A consuming fire, p.20
A Consuming Fire, page 20
“No,” Anya said, and the heat of the god was so great that the tears she shed dried on her face at once, as if they’d never been. “I can’t. I’ll give you my life, do you understand? My still-beating heart. However you wish to bring about my end, you can take what you desire. Only grant me this one small mercy. I may not be a fit sacrifice, but I can’t watch anyone else go. I can’t bear that I watched her go.”
The god fixed his fiery gaze upon Anya, and she faltered, looking to Ilva instead.
I’m sorry, Anya said, the words coming out soundless. I’m so sorry. It should have been me. I was the one fit for an offering. But I never wanted it, and I let you go instead.
The god of the mountain stood and considered, extending a monstrous hand to Anya as he did so. She could not help but think of how his touch had scorched and scarred so many girls. How it had already done so to her. But when she slipped her own small hand into his, the contact no longer burned. She’d become willing, and her own intent shielded her now.
The god, however, did not lead her to his martyr’s altar, where so many Weatherell girls had made their offerings. Instead, he brought her to the corridor that led out of his sanctuary. He escorted her, footfall by heavy footfall, up the winding staircase and through the beehive cairn at its head, into the cold, gray light of morning.
Out on the plateau at Bane Nevis’s summit, the god’s fire dimmed. He seemed smaller somehow, but no less dreadful—a twisted thing of embers and death now, rather than a demon of fire. Wind whipped the oilskin coat around Anya’s legs as her teeth began to chatter uncontrollably and her breath came in high, thin whines.
“Leave,” the god of the mountain gritted out in his stony voice. “May your failure lead you to a bitter end.”
His power and strength and the insidious nature of his touch compelled Anya. To hear, now, was to obey.
If Anya had felt despair at Ilva’s death, it was nothing compared to this. For her sister had at least failed in faith—Ilva had tried, for Albion’s sake, and been cruelly rejected. Anya had not even managed that. She had profaned herself, and her sacred calling, and sentenced still more girls to a terrible end. Within her, the awareness of the god’s brutal presence twisted and grew cold, crumbling in on itself, leaving only ashes and ruined hope where flame had been.
But the force of his order dragged Anya to her feet and set her stumbling down the mountain trail.
* * *
Somehow, Anya made it down the breakneck slopes of Bane Nevis and back to the city at its base. It was all a blur to her—she did not even realize she’d returned to the wanderers’ encampment until Tieran began to shout for Matthias, his frantic voice echoing from the rafters of the empty mill.
Anya felt more than saw Matthias’s steadfast presence. She was lowered to the ground and surrounded by a hum of worried voices. All the while, Tieran stayed at her side, and she fixed her eyes on his face as it swam in and out of focus.
She was made to swallow something bitter, and at last, the world faded away.
* * *
When Anya woke again, she could see through one of the mill’s grimy windows that night had fallen. The pain in her arms was a constant distraction, but not as all-consuming as it had been before. Glancing down, she saw that her coat had been removed and the sleeves cut from her loose shirt at the elbows. Her forearms were neatly bandaged, and a clean herbal smell rose from the dressings. All was as right with her as it could be, under the circumstances.
And yet she had never felt more wrong, with leftover awareness of the god still lodged inside her. It was not flame as her vengeance had been, but lifeless ash, strength-sapping and insidious, like a slow poison in the blood.
Anya was not out on the mill floor, where the wanderers had made their camp, but rather in a small storeroom opening off it. Through the door, which had been left ajar, she could catch a glimpse of the wanderers’ small, carefully built fires, and several of them passing restlessly from group to group.
Sitting up, Anya let out a quiet hiss as pain lanced through her. Bit by bit, it subsided until she could bear it again, and she cast about herself only to find Tieran, fast asleep on her opposite side. He seemed subtly different, with the god’s internal presence marring her view. A thin line of sparks limned the thief, but she blinked hard and the vision dissipated.
