by Kim Smejkal
“Together,” Celia whispered, choking on the word. At least they would go together.
Then she felt a familiar heat on her wrist. Her heart jumped and stuttered, knowing what it meant without knowing what it meant. Careful not to move suddenly, she looked down, tilted her tied wrists, and saw . . .
Ink.
One tiny dot on her skin, like a blemish or mole, but one that had never been there before.
Her head wanted to snap back to Anya, but she forced it to move in a natural scan.
Toward the line of Mob members. Down the length, holding every set of tired, sunken eyes along the way. Past every guard. Panning over the fevered crowd, who reveled in getting an intimate glimpse of Profetan justice.
To Anya, whose forearms were tucked against her chest, hands hidden. Behind Celia, keeping back, Nero was so obviously trying not to be obvious about averting his gaze that it was obviously obvious that’s exactly what he was doing.
So he was a trickster too, pretending to throw Remy’s delivered quill nub out the window. She decided not to be too pissed that it had taken him this long to decide what to do with it.
The devil looked at the angel, and the angel stared back.
Celia listened to that one dot of ink from Anya, and heard We fight, Cece. We use the ink against Diavala.
She doesn’t control it, we do.
Remember.
Celia pressed her thumb over the tiny splotch on her wrist. It couldn’t deliver safety, couldn’t save them from death or madness, but it held a sliver of power. It promised havoc and mayhem before the end.
Onstage, offstage, the Mob lived knowing that the show went on until the last curtain fell. Seer Ostra and Remy, Georgio and Ravino, Caspian and Sky—all the way down the line, they held her gaze, and she heard each of them say You’re not alone. She met Marco’s gaze across the distance, his stomping boots, his angry eyes: This isn’t the end. She looked at the maskless plague doctor, who’d been dealt a blow and gracefully turned it into an attack: Tilt your head a different way. And Kitty Kay—not a gray reaper, not an orange phoenix, but a mother hen to them all, her true form finally shining through—My family will never be the same after this. We have to make sure it’s worth the loss.
Celia went back to Anya: We’ll use her own ink against her.
Finally Celia heard it all.
Diavala turned to her and loomed as the parade came to an end, saying, “So what do you think? Be Diavala and try to save them or continue to wallow in useless despair. That’s your choice.”
Celia twisted away from Captain Andras with such a violent jerk that she ended up on the ground. “I’ll need my costume and mask mended. You’ll have the devil you want.”
She yelled at Diavala, kicked at her, pushed for undignified with everything she had. As Celia screamed and flailed, she remembered the Tower tarot card she’d pulled so long ago. Two poor idiots falling to their death, the cause of so much destruction.
We’re about to be pushed out of the tower, Anny, but we’re burning the place down first.
High Mistico Benedict put his hands out, appealing to the crowd for calm. As Captain Andras hauled Celia away, one of the onlookers lobbed a handful of mud in her direction. And, like a perfectly choreographed dance, the jeering began.
The Divine Returned, against Diavala in a bell jar.
Until they used the loopholes to flip everything right-side up.
Nine tails of a whip would strike her down, but Celia and Anya would die so spectacularly, they would take the devil with them, immortal or not.
Chapter 31
As they made their way through Asura’s streets toward the temple in the final leg of the journey, Celia thought of their final inkling test. Over and over, her mind tossed it around. Designed to weed out the worst, only the purest ten-year-olds survived it.
Celia shouldn’t have survived.
But what had always been her hidden shame might end up serving her well.
The test itself was a well-guarded secret disguised with vague language—sever ties to your old life, prove yourself—otherwise, more parents would ignore the tattoos that told them to donate their children.
At least Celia hoped they would.
Celia and Anya went through four years of training. Lupita taught them about art—form and function and interpretation—and about Profeta, this and that and whatever. Celia and Anya had each other, linked pinkies since the beginning, and that made sense even when little else did.
