“No. Not like this. None of us were controlled as much as you have been. But still, Aera served the temple for five years. She was prepared to kill in the god’s name. Coram, when they found him out and came to arrest him, he thought he deserved it and let them do it, and did not change his mind till it was too late and he was in chains. Lilia, down there in the camp, she got pregnant by a water-shifter, and aborted her baby when the priests told her to, believing it would be a demon. Leos—”
He felt her glance at him, then as quickly away again. “And you?”
“Have you not heard enough about me?”
“No.” She shifted next to him, wrapping her arms tighter around her knees, putting her head down on them so her voice came out not just thin but muffled. “You, do you know what it’s like to be controlled?”
He looked back out over the valley. “I ran when I was sixteen,” he said. “Because they’d found out and they were coming to kill me. They sent the soldiers after me first, then the maenads, but I had a better start that time and they didn’t get close. I got away across the desert.
“All the time, while I ran for my life, I knew I’d got the first of these gifts when I was not much more than an infant, I knew I’d done nothing to deserve any of them and they were not my fault. But even with that, half of me—sometimes more than half of me—thought I deserved it, wanted to go back, give myself up. The soldiers lost me before I was out of the city, and the maenads before I’d gone past the tableland. But the guilt came with me all the way.”
He flicked a look at her. “I nearly went back twenty times a day. And whenever I used my gifts I expected the god to strike me. I—” He began the sentence and could not finish. The memory rose to choke him. The journey across the desert, entirely alone for the first time in his life. The outlaw band—real criminals, outlawed for murder and rape, not just for the wrong type of gifts—who had captured him and from whom he’d only escaped by using his gift at a strength he’d not known he possessed. And all the time, the belief he could not stamp down or dismiss, that kept rising through him to fog his brain and cloud his thoughts, that said this is no worse than what you deserve, this is the god’s punishment, this is nothing but justice.
“It is all of us,” came Coram’s voice. Philos glanced at him. “It’s why we have only now begun to build our army. None of us were used as you have been used, or controlled as you have been, but we all had our chains to break.”
Next to Coram, Aera’s hand crept out to tuck itself into his, and something like jealousy—or longing—caught in Philos’s throat.
He looked at Maya, where she sat curled against the wall, arms still tight about her knees. He swallowed, wanting this to be over, suddenly exhausted. And angry. If she’d just believed him when he’d tried to tell her all this before, if she’d listened to what he was trying to say—
“How did you learn?” she asked. Her voice was still frail, thin, as thin as it had been when she’d torn her throat by shrieking. He remembered how she’d vomited blood back by the side of the ocean, when he had her bound, when she was still no more than the maenad-girl who’d nearly killed him. It made her seem far younger than she was, a child thrown into a world she did not have the resources to handle or to understand. He was struck by the thought that she’d become a maenad when she was no more than a child, that she’d had no normal adult life.
He spoke more gently than he’d first intended. “How did we learn what?”
She drew her knees nearer to her body, huddling herself close. “To bear it.” Her fingers whitened, and the thin shoulders drew together, as if she were in pain. “Knowing it was all a lie. Knowing—” her gaze flicked to Aera, “—knowing that you fought and fought and it was for nothing.”
Her voice went thinner, if that was possible, and pity struck through him, catching in his throat.
“We fight for something else,” said Aera.
Maya’s gaze focused on her. After a moment she moved her head, a tiny nod of understanding. “Your army?”
“Yes. We’ve been building it for years. Learning to live within our own rules, not those the priests bound us with. Learning how to think outside the boundaries they set.”
“And to use our gifts, not try to hide them,” Coram added.
Maya’s eyes flicked to him for a moment, then instantly away as if she shrank from looking directly at him. A shiver ran over her. “You were…condemned? Sentenced to death?”
“Yes.”
