Cursebreakers, page 29
But of all the units, Gennady’s was the first to fracture. A young woman with a massive brown rache split into a sob, turned to Gennady, and fell upon him with teeth and nails. Her rache snapped its jaws around his ankle, and he screamed, and the sound rang out across the waiting graveyard. Just like that, the dirt of the Penumbra began to churn red.
I wanted badly to cover my eyes; I wanted to look away. Mania could not blunt the horror. But I knew I owed it to Gennady to watch. I owed it to him to bear witness to the fall.
It was never in question that Gennady would be the victor over his kin. That knowledge did nothing to blunt the keen agony of watching him tangle in the dust. Lady had never looked smaller or sweeter than she did then, working the other Vigil into fine red shreds. Before I knew it, Tenniel had stepped away from me too, because all around me there was lightning.
One by one, Gennady tore the others down. They all knew that he was the most dangerous; they all came for him before so much as looking at any of the others. He fought ten at once, and then nine, and then eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two.
One. The young woman who had first attacked him. She’d survived until the end. I thought—I hoped—that Gennady might hesitate, might plead with her. I should have known better. He strangled her in front of me, methodically. She made tiny sounds, her last words trapped in her throat. She thrashed. She died.
“Watch,” I heard Tenniel say from a very great distance. I watched.
There was nothing I could do. Even if I finally killed, I couldn’t stop the violence. I looked out over the broad expanse of dirt in the setting sun and decided that the heathen concept of a hell must look a great deal like this. A rache can tear the throat of a human being in a few seconds with little effort. Occasionally, a captured soldier would fling themselves at one of Mulcaster’s. That death was always instant.
Amidst the howls and the screams, whenever the din lulled, I could hear the true character of the slaughter: the sobs of the victors. Gennady knelt with Lady, ringed by kin, and stared up at me, almost inquisitive. It was the look of an innocent: Are you proud? I’ll forever regret that I looked away.
Slowly, by degrees, the new reality crystallized. The dust settled again. The last bodies fell; the last writhings of downed soldiers faded into the air. Most of the units had their single survivor. A few of them had none at all—the final combatants had bled out shortly after their victories.
I turned my attention to the standing Vigil, trying to read their faces. Were they horrified? Were they pleased? The gathering was split, I found. Some of them watched with quiet smiles, and others fought dangerous tears, forcing them back as the liability they were. The illusion of a monolith was broken.
Corvier made his way over to survey the remnants of his children. “Traitor,” he said when he saw Gennady alive, exquisitely casual. He spat in the red dirt.
Gennady reached one hand out toward him, dragging the other hand across his face and smearing a long red streak across his cheek. Lady whined. “Ain’t no fucking traitor,” he growled, the diction of the baseborn demes beginning to crawl through his voice.
Corvier pretended not to understand, raising his eyebrows; his sable rache snorted. “Remember your elocution, now.”
Gennady exterminated the baseborn drawl and repeated himself. “I said I am no fucking traitor, Captain.”
Corvier looked away from him without another moment of consideration, examining me behind my screen of lightning. “Tenniel,” he said.
She nodded.
“Take care of this one.”
Then I was on my knees, and I was choking, and the lightning had died. The air had gone from my lungs; I couldn’t draw a single breath.
Every kind of magic has its particular horrors. Tenniel’s talent was among the worst, I decided, as I began to starve for oxygen. Dust devils swirled around us, taunting me.
Of course Tenniel had been augmented; she was braver than Kirchoff. Her magic was now beyond anything I could reach. She was above the laws of nature. She was my better in every way, and she had only allowed me my freedom so long because it amused her to see me try.
Gennady stumbled to his feet and dashed toward Tenniel, but Corvier brought his saber up and forced him back. He came forward again. Corvier struck him brutally on the head with the hilt of the blade, and he fell. He didn’t get up.
A dizzying rush of stars flooded my vision, dying away into brilliant blackness. I felt a few last sparks of lightning at my fingertips, valiant gasps, but I knew I’d be unconscious before long. The buzzing in my ears grew to a tremendous pitch.
