Days of Blood & Starlight(94)
“We do, though,” Karou spoke up, stepping out from the same archway she had hidden beneath to watch Ziri and Ixander spar. Thiago turned his benevolent-mask to her; how thin it was, how utterly unconvincing. “We have something to defend.”
“Karou,” he said, and he was already skimming the scene for Ten, traitor-sitter. Peripherally, Karou saw her on the move.
“There are still lives to be saved,” Karou said, “and choices.” They were Akiva’s words, she realized once they were out. She flushed, though nobody could know that she was parroting Beast’s Bane. Well, he was right. More right than he could have known.
“Choices?” Thiago’s look was cool, flat. Ten’s hand closed on Karou’s arm.
“You remember the choice we talked about yesterday,” said the she-wolf in a low growl.
“What choice is that, Ten?” Karou asked full-voice. “Do you mean the choice between Zuzana and Mik, and who you would kill first? I choose neither, and they’re out of your reach. Get your hand off me.” She yanked her arm free, and turned back to the host. She saw some confusion, and shuttling of glances back and forth between herself and Thiago. “The choice I mean is to protect our own innocents from the seraphim, instead of slaughtering theirs.”
“There are no innocent seraphim,” said the Wolf.
“That’s what they say when they kill our children.” She couldn’t help sliding a glance in Amzallag’s direction. “Some even believe it. We know better. All children are innocent. All children are sacred.”
“Not theirs.” A low growl edged Thiago’s voice.
“And all the folk on both sides just trying to live?” Karou took a step toward him. Another. She couldn’t feel her feet; maybe she wasn’t even walking, but drifting. In her state of anxiety and pumped-up courage her heartbeat roared in her ears. Her courage was a guise. She wondered if courage always was, or if there were those who truly felt no fear. “Thiago, I’ve been trying to work something out, but I’ve been afraid to ask you.” She swept the host with a look. All these faces, these eyes of her own creation, all these souls she had touched, some beautiful, some not. “I wonder if everyone here understands but me, or if any of you lose sleep wondering.” She turned back to Thiago. “What is your objective?”
“My objective? Karou, it is not required of you to understand strategy.” She could see he was still trying to work out what audacity brought her to question him, and how he might reassert his control without open threats.
“I didn’t ask your strategy, only your objective,” she said. “It’s a simple question. It should have a simple answer. What are we fighting for? What are we killing for? What do you see when you look into the future?”
How hard and unblinking his eyes, how immobile his face was. His wrath was ice. He had no answer. No good answer, anyway. We’re fighting to kill, he might have said. We’re killing for vengeance. There is no future. Karou felt the collective waiting of the chimaera and wondered how many of them would be satisfied with that. How many had lost all ability to hope for more, and how many might find a last scrap of it once they knew what Brimstone had done.
“The future,” Thiago said after an overlong pause. “I once overheard you planning the future. You were in the arms of your angel lover, and you spoke of killing me.”
Ah, yes, Karou thought. It was a skillful evasion on his part. To these soldiers, that image—a chimaera entwined with a seraph—was enough to eclipse her question. “I never agreed to it,” she said, which was true, but she sensed that the curiosity she had kindled was waning; she would lose whatever small ground she might have gained. “Answer my question,” she said. “Where are you taking us? What do you see in the future? Do we live? Do we have lands? Do we have peace?”
“Lands? Peace? You should ask the seraph emperor, Karou, not me.”
“What, the beasts must die? We’ve always known his objective, but the Warlord never mimicked it like you are. These terror killings only bring worse down on the people you’ve forsaken.” To the soldiers, “Are you even trying to save chimaera, or is it just about revenge now? Kill as many angels as you can before you die? Is it that simple?” She wished she could tell them what Balieros’s patrol had done, and what they had witnessed in the Hintermost, but she couldn’t bring herself to reveal that secret. What would Thiago do if he knew?
“You think there’s another way, Karou?” He shook his head. “Has all their gentle treatment led you to believe they want to make friends? There’s only one way to save chimaera, and that is by killing the angels.”
“Killing them all,” she said.
“Yes, Karou, killing them all.” Scathing. “I know this must be hard for you to hear, with your lover among them.”
He would keep coming back to that, and funny thing: The more times he mentioned it, the less shame Karou felt. What had she done, really, but fall in love and dream of peace? Brimstone had already forgiven her. He had more than forgiven her; he had believed in her dream. And now… he had entrusted it to her—not to Thiago, but to her—to find a way that their people might live again.
And she had thought the pile of thuribles in her room was a burden? Ah, what a little perspective could do. But the sense that had overcome her when Issa told her about the cathedral wasn’t the pinned-in-place trapped feeling that she suffered doing Thiago’s bidding. No. It was as if she’d been on her knees and Brimstone had grasped her hand and raised her to her feet. It was redemption.