She shuddered again, and this time Philos felt it, a clutch of horror that went through her, a physical revulsion that made his stomach feel as if it would turn inside out. It wasn’t just the fact that she’d been controlled she was reacting to. It was something else, something worse. And he didn’t have to cast his mind too far back to guess what it was.
“Coram,” he said. “Tell her who was supposed to execute you.”
Maya threw a look at him, then at Aera. “He doesn’t need to. It was—you, wasn’t it?” She stumbled over the words, as if she could not yet bring herself to say the former priestess’s name.
“It was me,” said Aera. “And I nearly did it.”
“But you didn’t. You didn’t do it. You—” Her shoulders heaved. “Oh gods, they said we were clean. They said—the god—the bloodguilt—”
“I tried to do it. Maya, listen to me. I tried to kill him twice. Once with grief and horror, because I knew who he was and I loved him. But once—the first time, before I recognised him—I did it gladly, believing I was obeying the god, believing he was worthy of nothing more. He survived because he fought me, that’s all. I have no blood on my hands, but if my story had been different I, like you, would have killed and killed and killed all my life until I died.”
Maya looked at her hands, turning them over, palms uppermost. The chains swung together, clinking, the sound grating in Philos’s ears.
“Can we not unlock those things?” His voice came out loud, as if he were angry.
“Of course,” said Aera.
Coram stood, the grey colour of stone sweeping over him, his wings unfolding to cast shadows across the rock. “I’ll be back in a moment.” He stepped off the cliff, falling for an instant before his wings beat a downdraft and he soared out across the valley.
Maya glanced up. “You need not. I—” she didn’t look at Philos but he could feel her awareness of him as clearly as if she’d touched her fingertips to his arm, “—I should not have asked you, before. I—I called you a monster, but it’s me who’s the monster. If you want to keep me chained, I will not ask to be freed.”
Aera stood. “We are all monsters here,” she said. “Philos?”
“Yes?”
She gave him a brief smile, bright as the sun reflecting from the silver fire of her dress. “You can stay with Maya for a while. I entrust her to you.”
“To me?” He frowned, trying to read her expression.
“She asked you to free her.”
He nodded, momentarily confused until he realised it wasn’t a question.
“And you refused. Then yes, I entrust her to you. You can explain what we’ve been planning. Tell her about the new recruits you brought us. And Maya, I told you we fight for something else. We fight against the priests who did this to us, who made us victims or outcasts or murderers. You can do that too. Listen to Philos and decide.”
She walked away, a glittering figure in the sunlight. Beside Philos, Maya sat looking at her hands, not moving until Coram came back with keys and unlocked her chains. Then she got to her knees, rubbing her wrists, fingers digging into the skin as if trying to massage away a cramp. “Thank you,” she said, very low, head bent.
Coram collected the chains over one shoulder—there were advantages to being made of stone—and took off down to the valley.
“Maya.”
She looked up at Philos. Her face was blank, stunned, as if she’d been hit so many times she could scarcely register it anymore. But her hands kept scouring together,
up and down, her thumb rubbing over and over into her palm.
“Are you in pain? Did the chains hurt you?”
She shook her head, still blank, and he realised. The movement of her hands wasn’t one intended to rub away stiffness or soreness, it was a washing movement. She was trying to wash something away.
“It’s their bloodguilt,” he said.
“Yes.” But the movement of her hands didn’t cease.
Without thinking, Philos leaned forward, stilling her hands with his own. Hers were cold, and ridiculously thin in his. No wonder she felt so helpless without her power. “Theirs. They did it to you.”
She gave a quiver of a nod. “Yes. But the memories…” She drew in a long breath, and under his hands he felt her stiffen, brace herself with the clenched-teeth stubbornness he’d seen before. Her mouth set and her eyes, when they came up to his, were no longer blank.
“Tell me, then,” she said. “What are you planning? What are you fighting for?”
