by Kim Smejkal
“Of course.” Celia pressed herself against the glass and stood on her tiptoes, trying to look directly into High Mistico Benedict’s light eyes. “I expect nothing less.” She wouldn’t cower. She refused to bend. But something nagged at her, and this was her last opportunity to settle it. “I know your story: the child whose own people drowned her. The child who returned only to be killed again. Even after all this is over here and you rise as the Divine, immortality sure is a long time. Something terrible is bound to happen to you again.”
Diavala’s eyes narrowed. “If that’s a threat, it’s a feeble one.”
Celia could barely form the words. Vincent made it sound like you curse your life. She was speaking to someone she hated, who wanted to destroy her and would destroy everything she loved, who pushed people around like playthings. Someone she very much needed to destroy.
And yet.
“If you could die again, for good this time, would you?” Celia asked.
Diavala clicked her tongue impatiently. “It’s irrelevant. And every action has a cost, Inkling.”
“True,” Celia said. “But I’ve decided I feel sorry for you, Diavala. At the end of the day, you’re under a bell jar like I am. Yours is bigger—infinite—and far emptier. You created an entire religion, but no one really knows you. Except me.” Even though she whispered those last two confessional words, Diavala heard her.
Celia understood abandonment, disappointment, and betrayal. She knew how it rotted you from the inside. Diavala had said to her once that people weren’t worth it, nor was investment of hope in them, because they always disappointed you. On particularly bad days, Celia would have agreed—attachments aren’t worth it, better not to care—but she’d always had Anya to kick her ass, straighten her out, and prove her wrong. If not for Anya being a light, she might have fallen to darkness too.
The moment paused.
Not a great idea for Celia to reach for empathy, because it had a habit of growing.
Her gaze flicked to Diavala’s neck. High Mistico Benedict’s neck. The place where she would press a dagger. And slice. Diavala would live, that was certain—she would steal another body and perhaps find a way to rise from the ashes left behind in the wake of that night—but High Mistico Benedict wouldn’t. Celia couldn’t ignore that he still existed in that body, his tenor gleamed at her even then, pulsing along its spectrum.
If Anya said it was the only way to stop more of Profeta’s harm, did that absolve Celia of calculated murder?
“Your crowd is expecting you.” Jittery, Celia nudged her chin at the people, needing to get this over with before she lost her resolve.
Diavala laced her fingers together and nodded. “The night has barely begun, Inkling, and here you are trying to rush me? With your little attempt at subterfuge, I’ve barely had time to enjoy the prelude to my homecoming.” She paused and stretched her neck, offering Celia another view of her future, the bump bobbing with a swallow in a very human way. Celia’s bees reminded her, You’ve always been a murderer, in thought if not in deed, and she steadied herself.
“But you’re right,” Diavala said. “Now that they’ve met Diavala under the bell jar, I think it’s time everyone met the Divine.” Diavala tilted her head to the right. “After the Mob’s executions, that is. They’re begging for it, with this incessant noise. And when it’s just you and me, alone on this stage—Diavala and Divine—the people can get a proper introduction to me while you get a proper introduction to what being flogged to death feels like. It’s been a pleasure, Celia Sand.”
Diavala gestured to the two mistico behind Caspian and Sky. They nodded, getting their chloroform rags ready. Quiet. Practical. Quick. Merciful, even. Still, in the end, deliverers of death despite the rapturous prayers on their tongues. Lupita had been an anomaly in the swarm when her conscience had finally overcome her faith.
Diavala presented the first two to die and surveyed the crowd with an air of triumph. A few people waved their fists, proud that they hadn’t been fooled by the devil’s tricks. Now they were done with the prelude and were ready to leap to the main event: the moment the Divine bested Diavala, once and for all, starting with her minions.
Caspian turned to Sky and whispered something in their ear. They held hands, and their fingers laced together, dancing with intense familiarity—light touch, stroke, caress—their point of contact so small but becoming the biggest thing. Becoming everything.