Tieran had his head pillowed on the smoky, tattered remains of Anya’s oilskin coat. He looked worn to a thread, a worried frown tugging at the corners of his mouth. The hair he’d shorn off had begun to grow back in a downy brown fuzz, and Anya reached out, running a hand over it. Tieran tensed visibly beneath her touch and then relaxed at once.
“Gonna live then?” he asked without opening his eyes, voice still hoarse with sleep.
“For now,” Anya answered dully.
“What did you give?”
There was no use lying to him any longer. He’d see the result of her blasphemy soon enough, when darkness fell and the god once more came rampaging down his mountain. When more girls suffered, because Ilva and Anya had failed. “I didn’t.”
Tieran sat up with a single fluid motion, his full attention fixed on her. “What do you mean?”
Hot tears pooled in Anya’s eyes and she ducked her head. “I mean I didn’t give anything. I’ve never been faithful. I’ve never been an offering. I’ve always meant to kill the god of the mountain, and I tried last night and failed.”
Tieran gave her an agonized look. “Anya, you could’ve said. Could’ve told me that’s what you were bent on. I’d have warned you then, that there was no point to it. I’d have tried to convince you not to go.”
“I wouldn’t have listened,” she said, striving to sound uncaring, though the words came out fraying at the edges. “Because it doesn’t matter to me if I die, so long as I take that monster with me.”
“It matters to me,” Tieran shot back. “Matters an awful lot. More than anything, I think.”
Anya dragged her gaze up to meet his and they regarded each other for a moment, both anxious and acutely unhappy.
“Trying to say something,” Tieran said, running a hand over his hair in a compulsive nervous gesture. His fingers were changing, slipping from shape to shape, and even after all that had happened on the mountain, a part of Anya wanted desperately to reassure him—to twine those fingers through her own or press them against her skin. “Trying to tell you… I love you, Anya Astraea.”
A thrill of shock sang through her. “What?”
“I’d give the heart out of my chest if it’d keep you safe and well,” Tieran admitted. “Didn’t ask to end up like this, but here I am. Can’t change it. Wouldn’t change it—not for nothing.”
“You’re lying,” Anya whispered, wiping at her eyes with the back of one hand. “You told me yourself, you always lie.”
“Do I, though?” Tieran said. “Or is that just another one of the lies I can’t help telling?”
Anya’s voice came out barely audible, a small and broken thing. “I wish this hadn’t happened. I wish we hadn’t met. It would make things easier. Because I’m never going to be happy or whole so long as the god of the mountain exists. I’ll become something twisted up and bitter—a monster in my own right, and I won’t be with you while that happens.”
Hurt flashed across Tieran’s face.
“Oh, don’t,” Anya said hurriedly. “Don’t look so. In any other world, you’d be the sun in the sky to me. It’s not our fault this one’s broken.”
“It’s all right.” Tieran scrambled to his feet, and the hurt Anya had seen was already shut away, locked up tight behind his usual spines and sharpness. “Every fool in Albion except me knows there’s no happy ending if you fall for a Weatherell girl, even if you aren’t one properly. Not your problem that I haven’t got any sense.”
But with his hand on the door, Tieran stopped.
“You hear something?” he asked warily.
Anya listened. “No, I—wait. Is that someone shouting?”
From outside the mill, a distant raised voice could be heard. Anya joined Tieran and he motioned to her to keep quiet and to stay unseen within the shadows of the storeroom. Together, they peered out as the wanderers got to their feet in dismay.
One of the mill doors flew open, revealing a dozen gray-robed Elect, in company with as many liveried city guards. Matthias was being dragged along by them, his hands bound behind his back, and he shouted protests as they went.
Tieran took in a quick, ragged breath, and when Anya glanced at him, he’d gone dead pale.
“There’s nobody here you want,” Matthias was still ranting. “We’re only travelers, trying to make our way. Don’t you—”
One of the Elect struck him across the mouth, and he fell silent. Anya saw, with a sinking feeling, that it was Roger, whom she’d met in Sarum, and that Orielle was with them too. Several women in gray robes had split from the group and were spreading out across the room, looking over each of the wanderers, taking their faces in their hands, sorting through their things.
