Chapter Thirty-Three
Thirty-three
The flame does not know devoted from heretical, just from unjust. That distinction belongs to the one who wields it.
—PRIOR YIORGO, DUSK CLOISTER
I LAND ON MY WOUNDED shoulder. Pain flares, but it is distant, narrowed. So is the gritty sensation of sand pressing into my face. The airy near hysteria of triumph is gone, consumed like gas vapors by flame as I stare back at Mortimer, lying several lengths behind me.
An arrow sticks out at a sharp angle from his ribs.
“No.” Whenever the shot landed, I didn’t realize it, caught up in battle fury and the fervor of escape.
And Mortimer… Mortimer must have felt it but carried on anyway, saving me.
I crawl to him. Right away, I can see the arrow is deep.
Thin rivulets of blood snake out, barely enough to reach the sand, but there’s nothing heartening about that.
Nor about Mortimer’s breath—uneven, ragged.
No. My jaw tightens, unwilling to let another sound slip out as I gingerly touch the feathered shaft. Mortimer twists, trying—failing—to get back on his feet. I lurch back, dodging one flailing hoof, feeling every muscle tense with understanding.
“Shhhh…” I slide around his other side, away from his legs. “Shh, Mortimer, don’t move. Don’t move.”
I’m telling an injured horse to stay still. The foolishness of it rings in my ears as Mortimer lets out another horrible, burbling screech, which pierces deeper than any arrow. A vinegar sting fills my eyes.
“Lys.”
Nolan. On one knee beside me, taking in the situation. “Lys, get up. There’s nothing you can do. The arrow is in his lungs. He’s drowning in his own blood.”
I shake him away. No. No. There’s nothing I can—
Yes. Blood. Yes, there is.
I reach into my coat and pull out a vial of the Renderers’ blood from where it’s hidden in my jacket, along with the jars of salve—everything but the sample I showed off to Machias.
Nolan’s idea, just in case it was a trap.
In case we needed leverage to ensure our dealings would go smoothly. So much for that.
I have it open before he grabs my wrist.
“What are you doing?” His fingers tighten as I try to pull back. “Are you crazy? It’s a horse. You have no idea what that will do. If it will do anything.”
“It could help him!”
“You don’t know that.”
“You don’t NOT know that!” My voice rises, sharp and unchecked. But muted too, the way everything but Mortimer seems to be. His breathing is getting worse, blood leaking from his mouth. One glassy eye rolls up at me, devoid of anything but pure, animalistic pain.
I have to do something. I have to.
I struggle again. This time, Nolan lets go. He stands and moves away from me, frustrated. I lean over Mortimer, ignoring the panicked flaring of his nostrils, position myself, and pour…
A thick, dark stream disappears down Mortimer’s throat. I back away, waiting. Hoping. I know what a drop of the Renderers’ blood did to Tychus. What a torrent of pure, divine blood did to me. All I can do is pray for something in between.
But nothing happens. Nothing beyond the weakening wails of a dying creature.
My fist curls around the empty vial, trembling. I feel hot all over—my eyes, my cheeks, in the distant throbbing of my wound.
All except my free hand, which is cold as ice as I draw one sickle.
It’s over quickly. No more cries. No more suffering.
No more Mortimer.
I bury my gaze in that silent, motionless form.
“Lys.”
I ignore him.
“Lys,” Nolan says again, more forcefully. “We don’t have time for this.”
I ignore him some more.
When he grabs my uninjured arm, hauling me up, I let him. I take in the irritated anger on his face, the hard line of his mouth.
And then I haul back and punch. Nolan tumbles backward and lands on his butt in the sand.
“We have time,” I yell, not caring if there’s anyone around to hear. If the Caerula are still nearby, I’d welcome them right now. Cut them down like weeds and be happy for it. “We have time because I say we have time.”
Nolan is as pissed off as I’ve ever seen him, bloodied teeth bared as he rises. “Do you not get it? Do you not understand what just happened?”
“Oh, I do.” It bursts up and out of me before enough sense gathers to stop it. “We had the heretic right there. And then, oops, you killed him.”
“That wasn’t my fault!” Everything that’s been simmering in him since the Renderers’ workshop suddenly rises to the surface.
I saw a hint of it when I revealed what I’d saved.
