Elder Saitas makes me wait. Better to reflect on my guilt, better for him to have the upper hand when he takes me to task for more than a decade’s worth of subterfuge. A master stroke, really. I’d thought the past buried, inconsequential to my present state until my brother’s truly heinous timing.
My brother is the one they call the Firebird.
That unavoidable fact rolls around in my head, a massive boulder shaking loose myriad stones until my heart is buried beneath the resultant avalanche. I’m lucky the rest of my unit didn’t immediately clap me in chains and drag me to the holding cells along with my brother for interrogation.
The Firebird.
Insurgent.
Their oily gazes slide off me when they think I’m not aware that their demeanour towards me has changed.
Yet it took the elder all of an hour to send one of the grey-clad penitents to fetch me from the Hall of Meditation, where I’d desperately been trying (and failing) to gain some clarity of mind on all that weighed so heavily on me. Small mercies be thanked, I’ve had time to wash myself clean of the grime and sweat from our mission, and have clad myself in fresh charcoal robes. The red sash is tied just so, as if ensuring that the knot is perfect will somehow protect me from the evaluation that will surely follow.
My harbinger was all wide-eyed and out of breath—presumably because he’d been sent in a hurry—yet I have counted two bells, half an hour of kneeling by the elder’s closed door. No one else. Just me. Of course. Time to reflect, no doubt. Elder Saitas knows just how to play me so that my thoughts turn into tail chasers.
My knees are numb from the cold stone. My back is to the ambulatory, and those who’ve passed me have done so amid hushed whispers, for anyone made to wait before Saitas’s door as I am is in dire trouble. No one wants my disgrace to smear their robes, and I fancy they give me a wide berth in case whatever I have is contagious—guilt by association.
The sun has long gone, and only the whistling of the rain frogs hidden in the cracks in the wall offer an accompaniment to my vigil.
I’d thought I’d had a clean break. I’d needed a clean break after the turmoil surrounding Ailas’s departure from my life, after what the Fennarin had done to Mama and Papa for their part in harbouring demon-kin. And yet now my brother has reached over the chasm of the intervening years to blight my life with a single touch.
I can’t tell whether the emotion boiling through my veins is anger or a deep-rooted resentment, but I visualise a poisonous black vine with mottled purple bruises throttling the ground, curling around rocks and tree trunks until the world is smothered with the corruption. This is what I’m feeling, and I breathe deeply, imagine pruning away at that foliage until I can uncover the source, where the stubborn roots have entangled themselves with the earth.
Yet even as I pull and pull, I cannot remove the taint.
That is Ailas’s effect on my life. Given time, his presence will no doubt sprout again. I will have to meditate, pay penance for months in the hope that some of the vyra-taint hasn’t worked its way into my heart. That I can undo the damage and prove I am worthy of my rank.
I sigh, concentrate on my breathing, on the tension in my thighs and the polarisation of my discomfort. An ally is strong in Fennar, the pure form along which we model ourselves. On our own, we are brittle sticks, but together we can stand against the onslaught—a bundle of canes tied together with twine. I must hold onto this, for if I were no longer of use to the fraternity of the Fennarin, I wouldn’t be kneeling here; I’d be sharing a cell with my brother.
This is a small comfort, but it is all I have.
Another bell rings. People are talking and laughing in the distance, their cares light. My stomach clenches and gurgles. I’ve missed dinner and my mouth is dry. The cracks in the plaster a hand span from my nose create a map filled with rivers and mountains if I will them so, and I can create little tableaus to keep me from screaming in boredom.
“Enter!”
Elder Saitas’s call is so sudden, I jerk, unbalance so that I must press a palm to the ground to prevent myself from toppling over. Immediately my breathing hitches, becomes ragged, and I have to stand still for a few heartbeats until I am calm again. Moist palms smoothed on robes. A stretching of limbs to relieve them of cramps. Then I do as the elder bids, and push open the door. He has made me wait for so long; I act now as someone who is overly grateful for a reprieve. That is a sign of weakness.
For all the Fennarin vows of poverty, Elder Saitas certainly has a beautifully appointed chamber. It is one of the larger ones, high up on the terraces before the dwelling place of the Most Esteemed. Large, arched windows open onto a breath-taking view of Mount Ferion’s cone during the day. Now the drapes have been drawn—heavy ornamental velvets from the continent, a royal purple with gold thread detail of tiny flowers. Fit for an emperor.
Saitas sits at his blackwood desk. One of his manuscripts is open before him, the margins half illustrated, and his hands, now resting on a leather scroll container, are ink stained.
I pause on the threshold, bow my head. “You summoned me, elder.”
No word about having been made to wait for three quarters of an hour. No. That would be highly inappropriate on my part.
“Yes. You may come in.” He gestures for me to sit on the stool before his desk.
My relief is so intense my knees turn to water. If I were truly deep in trouble, he’d make me stand on the small mat next to the stool. My heart thuds sickly, near to exploding.
I sit with my back straight, my palms on my knees—the expectant scribe pose, ready for instructions.
