54

SARINE

A Wide Street

Riverways District, New Sarresant

The street shook, windows rattling in their frames.

She felt it more than heard it, a deep boom reverberating through her Life-empowered senses. It sounded like a thunderclap, for all that it was midday and the sky was clear and blue. Behind her the column of nobles trailed in tight clusters, credit to Donatien for drilling them in soldiers’ marching formations. She paused, looking over her shoulder to the northwest, the direction from which they had come.

Another boom, this time enough to rattle her teeth.

Regiment-Major Laurent turned to look, the same as she had. “What under the Nameless—?” he managed, before yet another boom cut him short.

“Cannon fire,” Captain Vaudreuil said, flanking her at the head of the column. “Someone is setting off artillery.”

“Keep moving,” she said, raising her voice. “Let’s go, everyone keep up.” More than a few heads had turned, startled back into line by the sound of her voice. She looked up and down the line, seeing no sign of any attacks nearby; the booms were far enough away, and in the direction from which they had come, not the way they traveled now.

Still, her uncle.

He’d insisted she leave him behind, and nothing short of clubbing him over the head and tying him to a pack horse would have been enough to change his mind. She’d almost done that very thing, his choices be damned. Her stomach wrenched at the thought that he’d stayed behind, doubly so now if Vaudreuil was right. Artillery, northwest of the city. Almost enough to see her turn back to the Maw just to be certain he was safe. Instead she checked her leyline tethers through the strange power Axerian had called a warding, the blue sparks that even days later had not diminished. Shelter would hold if Faith did not, with the chapel itself an ample supply of both.

Vaudreuil trotted at her side, in full dress uniform of a navy captain, as the booms sounded again.

“What do you make of it, Captain?” she asked. Laurent loped along beside her, listening in as they spoke.

“I can’t begin to guess,” Vaudreuil said. “I had little information about the goings-on in this wretched city—ah, begging your pardon.”

“Perhaps a training exercise,” Laurent said. “I know the new High Commander personally. D’Arrent was ever fond of her war games.” That had been one of the few learnings they’d been able to glean from excursions into the city—Erris d’Arrent had high command of the army. Donatien had been silent on it, and she hadn’t pressed.

“Cannons though, so near the city?” she said.

Laurent’s brow furrowed as he took another look over his shoulder. “She might,” he said dubiously.

Nodding, and hoping it proved to be no more than that, she kept them moving down the wide streets of the Riverways, angling toward the Harbor district. The booms echoing in the distance added uncertainty to their slow advance, though they already took a great risk moving through the city in daylight. Vaudreuil had insisted their best chance was to sail on the evening tide, and that meant taking the time to secure supplies and free his crew beforehand. And now this. Gods send that nothing else went awry before she saw these people to safety.

As if to mock her pleas, a small company of men strode into view at an intersection ahead, carrying muskets but out of uniform. Almost she reached for Yellow before they continued on course, heading west on a different street. Off-duty soldiers, perhaps, but far more likely to be d’Agarre’s people, armed citizens. And they were marching in the direction of the cannons. She shared looks with Laurent, Vaudreuil, and the nobles around her, feeling the uncertainty she was sure was common up and down the line.

They tacked east, staying north of the river as they made way toward the Harbor district. Two leagues perhaps to cross through the rest of the city. They had somehow managed to avoid one patrol already, and made good time as they followed the streets winding along the banks of the river. Perhaps whatever trouble was brewing in the northwest corner of the city would leave them behind as they gained the ship.

“They’ll be in one of the warehouses along the harbor,” Vaudreuil had said when she’d asked after his crew. He’d proceeded to give her every detail he could remember, and offered to go with her to help spur the men to obedience. It would be a delicate thing to use Yellow to scatter whatever guards had been set without affecting the sailors, but Zi could do it. Whatever else his failings, she retained full confidence in his gifts.

She thought she knew the warehouse Vaudreuil had described, and went over the plans in her head as they moved. A side approach would be best, using one of the back alleys both in and out. Even now there was plenty of traffic in the harbor. She’d as soon keep the attention she drew to a minimum.

Thoughts of planning died as they rounded a left turn toward the district boundary. Gods damn it. Another company of militia, this one fifty strong or more and all carrying muskets, rushing up the very street down which they meant to march.

So much for luck.

