Chapter 10 Cero
Cero
Three days after Aiz siphoned his magic, Cero found himself wandering Antium, a kite with its string cut. Aiz had left with the fleet and Cero sent word to Noa of the impending Kegari attack on Serra. Noa, he trusted, would get the message to her source in the Empire’s government.
But by now, Aiz would know her mission was compromised. And she’d know who did it too. Only Cero and Ghaz had been close enough to her at the airfield when she’d concocted her attack plan. And Ghaz was too scared of her to tell the Martials anything.
Ah well, Cero thought as he walked through the east end of the city. Death comes for us all.
Noa and Olnas found him as the sun set, deep in the merchants’ district. From his spot on a bench near Antium’s baths, he could see the Kegari soldiers sitting watch atop the east gate, and the Imperial citizens shooting them dark glances as they passed below.
Behind Cero, Antium’s residents streamed in and out of the lamplit baths, while in front of him, shops stood open—though few of them were well stocked. The Martials and Scholars who remained in Antium had been cowed into going about their daily lives and businesses, for fear of Kegari punishment.
“Come on, lad,” Noa said. She was a tiny woman in her seventh decade, with curly white hair, warm skin, and a sly dimple that no amount of war seemed to dim. “Come with us.”
“You know, this is my favorite of the Imperial cities.” Cero glanced around. “Neat. Orderly. It’s beautiful, like whoever created it was an artist instead of a Snipe grunt forced to lay bricks until he died.”
Noa crossed her arms. “That’s enough navel-gazing from you. You need to do something useful.”
“Like pray to Mother Div with you?” Cero looked between Noa and Olnas, surly. “No thanks.”
Noa growled in irritation, but Olnas, the love of Noa’s life and her partner in all things, cut her a look before offering Cero a conciliatory pat on the shoulder. Her brown eyes were warm with empathy.
“You’ve hidden it from everyone else, but I know you, lad. You’re in a funk. Lucky for you, I have just the distraction.”
“We need help in the kitchen,” Olnas said.
“The children have been asking for you.” It had been Olnas’s idea to take a requisitioned building and provide food for the war orphans who roamed the city.
So far, Aiz hadn’t shut it down. If she knew the true purpose of the kitchen—to pass on top-secret intelligence about Kegari troop deployments, weapons caches, and munition stores—everyone there would already be dead.
Cero tried to help the clerics at the kitchen every other day. He didn’t talk much to the children who came there, other than responding to their questions. He wasn’t sure why they would ask for him.
“I’d rather not,” Cero said.
“Be reasonable, child.” Olnas sighed. “You haven’t been by in days.”
Not since Cero brought Noa news of the impending Kegari attack on Serra.
“Been a bit occupied,” he said.
“Busy waiting for Aiz to come back and kill you.” Noa snorted. “Don’t act like caring for others doesn’t make you feel better. I’ve known you since you were a pup bringing me kittens that I couldn’t feed.”
“Caring for others.” He laughed, bitter as a northern gale. “I designed the Sails our troops used to get here. I made sure they could remain aloft and innervated with no pilot. I created weapons to keep the Empire obedient. I made this war possible.”
“You thought the war would be over before we dropped a single bomb,” Noa said. “You thought the Martials had Loha and they’d hand it over. We all did.”
“We were all bleeding fools.”
“You think I’m not haunted by that, boy?
” Noa said softly. “I believed in her. I thought she must be the Tel Ilessi because all her life, I’d witnessed her survive things she shouldn’t have.
Sometimes we see what we want to, instead of what is right in front of us.
You can’t undo your sins. But you can try not to repeat them.
Come. It’s long past suppertime and the children are waiting.
Besides, there’s someone I want you to meet. ”
At Cero’s hesitation, she frowned. “Move, boy. Or so help me, I’ll drag you by that topknot of yours.”
Cero found himself smiling at the acid in Noa’s tone. She’d always cared for the orphans of her cloister with love wrapped in a wry wit. Nice to see that nothing had changed.
He was about to answer her when his neck prickled. He glanced at the shadowed columns of the baths, the darkened parkland beyond it, trees thick enough to hide anyone watching. When he sent out his wind to probe the woods, he found only wildlife.
Noa hadn’t noticed his disquiet. She hooked one arm into his while Olnas pinned him on the other side.
