Vultures

by Luke Tarzian

  Searyn put a hand to her head and frowned. “I…don’t remember any of that.”

  “A shame,” came the distorted, disgusted reply, “that your mind prevents you from reliving sin. If I could make it so, you would dream it every night as retribution. I suppose tattooing the faces of the defiled to your flesh will have to do.”

  Theailys tensed his jaw and grimaced. An archaic practice, that. The oldest and still highly popular form of branding murderers and the like. He turned his gaze away—how could he look at her? Memory or not, the deposition in the writ was clear—his sister had profaned the dead.

  So they say, you idiot, his conscience snarled. This is Searyn—your twin sister. Are you going to fall in with these xenophobic, virtue-preaching fucks, or are you going to do what you do best?

  Theailys furrowed his brow and set himself between Searyn and the lead Faithbringer. “Show us proof.” He smacked the writ. “This is just ink. General Khoren’s opinion of the dissident is the worst kept secret in the country. Show. Us. Proof.”

  The Faithbringer backhanded Theailys across the face and he dropped to the grass, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. The Faithbringer pressed the toe of its boot to Theailys’ neck, the tapered point of the sabaton resting on his spine. In his periphery Theailys watched them place the shackles on Searyn’s wrists. Crystalline like their blades, thus impervious to demonry.

  “Foster incredulity all you want,” the lead Faithbringer said as they withdrew. “It will not absolve your sister of her wicked truth. There is no exoneration for your kind, nor will there ever be.”

  “Theailys…” Searyn’s eyes were wet as she was led away.

  He pressed himself to stand, to give chase, but they were far too quick in mounting up and starting from the grounds. Theailys stood there, shaking, tiny threads of mirkúr streaming sadly, ineffectually from his hands as Faro cackled in his head, as Searyn vanished overtop the farmland hills.

  You could have stopped them, Theailys snarled.

  “Indeed, my Flesh,” Faro said. “But you forbade my interference where the Faithbringers were concerned long ago, so I did not.”

  Theailys clenched his fists. …I hate you.

  Faro cackled. “Self-loathing manifests in such peculiar ways. Like a voice inside your head or a shadow at your side. Embrace me. Embrace us, my Flesh. Free yourself of reservation—be your best self.”

  Not if that means reaping, wielding demon smoke, Theailys thought. I refuse—

  “Because you are weak,” Faro sneered. He took shape in an instant, bringing Theailys to the grass with but the twitch of a wispy finger. “This is what weakness looks like: on your knees as they take everything away. As they destroy and desecrate your kind. Do not fear your strength—find strength in your fear, as Khar Am once said.”

  At that, Faro fell away, leaving Theailys warm with moderate rage at the scrutiny and xenophobia his people faced and rightfully puzzled by the voice’s sudden clarity of speech. Where had that come from? And quoting the Faithbringer Khar Am of all people? What. In. Perdition.

  Theailys stood, spat, then began the slog to Helveden proper, thoughts an anxious whirl and taste buds screaming for a drink.

  * * *

  Cailean Catil was smashed. To the point his flayed left arm didn’t make him feel inadequate. To the point his left hand didn’t seem a lump of scarred and fissured flesh with what some might consider fingers. He sauntered into the Nasty Rabbit Tavern and grinned at the irony of having ever thought himself a handsome man. The myriad sun-red scars, the thrice broken nose, and crystal eye—now so commonplace Cailean could not recall his Keeper-given face, not even in his dreams.

  He scratched his stubbled jaw, then produced a flask and sucked down what little drink remained: hot whiskey, with the taste of warfront piss. He wiped the dribble from his mouth and chin as he started toward the tavern door.

  The low-lit room was welcoming to Cailean’s good eye, the amalgamated stench of alcohol, mirth, and misery to his nose. He took up his usual seat beside the window and leaned against the booth.

  “You look like shit,” a blurred face said not long thereafter, its owner dropping down opposite Cailean.

  Cailean rubbed his eye, chuckling wryly as the face forsook its haze. “Theailys An. Could say the same of you.” The dark-haired, gray-eyed fucker heaved a sigh and signaled for drinks. Cailean raised an eyebrow. “Really—you’re uglier than usual you depressed sod. What’s wrong?”

