2-9
Why hadn’t Sara run away? She’d had plenty of time: an entire hydrogen-lift airship was not exactly a stealthy or subtle object, even with the cloud cover. At any time from when she’d initially realized that it was coming, and also that Gilead wasn’t going to give up on this insane duel, she could have left. The skeletons weren’t even going to stop her.
But instead she had stayed, unwilling to leave the question of Gilead’s victory un-settled in her own mind. She had stayed even as the airship had parked overhead, even as red-clad soldiers of Ruthven’s government had let down ropes and rappelled down into fields, even as loping, inhuman figures had emerged from the woods to meet them. Lord Ruthven was not one of those figures: he had appeared seemingly out of thin air to say his smug nonsense and golf-clap at Gilead’s emotional distress. Aristocrats.
The lord of this entire shard was, in his appearance, distressingly ordinary. He looked, above all else, young: his features were soft and boyish, his face smooth, his hair faintly curly, locks falling down across his brow. There was no sharpness to him, his jawline a sweeping curve, his chin faintly cleft, his nose resembling that of a greek statue. He didn’t dress like anyone else Sara had met in Leedsrealm: instead of the almost-modern slacks paired with long, dark coats and buttoned-up vests, he wore tight-fitted breeches and an open jacket with a long tail that opened at the collar to reveal an elaborately-shaped cravat.
And yet, this dandy terrified Sara down to her very bones. There was no warmth to him, no life, only a profound emptiness that seemed to reveal the cold, hopeless underpinnings of reality.
Sara drew her Glock. One magazine remained. “Who are you?”
“Galanan Mac Cináeda, the Lord Ruthven. And you are?”
Sara didn’t let her fear show, even then. So what if this was the ruler of the whole shard, come personally to take care of his business? Sara had dealt with worse before. This trumped-up colonialist had nothing on that fucking cowboy, and she’d outsmarted him as well.
Never mind that she’d done that with a full stockpile of bombs and a heaping helping of luck.
“Do you think I’m stupid, asshole? I’m not going to tell you my name like that.”
Ruthven sighed. “You can put the gun down, you know.”
“That’s not happening either. I know who you are.”
“If you knew who I was, then you would know that the gun will do you no good.”
The loping figures from the woods resolved themselves into the shape of a vast pack of ghouls. In a panic, Sara switched her aim, pointing her pistol at one of them… but they did not attack. Instead, they spread out calmly, forming into an arc around the black knight’s surviving followers, with the largest ghoul padding up to Ruthven’s side.
“You’ve done a very good job, boy,” he said, affectionately petting the monster’s bald skull and down the length of its back. “A very good job, indeed. I hope you know how helpful you’re being.”
Of course they were under his control. Obviously. As though it could have been any other way.
Gilead had finally gotten to his feet again, panting for breath and staggering under the weight of his wounds. “Devilry! Fiend of a sorcerer!"
Ruthven grinned awfully, revealing his needle-sharp fangs. “Ah, and you would be the other one, Gilead du Carbennic! You know, I had always assumed that King Arthur was just a Briton myth, something to rally yourselves around while the Saxons ate you alive, but I suppose even a vampire can sometimes be wrong…”
Gilead tensed at the word “vampire”, but in his beaten and exhausted state, the attempt at violence caused nothing more than a violent coughing fit. Sara was going to have to be the one to fight him.
“So, are you here to arrest us? Or do you white-bread shitheels still think that I’m affiliated with Sublime Titanium because you can’t tell brown women apart from each other?”
“Arrest you? For killing Rutter?.” Ruthven made a dismissive wave. “Honestly I assumed it was self-defense. I know what Pretenders are like. No, killing him wasn’t the problem: the problem is that you’ve left my organization short an important member, and that is something that I simply cannot tolerate.”
“Wait, what?” Sara almost lowered her Glock in confusion. “Are you trying to recruit me?
“Precisely! You’ve proven that the two of you working together are a force to be reckoned with, certainly stronger than Rutter. Work for me, and you will have everything a Pretender wants: food, shelter, coin, sex, and an endless supply of bloodfiends to slaughter!”
Sara had received offers like this before, of course. As much as the powers that be in Scrapyard might disdain Pretenders, the fact remained that they were a power to be reckoned with. But it was that last part that really gave her pause: with Carlisle being positioned right next to the Deluge, there was no better place to harvest the endless quantities of edgeblood on offer there. Enough edgeblood to keep Zahra alive into adulthood, even.
