Hope and Red (41 page)

But the tide of soldiers had finally turned. Hope and Brigga Lin killed the few who remained in the hallway, and when they reached the council chamber, they found it nearly empty. Hope had lost count of how many white robes she had cut down. They had seemed endless. But now she wondered if they might actually be close to accomplishing their goal.

“Where is the council?” Brigga Lin raged at the lone biomancer in the chamber. Her hands swept sideways, and his legs broke outward at the knees. He dropped to the floor and when he screamed, his hood fell back and Hope saw his face. It was Teltho Kan.

“Wait!” said Hope. “That one is mine!”

Brigga Lin's hands froze in mid-gesture. “This is the one who murdered your people?”

“Oh yes, I am!” shouted Teltho Kan, his voice constricted with pain. “I used them as incubators for a breed of giant wasp I was perfecting.” He laughed, a desperate, high-pitched sound.

Brigga Lin stepped back a few paces. “He's yours, then. But make him tell you where the council members are hiding.”

“None of the others we killed were council members?” asked Hope.

“They were only novices,” hissed Teltho Kan. “Unimportant and easily replaced. In fact, you did us a favor, thinning out their ranks like that. Most of them were barely worthy of the order. Those few who survived will be the stronger for it.” He laughed again.

Perhaps it was just the pain of having both legs shattered, but he looked quite mad with that grin on his face. Again Hope felt a curl of pity around the edge of her vision. It had been creeping up all night, and each time she fought it off. But it was hard, now, to truly know what was right. When witnessing the horror of what the biomancers did from the outside, it had been easy to point to them and say,
You are wrong
. But now that she had her own biomancer—her own horror-maker—it was not so easy. She looked down at herself and saw that her black leather armor gleamed wet with blood. Her hands were sticky with it. How could any choice that was truly right bring so much death and pain?

“Where is the rest of the council, Kan?” asked Hope, her voice weary.

“Where is your red-eyed lackey?” He looked around.

“He isn't here.”

He nodded. “You're a good liar. Especially for a Vinchen. But we both know that couldn't be true. He could no more leave your side than you could abandon your oath.”

“Truly, Kan. He isn't here.” Hope didn't know what Teltho Kan had planned for Red, but she was grateful he wasn't there to find out.

A look of dread swept across Teltho Kan's face. He shook his head vehemently. “No, no, that can't be. He
must
be here. I
told
them he would be here. I
swore
it!” He glared up at her. “You knew, didn't you? You cunt, how did you know? How did you…” He turned desperately around, scanning the room. His broken legs cracked further, but he didn't seem to notice. He looked lost. Terrified. Pathetic. “How could I be wrong…”

“Anyone can be wrong.” Even as Hope said that, she realized she was telling not just him, but herself. She had been fighting off the doubts since they began this night, but seeing the man she hated most in the world rendered broken and helpless before her gave her the courage to finally let them in. To a Vinchen warrior, carrying out vengeance was the most important thing he could do. The Vinchen code was quite clear on that point. But it had been celebrating Carmichael's life, not his death, that had felt right to her. Would she be honoring her parents and her village by all this death? Thinking back on it, Hurlo had never explicitly condoned her thirst for vengeance. Perhaps even he had doubts that the code was always right. After all, he broke it when he accepted her as a pupil.

“I thought swearing vengeance on you was an honorable oath,” she said quietly. “I thought your death would somehow bring meaning to the meaningless waste of life you caused. But now I understand that it wouldn't make any difference. That neither my parents nor my teachers would have wanted me to squander my life to take yours.”

“Bleak Hope?” asked Brigga Lin, looking confused.

“This oath I made was the selfish and vindictive wish of a hurt child. Understandable, but not honorable. And I am no longer a child.”

She lowered her sword.

“No! Wait! You
must
kill me!” said Teltho Kan. “Don't you see? I have failed them! You don't know what they will do to me, how they will make me suffer!”

