FORTY-NINE
NEW VIGIL
It was a full minute after Sal had stopped talking that Ozhma realized she was staring.
“What,” she asked, pausing to take in a breath, “happened next?”
Sal didn’t look away from the door standing in the middle of the room, the door that went to nowhere and had nothing behind it. A sad grin pulled at the corners of her mouth.
“What happened next,” she said, “is I found a few nice bottles of whiskey, came down to this room, and made myself comfortable.”
“But what happened after that?”
“I just spent hours telling you. If you weren’t listening, I’m going to be really pissed.”
Those words did not so much strike her as pick her up and throw her off a tall cliff.
It was over.
She knew the rest of the story. Rudu found her, she found her way here, and then…
It was over. There was no more story to tell. No more time to take. When they’d started talking, she’d thought a lot of things—that she couldn’t be here, that she couldn’t do anything, and then finally, that she couldn’t leave. How odd, she thought, that not once in those many thoughts it had occurred to her that it would end.
Had her mind simply not grasped it or… or…
Or, on some level of rationale she couldn’t believe and feared to question, had she felt ready to stay here with Sal?
Right to the very end?
“Ask me,” Sal said, “what you really want to ask me.”
Ozhma didn’t know what she was talking about.
No, Ozhma corrected herself. You know. You just don’t want to ask it.
She shut her eyes. She swallowed hard. She tried to think of something else.
But you have to.
“What,” Ozhma said softly, “happens now?”
Sal tore her eyes from the door to nowhere for a moment. She turned that cool blue stare onto Ozhma. And Ozhma herself wondered if this was the same stare, the same smile, the same scars that Liette and Jindu and Agne and all of them had looked into.
“Would you hate me,” Sal asked, “if I said I had no idea?”
Ozhma felt the correct reaction was at least some irritation. Instead, though, she found herself wearing the same weary smile as the white-haired woman.
“No idea? Nothing?” Ozhma asked. “You have no plan?”
“Well, I didn’t say that, did I? I certainly had a plan,” she replied. “Somewhere along the line, anyway. But the further I went, the more I realized that…” She sighed, shrugged. “Look, I’m trying my hardest, okay?”
Ozhma nodded—that sounded reasonable. It wasn’t like she had any better answers. Silence fell over them as they both returned to watching the door. Long moments of quiet passed—not painful, not awkward, just the comfortable feeling of not needing to say anything else—before Ozhma thought to ask.
“How do you want it to end?”
Sal seemed to think about this for a long moment. She opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out. Her eyes twitched briefly. Tears rimmed them. A droplet fell, trailed down the scar as it hung from her jaw for a brief moment.
Three knocks.
Faint. Polite. Hesitant.
Sal paused. The tear fell, vanished. She got to her feet. She came to the door. She reached for the handle, hesitated, as if she feared to touch it and find out it wasn’t real.
Three more knocks.
Louder. Stronger. Desperate.
Sal didn’t wait this time. She took the knob. She pulled the door open. Inside a frame that should be empty, there was a vast field of darkness, a night sky yawning for eternity. And in that gloom, something twinkled—some faint and distant star, so far away as to be even the barest fragment of a dream, the kind that’s forgotten immediately upon waking.
But Ozhma recognized the star. And the star recognized her. And it looked at her with a sort of regret, as if to say…
I miss you.
A shape appeared in the darkness, a silhouette that filled the door. It stood in the frame, hidden by night. It shuddered, trembled. And fell.
Sal cried out, leapt forward.
She caught the shape, stumbled to the floor.
And Liette fell into her arms, exhausted and weak.
The name weighed heavy in her mind. The woman Sal spoke of had seemed so powerful, so invincible. The woman in Sal’s arms looked wearier. Her hair was disheveled and messy. Her face glistened with sweat plastered on top of dry sweat. Her clothes hung worn around her, her body looked as though it barely had the strength to tremble at all, let alone as fiercely as it did.
And yet… this didn’t look unfamiliar to Ozhma.
“Hey,” Sal whispered. She pulled Liette closer, smoothed hair out of her eyes. “Hey. Look at me.”
