Days of Blood & Starlight

51


THE BETTER TO KILL YOU WITH


Karou bent to examine Ziri’s hands and see more closely the healing that she had worked on them. She felt the disturbance in the air behind her, but Ziri’s fingers closed on hers in the moment she would have turned, and the sparks that gusted in the window skittered across the dirt floor and spent themselves unseen.

“You’re awake,” Karou said. Had he heard what name she called out?

“I’m glad we’re alone,” Ziri said, and her reaction was to pull her fingers free and shift away from him. What did he mean? But he looked stricken by her response and seemed to become aware all at once of the unexpected intimacy of the scene. “No, not…” He broke off, flushed, sat up and back, putting space between them on the bed. His blush made him look very young. He added with haste, “I mean, because I have to tell you what happened. Before he comes back.”

He? Who? For a breathless instant Akiva’s name came again to Karou’s mind and she pushed it away in frustration. “Thiago?”

Ziri nodded. “I can’t tell him what really happened, Karou. But I need to tell you. And I… I need your help.”

Karou just looked at him. What did he mean? What kind of help? She felt slow, still wrapped in the haunting spell of her dreams, and there was something nagging at her that she couldn’t seem to focus on.

Ziri rushed to fill the silence. “I know I don’t deserve your help, not with the way I’ve treated you.” He swallowed, peered down at his hands, and flexed his fingers. “I don’t deserve this. I shouldn’t have listened to him.” Shame weighed heavily on his expression. He said, “I wanted to speak to you, and I should have. He ordered us not to, but it always felt wrong.”

Karou processed this. “You mean… Thiago ordered you not to speak to me? All of you?”

Ziri nodded, tense and miserable.

“What reason did he give?”

With reluctance, he told her, “He said we couldn’t trust you. But I do. Karou—”

“He said that?” She felt slapped. She felt stupid. “He told me he was working on you all, that you’d come to trust me as he did.”

Ziri said nothing, but the message was clear. Thiago had been lying to her all along, and how could it even surprise her? “What else did he say?” she demanded.

Ziri looked helpless. “He reminded us, often, of your… treason.” His voice was soft, his posture hunched. “That you sold our secret to the seraphim.”

She blinked. “Sold—?” What? This did surprise her, the magnitude of this lie. “He said that?”

Ziri nodded and Karou reeled. Thiago had been telling the chimaera that she sold secrets to the seraphim? No wonder they hissed traitor at her. “I never sold anything,” she said, and it occurred to her: She hadn’t sold anything, and she hadn’t told anything, either. She’d been so busy wallowing in her shame these past weeks that she hadn’t even questioned whether it was justified. What exactly was her crime? Loving the enemy, that was a grave thing; setting him free, graver still, but they didn’t know she had done that, and anyway… she had not told Akiva the chimaera’s deepest secret.

Thiago had.

The White Wolf was blaming her for his own breach, keeping her isolated from the rest of the company, feeding steady lies in both directions. All to control her, and her magic, and it had been working neatly for him, hadn’t it? She’d done everything he asked.

Not anymore. Her heart was beating fast. She looked at Ziri. “It’s not true,” she said, and it came out like a twisted whisper. “I didn’t tell… the angel.” She couldn’t say his name again. “I never told him about resurrection. I swear it.” She wanted him to believe her, for someone to know and believe that though she might be a traitor in some measure, she had not done that. And then it came to her that Brimstone might have thought she had.

She felt sick. If he had, he must have forgiven her for it, because he had given her life, safety, and even—though she hadn’t realized it until she lost him—love. And it killed her to think he might have believed she had betrayed his secret, his magic, his pain. Even more, it killed her that she would never be able to tell him the truth. Whatever he had thought, he had died thinking it, and the finality of it brought his death home to her in a way that nothing really had so far.

“I believe you,” Ziri said.

That was something, but not enough. Karou held her stomach, which, in spite of being empty to concavity—or maybe because of it—was rolling with nausea. Ziri reached out an uncertain hand and drew it back. “I’m sorry,” he said, distressed.

She nodded, steadied herself. “Thank you for telling me.”

“There’s more—”

But then, shocking in its volume: a sound from outside. A shriek, a wail. Karou’s heartbeat was midskip when it hit her what it was that had been nagging at her. It was absence. Zuzana’s and Mik’s. Where were her friends?

And who had just screamed?




