Children of the Bloodlands

by S. M. Beiko

  The stone can only be separated in death. I could’ve given my life so someone who knew what they were doing could take over. I wondered if it was too late.

  Killian stopped to rest only once more, and I kept the fox warrior up as a shield. The tremors and the screams alike seemed to be fading the farther we went, and with one last check behind us, I felt like we might be in the clear. “Where are we going? What about the others?”

  “There are many vents like this scattered throughout the compound. The damage seemed to be centred on the infirmary and outward. Sleeping quarters and the dining hall are on the opposite end, which is where everyone most likely was congregated. We saw Mala around the main way in and out. Once we’re out, we’ll double back on the surface and hook back up with them.”

  I could do nothing but trust him. The grade of the tunnel tilted steeper, with only the strain in my legs to tell me. Judging by how far underground the Conclave’s compound was, we might be climbing awhile.

  The fox warrior form was difficult to hold, and now that the silence and the darkness was close and low, I knew I couldn’t hold it for too much longer. I shut my eyes, went deep down inward. The sensations led me to a visualization of hundreds of searing flaming cables, and with each breath I undid one. I went through them piece by piece, the light dimming by inches, and releasing the last one, I felt the fox warrior return to the stone that kept Her power in check, allowing it, at least, to rest.

  I emptied my lungs but kept my arm alight, and I saw Killian turn his head and catch me in his periphery.

  “Aye, good idea.” He nodded, smile flickering in my torchlight. “At least ye didna pass out this time. I’m gallant, but I can’t carry ye both.” His breathing was even but laboured, as he walked and spoke. “Yer learning quickly how to work in tandem with the stone. Nothing like a crisis to test ye. Well done.”

  It was true; transforming back had taken energy resources — as much as keeping the transformation in place. “I feel useless,” I deflected. “You’re doing all the work.”

  “No worries. I’m glad to put as much distance between here and back there as we can. For more than the obvious reasons.”

  Another tremor, but it felt more like a truck going by than a tectonic shift. Anxious mind going a mile a minute, I remembered the hall full of wary guards. “You got something against the Conclave, too?”

  “Hm? What do ye mean, ‘too’?”

  My head was spinning; I had to put a hard divide between Cecelia’s memories and perspectives and my own. They’d started twisting together. “Cecelia. She didn’t like them, either.”

  “Aye, an understatement, but aye.” I couldn’t see his face, but there was a smile in his words. “Let’s just say Cecelia and I were of the same mind on a lot of things. We kept our distance from the Conclave. Having the stone never means having absolute control. The Conclave didn’t like her approach to conflict resolution, and she didn’t much like being told what to do.” Killian grunted, but it was because, thankfully, the climb was levelling off. “It’s the same with all these Families, ye ken. With a lot of the old power structures of civilizations. They give all the power to one person, but they try to sway that person with an assault of perspectives. It’s meant to keep the power in check, keep it balanced and honest, but it’s too many voices, too many contradicting vendettas. Ye lose yer own voice and will in it, until there’s nothing left of ye and yer the slave to the whims of a council or the legacy that came before ye. And if the Conclave couldna have a say in how the stone was used . . . then surely it wasna being used for the good of all. Whatever that was at the time.”

  Too many voices. The stone was silent now, but for how long until it pushed me out of the way again? “Yeah. This stone is like a mini Conclave I get to carry around 24/7. The voices . . . screaming over one another. Sometimes I can’t shut them out. This is one of the rare times I’ve been able to make it do what I wanted. And the Conclave acts like I wanted this. It’s . . . it’s driving me insane.”

  I realized I could see the back of Killian’s sweat-drenched head nodding. There was a bit of light ahead, and I lowered the flame of my stiff arm.

  “I canna imagine what yer going through. But yer no’ wrong. The Conclave wants to control ye. It’s how it’s always been. Yer a loose cannon. They canna have that, not after Cecelia going rogue for so long. They know yer suffering. But they want ye to think it’s for a noble cause. For the Narrative. Always that bloody thing.”