“Stay back,” she called to the nobles behind her.

The militiamen showed no signs of stopping. Flares of Yellow sprang up at the edges of her vision. The militia were close enough for her to feel their emotions, using the power of Zi’s gift: dread, determination, worry, anticipation. She reached out to them, intending to amplify the fear already nestled there.

Instead Zi whispered into her mind. Green.

A moment of confusion, backed by a rising fury. Had he worked against her? Had he used the power of Green—to manipulate positive emotions—to offset her Yellow?

No, Zi thought to her. Not me.

Then she saw the man at the head of the militia company, a man carrying no musket, shouting commands, looking toward her column with rage in his eyes. She didn’t recognize the man, but he seemed to know her, staring into her eyes as he barked out orders to fire.

She had a bare moment before the militiamen dropped to their knees, leveling their muskets to shoot.

Shelter sprang up as the whipcracks of musket shot went off, wisps of smoke rising where they dissolved into harmless vapor. A battle cry rose up from behind the barrier she had constructed. Red, came the warning from Zi.

“I can’t break them!” she cried. “They have a kaas-mage. Laurent!”

Major Laurent seemed to blur as he tethered Body, drawing his sword with grim determination, huddled behind her barrier.

Yellow, thought Zi.

No. She willed Green into place, countering her enemy’s attempt to scatter her line in the same manner she had seen him do moments before.

“What should we do?” Laurent called to her.

They had moments, mere moments only before the militia covered the ground between them. And what if this enemy kaas-mage had access to Black, the power d’Agarre had used to drain away her bindings? What if he pierced through her Shelter and left them exposed?

“I didn’t want to have to kill them,” she said. “I—”

“No time, we have to attack!” Laurent shouted back.

Careful, Zi thought.

She dropped her Shelter binding and called on the power she’d found hidden in the sewers, granted by the strange voices at once similar to the mareh’et and lakiri’in, and yet also different. War-spirits, they had named themselves. Spirits of the storm.

Air ripped as she discharged their gift, streaks of lightning arcing from her hands into the onrushing militiamen. She was right; they’d almost been upon her barrier, a mere twenty paces shy of racing around her Shelter and crashing into the nobles. Their eyes narrowed with hate as her barrier vanished, replaced with shock and terror as her power struck home, streaking from man to man as it snaked through their line.

Screams, terrible screams as a crushing boom followed her gift.

White, Zi thought to her, and it was so: The man at the head of the column stood untouched, surrounded by a pulsing white shield.

But she heard nothing, saw nothing. The world seemed to blur.

A feeling bloomed in her mind, a swelling tide from the tips of her fingers down the back of her spine.

Pleasure.

She teetered on the edge, an abyss of golden warmth beckoning her for what seemed an eternity. Her mind drew in the feeling, shuddering as the sensation of needles pricked all across her skin. Joy, and a thirst for more. A thirst for blood. Pure bliss that stretched every moment into an hour, every heartbeat into a void of thoughtless rapture.

Fight it, Zi thought to her. Come back.

She blinked. It called to her, stirring a yearning from deep inside her. A picture shrouded in mist, struggling to be made real.

Screams. High-pitched screams.

The world came back into focus.

She saw Laurent, his face twisted in surprise as his head lay skewed apart from his torso, a sure sign his neck had been snapped. And Vaudreuil, twisted in an echo of the same, his fine naval uniform ditched into crimson snow. She saw bodies around her, bodies dressed in sullied clothes that had once been fine. Bodies of the nobles, torn and bloody.

Red flared at the edge of her vision, and she tethered Body, whirling to face the source. The kaas-mage had been loosed in her company, and they had broken before his attack, scattering into the street in a panic. The man laughed, a look of madness in his eyes as he ran after them.

She moved.

A raging flurry, drawing upon mareh’et to complement the rest of her gifts. She closed the distance between them in a heartbeat, striking the man in the back with one of the Great Cat’s ethereal claws. His White already exhausted, the man folded like paper into the slush remaining on the street.

As he died she felt the faintest stirring of the sensation that had crippled her before, a droplet of pleasure washing over her mind.

And then grief.

“Sarine,” Donatien said.

