Chapter Thirty-One Kian #2
“It’s not just revenge for dead parents.
It’s accountability.” I hold out my arms to the walls of skulls surrounding us.
Surely she can see it is so much bigger than just my vengeance.
My motives might be small in the larger scheme of things, but my goal is righteous.
“The corruption of the order is deep and long. Generations of dishonesty, perversion, and pain.”
She stands up and walks around the crypt. She reaches out to touch the skulls, but she cannot get to them. It’s as if an invisible barrier protects them. But of course, it likely does. One just like the barrier around the valley, around the lock to Tani’s stall.
She places her forehead against the barrier and whispers through it. Things I cannot hear. I would bet all the gold bars hidden in the walls of my family’s compound that they are kind, comforting words. If the skulls feel, and I now believe that they do, they are no doubt calmed by her gentleness.
I think of the way she took out the door to this crypt and Tani’s stall without blinking. The crooked building she brought down to nothing. How quickly Etana’s agony was alleviated.
Adela has the power to do everything I can’t manage on my own.
But will she?
“Help me,” I beg. “Help me destroy the bad so there is space for good.”
She turns to me, and for a moment it’s almost as if I see an outline of flames and wings rise up behind her. But her face is softening. She’s listening. Something deep inside me uncoils. I showed her myself and she didn’t abandon me.
She is going to say yes. She is going to be my partner in this. Together we will disrupt the order, root out the corruption, and make space for good.
Before she can answer, a smooth, silky voice comes out of the darkness. “Hello, my darling little birds.” High Priestess Sarai steps out of the shadows. “You are not supposed to be here. Yet.”
The gems glitter in the candlelight beneath Sarai’s sheer black veil.
She holds up a hand, nearly as pale as the unicorn skull, and snaps her fingers.
From behind her, half a dozen priestesses and priests, two from each of the orders, come forward carrying lanterns.
Linden, Molvi, Ylysia, and Jasmyn are with them as well.
Their eyes are wide as they hold up their lanterns, taking in the bone crypt and the thousands of skulls that surround us. But they remain silent and steadfast.
Linden descends on me, along with two brutes of brothers whose names I don’t know. One wears the red of the Spinner, one the navy of the Pupil. I had always wondered how involved the other two orders were with the actions of the Huntress. Apparently they are not innocent, as I’d hoped.
The priests grab my arms tightly, pulling so they’re half-twisted behind me while Liden stands close, acting threatening.
I roll my eyes at him.
“What is this?” Adela asks. “Why are you holding him?”
“He’s a traitor,” Sarai says with an unamused laugh. “And he must be punished for his crimes.”
“Crimes?” Adela asks.
“We have been following Kian for years as he plotted against the orders, leading his family of smugglers to the valley, even burn—”
I begin thrashing, spewing curses.
Adela can never know that I was responsible for the destruction of the matching hut. That, she could never forgive.
Sarai nods. The Pupil priest rips the phoenix skull off my face, breaking the leather strapping holding it on while Linden gags me with a length of cloth.
Swift and brutal. My eyes water as my tongue is shoved too far back into my mouth, and it feels like the skin of my cheeks is cracking, it’s tied so tightly.
Adela steps forward, as if she’s going to come free me from the gag. I shake my head. I don’t want them to hurt her. She stops ten feet from me, and I feel a tug deep inside myself and then instantly gone, along with the gag.
I spit. “You fucking—”
As if they anticipated a lost gag, Linden pulls out another length of cloth.
Once again, I am silenced, this one somehow even tighter than before.
But a little piece of cloth is not going to stop me from fighting.
I flail against the hands that hold me, flinging my body back and forth violently.
Despite my strength and size, they manage to hold me in place.
When I feel Adela’s power beginning to grow again, I expect her to remove the gag a second time.
Instead, she removes Linden’s hands. We all just stare for one ponderous beat before the screaming begins.
