God's Last Breath

by Sam Sykes

  “You want to talk about memories? About families?” He snorted. “You fail now, they kill you and your memories last as long as it takes a bird to eat your corpse. You run now, they chase you back to your families and slaughter the lot of them. You sit here, whining and crying about your revenge, your blood, your Tul over one dragonman you didn’t get to kill … then you die in a pile of your own shit.”

  The fear ebbed away from them. The anger seeped out of them. The stink left behind was stale and old and immovable.

  “You think of your past lives, you think of your future lives, but none of you realize that everything hinges on right now.” He stomped the earth. “Whatever happened to bring us here, we are here. Whoever died to bring us here, they’re dead. We are here. On this earth. On this land. By this time next week, either it is ours or we are all buried in it.

  “I don’t promise you victory. I don’t promise you leadership. I don’t promise to honor your stupid ways or your stupid Tul.” He shook his head. “But if you don’t follow me now … if you don’t fight, then I promise you will all be dead. Your families will follow. Then your race. Then your lands. Then everything.”

  He held his hands out wide, inviting. The tulwar recoiled, as though fearing another attack. He looked down at Dekuu, unconscious and bleeding on the ground, and snorted.

  “There are no tulwar. There is no war. There is just you. There is just one choice.” He looked out over the tulwar. “Rise up. Or die. There is nothing else.”

  Not one word was said against him.

  Not one fist was raised.

  Not one body moved to stand before him as he looked them over then, slowly, stalked through them and headed back to his quarters.

  Fear was not a useful emotion. Not for him. Humans needed it to tell them how to survive. Rhega knew better. Fear was nothing more than frail twine that held a body together, a scrap of linen bandage over a gushing wound. It was useful to idiots, morons, and cowards, and idiots, morons, and cowards were useful to no one.

  Had he smelled fear on the tulwar, who parted to let him through, he would have stopped and stomped it out of the skull of any he had found. An army that followed him out of fear was no army he could use. Warriors afraid of him would not fight as they must for him.

  But as he walked through them, as he felt their eyes follow him, he caught not a whiff of that sour reek. Anger still boiled there, to be sure, as did a hundred other unimportant emotions. But burying them all was that same, stale smell that had followed Kharga.

  Wariness.

  Resignation.

  Certainty.

  These he could use. These were stronger, older, tested. These were emotions that came to warriors who knew there was only one way fights ended. These were emotions he had given them.

  These were emotions he would win this war with.

  Huh, he thought as he trudged away. That wasn’t a bad speech. And, not for the first time and not without contempt, he added: Maybe you did spend too much time with humans.

  TWENTY-ONE

  A HERESY DIVINE

  Left. Then right. One right after the other. One. Two. Just like that.

  If nothing else, Asper could still count.

  It was hard to walk. Her legs felt like they had never been used before. It was hard to think through the sensation of the cold wind blowing over her and the salt of the sea on it sticking onto her. Her flesh felt raw and tingling with tiny little pains, as though someone had simply peeled her out of her skin and set her, new and raw and glistening meat, upon a world full of terrors.

  Left. Right.

  But she found the focus to think.

  One. Two.

  And she found the strength to walk.

  Her legs gave out every fifth step, forcing her to lean on the walls of the alleys and empty shops she combed her way through. And every unaided step she took sent her teetering, arms flailing as she tried to keep herself upright. She was unbalanced, her legs too heavy and her head too light, and by the fifth step when she forgot to lean on a wall, she collapsed to the cobblestone road.

  She looked up past the eaves and signs swaying in the breeze. In the night sky ahead, the stars were beginning to wink out. The moon had sunk low in the sky, hidden behind clouds. It could only be a few more hours until dawn. Which meant …

  One hour, she told herself through ragged breath. One fucking hour you’ve been without him and you’ve already forgotten how to walk. She shook her head. Or her. Whatever that thing was.