“Never,” growled Gilead. “I would rather die than submit myself to a parasite!”
Sara snapped out of it. Of course it was a trap; Ruthven would pay her just enough to make her dependent, and she would spend the rest of her life paranoid that he would decide she was too much of a threat.
Ruthven pouted at Gilead, then turned his eyes firmly on Sara. “And as for you, my nameless dilettante?”
“Not a chance in hell,” she said, and opened fire.
Ruthven’s torso vanished into mist, her bullets passing harmlessly through his body. She lowered her aim, going for the stomach, and he shifted, his torso substantial while his abdomen faded into swirling absence. Her final attempt went up, aiming at his head, and this time he couldn’t dissolve in time: a single bullet struck him in the center of the forehead. Sara’s last bullet; her finger landed on the trigger with a rigid click.
Ruthven reacted to the 9mm shell passing through the center of his brow the way most people would react to a mosquito bite. He clicked his tongue, folding his arms over his chest while the wound slowly pulled closed.
“I told you, a gun will do you no good.”
Sara and Ruthven stared at each other for a solid second, calculating possibilities, planning out what was to come next. Both of them acted at the same instant, Ruthven evaporating so that he could rush forward at the speed of wind.
“First Pretense:Watch the W—“
“No.”
Ruthven didn’t sound angry or caught in battle-lust. He sounded disappointed, as though someone had presented him with a new set of drapes that he felt didn’t match with the rest of the room, and felt slightly bad for having to turn them down. He had arrived in front of Sara just a moment too quick. His fist cocked back, a vicious straight-on body blow, and then Sara forgot how to exist.
There was a snap of pain and a sound like a gunshot, and Sara lost consciousness for a second; when she awoke, she was already in the air, blown fully off her feet and flying backwards from the sheer kinetic force of Ruthven’s physical strength. There was no pain, not really, but she couldn’t breathe. Not that her lungs were obstructed: she could will her body to inhale, and there simply wasn’t anything with which she could draw breath.
When Sara landed and started rolling along the floor, blood spurted from her mouth like toothpaste squeezed from a tube. That was what she had been reduced to: all of her internal organs had been reduced to a homogenous jelly by the shockwave. Her vision was already starting to fade, brain becoming starved of the oxygen that it could not be provided by a heart reduced to so much pulp.
Choking, dying on the ground, Sara’s thoughts started to wander. At least she’d died to something nobody could blame her for. If he could do this with a single punch, then what fucking chance had she stood, really? Also, was this what dying from a drone strike felt like? Probably. She’d always gotten a little fucked up inside from how many of her friends had died like this, death by qatayefification, but apparently once you pass a certain threshold of gross bodily harm, it stops hurting. Convenient. The skeletons had started fighting, a grand brawl against Ruthven’s ghouls and the rifle-armed soldiers that had accompanied him, but none of that was Sara’s concern any more.
And then there was a pressure against Sara’s side, and everything started hurting quite a lot. She couldn’t turn her head to see what was causing it, but as soon as the feeling started passing through her she recognized it immediately. It was like a ripple in three dimensions, starting where the tiny hands were pressed into her side and spreading out from there. Wherever the ripple went flesh was rearranged, dragged forcefully back into its preferred arrangement by powerful magic. Sara screamed as her repaired nerves flared to life with burning, unspeakable agony.
“Don’t, don’t, don’t, they’ll hear you,” Zahra said, her soft, tiny face bunched up with intense concentration, every vein and artery from palm to shoulder glowing golden.
Sara wouldn’t have known what to say even if her lungs had been intact enough to speak. She knew how much energy it took for Zahra to heal someone, let alone to heal the kind of damage Sara had taken, and the thought of an eight-year-old having to face that kind of pain…
All of Sara’s ribs popped back into place at once, sending her convulsing once again, old blood forced from her lips by a burst of new. Zahra’s skin looked unwholesomely pale and wan, as though she had donated that blood herself. Then, finally, she fell backwards onto her heels.
Sara slowly levered herself up onto her hands. A quick look down seemed to confirm that she was in one piece, though the fact that she felt like a single gigantic bruise reminded her of the limits of even Zahra’s incredible power.
“Thank you,” Sara hissed.
“I love you,” Zahra replied. “I don’t want you to die.”
Sara tried to roll forward onto her feet and failed. “You need to get out of here. I can handle this.”
Zahra shook her head. “No you can’t.”
