These Divided Shores, page 33
Ben held out his hand to Lu, and she took it, fingers tight around his.
“Together,” she told him.
Ben squeezed her hand. His eyes glistened. “Together.”
The steamboat’s engine hummed under Lu’s feet. She stood at the bow, drawing Lake Regolith’s crisp air into her lungs. The evening sun was just beginning to fade, casting a hue of orange over the sky, and the water’s glassy surface reflected it in a rebound of flame and night.
“Vex will be there,” Ben said, standing behind her.
Lu’s chin dropped to her chest. The peace of the lake shattered.
Nayeli still hadn’t heard from him. He hadn’t returned to the sanctuary before they left. It shouldn’t have taken him so long. Something had happened, and Lu couldn’t contain her panic in a safe, quiet little box like she needed to. It took all her willpower to not beg someone, anyone, to let her go find him.
“In Deza,” Ben started, words as soft as the wind, “the Grace Loray holiday is celebrated with mass healing ceremonies. People pour out of infirmaries and line the streets as my father and his priests walk through the city, laying hands on them, cleansing them. Whether it works or not, I honestly can’t say—disease does drop after this holiday. But Paxben”—there was a smile in Ben’s voice—“one year, he convinced me to pretend we had both gotten a plague. We painted ourselves in bright red spots and intended to sneak down to the ceremony, to make my father heal us. I don’t know what Paxben’s plan truly was—he was laughing too hard to explain. We both looked absurd, covered in blotchy red welts.”
A moment of silence, then Lu tipped her head, staring at Ben’s boots. “What happened?”
“My uncle caught us. And it turned out that the paint Paxben had found was for touching up statues in the gardens, meaning it could withstand rain, snow, wind—”
“No,” Lu breathed, and couldn’t help but smile.
Ben nodded. “It took four weeks for the red spots to fade.”
Lu laughed. It cut down to her toes. “He’s still just as careless.”
Ben shrugged. “But if there is a Pious God, I swear it must love him, for all he has survived. He will be fine. He’s resilient. And—we are, too.”
In the steamboat’s pilothouse, Lu caught sight of Gunnar, watching them. Near him, talking with a Tuncian raider, Kari slid her eyes, occasionally, to Lu.
“I have to believe so,” Lu whispered. “For all we have survived.”
And all we have yet to overcome.
Ben didn’t know how many people populated New Deza—but he suspected all of them were at the wharf.
Kari assumed Elazar would be deep in the port to give himself an upper hand, and that defensors would escort Ben and Lu far from the waterways. But as their steamboat approached the city, it became clear that Elazar had set himself up here. People packed the wharf, shifting bodies that clogged every free space Ben could see between the docks and the anchored steamboats. All of it concentrated around the northern end—the military docks, Lu said.
The raider driving their boat plowed it down the second dock. At the end, a platform waited, wide planks of wood holding defensors along the back and priests in somber black robes. Banners and pennants fluttered in the evening breeze, carrying the navy and white of Argrid down the wharf and almost, but not quite, hiding the defensors lining the top of the tide wall.
Also on the platform, a line of Mecht raiders stood behind Ingvar Pilkvist. Ben hadn’t known the man before those village parades, weeks ago now, but he recognized again the vacancy in his expression that came with Menesia. How many memories had Elazar taken from Ingvar to convince this mighty stream raider Head that he was loyal to Argrid?
It was only slightly less horrible than what Elazar had done to Cansu, making Menesia’s effects delayed until triggered by his hymn. And then she had obeyed him. Utterly. She had murdered her own raiders at his feet.
What did Elazar have planned for the rest of this island?
Ben was so lost in searching for his father—Elazar was nowhere in sight, but he was here, he had to be—that Lu’s clipped inhale had him grabbing for a nonexistent sword.
“Tom isn’t here,” she whispered. She turned to look at Kari in the pilothouse. The expression that passed between them kicked Ben in the chest—a deep, meaningful connection of parent to child that he couldn’t remember ever experiencing.
As if dragged forward to cement the inadequacy of their relationship, Elazar ascended onto the platform, hands lifted to the heavens.
The steamboat shuddered to a stop. Raiders rushed to the railing, met by defensors with weapons out. Everyone hardened.
