2.19. O Preliyat
They found a wagon to bring Simon back to his people. By the time their stolid mule had pulled it back into the village square, Moora was gone, slipped back to the wheel and leaving her corpse still breathing in her triage cot.
Riccana was still holding on, and the al Ydrises hurried into the tent to catch her soul before it took its flight. Seth stayed outside. He didn’t want to see the scarecrow woman, or Alain, scratching away at his last letters, a shroud covering the atrocity that had been done to him. He didn’t want to think about the animaxis in Annalise’s sword. The one they hadn’t been able to use, because Seth’s soul was already inside it.
If you’d been patient, and chaste, Simon al Teremi would be alive. The voice whispering it into the back of Seth’s brain sounded disconcertingly like Anna al Ydris. He shook it off. That’s not how she thought, even if it might be what she’d say.
The al Ydrises emerged from the tent. The animaxis under Annalise’s arm now reflected the light with a distinct green tinge to its refulgency. Tiago’s forearm was wrapped in gauze.
Seth raised a brow to see the fresh wound. “You trip or something?”
“Riccana was struggling on the boundary,” Ofelia said. “A slow and agonizing unlight. My brother gave her his blood to speed the passage, and now she’s sleeping easy. Very gallant. It’s a shame she wasn’t conscious for it.”
“We should compose an ode,” Seth said.
“All right,” Tiago grunted. “Shut up.”
“It was gallant, Tiago,” Ofelia said. “Put a low-laced tunic on and you’d have looked like a heartthrob from a Necropolitan bodice-ripper.”
“Shut up.”
A convocation was held for the dead in Shaheill’s square, once the last of the wounded were taken to their own beds or gave up their battles. The mourners insisted on bringing their unlit guests to the front of the crowd to stand with the banged-up, bandaged defenders. Every crowd that Seth had attended lately, in the shadow of the scaffold, had come to observe an execution. Odd to gather now, when the killing had already been done.
The dozen dead were arrayed in a semicircle before the scaffwood, wrapped in plant-fiber shrouds. You could tell which were Shaheilli by the trinkets and remembrances their weeping families had laden them with. The warriors who had joined from the further villages and garrisons had only the flowers and the generic icons about them, or scrimshawed tokens furnished by their comrades; nobody else knew much about them, save for how they had died.
Saint-Worship preached the sacredness of returning the departed shells to the cycles of the earth, just as the spirit returned to the Wheel. The burial cloaks were made to rot with the corpses. The bodies were bare beneath them and dusted with an apothecarial concoction meant to soften them and speed the return to loam.
There were no popmite farms in Shaheill; otherwise the shrouded bodies might have been lowered into them, to feed the insatiable larvae. The dead would be buried in the fields instead, that they might make the crops grow. The il Teremis who had died, they’d put below the rhubarb.
Moora and Alain they’d burn, to keep the unlit blood from climbing the roots of their crops. A smaller pyre, separate from Enna-Belum’s vast and foul blaze, surrounded by charm poles and laden flowers.
A pretty saintspeaker cenobiyant stood atop the scaffold where Annalise would usually tread, her hair bound up in the six needles, her eyes painted with the forest-green lines of the lakrimat. Her hands and feet dipped in the ceremonial mud. She was young, barely out of her teens, and on her face was the fundamental tranquility of a girl at a funeral for whom death would not be real for a decade or more.
She sang, high and lyrical:
O Preliyat!
Oculat tuat Rotama purganiy itery et Mundum conspizya
O, Preliyat!
Risat tuati Rotama silakti itery et Mundum audizya
Preliyat was Necrocantati for warrior. O Preliyat was a song for the valorous dead of the Legion, exhorting them to move swiftly through the wheel and bless the world with their eyes and voices once more. The carved and lacquered charm-statues, held aloft on poles by the saintspeaker’s solemn akathists, were Legion saints: St. Silas of the Sword, St. Kander of the Seal and Scale. But these weren’t legionnaires they were composting, and they’d sworn no oaths. Most weren’t even Hermandati. They were farmers and farriers and families, and the Legion was supposed to keep them safe, and it hadn’t. And now they were gone.
