Soul of the World

by David Mealing

  He nodded as they walked the pot out into the central nave. “You’re right, of course. Still, I trust in the Gods.”

  “Uncle, the Gods aren’t going to be able to scrounge cheap cabbage, let alone chicken and spices—”

  “Peace,” he said as they settled the pot beneath the dais. “Let us enjoy what we have, today.”

  She sighed as the nobles began to form a line around the side of the wide chamber. “I’ll fetch the bowls,” she said, walking back to the kitchen. Just as well her uncle made a habit of serving soup to the poor wretches of the Maw in the cold months. Between the few donations they received from their parishioners and the coin she earned selling her sketches, they’d been able to stock the larder well above what the Sacre-Lin’s stipend from the Basilica could provide. But the smoke rising from the Gardens made clear there wouldn’t be any more wagons from the Church, and she’d been hard-pressed to venture more than a few streets from the chapel for fear of d’Agarre’s people seizing the moment to strike.

  “Do you need a hand there?” Donatien asked after she’d deposited the first stack of bowls, making her way back into the kitchens.

  “If you don’t mind,” she said. “Grab the spoons, there beside the basin.”

  He hefted the wood crate, walking beside her. “I’m sorry for that, back there,” he said. “I didn’t mean to—”

  “It’s fine, Donatien.”

  They carted the rest of the utensils in silence, watching as the nobles lined up to receive their soup, looking for all the world like the usual urchins if you could see past the silks and jewelry. Her uncle shooed both her and Donatien away, insisting he could handle the service, and that they each receive full bowls, “for the benefit of our protectors,” as if he himself wouldn’t skim the dregs of the broth after everyone else had eaten.

  She carried hers back to the atrium, as far as she could from the crowd of nobles. Donatien followed, sitting cross-legged beside her.

  “Has there been any word from the city?” he asked after they’d eaten a few spoonfuls.

  “Not much,” she said. “Most honest folk are staying indoors, as cut off as we are.”

  “And the fires in the Gardens?”

  “You know as much as I do,” she said.

  He nodded, taking another sip of his broth, looking down in silence.

  It was obvious what he was thinking. “Look,” she said. “I’ve already told you, I can’t go tracking halfway across the city. If I leave and the chapel is attacked—”

  “I know,” he said. “You’re right. It’s only that I can’t stand sitting here while—”

  “If you want to participate so much, go rejoin your army and lay siege to the Gardens your bloody self.”

  He winced as if she’d struck him.

  Eyes from across the chamber turned toward them.

  “Sarine, please—”

  “I need time to think,” she said, dropping her spoon into her bowl and rising to her feet.

  “At least take a coat,” he said as she paced toward the main door. She made no sign she’d heard him, only unlatched the door and let herself out into the flurry. The swirling snow suited her mood, stinging against her skin as the wind cut through the Maw, leaving a layer of untracked powder. For some reason the cold didn’t trouble her, despite her loose linen shirt leaving her neck and forearms exposed.

  The beast spirits, Zi thought to her. It’s part of their gift.

  Shock pushed away the anger that had simmered beneath her skin. Zi never spoke so openly. “What is? Not feeling the cold?”

  Yes.

  She stared out into the storm, feeling the wind as if for the first time. “What else are you not telling me, Zi?”

  Silence. She sighed, settling in on the chapel steps. Gods but she hoped Donatien didn’t get it into his head to follow her, to bring her a coat or whatever other noble excuse he’d drum up to work his way under her skin. Not fair, she knew. His intentions were good. He only felt his own version of the pressure that threatened to smother her here at the chapel.

  The city was boiling over, and she was hiding like a rat.

  D’Agarre was out there; the army was out there. For all she knew the fires in the Gardens were pyres, built to sacrifice the nobles en masse on the altar of égalité, or whatever other excuse d’Agarre could find to fuel the madness she had seen behind his eyes. People were dying. Her people, the people of the city. And the Gandsmen, Donatien had told her they were coming. She felt caught in the eye of a storm, shackled to the lives of the nobles she had saved. And Donatien. Gods, but she felt trapped. She’d betrayed his trust at the council, when she started to reveal the treachery of the army after promising to leave it out of her account. He’d said nothing of it in the days since, nor of his duty to the army he had deserted. He only remained there by her side as the city burned.