She hadn’t seemed to notice his hands on hers. He took them away. Last night he’d thought, he could have sworn, he felt something between them, a certainty that if he’d drawn her closer, if he’d bent his head to hers, she would not have pulled away. But that had been in the darkness, in a tiny world that had held nothing but the two of them. It was brilliant, hard-edged daylight now, and she was the maenad who’d tried to kill him, the maenad who had killed—gods—eight hundred and seventy-three people, the maenad who’d been kept as little more than a hunting animal for nearly half her life.
“We never thought of fighting till Aera and Coram came,” he said. “We were just fugitives. But Aera—that temple is hers, not the priests’. She and Coram, from the moment they came, they were determined that one day, when we were strong enough, we’d go and take it back.”
Maya shifted on the rock, moving from kneeling to a more comfortable position, her legs curled sideways under her, her eyes intent on Philos’s face.
He let himself relax somewhat, remembering what Venli had said. She trusts you. “But our war is with the priests. Not with the people—our families, others with gifts like ours who live in hiding. If we storm the city, the innocent will die. And we won’t do that. We’re not—” He caught himself on the word, but too late, and Maya finished the sentence for him.
“You’re not murderers.”
“No.”
“All right.” Her mouth curved a little although the smile didn’t reach her eyes. “Go on.”
“So we’ve waited, hoping for something—some information, a new plan, someone with a different gift—that would help us overcome the priests without declaring war on the whole city.”
“And?”
“And we found it. Two days ago.” He found himself smiling, for the first time letting the realisation sink through him. That boy, that terrified youngster he should never have tried to save, had come as an answer to their prayers. “I’ve been in the city for a year, living in hiding. I’ve been using my gift to plant rumours in people’s minds, suggestions that if they run, if they head north, they can find others like them. The last person who took my suggestion reached the camp two days ago. He’s sixteen, a shifter. In himself, he can add little to our army.” He broke off as Maya raised her eyebrows at him. “What?”
“You should have been a storyteller. When are you going to tell me what his wonderful hidden gift is, that’s changed everything for you?”
Philos flushed. She was right. He was spinning it out, letting his pleasure, his triumph at having found their saviour override the bare facts. “I’m sorry.”
“No, no. It’s a good story.” This time her smile crept into her eyes and, half-unwillingly, he smiled back.
“Well, it’s not his gift. He persuaded his friend to leave the city with him. And his friend, Iraus—” he grinned at her, his triumph flooding over everything, “—it’s Iraus who has the hidden gift. He can hold people still, everyone within a certain span. The gods alone know how he discovered it and yet kept it hidden all this time. All we have to do is get him within the temple walls and he can hold the priests helpless, give us time to allow Aera to speak to the people.”
Maya’s eyes hadn’t left his face. She nodded slowly. He’d wondered if she’d question that last part, whether it would be enough for Aera to speak to the people, but of course, why would she? That was all it had taken for her. The fire-priestess, closest they had to the god on earth—when Aera spoke, even if it was to contradict everything the priests had ever said, her people would listen.
Maya did have a question, but it wasn’t to do with whether their plan would work. She took another breath, her shoulders straightening, her head coming up with that swift, birdlike movement he’d first noticed in the ravine where she’d found him. “I know the plan of the temple,” she said. “What can I do to help?”
Chapter Thirteen
“Show me again,” said Coram. “If I’m approaching the main gate of the outer wall, where will the guards be?”
Maya was hot and irritable, and she seemed to have been doing the same thing over and over all morning. But she paced out the steps, shutting her eyes while she visualised the courtyard where she’d spent so much of her life. “Here. And here. And here.”
“And how many paces to the south corner?”
She turned, walking back towards him. “Twenty-five…six. But your legs are longer than mine.”
He nodded. “It’s all right. I’m accounting for that. Very well, now, if I’m inside the main gate, how many paces to the wall of the temple?”
From behind Maya came Venli’s laughter, already, after just a few days, too recognisable, too well known. “How hard is he working you, Maya? You should ask him to let you rest.”