  She couldn’t be too hard on herself, she reasoned. She couldn’t remember a time she hadn’t carried that curse inside her. Even when it hadn’t spoken to her, it had weighed upon her every thought. One simply didn’t carry the power to unmake a man in one’s left arm without it becoming a part of their life.

  And now, without it, she felt … incomplete. Amoch-Tethr had been a part of her for so long, and when the curse had pulled itself out of her skin, it had taken a part of her with her.

  Maybe more than she realized.

  She had treated patients with rot before, with wounds black and weeping so badly with pus that she had been forced to amputate their limbs. And though many of them went on to live long and happy lives, they often complained of feeling the absence of the foot or arm she had taken from them. They felt pains that they shouldn’t have felt, the awareness that something should be there that was not there so keen that it caused its own special kind of lonely ache.

  She couldn’t find a better description for what she felt than that. Only instead of a limb, it was a presence, an entire person that should have been with her. As though someone had been walking behind her all her life and, with them suddenly gone, she was aware of just how terribly big the world that stretched out behind her was.

  That thought alone was enough to rob the strength from her and send her back to the street. She let out a gasp as she tried to pull herself down the rest of the street. And, failing that, she simply crawled until she found herself at the corner of an alley.

  She collapsed at it, hauling herself up to her rear end and pressing her back against the wall of the building. She was grateful no one was around to see her; this behavior would have looked pathetic on a drunk, let alone the fucking Prophet of Cier’Djaal.

  In name only, she reminded herself. You can’t heal the sick with a touch. You can’t call down a plague of insects. You’re not a Prophet. She closed her eyes. But the Big Fucking Liar of Cier’Djaal doesn’t sound as good, does it?

  She let her eyes stay closed for a moment as she drew in a breath. And, after a while, she found she could not open them again. It didn’t seem possible. Or maybe she just couldn’t see the point.

  Denaos would be proud, she thought. He’d look at me, lying and cheating and consorting with thieves, all these people eating up the shit I’m feeding them, and he’d applaud and a single tear would go down his cheek and he’d say “Silf, I couldn’t be prouder, now let’s go pick out a nice whore for you.”

  She would have laughed if not for the thought that followed.

  But Denaos is dead. He’s dead. He’s dead and you couldn’t help him. You couldn’t save him. You couldn’t—

  “Is it not clear by now that she is not coming?”

  The wind died just at the right time to let a voice, a deep and rolling hiss, carry around the corner and slither into Asper’s ear.

  “Or do you continue to cling to this lie she has birthed and left on the floor?”

  She knew the voice of Teneir, the fasha who had demanded she kneel and renounce her faith. Just as she knew the voices that followed.

  “It’s not a lie.” Aturach’s. Soft and just slightly worried.

  “And she’ll be here.” Dransun’s. Gruff and oh so weary.

  They were right there. Just around the corner, exactly where she had begged them to meet—albeit a few hours later. All she needed to do was go around and reveal herself and finish the plan. But that, too, seemed so hard. So pointless.

  You
couldn’t save him.

  “Out of gratitude for her service, we shall continue to share company with these pagans.” Careus’s voice, deep and resonant as a gong. “But it has been hours.”

  “Don’t go acting like you’re doing me a fucking favor, scalp.” Blacksbarrow. Sharp and flinty as a rough-hewn blade. “You want to scurry back to your nest with the rest of your rats, you go right the fuck ahead.”

  “Patience, if you would.” Haethen. So sweet and so patient and sounding so tired. “I have my reservations about this meeting, as well. But I am curious as to its purpose.”

  Just get up, she told herself. Just go out there. You’ve come so far. You’ve got—

  A tear slid down her face.

  You couldn’t save him.

  “By the grace of Ancaa, would you listen to yourselves?” Teneir, hissing, furious. “You posture and strut like cocks while at the same time debasing yourselves as you wait for a false prophet? Are you warriors? Are you soldiers?”

  “We’re believers.” Aturach. Forceful as he could be. “And we believe in her.”

  “And what is she?”

  A good question, Asper thought.

  If she could have saved him … she wondered what Denaos would say.