After four years to the day, all the six-year-olds-now-ten-year-olds stood in a lavish room together in front of Ruler Vacilando herself.
The room didn’t matter; even the nerves Celia had felt for the test disappeared. She had never seen Ruler Vacilando that close. She marveled at the intricacies of her tattoos, how they claimed her body bit by bit, no space wasted. She’d thought time would have dulled some to gray, but each one shouted in vivid black. Beautiful, she thought. She’s a canvas. For the first time, the ink made some sense to her. It decorated and drew the eye. It told stories.
“Focus!” Anya hissed her favorite word, low and quiet, and stomped on Celia’s toe for good measure.
The children pressed around her. Some trembled, some smiled, but no one knew what the final inkling test actually entailed. For a year Celia had tried to bribe, blackmail, or con the secret from the older inklings, but they hadn’t survived that long by being gullible.
All she knew was that very few of them would pass and become full-fledged inklings. In the group that preceded them, only six out of a few dozen had moved on.
Ruler Vacilando began a short speech of congratulations: for making it so far in their training and for their dedication. “It is an honor and a privilege to become the Divine’s messengers, and as such, she must know that her messengers are steadfast and reliable. Your tutors have already evaluated you on your skills. This test is a measure of character.”
That made Celia squirm. Monroe, her perpetually muddy friend who dug in the garden and climbed trees whenever they weren’t studying, mouthed Fail at her with a crooked smile. Celia didn’t know whether Monroe meant that they expected to fail or if they expected Celia to fail. Probably both.
Ruler Vacilando snapped her fingers, and the mistico began herding their charges—two by two—into adjacent rooms. “For expediency, you take the test together,” Mistico Lupita said. “Follow me.” Celia’s heart soared, glad that Anya would be there to keep her focused.
They followed Mistico Lupita. No windows, no furniture, the room was only ten steps by ten steps. The three of them stood in silence long enough that Celia began to sweat, wondering if the test of character was standing forever without asking any questions or making any comments. If so, she’d surely fail.
The door opened, and the new High Mistico walked in with four guards and two couples. Far too many people for such a small space, but that’s not what made her throat close.
Celia barely recognized her mothers: their clothing so fancy, their lips stained red in the style of the rich. They were far removed from the shopkeepers Celia had known. But their smiles were the same: glowing, proud of her.
Ridiculous, a vicious voice in her head whispered.
Those smiles were sharp stabs in her gut. Despite how badly Celia wanted to scream at them, she’d learned to follow Anya’s cues. She pushed the urge way down.
The other couple must have been Anya’s parents. She shared her father’s dark hair and blue eyes, her mother’s keen calculation as she appraised the situation.
Everything that happened next flooded together.
Another speech, this time from High Mistico Benedict, centering around the people who’d done their duty and served Profeta by giving their children away. Ridiculous, ridiculous. Twin smiles from people she’d loved, who’d pushed her into four years of cold stone, lonely nights, and constant fear. She tried calling up the good times—a cuddle, a laugh—but they’d been harassed out of her, ta
inted by all that had come after.
Celia realized, with more sharp stabs, that she hated them. She hated their calm smiles and bowed heads. She hated that they didn’t push their way to her and scoop her up. Come to me and scoop me up!
They loved her, but they loved something else more.
When Mistico Lupita produced a dagger two handspans long, the room tightened.
When she demonstrated how to use it, Celia stopped breathing. A precise, textbook step one and step two, similar to the way Lupita might point out how to use contoured lines to add depth to a picture.
The gilded handle felt warm in Celia’s hand, as if it belonged there.
High Mistico Benedict leaned against the wall, picking at his fingernails. Overseeing each test was such a chore. “Kill the people who abandoned you, or die yourself,” he said simply.
The room erupted, most of the noise coming from Anya’s father. The guards, anonymous, nameless, forced their parents to their knees. Celia’s mothers didn’t smile anymore, but neither did they fight.