  I knew all too well what people would do for the Narrative — the story we were writing with each step and choice. “I remember when I thought the Narrative was just a legendary origin story.”

  “Aye, it’s that. The Narrative is forever. It is the beginning, the middle, the end. Ancient’s great blueprint that Denizens must follow, protecting life itself even as our powers fade with each season. All to guard a dying world populated by the selfish and greedy that its verra creator has forgotten.” His bitterness was so thick, I was surprised he didn’t spit.

  “I still can’t see why the Conclave isn’t your biggest fan, really . . .” I said. Killian laughed. “But that doesn’t explain why you bothered coming back after keeping your distance for so long.”

  With the next step, a cool breeze moved through my dishevelled hair and across my face. It felt so good that I stopped short. We were outside, and Killian stiffly knelt and placed Ruo on the ground like she was made of glass. He collapsed beside her, star-fishing his sore body and shutting his eyes with the bliss of the spent. Ruo seemed so peaceful, too, burned face relaxed in the light of the waxing half moon above us.

  We were in the woods. Behind us was a shrub-shrouded rockface; we’d emerged from a cleft in the stone, what could have literally been the backdoor of a mountain.

  “I came back here for you.” Killian stared up at the stars. “I told ye. I ken well what it is to be alone. Soon as this thing started hunting stone-bearing Paramounts . . . well. I wanted to see ye safe. For Cecelia’s sake. Mostly I wanted to find ye before the Conclave did. But beggars can’t be choosers.”

  Ruo shivered in her sleep. Killian sat up immediately, digging his finger in the earth and etching the triple ring pattern I’d seen in so much Denizen iconography. He twisted his hand over it, and a fire flashed above the arcane symbol, undulating and alive in the air without any fuel. His fingers stretched, and the fire did, too.

  I crouched down across from him. “Shouldn’t we keep moving?” I also questioned the intelligence of lighting a beacon to our whereabouts considering we had been fleeing an enemy attack, but the woods around us were alive only with the sound of night birds and crickets.

  “We’ll get going soon,” he said. “Let’s get her warmed up, though. It will be a long night, and I’m no’ a spring chicken.”

  He lifted a knee up and rested his arm across it. He kept complaining about being old, but he didn’t look it. His dark hair and engaging eyes certainly lent to this illusion of youth, but in the fire I saw the lines about those eyes and his mouth, that scar running from brow to chin. His cheeks and jaw were lean, shaded with the beard growth of a few days, but now that I could appraise him closely, there were shadows there, ones I recognized from staring into my own bathroom mirror. The shadows of too many sleepless nights.

  “You grew up with my mother,” I said abruptly, and Killian’s keen eyes flicked up. “What was she like?”

  His face tightened. I hadn’t edited the grief out of my tone — I was too exhausted. “Canny. Clever. Intense. Beautiful.” He looked away from me. “Aye. I spent time wi’ her. Even though she moved around a lot. Lots of time. When training breaks for the both of us allowed it, of course.” He looked away suddenly, as if he’d been caught out.

  A tingle of understanding. He’d been close to Ravenna. Maybe more than friends. The things this man knew, this man I’d only just met, outstripped what I knew about my own bloodline by mil
es.

  “They were incredible women, Roan, yer granny and yer mother. Gifted. Strong-minded. But conflicted about where their hearts truly stood. I hope ye didna mind me saying, but yer so much of both of them. Beyond looks.”

  My pulse picked up. I needed more. “And . . . and my father? I mean. My biological father. I know now that Aaron . . . that she remarried . . .”

  I watched his face change, eyebrows shifting his hairline in bemusement as I stumbled over my desperation to learn something, anything, about the strangers who made me. “Everything I know about my family is all snippets and secrets and it seems like anyone who knew them died before I could learn more or hasn’t been in their right mind for a long time to paint an accurate picture.” Or I didn’t bother asking before it was too late. Ruo hadn’t moved, but her eyelids fluttered like she was dreaming, upper lip curling at whatever she saw.