Together, they marched him to the foreign quarter, to the whitewashed building they’d transformed into a kitchen.
It had battered old double doors that opened out and three large windowpanes, only two of which had glass in them. The other one was boarded up.
The kitchen was L-shaped. Another cleric from Dafra, a middle-aged man named Jerim, had been holding off the children, entertaining them with stories until he had help with the food.
“Jerim?” Cero whispered to Noa. “Really?” He was a kind old man, but he couldn’t keep a secret to save his life.
“Fear not,” Noa whispered. “He doesn’t know anything.”
“More hands, thank the Spires!” Jerim bustled toward them.
“Olnas, give them bowls and corn cakes. Noa, the lentil stew. Cero, my boy, how are you—do take over the rice—” Jerim hurried to open the back door so more children could enter.
They surged in, chattering, elbowing, laughing.
All of them were Martial or Scholar and most of them were skin and bone.
Unless you were a Kegari, regular meals were hard to come by in Antium.
Especially if you had no adults to procure food for you.
“Cero! Look, Dawa, it’s Cero.” A dark-haired little boy named Fabius hurried to Cero’s station with his bowl. He only spoke Serran—but Cero had picked up enough these past few months to follow most conversations with relative ease. “Cero, where have you been?”
“Don’t talk to him!” Dawa bared her teeth at Cero. He didn’t blame her. “He’s the enemy!”
“Cero, are you the enemy?” Fabius swept dirty hair out of his face, regarding Cero very seriously.
“Not yours, Fabius.” Cero added a scoop of rice to Dawa’s stew. She snatched it from him as if he might take it back. “But I understand why Dawa’s angry. She has every right to be.”
“Why do you wear your hair like that?” Fabius offered his own bowl now. “Is it very ugly if it’s not tied up?”
“Absolutely hideous,” Cero said. “I keep snakes up there to unleash upon my enemies.”
“Could you use them on my enemies?” Fabius said.
“Certainly. Just point them out.”
Cero wasn’t smiling, but Fabius giggled anyway, and headed outside with his friend.
As Cero watched them, his stomach twisted.
Most of these children had lost their parents to the Kegari war machine.
They would be in their own homes, eating food their families made them, if not for Cero and his ilk.
What the clerics did here—it was a bandage over an amputation.
“Get out of your head and serve the rice, child.” Noa kicked his boot none too gently. “Hate yourself on your own time.”
Noa knew him too well. Children pushed forward faster than Cero could scoop out the rice.
“Has our Tel Ilessi threatened to shut you down yet?” he asked Noa as he gave a particularly small child an extra-large scoop.
“She’s been avoiding me,” Noa said.
Cero was unsurprised. “You refuse to bow to her. She won’t like that.”
“She is lost to us,” Noa said. “I thought perhaps the Aiz we knew was still inside, but—” Noa’s face was etched with sorrow. She forced a smile for a little boy who approached. “Hello, Ingan,” she said in heavily accented Serran. “I’ve got another corn cake for you today.”
As Noa fussed over the child, Cero observed a small, hooded figure in line—a girl, he was certain. Her gold-brown hands were clasped around her own bowl. He caught a flash of pale, silver-gray eyes when she glanced up.
Though it was more of a glower. Hood or not, hatred blazed out from her like heat from a smith’s furnace. He looked away, cheeks hot, suddenly ashamed.
Cero leaned toward Noa. “Who is that?” he asked. She didn’t have to glance up to know whom he spoke of.
“That’s who I wanted you to meet. Our most recent liaison with the…
Ravens.” She used her code name for the Resistance.
Cero could barely hear her over the din.
“Been working with her for a few days. Kari, she’s called.
Not the friendliest, but she’s gotten the messages through.
Oh—” A clatter as Olnas toppled a stack of corn cakes.
“Let me help Olnas. Tuck this under Kari’s bowl.
” Noa slipped a tiny square of paper to Cero.
“What is it?”
“The missiles,” Noa whispered, and Cero understood, for it was he who’d given Noa the location of a new missile cache yesterday.
Cero grimaced as he struggled to ladle stew and rice.
But he couldn’t be angry. As Noa helped Olnas gather the scattered cakes, the tenderness in her face for her beloved made a lump rise in Cero’s throat.