Now comes a surge of viciousness—twisting his features, blackening his gaze—frightening enough to make me retreat a few steps, put space between us.
For the first time, I feel like I see the truth of Nolan: driven and devoted beyond anyone else I’ve ever known, and left dangerously wounded by failure.
“That was our only lead,” he snarls. “We are back to nothing. Nothing but new enemies and the vaguest notion that the reliquary is somewhere on this godsforsaken island. And your concern is for a godsdamned dead horse?”
“Fuck the reliquary!” Despite the threat of him, I throw the empty vial, angry at its uselessness. It bounces off Nolan and disappears into the sand. “Fuck the Caerula and the heretics.” I barely stop short of adding Tempestra-Innara to that list too.
“The reliquary—”
“I don’t care!” It hits all at once. The dragging, drowning, empty feeling.
The inescapable need for the soothing balm of their light.
I thought Nolan was the weak one, being so sensitive to the Goddess’s absence, making him impulsive.
But it’s been rooted deep in me all along too, kept at a manageable distance by anger and the novelty of the unfamiliar.
But this impure freedom was only a distraction.
A makeshift bandage for a festering wound.
“I don’t care,” I say again, but with less resolve.
I want to sink into the sand at my feet, disappear like the vial.
“Of course you do. Even if you’ve lost your mind enough to not realize it.
” His voice thins, quiets, as if taken by the same tide that’s washed over me.
“We’re… failing Tempestra-Innara. After we already failed to protect them in the Cathedral.
” He pauses, as if drained by speaking the words aloud.
“But if we even consider giving up now and going back empty-handed, if they are forgiving, do you understand what we’ll be?
” He goes tense all over. “Nothing. Nothing in their eyes. In the eyes of our brethren. I’m not nothing.
And I won’t give up on showing our blood mother my potential just because your horse got killed! ”
I damn near punch him again, with the plan to take out a few teeth this time. But my fist hangs at my side, stupidly limp, searing tears leaking over my cheeks. Nolan isn’t simply mad. There’s fear in his face, in his voice, glazing those hazel eyes. Fear of failure. Fear of loss.
Innara is dying.
I take a deep breath and understand. Really understand. His dread and distress about the Goddess’s vulnerability, and his own. Of their avatar being weak and the need to find the reliquary quickly. Of failing to do so and, therefore, failing to show his strength and capability.
Of being nothing.
All the pieces, broken up and scattered in front of me so I couldn’t see the whole picture.
“This isn’t about becoming Executrix, is it?” It coalesces as I put it into words. “You want to prove you’re as good as that and better. Tempestra needs a new avatar.” A bitter laugh escapes. “You want it to be you, don’t you?”
He doesn’t answer. But he doesn’t need to. There’re some truths even Nolan’s acting can’t conceal.
Something in me turns brittle, the part that is always honed, always waiting to be challenged. This was never a competition, not really. We both had plans all along—big plans.
I can’t even be mad. I kept my secrets and Nolan kept his. There’s no escaping the games we play, the blades we keep hidden.
It’s too much. I turn back to Mortimer and sink beside him in the sand.
Place a hand on his chest. He’s as warm as in life, but still.
No rise and fall of breath. No thick, heavy beating of his horse heart.
Just meat now, lying on a beach, waiting for the tide to come and claim it, add it to whatever else rots beneath the inky blue.
I sit like that, hand on horse, stuck. Stranded.
Distantly, I am aware of Nolan taking a few indecisive paces toward me, then away, then toward Buttons.
I wait for the sound of him riding away.
It would be the smart thing to do, to leave me behind, abandon me to our pursuers.
Instead, his footsteps approach once more.
“Lys,” he says quietly. “Your shoulder.”
I know it’s bleeding. I don’t care.
His hands fall onto my shoulders, remove my cloak, tug my jacket off.
I don’t fight, don’t take my eyes from Mortimer and the dark patch of wet sand, not even when pain flares.
There’s a rustle of fabric, followed by the scrape of a lid being opened.
Only then do I turn, see the small jar of Renderer salve in his hands.
“This isn’t over,” he says by way of explanation. “You need to be able to fight. And as horrific and frankly disgusting as this is, it will help. I… I think the Goddess—and Prior Fedic—would understand.”