No gods for drowning, p.15
No Gods For Drowning, page 15
“You’re right,” Alex said. “Check the temple, I’ll check Lee Village. If you don’t see her there, head my way. I’ll do the same.”
“Count on it.” Cecil reached one hand to Alex’s face, hugged him close, and then kissed his cheek.
Alex hardly felt the touch through the rain, only pressure against his skin and a warmth in his chest.
A whisper worked into his ear. “It’ll be better soon, my friend. I promise.” Cecil slipped back and chuckled. “Nerves are a bit fluttery.”
“I’m not going to die,” Alex said.
“You’d better mean it.” Cecil clapped Alex’s shoulder. “We got this.”
Alex gave a wan smile. He really hoped so.
The rain thickened as they split from the pawnshop, Cecil heading north, Alex heading northeast. He would hail the first cab he spotted. Angry fire ripped through his core, fuel that kept him pounding across wet asphalt, past waterlogged clusters of people.
He’d stood in Lilac’s home. He’d eaten her food, met her mother, worried over Arcadia beside her. The whole time, Lilac had this blood on her hands. How long had she spent washing them, acting like she’d done nothing wrong so long as her cutting and killing came in the name of the gods? She’d played the fool in front of his face and probably laughed after he left.
She had no idea what she was playing with—the fate of Valentine. No Logos to return to, no temple, no Logoi. This was a different city, and they needed to care for it. Alex had to catch her and put an end to this, even if she fooled a holy covenant into trusting her, helping her.
Even if she believed she had a goddess on her side.
Chapter 25
L
ee Village Library faced a cluster of old dark houses, packed and piled atop each other in a twisting wayward structure. Beckoning Tower, Lilac thought it was called. Lightning flashed its gray stone alive, but it quickly faded to join the evening’s black sky. A narrow door broke up the bottom of the architectural monstrosity.
Lilac paid her cabbie and stumbled toward the door. Her priestess guise meant no boots, no umbrella, only her robe and faith. The coralstone would remain a secret until she was ready. She reached out and knocked as thunder rolled through the sky.
The door slid open, and an elderly priest beamed out at her, his whiskers glowing from inner firelight. “Come in, sister,” he said. “Out of the rain, quickly.”
Lilac thanked him and ducked inside. A narrow foyer led past water-stained walls and rotting furniture into a wide room, where wooden beams braced the vaulted ceiling. Smoke slithered from a dancing fire up a great shaft that climbed the tower. Its flames cast curious shadows across more than a dozen faces, scarcely a fraction of Valmydion’s old covenant. Black robes covered their bodies, and hoods guarded their hair against the ceiling’s dripping holes.
A gentle-eyed young priestess waved Lilac over. “Get warm, please.”
Lilac sat beside her, and the fire’s heat baked moisture from her clothes, skin, and hair. She watched the elderly priest who’d answered the door amble over, and then she studied the others. What to say? These people knew each other, but Lilac was a stranger. Best she tread carefully.
“I haven’t been to this side of Valentine in years,” Lilac said. “What is this place?”
“You don’t know?” the elderly priest asked. He chinned his beard at a nearby priestess. “Tell her, Kosmi.”
Kosmi averted her eyes from Lilac and waved a thoughtless hand at the ceiling. “A year after Valmydion left us, government men from the State House thought they could channel the gods with crude shapes, particular geometry, like the gods would care about their symbols formed in architecture.”
“Imaginary solutions,” said a middle-aged priestess across the fire. A scar ran up her cheek across an empty socket; her remaining eye glared at Lilac. “When they died in the State House wreck, we took it.”
Kosmi lowered her gaze. “We’ve all done things to cope with what’s become of us.”
“Indeed,” the middle-aged priestess said. “Trying to call the gods is better than lying to ourselves they’re already here. Those desperate hearts flocking to the temple tonight, to Oldtown, they’ll believe anything.”
“We knew Valmydion was gone before anyone else,” Kosmi said. “We’d know if she was back, too. There’s no wild grain scent in the air.”
“The crowds eat what they crave—a bowl of lies.” The middle-aged priestess scratched her scar. “The gods are distant, but not everyone can live with that.”