Out in the court, Zuzana covered her ears and gritted her teeth.

Mik was more diplomatic. He nodded to the chimaera named Virko, who had just drawn an earsplitting skreeek from his violin. “That’s right,” he said. “That’s, um, how it makes sound.”

Virko was holding the instrument more or less correctly. Though it was dwarfed by the jut of his jaw, his big hands managed the bow all right. One thing Zuzana had noticed was that many of the chimaera had human hands—or human-ish—even though the rest of their body might be solidly beast. Judging from the array of swords and axes and daggers and bows and other implements of killing and dismemberment that they carried around, she gathered that manual dexterity was an imperative.

The better to kill you with, my dears.

For all that, though, weapons and claws and such, they weren’t that scary. Oh, well, they were scary as hell to look at, but their manners weren’t menacing. Maybe it was because Zuzana and Mik had crossed paths first with Bast, the one from Karou’s floor, who had understood their pantomime of eating and brought them with her to the food, introducing them around with words Zuzana and Mik could not understand.

“Do you want these humans grilled or minced in a pie?” Mik had translated under his breath, but Zuzana could see that he was in awe more than he was scared. The chimaera had seemed more curious than anything else, really. Maybe a bit suspicious, and there were some who turned her blood cold for no better reason than the unblinkingness of their stares; she stayed away from those, but overall it had been fine. Dinner was bland but no worse than what they’d eaten at a tourist trap in Marrakesh on their way here, and they’d learned a few words of Chimaera: dinner, delicious, tiny, the last—she hoped only the last—in regard to herself. She was quite the object of fascination, and submitted to pats on the head with unusual good grace.

Now, in the court, it was Mik’s violin that was the object of fascination. Virko produced a few more hellish shrieks and a sawing sound before another chimaera shoved him and growled something that must have meant give it back, because Virko handed it over and gestured to Mik to play, which he proceeded to do. Zuzana had learned to recognize his signature pieces, and this was the Mendelssohn that always raised the hairs on the back of her neck and made her feel happy and sad, salty and sweet at the same time. It was big and intricate, kind of… cute in some places, but epic in others, and wrenching, and Zuzana, standing back and watching, saw the change it worked on the creatures arrayed around her.

First: the startle, the surprise that the same instrument that had produced Virko’s skreeek could do this. There was some exchange of glances, some murmurs, but that fell away quickly and there was only wonder and stillness, music and stars. Some soldiers hunkered down on haunches or settled on walls, but most stayed standing. From doorways and windows others peered and slowly emerged, including the unsoldierly stooped figures of the two kitchen women.

Even the Other White Meat looked transfigured, standing stock-still in all his weirdly repellant beauty, a look of deep and terrible longing on his face. Zuzana wondered if she could have been wrong about him, but dismissed the thought.

Anyone who would wear all white like that clearly had issues. Just looking at him made her wish she had a paintball gun, but hell, you couldn’t pack for every eventuality.




Karou shook her head in wonder. Zuzana swaying lightly in the court while Mik played his violin for such an audience; back in Prague she could never have imagined this scene.

“How did they come to be here?” Ziri asked. He had risen, too, and stood behind her looking over her shoulder.

“They found me,” Karou said, and the simplicity of it filled her with warmth. They had looked for her, and found her; she wasn’t alone, after all. And the music… It rose and swelled, seeming to fill the world. She hadn’t heard music in weeks, and felt like some gasping part of her was gulping it and coming back to life. She climbed onto the window ledge, ready to step off and drift down to join her friends in the court, but Ziri stopped her.

“Wait, please.”

She looked back.

“I don’t know when I’ll have another chance to talk to you. Karou, I… I don’t know what to do.”

“What do you mean?”

“The souls.” He was agitated. He turned and paced away from her, stooped to reach for something, and came back up with a thurible. “My team,” he said.

“You saved them?” Karou stepped back into the room. “Oh, Ziri. That’s wonderful. I thought—”

“I’ll have to report to Thiago, and I don’t know whether to tell him.” He weighed the vessel on his palm.

Karou was confused. “Whether to tell him that you saved your team? Why wouldn’t you?”

“Because we disobeyed his order.”

Karou didn’t know what to say to that. Disobeyed the Wolf? That just didn’t happen. After a pause, she asked, “Why?”

Ziri was very grave, very careful. “Do you know what the order was?”

“The… the Hintermost. To defend against the Dominion.” She said it, but she didn’t believe it.

