The Empire's Ruin, page 21
“It’s bad for us,” he said, shifting the subject, “if the Annurians are actually back. Bad for the temple.”
“Eira’s not an Annurian goddess,” Bien objected. “She’s bigger than that. Older. Older than any empire.”
“Doesn’t change the fact that it was Annurians who built this place. Annurians who burned down all the old shrines to the Three.”
“We didn’t do that. All the priests of Eira have ever done is help. Clothe people, feed them, listen to them. That’s why we’ve survived when all the other temples were torn down.”
“Given a choice between remembering a kindness and feeding a hate, which do you think they’ll choose?”
Bien had just opened her mouth to protest when a scream from outside sliced through her words.
Screams had a shape just as light did a color or music pitch. Before he’d ever had words for the notion, Ruc could tell which birds were shrieking with rage as predators invaded their nests, which were hoisting their hunting cries into the air, and which were dying, their broken bodies caught inside some predator’s jaws. People were more or less the same. There were the bright, light screams of children thrilled by acrobats or jugglers, or the shrieks of young women and men courting in canal boats, feigning terror when the hulls tipped. Then there were the darker, graver shouts of the injured—a carpenter fallen from the ladder, a fisher with a hook lodged deep in the flesh. What he heard now was worse—the red, dark scream of terror, just outside in the street and growing louder as, at the far end of the nave, the temple doors crashed open.
Bien’s head snapped around.
“… Murderers!” Someone was sobbing, voice teetering on the edge of reason. “You’re all murderers. He never hurt you. Never threatened you. Loi never hurt anyone…”
The name hit Ruc like a fistful of knuckles. Of all Eira’s priests, fat, friendly Loi had been the most gentle, the most devoted. If he never got out of bed before noon, that was because he stayed up half the night poling the cramped channels of the Weir, doling out food to the orphans, setting their broken bones and bandaging the worst of their gashes. Every day for thirty years he’d traversed the most dangerous parts of the city unmolested, guarded by the invisible hand of the goddess or his own radiating goodness, and now …
“… You killed him. You slaughtered him—”
The voice—so churned up with hysteria that Ruc couldn’t recognize the speaker—spiked in a wordless scream, then collapsed into silence.
“Loi…” Bien murmured.
“Not just Loi,” Ruc replied. Even through the screen, he could see the heat of the bodies pouring in at the far end of the nave. “They’ve come for everyone.”
Her eyes widened and then, between one breath and the next, hardened. “Then what are we still doing in here?”
Before Ruc could object, she rose to her feet, turned, and slipped out through the gap in the screen.
He followed just a few steps behind, stepping from the privacy of the side chapel into a bath of blood.
More than fifty men had flooded into the temple, all dressed in noc skirts and vests—the ancient style of Dombâng—all carrying bronze weapons: knives, swords, sickles, spears. The metal gleamed like false gold in the lamplight. It was weaker than steel, but no one in the church of Eira carried steel, not anything more formidable than a belt knife. Like the temple in which they lived and worshipped, the priests and priestesses of Eira were not prepared for defense. Defense was incommensurate with love.
Open hearts. Open doors.
That openess was going to get them all killed.
The attackers had spread out through the nave, overturning pews, smashing lanterns, knocking askew the sconces of candles, hacking at the elaborate carvings with their blades. Across the way, they were dragging a young priest—Hoan—into one of the small side chapels. He struggled weakly, but blood ran from a nasty gash along his hairline, and he looked dazed. He was still wearing his shirt, but his pants were a tangled ruin around his ankles. When he tripped, one of the men slammed the butt of a spear up between his legs. Ruc could barely hear his scream over the din.
“Stop it!” Bien shouted. She’d raced to the center of the nave, planted herself athwart the main aisle, arms outstretched. In the madness, no one seemed to have noticed her. “Leave him alone!”
For a moment, Ruc thought she was talking about Hoan. Then he realized she was looking toward the entrance to the temple. His stomach shriveled as he followed her gaze.
