Chapter 45

45

Aiz

It took more than a week to find the children.

Not children , Aiz reminded herself as she and Cero—with whom she flew—approached Serra from the air. They are killers. Masks.

The little savages had, after all, booby-trapped the fields around the house they'd holed up in, deep in the Serran Mountain Range. Aiz had lost thirty soldiers before her troops even reached the dwelling, and another five inside. In the end, she'd been forced to blast the roof off with her wind and pin them one by one. Only then did the Kegari capture the Masks.

Now, under Triarch Ghaz's watchful eye, they awaited her at the pilots' barracks, gagged and heavily chained. Aiz was victorious. But she was also tired, her bones enervated from the use of so much power.

"What's taking so long?" Aiz called to Cero, who navigated their Sail through the mountains with painstaking care. She was still angry at him for losing Quil. After the Empress's escape, the news had been a terrible blow. Aiz had ordered Cero out of her sight, fearing her own anger. "We should have landed by now."

"Tel Ilessi," Cero said. "They're young. Children. Only fourteen."

"They're snakes, Cero. You saw how many of our soldiers they killed."

"Because we surrounded them. We gave them no choice."

Aiz bristled. Cero had pressed her, recently. Disdaining how Mother Div got her power. Questioning Aiz about the missing children in Kegar. Criticizing the treatment of captured prisoners.

"Those children ," Aiz said, "are trained killing machines. We will remove their heads, and their masks, and feel no guilt in doing so."

Cero was silent the rest of the way to Serra. After a time, the city appeared below, a pocked, ruined shadow of its old self, the River Rei choked with debris. The signalers cleared them to land, and as they spiraled down to the makeshift airfield, the stench of smoke and refuse and blood choked Aiz's nostrils.

Guilt swept through her, bees beneath her skin. Ruh had loved this city. The fountains are huge and there's an entire street of storytellers and another of kite makers, and another that sells silk in every color—

Aiz wondered if Laia lived. If Elias and Kari and Zuriya lived. Then she realized she didn't care, really. Ruh was the only one she'd loved.

Something flickered at the edge of her vision. A flash of silver. A familiar giggle. Aiz turned as she dropped from the Sail, startled, seeking the child amid the ruins of Serra. For a second, she was certain Ruh was here.

"Tel Ilessi?"

Cero called to her, and she remembered. Ruh was dead.

"Come," she ordered Cero. "The Masks are at the barracks. It's not far."

"If you want to kill those children"—Cero stood rooted in the shadow of his Sail, fiddling with the straps on the pilot's chair—"go ahead. But I won't be a part of it."

As Sails took off and landed around them, Aiz examined her oldest friend. He was worn. He'd been by her side for months now, carrying out orders, listening to her talk about Mother Div, helping her plot the takeover of the Empire. He'd believed. But now he seemed tired. So many of her soldiers seemed tired. They needed a victory.

The Loha would give them that.

"Very well." She tried to sound reasonable. "I'll handle it myself. Why don't you take a few days away—"

"Before you murder those poor children"—Cero shoved his goggles on his head—"there's someone you need to speak to." Cero reached for Aiz's hand, tentatively, as if he thought she'd slap him away. "Don't be angry at me. You're not yourself, Aiz—"

"Tel Ilessi," she reminded him. The airfield was loud with the movement of aircraft, but that didn't mean that others couldn't hear. Respect must be maintained. "And I am more myself than I've ever been. I don't have time to—"

"Aiz, my love."

She turned to find the gnarled old figure of Sister Noa. She hadn't seen the sister in weeks—not since the war began. In Kegar, in the months of planning, Aiz grew more distant from Noa. For while High Cleric Dovan, Olnas, and the rest of the clergy looked at Aiz with apposite awe, Sister Noa only ever appeared chary. Even unfriendly at times.

"It's Tel Ilessi, Sister," Aiz said.

"Walk with me." Noa took Aiz's arm. The old woman was so frail, so small that Aiz let herself be tugged along.

Noa was silent as they reached the edge of the airfield, and began to pick their way through the quiet, rubble-strewn streets.

"So much death," Sister Noa said. "An apocalypse for these people. A genocide. I wonder if, a thousand years from now, they will think of us as their cataclysm."

"A thousand years from now, they will have all murdered each other," Aiz said, grimacing as she caught sight of a dog gnawing at something large and white in the ruins of a house. "They are a violent and warlike people, Sister Noa. In any case, it won't be any concern of ours. For we will be far away, across the sea. Home."

"Home, yes," Sister Noa murmured, slowing before what was once a large sculpture, surrounded by a fountain. The water was gray with ash now, shattered shards of clay poking out like scavenged bones. "A fair gold and green land that was ours alone. It had at its heart a Fount of golden light, and that was the source of our magic." Noa smiled as she quoted the Nine Sacred Tales. "Do you know the stories of what caused the cataclysm, Aiz?"

"That isn't in the Nine Sacred Tales. Mother Div didn't mean for us to know."

