floor beneath their feet, and Tristan realized that the maze was a series of grooves meant to channel the blood and direct it into a certain pattern . . . perhaps a sacred rune of the Fire Gods. There was nowhere to run and no way to separate his bare feet from
the floor. In minutes, his toes would be awash in his brother’s blood and the room would be flooded with vile power.

  “It’s just as well the eldest got away; he would have been little more than a snack.” Gana reached forward and raked her red nails across Christian’s cheek. “I will reap a far greater reward from you, my precious.”

  “And what do you get out of this?” Tristan addressed Mordant. “Aren’t you afraid she’ll ‘consume’ you too when she’s finished with us?”

  “I made her,” said Mordant. “I saved her from the wastrel refuse and molded her into the figure you see before you. Her loyalty belongs to only me.”

  Again, Tristan bit back a laugh. Bernard and Rene weren’t so successful.

  “You fool, she’ll have you for breakfast,” said Rene.

  “Who’s the ruler of the Green Isles now?” asked Bernard.

  Tristan felt his shackles burn again, and the twins fell to their knees in pain.

  François seemed to have been waiting for this opportunity. Up he sprang, hurtling his body toward Gana. The burning chains between his shackles pushed into her dress and the fabric began to smoke. The guards on the dais were so concerned for their mistress that they missed Christian’s duck and lunge, deflecting Mordant’s unsheathed dagger. Christian moved to add his strength to François’s, but it was too late.

  Mordant’s blade had already pierced François’s heart.

  17

  The Wrong God

  PAPA HAD NAMED his ship Seven’s Seas, and Friday stood proudly upon her deck. The patchwork flag snapped in the wind in all its glory. Mr. Jolicoeur had begun referring to Friday as “Captain” immediately, and though she tried to dissuade them, everyone else on the ship followed suit without question.

  Everyone but Philippe.

  In this, Friday agreed with the swan brother. She couldn’t think of anyone in her family less suited to be captain of anything. Her skills would be put to better use mending sails. What would Thursday say? With any luck, her seafaring, pirate-queen sister would never find out.