Seraphina's Lament (The Bloodlands Book 1)

by Sarah Chorn

  He knew how to use a knife to get the job done. He was merciless. He felt no guilt. The land was set against him. He fed the earth blood, and took what he needed in exchange. It was a simple payment and return calculation; give a little, get a little. This was war, and in war some people died. He salted their meat, kept it hidden, and ate it greedily.

  He was eating more than he’d ever eaten in his life. His meals were huge, sprawling, meaty affairs that would take hours to consume, until he was sucking meat from bones, and then just sucking on bones. By the time he was finished, he’d be ready to start the next one. Even then, he never gained weight. His skin remained a sallow gray, hanging off his angular bones like drapes. His eyes stayed a jaundiced yellow. His teeth kept falling out, along with his hair. He looked like a skeleton wrapped in lace.

  The more he ate, the hungrier he became. It was worse than the hunger pains he’d felt before, when starvation was singing him lullabies and eternal night whispered seductions in his ear. The need to devour was a horrible, clawing drive. He needed to consume more than he needed to breathe. Even with his hiding place overflowing with salted meat, and him managing huge meals each day, the weight, his healthy pallor, and his good skin never came back. Taub’s joints ached. His eyes stopped seeing anything save a blur of light and dark. The world ceased to exist, replaced by a relentless need to fill the gaping emptiness inside that threatened to swallow him whole.

  Hunger was his siren song. He ate constantly, everything he touched disappeared inside him. He ate meat. He ate the bark off the trees and then he ate the trees. He ate dirt and rocks. He ate all of his clothes. He ate his fingernails and the skin off his hands. He ate his house. He ate his friends. He ate his memories.

  He ate.

  But he tasted nothing, and the roaring emptiness inside him, the beast demanding its due, remained insatiable. Constantly urging him on, driving him to devour more and more.

  He ate, never sleeping, never resting, never stopping. If he stopped eating, hunger would gnaw on his bones. He’d grow weak and sick. He’d feel like he was dying. But this wasn’t a drive borne of starvation. It was an inexorable need, fueled by fear—fear that he was next, that someone or something would devour him unless he devoured it first. Hunger hunted him, a wolf nipping at his gaunt, bony heels, urging him on, pushing until he became something unrecognizable. His existence was defined by his ability to ingest, to consume. He couldn’t live in the world unless he was taking every bit of it into himself. Stopping was impossible. Might as well ask a man to stop breathing.

  So, he ate.

  Until he’d eaten his humanity, and all that was left were his bones.

  Then, one day, there was nothing left on his land and the drive to devour pushed him on, herded him west. That black, yawning pit inside of him forced him beyond the bounds of the only life he’d ever known, away from the place he’d spent so many years working so hard for so little. But the void wasn’t satisfied. It would never be satisfied. He couldn’t stop. If he stopped even for a moment, pain would make him howl and scream like a ravaged beast.

  Like a man with no future. Like a man who’d eaten his past.

  He soon discovered that he wasn’t the only person eating his way across the Sunset Lands. No, he was far from alone. He moved in the trampled, desiccated rut created by those who came before. He walked through miles and miles of land that had been eaten down to the last insect, the last rock, the last tree, the last hope.

  This wasn’t a drought or a famine. This was a wasteland, created by people just like him. They were the dread hosts of a new disease, carrying it with them, spreading it to others, a contagious curse wrapped in the gift of continuing life. They were hunger given shape, famine given form, living but not alive, dead inside, eaten out by the ruthless need to consume.

  They weren’t people anymore, they were an infection and they were tainting the land. Poisoning it with need. Killing it with mastication, twisting everyone they came into contact with. Those who rejected their sickness, their hunger, their disease, were consumed; ingested, digested, turned into the fuel that strengthened what they were becoming. Lives erased from the world as though they’d never existed.

  They moved ceaselessly forward, walking into the fiery eye of the setting sun, unmaking the world as they went.

  Taub was but one among the army of the starved, creeping like a plague, leaving nothing behind them but the white, gnawed-on bones of the dead, and a land stripped down to empty desolation.