This was a show of respect, probably, or meant as one. From the glistening tears in the crowd and the voices joining in the song, it was working that way. Seth averted his eyes to the dirt. His singing voice was golden now, thanks to his hexentat. Something stopped him from lending it.
Annalise caught his downcast glance and gave him the tiniest of nods. Her fingers threaded between his. She wasn’t singing either.
By the service’s end, departure from Shaheill was out of the question. Celebrations had begun, and tearful reunions and copious drinking, but this was not for the al Ydrises and Seth il Gutierre. Unanimously and voicelessly, they trundled their exhausted selves to bed.
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There were rooms for them at the roadhouse, and the twins gladly took them to avoid having to clean the clutter the thieving seraph had left. Annalise and Seth took advantage of the inn’s bathtubs, but then retired to their tent. Seth had come to prefer it to a roadhouse bedroom. He could see the stars faintly through the fabric, and the cold night air forced him closer against the big soft furnace of Annalise al Ydris’s unlit heart.
Annalise crawled into the quilt with him, and pulled him halfway atop her. Her hands wandered to their preferred places on the small of his back and the nape of his neck. “I wanna fuck you,” she mumbled.
“I wanna get fucked,” he responded, as numbed by weariness as she was.
Her responding laugh was heavy with fatigue. “But I’m so tired.”
He kissed her collarbone. “I’ll still be fuckable in the morning.”
They managed a kiss, at least, slovenly and sloppy, and okay, now Seth was a little hard, but he was still mostly exhausted.
“Can I ask you something?” he whispered.
She nodded.
“What do you tell them? The ones who are afraid before you execute them.”
“Sorry, Seth. Can’t say. It’s not something for the living to hear.” She tightened her hold on him. Her fingers made grooves in his silver skin. “And I’m gonna keep you alive for a long, long time. If I can keep you from crashing bleeding stormships into all our problems.”
“Thank you for letting me go.”
“Thank you for coming back,” she replied. “And thank the Saints Anna didn’t pull your bleeding head off.”
“About Anna.” Seth hesitated, then plowed on. “I don’t think there should be a you that hurts, Annalise. I get that it’s what she’s for, I just… you’ve seen so much, and been through so much, and you got your head back above water. No pun intended. Maybe there’s a way for her, too.”
“G’way outta that, Seth. It’s no problem. If I’m Anna, it’s cause there’s some screeching evil to be stabbed up, so that’s already made a right mess of whatever day’s to be had.”
“Have you ever put her on and…I dunno. Had a vacation?”
His eyes were shut now, but he heard the skepticism tinging her voice. “Why wear a suit of plate to the beach?”
“I feel bad for her, I guess. And I wonder if there’s a way to make her feel better.”
“My wee goldenheart.” Another sleepy chuckle. “Her is me. Remember? You’re making her feel better right now.”
If that’s true, Seth thought, then her pain’s still inside you, too. Even when her head was bleached bone, that same hopeless hurt dwelt in his lover. Anna just brought it closer to the surface.
“I guess so,” he said aloud, but to himself, he swore a private oath, and beseeched St. Kander to witness it:
He would find a way to make that mean, miserable Murani huntress smile. He’d seen its ghost a few times on Anna’s face, in the moments before she’d shut it down. He’d bring it back and bid it stay. He’d make Anna happy.
Somehow.
And okay, he’d have to do it while she fought whatever seraph she’d been screwed on to kill. Such details were best addressed in the moment.
Maybe they said a few more words to one another, maybe they didn’t; the next thing Seth could remember was waking up in the middle of the night on his back. The stars were glittering emeralds beneath the deathspell’s dome. He knew what it meant, by now, to be roused awake like this. Annalise had turned onto her side and was twitching and whimpering, caught in one of her fits.
