by Karin Cox
I looked at my sister’s face, so like mine but more feminine. It was not the face of Jiordano. I remembered how he had always sneered at me. He hated me, I realized, like most Cruxim in Silvenhall.
“She rarely talked of Cruxim. They let me believe we were solitary creatures.” I was silent for a moment. “She lied to me, Kisana. She never told me about Silvenhall. I remember hearing them whisper together, she and your father. I was very young, and she was with child at the time, her belly full with you. Once, when we ran foul of a coven that nearly bested them, she begged Jiordano to take us both when she died, but he was stony. Once you were born ... well ... he told me later that it was not our way. We were beings of loneliness, he said. It was not in our nature to be around others of our kind.”
“You believed him?” Kisana’s voice was soft with pity.
“I was young. Alone. I had no one else to ask.” I wet my dry lips with my tongue, remembering how I had hated Kisana at her birth. How much like a cuckoo she had seemed. “One night, a little after you were born, I left.”
“For where?”
I shrugged. “I nested with owls in the roofs by day or curled up somewhere in the eaves. I was not strong enough to hunt Vampires at first. I dined on whatever I could catch—rodents mostly, or pigeons. It made me weak. One day, when I had just begun to fledge properly for the first time, I came across one of them in an alleyway. He was injured, torn to shreds by something, another Vampire I presumed at the time, but now...”
“What was it?” She sat forward, intrigued.
“A Sphinx.”
“A Sphinx!” She curled a lock of her hair around her fingers like a child, her eyes shining. “They do exist, then? For so many centuries the Proxim have sought out a Sphinx. Many Cruxim have come to think them a fairytale, except that the Cruximus mentions them.”
“Yes.” I paused, my thoughts on Sabine, on her gentleness and strength, the power in her great paws and the kindness in her eyes. “They are the only other beings that sometimes have the strength to repel them.”
“What about Harpies?” Kisana listened with her head tilted, her knees drawn up to her chest.
“What about them?”
“I have heard they can kill Vampires too.”
“Harpies?” I considered it.
She nodded.
“I have never encountered one. I took them to be figments of the imagination.” I laughed. “Then again, I had never thought to meet a Sphinx.”
“Nor I. But I have heard of Harpies nevertheless, and Sphinxes.”
“I hear a lot of things,” I replied. “But so few are true. This Cruximus, tell me, sister, can you bring a copy? There is something in there, a riddle about a Sphinx. It is why Skylar brought me here.”
Kisana smoothed down the fabric of her skirt. “Perhaps it is not the only reason,” she said coyly. “But I cannot bring it for you, brother. There is no copy. Only one Cruximus exists—the Holy Book kept by the Sibylim in Cascadia and brought out for the Council, when interpretation of its lore might be required. Even then, only the Speaker or the Sibylim may read it. All else learn it as children from the Sibylim themselves, when we make our initiation in the ice caverns beneath Cathedral Cascade.”
Kisana stood, took two goblets from a chest and filled them with wine.
“Then tell it to me,” I urged.
My sister sighed and looked down at the wine as it flowed into the vessels. “It makes no sense to anyone, and I was a young girl then. I have long forgotten it, brother. Perhaps the Speaker can help you, if the Council lets you stay.”
Kisana took one of the goblets and passed it out through one corner of the tent, to where the silhouette of a Cruxim—the guard, Avrel—paced. He took it, muttering his thanks.
The other she brought to me and held to my lips.
I coughed. The liquid tasted sweeter than wild honey and was as thick as blood. I had been expecting merlot.
“What is it?”
“Haemil.” She sat herself down next to me on the cushions and took a sip from the same goblet. “Our loyalty to the Crèche is bound in blood—the blood of our mothers and fathers and ancestors. On Holy days, all but the Sibylim bloodlet. Our own blood, mixed with goats’ blood and honey, can sustain us for a time.” She lowered her voice and looked sidelong at me, gauging my reaction. “It can even negate the need to hunt. Most Crèches have their own supply for the young, or for times when our armies are in training. In Silvenhall, we keep a supply for the Sibylim, who do not hunt.”
