Riv sat at a table in the woodsman’s hut, staring at nothing as Fia stitched a deep gash in her shoulder. Fia’s baby, Avi, lay in a cot close by, snoring gently, oblivious to the momentous events that had happened around him.
Will Kol kill him, now, bury him beneath a cairn alongside his kin? My kin.
Will he execute me? Kill my friends?
Voices outside. Riv glowered at the door.
The battle was all something of a blur to her, a scarlet haze of blood and rage. That had faded now, replaced by exhaustion and shock, but she knew the red mist lurking in the dark places of her mind was still there, a hidden monster veiled in shadow. She had a vague memory of the world freezing at Aphra’s announcement, Kol’s sword hovering, his face twitching. She had felt her breath leave her, the adrenalin of the fight abandoning her, draining her strength and leaving her empty, drooping like a windless sail. Then hands reaching for her, lifting her, half-carrying her to the woodsman’s hut. There was blood under her fingernails, on her clothes, her wings, the stench of it in her nose, the copper tang of it in her mouth. Her body ached, a score of cuts and grazes. A few deeper wounds, like the one Fia was stitching for her. She didn’t care about any of it, hardly felt the pain of Fia’s hooked needle weaving in and out of her flesh. All she could focus on was…
She is our daughter.
Nausea churned in her belly.
Our daughter.
Raised voices outside, angry.
Is that Vald? What are they doing to my friends? Bleda? Jost?
The anger stirred and she half rose from her stool, realized that her wrists were chained behind her back. She snarled, flexed her arms, knew that she could have snapped ropes, but chains…
They just might take me a little longer.
Fia gripped her wrist.
“Please,” Fia whispered. “Wait. Go out there now and you will get us all killed.”
Riv stared at her, took a long, shuddering breath and sat back down, involuntary twitches passing through her wings, an expression of her mood.
The door opened and Aphra walked in, eyes fixed only on Riv.
She is our daughter…
Everything I know is a lie. Aphra, who are you? Are you truly my mother?
Dalmae was her mother, Aphra her sister, whom she had bickered with, admired, loved, fought with, teased, and worshipped more than a little.
Not anymore.
“I am sorry. So sorry,” Aphra said, a tremor in her voice. Tentatively, she reached a hand towards Riv.
Riv flinched away and Aphra’s hand jerked back to her side.
Fia tied off her stitching, bit off the thread, dabbed in some honey and bandaged the wound.
“There is so much to say, to tell you,” Aphra said.
“Aye. Of how you’ve lied to me, all of my life,” Riv grated through locked jaws.
A tear welled in Aphra’s eye, spilt onto her cheek.
“All I’ve done has only ever been to keep you safe,” Aphra whispered.
“Safe? That hasn’t worked out too well,” Riv observed. She pointedly looked at the fresh-stitched wound on her shoulder, the mass of cuts and grazes all over her body, the blood, everywhere. “Mam murdered.” She passed a slow ripple through her furled wings. “Me an abomination, at the top of the execution list.”
The door opened again and Kol entered. A fresh wave of hate and rage swelled in Riv’s chest at the sight of him, a new tension filling the air, the presence of imminent death a palpable thing. Two Ben-Elim followed Kol and remained standing at the door as he limped towards them. Riv felt a moment of satisfaction as she saw one of his eyes was swollen closed and mottled purple with bruising, a scab forming on his lip.
He stood before the table, looking between them. A murmur from the baby in his cot drew Kol’s eyes. Fia took a step, placed herself between Kol and the bairn. Kol stared at Fia a long moment. “Adonai’s child?” he asked.
“He is. His name is Avi,” Fia said defiantly.
“He should be cold and in the ground,” Kol said, a sneer curling his lip as he stared at Fia’s baby. “You knew the price when you joined with Adonai. I made it clear to you.”
“You did,” Fia said, “and I agreed because I was a fool, infatuated with Adonai, blinded by the radiance of you Ben-Elim. I felt I was being loved by a god.”
