Keiro sat cross-legged far beneath the earth, his back straight, hands loose upon his knees, chin tilted upward. Every inch of his bearing spoke to calm confidence. Every inch was a lie, but it was a good lie—a necessary lie.
For around him, the earth trembled.
Keiro forced his breath to come steady, even though his heart thundered and every instinct screamed that he should flee. He sat still, and he breathed, and he waited.
Across from where he sat, a god-storm raged.
Fratarro was in the middle of what Keiro would have called a tantrum, if Fratarro had truly been the child whose skin he wore. But Fratarro was no child, and even a god’s petulant anger was a frightening thing to behold. His pose mimicked Keiro’s, legs folded and back straight, and though Fratarro’s hands rested on his knees, the right one shook like a leaf in a tempest, while the left lay utterly, disturbingly still.
Showers of dirt pattered onto Keiro’s shoulders, onto the ground. Somewhere not so far away, the earth groaned with the stress of staying put as Fratarro worked, however unintentionally, to shake it to pieces.
Left unchecked, it would not be very long until he succeeded.
Keiro strove to keep his voice steady, to keep the words from breaking into a scream, as he recited, “Gentle Fratarro, warm and kind.” A child’s rhyme, words he’d heard recited countless times through the halls of Mount Raturo . . . but there could be power in even the simplest words. “Though deep beneath the earth confined, good children know they’ll always find his loving heart and caring mind.” As Keiro repeated the rhyme, the words coming stronger to his lips, Fratarro’s shaking hand began slowly to still. The fury faded from his eyes by slow measures, until he squeezed them shut; and they were summer-breeze calm when he opened them once more.
Keiro said the rhyme again and again until the dirt stopped raining on his shoulders, until the floor stopped trembling beneath him, until Fratarro sighed and said softly, “Thank you.”
“Of course, my lord.”
Fratarro made an unhappy noise at the back of his throat, and faint tremors started once more beneath Keiro. “I have told you—”
“Brother,” Keiro amended quickly, and the tremors stilled. It felt wrong to address his god so casually, but self-preservation was stronger than propriety, and he would do nearly anything to keep Fratarro’s frustration in check. If he wasn’t so exhausted, he might have remembered better how carefully he needed to step. “You’re doing better, Brother.”
“I’m not,” Fratarro said, and he sounded so much like a sulky teen that Keiro almost smiled. That was a dangerous line to walk—no matter that Fratarro looked like an adolescent, he was centuries old, older than all the stars in the sky. To forget that, for even a moment, was dangerous.
“Control will come,” Keiro said, hoping, praying, that the words were true. They all needed them to be true. “Power must come first, and you’re certainly showing that. The rest will follow. You were . . . bereft for so long. No one expected you to rise to your full power immediately.”
A wan smile twisted Fratarro’s lips. “You tell sweet lies, Keiro Godson.” Keiro opened his mouth to babble an argument or defense, but Fratarro lifted a hand to halt his words and wave them away. “You’ve done enough today. Go. I know there is more to be done above. You’re more useful above.”
It wasn’t meant to be a cut against him, Keiro knew that, but there was still a dull ache beneath his breastbone at the words. He rose slowly to his feet, leaving Fratarro sitting alone at the center of the chamber. Walking between pools of flickering blue light, Keiro paused to lift something that had fallen to the floor during the tremors, incongruous by its very presence in the nearly empty chamber. It was lumpy and ratty and faintly musty. Turning it in his hands, Keiro recognized the shape of a horse, an old and poorly stuffed toy.
“Leave it,” Fratarro said, and Keiro fought back the urge to shout, for Fratarro stood suddenly at his elbow. The unnatural silence of a child, combined with the powers of a god. “I don’t know why I keep it . . .” But he held out the fingers of his good hand, and Keiro handed him the stuffed horse. He watched Fratarro run his thumb down the yarn-mane, staring into the horse’s button eyes. Fratarro’s own eyes were . . . different. Keiro could not quite say how, and he left before they could change again. As he crawled into the tunnel from the chamber, his last glimpse was of Fratarro reaching up to place the horse on a shelf sunk into the wall, dark with shadows.