Elder Saitas, at a glance, looks like everyone’s favourite uncle. He is small, round and wrinkled, but his permanently bemused expression should not be trusted. A sharp mind lurks behind those glittering black eyes, and he misses nothing.
“You know why you’ve been called here today,” he says.
There is no point in lying or trying to avoid the topic. I dip my head. “The prisoner. The Firebird.”
“Yes. Your brother.”
“I should have unburdened myself about my connection to a demon-kin much sooner.”
He laughs, and I dare to look up.
“My dear ally, if you thought that we were completely unaware of your past when you joined our fraternity, you are far more naïve than we initially assumed.”
Try as I may to contain my emotion, I’m certain my face betrays my shock, because Elder Saitas’s smirk grows.
“We screen every penitent who apprehends the call of Fennar, thoroughly,” he says. “Not every penitent is of a sufficiently high enough calibre to ascend to querent status. We do, after all, have to ensure that the integrity of the Fennarin is not compromised in any way.”
I lower my gaze to my now-clasped hands. With great effort, I separate them and place them palm down on my thighs again. I have to speak these next words, even though they pain me greatly. “I am deeply remorseful that I have compromised the Fennarin through my inaction.”
His laughter comes from deep within his belly, and I raise my head, resolve to not look down again, even if I have to focus on a point slightly to the side of his lips.
“Oh my dear, no, you’ve excelled beyond expectations. Ally Melnas was most put out when he all but burst into my chamber full of bluster and bruised ego. ‘Do you know that we have a traitor in our midst!’ he yelled. Caused quite the to do. I had to threaten him with a week of penitence to get him to contain himself.”
“You knew all along, about my...brother?”
He nods. “But now that the kama bird has slipped the snare, so to speak, I’d like to know why you informed the Fennarin about your brother a decade ago. Why betray your blood kin at all? Especially when there was no suspicion linked to insurgent activities. Your piety does you a great credit, but...” He leans forward, idly trailing a finger around the lid of an ornate inkpot.
Deep revulsion for my past floods me. “He needed to be stopped, elder. I tried. I tried reasoning with him. I tried cleansing his things; I tried everything, but he was obstinate in his path to evil.”
I squeeze shut my eyes, try avoid seeing that last night replay itself, but it’s useless. A thing of nightmares, of me hearing noises late at night, going to investigate. And my brother, supine on the floor, surrounded by candles. His eyes rolled back, limbs twitching and his mouth pulled into a rictus grin while obscenities tumble off his tongue.
A possession in my family home, a communing with demons that he’s invited into his body. He lies there, naked, a puppet. His member erect and straining away from his body. Phenomena that are indelibly marked in my memories, of the cold wind that blows unaccountably through the house, of the whisperings, the scratchings of tiny, invisible feet that scurry away whenever I enter a room.
Unnatural.
And my parents, seemingly unconcerned and oblivious to these goings-on. Indulgent even to the point that they allow Ailas to renovate the old ruined shrine up in the ravine near the spring. That Mama even goes with him on some nights to light candles and make petitions to the vyra-demons and other spirits of the air.
There was no doubt I had to take action. The elders at the village school instructed us at great length of the dangers we faced otherwise. It is written so in the Word of Fennar that we recited as children every morning, though when I glanced at my brother, he kept his lips pressed tight and his hands clenched at his sides during the meditations.
“It is unfortunate that your parents were put to the fire,” Elder Saitas rumbles.
My pulse stutters. “I didn’t know that they—”
I hadn’t thought they would suffer for Ailas’s transgressions.
“Yet you were spared.”
Here it comes.
“I... I was at my brother’s shrine. I was angry still when I returned from the Place of Fennar. I went to the shrine and destroyed it. I pushed over the standing stones and broke the offering tray. I scattered his unholy sacraments and crushed the candles beneath my heels.”
“My, my, that was a lot of anger for a young girl.”
“I was sixteen. I was a woman grown.” I bristle at his patronising tone, and pray it doesn’t show.
His smile is inscrutable, and he gestures with one hand for me to continue.
“But you know the story.” My nails dig little half-moons into the skin of my thighs. I don’t want to go back.
“I would prefer to hear it from your lips. So much more lively than a dry, written report, don’t you think?”
Icy fear reminds me that I am indeed still under scrutiny. What I say here and now might damn me anyway, even if the Fennarin has been aware of my identity all along.
“I returned to the homestead but when I got there, the allies had already arrived. They’d—”
The ugliness of that scene flashes and stutters. I don’t want to see how Mama is dragged to the courtyard, nor how Papa pleads, his sobs reaching me from my hiding place in the tala berry tree. I’m screened by the weeping boughs, stained by the red fruit, but I don’t move, don’t say a word.
Kama birds screech and stamp—that is how the Fennarin has arrived so soon after I went to tell them of my brother. I hadn’t considered they would respond quickly, with so much violence.
Yet of Ailas there is no sign; it’s as if he has vanished into the wind.