A few paces inside the wide doors, standing up against the wall, stood a wide wooden offertory. People without the time or inclination to pray would often enter the temple all the same, just for a few moments, to kneel on the floor, drop a coin or two through the slot in the huge wooden chest, and murmur a prayer to the painting of the goddess hanging above.
Two men had Old Uyen backed up against the box. One held a broad-bladed spear casually in his hand while the other pressed the flat of an ax head up into the priest’s throat. Eira stared down from the painting overhead, her dark eyes somber.
Ruc was halfway across the open space before he realized he’d moved.
“Knees,” growled the man with the ax, pointing to the ground.
Uyen shook his head. “What are you doing, child?”
Ax cuffed him across the face, hard enough to split open his cheek. “On your knees, Annurian,” he growled, then shoved the old man down, knocking askew the candles set at either end of the offertory.
Uyen crumpled, steadied himself with a hand, then looked up at his assailant with dark, watery eyes. “I am no Annurian. My father was Dombângan, a fisher. And my father’s father. I was raised in this city.”
Flame licked at the silk hangings flanking the painting.
“Then you are a traitor,” Ax replied with a shrug.
The other man, the one with the spear, placed the blade of his weapon against Uyen’s stomach.
“I love this city,” the priest protested. “I love her people.”
“You are a traitor and a worshipper of idols.”
Uyen shook his head. “Love is no idol.” He put a gnarled hand around the shaft of the spear, gently, as though he were taking the wrist of a wayward child. “She is the light in dark places, the melody threading the notes.”
But there was no melody inside the church; the notes of evening song had come unstrung, replaced by smashing, screaming, and the eager, crackling growl of fire, which had caught in half a dozen places. Ruc could feel it on the back of his neck, on his cheeks. Vaguely, he was aware that the wooden arches overhead were ghostly with smoke. The canvas of the painting above Uyen’s head had begun to burn, small flames lapping at the figures of the wolves that prowled at the feet of the goddess, chewing through the avesh where it gnawed at its young, licking at Eira’s feet as she stared out at the violence.
Ruc stood just two or three paces from the old priest and his attackers, but could find no strength to draw closer. It wasn’t fear that held him back. Or rather, he could feel the fear boiling inside of him, but not of the men with the weapons. If he took another step, he would strip away the ax and spear. The Witness’s taunts of softness aside, he would seize that bronze and use it to open those men, one and then the other, from their bellies to their throats. Despite the long passage of the years, he remembered all too well how it felt to kill a thing, the perfect, crystalline thrill of it. He knew precisely what it would be like—the struggle, the bright denial in the eyes of the men, the triumph raging in his veins—but this time Uyen would be watching, old gentle Uyen, who had taught him what it was to be human, forced to witness his savagery.
“Let him go,” shouted Bien, forcing her way past Ruc as he stood there, mute.
She had no weapon. Her hands were clenched into fists at her sides. She was not a small woman, but Ruc had never seen her throw a punch.
He reached out a hand to pull her back, but too late, too slow, as though he were moving underwater.
Spear had already turned to face her while Ax glanced over his shoulder. He smiled a brown, broken smile.
“Hello,” he said, stretching out a welcoming hand, as though he intended to help her aboard a boat.
“Let him go,” Bien said again.
Ax raised his brows. “This old goat? I suppose we could let him go. He’s too feeble to interest the Three.” He smiled even wider. “You, on the other hand, will make a beautiful sacrifice. You might even join the ranks of the Worthy.”
“Fine,” she replied, straightening her shoulders, standing to her full height. “I will be your sacrifice. Leave Uyen and take me.”
“Take you?” Spear chuckled through his mustache. “Take you.” He glanced over at his companion. “What do you think? I suppose we could take her before we give her to the Three. They won’t mind a little blood on her thighs. Just like a sauce for them.”
Hate took Ruc by the throat, dragged him forward. Flame gnawed at the wooden pillars, chewed through the pews, but the heat of the fire was cool beside the burning in his veins. The screams had faded to a vague din. The ache in his arms and shoulders was gone. He reached out to seize a chest-high candelabra, heedless of the sparks scattering across the floor, of the burning candles rolling beneath the pews. The church was burning already; he couldn’t stop that. The iron was hot in his palm. The heat felt right.
