Chapter 34 Cero
Cero
When Cero was a boy, he’d grown bored of the clerics’ stories quickly. A queen whose spirit would be reborn! A miraculous leader who could windsmith, bloodsmith, and mindsmith! He never understood why Aiz believed such rubbish.
Cero preferred exploring over lies. When he was about five, he began wandering the tunnels beneath Dafra cloister.
He’d take a lamp to examine the strange, faded murals with images that only made sense with his eyes half-closed and his imagination filling in the empty spots.
He would puzzle over the bits of scripture on the walls that didn’t appear in the Nine Sacred Tales.
Lo, and the Tel Ilessi shall meet the Queen of the Crossing, for whom he was named. There in the shadow of our bloodiest betrayal, the Tel Ilessi shall hear the dark history, our Ninth Sacred Tale. And thus may our people finally be led home.
He also saw an apparition in the tunnel. A woman, with canny green eyes and a severe, aquiline face. And though he’d been but a boy, Cero would never forget her words:
I saw you coming, child. I knew that you alone would learn the truth. But not yet. The stars spoke of the Wayfinder. They said: The oldest betrayal is that which is between blood. Cast him into the dark, so that he might see.
Cero was in the tunnels, just shy of eight years old, when Tiral bet-Hiwa lit Dafra cloister on fire. The highborn did it in a fit of pique after the cloister children made him look weak before his powerful father.
Cero knew the instant it happened. Not because he smelled smoke or heard screams but because he felt Tiral’s malice, a poison that seemed to seep through Cero’s blood. He experienced his fellow orphans’ terror, and it kindled his own.
Still, he didn’t realize how fast the fire would spread, not until he burst into the courtyard and saw the entire dormitory erupting in flames.
All he could think was that he must find Aiz.
He ran into the burning building, ignoring the clerics’ shouts of warning. He found Aiz collapsed by the door. She wasn’t breathing—she’d been in the smoke for too long. He dragged her down the stairs, and he was suddenly the most fervent member of Div’s faithful, begging her to save Aiz.
He got her to the courtyard, and Noa and Olnas knelt beside Aiz, Noa trying to breathe her back to life. After a few minutes, it was clear it would not happen.
But Aiz couldn’t die, because she was Cero’s best friend. Their parents had grown up on the same street. Before the highborns pressed them into the military, Aiz’s mother and Cero’s father had been friends. Aiz had been a constant in Cero’s life for as long as he could remember.
She gave him silence when he needed it. He made sure she ate enough. She listened to his ideas and dreams, and he protected her as best he could. Even though he was younger, she never treated him as lesser. She was his family. His only family. She could not die.
He put a hand on Aiz’s shoulder after Olnas and Noa had gone to help put out the fire. For a long time, he simply sat beside her, unable to leave her in the cold, dead courtyard.
And then in the same way he could feel the contours of the wind, he sensed her heart, still flickering. He spoke to it.
Awake. Awake and live. Awake. His magic surged in a strange new way. With the wind, he had only to whisper a desire and it complied. This was bloodsmithing, and it turned his bones to ice.
Awake. Awake, Aiz. Calling her back was like trying to shove through a great, dark ocean seething with pain.
But he repeated the words awake, Aiz, awake, and after a time, the spark within her flared.
She coughed. Cero sat back, startled. Sister Noa, soot-covered and burned, must have heard. She ran toward them.
A miracle from Mother Div, she wept.
Cero said nothing, knowing, with a growing terror, that the miracle had come from him.