Chapter 6 Cero
Cero
Cero dreamt, but he did not sleep. For sleep was a roiling ocean and Cero only skimmed the surface, catching glimpses of horrors deep beneath its skin.
Snipes, the most wretched of his people, frozen in the snow as the highborn trod past in furs. His fellow orphans, screaming as their cramped bedchamber went up in flames.
Children slumped in the filthy snow of Kegar’s alleyways, dead-eyed, their hearts torn from their chests. Walking among them, a boy, slight and dark-haired with pale gray eyes. A boy who had haunted his nightmares for weeks now.
Who are you, Cero bet-Dafra? the boy said. Cero felt he should know who this boy was, but he didn’t. The boy spoke again.
I will tell you who you are. You are the Wayfinder. It must be you. Then the boy reached for Cero’s chest and ripped out his heart.
Cero awoke gasping, grabbing for his knife, covered in sweat. He fully expected to see his heart, bloody and beating, in the hands of that child. But after long moments, the contours of his barracks room came into focus. Narrow bed, high ash-dusted ceiling, stone floor.
Cero stumbled toward the window and flung it open, desperate for air. A mountain breeze blew in, cool this far north, even in the depths of summer. Outside, the stars faded as dawn painted the arches and columns of Antium a pallid yellow.
The Imperial capital was whole, for the most part.
Half of Antium’s population had evacuated before Aiz’s first assault.
The rest had capitulated to a Kegari occupation after they had learned of the destruction farther south.
The Martials and Scholars here were alone.
Belly-up. Submission was their only choice.
Though not forever. Not if Cero could help it.
A hard, single knock at the door made him jump.
“Cero.” Aiz spoke from the hallway. “Get up. I need you.”
I need you. Cero grimaced at Aiz’s voice, once loved, now loathed. Though the Jaduna sorceress Sirsha had sundered Mother Div from Aiz, Aiz’s loss of power had only sharpened her edges.
For four months, she had used every wile at her disposal to convince her people that she was flush with magic when she could hardly stir a breeze.
After Aiz and Cero had survived Sufiyan’s attack, after Cero realized Div was truly gone from Aiz, he was pathetically grateful.
The last time hope had filled his chest like that was more than two years earlier, when Aiz had kissed him.
On that night, all the voices in his head went quiet.
All the confusion and rage disappeared. He was seventeen to Aiz’s eighteen, and he was a fool in love.
Well, he wasn’t in love anymore, even if he was still a fool.
He’d believed Aiz might be sorry for what she’d done.
You can’t make it right, he’d told her. But you can use your power to stop the slaughter in the Empire.
We can take our people south to Kegar. Offer them a future that isn’t soaked in blood.
He might as well have been talking to a tree stump. Within a few days of arriving in Antium, Aiz ordered more Battle Sails built, more firepowder procured. She tortured residents for information about Loha, the metal the Kegari needed for their Sails.
It was the Loha at the heart of their woes.
The only place they’d found it had been on the faces of Masks, elite Martial soldiers named for the silver metal that melded to their faces.
Removing the mask meant killing the soldier wearing it.
Aiz didn’t care. She wanted the Loha badly and offered Martial and Scholar villages safety if they turned over Masks, and destruction if they didn’t.
We need more Loha, Aiz justified her slaughter. Enough to power our aircraft and return across the sea to Old Kegar. Thus it is written in the Nine Sacred Tales and thus it shall be.
Those old stories mentioned nothing about murdering thousands of innocents. But no matter how often Cero said it, Aiz didn’t hear. First he’d despaired at her murderousness. Then he’d replaced his anguish with rage.
These days, he said little to Aiz. Keep your peace, Sister Noa, one of the clerics who raised him and who’d been careful to retain Aiz’s trust, had warned Cero just days ago.
Keep your position. Risk it for nothing, no matter what she does.
She has no magic and that means we have a chance.
Hold your tongue and get us good information our allies can act on.
When Noa and another Dafra cleric, Sister Olnas, asked him to spy on Aiz, he suggested assassination instead. Without the so-called Tel Ilessi, the entire reason for Kegari presence in the Empire would crumble.
But Cero realized quickly that Ghaz, the head of the Kegari army, would take control. And yet again, the highborn Hawks would rule and the Snipes would suffer.
Keep your head down, Olnas had said. And get us what we need to fight back.
Cero wasn’t startled at the clerics’ cold practicality.
Noa and Olnas had helped run Dafra cloister, the largest in Kegar.
They’d made life-or-death decisions constantly.
