Chương 33: A lie

Caspar pulls the seared flesh from the bone and chews its crispy skin. A bursting pop of flavor, sumac and Northward oregano. Hot damn, that is delicious. He holds the thin wing bone in his hand and casts about for a place to put it. A beaming cater waiter plucks it from him. His "oh, thank you" comes too late—she's already swanned away. He's never been great at parties. Never been one to strike up the conversation first.

When he was with Vesta, his strategy was to keep stuck to her, let her make the approaches and introductions, and hop comfortably into the chat once it had been warmed up. He supposes the less memorable he is here, the better. That's a comfort. He settles into the ghostly solitude he so feared slipping into at previous shindigs. It's not half bad, being around all this glitz, when introversion is mission critical.

He lets his attention trail across and past Paul Tilliam, the shiny bauble being gleefully passed around by Pastornos high society. Everywhere is ease and cheer. Mineral magnates in sharply tailored suits rub padded shoulders with Temple luminaries in chaperons and filigreed frocks. A shimmering starlet, her powdered face nearly lost in a thicket of exotic fur, giggles like a chiming music box at the cutting joke of a silver-haired captain.

In the cylindrical center of the chamber, gaily dancing couples two-step across a hardwood dance floor painted with an ornate cornucopian mural, so polished and immaculate that Caspar has trouble imagining anyone's stepped on it before. Safe to assume none of these folks have attended a barn raising. Caspar indulges his imagination, thinking about showing up to one of these fancy to-dos with his wife on his arm, a little inky lady poured into something cute and purple.

A century down the line, once everyone got used to cohabitating with Old Ones, I'd be the life of the party, he reckons. I really don't know. I've never been to something like this, only watched. The hwuarch were mostly solitary creatures outside of their spawning cycles. We liked our privacy when we were mortal. It was only once we'd died off and reached an afterlife without competition for resources that we really hit it off with ourselves. And by then, none of us knew how to cha-cha properly.

Watching the sparkling, laughing promenade over Caspar's shoulders, I promise myself: by the time my husband kicks the bucket, I'll have taught myself to dance with him. Caspar locates Jordan in the crowd; her evoked face, structured and aquiline, is a mask of neutrality as she slips through the frivolity like a coral reef predator. He passes her a flute of sparkling wine as she reaches him.

"Some party, huh?"

"Might surprise you, how unremarkable it is," she says.

"You think the rich are gonna be classier in Pastornos somehow. Like you'll feel they deserve the money more because it's so old." She looks askance at an heiress reaching precariously for the top glass of a champagne tower.

"Nope. Fancier accents, same horseshit. More horseshit, on account of there's actual horse shit out in the carriage bay."

"How's the dress treating you?" Caspar asks. She tugs on the hem of her dark maroon dress, which shimmers with rhinestones.

"I don't hate it. But my thighs aren't used to rubbing together this much. I look okay?"

"You look gorgeous," he answers, and it's true—she does. Jordan's body, weaponized as it is, fills the sleeveless scoop-neck cut fabulously, exposing her sculpted shoulders. I remember a time when I'd be angrily pacing at Caspar's pronouncement. Now I just rub my ring and wonder how that dress might look a few sizes smaller and a few shades purpler. My warlocks hear that famous laugh, the one that sounds like a pipe organ.

Archbishop Paul Tilliam is glad-handing a shoal of cardinals, the fullness and color brought back to his cheeks by a return to indulgence and the careful appliance of continental rouge. A light touch on his arm draws him from the pool of popery. Adaire murmurs something to him, something that makes him smile and puts a brief glow on the edges of his ears. She leads him away, through the swinging door into the kitchens.

"That's us." Jordan downs the dregs of her wine.

"Let's rock."

"Are we allowed back there?"

"Don't ask that and don't wonder it. That's the trick. Head up and look like you belong, yeah?" Caspar keeps his head up and his shoulders square. The two warlocks push through the doors and stride past the hubbub of the line cooks. No eye contact with anyone, no slowing down. He feels like one of those cartoon characters running off a cliff and continuing apace past the ledge. Just don't look down, Cas. Tilliam and Adaire are on the far side of the kitchen now.

