As Temoc drew the scar, he feared the gods had deserted him. That, sleeping, they might not imbue the scars with power. But the wound his knife left blazed green, and knit itself closed. Still, blood was lost, and more would be. So much more.
He prayed as he worked, spoke the words and fixed his mind in proper posture for the gods. Dead Ixchitli first, the Sun who fixed the sky, fiercest warrior in the battles against the skazzerai between the stars. Envision a man blood-soaked astride a green field under a blue sky. Two spears in one hand, a club in the other. First see his strength, then see his age. See him as a mountain that bleeds. See his feet entangled with the grass, see him as a fire inside all that grows, a fire too in the bowels of the earth. Then his daughters Aquel and Achal, the twins of one heart with the two Serpents who twine beneath the world, guardian and doom of our people. Qet and Isil. The Hunchback. God after god, each presented as a burning curve through his son’s skin. Caleb knew the stories. As Temoc cut, they became part of him.
Arms and legs belonged to the Spider whose web was flame, rebel child of the stars. The Serpents coiled around the boy’s heart, guarding and troubling it, their stirrings its constant beat, their magma rolling through his veins. The lungs were Isil’s and his salt blood Qet’s. Steady the hand, ensure the lines meet cleanly. No fine manipulations of the chisel here, no elegant glyphs: he carved gods and their prayers in elemental forms onto his son, into the boy’s soul.
Blood stained the bedsheets. Blood stuck to Temoc’s fingers when he wiped it away to clear the ground for the next incision. Blood did not stick to the knife’s edge. It rolled off, leaving droplet-trails on skin. The boy’s breathing did not change. His eyelids fluttered, eyes danced beneath them, but he lay locked in a sleep the gods invaded.
Sweat ran down his brow, and stung his eyes.
Time passed. An angel of blood spread from Caleb on the bed, wings flared beneath his outstretched arms. The wounds closed, most of them, but he was pale, and shivered from the blood he’d lost. Green and silver lines shimmered beneath his scabs.
One final scar remained: the vertical cut atop the heart, below and above the Serpents’ gaping mouths. Anyone could draw the other scars, though there was honor in drawing them yourself. Only the recipient could make the last, symbol of the sacrifice he would perform, of the life he would lead, as if he were a man already dead.
No time to explain all this to Caleb. Temoc hoped, this once, that form would be enough. The gods knew his need. The gods guided them both. The gods would forgive one distortion.
He lifted his son’s slick, sticky hand and wrapped his small fingers around the knife. Bones ran straight and thin beneath Caleb’s inscribed skin: phalanges and metacarpals and small round knuckles. Strong. Temoc’s hand held his son’s, which held the knife, and the gods’ hand held his. The wrist didn’t want to turn quite perpendicular to the chest, so Temoc had to lift Caleb’s elbow and move it in. He expected the arm to feel heavy. It did not.
One last cut, a finger’s breadth. Skin parted slowly, as if the knife had grown dull. This was the signature, the permission, the act that tied the disconnected scars into a whole.
And the gods entered Temoc.
His spine was a live wire. His flesh crisped, his skin peeled back. Fire tore through him, stretched him to impossible size, and passed down his hand to his son’s, to the knife, to the blood. Caleb’s eyes snapped open. He gasped for breath, and beams of coherent light shone from his eyes. The scars thrummed as if Caleb’s soul were a drum with which the gods beat time. A sound escaped his son’s mouth, a hollow, animal screech.
It was done.
The scars dimmed, though they pulsed still. Caleb fell back to the bed. His body struck the sodden sheets with a wet heavy sound. His eyes remained open. They stared up blank, unseeing. Breath ran rapid over his lips, in and out and in and out, too fast. Shadows unfolded from the boy’s scars and folded again, spasmodically, no more subject to Caleb’s will than were his trembling hands.
Temoc did not remember this. Perhaps he would not have remembered it. Or else this was new, some reaction to the way the deed was done, or to the drug. He would stay, and watch until it passed.
The blade in his hand was clean as ever. The gods kept it so.
He had done what he came to do.