Lilac nodded as if she knew what they were talking about. She hadn’t kept up with city news today; she had bigger fish on her plate. Her fingers prodded the pocketed coralstone. The gods were closer than these holy people knew, and yet so far. How could Lilac offer hope to these strangers? On tip-toe, maybe crawling on her belly. They were likely curious already why they had never met her before.
“Have any of you tried calling the gods?” Lilac asked.
“We’ve prayed,” Kosmi said, and gestured at the old priest. “Nemo leads us, usually.”
“Every day,” Nemo said. Others nodded with him.
“We’ve all done things,” Kosmi said. “Wild ideas. Bloodshed in the temple, in chalices, in urns.” Kosmi gestured to the one-eyed priestess. “Meridia had her plan.”
“You mean on Holy Tree Day?” Meridia asked. “It would’ve shamed us as Valmydion’s covenant to offer blood to another god, like witches, so we chose something beyond gods. No one really knows how desperate you’ll get until things turn nightmarish.”
Nemo chortled. “People say any god would be better than no god. Imagine Tychron here, unchecked by his cousins? No one wants that.”
Except the people in Tychos, but Lilac swallowed the comment. The people of every city-state wanted the gods back, and some would burn their cars, homes, and humanity in sacrifice to make it so. They would do the impossible and seek out lost Aedos if it meant the goddess Aeda would return, migrate to Tychos if Tychron would come back, turn nomads for Lyvien—any god to save them from the glories.
Still, Lilac couldn’t imagine what Meridia might have planned to do on Holy Tree Day.
Meridia sat straight, fire glowing across her scar, and faced Lilac as if sensing her confusion. “We didn’t go through with this, understand? We planned, but we couldn’t make the journey. Not even for the Dawn Gods.”
Lilac leaned closer to the fire, and understanding began to bake her skin.
“We meant to offer ourselves on the Grave of the Holy Tree,” Kosmi said.
Nemo cut in quickly. “Might have mattered, understand? The Holy Psychopomp Tree used to be a Dawn God.”
Lilac didn’t understand that logic. If Logoi had cut off one of her nine heads, the severed head would not be Logoi, only a fragment. A body, or pieces of it, did not make a soul.
Meridia piped up. “The Holy Tree was only the shell of a body. The Dawn God Sceptomos left it behind while his soul headed to the mysterious heavens. That’s why Gentle Theo could become the Holy Tree’s soul. A living thing without a soul violates the laws of nature, after all, and so the Holy Tree merged with him and carried on.” She tutted as if this were the end of the story.
Lilac knew better. It was one of her earliest lessons in Logoi’s temple. The priestesses had explained that when the Dawn Gods finished their work, six of them ascended in flesh while the last, Sceptomos, ascended in soul, leaving his body behind to become the Holy Psychopomp Tree. It was to be the arbiter of all souls crossing the Between from one life to another, a balance brought to reincarnation. Lilac had hated the idea, even as a child.
She was not sad when the lesson ended with a madwoman, Noema the Sick, burning the Holy Psychopomp Tree to the ground. She had kept her relief to herself, unsure how Mother would react.
The memory reminded Lilac that soon Logoi would spread her nine heads and tremendous body within Valmydion’s temple and take up the cause of Aeg. They would be mother and daughter again, teacher and student.
Lilac clutched the coralstone and dug her way up from her thoughts. The covenant was arguing.
“Keep in mind, Noema’s burning the Holy Tree might have been part of the Dawn Gods’ intent,” Kosmi said, her tone softening. Someone scoffed across the fire.
“She didn’t burn it,” Meridia said, growing haughty. “When Noema the Sick carried hatred and injustice in her heart to the foot of the Dawn Gods’ final gift, set within its roots, the Holy Tree immolated itself, for it saw mankind was ungrateful.”
She had recited directly from scripture, each word eating ice into Lilac’s nerves. Had the last two days’ sacrifices felt this same chill when she’d recited scripture to them?
Nemo shrugged. “I’ve my doubts. Something happened inside the Holy Psychopomp Tree, I say.” His face turned grim. “Something unwritten in the Verses of Aeg.”
