Siege and Sacrifice (Numina) Read online

  Cleric Liddell appeared in the doorway. “Is he . . . all right?”

  “He will be.” Rone eyed him. He’d expected the priest to return. His robes were dingy. “Where have you been?”

  “The roof.” The priest wrung his fingers together. “The part that’s still there. Watching.”

  A shiver ran up Rone’s arm and into his neck; he swatted at it as though it were a mosquito. “Anything?”

  Liddell shook his head. “Not yet.” His voice was strained, his eyes circled by shadows.

  Sandis said, “You should get some rest.”

  The man merely shook his head and disappeared back into the hallway.

  Rone watched the doorway after Liddell had gone, an earlier thought churning to the front of his mind. Turning, he glanced to the cupboard, its door now shut.

  “Sandis.”

  “Hm?”

  “If the Celestial is a numen”—that was still hard for him to swallow. How had his people come to worship a monster from the ethereal plane? Had his father left them for a false god? Or were all gods simply contorted creatures one could summon into another’s body?—“would it be . . . bound?”

  He knew Sandis hadn’t thought that far, judging by the unease that wriggled into her features. She leaned hard against the table where Bastien slept, and folded her arms—more in a way that kept her warm than in contemplation. “I don’t think so. It can’t be.” She paused for a moment. “It took an amarinth to bring Kolosos here. No one could be strong enough to summon the Celestial. There’s no possible host.”

  Rone’s hand moved to his pocket, the one where he usually stowed the amarinth, only to find it empty. “Unless”—the hairs on the back of his neck rose—“the Lily Tower has an amarinth.”

  Sandis started.

  “If there was only one, would there even be a record of it? There must be more,” Rone said, more to himself than to her. “You said Kazen knew about them—maybe he learned about them through his connection to the tower.” He paused, then added, “And if the Celesians had one, it would be in the Angelic’s possession.”

  Sandis shook her head. “It was a transcription of an old text. Something Kazen kept records of, talked about. He’d sketched pictures, theorizing its shape. A few looked very similar to the real thing.” She met his eyes. “You don’t think . . . the Lily Tower keeps a vessel for the Celestial, do you? But looking at Kolosos . . . if the tower had an amarinth and could summon the Celestial, we would know about it. I don’t think someone could hide a numen like that.”

  He thought of the Angelic . . . but he couldn’t be a vessel. He was too old and wasn’t a virgin.

  “If Kazen was a priest,” Rone said, “that could be how he knew about amarinths.”

  She looked uncertain. “He would have used one from the beginning if he knew. He would have hunted you more than me.”

  “Didn’t he?” He offered a half smile.

  Sandis’s shoulders relaxed. A small victory, that. Yet a frown tugged on her lips. “Cleric Liddell didn’t know the truth about the Celestial. Maybe none of them do.”

  He breathed out a frustrated sigh. “How did Celesia start in the first place?”

  “I don’t know, Rone.” She dropped her arms, voice laced with defeat. “I don’t know. I don’t even know how many of them are still alive.”

  That word drove into his gut like a nail. Alive. Could his father have died when Kolosos and Kuracean attacked the tower? If Kazen wanted revenge on his former religion, wouldn’t he kill its leader first?

  Why did that even bother him? His father was such in biology only. The Angelic had rejected his family the moment he donned his mantle. A requirement of the office, yes, but one he’d accepted with equanimity.

  The sensation of Sandis’s fingers sliding between his broke his thoughts. Her thumb ran up and down the side of his knuckle.

  Rone let out a long breath. “I don’t know if we can win this.”

  “We have to try. We’re connected to this. I am, at least.”

  “We.”

  She smiled. “We. We have to try. And if we can’t . . . we’ll run. Kolosos can’t take on the entire world. We’ll find your mother.”

  Her voice shook, and Rone knew why. Run for his mother, at the expense of her brother. He smoothed hair behind her ear, trying to imagine leaving Dresberg and Kolingrad behind, finally reuniting with his mother in Godobia, Sandis at his side. It felt too good to be true. It probably was. Even if the borders were too overrun for the guards to stop them from passing without papers, they would be leaving behind a monster. The thing about monsters was that they didn’t care much about arbitrary borders. If they left Kazen to ravage the country, who was to say he’d stop at the Fortitude Mountains? But Sandis . . . He had an uneasy feeling that leaving Anon behind to be consumed would break her, and that would break him.

