Spellbreaker (56 page)

“But don't you see I have to? Don't you see I have to—”

“Justify my existence?”

“Yes.”

Leandra opened her mouth to hotly reply, but her own doubts washed over her. She closed her mouth and again brought her hand to her forehead.

Nicodemus spoke. “You know, somewhere deep down, that you're not a demon. Maybe you are composed of demonic language, but … don't you know you're not a demon?”

Leandra pressed her hand harder against her forehead. Grimaced. “No, I don't. If today has any damned point to it, it's that I don't have the first clue about who I am.”

He wore an expression of wilting hope.

“You want to believe. You want to believe that whatever forces made me, deep down I'm something good.”

“I do.”

“Even after I poisoned you.”

“Especially after you poisoned me.”

She nodded. The more he suffered for her, the more he needed that suffering to mean something.

He was studying her. “Things are very new. And right now we have only the words of a monster. It may well turn out that the Savanna Walker is lying, or maybe things really aren't white and black. Maybe a civilization of divinity and humanity could be more humane—as odd as it sounds to say that—than one of humanity alone.”

She looked up at him. “You're thinking about how we're going to justify … all this?”

“I know you, Lea. You're not Los. I know why you have done the things you've done. Your refusal to accept the small evils of society makes you a better person. You are trying to be righteous.”

“Some of the greatest horrors of history were committed by those trying to be righteous.”

“Knowing that will help you avoid becoming one of them.”

“What if you're wrong?” she said, unable to hide her exasperation. “What if I truly am the reincarnation of evil?”

“Then your mother and I will have to do a better job killing you than you did trying to kill either of us.”

She laughed. “So, in the meantime, how do we explain my existence to the world?”

“We embrace the sermons about building a civilization of humanity and divinity living in harmony. We denounce Vivian as the Storm Petrel who wants to destroy civilization by sterilizing language and murdering divinity.”

“What about my being Los Reborn?”

“Rumors, not worthy of official recognition. It's true that you're the daughter of a dragon. But that hasn't stopped you from protecting the weak against neodemons and stealing deities away from the empress.”

“You think it will work?”

Experimentally, he let go of the railing and stood on his own. Slowly, he turned to her. “Mostly. But the rumors about Los—”

“How many of our allies will desert us?”

“Few if we can quickly deflect Vivian. But if things go poorly or the fighting drags on—”

“Then rumors that justify defection to the empire might begin to spread?”

“Precisely. Can you think of anyone in particular we should worry about?”

Leandra blew out a long breath. “Most of my followers were killed on Keyway Island. And the one deity in my service of questionable loyalty is no more.”

He frowned at her.

“The shark god?”

“He had been pressured into compromising our cause. Things ended in his deconstruction. We can talk about it later.”

“You killed him.”

“I didn't have a choice.”

“Why didn't you have a choice?”

“Because mother was holding his son hostage. Both Holokai and I knew that meant his allegiance would forever be hers. You think she'd ever let that boy go? When Holokai realized that, he came at me. He was the one to attack. He knew I'd deconstruct him and he attacked anyway.”

Nicodemus was silent for a moment. “Lolo?”

Leandra nodded and then looked up with anger at her mother's figure. But watching her fly slow circles only reminded Leandra of watching her fly above the
Empress
, dodging lightning for her daughter's sake. Guilt joined anger. Worst of all, where some amount of love should have tempered her emotions, Leandra felt only the void of the loveless spell. Frustration boiled through her.

Nicodemus was still watching her. Apparently something of the emotions tearing through Leandra's heart showed on her face; he asked, “Are you sure you don't know that you are good? Somewhere inside?”

“I told you—” she started to say when she remembered him falling backward into paralysis. “No, Dad, I don't know. I've told you everything.” She brought her hand to her head. “Creator, I wish I could take this … Is Doria around?”

He frowned. “Are you feeling unwell? Doria will be back in her rooms, but Ellen should be in the hallway.”