She affected not to hear him, lost in a sea of gray. It was her fault. It had been her responsibility to protect these people, and she had failed. The remainder of their journey passed in a daze, long streets made for wagonloads of goods hauled from the ships, reaching out from the harbor like the fingers of a corpse. She walked their paths inward, knowing she had blood on her hands. Never mind the men she had cut down like chaff with the gifts of the storm spirits; she had lost a dozen or more of her charges before coming to her senses. Zi had tried to warn her, tried to stay her from this course. She was a fool.

“Sarine,” Donatien said again. “Isn’t that …?”

She looked up.

Axerian stood in a relaxed posture, hands at his waist, short curved blades dangling from his belt. Waiting for them at the end of the last street, where their path ended at the entrance to the harbor.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Donatien said quietly as they moved toward where Axerian stood.

The nobles behind them moved in a ragged procession, as if they carried some glimmer of the burden on her shoulders. She looked back and saw their haunted eyes reflecting her guilt, wincing as she turned away. It was her fault.

“Sarine, I—” Donatien said.

“Donatien,” she said. “Let it be. Please.”

He said nothing more and she didn’t look back.

Axerian grinned at her approach, the first she’d seen him since the day they’d rescued the captain. If he noticed the hollowness she felt behind her eyes he made no comment on it. This had been his way since he’d first come to the chapel: showing up when he had word of d’Agarre’s activities, then vanishing for days at a time, only to reappear wearing a half smile as if his arrival were a matter of course.

“Trouble crossing the city?” Axerian said, casting a glance up and down her column as he fell into step beside her.

She nodded. No need to bear repeating the details.

“We ran into d’Agarre’s militia,” Donatien said. “Isn’t that what you are supposed to be out stopping?”

The upbraiding sounded foolish to her ears. Not that Donatien had cause to know he was speaking to a God.

Axerian seemed similarly amused. “How under the heavens did you manage without me, my noble lordling?”

“There was a kaas-mage with them,” she said.

Axerian’s eyes shone as his smile faded into a look of concern. “Ah,” was all he said.

“Sarine cut the man down,” Donatien said as he walked a step behind. “She saved us all.”

“You’d hardly be standing here if she hadn’t, my lord,” Axerian said, his smile returning.

“Why are you here?” she asked Axerian, coming to a halt at the mouth of the harbor. The streets beyond were quiet for all that it was still midafternoon. She glanced down the docks, craning her neck to try to tell one ship from another. They all looked the same to her, knots of rigging and white sails packed and bound to masts as tall as buildings. Some empty, some swarming with sailors preparing to sail. If Captain Vaudreuil had been here he could have shown the way to the Redoubtable, but he was dead. Because of her.

“As it happens, I have need of your assistance,” Axerian said. “The city has need of your assistance. There have been certain developments over the last two days.”

His words flowed through her like water through a sieve. She cast another blank look up and down the harbor. “After,” she said. “First I have to save the nobles, to get them to the ship.”

He grinned more broadly. “I’d guessed you might do that.”

“What do you mean?” she said.

“My dear,” he said, a spark showing in his eyes, “I took the liberty of releasing the Redoubtable’s crew and seeing to it they were provisioned for a lengthy voyage. I trust I guessed aright?”

“What? You sent them away?”

He laughed, forestalling the beginnings of her anger. “No, no. I know you too well. As soon as the captain gave his name I knew you’d come. I have the crew set and waiting for your charges, here at the northern docks.”

She gave him a long look.

“Shall we?” he asked, offering an arm.

With a wordless nod, she disdained his gesture as she strode past him. He laughed again, walking beside her as the column of nobles trailed in their wake. A glance behind revealed Donatien simmering but silent, meeting her eyes with a look that nonetheless bespoke compassion.

They made the short walk to the north end of the harbor in relative silence, passing sailors eyeing them with dubious looks. She was past caring. So long as they made it to the ship.

Yellow, came the thought from Zi.

Panic flooded her veins, whirling around to find the source.

Axerian held out a hand as a calming gesture. “It’s only me,” he said. “A warding, to ensure the ship could remain here safely. There, see?”

The sensation faded from her mind, though her pulse did not slow. She nodded.

And there it was. A cheer went up from the nobles when they read the name etched on its hull.

The Redoubtable.

She found a stack of crates, and seated herself atop one, watching as the nobles made their way onto the ship. The crew had made quick work of preparations, unfurling rope lines and barking orders across the deck. Vaudreuil’s first officer—the captain now—had assured her they’d be under way within the hour. She’d stolen away to have a few moments to herself. Here on the dock, before she had to say her goodbyes.

