Chapter Twenty #2
resembled little more than an improvised shiv.
“You
can still have a life,” Berith said.
Isaac kept
walking. The femur did not retreat.
“I can
help you escape. The Diet will never know the truth.”
Only a
few paces remained between him and his uncle.
“You’ll
never have to see me again.”
Isaac
raised the dagger. The femur shot forward, pressing into his neck. It split his
breath in half. With the slightest push of force, the sharpened head would
puncture the skin, severing his artery.
“Look
at me, Isaac.”
Berith’s
blue eyes glowed with magic. There were wrinkles in the flesh, where his scowl
often rested. Isaac was sure he would never forget the face in all his life.
“You’re
my son,” Berith said.
Isaac’s
vision began to blur.
“He’s
not your father. I am. You’re my son, and I—”
“No!”
Isaac screamed.
His
voice echoed across dust, stone, and sand, spilling out into a sea of festering
bone. Berith flinched in surprise.
“No!
I am not your son! I will never be your son!”
The
femur trembled at his neck.
“I was
your prisoner! You told me I was a waste, a burden! An anchor around your neck!
You told me I should have died with my mother!”
“The
context—”
“That
is what you said!”
Berith
swallowed. His hands rested on a bank of metal controls, the knobs and dials
alight with unknown power.
“Was I
still your son,” Isaac said, “when you sent me off to die?”
His
uncle’s fingers roamed towards tiny levers.
“You
lied!” Isaac was so furious he could barely speak the words. “You lied about everything!
Every spell, every book, every potion! Every day, there was nothing but lies!
You knew it was pointless! You knew I was going to die! You could have told me
the truth, you could have done anything other than mock and berate me for
everything I tried to do, but you didn’t! And you are still trying to tell me
it was everyone else’s fault, you are still trying to purge yourself of blame,
when it was always you!” He jagged a finger, the dagger glinting with motion.
“It was you! No one else! It was always you!”
He
slapped the femur away, taking a step forward. The bone shot back into place. Barely an arm’s length remained between them.
“I
would rather die than be your son,” Isaac said.
Behind
him, the thralls stepped closer, forming a semicircle at his back. A blaze of
fire thickened his shadow upon the stone.
“Do
it.”
Berith
blinked. The bone quivered.
“Do
it!” Isaac yelled. “Kill me!”
“Isaac.”
He leaned
his neck into the bone. “No more tricks. No more lies.”
“Isaac,”
Berith said. “Please.”
Isaac
felt tears come down his face, mixing with dirt and blood.
“This
doesn’t have to happen,” his uncle said.
Isaac’s
hand was shaking. His fingers ached around the dagger’s hilt.
“I can
just—we—you and I—”
“Uncle,”
Isaac said. “It’s me, or you.”
Berith
looked him up and down, as if seeing him for the first time. The air was hot,
and the wind was dry. Only their breathing pierced the silence.
“You’ve
always had his face,” Berith said. “Your father. You’ve been told that your
entire life, but . . . you do.” He pointed. “Except for the eyes. Your father’s
were brown. Yours are blue. Like mine.”
Over
his uncle’s shoulder, something glinted in the sun.
“You
were less than a year of age,” Berith said. “I had finally worked up the nerve
to kill you. Not for the Diet, not for your father. For your sake. To spare you
the life I knew would be waiting for you.”
Isaac
could feel the thralls standing at his back. To the side, loose bones skittered
across the floor, like embers in a breeze.
“I went
to your crib, in the dead of night. I had a plan for your disposal, for my own
alibi, for an escape from the Nine if I should have to become a fugitive. I
thought I had everything settled.”
The
femur was tight on his neck, the withered edge bulging down against the skin.
“You
were asleep. All day, you had wailed and moaned and tittered, and nothing I
could do would make you stop. By dusk, it had driven me to a rage. And though I
truly wanted to help you, I could not help but stoke this rage, like a fire.”
Souls
leaked from metal and stone.
“I
placed the tip of the knife,” Berith said, “to your chest, at an angle, to
bypass the sternum. It would be a simple puncture, straight to the heart.”
The
femur drifted down from his neck, carving a shallow laceration across his
collarbone. It settled on his chest. The angle shifted. If he struck now, the
bone would stab straight through the protection of rib and sternum. Isaac felt
his heart pounding against the sharpened bone.
Behind
his uncle, something moved.
“I was
ready to do it,” Berith said. “I would not falter again.”
The tip
of the femur pressed down towards his heart, almost breaking the skin.
“But
you woke up, and you saw me hovering above you, and when you looked at me. . .
.” Berith looked at him now, as if his memory was as clear as the present.
“Your eyes were blue, just like mine.”
The
femur quivered at his chest.
“And
you smiled, and you reached for me, and your little. . . .” His voice cracked.