“It is not my purpose to punish or save you,” said Hope. “My life has intertwined with yours long enough. Here is where we part.” She turned away from him.

His face twisted in fury. “No…” He lunged out, reaching for her sword hand.

“Hope!” Red's voice rang like a bell.

In the same moment that Teltho Kan's fingers grazed Hope's knuckles, a throwing blade embedded itself in his eye and he dropped to the ground.

Hope looked down at her hand and saw the knuckles withering, shrinking, desiccating, turning to rot. Her sword clattered to the floor.

She could hear Red calling her name. He had come after all. By his own choice. Even as the pain twisted in her hand, a part of her felt joy that he had chosen to join her on his own. And a part of her was terrified of what sort of trap Teltho Kan had laid for him.

But then pain took over her body, wiping out thoughts of anything else. Red's blade had killed the biomancer, slowing down the process a little, but not stopping it. The rot spread to Hope's fingers. She felt them dying one by one, each death sending a blast of agony up through her arm and into her skull.

Red was running toward her. Brigga Lin, too. But the rot was fast. It would finish her first. And even if they did reach her in time, what could they do? What could
she
do? She swayed, and her vision began to dim. She felt herself slipping away as the pain and rot traveled up into her palm.

“Hope!” screamed Red.

But she had made a promise to Red. Not to give up. Ever. That, she decided, was a vow worth keeping.

She forced herself to concentrate. She looked down at her hand. It was a curled and blackened thing, oozing puss. The rot was reaching up toward her wrist. She dropped to her knees and picked up the Song of Sorrows with her good hand. Then she brought the blade down, cutting off her rotting hand just above the wrist.

The rot was gone. She no longer felt its slow, withering death. Instead, there was a bright, hot pain, as blood poured from the stump of her forearm. The floor around her was suddenly slick with it. She pulled the strap tight on her sleeve to slow down the flow. Then she stared at the empty space where her hand used to be. That was when she finally screamed.

Then Red was there and she sank back into his warm embrace.

“Oh, God, Hope, I'm so sorry, so sorry!” His sweaty hand pressed her cold cheek as he held her. “It'll be okay, we're going to make this okay.”

“You came,” said Hope, fighting to stay conscious.

“I'm here. I couldn't stay away. No matter what.”

She smiled faintly. “Like we promised. You and me. Hope and Red. No matter what.”

“That's right,” he said, grinning through his tears.

“I can fix you.” Brigga Lin cradled Hope's stump in her hands. “Let me seal this now, and I'll fix it later when I have materials.”

Hope nodded, too weak now to speak.

Brigga Lin brought the bleeding stump up to her lips. She kissed the white gleam of bone in the center gently, almost reverently. Immediately, the wound closed. Hope shuddered as the pain left her body, replaced by something cool and soothing.

“Well,” came a voice that sounded as old as dust. “It appears that Teltho Kan was right after all.”

Hope weakly lifted her head up from Red's lap and saw a fresh troop of soldiers come boiling into the chamber from the stairs. They formed a ring around the three, rifles pointed inward at them.

“Welcome to the Council of Biomancery,” said the voice. Hope followed the sound to the far side of the council chambers, where a line of men in hooded white robes stood motionless, their hands joined, their faces hidden.

Red held Hope tightly to his chest, his arms protectively around her, as soldiers pointed rifles at them. He had been too slow to save her hand. He would save the rest of her, whatever the cost.

“There you are.” Brigga Lin glared at the biomancers on the far side of the room. She wiped the line of blood from her nose and slowly stood. “Don't worry, Bleak Hope. I'll finish this.”

She raised her hands and began a series of fluid gestures so rapid, even Red's eyes could barely follow them. Then she swept her arms out toward the line of biomancers.

The air rippled around them, but nothing else happened.

“Did you really think we would have let you live if you posed a true threat to us?” asked the one in the center in the same dusty voice they'd heard before, now with just a hint of amusement.

Brigga Lin stepped back, all of her dark arrogance evaporated.

