2.18. Animaxis
The Thief
Seth forced himself upright, out of the cozy soft warmth of his lover’s arms. “Sounds like an incredibly unpleasant time, Tiago,” he said. “Thank you.”
“You wanna talk about unpleasant times, you saw ours from a quarter-mile in the air.” Tiago’s blackout eyes were sullen in the carriage’s window. “Don’t get cocky, balloon boy.”
“Balloon boy. Saints.” Seth eased the carriage door open. “What happened to me being a beautiful twerp?”
“The beautiful and the twerp are a tug-of-war,” Tiago said. “Come on. You can get back to whatever lovey-dovey shit after.”
Annalise threw a forearm over her face to block out the last dregs of evening light. “Fecking taskmaster.”
“If you make me think about how tired I am, we’re all gonna collapse. Come on.” Tiago hopped from the carriage step and sauntered from the crumple-walled roadhouse. “Last thing, and then we’re out of Shaheill and we all sleep for twelve hours.”
“Oh, I’m so bleeding tired.” Annalise raised her arms above her head. “Carry me, pet.”
Seth gamely took her huge hands in his and tugged. Absolutely no use. “I could… drag you?”
“No, no.” She sighed and creaked upright. “No, I can walk.”
Seth rubbed his bicep as they exited the carriage. This winter, he told himself. This winter in the Necropolis, he’d start eating right and putting on weight, and he’d beg her to train him, and by spring’s new quota season, he’d be a musclebound hunk, and bridal-carry Annalise al Ydris everywhere they went.
Or deadlift her, at least, he thought, as the carriage listed to one side beneath her powerful frame’s exit, her black greatsword strapped in its familiar spot behind her broad shoulder.
Past the northern edge of town, a bonfire was unfurling its dark curtain across the dimming day. They were burning as much of Enna-Belum as they could find, mixing his guts with lacecap and swamp rose to cover the smell and keep the unlighting poison out of the lungs. A pair of hermandati with a push-wagon were carting the dead yellowfeathers away to join the blaze.
Tiago tossed an errant leg into the gruesome stack as it passed. “We reckon they came in over the wall to the West, your head thieves,” he said. “Snuck in while Enna-Belum was attacking.”
Seth yawned and tried to focus his tired mind on the mystery. “Did a blackfeather breach the deathspell and storm a village just to distract you?”
Tiago shrugged.
“I’m sure they wouldn’t have minded if he’d killed me,” Annalise said. “Or however many kindred they could’ve. But it might’ve been a secondary, I’ll admit that. They put Enna-Belum right in our path, after all.”
“Just like those unlit who spiked Ofelia,” Tiago added.
“Who’s they?” Seth asked. “The mindless horde of monsters? That would sorta defeat the mindless part.”
“That, Seth, is a conversation you’ll love to have with the lass whose skull we just saved for the umpteenth time.” Annalise gestured to the huge wrought-iron carriage they were leaving behind. “Her name’ll be Alice, I’ve already decided, and she’s full of brilliant theoreticals on the feathered ones.”
“Maybe that’s why,” Seth said. “Maybe there’s something important in there.”
“Maybe so,” Annalise said, with a tone so light and casual that Seth was immediately suspicious. “Me, I haven’t the foggiest. My brain says get through the day and then sleep, and that’s about all I’ve got.”
Tiago did a passable-enough job acting disinterested in the conversation, but his ears were perked.
Seth wondered what Annalise al Ydris wasn’t telling him. He determined it would not bother him. Whatever she gave him back, he’d take, and the rest would come in time. Annalise valued her mysteries, he knew. He’d known when he gave her his soul.
And she’d surely known when she’d taken it that he planned on nosing about for them in every eave and corner of the Necropolis he’d find.
He held his hand out to the Verdugo. With a tired smile she took it.
The village square’s conversion to a field hospital was more-or-less complete by their arrival. Vast white mushrooms grown up from the cobbles after a strange and terrible storm. A black-haired, leathery woman sat on her haunches outside the largest of these new growths, smoking a cigarette and gazing with cold neutrality at her hand, which shook like an autumn leaf about to dislodge.