Let’s speed this up even more, Diavala. Now that they’d started the wave of chaos, they had to keep it going. They had to keep Diavala reactive until the bitter end so she didn’t have time to see their final move.
If nothing else, chaos would reign that holy night.
Murderer, murderer, her bees whispered. You finally get your chance to claim your truth. Celia held her breath, her heart thumping loud and echoing off the glass.
After the stop in the field outside Asura, Celia had maneuvered her way close enough to Griffin to ask him one question. “Would you free me from the bell jar even if I was the devil?”
“I’ve met the devil, Celia,” he’d said, watching Diavala with the burn of Vincent’s death still fever-bright in his eyes. “And you’re nothing like her.” He’d turned back to Celia and aimed those dark eyes at her. “I’ll be there, as always.”
And there he was.
In the time it took for him to leap into a run toward Captain Andras, she had lifted the baton from her belt. And with a wild look of confusion on her face—a plague doctor swooping down upon her like a carrion bird!—she hesitated long enough for him to grab her baton.
Before Celia had time to duck, the plague doctor smashed the glass bell jar with it, aiming for the hairline crack. The glass rained down on her in splintered shards.
The mistico behind Cas and Sky had frozen, mouths agape, and looked from their chloro rags to High Mistico Benedict to the glass shards littering the stage to the unmasked devil and the very-masked plague doctor—the singing and smiling and dancing plague doctor, because if anything, he’s the one who excelled at chaos—and back again.
In shock from the devil’s escape from the bell jar, the crowd balked. Mouths hung unappealingly open. Fists that had been waving moments ago hovered in the air, unmoving. A few more guards had moved into the swarm to aid the people who’d passed out.
The Mob began moving as they sang—small movements, like a step forward, a duck, a bend—but all together effectively giving the impression that they weren’t contained. They could run. They were thinking about it. Maybe this was the beginning of a mass escape.
Uncertain, the people in the crowd either pushed to get closer or pulled farther away, they either whispered or argued with one another. So much movement and noise, trying to make sense of what was happening, that the entire square bubbled. Guards were breaking up a few fights in the crowd, and inklings and fleas broke formation to press close to friends, thwarting the mistico’s attempts to restore order. The escape of the devil in the bell jar had stirred the square like a stew in a giant’s cookpot.
Dante, Lupita, and Zuni stood together with Wallis and the fleas, having taken advantage of the mass of movement. A lock of Dante’s perfect hair stuck to his forehead from sweat. Not much, but enough that if they survived the night, Celia would have fodder enough to tease him forever. Zuni and Lupita held hands like old friends.
Nero stood at the end of the line, four guards holding him. He’d made himself part of the show when he’d tried to help.
Celia decided she loved his salamander.
The Mob showed no fear. They sang. Held hands. Seer Ostra nudged Caspian and gestured to the tattoo on her chest, starting a ripple that saw every Mob member shift their costume enough to showcase their ink.
Music enveloped all, reaching crescendo. After the quick game of cat-and-mouse between the plague doctor and a livid Captain Andras, he nodded to Celia significantly, then waltzed over to join the Mob, squeezing himself b
eside Kitty Kay. Red-faced, Captain Andras stomped her way to Diavala to apologize, or explain herself, or demand the plague doctor’s head.
As important as Celia was, it took quite a while for the guards to notice her standing so quiet on top of her shattered bell jar amid all the other noise and movement. She’d been freed, but hadn’t yet done anything with her freedom.
Except enjoy how seamlessly everyone had gotten into formation.
Guards flanked the sides of the stage, preventing escape; a row of mistico stood behind the row of Mob members, ready with their daggers; and Diavala stood in front with Captain Andras and her nine-tailed whip. The pair were closest to the people, right near the edge of the stage. If that whip came down, those first few rows in the audience were in a splash zone.
When a guard finally had the presence of mind to grab Celia, she shouted, “No! I had nothing to do with that! Don’t give me to the High Mistico!” And so they immediately delivered her to her position beside the High Mistico.
As she moved, the fabric of her costume brushed against her raw skin. When they exposed her back for the flogging, they were in for a surprise.