  They were a battalion of bones with wasting skin and sickly yellow eyes. Devouring everything. Leaving nothing.

  Not even memories.

  Seraphina

  Seraphina felt like she had swallowed the sun.

  Agony, to her, wasn’t something that happened; it was a force that burned inside, as much a part of her as her soul. It started in her right foot, and traveled like a forest fire up her twisted leg to settle in her hip, and then eventually made a home in her lower back. Skin too tight, too much sensation for one body to hold. This was how she imagined the universe felt before it birthed planets. All this pain and pressure, this stretching and then, inevitably, the explosion.

  “Tell me about the border,” Premier Eyad said, dragging her from her agony-fueled thoughts. His voice was low and rough. Moonlight fell on his wavy black hair like a kiss. His sharp eyes looked over the city of Lord’s Reach, arrayed like a splendid dress below, buffering up against the walls that contained it. At his back stood three of his ministers, all of them doing their best to hide their discomfort. Eyad’s rooftop meetings were notorious for being long and ending in unexpected, occasionally brutal, ways—usually involving a fall or the end of a knife.

  “I spoke with some Red Desert envoys yesterday. The Desert is…” Eyad’s sharp features fixed themselves into an exaggerated, thoughtful expression. “Not pleased.”

  “Premier,” Igor, the Minister of Population Statistics began, his face pulled into a worried grimace. He was an elderly fellow with gray hair and plenty of wrinkles. He managed to keep himself safe through the many transitions from monarchy to collectivism by knowing exactly where to be, and what to say, at the best possible moments.

  He had worked with Eyad and his group of revolutionaries during the overthrow of the monarchy ten years ago, helping secure other ministers to add their strength to Eyad’s own, often through bribery if the rumors were true. He always bothered Seraphina. He was too lucky. “There is a flood of refugees at the border,” the minister continued. “Currently, we have patrols stationed out there. All of the peasants they capture are being sent to labor camps in the north and sentenced to work in the mines.”

  Eyad didn’t reply. He just fixed Igor with his dark eyes, his thoughts hidden deep, the scarlet circle with the lines through it branded on his cheek shining like fresh blood in the dim light of the torches. Mind talent. Eyad could hear everything Igor wasn’t saying.

  “If this is true, perhaps we should think about closing the border,” the Premier mused.

  Seraphina was kneeling, and had been for hours, their words washing over her in waves, ebbing in and out with the heartbeat of her pain. Kneeling was easier than standing, but after so long even this was tying her into a knot of intense, coiled agony. The hot sun had just melted away setting the world to blaze, and night was falling. Or, she wondered, did it rise like a leviathan with one milky eye? Time, passing in breaths. Beside her, the torches sputtered and hissed, her pain bleeding into her fire talent, causing them to react in the susurrating, angry way she couldn’t.

  “Premier,” Ivan, the Minister of the Enforcement Committee said, “I think, at this point, that would be an ill-advised move. There is still trade between here and the Red Desert. If we close the borders, then we choke the economy, and that’s money we need.”

  “You and Igor will think of ways to counteract this,” Eyad replied, waving a languid finger between them, “and report your ideas to the next council meeting. How has the search for new tal
ents gone?”

  The abrupt change of topic seemed to throw the ministers. Their brows furrowed. She wondered what thoughts Eyad was picking from them. “We have been dutifully testing everyone who comes of age,” Igor said, apology licking at his words, “but it’s been over a year and we’ve found no new talents. Our talent schools are only one third to half full, and those that we are monitoring are getting weaker. We are at a loss.” What he didn’t say hovered in the air between them: We are losing our magic.

  Silence fell, sharp as a knife, cold as winter, punctuated only by worried glances.

  She watched Eyad. Watched how the firelight cast his features, high cheekbones and full lips, into distinct relief; the shadows making his face that much more menacing, like a marble statue given sudden, shocking life. He was as unmovable as granite, and his mind talent made him dangerous, like an unsheathed blade with its sharp edge pointing out at the world. He heard everyone’s deepest, darkest secrets. He liberally sifted through the thoughts of those around him, gleaning conspiracies, truths, lies, and threats; and then acted accordingly. He was a man who was impossible to outmaneuver. He seemed to know all.