“Look at yourselves,” Old Uyen was pleading. “Look inside yourselves. You do not want—”
With a casual, backhanded swipe, Ax smashed the blunt head of his weapon into the priest’s temple.
“Stop!” Bien screamed, but it was too late to stop.
Uyen raised a trembling hand, but his attacker flipped the ax deftly in the air, caught the shaft, then buried the bronze blade in the priest’s skull.
Bien hurled herself forward, but Ruc, finding his speed finally, caught her by the robe, yanked her back. She hit him in the side of the head—the lashing out of a baffled, panicked creature—but he barely noticed the blow. With one arm, he slid her behind him.
“Run,” he said, swinging the candelabra between himself and the men with the weapons. He couldn’t save Uyen anymore. He couldn’t save Hoan. He couldn’t save the temple or the people inside it, but maybe he could still save Bien. “I love you,” he said, then shoved her back up the nave. The press of bodies was less up there. With a little luck, she could escape through one of the smaller doors, either into the temple plaza or out toward the dormitory.
He didn’t dare turn to see which direction she chose.
The two men hesitated a moment, surprised by the unexpected resistance.
They shared a glance, then Ax let out an ugly chuckle. “I guess we finally found one willing to fight.”
Spear looked at him with dead eyes, but said nothing.
Without a word, both men began to close. The spear tip burned in the firelight while the bronze head of the ax dripped blood. The man holding it grinned, as though the whole scene of slaughter was a show held for his entertainment. Spear was smiling too, but his eyes were empty, hollow.
Ruc swung the candelabra in a tight arc in front of him. The thing had no sharpened edges, no pointed ends, but it was heavy enough to snap a limb or stave in a skull. He took half a step forward, knocked aside the spearhead.
Above Uyen’s crumpled corpse, flames wreathed the body of Eira, blackened her arms, devoured her face. There was no time to contemplate the immolation of a goddess.
Spear lunged. Ruc knocked aside the shaft, stepped clear of a looping blow of the ax.
The man holding it coughed up a laugh. “Fights about like you’d expect from an Annurian whore.”
He’d aimed for scorn, but surprise flecked his voice, surprise and the beginnings of fear. He hadn’t expected anyone to fight back, not like this, anyway.
Somewhere else, somewhere nearby, people were dying. Ruc shoved the thought from his mind, tested his weapon. It was too heavy. All that weight was good for crushing or breaking, but it made him slow. He wondered if Bien had escaped the temple complex. Once she was out the door, the shortest path was across the courtyard, through the refectory, down two dozen stairs to the docks. How much time had passed? He had no idea.
“On the other hand,” Spear said, gritting his teeth as he prodded cautiously at Ruc, “he’s strong, young. Could be good for the Worthy. Better than anyone else in this place.” He met Ruc’s eyes and raised an eyebrow. “What do you think, traitor? Want to serve a real god?”
“They aren’t gods,” Ruc replied grimly. “They are animals.”
“What do you know, Annurian bitch?”
“I know,” Ruc replied, raising his arm so that his sleeve fell back, revealing the lines of ink snaking along his forearm, “because I have seen them.”
Ax’s eyes widened. Spear’s did not.
“Ink is cheap,” he said, voice flat.
“Not this ink.” Ruc nodded toward his skin. “This arm I earned for killing a croc. This arm, for a jaguar.”
He wasn’t trying to convince them of anything—people who slaughtered priests and burned down churches were long beyond convincing—but every moment the conversation dragged on was another step toward safety for Bien. More than a dozen boats waited at the docks. If she could just get into one of them …
The two men had begun to split apart, coming at him from the sides. Ruc tossed the candelabra aside.
“Giving up?” Ax demanded.
Ruc shook his head. “No. I’d just rather do this with my hands. I want to feel it when I take you apart.”