He shook his head. “It was a counterattack. On seraph civilians.”

Karou’s hand flew to her mouth. “What?” she asked, her voice paper-thin.

Ziri’s jaw worked as he nodded. “It’s a terror campaign, Karou.” He looked ill. “It’s all we can attempt, he says, being so few.”

Terror, thought Karou. Blood. Blood. How many had died in Eretz on both sides over the last days?

“But we disobeyed him. We went to the Hintermost. It was…” His eyes were out of focus, haunted. “Maybe Thiago was right. There was nothing we could do. There were too many of them. I was safety, and I watched the team die.”

“But you got their souls. You gleaned—”

“It was a trap. I walked right into it.”

“But… you escaped.” She was trying to understand. “You’re here.”

“Yes. That’s what I don’t understand.” Before she could ask what he meant, he took a deep breath and reached into his bloodied, ash-stained tunic, taking something from an inner pocket. Karou saw a flash of vivid green, but that was all. Whatever it was, it was small and fit neatly into his hand. He said, “They had me, Karou. Jael had me. He was going to make me tell him.” His eyes, large and brown and bruised with exhaustion, were wide with a strange intensity. “About you. And… I would have. I wanted to think I wouldn’t break, but I would have.” He choked out the words. “Eventually.”

“Anyone would.” Karou kept her voice even, but a panic was building in her. “Ziri, what happened?”





52


A SUMMONING OF BIRDS


“Akiva.” Liraz’s voice, sharp. She’d pointed down and away, down the slope where rock furrows met green, to a small clearing hazed by the smoke of a dead fire, a blot of ash at its center. And angels. “Jael,” she’d hissed, then looked to her brothers, grim, as they saw the rest for themselves.

Jael’s soldiers had a chimaera surrounded.

From such a distance, all Akiva had known was that it was a Kirin, the first he had seen since Madrigal died, but as soon as the Kirin moved—cutting, killing, like dance—Akiva understood that here was no fleeing freed slave, but a soldier.

Jael had found a rebel. All Akiva’s unspent mercy and thwarted purpose came down to this moment. And when the Dominion finally fought the Kirin to the ground, and when Jael stood over him, rolling up his sleeves, Akiva had known that all his hope came down to this moment, too. A resurrectionist. The thurible. Karou. Would Jael find the rebels, or would he?

How had Hazael put it? “Do you suppose there will be many birds out today?”

As it happened, there were. From his high slope perch, Akiva had scanned the deep distance: blood daubs and squalls circled in great numbers, disappointed by the fires that cheated them of flesh. Of course, Hazael hadn’t meant literal birds.

But even Hazael didn’t know what Akiva was capable of.




It began as a sound, Ziri told Karou. Gathering and building, a tremulous, encircling murmur growing to a roar. At first he had thought it was something of the angels’ making, but it distracted them, too. His captors looked around, alarmed. They were holding him down, two to a side. He was on his back in the ash, his arms wrenched wide, hands… secured. Jael had him pinned, each hand speared through by a sword from a soldier he had killed.

Every kick jarred the blades, and the pain only began in his hands but didn’t end there. It got in his head; it possessed him. It was everything, and in the small moments between kicks, when he could keep still and let it abate, the fear came back—the fear of what he would do and say to make it stop.

He had told them nothing yet, but they were far from through with him. Jael knelt over him with a helm full of ashes. “This was a friend of yours just a few hours ago,” he said. “Open wide.”

“No!”

They clawed his mouth open with their fingers. Ziri felt the hot steel of the helm against his lip, and tasted ash as it began to spill. He fought, he struggled, but in it fell and filled his throat and he was choking on his own dead, drowning in death. His struggling gasps sucked it into his lungs and he was burning from within, all ash and no air, and time spun interminable. Bright lights in pinpoints and the seraphim blurred: their leering faces, Jael’s sucking hole of a mouth flecked with spittle from his exertions. The pain closed in, the burning and the gasping, the hot awful closing-in airless dying…

Dying.

And then water.

It choked him, too, but it cleared the ash and then he was coughing it all out and breathing water and ash but also air, and not dying.

“Is this helping your memory any?” Jael asked. “I can do this all day.”

The physical misery was overwhelming. Ziri saw how it could take over, how pain could become puppet master and make you do things. Tell things.

No.

The helm came again. He tensed, fought. Clenched his teeth, and they couldn’t pry his mouth open.