  And in the darkness, from somewhere deeper than prayer, deeper than even Amoch-Tethr had dwelled, she got her answer.

  You’re the fucking Prophet.

  Her eyes snapped open.

  So fucking act like it.

  It was hard to do, but she stood. It took a moment to figure out how, but she walked. She wasn’t sure if she could do it, but she put iron in her spine, forced her chin high, her eyes clear, her stride strong as she turned the corner and strode into the square, proud and strong.

  As a Prophet should.

  Inside the confines of the square, it was as bright as daylight. A hundred torches held by a hundred hands lit up the ruin of what had once been a thriving market. The flickering of the torches threatened to blind her, but she did not so much as squint. She walked, slow and deliberate, into the square until she could see them.

  A hundred faces, wide with shock, all fixed on her.

  Karnerians on one side, assembled into a tight phalanx, headed by Careus in his black armor, Haethen looking positively tiny at his side. Sainites on the other, in a shifting, unruly gang, staring at her from beneath their tricornes, all gathered behind Blacksbarrow, who wore her shock unabashed. Aturach and Dransun, staring wide-eyed at the woman who stood whole and hale and wondering where their broken, battered, dying friend had gone.

  “Blaspheme.”

  And none was more shocked, more terrified, more furious to see her than Teneir. In a simple azure robe, the fasha scowled at her through yellow eyes, the only thing visible through her veil. But that was more than enough to make her contempt known.

  Not that Asper could blame her; doubtless, the fasha had counted on her being dead by now.

  “You dare show your face here?” the fasha demanded. “You dare emerge where you do not belong?”

  “I did call this meeting,” Asper replied, coolly. She looked to Dransun. “Did I not?”

  The captain, a black hole in his beard where his mouth hung open, merely stared at her. “Son of a bitch,” he whispered. He shook his head. “I mean, you did, but …”

  “She was fucked up when we last saw her, right?” Blacksbarrow made no particular effort to disguise her shock as she glanced among the Sainites. “You saw her, didn’t you?”

  “She was barely standing,” Haethen whispered, eyes unblinking. “I thought she’d collapse at any moment, but she’s …” She shook her head. “That’s not possible.”

  “Daeon has made it possible,” Careus replied, the only one who did not appear fazed by her sudden recovery.

  Asper said nothing at their shock. She simply stood there, whole and strong and completely undeniable. On their faces, she could see them trying to figure out an explanation for her sudden recovery. And, with satisfaction she was careful to keep off her own, she saw that they had none.

  Let them think it another miracle. Let them think the gods did it. Let them never suspect what actually happened.

  “How?”

  It was Aturach who broke her satisfaction. Beneath his hood, his slender face had drained of color. It was not shock he wore on his face, but terror: the knowledge that she had some secrets that she hadn’t even told him.

  “How is it possible?” he asked, wounded.

  “Is it not obvious?” Teneir thrust a skinny finger at her. “She is a deceiver, a pretender. I have seen opera beggars wear more convincing wounds than she did. She has simply cast them off, as she pleases.”

  “Bullshit.” Blacksbarrow spit on the stones. “I’ve seen enough dead men to know real pain when I see it. She barely made it through Harbor Road.”

  “She required ample aid getting around Temple Row,” Haethen said. “I thought she might drop dead herself before she could heal Careus, but …” She looked to the towering man at her side. “They are both whole.”

  “Then you are fools,” Teneir snarled. “Or blind. Or both. That she could deceive a handful of shkainai is no feat.”

  “And what of a thousand Djaalics?” Dransun growled, stepping forward. “I was there at Jalaang. I saw that lizard beat seven kinds of shit out of her. You can’t fake that. The thousand who came with us will agree with me.”

  “Then how do you explain it, hm?” Teneir swept around, scowling at the assembled. “How do any of you explain it? What was it if not treachery? Magic?”

  The derision in Teneir’s voice swept through the crowd like venom, sent doubt twisting across their faces. Quietly, they exchanged nervous looks with one another, a few lips twitching as they whispered hushed conspiracies among each other.