He hated himself. He hated the gods. He hated the war, and Chakal Square, and Chel for finding him, and he hated the King in Red most of all. But what was done was done.
“Temoc.” The voice behind him, the waking whisper, wrapped him in ice. Mina’s voice. “Temoc, what’s wrong? Why are you still up?”
Her footfall on the floor of Caleb’s room was soft and clear. A single gentle press on a piano key. The last time he would ever hear that note.
He did not turn. He did not look at her. He was brave enough for everything but this.
She saw, and screamed.
Passed him in a rush, a sweep of hair and nightgown. He tried to stand, and staggered back. She bent over the bed, a curve in the darkness, holding Caleb, her hands stained red. Words were a rush of breath pulsed with consonants: “Oh, gods. Oh, gods.” Could she see the light in their son’s scars? Or did she only see the blood? “Caleb. Caleb, honey, wake up.” Caleb coughed, gasped, shivered, did not wake.
“It’s okay,” he said. “He’s okay.”
She wheeled on him. “There’s blood, Temoc. There’s—”
He held his hands out between them. Voice low. Voice level. “It’s okay. Mina. You don’t understand. This is good.”
He still held the knife. His hands were red.
Her eyes flared black and large in the night.
“What. The hells. Have you done.”
So many ways to say it. I scarred our son. Gave him strength. Joined him to the ways of his family since the dawn of time. Warded him against the legions that will one day wish to do him harm. The words did not come. None but the simplest. Only an “I.”
That was all she needed. “You.”
He stepped toward her. She drew back.
“The wounds are closed.”
“Go.”
“He’ll be fine.”
“You want to go. So fucking go already.” Her voice broke to a ragged edge.
He sheathed his knife. He could not reach for her.
“Get out of here. Get out of here right now or I will—” She cut off. Anger closed her throat. She grabbed a lamp from Caleb’s bedside table, lifted it like a mace. “Go.”
“Mina.”
“Not one fucking step.” A scream. Caleb convulsed, moaned.
Temoc wanted to say something. Anything.
He raised his hand.
“No.”
That word was a wall, and the wall fell onto him.
Stop her. Grab her, calm her down. Explain.
How? He couldn’t even explain to himself.
He stepped back. Turned halfway. By the time he reached the living room, he was running. Fast, and faster still. His eyes burned. His hands burned—from the blood. It stained him, covered him. Waking gods licked his hands and sang sweetly in his ears. He ran faster, as if he could outrun himself.
Faster yet, and every step carried him to war.
Behind, on the rooftops, two figures watched the house, and exchanged a long, silver, hungry look.
Soon, they said. Very soon, now.
They licked their lips, and savored their fangs.
48
Rage flowed cold and waterfall-fast, mixed with and inseparable from fear. Mina stood surrounded by Caleb’s room. Shelves. Books. Cards. Blocks. Right angles and sharp edges, askew. The door gaped before her, where Temoc had stood a moment ago, and the black beyond.
She had not seen what she had seen. She could not have.
No. That was the reflex of a scared child’s mind, to reject reality that did not fit preconception. She saw the knife in Temoc’s hand. She heard him try to apologize, in that way he had of not apologizing. She saw him leave. She told him to le
ave.
And now he was gone, and she remained. Rocking on her feet. Her breath, and Caleb’s, both loud in her ears.
Caleb. She turned back to the bed, to him, shaking, asleep, covered in seeping wounds, in blood.
So much blood. Gods. The body contained what, eight pints, a child’s less, and how much spilled here? The sheets stained red. All the gods and devils watched.
She touched her son’s chest, his face. Caleb groaned. Eyes opened but did not focus. A sweet, dank smell on his breath: some soporific drug, mixed with the wine. He kept that kind of stuff around, for rituals and dream-quests. Out of the boy’s reach. Well hidden.
“Caleb. Caleb!” No response. “Caleb, can you hear me?”
No, again.
She wanted to cry. She was crying, big, racking sobs. Her eyes were wet. She wiped them with her hand, unthinking, and the blood stung. Qet and Isil. Damn them. Damn all the gods, and her husband, too.