Keiro had grown very skilled, of late, at not questioning the things he saw. His mind was a study in emptiness as he crawled through the bowels of the earth. He did not—very carefully, did not—think of the second part of the child’s rhyme: Patient Sororra, trapped in sleep, her anger brightly burning deep. If you’ve crossed her, run and weep, for she has promises to keep. The tunnels were long, and he was alone with his mind as carefully empty as the tunnels themselves. Best to be safe—there was no telling when Sororra might be listening.
Above, on solid ground beneath the dark, open sky where clean air blew across his face, there was almost, almost, peace. There was a single moment of it, at least, where Keiro knelt with his eyes closed and his face upturned, and felt relief like a tide through his veins. It felt so like the first time he had visited these hills, when he had seen the Starborn sing to the full moon and felt a moment of heartbreaking peace. Yaket, Elder of the plainswalkers who had lived in the grass sea since the Plains had been only knee-high, had shown him the mravigi, and he’d thought he’d understood the message she’d been trying to teach him. He should have listened to her better, then and later. In the piling mountain of Keiro’s regrets, it was a firm foundation stone. He might have had more peaceful moments like this if he’d learned her lessons better. He might not have been so terrified of his own thoughts.
He supposed it was fitting, that Yaket found him there. “These are troubled times, Godson,” she said as she lowered herself down next to him, startling him from his melancholy.
Keiro swallowed heavily, and could not look at her. “It has . . . been a long while, Elder.” She did not often leave her people, the few that were left of her tribe, and Keiro couldn’t bear to see them—or, rather, to see all the faces that were missing. He kept telling himself it was better for Yaket and the plainswalkers—the last thing they needed was for the Twins or the Fallen to turn their attention and their ire on the plainswalkers.
“It is better for us, away from the hills. Your people are not so welcoming of strangers . . . especially not of strangers they believe have wronged them.”
They are not my people, Keiro wanted to say, but the words stuck to the roof of his mouth and his tongue could not free them. Instead, he said, “You must understand their suspicion. They think that if you and your people did not come to the Fallen with the location of the Twins, that can only mean you intended to keep them hidden away forever. There is no room in their minds for any other option.”
Yaket did not answer right away. “That was what you thought, too, at first.”
“It was,” Keiro agreed softly. He could not say any more, keeping his mind carefully blank of any thoughts. It was dangerous, certainly, to say anything else, and dangerous enough even to think beyond the constant pressure in his chest, the endless exhaustion, the fear, the fear, the fear . . .
“I think you know, now, why I made the choices I made,” Yaket said, not hearing the warning in his silence. “You know why my people have stayed here for so long, and kept our silence for so long. We, who lived so close to them, knew the stakes better than your people ever could.”
“Yaket—”
“We are not without hope, Keiro. We never were, and we never shall be.” Her words came in a rush, fierce passion lighting through her voice. “My people are old enough to remember the lessons of the past. We can find a way to fix all of this, to restore—”
“Yaket!” Keiro nearly shouted it as he surged to his feet, hands clapped over his ears like a child, desperate not to hear, desperate not to let Sororra hear. Yaket stared up at him, her wrinkles smoothed by wide-mouthed surprise. Keiro put his back to her and wrapped his arms around himself, trying desperately to slow his heartbeat, to calm his thoughts—these would be like an open door to a thief, for a goddess ever listening for opposition. “You cannot ever speak these things, Yaket. Do you hear me?” His hands still shook, but his breaths came more even. He was so, so tired. “These are troubled times,” he said heavily. Her own words, echoed back to her. “We must all be faithful, loyal followers of the Twins in their path to victory. They have risen, and they will rise further.” He stopped the words before they could leave his mouth, but he could not stop them drifting through his thoughts: And there is nothing we can do to stop them.
He heard Yaket start to rise, knew the compassion he would see on her face if he turned, knew she would touch her crabbed hand to his shoulder and he would break. There was so much danger here. He fled before it could consume him.
He wanted to pray, but there was no safety in prayer anymore. Sororra would hear, and that was what he did not want. He kept his teeth clenched, and did not let himself hope that she hadn’t been listening, that she hadn’t heard the whispering of blasphemy—
No. Dangerous to even think the word.
I am loyal, he thought. I am a good and faithful servant of the Twins. But he didn’t know if the words were his own, or Sororra’s.
They would need to be his own, if he was to survive this. He could give the Twins no reason to doubt him.
