No gods for drowning, p.31
No Gods For Drowning, page 31
Chapter 48
T
he Holy Tree must have changed its mind. That was Simone’s first ludicrous thought when the ground trembled and the red-black roots snaked out from the ruined temple. Across the sky, branches and limbs curled inward like burning hairs, and the trunk caved in halfway up. It had only formed an hour ago at most, and now it was dying.
“What do we see?” Medes asked. She lay on the cobblestones beside Simone, wearing a coat someone had thrown over her. She was supposed to be a goddess, at least from what Aeda had said, but she looked too young and vulnerable. Too mortal where raw flesh showed in patches down her skin. “Have I missed Exalis?”
“You saw him,” Simone said, holding Medes’s hand. “He gave you to the goddess’s arms in light.”
“He has done more than that, I should wonder.” Medes’s free fingers traced cuts in the flesh of her bare legs.
A quake tore through the temple plaza as the Holy Tree’s trunk rose up on its roots like a rearing horse. If it came crashing down, it would kill most of the gathered refugees, but it held.
Simone wished for Logoi. Hatred and love still sloshed together in her heart, but at least the goddess of reason could explain why the Holy Psychopomp Tree looked to be eating itself from the inside.
The temple’s foundation split as roots untangled from marble. Exalis hadn’t stayed; the Holy Tree wouldn’t stay. On and on, everyone seemed to abandon Aeg. Dawn Gods left the Holy Land to the gods. Gods left it to the descendants. Each generation expected too much of their children, who had greater numbers yet far less power.
What was a descendant supposed to do? Of course Lilac had reached out for a goddess. And of course that goddess had reached out for a Dawn God. Did Exalis, too, have a parent to ask for help, an entity beyond the Dawn Gods, unknown to lowly mortals? Was he finding that parent now, somewhere in the heavens?
Every inch of the Holy Tree turned pale, as if camouflaged with the temple’s white marble. Bony, sickly, a great maggot eating at the morning sky’s carcass.
Simone had the sudden thought that the Dawn God’s body was dying. To go a lifetime hearing the story of the Holy Psychopomp Tree, the many centuries it had stood, the story of its demise, she’d thought it a thing meant to outlast any mortal.
This Holy Tree had been brief. Exalis might not have given his body to become the tree had he known it wouldn’t last.
Some vacuous force yanked the roots and branches against the massive trunk, again and again until it became a pale column, floating in the sky. The trunk crunched between them. The Holy Psychopomp Tree became an ever-shrinking tower of churning wood, the size of a house, the size of a tree, a sapling, a toothpick.
And then it was nothing, an implosion of empty air where a Dawn God had floated not long ago. Blue-green grass rained across the crowded plaza. Not a splinter of the tree remained, only the damage it had left on the city, the ruins of the temple. Someone stood at the top of the steps, impossibly tall, the way you expected a goddess to be.
Medes tore her hand loose from Simone’s. “Aeda, come to me.”
Aeda descended the temple steps. Her face appeared stony, disinterested in the people who surrounded her or the destruction she’d left behind. She stopped above Simone, reached her great hands to the ground, and plucked Medes up, no heavier to her than a doll.
“My daughter,” Medes said. “It has not gone right, has it?”
“No, Mother. All lies in ruin.” Aeda pressed her forehead to her mother’s tiny mortal body. “And Father is lost to us forever.”
Medes reached for Aeda’s cheek. “You have suffered, sweetling. What would you have us do?”
“Away,” Aeda said. “As with the other gods, away from this accursed land.”
Medes kissed her daughter’s forehead. “Take us.”
Aeda nodded, but before she left the plaza, she glanced over her shoulder, past Simone, at the temple. “Best you be pleased with yourself or be nothing,” she said. “You have damned the world.”
She began across the plaza. Some of the gathered faithful broke around her feet, while others hurried after, murmuring that Aeda would need a boat if she meant to bring now-mortal Medes across the sea, and some knew how to build one.
“For these sins, I curse you all with the red scar and its endless hunger,” Aeda said, stepping into a throng of faithful. “I curse your eyes to watch your loved ones fade and perish.”
