The Killing Light

by Myke Cole

  Giorgi stared at her, his face grief-stricken, but he made no more gestures and the flame man did not move.

  She turned back to Onas. “No one needs to die. You cannot walk, Onas. You are beaten. I only want to talk with the Nightingale.”

  “Your pet Kipti,” Poch’s voice came from behind her, “has killed Ingomer Clothier. I suppose some people need to die, eh, Heloise? So long as they were your own.”

  Heloise swallowed the ball of frustration that rose in her chest. Xilyka would not have killed Ingomer unless he had given her no choice, but it didn’t matter. He wasn’t much older than she was, just promised. The wedding had been planned for that spring. She remembered his braying-donkey laugh, the way he’d chewed his lip when he’d been deep in thought. Every step of the way, someone had to die—as if the world were a thing that turned only on the promise of blood, the only currency it would accept. No matter how stupid, no matter how small the need, the blood-toll would be taken.

  What could she say to Poch? What could she say to any of them? Fatigue replaced the anger in a rush. “The Nightingale,” she managed, “the wizard. Let me talk to her and this fight is over.”

  Onas took a limping step toward her, brandishing his knives. “I do not need to be able to walk to kill you, Heloise. And if you kill me, the rest of my people will—”

  “Enough.” An old woman’s voice, high and thin. “Stop it, all of you. What do you want of me, girl?”

  Heloise turned to see the wizard from the tower. Up close, she looked even smaller, older even than Florea, but straight backed for all that. She wore a fine black gown, a boned and quilted bodice with a high collar, long skirts embroidered with black thread over black cloth so that it hinted at patterns every time the woman shifted.

  “You are the Nightingale?” Heloise asked. “The one the Sojourners spoke of?”

  The woman caught her breath. “I must say that I am very surprised to see a villager girl in the Procurer’s great commission, the one he entrusted to the valley’s finest tinker, and to hear her call me that.”

  “Then it is you.”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I am Heloise Factor, and I come from the capital. I have seen the Congregation of the Faithful…”

  The woman looked frightened now. “No villager has ever seen the Congregation. No villager knows of it.”

  “Then I am no villager,” Heloise said. “The capital is taken. The devils are in your streets. The Order is dead before the gates. I do not know how many Pilgrims still live, but I have one of them with me. The veil is rent, ma’am. I need you to help me knit it back again.”

  “Where is the Song?” she asked.

  Heloise looked at her feet, her cheeks flushing. “Gone.”

  The woman swallowed, swayed. She put a hand to her forehead. “Please tell me that you lie.”

  “I do not. Come with us. There is no time.”

  The woman sighed, mastered herself, then turned to Onas. “Did you know?”

  The Sindi boy said nothing, kept his eyes locked on Heloise.

  “Tell her, Onas,” Heloise said.

  “I did not know that the devils had taken the capital,” Onas said slowly, “until just now, when Heloise brought word.”

  “That they had taken the capital,” the Nightingale said, “but you knew the veil was rent? That they roamed the sunlit world? Why didn’t you tell me?” The Nightingale’s voice shook.

  Onas looked at his feet, said nothing.

  The Nightingale took a step, and Heloise wondered if she might not strike him. She swallowed again, turned to Heloise. “If you are lying…”

  Heloise reached up to the reliquary box, realized with a start that Barnard held the only key. The frustration boiled over and she forced her knife-blade into the lock hasp, wrenching down hard. The tinker-engine bellowed with the strain. Barnard had made the lock well, but he had made the war-machine better. The blade began to bend, and for a moment, Heloise feared it would snap, but at last the lock tore open with a shriek of metal and her arm came swinging free. She could see the blade was bent badly. Doesn’t matter. Tone was right that we will not beat this enemy with weapons.

  She reached up again, using the bent blade to hook one of the horns on the devil’s severed head. She drew it out, tossed it at the Nightingale’s feet. “I am Heloise Factor, knife-handed, devil-slayer. I am telling the truth.”

  The Nightingale bent, lifted the head, examined it for a long time. At last she spoke, trembling. “Where is this Pilgrim? Take me to him.”

