Last First Snow (34 page)

“You don't need me. The people will follow you.”

“I'm just one man.”

“That's why.” He nodded. “You need the gods. Awake. You need them strong. You need them fed.”

“No,” Temoc said.

“It is the only way.”

“We left that path. The people—”

“The people don't care about theology. They are passion and fear and anger and they need gods to fuel that passion, soothe that fear, stoke that anger.” The Major grabbed Temoc's arm in one gauntleted fist, and squeezed. The plates of his fingers tugged at Temoc's shirt, and the blood on his hands left a stain among the other stains. “And I'm almost gone anyway.”

“I can save you.”

“For a day or two, until I die. But you can do better. You can make me mean something.”

Blasphemy even to propose it. Well. Not blasphemy. The gods demanded sacrifice. But for twenty years Temoc had taught another way, preached sacrifice in the living body. To feed the gods and live as the modern world could still permit.

But he had come to defend a people the modern world would not allow to live much longer. He set himself against the King in Red as surely as he had decades before, when he fought the Craftsmen in the skies above Dresediel Lex. And tonight he had pledged his son to the gods' service in the old way, with scars and blood and sacred rites.

Had he lied to himself all these years, thinking he could walk any other path? Thinking he could build peace with the King in Red, that all things true and good in Quechal life could survive when the pyramids became office buildings and old calendars gave way to new?

“Not tonight,” he said. “There is no eclipse. The gods will not receive a sacrifice out of cycle.”

He knew the excuse was feeble before he spoke, before the Major laughed. “The gods have not fed for forty years. They will forgive what they must, to eat.”

“This will turn them all against us. The whole city.”

“They're against us already.”

“I can't.”

“Temoc.”

“We have come so far.” Head bent near the Major's helm, he barely had the voice to speak.

“Give me my death.”

Knives in the dark. She'd screamed at him. His son, bleeding, on the bed. And then how many dead in the last few hours? He'd strangled Couatl with his bare hands, in the air. Battle joined already.

They stirred within him, beneath him, around and above.

Is he right?

No answer came that he could hear. Pride even to ask the question. We know the gods' will through our deeds.

The Major's breath grew heavy. Death pressed down on him. “Soon, now.”

Temoc slid his hands under the man's back. The metal was sticky with blood. He lifted, and found the Major lighter than he'd thought. Metal plates clanked as Temoc cradled the living body. A groan escaped the Major, so soft he could barely hear.

“Temoc?” Bill Kemal, kneeling. “What's happening?”

“He has asked for his end,” Temoc said. “I will grant it to him.”

He understood. Blanched, and stared at Temoc as if seeing him for the first time, or seeing for the first time what he'd been all along.

Temoc turned to Chel. “Summon them.”

“Who?”

“Everyone.”

 

51

“All forces withdrawn,” the dreamer said. “Groups one, two, three, five, eight confirmed safe. Recovering to secured positions. Awaiting orders.”

“That's the last of them,” Chimalli said. “We're done here.”

“You may go,” the King in Red replied. “If you wish. I want to see how this plays out.”

“We'll have options for tomorrow's assault on your desk by four in the morning.”

The skeleton peered into the vision well. “Temoc's carrying the Major to the prayer mats.”

“That doesn't make sense,” Chimalli said. “The Major's shown no religious inclination before.”

The King in Red did not respond.

“I'm in favor of the stun option myself,” Chimalli ventured. “There are health risks, but we can neutralize the crowd with minimal risk to our people. And it's memorable. Everyone in Chakal Square will know that if they work within the system they'll be protected, and if they try to fight, they'll just look foolish. They'll realize protest is a gift we allow them, not a power they hold. And we'll foster a reputation for resolving dangerous situations gently.” No response. He kept going, in hope. “We could let most of the people go—jail the leaders, try them. Everyone else wakes up at home in bed.”

“Captain,” the King in Red replied. “Please shut up. And watch.”

“Sir?”