“More, please, Kisana.”
She held the goblet to my mouth again.
It was filling, but how I wanted a Vampire on which to slake my thirst. How I wanted Beltran’s neck against my fangs, rather than this Cruxim blood. I washed away the sour taste of vengeance denied with another sweet sip of Haemil. It made me shiver, but I felt some of my strength returning with it. The blood warmed my arms, and I felt a little of my exhaustion fade.
Kisana set the goblet down. “Peace, Amedeo.” Her tone was wistful, as if she knew my thoughts, and perhaps she did. “You should rest. There will come a day to smite them, a day that is coming soon.”
“Not soon enough.” My hands, still knotted behind my back, clenched with the need to kill. “It is nothing, sister. I am just tired and a little cold. My fingers are numb.” I wiggled them behind my back and she leaned close to see.
“The binds are tight,” I said, wincing for effect. “My circulation is suffering.”
Kisana glanced around for the guard, who was still distracted with the goblet of Haemil. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I cannot remove them for you, Ame, it would be a crime, but perhaps I might loosen them just a little.”
She moved behind me, and I clenched my fists as she tugged at the buckles. When I heard the faint grate of metal as the buckles slid from their notch, I flexed my biceps and clenched again, leaping to my feet.
“Amedeo!” she whispered in panic as the silver buckles, only half-tightened, failed. I drew my arms up above my head, wrenching my wrists apart and flapping my wings until my leather bonds split and fell away. Freedom rushed with the blood back into my arms, and I immediately bent to tear at the straps that held my feet.
My sister watched me sadly, but she made no move to alert the guard, nor did she follow me as I slid out of the other corner of the tent, seeking the safety of the skies.
I knew they would not let me leave. My bodyguards would be upon me soon enough, but like a hare to a fox I was determined to exhaust them in the chase. With a shudder of my wings, I leaped onto the boulders that had formed the passage into Silvenhall Crèche. Finally, I had found Cruxim like myself, yet still I did not belong. My wing beats battered my body back against the cliff as I rose into the air and wheeled away from Silvenhall and from its disappointments.
I had flown for not half an hour before they intercepted me, ten of them. They bore down on me swiftly with Skylar behind them, begging for leniency. Daneo was the first. A team of darker-haired angels followed, their capes fluttering around them so they looked like a murder of crows descending on a skylark. I fluttered on the wing and spun, soaring away, but I had no hope of escaping them. My wings had not healed enough, and I was weak, having drunk only a little of the rich Haemil.
“You dare to leave against my orders?” Daneo’s enormous white wings clawed at me and sent me spiraling downward. Another Cruxim followed, battering me with feathers and fists.
“I believed I was a guest,” I answered haughtily. “I did not find the hospitality to my liking.”
“A guest,” another spat.
“Yes. Skylar invited me.”
“She should not have.”
“No, she shouldn’t. That is why I left.”
“Now you know of Silvenhall.” Skylar’s voice in my brain was calm. “They will not let you leave until they are sure you will not reveal its location. I brought you to Silvenhall by many different paths, that it might confuse you and placate them. But you wer
e right: I should not have brought you here.”
“Then I am to be made prisoner again?” My heart wilted at the thought.
“Yes—until I can convince them you will be their salvation and not their ruin. We will meet with the Council tomorrow.”
“I am no one’s salvation.” I wheeled again. “You saw what happened to Danette, to Joslyn and Sabine. I was their damnation.”
“And you may yet be ours,” Daneo snarled.
I growled back, “Perhaps you might avoid that by treating me more courteously.”
It was an affront to him, and I expected retribution. Daneo rushed at me again. A well-muscled Cruxim helped him, spinning me around in mid-air and dragging my exhausted body between them.
I let my wings still—what would they do if I refused to fly?—but between them, they hefted my body up and hauled me back with them.
“Let me remain unfettered. I will not leave again until you reveal the Sphinx’s riddle,” I promised. “You have my word.”