  Only then did Asper decide to speak.

  “Heaven demands a champion.”

  She barely raised her voice, yet it cut through the crowd like a scalpel, bleeding Teneir’s venom dry. The fasha fell silent. The rest followed. Their eyes turned to her, took her in as she held her arms out in a simple gesture.

  “Heaven needs us to be strong.”

  A long silence stretched out between them, as long as the last held breath after a prayer whispered in the dark. But in their faces, she saw no more doubt. And their eyes followed her as she walked through the crowd, into the square. Not a word was said as she bent low and plucked up a fragment of stone dislodged from the road.

  “This used to be a market,” she said, turning it over in her hands. “I saw it, briefly, when I first came to Cier’Djaal. Children played here, tugged at their mothers’ skirts as they haggled with merchants.” She dropped the stone and looked out over the rubble and ash. “Not anymore.

  “Perhaps you think I’m trying to guilt you by showing you this.” She shook her head. “If I wanted to do that, I’d tell you more about the dead. I’d tell you the names I heard uttered on the lips of those that survived the war brought to this city. But I don’t want to do that. I want to show you. All of you.”

  “What is it you wish to show us, priestess?” Careus asked.

  “How easily it all falls apart.” She turned to them and spread her arms out wide over the ruined square. “Stone, silk, coin; all the petty things you fought over, all the lives lost for it, it all ends up the same.” She kicked. A cloud of black rose up. “Everything becomes ash and dust, no matter who sets the fire.”

  Across the square, Careus and Blacksbarrow exchanged glowers, as though each one were forming an accusation as to who was to blame for that very cloud of ash. Maybe it was guilt that kept them from voicing it. Asper didn’t care, so long as they kept listening.

  “I will not try to convince you of the atrocity of what happened here,” she said. “I will call it what it is, what heaven condemns it as.” She sneered. “A waste. A waste of lives. A waste of warriors. A waste of a war. You fought among yourselves for fleeting things, unaware of the true battle that was yet to come
.”

  She pointed out to the walls of the city, to a sky quickly turning light with dawn.

  “Past that wall, through the Green Belt, and just a short few miles, lies the death of every man, woman, and child in Cier’Djaal.” She looked hard at the assembled. “You’ve heard the stories by now. You’ve seen the faces of those who saw it. You no longer have the luxury of pretending it’s all lies, of pretending the true enemy is standing beside you now.”

  She narrowed her eyes.

  “The tulwar are coming. Thousands strong. With swords and with flame and a monster at their head, they are coming. And all the trifling waste you battled over will be more ash and dust beneath their feet if you do not heed the word of heaven.”

  At this, the crowd finally broke out into hushed, excited murmurs. The soldiers exchanged nervous glances, as though this were the first time they were hearing of such a thing.

  “The monkeys?” Blacksbarrow spit. “We had some trouble with them out in the desert, had to withdraw my convoy from them. But it took a whole city of theirs to bloody our nose.”

  “They have two cities now,” Dransun said. “They took Jalaang. Its forges and docks are crawling with the savages now, churning out boats and blades by the score.”

  “Jalaang was a trading post with no adequate defensiveness,” Careus replied. “That the barbarians took it hardly indicates anything more than their own unpreparedness.”

  Asper gritted her teeth, fought hard to keep the anger out of her scowl. Prophets didn’t get angry. Prophets kept their calm. And she did.

  “More lies.”

  But damn if it wasn’t hard once Teneir started speaking.

  “Even during their so-called Uprising, the tulwar were easily put down,” the fasha said. “If they march upon us, there is no chance that they will win.” She scowled at Asper. “She merely seeks to coerce you into obedience, as she has plotted from the beginning, with this story of tulwar.”

  “How can you still …” Dransun growled.

  “Have you not heard the people?” Aturach demanded. “Have you not heard the tales?”

  “Civvies get excited,” Blacksbarrow grunted. “You don’t go asking them for advice on war.”