Ax feinted low, then came in high and hard. Ruc slipped under the blow, slammed his fist into the man’s side, felt one or two ribs snap beneath his knuckles. Ax staggered back, but Spear lunged into the gap, thrusting wildly with his weapon. Ruc caught the shaft, held it a hand’s breadth from his chest as the man holding the other end tried to drive the bright head forward. For the first time something moved in those dead eyes—confusion molting into fear.
Ruc smiled.
Not much of a fight, but he could feel the joy rising inside him all the same, the rightness of being faster and stronger.…
Then the world collapsed atop him.
An awful weight—hard, heavy, hot—slammed into his shoulders, snapping his head forward, folding his legs, smashing him into the floor. He groped for something to hold on to, something he could use to pull himself up, found the corner of the pew, hauled on it, lost his grip, found his face pressed back against the smooth floor. One of the beams … gnawed through by fire, it must have fallen, struck him … Darkness seeped in at the edges of his vision while the center of his sight whirled in a vision of screaming and flame. Again, he tried to right himself, but the temple felt like it was tilting on some inexplicable axis, the floor tipping him off and down.
He knew that this was dangerous, that he needed to get up, but the knowledge was small and far-off, like a rumor of war in another country. His body was too heavy. He struggled to sit, to lunge to his feet, but his limbs didn’t work right. Urgency leaked out of him. He kept trying, more out of stubbornness than anything else, and at last managed to roll to his knees. The world had dimmed to a smudge of fire and shadow. The lights were like nails driven through his eyes and into his brain. Two figures loomed over him, men with weapons, tall, bold, like guardians of something sacred. He felt like he should know them, but couldn’t haul the names to mind. Where was he? Why was everything burning? Who was the woman behind them with four arms and a body of flame?
“This place is coming apart,” muttered one of the men, the one holding the ax. He was bent over, free hand pressed to his side.
The other just nodded, then prodded Ruc in the ribs with the tip of the spear.
“You want to take him? Give him to the Worthy?”
The man with the ax hesitated, spat, then shook his head.
“Too weak,” he said.
Ruc almost laughed. Bien had told him that, too.
Bien.
The name cut through his mind’s hot fog.
The men before him were not gods, not even false gods. They’d come to break things, to terrify and kill. They’d done all of that, and Ruc hadn’t stopped them. The memory was a stone on his chest. Bien, though—he remembered finally—Bien had escaped.
She’d escaped, so why was she standing behind these two? Ruc squinted, blinked. Or was that the burning visage of Eira? His vision was too blurred to be sure.
“No,” he said, shaking his head, trying to will her away. She should have been outside, down by the canal, across the canal, somewhere safe, somewhere free. Only there was nowhere safe in Dombâng, not anymore, and she was standing just a few paces behind the killers, the men with weapons, the ones who wanted to rape her and feed her to the delta. She was standing there, backlit by the burning church, face streaked with sweat and blood, black hair soaked and glistening as though ablaze.
“No!” he groaned, trying to drag himself up.
He got one foot beneath him, then lost his balance, crashed to the side.
“Doesn’t know when to stay down,” observed Ax. “Might be good in the Arena. Maybe we ought to tie him up. Bring him with us.”
“No time,” replied the other. He stepped forward, laid the point of his spear against Ruc’s throat. “City’s filled with traitors and heretics. We’ll find someone else for the Worthy, someone tougher than a priest of love.”
Ruc ignored the words, ignored the spear, ignored the man holding it. He stared past them all, at Bien. He could see clearly now that it was Bien.
Please, Eira, he pleaded. Make her run.
Eira didn’t answer. Her eyes stared blankly from the blackened painting.
Bien’s eyes, however, were fixed on Ruc.
Her robe had caught fire, but she didn’t seem to notice. As he watched, she raised her hands. Her lips pulled back to reveal her teeth. She was snarling something to herself, something Ruc couldn’t hear over the roar of the fire, the same words over and over: All of them. All of them. That’s what it sounded like, anyway, though the syllables made no sense.
