9.

 

The fall did not kill her.

The glass shattered and, with both Fo and Bau in her grasp, the tower fell behind her fast, impossibly fast; she panicked and lost both Keepers, aware that they were drifting away from her and that Bau was reaching for Fo. She told herself that she had to catch them, to hold them—but the thoughts came too late as the rush of air deafened her, as the heat in her body was lost to the wind around her. The wind that tore through her, stealing her strength and resolve, threatening her consciousness that was lost when she hit the ground moments later.

It was a weak touch on her shoulder that brought her back.

“Ayae.” The voice that belonged to that touch was soft, raspy. “Ayae, please. You have to get up. They’re not dead. I can’t, I can’t—Ayae, please.”

A body slumped to the ground beside her.

“Ayae.”

Meina.

The words were not said aloud: she could not speak them, so horrified was she at the sight of Queila Meina. The tall mercenary was on her knees, hunched over, her skin blistered with sores and open wounds that she had sustained not from a sword, but from when her sword had struck Fo’s. Ayae could see the mercenary’s weapon behind her, a twisted, distorted shape so similar to its owner that their entwined nature could not be denied.

Meina’s hand—the hand that had held that sword so strongly—had no strength when Ayae took it.

Still, she had made her way from the tower. Meina must have left after the fall, for it burned fully now. She would not have left alone, either. Half of the ten members of Steel who had come with them had been alive when she went out of the window, a quarter of the Mireean Guard: but none were in sight of the captain, none had made it out of the Spine’s Keep. Ayae had the grisly vision of their bodies lining the halls, having fallen to similar ailments, their flesh breaking down until only one was left, only one could limp, slowly, agonizingly, to her.

And she could do nothing.

“Only you left now.” Fo’s voice was even, monstrous in its lack of acknowledgment of what he had done. “But that is how it should be.”

She released Meina’s limp hand.

“The gods did not fight with mortals,” he continued. “They knew they were too frail for any battle, any true test, not that it stopped those who had faith fighting in their name. Every part of our history is filled with men and women who raised a weapon, a fist or a voice, in the name of their own god. They did it regardless of whether their god demanded it or not. They did it because they wanted to do so, because they had to do it, because they were the image of their god, the divine creation. But the truth of it is, they never needed to go to war: in the fullness of their power, the gods were terrifying beings, just as we are.”

Her first sword lay to her right. She picked it up as she rose. The second, not far from that, followed.

She met Fo’s gaze as fire ran the length of both.

She had no words, no thoughts. Yet, when her swords lashed out, it was as if she screamed. It came from deep in her, deep from within her grief not just for Meina behind her, or for Illaan, but for her city, her home, her life. Unable to open her mouth, her weapons contained her rage, held the burning distillation of everything that she had known two months ago and been sure in. Everything she had derived her happiness from. Everything that she had lost.

She wanted nothing more than to feel her swords hack through Fo, to slam—not cut, but slam—through his flesh, to beat him down, to tear through him as if she were the basest, most rabid animal to reach the man behind him, the man she knew she would have to kill first.

Beneath her bare feet, she could feel broken, diseased black dirt, an emanation that Fo left with every step he took backward, every cut he sustained. She did not let that bother her, did not allow the weakness to take hold as it had before. She burned whatever felt alien against her, whatever felt wrong inside her own body: an awareness she had never had so fully, so completely as what she did now. One that, in another time, would have resulted in her immense curiosity, and perhaps a satisfaction, but which now, left her feet and legs feeling as if they were made from liquid, as if they were not truly flesh, and allowed her to push her attacks quicker, harder, scoring cut after cut on Fo’s shoulders and hands, edging closer to his neck, his face, knowing that she would soon overpower him.

Then, suddenly, the Keeper dropped his guard.

Her sword pierced his shoulder as he drove into her. A quick step back and she slashed her blade across his abdomen; but there was no return stroke. Instead, he smashed his head into her own. She reeled, crying out in shock not from the hit, but from the sudden blindness, the loss of her sight, the complete and utter blackness that surrounded her.

It returned in a flash of pain to show his healing wounds, but so startled, so unprepared for the move was she that she had no time to counter Fo’s head a second time. No time to counter his hand as it closed around her throat.

Her sight came back again, blinkering, a series of still moments that revealed a figure at the gate of the Keep, a figure behind Bau who was deep in concentration, deep in knitting the wounds Fo had taken, keeping the strength in his body as his fingers tightened around Ayae’s throat.

The knife that came around his neck cut deep and straight as it had across the throat of a dead man, weeks before.

And like that time, it saved her again.