Inwardly, Leandra groaned at the thought of asking the obnoxious woman to remove her loveless spell. “No, that's all right, I'm…” Her voice died as she noticed Dhrun slipping out of the room. She knew exactly what the bastard was going to do.

“Lea,” her father asked, “what is it?”

Leandra started to answer but just then Ellen stepped through the screen door followed by Dhrun, who was whispering in her ear. Ellen was studying Leandra with narrow eyes. She seemed to ask a few questions of Dhrun. Together physician and deity walked out onto the patio.

“Forgive the interruption,” Ellen said, “but I understand that the Lady Warden might want a Numinous spell removed from her mind.”

“Yes, I do,” Leandra growled while glaring at Dhrun. With an expression of false contrition, the god pressed his palms together over heart and forehead.

Ellen studied Leandra's face, or maybe she was examining the spell around her mind. Either way she seemed less hostile. Ellen walked around Leandra.

“Lea?” Nicodemus asked.

“It's the spell that stopped my disease by unmasking the part of me that comes from Los. It also prevents me from loving.” She looked at Ellen. “Can you take it off without damaging it? I need it put back on after a little while.” As she said these last two words, she glared at Dhrun, challenging him to contest the timing. He only bowed.

Ellen lifted her hands up toward Leandra's head and then paused to ask, “May I?” When Leandra nodded, the physician reached up and pressed her hands lightly against the back of her head.

Leandra closed her eyes and tried to hold still. She was wondering if she should brace herself in case the removal would be painful, but then a familiar ache grew in her gut.

“It's done,” Ellen said.

Leandra opened her eyes to find Ellen looking down at her hands. Her father was also staring down at Ellen's hands. “This is an impressive text,” Ellen said as she turned her hands this way and that. “I'll store it in a blank spellbook.”

“It's a beautiful spell,” her father agreed. “Who wrote it?”

Leandra felt hot and confused. The pain in her gut was growing. The words seemed to churn in her mind.

“Lea?” Nicodemus asked. “Are you all right?”

Leandra had to make a conscious effort to stand up straight and keep the pain from her face. “Yes,” she managed to say before turning to Dhrun and Ellen. “Please … leave us for a moment…”

With a nod, Ellen retreated back into the rooms and then into the hallway. Dhrun followed more reluctantly.

For a while, neither she nor Nicodemus spoke. Up from the lower terraces came the sounds of cartwheels on cobbled streets, distant conversation. The chatter of parrots echoed down from the higher terraces.

Leandra had thought that restoring her ability to love would fill in the void left by the loveless spell, but instead the void was growing. Vivid memories returned to her: balmy nights with Thaddeus in her arms; the sparkling sea stretching away from her catamaran, Holokai by her side; Master Alo's ancient corpse on the docks of Keyway Island.

“Lea?”

When she looked up at him, the hollow feeling pushed itself into her heart. “What do you want?” she found herself asking, more breathlessly and desperately than she had thought possible. “Dad, what do I do now?”

He only looked at her in confusion.

“I killed them,” she whispered. Her hands were trembling. The pain in her gut had turned into nausea. “I killed my old lovers. I killed everyone in Keyway.” She looked up at him. “I nearly killed you.”

“Lea…”

“You want there to be something good in my core. Because I'm your daughter. But you don't really know who I am. You don't know what I am.” A mirthless laugh bubbled out of her, almost painful. “I don't know what I am.”

“Lea … your rash…”

She raised her hands to her cheeks, but they felt no different. Perhaps her wrists and knees hurt, or perhaps she was only imagining it. Nicodemus was looking at her with fear in his green eyes. “Is it back?” she asked. “The rash?”

“Very brightly.”

Again a mirthless, painful laugh bubbled out of her. “Of course. I've taken on aspects of Holokai's body. That's why I'm taller. Now there's more divine language to kill off my human body. And I'm stupid enough to be standing in the sun.”

“Should we cast the Numinous spell about you again?”

