The Staff and the Blade: Irin Chronicles Book Four (43 page)

And my soul will have no other.

My home is in my lover’s arms.

With her, I find rest.

※

Damien left the ritual room and found Sari in the library as the blue light shone through the high windows of the room. She sat on the ground in the corner of a hallway, her back against one wall, staring at a tiled mosaic one of the Greek scribes had created two hundred years before from the shattered remains of his village. It told the story of the Rending in vivid detail. Shards of pottery and broken staffs made up much of the material used. A piece of a doll’s face. A delicate earring. Charred wood and broken glass were mixed with the tile.

Damien sat next to Sari and took her hand. She squeezed his but said nothing. He often found her here, but it wasn’t anger he saw on her face that morning. Only deep sadness.

“Why do you come here?” he asked.

“To remember.” She laid her head on his shoulder. “To try to remember the rage.”

Damien said nothing.

“But I can’t,” she continued. “Not anymore. Perhaps rage and guilt don’t make easy companions.”

“You protected your sisters,” Damien said for the thousandth time. “Likely saved countless human lives by—”

“Not without cost.” She took a deep breath. “Not without innocents lost, my love. We both know it is not possible.”

“What must I say to you?” He tipped her chin toward him and forced her eyes away from the mural. “I know this guilt. It’s the guilt of every honorable warrior after a battle. Innocents are killed, no matter how much we try to avoid it, because evil hides behind the good.”

Her eyes blinked back tears. “I envy your hierarchy now. Did you know that? There is comfort in knowing you were following orders. Obeying protocol.”

“So others can bear the blame?” Damien pulled back. “Obeying orders is no excuse for dishonor. The Irin Council must take responsibility for its actions. And lack of them.”

“But don’t you see, Damien? We made our own rules. Or had none.” She swallowed hard. “We had no mandate to follow. We had no excuse.”

“You did what you thought you had to in order to survive.”

“I see their faces.” She covered her eyes. “Every night. When will they go away?”

Never. Damien didn’t want to say it, but he still saw them. Still saw innocents’ blood staining the streets of Antartus. Still saw the red spray across a field of silk flowers. The blank eyes of Grigori children who had known no other life than being slaves of the Fallen.

“We go forward,” Damien whispered. “We give the dead their peace. The dead do not care that we mourn them. They do not care that we rack our bodies in grief. We move forward, Sari. That is how we honor them. We live. We survive. And we change our world so that future generations do not have to make the decisions we did. We change this world so that our children may have peace.”

CHAPTER ONE

S
ARI
was ready to murder. “You said that Konrad would oppose the measure.”

“He was planning on it.” Gabriel leaned back in his chair in the library of Damien and Sari’s town house in Vienna. “But new information revealed to the council has put him in a difficult position. And I can’t say I disagree with him.”

Gabriel was her brother—would always remain her brother—but he was also chief secretary to the elder scribe Konrad, one of the most powerful and influential leaders in Vienna.

And he was pissing her off.

“What new information?” Sari asked.

“A new report from the watcher in Hamburg came in. He can’t ignore it, Sari. Two scribes mated to
kareshta
within months of their appearance at the scribe house? These women know no magic. They have no training or education. What is their status?”

Damn eager scribes. Couldn’t they have practiced a little more patience? “The
kareshta
are… mated to Irin scribes. Why should their status be any different than any other Irina?”

“You know why. These unions are one-sided. The women have no idea of their responsibilities as mates. They have no idea about our world or our traditions. They might be true unions of the heart or these women might be desperate. No one would blame them. But they could also be a security risk, and you know it.”

Because unless their angelic fathers were dead, any offspring of the Fallen, Grigori or
kareshta
, was little more than a slave to their sire. Free will was not an option. Most Fallen ignored their female progeny, but there were some cunning enough to use their daughters as spies.

“Gabriel, we have debated for months,” Sari said. “The Irina Council is opposed to forcing the
kareshta
into any kind of registry. The council does not have the right to—”

“The Irina Council is not unanimous. And most acknowledge that the scribes’ council has the right to police their houses,” Gabriel said.

“They only belong to the elder scribes because they kicked the Irina out!” Sari replied, her temper rising. “They are not
their
houses any more than the Library is
their
Library.”

“You know what I’m talking about.”

“Language matters, Gabriel. Words matter. You, of all people, should acknowledge it.”

He looked away, knowing she was right.

Sari had no patience for the doublespeak of politics. She wasn’t an elder and had no desire to be, but she had become the de facto representative of the haven guardians around the world, most of whom still distrusted the Irin and Irina Councils. Almost all of the Irina havens were still operating, allowing her sisters a safe place as the political landscape constantly shifted. Sari was there to make sure that their interests were acknowledged. She was a leader, but she was not a politician.

“I’m not disagreeing with you,” Gabriel said. “But women and children are appearing out of nowhere. We have no history for them. Some have no human documentation at all. They were born in seclusion, and most of their mothers are dead. The majority have no idea which of the Fallen sired them. There are reasons this is necessary, Sari.”

“They are not cattle,” she hissed. “Not livestock to be tagged and herded.”

“No one will be treating them as such!”

“You say that now,” Sari said. “But what of the time when sympathy for their plight wears thin, Gabriel? What will happen when a daughter of the Fallen wants to disappear? What if she grows tired of our world? What might happen if a scribe and his
kareshta
mate need to go into hiding? Registries last forever. Pictures last forever. We no longer live in a world where information disappears.”