  “So ye didna know anything about your father.” Killian was moving his hand over the flame and back again, fingers twining through it and casting odd shadows on his face. “No one told ye anything about him?”

  I shrugged. “Up until a few months ago, I thought Aaron Harken was my father. As if I needed another plot twist in all of this . . .”

  A crease appeared over the bridge of his nose. “Do ye remember the Stonebreakers? The radicalized group that Mala mentioned earlier?”

  I nodded slowly. “It was a confrontation with them that left Ruo . . .” I trailed off. I don’t think it bore repeating, nor telling him how I knew. I wanted to keep that close for a while longer. I didn’t even know if I could trust Killian, but I felt I had already started.

  “Mm. They believed the stones would be better off destroyed, and wi’ them every Denizen’s connection to Ancient. Without Ancient’s influence, and wi’ the Narrative itself cast aside, they saw a world whose ending wasna governed by divine plan. The Families were so divided as it was, that some of these Stonebreakers saw it as a way to unify. Those in power disagreed. The extremists were deemed a threat, though they were only founded on the notion of open dialogue about the rights to such power, about keeping it from the rest of the unsuspecting world. To be a Stonebreaker was to forfeit yer Denizenship.

  “Cecelia was no ardent worshipper of Ancient or its laws, but she kenned there was a balance. She fought the battles when need be, defended the vulnerable, pushed for reform, and tried to make this a more just system. But she saw the cracks even before the Opal chose her. True, the Stonebreakers were extremists, but she wanted to understand their perspective.

  “Ravenna was adept, and she loved the stories we grew up on. She saw her mother as a great hero fighting evil at every turn. But Ravenna was less about fighting and more about scholarship, about using her words and a well-crafted argument. She and Cecelia always clashed about the old ways in the modern world, about the privilege of power and using it scrupulously. Rare was it that Ravenna wasna over in my back garden, crying about some argument they’d had or Cecelia’s need to control every part of her daughter’s life. Ravenna loved being a Fox, didna understand why her own mother, the Paramount of all Foxes, could be so embittered towards the Family and the world.

  “Then there was yer father. Ravenna thought he hung the moon. He wanted to give her everything, but he was of a mind with Cecelia — one of her best students, in fact — and he wanted nothing more than to shape a balanced world that he could feel secure in sharing his life with Ravenna. Raising a family with her.

  “He fell into like-minded circles verra easily. He had a silver tongue. It didna take long before he was allowed into the fold of the Stonebreakers. They were a convincing lot. He kept it secret from Ravenna, and Cecelia, too. But yer da was young and rash, and the Stonebreakers’ ideologies shifted around this time: they still wanted to destroy the Calamity Stones, but they felt they needed the backing of greater powers. So they turned to the darklings. They thought if they took the stones, used them to release the darklings and gain their support . . . well. It spiralled out of control. They were mobilizing to wake Zabor, even. But they got caught. Yer father included.

  “Ravenna felt betrayed. She couldna stomach he’d turned on everything she held dear, that he’d be willing to do terrible things for the ‘right’ reasons. So she cut him out of her life, went to Canada, and stayed put. Cecelia had kept a house there for years since it was a bit o’ a demonic hotspot, what with Zabor there, and to yer da, it may have well been the other side of the universe. Because he was put into a Denizen prison with the rest of the extremists, and the movement was quenched.”

  The fire between us straightened like a rod, flipping backward on itself as it retracted into Killian’s arm, his pores reeling it back in with a crackle. He dusted off his hands and got to his feet. It was a beautiful trick, but the charm of it was tainted by him ramming his boot into the ground, scraping away any evidence of the three circles he’d drawn there.

  My father, imprisoned. Was he still there? Was he still alive? “What happened after that?” I struggled up stiffly, still hungry for details. He’d already bent down, scooping up Ruo as if she weighed nothing, his former fatigue seemingly gone. “Did he ever try to contact Ravenna? Did he know about . . . me?”

  “No.” The answer was quick and sharp. “No, he didna know about ye. C’mon. Best keep moving.”