"Or perhaps Ten Sacred Tales didn't have quite the same ring," Sister Noa said dryly. "But we do have records. Reliable ones, for Mother Div was nothing if not meticulous. The Fount, legend says, was poisoned. Tainted with evil magic. It didn't happen overnight. It was gradual, else Mother Div would not have had time to find a new homeland for her people."

Aiz tried to pull Noa from the broken fountain, but the old woman held firm.

"Our people turned on each other," Sister Noa said softly. "The tainted magic drove them mad, pitted parent against child, siblings against each other, leaders against their people. Tens of thousands died. The First City, the Home of the Fount was consumed. It was only people from the outer villages and districts whom Mother Div could save. When humanity turns on its children , she was rumored to say, then you know we are lost. "

Aiz felt a chill, thinking of what Quil had said to her at the war camp. When you sacrifice other people's children on the altar of your ambition, it's only a matter of time before you'll be willing to sacrifice your own.

Sister Noa turned to Aiz, and she flinched at the disappointment in the cleric's eyes.

"You are lost, Tel Ilessi. How many have died to satisfy this creature that feeds you power? And do not call her Mother Div. Our Holy Cleric would never sanction such violence. Not against the guilty, and certainly not against the innocent."

Sister Noa squeezed her hands with the same understanding she'd offered Aiz her whole life.

"Cast that thing from yourself, my girl. You can still lead us. You can still be our Tel Ilessi. But not like this."

Aiz's fury seethed low, like a carpet of fire ants. Something else surged beneath it: despair.

"Perhaps I am lost," she said. "Perhaps I did make sacrifices I didn't expect. And there—there is much that will haunt me. But if it is for my people, it is worth it. I can't turn back now, Sister, nor cast Mother Div from my mind. I will not."

"This cannot be who you are," Sister Noa pleaded. "Do you remember the question I used to ask you? What do you dream? Is it really this?" She gestured to the wreckage surrounding them. "Tell me, Aiz. Tell me what you dream."

Hunger gripped Aiz. Then satisfaction. Far away, Mother Div fed.

Aiz stared out at the destruction she'd wrought. "I dream of victory," she said. "And death."

Then she yanked her arm free from Noa and left to claim her Loha.

The young Masks knelt in the courtyard of the pilots' barracks, gagged, blindfolded, beaten. Aiz ordered their blindfolds removed. Their silver faces gleamed in the winter light.

Their hair and skin and genders ranged, but they all had the same worn, dark fatigues, the same set to their shoulders, the same defiance in their faces. As if they'd murder every Kegari they could get their hands on.

Ghaz, pacing before them, stopped when Aiz appeared and, at her order, removed the gag and blindfold of the first Mask.

The young woman looking back at her had red hair and brown eyes. Her lip curled as Aiz entered, and she spat on the courtyard's stones.

"If you're going to kill us and take our masks, get on with it," she said.

"So eager to die?"

"Eager for you to let me out of these chains so I can wrap them around your throat and watch you choke." The girl's voice was chillingly calm.

A sudden presence at her back had Aiz smiling, as did the cool rush of power filling her.

"Will you let this insolent pup speak to you so?" Div's righteous anger soothed Aiz's bruised ego. "Set your interrogators upon her. Perhaps she will know where there is more Loha."

"I'd rather take her mask, Mother Div."

The cleric considered. "Let me feed upon her," she said. "She is violent certainly, but young still, and pure."

Aiz was about to answer when a commotion on the edge of the airfield caught her attention. A Sail landed with all the grace of a wounded grouse, and a messenger stumbled from it, gasping for breath. Her hair was in disarray, her breath short with panic.

"Tel Ilessi!" She staggered toward Aiz. "An uprising in the southern part of the city. Nearly a full legion approaches. They—they just appeared. Out of nowhere! We're awaiting another arms shipment from Kegar. We don't have enough bombs to stop them. The—the Empress leads them."

"Why were we not told?" Aiz demanded. "Whose clan had watch duty?"

Ghaz had joined Aiz at the arrival of the messenger, and now he spoke. "Hiwa's."

She would kill the man herself. But now she required more power. A great deal more.

Mother Div sensed it, anticipated Aiz's need.

"A few hearts will not be enough to stop a Martial legion, daughter of Kegar," Mother Div warned. "I need more than that. If you are so deeply opposed to me taking more hearts, I can extract the power. But it requires…pain."

"I am ready." Aiz lifted her chin. Mother Div canted her head, teeth glinting.

"Not your pain, Aiz. Theirs." She nodded to the Masks. There was a devilish eagerness to Div. A surging excitement Aiz couldn't ignore.

"You mean to torture them."

"Yes. I would pull pain from these Masks," Div said, and at Aiz's look of disquiet, she held up a hand. "It is not something I will relish, child. That is why I have never mentioned it before."

"Tel Ilessi." Triarch Hiwa appeared from the rubble, accompanied by two dozen of his fighters. The panic on his face was embarrassing to witness. Aiz did not understand how this weaselly creature could be a descendant of Mother Div.