The woman shook gently. Sal stroked her neck.
“Please.”
Liette turned upward. Sal tensed, fearing what she’d see when that shaking, trembling head looked up, what horrors would be scarred in her eyes. When Liette looked at her, her eyes were heavy with sadness.
But not stars.
Not darkness.
The sorrow in her eyes was deep. It was pained. But it was hers. It was all hers.
“Hey,” she whispered back, breathless. “I did it.”
“I knew you would,” Sal whispered.
“You didn’t.”
Sal took her gently by the chin. “Are you all right?”
Liette tried to smile, shook her head. “No. No, I’m not. Not yet. I… I spoke to him, Sal. I heard him. I felt his voice. He is so angry. He’s so… so…” She swallowed back pain, failed to swallow back the tears. “And you’ve been carrying him all this time. Listening to him. And I never… I never helped you.”
She weakly reached out, took Sal’s fingers, pressed them to her lips.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry, Sal.”
Sal didn’t say it was okay. Sal didn’t tell her not to worry. She just sat there as Liette spoke. And she nodded weakly. And she pulled Liette against her for a long time, kissing the top of her head and holding her there.
The moment stretched out. For as long as moments like those could.
“What did he say?”
Liette shuddered at Sal’s question. But Sal didn’t relent.
“What did he tell you?”
Ozhma noticed, then, that Liette was clutching something to her chest. A box of charred wood, warped and split from heat in places. Her hands trembled as she raised it, turned her face away from it, and held it out.
Sal stared at the box as though it could stare back. And so did Ozhma.
She didn’t mean to blurt it out—in fact, she was quite mortified to have interrupted the moment between them. Curiosity compelled her. But courtesy condemned her.
“Sorry!” she said. “Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean to ruin the mood. My name is—”
“You didn’t ruin anything, Ozhma.” Liette’s voice was weary, but the gratitude in her words still came through. “Thank you. For staying with her.”
Ozhma furrowed her brow. “But… we haven’t—”
“Is it bad?” Sal interrupted, pulling Liette closer. “The answer… is it bad?”
Liette shook her head.
“Worse.”
Sal slowly reached out and took it from her hands. The wood splintered as she did, the char beginning to smolder. The fragments of wood caught ablaze as they fell, becoming fiery petals that turned to ash on the floor. An object remained in her hand, wrapped in cloth that began to smoke. A fire caught, swept across her palm—she did not flinch.
Trappings fell away and became kindling on the floor. What remained in Sal’s hand was a black wooden grip, a thick brass barrel forged in the shape of a grinning dragon, a heavy trigger. The room was lightless, yet the metal was so bright that Ozhma could see every detail in its design.
Ozhma stared, breathless, at the weapon.
And the Cacophony stared back at her.
The gun’s metal was moving. Breathing. Alive.
And pleased.
Ozhma could feel the heat of his contentment radiating out from him. She could feel him reaching out to her with unseen hands; a fever rose behind her eyes the longer they lingered on that weapon. Images of fire, of blackened hands groping out of seas of flame, of screams so innumerable they swallowed the sound of wind, flashed before her eyes. She felt her chest tighten. She felt her legs go weak. She felt—
“Ozhma.”
Hands. Hands on her shoulders, picking her up. Hands on her cheeks, waking her up. Her eyes flitted open, her vision restored. Sal stood before her, the weapon in his sheath and burning at her hip. Ozhma felt her gaze drifting inexorably back to it.
“Hey.”
Sal grabbed her face, forced her to meet her stare.
“I’m sorry to ask this of you,” she said, “but I need a favor.”
Ozhma’s mouth hung open. “W-what?”
“I need you to go.”
Ozhma’s focus returned. Her eyes snapped wide open. “You said you had no plan.”
“I didn’t say that,” she replied. “I always had a plan.” She smiled sadly. “I was just kind of hoping I wouldn’t have to do it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Yeah. I know.” Sal took her hands in her own, squeezed them. “But you listened to me, anyway. Thanks. For that.”
“You’re… welcome?”
Sal shook her head. “Ask me what you really want to ask me.”