Kol smiled. “In Elyon’s absence, we are the closest you mortals will ever come to a god.”
His arrogance makes me want to vomit. Or kill him, thought Riv.
“So why have you not fulfilled your part of the bargain?” Kol asked, looking genuinely confused. “You may love us, but consequences such as… this—” Kol gestured—“cannot see the light of day. Israfil would have had our heads, and yours. He may be dead, but there are others amongst the Ben-Elim who share his puritanical ways.”
“Love changed my mind,” Fia said, eyes flickering to Avi and back to Kol.
Kol gave Fia a disgusted look and took a shuddering breath. His gaze shifted to Riv, to her wings. He shook his head.
She glared at him, tested her chains. They were infuriatingly strong.
“We have much to talk about,” Kol said. “Sit down, all of you,” he muttered. “And you, behave yourself,” he said to Riv. With a grimace of pain, he sat, facing all three of them.
“So, Aphra, explain our daughter.”
“It’s plain enough,” Aphra said, her eyes dipping to the floor. An indrawn breath, shoulders straightening, eyes rising to meet Kol’s.
His mouth twisted. “That cannot be, I would have known—” His eyes narrowed and he snapped his fingers. “When Dalmae took you on campaign to the Agullas Mountains?”
“Aye.” Aphra nodded.
“Lorin?” Riv said. All her life she had thought the White-Wing had been her father. She had asked Aphra to tell her tales of her da, so many times.
“Lorin was not your father,” Aphra said, looking at Riv. Aphra drew in a deep breath, as she had when Riv was about to leap into the icy waters of the river Vold, north of Drassil. “He was my father, but not yours. Kol is your father.”
Riv just stared at Aphra, unable to squeeze words past the constriction in her throat.
“And Dalmae?” Kol said, leaning back with his arms folded across his chest. “What was her part in all of this?”
“It was all my mother’s—your grandmother,” Aphra directed to Riv. “It was all her idea.”
My grandmother. Another new fact that felt startlingly, shockingly, wrong.
“We were on campaign in the Agullas Mountains,” Aphra was saying, “fighting an uprising of rebels who wanted the land of Tenebral reformed, wanted to split from the Ben-Elim’s Land of the Faithful. My father, Lorin, was slain during an ambush. We were grieving, Mam and I, and at the same time I knew that your seed was growing in my belly, had known before we left Drassil. The grief of losing my father… I was a mess, felt at my wits’ end, and it just spilt out. I told Mam everything. About you, Kol, about the coterie of Ben-Elim that you had gathered to yourself, those that shared your… tastes. The secret meetings, the mock campaigns you took us on.”
“There are many of us,” Kol said with a twitching smile, a quick glance to the two Ben-Elim standing guard at the door. “And even more, now that Israfil is no longer around to take our wings or our heads.” His smile withered. “But how did you hide it? Even amongst Dalmae’s hundred, tongues would have wagged. Your belly…”
“Mother handed her command down, gave it to her second, and said we were taking my father’s body back to his kin in Ripa. Which we did, but then we left and lived alone in the forests around Balara for some months.” She paused, looked at Riv. “They were happy times. And then you were born, which was my greatest joy.” Her hand reached out again, hesitant, stopping at Riv’s dark look. She sucked in a long breath.
“Then we went back to Dalmae’s hundred, where she told them she had been pregnant with Lorin’s bairn. They rejoiced for her, and just like that, I had a new sister and was no longer a mother. Except in here.” She put fingertips over her heart.
“Lie upon lie upon lie,” Riv growled.
“I had to,” Aphra said to her desperately, “it was that or see you murdered. You just heard Kol talk of the agreement between us privileged few who were invited to partake of the Ben-Elim’s greatness. We could love the Ben-Elim, but if we ended up with child, then we had to eradicate that… consequence, as Kol put it. That was no choice at all for me.”