In the far distance, I heard a woman’s voice. Not Tenniel’s; abruptly, Tenniel had stopped choking me. I could breathe again—the relief of it combined with the drugs, and I teetered on the edge of consciousness. Eventually, shapes began to resolve in front of me. I could see, little by little.
What I saw when I raised my head was Prefect Tessaly Velleia, and behind her, the ragged skeleton of an army.
Chapter 25
Corvier cursed viciously and stepped backward. A dangerous rumble echoed through the gathered traitor Vigil as the occasional sobs from the decimated units quieted.
“Everett Mulcaster,” Velleia called, in her strong, low voice, the voice of an oncoming apocalypse. “I convict you of treason, by the authority of Basilea Illyria.”
The Basilea who headed the Curia Clementia, one of the two empresses. I had to wonder where she had been throughout all of this—had she been unaware until now, somehow? Had she been watching and waiting to see who would prevail? Either way, it didn’t matter; in the final hour, she had chosen Velleia. A wave passed through the gathered Vigil—the traitors wavered, and the defeated dared to hope.
Amphion tipped back his head and howled, a sound of raw, unmitigated violence. One by one, every other rache joined in, both the new Vigil and the old, baying together as one in response to a Prefect’s call.
The howl of a rache evokes something primal in anyone who hears it. For the Vigil, it signals that there’s prey to be had. For the rest of us, it reminds us of the days before civilization.
Only Mulcaster’s mottled, half-tailed rache was silent. The two of them stood unmoving, unimpressed, almost bored by Velleia’s challenge—or so it might seem to the unobservant. Mulcaster’s expression was calm, but in his eyes there was a subtle fire.
When the deadly racket had died down, he walked slowly to Velleia, one hand on his executioner’s sword. For the most part, those swords were intended to be symbolic, ceremonial. I had a sense that both Prefects would be willing to repurpose them.
Velleia ignored Mulcaster studiously. “The Basilea has given her orders,” she called to the Vigil. “She’s been presented with all the evidence she needs. She’s issued her legal decree. Anyone who wishes to stand in the way of that stands against the city of Astrum itself.”
Mulcaster turned to his troops as well. “Illyria is beholden to the Curia. The Curia is not beholden to her. We’ll take our victory here, and then we’ll see what she says.”
“Sacrilege,” Velleia said. The Basilissae are, in the civic liturgy, goddesses. A gasp swept the Penumbra’s yard.
Velleia stood with a grim smile, as though by uttering the word, she’d decided the matter. She should have known that Vigil who were willing to sacrifice their comrades would never be swayed by such infinitesimal matters as sacrilege.
“Ready,” Mulcaster said. His voice rang out across the dirt, and the traitor Vigil raised their sabers. The hatred on his face was a force unto itself. I recalled the rumor that Amphion had taken the other half of his rache’s tail.
“You’re outnumbered.” Velleia drew her executioner’s sword.
“Not for long,” Mulcaster snarled. He turned on his heel and approached Tenniel, absolutely heedless of me as I knelt before her. She straightened up, ashen despite herself.
Mulcaster’s rache—Leo, I remembered; what a darling name—came to inspect me as Mulcaster and Tenniel spoke. He was nearly as tall as I was, on my knees. The edges of my vision blackened again.
“You,” Mulcaster said. “Where are the other magicians?”
“On their way,” Tenniel said. “They were given notice to be here as soon as possible. There was some sort of trouble with Kirchoff, but they should be here.”
And he was drawing a breath to interrogate her about the specifics of soon when the first magicians arrived. Magicians have a weakness for aesthetics, and the drama of timing is included in that category. Mulcaster’s magicians had come in style. As they approached Velleia’s army, I could feel their power, a pressure in the air. I could hear it buzzing in their veins. The Penumbra was packed.