Thick pillars of black smoke send their fingers into the brassy afternoon sky. A trickle of sweat tickles down the small of my back, but I can only watch as they torment and burn my parents. Every once in a while one of the allies steps back, scans the vicinity, as if waiting for someone to come. No one does, and my parents die. In great pain, with both our names on their lips.
What can I do? I am but one woman against a dozen armed men. If I go out, they’ll do the same to me.
“You changed your name to Lada Garissa,” Elder Saitas prompts me. “That is an Oran name. Unia.”
I meet his gaze, though every part of me wishes to withdraw, to be fascinated by the loose thread in the sleeve of my robe.
“I wished to distance myself from my family. I had nothing to live for after that.”
“So you heeded the Word of Fennar and joined the Fennarin.”
“What else was there for me?”
“You have been a model ally. We have been most interested in your progress, in your... How should I say it...zeal.”
“In other words, you were waiting for my betrayal all this time.”
He laughs. “Perhaps there are some among us who felt as though we could use you for leverage, to try sniff out more vyra. In that regard, you have proven to be most...disappointing.”
“And now?” I hardly dare to breathe.
“You are a peculiar creature,” he says. “For someone to turn against kin not once, but twice.”
“It’s my brother’s fault my parents are dead.”
“Oh.” The elder raises a brow. “That is such a simplistic way to look at it, and if you’d let things slide? You’d still have a family.”
“Destroyed by the demon-taint!” I cry. “Why are you asking me these questions? Surely my loyalty to the Word of Fennar is not in question, especially not after today? The Fennarin is all the family I have, those who cleave to the truth, and who understand why we fight true evil.”
He sighs, and this time he is the one to look away, shuffle at the documents on his desk. “I fear the Fennarin has done its job too well at times.”
“What do you mean?” The band constricting my chest has lifted. I have an advantage here, yet I don’t understand why.
He huffs out a breath, looks up. “Ally Lada, you will assist Elder Susin in the Trial of one known as Vyr’Ailas Ada’rah Beni, whom we refer to as the Firebird. Should he survive the Trial, he will be granted the final blessing of fire. You will understand that this task I give you is indeed a great honour for any ally of your age.”
The shock of this pronouncement hits me with the force of a bucket of icy water, and I fear that I gape at him like a halfwit for a fraction too long. His expression is grim, as if he’s handing over a death sentence, and, perhaps in a way he is.
Another test of my loyalty.
“I-I-I will not disappoint,” I stammer.
* * * *
Despite my meditations and recitations of passages from the Word; despite even the mild soporific tea I’ve ingested, I cannot sleep. A night-whistler is calling, its eerie, liquid voice distant and taking me right back to childhood. I don’t know when I last heard one of these birds here in the Place. My skin prickles. Night-time in my cell is for staring at the ceiling, turning the day’s events over and over like a bad meal that has become mud in my belly. What stayed my hand this afternoon? Would I have hesitated with any other insurgent? If I’d brought that staff down, I would have crushed the soft cartilage of his throat; the insurgent might have choked to death, starved of air. Not a pleasant way to die, but I’d not be faced with my current predicament.
Not an insurgent. My brother. Ailas.
His name is a malediction I haven’t dared to speak in years, not even as a whisper.
To think that Elder Saitas and other senior initiates have been aware, all this time, of my past, causes me such acute discomfort that I writhe on my pallet, twisting this way and that, unable to escape. Their knowledge is a spear that has hung over my head all this time, without me knowing. Waiting. Ready. The mortification makes me clutch at my upper arms. I am not worthy of the fraternity. All the while I’ve been nothing more than a bauble to bait a trap.
Why did I not deliver that killing blow when I had the chance? This is what I’ve been training for my entire life. I’m weak.
It’s that unguarded moment, when an insurgent relaxed his warrior stance, became a person, and I curse myself for my hesitation. If this had been anyone else, I’d be the one who would be dead. I hate him for making me hesitate. And yet if I killed him, I would not have the answers.
What answers?
Where were you? That is a question I’d like to ask. Where were you for the past decade?
He didn’t come that afternoon, and as much as I hate to admit it, I want to know why.
And why only approach me now? Surely he must’ve seen me. He could have gone any other direction, and yet he’d run at me. In another twist of fate, Ailas may have been the one to make the decision to pull the killing blow. Contrary to that, the phantom pain blooms across my throat.
But.
What if I’m wrong? What if I’ve been wrong all this time? Years and years of being wrong. And what if I’d rushed out to try help Mama and Papa? Would I have been burnt too? Would Ailas have come? Or would he have stayed away even then, so far gone in his vyra-taint and selfish self-preservation?
Guilt. Now there is something I’ve not examined for a long while, nor have I probed at this thorny, cold thing that lies across my souls, constricting it. We are absolved of guilt when we act in accordance with the Word, but now that the first niggles of doubt have crept in, my guilt has followed.
I squeeze shut my eyes, and my chest is so tight I can hardly draw breath, but I cannot cry. Mustn’t. Instead I bite down hard on my knuckles until I can taste blood. Damn you, Ailas. And damn me.