It was the children—the ones born to the first of the unfortunate human women in the citadel’s sinister arm. That “gods” should claim concubines was to be expected. That children would result was only natural.
That the children should be special, now, that was a surprise.
Over centuries of empire, plenty of half-breeds had been born in dozens of different worlds. Some had no gift at all, no apparent receptivity to the magic in their blood. At best, they might test for a weak gift, though under imperial law half-breeds had been forbidden to serve.
But every blue bastard born to a human mother in Zeru tested at a magnitude as high or higher than his or her Mesarthim parent. And considering that Skathis’s crew were all of exceptional magnitude, this was something extraordinary. Kora thought maybe it was because of the mysterious, clear fluid, spirit, that flowed alongside their blood. As far as she could tell, it was the only anomaly that set these humans apart from others who fit in that broad taxonomy.
Whatever the reason, if Skathis had still been recruiting for the empire, he could not have found a better source of soldier-wizards for the ranks. But there was no more empire. In its place there were worlds at war—with one another, within themselves, too many wars to count, and more starting every day. And where there’s war, one thing’s certain: There are kings or generals or potentates willing to pay for weapons.
So Skathis sold his bastards off and set about making more. Vanth and Ikirok were pleased to aid in the effort. Over the years, Isagol and Letha both took human lovers and birthed babies themselves, though they were far less efficient bastard-makers than their male counterparts, and that was fine. There were women enough in the city for that.
Skathis had an outpost built on a broken-off tezerl stalk growing out of the red sea just the other side of the portal, and he held auctions there. Buyers came from as far off as Mesaret itself, and Skathis, the god of beasts, began to amass a fortune. He sold shape-shifters and elementals, seers, healers, soporifs, every kind of warrior. There were gifts that had no application in war, but he put every child on the block—almost every child—and the leftovers were bought at a discount by traders, to be sold off down the line, wherever they might be wanted.
One gift never made it to the block. Smiths could be identified as babies. They had only to touch godsmetal and their little fingers would leave marks in its surface. These babies he slew.
And so years passed, and Kora was given the task of testing the children and taking them to the wasp ship and locking them up in the little cages. And every time she did, she died a little more, and she might have chosen to die in body as well as spirit were it not for one thing. She dreamed that her sister was still looking for her. She had only to imagine Nova arriving too late, coming to save her only to find that she’d taken her own life, and she wouldn’t be able to do it. She stayed alive.
And one day a baby boy in the nursery manifested smith ability. Kora snatched him. She stole him, and sent him, in her eagle’s grip, through pierced space to a place far away where Skathis wouldn’t find him.
She hadn’t planned it. It was luck. But once she had the baby, it all began to take shape in her mind: her mutiny. The boy would grow up, not knowing what he was, and one day she would bring him back, and he would set her free. She daydreamed of murdering Skathis. If his hobby was breeding slave children, hers was dreaming up his death.
She planned to wait until the baby grew into his power. Then she would bring him back—to fight the gods and kill them, and open the portal and fly her through it. She had it all planned out.
But it wasn’t to be.
Because Eril-Fane killed her with the rest of the gods, and the little boy was cast adrift without a single soul knowing what he was. And all that survived of Kora was a shred of her soul in the form of an eagle, which went on as it always had, circling, watching, and waiting for the day when it could finally escape, and go home— wherever that was now.
Because home was and had always been Nova, and Kora died believing her sister would come.
Chapter 48
They Beheld Abominations
The citadel of the Mesarthim had come alive in the sky. It had ripped its chest open and reached inside, grabbed a handful of people, then knelt—a giant, wings flaring, dwarfing the city—leaned down, and tossed them like litter.
Lazlo was not among them.
When the hand had thrust into the chamber, and the metal, flowing, had swept everyone into it, he had tried to follow. He’d seen Sarai and reached for her, but the metal hadn’t let him. Nova hadn’t let him. She still held his power, and she kept him here. He was sunk to his knees in the walkway, trapped. He struggled but couldn’t pull free. He could only watch as the hand drew away, taking everyone he cared about with it.
“Sarai!” he screamed till his throat went raw.
Now they were gone and he was still here. He watched in horror as Nova set about doing what he himself had planned to do, but with none of the care he would have taken. She pulled up the anchors one by one. The seraph maneuvered to set a foot on each in turn—east anchor, south, then west. Metal adhered to metal, and she ripped them up, heedless of the buildings around them, which swayed and toppled, sending up billows of dust as the citadel resorbed the mesarthium and grew larger.
Nova turned last to the melted north anchor, and Lazlo tried to stop her.
“Leave that one,” he pleaded. With his gift gone, he could no longer sense the metal holding the fractured bedrock together, but he remembered. He had done it, and he knew what would happen if she ripped it out. “The ground will collapse,” he said, looking in desperation to Kiska, Rook, and Werran, as though they might care, or intercede. “The river will flood. The city could fall. Please. Just leave it.”
But Nova did not.
Like a beautiful nightmare, the seraph crouched over Weep. It plunged its massive fingers into the sinkhole, gouging down into the rock to find and suck up every dram and rivulet of mesarthium. The ground began to tremble and crack. The sinkhole grew. Its sides collapsed. Huge chunks of stone calved away, and the foaming churn of the Uzumark broke free. Rows of buildings were sucked underground, including the ancient library so recently unearthed. The roar was distant. Plumes of spray and dust fountained up, filling the air with haze.
From above, to Lazlo’s horrified eyes, it looked like a toy city falling to pieces. “No!” he choked as the devastation spread, block after block collapsing into ruin as the river chewed its way out of the ground like some hell-banished creature seeking the light.
How far would the destruction reach? How much of the city would crumble? Was the amphitheater safe? Were Sarai and the others?
Lazlo wasn’t to know. The citadel righted itself in the air and he could see only sky through the hole in its hull. Weep’s fate—and Sarai’s—was hidden from him. “Let me go!” he begged his captors. “Leave me here!”
Nova didn’t even look at him. She didn’t look at anyone. Her eyes had gone out of focus. A veil of exhaustion had fallen over her. Ashen-faced and heavy-lidded, she undertook her grandest feat of piracy yet. Skathis’s ship was the largest concentration of godsmetal that there had ever been. It was the most powerful vessel in the Continuum. There wasn’t a force in any world that could touch it in battle. And now it was hers.
With a deep breath, she began the task of moving it through the portal to the world on the other side.
…