  Lowering his head, Rone touched his lips to Sandis’s. Their warmth, their softness, made it easier to dream. He could almost picture a little cottage with laundry on the line. Sandis in his bed, his mother humming in the other room. But it was only a dream. Right now, they had to at least try to face reality.

  It was the best they could do.

  Kolosos returned before Bastien woke. Near midnight, Liddell ran into the office, where Rone and Sandis had dragged two cots, and raved about fire across the city.

  Then the first quake came.

  The ground shivered with it. It was a soft rumble, like the start of hunger. Rone, who’d been dozing prior to the priest’s intrusion, leapt to his feet and ran up the stairs to the lair’s entrance. His eyes had grown accustomed to kerosene lamps—lights that wouldn’t last much longer if they didn’t find more fuel. It took a second for them to adjust to the depth of night.

  A slight tremor rolled under his feet once more. He might have thought it a factory explosion on any other day.

  Rone climbed the dilapidated building, nearly losing his footing twice before he reached the top. It impressed him that Liddell had been up and down so many times without killing himself. The man practically wore a dress.

  The darkness illuminated Kolosos’s path of fire.

  At least it’s far off, Rone thought, gaze following the flames. The growing destruction pointed toward the center of the city. The Innerchord?

  No, the cathedral. He’d bet half his savings on it.

  When he climbed down, Sandis was waiting for him at the foot of the building, her white skirt blowing softly in the smoke-scented breeze. A long shadow hugged her back; it took Rone a second to realize it was her rifle. Liddell moved closer to Rone, huddling into his vestments, silently seeking refuge with the one person who, while hardly holy, at least was not a branded heathen.

  Rone nudged him back with his elbow.

  “What do we do?” the priest asked.

  The skin around Sandis’s eyes tightened. “I don’t know enough about it. Ireth . . .” She paused, staring at nothing. “Ireth is trying to tell me something. I don’t understand. Maybe I can understand if I get closer to Kolosos. But Bastien is still unconscious.”

  Rone snorted. He couldn’t help it. “I don’t think we can get much closer than we were before. Seems like the only thing it’ll get us is a quicker death.”

  Sandis nodded. “Kolosos is . . . invincible.” She winced at the word. “But Kazen is not. If we hurt Kazen, Kolosos disappears.” He heard what she didn’t say—and my brother will be back.

  Rone nodded. “Liddell, watch Bastien.”

  The cleric bristled. “I am not some dog to be ordered around—”

  “Fine,” Rone snapped, “then go back to the tower.” He raised a finger to his chin. “Oh wait, it’s gone.”

  “Rone.” Sandis’s tone was one of warning.

  But Liddell’s fire went out like a match in a hurricane. “I’ll watch him.”

  “We don’t have much time if it’s like before.” Rone moved away from the lair, scanning the dark streets ahead. “Do you want to steal a horse, or
try the roofs?”

  “Roofs,” she answered without hesitation. “I want to be able to look Kazen in the eye.”

  It was harder to jump roofs at night. Dresberg was generally a well-lit city, but where it wasn’t, the lip of a building could blend into the black gulf beyond it. Rone was used to this, but Sandis wasn’t. He had to be careful to make sure neither of them fell. The immortality bestowed by the amarinth, however brief, was no longer an option.

  It wasn’t hard to see their destination, even from the southeast corner of the city. Kazen wielded Kolosos like a madman, and with every roof Rone and Sandis crossed, the fire grew brighter. Once Rone’s legs started aching, he could hear the screams of fleeing Kolins. Sandis breathed heavily behind him, but she never complained, even when they had to climb down to the street and run on foot. The Innerchord, located at the center of Dresberg, was the only part of the city where buildings weren’t close enough to leap between roofs. The bureaucrats liked their space.