One skeletal finger pointed down into the water. Chimalli knew he must have been mistaken, too much coffee, too long in that dim foul-smelling room, but he thought he saw the finger shake. “They are making our decision for us.”

*   *   *

Temoc lay the Major upon the makeshift altar.

Smoke rose and fire burned. Heat bloomed on his skin. He was not a weapon now. Only a priest, with a job to do.

The thousands gathered to watch. Wounded, seared, broken, blind with exhaustion, they knelt on the grass mats, or nearby.

Not all came. Some manned barricades, some doused fires, rebuilt the shattered camp. But many. Chel stood beside him. The altar strained beneath the Major's weight, of armor and flesh.

The Major had not spoken since Temoc set him down. His breath came faster.

Temoc spoke the gods' words.

“Qet Sea-Lord, Ixchitli Sun-Shaper

The Twins gave of themselves when the sun their father died

Yes, they gave of themselves—suckled serpents on their blood

Suckling serpents they became the world

Becoming the world they became a bridge

A bridge—between man and god

A bridge—between our world and the next

Two united, each informing each

Blood for blood, hunger for hunger,

Thirst for thirst repaid.”

And on the litany rolled, words first heard in youth and spoken so many times since, words that came easy to his lips yet fell heavily from them to strike the air like an immense bell's clapper.

The people watched. He felt their faith, their fear, saw it even when he closed his eyes, a sea of green he could inhale, make part of himself, and offer as he offered this sacrifice, this willing human being, to the powers that made them all.

The Major's terror grew as he faced death. No matter that he had begged for it. He was still afraid, and Temoc was still the man who held the knife.

He lifted it: not the black glass blade reserved for sacrifice on Quechaltan and for the making of new Eagle Knights. He had found a blade of simple steel. It would serve. This was no great altar, sanctified by generations, but each altar took its first blood sometime.

He'd denied that truth for so long.

Few in the audience could understand the High Quechal prayer. Few ever had, even in the old days, when hundreds of thousands gathered to see the death that made the sun live again.

“The gods ask us all to give according to our strengths,” he said in Kathic. “And we fortunate few are called to give our hearts.”

He bent over the Major, who lay prone and still. Unconscious, Temoc thought, until he heard the man's voice: “Don't let them see me.”

“I will not,” he replied.

Temoc gripped the Major's breastplate and tore the steel. The gods gave him strength. The armor opened for him like flower petals, rising to obscure the Major's body.

She wore a thick leather shirt under the makeshift armor, but that could not hide her as the metal had. Temoc said nothing—only hesitated as he cut the leather out of the way. But the Major caught him again by the hand, strong in her, his, last breath. “Do it.”

He raised the knife.

He heard Chel breathe beside him, heard nothing else in the silence. His arm trembled above his head. He shifted grip on the knife, pommel down.

He struck fast. The breastbone broke, as needed. There was no scream. Muscles in the Major's throat corded, strangling his cry.

Gods stirred. Faces pressed through the world's gauze, endless eyes watching him. Mouths, open, hungry. He knew their names, he knew each tooth. They waited for their child to offer them a gift. No matter that he was an unworthy priest, that the gift itself could not match their radiance. Time was a single scream, a single breath. Gods and men trembled on the edge of a knife, a single drop now tumbling toward eternity as the blade swept down, and blood wept, and divine eyes opened, and the whole world sighed at once and was, as ever, saved.

The Major's heart was slick in his hand.

His people cried rapture as he held it high.

And the gods were in and with them all.

Skies opened. Artificial clouds boiled away. Throughout the Skittersill, ghostlights died and fires failed. Night fell upon their faces, and above them all the stars shone.

The Major lay beneath, a husk.

*   *   *

The vision well blazed and died. Water rolled against stolen rock.

“What the hells,” Chimalli said.

The King in Red looked up. Before, though Chimalli would never have said this aloud, his boss had seemed angry, petulant—a boy genius thwarted.

No more.