The wind carried off the thin sound of Daneo’s laughter. “Your word. Just like your mother’s. No. You will come, and you will wear your bonds, and you will remain until we have decided what to do with you.”
“Don’t fear,” I heard Skylar’s thoughts again. “They cannot kill you.”
“It is not death I fear,” I answered her. My throat was too hoarse with anger to speak the words, Sabine’s words, that echoed in my brain: It is eternity in a cage.
“Shhhh.” I felt a singular pain shoot through Skylar’s mind, no words or thoughts attached, or none I could discern—she hid everything so well. I took it as guilt. Was she sorry she had not helped me save Sabine, at least?
“Bring me Kisana,” Daneo instructed another Cruxim as we descended among the rocky towers that concealed the Crèche. “She set him free. She must be punished.”
“My sister did nothing.”
“Exactly. She did nothing to stop you.”
“Do not lay your hands upon her,” I growled, struggling in his grasp.
He looked shocked at that, but I saw the anger in his eyes.
“Why punish her for my presence here? If you do not want me here, let me leave.”
“I do not want you alive,” he spat, releasing me. “If you were not Kisana’s kin, maybe you would not be. The cage this time, for both of them.” He nodded to the other Cruxim and strode off to find my sister.
“Or if he were not the Cruor.” Skylar’s words followed him.
“I am sorry,” Skylar said gently once her Crèche mates had dragged me into the stone hall and thrown me into a gilt cage for good measure. A second cage sat more than a wingspan away, awaiting my sister, I presumed.
“I should not have brought you here, nor let them bind you. Now that you have displeased them so, who knows if they will even let me teach you Cruxim lore?” She put her hand through the bars to squeeze my forearm, but I pulled away and turned my back on her.
“I want no part of this place, no part of your lore. I have survived hundreds of years without the company of another Cruxim. I will survive thousands more. Even if they determined I could remain, I would not.” I leaned against the bars. “If I do nothing else, I must find Beltran and send him to Hell for what he has done.”
“They will all go there eventually, Amedeo.”
I spun again to grasp the bars and shook them. “Why? Why should you care? All I see here are Cruxim with no passion, no purpose. You drink each other’s blood and sit in Council. Meanwhile the undead hordes are animating corpses. Daily the Black Death is serving them ever more corpses while you all sit here playing at politics and prophecies. Does this lore say for what purpose Cruxim are made, for it is surely not this? Tell me the riddle and let me leave, for I will not stay here and content myself with trivialities, not while Sabine still lives. Not while Vampires still exist.”
“Very good, Cruxim. Very good.” A laugh trilled around me. It bounced off the marble flagstones of the council chamber and rang meanly in my head like Beltran’s.
A woman, wearing a suit of supple, dark kid leather that fit her body like a skin, glided toward us, pushing my sister before her.
Kisana’s hazel eyes were even sadder now and swollen with tears.
“Do not touch her!” I rattled the bars of my cage.
The woman ignored me, directing Kisana toward the other cage. My sister made no move to resist, just stepped inside and slumped in the corner.
“Sister,” I called to her. “I am sorry.”
Her head was braced on her arms, knees drawn up, but she nodded between sobs.
“What did she do,” I raged at Skylar, “to deserve him? Must we both be punished for our mother’s actions? Who will punish Daneo for his?”
The woman raised an eyebrow as she turned the key to lock Kisana in her cage.
“Was that a threat?” she said, crossing the space between the cages. She circled my cage, as if appraising me. “You have a temper, Amedeo, and quite a body. I am sure you would find no shortage of suitors in Milandor.”
“Don’t,” Skylar said. “Your quarrel is not with him, Jania.”
“No. And I have no hope of convincing you to join Milandor, do I, Skylar?” Her words lacked malice, but her enormous blue eyes were sad. “I gave up on such hopes ... years ago. But many others do not. Thanks to Milandor, not all Cruxim will be slaves to the Cruximus,” she continued. “Not all of us will suffer.”