That was when they cut his smile.

The helm was again to his lips when… the sound. The angels stopped, the helm fell aside as they spun in confusion. They drew their weapons, and the hum grew to an overwhelming, all-encompassing drone and kept growing. It became more than sound. It became shade.

The sky took on a life of its own. Chaotic and every-colored. Shifting. Loud. Pressing in.

It was a phenomenon.

It was… a distraction.

“Birds,” Ziri told Karou, shaking his head in wonder. “Blood daubs first and then others. Every kind. I don’t know how many thousands. The sky filled with birds, Karou, filled with birds, and they were on us.”

“They attacked?” Karou was leaning forward, her eyes wide.

Ziri shook his head. “They just came. Around us. Between us. Driving the angels back.”

She cocked her head in that way she had, and it made Ziri want to reach out and lay his hand—his newly healed hand—full against the long, fair column of her neck—or, he thought, flushing as he recalled the feel of her body’s warmth against his when they had lain side by side, to just draw her to him and tuck her against him and hold her. He looked away again, stared hard and unblinking at the wall.

His hand pulsed as if the small thing he held were still alive; it wasn’t. It was his own blood thrumming in his veins… because he was alive. He didn’t understand it, and he didn’t know what to say next, so he held out his hand and opened it.

Karou saw the tiny feathered corpse. She just looked at it, blank, not making the connection, and Ziri doubted for the hundredth time that this blue-haired human girl was truly Madrigal. Surely she couldn’t forget this.

And then her eyes flew wide and her gaze lifted to his, startled.

It was a hummingbird-moth. Its furred wings were soft gray and crushed; its body was brilliant viridian with a band of scarlet at the throat. When the birds had descended—birds of every kind, birds of the day and the night, shadowlarks, evangelines, bat-winged crows and blood daubs, songbirds, raptors, even stormhunters, their wings still flecked with snow—Ziri had seized the opportunity to escape. It had meant tearing one hand free. The swords that held him were driven too deep into the earth to shift, so he had set his teeth and… pulled. The blade had been blessedly sharp. His hand came away in a scream of agony, red pulsing filling Ziri’s vision, chaos and adrenaline drowning out some of it, maybe, and somehow he had used that mangled hand to free the other.

The seraphim tried to grab him. He couldn’t hold blades, so he lowered his head and used his horns, caught one soldier in the side, but his horns weren’t sharp enough to pierce mail and the soldier only fell and Ziri had to drop a knee, crushing his throat. Another he swept off his feet with a long low kick, and he was looking for Jael, intent on doing what he had said he would and killing the Captain of the Dominion, but he couldn’t find him. The gleaning staff still stood in the earth, so he grasped it in his mangled hands as the thickness of birds became a maelstrom and he could scarcely see his enemies through the fury of feathers. Or they him.

In the rushing of wings, he chose flight.

He didn’t stop then to consider how or why this thing had happened, and certainly not who—it didn’t occur to him that there was a who until he got well away, clear and unpursued, far, far, and fell against a tree to breathe. The hummingbird-moth was dead when he discovered it. It was entangled in his mail, a small victim of the chaos, and—it seemed to him at once—a sign.

Hesitating, he told Karou, “I can’t say for certain that… he… did this—”

“He?” Karou was wary. “I don’t know who you mean.”

Ziri looked at her long and searching. In no single detail did she resemble Madrigal. The shape of her face was different; her eyes were black, not brown. Her mouth was less wide, her hair was blue, she had no horns, she was human. With the memory of Madrigal bright in his mind—and the night of the Warlord’s birthday that had been the beginning of the end—Karou seemed unconnected to it all, and he could almost believe her denial. He asked himself, did she really need to know? It wasn’t as if he wanted to talk about the angel. Her lover. Maybe it was enough that he had shown her the bird. Let her think what she wanted. As he had said, he didn’t know for certain.

But… he believed there was only one possible explanation for his being alive, and he couldn’t keep silent. “I never saw him,” he said, and Karou didn’t ask who he meant. She was silent, still wary, guarded. “Maybe I’m wrong,” Ziri said, “but I don’t know what else to think. I’ve never heard of a summoning of birds but that one night, at the Warlord’s ball. The… the shawl.”

Her eyes widened in surprise. “How did you know about that?”

Ziri’s face grew hot. He looked down and admitted, “I was watching you.”