  If he is still alive, Heloise thought. She gestured to the battered gate. The Nightingale nodded, gathered her skirts, and strode toward it.

  “Wait!” Onas shouted after her.

  “I will not,” the Nightingale shouted back to him. “Send your dancing knives to cut down an old woman while her back is to you. Do you know what devils are, boy? Do you know what they do?”

  She kept walking, her eyes fixed on the gate. Onas shot an angry glance first to Heloise, then to Giorgi, then to the knife-dancers where they stood in a protective ring around the Mothers.

  No one moved.

  Heloise turned and found herself face to face with Poch.

  “I … I am sorry for Ingomer,” Heloise managed, then pushed past him, the old Drover having to stumble sideways to keep from being crushed by the machine.

  For the first few steps, Heloise’s back itched, as she waited to hear the sound of knives whistling through the air, or footsteps pounding after them. But there was nothing. She cleared the gate just behind the Nightingale, and the two walked out into the field beyond.

  Tone stood beside Xilyka, unharmed. Ingomer lay on his back. Heloise could not see the wound that had killed him, for Xilyka had removed the knife and folded his arms across his chest. He looked like a man sleeping.

  Danad had dragged himself clear and was crawling toward the gate, casting terrified glances over his shoulder at the Hapti girl. Heloise joined Xilyka in ignoring him. “Are you all right?” She scanned Xilyka for wounds. Apart from a small bruise on the her wrist, the knife-caster looked perfectly fine.

  Xilyka shrugged. “He told me either he or the Pilgrim was dying today. Figured we needed the Pilgrim more.”

  “Oh good, I was…”

  “Heloise, are you all right?”

  Heloise followed the look of worry in her eyes, traced it to her skin. At once the pain of it hit her, the deep fire under it, the dry, stretched feeling across her bones. She looked down, caught the angry red patches across her belly and thighs. White blisters were beginning to rise in the midst of them, pale, numb islands in a sea of fiery crimson.

  “I’m … I’ll be all right.” As she said the words, heat swamped her, followed by chills. A fever pulsing. She could feel sweat beading on her forehead, sliding down the waxy surface of the red skin.

  Xilyka climbed onto the machine’s frame, reached in, touched a red patch on Heloise’s thigh and jerked her hand back, hissing. “This will need a poultice. We need to put her into a bath.”

  “There is no time for that,” Heloise began.

  “We will make time for—”

  “She is right,” Tone said. “We must return at once.” He turned to the Nightingale. “You must return with us to the city. The Congregation must awake.”

  “The girl says that the Emperor’s Song is gone—”

  Tone looked away. “He … he fell in battle. I am sorry.”

  Heloise stared at him, but Tone did not meet her eyes, and he did not say more.

  “Who are you?” the Nightingale asked. “Where is your flail? Your seal?”

  “I am Brother Tone of the Cygnus Chapter. Though as far as I know, I am the last of our convocation. My flail lies in the ruin of our capital. It is invested by the enemy, too numerous to throw back on our own. But my heart is true to the Emperor’s purpose, and I will see His will done here. The veil must be knit, and you must help me to knit it.”

  “A Pilgrim with neith
er flail nor armor,” the Nightingale said, “a Kipti and a villager in a tinker-engine. And you tell me the capital is invested by the Great Enemy, and the Song is fallen. What am I to believe?”

  “What your eyes show you,” Xilyka said, gesturing to the devil’s head in her hands. “I have no great desire to travel in the company of an old woman in her mourning clothes, let alone this preaching-head. I am here to guard Heloise, and the sooner we get this veil closed back up and the devils knocked off back to where they came from, the sooner she will stop romping around after you fools. So, if I could trouble you to believe us, and quickly, I would appreciate it.”

  The Nightingale gaped at her, and Xilyka nodded, turned on her heel, and jogged off toward the woods.

  “Where are you going?” Heloise called after her.

  “To find spaderoot,” Xilyka said. “Helps with the burning. I’ll catch up. I’ll eat one of my knives if that crone can move faster than a lame dog.”