And indeed, Sara couldn’t. The skeletons, as durable as they were, were too slow and too disorganized. Rifle bullets exploded skulls and shattered long bones, while ghoulish strength could tear them limb from limb. And at the center of the melee, Gilead limped up to Lord Ruthven himself.
“You’re spent,” Ruthven said. “I don’t know what you hope to accomplish.”
“So long as I draw breath, I shall not suffer a blood-sucking parasite to live.”
“That’s very rich coming from a landed knight,” Ruthven replied. “But you know what, I like your vinegar! One free shot, no dodging, no turning into mist, just your sword and my flesh!”
Sara’s jaw had hit the floor. “What in God’s name does he think he’s doing…”
“Saving you,” Zahra replied. “But he can’t win. You know he can’t.”
“All the more reason for you to run away.”
Zahra shook her head. “That man is a vampire. You know what kills vampires, right?”
Sara felt cold as her sister started backing away from her. She was sad, the emotion written all across her face, but her steps were even and determined.
Gilead took his one shot. He swung with all the might he had left, aiming squarely for the side of Ruthven’s neck: the curved saber bit deep into the flesh, and for a moment Ruthven’s eyes widened with shock. But he didn’t die: the blade stopped halfway through.
“Bloody hell, you nearly actually did it! If I didn’t have a spinal column you might have actually got me in one blow.”
Ruthven’s hand snapped shut around the blade, and with a flick of his wrist shattered it into three pieces. “But you didn’t, though.”
“No no no no no no.” Sara clawed out at Zahra, unwilling to see her die this way. “You can’t, you can’t!”
“I’ll be fine,” Zahra replied. “You said it yourself, only use my power when there’s no other choice. Seems like now, doesn’t it?”
She backed away from her sister, out of the reach of her arms and into the dark and the chaos, skeletons and ghouls and soldiers all ripping each other apart, and in the middle of it all Ruthven crushing Gilead’s throat with one hand. Sara’s final objection died: there really was no other choice, even if this choice was making her want to scream.
Zahra ran out into an open area where the fighting was thinnest, and threw out her arms to either side. “First Pretense:” she said. “Let There Be Light.”
Ruthven looked over his shoulder just as she started. “Oh.”
And then there was light.
Sara had to avert her eyes from the explosion of yellow-white brilliance that consumed half of the field. Ruthven dissolved and decayed, his human form reduced to a scrap of shadow that wavered and flickered amidst the overwhelming illumination, screeching as it desperately held on to existence. Gilead, still barely conscious but now totally blind, crumpled to the ground.
There was a nickering of horses and the trundling of crude wooden wheels as the force of nature which Zahra had turned herself into started to move. She was effectively invisible amidst the glow, and made good use of that, racing in a zig-zag from one target to another, burning ghouls into charcoal as she slashed them, peppered them with arrows, or trampled them underneath her hooves. Her ultimate goal was Ruthven, though, and he knew it.
The scrap of shadow that had been the absolute ruler of Leedsrealm a few seconds ago fled and fled, stretching out splinter-thin limbs as though ready to take to the skies with the speed of a peregrine; but the light gnawed at it, paralyzed it, rendered it staggering and unsteady. Behind Ruthven, the chariot of the sun could not be stopped.
Sara had only seen her sister’s Pretension form like this twice before, and to this day it deeply unnerved her. The rider did not look like an eight-year-old, but an adult woman, a warrior of the ancient world, skirted and helmeted and clad in armor of bronze scale, with a khopesh at her hip and a bow and arrows in her hand. The chariot had reins, but the rider did not need them: somehow, Sara knew that the chariot and its two horses were just as much a part of Zahra’s body as the figure of the rider was.
Once Gilead was out of the worst of the glow—God, but Sara hoped that he had kept his eyes shut as the chariot raced right past him—Sara scrambled over to him, to help him up onto his feet. He looked bad, to say the least: he could still breathe, but where Ruthven’s fingers had held onto his neck, the flesh had already turned red. It would bruise badly.
“Get up, you son of a bitch, get up.” Gilead was twice Sara’s weight at least; she couldn’t lift him. “I know you’ve faced worse.”
“I have,” he replied. “And usually by this point I had fainted and allowed God to decide my fate.”
“Not today!”
With much grunting and groaning, Gilead and Sara were able to work together to get Gilead onto his feet. One step at a time, the two of them retreated from the battlefield, staggering towards the darkness of the surrounding countryside.