Carefully planned, meticulously designed, Anya had inked a very special Divine tattoo on herself throughout the day, sending it to Celia the moment Diavala was preoccupied with her audience. From one shoulder blade to the other, dipping all the way to Celia’s lower back, fire had raged. Her wild gesticulations as the devil in the bell jar had disguised her reactions to the pain, otherwise she would have twitched like a bug and given everything away right there.
Weeks earlier, Diavala had admitted that her powers weren’t limitless, and with every Rabble Mob tattoo, Celia and Anya had tested those limits and poked at edges, trying to find the exact shape of Diavala’s link to the ink. “See? I can have faith, Cece,” Anya had said with a wicked smile. “I have faith that she has no idea how far we’re willing to go.”
The hidden tattoo was a culmination of every experiment. Anya had transferred the ink from one body part to a different one, she’d channeled more ink so that the image stretched, becoming as large and visible as possible. And, most important, it was still invisible to Diavala. She could see every path the ink took, that much was likely true, but as they’d learned with the plague doctor’s “don’t bother” tattoo, it wasn’t immediate. Anya’s theory was that she had to be actively looking.
And why would she search for a Divine tattoo that night, when she was convinced that she’d won?
Just as with Tanza, Diavala’s hubris gave her tunnel vision.
She wouldn’t see that inklings had all the power until it was too late.
Judgment time was fast approaching. The meaning of the tattoo on Celia’s back would ring clear across Illinia.
Hopefully.
Celia felt a jab on her arm. Ink bloomed and then disappeared quickly. A punch from Anya to focus. As if Anya knew exactly when Celia would start worrying.
Captain Andras looked hungry. She uncoupled the whip from her belt.
To the hum of Mob singing, Diavala struggled to find words to match her fury.
It was strangely satisfying to see her floundering. Celia shrugged. “We’re performers, and you gave us a stage,” she said sweetly. “Did you really not expect us to use it? If we’re all going to die anyway, at least we can have the satisfaction of creating a Mob-size smear on your blessed night.”
“Everything will settle itself with your flogging. Of that, I’m positive.” Diavala took a deep breath. “This looks like disorder now, but when everything is said and done on this night, it will only look like desperation. All this”—she gestured to the neatly assembled rows onstage, now quiet, contained, and watchful—“only proves collusion. You could have saved them if you’d cooperated. Instead, you convinced them that there was hope in fighting back. And every inkling knows that hope doesn’t exist here.” Leaning in, she whispered a hiss into Celia’s ear. “At least when I was flogged, I knew it was a mistake. But you will deserve every strike. Two dozen lives will be lost for nothing, their blood will be on your hands, and that will be your only legacy, Inkling.”
Captain Andras tenderly stroked the nine tails of leather, trailing them between her long fingers like fluttering ribbons, so eager to take out her anger at the plague doctor’s embarrassing baton robbery on Celia’s back. “So she goes first, then?”
Diavala nodded. “She goes first. Let her bear the pain of the whip, let her bear the pain of her followers watching it strike.”
The crowd wasn’t in a rolling boil anymore, but they still simmered, waiting. What had felt like years of chaos had been only minutes, and it was clear that everything was under control again. Justice would be done.
Diavala turned to them and thundered, “Your patience is admirable, your faith even more so. Diavala had more tricks up her sleeves, but all this has only been prelude to the most glorious day in the history of Profeta. Our Divine has finally returned to us!”
The temple doors opened again, and there was an angel.
Anya drifted out, flanked by two mistico.
And she looked like perfection.
And she walked tall and proud.
As she approached Celia, she lifted her mask.
And met Celia’s eyes.
“No matter what,” she whispered. “Be strong, Cece.”
And she tried to smile.
With her arms held aloft, the crowd roared for her.
And Anya took center stage.
Chapter 35
Everything moved in slow motion, as if the temple had been plunged deep underwater.
Like a puppet testing out its strings, High Mistico Benedict prostrated himself at Anya’s feet, jerking and twitching as his tenure serving Diavala came to an end. Whether it was sheer stubbornness, determination, or some lingering command still leading him, he didn’t utter a sound for a few seconds.
