Days of Blood & Starlight(97)
“Daughter of my heart,” was the message Brimstone had sent just for Karou. She wanted to cry again right here in the court, thinking of it. “Twice-daughter, my joy. Your dream is my dream, and your name is true. You are all of our hope.”
Her dream. A dream dirty and bruised is better than no dream at all. But she had had Akiva then, and the hope that he might bring the seraphim to their new way of living. What did she have now? Nothing to promise, and no plan. Nothing but her name.
“No,” she said again. “I would not have us bare our throats. Nor would I have you thrust our people to their knees in your rush to slaughter theirs. Nor would I have you leave our future buried under the ash, so that you might bury theirs.”
Thiago’s eyes narrowed as he tried but couldn’t at once find words to answer that.
Karou went on. “Brimstone once told me that to stay true in the face of evil is a feat of strength. If we let them turn us into monsters…” She looked at Amzallag, the gray hue of his flesh, at Nisk and Lisseth, who stood just behind Thiago, still recognizable as Naja but with none of Issa’s beauty and grace. At all the others, overlarge, overfanged, winged and clawed, and unnatural. She had done this, the literal work of turning these chimaera into the monsters the angels believed them to be.
“Someone has to stop killing,” she implored Thiago. “Someone has to stop first.”
“Let it be them, then,” he said, so cold, his lips trembling with the effort not to fall into a full wolf snarl. His fury was palpable.
“We can only decide for ourselves. At least we can stop the assaults long enough to think of another way, instead of making it worse, always worse.”
“We are destroyed, Karou. It can’t get any worse.”
“It can. It has. The Hintermost? The Tane? What is Razor doing right now, and how will it be answered? It can get worse until there is no one left. Or maybe… maybe it can get better.” Again Akiva’s words came into her head, and again Karou spoke them, this time without blushing. “Eretz will have chimaera in it or not, depending on what we do now.”
And that was when the Shadows That Live spread their silent wings and lifted with the grace of dreams and nightmares to float over the heads of their comrades and land lightly at Karou’s side. They didn’t speak; they rarely did. Their stance was clear: elegant heads held high, eyes defiant. Karou was breathless with a sudden swell of emotion. Of power. Amzallag, Tangris, Bashees, Issa. Who else? She looked to the rest. Most seemed stunned. In more than a few pairs of eyes, though, Karou saw malice to match the Wolf’s, and knew that there were those among them whose hate would never again be touched by hope. In others, she saw fear.
In too many others. Bast would come, though; Karou willed her to take a step. She was on the verge. Emylion? Hvitha? Virko?
And Thiago? He stood staring at Karou, and she remembered the way he had looked down at her in the requiem grove in another life. She saw that savagery in him again, the flaring nostrils and wild eyes, but then… she saw him pull it back. She witnessed the moment that he mastered his fury, and, with calculation and cunning, and effort, put his mask back in place. It was worse than hate or fear, this lie of mildness. This huge, huge lie. “My lady Karou,” he said. “You make a powerful argument.”
Wait, Karou thought. No.
“I will take it under consideration,” he said. “Of course. We’ll consider all possibilities, including—as we now may, with glad hearts—how to glean the souls from the cathedral.”
Her new surge of power shrank to nothing. By giving her this small victory, the Wolf took away her chance for a greater one. Now none of the other soldiers need gather their courage to come to her side, and their relief was profound. She could see it in their posture, in their faces. They didn’t want to choose. They didn’t want to choose her. How much easier it was to let themselves be led by their general. Bast wouldn’t even look at her. Cowards, she thought, starting to shake as all of her pumped-up courage collapsed into frustration. Could they really believe that the White Wolf would consider ending—or even pausing—in his crusade? Victory and vengeance. He would have to tear his gonfalon down, make a new one. She thought with yearning of the Warlord’s symbol: antlers sprouting leaves. New growth. How perfect, and how out of reach.
And now, so quickly, the rest of these soldiers were out of her reach, too. Thiago was accustomed to wielding power, and she was so very not. Effortlessly he took back what little she had gained and turned the army’s energy to his plans.
His plans for gleaning the buried souls from the cathedral.
Amzallag himself was the first to volunteer. He went forward, avid, and others followed him. Karou stood rooted in place, all but forgotten. Issa took her hand and squeezed it, communicating her shared dismay, while the Shadows That Live melted away before she could even thank them, and soon the direct heat of the sun drove most of them from the court.
The day passed away in this atmosphere of new energy. Karou and Issa watched and listened, and Thiago did entirely appear to be doing what he had said he would: considering all possibilities, such as how they might conduct an excavation in enemy-patrolled territory, and even what they might do in the south to help more chimaera reach the Hintermost. It was exactly what Karou wanted, and she could barely breathe, because she knew it was just another move in the Wolf’s game. A feint. But what did it conceal? What was his true game?