Sin and Sorrow, page 23
“Such blasphemy!” she joked. “Fine. I guess, if I had to pick one god it would be The Provider. Water and crops are kind of important, and he’d make as good a fertility god as any male.”
“He’s dead,” said Akachi, remembering that lush bubble reality bursting, the hoarded souls living there snuffed from existence.
“Oh,” said Fajah. “Well, shit.”
They walked on in silence, Fajah looking increasingly thoughtful.
Finally, she said, “You didn’t tell me who you’d choose.”
There was a time when his answer would have come fast. Now, having suffered so much for his god, he wasn’t sure he wanted to rule Bastion as Heart’s Mirror for thousands of years. After all that time, what would remain of the Akachi he knew?
Nothing.
The Healer seemed like the obvious choice, but he’d already tried to kill Akachi. There was something weak about the god, something pathetic about his nahual. True rulers don’t serve, they decide. At best, the Lord of the Root was a support god, there to aid the nahualli of the rest of the pantheon.
“Sin Eater,” Akachi decided. “Mother Purity.”
Goddess of filth, guilt, cleansing, sin, purification, Bastion needed these things now more than ever.
“You’re a little dark for a sidekick,” Fajah said. “We’re going to have to work on your comedic relief.”
She set turned into another alley, avoiding the main street, and Akachi jogged to keep up.
“I have something to show you,” he said when he caught her.
“If you had any idea how many young acolytes have tried to ‘show me’ things—” Seeing his expression, she cut herself off. “Did you ever have a sense of humour?”
“I think so.” He walked at her side for a moment, trying to remember who he had once been. Nafari and I used to sneak into the wing where Precious Feather’s nahual stayed. Though Nafari had always been the instigator of such boyish adventures.
Akachi said, “I fought Mother Death in the streets of the Growers’ Ring and lost. She killed me. She severed my fingers and tore me apart. Cloud Serpent put me back together with all the care of a child making a doll out of mud. A squad of Hummingbird Guard escorted me into a tecolotl trap, and a dead man ripped out my left eye before I escaped. Smoking Mirror manipulated me into killing gods and turning millions of souls into ash. I live with all of that. My fingers ache every day. I’m afraid to lift this eyepatch for what I’ll see. I don’t sleep. I close my eye and a new nightmare begins.” His chest hurt. He wanted to scream, to cry and beg forgiveness. “Give me a god of punishment. Give me the god who abhors sin and filth. I want a god who demands cleanliness and perfection.”
“That sounds great,” Fajah said. “Crazy, but great.”
She wasn’t wrong. Sin Eater was hardly a god known for understanding and compassion.
Fuck understanding. Fuck compassion. We’re at war for the very survival of humanity.
“What did you want to show me?” Fajah asked.
Ducking into the shade of a nearby doorway, Akachi fished the steatite box from the belt he wore hidden beneath the voluminous Senator’s shirt. Fajah joined him and he became uncomfortably aware of the smell of her. He wanted to step closer, close the small gap separating them, so he could breathe deep her scent. Instead, he opened the box and showed her the amaruca within.
“Is that a crocodile or a snake with legs and wings and two heads?” she asked, leaning closer to study the stone creature nestled there.
Her hair smelled like lilacs. Akachi swallowed. “Neither. It’s—”
“Amaruca,” she said. “I read about those. Thought they were myth, like skyvyrm.”
“I saw a skyvyrm,” Akachi said. “It destroyed a Quarter Cathedral in the Growers’ Ring. Someone, either some secret nahualli sect or the Loa, maintain hidden menageries way out near the Sand Wall.”
Still uncomfortably close, Fajah looked up, met Akachi’s eyes. Brow crinkled in thought, she seemed unaware of the proximity. “Have you used this? Have you become an amaruca?”
Akachi shook his head. He wanted to retreat a step but yearned for human contact that didn’t involve violence or deception. “The last time I used my nagual power I called Gau Ehiza, a puma spirit.” He forced himself not to look away in shame. “I hunted and killed several Dirts.”