The harsh noises of the Touch began—the High Mistico was so close to divinity, he was so overcome!—and then they quickly stopped when the closest mistico dragged him away.
Hundreds turned their gazes to the angel in white lace.
She held out her arms. Smiled. Took the time to look at everyone, holding eye contact significantly before moving on. The initial blast of cheers had died. People wept, fell into deep bows, or stretched their arms out as if to touch her. Wails of emotion tore through the new sound of measured prayers from hundreds of mouths. Ruler Vacilando’s personal guard were trying to revive her back to her senses, so full was her delirium.
Diavala said nothing. She didn’t have to. This moment had been building for weeks, for years, for centuries. Her ink had always spoken for her anyway, and it made sense that she wouldn’t bother with such trivial human mundanities as speech. The sea of faces believed that the one dressed as an angel was their Divine. Look at her, they seemed to murmur to one another. She walked among us all this time. She was the one who knew I needed guidance in my marriage, my profession, in dealing with my personal loss.
Maybe the Divine wasn’t what they expected, but still, she seemed to be exactly what they’d expected. Waves of black hair: young and beautiful. A regal countenance: old and wise.
She moved like someone young, but, with a different tilt of her head, deep wisdom in her gaze made her look ancient.
Magic.
Her lace dress so simple yet so elegant, as beautiful as a true angel fallen from the heavens.
The link to the Rabble Mob made perfect sense: from within that very temple the Divine had noted Diavala’s new scheme. She’d watched it take shape, then followed her, disguised as another inkling. From the temple to the Illinian countryside, they’d battled.
In the eternal fight between good and evil, there in Asura it would end.
Celia felt their rapture as a tangible thing, wrapping around her like barbwire. As she stared at Anya, her heart thumped in a painfully slow rhythm, as if it knew it had only a thousand beats left and foolishly wanted to stretch
out Celia’s time.
A message on her arm shocked her like cold water. For a brief moment she thought Anya was playing some sort of new game, clever thing that she was. A ruse of some kind, maybe trying to spare Celia from the whip in Captain Andras’s hand. Profound relief flooded through her and those black dots in her vision became bright, dizzying starbursts.
But Anya’s arms were held up to the heavens. No matter how skilled she was with hiding her messages, she’d never perfected doing them without using her hands.
Keep going, the message said.
Celia shook her head, tossing away thick cobwebs, and turned to the Mob. They all stared back at her. Then she found Dante, standing with Lupita and Zuni. It could only have been him, turning forward again after tilting to hide his arms. Dante? Using the ink and breaking a rule so huge? And when had he learned to do it? He nodded at her.
Some, like Remy, Wallis, and Zuni, had the decency to look stricken. The others held no expression save determination. The plague doctor gave Celia another bow. Lupita trembled so terribly it was a miracle she hadn’t fallen over. Her swiveling, drowning eyes were aimed in Celia’s general direction, trying to pin her down, and her normally smiling mouth had disappeared into a fierce thin line. Kitty Kay looked more phoenix than hen as she nodded, the set of her mouth matching Lupita’s.
They all told her to keep going.
“Don’t you dare,” Celia hissed. How dare they act as if Anya’s disappearance from this show was a wardrobe malfunction around which to improvise? Celia may have dropped her mask, but never had she felt so beastly. Her hands clenched into fists, fire consuming her.
Anya’s eyes were closed, and tears streamed down her face. Anya’s face, Anya’s body, Anya’s familiar tenor.
But definitely Diavala’s tears. Being seen for the first time in centuries had almost undone her. She opened her deep blue eyes only long enough to look at Celia and twist the knife. “You never even had a chance, Inkling.” Anya’s lips. Anya’s voice.
Celia tried to sink to her knees, but Captain Andras caught her under her arms, holding her up, murmuring consolations in her ear that weren’t meant to comfort. Swift whips, deep and hard, your death will come as quickly as possible, but not quick enough.