The thought came again: She was a fool.

“What was it, Zi?” she whispered. “What happened to me?”

Black, he thought to her.

“Killing?”

Yes.

She brought her knees up to her chin, wrapping her arms around them as she rocked in silence.

It is one of the ways Axerian corrupts his ascendants, Zi thought. He uses the Veil’s power to compel my kind not to intercede.

Her thoughts went back to the night of the salon, to the look of madness in Reyne d’Agarre’s eyes when he killed the Comtesse de Rillefort. Had she worn the same look as her charges died around her?

“There are plenty of murderers in the world. Why me? Why does it affect me? Because of our bond?”

Yes. It is the price of our gift. You feel some margin of what I collect.

“This all sounds like things for which I am not prepared,” she said, allowing some measure of bitterness to creep into her voice.

It is my nature to protect you.

“I know, Zi,” she said, tears sliding from her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

The moment lingered, sailors shouting as they worked, relief showing on the nobles’ faces as they walked up the gangplanks. How she wished for a moment she could be like them, not for their finery and poise even in the face of adversity, but for the small kindness of being able to board a ship and sail away from everything. The freedom of it beckoned to her, the adventure of the unknown.

“Do you know anything of what Axerian spoke? The danger to the city?”

No. I know only what I see, the same as you do.

She nodded.

But it may be d’Agarre. He will be close to ascension.

“Zi, will you explain what ascension is, please?”

A long silence stretched, and she felt a measure of anger come creeping back, never mind the softness she had felt before.

The Seat of the Gods, he thought to her. Three champions, one for each line, at each awakening. Three to decide the fate of creation for each cycle. Three for Life, Three for Death.

She turned his words over in her mind, repeating them to herself.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

The champions decide the image of the world, vying for balance between the Goddess and the God. Life and Death.

“The image of the world …? And what is a champion?”

Pain lanced through her mind, though it was no sensation of hers.

Please, he thought. You are not ready.

Understanding dawned. “Zi, does it hurt you to tell me these things?”

Only if you are not ready to hear them. It is part of the bond. Like the union of the spirits and the aspects of gold along the ley-threads; there is an appointed time. I am sorry.

“It’s all right,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry, too, Zi. I’m a fool.”

So are we all, when we are young.

She laughed at that, rich and true in spite of her grief. Imagining Zi as a young version of himself was more than she could manage. He was just Zi. As far as she was concerned he had always been exactly as he was.

“Feeling better?” Donatien asked, approaching from the base of the gangplanks leading onto the deck of the ship.

She looked up at him, feeling some of her mirth drain away. “Donatien, I—”

“You’re not coming aboard the ship,” he finished for her.

Tears welled up, and she shook her head, reaching a hand up to wipe them away as Donatien came to sit beside her.

“Sarine, it’s all right,” he said. “I understand. I knew this was coming, even if I didn’t want to admit it to myself.”

“Thank you,” she said, stifling another wave of emotion.

Donatien offered his arm, and she leaned against him, a roil of conflicting feelings coursing through her. He held her as they listened to the sailors work, making final preparations before the ship cast off.

“You will stop him,” Donatien said after a time. “D’Agarre I mean.”

She nodded.

“Did Axerian disappear again?” he asked.

She nodded again. “I told him I needed a moment. He said to meet him at the chapel.”

“Did he know what was happening in the city? The cannons?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t say anything more.”

“Be careful with him,” Donatien said. “If he can help you, let him, but—”

“You’re right,” she said. “And I will.”

They sat together for a long moment, until one of the sailors called out. Final boarding.

Donatien rose to his feet, turning to look at her.

“You are an amazing woman, Sarine,” he said. “I’ve been privileged to have loved you.”

“Thank you, Donatien,” she said, rising into his arms one last time. “Thank you for everything.”

They held together as long as they could before breaking away, and she watched as he rounded the dock, looking back at her as he boarded the ship.

Emotions swelled within her as the mooring lines were cut. Relief for the ones she had saved, regret for the ones she had lost. Sadness for Donatien, but sweetness, too; the same for Zi.

And determination. A rising swell of determination from deep within her bones. It was past time to see this decided, one way or another.