His eyes burned, as always, but hotter now, the darkness around them deep.

The King in Red was ancient, unbowed, no longer human. More, and less. He was a mind of cold blades that threshed the world from its chaff.

He had slept.

Now, he woke.

“Tomorrow,” Kopil said. “Tell Elayne.”

 

52

The wounded and dying overran Grace and Mercy Hospital. Couatl swarmed about the roof, depositing wounded Wardens, then winging south to recover more. When Elayne arrived in the cab with Mina and a bleeding Caleb, the orderlies tried to turn her away. She shouted at them, name-dropped Dr. Venkat, and in the end walked straight past the orderlies' desk toward the lifts. Mina followed her, tight-wound, silent. Caleb floated between them, wrapped in towels to stem his bleeding.

She found Venkat in the trauma ward. The doctor looked as if she hadn't slept since Elayne saw her last. Blood stained her white coat. “Do you have any idea how much work you've brought us?”

“One more,” she said, and pointed to the boy. “He'll die if without help.”

“So will twenty others in this ward.”

“His father,” Elayne said, “is the leader of the riot.” Mina made a strangled sound, which she ignored. No time for niceties. “He is valuable.”

“Everyone is valuable.”

“He is valuable to the King in Red, I mean.”

Venkat's face closed.

“He's my son,” Mina said. “Help him.” No emotion in her voice, anymore. On the ride over she hadn't been able to tell Elayne the whole story, but the important elements came through. The boy scarred by his father's knife. The old line carried forth into a new generation—the warrior-paladinate handed to a boy unready for the pain or duty the scars promised. Temoc's last attempt to guard his son from a world that would grip him even tighter now he bore these scars. But Caleb had saved himself and his mother in the hotel. Maybe that justified the burden he would bear.

Venkat said, “This way,” and led them through a maze of blood and screams, past operating rooms where bells kept rapid pace with racing hearts, to a small white chamber with a white bed where she laid the boy, stripped off his makeshift bandages, dosed him for the pain, and set to work. Even through the drugs, her touch made Caleb writhe. Venkat shouted to a nurse, listing chemicals and talismans—some Elayne remembered from trauma tents in the Wars.

Elayne tried to pull Mina from the room, but Mina would not leave. “This won't be short,” Elayne said, “or pleasant.”

“I'll stay,” she said.

Elayne walked three circuits around the trauma ward. No one tried to stop her. Wandering without a child to care for, she made sense of the building, assembled the hallway maze into architecture, identified operating theaters and recovery rooms. She poured a cup of coffee from a pot behind the nurse's station, and drank. The hospital smelled of blood and disinfectant and burnt fat. She was not Kopil's warrior, or his general. His Craftswoman, only, his representative in a matter now settled.

The coffee tasted foul. Not the coffee's fault. Ambrosia would have tasted the same.

She returned to Caleb's room an hour later, found the doctor gone and the boy bandaged, stitched, sedated, and asleep. The room had a careful, neutral odor of bad smells scrubbed away by Craft.

Mina sat by the bed, and did not look up when Elayne walked past.

She poured two more cups of coffee, and returned. Mina accepted the cup without looking, drank, and said nothing.

Elayne sat beside her. A metronome ticked the beats of Caleb's heart. She could have danced to that beat, though it lacked swing. A tube snaked down his nose, connected to a bag that inflated and deflated with his breath.

“They had to sedate him heavily,” Mina said, unprompted. “They use the tube because otherwise he might forget to breathe.”

Elayne drank her coffee and listened.

“They asked me what they should do. I'm his mother, so they asked. I didn't know what to say.” She drank. “I carried him across the city. I fought for him. We almost died. And I couldn't speak when they asked.”

“They know what to do,” Elayne said. “They asked you because you were there, to make you feel better. Don't blame yourself.”

“Who else should I blame?”

“Temoc,” she said.

“I married him.”

“If not for that, this boy wouldn't be here at all.”

“I know.”

“Caleb's safe. No one will come for him.”