He took a breath. “Your fingers wrapped around mine, around the knife I was
placing to your chest, and you looked at me, and you said ‘father’.”
Berith’s
eyes stopped glowing. All at once, the students slumped to the floor, their
magical elements disappearing like the snuffing of a candle.
“That
was your first word. You called me your father.”
For the
first time since entering the tomb, his uncle’s eyes were normal again,
untinged by any corruptive magic.
“How
could I kill my own son?”
At
Isaac’s chest, the femur fell away, clattering on the ancient stone.
Nothing
separated the two. Berith looked Isaac up and down, taking in the details of his
face, his injuries, his tattered robes, the dagger still clutched tightly in
his hand. After a moment, he lifted his head, gazing over the expanse of the
colossus.
He gave
a shuddering sigh.
“I’m
sorry, Isaac. What I did to you. . . .”
Berith’s
form began to be eclipsed by a larger one, sprinting from behind.
“I was
angry. Gods, I was bitter.” He blinked, and his cheeks glistened with tears. “I
should’ve never. . . .”
He
stopped. Isaac wasn’t sure if he heard the footsteps, or if he saw the
expression of guilt and terror on his nephew’s face. Either way, his eyes
widened, and he began to turn, his arms spinning through a spell.
Zaria
gored Berith with her captain’s sword, impaling him with such charging force
that he was lifted clear off his feet. With a snarl, she slowed herself, lifted
his entire body by the edge of the blade, and slammed him to the ground, trying
to wrench her weapon free. She stomped a foot on his chest, yanking the hilt
like a lever, ignoring Berith’s desperate, flailing grabs. After a few wet
jerks, the cutlass was sucked from the flesh, shining a bright red in the harsh
light of the sun.
Berith
remained on the floor, choking and reaching. Zaria raised the sword again,
preparing to plunge.
“Stop!”
Isaac shouted. “Stop!”
She
paused, mostly by surprise. Isaac attempted to run, but he put too much weight
on his burned leg, and he collapsed into the sand, gasping in agony, managing
only to crawl on his hands and knees. Ahead, Berith clutched at his chest,
giving wet and rattling gasps. Bones tumbled from the air. His thralls slumped
like discarded dolls.
Isaac
fell to his uncle’s side. Berith reached out, gripping his arm. There were
desperate, whistling breaths. A gargle of blood.
Anatomy
diagrams.
Lungs.
Heart.
Trauma.
Zaria
had pierced a lung. Berith was going to drown in his own blood, unless the
blood could drain from the pleural cavity. How to do it?
Intubation.
Something
sharp.
Isaac
put pressure on his uncle’s chest. “The sword!”
Zaria
looked at the blade in her hand.
“Give
me the sword!”
One of
his lungs was punctured. He had to drain the blood. If he tore a hole in the
pleural cavity, and flipped him onto his
side, the blood would not fill his lung. But there was already an ecstasy of
blood sloshing from his throat, and his breaths were rattled with fluid, and
Isaac knew the damage was far worse than whatever meager aid he could manage to
provide. Still, he had to try.
His
uncle was drowning.
The
blood was bright red. It must’ve come from an artery, because blood from the
veins was a darker hue. If he could pinch the tube. . . .
Aorta.
Carotid. Subclavian.
Diagrams.
Diagrams.
Diagrams—
Berith’s
grip tightened on his arm.
Isaac
tried to flip his uncle onto his side. His arm was weak, and the cauterized
skin was a screaming pain, and he was likely screaming himself. “Give me the
sword, Zaria!”
Berith’s
grip tightened again. His face was as pale as the bones.
“Yes, yes,
I’m here,” Isaac said, gripping him back. “I’m sorry, I . . . made the plan, I
couldn’t stop her. I didn’t think. . . .”
Berith
shook his head. For a few sucking moments, he tried to speak.
“You .
. . you. . . .”
He
gurgled. Blood glistened on blackened robes.
“You
deserved. . . .”
Two
pairs of blue eyes gazed into each other. After a moment, one of them went
glassy and still. Berith’s head fell to the stone, the unspoken words fading
like a gentle sigh.
The
world seemed to fade away. Suddenly, Isaac felt as if he had never left his
home, as if all that he had seen and learned on his journey had been only an
illusion, a dream of fantasy and want. As he stared at the body of his uncle,
there was only his routine, once again.
“Isaac.”
Training.
The morning sun. Grass and sweat and pain. Books lit by candlelight. Warm
meals, a clever debate, a sneaking of cider.
A hand
on his shoulder. “Isaac.”
The
sneer. The shouts echoing through the tower. The lack of satisfaction. The
constant demands, the gaze that always seemed to guess his thoughts, but also
the books, the jokes, the rare moments of mercy. The small nod whenever mastery