Fire filled Meridia’s eye. “You can’t go adding more Verses of Aeg on wild assumptions, Nemo.”
Kosmi shook her head and whispered, “This is why the gods left us. Our sacrilege.”
Lilac cleared her throat, and every eye turned to her. She didn’t want the attention, but she needed it. Kosmi had a point—there wasn’t time for the covenant to bicker the scripture’s fine print. The rainy season was already here.
“Why did you think bleeding on the Holy Tree’s grave would help summon a god?” Lilac asked.
“Not a god,” Meridia said. “A Dawn God.”
Lilac bit the insides of her cheeks not to laugh. No one knew for certain what had prompted the Dawn Gods to descend five thousand years ago, but she doubted mortals alone could bring them back.
“Not Sceptomos, of course,” Meridia went on. “But our Valmydion’s forebearer, Lyradosia? Or Milante, or Exalis? Someone might have helped, and not only to protect us from glories. They would have driven the glories out, like in the dawn days.” She lowered her head, heavy beneath ridiculous notions. “A nonsense plan, you think? You’re right. Greater gifts need greater allure. Whatever special circumstances first drew Exalis and the other Dawn Gods to descend, whatever made Gentle Theo special enough for the Holy Tree, we don’t have it.”
“Not nonsense,” Lilac said, touching Kosmi’s arm since she couldn’t reach Meridia. “Overambitious.”
Kosmi’s robe flaked fibers and grime, a frail sleeve with frailer flesh beneath. These people were withering. Lilac couldn’t help feeling sorry for them, and for herself, too. For ten years, she’d blamed Logoi’s absence on Logoi while these people blamed Valmydion’s absence on themselves. Guilt and shame would eat them alive.
Kosmi stood from Lilac’s side. “Was it really overambitious? For our means and stature, maybe, but not our experience. I’ve touched Valmydion’s hands and feet—touched divinity! Now I beg in a South Temple District pawnshop. The temple’s falling apart, and the city’s next.”
Nemo raised placating hands. “Kosmi, please.”
But Kosmi paced the room, fingers fraying her tangled hair and parting her robe. “It’s shameful to have peaked so young.” Black fabric shed from her body. She didn’t wear undergarments like Lilac, maybe none of them did. Shadows danced over Kosmi’s nakedness. “Look at me now, priestess to the goddess of prosperity, now priestess to Honest Hector’s. I’ll shed blood for a better deal, but you’ll need a god to convert the currency.”
Lilac wanted to hold her. This lost despair echoed the emptying temple in Logos years ago when Lilac had watched Logoi’s priestesses abandon her. Nearly a year passed before she could beggar enough money to ride the now-ruined railroad north to Valentine and find Simone.
But no matter its familiarity, this pain could end.
Kosmi crumpled to the floor and gathered her robe against her chest. “Some days, I almost wish it’d never happened, so I might still have big things ahead. But my best days are behind me. There’s only drowning ahead, and no gods to help us.”
Lilac crept closer. “That isn’t true.”
“A priestess at seventeen,” Kosmi said, raspy. “And an ex-priestess, what is that? Can you eat it? The job asks lifelong service, and then suddenly we’re homeless, jobless, our pockets empty. I was still trying to figure things out by the time my son was born, and I’d already had years to accept Valmydion wasn’t coming back.” She looked into Lilac’s eyes. “My son’s gone now. I didn’t know how to survive the street. Valmydion, she provided everything for us. I never thought she would abandon me, but the gods give and they take, and I didn’t know how to keep my boy alive.”
Lilac drew Kosmi’s head to breast and kissed her hair. Memories of Sara and Daphne erupted inside. Smaller heads, bigger kisses.
“Seventeen.” Kosmi trembled in Lilac’s arms. “I swore my life to her at seventeen. What good is that? A sacrifice is only worthwhile if something precious is lost. The city’s lousy with people like me. Priestesses hang around newsstands for loose change, or they sell their robes and get jobs as waitstaff, cleaners, lounge singers, flood fighters, anything but this because there’s no need for us anymore. The covenant is nothing without the gods.”
Lilac looked around the room. The firelit faces had turned stony, and a new tension dug through her muscles and bones. Her legs twitched to stand, run, but she didn’t know why. Something had shifted in the air.
