Chaos Queen--Fear the Stars (Chaos Queen 4)

by Christopher Husberg

“Cinzia,” Nayome said, entering the tent. Cinzia had not seen her since their infiltration of Canta’s Fane. Between all that had happened, with the Fall of the Eye and all of the healing and miracles, and the Nine Daemons and the Outsiders and—

  And, for the briefest moment, the red gem in her belt pouch, now resting on a small table by her bed, called to her.

  But Nayome was much more put-together than the last time Cinzia had seen her. Not a single blonde hair out of place, once again pulled tightly behind her head in a wide bun. She wore a dark cloak—Cinzia would have been shocked if even Nayome had the brashness to stride through the Odenite camp in full Cantic robes—but she did see the cream and crimson hem beneath, albeit tattered and muddy.

  “Cinzia, I—are you all right?” Nayome asked.

  I cannot believe you would visit me, Cinzia wanted to say. What would lead you to think such a thing would be a good idea? What idiocy overtook you, or are you always this stupid?

  But, while the anger still clamored inside of her, she knew it was useless. She knew it meant nothing, would do nothing.

  So Cinzia slumped back into her chair. “What do you want, Nayome?”

  “Some tea would be in order,” Nayome said quietly. “I believe I may be here for some time.”

  “Bloody ask for it yourself,” Cinzia said.

  Nayome cleared her throat, but the woman did not seem nearly as taken aback or angry at Cinzia’s language as Cinzia would have thought. If anything, Nayome seemed nervous, fiddling with the hem of one sleeve. She looked over her shoulder.

  “Tea, please,” Nayome said, her voice loud and sonorous.

  “Right away.” Footsteps walked away from the outside of the tent.

  “I sense Luceraf has left you,” Nayome said. “Such news would have delighted me just a few days ago,” she muttered. “But now…” She met Cinzia’s eyes. “The gemstone works, then? You’ve tried it?”

  How Nayome could possibly know about the gemstone was beyond Cinzia. And what did she mean, ‘but now?’

  “If you are wondering how I know such a thing, I followed you into the Vault after all. I couldn’t help myself. I heard your conversation with Arcana.” Nayome looked over her shoulder as she said the Essera’s name, as if the woman might be inside the tent with them.

  “And now… what is it you want?” Cinzia’s mind and body were exhausted. Goddess, she did not want to deal with this tonight.

  “I think we need to share information with one another.”

  For the first time, Cinzia noticed a large pack at Nayome’s feet. Had she carried that in? Cinzia could not remember the woman taking it off, or setting it there, but it had to belong to her. Cinzia rubbed her eyes. Perhaps she was so exhausted that she had not noticed.

  And, suddenly, Cinzia realized what this was. Whatever Nayome had come here to do or to say did not matter; whatever was in that pack did not matter. None of it mattered, except that it was a distraction. A distraction from—

  Cinzia tried to think of a way to retrieve the small pouch with the gemstone in it without being too obvious, but could think of nothing, and settled for striding purposefully over to it and grabbing it in both hands. Or, at least, that had been her plan. The moment she tried to stand, she almost buckled. She steadied herself on the arms of the chair, and then ended up limping over to the small table where the pouch lay. She picked it up, and hobbled back to her chair, settling down into it with a long sigh.

  “What kind of information?” Cinzia asked.

  A distraction.

  Nayome stared at her, blinking for a moment, then continued with a tiny shake of her head. “You healed people, near the Eye, after what happened. The dead and the dying.”

  Cinzia inclined her head. “I did what I could, but it was only Jane who raised people from the dead.”

  Nayome appeared to process this information for a moment, then nodded quickly. “Well, whatever has happened between us, and whatever else might happen in the future, I thank you for that. What happened to the Eye…”

  When Nayome did not continue, Cinzia looked up to see the woman blinking back tears.

  A knock sounded at the doorpost. “Your tea, Disciple Cinzia.”

  “Yes, yes,” Cinzia said, shutting her eyes tightly in an attempt to reset her mind. “Please bring the tea in, thank you.”