She's tipped his circular service hat onto her head at a jaunty angle and taken his tie out from beneath his suit jacket, pulling it lightly to guide him down a utility hall. Caspar and Jordan share a silent five-count, then follow. They emerge into the hall just in time to watch the bathroom door clicking shut. Jordan releases the tension in her trapezius with a slow circle nod. By the time she's reoriented, her face has rippled back into her usual features.

Caspar follows suit and holds in the tickling sneeze that always accompanies his reconstructing nose. They enter the bathroom. The archbishop looks up from the hickey he's marking on Adaire's graceful neck. He makes eye contact with the inspector's boreal blues.

"Hi, Paul," Jordan says. He doesn't have time to scream. Adaire's hand is clamped across his mouth.

"Shhh. Tilly. Calm, my brave boy. Be calm for me." The archbishop's jaw goes slack; he feels the brute strength in his lady friend's willowy arms. She wears a radiant smile as she ratchets him closer. Her lips, full and crimson red, press to his ear, and whisper something into it that freezes him like he's been cast in bronze.

"Hello again, archbishop." Caspar closes the bathroom door and locks it.

"Let's pick up where we left off."

"Spawn of the Adversary." The fury on Tilliam's face is pure and zealous.

"Misguided lamb, in the coils of the serpent. You ain't getting any more blood from this stone. I swore I'd washed my hands of you and I have, one way or the other."

"You asking to die for your dogma, Paul?" Jordan's toothy grin puts Caspar in the mind of her lupine mistress.

"Don't know if that'll work out like you think."

"Again, you brandish your infirmity of faith against me, like it's a weapon and not a wound. Like it won't turn back to bite the fist that wields it."

"You can spit defiance in their faces, Tilly." Adaire's voice is silk.

"You can spit it in mine. But I know you. I know this boy. I wonder at the pride he broadcasts, and the weakness he professes to me. That he hides from both fathers. The Father, his father."

"Don't you dare—" But Tilliam's hull is already breached even if he isn't all the way sunk. All four of them know he's drowning.

"Don't you dare," he repeats, shrinkingly.

"Such a frightened man." Adaire's long, red-tipped nails hiss against his cotton dress shirt and jostle the gold-leafed charm braid that hangs over his heart.

"You say you're ready to die. But you aren't. You don't know what's next. For all your prevarication. You've seen our miracles. The things you call witchcraft. But you've never seen one of yours."

"Father…" His prayer perishes at his lips. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Adaire laughs softly.

"Go on." He's silent. I touch lightly upon his overcharged mind. He's full of terror and self-loathing, and deflated, intimate hatred, the cicada shell that broken trust leaves in its wake.

"Always afraid." The person he knew as Corinne is back in his ear, close. He feels the familiar honeyed heat of her breath.

"Such wavering faith. Well, we don't waver, Tilly. The void in us isn't like the void in you. Ours hears. Ours speaks. Ours we worship."

"Warlock," he whispers.

"You're a warlock too."

"Finally, you are given eyes to see." Her smile is radiant.

"My name is Adaire. It brings me such joy to properly introduce myself."

"Deceiver. Liar." A full body shiver takes Tilliam.

"I've lain with you."

"And stood with me, and kneeled, and crawled on all fours. And more besides." One of her nails hooks on his collar lapel.

"None of that was a lie. None of my affections. None of my care for you. Perhaps it doesn't seem like it yet. But my friends and I feel the hands of our gods, always. In the ways you always thought you ought to feel and never felt. Guiding us." A tear beads at the edge of Tilliam's terrified eye. Adaire wipes it away with the pad of her thumb. Her nail rasps lightly on his cheek.

"It's time you were guided, too, Tilly. For your own good." A desperate shake of his head. It puts Caspar in mind of a steer in line for the slaughterhouse.

"Not a choice time, archbishop." Caspar steps into his peripheral view.

