Chapter 29

29

Cero

As Cero landed his Sail at Kegar's central airfield, the heady fragrance of Spire roses assaulted his senses. He grimaced, thinking of Aiz, for she dearly loved to chain them together and make crowns for the orphans. They smell of life , she'd say. Cero used to think so too.

Now everything stank of death, even Spire roses. Especially on the days when Cero came back from bombing runs.

Spires, he hated those runs. The cowardice of dropping explosives on a scrambling, screaming population made him feel as if he'd rolled around in excrement. Watching and listening as the Kegari ground forces swept in to steal food and goods, murdering any left alive, made it impossible to sleep.

He'd long since altered the missile chutes on his Sail, allowing him more control over bomb drops. When the Sail squadrons launched raids, Cero's payload landed on empty barns and evacuated town squares. The bloodlust of Tiral's other pilots meant there was never a shortage of casualties, so for months, Cero's questionable aim went unnoticed.

No longer. As Cero dropped from his Sail, Tiral stalked across the airfield toward him. Sweat plastered Tiral's pale hair to his head—spring was warmer than usual—and his cheeks were an ugly red. From the heat, perhaps, but more likely from anger. The so-called Tel Ilessi had a temper. Which was nothing new for Cero. He'd known Aiz since birth, after all.

At that moment, his aaj burned. Cero! Aiz called through it as she had for days now, weeks. He refused to respond. He didn't want her to come back.

Cero-Cero-Cero-Cero. His name echoed with such constancy that it sounded as if he had a ball of snakes living in his brain.

He wanted to speak to her. To know everything about this Tribe that had taken her in, the child Ruh whom she loved—even the damned prince she claimed not to care for. Give your heart to him , he wanted to say, because it's precious and deserves to be cherished by someone kind. But Cero also wanted her to guard her heart. To wait.

For him.

Utter folly to think these things. No child of Dafra would allow themselves such weakness. For in weakness lay death. Then stop thinking about her, fool.

"That is the fifth time you've missed the mark on your bombing runs." Tiral paced before him, spittle flying as he stripped off his flight leathers. "You destroyed a half ton of foodstuffs. Explain!"

"The channels on some of the Sails are faulty. I told you." Cero refused to grovel to anyone, least of all a false Tel Ilessi. Still, he kept his voice neutral. Tiral had already destroyed Dafra cloister. He could still hunt down its clerics and those few orphans left—just to teach Cero a lesson.

For the thousandth time, Cero cursed his own heart. Love was misery. Without it, he'd have deserted this hellhole years ago.

"I reported this failure to the head engineer," Cero said. "It's not my fault she hasn't fixed it." The head engineer was a two-faced Hawk hag who mistreated Snipe pilots for sport. Cero had no qualms about throwing her into the flames of Tiral's temper.

Though perhaps, Cero thought as he surveyed Tiral's expression, he should be more cautious. Tiral thought ruling was as simple as sitting on the high throne and calling himself Mother Div's chosen. But now that shipments of raid loot had dwindled, discontent seethed. Some called Tiral a false Tel Ilessi. The people's patience thinned and Tiral knew it. He'd massacred hundreds of Snipes who had protested against him in Dafra slum just weeks ago. He was more volatile than ever.

"The head engineer assured me your Sail is in perfect working order," Tiral said. "So tomorrow, Snipe, you will hit every target with precision. Or I'll pay a visit to those clerics of yours." Sensing Cero's trepidation, Tiral smiled. "They can't very well preach without their tongues, can they?"

No one greeted Cero as he left the airfield or while he made his way through the streets to Dafra slum. Aiz was the one who befriended every orphan and street sweep in the city. Cero preferred anonymity.

He found Sister Noa in Dafra's main market, passing out cups of grain to a long line of weary, hungry Snipes. He considered helping her and then dismissed the idea. He hated being thanked.

Cero drifted to the shadows, watching his people. Most looked worse off than the last time he'd visited Dafra a week ago. Before, they were hungry. Now, they were starving.