  The tent flap pulled back, and the Prelate entered, a tray with a clay teapot and two cups held in both hands. He did a double-take at Nayome, seeing her in her full Cantic robes, before he placed the tray on a small table between Cinzia and Nayome.

  “Er… is everything all right, Disciple Cinzia?”

  “Everything is fine,” Cinzia said, although nothing was fine, and nothing would ever be fine. “Thank you.”

  “Would you like me to pour?”

  Nayome took up the teapot, filling their cups. “Thank you, but no,” she said, inclining her head toward the Prelate. Then she turned her attention back to Cinzia. “It would benefit our conversation if you dismissed your guard.”

  The Prelate frowned. “I am sorry, miss, but I do not take orders from you—”

  “It is quite all right, Hennic,” Cinzia said, smiling up at the man. A distraction. “A private conversation would do us good. Nothing to worry about. You can still keep guard over the tent, but… please do so at a distance.”

  “Disciple Cinzia, I really—”

  “If Eward has a problem with this, tell him he can take it up with me.”

  Hennic glanced back and forth from Cinzia to Nayome, obviously flustered. But he could not very well disobey a disciple. Eward had trained his force well, and with the exception of Jane, disciples held ultimate authority throughout the camp.

  “Very well, Disciple Cinzia,” Hennic said with a small bow. “If you need me, or need anything at all, just—”

  “I shall call out very loudly. Worry not, Hennic,” Cinzia said.

  Then she and Nayome were alone.

  Cinzia reached for her cup of tea on the table. The clay was warm in her hands, and the tea was strong, with a bitter edge to it. Sugar, of course, had become quite scarce for the Odenites.

  “Nayome,” Cinzia said, placing her cup back down on the tray, “you have yet to actually share anything of note.”

  “I am aware of that. I had to make sure that silly guard was gone. What I am about to tell you should not fall on anyone else’s ears.”

  Cinzia frowned. “What could you possibly have to tell me that I would not want to share with the other Odenites?” The moment she asked the question, however, she realized how silly it was. She had kept plenty of things from the Odenites, both for their good and her own convenience, or shame, depending on the day.

  Nayome took a long draught from her cup.

  “Before you left the Vault, Arcana gave you a choice. You could take the gemstone or the pages.”

  “And…?”

  “You took the gemstone. But after you left, I glanced around. The other artifacts in the Vault frightened me. But the pages, on the other hand… Arcana had implied they could be read by anyone who chose them. So, I chose them.”

  A distraction from—

  “You are telling me that you, a Holy Crucible of the Denomination—” Goddess, no wonder she did not want anyone eavesdropping on this conversation “—stole the pages from the Denomination’s secret vault?”

  “Yes,” Nayome said, sitting back in her chair. “That is exactly what I am telling you.”

  Cinzia glanced at the pack at Nayome’s feet. “And there…”

  “I have them with me, yes.”

  Cinzia’s exhaustion was all but forgotten, now. “Why did you bring them here, Nayome?”

  “I already told you,” she said. “We need to exchange information.”

  “What information do I have that would benefit you?”

  “You have that gemstone,” Nayome said, nodding at the pouch now sitting in Cinzia’s lap. “Once you read this manuscript, you will understand why I want to
know more about it.”

  “Very well then,” Cinzia said, unable to keep the eagerness from her voice. “Let me see it.”

  “I will,” Nayome said, “but first you must understand something. What I’ve read in these pages… they have changed the way I view the world, Cinzia. They have changed the way I view Canta. And, to be completely honest, not for the better. If you truly want to read them, I need you to understand that your views may also change.”

  My views are already changing, Cinzia wanted to say. But the truth was, she did not think her faith, or whatever had happened to it, was any of Nayome’s business.

  “I understand,” Cinzia said.

  “You used to wear the Trinacrya,” Nayome said.

  Cinzia’s jaw clenched. “Thank you for pointing that out.”

  “I am not trying to be petty, Cinzia. You used to wear the Trinacrya, but did you understand what it meant?”