“Everyone stay just where you are,” Orielle said, her voice clear and assured. “Understand that we know where you’ve come from and how you’ve profaned your calling. Furthermore, your village was under the jurisdiction of Lord Nevis, and we are in accord for once—you had no right to leave your place or your land.”
Anya’s eyes cut to Janie and Ella, who stood with their arms about each other, wearing matching expressions of horrified dismay.
Matthias spat blood. Anya had only ever seen him gentle before, but he was radiating outrage now, his face a mask of anger. “We haven’t done anything wrong. There’s no law in Albion that says you can’t pick up and move from a place if you choose.”
“We are the law in Albion,” Orielle answered coolly. “Together, the Nevis guard and the Elect represent both the moral and civil rule of this island. But we would be willing to overlook your faithlessness for the moment, Arbiter, in exchange for information regarding the company you’ve been keeping.”
Beside Anya, Tieran had gone rigid with the effort of keeping himself from shifting. Sweat stood out on his forehead, and his breath came in shallow gasps.
“We want the Weatherell girl, and the thief she travels with,” Roger said. He was tense and impatient, pacing about before the gathered Elect and the guards. “Don’t bother pretending you’ve no idea what I mean, we know they’ve been with you. Like calls to like, and sooner or later, heretics fall in together.”
Matthias made a great show of scanning the gathered wanderers before shrugging expansively.
“No sign of anyone here,” he said, his voice pitched to carry. “Suppose you’ll just have to keep on looking.”
“Anya,” Tieran breathed. “We got to go.”
He reached for her hand, but she stayed rooted to the spot, listening.
“What of this?” Orielle said to Matthias. “A trade in kind. You give us our straying lamb and her escort, and we’ll let every single one of your people go free. You’d be getting the better end of that bargain.”
Lee stepped forward, staunch and unyielding. “We don’t play that game any longer. No more trading a life in exchange for more lives. Think we’d do it now, when it’s everything we walked away from? That’s not who we are at all.”
Orielle rolled her eyes. Snapping her fingers, she recalled the women prowling among the wanderers.
“Anya Astraea,” Orielle called. “This is your decision. We’re offering you a chance to make all your wrongs right. You’ve strayed yet again, but you can still choose the upward path. You can save these people, and perhaps be the saving of us all. The only thing we require is for you to come forward.”
In the corner of the storeroom, Ilva stepped out of the shadows, her eyes beseeching, flames burning beneath the translucent net of her skin. Tieran, by contrast, had shrunk away. He stood by the storeroom’s window, one hand already on the latch. Anya turned to him and could see what Janie and Ella and Matthias had warned her of. What Tieran himself had been trying to tell her, from the beginning. It cut at her worse because she’d grown to rely on him. Because she’d thought better of him, and now he would not so much as risk his freedom for the family who’d loved him longest and best.
“They’ll only hurt you, if they find out what you’ve done. But you can come with me.” Tieran’s words were dark and ashamed, and he spoke them as if he could not help it. As if he was compelled to. “We’ll go together. Wherever the Elect are, we’ll be elsewhere. Wherever the god is, we’ll be a hundred miles away. Don’t care if you get angry or hard-hearted on account of the god and what he’s done. Doesn’t matter to me if you end up monstrous, like you said, not when I’ve always been that way too.”
But Anya knew, with a dull certainty, that she could not let others suffer in her stead again. Perhaps she’d failed on the mountain, but she could at least succeed in this—in saving the people who’d helped her along the road, even if she could not save a single Weatherell girl who was to come and had not saved Ilva when she might have done so.
“I can’t leave them,” Anya said. Everything in her went numb as the thief refused to meet her gaze. “It’s not in me, Tieran. Not yet, at least.”
He nodded miserably.