Sometimes, Cero thought that if he died in a raid, if some murderous villager split him open with a scythe, it wouldn't be organs that spilled to the earth, but a scream of hopeless fury. One whose seed had been planted when Cero was a boy who realized his people were doomed by the idiocy of their leaders.

It didn't have to be this way. If the bleeding Triarchs had an iota of creativity, they would see what Kegar had to offer the world—and all they could receive in turn. So much possibility lost because those three rotters had the collective imagination of a tree stump.

Sister Noa spotted Cero leaning against the crumbling wall of an old tavern called the Dead Man's Ale. She handed the grain cup to Sister Olnas and hurried toward him.

Cero! Aiz's voice again. More insistent this time.

"Thank Mother Div." Noa threw her arms around him. "Every time you go, I worry—"

"I'm fine," Cero said. "But you might not be, if Tiral has his way."

The blood drained from Sister Noa's face. "What now?"

"I've erred, and he's threatening the Dafra clerics and the orphans, again. We need to move everyone. I've got a place in mind. It's better anyway, the building you're in now has no back exit if—"

"No," Sister Noa said. "The children need stability. We can get the young ones out quickly, if Tiral comes. As for the clerics—he's jailed us, tortured us. He's destroyed—" Noa took a breath, chin quivering as she looked toward Dafra's skyline, bereft of the cloister's steeples. "Destroyed our home. Killed our fellow clerics. If he wants to kill the rest of us, too, so be it."

"So ready for death." Cero stepped aside for a drunk stumbling out of the tavern. "Wasn't it you who told me a few weeks ago that there was still so much to hope for?"

"For you, certainly." Noa patted his cheek. "You're young. Have faith in Mother Div—"

Cero sighed. Noa meant well. She was a kind woman, a hopeful one, with a backbone of iron. But she wasn't a realist.

Cero, talk to me. Aiz again.

"Sister Noa, please consider moving," Cero tried again. "If not for yourself, then—"

"Have you heard from her?" Noa glanced at Cero's aaj. Other than Aiz, only Noa knew what the aaj could do. When Cero first heard from Aiz weeks ago, he'd had a moment of weakness and told Noa about it, knowing how worried she'd been. The old woman had been so overjoyed she hadn't even asked how Aiz got the aaj. Noa didn't know of Cero's role in Aiz's escape. No one did, other than Aiz.

And even she didn't know the whole of it.

"Haven't heard from her," Cero said. Apparently telling fibs as a child— I most certainly did not skip lessons, Sister Noa —made him an effective dissembler as an adult.

"She will return." Sister Noa's face glowed with a familiar, beatific shine reserved for when she told the Nine Sacred Tales. "And she will be changed. Mother Div chose her—"

Not this again. Cero groaned and Sister Noa gave him a long-suffering look.

"How someone so faithless came out of the cloister is beyond me," she said. "Yet I do not fear for you, child. The cloister put a love of Mother Div in your heart, whether you acknowledge it or not. One day, you will turn to her for comfort. As we all do."

She kissed him on the cheek and went back to Olnas and handing out grain. Cero watched for a moment longer before making his way through the rose-scented streets of Kegar and back to the Aerie.

Cero, for Spires' sake, talk to me.

His Sail had been brought to a hangar, and Cero spent the rest of the evening tinkering with the missile chutes enough so that tomorrow, after he missed his bombing targets, Tiral could examine the chutes himself and see that they were defective. He'd never suspect Cero, because what would a Snipe know of the high art of Sail engineering?

I know you can hear me , Aiz called . Why won't you respond?

It was a nice night out. The kind he and Aiz used to spend by the docks, dreaming up another life. The stars clear above, the air cool, not yet summer-warm. Cero bunched the canvas of his Sail into something resembling a bed and lay back, hands folded behind his head. A gray fox ran across the edge of the airfield and heavy-bodied insects droned through the skies. Distantly, voices carried from the Aerie, arguing, laughing.

Cero. Cero. Cero.

He could remove the aaj. Give himself silence. Instead, he listened to her, and to the world around him, and all the other voices, and despised himself for how many innocents would die tomorrow.