Blood gushes, covering Linden, me, and the priests.
He turns, splattering the floor, candles, lanterns, and robes of everyone near with gore.
Ylysia collapses on the hard-packed dirt floor, knocking her gytrash skull askew as her head hits the ground.
Molvi bends to help her even as Jasmyn steps over her to get to Linden.
The Pupil priest is closer. He lets go of me to focus on healing Linden.
His bleeding slows instantly, but the priest does not have enough magic to regrow a hand.
I could.
I turn away. Let him manage the world with no hands, and no creature skull. The fate he deserves has found him.
Taking advantage of the chaos, I pull out of the grasp of the single priest now holding me and hurry to Adela, kissing her. A desperate, hungry kiss, as if it might be the last we’ll ever share.
“I wish I were you,” she says softly, like a goodbye. “A healer. A creator.”
“No, love. You’re so much more. You’re willing to do whatever is required, even if you abhor it.” I think of my cowardice at not telling her about the matching hut and wish I could go back to tell her the full truth of who I am. “Embrace who you are. Exactly as you are.”
“Even the part of myself that embraces destruction?”
I glance over at Linden, whimpering, and Sarai, giving instructions. They follow her orders without thinking. Or without caring, perhaps.
“Especially that part.”
Once Linden is carted out of the crypt, his partners weeping behind him, Sarai’s attention is back on us. “I didn’t think you had it in you,” she says to Adela, something like pride in her voice.
“You think I don’t know the necessity of violence?
” Adela laughs and does not let go of me.
“I’m a keeper. To care for creatures means sometimes you mete out violence.
Any animal caregiver knows you do not allow an abscess to linger.
You cut it open and let the rot drain out, even if the creature flails and screams their pain. ”
Her eyes trace the trail of blood that stains the crypt floor.
The diamonds on Sarai’s unicorn skull gleam in the flickering light. “The things we will accomplish together, you wonderful little bird.”
I can feel Adela tense in my arms. She wants to argue, to fight, but she shakes her head as if trying to knock something loose. I wonder how loud this many skulls are for her, how painful it must be to have them whispering their desires, their whims, inside her mind.
“What exactly do you want?” I ask Sarai.
“Magic is failing.” Sarai walks slowly over to another part of the crypt, where there is an altar similar to the one in the sanctuary above.
She traces a fingertip along the edge, then lights the three candles there—one red, one navy, and one black.
The three colors of the three orders. As a member of the Huntress order, she has no right to light the navy or red.
Those are for the Pupil and the Spinner.
They should not even be in her possession.
Except obviously the other orders are also involved.
“I’m securing our futures, through the means the high priestesses established three hundred years ago.”
Three hundred years of stockpiling skulls. Three hundred years of breaking their commitments to the valley. Three hundred years of deceit.
“But the reason the magic is dwindling is because you’ve been hoarding skulls!
” Adela counters, then cringes again, pressing one ear against my shoulder, as if that could keep out some of the sounds surrounding her.
“And, besides, you have magic. The only magic that exists. Why would you need more?”
I agree with Adela. Sarai leads the largest, most powerful order.
She charges people for the privilege of helping their loved ones cross into the after.
She controls the fresh fruits and vegetables of an entire city.
She tells her priestesses who to heal. And who not to. What would she need with more, indeed.
“Compared to the high priestesses of old, the power I have might as well be none.” Sarai takes one of the candelabras we lit and walks around part of the crypt, holding up the flickering light so we can better see the creature skulls.
“I cannot bend a person’s will to my own or block off a path entirely.
We will match these ancient skulls with novitiates who are eager to follow the will of the Huntress.
” She glances at the other orders’ members and acknowledges them with a nod of the head.
“And the Pupil and the Spinner, too, of course.”
She’ll match the skulls to those eager to be puppets of herself, more like. No matter which order they belong to.
I can feel the phoenix’s pressure building deep inside me as my fury grows.