Ofelia stood next to her, with a bummed smoke in her mouth and a dog-eared book under her arm. “The poppy juice does an amazing job,” she said. “I’d expected more screaming.”
“The screaming shan’t be missed,” the woman said, half paying attention to the unlit girl.
Ofelia trapped her cigarette between her teeth and waved to her approaching family. “They’re using this amazing anodyne in there, Mother. Dolores says it’s made from poppies.”
“Verdugo al Kanap was rattling on about this stuff last winter,” Annalise said. “Glad to see it’s moving south. The wonders of technology. Beats the hell out of a slug of whiskey and a dowel in the mouth, I reckon.”
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Dolores surveyed the gathered retinue with dispassion. “You’re here to pick, then.”
Tiago nodded. “Where’s the animaxis?”
“Ursula.” The woman stood and whistled. “Ho. Ursula. Bring the soul mirror.”
A mousy girl in a saintspeaker’s tunic jumped to, with a clatter of carved hundred-charms. “Yes, Madam Dolores.”
“Four of ‘em,” Dolores said. “You want my advice, pick a Teremi.”
“Thanks for the council.” Annalise held her hand out to her daughter. “Let me see that cig.”
Ofelia pouted. “Mother.”
“Just a puff. Swear to the saints.”
Ofelia passed Annalise her cigarette. The Verdugo flicked it to the ground and crushed it under her boot heel. Ofelia exhaled her exasperation. “You are awful and evil.”
“Don’t pick the habit up. Love you, girleen.” Annalise ducked into the triage tent.
Seth followed, and the twins came after. “I don’t know what you see in her,” Ofelia said.
Inside the canvas was stained in shades of carnelian and rust. A low murmur surrounded them as healers sutured and stitched and wrapped gauze around broken skin, or set twisted limbs into splint. Ofelia was right about the screams, or lack thereof. It would take years of sorcerous study to take the pain away; the little silver ampules the healers carried did the trick in half a minute and a workmanlike poke.
The scarecrow ward was at the tent’s far end, tied off with hemp. Four of them, as Dolores had said. A woman Seth didn’t recognize who was lying very still in her cot, the gray already creeping along her throat. A heavy, hirsuite man sitting up with a notebook, tongue stuck out as he scratched into it with a fountain pen.
Riccana lay by a circular cut-out in the canvas, breathing shallow. Her face was pallid. Sweat beaded on her brow. Tiago’s attempted look of glowering detachment snagged on her like a hooked fish. Seth remembered the excuses he’d found to be near the little ginger-haired woman, who now sweated and twisted at the rim of consciousness, clinging to the ragged tail of her departing soul.
Simon sat near her, eased back in a woodframe and canvas chair. He gave the incoming retinue a woozy smile and a wave with the one arm he had left. The other was tied off now at the elbow. The blood on its dressing was already as dark as ink. The whole limb had gone from ruddy pink to a pallid gray. “Welcome to the ward,” Simon said. “Relaxing, no?”
The writing man snorted.
“I suppose you know why we’re here,” Annalise said. Ursula the junior saintspeaker tarried at the edge of the rope divider, the polished onyx animaxis under her arm. “All of you did heroes’ work today. And had the Saints their seat, we’d have animaxi for all of yous. But—”
Simon interrupted. “It has to be Riccy.”
Annalise bit the rest of her speech back. The unlit retinue’s collective gaze fell on the girl, who whimpered weakly as if halfway hearing her name.
“Moora there hasn’t woke up yet,” Simon said. “And probably won’t. But Alain agrees.”
“I said Simon,” Alain the writer grunted. His voice was weighed down on its corners by the anodyne. “Seems to me he has the better chance at walking again. But Simon said Riccy. So.”
“And not you?” Seth asked.
“Nah.” Alain indicated the lumpy sheets below. “It’s a horror down there. Nothing will work the way it’s supposed to anymore, they say. Not a thing you want to see the one time, let alone every day. Not a life you stick around for. Back to the wheel for me. While died a hero is still on the table. And before I find out how it is to take a shit without half the plumbing.” He smirked at some uncontrolled reaction on Seth’s face. “See what I mean?”
