Days of Blood & Starlight

The heat of the day was as powerful as a hand pressing on her head, but still she had put on a sleeved tunic to cover her bruised arms, and she’d slung her knife belt on over that. Her crescent-moon blades hung at her hips, a reassurance that she wished she didn’t need. All the chimaera were armed at all times, so she didn’t stand out; her “comrades” didn’t need to know it was them that she feared.

Almost as soon as she entered the great hall, someone whispered, “Traitor.”

It came behind her back, a hiss too toneless to place. It pierced her, though she gave no outward sign, continuing on and hearing holes gape open in conversations. It might have come from Hvitha, who was serving himself food, or Lisseth or Nisk, who were already at the table. But Karou’s money was on Ten, for no better reason than that Ten, a wolf-aspect female and the lone surviving member of Thiago’s retinue, was friendlier to her face than most. Which of course made her totally suspect.

I love my life, thought Karou.

If it had been Ten, though, the she-wolf was all innocence as she hailed Karou and offered her a plate. “I was just going to bring it up to you,” she said.

Karou gave her a suspicious look that took in the plate, as well.

Ten didn’t miss it. “You think I’d poison you? Well. Wouldn’t I be sorry next time I died?” She laughed, a husky sound from her wolf jaws. “Thiago asked me to,” she explained. “He’s meeting with his captains or I’m sure he would have done it himself.”

Karou took the plate of couscous and vegetables. That was another benefit of being here: In Eretz food had been hard to come by; they had subsisted mainly on boiled jess, which had the mouthfeel of modeling clay and not much more flavor. Here, a battered truck served Karou for occasional trips to buy bulk bags of grain, dates, and vegetables in the nearest towns, and behind the great hall a dynasty of stringy chickens now ruled over a small courtyard.

“Thanks,” Karou said. Thiago had brought her dinner several nights now so that her work would not be interrupted, and she had to admit it was easier than coming down to the dubious reception of her comrades—on top of which, the Wolf had tithed. His arms were almost as bruised as her own now, covered in blotches and blooms from the palest yellow to the deepest purple, overlapping and ever-changing.

“An art form all its own,” he had called them, and paid her the strangest—and ickiest—compliment of her life: “You make beautiful bruises.”

This evening, however, he had not come, and it was when she realized that she was waiting for him— waiting for the Wolf—that Karou had slammed to her feet and gone straight out the window.

She let Ten guide her to the table. The hall wasn’t crowded at this hour. A quick scan and she gauged that half the soldiers here were her own handiwork. It was easy to tell: wings, sheer size. There was Amzallag: hers; Oora: not. Nisk and Lisseth, both hers; Hvitha and Bast: not. Not yet, anyway. But there was a reason the hissed traitor had come behind Karou’s back: they all knew that in the days, weeks, possibly even hours to come, their souls would pass through her hands. One of them might even be walking to the pit with Thiago tonight; who knew? What they did know was that they were going to die; they were used to it.

They were not used to trusting a traitor with their resurrection.

“Nectar?” said Ten. A joke. She gestured to the big drum that held river water, and scooped Karou up a cup. After they were settled in their places, she said, “I saw Razor earlier.”

“Oh?” Karou was instantly wary. Razor was a Heth bone priest she had brought back that morning from the stash of thuribles. It had been a tricky resurrection, one of Thiago’s special requests.

Ten nodded. “He was perplexed by his head.”

“He’ll get used to it.”

“But a lion’s head, Karou? On a Heth?”

As if Karou didn’t know what kind of heads Heth had. They were fairly horrific, actually, with great compound eyes and scissoring ant mandibles that resembled crab claws. How had Brimstone handled that? Karou had no insect teeth in her supply, and she had never known him to have any, either. “Thiago wanted him. Lion was the best I could do on short notice.” And better than he deserves, she thought. Razor was a stranger to her, but she had sensed a dark character while she worked. Every soul made a unique impression on her mind, and his was… sticky. Why Thiago had made him a priority she didn’t know, and hadn’t asked, as she hadn’t asked about the others. She did her work and the Wolf did his.

“Well,” allowed Ten, “I suppose he is much prettier now.”

“Right?” said Karou. “I’m expecting his thank-you any day.”

“Yes, well, don’t sheathe your claws,” said Ten. It was a chimaera expression, roughly equivalent to don’t hold your breath, though more menacing, with the implied necessity of self-defense. Good advice, thought Karou.

Her mouth was full when Ten said, casually, “Thiago suggested that I help you.”

The couscous felt like Play-Doh on Karou’s tongue. She couldn’t answer, and struggled to swallow.

“Well,” said Ten. “It’s an enormous undertaking for one person, isn’t it?”

Karou finally swallowed her Play-Doh. Brimstone was one person, she thought, but she didn’t say it. She knew she didn’t fare well in that comparison. Besides, Brimstone had not been alone, had he?

“I would be your assistant,” Ten went on. “Like the Naja woman, what was her name?” At this blithe mention of Issa, Karou stiffened. Ten didn’t notice, and didn’t wait for a response. “I could take care of the menial things to leave you free for the part only you can do.”

“No,” said Karou, sharp as a bite. You’re not Issa. “Tell Thiago thank you, but —”

“Oh. I believe he meant for you to accept.”

Well, of course Thiago meant for her to accept; he meant for everyone to accept his will and enact it at once. And she did need help. But Ten? Karou couldn’t stand the thought of the she-wolf always at her elbow, watching her.

There was something savage about Ten, about most of the company, in fact, that Karou was having a hard time reconciling with her memories of her chimaera kindred—had they always been like this and she just couldn’t see it? There had been, for instance, the matter of the sweet arza tree, not long after she’d joined with them. Nothing sweet about it anymore, the tree was burned like everything else around Loramendi, huge and skeletal as a great bone hand clawing up from the earth. There had been charred orbs swaying in its boughs, and Karou hadn’t understood what they were until she’d heard some soldiers talking of using “the arza fruit” for archery practice.

She hadn’t even thought—stupid, stupid—before saying, “Oh, that’s fruit? It’s big.”

The way they’d looked at her. She couldn’t recall it without a scald of shame. It was Ten who had said, “They’re heads.”

Karou had blanched. “You’re shooting at heads?” All she could think was: But they’re ours. They must have been chimaera, and Ten had asked, “What else would we do with them?”

A beat passed in incredulity before Karou said, “We could bury them.”

To which Ten had replied, with vicious zeal, “I’d rather avenge them.”

It was a fearsome thing to say, and Karou had gotten a chill—and a small spark of admiration, she had to admit—but it kept coming back to her later, and her admiration didn’t last. Why not both? Bury the dead and avenge them. It was barbaric to leave corpses lying about, and she knew this wasn’t simply her human feeling.

She experienced a queer collision of reactions these days. Karou’s were foremost, and most immediate, but Madrigal’s were hers, too: her two selves, coming together with a strange kind of vibration. It wasn’t disharmony, exactly. Karou was Madrigal, but her reactions were informed by her human life and all the luxuries of peace, and things that might have been commonplace to Madrigal could still jar her at first. Burnt heads strung from a sweet arza tree? If Madrigal hadn’t seen exactly that, she had witnessed enough horror that it had no power to shock her.