He inched closer to her, bracing himself. Here came the springloaded bearhug, and she snatched him into her arms. It was painfully tight for a few seconds, and then Annalise’s spasming muscles relaxed—not enough to free him, but he didn’t mind. Ease returned to her.
He made himself as comfortable as he could in her protective clutch, her massive tattooed arm replacing his pillow.
He kissed her nose. She’d stayed asleep through the tremors. He whispered “I love you” anyway.
In the morning they resumed the slow untangling from the lives of the men and women alongside whom they had fought and bled. In streets laden with flower petals and torn flimsy from last night’s celebrations, the people saluted Seth as he passed. Here was something far stranger than any of the strange looks he’d received since his skin went gray.
At the outskirts of the village, the Blue Ekadao conquered his distaste for the smell of humans long enough to give Seth a quick hug. “I will make for the Necropolis later in the winter,” he said. “I will hope to see you there.”
“That’d be lovely.” Out of innocent curiosity, Seth had lifted something from the lumpen satchel at the Blue Ekado’s back during their embrace. A nectarine. He secreted it back inside before it would be missed. “What business do you have at the Necropolis?”
“I will be there a few weeks before I ship off to the Winter War.”
Seth broke the hug off with a look of concern. “You’re fighting?”
The Blue Ekadao nodded genially. “I do so every year.”
“Why?”
“It pays wonderfully,” the Blue Ekadao said. “And I enjoy killing seraphs with fire.” He retrieved his horse’s reins. “Be well, friend il Gutierre, and commend me to your intimidating lover.”
And with a waft of lilac, he was off.
Seth found said intimidating lover at the Corregidor’s manor, asking for whoever was in charge. The Corregidor was fled and the Undersecretary was dead, so the vicer they eventually found was a nebbish girl whose authority had been, in the main, watering the Corregidor’s rose bushes.
“This is a citation.” Annalise handed the young woman a heavy-looking envelope in the Legion’s businesslike black. “You give it to Corregidor Alesandri when he returns.”
The vicer bowed. “Yes, Madam Verdugo.”
“It details the penalty for abandoning his village during the crisis, and the steps he’ll need to take for remediation.” Annalise produced a second envelope. “And this one’s for the Chief Hermandat.”
“Y—uh, yes, Madam Verdugo. Apologies.”
“Ah sure, goodwoman. No call for that. Wasn’t your fault, was it?” Annalise flicked the girl a jade-stamped halfscore coin. “For your troubles. I’ll be back next year, and if they’ve resigned or remonstrated, it’ll all be popped mites and picked flowers. I’m sure your boss’ll do the right thing. I’ll make sure, in fact.” Annalise unfolded her sunglasses and placed them on her face. “Wink.”
“Can I get something for my troubles?” Seth asked, as they made for the carriage.
Annalise gave him a single solitar and a kiss on the cheek.
They’d kept Simon’s funerary wagon—a bit too much blood on it for a proper rental—and paid the farmer who lent it double what it was worth. Riccana il Teremi lay in it now atop a pile of straw scatter rugs, still unconscious. Tiago stood by her, looking solemn and formal and like he wasn’t sure what to do with his hands. Annalise put a palm to the girl’s forehead and frowned. “Dunno if this poor craythur’s making it to the Necropolis, Sunshine. I’d hoped another night might help, but she’s in rag order.”
Seth watched sweat drip down Riccana’s pale forehead. Her hair had gone from its fiery orange to a limp gray. “Did we waste an animaxis?”
“Nah,” Annalise said. “We can let the soul out and still catch the hexis, if the worst comes.”
Tiago’s gaze was leveled with geometrical precision toward the middle horizon, a handspan to the left of his mother’s face. “In that case, and with pardon begged for the insubordinate suggestion…”
He took a stabilizing breath. Whatever this was, it wasn’t easy for him to ask.
“I know the rule is that the circle is for family,” he said. “And I know the magic is forbidden. And I’m usually the one forbidding it. But I beg for an exception.”