Finally.
She let out the breath she’d been holding for months, waiting for the cool piercing metal at the base of her spine that would release her from the hell she’d been living in.
The cold silver never came. The hand over her mouth eased away, and two dark brown hands turned her around. She blinked in the darkness, trying to see who was with her. No one spoke. In the dim candlelight, she could see a figure unwrapping the heavy scarves around their head. The face revealed was a woman’s with skin darker than any Renata had seen. It was the color of seasoned walnut and perfectly smooth except for a vicious red wound on her cheek and jaw.
Whoever she was, her magic was strong. She was unquestionably Irina.
“Who are you?” Renata croaked out. It was the first time she’d used her voice in weeks.
The woman held up a finger and reached into a leather bag. She reached inside and brought out a leather roll. She unrolled the makeshift scroll, and a rag and chalk fell into her hand.
She carefully wrote in Latin: I can’t speak. My name is Mala. The Grigori took my voice.
The woman unwound the cloth from around her throat, showing Renata the raw edges of a wound that looked like it had taken out most of her throat. The wound looked like it had been made by an animal’s teeth. It was ragged, red, and swollen.
Renata reached for the chalk in the woman’s hand, but the woman wrote again, I can hear.
“It’s infected. Your wound is infected.”
Mala shrugged.
“I can heal it for you.”
Mala cocked her head as if to say, Really?
Renata realized too late what she had offered. She hadn’t sung a song since Balien had died. She hadn’t wanted to. But the woman was an Irina. She’d been wounded. Renata had a duty to help her.
Are you a healer? the Irina wrote on the leather, wiping out the words after Renata read them.
“No, I’m an archivist.”
The woman’s eyes gleamed with respect. An Irina archivist was like a walking magical library.
“I know the song, but it might not work as well as if a true healer sang it,” Renata said. “What about you? Why are you here? Is your mate in Rome?”
Mala’s eyes went cold. They killed him while he was defending our scribe house. I came to this country to tell his mother, but she is dead too.
“My whole family is dead, and my mate.” Grief sat like icy air in her lungs, making it hard to breathe. “We weren’t mated yet, but he was my reshon.”
The woman clasped both Renata’s hands between her own, and Renata knew from the silent grief crying in her mind that Mala had also lost her soul mate.
“What do we do now?” Renata said. “Nowhere is safe. We traveled to Rome to escape, but they still found us. Most nights I just want death to find me, sister.”
The woman’s eyes turned fierce. She shook her head vehemently and wrote: Not until we kill as many of them as they have killed. She drew back her cloak, revealing the wicked curved blade at her waist. Renata had never seen a blade like that, but then she’d never seen an Irina like this woman.
“I don’t know how to fight,” Renata said. “I’m an archivist.”
So? the woman wrote.
“No one ever taught me.”
My mate taught me. He was a warrior. Many of the Irina in my clan are warriors.
Why hadn’t Balien taught her to use a sword or fight? Why didn’t she know any Irina warriors? Among her peers, they were only the subject of legends. Irina fought centuries ago, not in the more civilized modern age. Scribes were the ones who handled the dirty business of fighting off Grigori.
“And look where we are now,” Renata murmured.
The woman tapped her knee. What is your name?
“Renata.”
She eyed the fierce woman with the curved blade. She had calluses and scars on her hands, just like Balien and her father.
“Can you teach me?” Renata asked. “Can you teach me to be a warrior?”
The woman smiled a little. Can you heal my wound?
Renata held out her hand and Mala grasped it. “Deal.”
2
Prague, 1999
Maxim lifted the beer and drank half of it before his companion sat down.
“You like the beer in Prague?” the scribe named Vilem said. “It’s good, isn’t it?”
“Best in Europe,” Max said.
“And cheap.” Vilem looked around the club in the basement off Old Town Square. Young people were everywhere and the music was pounding.
Max wasn’t worried about paying for beer. The watcher who’d sent him on this intelligence-gathering mission had given him plenty of funds. Though he was technically assigned to the scribe house in Istanbul, Maxim traveled all over eastern Europe, trading favors, listening to rumors, and sharing beers with scribes like Vilem.
Vilem was technically a rogue, but he was a harmless one. Max could sympathize with not wanting to bow to a power structure. Once, it would have been nothing for an Irin scribe to make his own way in the world. As long as they didn’t harm anyone, the Elder Council would leave scribes and singers to live their lives.
That was life before the Rending. Life after the Rending meant the Irin population was cut in half. Three out of every four Irina were gone, along with hundreds of scribes who had died trying to protect them. Their people, already scarce, were struggling to survive. The Irina who’d survived the Rending hid in havens around the world. Some scribes had never even seen a female of their own race.
The few scribes whose mates survived the Rending went with them into hiding, choosing to defy an increasingly controlling power structure in Vienna that had become paranoid and protective. Some of those families produced children like Vilem. Young. Mostly untrained. Powerful offspring of their half-angelic blood with none of the discipline the scribe houses wrought.
“Where are you from?” Max asked Vilem.
Vilem was silent.
“I’m not interested in turning you in to a watcher or exposing your family,” Max said. “I’m simply trying to understand how you came across this information and why you’re choosing to share it.”
“Because it’s not right,” Vilem said. “It’s just not right.”
“What’s not right?”
Vilem drank his beer in silence for a few more minutes, letting the dance music assault Max’s ears until a headache threatened.
“I’m from Dresden.”
Max nodded but didn’t speak. Dresden fell in a territorial grey area. After the Forgiven angels had returned to the heavens, leaving their Irin children behind with their magic, the Fallen were the only true angels on earth. The problem was they were far from the peaceful creatures the humans imagined. The Fallen fought among themselves, breeding with human women to produce half-blood offspring called Grigori.
But though the Irin and Grigori shared angelic blood, they shared little else.
“What’s the situation in Dresden?” Max asked. “The nearest scribe house is Berlin, is it not?”
“We live well,” Vilem said. “It’s not as bad as you might think.”