It took all of her will to shake her head. “Not yet.” She looked up at her father, but then had to look away. Unable to control her emotions, she felt like a child. “I don't know what I am.” She was ashamed to hear a plaintive note in her voice. She put both her hands on the railing and stared down at them.

“No one truly knows who they are,” her father said, moving carefully closer. “We all look back at our lives, at the things we've done, and assume that they are us. But we had in us far more potential than we could ever express.”

She shook her head. “It's different. I don't know what I'm capable of … But I know I'm capable of things … truly horrible…” She remembered the way Holokai used to hold her. She stood up straight and blinked rapidly, prayed she wouldn't cry in front of her father. She looked away from him, out to the bay.

They were both silent, and again she listened to the sounds of street traffic and complaining parrots. Her breathing slowed and the sting left her eyes. At last she said, “I don't know who I am.”

“You're my girl,” he said and placed his hand on top of hers.

The stinging came back to Leandra's eyes, blurred the bright world into tears. She folded herself over, her mouth twisting into a rictus of agony as she wept.

She slowly fell to her knees, and her father sank with her. His arms wrapped around her, drew her close. And she wept for Holokai who would never again swim the bright sea. She wept for Thaddeus, gone now to dreams stranger and darker than he had ever found from pipe or drink. She wept for the disease that was destroying her human body and for how sorry she felt for herself. And she wept for the trust she had broken with her father, and for how estranged she was from her mother. She wept for all those she had not been able to save and all those who had died following her.

And all the while, Nicodemus held her close and murmured, “You're my girl, my baby girl.”

And then it seemed that she had poured the entirety of herself out through her eyes, as if her every capacity for happiness and sorrow, cruelty and kindness, had been washed out with her tears. Her gut and joints ached and she needed to pee. A massive disease flare was upon her.

Gradually, her eyes dried and her breathing became regular. Nicodemus still held her. But a deep rolling boom broke the calmness. Leandra straightened and looked up into the clear sky, expecting to see a reconstituted
Empress
. But there was nothing but tropical blue sky above them … that and her mother as she dove to the north.

The boom came again and this time Leandra recognized it.

Nicodemus struggled to his feet. “What is it?”

“Cannon fire,” Leandra said. “Aunt Vivian's here.”

Nicodemus made a low sound. “Then we'll see about welcoming her. We should get the Numinous spell about your head again so you aren't dealing with a disease flare during a siege.”

Leandra wanted the loveless spell so powerfully that when he called for Ellen, her heart was filled with an almost unbearable mixture of shame and relief.

 

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

A sinking feeling filled Vivian as she looked out across her fleet and saw every face tilted upward. There was no sign of the Savanna Walker.

Two score imperial war galleys stretched in a siege line before Chandralu. Above them the air fleet hovered on the strong sea winds. A massive carrier airship, filled with enough warkites to ravage any city, glided behind the sleeker cruisers and destroyers.

Until she knew the Savanna Walker's strength, Vivian wanted her forces spread out so that any one attack would not endanger more than one or two vessels. The fleet was an awesome sight: a wall of wood, cloth, sailors, pilots, and prose. The greatest concentration of martial power ever assembled in the landfall kingdoms.

Before them, terraced Chandralu shone white. The harbor bristled with catamarans. Above the city, draconic Francesca slowly circled. And there were Creator knew how many war gods and goddesses lurking within the city walls.

Long boats from both the fleet and the city were meeting in the harbor. Richly dressed commanders from both sides were conferring. Two of the Ixonian diplomats shone with bright green auras. Petty gods. Vivian had dispatched her representative with predictable demands, namely the surrender of the demon Leandra Weal and the recognition of Empress Vivian as the Halcyon. The Sacred Regent would make the predictable counterdemands: the immediate and peaceful withdrawal of all imperial forces and an official apology to the Lady Warden Leandra Weal, daughter of the true Halcyon, Nicodemus Weal.

Then would come the threats before each set of dignitaries withdrew so that the two sides could slaughter each other like civilized people. Regrettable that such was the way of their world, but the alternative of handing it over to Los would be even more regrettable.