Tenniel left me kneeling to join her fellows, content that I was no longer capable of being a threat. She seemed eager to get away from the Vigil, I realized, and they were glad to be rid of her as well. With that realization came the shaky, threadbare beginnings of a plan.
Gennady was just beginning to come to; I stood, not without difficulty, and went to shake him by the arm, pulling him to sit.
“Professor,” he said.
I tried to stand him up, but he crumpled again. “Come on,” I said. “Come with me.”
With my shoulder under his arm, I helped him walk to the center of the yard, heedless of the gathering crowd of magicians and the arguing Prefects. No one stopped us. We were watched by some, with hope or hostility, but everyone had bigger concerns. Once we were at the center, I helped Gennady sit again.
“What the hell are you doing?” he slurred.
“I want to make sure everyone can hear me,” I said.
He only shook his head, not willing to bother with questions. Blood shone through his hair where Corvier had struck him.
Mulcaster’s magicians had fully filtered into the Penumbra’s yard. Some of Velleia’s soldiers made the beginnings of moves to attack them, but a raised hand from her kept them under control. I expected her to touch off a wholesale slaughter, but evidently, she was more interested in minimizing the damage than Mulcaster was. The Penumbra was a lodestone, I thought dizzily, pulling every vicious and unfortunate soul toward it bit by bit.
Some of the traitor magicians looked at me curiously as they took their places next to the soldiers. Kirchoff and his cadre weren’t among them, of course. At least we’d taken that small sliver of their force away.
But this was not going to go the way of the hall of St. Cynanne.
It was time to try something. I turned to the magician nearest to me, a few paces away, and said, “Really?”
She narrowed her eyes at me, taking me in. I knew I looked awful; a distant pang of vanity made me wince.
“I mean, really?” I repeated, as Mulcaster and Velleia talked with each other up front, the hatred radiating from them like a spotlight. Others around us had turned their attention to me.
“Really what?”
“Allying with the Vigil,” I said.
She shrugged. “A necessary evil.”
“You know they hate us.”
“It’s only temporary.”
I mimicked the shrug she’d given me. “Good luck betraying them before they can betray you.”
“Aren’t you Adrien Desfourneaux?”
I had to smile. “That’s me.”
“You’ve already lost,” she said. “Time to stop talking.”
Unfortunately for her, it is rarely time for me to stop talking. “You’re telling me you don’t remember how the Vigil used to treat us, before all this?”
“Of course I remember,” she said softly, as a few of the other traitor magicians who had settled near us cocked their heads.
Gennady was staring at me. “Always threatening,” I said. “Always with their sabers in hand. How many times have you seen them terrify one of your students?”
She set her jaw. “Plenty. That’s not what this is about.”
“Tell me,” I said. “You don’t expect me to believe that the alliance has been easy.”
“Of course not.”
“How many times have you been threatened? Hmm? In the last week, say.”
Her expression told me that the answer was, as I’d predicted, not zero.
A different nearby magician broke in. “They’ve all been brutes about it.”
“The alliance was supposed to last until you perfected the process, wasn’t it?” I said. “That happened a long time ago. Why are you still beholden to them?”
“Kirchoff said,” he began.
I swept my hand in a cutting motion. “Forget about Kirchoff. He made his mistakes. He’s . . . out of the picture.” I didn’t think he was dead, but they didn’t have to know that. “Why are you still fighting the Vigil’s battles for them?”
We were attracting the attention of a small crowd.
The first woman crossed her arms. “It’s just for a little while longer.”
“Oh,” I said. “So you’re willing to risk death for them.”
She blanched.
“Because that’s what you’re here for,” I said. “They’re using you as fodder. If you fight here, now, Velleia’s forces are going to rip you to pieces.”
She looked uneasily at Velleia’s ragged army.
“That’s right. Is that how you want to end up? Killed by the Vigil after all—just how they threatened so many times?”
Hesitantly, she shook her head, and the growing group of other magicians around us that were listening shook their heads too.
Gennady spoke up. He’d caught the eye of a nearby survivor of the old Vigil, a teary-eyed young man with a broad slash across his face and a bloodied rache. “Listen to them,” he said to his comrade, breathlessly. “Cowards.”