Some of the crowd clustered where Aeda stepped, reaching for her as if they could cling to her dress and be carried over oceans to safety. A red glimmer haunted her skin where they touched, and Simone watched them fall away from the goddess’s path, grasping at mouths and throats now clogged with blacked-over puddles. They were drowning on dry land.
“And I curse you with lungs of blood and water, and a slow, slow death,” Aeda said.
She ignored the people writhing beneath her, and the rest scattered at her approach toward the plaza’s edge, westward into Valentine’s alleys. Goddess and mother alike slipped out of sight, and the rain trickled onto the crowds and cobblestones as if Aeda had never stood here.
Simone turned to the temple to see who Aeda had been first talking to, whoever had supposedly damned the world, and her heart skipped a beat. Through all this destruction—there she was.
Lilac wobbled to her feet, groggy, aching, but alive.
Chapter 49
T
he temple was little more than a marble pile where Lilac stood. No seating, no altars. The hole remained in the center, but no strange tree grew above or below. The world had righted itself in the absence of the Dawn God’s power. Arcadia lay against a broken hunk of marble. Dead? No, her chest rose and fell. Breath. Good enough for now.
Cecil staggered to his feet not far away, holding his head in one hand. In the light of early morning, the red traces in his pale hair glared like a crimson sunrise.
Lilac watched and considered him, but there was little to sort out. She had fed the tree to itself. She had kept Aeda or Cecil from getting what either of them wanted. Troubles persisted, but there was only one she could do anything about, and it was a simple problem with a simple solution.
She was already charging at him before she finished her thought. He noticed at the last moment, too slow to react. She grabbed his arm and yanked him against a chunk of once-altar.
The collision breathed white dust into the air. Cecil clambered up its side. Blood painted his forehead.
Lilac squeezed his shoulder hard and thrust him at the pockmarked marble floor. He landed on his back. One hand danced for the knife in her robe, but she’d dropped it. She would have to make do. Her knee sank against Cecil’s chest.
“You,” Lilac said. “Every awful thing’s happened because of you.” There was a cry in her voice she didn’t like. She shouldn’t mourn this moment. Cecil was her friend, and he’d betrayed her, and she wasn’t going to let that hurt her heart.
Cecil coughed. His limbs were weak, and he couldn’t seem to shove Lilac away. “You’re blaming me,” he said, almost in disbelief. “Aeda could have pushed the sea from Aedos, didn’t you think of that? But that wouldn’t have made people desperate. Don’t you get it?”
Lilac punched him in the mouth. The strike screamed through her knuckles, but it was worth seeing his lip split open.
Cecil winced. “You weren’t caught between two rough spots, love. You made this happen. Want to kill me? How do you know years from now, there won’t be someone who finds out you set Aeda loose? Who blames you for all the killing?” A smile tugged his bloody lip. “They might want revenge. It never ends. It’d go better with a friend to watch your back.”
Lilac hit him again. The blow hurt less this time.
“Fine, fine, Aeda didn’t bring the sea, I admit it.” Cecil spat blood, careful not to spit on Lilac, as if politeness might save him any better than inventing stories and excuses. “Going to kill me? Come now, I’m your friend. And I didn’t even know you back when my grandfather sent the gods running. It was ten bloody years ago.”
“And two years later, I started growing my babies inside me,” Lilac said, raspy. She leaned close to Cecil’s face. He smelled like blood. “And after they were born, I started growing them outside me. Inch by inch, meal by meal, until they were three years old, when I never saw them again. These past four years, I’ve been thinking of those empty funeral pyres because of you. Because you killed my babies.”
“I didn’t take them to the glories and say, lunch is on me!” Cecil snapped. “Unforeseen consequence. Nobody’s fault, not even yours.”
“Yes, it is. I take responsibility. You’re like Alex.” Lilac raised her fist again. “You can’t own what you do.”
“No, that isn’t it. Stop hitting me a moment, just listen!” Cecil inhaled hard. “But if I have to take responsibility in their deaths, I get a share in responsibility for their lives. I’m the only reason you left Logos, right? Met their father? If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t have had children at all. No Sara, no Daphne. You’d have never met Simone. And later on, never met Arcadia. All these good things only happened after the gods left. Would it really have been better without them?”
