These Divided Shores, page 36
“That’s Bianca’s son!” she screamed. Then, louder, over the death cries, “Bianca’s son!”
And my father’s. He’s destroying him like he destroyed me.
Jakes spun to her, the delirium in his eyes slipping, if only for a moment.
Lu reared back her fist and smashed the Rhodofume pod on the platform.
32
SMOKE FILLED THE area in an explosion of gray.
Lu surged through it, toward the exact place she had seen Tom standing before fog shrouded them. She hit the platform, leaped onto it, propelling onward until she smashed into her father and the two of them flew back in a jumble of limbs and speed.
A single Rhodofume pod did not have an excess of smoke, nor did it last long. As Lu scrambled up onto her knees, the air had already started to clear—and she saw Tom, an arm’s length before her, stumbling to his feet. He used the hand holding his pistol to wipe his mouth, smearing blood across his chin.
Distantly, Lu heard Kari cry her name. She heard the sounds of battle. She heard Teo weeping, but he wasn’t near Tom, no longer close enough for that man to touch him.
That man. His father.
Lu tore away from him, across the wood, and threw her arms around Teo, around Vex too, burrowing Teo’s face into her chest. She couldn’t make a sound come out of her mouth, but she didn’t need to—Kari was on the grass behind them with a look of horror on her face.
The noise of battle was starting to wane. People wept on the grass, holding their heads as friends tried to help them. Nayeli cradled a sobbing Cansu; Nate held his hands out as he cautiously approached one of his raiders.
They were fighting the Menesia, with grit and will and the small doses of Bright Mint.
The defensors still fought. Though their numbers were dropping, they rallied on, driven by the sight of their king—their god—tearing through the sobbing raiders as a sickle would cut through grass. Elazar had a sword now, his movements jerky and manic, blood spraying around him in a storm of destruction.
Kari’s eyes moved past Lu, and her face set. “Tomás—don’t.”
Lu withered, spinning back to Tom as he took slow steps toward them.
He wavered.
“Of all the things I have done in the name of Argrid, to bring peace and healing to this island”—his eyes shifted to Kari—“the one I most resisted, the one that caused me to write to the Eminence King and dare beg him to choose another servant, was the task that made me unfaithful to you.”
Lu gagged.
Her father had manipulated her. Tortured her. Lied to her.
And he didn’t count that as his worst task?
Tom kept talking. “My king wanted to know the effects of Shaking Sickness on a child born to an infected mother. After Bianca had Menesia, she believed I had rescued her from Argrid. She fell in love with me. The task was . . . easy to accomplish.”
“Stop.” Kari lifted her hand, fingers shaking.
“But Teo was born, and Lu—Lulu-bean, God save me, the war ended, and what Ibarra did to you—I’ve tried to spare you from this pain, Lulu-bean,” he told her. “You and your mother. This is why I used Menesia on you—you found out about Teo, and it nearly destroyed us. I’ve tried to keep you safe, but you refused to listen to me when I knew how close you were to permanent magic, and the whole of the world hung on your potion. Can you conceive of that weight? And I thought, maybe Teo truly did have powers. Maybe my love for him was a weakness. So I offered him up to the Pious God, as I should have—”
He wouldn’t stop talking. Explanations, excuses, lies, horrors—Lu couldn’t handle it anymore, couldn’t take the fabrication he had sculpted.
Defensors reached them. Tears and sweat made Kari’s cheeks shine. She drew knives and spun to fight off the defensors. Vex, his hands on Lu’s shoulders, tried to pull her and Teo away—how far would they get? Where would they go?
“Lu,” Teo sobbed against her. “Lu, I don’t want to be here—”
Stiff, spent, Lu looked up at her father.
She still had weapons. She still had plants, and the Incris in her body.
“Lulu-bean,” Tom said, reaching out to her. “Please, let me fix this. I can make you forget everything, and we can be happy again. Teo, too. I promise, my love. Please.”
Lu faltered on the precipice of action. To kill her father. The man who had made her capable of killing at all.
She wasn’t a soldier anymore. She wasn’t a monster.