I cannot believe she is asking Adela to do this.
To betray everything she believes in. But without a target or direction, the pressure is nothing but a suffocating frustration.
After all, what am I going to do? Make a vining plant that strangles her?
Put her in a box that her followers will just tear down? I stand there and seethe silently.
Sarai returns to the altar. Kneels at it.
Bows her head as if ready to receive an anointment.
In her dark robes and veil she looks like a pious supplicant.
“The great goddess must concur. After all, she’s blessed me with not only a phoenix pair to destroy whatever enemies that arise and then rebuild them to our purposes—” she turns just her head toward Adela. “But also a matcher.”
“Why would I ever help you?” Adela lets go of me, and I resist reaching for her hand.
If she wants to stand on her own, I will stand beside or behind her.
Wherever she needs me. “You’ve manipulated me.
You’ve amassed power and wealth that were not yours to keep while withholding food and other promised resources from my community.
You’ve made it impossible for us to fulfill our destiny as keepers, and broken your covenants. ”
“You’ll help because you want influence, of course.” Sarai stands and comes closer, her arms outstretched. “As my right hand, you will have a voice in the decisions we make, the world we rebuild.”
This makes Adela pause. She desperately wants to do good in the world, and I can see the temptation. If only the offer were true. But the whole room knows it’s not. Surely.
Thank the goddess, it’s not enough to sway Adela.
“No,” Adela responds.
Sarai shrugs and immediately changes tactics. She lowers her head, as if she embodies the unicorn she wears and is going to charge. “If you don’t join me, your precious valley will suffer your refusal.” She raises a single finger. “First, we withdraw our aid. All three orders.”
Adela does not flinch. After all, she knows the valley is healing. In addition to my family’s trade, it could be enough to sustain them.
Sarai holds up a second finger and takes a small step closer to us in the center of the crypt.
“Second, we prevent the smugglers from accessing the valley to provide their own version of resources. I cannot block the path in and out fully, but I can move the entrance far enough that attempting the old way in will harm them.”
Damn it.
Here, I see Adela hesitate. Based on the way she spoke of going hungry in the depth of winter, I doubt the keepers have enough stores to survive without any food from the outside world. It will be months before the current seedlings produce enough to feed an entire village.
Sarai doesn’t stop there with her threats.
She holds up a third finger, stepping closer yet again.
She drops her voice, and the softness of it is more chilling than yelling ever could be.
“And then, when they are weak with hunger, we go into the valley. We might not have a willing dragon or a phoenix’s destructive capabilities, but we still have magic.
We still have power. And of course, we still have physical weapons.
Most importantly, we have the will to crush our enemies. ”
She lowers her hand, making a fist. A promise of violence.
The air is heavy—oppressive—with Sarai’s threats. Though I can’t see her face, and I’m not touching her, I can practically feel a storm of emotion building up in Adela, like Lathai’s storm in the valley. “You will just destroy it all with so little thought?”
Sarai doesn’t flinch. Her tone is smooth and calculating.
“On the contrary, I’ve given it great deal of thought.
I don’t do this lightly. You could say I’m not doing it at all.
In the end, it’s your choice. You can pledge your loyalties and power to me or you can be responsible for the destruction of your home and all the people and creatures within it. ”
Adela looks around the crypt’s walls and ceilings, taking in the thousands of skulls stolen from her people, and I know before she speaks that she’s made her decision. It was never a choice. It was a trap.
Adela’s shoulders sag, her face collapses in resignation, as if the fire within her is dimming, being snuffed out. She glances at me briefly, then her gaze flicks away. As if I would judge her for what I know is coming. Her voice is barely above a whisper when she says, “I agree.”
“Excellent.” Sarai walks over to me, trailing a long finger across my shoulders, and smiles with no warmth, just calculating satisfaction. “As your first test of loyalty, for his crimes against both the orders and the valley, you will kill Kian.”