Chapter 22 #3
It wasn’t a fatal blow. She’d stabbed him just under the sternum. She had missed his heart. Eventually he might bleed to death, but she didn’t want him gone just yet. She needed him alive and conscious.
She still needed absolution.
Altan peered down at the prongs emerging from his chest. “Would you like to kill me?”
She withdrew her trident. Blood spilled out faster onto his uniform. “I’ve done it before.”
“But could you do it now?” he inquired. “Could you end me? If you kill me here, Rin, I’ll go.”
“I don’t want that.”
“Then you still need me.”
“Not the way I did.”
She’d realized, finally realized, that chasing the legacy of Altan Trengsin would give her no truth. She couldn’t replicate him in her mind, no matter how many times she tortured herself going over the memories. She could only inherit his pain.
And what was there to replicate? Who was Altan, really?
A scared boy from Speer who just wanted to go home, a broken boy who had learned that there was no home to return to, and a soldier who stayed alive just to spite everyone who thought he should be dead.
A commander with no purpose, nothing to fight for, and nothing to care about except burning down the world.
Altan was no hero. That was so clear to her now, so stunningly clear that she felt as if she’d been doused in ice water, submerged and reborn.
She didn’t owe him her guilt.
She didn’t owe him anything.
“I still love you,” she said, because she had to be honest.
“I know. You’re a fool for it,” he said. He stepped forward, reached for her hand, and entwined his fingers in hers. “Kiss me. I know you’ve wanted to.”
She touched his blood-soaked fingers against her cheek. She closed her eyes, just for a moment, and thought about what might have been.
“I loved you, too,” he said. “Do you believe that?”
“No, I don’t,” she said, and pressed her trident into his chest once more.
It slid smoothly in with no resistance. Rin didn’t know if that was because the vision of Altan was already fading, immaterial, or if Altan within this dream space was deliberately aiding her, sinking the three prongs neatly into that space in his rib cage that stood just over his heart.
When Rin breathed again it was a new and frightening sensation, at once mechanical and also terribly confusing.
Was this her body, this mortal and clumsy vessel?
One finger at a time she learned the inner workings of her body again.
Learned the way air moved through her lungs.
Learned to hear the sound of her heart pumping inside her.
She saw light all around her and above her, a perfect circle of blue. It took her a moment to realize that it was the roof of the yurt, pulled open to let the steam escape.
“Don’t move,” said the Sorqan Sira.
The Sorqan Sira placed a hand over Rin’s chest, clenched her fingers, and started to chant. Sharp nails dug into Rin’s skin.
Rin screamed.
It wasn’t over. She felt a terrible pulling sensation, as if the Sorqan Sira had wrapped her fingers around Rin’s heart and wrenched it out of her rib cage.
She looked down. The Sorqan Sira’s fingers hadn’t broken skin. The tugging came from something within; something sharp and jagged inside her, something that didn’t want to let go.
The Sorqan Sira’s chanting grew louder. Rin felt an immense pressure, so great she was sure that her lungs were bursting. It grew and grew—and then something gave. The pressure disappeared.
For a moment all she could do was lie flat and breathe, eyes fixed on the blue circle above.
“Look.” The Sorqan Sira opened her palm toward Rin. Inside was a clot of blood the size of her fist, mottled black and rotten. It smelled putrid.
Rin shrank instinctively away. “Is that . . . ?”
“Daji’s venom.” The Sorqan Sira made a fist over the clot and squeezed.
Black blood oozed through the cracks between her fingers and dripped onto the glowing rocks.
The Sorqan Sira peered curiously at her stained fingers, then shook the last few drops onto the rocks, where they hissed loudly and disappeared. “It’s gone now. You’re free.”
Rin stared at the stained rocks, at a loss for words.
“I don’t . . .” She choked before she could finish.
Then it happened all at once. Her entire body shook, racked with a grief she hadn’t even known was there.
She buried her head in her hands, whimpering incoherently, fingers thick with tears and snot.
“It’s all right to cry,” the Sorqan Sira said quietly. “I know what you saw.”
“Then fuck you,” Rin choked. “Fuck you.”
Her chest heaved. She lurched forward and vomited over the stones. Her knees shook, her ankle throbbed, and she collapsed onto herself, face inches from her vomit, eyes squeezed shut to stem the tide of tears.
Her heart slammed against her rib cage. She tried to focus on her pulse, counting her heartbeats with every passing second to calm down.
He’s gone.
He’s dead.
He can’t hurt me anymore.
She reached for her anger, the anger that had always served as her shield, and couldn’t find it.
Her emotions had burned her out from the inside; the raging flames had died out because they had nothing left to consume.
She felt drained, hollowed out and empty.