Eighteen years ago at the Warlord’s ball, Ziri had been a boy in a crowd, and he had watched Madrigal dance with a stranger and wished it were him, wished he were grown, wished, wished, uselessly wished. Of course he hadn’t guessed that the stranger was a seraph, but he had seen what no one else there had: that he was the same man in different masks, and she danced with him again and again. There had been something melting and supple about her movements that hinted at adult mysteries—as opposed to the brittle way she held herself with Thiago—and when the drifting hummingbird-moths fanned down from the constellations of lantern light to settle on her bare shoulders, Ziri had seen that, too, and understood that it was magic, and that the stranger had done it. The man had lifted Madrigal up, cloaked in her living shawl, and brought her back down again, and even a boy could see that there was magic between them, and more than magic.

Ziri had been a watchful child, and had seen many things he was too young to understand. He’d had to watch Madrigal die, and he hadn’t understood the fervor—the ecstasy—of the crowd. He hadn’t understood why the only one who mourned her was the enemy, driven to his knees and bloody from torture. Ziri would never forget Akiva’s screams—absolute despair, rage, helplessness. It remained the worst thing he had ever heard.

He had seen Thiago that day, too, a chill white presence on the palace balcony, motionless and unmoved.

Ziri had begun to hate someone on that day, and it wasn’t Akiva.

“I don’t know why, Karou,” he said. “But I think the angel saved my life.”





53


HEROES


“We should have killed him when we had the chance,” Liraz said under her breath as she and Hazael walked in step through the Dominion camp.

“We didn’t have the chance,” Hazael reminded her. “There were too many damn birds in the way.”

“Yes, well, I hoped he’d been suffocated or pecked to death or something,” she replied.

She was talking about Jael, who they were headed to see. For reasons yet mysterious, their charming uncle had asked to see them. “Couldn’t Akiva have made the birds kill him?”

Hazael shrugged. “Who knows what our brother can do. I don’t think he quite knows himself. And I don’t think he’d ever tried anything that big before. It cost him.”

It had. The effort of the summoning had left Akiva gasping and shaking, his eyes tight shut so that Hazael and Liraz had not seen until it was done how blood vessels had burst and turned them red.

“For the life of one chimaera,” said Liraz.

“For the life of one, yes, and the hope of more,” said Hazael.

“The hope of her,” said Liraz, not without bitterness. How could she not hate this phantom of a girl who was neither alive nor dead, human nor chimaera—what the hell was she, anyway? It was just so very far outside of everything, so deeply abnormal, and… Liraz knew that at the root of it was jealousy, and she hated that. Akiva was hers.

Oh, not in that way. He was her brother. But Hazael and Akiva were her people, her only people. They had hundreds of other brothers and sisters, but this was different. It had always been the three of them, and though she had come close to losing them in battle more than once, until recently she’d never had to worry about losing them in this way. Misbegotten didn’t love and marry. It was forbidden. And… it would be worse, she thought, because it would be their choice. They wouldn’t die, or be taken from her. They would go freely to make their life around another person and leave her behind.

She had said she didn’t feel fear, but it was a lie; this was her fear: being left alone. Because of one thing she was certain, and it was that she could never love, not like that. Trust a stranger with her flesh? The closeness, the quiet. She couldn’t imagine it. Breathing someone else’s breath as they breathed yours, touching someone, opening for them? The vulnerability of it made her flush. It would mean submission, letting down her guard, and she wouldn’t. Ever. Just the thought made her feel small and weak as a child—and Liraz did not like to feel small and weak. Her memories of childhood were not kind.

Only Hazael and Akiva had gotten her through it. She’d thought that she would do anything for them, but it had never occurred to her that “anything” might mean letting them go.

“I wonder if he’s found them,” she said now to Hazael. The rebels, she meant. She spoke low; they were nearing Jael’s pavilion. “We should have gone with him.”

“We have our part to play here,” he said, and Liraz only nodded. She hadn’t wanted to let Akiva go off alone again, but how could she stop him? The worst thing of all would be making him hate her. So they’d watched him struggle to glamour himself invisible—he had been so weary after the summoning—and follow the Kirin into the bird-torn sky, while she and Hazael had returned to the camp. To play their part, as they had before, and cover for him.

Never before, though, had they been summoned before the Captain of the Dominion to tell their lies and half-truths.

“Ready?” asked Hazael.