  And so we did, walking farther into the moon-brightened woods. Behind us, I swore I heard spitting and snarling, but when I turned to look, it was only a night bird, calling as it should. Then nothing at all.

  A Chosen Daughter

  “Firenze, Kita,” the burly man nodded, going down his list. “And Allen, Barton. Yes, we’ve been expecting both of you.” The man visibly sized up Barton from his running blades to the crown of his fade. “The debriefing has already started, but you can catch the rest of it if you slip in quietly.”

  Kita nodded, unceremoniously dropping her pack and adding it to a mountain of them in the loading dock where they’d ended up. Barton simply followed suit, happy to lose the load and crack his neck. It’d been a long trek from the stockyards at the end of the train’s line to the industrial park and the very derelict-looking warehouse at the pier. People came and went from the loading bay, taking packs and loading them for a run to the camp at the bottom of the hill.

  Kita had told him they’d only just set this place up, but it was already a hive of activity. She said it was mostly the militarized arm of the Rabbit Family that had started it, and more Rabbits and Foxes had turned up as the week went on to strengthen the growing coalition. The Coalition proper, and the ensuing camp, began as soon as the Serenity Emerald, and the Paramount, went missing.

  “Now that your Owl friend is missing, too,” said Kita, “this seemed the best place to set up. I’ll show you why afterward.”

  They came to a steel door with a push bar, and Kita led them in, releasing it gently as they came into the back of a huge factory, its massive machinery rusted still and filled with thousands of old shoes. The windows were blacked out and fluorescent lights cast an acidic buzzing shine on the gathering, men and women standing or leaning on empty conveyor belts and giant steel tubs on castors. One man was talking in the factory’s most open space near the centre, and Kita and Barton nudged their way closer to get a better view.

  “. . . unprecedented, to say the least.” The man was in his forties, Chinese, wearing the same pressed green linen that everyone seemed to be wearing — the Rabbit colour.

  “Commander Zhou,” Kita whispered. “He runs this unit now. The former commander has gone off to lead the search for the missing Rabbit Paramount in Mongolia, but they doubt it is a recovery mission anymore.”

  Barton turned his full attention back to Commander Zhou. “. . . we are tracking the seismic data at the crash site and have just received word from Mala of the Conclave of Fire that after a direct conflict with Seela’s infected servants, they have recovered their Paramount, and the Dragon Opal,
safely in Scotland . . .”

  Relief washed through him and Barton’s hand twitched for his phone to text Phae, but he returned his hand to his side. “He means Roan,” Barton said, nudging Kita.

  The speaker turned when Barton spoke, causing him to freeze like his powersake. “Barton Allen.” The man nodded. “Welcome. You’ve come a long way to aid the cause, and we are grateful.” He bowed and, uncertain how to reply, Barton responded with an awkward dipping of his chin. “Barton, as you all know, was one of the five who sealed Zabor in Winnipeg. Heen herself restored his formerly severed connection to Ancient, and he was able to open a Bloodgate soon after.”

  Barton had been accustomed to stares of pity or open scrutiny, but this was different — the room hushed and swelled with admiration, and he stood straighter.

  The commander nodded smartly and surveyed the crowd, which Barton realized were all stiff and trim with an air of discipline. Fighters. Those who had trained maybe their whole lives in their Family’s power. He may have just been given a strong accolade, but he had a lot of catching up to do.

  “This is all the intel we have so far. The Conclave of Fire in Glencoe will be dispatching a force soon, and as soon as what remains of the de facto Council of the Owls arrives from Korea, we will send a team to Rathgar’s crash site to ascertain if there were any survivors. Or any further risk. You are dismissed.” The bodies began to disperse, the noise of the crowd carrying with them as they pushed for the doors. The commander came straight for Barton and Kita, hand outstretched.

  Barton took it, squeezing hard. “Thank you for coming,” the commander said, and his tone of hardened leadership flicked over to open fatigue. “Before Kita shows you to your bunk, I wanted to show you the site monitoring team.”