by Scott Hale
“Of course, we will,” Gemma said under her breath.
“Hex will stay in Cenotaph to coordinate with the Marrow Cabal network as a whole. We have hired the Cabal now. They are not simply bound to us. They work for us. We need to take full advantage of their abilities.”
Hex raised her hand as if she had something to say.
But Felix was on a roll. She’d have to wait.
“Clementine and Will accompany us to Eldrus. Can that be arranged, Hex?”
She nodded.
“As for the burning in Cathedra today…”
Barnabas cut him off with: “The burning raised morale greatly.”
“To fight the Disciples of the Deep, you must normalize their behaviors,” Sloane said.
That sounds like something Justine would say.
“How about we burn you?” Gemma snapped. “Normalize that, bitch.”
“No more burnings,” Felix interjected, before the two of them could get going. “Find other ways to raise morale.”
“But they will say you’ve aligned yourself with demons,” Sloane said.
“They’ll say whatever they want to say. No more burnings.”
“But Mother Abbess…”
“No more burnings, Sloane.”
“Yes, your Holiness.”
Felix steadied his breathing. His heartbeat slowed. He’d have to keep a close eye on Sloane on the road. She had Winnower written all over her.
Hex cleared her throat, said, “Can I?”
Felix nodded.
“Ichor’s made contact with the vermillion network. Word in the blood is Audra’s on her way home.”
Audra…
“And she’s God’s Speaker.”
All at once, Millicent, Warren, Gemma, Barnabas, and Sloane looked at Felix.
And to them, he said, his voice cracking, “We leave for Eldrus.”
Felix ended the meeting before anyone could ask him any more questions and hurried back to his room. Audra was God’s Speaker? It made so much sense, what with her ability to grow the Crossbreed and Bloodless and to communicate with the shadows, and he hadn’t even considered it. Did Justine know? Is that why she let her go? Did she know she’d end up back in Eldrus? Was that a good thing? A bad thing? Audra would beat them there by weeks if she was coming from Nyxis. He was running out of time.
Sprinting through the hallways, trying to get back to his room before a full-blown panic attack cold-cocked him into a coma for the rest of the night, he heard someone following him. Stressed, pissed, he spun around, crying before he saw the person, “Go away!”
It was Hex who stood behind him.
His door was only a few feet away, and he had half a mind to ignore her completely.
“It should’ve taken longer.”
He didn’t know what she meant.
“For Ichor to tap into the network. Warren said you were in the chapel.”
“You really hurt…”
“Those are his veins, but in the walls? In the ground? It’s God. Cathedra is ripe with the Vermillion God. I wouldn’t be surprised if Edgar is using the Anointed One to spy on us with all these veins coursing through the place.”
Felix shook his head. “They don’t grow where there’s no belief.”
“I don’t know about that. And Eldrus had dug very deep to mine the veins in Carpenter Plantation.”
“What’re you saying?”
“Cathedra’s rotten. It’s no good. God’s been here for a long time. They’re all impostors.” Hex pulled her blue hair back into a bun. “I’m saying it’s good you’re leaving.”
“Well, it’s good to know someone agrees with me.”
“But you’d be safer surrounded by new company…”
Felix turned away, took out his key, and put it into the door’s lock.
“Also…”
He unlocked the door, let it open on its own.
“… there’s someone who wants to meet with you.”
“Not now, Hex.”
“He’s already in your room.”
Slowly, Felix turned. There, sitting on his bed, hands on his kneecaps, legs swinging like a happy child, sat the massive mosquito, Mr. Haemo.
“Hey, Boy,” Mr. Haemo said. “I heard you’re going hunting. Want to buy some guns?”
CHAPTER XXVIII
Audra had come bearing gifts of hate, but in the space between a second and a sigh, came up empty-handed.
She was happy to be home.
It hurt to think it, but she thought it; it hurt to feel it, but she felt it; it hurt say it, but there it was, on her lips, a precious whisper between a hidden smile—unfathomable, incurable; unexpected, and yet welcomed.
She was happy to be home.