She winced at the derogatory term and Akachi felt a flash of guilt. “You are a nahualli of Cloud Serpent.”
“As Gau Ehiza I stalked them. The puma toyed with them as cats sometimes do.”
She touched his arm, offering comfort. “I know you’ve had to do things—”
“I ate them.”
Her hand fell away.
“When we first met, all that gore on me was theirs.” He wanted to tell her how his belly had been distended, full of raw meat, how he’d belched blood. How good it felt to surrender control.
“I dare not use my nagual power to become the amaruca,” he said instead. “In the old stories such things were near unstoppable monsters. Scores of skyvyrms fell before a single amaruca.”
Fajah’s gaze fell to the box, eyes widening in understanding. “You want me to use it.”
“Maybe,” he said. “If it comes to that. This is the only weapon we have.”
Fajah touched the figurine with a slim finger. “It’s carved in stone. That’s blasphemy.”
“So is eating human flesh, killing our fellow nahual, and reading the Book of the Invisibles. What is blasphemy when held against saving humanity?”
“It’s still blasphemy,” she answered. “You don’t get to ignore the gods’ laws whenever they’re inconvenient. We’re nahual.”
Akachi didn’t feel like a priest. He hadn’t felt human since Bishop Zalika sent him out to the Wheat District. He felt more like a trapped animal contemplating gnawing a paw off to free itself.
His eye strayed again to the ruined hand. Except I don’t know which paw to chew off. And the trap was a thousand generations of obedience. Bastion itself felt increasingly like a prison. As a small child he asked his father why there was no gate in the Sand Wall. Why weren’t they allowed to leave? His father said there was nothing out there but bloody sand forever and the ghosts of dead gods and a billion souls.
‘Why would anyone sane want to leave Bastion?’ his father asked.
That had been the end of the conversation, Akachi once again left feeling like he’d asked another stupid question and somehow disappointed his father.
There could be other cities just beyond the horizon and no one would ever know. Maybe there were hundreds of identical ringed cities littered around the world, each with its own gods.
If the gods break the Sand Wall in one of their fights, I’ll leave, walk until I find something or die.
He knew he wouldn’t leave. He’d fight to save his city until his last breath.
“No matter the cost,” he mumbled.
Fajah looked up at him. She still hadn’t backed away. “Pardon?”
“If blasphemy is the only way to save humanity, then I shall blaspheme.” Snapping the lid closed, he lifted the box, offering it to Fajah. “I need your help. You’re a skilled nagual. Refuse, and I will do my best without you.”
“No need to be so dramatic.” She took the box, fingers brushing his. “Anyway, you’re my High Priest. According to the Book, you define what is and isn’t blasphemy.”
Akachi’s eye felt hot with tears, and he turned away, focussed on breathing.
Not alone. He wanted to cry with gratitude.
Fajah had none of Captain Yejide’s implacable strength, but she also lacked Omphile’s manipulative charm. She was…Akachi struggled to find the words. She is nobody. She could have gone through life without ever drawing attention to herself. She’d never have been important, would never have risen beyond the parish her parents arranged for her. Yet here she was, utterly out of her depth, cracking jokes about him being her sidekick despite the fact he was her High Priest. Beneath that quiet bookworm exterior, she was a true servant of Bastion. While perhaps unremarkable, Fajah was what nahual were supposed to be.
“We should keep moving,” she said, voice gentle.
Tucking the box into her belt, she once again set off down the narrow alley.
Akachi followed, feeling vulnerable now he’d surrendered the box. As Cloud Serpent’s chosen Heart, he was more important than any pastor.
She could keep the carving and return the box.
Or maybe it will hide and protect her.
Whatever happened, he wanted Fajah to survive. No one else had. Every nahual he’d crossed paths with was dead.
And if he had to sacrifice her to save Bastion?
No matter the cost.
Once a mantra of faith, he was growing to hate the thought.