“Let me live?”

“Of course. Those poor souls we sent down there to feed you only knew that we wanted them to mention the female Vinchen within your hearing. We knew you wouldn't be able to resist. That you would kill them, make your escape, and seek her out. That with you egging her on, the female Vinchen might grow bold enough to attack us directly. And Teltho Kan was certain that the red-eyed youth wouldn't be able to let you attempt such a thing without him. It's a shame Teltho Kan didn't live long enough to see that he had been correct after all. This success would have finally brought him into the council.”

“Well, you got me.” Still cradling Hope, Red reached down and pulled out a throwing knife. “But I reckon you'll be sorry you did. You might be able to block magic, but let's see you block steel.”

“You cannot kill all of us.”

“You're going to kill us anyway, so I might as well take down as many as I can.”

“On the contrary, we do not wish to kill you. And if you agree to surrender yourself to us peacefully, we will even set your Vinchen free.”

“You're lying.”

“We are incapable of perjury.”

Red looked at Brigga Lin.

“Biomancers cannot lie,” she conceded. “Making untrue statements would weaken our power.”

Red turned back to the biomancer council. “You'll let Hope go free? No restrictions? No hunting her down later?”

“If she leaves Stonepeak and never returns, and for as long as you cooperate with us, we will never harm her directly.”

“Why?” asked Hope, her voice hoarse. She struggled to sit up, her stump tucked under her other arm. “What will you do to him?”

“Train him. Help him realize his full potential,” said a different biomancer, his voice like dripping oil. “He will be an essential element in saving our empire.”

“What's so special about me?” asked Red.

There was a pause.

“Perhaps he will be more willing to comply if he knows the whole truth,” said the biomancer with a voice like oil.

“Or he will become even more unwilling,” said another like rusty metal.

“We shall see,” said the dusty voice. “Young man, you are the culmination of an experiment that has lasted almost twenty years. We developed a substance that caused feelings of confidence and sexual arousal in those who inhaled it. It was also highly addictive and, after repeated use, fatal. Its name was
Coractulous spucaceas
. But you would most likely know it as coral spice.”

“Wait,” said Red. “
You
invented coral spice? The drug?”

“It only behaved like a recreational drug. Its true purpose was to alter the unborn children of female users while they were still in the womb and vulnerable to such drastic changes.”

“Alter?” asked Brigga Lin.

“It would improve their reflexes and hand-eye coordination to performance levels well beyond a normal person. It would also mark these children with red eyes so we could readily identify them. But every one we found did not live longer than a month. We thought none had survived, so the experiment was considered a failure. Until Teltho Kan saw you.”

“You're saying that countless lives were ruined on the off chance someone like me might come along?” demanded Red.

“We did not force people to take the drug. One of our number was most insistent on that point.”

“There must always be an element of choice,” said the oily voice.

“So my whole life, the reason I've always been so clever with my hands and good with my aim? That was the coral spice.”

“Correct.”

“And Teltho Kan,” said Hope. “He intensified it.”

“Yes. The subject's full ability lay dormant until unlocked by a biomancer.”

“Why do you need him?” Hope struggled to her knees. “What is he saving the empire from?”

“That we will not tell you. Suffice it to say, it is a threat greater than even our power alone can face.”

“So if I agree to help you,” asked Red, “you'll let Hope go free?”

“Yes.”

“What about Brigga Lin?”

There was a pause.

“She should be disciplined for her heresy.”

“You mean tortured to death, right?”

Another pause.

“Yes.”

Red's face set. “Then I want you to let her go along with Hope.”

“Why? What is she to you?”

Red turned to Brigga Lin. She stared back, looking baffled. Perhaps even shocked. Red didn't blame her. After all, it was partly her fault they were in this mess. But that wasn't the most important thing right now. That was in the past and couldn't be changed. But something else could be changed.

“You fix her,” he said quietly to Brigga Lin. “You
help
her. From now on. You have to be there for her when I can't be. Keen?”