“You could stay,” Anya went on. “Do what no one thinks you can. Maybe… maybe if I’m penitent, and become a proper sacrifice, like I was always meant for—the Elect will let you and Matthias and everyone else be. If I asked them to, they’d hardly say no. Not if I put an end to all this, and give what’s needed. I’d have to go back to Weatherell, and take my place as one of the ones who went, but we’d both be alive.”
Even as Anya spoke of willing sacrifice, her skin crawled and her stomach turned over. The god’s ashen presence still lived within her, along with her memories of Willem and Philomena and Sylvie, and Ilva dying with the god’s hand imprinted above her heart.
“I’d never have been able to make myself an offering for Albion,” Anya said quietly. “But I could do it for your family. I could do it for you. I could’ve done it for Ilva, though I didn’t know it at the time.”
Tieran was shivering, minuscule changes running like ripples across his skin.
“It’s not in you to go, and it’s not in me to stay,” he told her after a moment. “I never lied to you about who I am, not really, but I’ve always been worse than you thought. Have to say goodbye now, Weatherell girl.”
Something deep within Anya’s chest ached unbearably.
“Did you mean any of what you said?” she asked. “About me, and about your heart?”
Tieran paused, already half out the window, half on his way to wherever else he was going. Somewhere safe, far from Weatherell girls and their troubles. An open road where he could outrun any memory of Anya, or of the wanderers who’d given him everything a family could.
“Suppose we’ll never find out,” Tieran said.
And then he was gone.
Anya took a moment. She wiped the tears from her eyes. Smoothed her hair. Set her shoulders. Last but not least, she took the red collar from her pocket and clasped it around her neck.
Letting out a breath, she stepped onto the mill floor. It was no work at all to assume a chastened and grief-stricken look, but only the outworking of what she felt, and unlike Ilva, Anya Astraea wore repentance well. Unlike her wild twin, her face was made for penitence.
She had been born for sacrifice, one way or another.
“There she is,” Orielle said with a satisfied smile. “I never doubted you, my love. Today we rejoice, for we have found our lamb who was lost. But where is your companion?”
“Gone,” Anya said. “I’m sure he’s out of the city by now—there’s no point looking for him, he knows how to hide well enough. He left me, once he found out who I am. Or rather, who I ought to be, and will become.”
A murmur spread through the wanderers. Anya could not bear to look at them, not after all her lies and what had happened on the mountain. Instead, she lowered her head in deference to Orielle as the gray-robed Elect and the guards closed in around her and shepherded her out into the street. But as she went, Anya tucked her hand into her pocket. She pulled out the summoning coin she’d been given at the city gates by the Nevis guard and let it slip quietly through her fingers to the ground.
TWENTY Wolves and Lambs
White halls.
Distant chanting.
The pervasive smells of honey and astringent herbs and blood.
It was as if the last few weeks had never been—as if Tieran, a thief and a trickster to his core, had never arrived in Sarum to steal Anya out from under the very noses of the Elect. As if she’d never met the wanderers and learned her Weatherell was not alone in Albion. As if she’d never stood before the god and failed at the vengeance she’d laid out for herself—failed even to convince him to put an end to her wretched and haunted existence. Numb to the core, Anya let herself be led into another chamber painted with a dizzying array of crimson runes, another bed on a dais.
This time, they did not bind her hands.
Orielle fussed over the bandages on Anya’s arms, and Anya said nothing about where they’d come from. Not because any sense of self-preservation kept her from speaking, but because immobilizing ashes had settled within her, and they bound her to silence.
Meek and with no shame, Anya removed her shirt and laid herself down, and she did not flinch at the first prick of the needle, finishing the prayer that spread across her back. She kept still as a stone through it all, and the silent tears that tracked down her face had nothing to do with bodily pain—that, she hardly felt. The hopelessness unfurling like a poisoned blossom beneath her skin was far worse.
In time, the prick of the needle stopped, and Anya knew she had been made a living prayer. Something cool and slick was spread across her aching and inflamed skin, and the Elect who had gathered filed out, leaving only Orielle behind.