Ben had told Gunnar to stay in the pilothouse until things turned dire. He needed Gunnar here, but he needed Gunnar safe, somewhere he couldn’t be used against Ben until they were all free to fight for themselves. But with his back to the pilothouse’s door, Ben felt the temperature increasing, steady and sure.
“Benat,” came Gunnar’s voice.
Ben pivoted enough to send Gunnar a weak smile. He couldn’t make himself meet his eyes.
“My son has returned to me,” Elazar’s voice boomed from the platform. The crowd was silent.
Velvet-soft peace fell over Ben. He took one step, another, crossing the deck to meet Lu, still at the bow. The defensors before them gave leery glowers, their pistols cocked at their sides, a few swords naked.
Ben grabbed the edge of the boat and leaped onto the dock. Lu followed, steadying herself on his arm.
Lu had made sure every pocket was stuffed with plants, small, discreet vials and pouches. Defensors searched them for weapons—they took a few vials of plants but didn’t find all of them—and, hand in hand, Ben and Lu walked toward the platform.
All the raiders stayed on their boats. When the fighting started, Ben and Lu would be separated from any allies until they fought their way through, unless Nayeli’s people had made it into the crowd.
Brittle hope and handfuls of magic were the only things that would keep them alive.
The silence held as Ben and Lu walked up the platform. When he stood on the wooden planks, able to see far across the crowd, unease drove into Ben’s chest. Many of these faces had masks of blankness similar to Pilkvist’s. Had they been in Argrid, Ben would have dismissed it as devotion—but had Elazar inspired that deep piety here? Or had he already given them Menesia? Were Ben and Lu too late?
Elazar moved to the front center of the platform, his body cocked slightly toward the crowd but his arms open to Ben. “Benat Gallego,” he said, voice rising. “And Adeluna Andreu. The Pious God is eager for you to return to his fold. Kneel and offer your surrender.”
Ben swallowed. He expected to kneel first, to have to pull Lu to her knees beside him, but Lu stepped ahead of him and lowered herself to the platform, back stiff and eyes on the wood.
“Benat,” Elazar prodded, his arms still spread.
Defensors rimmed the platform at Ben’s feet. They stood at the rear of the stage, by the steps, held pistols on the tide wall above—waiting on Elazar’s orders, should Ben falter.
Elazar, though, was calm and sure. Joyful, even.
“No,” Ben said.
Elazar’s arms slid down. “No?”
Ben had been reciting questions for days, things he would ask his father to get him to prove his madness before the crowd:
You say I am impure—but I came from you, so does that not also make you impure?
When did my impurity start? Everyone I caught as an Inquisitor in Argrid—you should release them, for I captured them while under the Devil’s hold, and their arrests were therefore to serve him, not the Pious God.
A dozen questions rolled through Ben’s mind. But only one came out of his mouth.
“Have you ever loved me?”
Elazar’s eyebrows shot up. The question was as unexpected for him as it was for Ben, who trembled in the wake of it, not realizing how desperately he had always wanted to ask that.
“Did you love my mother? Your parents?” Ben continued, heat rising in his chest. “Are you even capable? Am I a fool, to keep expecting something from you that you cannot give?”
For one shallow inhale, Ben saw hesitation on Elazar’s face. The corners of his mouth dipped downward, his eyes narrow, calculating.
Ben knew, if Lu had asked that question of Kari, she would have responded simply, but far more meaningfully: Yes. Yes, I love you. Of course I love you.
“You don’t, though,” Ben whispered. “You don’t love me.”
He was small again, a boy in awe of his father, the king, the Eminence. He was a child, and Ben staggered, facing the crowd.
“I trusted this man,” Ben shouted, pointing at Elazar. “I was once every version of you—eager and hopeful and so in love with King Asentzio Elazar Gallego that every word from him sounded dipped in honey. But I promise you”—here was where bullets would fly, if Elazar wanted. Here was where he would realize his son had no intention of bowing to him—“I promise you that he is a lie. Everything about him, every word he says. Lies.”
Ben faced Elazar, vibrating in a lifetime of repressed actions, unspoken words.
And Elazar stood there, watching him, an unreadable face framed by waiting defensors.