NURU – OWLS AND OMENS
And on that, the very first day, Áłtsé Hashké did set in motion his plans. The changes he made to the Queen’s city were small, beneath divine notice, but he knew the long-term effects would be colossal. For the behaviour of any complex dynamical system is exquisitely sensitive. The most infinitesimal changes made in the earliest state will result in ever larger changes over time.
All gods feed off worship and blood and souls, but only one feeds off discord. And that chaos would inevitably lead to a pantheon-wide war.
—The Book of Bastion
Nuru dragged Kofi from the room. “Efra went for a walk last night after…”
Kofi blushed, looking everywhere but at Nuru. “I was asleep, never saw her leave.”
Why had Efra been asleep the first time Nuru woke and then gone after that?
She returned once, Nuru remembered.
Why had she come back last time but not this time?
“We’ll go out the back. She would have stayed to the smaller alleys if she left the building.”
In truth, Nuru had no idea where the girl would have gone. She did, however, know Turquoise Fire was out front and that was the one place she didn’t want to be. If they found Efra, the three would run. Maybe, if they got far enough away, the god wouldn’t be able to kick them backwards in time again and they’d be free. Father Time wasn’t omnipotent and all-knowing; that much she knew. But she also had no idea what his limits were. Had all of Bastion been reliving the same moments over and over just like she and Kofi? No, the other gods would notice if that was happening.
He wouldn’t want to draw attention.
She prayed she was right.
Nuru shouted, “Efra! Efra, where are you!”
Her voice echoed through the building. There was no response.
Turquoise Fire wants Mother Death. If I’m gone, he has no reason to pursue Efra.
Not unless he knew she was Smoking Mirror’s Heart.
Where is she?
And how the hell had she managed to be in the room sometimes and not others when Kofi stood in the same place each time Nuru woke? She was half tempted to say aloud that she wasn’t going to call Mother Death this time just for another chance to do this over and hope Efra was there.
They reached the ground floor without finding her.
“Out the back,” Nuru snapped. “If she’s not there…”
She snarled in silent anger. She shouldn’t abandon her friend, and yet if Turquoise Fire killed Nuru and Mother Death, it was the end of everything they fought for.
Maybe Smoking Mirror warned his Heart and she fled. With Nuru dead, there’d be little to stand between her and becoming Heart’s Mirror, the unchallenged ruler of whatever remained of Bastion when all this was over.
Nuru led Kofi to the rear exit. Pushing the door open she stepped into the morning light. Smoke and dust still choked the air, the aftereffects of the battle between two gods. Even managing a perfect victory, a terrible amount of damage had been inflicted upon the city. The cries of the wounded echoed through the narrow alley. Stepping onto the street, Kofi at her side, Nuru stopped.
A spiralling tornado of flaming feathers awaited them. Pulling loose detritus and stones from the street, it grew, a maelstrom of trash. It spun and hummed a deep note she felt in her bones. Her guts shook to jelly and then water. She wanted to scream, to flee. She wanted to hurl herself to the stone and beg forgiveness. She was nothing before the might of this divinity. Her merest existence in its presence was an unforgiveable blemish. Burning opal eyes circled the raging torus of fire, all focussed on Nuru.
This was the moment. She could call Mother Death and die or refuse to summon the god and likely wake up back in that bed only to die later.
Indecision froze her. More than anything, she wanted to escape. Even fleeing back to that previous moment—knowing it would only again lead here—was better than facing this god.
Kofi stepped forward, placed himself between Nuru and Turquoise Fire. “I have an idea.” Digging through his pouch of loose stones, he tossed several aside in his haste. Several shattered on impact with the ground and he ignored them. “Please be right,” he whispered to himself. “Diamond,” he muttered, selecting, an uncut clear stone. “Blindness, I hope.” He found an oval crystal of deep magenta. “Kunzite. Distraction” Scattering stones in his haste he found another which looked like a rounded shard of dirty glass. “Fulgurite. Nightmares.” The last stone was a misshapen grey lump glinting with an internal crystalline structure. “Sky stone.”
Holding all four clutched in his fist, Kofi faced the Lord of Time.