He thought of Yaket, likely staring after him, her heart heavy with grief—for herself, certainly, but he did not doubt that most of it would be for him. The thought made his own heart heavy, but he pushed away the pain. She had to understand. Everything had changed now. Everything was different.
He very carefully did not think, Everything is wrong.
If she had heard, if she had been listening through Keiro when Yaket was talking, it might already be too late. A seed of doubt would be all it took, a single ripple enough to turn into a capsizing wave. She might even now be returning from wherever she whiled away the long hours waiting for her brother to regain his power, her course set on Keiro, set to destroy anything that might get in her way—
“Brother Keiro!”
Ripped from his apocalyptic thoughts, Keiro stumbled over his own feet and nearly fell. Laseneo was huffing toward him, eyes huge in his moon-pale face, and one of his hands was already inching toward the back of his neck as he ran.
Keiro stared at him in stark disbelief. As Laseneo stopped, panting, before him, Keiro said, “You’re supposed to be gone.” Blunter words than he might have chosen another time, but his nerves and his mind and his soul were frayed. Laseneo should have left hours ago with the rest of the Fallen. Keiro couldn’t allow disobedience, couldn’t be seen as weak—not by the Fallen, and certainly not by—
Laseneo curled into himself, taken aback. “Brother Keiro, I serve you . . .”
Keiro cut him off with a sharp motion. He had to find a way to salvage this ruin of a night, so that Sororra need never know any of it. “All of the Fallen save those specifically named were to leave. Were you named, Laseneo?”
“N-no, but . . .” Laseneo began rubbing his own neck again, his fingers leaving red marks like claws. “That’s w-why I came to find you . . .”
Keiro’s pulse grew loud in his ears. “Show me,” he said, before Laseneo could say any more. Something had gone wrong, but there had to be a way for Keiro to fix it, and to do so without Sororra ever hearing. He was her voice and her hands, her will among the Fallen. He couldn’t fail her.
Laseneo scampered across the hills, eager as a puppy, and Keiro followed with a lump in his throat that might choke him, and his thoughts carefully blank. Raised voices soon led him as much as Laseneo, and they came across a large crowd of people clustered in the valley between two hills—a larger crowd of people than there should have been.
Earlier, when Keiro had crawled beneath the ground to make his way to Fratarro, the Fallen had been leaving, finally, the great mass of them packing up and beginning the long trek back to Fiatera. From what Keiro had seen, it had all been going smoothly—there was anger, grumbling, but they all seemed to accept that they had no choice. Valrik had been supervising it all, along with his chosen leaders, the ones who didn’t call themselves Ventallo but were. Most of them would be staying, along with a complement of the black-armored mercenaries and a small cadre of mages. Only two score total, staying behind to guard the hills, to serve the Twins until they regained their full strength.
At a quick look, Keiro would guess there were close to two hundred people gathered now between the hills.
No. The despairing thought lurched through his mind before Keiro could stop it. And on its heels came a much harder thought, unforgiving, merciless: You should have known. Sororra had said she would be watching . . . and Keiro was her eyes and her ears. Of course she would know of his failure.
If you’ve crossed her, run and weep . . .
Keiro had been so focused on Fratarro’s capricious moods that he had forgotten that the world was swaying and lurching beneath his steps. In this new and singular world the Twins would see made, there was no room for failure, no allowance for missteps. Sororra would—
He had to fix this. If he didn’t, he was as good as dead.
He hurried forward, past Laseneo and into the throng. They parted for him, some with guilty looks, but many with open hostility. Keiro had not been well liked among the Fallen from the beginning, for all that he had found the Twins. He had been branded an apostate before that, banished, and he had done nothing since to be worthy of their good graces. Ordering the Fallen to leave their gods behind had only cemented their hatred. They wouldn’t listen to him willingly, not these who had already chosen to disregard his orders. They wouldn’t care that their disobedience would be deemed Keiro’s fault.
The shouting voices died as Keiro passed by, pulling a shroud of silence behind him. As he had expected, Valrik stood at the center of the crowd, waiting with his hands on his hips, his empty eye sockets pointed directly at Keiro. “Brother Keiro,” he said in his rumbling voice.
“What is this?” Keiro tried to make his voice authoritative, but it came out reedy and weak.