  Theailys opened his mouth and out spilled a day’s worth of misery with a dash of guilt and an extra pinch of fuck you for General Khoren.

  “Oh,” Cailean murmured. “Oh.” He downed the rest of his ale, grimacing. “Shit.” Then, lowering his voice: “Zealous hilt stroker probably framed her. Khoren’s been looking for a reason to invalidate Searyn ever since the marshal made her Second General.”

  Theailys drank.

  Cailean leaned back against the booth. “I was looking for you earlier at the Hall. I’m coming with you.” He grinned wide at Theailys’ tensing. “Heh. Searyn’s orders. Queen’s too.” Cailean pulled his knife out and began to play. “Don’t worry. Won’t say anything mean about those paleskin bastards ‘less the situation warrants it.”

  Theailys glared. “I’ve no qualms with letting the phantaxians send you back to Helveden in a silken bag if you call them that. Country over person, Cailean. I’ll let them gut you if it means procuring the argentium I need.”

  Cailean chuckled, fingering the knife. He knew Theailys wasn’t joking.

  “Try smoke sometime,” he said, standing. “Takes the edge off reality.”

  Cailean dropped seven silver square on the table, then tottered happily toward the pelvis-thrusting, rabbit ear-wearing men at the far end of the room.

  * * *

  Theailys sat in the Hall courtyard with Mistress Khal. The moon was full, the air perfumed with honey-scented smoke. What an absolutely shit day it had been. First Anayela’s missing corpse, then Searyn, now Cailean. Keepers scorch the earth, but why in Perdition did that drunkard piss stain have to tag along? They weren’t friends, and the last time they had gone somewhere together they had nearly come to blows.

  Theailys took a whiff of smoke, held it for a seven-count, then blew it out.

  Khal snorted, took the pipe, and took a hit. The smoke escaped her lips in wispy tendrils as she fixed her eyes upon the moon. “Do you think they’re up there? Ridge and Anayela? Hell, everyone who’s ever been ascended? Are they up there in the halls of Rapture, looking down on us, or is it all just one big lie?” She looked at Theailys, strands of raven hair falling past her bloodshot eyes.

  “Yes,” Theailys said, “and no. I think…I think they’re up there so long as we put stock in the concept of Rapture. The moment we lose faith and decide it’s something fabricated by the Church, Ridge and Anayela cease to exist. Spiritually, I mean.”

  “Makes sense,” Khal said. “Are you ready for tomorrow?”

  Theailys offered a sardonic guffaw. “Funny. Did Searyn teach you that one?”

  Khal took his hand and squeezed it sympathetically. “I’ll keep an eye on things—on Searyn. You just make sure you keep a level enough head to see this through.”

  We’re fucked if you fail, Theailys knew she meant.

  He nodded. Then, taking a page from Cailean’s book, he produced a flask and knocked the medicine back.

  4

  Exile

  The temple was empty save a figure cloaked in mourning red and white. Dawn light entered through the crescent moon- and star-shaped windows, casting pictures on the polished azure floor. Serece walked at a measured pace. Her head and muscles ached, half from battle, half from an hour-long council inquisition during which she had taken fault for the slaughter of her party through infected Yssa. Thankfully her wounds were clean and she was freshly bathed—she dared not confront her mother garnished in her sisters’ blood.

  Artemae turned to acknowledge her, midnight eyes bloodsho
t, wreathed black with grief and restlessness. She wore two snow roses in her braided mane of silver hair to commemorate Taür and Sorin; she had done the same for Rejya. “Here you are,” she whispered, boring into Serece. “Here, while they are gone.”

  Serece swallowed. “Mother, I…” She approached, reaching for Artemae’s hands, but her mother turned away. “Please don’t put your back to me.” Tears welled, and Serece bit her lower lip to hold them back. “Do you wish them here instead of me? Rejya, Sorin, and Taür?”

  “Always.”

  The floodgates cracked. Serece tensed her jaw. “I am sorry to disappoint you—again.”

  Artemae said nothing as she started toward then knelt before the argentium effigy of Vol’anan. “Mother of Souls,” she whispered, hands to her heart, “ferry our fallen to the fair skies above. Love my daughters in the Second Life as fiercely as I did here in the First.”