“It is not much of a sacrifice to make.” Kol shrugged.
“You may have become flesh,” Aphra growled, “but you are not acquainted with that quality that makes us human. Love. Bonds of family and friendship.”
Kol snorted. “Whatever frail, pathetic emotion guided you in your deception, you did it well. I never knew or suspected a thing,” he said, blowing between his teeth.
“You could not,” Aphra said to him. To both of them she said, “Else Riv’s corpse would have been out there lying beneath a cairn alongside all of the others. I could not, would not, do that.”
“There is still time for that,” Kol said, shooting Riv a flat look.
“Like to see you try,” Riv growled, rattling the chains that bound her wrists.
“You are an abomination, Elyon’s Lore demands your execution,” Kol snarled.
“Yes, but I am your abomination, the get of a sin that you have committed, for which the same Lore demands that you should be executed, too.”
Kol and Riv glared at one another, hatred leaking in waves from both of them, their malice towards one another almost a physical thing. Then he did something that took Riv by surprise. He leaned back and laughed.
“A fair point,” he said. “Fortunately for me,” Kol continued, “I am now as good as the Lord Protector of the Land of the Faithful, so I do not have to be so rigorous about maintaining a Lore that would see my head on a spike. You, however, are a problem. Lore or no Lore, there is no hiding your wings.” He took a moment to consider them. “You could never pass for a Ben-Elim, they are dapple grey, not white, and of course,” he added, “you’re a woman.”
Riv blinked at that; all of the Ben-Elim were male. She felt abruptly so alone, a half-breed, but also the only woman to have wings.
The joy of flight is a blessing, but in all other ways I am cursed.
Kol shook his head. “Even forgetting your wings, your gender and your… heritage, you have slain Ben-Elim, taken the lives of the Faithful—”
“As have you,” Riv interrupted.
“Ah, all this one does is keep pointing out my shortcomings. I am not perfect, true,” Kol said, shaking his head and spreading his arms wide.
Is he enjoying this?
“But you have slain my followers, out there in the glade,” Kol continued. “There must be a price for that. And you are a problem that I can only see is best solved by taking your head and burying you in a ditch.”
“There are other options,” Aphra said.
“Yes. I could bury you in a ditch,” Riv said bitterly to Kol.
Aphra slammed a fist on the table. “Shut up, Riv,” she said. “You’re not helping.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “I am trying to save you.”
“Don’t bother, liar,” Riv retorted.
“Life is not as clear as you see it,” Aphra said. “You would be hard-pressed to find someone who has not lied, at some point in their life. All lie, it is the why that is important.”
“Israfil never lied,” Riv said.
“And look where that got him,” Kol said.
Riv turned her glower upon him.
“It has been a dark, confusing time. Sometimes there is no easy or obvious path.” Aphra sighed, rubbing a hand across her forehead, squeezing her temples.
“Seems simple enough to me,” Riv said. “Israfil was the Lord Protector, Kol schemed and murdered him. And my mother.” Her lips twisted. “Grandmother.”
“The impetuosity of youth,” Kol observed, “when all is so clear, so easy to judge.”
“Riv, please see, please think. I have lived sixteen years with you, a path of joy as I have watched you grow, and sadness that I could not hold you, as I yearned to, always stepping aside, to be the sister, not the mother. But that was better than not having you at all, always so much better.”
“But you’ve lied to me.”
“Yes, I have,” Aphra said, “to keep you alive. You would do the same, too, for someone you loved.”
Riv felt something shift in her then, the words crashing into her like a battering ram at the doors of her heart. A swell of emotion that for a change was not rage. The doors held fast, but something in them had cracked, a hairline fracture through her rage and resolve. She ground her teeth, angry with herself for feeling even a moment of weakness in her hatred, for the lies Aphra had told, the terrible damage she had wrought. Yet part of her understood, knew that there was a logic to Aphra’s actions.