None of it made sense.
Celia looked at Anya, who stared at the dagger in her own hand as if she didn’t know what it was, for the first time her thoughts written in a language Celia didn’t understand. They’d both assumed that if you failed the test, you’d be released from duty to Profeta, not from life. Anya had wanted to fail on purpose.
No wonder the older inklings wouldn’t talk about it—their payment for breathing had been to force their family to stop.
“Make your choice,” Lupita said. “Kill or die.”
“This is outrageous,” Anya’s father shouted. “We gave our beloved—”
“Do it, Celia,” Mama said. Her smile had returned, fringed with tears. She held Mother’s hand. “You’re part of a bigger story.”
Celia trembled like a sapling in a storm. Had they always spoken in code? She understood Anya’s father far better. His shouts rang loud, giving words to everything Celia felt. Deception, crooked, torture, don’t make them . . .
Don’t make them.
She stared at her mothers’ red lips, so out of place, and thought, Red suits them. She tightened her grip on the handle, a jewel on the hilt digging into her palm.
Kill them, or die.
Celia didn’t want to die.
“Don’t make them!”
“Do it, Celia.”
She turned her heart to stone. She blocked out Anya’s father and all the sense he made.
Celia made her choice: Kill. Live.
It was on her mothers’ red lips; they wanted her to pass the test, to live, even at the expense of their own lives.
Maybe this, finally, would fill the gap inside her.
She lifted the dagger to her mama’s neck. All it would take was one slash to either side of her throat. Then two more on her mother’s. Even a life at the temple was better than no life at all, she reasoned. She could ink people with messages all day, cuddle up with Anya every night. Anya could correct her lines and she could make Anya laugh and they could go on like that, making sense as they always did.
Anya, who was watching her.
When Celia hesitated, her mama panicked. “Come on, darling. It’s okay. Be brave.”
This was the first time Anya had ever looked to Celia for guidance. Anya mirrored Celia’s movement and placed her dagger at her father’s throat. She shook so hard it was a miracle she didn’t slice his neck up like a turnip for stew. He’d stopped shouting, his tearful eyes pointed up at his child.
But he wasn’t crying for his neck.
In order for that life Celia wanted, Anya would have to kill too.
Celia imagined blood staining the hand that had held hers for four years, the pinky that had wrapped around hers the first day. What would happen to those calm, infinite dark blue eyes? Would the spark in them dim or flicker out? Celia loved them exactly as they were.
The world entirely changes when you have an audience made up of someone you love. When you care for their soul more than your own.
She understood her mothers then. For the briefest of moments she understood what it was like to love something so absolutely.
I can do this, but you can’t, Anny.
You can’t.
A calm settled over Celia as she dropped the dagger. Her tears fell silently, a betrayal from her eyes. “Forget this. Let’s go together.”
Celia’s mothers fully panicked, Anya’s father joining them as they shouted. Seemed that everyone, suddenly and fiercely, wanted to die in that room.
Anya nodded, her own silent tears falling. Instead of daggers in their hands, they found each other’s pinkies.
High Mistico Benedict left to supervise the next test. Mistico Lupita led them back out to the main room, shutting the door on their parents’ ongoing exclamations.
The gilded room was full again with the children Celia had known for four years. It was clear which choice most had made behind their own closed doors. There was so much red: hands, eyes, hearts.
Monroe, smaller than even small Celia, had more than dirt on their face now. A smear of crimson painted their skin, as if they’d tried to rub what they’d seen and done from their eyes. They looked at Celia but didn’t see her. They looked at their hands. And saw them. And cried.
They were different tears from Celia’s and Anya’s: an internal horror versus resigned fear. Though both manifested in salty water, theirs may as well have been made of acid.
Only a few would fail and die with Celia and Anya. Yusef wept silently. Dante was as aloof as ever, rankling Celia. Not even his own impending death could phase him?
Anya squeezed her pinky and, absurdly, laughed.