Annalise knelt by the il Teremis. “She’s further gone than you are. Alain’s not wrong.”
“She’s young,” Simon said. “She’ll come back. She’ll survive this and anything else she faces. I know she will. I wasn’t all that, not in the end. Didn’t get much done. Didn’t go anywhere, didn’t do much. Grew some tasty rhubarb. I always wondered whether there ought to be more. And then more came, and it was fucking awful.”
“I’m sorry, Simon,” Ofelia said, quietly.
“Ah, it’s fine. I’ll blame the seraphs, on balance.” With his one remaining hand, Simon stroked a sweaty lock of Riccana’s hair behind her ear. “Riccy’s the one who deserves the chances. Whatever’s left to her, she deserves. I’ve never been to the Necropolis, and I suppose now I never will, but surely they know how to fix a broken soldier.”
“Most of the way,” Annalise said. “Most of the time.”
“Bring Riccy’s soul with you, then. Bring her with you. Anyway.” He croaked a wraith of a laugh holding up his stump. “You’d save the most person by percentage.”
Annalise didn’t join in the laugh, but she managed a smile, at least. “We’ll take care of her Simon,” she said. “You have my word.”
Tiago let out a long exhale behind Seth, who did him the favor of pretending not to notice. Simon slumped into his seat, eyes heavy-lidded. “Good.” Something loosened in his face. They were all on threadbare hours of sleep, but he looked tiredest of all. “That’s good, then.”
“One last question,” Annalise said. “Or request, I suppose. From the Legion.” She tapped her palm against the pommel on her sword’s back. “It’d be fast, gents. The al Ydrises don’t swing twice.”
Alain shook his head. “They say I have an hour or so, and I have letters to write. Apparently if you take enough anodyne at once it gives you a sleep you don’t come out of. That sounds better than a sword. And I’ve given the Legion enough, I reckon. You get to the Necropolis, tell General il Nekropoli he’s welcome. Bunch’ve peasants did what his fancy deathspell couldn’t.”
Annalise chuckled at the casual treason. “I will, yeah.”
“I’ll donate my head.” Simon eased out of his seat. “Why not? Let’s get as much use as we can out of this shit sandwich.” He affected an unsteady bow. “Lead on, Madam Verdugo. Let’s not get this tent any stickier.”
Annalise bowed back, and stepped over the rope’s tether. The Verdugo and her retinue trooped outside with their sacrificial Undersecretary. Out from the village square, to its outskirts, in weary silence. A mourning dove hooted plaintively into the dying light. The birds were returning to Shaheill.
“Here’s fine. Starting to feel the pain again.” Simon tilted his head up to the sky and stared at its distant green roof. “Would you do me a favor? A last request for a last request.”
“Yes,” Annalise said, without hesitation. “Name it.”
“Tell her I died on the field. Doing some feat of dashing bravery, if you’d be so kind.”
“This is braver than anything anyone did on that field,” Tiago said.
“That’s kind of you to say, but I’d like her to think of me hefting aloft some variety of sharp stick.” Simon sank to his knees. “Now take my head, please, before the drugs wear off and I start feeling this.”
Annalise unsheathed her sword. Simon’s eyes were shut, but he flinched at the sound of its artery-spray draw. His remaining hand was shaking. He balled it tightly into his bloodstained trouser leg.
Annalise rested her blade on her trapezius. She leaned into Simon’s ear and whispered something.
His shoulders lowered. “Really?” he asked, voice made small and tremulous with awe.
Annalise’s reply was a flicker-fast stroke of her sword. Its black edge sent Simon’s head tumbling to the ground.
She bent into the grass and picked the head that used to be Simon il Teremi up from his spreading lifeblood. “Thank you, Simon,” she said, and closed the head’s eyes.
She lay it back on the ground, into the dead man’s half-torn-away embrace.
“That’s the last one.” She wiped down her blade and turned to her family. “Last head of the year. I’m just about ready to get the bleeding fuck out of Shaheill.”
“Home, then?” Tiago asked.
“Almost, but not quite.” Annalise sheathed her sword with a sigh. “I reckon we have us some funerals to attend.”