"You're coming with us."

"Sure there's a choice," Jordan says.

"If you want, we'll introduce the world to your mistress and give you just long enough to watch your reputation burn down before we kill you as painfully as we know how."

"There's no need for that, Miss Darius." Adaire clicks her tongue.

"You'll be good for us, won't you, Tilly?" He's still as a statue. The fire is out.

"We'll take your car," Adaire says.

"Jordan will drive us. She drives you now. We'll talk about your new life."

"I—please." He clutches her arm.

"I can't. I won't be able to do what you need."

"You will, Tilly," Adaire says.

"Don't put yourself down. You don't even know yet what tasks we have for you. We've all watched you. Your broadcasts, the fire and thunder. You've got three big fans right here." She straightens his askew charm braid.

"You're going to do so wonderfully." ₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪ Alexandra's scarlet plumage lays flat along her fuselage as she peers from her mess of masonry once more. It's just Ganea and I camped at the mouth of her nest. I give her another cautious hail. This one is returned with a chittering, anxious greeting. I promise her we're not here to fight her or drag her into our alliance—only to understand. Ganea's bridge is open to whatever manifestation she cares to bring forth onto it.

Our sister appears in a flurry of red feathers that turn to rose petals as they drift from her. Alexandra's wings are wrapped around her like a protective cloak. The topmost pair of her six metallic eyes peer with suspicion from above them.

"It's useless, what you're doing," she says.

"This little alliance. No use." I catch one of the turning petals between thumb and forefinger.

"Well, hello to you too, Alex." Ganea brushes a couple more off one spaulder.

"You're cleaning those up."

"She's winning," Alexandra says.

"You have a plan? She has a plan."

"Putting plans aside." I exude as calm and welcoming a presence as I can, which isn't easy at the right hand of a glaring steam-engine tyrant giantess.

"What I'm wondering is how you've been talking to her. I'd filed our sister away in the force of nature category rather than the chat over tea one. After what happened with Milly."

"She's who I've been talking to," Alexandra says.

"Eight, do you mean? You've found a way?" Alexandra shakes her avian head.

"Milly. I've been talking to Milinoe." My mortalesque heart skips a fluttering beat. Milinoe was our wake-up call. After we'd stripped the last of the marrow from the bones of the Father, and realized that the key was on Diamante and not within His divine corpse, my sisters and I… I'm having trouble putting this in your language. Sorry. I don't enjoy talking about this. I don't know. It was a hard war. We were all exhausted and hurt, and we'd just realized how hollow our victory was.

Words and abuses were exchanged. Rapproachments and covenants formed and discarded. Salome and Ganea ripped each other's appendages off, but that's Sal and Gan for you. Eight's strange behavior we disregarded at first. Her hunger was disconcerting, sure, but Bina loves putting stuff in her mouth, too. Her refusal to adopt our ways of mortal address and adjustment, we put down to that excusable calcification that comes with age. She's always been our wisdom, Eight. If I was the glue, she was the foundation.

When she disappeared, we shook apart. I won't re-litigate the long, sad falling away here, reader, but suffice to say I'm as guilty as everyone else that it happened. Our collaboration became a competition. There was only one sister everyone knew was blameless. The one without whom we never would have taken heaven. Who—at the time—I thought was the most powerful of our race. Quiet, courageous, kind. That was Milly.

In the last fraying days of our old kinship, we beheld the trail of destruction Eight, well, ate across Heaven and realized she was eating you. My sisters and I did many wicked things to defeat the Father, but by the terms of our most ancient laws, devouring the souls of mortal kind was not one of them. The only reason we broke the rule and ate the big man was because we thought with His power in our gullets we'd be able to fix your afterlife. Perhaps, we thought, this was what Eight was doing.

An unutterable sacrifice, sure, but one in pursuit of that commendable aim. We needed to bring her to heel, but we told ourselves the story that it wasn't too late. Milly volunteered to find her. I was in negotiations with a would-be warlock when it happened. I'd finally gotten through to him that no, I would not be giving him any love charms, and seeking one in the first place was psycho behavior. The cry echoed across Heaven. We all heard it.