  12

  YOU KEEP IT

  For what is a devil but a reflection of ourselves? It is our face in the mirror when the candle is spent, our soul laid bare in the instant just before it gutters out.

  —Sermon given in the Imperial Shrine on the centennial of the Fehta

  For the first league, Heloise kept turning to look behind her, shocked each time when she saw that Onas’s renegades were not following. Her burns pained her, chafing against the scorched and ragged remains of her clothing and the unyielding leather of the control straps. The pain was not great, but it was endless, spread across the whole of her body under skin that felt stretched too thin. She was careful to avoid looking down at herself, but she could catch the angry red of the burned skin, the blossoming white blisters, out of the corner of her eye.

  The Nightingale carried the devil’s head reverently, her mouth working softly as she gazed into the gray clusters of its dead eyes, still as fresh as they were on the day Barnard cut the head from the monster’s shoulders. Tone cast glances at her as they walked, the awe plain in his eyes.

  Heloise felt the constant nattering of her burns. She just wanted to rest, to be comfortable, if only for a moment. The sight of the old woman gazing at the severed head like a lover sent a surge of sick anger through her. The pain and the tightness made it impossible to bite it back, and before she knew it she had said, “Keep it.”

  Both Tone and the Nightingale looked at her in shock. “What?” the old woman asked.

  “Heloise,” Tone said slowly, “you are the only living person in memory who has slain a devil and lived. That is your evidence.”

  “No, I’m not.” Heloise fought to keep her voice down. “I bet some of your soldiers with the siege engines killed one. Maybe even two, but you don’t want to talk about it because it spoils your stupid legend. If killing a devil isn’t a great act, then maybe we don’t need to be so frightened of them. And if we don’t need to be so frightened of them, then why do we need an Order at all? Or an Emperor?”

  Tone blanched. “That is heresy…”

  “Yes, it is!” Heloise was shouting now. “What will you do? Hit me with your stick? Preach me a sermon? ‘Heresy’ was always a way to shut people up before you had to listen to what they had to say. Your stupid faith is like the capital—it looks impregnable, but once you’ve got something big enough to kick a hole in it, it goes over like a pile of sticks. The devils are strong, but they aren’t special. Wizardry brings them in, but it also keeps them out.”

  “I am no wizard,” the Nightingale said. “My gifts come from the Emperor.”

  “There is no Emperor!” Heloise felt her legs shaking. “The Sacred Throne is empty! It looks like it’s been empty for a thousand winters! He’s a made-up story! Just like the devils!”

  “The devils are real!” The Nightingale held up the head as proof.

  “So are bears! So is the pox or a dust-devil, or any other thing that can kill us! Doesn’t mean you have to burn villages.”

  She could see Tone chewing on his bottom lip. A part of her wished he would try to strike her, so that she could repay it in kind. Her stomach roiled as she recalled the helplessness the last time she faced him, realizing that the war-machine alone was not enough, that mounted and properly armed, he was still a match for her. But not now, after he given up his flail and more, after the sight of the empty throne.

  She leaned toward him. “You know it’s true. You don’t believe in the Emperor any more than I do. But you won’t say it, and I know why. Because if you do, if you confess that you have been wrong all this time, then you will have to account for what you have done. You will have to pay for my eye, and my mother, and Gunnar, and for Austre and everyone at Hammersdown.”

  Tone blanched, his shoulders shaking. “The devils smashed your precious army just as surely as my Order. You cannot deny them.”

  “Not trying to,” Heloise hissed back, “but neither am I using it as an excuse to be just like them.”

  She reached up, wedging the corner of the shield between the reliquary box and the machine’s helmet. She pushed, was surprised to find the leather straps holding. She increased the pressure, feeling the engine gather force, roaring louder. Tone’s mouth twitched, and she pictured him laughing at her as the Emperor demonstrated His power, the reliquary miraculously refusing to be budged.

  But at last the straps sheared and the Nightingale stepped back as the metal box crashed to the ground. Its underside was nearly black with rust and mold where it had adhered to the metal beneath.