Edgar sat beside her on the balcony. Not before her, above her, or behind her, but beside her; inches away. From the night he’d killed their family, the day Alexander Blodworth had abducted her, and until this morning just an hour ago, she’d thought of nothing else but ways to murder him. By knife she’d stab him, by sword she’d gut him; by fire she’d melt him, by shadow she’d consume him. She’d mapped Ghostgrave’s rooms and halls in her mind, and in each one, imagined a scenario in which she could take him down. If they’d left Lena’s room alone, then there were more than enough vases to break on his head and have him seeing stars in the sunlight. If Horace’s room was untouched, then all it would take was getting Edgar in the doorway, because Audra’s eldest brother had so many blades in his quarters, she could throw all of them, miss ninety percent of the time, and still turn Edgar into a soggy pincushion. If nothing else, she’d banked on getting Edgar to go down into the nest of subway tunnels beneath the keep, where once they’d dreamed with brother Auster of an Eldrus made better by the Crossbreed; down there, yes, in that nest of darkness and glass, where anything could happen, and if it couldn’t, would happen a little farther down the line, where Vincent’s torture chamber resided.
But she was happy to be home, and happy enough to sit here and finish off this sprig of grapes with her would-be victim. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to kill him. The jury was still out on that one. It was that she didn’t need to kill him just yet.
She knew this because she was here, beside him, no shackles on her wrists, nor a knife in her neck.
She knew this because Eldrus was before her, a coiled kingdom laid like coral in an oil spill, its numerous buildings, severe and sharpened, forming a black reef that ran along the land as far as she could see. Once it’d been held together by the walls that ran between the districts, and the towers that kept watch over them, and now it seemed the city-state owed its stability to the vermillion veins, which threaded through it with the careful precision of a seamstress’ needle; going everywhere they needed to go, and making themselves needed in the process, so that if Edgar were to pluck these veins, everything would unravel.
She knew this because the Vermillion God was watching her, not smiting her, from atop Its volcanic throne. When It beat Its ephemeral wings, it wasn’t to cause a windstorm strong enough to hurl her into the atmosphere, but to catch the rising sun and color the waking world in accordance to Its namesake. When It stretched Its limbs, it wasn’t to tear her away and force her down Its throat to be the voice It lacked, but to consider Its kingdom, damming rivers here, parting forests there. When It cast Its gaze her way with Its spiderous eyes, it wasn’t to threaten or intimidate, but to plead and beg for an audience in the empty auditorium in her mind—the one It’d put there; the one she refused to visit.
Audra was happy to be home, but it was more than that. For the first time in her life, she was in control. No one was going to make her do anything anymore. They would try. She wasn’t stupid enough to think they wouldn’t. But they assumed the sum of her worth came from her ability to be God’s Speaker. It was that myopic view of things that would leave them in the shadows, to the shadows, for good.
“What do you think?”
Edgar’s voice had all the telltale signs
of obsession: a distant voice warm enough to solicit any kind of validation. His body showed it, too. What was he now? Twenty-two? Audra couldn’t remember, and whatever she came up with, it was hard to actually believe it. For a man so young, he couldn’t have been grayer than the headstone-gray walls of Ghostgrave. If someone told her he was possessed by a ghost, she would’ve been first in line to sprinkle him with holy water. Pale and weak, Edgar seemed to have a second skin around him, or if nothing else, a second source of light, as if he’d gotten trapped in the middle of an out-of-body-experience
“Nothing’s the same,” she said.
Edgar leaned back on the bench they sat on and said, “It’s better.”
“For who?”
“Everyone.”
The wind kicked up. Audra caught a whiff of herself. She’d come straight from the carriage and had brought with her a fragrance formed from hangovers, bad sex, sweaty fear, expired food, and that cloying stink of Arachne web. It didn’t seem to bother her brother, but it bothered her. She was in control now, and the less Edgar knew about her, the better. She’d been open with him once when she’d showed him the Crossbreed. Never again. She had to be an unmarked tomb: hard as stone and sealed off to the world; scentless, emotionless; alluring in her mystery, disarming in her simplicity. When they searched her for her engravings, to make sense of what she’d become, they’d find only mirrors, and it would be in that moment they’d realize whose tomb she really was.