I dropped the connection with such haste that it gave the poor bastard's cortex a spiritual friction burn that kept him from sleeping properly for years afterward. Milinoe's final words. Even if you could read them, I wouldn't reproduce them here. The scar is still too sensitive to the touch. They were full of fear, and sorrow, and love for us all, even for the sister swallowing her whole. They were the last of her that escaped, before the rest spiraled into Eight's all-consuming maw, and she was silent.

That's what I thought, anyway.

"How?" I barely hear myself over a sudden insistent hum in my ears.

"She's still in there," Alexandra says.

"Still in Eight. She manifested. We talked." Ganea leans forward.

"Was this at Eight's allowance?"

"I don't know," Alexandra says.

"Neither does she, I don't think. All the way. But she hears. She sees. She says we can be together again. Inside."

"You're not working for that," I say.

"Surely you aren't." She paces.

"Of course I'm not. You think I want to do a family reunion inside Eight's bigass stomach? Who knows if it's even really her? Might not be enough of her left. Might just be Eight waving a fake manifestation to draw me into the mouth."

"But you're working with her. What's she offering you?"

"Nothing," Alexandra says.

"I did the offering. And Milly seemed to think it would work. My warlock, working with her warlocks. In exchange for a head start." My blood freezes.

"A head start."

"She's going for me last. So Milly says, anyway. Don't know if it's true. But it's better than nothing. I'll take the wager. Can't hurt."

"Alex, what the fuck, girl? How is that anything at all?" She bristles.

"It's more than you're getting. Irene." An oily tear runs down her protective wing.

"The only reason I haven't fucked off back to the void is because she'd see I'm trying to run, and she'd take me. Gotta time it right."

"You don't have to think like that. If you join—"" We fucking lose, Irene!" Total despair pulls at her words like a counterweight.

"We lose. And maybe Milly's right and it's real and okay and we'll be together again, and that's the only thing that even looks a bit like hope. Don't hope. Hope's done now."

"Coward," Ganea rumbles.

"Didn't think you were this craven." Alexandra hops backward away from us, stung.

"I'm sorry, Gan. I'm really, really sorry. But not even you. Not any of you."

"What is making you say this, Alex?" I take an unstable step.

"What has she been telling you?" She trills a frantic, harsh laugh.

"I shouldn't even be talking. You should just keep doing what you're doing. It'll distract her." Ganea stands.

"This is useless." I know that voice. She's in a crushing mood. I place myself between them.

"Whatever she's told you," I say.

"Whatever this all is. You can't trust it, and you can't just throw up your hands. If you come into the fold, if you bring what you know and what you can do. That's gonna give you far more of a shot than playing along."

"I know what you're looking for," Alexandra says.

"You won't find it. Not here. Just go. Us all together, too big a risk, anyway. Leave me alone, all right?"

"We'll be back," I say.

"Once we've got the key, okay? The door isn't closed." Alexandra gives that a tremulous scoff.

"It's closed. It's pretty fucking closed."

"I'm not listening to this any longer." Ganea's fists close.

"Leave, Alexandra. Before I erase you." She doesn't need to hear it twice. A terminal curtain burst of feathers and Alexandra's gone. They drift like bloody snow around my ankles. I stare out the bridge window as the streak of red departs deeper into the shadows. I make no move to follow. A block of metal is at my back. Ganea's rested an uncertain gauntlet against me. It's not exactly comfortable, but I lean into the touch, anyway.

"That didn't go how I hoped."

"She left her fucking feathers all over," Ganea grumbles.

"I owe her a sororicide for that. Remind me."

"I've never seen a sister that terrified." I chew a hair tendril.

"Was she right, do you think?" Ganea's jaw is set.

"She's right about one thing. She's already lost."

"What about us?" Ganea's head tilts.

"We're fighting."

"What do you think? Will we win?"

"We're fighting," she repeats.