She recognized the scars. She had written articles on their like, discussed their language and their relevance to modern Craft, had run her fingers over those very ridges on her lover’s, her husband’s skin. She had never seen them on her son’s body before.
Too much, too much, tossed by rage and frozen by fear.
She could not afford to be this person now.
Her body understood before her brain did. Stopped shaking Caleb, stood. Searched the room, found nothing, staggered out into the hall, realized when she reached the bathroom that she was looking for a towel. A cloth robe. Something to cover him. Grabbed both, and returned. Don’t drag the towel across the wounds. Whatever he had done—whatever Temoc and his gods had done—to heal the boy, his cuts were too fresh, scabs pink and raw where there were scabs at all. No longer bleeding openly. Not good, there was no good here, in this room, but good enough. Pressing with the towel, she mopped up blood. Some remained, smeared, dried onto his skin. A handprint. Hers, or Temoc’s. No. She refused to think that name. It made her freeze, and she could not afford to freeze.
Where to go? Hospitals would be full of riot-wounded. Could drive north, risk meeting rebels or Wardens or those dogs. Don’t worry about that, said the small part of her that was no one’s wife, no one’s mother, no one’s daughter even. Don’t worry. Get Caleb out of here. First, pull him off that bloody mattress. Scars on his back, too. Fuck. Sop the blood. Drape him in the bathrobe, white cotton with blue stripes and now red ones, too. Fine. Tie the knot at his stomach.
“Mom?” The voice soft, heartbreaking, weak as if through many layers of cotton.
“Caleb? Can you hear me?”
“Mom,” again, drifting off. Fine. Good, even. She lifted him, tested his weight. So heavy normally, grown big, but he felt like a feather now. All had gone out of him, everything but life. The life she’d keep, and strangle anyone who tried to take it from her. Drape his arms over her shoulders. Scabs ridged his skin beneath the thin robe. He moaned in sleep, from pain, from nightmares.
Alone. Alone with her boy in a city gone mad. She could walk the streets, try against hope to hail a taxi. Or she could fly. She closed her eyes, took inventory of her soul. She thought she had enough.
The King in Red would have forbidden optera from landing in Chakal Square, but the rioters’ need was great—it would poison the air, confuse the bugs hovering above the Skittersill. But her need was greater, and there was no price she would not pay.
She ran with her son clutched to her, out into the courtyard, out into the street. Feet bare against cobblestones. Craft-warped insects that hover in the clouds, chitin angels, hear me. No one has ever needed you as I need now.
The sky spread opalescent overhead, stained orange in the west by fire. Blank walls crowded her in, skyline scalloped black by roof tile. Dew-damp cobblestones slippery underfoot. Hot breath on her neck, Caleb’s breath, so rapid, his body rigid too, seizing up as she ran.
Shapes moved on the roof across the street. Humanoid forms, long-limbed. Copper plates glinted where their eyes should have been, like a cat’s eyes seen at angle. They leaned forward, watching. Their silhouettes showed claws.
She would not scream. She ran.
I need you.
Bug-legs struck her from behind, and she flew.
49
Temoc ran from himself, and from his wife, and his son, and two decades of peace. He ran toward battle.
Dresediel Lex around him crouched in wait. Behind blank windows families hid, waiting for a signal to pretend once more to live their normal lives. Lit convenience stores stared empty-aisled out on vacant streets, waiting for customers who would not come. A shopping cart lay upended in a parking lot. An optician’s ghostlight sign flickered and buzzed. He ran past all-hour groceries, diviners’ shops bedecked with crystal balls and tarot cards, a small-time local Craftsman’s office, low-roofed bars, a palm-fronted nightclub, a bookstore with barred windows, a row of tailors’ shops. Most nights this strip throbbed with people. Now its emptiness throbbed in turn.
The wind shifted north, hot again, and he smelled smoke, dust, and sand. Senses dilated by panic, rage, and gods, he heard the battle in Chakal Square, an ocean of screams and tangled bodies. His world, now. He sank into it, and ran faster. Muscles stretched. Power coursed through him. He became a creature of darkness.