But it has all led to Mother’s, to Dalmae’s death. To Israfil’s death. To changing everything.
“I hate you,” Riv said to Aphra. Then looked slow and cold at Kol. “And I want to kill you.”
Kol threw his head back and belly-laughed.
“Tell me something I don’t already know,” he said when his laughter eased enough that he could speak.
“The way forward,” Aphra said doggedly.
“Aye,” Kol nodded. “As much as this is all very entertaining, I have a realm to rule, and it is not simple, believe me. You think this is complicated? You should try ruling the Banished Lands for a day.” He pinched the top of his nose between finger and thumb. “Technically, I am not even ruler yet. I have not been officially named Lord Protector.” He smiled at them. “But I will be. So, Aphra. You said that I have options. The obvious one is to kill Riv, Fia and… this.” Kol gestured with a hand at Avi in his cot.
“Do that and you will have to kill me, also,” Aphra said, and for the first time there was no diplomacy in her voice. Just a fact.
Kol stared at her, his face shifting to something cold and aloof. Calculating.
“I could do that,” Kol said.
“Aye. But you would have to kill my hundred, as well.”
“Yes. A difficult task, and one where I would take losses. But, again, I could do that.”
Aphra nodded. “In doing so you would be killing an ally and losing a hundred swords that would stand beside you in the difficult days ahead.”
Kol dipped his head, an acknowledgement.
“And then there would be the matter of the parchments I have written,” Aphra continued, “that will be sent far and wide, telling of what you have done, including fathering half-breeds.”
Kol’s lips twisted, shifting to fury.
“You would threaten me?”
“As you did me, to join you against Israfil, told me it was in my interest to support you, that I would die if I did not. This is no different.” Aphra’s hands didn’t move, but Riv could see the threat of violence rolling from Aphra in waves.
“I did not threaten you. I told you Israfil would execute you if he found out our secret.”
Aphra snorted. “It was a threat.”
Kol shrugged, dismissing the point. “Where are these parchments?”
“Safe,” Aphra said, “with people I trust. The first place they will reach is Dun Seren. The Order of the Bright Star would find it all most interesting.”
“You would jeopardize the war against the Kadoshim?”
“I would not care. I would be dead, and all that I love would be dead.”
“Humans.” Kol sighed. “Always ruled by your emotions.” He drummed fingers on the table. “And the alternative?”
“Change things.” Aphra shrugged. “A new order, where the boundaries between Ben-Elim and humankind are not so… fixed. That is what you are doing now, anyway. This would just be more obvious.”
“Yes, you have that right,” Kol said, looking at Riv’s wings.
“You have carried out a coup, killed Israfil, taken the lordship of the Ben-Elim for yourself. You are in charge, now.”
“Yes, but it doesn’t mean I can do this. Not all of the Ben-Elim are behind me; my power is not consolidated yet.”
“It will be. You have a thousand Ben-Elim declaring their support for you already. The rest will follow. You said yourself, now that Israfil is dead, more will be happy for your new way to begin. You and your kind will be enjoying the pleasures this world of flesh gives, having relations with humankind, as you have already been doing for a hundred years, but more openly. But there will still be consequences, there will be more bairns born, more than ever before. You cannot keep it all a secret any longer, or do you plan to kill them all?”
“No,” Kol said, “but I was planning on taking the steps on this path slowly, a gentle slope into change, not a cliff-leap to jagged rocks and possible execution.”
“Better to just do it, get it over with and enjoy the fruits of your victory.”
He rubbed his stubbled chin thoughtfully. “And there is Elyon’s Lore,” he added.
“Is it really Elyon’s Lore? Or is it the Ben-Elim’s lore, fashioned to create a world that suited the Ben-Elim? To establish the boundaries that you wanted, the obedience you needed to fight the Kadoshim?”
Kol raised an eyebrow. “Good point.” He smiled. “Clever as well as beautiful.”
I cannot believe what I am hearing.