  He shouldn’t be here.

  She frowned. “I know Donatien supports the ideals of these revolutionaries, but—”

  No. Him.

  She looked into the snowfall, tethering Life by reflex as she struggled to find something unexpected in the haze of the storm. She saw nothing, only white streets lined with white rooftops beneath a pale gray sky. Frowning, she began to ask what Zi meant. Then she saw.

  A lone silhouette, dressed all in black, making his way toward the chapel.

  Fear spiked in her veins. “Who is he, Zi?”

  Too soon. Too soon for him to have left the Seat.

  She rose to her feet. One man was little cause for alarm by himself—she had Body binders in the chapel, and a squad of trained soldiers to boot. But it could mean d’Agarre had finally realized she’d survived the council. It could be a warning against what was coming next, though she couldn’t imagine d’Agarre would be fool enough to come himself.

  The man in black continued his approach, now visible even without the aid of Life. She had to assume he was either a binder or a kaas-mage to be so brazen. It could not be an accident that he was bound for the Sacre-Lin. She stepped forward into the street, the chapel at her back. The man came to a stop twenty paces away, facing her through the snow on the wind. He drew the blades from his belt, a pair of short swords no more than half an arm in length with a sloped, curved design she had never seen in use by any soldier or gentleman of Sarresant.

  “Sarine,” the man called. “The one they say guards this chapel.”

  “Who approaches?” she called back.

  “An arrogant move. To come here, to hide in plain sight. Did you imagine the Three would not respond?”

  “What is he talking about, Zi?” As if in answer, Zi materialized on the snow in front of her, his tiny frame puffed up to his full height, interposed between the newcomer and where she stood before the chapel.

  Red, came the thought from Zi.

  So, the man was a kaas-mage after all.

  She tethered Body and felt Zi’s Red pulse at the edge of her vision, steeling herself for a fight.

  The man lowered his swords, abandoning a fighting stance as he stepped forward into the wind.

  “Impossible,” he said in a voice barely above a whisper, caught by her Life binding.

  She kept her guard, expecting a trick.

  It is not impossible, Zi thought. Without knowing how, she knew Zi had made himself heard by the man.

  “You are bound,” the man in black said. “You cannot be here.”

  “Zi, what is he talking about?” she said.

  Now she was close enough to see his face, a tall man with a hooknose. His eyes had gone wide, his face pale.

  You know less than you imagine.

  “She doesn’t know, does she?” he asked.

  “What is this?” she asked, heat touching her voice. “What’s going on, Zi?”

  Why have you come here? Zi asked.

  “You thought you could cleanse away our efforts and not draw a response?” the man said, sheathing his blades. “What were we to believe? We thought it was the Regnant’s work
. I risked everything to come down, and now I find this.”

  “Enough,” she said. “Who is this man, Zi? Explain yourself.”

  He is Axerian.

  Axerian. The name stirred her memory, taking her back to d’Agarre’s manse. To the revelations of the Comtesse de Rillefort, before she’d been slain on the edge of d’Agarre’s long knife.

  In this age, he is called the Nameless.

  Zi’s words tore through her, confirming her memory. The Nameless. The Enemy of the Gods.

  “Yes, my lady, I have that dubious honor this cycle,” Axerian said, affecting a slight nod. “No more truth there than in any other myth, I assure you.”

  “You …” Her jaw worked, trying to make sense of what she was hearing. “You are the one responsible for Reyne d’Agarre, for the corruption there, with his Codex.”

  He seemed surprised. “That’s right,” he said. “I am, and in a way I’ve come here to rectify that mistake.”

  Axerian, Zi thought, in a manner that made clear it was meant as a warning.

  “Let him speak,” she said. Her head swam, looking him up and down. The Nameless. A God, or near enough for the difference not to matter. Here, on the steps of her uncle’s chapel. Madness.