“There will come a day when such suffering will end.” I heard Skylar’s thoughts.
Jania’s laugh echoed around the chamber again. “For you, Skylar Emmanuel, yes. Unfortunately, it will be the same day you hold your newborn daughter in your arms.”
“Then I will know pure love,” Skylar retorted.
Jania looked at her wearily. “For an hour, no more. I would have offered you my love for eternity.”
“Jania, your heart belongs to Lilyana now, for eternity,” Skylar said gently, approaching the Cruxim to place a hand on her shoulder. “Do not speak of such sorrows. You will always have my heart, friend.”
“No.” I felt the slicing blame of Jania’s stare. “You will trust a stranger sooner than your oldest friend, even if he will lead you to your doom.”
“So be it,” Skylar said.
“The Council will meet this evening to determine his fate. Have pity on your sister,” Jania addressed me. “Do not think to attempt escape.” Her boots squeaked as she strode off.
Skylar put her hand over mine where it wrapped around the bars. “I apologize for Jania. She does not easily trust newcomers.”
I scoffed. “I have caught you in a lie, Skylar: a kind lie but a lie nevertheless. It is not newcomers she distrusts. It is me. Any fool can see that. Just like the rest of them.” I slumped to the ground to sit. “What is she to you?”
“A childhood mentor, and the Proxim of Milandor.” She lowered herself down next to me on the other side of the bars. “She hoped, at one time, that I might join them. But their way is not for me.”
“Their way?”
“They are barren.” Kisana put her head up, and I wondered that she too had no children.
With Daneo as her mate, surely a son would be welcome, I thought, but I did not give voice to the words. “By choice or by nature?” I asked
Skylar shrugged and answered. “They love other Cruxim of the same sex. They will not suffer the pain of losing their mate when a child of the same sex is born. ”
So my mother had been honest about that, at least. “Then they have more sense than you,” I said, not unkindly, but thinking of Joslyn and the hole her absence had punched in my heart as surely as if the silver cross had ruptured my skin.
Hurt crumpled Skylar’s brow. She did not answer, just inspected the nails of her left hand.
They were short, I noticed, for a woman’s, as if she kept them that way so she might play an instrument.
“Jania loves you. Even I can tell that.”
“It is not the way of
Silvenhall,” Kisana interrupted.
“To be celibate? Our mother was of Silvenhall, and she took a vow of celibacy.”
“A vow she broke,” Skylar responded.
I reached my hand out through the bars toward her. “Tell me about her, if you know of her. I have told Kisana all I know.”
“Jania?”
“No. My mother. She left me young when Kisana was born. How do you know so much about her, here in Silvenhall?”
Skylar’s eyes fixed on my lips, and then she flushed, almost shyly. “You resemble her in many ways.” She nodded across at Kisana. “As does your sister. Calira was proud, very beautiful, and clever. Before Samea took her place, she was the head Sibyl, and an excellent one. Some say the best, although they daren’t whisper it now. When she broke her vow ... The Cruximus says it should not be that a Sibyl is ever lost to childbirth.”
I did not press her more. “You talk much of this Cruximus, yet you refuse to let me hear its riddles. Why do you keep it from me? Apart from my sister, there is nothing here for me but secrets and riddles, and even those are denied me. I have come here for even less than I expected.” My words came out harsher than I intended.
“For that too, I apologize...” Skylar’s voice faded out again. “The Cruximus is sacred. There are lores ... conventions ... that must be followed. You will remain an outsider until you make a blood-troth, and only then will you be allowed to know the secrets of the Cruximus. Before you can make a troth, the Council must see fit to grant you asylum here in Silvenhall.” She paused. “That is if they will.” She sighed. “Amedeo, you must be prepared. Even if you see the riddle, the oracles, there is no telling whether you will understand them. They are very precious to us, guarded over deep in the caverns of Cascadia, in the Chapistry of the Sibylim, but you have heard the voice of the Maker, you know how enigmatic He can be. Sometimes even the Sibylim cannot decipher an oracle’s meaning.”