"There is a full Martial legion—"

"I am aware," Aiz said. "Tell Triarch Oona to lead her archers against them. Triarch Hiwa, you will lead the ground assault."

"I— But, Tel Ilessi," Hiwa spluttered. "We will be slaughtered."

"By the Martials or by my hand." Aiz brought her wind to bear, pressing on the Triarch's windpipe. "I'd say you'd have a better chance of surviving them."

She released him and he glared at her, gathering his wind. She knew he wouldn't dare to use it. He was too weak.

"Triarch Ghaz," Aiz said. "Take your men to fight alongside Hiwa's. Hold them off for as long as possible. I will be there soon."

"The Masks, Tel Ilessi. It is not safe—"

"I can hold them. Go."

Ghaz bowed and hurried away, taking his men. The red-headed Mask, seeing that there were no guards, grinned and began to rise. But Aiz forced her and her fellows down with fists of wind.

Div circled them. "Let me help, Tel Ilessi. You know your troops alone cannot destroy this legion. I can give you what you need. More."

You are lost, Tel Ilessi. Aiz regarded the young Masks. She thought of Ruh's shining silver eyes. What would he say if he saw her now?

An old emotion, fossilized in the sediment of Aiz's past self, threatened to break free. Anguish, keen as an eagle's talon. A sound emerged from her throat, the moan of a struck bird, the last shred of humanity clinging to Aiz's heart.

Yes, she was lost. Irredeemably so.

But Ruh died so Aiz could get this far. What use, if she gave up now?

Aiz considered Div. She'd let Div hunt and kill for months, and had managed to control her. In doing so, perhaps Aiz had limited herself by curtailing the power Div fed her. Perhaps Aiz had only begun to understand the well of strength Div had to offer.

"Yes," Div crooned. "Now you see."

Aiz nodded. "Do it," she said.

Moments later, the first Mask began to scream.

After, the Kegari soldiers who witnessed the shredding of the Martial legion would say that Mother Div herself descended from the sky and laid waste to the enemy when all seemed lost. Triarch Oona's red-clad archers had been overrun, the Triarch herself dying at the edge of Empress Helene's blade. Triarch Hiwa's troops turned and fled, though their leader had not been so lucky, an arrow slicing through his back as he bolted like a coward.

Only Triarch Ghaz's soldiers held firm. And when it seemed like they, too, would be destroyed, the Tel Ilessi appeared, glowing with fury. A shadow stood at her back, bearing the sunbeam crown.

The wind rose, vicious and unforgiving. It ripped the Martials to shreds. They turned tail, their Empress with them.

Aiz remembered little of it. She woke after, in the infirmary. The room was simple and white. A memory rose in her mind. Sister Noa beside the cloister's wide hearth, with Cero tucked under one arm and Aiz under the other.

Holy Cleric Div was most beloved to children, did you know? She hated the politics of ruling. Any chance she got, she would come to this cloister—this very one!—and play cat in the corner with children just like you.

Mother Div paced around Aiz now, her familiar features relaxing when she saw the girl awake.

"I thought it might be too much power for you," she said, coming to Aiz's side. "I thought I might have hurt you. I thought in saving your people, you might have destroyed yourself."

Your people.

Aiz remembered the power then. And how she'd gotten it. She remembered the screams of the children.

"You're not her, are you?" Aiz finally spoke the question she'd suppressed since Tiral's death. A question reawakened by her conversation with Noa. She did not look toward the creature that called itself Div.

"I am who you need me to be." The creature pulled its hair to one side and began to braid it.

"But you're not her ." Aiz struggled to draw breath. "You don't know anything about my people. You don't care about us."

She thought of Tiral's last words. I wish I could live, just to watch it eat you alive.

"Tiral knew," Aiz said. "That's why he didn't hunt me. Did you— Did you talk to him, too—"

"Tiral is weak. Tiral is dead." The creature finished the braid and laid a light hand on Aiz's shoulder. "You are strong and so I helped you. I found that which you desired most—Loha."

"You found a reason to torture children."

"Because you needed aid." The creature squeezed Aiz's shoulder a touch too hard. "And you are wrong. I do care about your people. Because I care about you. Let that be enough."

It wasn't a request. It was a warning, and Aiz saw two paths before her. One in which she delved more deeply into exactly what she had awoken that cursed night in the Tribal Desert. And one in which she took what Div had to offer and gave her people a chance at life without pain and poverty and hunger clawing them to death from the inside.

Aiz swung her legs out of the bed and pulled on her boots. Her body throbbed, but Div—for that was who Aiz needed her to be—fed power into her steadily until the pain had faded.

A knock at the door. Cero.

"I'm fine." She stood. "Better than fine. We captured one of the generals, yes? Let us see if he knows—"

"You received a letter." Cero hardly spared her a glance, as if any wounds she had were no concern of his. He held up a scroll. "It came via one of our messengers in Ankana. From the High Seer himself." He handed it over, watching Aiz as she read it.

"A change of plans," she said. "We're going to Ankana."