“Or maybe the purpose lies with your goddess,” Kosmi said. “You’re not Valmydion’s priestess.”
Two young men in black robes had slipped between Lilac and the door. Her legs twitched again, but she didn’t make to stand, not yet. She shut her eyes and sifted through the patterns, looking for an escape if she needed it, and a way to convince these people to help her, too.
“I don’t know who you are, but you lied to us, and that turns my gut,” Kosmi said. “Meridia, what do you think?”
“With her boldness, stomping in uninvited?” Meridia scoffed. “She came with the Logos police, another wayward looking to take this city.”
“I’m not with them,” Lilac said, eyes still shut.
“You’re a priestess, aren’t you?” Meridia asked. “You want to know if we ever tried to bring another god back. You think we’re the ones cutting people apart, putting Logoi’s bloody sign on the city walls. A snitch hiding her nine-pointed badge under a black robe. Might even be some other god’s child.”
Lilac had counted more than a dozen figures here. She couldn’t fight them all, even with her dagger. Meridia had to have known a descendant before, maybe Valmydion’s daughter who had vanished the same time as Valmydion herself. No one ever took the descendants into account, that had been Lilac’s secret to success, but this covenant was different. Maybe they hadn’t known right away and needed her to sit here until they figured her out, but since her arrival they’d realized something wasn’t right.
Kosmi stood tall and fully clothed. A short knife gleamed in her hand, and its blade echoed around the fire, Valmydion’s covenant wielding knife after knife.
“We let you in,” Kosmi said. “We shared our shame, but you’re not one of us. Tell us what you came here for, and it had better be a damn good reason. Don’t make us bring you low.”
Chapter 26
A
lex watched Merchant Field’s neon lights fade into the golden glow of Lee Village through a cab window. How long would these lights stay lit? They might die as he reached Lilac. What dark trap was he walking into?
“Lee Village Library,” the cab driver said, parking where Alex had told her to go. “They look closed to me, friend.”
“I’m sure they get that a lot.” Alex paid her and stepped out of the cab.
Water sloshed as he crossed the street, and he realized too late he’d left his umbrella in the back seat. Nothing he could do now but press on.
He had never entered Beckoning Tower, let alone climbed to its peak, and imagined it offered a similar vantage as the temple’s roof. A climber at the top might see the lights of Tychos distant in the night, and during the day might look northward to the far off windy hills beneath Shadow Mountain. Somewhere in between lay the Grave of the Holy Tree.
And yet, looking to Beckoning Tower, Alex wouldn’t have thought there could be a more broken place in the world if he didn’t already know the truth about Logos. That truth might have stretched to other city-states by now.
It could happen here.
The tower door awaited. Rainwater soaked Alex’s hair, clothes, his poor notebook, but not his pistol, secure beneath his trench coat. His fingers grasped the gun; his free hand raised into a fist, about to knock.
Gulls cried and he couldn’t help remembering that had been an ill omen in an adventure book he’d read as a child. Now he wondered if the author had slipped some ancient superstition into the pages. The flock sounded like they were heading out of the city. Alex waited for their cries to fade beneath the hushing rainfall and then rammed his fist against the door. Once, twice.
“I know how it sounds, but it’s true,” Lilac said, at the end of a tiring story. “Rub your finger on the surface, a couple drops of blood. It’ll explain everything.”
Kosmi and the rest had let Lilac reach into her robe and draw out the coralstone. Still cold, it no longer felt like the mother who’d drank Arcadia’s blood and healed her, who’d whispered about saving Aeg.
Meridia and the rest watched in silence as Kosmi placed a tentative fingertip on the porous coralstone. Her gaze clung to Lilac’s as she rubbed back and forth, her blade pointed at Lilac.
The change stirred in Lilac’s hand even before she saw blood smear across coral. The stone warmed against her palm, a godly sun rising deep inside from the Between where some blasphemous asshole had trapped the goddess of reason.
Kosmi’s shoulders hunched. “Goddess, I’m sorry I doubted. Goddess, forgive me.”
Meridia launched to her feet. “What is it? What happened?” Others stirred around her.