“Hey,” the first magician said. None of Mulcaster’s magicians had been around to see me dragging Gennady to the center of the yard; she didn’t know we were connected in any way.
“You are,” Gennady said. “You’re cowards. I can tell.” He paused. “But then, all you Pharmakeia people are.”
I was betting that the majority of Mulcaster’s magicians would have no inclination to distinguish between the old Vigil and the new, bloodied or not. To them, a soldier was a soldier. Gennady’s insults might as well be coming from Mulcaster himself.
“Better a coward than a vicious animal,” I said to Gennady. I smiled at him; he smiled back.
“Better a vicious animal than a magician,” he said.
One of Mulcaster’s Vigil nearby broke in. “Shut up over here.”
The woman I’d been talking to bridled. “You can’t tell us to shut up.”
The officer’s rache showed its teeth, and she shied. A discontented murmur spread throughout the small crowd around us.
“Pathetic,” Gennady said to Mulcaster’s officer. “Right? Aren’t they?”
The officer opened his mouth, possibly to tell Gennady to shut up as well, but before he could, I turned to Gennady again. “Quiet down.” I made my tone as sharp as I could—quarrelsome, waspish, everything I did best.
That got the officer to turn on me instead. “Not another word out of you.”
I glanced at the other magicians surrounding us. “Can you believe this? They never stop ordering us around.”
My status as an enemy was quickly being forgotten. I saw them nodding. Evidently, deep-rooted prejudice was stronger than new-forged alliances. Magicians were magicians, and Vigil were Vigil. A sad lesson for humanity, a grim indication overall, but a godsend for me and my half-formed plan.
Slowly, the discussion spiraled out of control. First another single voice chimed in, and then two from the opposing side, and then a dozen more people were talking all at once.
Mulcaster and Velleia, meanwhile, put aside their standoff for long enough to walk over and investigate the commotion.
“Explain,” Velleia said, standing a thousand feet tall.
Mulcaster was silent, surveying the scene with deadly consternation.
The quarreling crowd had stilled. Dust hung in the air.
I looked at Gennady and beckoned. He gave me a wide grin and launched himself at me, knocking me to the ground with a flying tackle.
It was all the powder keg needed. The magicians around us cried out in outrage and raised their magic, and the Vigil drew their sabers.
The lodestone of the Penumbra pulled everyone in close, and the violence spread like a virus as Mulcaster’s soldiers and magicians sprang upon each other. Velleia’s people obligingly joined in. A vast wave of magic and sound poured from across the prison yard, and for the second time that day, I found myself in battle.
The tide was coming, but I had the grace of a few moments before it broke. If Gennady and I dashed, I thought, we might be able to escape the Penumbra.
My akratic confidence was well and truly gone; I was no longer thinking in terms of guaranteed victories. It was time to leave, no matter how selfish that might be.
Gennady rolled off me; I struggled to my feet and gave him a hand up, amidst all the chaos. “Come on,” I cried, over the din.
Mulcaster and Velleia had their executioner’s swords out. As their forces dissolved around them, every possible crossfire running hot, they dueled. They moved like gods of death, like evil poetry. I saw Mulcaster cut Velleia open along the side; I saw her nearly take his head off.
If I watched any longer, I knew, I’d be entranced. I looked away and dragged Gennady toward the exit from the prison yard.
But he stopped. I felt his weight drag against me as he stood still, and I looked back at him.
He mouthed, silent over the noise, Watch out.
I turned to look behind me.
Corvier. I’d forgotten Captain Hiram Corvier. He stood, face twisted in unholy rage, hating his son. He’d followed us to the center.
The world quieted, just for us.
Corvier raised his saber to the setting sun. He stepped forward.
“Captain,” Gennady said, and then he said, “please,” and then he said nothing at all. Corvier drove that saber straight through him.
Corvier’s rache lunged for Lady as she screamed and screamed.
