Days of Blood & Starlight

The incense was lit. Zuzana handed it to her, and Karou’s hand shook setting it on the brow of the body. Smoke made a fluting trail upward before dispersing on a puff of Karou’s breath. The scent of sulfur; this had given Brimstone his name. Karou wondered what it had been before he became the resurrectionist, when he was a thrall in the pain pits of the magi.

The door shuddered lightly as Ten tried pushing it open and met with unexpected resistance. An instant of startled silence, and then a fist thudded on the wood. “Karou?”

She looked up sharply. It wasn’t Ten. It was Thiago. Damn.

“Yes?” she called.

“I’ve just come up to see if you need anything. How is the door blocked?”

How indeed, thought Karou, who had never had the opportunity to ask after her crossbar. He thought he had taken care of her irritating need for privacy? Well, there is more than one way to skin a cat. Or a wolf. She said only, “Just a second.”

A further pause, Karou fumbling with the thurible—she winced when the chain rattled, afraid he would somehow guess what she was doing—and then his fist came down on the door again. “Karou?”

“Juuust a minute,” she sang, her voice covering the scrape of the thurible twisting open.

She dropped to her knees beside the body. Watched, waited.

The soul effused from the vessel, overwhelming her with its presence. It was fireflies in a garden. It was eyes shining from shadows. It was flicker and fork, honey and venom, slit pupils and smooth, sun-warmed enamel.

It was Issa.

Karou was conscious of the beats of her own heart, one, two, three; distinct, almost painful pulses. Four, five, and the serpent-woman opened her new eyes and blinked.

Karou held in a sob; time hung still, the sob expanded within her. Thiago hit the door harder. “Let me in,” he said, his voice cloaked in calm that didn’t manage to hide its spiking anger. Karou didn’t answer. She held Issa’s gaze.

What has she been through? How did she die? What does she know? What will she say?

Down the length of the new body, flesh that had been inert came slowly alive. The subtle contraction of muscles, twitch of fingers, the beat of a heart. Issa’s chest rose with the intake of her first breath. Her lips parted, and her first exhalation—her very first—carried the words Sweet girl.

Karou’s sob escaped and her face found the place it wanted, against Issa’s neck where human flesh transitioned to cobra hood—the odd mix of warm and cool that Karou had known since she was a child and Issa had held her on one hip, rocked her to sleep, played with her, taught her to speak and sing, loved her and been half a mother to her. Yasri had been the other half; between them the two chimaera women had raised her. Twiga had never taken much of a role, and Brimstone…

Brimstone. The instant Karou had touched Issa’s soul back at the river she had known her, and had felt the queerest split decision of emotions: elation and defeat, love and disappointment, joy and savage despair. Neither side had overtipped the other. Even now the emotions were a balanced scale. Issa was not Brimstone, but… Issa was Issa, and Karou held her and felt her arms, shaky and uncertain and new, climb up and wrap around her in return.

“You found me,” Issa whispered, and from her queer balance of happy and sad, the words tipped Karou into confusion. Because she hadn’t found her.

Akiva had.

But there was no time to think about that now. Karou sat up and back, in the process giving the serpent- woman a clear view of her surroundings. When she saw Mik and Zuzana, her eyes went wide. She smiled, and, oh, her face was so lovely—it was not the face that Karou had known and loved, but it was similar in its quiet Madonna beauty, its flawless skin and sweetness—and her delight was so instant and pure. She knew Zuzana the same way Zuzana knew her: from Karou’s sketchbooks; Mik had not been in the picture yet when the portals burned. Zuze gave a dopey smile and half wave, and Issa let out a rusty little laugh.

Softly, Karou said, “Issa, I have a lot to tell you, as I hope you have a lot to tell me, but that’s Thiago—” She gestured to the door just as it juddered from a low kick.

Issa’s eyes clouded at the mention of the Wolf. “He lives,” she said.

“Yeah. And he’s going to be very surprised to see you.” Hello, understatement. It was imperative that Thiago not find out how Issa came to be here; Karou said as much, and helped Issa to a semisitting position. Then she motioned to Mik to take hold of one of the wood planks while she took the other.

“Karou,” said Thiago, and his false calm had all rubbed off. “Open this door. Please.”

Karou nodded to Mik, and they wordlessly pulled away the boards and stood back so that Thiago’s next kick blasted it open, startling him—and Ten behind him—with its gunshot report.

“Good morning?” said Karou, making it a query as she looked with puzzled innocence at the blasted-open door. “Sorry. I was finishing a resurrection. I didn’t want to be interrupted halfway.” She looked to Ten. “You know how I am about that.”

Thiago’s brow furrowed. “A resurrection? Who?” He cast a glance into the room and saw only Zuzana and Mik. The open door concealed Issa, but Karou shoved it back, and when Thiago saw who was there, his eyes widened, then narrowed. Ten’s, too, before she turned a look of fierce suspicion on Karou.

Before either could speak, Karou said, in a tone of mild reproach, “You never told me Issa’s soul was in there.” She gestured to the pile of thuribles. “Do you know how much faster the resurrections would have been going if I’d had her helping me all along instead of Ten?”

She had the satisfaction of seeing the White Wolf speechless. He opened his mouth to reply and nothing came out. “It isn’t,” he said finally. “It couldn’t be.”

“It is,” said Karou. “As you see.”

There was, of course, no possible way that Issa’s soul could have been in that stash of thuribles, and they both knew it. Those were all soldiers who had been under Thiago’s command and died at the battle of Cape Armasin; Issa would never, could never have been among them. Yet here she was, and Karou watched Thiago’s expression flash from astonishment to confusion to frustration as he tried to come up with a way to account for it.

He settled on disbelief. “Whose soul is it really, and why have you wasted resources on such a body?”

It was Issa herself who answered him. “Such a body?” she asked, looking down at herself. “Since when have Naja been a waste of resources?” It was a fair question; Issa herself was not a warrior, but plenty of her kind were, like Nisk and Lisseth.

Thiago’s reply was curt. “Since we developed the pressing need to fly, and Naja have no wings.”

“And where are your wings?” Issa shot back. She turned to look Ten up and down. “And yours?”

More fair questions. Thiago didn’t answer her. “Who are you?” he demanded.

“I assure you, Thiago, it is as Karou says.” Unsteadily she took possession of her body, raising herself to rear up slowly on her serpent coil, which was banded muscle as thick around as a woman’s hips. Already, the tip of her tail twitched in the way Karou remembered. The marvel of creation struck her as it hadn’t in many weeks; she had gotten so worn down that she’d lost her amazement—for resurrection, for magic, for herself. She had remade Issa. She had done this.

Issa told Thiago, “I am Issa of the Naja, and for eighty-four years I served at Brimstone’s side. In that time how many bodies did he craft for you? The dauntless Wolf. No less than fifteen, surely. And you never once said thank you.” Her beautiful smile made it sound not like a scold, but almost a fond remembrance.

“Thank him? For what? He did his job, and I did mine.”

“Indeed, and you asked no thanks, either. Or adulation.”

There was no sarcasm in Issa’s voice. Her tone was as sweet as her smile, but anyone who knew Thiago at all would understand that she mocked him. Adulation was wine to the White Wolf; more: It was water and air.