  This was, perhaps, how he’d managed to keep her enslaved. The silken noose around her neck rubbed her skin, the end of her leash resting lazily in his hand, his thumb idly stroking the golden fabric. It was a thin strip of cloth that weighed as much as the world, and yet weighed nothing at all. Though her fire talent was as rare as his, it couldn’t protect her from him. Eyad had learned the pattern of her mind a long time ago. He knew how to keep her cowed and docile, and she’d given up trying to defy him. What was the point, when her actions were known before she took them? When he seemed to find her efforts so entertaining?

  She was a shadow of who she had been, almost all the fight bled out of her.

  Night unfurled its onyx blanket and she stared up at a chaos of stars. Seraphina realized that she hadn’t been born; rather, she’d been created in much the same way as a priceless jewel. Exert enough pressure here, enough heat there, and you’d have a girl diamond bright and just as cold. Polish her so she glitters even in the darkness. Open her up and hollow her out until she’s nothing but a beating ruby heart and white marble bones. Nothing but a reflection of those who made her.

  She wasn’t a woman, but a carefully crafted echo chamber.

  Deep inside, however, her soul beat its wings against its cage. She wasn’t giving up yet. Perhaps for now, but not forever. There was still a spark burning in her. From a spark, an inferno could grow.

  “And the counter-revolutionary elements, Samson, how are your secret police dealing with them?” Eyad asked, his voice pushing her thoughts aside.

  He tugged on her leash a little, just enough, and they exchanged stares; his full of threat, a tight smile curling his lips, hers full of resignation. He was reading her thoughts, she could tell. It was in the hungry gleam of his eyes. He liked it when she turned herself inside out like this, liked the way her thoughts spiraled and circled until she became the serpent eating its own tail. He didn’t have to work to break her spirit anymore. She did it herself.

  She held Eyad’s gaze defiantly. His smile became more pronounced, a dimple showing in his left cheek, the scar across his right puckering. He liked challenges. He tugged her leash again. The noose around her neck tightened, pinching. He wanted her to listen to this. This was something he needed her to hear.

  “Premier, my secret police are scouring the countryside to the east and west. They do not give any counter-revolutionary elements a second chance. All are cut down and left to rot where they lay, as examples to those who work against the state. Most of these subversives have turned into bandits, and the peasants are pleased that we are as vigilant as we are. They praise you for keeping them safe.” Samson’s voice was low and even. Seraphina studied him; dark hair, dark skin, and like Eyad, he had the angular features that hinted of Red Desert blood somewhere in his family’s past. “The fact that the winter rains and snows have not come as they should is making more of the peasant population turn to banditry. This eternal summer drought and the lack of food is increasing crime.” Samson looked at the sky, glaring at it as though that would make winter appear. He was another holdover from the days of revolution. Before, Samson had been the head of the army, instrumental to the overthrow of the Lord and Lady and Eyad’s grab for power. He’d changed positions over the years since then, but had gained in authority.

  His words sank through her skin and settled low in her belly, twisting into a rope of anxiety that threatened to cut her in half. She felt Eyad’s attention on her, watching her while she let the implications sink in. There had been enough hints since she’d helped her twin brother escape five years ago, enough subtle cues from Eyad, for her to assume that her twin was now one of these counter-revolutionary elements he hunted so vigorously. Since then, Eyad had taken particular pride in letting her know all the ways Samson’s secret police were killing those who spoke up, or acted, against the state.

  Every time it came up, she agonized over whether or not her brother numbered among those who had been left to rot on the side of the road somewhere, in a shallow grave, or cut down in a cozy kitchen by strangers, or friends, or sometimes even family members. Eyad had bid Samson to fill his secret police force with the most unexpected souls, and paid them enough to be ruthless. Sons and daughters reported on their parents. Neighbors against neighbors. Eventually, the information always found its way to someone who carried a knife, and all the justification they needed to use it.

  It made her sick. Had her brother escaped just to die out there, one more nameless victim in Eyad’s eternal war against counter-revolutionary elements? He’d never tell her. The not-knowing was too delightful for him. Eyad loved his subtle tortures.