“He killed my family,” Ben said, the truth scraping up through his soul and falling out of him in a rush of breath and tears. “You—you—murdered everyone I loved and made me watch as they burned, alive. You let your monxes beat me—you beat me until my bones snapped. I lost myself in a dozen different vices trying to escape the things you did to me. You speak of benevolence as though you know it so well, and of mercy and love and honesty, and I believed you were those things. I don’t believe anymore.” Ben’s tongue was aflame, his soul rapturing from his body. “I don’t believe in you.”
He waited, expecting gunshots.
The crowd murmured. A handful of people gaped at him, the weight of his words shattering what hold Elazar had had on them; others stared in that glazed unawareness, hardly having moved since Ben started speaking.
“I knew,” Elazar started, and he faced the crowd, “that it was too much to hope that Benat had chosen to renounce evil. But I told you, Grace Loray—my son has returned to me. The Pious God makes a way, as long as the faithful remain true. And he has presented a way.”
The adrenaline that had wrapped around every word from Ben returned on him tenfold, panic and dread a toxic brew. Elazar would force Menesia on him, like he had on Cansu.
Ben reached for the Bright Mint vial in his back pocket, fingers moving slowly—
“My son was taken years ago,” Elazar said. Ben frowned, his body freezing. “Swept up in the war on Grace Loray. I admit before you now that he was the product of an illicit romance, an affair that speaks to the sinful nature at my own core. Yes, I am capable of being seduced by evil—but I repent my sins and strive, every day, for purity. My punishment for this failing was to lose my son. But the Pious God has seen fit to return him to me. My youngest son, a fresh start.”
The declaration was so incredible that Ben’s mind went white. He was vaguely aware of Lu shooting to her feet and saying a name:
“Teo.”
The boy? Elazar’s—
Ben’s vision fogged. Gray clouds and a thrashing sea.
“Teo Gallego,” Elazar corrected, giving Lu a sweet smile. “The Pious God has given me a new son to cement the rightness in Grace Loray’s rebirth. He rewards his followers when the costs we pay are great.”
“You’re lying,” Lu growled. She turned to Ben. Saw his blankness, his immobile panic, and he felt her fingers on his arm. “He’s lying, Ben. Teo is too young, he can’t be your—”
“You asked me, Benat, if I ever loved you,” Elazar cut in. Ben glared at him, and Elazar grinned. “The truth is: not enough. For your sake, though, you should be glad—the Pious God requires sacrifices even from his staunchest children, but you never meant enough to me. No, Benat, there is a greater sacrifice. I told you once—the Pious God showed me what I have to do, once and for all, to resurrect Argrid from the poverty it has sunk into, and he has confirmed it by returning Teo to me—this boy, filled with power, who is worthy of my name.”
It shouldn’t have hurt. Ben was glad not to be worthy of Elazar—but the look in his father’s eyes, the direct negation of everything Ben had wanted, hoped for, dreamed of—
“We will turn this island against you,” Lu snapped. “We already have what we need to stop you from destroying Grace Loray more than you already have.”
Elazar’s eyes widened in amusement. “Do you? With so many raiders against you?”
Lu’s shoulders leveled. “The Mecht syndicate doesn’t—”
“Not those barbarians.”
At the rear of the stage, Pilkvist looked up.
Ben stepped closer to Lu, taking her elbow. He didn’t dare scan the crowd, hoping for Nayeli’s Tuncian raiders to be nearby; he couldn’t make himself look back at the docks to see Gunnar, flames up his arms.
He waited, breathing only to fill the moments until the storm broke.
“You provided the means to uncover Menesia’s purpose in the Pious God’s plan,” Elazar said to Lu. “Your father—his brilliance on this subject has kept him alive, despite his weakness over you. The Church’s hymns, when sung after the highest Menesia dosage, trigger utter obedience. Which is what the Pious God rewards. Obedience.”
Lu staggered. Ben’s grip on her arm pinched tighter.
“Many of the raiders on this island,” Elazar said, “once uncontrollable criminals, are now docile servants of the Pious God.”
“The missing raiders,” Lu guessed.
Elazar’s smile was steady. He tipped his head and lifted the fingers of his left hand, motioning above him—to the sky? No, to the castle, the one sitting on the cliff over Lake Regolith, night’s black shadows curling around the towering stone walls.
