Ba’al climbed into the skiff where the others were waiting and checked over his belongings for his pipe and opium lamp. “You sure are compassionate for a pirate,” he said.
“Every man has a conscience. You paid more than your fare for such an easy crossing, and I don’t want your ghosts haunting me on the sea.”
“Just lower the boat.”
“Thank you,” Adam said, bowing in place of the bishop. Adnihilo felt the same, but his gaze was locked onto the blackened remains and cracked clay husks of his home. His eyes panned left, to the southern ward, and he wondered if anything remained of the ruined palace or the graveyard of swords or the last sacred altar. Childish thoughts—he put them out of mind and turned his focus to the city center. It was as she said; the Walls of Barzakh had fallen. “It doesn’t look the same,” the pastor’s son noted, pausing as the skiff hit the ocean. “Without the Bridge, I mean. Can’t see the steeple either. It truly is gone.”
“Like Iisah after the Beast,” commented Lilum. “And like Iisah, she will rise again in the glory of her Father.”
“And wage war against the heathens until it is He who rules over land and sea,” Adnihilo finished for the priestess.
Ba’al spat into the water. “So she’s finally won you over, huh?”
The half-blood stared into empty air where once the vultures circled the towering black stones. “I know my place,” he answered.
“Fate is in God’s hands,” Adam added. “Whatever happens now is His will—and us merely instruments.”
The bishop asked the Tsaazaari oarsman, “What do you think of this religious fervor? Adorable, isn’t it?” The oarsman said nothing, kept his head down and his eyes on the water. The entirety of Sadaf’s crew had done the same come morning when they saw the Walls suddenly gone from the horizon. Sailors’ superstition—fear of that which transcends the understanding of man. It made Ba’al laugh.
The skiff found soft landing on Eemah’s beach, the last trace softness in the city. For nothing built by Messaii hands was left standing. Every board and beam of timber was burned, and every mortared stone smashed to pieces so that no more were the roads of beaten gold, only gray pebbles and smoldering black cinders lay treaded under feet. Swiftly, silently they waded through this vacant city seeming no larger than a kiln of a shattered potter’s shop. All around them jutted fragments of topless native houses: where once was thatch was rendered ashes; where clay, collapsed; where wood, demolished. No belongings, not even bodies—no hint of bones where there should have been thousands. Then they entered the central ward, the open sand where the Walls once stood.
It was here the dead slept a sea of skeletons. Adam, Adnihilo, even Lilum gave pause at the desecration. “It wasn’t enough to cut them down?” asked the pastor’s son. “Why drag them here just to leave them for the vultures?”
Ba’al’s boots clattered a dozen paces ahead. “Because I ordered it.”
“You what?” Adam started after him, the others close behind. “What do you mean you ordered it? I thought you said you were there to warn us. Why would you have—”
The bishop quickened his pace, spoke with his head tilted toward the steel-blue sky. “I did warn you, didn’t I? It’s not my fault your father wouldn’t listen. And these bones, what do you think would’ve happened had I not ordered them brought here? The soldiers would have burned them.”
“That would have been better.”
“It would have been a waste!” Ba’al stopped and turned at the foot of a black chasm then spoke to Adnihilo. “I made them into an offering.”
“Sacrifices,” the half-blood said.
“Exactly,” replied the bishop as the others finally caught up. “It’s what the legate would’ve wanted, to offer their blood to the King.”
“Before he turned traitor,” Lilum interjected. “That’s why we need you, Adnihilo, to repent for your sire’s sins. You are the Father’s harbinger. Your blood has broken this cursed seal.”
Adnihilo peered behind Ba’al and into the abyss, watched it churn and ripple viscous and black beyond reflection. “And what were those sins?”
The bishop answered, “Weakness and cowardice. He’s the one who let the Messaii missionaries into the city. Then, during the First Purge—when they stabbed him in the back for his act of tolerance—he hesitated to join in the fight while thousands of his own men were dying. He’s the reason that Babylon surrendered, because of mortal temptations that distracted him from his duty.”
“The Red Demon of Babylon,” Adam spoke with a shudder. “Father gave that sermon the day we were attacked.” His body jerked stiff, electrified by realization. “That can’t be coincidence. You planned it, didn’t you? To use the people as a sacrifice to—” The crest began bleeding down the side of the Messah’s neck. He grasped at it, his face twisted in pain. “The King, the Father, he’s—” A surge of burning burst from the brand. It buckled Adam’s body, hung his head toward the edge of the abyssal waters.
Ba’al knelt down so that their eyes were level. “That’s right,” he said, “Our one true king is the Devil himself. After all this long way, you finally figured it out. Or mayhap you knew and told yourself you didn’t—just like you’ve convinced yourself you’re innocent. Though I suppose all that matters now is what you’ll choose.”
“Adam,” Adnihilo called out to his friend, but the Messah was transfixed with the churning black water. The half-blood looked to see what the pastor’s son saw. Void. Nothing. Yet Adam spoke like he’d seen a ghost.
“It’s too late to turn back. Either way, my soul is damned.” He rose, the black pool still holding his gaze. “I made a promise to Magdalynn.”
Adnihilo looked back and forth from the Messah’s face to the water’s surface. “What is it you saw?”
“Our fate. Come on,” he straddled the border of land and the abyss, his lead foot sinking. “I can hear her