“The Rending will not be repeated.” Gabriel’s eyes were black flames. “But not everyone is a warrior, sister. They are asking for protection. For shelter. Would you have us bare our necks to the shadows?”

“And would you have me bow to the whims of old men who would lock me away for my own good?” Sari countered. “These women don’t know enough to make any choice yet. They need safety and knowledge before they can make any decision.”

Gabriel tugged at the back of his hair, his usually unflappable demeanor tested by Sari’s stubbornness. “Heaven knows you won’t stop teaching them magic, no matter how the council protests.”

“They need to be able to protect themselves. And the havens do not answer to the council.”

“And so we put ancient knowledge in the hands of our sworn enemies!” he shouted, rising to his feet. “Women who could be spies. Women who could be feeding knowledge to the Fallen. We hand them this power and hope for the best?”

“All we’re teaching them is how to block the voices,” she said. “Protect themselves as well as they can.”

“Are you that foolish, Sari?”

She rose to meet his anger. “You think I don’t know the risks?”

“I think you see every lost sister as your own!” Gabriel’s face was flushed. “And they’re not, Sari. They are not Tala. Not Abra. Or Diana or any of the countless others we lost. These women are the offspring of very powerful enemies. And we have no idea where they come from or where their loyalties lie. Even Kostas’s faction is not so forgiving as you.”

“Kostas is a paranoid rogue Grigori who sees angelic infiltration everywhere. He won’t even accept children unless he knows their sires are dead by his own hand.”

“And he’s probably smarter than we are,” Gabriel said.

“They’re
children
.”

“I know,” Gabriel said, stepping closer. His voice dropped. “But they’re not
our
children.”

The truth sat heavy in her gut.

“You and I know better,” Gabriel continued, “than to assume innocence just because a face is young.”

Her eyes met his. “Then what do we do? They need to belong to someone.”

“I don’t know.” He let out a long breath. “Some days I don’t think I know anything anymore. But Sari, compromise must happen.”

“I do not see a compromise on this issue,” she said. “The
kareshta
do not belong in your record rooms on some kind of secret list.”

“How can we help them if we don’t know who their sires are? How can we make sure they have some assurance of self-determination?”

“How can we help them”—her voice rose again—“when a councillor who said he would be their ally turns his back on them over one troubling report?”

“That is political reality, Sari. Konrad does not answer to you.”

“Konrad doesn’t even listen to me,” she scoffed.

“Trust me,” Gabriel said. “Everyone listens to you. They don’t have a choice when you spend most of your time yelling. You are the thorn in the side of every councillor who disagrees with you, scribe and singer alike.”

Sari thought she was supposed to be offended by that, but she just couldn’t find it in her to care.

※

Her mate found her in the back garden. Damien had been at the Archives all day. He spent most of his time when they were in Vienna working on a translation of Old Slavic battle songs from his grandmother. He was translating them into the Old Language, curious if any contained martial magic that could be recovered for the Irina.

He worked in the Archives, corresponded with his men in Istanbul, and avoided politics like the plague no matter how much his family tried to draw him in. Though his father had died in battle one hundred and twenty years before, his mother, the
praetora
of the region where Damien had been born, had never loosened her grip on power and politics. Katalin was as ruthless as she had ever been.

And she still disliked Sari.

Damien came and knelt beside her as she dug her hands in the soil. The garden was the only thing that gave Sari peace in the city. Well, the garden and her mate. The former was overgrown—they’d returned to Vienna only the week before—but it still recognized her song. The latter shifted her until she was leaning against him, still pulling weeds as she sat between his legs.

“Hello,
milá
.” He brushed her hair to the side and kissed her neck. “How is our brother?”

“He’s well.”

Damien kept away when Gabriel visited. Though the two could see each other in passing without Gabriel going into a rage, the relationship had never healed. Sari didn’t know if it could. Her brother covered his grief with work and political machinations, but he had never recovered from Tala’s death. And though Gabriel could acknowledge Tala’s part in putting herself at risk, Damien was still the easier target.

“He gave me some news that was not welcome,” she said. “Konrad has withdrawn his objections to the
kareshta
registry movement.”

“Hmmm.”

“That is not a surprised ‘hmmm.’”

“No, it’s not.”

“Did you see this coming?”

Damien paused before he spoke. “I know the number of women who come to the house in Istanbul,” he began, “and I also know that angelic presence is very low in my city.”

“Because of Jaron.”

“Because Jaron didn’t take many human lovers, and he didn’t allow many minor angels in his territory. But Jaron is gone, so that will likely change.”

“And?”

“And just in the past year, three women have come to our house looking for sanctuary. Three in a very quiet city.”

“And we sent them to Sirius.”

Sirius was part of Kostas’s faction, and the rebel Grigori was even more passionate about the women and children under his care. He had a keen mind and solid judgment. In fact, he reminded Sari very much of Damien.

“We send them to Sirius,” Damien agreed. “But not every watcher has a Sirius close by. And Kostas is very secretive about his resources. He won’t talk to many aside from you, Max, and Ava. So what do the other watchers do, my love? Where do the women go? Who teaches them about our world and makes sure they pose no threat?”

Much as she was loath to admit it, Damien had a point. “The Irina should be teaching them. I’m not as foolish as Gabriel seems to think. I don’t believe they should be taught powerful spells unless we know we can trust them. But I
do
believe we have a responsibility to at least teach them shielding.”

“I agree. But who will teach them?”

“There should be Irina in every scribe house,” Sari said, pulling more weeds and wishing she had something bigger to take her aggression out on.