They’d loved each other since long before Cero knew them.
Nothing, not hunger nor Aiz’s war, had come between them.
“Oi. Sky-dog,” someone said in Serran. “Give me some rice.”
Cero hadn’t noticed Kari reach him until she spoke. He rolled his eyes, accustomed to insults, especially from the older children. When he tried to hand the bowl back with the note tucked beneath, she sneered.
“Don’t be so stingy.” She nodded at the rice. He added a scoop and shoved the bowl at her.
A spark jumped between them as their fingers touched. Cero snatched his hand away, looking up at her as he did.
And then he froze at her glare, though that wasn’t what rendered his brain inert. It was her face—sharp cheekbones, harsh black eyebrows, a slash of a nose, a face that should have been too stark to be beautiful but was softened by full lips and a dainty chin.
She was stunning. And, Cero thought with irritation, strangely familiar. Why the hells did she look familiar?
“Keep your filthy eyes to yourself, Kegari,” she snarled, but she, too, was staring at him, the slightest perplexity in her face.
“So, you get to gawk at me, but I can’t return the favor?” Cero said. “Seems unjust.”
Her eyes widened at his Serran—accented but crisp. He hid a smirk. He’d always picked up languages quick.
“Do sky-dogs not realize?” Kari said. “Justice died when you dropped the first bomb.”
Sadness cut through her wrath for a moment, followed by bitterness. Cero saw through her, and it was, uncomfortably, like looking in a mirror. Fury and hate wove a cloak that kept her sane. Cero understood, and that understanding made him unaccountably angry, for he felt suddenly exposed.
It was the anger that betrayed him. For it consumed him enough that he didn’t feel the telltale shift in the air that meant a powerful windsmither was nearby. He was still frowning at Kari when the windows and wood of the kitchen burst in, all at once.
The children shrieked and scattered, streaming out the back door, and Cero dropped. Bomb. Aiz had learned of his betrayal. She’d decided to squash him out like she’d squashed out all her other enemies.
Bootsteps thudded in the street. Noa, crouched beside Cero, met his gaze with terror in her own.
“She’s coming for me,” Cero said, and he felt surprisingly calm. He’d known she would. The Aiz of two years ago would not have hurt him. But she was dead and gone. If some pathetically naive part of him hadn’t believed it, he had no choice but to face it now.
“Get out,” he told Noa. “Get the children out.”
“I won’t leave you,” Noa said. “She won’t attack me—”
But Cero sent out a feeler of wind, tasting the air. “She won’t, perhaps,” he said. “But he will.” Cero nodded to the figure stepping through the broken window, who was looking with disdain at the upturned plates. Ghaz. “Run, Noa. I’ll be fine.”
“My boy—”
“Run, Spires damn you,” Cero hissed. “I can’t be worried about you!”
With that, he sent the table beside them flying toward Ghaz. The highborn flicked it out of the way as if it were a mosquito.
“Do we have to do this, Snipe?” Ghaz asked. “Truly? You know what you’ve done. And you know you’ll die for it. Save us the trouble and come out so I can deliver you to her and we can get this over with. You were friends, once. Perhaps she’ll give you a quick dea—”
Cero flung a wall of wind at Ghaz, everything he had. Ghaz was not as strong a windsmither as Cero, and the sheer force of it should have knocked him to his knees.
Instead, Cero’s wind rose—and immediately died.
From a young age, Cero had known he was a windsmither. He’d used and manipulated the wind so regularly that it was as easy as breathing. But now the wind wouldn’t come.
This had happened once before, when Quil and his friends had attacked Cero with the Ikfa chains in Ankana. But that had required physical contact with the chains, and such contact would have rendered Ghaz’s magic useless too.
A sudden, sharp ache bloomed in Cero’s arm, and he looked down to find a feathered dart sticking out of his bicep. Ghaz smirked as he ambled forward.
“Ikfa dart,” he said. “Small enough to carry. Effective enough to snuff out your magic for a few hours. Compliments of our metallurgists.” The highborn called on his own wind, wrapping it around Cero’s entire body.
Moments later, Cero was on the ground, held in place by Ghaz’s windsmithing. As Ghaz drove his boots into Cero’s ribs over and over, all he could do was fall into the pain, and wait to die.