god may die? Honestly, Barnabas. How can we let a god like that live?'
'The Rethari will ascend, and the days of man-'
'Will be damned! And the Rethari should rise up! If this is the best we can do with that divinity, then let them have it for a while. Maybe we'll learn something of atonement, then.' The rest of the room had pulled back. The crowd of whiteshirts at the door, the troupe of coldmen. Even Barnabas. Blasphemy felt good. It felt honest, for once. 'You don't believe this, do you, Fratriarch? That we should honor the memory of Morgan by honoring his murderer? That the Betrayer should be protected because he's the only god we have left?'
'The alternative is unacceptable,' he said, sadly.
'You speak as if there actually are alternatives. As if choosing between no god and that god were a choice.'
'Eva, please.' He raised his hammer between us, holding the shaft parallel to the ground, one wide hand under the steel head, the other grasping the base. 'Please, no.'
I stood straight as I could. There was a heaviness to the room, a cold void that was waiting to be filled with blood and fire. I drew my sword, and the rasp of it tore through me like a hook.
'Do what you must, Fratriarch. But I will not stand aside.'
There was silence all around us. He bowed his head and touched a dead finger to his forehead. No one moved.
'I am not going to fight you, Eva Forge. The time for that is past. I think they hoped that I would, when they plucked me from the grave. They did not believe you would be willing to strike me down.' He laid the head of his hammer on the floor with a mighty thud, and crossed his hands on the base of the shaft. 'They were wrong, on both accounts. These others may try to oppose you, but I will not.'
There was half a breath where the six coldmen exchanged querying glances with their goggle eyes. They had not even raised their hands before I struck. Best not give them the luxury of certainty. I invoked as I moved, striking between words, rushing forward and falling back with the rhythm of my invokation.
'The Fields of Erathis! The River that Roared and Bled! Having-warry, Belhem, the Legions of Tin-Terra, the Legions of the Scale!' The first coldman fell, even as my blade passed through him and the next one was coming up. 'Morgan stood there, he stood against them all. He stood as the warrior.' A spinning block, blade's edge against his knee, blade's flat against his head, pommel to chest, upstroke and then down. He fell. 'The champion, the hero, the hunter. My blade is bound to him!' And I realized I was just talking, but my blade traveled on. The next two were circling me carefully, the final two rushing up to join the circle. 'I am bound to him! To the battle, to the grave, to the hunt! I commit myself to blade and to soul, and never may the Warrior die!'
And something happened. I knew Morgan was dead, but his power lived on. This was something I had never been taught in monastery, never really thought about. Amon was dead, and yet his power was all around us, in the machines that fed the city, in the Cants of Making and Unmaking. Alexander lived, and his scions flourished. But Morgan was dwindling. Because we had bound ourselves to the memory of his days, and not the glory that had come after, to the battles that were fought in his name, with his power. To the heroes who had followed in him. I had been serving a dead man, rather than the living power that had sustained the Cult since his death. And yet I could feel the power of Morgan welling up around me, though I was speaking no invokation I had been taught.
'I bind myself to Barnabas,' I howled, 'hammers flashing, battle raging. To Tomas, to Isabel.' I racked my brains for the history of the Cult, for the great Fratriarchs and Paladins who had come before me, and after Morgan. 'Clovis on the ramparts of Messit. Pure and High Yelden, Paladin of the OverArch. Katherine, Kaitlyn. Sweet Anna, Bloody Jennifer. To the Paladins who held the walls of Dalling Gate for a hundred days, and the Paladins who marched against the Rethari, to bring the traitor Amon to justice. May they be forgiven. May we all be forgiven, and justified, and remembered forever. May the Warrior never die!'
And I struck, gods, I struck like lightning and fire and stone and blood. I struck with rage and purity, the light of three hundred years of divine service coursing through my skin and fire arcing from my blade, my face, from the strength of my arms. I blasted that room, those who stood against me, those who didn't get out of the way. That room saw the binding of this new god.
When I stopped, I was alone. The room was a ruin of broken bodies and fragments of arcane and noetic light, glimmering like snowflakes. Barnabas stood at the center of the room, hands still crossed on his hammer, head bowed, eyes closed. He was spattered with the black, cold blood of those monsters.
'What you have done, Eva, cannot be undone.' He sighed deeply, hefted his hammer, and walked out of the room. As he went, he turned back to me, just once. 'I hope you can carry this through. There is no other choice.'
When he was gone I stood in the center of the room and gathered my wits. Energy was thrumming through my body and through my blade. There was a noise at the door, and I turned to it. A whiteshirt, peering into the room. I moved quickly to the corridor. There were a lot of them, and they had bullistics.
'What will you do, to stand against the Warrior?' I growled. Pulses of heaviness rolled off me, pushing against the walls and the floor, pushing against this cadre of gentleman soldiers.
The front row of Healers popped open their shotguns and let the shells clatter to the floor. Behind them, another whiteshirt emptied his clip, and then another. Soon the floor was rattling with unspent cartridges. When the last threat vanished-and I could feel that diminishment in them, could feel the empty weapons all around-when they were defanged, I nodded and stepped back into the room. Malcolm, who had retreated to the other side of the dome, came tottering back into sight. He was hugging the little archive against his chest.
'I'm not sure what to think of that, lady. I wish you hadn't killed my friends, but I don't think I'd have missed this for anything.'
'I have freed you. I will free all of the Scholars. You may go.'
'You'll probably want to rethink that. We've been under heel for two hundred years. That's an awful powerful grudge to bear.' He scratched his brow and nodded. 'And we aren't all pleasant old men. Hardly any of us are, actually.'
'Be that as it may, I will see the wrong done to you righted. It is only just.'
'Just isn't the best course, always. But I'm not going to stop you. Do you mind-'
He stopped and turned to the dome. One of the pressurized doors unsealed, and a cloud of fog vented into the room.
'There was someone in there? You sent some poor damn fool into the mind's archive? What the hell were you thinking!' He dropped the archive and ran to the bottom rung.
'She's an Amonite,' I said. 'She'll be fine.'
'Oh no she won't. Hell, that'll just make it worse. Brothers damn hell, lady, do you just go around pushing all the buttons in a factory?'
The door finally creaked open. Cassandra stepped into view. My heart jumped. She was hurt. Something was wrong with her.
She stood just inside the door to the dome, wavering slightly. The pressure suit hung in tatters, her pale skin steaming in the air. The bloody handprint between her breasts pulsed through the remains of her clothing. She put a hand against the dome to steady herself and ripped the suit's mask from her head. Long black curls tumbled out and around her face. She was hunched over, like she was catching her breath. When she looked up, I could see that her eyes were nothing but ash.
'Cass!' I yelped, and jumped for the ladder. She collapsed forward, skinning her knee on the iron sill of the door before pinwheeling out into open air. I collided with her falling body, and we landed in a heap. I wrenched myself around and cradled her head, then laid her down. She looked up at me with empty eyes, tears that were nothing but soot smearing across her temples.
'Cassandra, what happened?'
'Amon,' she whispered. 'Amon lives.'
17
he girl is mad,' Malcolm snapped. He stood over the both of us, kneading his