  Serece knelt beside her mother, a prayer resting on her tongue, but Artemae gripped her arm. “Stand. Beg nothing of our Mother lest you wound her ears. You already test her patience with your presence in this place.”

  Serece obeyed, tears trickling down her cheeks. She retreated several steps. “You and I were never close,” she said. “You always favored Rejya. You saw the best of yourself in her as we grew. You saw your courage and your will to lead, your tactical prowess. Your unwavering loyalty and compassion for our people even as this flesh-plague started civil wars. In Taür and Sorin, erudition. Wonder.

  “But in me?” Serece said, sniffling. “In me you saw your failure—nothing more than a mistake. You told father as much and yet he loves me like his own.” Her body quaked. “I was the silent fury your infidelity produced, a stain you would have washed away had you been able. But you couldn’t, and it festered, and now everything is so much worse!” She strode to Artemae and yanked her up by the hood. “LOOK AT ME!”

  Artemae wheeled around and wrapped her hand around Serece’s throat, face contorted in a familiar rictus of rage. “…You…” Her arm shook, and she relented her grip. She released Serece and brought her hands to her mouth, eyes wet, wide. “You took my girls.”

  Tears flowed like a river in spring. “I-I didn’t m-mean to,” Serece whispered as she again reached for her mother’s hands. “Mama, please… I don’t want to be like this, so angry all the time. Please…”

  Artemae brushed the gesture off, gazing pensively, furiously past Serece. “The council…your father…”

  “Are already aware,” Serece murmured. She thought to reach for her mother again but decided doing so to be fruitless. Instead she clasped her hands behind her back, eyes fixed on the floor.

  Serece held this position a long while after Artemae had withdrawn from the temple. Eventually she dropped to her knees, prayed to the Mother of Souls, and wept for the dead sisters her rage and envy had poisoned her against.

  Day yawned into dusk, dusk into night. Serece stood atop the highest spire of the Citadel, the courtyard pyres little more than orange dots from this high up. She had been refused admittance to the funerary rites for Sorin and Taür on pain of death, and a part of her—a far larger part than Serece was normally comfortable conceding to—accepted this decree despite its implications.

  Pariah. Witch. She chewed the inside of her cheek, snorting at the hypocrisy of such a thought. As if I’m the only whose rage has ever summoned Shades or loosed an Avatar upon the land. After the onset of the plague and their violent expulsion from Ariath, the phantaxians had been forced to weather what was known historically as the Year of Shades, during which they’d lost a quarter of their population to Yssa’s frenzied manifestations. Tempering that bestial energy was nigh impossible when it was siphoning rage from nearly one hundred thousand people. Though I suppose none of them ever killed the queen’s daughters.

  Daughters. Daughter. Serece lingered on the word, remembering her own, her little Vhora, dead before her second month. She gnashed her teeth at the memory of that night, of the plague devouring her girl, and choked it back to the darkness of her mind. She supposed she could handle being a failure in her mother’s eyes—that wasn’t likely to change. But to have failed as a mother… Keepers, but the knowledge was enough to make her want to rip her heart from her chest. A parent wasn’t supposed to bury their child.

  Serece sniffed back tears and watched the smoke rise, its wispy tendrils twisting in the breeze as they reached toward a tapestry of stars. There was peace to this ethereal dance. Momentary, peculiar, but profound enough to make her wish it would remain. To wonder how she could bend to persistent anger and the weight of her mother’s contempt when she had tasted something so pure.

  Her ears twitched. She looked to the doorway, then felt her body relax. “Father.”

  Undrensil peeled back his hood and approached, a weary smile drawn tight to his lips. His cheeks were dry, but she could sense the sorrow swirling in his sulfur eyes. To all, perhaps save Serece, he was a master at suppressing his pain. He pulled her into his arms, resting his chin atop her head, and Serece allowed herself to melt into his chest.

  “What do you plan to do?” His voice was deep, his words soft.

  Serece offered a watery chuckle. She only ever came here when considering something bold. “You know me well, papa.” She took a deep breath and heaved a long sigh.

  Undrensil pulled back and tipped her chin up with his thumb. “You mean to leave.”