The only things that remained were exhaustion and the dry ache of loss in her throat.
“You are allowed to feel,” the Sorqan Sira murmured.
Rin sniffled and wiped her nose with her sleeve.
“But don’t feel bad for him,” said the Sorqan Sira.
“That was never him. The man you know has gone somewhere he’ll be at peace.
Life and death, they’re equal to this cosmos.
We enter the material world and we go away again, reincarnated into something better.
That boy was miserable. You let him go.”
Yes, Rin knew; in the abstract she knew this truth, that to the cosmos they were fundamentally irrelevant, that they came from dust and returned to dust and ash.
And she should have taken comfort in that, but in that moment she didn’t want to be temporary and immaterial; she wanted to be forever preserved in the material world in a moment with Altan, their foreheads pressed together, eyes meeting, arms touching and interlacing, trying to meld into the pure physicality of the other.
She wanted to be alive and mortal and eternally temporary with him, and that was why she cried.
“I don’t want him to be gone,” she whispered.
“Our dead don’t leave us,” said the Sorqan Sira. “They’ll haunt you as long as you let them. That boy is a disease on your mind. Forget him.”
“I can’t.” She pressed her face into her hands. “He was brilliant. He was different. You’d have never met anyone like him.”
“You would be stunned.” The Sorqan Sira looked very sad. “You have no idea how many men are like Altan Trengsin.”
“Rin! Oh, gods.” Kitay was at her side the instant she emerged from the yurt. She knew, could tell from the expression on his face, that he’d been waiting outside, teeth clenched in anxiety, for hours.
“Hold her up,” the Sorqan Sira told him.
He slipped an arm around her waist to take the weight off her ankle. “You’re all right?”
She nodded. Together they limped forward.
“Are you sure?” he pressed.
“I’m better,” she murmured. “I think I’m better than I’ve been in a long time.”
She stood for a minute, leaning against his shoulder, simply basking in the cold air. She had never known that the air itself could taste or feel so sweet. The sensation of the wind against her face was crisp and delicious, more refreshing than cool rainwater.
“Rin,” Kitay said.
She opened her eyes. “What?”
He was staring pointedly at her chest.
Rin fumbled at her front, wondering if her clothes had somehow burned away in the heat. She wouldn’t have noticed if they had. The sensation of having a physical body still felt so entirely new to her that she might as well have been walking around naked.
“What is it?” she asked, dazed.
The Sorqan Sira said nothing.
“Look down,” Kitay said. His voice sounded oddly strangled.
She glanced down.
“Oh,” she said faintly.
A black handprint was scorched into her skin like a brand just below her sternum.
Kitay whirled on the Sorqan Sira. “What did you—”
“It wasn’t her,” Rin said.
This mark was Altan’s work and legacy.
That bastard.
Kitay was watching her carefully. “Are you all right with this?”
“No,” she said.
She put her hand over her chest, placed her fingers inside the outlines of Altan’s.
His hand was so much bigger than hers.
She let her hand drop. “But it doesn’t matter.”
“Rin . . .”
“He’s dead,” she said, voice trembling. “He’s dead, he’s gone, do you understand? He’s gone, and he’s never going to touch me again.”
“I know,” said Kitay. “He won’t.”
“Call the flame,” the Sorqan Sira said abruptly. She had been standing quietly, observing their exchange, but now her voice carried an odd urgency. “Do it now.”
“Hold on,” Kitay said. “She’s weak, she’s exhausted—”
“She must do it now,” the Sorqan Sira insisted. She looked strangely frightened, and that terrified Rin. “I have to know.”
“Be reasonable—” Kitay began, but Rin shook her head.
“No. She’s right. Stand back.”
He let go of her arm and stepped several paces backward.
She closed her eyes, exhaled, and let her mind sink into the state of ecstasy. The place where rage met power. And for the first time in months she let herself hope that she might feel the flame again, a hope that had become as unattainable as flying.
It was infinitely easier now to generate the anger. She could plunder her own memories with abandon. There were no more parts of her mind that she didn’t dare prod, that still bled like open wounds.
She traversed a familiar path through the void until she saw the Phoenix as if through a mist; heard it like an echo, felt it like the remembrance of a touch.
She felt for its rage, and she pulled.
The fire didn’t come.
Something pulsed.
Flashes of light seared behind her eyelids.
The Seal remained, burned into her mind, still present. The ghost of Altan’s laughter echoed in her ears.
Rin held the flame in the palm of her hand for only an instant, just enough to tantalize her and leave her gasping for more, and then it disappeared.
There was no pain this time, no immediate threat that she might be sucked into a vision and lose her mind to the fantasy, but still Rin sank to her knees and screamed.