  “Nayome, I have neither the time nor the patience—”

  “I don’t mean that in a figurative sense,” Nayome said, clearly frustrated, “I mean it literally. Do you know why the Denomination used the Trinacrya as its main symbol?”

  Cinzia pursed her lips. “It was the symbol Canta chose, first of all.” But no, that would not be the answer Nayome sought. “The circle represents the eternal progression of things, how one event always leads to another, and one generation to the next, always in patterns.”

  “And the triangle?”

  “The triangle… has always been less clear,” Cinzia admitted. “Some say it is the unity of mind, body, and spirit. Others the symbiotic relationship between Canta’s children, the Denomination, and Canta Herself. Others the triplicity of all things.”

  “Yes,” Nayome said, “and yet others the triplicity of Canta’s own nature.”

  Cinzia frowned. She did not think she had heard that particular interpretation.

  “I hadn’t heard of it either,” Nayome said, anticipating Cinzia’s thought. “Until I read the pages.”

  Nayome’s eyes darted down to the backpack at her feet, and then back to Cinzia.

  “Canta’s existence spans three phases,” Nayome said. The excitement, the anticipation on her face were gone. In their place, a deadly seriousness. “Destroyer, Lover, Creator.”

  Cinzia had never heard this before. But at least it was—

  A distraction.

  “More accurately, at least according to history,” Nayome continued, “you might order them Creator, then Lover, then Destroyer.”

  Cinzia glanced again at Nayome’s backpack.

  “Very well,” Nayome said with a sigh. She reached down into the pack, but instead of pulling out a pile of pages, she retrieved a small, leather-bound book. She tossed it to Cinzia, and Cinzia nearly knocked over her tea trying to catch it. The book landed awkwardly in her lap, and Cinzia stared down at it, crooking her head to read the title that was currently upside down. She turned the book around.

  Poems and Verse.

  “Don’t worry,” Nayome said, “we will get to the pages soon. I know you are chomping at the bit, as it were. But first… what do you know of the poet Cetro Ziravi?”

  Cinzia blinked. She remembered a missing copy of Ziravi’s works from her family’s library in Harmoth—

  A distraction.

  “Everyone knows of him,” Cinzia said. “Everyone familiar with poetry, at least. His epic was famous for challenging the Denomination itself at the time.”

  “Exactly,” Nayome said. “And do you know why his poetry was so controversial?”

  “Because it placed the Essera contemporary with Ziravi in Oblivion,” Cinzia said. She might have found that humorous, once. “And criticized the functionality and, according to some, the legitimacy of the Denomination.”

  “His epics did, yes. But his poetry…?”

  Cinzia shrugged. “What about his poetry, Nayome?” A part of her wanted Nayome to just leave, to be done with this conversation, with all conversation, but at the same time—

  A distraction.

  “He often wrote poetry as if from the point of view of Canta herself,” Nayome said. She nodded at Poems and Verse. “Turn to page seventy-nine.”

  Cinzia frowned, but did as Nayome requested. Anything was better than being alone with her thoughts.

  “‘Wild Calamity’,” Cinzia read.

  I do not control myself,

  I do not hold back, hoping my rage and

  power spare the deserving,

  I do not weep through eternity, nor do

  I scrape my knees along the floors of

  time, atoning.

  Because I love what I love, and I love

  all things.

  I destroy all things,

  Just as I create them.

  I could not destroy that which I did

  not first love,

  And so the circle spirals onward.

  To destroy, I must first know love,

  And to create, I must first know

  destruction.

  And to love, create.

  Meanwhile, the needing, the touching

  skin, the welding

  bodies, the connecting of every pair of

  lost children,

  soft in body and young in mind,

  continues my pattern

  and life’s wild calamity.

  Cinzia’s eyes narrowed.

  …I destroy all things, just as I create them…

  Slowly, everything began to click into place in Cinzia’s mind. The Codex of Elwene. Elwene’s footnotes. The Nine Daemons, the Betrayer… Canta. Canta, who created the Sfaera. Canta, who loved the Sfaera.

  To destroy, I must first know love, and to create, I must first know destruction.

