Days of Blood & Starlight(51)

Jael kicked him again. And again. Ziri ran out of laughter. Only when he was choking up blood did Jael come close enough to rip the gleaning staff off of his back. His eyes were hard with triumph, and Ziri felt the first burn of fear.

“I have an amusing story, too, only mine is true. I met your Warlord and Brimstone recently, and I burned them like I burned your comrades and that is how I know that they are dead and gone, and that this”—he held up the thurible—“can only be for someone else. So… who?”

Ziri’s blood had become strangely loud in his head. It was dawning on him what this was about, that the seraphim had laid a trap in the clearing and waited to see if anyone came gleaning. The rebels had been ghosts, as the Wolf had said; now they were real. He had tipped their hand. “I’m sorry.” Ziri feigned confusion. “Who what now?”

Jael looked down. He stirred the ashes with the tip of his sword. “You will tell me who the resurrectionist is,” he said. “Sooner would be better. For you, I mean. Myself, truly I don’t mind if it takes… a bit of work.”

Well, that didn’t sound like fun at all. Ziri had no experience of torture, and when he thought of it, there was one face that came to mind.

Akiva’s.

Ziri would never forget the day. The agora, all of Loramendi turned out to watch, and Madrigal’s lover forced to watch, too. The seraph had been on his knees as Ziri was now, weak from beatings and hamsas and undone by grief. Had he given up anything to the Wolf? Ziri didn’t think so, and strangely enough, the thought gave him strength. If the angel could withstand torture, he could, too. To protect Karou, and with her, the chimaera’s hope, he thought he could endure anything.

“Who is it?” asked the captain again.

“Come closer,” replied Ziri with a bloody grin. “I’ll whisper it in your ear.”

“Oh, good.” Jael sounded pleased. “I was afraid you were going to make it easy.” He gestured to his soldiers, and two stepped in to seize Ziri’s arms. “Hold him,” he said. He stabbed the gleaning staff into the black earth and began to roll up his sleeves. “I’m feeling inspired.”





44


SOME LUXURIES


“I said no humans would be hurt.” Karou’s voice, already hoarse from arguing, sounded like a growl to her. “That was the first thing. No humans hurt. Period.” She was pacing in the court. Chimaera were gathered in the gallery and on the ground, some basking in the sun and others withdrawn in shade.

As if he were teaching her a hard life truth, Thiago said, “In war, Karou, some luxuries must be put aside.”

“Luxuries? You mean not killing innocent people?” He didn’t say anything. That was what he meant. Karou’s stomach twisted in a knot. “Oh god, no. Absolutely no. Whoever they are, they’re nothing to do with your—” She stopped. Corrected herself. “Our war.”

“But if they endanger our position here, they are everything to do with it. You had to know the risk, Karou.”

Had she known? Because of course he was right that it would only take a hiker telling tales to bring a media storm down on the kasbah. And then what? She didn’t like to think of it. The military, surely. Once upon a time, a tale of monsters in the desert might have been dismissed as backpackers smoking too much hashish, but times had changed. So, what now?

“They might keep going,” she said, but that was feeble and they both knew it. It was a hundred degrees out and there was no other destination for many miles. Besides which, even at a distance it was obvious the hikers weren’t doing so well.

They were dragging uphill, pausing every minute or so to bend over with hands on knees, slug water from canteens, and then… the small one doubled over and heaved. They were too far for the accompanying sound to carry, but it was obvious that they were at risk of heat exhaustion, if not already suffering from it. The pair leaned together for a long time before they got moving again. Karou paced. The hikers needed help, but this was oh so very much not the place that they would find it. If they only knew what they were headed toward. But even if they did know, they were clearly in no state to turn back.

Thiago was calm, always so maddeningly calm—until he wasn’t, anyway—because the hikers posed no urgent danger. He was content to let them approach. And then what?

The pit?

Again Karou’s stomach seized. She could smell it today. Maybe because it had fresh fodder—Bast had finally taken her walk with the Wolf. Karou had already conjured her new body; it lay on her floor even now—and maybe because the breeze was one of those mild but insistent wafts from just the right direction. It might have been saying, Here, smell this. Here, smell this, over and over.

Karou stopped pacing and stood before the Wolf. She put her shoulders back and tried not to shake, tried to sound like someone to be reckoned with as she said, “I’m going to go down there and help them, and I’ll take them around the back gate into the granary.” It was cool in the granary, and isolated. The truck was there. “I’ll give them some water, they will see no one, and then I’ll drive them to a road.” She paused. She heard herself, and knew she wasn’t conveying the forcefulness she wanted. “You won’t have to do anything,” she said, but her voice cracked and her head filled with cursing. What a perfect time to sound like an adolescent boy. “I’ll take care of it.”