  Once they climbed up again, Rone felt his joints lock. Not necessarily because of fatigue, but because he could see Kolosos’s enormous wings and fiery snout. The monstrosity of the being. Not even Mahk had been this huge, this terrifying. This numen was like something out of a macabre fairy tale—the exact kind he imagined Kazen loved to read.

  Rone was leading Sandis right toward it, and part of him reeled at the fact. That part wanted to flee with Sandis, away from the danger and carnage. It wanted to secure her in the shadows, hold her close, make love to her, and wash away all the guilt, fear, and memories that weighed them down.

  But the larger part of him knew Sandis was stronger than he was, especially when it came to the occult. She’d never forgive him if he subverted her will a second time, even in an attempt to protect her. And in his heart of hearts, he knew she might be the only person capable of stopping Kazen. So he didn’t try to stand in her way. Not yet.

  The sounds grew louder—some screaming and shouting, but most of the Kolins had already fled from the scene, taking their terrified voices with them. Below, scarlet-clad policemen and soldiers garbed in steel blue clustered together like ants around a crumb. Gunshots punctured the sweltering air, bullets racing to see which could strike the six-story demon first. Kolosos ignored the onslaught; Rone imagined the volcanic monster merely absorbed the metal and made it part of itself. A new vein here, an extra claw there.

  Rone didn’t know what kind of building they stopped on, only that it had a smokestack beyond the numen’s reach. He hunkered behind the stack, and Sandis dropped to her knees behind him. Neither of them spoke as they caught their breath. The space between Rone’s lungs burned hotter than the demon ransacking the city. Sweat gathered on his brow and soaked his hair. He pulled off his jacket. The night air was hotter than noon at the peak of summer.

  Sandis cleared her throat. “Do you . . . see him?”

  Creeping to the edge of the smokestack, Rone peered around. The monster was two blocks away. Too close. But that had been the point of coming, hadn’t it? To get close.

  “I don’t see Kazen.”

  Sandis was already on her feet, creeping toward a roof to the east. She found a board near the lip—Rone wondered if this was one of the places he’d crossed before, and if the board was one he’d left behind—and he helped her use it to bridge the gap. He held it steady as she crossed, then bounded across it himself.

  From this angle, he could see the cathedral. Or rather, what was left of it.

  “God’s tower,” he cursed. “It’s . . . nothing.”

  Where the Central Cathedral of the Celestial had once stood, there was now a carpet of orange embers, like someone had taken a broom to a dying bonfire. Steam billowed from the west side—the fire brigade? It seemed ridiculous to worry about the embers when a practical god continued to wreak its destruction on the surrounding buildings, but in a place built as packed together as Dresberg, an uncontrolled fire could demolish the entire city.

  A whistle blew somewhere behind him. Perhaps a scarlet calling for retreat, or backup. Maybe the triumvirate had finally released some of the hundreds of guards standing watch over the broken prisoners at Gerech to fight Kazen. Kolingrad was the northernmost country in Meletarr; it was surrounded on three sides by frigid ocean and on one side by nearly impenetrable mountains. It was a risky place to conquer, so no one did. The place didn’t have much of an army, and yet it had border guards in the thousands. All its three leaders had to do was pull them in and teach them how to march in a straight line.

  How much destruction had to happen before they cared enough to do it?

  “He’s there, on the thing’s horn,” Sandis said. “It must be able to control its heat.” She didn’t need to whisper; Rone could barely hear her over the chaos unfolding around them. Sure enough, the place where Kazen stood was black as though cooled.

  She pointed ahead to their next destination, a building far too close for comfort. One wrong turn by the monster and the thing would crumble like the Lily Tower. If that happened, they would be caught in the fallout. But Sandis crept forward, so Rone didn’t hesitate to follow her.

  Brilliant orange light burned one side of his body and blinded his left eye. “Stay low.” The last thing they wanted was for Kazen to see them.

  They made it to the next roof, and Sandis knelt again. Rone went one step farther and dropped to his belly. She took the rifle from her back and pressed its butt to her shoulder. Squinting, Rone tried to find her target, his eyes watering from the raging light of Kolosos’s inner fire. He caught a flash of pale skin on one of the beast’s horns, which had blackened to dead rock. Kazen’s face? The grafter always wore black, and in this case, it allowed him to blend in with both the numen and the night sky.