“Some of our loyal brothers and sisters have elected to stay,” Valrik said, and there were murmurs of agreement throughout the crowd.
Keiro shook his head, and felt fear-sweat eke down from his hairline. “My instructions were clear. Your instructions were clear. The Twins need time to rest and recover, and they cannot do so with so many people ar—”
“There aren’t that many of us,” Valrik interrupted, spreading his hands in an empty gesture of conciliation. “Surely the Twins will be heartened by the faith of these remaining few.”
Keiro thought of Fratarro, cloistering himself far beneath the surface—just a different kind of prison from the one that had held him for centuries. He didn’t want to show himself in his weakened, broken state, not with so many of his followers around; Keiro had seen the longing in his eyes when he had asked how long until the Fallen left. How long until he could climb free of his prison and walk beneath the sky once more. It should have been now. “I promise you,” Keiro said, “they will not be.” He turned his back to Valrik, facing the unhappy masses. “Leave, as you were commanded. A truly loyal follower would do as his gods have ordered.”
“How do we know they did?” The heated shout came from somewhere in the crowd, Keiro couldn’t pinpoint where. “We’ve only your word for that!”
“Now, now,” Valrik rumbled, stepping to Keiro’s side and reaching out to place a heavy hand on his shoulder. Keiro resisted the impulse to shrug Valrik’s hand off. How things had changed: not even months ago, Keiro would have thought it an honor to stand in the presence of the leader of the Fallen, the earthly embodiment of the Twins’ will. He knew better now, in so many ways. “Sororra and Fratarro have named Brother Keiro their voice; we must trust that he is serving them truly.” The words did nothing to soothe the grumbling, but then they had not been meant to. He spoke to Keiro next, though his voice was loud enough to carry. “Still, Brother, I hardly think a few dozen more of us will do any harm. No doubt we’ll raise the Twins’ spirits—a perfect reflection of Sororra’s own stubbornness, eh?” He shook Keiro’s shoulder in what was likely meant to be a brotherly way, but that was too much. Keiro twisted out of his grip, knocked away his extended arm, and the grumbling died into shocked silence. Who would dare assault Valrik Uniro?
Keiro would. He had faced the Twins, and he had nothing else to fear. “There is stubbornness,” he snarled, “and there is stupidity. You are fools, all of you, if you think the Twins will be pleased with disobedience—and you, Valrik, are more the fool for encouraging it. If you are wise, you will leave. The others can’t have gotten far, and a group your size will move faster. You can likely catch them up before the moon rises. Listen, and go.” His voice broke on the last word, his throat thickening unexpectedly. He knew already that it was hopeless.
He could not face them any longer—not without screaming or sobbing. So Keiro turned, and pushed through the crowd until he broke free of them. As he walked through the hills, the murmur of their voices followed him, and a smattering of laughter, of jeers.
If you’ve crossed her, run and weep . . .
Laseneo found him, jabbering and plucking at his sleeve, his voice like knives through Keiro’s skull. Keiro spun on him, and his hand stung—and he did not realize until two breathless moments had passed that it was because he had struck Laseneo. The smaller man stood there, staring and quivering, tears already welling in his eyes, and guilt and fury surged within Keiro, so strongly that he could not tell them apart, could not tell which was stronger, could not tell which was real. He fled, hillsides looming in the darkness, his feet clumsy on the uneven ground until he stuttered to a halt only long enough to yank the ill-fitting boots from his feet. They had belonged to a dead man. He left them behind as he continued racing through the hills, bare feet firm and confident against the ground, his toes pressing into the cool dirt. He ran and ran until his breath was like rocks in his throat, and the ground reached up to grab him. It was not quite falling, but it was not so very far off.
Sitting beneath the slow-spinning stars, Keiro wrapped his arms tight around his churning stomach. He wanted to stand and keep walking, to choose a direction and let the stars guide his feet, but that was hopeless. There was nowhere else in the world left for him, nowhere he belonged, nowhere he would be safe. When Sororra returned, she would mete out the punishment for his failures, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
Was there?
Sororra had no mercy for those who opposed her. She was strong, and she respected that same strength in others. She would not stand for disobedience, and Keiro was her hands and her eyes and her voice. He would not stand for it either.