Both had loved Aiz as much as Cero. Both had been horrified at Aiz’s ruthless choices.
And both remained in Aiz’s good graces, even if they privately loathed what she’d become.
Noa and Olnas were two of the only people Cero cared for, so he listened and reported anything useful.
He watched for any sign of Aiz recovering the precise and powerful magic she wielded when Mother Div—or whatever that creature was—lent her power.
So far, her magic had appeared short-lived and unreliable, as it had been before she met Div.
But sometimes when Cero looked at her, he saw a strange shadow in her eyes. It was as if the hunger that plagued Mother Div had taken root in Aiz and now waited to be unleashed. Her magic would stir, and it felt like the crackle of a distant storm.
“Hurry.” Aiz’s voice through the door jarred Cero from his thoughts. He took his time splashing water on his face, brushing his hair into a topknot, and pulling on his flight leathers.
When he finally opened the door, he was met with Aiz’s frowning visage. Behind her, two guards—both from Dafra slum—nodded a greeting.
Aiz wore a white dress, something she’d taken to after Ghaz had suggested it was appropriate for her role as the Holy Tel Ilessi. The dress made her look ethereal. Virtuous. The sight made Cero want to laugh and scream at the same time.
“General Ghaz is planning something.” Aiz hurried down the hallway, clearly with a destination in mind. “I need you there when I confront him.”
Perhaps Ghaz was finally showing his true colors after bowing and scraping to Aiz for months. He’d once been a Triarch, one of the three rulers of Kegar. He hungered for power. He’d even taken rooms at the Blue Palace, once Empress Helene’s seat of government.
Everyone knew he was no ruler. But he wasn’t weak, either. Aiz had more than once considered getting rid of him, but she relied on him to keep the highborn Hawks—and their pilots and soldiers—in line.
“Ghaz claims there is no Loha,” Aiz began as they walked through the barracks. It was early yet, and nearly everyone was still abed. “But this cannot be.”
Cero glanced at her surreptitiously. Her nostrils flared as she picked at an old scar on one hand.
“I would destroy this city if it changed anything,” she said. “But—”
“It won’t,” Cero said, appalled at the casual way she suggested such a horror. “We’ve killed enough people, Aiz.”
“Tel Ilessi,” she corrected him with a glare. “And no moralizing this morning, please. This is war, Cero. And in war, people die. If I had my power”—she glanced back at her guards and lowered her voice—“everything would be different. But it is distant.”
She shook herself, body trembling. For a moment, as she fixed her gaze on him, Cero was sure she would rip his heart out as the boy had in his dream.
“I have fewer allies by the day, Cero,” she said. “Even Dolbra left as soon as she understood that Div and I were no longer bonded.”
Maybe because no one wants to be allied with a child-killing fiend. Dolbra’s betrayal had stung Aiz. She’d thought the Ankanese seer would be an adviser. But all Dolbra cared about was Div. The seer had disappeared weeks ago.
They exited the barracks and stepped into Antium’s cool summer sunshine. Aiz’s guards closed in, eyeing the streets around them warily. Cero had already saved her from a few assassination attempts—reluctantly and on Noa and Olnas’s orders.
“Ghaz will be at the airfield,” Aiz said. “He gathered two dozen pilots a half hour ago. I wish to know why.” She paused, dropping her voice further. “Do you think he knows? About…my magic.”
Likely. Ghaz didn’t miss much. But that was Aiz’s problem to figure out.
“At least be civil enough to speak, Cero,” Aiz sniffed. “If not for me, you’d be in an unmarked grave a few thousand miles from here.”
Cero’s anger flared. The bloodsmithing. He suspected she’d try to hold it over his head eventually.
“I forgive you your ungratefulness.” She misinterpreted his frown as anxiety instead of poorly suppressed disgust. “I forgive you because I trust you. And I need you at my side.”
He kept his face blank, even as he thought back to their childhood, to the girl who’d survived Dafra slum with him. He couldn’t see that girl anymore. He saw only the despot she’d become. For a moment, he was incensed at himself for letting it happen. For failing Aiz and his people so badly.
But the moment passed. Aiz made her own decisions. He was not her keeper.
They reached the Kegari section of the city, an area of small, neat houses and narrow, cobbled streets.
This had been the foreign quarter of Antium, but after the Kegari assault it had emptied out.
Ghaz had told Aiz he planned to settle a few dozen Snipe families here.
But as news of Aiz’s presence spread and Kegari began to emerge from the houses, Cero realized that there were far more Snipes than Ghaz had let on. At least a thousand.