Liraz nodded and went first through the flap. The same flap Loriel had come through, was it just the day before? Liraz felt the brief contact of her brother’s fingertips at the small of her back and carried the connection with her as she faced Jael.

Loriel said she was fine. She said it was nothing—just a man, and men wash off.

She was older than most of the female soldiers, more worldly. She had volunteered—to spare some virgin being thrown to Jael, she said—and though Liraz had not been in danger, being Jael’s own blood, she thought it was an act of courage unlike any she had ever witnessed. Braver than taking the vanguard or doubling back for wounded comrades. Braver than facing a host of revenants. Liraz had done those other things, but she knew she could never have walked into this tent and out of it again, not like that.

“My lord,” she said now, with the appropriate deep bow. Drawing even with her, Hazael did the same.

“Niece, nephew,” he drawled. It was mockery, but Liraz was glad of it. And don’t forget it, she thought. She lifted her head and looked at him.

And really did not like what she saw on his face. It was aimed at her, cutting Hazael out, and it was… interest. Unmistakable and unsettling. “What is your name?” he asked her.

“My sister is Liraz,” Hazael spoke up. “And I am Hazael.”

But Jael repeated only, “Liraz.” He said it wetly, followed it with a heavy sigh. “Misbegotten. What a pity. You’re a fresher fruit than some others who’ve come my way. But my brother does have a way of… inserting himself.”

Hazael laughed. “I get it,” he said, and succeeded this time in drawing Jael’s eyes from her. “Inserting himself. That’s funny.”

Stop, Liraz willed him, but Jael only smiled. Hazael’s laughter sounded genuine. He had a gift for laughter.

Now that Jael troubled to look at Hazael, he saw what everyone did when the pair of them stood side by side, and looked back and forth between brother and sister. “Twins?” he asked. “No? The same mother, at least.”

But Hazael shook his head. “No, sir, only our father’s blood shining through.”

Liraz was stunned enough to turn her head and stare. To name Joram “father,” to Jael? She knew what he was doing, trying to keep the focus on himself. Stop it, she willed him again, but Jael didn’t take offense. Maybe because of the foolish good humor of Hazael’s manner, and maybe because his thoughts were elsewhere.

“Indeed,” said the captain. “Though that’s not the case with the Prince of Bastards, is it? I would say his Stelian taint rose to the top.”

Taint? It was true that Akiva looked nothing like Joram; more than that, Liraz couldn’t say. She didn’t remember her own mother, let alone Akiva’s. What did Jael want?

“I’m told that Akiva is not in camp. Is that right?”

“Yes, sir,” they said in unison.

“And I’m told that if anyone knows where he is, it’s you two.”

“He’s still out hunting, sir,” said Hazael. “For the rebels.”

Not even a lie, thought Liraz.

“Admirable. Our stalwart Beast’s Bane never rests. But you came back without him?”

“I was hungry, sir,” said Hazael, contrite.

“Well, I suppose we can’t all be heroes.”

His disdain snapped something in Liraz. “And did you catch any rebels?” she asked, with none of Hazael’s comic contrition. “Sir.”

His eyes swiveled back to her. A beat, and he answered firmly, “No.”

Liar, she thought, recalling the sight of him brutalizing the Kirin. He’d enjoyed himself. Feeding him the ashes of his comrades? It made her sick. Funny, how easy it had been to root for the enemy when the enemy was up against Jael. Well, the form and nature of the enemy had surely helped. Had he been Heth or Akko or some snarling, beast-aspect revenant, it would have been harder to take his side, Jael or not. But the Kirin, it had been thrilling watching him fight—Liraz had even thought for a moment that he might prevail and escape. He was so quick. She hadn’t seen a Kirin since she was a green soldier on her first forays and she had forgotten what they were like. So when Akiva had told them, in a quiet, choked voice, that Madrigal had been Kirin, too, the last of Liraz’s revulsion had loosened and evaporated.

In spite of the rebel’s creature elements, there had been a lean and elegant grace to him that was not animal. Not at all. She hadn’t wanted him to die.

The same couldn’t be said of Jael. No elegance, no grace. She would have been glad to see him choked with ash. How badly, she wondered, had he hurt that soldier? And how many others had he delighted in torturing in just that way? “No?” she heard herself say, goading him. “Maybe they really are ghosts.”