Ozhma looked away. Only for a moment.
“What do you need me to do?” she asked.
Sal released her hands.
“Yria will be waiting upstairs,” she said. “She’ll get you out of here. Somewhere very high and very safe. You’ll be able to see the whole thing.”
The whole thing?
Ozhma didn’t have time to speak the thought before the realization hit her.
The Imperium.
The Revolution.
The legions of soldiers, cannons, magic, and worse arrayed out there against New Vigil. Still waiting. Still ready to bury this city. Nothing had changed. She hadn’t saved anyone. She hadn’t helped anything. She—
“Hey.”
Sal’s voice grew a little irritated. She glared at Ozhma as she helped Liette to a chair.
“I’m trying to tell you what I need you to do before we all fucking die,” she said. “You mind listening?”
“R-right,” Ozhma agreed weakly. “Right. I’ll see…” She took a deep breath. It didn’t stop her chest from hurting. “I’ll see the whole thing.”
Sal nodded grimly. “I want you to see it, Ozhma. I want you to look at as much as you can. I want you to remember as much as you can. I want you to get out of here alive—and when you do, I want you to go to every town with more than two people in it and tell them what you saw here. Tell them what I did here. And tell them I’ll do it again if any army comes back to this city.”
Ozhma swallowed something hard and painful. “Is that all?”
“No,” Sal said. “There’s one more thing.” She reached down, took Liette’s hands in her own. “When it happens…”
Liette looked at Ozhma. Etched in her eyes was a fear, a fear as deep as night and endless as the oceans. And when she spoke, it came out in her words.
“Cover your ears.”
“Not to be rude, but that sounds pretty fucking stupid to me.”
Rudu didn’t sound rude. Honestly, he didn’t sound wrong, either. This did seem like a bad idea. It was a bad idea.
But then again, most of the past day or so had been.
“I used to be in the Imperium, lady,” he muttered, a little more forcefully, behind her as he took another light. “It’s not all pageantry. We did horrible shit. The kind of shit I shouldn’t have seen. The kind of shit I have to keep smoking just to stay ahead of.” He gestured out over the field. “Torle of the Void is a thousand times worse than any of that shit. Look away, you don’t want to see this.”
Ozhma agreed. Everything she’d heard about Torle of the Void was horrific—and even so far away, on another cliff far from his own camp, she could see the fanfare of his arrival. Trumpets played and banners flew in the Imperial encampment that had been erected on the ridge.
No more delays. No more tricks. No more threats.
Torle of the Void was here. And ready to end this.
And even if, by some miracle, he wasn’t, it wasn’t as if there wasn’t another, equally horrible end awaiting the city. The airship of the Revolution hovered over the field, its engines muttering and its many cannons fixed upon New Vigil’s wall.
The fields had been cleaned of the dead and now stood brimming with soldiers. Imperials. Revolutionaries. It was hard to tell the difference, sometimes, there were so many. And it wasn’t like it mattered if she mixed them up, either—they were both ready to destroy the city.
Buried. Burned. Broken apart brick by brick.
New Vigil would fall, one way or another.
And she knew it.
“I’m serious,” Rudu said. “Are you listening to me?”
“Yes, I am,” she replied, looking plaintively to him. “And I am really grateful for your concern and the efforts you’ve made to take care of me thus far. I really, truly am and I’ll be happy to spend more time telling you that. But until then, if you could maybe FUCK OFF?” She snapped. “I made a promise to watch. And that’s what I’m going to do.”
“But it’ll—”
“Even if it hurts.” She turned back to face the field. “Go if you want. But I’m going to stay.”
She heard him scoff, then snort, then smoke, then smoke a considerable amount more, and then stomp off.
And, after a few minutes, she heard him smoke again and come stomping back. He took a position beside her, his sullen look evaporating under a cloud of smoke cloying at his face.
“You don’t have to stay,” she said.
“Yeah, I know,” he sighed. “But I can’t leave you here after asking you to do me a favor like you did.” He smirked at her. “What would they say about Rudu the Cudgel if I did?”
She smiled back at him. He took a deep inhale, passed her his pipe. She took a drag of her own, coughed a lot, handed it back.