Lilac’s hesitant fist trembled in the air. “Some days, it’s felt that way.”
“I’m sure. I can imagine.” Cecil tilted his head, splaying tawny hair over pale floor. “I see it in your eyes. Never used my gift on you, you know?”
“Descendants can’t.”
“But I never tried either—”
“You’re lying,” Lilac snapped. “You thought your damn gift didn’t work.”
“—so I never knew you were a descendant until this past night,” Cecil went on, as if Lilac hadn’t spoken. “Good to my word, right? Isn’t that how you’ve known me? We’ve been friends for years. Look at me.” He flashed a grin. There was blood in his teeth. “Still me. Still your mate, Cecil. None of that was fake. I lied more to Alex last night than anyone, and to your benefit, love.”
Lilac punched him again. “Don’t call me that.” She could grab a chunk of marble. Put a swift end to this.
“That’s fair. Perfectly fair.” Cecil raised his arms, his hands open-palmed. How many hugs and friendly pats and general gestures of affection had he given? He’d acted so caring before, only to show his true malice here. “Listen, Lilac. We’re still in trouble. Let me make a couple sacrifices to Lyvien, draw his sign of the fox-head. He’ll come.”
“I tried that,” Lilac said. “Logoi’s star. If she couldn’t hear me, why would Lyvien hear you?”
“Logoi heard.” A soft wind stuck Cecil’s blood-tipped hair against his cheek. “We’re their kin, Lilac. Special privilege. Sacrifice for them, offer blood, paint their signs, speak their names. They’ll hear us. She always heard you, every time, and she made a choice.”
Lilac studied his face. Another lie? Or worse, a truth?
“But Grandfather Lyvien is different,” Cecil said. “He’ll come. Next time the glories try for Aedos, they’ll find a god here. We can still save the Holy Land.”
“From you.” Lilac’s chest swelled. “From what you did!”
“Let me make it right.” Cecil’s voice cracked with desperation. “We can all be better than I was. I reamed you on being selfish, but it was me, too. I admit it, selfish pile, that’s me. Look at Arcadia over there.”
Lilac cast a split-second glance Arcadia’s way. She looked as dazed as before. Cecil had put her through unimaginable horror. Shah, shortly after the gods left. Lilac. Medes and Aeda and their machinations. That sweet soul clung to the world, but Arcadia hadn’t deserved any of this nightmare.
“She wouldn’t do what I did,” Cecil said, and then raised a weak hand toward Lilac. “And she wouldn’t do this. Killing me isn’t what she’d want you to do.”
“I’m not Arcadia.” Lilac grabbed Cecil by the trench coat collar and tugged his face close. She hadn’t realized until now that her cheeks were wet with tears. “You—damn you. I loved you, Cecil.”
“Don’t fret.” Cecil’s voice sank to a serene lilt, almost motherly. “I’ll make it right. Lyvien will come. A god will save us. Isn’t that what you wanted, so that no one else has to die the way your daughters did?”
Lilac turned it over in her head—bring Lyvien here. She could almost see it. She wasn’t sure who deserved the blame more, grandfather or grandson, but she knew she couldn’t stomach that god to wander the Holy Land, to become its savior after he’d set its destruction in motion.
“Cecil?”
“Yes, love?” Cecil’s eyes turned calm.
“I can’t,” Lilac said. “You were right. I’m too selfish.”
Her grip tightened around his collar. She raised his head high from the floor and then slammed the back of his skull against the marble. A wet crackling thud echoed over the temple ruins. Cecil’s eyes quivered, and then his lips. Lilac raised him up and thrust him down again. Another crack, harsher this time.
That was enough. Cecil’s head lolled to one side.
Lilac stood, watching the puddle of blood spread across the marble. Crimson stained her hands, and drops had spattered down her face.
This blood didn’t seep into her hungry skin. It lingered, sticky and warm.