Lu slackened in Vex’s hands. She shifted across the wood, toward the edge of the platform.
Tom tracked the movement. His lip curled. “No! Don’t make me hurt you—”
A gunshot echoed.
Tom frowned, a crease dragging through his brow. His focus went around, searching for the source of the noise.
Jakes stood at the rear of the platform, his smoking pistol still raised. His eyes shifted to Teo and a look of awe passed over him, as though he had awoken from a long-held dream.
A thud yanked Lu back to herself.
Tom had fallen to his knees, hands to his chest. Jakes’s aim had been true, straight through his heart, and Tom collapsed to his side before Lu.
She sucked in a breath, the air rank with sweat and iron.
He was dead. Like Milo. Two horrors in her life snuffed out.
This one brought a wave of emotions. Grief tried to drag her down, screaming sobs one breath from destroying her until Kari slid onto the wood and bundled Lu and Teo into her arms. Around them, the remaining defensors were either dead or gone, joining Elazar in his last stand against the raiders in the courtyard.
Lu clung to her mother. Together. They would deal with Tom together. She wasn’t alone, kneeling by her father’s corpse in agonizing solitude. She had her mother—and she had Teo.
“Lu!” Teo shrieked. “What’s he doing? Stop him!”
Elazar? Yes, they would—but Lu needed this, a small moment of her mother taking her weight and Teo breathing, steady and sure, against her.
Teo. Her . . . brother. The thought felt disjointed, but Lu held it anyway—
Until Teo bucked against her. “Stop him! Don’t go, Vex!”
Ben wasn’t sure what had pushed Jakes to act. The drawing out of the battle, the appearance of Elazar, the endless screams of people dying—it had a way of throwing the smallest of details into stark clarity.
For Jakes, that seemed to be Teo. He hadn’t said a word to Ben or Gunnar before he’d dived past them, onto the platform, and shot Tomás Andreu.
Some settling in Ben’s mind told him that the actions on the platform would be resolved, a calmness that centered him on the only detail, in this courtyard, that mattered to him: Elazar.
The vial of permanent magic sat in his breast pocket. Jacket tattered, shirt drenched in sweat, Ben removed the vial and stared at the liquid within the glass, the shifting rainbow of colors that caught the torchlight from around the yard.
“Benat,” Gunnar said insistently. “Are you certain?”
No. Ben looked up. Elazar was in the center of the yard, a handful of defensors at his back, weapons bloodstained. A dozen or more raiders still fought, coming at the tight knot of resistance from all angles. Ben spotted Rosalia. Pierce, just there.
But Elazar was, as they had feared, unstoppable. His limbs and weapons swung in constant arcs, a flurry of redemption that would drown this island in death.
“Sinners!” Elazar bellowed. “You are defenseless against the Pious God!”
Perhaps Elazar was the Pious God now. Perhaps that permanent magic had given him and Lu and Nate and Rosalia all an unearthly level of power.
Ben stared down at the vial in his palm, hearing a dozen voices telling him that he needed this weapon. He couldn’t fight his father without equaling him.
“This is—” Ben started, ground his teeth together. He uncorked the vial and held it ready. “This is Argrid’s war.”
His arm tensed to dump the potion into his mouth before he could reconsider—but a hand covered his.
“You aren’t the only Argridian here,” a voice said.
Ben blinked. Paxben was holding the vial now, his ash-covered face cocked in a sad attempt at a smile.
“Irmán,” Vex said, and downed the potion.
Ben jolted. “No!”
Vex gave him another grin. Staggering, doubled in half, he turned and ran for Elazar.
“Paxben!” Ben screamed, and tore after him.
Gunnar caught him around the waist. “Benat—he can do this! You cannot face your father without magic!”
Lu bounded off the platform and landed next to Ben, her face drawn as she watched Vex race across the battlefield.
“What did he do?” It came as a whisper, the situation punching her in the gut.
Ben went slack in Gunnar’s arms when Lu’s eyes met his.
“He will be fine.” Gunnar tried again. “He has magic. It may be enough to—”
Lu shook her head. “His Shaking Sickness. I tried to cure it, but—”
“—that much magic might kill him,” Ben finished.