Aphra is proposing Kol change the doctrines that have ruled our lives for a hundred years.
But if they are a lie, made up to keep control, then why not change them? Why follow them at all.
“You change Elyon’s Lore as you are changing everything else,” Aphra said. “You would not need to declare it to the world, just quietly remove those parts from the texts. What is it you have often said to me? People are sheep. So, you lead, and everyone else will follow.”
Kol inhaled, long and slow, then turned his eyes onto Riv.
“And what do you say to all of this, daughter?” he asked her.
Riv wanted to punch him in the face for that, though at the same time she felt some strange reluctance seep through her limbs.
Daughter.
He’s my father.
And I hate him.
“What do you want of me?” Riv said, her gaze flitting from Kol to Aphra.
“That you refrain from trying to kill me, if I take those chains off,” Kol said.
That will be hard.
“To understand,” Aphra said.
“He killed Dalmae,” Riv whispered, sparks of hatred fizzing out of the fiery rage within her.
“Yes, he did. It was a battle, she died. My heart is broken for her loss, a thousand times over. But I would not lose you, too.” Aphra’s hand reached out, touched Riv’s leg, and this time Riv did not pull away.
Part of her understood Aphra’s logic, knew that there was sense and truth in it, and now there was a part of her that wanted to hold Aphra, to hug her and squeeze her and never let her go.
But the other part of her wanted to punch, smash and stab something.
No, not something. Kol.
I just feel so angry, more than I’ve ever felt before. Kol was a hero to me, someone I admired, no, revered, respected as a warrior, a leader. Kol is nothing like the man I thought him to be. He is a liar and a murderer.
I can understand what Aphra is saying, how she has been caught in a place with no way out, has made choices for those she loves. For me.
And she’s right, I would do much for those whom I love. But would I do anything, as Aphra has for me?
“What of Bleda?” Riv said slowly. “Of my friends, Vald and Jost?”
“What of them?”
“They are only here because they have chosen to help me. They should not be harmed for that,” Riv said, trying to hold back the rage that she felt at Kol’s indifferent response.
“They have made poor choices.” He scowled. “Slain my Ben-Elim; that cannot go unpunished.”
“Bleda’s oathsworn lie dead out there, too,” Riv growled.
Hurt Bleda and I shall break these chains and wrap them around your throat, make your eyes pop from your skull.
“Punish Bleda and you risk war with Erdene and the Sirak,” Aphra added. “You would win, but how easily? And do you need a war right now, with the Kadoshim stirring, and your position needing consolidating?”
A silence.
“No, I do not need a war,” Kol conceded.
“People die in battle,” Aphra said. “Afterwards there is reconciliation. Pardon them all, for the sake of peace, grant an absolution to all who have fought in these troubles.”
“Peace, absolution,” Kol echoed. “My instinct is to exterminate all who have caused me grief, but there is much wisdom in what you’ve said. Aphra, for a pretty human, there is some wisdom in that skull of yours.”
Aphra said nothing, just looked at Kol.
“And you,” Kol said, turning to Riv. “Would you cooperate? Not attempt to kill me? Swear your oath to me?”
Another silence.
All I have thought about is killing you. But I do not have to do it straight away.
“I will not try to kill you,” Riv said sullenly.
Not yet, she promised herself.
“If Bleda and the others are not harmed,” she added.
“Your oath,” Kol said, more firmly. “I must have your oath, swearing fealty to me. Loyalty and obedience.”
How can I swear an oath to him? Bind myself to him? I would truly be giving up my vengeance. Turning my back on Dalmae.
But she is dead, gone, as Aphra said. And Bleda is alive, Jost and Vald are alive. But for how long?
“Your friends will thank you,” Kol said.
Riv drew in a deep breath, felt she was about to leap into a pit of adders.
“And my oath.”
Kol held her eyes a moment longer, then nodded to himself. “Good,” he said. “Then swear your oath, and seal it in blood.”