He felt the wingbeats before he heard them. Bass shock waves struck his chest like blows, echoed inside like a second heartbeat. He stumbled, thinking—heart attack? Had he lost everything only to die here? But he looked up, and saw. He might still die, but not from weakness of the heart.
A flying V of Couatl wedged toward Chakal Square. Twenty-meter wings beat in unison. Snaky tails thrashed the air. They flew so high, in such elegant array, that someone raised in another city might have mistaken them for swans.
Temoc did not mistake.
This was no patrol. They came to kill.
The gods were kind, indeed. Cruel and kind. The King in Red had held his attack for night, when after a brutal day’s fighting the Chakal Square band would have no choice but to man their makeshift barricades and hope for the best. Then the Wardens’ attack would fall in the center, brutal and unexpected.
The gods were kind, unless they had doomed him to see this assault without being able to stop it.
He could not fail now, not after all he’d done. He ran faster, through the scared city’s sleeping streets.
* * *
“We are winning,” the Major told Chel in a voice that brooked no argument.
“Winning?” She swept an arm to compass the mess of Chakal Square. “You call this winning?”
They stood in the Square’s heart: the clearing they’d made by the fountain for the wounded, of whom there were too many. Bodies lay on beds of folded cloth, moaning, bloody. Nurses moved among them, lacking any uniform but compassion. Few in the camp had medical training, most limited to half-remembered first-aid lessons from grade school camping trips. Now they tended the wounds of a war. In days, infection would claim most of the fallen, if the camp lasted so long.
Fires roared behind her. Out on the perimeter, the battle raged. Wardens charged again and again at the barricades.
“We have withstood a day’s attack. If they thought we would be this hard to break, they would have struck us harder. We have exceeded the King in Red’s expectation. We defied him.”
Sweat coated Chel. Pain dulled the sharp edges of her mind. Memories of Temoc’s healing still sickened, that sensation of her body coming alive, ribs wriggling and blood vessels fusing as a boar rooted beneath her skin. “We’re losing people. We can’t last another day at this rate. And we won’t, because they haven’t really hit us yet. Which they will, if we don’t give up these hostages.”
The Major laughed steel and springs. He’d straightened out the dimple in his helm, but a trace of the knuckles’ dent remained. “You’d have us relinquish one of our few bargaining chips, just because you’re afraid. Even if we released them, how do we know the Wardens would call off their att
ack?”
“There’s nothing certain here. Best we can do is gamble.”
“And you’ve gambled so well today.”
She drew breath, and did not try to kill him. She’d clawed through broken glass to return to Chakal Square. Sprinted the last quarter-mile, or as near to a sprint as her wounded body could manage. Burst Mina’s stitches running from those damn dogs. And her men, the ones she led out into the city to bring Temoc home—they weren’t back yet. Hiding still in the city, she hoped. They had friends and bolt-holes. They weren’t dead. Necessarily. Not all of them, not yet.
Flimsy argument, she knew. Gods.
“I made the right call,” she said. “If Temoc were here—”
“If Temoc were here he’d lead us down the same conciliatory road that got us into this mess. If Temoc were here, he wouldn’t be able to turn this attack.”
“Listen.”
“I have listened. You want us to need Temoc, because then your sacrifice won’t have been in vain. You want us to lose this battle, due to your misguided fascination with old gods and antique heroes. You refuse to—”
“Not to me, dammit. Listen!”
The Major stopped talking.
The camp around them had gone quiet. Even the convalescent ceased to moan.
A drum beat overhead.
Chel grabbed the Major’s arm and pulled him to the ground. He squawked in shock, struggled to rise.
Then the tents exploded.
* * *
On any other night Mina would not have realized she was being followed until too late. Ordinarily the sky above Dresediel Lex swarmed with fliers and airbuses and Couatl and drakes, as reefs of mirror coral in the Fangs swarmed with multicolored fish. Even at night, the airspace should have been so crowded that a few more fliers would be all but impossible to notice.
Tonight, though, the Skittersill skies were empty. Couatl swarmed near Chakal Square to the west, but she flew north alone.
Last First Snow Page 23