Audra smiled, but Edgar didn’t notice. Like herself of late, he, too, was lost in self-reflection. He’d apologized more times than she had fingers and toes—she’d kept count—but it was good to see that for all his efforts, futile as they were, he could recognize they weren’t enough. He hadn’t been prepared for her, Audra knew that now. Years after the murders, and he still hadn’t completely justified his actions. Audra wasn’t prepared for that, either.
“You’re not a prisoner,” he said, finally looking at her. “Come and go as you please.”
Cocking an eyebrow, Audra said, “You and the rest of the family never thought much of me.”
“I know you could kill me. I’d deserve it. I can’t change what happened, or what happened to you. But we, together, can make changes, like we’ve always wanted to. This—” he gestured to Eldrus, but in actuality, to the entire world, “—is nothing more than our Crossbred on a grander scale. It works, Audra. God works.”
“What about the seed-junkies I’ve seen wandering around?”
Edgar grumbled. “Not my doing. Someone’s gone too far and…”
He paused. The ghostly sheen lifted from him. Warmth and excitement returned to his face, and now, yes now, she could recognize him. Edgar continued: “Take Nyxis for example. Crops are beginning to grow again in the fields. The swarms of mosquitoes that have been spreading diseases, regardless of the time of year, are gone. Prostitution has plummeted. The city is healthier than it’s ever been. The witch covens that resurfaced awhile back have been run out. They no longer control the local government or flood the city with would-be mercenaries to sow chaos. The people are eating.”
Nyxis had been a blur of bar fights and one-night-stands for Audra. The only things she remembered about the place were the crisp, cold mornings where she and Deimos sat outside, nursing their wounds from the night before. But it had been calm there, and now that she was thinking about it, not at all what people had played it up to be.
“Hrothas is experiencing the same moral renaissance, Audra. No longer are problems solved by murder. The corrupt mayor and his cronies have been taken out of office, replaced by loyal Disciples. A new wave of Feminism has washed over the city. Women are taking up positions of power once long-held by men. They have voices that are being heard, fists that are being felt. Women aren’t being traded and branded like cattle. Abortions are no longer happening in back alleys, but in sterile clinics.
“Islaos, far away as it is in the Blasted Woodland, has even felt the changing presence of the Vermillion God. Unions have formed to counteract the long work days. Alcohol use and mind-killers are at a record low. The Disciples of the Deep have eliminated all distributors of the substances. Schools have been built. Education has an emphasis on it that hadn’t been there before. No longer will the children there be forced into a life of lumbering, mining, or hard labor. They can dream beyond their parents’ achievements.”
Why did it seem as if this, not his sympathy, was the thing Edgar had practiced the most before Audra had arrived?
“Of course, we can’t forget Cathedra. The city is closest to God’s presence than anywhere else. Not only that, but the Holy Order is there, too. If there were any doubts about the legitimacy of God, then there is always their ‘god.’ But Cathedra hasn’t changed. It’s worse than it has ever been. We have many loyal followers in Cathedra. Our eyes are everywhere. Thanks to Penance’s army, Narcissus, and the Conscription being in the city and the outskirts, rape rates have skyrocketed. Men, women, children… It doesn’t matter. Domestic abuse hasn’t waned once the Holy Child and the Mother Abbess arrived but increased. More men are beating their wives and children, and many reports state it is because of the opposing faiths occupying the space. We received word that the Compellers have allowed our Great Hunt to continue there, but they weren’t just burning Night Terrors, but their own. They dressed them up as the enemy, and then they fed them to the flames. Dissenters, heretics, apostates. We do not do that in our cities of God. Free speech is everything. Is it not unreasonable to look at Nyxis, Hrothas, and Islaos, see all the good that is happening in those places, and come to the conclusion that Cathedra has not been saved because of the presence of the Holy Order there? They are closest to God, Sister. It should be a veritable paradise, yet it’s anything but. The Holy Order mocks God for not acting, but where is the Holy Child and the Mother Abbess? They have done nothing but move armies around maps, to fight things that will be of no consequence.”