Of course. Cecil was a descendant. Same as their blood was no good to the gods, it was no good to each other. Lilac couldn’t drink it, almost like she wasn’t some blood-sucking descendant at all. Painted in red splotches, she looked like any other murderer.
She wiped her palms on her robe, frantic to rub the marks away, but the red blemishes stained her olive skin. She’d pitied the first men she killed for Logoi, and then Vince, and then the temple sacrifices. Cecil didn’t deserve it, but she pitied him, too.
And herself.
Water rushed in the distance. The rains were coming back, and maybe the sea would join them. Lilac didn’t really want to know anymore. She staggered toward Arcadia and collapsed beside her.
Arcadia blinked, her eyes a little more focused than before. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” she said.
“Nobody does.” Lilac pressed at the dark bloodstain on Arcadia’s chest. “Does this hurt?”
Arcadia shook her head. That was something, at least.
Lilac let her head sink onto Arcadia’s chest and listened to a steady heartbeat. “He killed my babies,” she whispered.
Arcadia couldn’t know what that meant, but she held Lilac anyway, the most natural thing in the world for Arcadia to do. Lilac wished this was all they had to do, forever.
And in some ways she wished they had never met.
And in greater ways, she wished for some other impossible life. She wanted a life spent with Logoi and Simone and the twins by day and then with Arcadia by night. They would meet up with Alex and Cecil for dinner, and they would all be friends. Vince would visit sometimes to see Sara and Daphne, let them know he loved them, but Arcadia would help Lilac raise them, and they would play with Arcadia’s uniform and want to be flood fighters like her when they grew up. And this miracle life would thrive in a city immune to glories, some winged metropolis that could never drown, where the rain only came when you wanted it.
There, Lilac never had to sacrifice anyone. Never sup on their lives. Never hurt the people she loved.
Never wear this tattoo of Cecil’s blood on her skin.
Chapter 50
A
barrage of damp boots squelched the earth to the west of the plaza. Arcadia’s arms dropped. Lilac wanted to lie here longer, but there was no safety in the city, whether they called it Valentine or Aedos, and everyone knew it. She helped Arcadia to her feet and turned with the gathered crowd to face the newcomers.
They were the remains of the Logos police and flood fighters. Mud and blood had erased any distinctions between their blue and sea-green uniforms. Lilac couldn’t imagine what nightmare they had seen in Oldtown, but she guessed they’d been forced to their knees when Exalis arrived and had been gathering themselves since.
But they’d taken too long and missed everything. Doubtful they could have helped. When had they ever?
A burly man with a scraggly beard sat in a wheelchair, pushed by a young woman. He raised his hand for her to stop, and the rest of the approaching group stopped with him.
“Commander Thale of the Logos police,” he said. “Anyone want to explain what happened here?”
Arcadia leaned against Lilac, and they started down the temple steps.
Thale gazed over the crowd. “Anyone?”
Most heads turned to the temple, and Lilac realized they were looking to her, as if she were still Exalis’s high priestess. She didn’t want the responsibility of explaining anything. She wanted to take Arcadia and Simone and go home.
Except home was gone, erased by the red scar. Medes had seen to that.
“We thought we’d be saved,” Lilac said. “We were wrong.”
Thale looked her up and down, seeking something special, seeing only a woman in a black priestess robe, tired beyond belief. “And who are you supposed to be?” he asked.
“Nobody.” Lilac descended the steps, where she found Simone and hugged her tight.
Thale creaked uneasily in his ill-fitting wheelchair. He gave Arcadia a long stare and then winced. “Valentine is done. The storm’s eased off, but we can’t hold the glories back an entire season. We barely held them off last night.”
The young woman who pushed his wheelchair leaned over him. “What do we do with the people?”
“I don’t care what they do.” Thale’s speech became a roar. “Anyone who wants to follow me, I’ll lead them across the city-state, up the North Road toward Shadow Mountain. It’ll be hard, but I’ll take any small chance over no chance, which is all we’ll get in Valentine. I’m tired of wasting time and lives trying to protect you people. Follow us if you want, but I agreed to run this city, and it’s finished. You do what you want.”