Oh, fool. Jael’s look of lazy interest sharpened and sparked. “They are animals,” he replied simply, in an offhand manner as if he couldn’t care less. He took another step toward her. “You know, you remind me of someone.” He was studying her face, her body. “Not in particulars. She was dark, not fair, but you have the same… fire… that she had.”

Had. Liraz forced her eyes to the floor. Don’t push him, don’t test him, he is Jael. Do you really think bastard blood will constrain him if you anger him?

“Can we relay a message to Akiva for you?” asked Hazael, trying again to draw their uncle’s attention away. “He should be back in a day or two.”

“No.” Jael stepped back. “No message. I’m returning to Astrae. But no doubt we’ll meet again.”




“I can’t believe you went downstairs without me,” Karou said, exasperated.

“What?” Zuzana was impenitent. “I was starving and our hostess was passed out on the bed with a hot monster boy.”

Hot monster boy? “God. That makes it sound…” Karou threw up her hands and shook her head. It was silly to be so retroactively anxious about something that hadn’t happened, but when she thought of what Zuzana and Mik had walked right into, it made her cold. When she had finally gone down to the court she’d found Zuzana sitting between, of all possible chimaera, Tangris and Bashees, having much the same sort of pointing-and-charades “conversation” one has anywhere while traveling and meeting people who don’t speak your language. Only… these weren’t “people.”

“You don’t understand.” Karou hadn’t wanted to freak her friends out before, but they were obviously not freaked out enough. “Do you know what they’re called? They’re the Shadows That Live, Zuze. They’re assassins.”

“Like me,” said Zuzana cheerfully.

Karou thought maybe she should hold her head so it didn’t come apart. “No, not like you. Not pretend assassins. Real assassins. They slit angels’ throats in their sleep.”

“Yikes.” Zuzana grimaced and grabbed her throat. “But the angels are the bad guys, right?”

Karou really didn’t know how to respond to that. None of it was real to Zuzana. “They’re just really creepy, okay?” she said, hearing how lame she sounded, then hesitated. How could she be sure of anything, in light of the fact that she’d been living in a theater of Thiago’s lies? “Aren’t they?”

Zuzana shrugged. “I don’t know. They were cool.”

Cool. The Shadows That Live were cool. “And I suppose Thiago is a peach, too.”

“Eww,” said Zuzana with a shudder. “No. Nonpeach. Wormy peach.”

Well, at least they agreed about that.

“You should get some sleep,” Karou said.

Mik was already stretched out on the bed, barely conscious, and Zuzana’s energy looked to finally be winding down. “I know.” She yawned. “I will. What about you?”

“I slept already,” Karou said. With Ziri. How strange. And now they were allies with a shared secret. Thiago didn’t suspect. They’d heard him coming and had time to pretend sleep before he walked in—in a less intimate arrangement than before, with Karou on the chair beside the bed. They had already decided that Ziri would tell the general about the gleaned souls, and that Karou would somehow manage the resurrections in private so that she could give Balieros and the others their cover story when they woke. If all went well, Thiago never needed to know that they had disobeyed orders. She wasn’t sure what she’d do with the extra soul Ziri warned her she might find: the Dashnag boy who’d fought and died with them. Stasis, she guessed.

Of course, this was all only the beginning of the problem. The large and looming issue was: What now? This terror campaign. Karou had believed—as far as she had peered out of her misery to really think about it—that the objective of the rebellion was the protection of chimaera. Thiago was protecting no one. Maybe it was true that he lacked the numbers to do any more than that, which he would say was her fault, but… had he given up on everything else?

“That can’t have been enough rest,” said Zuzana. “You can sleep here. I’ll scooch over.”

Karou shook her head. “Be comfortable. I wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway.” There was too much spinning in her mind. What to do? What to do? “I think I’m going to go for a walk while it’s still cool. In the morning it’s back to work.” Zuzana’s face brightened, and Karou said, “Yes, Igor. You can help. And thanks for earlier. You were awesome.”

“Me? You were awesome. Holy. Karou. You’re my hero.”

“Yeah? Well, you’re mine, so we’re even.”

Mik, contrary to appearances, was not quite asleep. He rallied to say, “I want to be someone’s hero, too.”

“Oh, you are,” Zuzana assured him, throwing herself on top of him. She kissed him with a smack. “My fairy-tale hero, one task down and two to go.” Karou didn’t know what that was about, but she backed away as Zuzana continued to plant noisy assurances all over his face.