Soft light emanated from it now. Ben’s stomach twisted. What—who—was up there?
“The raiders, like the people of this island, refused to submit to purity,” Elazar said. “But the Pious God is wondrous. Everyone is helpless when asked to play their role in his will, even those the Devil has ensnared.”
“No,” Ben stated. “We’re done. This is over, today. We won’t—”
“But you will, Benat! Don’t you see? You came for war, didn’t you? You have raiders lying in wait to attack. You have allies, weapons, all out for blood. Just as the Pious God wants!” Elazar’s madness drew color into his cheeks. “This island is the source of all evil. It brought war. It brought division. It caused the ills that harm Argrid. To bring peace to our country—no, to the world—I must sacrifice Grace Loray. I must cleanse this island, in its entirety, and thereby destroy the source of all evil.”
The crowd might have reacted with gasps, protestation. But Ben was beyond himself, watching as though above his own body.
“These people”—Elazar waved at the crowd—“even the ones who have not been given Menesia, they will not fight back. They believe the word of the Pious God. And the villagers in the outskirts—they will receive with open arms the people my defensors arrested and are, even now, returning. People like your missing raiders, who are now wholly my servants.”
“No,” Lu murmured.
“Every soul on this island”—and Elazar didn’t stop, couldn’t—“every speck of corruption, every seed of evil—everyone, after tonight, will be given over to the Pious God, as I should have done long ago. This new son of mine, Teo—he is the beacon of Argrid’s future. We shall leave this island, fresh and reborn, and Argrid will rise from Grace Loray’s ashes, anew.”
“You never wanted to convert Grace Loray,” Ben said, breath escalating. “You’re going to kill everyone.”
“You’re insane,” Lu said. “This is barbaric—”
Pilkvist shot forward another step. He had a pistol out now, and Ben swung in front of Lu, a shield.
“Barbaric,” Pilkvist echoed.
“Ingvar!” Lu shouted. “Elazar promised you support on this island. He promised to help your people and return New Deza to the Mecht immigrants. He’s taken you—he lied!”
Ingvar launched forward again and aimed his pistol at Elazar’s head.
Defensors swarmed the platform, weapons out. The crowd reacted, stifled screams and calls of alarm, the first beginnings of reaction through their confusion.
But Elazar smiled, one hand raised to stay his soldiers. His other hand he stuck into his robes and withdrew a vial.
Lu’s other vial of permanent magic. Ben had the last one, which he had given to Gunnar before this so the defensors couldn’t take it from him.
Ben instinctively reached for Elazar’s vial. At a tip of Elazar’s head, defensors pinned their weapons on Ben and Lu.
“Ah, Benat. I wouldn’t. The Pious God has no use for you anymore. Adeluna, child—you have succeeded, I heard?” Elazar tipped the vial, admiring it. “Everyone on Grace Loray will die to drive out the Devil’s foothold in this world. Argrid will rise. I will unlock the powers in my new son’s blood, and he will reign unmatched over this earth. With this vial, I will pave the way, becoming the Pious God myself.”
He uncorked and downed the contents before Ben could scream, “Don’t!”
Coughing, Elazar doubled forward. Lu braced herself on Ben.
Pilkvist didn’t pull the trigger. He watched Elazar sink to the ground, defensors doing the same, and Ben was reminded of a cell in Deza, Elazar and Jakes watching a sick man Ben had given healing potion. Not caring for the life or death in the balance—wanting the outcome.
After a lifetime, Elazar uncurled, straightened. His hair was mussed now, wild around his face, and his deranged eyes focused on Ben.
“I am the Pious God incarnate,” Elazar bellowed, and cupped his hands over his head in the Church’s symbol. “And I will consume this Devil-touched island in fire and blood.”
He began to sing a bellowing hymn that the defensors surrounding the area picked up. It reverberated through the docks, resonant and haunting, and when it ended, death followed.
A gunshot. Another. Ben grabbed Lu and hit the platform, arms thrown over their heads. Through the tangle, Ben watched spots of blood puncture Pilkvist’s chest. Defensors fired again, and again, but Pilkvist snarled and forced his pistol to stay up—