  Heloise stepped on it, the machine’s weight driving it into the ground. “Keep that.” Heloise stabbed her knife-hand at the devil’s head. “You. Keep. That.” She bit off each word. “We go now to a final fight with the real enemy. And it will end either with their deaths or with ours. And either way, a severed head won’t count for anything.”

  “Heloise, she is helping us,” Tone said.

  “She is helping us because she wants to see the enemy beaten,” Heloise said, “because she wants to help everyone. Everyone. Traveling People, rangers, heretics, and Imperials alike. And if that’s not why, if a few words of truth are enough for her to withdraw her help, then she can stay here on the road, and I will fight the devils myself.”

  “Heloise!” Tone began, but the Nightingale silenced him with a gesture.

  “She is right, Holy Brother,” she said. “I am here to defeat the enemy. And a few angry words will not change that.”

  “Still, I will—” Tone began.

  “You will”—Xilyka’s voice cut through the conversation as she emerged from the wood beside them, bundles of some uprooted plant clutched in both hands—“use that stick of yours to help me grind these. And you may gripe all you like while you work, but nobody is going anywhere or doing anything until we’ve a poultice for Heloise’s burns.”

  * * *

  Xilyka sent Tone to fetch water from a pond a few paces into the woods, cupping it in his hands for the short jog to a divot in a rock where he dumped it out. It made a shallow bowl into which Xilyka shredded the broad, green leaves. “Go on then, priest.” She motioned to him. “Grind.”

  Heloise half-expected the Pilgrim to protest, but Tone leaned on his staff without complaint, churning the concoction into a bitter-smelling mush. Xilyka scooped handfuls of it out, slathering it across Heloise’s skin. The relief was instant, a delicious coolness spreading through her, coupled by a tingling that felt oddly good. Xilyka then removed her cloak and cut it into broad strips, which she bound across Heloise’s body.

  “You must lance the boils,” Tone said. “If you just cover them up, they will poison her.”

  Xilyka snorted. “You Pilgrims are great scholars of things you know nothing about. You have made a profession of being wrong. If we lance them, we put holes in her that are open to all the dirt of the road. That will surely kill her. Unless that was your intent?”

  She turned a cold eye toward Tone, and Heloise, angry as she was, shook her head. “He is ignorant, Xilyk
a, but he isn’t trying to hurt me.”

  Xilyka grunted and hopped down off the machine’s knee. “Losing my patience with the ignorant. Come, let’s finish this.”

  They went on in silence, faster now that pain no longer nagged Heloise. Still, the Nightingale was old, and Heloise endured her slow walk for as long as she could before finally insisting that she carry the old woman. She was careful not to jostle her too much, keeping the machine at little more than a fast walk, but it was a little quicker at least. The Nightingale endured it with something approaching dignity, cradled gently between the shield and the machine’s breastplate.

  It was then that Heloise realized that the Nightingale no longer carried the devil’s head.

  The old woman had set it down somewhere along the way.

  * * *

  The journey back was lost in a rhythm of anxiety, each step accompanied by a fresh worry. Foot up. My father is dead. Foot down. We’ll never be able to get past the devils. Foot up. The city will be destroyed, and the Congregation with it. Foot down. I will lose everyone who is dear to me. I will be alone. After a league, Heloise stopped watching the horizon, bent her eyes to the broken gray-brown of the road, the blurring of it as she hurried along helping her to feel as if she were moving faster. She could hear Xilyka and Tone panting as they struggled to keep up. The world blurred by, Xilyka’s poultice and the chill wind masking the heat of her wounds.

  “We are close,” Xilyka panted alongside her, and Heloise looked up to see the familiar widening of the track as it wound toward the slum outside the capital’s postern gate.

  The wind rose, whistling through the trees loud enough that Heloise couldn’t be sure she heard the sound of boots crunching on snow until she saw two figures stagger out of the distance, jogging down the track toward them. Heloise stopped, set the Nightingale down. “Get behind me.”

  Tone drew up beside her, raised his staff. Xilyka fanned her knives out in her hands.