“It’s… so good.”
Her lungs burned too much to say anything else. And that was fine, honestly. There didn’t seem to be anything more to say. So they didn’t say anything as they stood there.
And they watched.
Until the gates of New Vigil creaked open.
And a woman walked out.
Sal looked tiny on the field as she came striding forward slowly, unhurried, as though there weren’t endless soldiers, machines, and mages standing by to destroy her. She took her time as she sauntered away from the gates and the walls of the city.
She paused there, between the city and its conquerors, and took a long look up at the sky. Ozhma squinted; she could make out the woman reaching down to her hip, pulling a weapon free and holding it.
And then, she set it down upon the ground, took ten paces backward and sat down.
Nothing else.
No plan. No great gamble. No legendary luck.
Even the Cacophony could not destroy empires. Sal knew it as well as anyone else did—and no matter how badly she wished she didn’t, Ozhma knew it, too. Whatever resistance Sal was intending to offer here, she knew it was all she could do. All that she was doing right now.
Sitting.
Waiting.
Watching.
A trumpeted chorus blared from the ridge. A faint silhouette rose from the camp, like a wisp of smoke from a fire. Black robes fluttered as the shape sailed into the sky, hovering high. The Revolution’s airship did not move to challenge this new arrival to the skies—why would it?
They had the same goal.
Torle of the Void looked different than she thought—at least from here. She was expecting someone more terrifying. The man that hung in the sky there could have been her grandfather.
She held on to that impression for as long as it took him to raise his arms, for his eyes to flash purple. She wondered now if the Lady’s song was playing. She was not a mage. She couldn’t hear it. But she wondered how it sounded to Sal down there. Was it sad?
Or was it just tired?
Torle of the Void spread his arms wide, as if in invitation. And, as if in acceptance, the earth began to rumble.
Slowly, at first, like the sound of stone grinding on stone—an ancient groaning of earth that was never meant to be moved like this. Then, the lines started to appear—black scars spreading at the edges of the city, clouds of dust and earth exhaled from the cracks forming in the ground.
What was it like in there now? she wondered. Were Yria and Urda still bickering, even as the world came apart? Were Cavric and Ketterling and Meret still trying to get people out?
The groan of the earth became a roar. The bricks of the city’s mighty walls began to shake free of their standing. The ground shook, all the way to beneath her feet. She felt the breath trembling out of her, the despair sinking in even as the shudder of the earth reverberated through her bones.
She wanted to look away. She tried bargaining with herself, reasoning, trying to find the courage to look away. But she forced herself to ignore them. She forced herself to watch.
She told Sal she would.
And so she would watch. As the cracks continued to open. As the city started to sink. As the great void opened up beneath it.
She told herself this. She prepared herself for this.
She waited for it.
The earth started to split open. The clouds of dust became walls. The stone and dirt screamed as they were forcibly split apart. The city shuddered visibly, as if bracing itself for its grim fate.
Torle of the Void spread his arms wide.
Wider.
Wider.
Until they snapped.
Ozhma didn’t notice until the earth began to calm and pull itself back together. She looked back up to Torle of the Void. The man hung there in the sky, writhing and screaming as his arms were pulled backward by some unseen force until his shoulder blades split.
Sirens blared in warning. Soldiers stirred in their ranks. Something was happening. None of them knew what.
Except her.
His legs followed, bending forward to snap at the knees and twist unnaturally. He hung, spinning in the sky, limbs bent like the toy of an especially cruel child. Even from here, Ozhma thought she could see the agony on his face, the fear and confusion as he struggled to comprehend what was happening.
Maybe the people of Bitterdrink had worn the same face.
She didn’t have time to reflect on that. Not as Torle of the Void’s spine snapped backward, folding the mangled mage in two. Not as his body shuddered in the air and then sped toward the gates of New Vigil, plucked from the sky by an unseen hand. She didn’t have time for thought anymore.
Or anything beyond three words.
“Cover your ears,” she said as she put her hands to her head.
“Huh?” Rudu asked.
“COVER YOUR EARS!”