Meanwhile, the scrap of shadow found that it could not run away any longer, for it was too weak and the light too insistent. It stopped near the ruined wall of castle Carbennic, turned, outstretched its rotten limbs and screamed heavenward in a tongue Sara did not understand, aside from one bellowed word: Lucifer.
Darkness concentrated, and Lord Ruthven’s form regained some of its majesty, his will able to contend with that of Zahra. Her light in turn brightened, attempting to overwhelm the dark, but although it shrank it did not vanish, and Ruthven was able to stand his ground. Even with all the power he could draw on, though, he was still overwhelmed one second at a time.
But this was not merely a duel between Zahra and Ruthven. Though she’d done her best to wipe them off of the field, many of Ruthven’s followers still stood. The humans had mostly run away, or else cowered on the ground, dazzled and awestruck; but the ghouls, able to maneuver even when totally blinded and driven onwards by some element of Ruthven’s dark magic, lurched forward to attack Zahra from the flanks and rear.
The instant that one of them leapt up onto the back of the chariot, the rider spun around, turning that first ghoul to cinders with a mere glance, then slicing the second one in half with a single swing of her sword. The light suddenly began to dim, and Ruthven’s shadow reached out to engulf Zahra. The rider froze in place as though stricken by some kind of attack, recklessly swinging her khopesh to little avail. A ghoul rushed forward, lunging over the blade, and caught the rider by the back of the neck. Instantly, the night was dark once more: Zahra, her power exhausted, was back to being a little girl in a dark hoodie, hanging limp and lifeless in the jaws of a burnt, blinded, but still very much alive ghoul.
Sara dropped Gilead immediately, a wordless scream of terror ripping through her lips as she raced to defend her sister. That there was little she could do in her state, that Ruthven was rapidly recovering from all the damage Zahra had done to him, didn’t matter in the slightest: she was going to rescue her or else die trying. At least that was the plan; one lonely word stopped her in her tracks.
“Please…” Gilead whimpered.
Sara looked back. He couldn’t even stand, though he was trying to, nails digging into the earth in desperate search of purchase.
“I… I need to save her.”
Gilead locked eyes with Sara, and she saw something entirely new in his gaze. Fear. The pathetic fear of a child afraid of being abandoned.
“Martyring yourself may be an effective tactic where you come from,” Gilead said, “But if you die there will be nobody to replace you.”
“Fuck you!” Sara said, wiping tears from her eyes. “She’s my sister!”
Ruthven’s clothes had been reduced to charred rags, but the flesh was just as hale and hearty as it had been. “Put her down,” he said.
The ghoul that had grabbed Zahra hesitated; letting go of prey was against its nature. But in the end, Ruthven’s sorcerous control won out, and it placed her limp form upon the grass. Ruthven scooped her up into his arms, furrowing his brow at her.
“The first time in half a millennium that I am made to feel genuine fear for my life… and it’s a little girl. What an exceptional specimen you are. But oh, that much power really did take it out of you.” He placed his fingers against her throat, measuring her pulse. “Barely clinging to life.”
Sara’s eyes were fixed on that sight, Ruthven holding her sister so tenderly. “What is he doing?”
“I nist his intentions, but I do not think he wishes to kill her, else he would already have done so.”
“So, what, we run away? Let him do whatever he wants with her? Gilead of Carbennic, is that what you are suggesting that I do!?”
He grabbed onto Sara’s side, nearly knocking her over as he pulled himself onto his feet. “No; I have seen the error of my ways. If thou art to tilt once more at thy foe, then I shall tilt with thee. Let us fight together, if thou wishest.”
Because of course he would. If Sara didn’t help Gilead to escape, if she killed herself trying to rescue Zahra, then Gilead would die as well, caught and torn apart by Ruthven’s followers. But there was a chance that they could both live to fight another day: Ruthven himself was retreating back to the airship, and though his followers were beginning to spread out for a patrol, most of them were still dazed by what Zahra had done.
She’d bought them time to escape. It felt like tearing her own tongue out of her mouth, and Sara scrunched up her face and dug her nails into her palms and kicked clods of dirt until she felt ready to vomit… but there was only one correct answer.
“I’m sorry, Zahra. I’m so, so sorry.”
She took Gilead’s hand, and taking as much of his weight as she could, the two of them rushed away into the night as fast as they could make it. Gilead’s bag was still exactly where he had left it. They made it as far as the town of Carbennic itself before Gilead collapsed from exhaustion, leaving Sara with little choice but to join him.