As he crossed the field, Vex didn’t let himself think about each person he hurdled over—raiders, defensors, people he might’ve known on both sides.
God, the potion hurt. It felt like he’d swallowed a handful of nails. He staggered, faltering to his knees as a spasm grabbed every muscle and squeezed.
It took all his willpower not to scream. Hell, it’d taken all his willpower to grab the vial from Ben at all—just when Vex thought he’d hit the bottom of his strength, he found another layer, another, shocking himself with how deep his fortitude ran.
He’d never dug this deep, though. He’d never put himself in situations where he’d have to tap into some hidden reserve of strength since he’d gotten out of the Church’s mission-prison.
Now it let him shove himself back to his feet. Maybe it was the potion he’d taken, or this new wash of tenacity—but as Vex stood on the battlefield, surrounded by the dead and dying, he faced Elazar, a dozen paces in front of him, still tearing aside any who approached.
And Vex felt ready.
He swiped a stray sword from the ground, the tip dragging through the matted grass. Step by step, Vex clenched and unclenched his free hand, waiting for some shock of extra speed or muscle power or berserker drive to slaughter people. How long had the potion taken to work on everyone else? What’d they do to figure out which magic had taken root?
Vex wavered. He probably should’ve known more about this magic before he’d snatched it from Ben.
He sucked in a breath and cut off his mind from the spiraling questions. Another step, boots slipping on the slick grass. Vex held other images at the front of his mind:
Edda. How she’d walk into a fight. Back straight, weapon ready, her face set.
Rodrigu. Every meeting with his allies, every solemn ceremony in the cathedrals—the same impossible mask had descended over him, a wall that refused to let his worries or misgivings break his concentration.
Paxben had practiced stoic expressions like that in the mirror. He’d thought of his father and puckered his face and laughed at the uselessness of something so serious.
There was no humor in Vex now, though. He set his features, brick by brick building a wall out of memories of Rodrigu, out of memories of Edda.
Elazar pivoted in the yard, a broadsword raising overhead as he swung to the next source of movement—Vex.
His fog of vengeance shifted. Through it came a long, slow smile of recognition.
“Paxben,” Elazar growled, and charged him.
Paxben had trained alongside Ben when they’d been kids. He’d never been good at moving like this, his long limbs too lanky and uncoordinated, but some remnant of that training burst up through him, and Vex moved.
He caught the first of Elazar’s blows. The force vibrated up Vex’s arm and he cried out, the destructive power jarring every muscle, every bone, every sinew that for the past few years had slowly been deteriorating under Shaking Sickness.
Darkness wafted over him, the pain too intense. When it cleared, Elazar was pulling back to swing again—
Vex hesitated, his body recoiling from another shattering block, and that pause sent Elazar’s broadsword slicing straight for Vex’s neck. He faltered back and the tip of Elazar’s blade sliced along his cheek.
“Coward!” Elazar screamed, eyes peeled wide, lips snarling spittle. “Just like your father! Coward!”
Elazar hefted the sword for an overhead blow. Vex caught it again, and the contact rang through him like the toll of a bell, each vibration darkening his vision more, more. . . .
He’d crawled up to the Grace Neus Cathedral bell tower with Ben. They’d made a secret hideaway of the little-used nook there, giggling about how no one would ever find them—until the bell had struck noon, and the incessant dong, dong, dong had deafened them for hours.
Vex shook his head, forcibly clearing his mind. Damn it—why hadn’t the potion kicked in? Had it not worked on him? God, his body ached.
Blood gushed down Vex’s face, warm and thick. He gripped his sword with both hands and tried to run, to put distance between himself and Elazar. Maybe he’d get Incris, like Lu, and be able to bolt away—
A hand seized Vex’s shoulder and ripped him back. He slammed against the ground, something in his chest snapping in a burst of agony like a candle disturbing a peaceful night. Vex arched against the pain as Elazar loomed over him.
Elazar rested the point of his sword on Vex’s collarbone. The weight of the broadsword alone was enough to puncture his skin. Vex cried out.