  Sandis just needed the beast to turn, and she’d get a shot. Could Rone help, somehow? Get onto another roof and start yelling, draw Kazen’s attention? Would the old man even hear him?

  Another round of gunfire erupted from the south. What good is it? Save your bullets! None of the shots came close to Kazen. Did the scarlets and steels even know this monster was a numen? That killing its summoner would ultimately kill it?

  Except . . . Rone’s mind shot back to Kazen’s lair, to the night he’d found Sandis chained up, standing in a pool of blood. Isepia, the one-winged witch. Kazen hadn’t controlled her, and she’d run rampant. Surely Sandis knew that killing Kazen would allow Kolosos to do whatever it damn well pleased . . . but only until its vessel tired. Then it would go back to the ethereal plane, and the nightmare would be over.

  It was a necessary risk.

  Kolosos turned toward the gunfire, one of its wings crumpling the corner of a building. The movement exposed Kazen.

  Sandis pulled the trigger, and the explosion of the releasing bullet hit Rone’s ears like a hammered nail.

  At that exact moment, Kolosos raised its lava-laced arm to strike at the police brigade. The bullet hit its wrist instead of Kazen. The grafter must have noticed, for before Sandis could ready another shot, the demon whipped toward them.

  “Run!” Rone grabbed Sandis by the back of her dress. “Run, run, run!”

  They bolted toward the opposite end of the building and jumped just as Kolosos’s clawed hand slammed down on the roof; Rone heard the structure buckle as a wave of heat collided with his back, propelling him to his target. He landed and fell hard on his knees.

  “Rone!”

  Whipping around, he saw Sandis hanging on to the lip of the roof—her hands clasped the edge, but the rest of her body dangled against the side of the building.

  New energy spiked through his body. He rushed for her and grabbed her forearms, pulling her up with a heave. They ran to the next roof, which was a little closer, and climbed down the fire escape. Rone didn’t miss the irony.

  Sandis still had her rifle—which may have impaired her balance on that last jump—and when they reached the ground, she turned around, back toward Kolosos. “I have to touch it.”

  It to
ok Rone half a second to realize the it was Kolosos. He snatched her hand. “Are you out of your mind? You’ll be incinerated if not shot!”

  “But I know the words!” she shouted as a puff of cinder-laden wind blew over them. “If I can touch Kolosos, I can send it back into the ethereal plane.”

  But Rone shook his head. “There’s no way, not without burning to a crisp. Remember the tower?”

  The closest they’d been to the demon so far. The heat of it . . . the memory burned in Rone’s skin. It would never work.

  “I have to try,” she pleaded, her voice barely audible over a nearby crash punctuated with screams. “If not, maybe I can shoot Kazen from the ground.”

  Rone gritted his teeth. No one else has been able to. He didn’t say the words aloud—it wouldn’t change her mind. Besides, if anyone could do it, she could.

  The two of them ran into the heat, toward the embers, to the heart of the fire. One block away from Kolosos’s hooves. Half a block, and the moisture in Rone’s mouth and nose evaporated, leaving him half a husk. Sandis must have felt it, too, for she readied her firearm instead of venturing closer to the beast to touch it. They passed a line of soldiers who shouted at their backs but did nothing to stop them.

  Rone didn’t know why he noticed the lone man ahead of them. Maybe because he didn’t wear a uniform. Maybe because he was unarmed. Probably because he stood closer to the numen than anyone else, even the soldiers. A thin silhouette, robes wild in the heat-stirred wind.

  Rone noticed him, but not the falling chunk of building. Not until Sandis screamed.

  It was right over them, a tumbling mass of shadows that blocked out the stars. It would crush all three of them. They’d never run fast enough to clear it.

  Just before it struck, a light brighter than the glowing coals of the cathedral erupted to Rone’s left. He knew even before he looked that it was Sandis. Ireth. A beacon to both Kazen and the world. Their salvation—and perhaps their ruin, too.

  Her fire exploded like a storm, knocking Rone into the stranger and disintegrating the falling rubble into raining dust.