  “I mean to stop d’Agarre’s ascension, of course,” Axerian said. “Him and the others of his kind, those with the kaas.”

  That is not your place.

  “How?” she asked. “How would you stop d’Agarre?”

  “Restoring peace to the city, if I can,” he said. “And if not …”

  “What?”

  He met her eyes. She found his gaze strangely normal, an ordinary shade of brown, but touched with a reserve of fear all the more out of place in the eyes of a God.

  “If not,” he said, “then I must hunt the kaas-mages down and extinguish them, every one.”

  Their madness is your doing, Axerian.

  “You mean for her to ascend in my place?”

  No. That is not possible.

  “Stop,” she said, looking between Zi and Axerian beside him. “What are you talking about? I don’t understand. What is ‘ascension’?”

  “Passage to the throne of the Gods, my lady, to secure a place as a champion of—”

  Axerian, no. She is not ready.

  Fury boiled in her stomach. “Zi?”

  I am sorry, Sarine.

  Axerian bowed his head, taking a step back.

  “How dare you?” she said. “What do you know, Zi? Tell me now, this instant!”

  It is not my place to decide. Forgive me.

  “What?” she shouted. “Why is it anyone’s place to decide what I should be told?”

  Silence. She glared at Zi, rage building beneath her skin.

  “Be this as it may,” Axerian said, “I accept that the fault for the kaas-mages’ madness is mine. But surely both of you can agree they cannot be allowed to …” He trailed off, looking down at Zi. “… fulfill their goals. Are my aims at odds with yours, my lady? Would it be remiss to ask for your help?”

  Her vision still simmered with heat. “What sort of help?” she said.

  “Peace may be beyond reach, unless I can contact …” He paused, and shook his head. “No. I mean to kill them, my lady. That is the sort of help I need.”

  “Well, Zi?” she asked, anger dripping from her voice. “Am I allowed to work against d’Agarre?”

  Zi looked up at her, silent and staring as the snow fell around him.

  “I can’t help you,” she said, breaking off her stare, looking down at the base of the chapel steps. “I’m needed here, to defend these people.”

  Axerian frowned. “Why not set a warding? Few enough could break one, save perhaps a kaas on the cusp of ascension.”

  No. She is not ready.

  Anger flared again. Zi’s refusal was a bitter draught of betrayal. And now to be pointedly told she was powerless to stop d’Agarre, powerless to do more than sit in the chapel while he sent the city into madness …

  “Apologies, my old friend,” Axerian said. “But I am going to need your lady’s assistance if I am to have any hope of success.”

  Axerian closed his eyes, and an arc of blue lightning coursed around his arm. A coil of energy she’d seen before, beneath the d’Agarre manse surrounding the Codex of the Comtesse de Rillefort, and again at the strange place called Tanir’Ras’Tyat in the sewers beneath the Maw. It seemed to call to her even as he shaped it, sculpting it into a lattice of brilliant color. Then it vanished.

  “It should work with any of your gifts, of course,” Axerian said. “I only know the use of it with the kaas’s powers.”

  “What did you do? What was that?”

  “A warding, as I said. Do you need me to show you again?”

  Don’t use it, Zi thought to her. You aren’t ready.

  Muting Zi’s voice to a buzz in her head, she thought through what she had seen Axerian do. The use of the power was simple enough, but from where had he drawn it? The same energy, the blue sparks, but it came from within him as if he had tapped some internal reservoir. Perhaps she’d absorbed some of it, before. If she could only find it …

  There. A song at the edge of her mind, a sorrowful voice that wrapped itself around her as she let it come forward. She reached for it by instinct, feeling it course through her. For an instant her vision flashed to another place, a wide, empty stone chamber behind a thick pane of … glass? It blurred and disappeared, leaving behind a coil of pure energy in her hands.

  “You’ve got it,” Axerian said. “Now fold it around one of your gifts, and you’ll make a warding. Once it’s set, you can channel a power of the kaas—or one of the leylines or spirits—as if you were there in person, and stronger, with less fatigue in the wielding.”