  “To stay here is to exist alone in a crowded room,” Serece said, taking his hand. “To be marked a pariah. I accept responsibility for my sisters’ deaths, and I surely deserve the odium thrown my way, but…” She squeezed tighter. “Te Vétur Thae harbors far too many means to provoke my temper, especially now. I fear I’ll only strengthen Yssa and expedite its next manifestation.”

  Undrensil nodded, swallowing the lump in his throat. “Where will you go?” Worry flashed in his eyes. “Not Banerowos, I hope?”

  Serece shivered at his mention of the dead city, silently cursing him for having said its name. Losing Vhora had been bad enough, but what Serece had tried to do in Banerowos had etched a permanent sickness in her mind. Things dead were better left so.

  “No,” Serece said. “Somewhere I can hide. Where I can think.” She leaned in to hug her father once more, whispering, “I don’t want to harm anyone else. And I don’t want to hurt.”

  He held her, and they stood there in the gentle night until long after the funerary smoke had died. His kindness, his gentle nature and enduring acceptance of an angry young woman without his blood—Serece would miss that, miss him dearly.

  “I’ll come back,” she said finally. “I don’t know when, but I promise you I will.”

  “Do what you need,” Undrensil said, stroking her hair. “I just want you to smile. I can’t remember the last time I saw happiness in your eyes.” He kissed her forehead, then left Serece to the night and her thoughts.

  She remained a while longer, arms resting on the balustrade, eyes fixed to the distant peaks in the east—the Frostlands, where she and Rejya had first come to blows. Where they’d nearly killed each other twice, then wept apologies as they shirked the Avatar and Shades their dual exasperation had invoked. Mortality and kinship had a strange relationship, and Serece could not help grinning at the memory of that night.

  Adrenaline coursing, she withdrew to pack her things.

  * * *

  The town was a necropolis of hoarfrost and ice. It had been this way for centuries, since the night Phantaxis died and the onset of the plague. The snow here in the Frostlands was exponentially colder than it was in Te Vétur Thae and the lower plateaus of the Phantaxis Mountains. Serece peeled back her hood and rolled up her sleeves. The increased frigidity soothed her flaking, plagued skin whilst renewing her verve. For that, she loved the snow. Craved it like a drunkard does the drink.

  She abhorred it too. All phantaxians did, whether they cared to admit so or not. As the snow prevented the plague from further consuming their flesh, it kept them le
ashed to the Phantaxian peaks. Confined to a bar-less cell. In that respect the phantaxians were a race of wretched immortals. One day, she thought. One day I’ll brave the expedited rot and see what lies beyond the snow and rock. But for now, it was time to see what lay beyond persistent loneliness and rage.

  Serece wandered through the moonlit ruin. Eventually she came across the jagged half-collapsed skeleton of a temple. She ducked under the door and into the rime-infested anteroom, familiarity peaking as she eyed the tarnished statues of the Keepers. Even now, despite their ruin, they stood tall and proud.

  Beyond them was a cracked and crumbling pedestal, the sight of which stirred odium in Serece. Before the time of plague and endless snow the pedestal had borne the effigy of the god who’d doomed them to this hell. Curse you, she thought. I hope your soul still burns for what you did, Phantaxis. I hope our eternal suffering was worth whatever you achieved by meeting with Te Mirkvahíl. She closed her eyes and took a breath. Push away the anger—that was what she had to do, what she had come to do. Temper the inner flame to keep the beast at bay.

  “I knew that one day you would come,” said a voice within the darkness of the passageway ahead. There was a softness to the tone, a gentle urgency. “It was written in the light, whispered of in shadows.” A woman emerged, skin bruised and mottled by the plague, azure eyes aglow. She was gaunt, but not unhealthily so, and in her hand, she held a tiny bag. “You look older in the eyes than I recall, my girl.”

  Serece’s heart thumped against her chest. The only one who’d ever called her that was… “Aunt Fiel?” She closed the gap and wrapped her arms around the taller woman’s neck. Fiel chuckled, a strong arm around Serece’s waist. “I thought you were dead,” Serece whispered. “Mother said—”

  “Bah,” Fiel spat. “Artemae says a lot of things. That does not make them true.” She pulled away and took Serece’s hand. “Bad energy is all my sister is, and you, my dear, deserve much more than that, thank the Keepers Undrensil is good of heart.” Again, she spat. “Come now. Time to rest, Celestials know that sleep will soon be scarce.”