That’s when Celia knew she’d made the right choice. If Anya looked like Monroe, like Cleo, like all the others stained with red, if she couldn’t laugh in the face of this stupid place, that would have been a tragedy.
But when everyone was assembled again, the mistico and their daggers didn’t move toward Celia, Anya, Yusef, or Dante. Their robed forms surrounded the red, wailing ones. Monroe’s face disappeared behind black fabric. Shrieks rose up.
Ruler Vacilando congratulated the graduating class. With each word, a shout was silenced, either from the circle of frightened, bloodstained children or from behind the closed doors.
Celia didn’t understand what was happening. The calm that had fallen over her when she dropped the dagger transformed into something big and hot and bursting. Anya pressed her forehead against hers and they squeezed their eyes shut, clamping their hands over each other’s ears.
If Celia could wind the spool of her life back to the exact moment when she broke, it wouldn’t be when her mothers gave her away or the years of soul-crushing punishments. Or even the instant she realized she was willing to kill her own mothers.
It would be this moment: Anya’s hands over her ears, eyes shut tight, that hot, bursting thing trying so hard to get out.
Is everything a lie?
What devil do we serve?
The temple wanted the weakest servants, not the ones who might fight. The apprentices who slit the throats of their families, the ones who chose to keep breathing, they were the ones who failed.
No family member left the temple alive on graduation day, their usefulness fully spent. Closing the circle, tying up loose ends.
The test was presented as simple black and white, like ink on pale skin: Are you strong enough to fully devote yourself?
Yes? You’ll kill?
Then you’re not weak enough to serve. Diavala wanted sheep for her herd: docile, pliable, unaggressive.
Celia would have killed. She should have died for it.
And without Anya, that’s how it would have gone.
Celia was a murderer, like Monroe, like Cleo, like all those others, in thought if not in deed. But she’d found a loophole in her love for Anya and survived when she shouldn’t have.
She’d lived with that knowledge for six long years. It had eaten away at her core. It
had scarred worse than any dagger cut. But now, she realized, it would be her strength.
Playing Diavala onstage wouldn’t be an issue. Profeta had made sure of that.
Chapter 32
They dumped Celia in her favorite stark cell: the one with the rat hole in the corner so furry nighttime visitors made sure you were too paranoid to sleep. The dungeon in the temple was a short series of small rooms. Solitary confinement before the true punishment of water torture or slashes, so the rogue inkling had time to adequately dread.
There weren’t enough cells to hold so many people individually. Celia was placed with Marco and Seer Ostra.
Seer sat on the ground and patted the space beside her, inviting Celia to sit and fall into her bosom, as if Celia were six instead of sixteen. “I’m glad the cards kept this from me,” she said. No accusation in her rumbly voice, only acceptance.
Celia’s umbrella of Us had been dozens strong since the beginning.
We can do it, Anya had inked earlier. We’ll end this nightmare. She’d spent the last day of travel wearing her quill nub down, telling everyone with disappearing messages what she and Celia would try to do onstage. They hadn’t explicitly asked for help, but Celia discovered Us was funny like that—they hadn’t needed to ask.
Seer nodded, as if hearing Celia’s thoughts. “At least we’ll do some damage before we meet the afterlife.” And a slow smile curled over her face, as though she couldn’t wait to get started.
Turned out, revenge red had spread like Marco’s fire through the rest of the Mob.
They had an impossible audience. An immortal adversary. Even if they won and were able to convert the people into seeing the ink as manipulation instead of something divine, even if they took down Profeta, even if Celia survived the flogging, Diavala could still exact a desperate revenge through the Touch.
But they would perform one more spectacular show.
The Rabble Mob of Minos would be remembered.
* * *
When the door of the cell swung open later that day, Celia tried to blink the hallucination away. When Dante didn’t disappear, instinct made her grab the closest person, Marco, and push him out the door. “Get him out of here. Run!”