“Pathetic,” Elazar snarled. “That you came from my line. Look at you! How your father would weep to see what a useless creature you’ve become.”
Elazar raised his sword.
At the edge of the yard, Vex saw the faint outline of bodies running toward him. Ben? Lu? He couldn’t twist to look, frozen on the ground in the heaviness of Elazar’s gaze and the intensifying tremors that spread from Vex’s torso, down his legs, out to his fingertips.
He shouldn’t have taken that potion. He could feel it warring with the temperamental state his body had been in, magic heaped on too much magic already.
The image of Elazar, lifting his broadsword for a death strike, slowed. The shadows on the edges of Vex’s eyesight, Ben and Lu racing for him, faded and rippled into the night.
Vex had been terrified during the first resistance meeting Rodrigu had brought him to. His father had noticed Paxben’s fear, dismissed everyone, and sat with him on his lap for hours, until they were both giggling about nothing, about everything.
“Papa,” Paxben had asked, his head tucked against Rodrigu’s neck. “What if I’m not as brave as you are?”
“You will be one day. You won’t even feel it happen—something will become more important to you than fear, and you will find yourself doing amazing things.”
The world smelled suddenly like Lu’s hair. Like salt and sun, warmth and honey. The hum of the battle sounded like the shushing wind when he’d been alone with Ben atop the cathedral, the whole of the world bowing before them.
Elazar’s eyes leaped to Ben and Lu, gaining on him. His grin was beyond demented—it came from the very depths of whatever hell he so feared. His lifted sword shifted course, and Vex knew it would strike one, or both, of the people rushing to his aid.
Vex’s body was broken. The muscles in his legs were unraveling, spasms stretching him thin and tremors coming one on top of the last. He couldn’t move. Couldn’t fight. Couldn’t do anything but sit in that carriage and listen to his father burn to death—
Vex screamed. His soul cleaved in two, spilling the last of his strength.
He planted his palms and swung his legs in a spinning arc that hooked Elazar’s ankles. Elazar dropped to the ground, his blood-covered robes wafting around him as his head slammed back against the grass.
Vex panted, too high on possibility to let his momentum falter.
“Vex!” came Lu’s scream. She was nearly upon him.
He ripped Elazar’s sword from his grip, spun it around in both hands, and heaved all his weight into driving the blade into his uncle’s chest.
The crunch and spurt of blood shook Vex head to toe. He wondered if Incris had taken him after all, for speed; and Powersage, for strength; and maybe he was just all of it, Croxy and Aerated Blossom and everything. He was flying and powerful, healing and destruction.
The world trembled. Beyond, defensors wailed, their words muffling so they sounded like “Our Eminence! The Pious God! Rise again, Eminence, you cannot be killed!”
Vex wavered, the hilt of the sword keeping him upright. He almost expected Elazar to obey the pleas of his defensors.
“Rise again, Eminence! Pious God, save you—”
Elazar’s eyes, staring at Vex, dimmed. He looked shocked—that his useless nephew had truly killed him? Or that he had died at all?
The defensors’ pleas faded. Faded more. Each second that passed without Elazar bursting up from the ground brought a deep, rippling sense of finalization across the courtyard.
Defensors lowered their weapons. Elazar’s devoted servants stared in horrified wonder.
Vex fought to stay upright, to revel in their amazement, but his body had gone too far. He pitched to the side and curled inward, a tremor contorting him into an unyielding knot of limbs and bones and a stunted cry.
Hands on his face, smoothing his hair back. “Vex—can you hear me?”
He couldn’t breathe without his lungs feeling like they’d catch fire. Even the act of closing his eye drove spirals of anguish down his bones, and he felt something crack in his leg, another, tremors shaking him apart from the inside.
“Heal him!” Nayeli, frantic. “You healed him once—heal him again!”
“I didn’t heal him! That’s why—oh god, he shouldn’t have taken it—”
Vex bit down on his tongue and pried his eye open. He knew he was fading, fading fast—he scrambled through the delirium with one last, feeble grasp at the sights around him.
Lu, his head on her lap, tendrils of her hair flurrying around her face. Nayeli, over her, lips moving as she said something, or prayed maybe.