Turquoise Fire became a giant of a man, face painted red and black. He wore a shirt of stones, a mosaic of a thousand shades of green. A continga bird of blinding blue nested in the centre of his skull, a burning halo of sky-coloured feathers circling over his head. The god carried a shield of green stone in his left hand and a wood staff, the end carved into the shape of a dear’s antlered skull, in his right. Droplets of blood bubbled from the ground to jump up and cling to the antlers.
“Tecolotl; owls and omens.” The god spoke in the dust of generations long dead. “Blood and bones and stone. Time is death and destiny.”
Kofi stood his ground. Baring teeth in a rabid snarl Efra would have been proud of, he grinned challenge at the god.
Turquoise Fire took a step forward, the stone of Bastion crumbling beneath his bare feet. His head tilted to one side, and the continga bird within squawked in annoyance. “What are you doing?” The feather halo spun faster, a blur of blue flames. “Time collapses behind me, ceases to be. I see only five heartbeats back. What have you done to the past?”
“Call Mother Death,” Kofi hissed over his shoulder to Nuru. “I don’t know how long I can hold this.”
Convinced that’s what Turquoise Fire wanted, Nuru hesitated. If she refused to, she’d once again awaken back in bed. If she called the Queen of Bastion, the Lord of Time would battle her until he won. At full strength Mother Death would crush him with ease. Though stronger with each passing day, she was nowhere near that.
Turquoise Fire advanced on the Loa priest. The continga’s wings fluttered in increasing agitation. “The days are a river,” the god said. “Branching. Eddies swirling in every direction. All gone.” The god reached a massive hand toward Kofi, spread fingers becoming blue feathers. The Lord of Time stopped. “Not one. None. Nothing.” The continga nested in his skull flapped its wings in mad panic, the fingers falling loose and drifting to the ground to burn feather-shaped wounds in the street. “Where is the future?”
Teeth bared, eyes streaming tears, Kofi snarled, “Call her!” at Nuru.
She hadn’t shared her suspicions for fear Turquoise Fire would hear. Kofi had no memory of the previous times they woke and no reason to think this was anything other than a simple battle between gods. He couldn’t know that calling Mother Death was probably the worst thing Nuru could do.
“Where?” demanded the god, massive head swinging in every direction as if searching for something. “Why is there no future beyond this moment?”
No future?
Nuru froze. If the Lord of Time saw no future, it either meant Mother Death would slay him, or the battle between the two gods would end everything.
Turquoise Fire took another step toward Kofi, the continga squawking in terror. Brilliant blue feathers scattered in every direction, each one searing its shape where it fell. The god swayed as if about to stumble and fall, confusion written into its posture.
Something moved on a nearby rooftop, the blurred form of a woman sprinting along the edge.
Silk dress snapping in the wind, Efra leapt. She uttered no war cry as she crashed down upon the Lord of Time. She landed hard on his broad shoulders, staggering the god. That massive open skull, bird nested within, turned toward her.
Even as she lost her grip and fell, Efra stabbed at the continga with the obsidian dagger.
Reality stuttered.
Something moved on a nearby rooftop, the blurred form of a woman sprinting along the edge. Nuru turned to see Efra, eyes wide with dawning horror, leap off the roof.
The god, ready and waiting, caught her with ease. It held her clutched in a feathered fist. “Though I see only five heartbeats back, that’s enough to defeat mortals.”
Kofi screamed, “No!” Brandishing his stones, he advanced on the god. “If you kill her, you end everything!”
Turquoise Fire crushed Efra, flinging aside the pulped ruin of her, and the sky split as the Fifth Sun clawed its way from the underworld to Bastion. A wail of horror rose from the Lord of Time as every mortal soul became ash and his own skin blackened and peeled.
Time spasmed in terror.
Brandishing the obsidian dagger, Efra leapt from the rooftop, screaming as she fell toward the god. Turquoise Fire swatted her aside and she left a smeared splash of blood on the wall she hit. Even as her smashed remains slid to the street the sky tore as the Fifth Sun brought his endless rage to Bastion.
Kofi screamed, “Call her! I can’t—”