  She brought her eyes back up to the heavens. Beautiful, that sky, she thought. She yearned for those stars. To hold them in her hands and string them together with priceless golden thread. She wanted to wrap herself in starlight and impossibilities, and clothe herself in dreams and moonlight before she faced a future full of the yawning unknown.

  Dreaming, losing herself inside of herself, was her only true solace. Easier to face dreams than reality.

  She felt another tug on her leash, choking off her air. His eyes grew hard and she realized why. Her posture had slipped. Eyad didn’t like mess, whether in a person or a place. She was a thing that must be composed, an object that needed to be presented—an ornament. She clasped her hands before her in supplication, straightened her spine, and shifted her weight in a failed attempt to ease her tortured joints. She turned her face so the orange tattoo of fire on her cheek was obvious in the light of the torches beside her. She felt the look of the Premier soften, the hold on her leash ease.

  “Premier,” Ivan said. “With the counter-revolutionaries eating two meals a day in the labor camps, peasants in the countryside are losing their rations. This drought is hard. Perhaps we could cut the meals in the camps down, and—”

  “Yes,” Eyad said. “Why should counter-revolutionaries and criminals get two meals a day while honest peasants get nothing but rations? Thank you for pointing that out, Ivan. Cut the criminals’ meals to one a day, and give the remaining food to the peasants in the villages immediately around Lord’s Reach.”

  Eyad looked pleased. He clapped Ivan on the shoulder fondly and grinned at him. One problem solved, and easily done.

  “What do you think, Seraphina?” he asked, and her eyes widened with surprise. He rarely spoke to her in public, usually just displaying her like the broken vase she was. She watched as his ministers saw her, and then purposefully didn’t see her.

  “Premier,” she said, clearing her throat. “I am but a slave. I could not hope to—”

  “Enough of that,” he cut her off with a wave of his hand. She licked her lips, nervous agitation filling her up. He was feeling spirited tonight. That made him hard to predict. She hated when he was like this. “Tell me what you think about my
plan,” he demanded, putting her on the spot, the gleam in his dark eyes betraying how much he was enjoying watching her squirm, keeping her on edge.

  “Premier,” she whispered, lowering her eyes. “I think those who have not committed crimes against the state should be served first, and criminals should get the scraps.”

  Logically, it made sense, but she knew that most of the people arrested and sent to a life in labor camps were guilty of nothing more than wanting to live better, usually somewhere else. Should they suffer for dreaming? Was hope a crime? Eyad’s world was black and white, but Seraphina saw in rainbows.

  Her words settled around the small group like snowflakes, and melted under the heat of Eyad’s surprised stare. The fact that she could still surprise him after all this time was good. It would buy her one more day. Then, maybe, another.

  She felt like glass, thin and hard. Transparent. The moment stretched until she thought she could hear it screaming. She wondered if she would shatter. If she’d spray shards of herself into the ether. Perhaps all of her jagged edges would shine in the night sky like stars, glittering and beautiful, each of them a priceless jewel crafted from the fabric of her soul.

  Then, it was time for the ministers to leave. Somehow, she pulled herself to her feet without crying. Straightened her spine to the best of her ability, and listened as the men said their farewells. Then it was only her and Eyad, the world spread out below, all of creation above, and a battlefield between them.

  “Come here, Seraphina,” Eyad said, and then turned his back on her, propped his elbows on the thick stone of the palace walls, and gave her the privacy he knew she wanted to lurch the few painful steps that it would take to get from her cushion to his side.

  It was a small kindness, she supposed, that he allowed her these moments unwatched; fully feeling her pain, experiencing the way her body, stiff and scarred as it was, jolted rather than flowed. Each jarring, horrible movement was a knife biting her spine. She swallowed her cries until she was sure she’d choke on them. Finally, an eternity later, she reached the wall and propped herself against it, full of an acute wariness. His kindness always caught her off guard. For a man who gloried in ruthlessness, these quiet moments where he let slip the caring person he might have been in some past life, unbalanced her. It was a window into the soul he refused to share with the world. A part of him that refused to die.