  His words floated through her mind, but she understood without further instruction. She blinked to see the leylines, finding Faith, her oldest, most trusted gift. Twisting the binding through the blue energy from the distant song, she tethered it into the chapel, and watched as the Sacre-Lin chapel faded from view.

  “Hah, now that’s a sight I haven’t seen in a long time,” Axerian said, grinning. “Though if I may suggest, you’ll want Yellow instead, or Shelter. Vanishing chapels tend to draw more attention than they hide.”

  She released her tether of Faith and the chapel reappeared. Only this time she could sense the latticework of blue energy she had created, waiting for her to tether another binding into it.

  “I think I’ve got it,” she said, awe touching her voice. “Thank you.”

  “Your gift, not mine,” he said, bowing his head. “And perhaps now you can lend me your help in return.”

  Zi glared at her, as angry—or whatever passed for that, for a kaas—as she’d ever seen him.

  “You’ll have it,” she said. “To bring down d’Agarre, and those loyal to him? Yes. I will.”

  48

  ERRIS

  Council Street

  Southgate District, New Sarresant

  Jiri slowed to a walk as they turned down the wide street that ran between the council buildings. The first winter storms had abated, but their leavings stuck to the ground like a blanket of ice and sleet. Long icicles hung from rooftops, ominous spears threatening to impale passersby when the ice cracked and dropped. A good sign that there were people on the streets at all, never mind the weather. And there were a great many today, enough bodies to pack the gallery and make her late for Councilman d’Agarre’s meeting. Ostensibly a meeting of some body called the “Transitional Reform Council,” but neither she nor Voren had any illusions which puppeteer pulled those strings.

  “What do you make of it, sir?” Sadrelle asked, riding beside her.

  She frowned, looking up ahead. A swarming crowd, out of place both for the cold and the city’s politics, but she hadn’t taken any especial note of it. Such gatherings were common in better times.

  “Nothing of great import, Aide-Lieutenant,” she said. “A sign of the city’s re
covering health.”

  “Sir?” Sadrelle asked, in a tone that suggested she had just ordered a bath drawn and filled with calf’s blood.

  Only then did she notice the commotion in the center of the swarm, where it appeared a man had decided to go out naked into the cold, drawing a crowd to watch the spectacle of it. A heartbeat later she noticed a rather fine-looking coat being held aloft in a mocking fashion by one of the onlookers.

  “Oh, Gods damn it,” she said, spurring Jiri into the press. She fell into her battle voice, calling for the crowd to move aside. Jiri was large enough to draw attention by herself, and trampling through the square got them to make way at once.

  “What goes on here?” she called out, reining Jiri to a halt. “Who is this man?”

  The naked man cowered on hands and knees, looking up toward her with dullness in his eyes. She saw bruises on his legs and back, with flushed skin on his chest that would bloom to purple soon enough.

  Rage shone in the eyes of the crowd, with a pair of large men—one of whom held the coat she’d seen from afar—standing at the front rank on either side. “No concern of yours, Captain,” one of them said. “Just a tribunal on behalf of the people of New Sarresant.”

  “She’s a general, you bloody fool,” Sadrelle called as his mount reined to a halt behind her.

  “She’s fixing to be next if she doesn’t mind her business,” the man shouted back.

  That made the crowd nervous; credit them with sense enough not to assault soldiers in broad daylight. Even so, the man’s words hung in the air, adding their own sort of chill to the biting cold.

  She said nothing in reply, merely held a hand high enough for the crowd to see as she peeled off her glove, letting it drop to the ground at Jiri’s side. Gasps came from all around as their eyes settled on the broken skin on the back of her hand. By the time her second glove fell to the ground, the crowd had edged itself back a few paces, the men at the head sharing uncertain looks.

  “He’s one of them,” one of the men offered, with an exaggerated spitting gesture even as he backed away. “One of the nobles. It’s no more than they deserve.”

  “Go back to your homes,” she said in the voice she used for battlefield speeches. “And give this man back his clothes.”