“She won’t show me the very end.” She shook, shivering. Fresh tears fell each time she blinked.
She’s scared. She thinks her sister will finally take her vengeance at the farmhouse. And yet he couldn’t stop her from going. If he was healthy, if he was strong, he’d throw her over a shoulder and carry her away. Now all he could do was follow along and watch. He felt pathetic, helpless. Weak. He lived his life being strong, unafraid to take risks. He was daring, if not heroic. Though he ran from any fight guaranteed to end in death and failure, he stayed for many where the outcome was in doubt. He’d always been strong.
And now?
Bedeckt spat into the fire, feeling sweat bead his face and forehead. The fire seemed dim and far away.
Zukunft stared at the mirror, entranced. “Your friends are going to be there too,” she said. “They’re in danger. Something is following them. Something cold, evil. It’s in the sky, above the clouds. Wings bigger than the sails of the biggest ship, sheets of snake skin. It vomits insanity, melts flesh from bone with its madness.”
“Geisteskranken?”
Zukunft nodded. “Teetering at the Pinnacle, about to lose control.” She laughed, a sob of fear. “Gottlos will fall before the war even starts.”
“Good,” said Bedeckt. “War is the part where all the poor people die to protect the interests of wealthy arseholes.”
“Sometimes it’s about protecting something. A way of life. Freedom.”
“The people of Gottlos aren’t free,” said Bedeckt. No one is free. “King Dieb Schmutzig is a Gefahrgeist, a self-centred bastard. The city-state is ruled by half a dozen of the wealthiest and they’re all Geisteskranken. Most are Gefahrgeist. They own the lands. They own the farms. They own the food and the people.”
“But they rarely make use of that power,” she said. “Gottlos might not be wealthy or prosperous, but by and large the peasants are left alone.”
Left alone, like that was the best they should even hope for. Bedeckt laughed. “The peasants. Spoken as someone who doesn’t count herself among them.”
Zukunft flushed with embarrassment and fidgeted. “We were wealthy. It’s not a crime. My father worked hard—”
“You owned people.”
“We owned the land. Peasants… People worked it for us.”
“Did your father have the right to punish them as he saw fit?”
“He was always a just man,” she said, defensive.
“No doubt,” said Bedeckt. “Did he ever hang criminals?”
She glared at him, seeing the trap. “Sometimes.”
“He had power of life and death over them. That’s ownership.”
Zukunft pursed her lips, tilting her head to one side to examine Bedeckt through slit eyes. “What you do with that power matters. The Geborene god will not be some distant Gefahrgeist too wrapped up in his own life to bother the peasants. He demands worship. He wants to rule over everything and won’t stop until he does. He’s mad and his delusions are more dangerous than those of some self-centred arse.”
“That’s why I’m going to stop him.” He no longer felt so sure. What could one dying old man do against a god?
“The Geborene Theocrat thinks he controls her,” said Zukunft.
“Who?”
“The flying Geisteskranken I mentioned. He’s sent her for you, but she’s going to kill thousands. Tens of thousands. She’ll lay waste to cities.” She looked at Bedeckt then, eyes hollow. “She’ll bring down several city-states before she cracks. She’ll hand that insane boy-god most of the world and destroy what little remains when the Pinnacle takes her. Unless someone stops her.”
Someone. Not me. I’ll be dead. “And she’s following Stehlen and Wichtig?”
She nodded, damp eyes never leaving his. “She’s hoping they’ll lead her to you.”
“They’ll be at the farmhouse.”
“She’ll be there, in the clouds. There are two others. Wahnists, I think. They too ride the edge of the Pinnacle.”
A Wahnist suffered false beliefs. That could mean anything from thinking they were petunias to believing they had god-like powers over life and death. Most thought they were someone more important than they were. The chances that’s what the Theocrat sent seemed pretty sticking slim.
“What are you going to do?” asked Zukunft.
“Get some sleep,” said Bedeckt, easing himself back with a groan.
She watched him for a dozen heartbeats before stretching languidly, allowing her shirt to fall open and her skirt to rise suggestively exposing her legs.
Bedeckt, in too much pain to give a shite about some cleavage and a flash of pale thigh, grunted and rolled over, turning his back to her.
“I saw you watching, old man.”
“Your feet are killing me,” he said.
Zukunft threw a chunk of bread at him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Time is a delusion. We think it’s fixed but—if you think about it even for a moment—you’ll realize it isn’t. You’ve no doubt noticed how time seems to move slower when you’re bored, right? That’s because it does! Belief defines reality. I’m moving to Grunlugen, easily the most boring of the city-states. Once there, I’ll find the most boring work I can. I’ll live forever!
—Anonymous