Keiro’s racing pulse slowed by steady beats. The lump eased from his throat. As he stood, his hands were steady.
Keiro made his way toward the largest hill under which the Twins had been buried for centuries. He walked at a slow and measured pace, and his thoughts were empty of everything but his singular purpose.
The mages weren’t allowed to congregate, weren’t allowed to even be near each other, and so the ones who had been chosen to stay behind had each carved out their own space. Keiro hunted down all of them, ten in total, said to each of them, “Come with me,” and they did because of the drug that ran through their veins. He hated using that against them—it made his stomach churn, to see their faces go slack with mindless obedience—but there was no choice left to him. His life hung in the balance, and Keiro had never wanted to be a martyr.
Perhaps the mages would thank him, when it was all done. The thought was cold comfort, and little enough even of that.
He gave them more tremulous orders as they went, telling them what to do and making sure they knew the signals he would give them. They retained commands so well, even in the throes of their madness. Keiro simply had to hope they wouldn’t falter.
With the ten mages stumbling along behind him, Keiro climbed to the top of the tall hill on the side opposite from where the remaining Fallen had gathered, walked around the crater gouged into its center until he could look out over them all. The few who had been asked to stay, and all the ones who had chosen to.
Keiro made a motion to Terstet—he would always know the mages’ names, always—and saw the man’s hands weaving a spell in response. It was the same spell he had used the last time Keiro had addressed the Fallen, the spell that made his voice loud enough to reach thousands of ears. For the two hundred left, Keiro’s voice would be like thunder over the hills when he called, “Valrik. Ventallo. Blades for the darkness. To me.”
They came slowly, all two score of them—but they did come. Keiro made a mask of his face as they approached. Perhaps they would thank him for this, later—when they began to see how precariously their own lives perched along a dagger’s edge.
Keiro had to make them see.
Keeping his expression masked, Keiro said, “You were asked to stay.” His voice still boomed loud, and he saw some of the two score gathered before him wince, but he did not signal to Terstet to break the spell. He wanted to be sure they heard him, even if it meant shattering their eardrums. “Only you. You were chosen for your loyalty, and your faith, and your usefulness. You were deemed worthy of trust.”
“The Twins handpicked us, did they?” It was one of the youngest among the Ventallo, his voice dripping with scorn.
“No,” Keiro said flatly. His voice had all the authority he had wished for it earlier, drawn up from the dark and desperate place within him. “The Twins wouldn’t waste their time on you. They chose me, and I chose you.”
There was silence, long enough for a dozen heartbeats. Silence, as they waited to see who among their number would be the first to refute him. He gave them those moments, to see if there were any who were exceptionally brave or exceptionally foolish. If any of them were, they hid it well. Fools did not survive long among the Fallen, and the brave did not survive long at all.
Into their waiting silence, Keiro’s voice boomed once more: “You all were there beneath the hill, when I showed you the faces of our gods. You heard when Sororra pardoned Valrik for the sin of declaring himself a leader among men.” Keiro turned his eye to Valrik, whose jaw was clenched, tendons and muscles dancing stark around his eyes. “Do you remember what she said to you?”
“She said the Fallen would need guidance,” Valrik rumbled, and it sounded as though each syllable pained him. “She said I would continue to lead the Fallen.”
“She said more than that, Valrik.”
Keiro imagined that if Valrik still had his eyes, he’d be giving a truly formidable glare. Even if he could, Keiro still would have levelly stared him down. “She said,” Valrik ground out, “that I would lead, with you advising me.”
“You will heed the voice and the hands and the eye of Keiro Godson.” The words flowed through Keiro, empty and easy. “Does that sound familiar?”
“Yes.” Reluctance clipped the word short.
Keiro skimmed his eye across the others, the Ventallo who had cowered before their gods and babbled praises. He knew them, knew their names and their histories—but he couldn’t let those matter. They would understand, soon. “You should all remember Sororra’s words . . . but it seems you are in need of a reminder. You will be our voice, she said to me, and our eye, and our hands. Your word is as our word, and silence shall fall at your speaking. Your actions are as our actions, and none shall doubt you. All of you were there when she said this. Do you remember now?” They didn’t answer, but they didn’t need to. Their hatred was a sharp stench in the night air, their silence answer enough.