Maya’s teeth gritted, almost of themselves. Over the last days Venli had seemed to make particular efforts to be friendly—unless she was that way with every newcomer—but Maya could not feel at ease with her. Maybe it was just the memory of that first meeting, when Maya had been trapped, humiliated and terrified. Maybe it was because of that flicker of a look she’d seen then—and once or twice since—in Venli’s eyes. Maybe it was just that, having grown to womanhood in the maenad pack, she was discomforted by Venli’s constant playful flirtatiousness with any man she passed—Philos, Coram, even Sufi, the sixteen-year-old ex-slave, who had eyes for no one but the young noble he’d only just managed to persuade to escape with him, and who, Maya was fairly sure, was hardly going to respond to any advances a girl might make to him.
But maybe—the thought came unwillingly—maybe it was because the girl was so familiar with Philos. Overfamiliar, to the mind of someone brought up in an all-female pack, her only male acquaintances eunuchs and priests. Even Venli’s friendliness felt as if it came from a place of conscious, deliberately flaunted privilege—the old, established friend favouring the newcomer with her attention.
“I’m not tired.” Maya knew the reply was brusque, almost rude, but she had no patience with what seemed like the elaborate politeness the members of the camp used towards one another. In the maenad compound, if a girl had irritated her as much as Venli did, they would have fought, and the girl would have learned to leave her alone. Here, though, there was a whole set of different rules, some of which she could not yet understand.
And Venli… Maya’s lip curled. She wasn’t a girl who’d fight, anyway, not if she had a man to do it for her. Maya didn’t know what her gift was. Venli hadn’t mentioned it, and she didn’t care enough to ask.
Now, Venli smiled past her to Coram. “Aera needs to see you.”
“Very well. Thank you, Venli. Maya, thank you.” He turned and left them.
Venli gave Maya one of her flickering looks. “Some of us are going to the spring to bathe. Why don’t you escape Coram and come with us?”
“Not now.”
She didn’t try to make her voice come out rudely, but all the same Venli’s eyes rested on her a moment longer, and suddenly there was a hard edge t
o her expression. “You’re not very polite, are you?”
Maya looked at her, at the glossy hair, neatly woven into a plait down the back of her head, at the pretty, curving lips. “I’ve been out of the way of places where I needed to be polite.”
Venli’s eyes flicked up and down her. “It shows,” she said, and, without meaning them to, Maya found her fingers curling into claws. If I had my gift you’d not dare to speak to me like that.
She caught the thought back, horrified. Was that really what she wanted, to have the power once again to murder—and this time without even believing she had the sanction of the god? Every night for the last seven days she had been tormented with dreams of those she’d killed, their faces rising before her, clear as the day they’d died, their screams in her ears, the taste of their blood on her tongue…
“What’s wrong?” said Venli. The hardness had gone from her face, she looked genuinely concerned, but of all people, Maya could not talk to her about the horrors that haunted her sleep. Aera, maybe, whom only chance had saved from being a murderer too. Or Philos, who had never killed, but who felt what she felt, who understood without her needing to tell him.
“Nothing,” she said. “Go and have your bath.” She turned away, making her way up the cliff path to the cave where she’d spent that first night. Still, sometimes it came over her like a wave, cold enough to take her breath, salt enough to leave her throat and eyes burning. Not just the guilt, the horror, but pain. The loss of her powers had left a space inside her, a wound that stung and throbbed and woke her in the night with an awareness of loss so sharp it was like a knife thrust right through her, leaving her spitted, gasping, bleeding to death.
On the shelf outside the cave she sank to a huddle on the sun-hot rock, holding herself tight as she’d done before, seven days ago, and so many times since, fighting against the pain. Aera had been right. Planning revenge on the priests, working on their plan for justice—it did help. But not enough, not quickly enough.
“Maya.”
She’d known his footstep on the rock before he said her name. She didn’t look round, but felt him sit beside her.
Blood of the Volcano: Sequel to Heart of the Volcano Page 14