  “Canta… the Destroyer,” Cinzia said quietly.

  “Yes,” Nayome whispered, tears streaming down her face. “I wish I had never agreed to go with you, to help you get into that vault. I wish I had never followed you, because now I cannot unlearn what I have learned. I cannot go back to what I knew. I cannot reconcile my faith with what has been revealed to me.”

  Finally, Nayome hefted the backpack onto the table between them, heedless of the tea tray.

  “Read it,” Nayome said, taking the pages out of the pack. “Read it, and you’ll understand. You’ll know what I know.”

  And what is it you know? Cinzia wondered, the answer already echoing in her mind.

  “The Nine Daemons were never going to destroy us,” Nayome said. “That was Canta’s duty. And now, I fear, she will soon come to let her sword fall on the Sfaera.”

  “Canta the Destroyer,” Cinzia whispered. She picked up the pages, words forming out of nothing on the first document she took up, and began to read.

  EPILOGUE

  ALAIN, MORAYNE, AND CODE finally made it to the Odenite camp. Code had been leading them out of the city when monsters began raining down from the sky, and the rest of the night had passed in a dark, violent, snowy cold blur.

  Alain hated the snow. He had never seen it before, and had been reserving judgment on the stuff his entire life. Now that he’d experienced it, however, he’d be quite happy if he never had to see it, feel it, shiver in it, kill in it, or die in it ever again.

  Morayne, walking beside him, had not said a word since they left the city. Neither he nor Code had said much, either, but they had at least exchanged a few words between them. Alain recognized this sort of silence from Morayne. He reached out a hand to hold hers, squeezing it tightly. He barely felt a squeeze from her in return. He was about to ask her what was wrong, when Code swore beside him.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said. The Nazaniin had stopped, staring ahead of them. Or ex-Nazaniin, Alain was no longer sure; Code had said something about going to the Odenites first, and then perhaps traveling with Alain and Morayne to Maven Kol again, because he had no more business with his former associates in Triah. Alain had no idea what exactly that entailed, but it did not seem to indicate an ongoing
relationship with the Nazaniin. He hoped whatever had happened did not have to do with himself or Morayne; he would hate to think they might have disrupted Code’s life. He’d said as much to Code, and Code had insisted otherwise, but Alain nevertheless felt something was off.

  But now, Code had stopped, and stared at a campfire ahead of them. The Odenite camp stretched on for quite some time—if anything, it looked even larger than it had when he and Morayne had first arrived in Triah—with tents, campfires, gathering areas, and more. But straight ahead of them was a tiellan woman, sitting alone at a fire pit that no longer burned. She seemed oblivious to the cold, her breath puffing visibly from her mouth, but she did not shiver nor pull her dark leather overcoat more tightly around her.

  “You,” Code said, walking toward the woman.

  Her long black hair was braided tightly on either side of her skull, while a looser braid ran from her forehead, over her scalp, her neck, and halfway down her back. When Code spoke, the woman looked up at them, and Alain looked into twin black pools.

  “Months of waiting to meet you,” Code mumbled, walking more quickly, “and I run into you in the bloody Odenite camp? What are you doing here?”

  “Do I know you?” she asked, standing, a hand straying to the hilt of her sword.

  “Not yet you don’t,” Code said, stopping in front of her. “But you’re about to. My name is Code. Was a Nazaniin, now I’m not so sure. Was assigned to gain your confidence, but now that I’ve found you, ironically, I don’t much care to do that. But I figured I’d meet you anyway, considering… everything. I’d kill you right now for what you did to the Eye, if I didn’t think you’d strike me down long before I made the move.”

  “I will not strike you down,” the woman said, bowing her head.

  Alain felt Morayne squeeze his hand. She was staring at the woman intently.

  Something was certainly off, here. The woman had basically just invited Code to kill her, and Code wanted to kill her because…

  Because she had destroyed the Eye.

  “Ah,” Code said, when he noticed the woman looking at Alain and Morayne, “where are my manners? Alain, Morayne, may I introduce you to Winter Cordier, the Goddess-damned Chaos Queen.”