Keiro stepped past them and faced the gathered hundreds, the willful Fallen who had thought their faith was more important than their obedience. They should have known better, should have learned the lessons buried so shallowly in all the old stories passed through the Fallen. Sororra had no tolerance for betrayal, no mercy for traitors. My actions are their actions. My hands are not my own.
They all watched, as silent as the Ventallo, for they’d heard Keiro’s words just as clearly. From so far away, Keiro couldn’t make out individual faces, couldn’t see whether they gaped with fear or with fury, couldn’t tell if they were on the edge of fighting or fleeing. It didn’t matter, either way. “You have an excuse, all of you. You did not hear the Twins speak, did not hear them name me their voice. You can be excused your doubts—after all, it’s a poor servant who never questions the reasons for doing his master’s bidding. The Twins are kind, and merciful, and they will understand why you doubted that my words were truly theirs.” They must have been at least a little frightened, for Keiro could almost taste the relief that now washed through them. He quashed it. “They will not understand your disobedience, though—that’s one thing they cannot abide.”
Without turning away from the gathered Fallen, he called to one of the mages, Enil, to create a shield, watched the lines of its power crackle along the crown of the hill, surrounding Keiro and the Ventallo and the mages and the black-armored mercenaries. A line, drawn definitionally between those who obeyed and those who did not. He called on the other eight mages, called them each by name. With his voice still loud as thunder, and flat as a dead man’s gaze, Keiro commanded the mages, “Kill them all.”
If you’ve crossed her, run and weep . . .
They all doubted him, Keiro thought, all of them—doubted him even until the fires began to blossom among the gathered Fallen.
The Ventallo shouted, though their cries were not louder than the ones from below that rose shrieking into the night sky. With face fixed in a mask of impassivity, Keiro watched the fires spread—eight fires, tendrils reaching and joining and growing. A hand grabbed at Keiro’s shoulder, and without thinking, Keiro grabbed the offending wrist, twisted and yanked so that a wet pop registered briefly below all the screaming. No one else touched him. Some of the Ventallo battered themselves against the shield, straining to be free, but not so many of them. Fools did not survive long among the Fallen. The brave did not survive long at all.
Somewhere in the conflagration would be nervous Laseneo, who had wanted only to serve. But Keiro had not asked him to stay, and Keiro could show no mercy, and no remorse.
Sororra would not tolerate disobedience, and she would not tolerate those who allowed it. If the disobedient Fallen were here when she returned, she would kill them anyway. Was it so terrible, then, to take their lives sooner? Take them, to spare his own? The end result was no different, save that Keiro might survive it this way. He couldn’t—shouldn’t—wouldn’t be held accountable for their foolishness. They had chosen their fates.
A few of the Fallen broke free of the spreading inferno, stumbling shrieking into the surrounding hills. The mages—ever obedient—sent tongues of flame skittering after these runaways without even being told. Kill them all, Keiro had said. He could as well have shouted, Save me. Help me. Please.
He watched, his face an impassive mask, as a hundred and a half of his sworn brothers and sisters burned. It would surely draw Sororra’s eye, and the righteous fire of vengeance would drive all other thoughts from her mind.
It had to.
Once all the screaming had stopped, and the fires had turned the bodies to ash upon the scorched dirt, Keiro made a motion with his hand. His hand didn’t shake at all, the mask spreading like a creeping vine to hold him steady. The fires, never anything natural to begin with, died quickly as snuffed candles. The shield fell away, though none of the Ventallo made any move to pass beyond where its line had been drawn. Hot air rushed forward and hit Keiro like a slap, but his toes curled into the soft earth, and he didn’t stumble or sway. He made himself draw a dozen deep breaths, the heat and the burned-meat smell tearing at his throat, until he could speak without choking. Speak without letting the mask shatter.
“I am their voice, and their eyes, and their hands,” he said, and his voice still shook the air atop the hill. He had not asked Terstet to dismiss that spell. He needed to be sure they heard him. “My word is their word, and my actions are their actions.”
Finally he turned to face the Ventallo, looked at them without looking at them. He didn’t want to see their fear or their hatred or their horror. He didn’t want to see what he had done, reflected back to him in the emptiness of their eyes.
I’m so sorry, he whispered into the blank mouth of the mask.
“Heed me,” he said, “for I am the voice of the night.”