Edgar stopped, took a deep breath. He went red in the cheeks, and then redder, as dawn crept up the back of God and the sun took its place in the clear, blue skies. He smiled, played with the embroidery on his pantleg, which was the symbol of the Disciples of the Deep—a lidless eye wreathed in tentacles.
“I had my doubts,” he said, his voice dropping. “I had… so many doubts. And not a day goes by that I don’t regret everything I’ve done. But… do you understand… everything It’s done? In one season, we experienced centuries-worth of change. The Marrow Cabal couldn’t do that. This didn’t even happen in the Old World when God first awoke. This is meant to be.”
“What about the rest of the Heartland?” Audra asked.
“Bedlam? Bedlam is bedlam. That’s never going to change. Gallows is gone. The Skeleton turned it into a giant pool of blood. We can’t even go near the area because it’s so badly infested with insects, especially mosquitoes. Cadence was destroyed by the Holy Order a year ago when they found the Holy Child there. In the Kistvaen range, Llyn was melted by the eruption, Trist was smothered in ash. Marwaidd, Rhyfel, and Angheuawl were wiped out by the Cult of the Worm. Flesh fiends raped Communion a month ago. Hvlav and Brann have received God’s grace; they flourish. But Formue and Skygge? You can thank the Skeleton for what’s happening there.”
“What’s happening there?”
“The Black Hour, at all times.” Edgar said this so hard, the sentence nearly snapped in half. “Or did you want to know about Nora? God is in Nora. They’ve begun to build ships to sail the sea again.”
“Edgar…”
“Or did you want to know about Nachtla? Yes, dead as that town may be, we’re going to fill it again. Or how about Flotsam to the south? The outposts on the coasts? We’ve crossed the Divide. Beneath the snows on Penance’s peninsula, the ground runs vermillion.”
“Edgar, stop. That’s enough.”
He bit his lip and nodded. As his defensive shell fell, the ghostly sheen returned, and he slumped beneath its weight.
“Every day, I hav
e to explain myself to myself,” he said. “If someone who doesn’t believe in me could just believe… It would be so much easier.”
“I’m not going to be God’s—”
Vermillion words wormed through the soil of her mind. She screamed, bent over, and grabbed her head. The pain was unbearable. It coursed through her bones like they were conduits. She shook, this eldritch lexicon shocking her as it were lightning.
I’m in control. I’m in control.
She looked up, her eyes meeting with God’s, and from her mind, on a shadowy tide of Its condemned she sent one simple order: Stop.
With that, in a fraction of a second, the pain was gone. The storm cleared. And somehow, she felt better than before; felt like how it felt after a heavy, summer rain; cool, but warming, and resolved.
Edgar, pretending as if this hadn’t happened, said, “How did you escape Penance?”
“With Deimos,” Audra said. “Is he okay?”
“He’s fine. We are treating his wounds. Lotus’ people weren’t… kind to him on the journey. No one can know he’s a Night Terror. He won’t survive the night if anyone finds out.” He paused. “A Night Terror smuggled you out of Pyra? How is that possible?”
“The Holy Child let me go. He was a friend to me.”
Edgar drew a sharp breath.
“I owe him my life.” Sensing her brother was going to try to pry her open for everything she knew about Felix and Justine, she quickly changed the subject. “You gave Blodworth my Crossbreed.”
“Uh, yes.”
“Did you know he would kill Geharra?”
“No.”
“Did you know he would try to summon the Red Worm?”
“No, Audra, I didn’t. I would’ve never…”
“But you did.”
Edgar’s cheek quivered with anger. “Geharra funded the Marrow Cabal’s rebellion in the Heartland. They were attempting to assassinate me and overthrow Eldrus. My intentions were to have the Crossbreed planted in Geharra, to do exactly what you and Auster and I had in mind for our city, which was to make it a better place. Then Geharra would see we were not the enemy.”
