Days of Blood & Starlight(16)

It lay before her, huge and inert. Monstrous. She couldn’t believe that Brimstone would be proud of her now, but, as Thiago had persuaded her, these were monstrous times, and the rebels needed to maximize the impact of their small force.

It at least bore a resemblance to Amzallag’s accustomed bodies, being stag and tiger with the torso of a man, but it was much bigger—the iron filings were for size and heft, and fittingly were scavenged from the cage of Loramendi. It was a hulking thing; no armor would fit it. Every muscle was bunched and pronounced, and the flesh had a grayish cast: The excess of iron did that. Its head was tiger, the fangs as long as kitchen knives. And then there were the wings.

Ah, the wings.

The wings were the reason that living soldiers needed new bodies at all. It was Karou’s own fault. It had been her idea to come… here. She glanced at the window and the singular moon that was framed in it. Was she crazy? Stupid? Maybe. It had just been too much, keeping always on the move in Eretz, hiding in ruins and mine tunnels and scanning the sky for seraph patrols. She’d have lost her mind and her nerve keeping on like that, and the chances were that if they’d stayed they’d have been discovered by now, but still, she had to admit she hadn’t thought out all the ramifications of the move.

The pit, chiefly.

The soldiers needed to be able to come and go through the portal in the sky. They needed wings. For the journey here, those who could fly had carried those who could not—multiple trips back and forth, and those too large to be lifted had been slain and gleaned and carried that way. That was a day Karou would never forget, and now that they were here, the wingless were relegated to guard duty until she was able to remake them, at which time they could join the incursions into Eretz.

It was that simple. Simple, ha. Karou shuddered just to look at the fearsome thing on her floor and know that Amzallag’s previous body—the last one of many that Brimstone had made for him—had been thrown away like an old suit of clothes, so that Amzallag could become this. For a moment, she could only see it as its prey would see it, the horror and the hopelessness of escape, those wings, which, unfolded, would quite blot out the sky. Her hands grew clammy. What am I doing?

What am I making?

And… What have I brought into the human world?

It was like surfacing from a dream to glimpse cold reality for just an instant before sleep dragged her back down. Karou’s horror subsided. She was arming soldiers, that’s what she was doing. If she didn’t, who would make the seraphim pay for what they’d done?

As for bringing them into the human world, this place was remote and forgotten; the chance of encountering people was slim to none. And if a small voice in her head liked to whisper, That’s not good enough, Karou, she was getting used to tuning it out.

She took a deep breath. All that remained now was to guide Amzallag’s soul into his new skin, and that was a simple matter for incense. She reached for a cone and turned back to Thiago. He had put his shirt back on, she was glad to see. He looked very tired, his eyes heavy-lidded, but he mustered a smile.

“All ready?” he asked her.

She nodded and lit the incense.

“Good girl.”

She bristled at the words and the caressing tone in which he spoke them. Am I? she wondered as she sank to her knees to raise the dead.





18


ARISEN


Coming up on the silent village, the slave caravan thought nothing of a sky winged by blood daubs. The anomaly would have been an absence of blood daubs; in this work, carrion birds were a given. Usually, however, the carrion was of the beast variety.

Not so now.

The dead were strung up on the aqueduct: eight seraphim with their wings fanned wide. From a distance, they seemed to be smiling. Up close, it was an ugliness to shock even a slaver. Their faces…

“What did this?” someone choked out, though the answer was writ plain before them. In sweeping letters, in blood, a message was painted on a keystone of the aqueduct.

From the ashes, it read, we are arisen.

They panicked and dispatched messengers for Astrae. Being ill-defended, they didn’t delay to cut down their soldiers but hurried on, driving their chimaera chattel with whips. A marked change had come over the captives at the sight of the dead—a brightness, a keen and shifting eagerness. The blood scrawl was not the only message; the smiles were a message, too.

The corners of the dead angels’ mouths had been carefully slit, widened into rictus grins. The slavers knew exactly what it meant and so did the slaves, and all eyes grew sharp—some with fear; others, anticipation.

Night came and the caravan made camp, posted guards. The dark was pocked by small sounds: a scurry, a snap. The guards’ hands were hot on their hilts; their blood jumped, eyes darted.

And then the slaves began to sing.

This had not happened on any previous night. The slavers were accustomed to whimpers from the huddle of captives, not song, and they didn’t like it. The beasts’ voices were raw as wounds, forceful and primal and unafraid. When the seraphim tried to silence them, a tail lashed forth from the huddle and knocked a guard off his feet.

And then, between one leap of the campfire’s flame and the next, they came. Nightmares. Saviors. They came from above, and the slavers’ first confused thought was that reinforcements had arrived, but these were no seraphim. Wings and screaming, spike horns, antlers, lashing tails and hunched ursine shoulders. Bristles, claws.