On Wings of Fire: Chapter 24

Fyn didn’t know whose ribs cracked, Sasha’s or his, only the explosion of pain in his chest not softened by any god’s power and the numbness creeping across his back that promised a quick oblivion.

Groaning, he rolled off of Sasha’s still frame and onto the marble floor. Though the inky black floor was rapidly fading back to white, Fyn did not much care if it was safe to touch yet. The tendrils had touched him in a dozen spots across his legs and back. With no mote left inside him, it was already too late.

He squinted up with bizarre calm, hoping for a last look at Cassia. He had not meant to die here. But then he had seen Sasha’s desperate glimpse and guessed what he had hoped from the moment she revealed her powers — that the human gods had found their own way to control their followers.

When he realized he could free her, what else could he have done?

He heard the thud of feet beside him and distantly felt Cassia drape herself desperately across his chest, feeling for his heartbeat, but the pounding of his heart in his ears drowned out what she was saying.

The numbness seemed to be taking a very long time to spread, or it didn’t kill all feeling as he had thought. The crate had splintered and spilled when Sasha fell backwards across it, and shards of pottery dug sharply into his back, but he couldn’t summon the energy to move, even if Cassia hadn’t been half on top of him.

She was reaching to her own back now. Alarm shot through Fyn — Selach would kill her. “No,” he managed, struggling to sit up and stop her from giving him her own mote.

To his surprise, a sudden strength surged through him, and he managed it. The numbness wasn’t spreading now, it was receding, and his toes tingled painfully as feeling returned.

“I’m… okay,” Fyn said to a shocked Cassia, and found that it was true. A wonderfully familiar warmth had seeped into his stomach and formed a pulsing core, driving out the death magic. It was warm and did not burn.

It didn’t burn.

Fyn got to his knees and spun around, touching in a second what he should have guessed all along.

Among those fragments of pottery that had scattered when the crate broke was a shard from a jug that had held that strange and familiar power. It was Selach’s — Fyn had known that from the moment he first touched it back at the Hive — but it had none of his malice.

Fyn seized the glassy red shard nearly as big as his palm and felt its power finish draining into him, coiling in his stomach right where his old mote had always been, like a claw slipping into a stone-mark.

Fear followed a second later, as Fyn waited for the new power to surge in fury and tear him apart.

But it only swirled, warm and eager in his belly. It wasn’t fully settled — it billowed like a cloud rather than glowing like an ember, and it felt almost ephemeral. Not a mote, then, but this strange power that was and was not Selach’s clearly recognized Fyn as a vessel.

“Fyn…,” Cassia started, watching him nervously.

He held up a hand and the flames played along it as easy as breathing, though he wasn’t angry.He concentrated until a bonfire roared in his hand, and still he wasn’t angry but eager, as if he longed to jump up right now and go do something, anything, that would… mean something. An entirely new kind of burning.

Holding the empty shard, Fyn understood, and the very ground beneath his feet seemed to shift.

You influence us. You create us. Mithrinde’s words, spoken through his mouth.

Mortals linking themselves to beings so much more powerful… had side effects.

The power contained in the fragments of the shattered jug was not Selach at all.

It was what Selach had been.

And what he could be again.

“Fyn!” Cassia seized his shoulder and shook it, and it was only now that Fyn realized she had been calling his name for the last minute at least.

“Yeah?” he said distractedly, turning his head to look at her.

“What by the stars were you thinking? And don’t tell me you’re okay, because I know you’re not, you weren’t even hearing me a moment ago—”

“No, I’m fine,” Fyn said. A grin split his face. “Better then fine. Cassia, do you know what this means—”

“I hate to break this touching moment up,” a cold voice said. “But what in Death’s name have you done to my daughter?”

Fyn and Cassia spun around, scrambling to their feet and crunching a few shards of pottery beneath their shoes. Fyn’s blood chilled. Iona was standing in the doorway of the small entrance at the back of the hall, flanked by two of her mages, and her entire frame was shaking with rage.

Fyn had been so distracted by his near brush with death that he hadn’t even looked over at Sasha yet, other than to note that the death magic had vanished and the wings were firmly on her back.

She was lying still on the floor. Fyn moved to step over her, but then she stirred.

She rose all at once, stiff like a stick figure. She shook her braids back across her new wings and faced Iona with eyes like ice.

“Hello, Mother.”

Iona stopped in her tracks. Fear flashed against her face and she half-raised her hands defensively, but it was gone as quickly as it came. She turned her palms up and reached out to Sasha.

“Sariah, darling, did they hurt you?”

Thwack thwack. Fyn heard the impacts almost before he saw Sasha’s hands move. Iona’s magic flashed too late.

All eyes, moved, as if in slow motion, from Sasha’s outstretched hands to the two knife hilts sticking out of Iona’s chest and the crimson stain blossoming across her dark leather blouse.

Iona’s eyes were wide and staring, her lips parted in reproach. She made a choked noise that could have been an attempt at speech.

Then her legs buckled, and Iona, leader of the Seekers, agent of Change, envoy of the gods, fell dead to the floor.

The two mages flanking her stepped backward, staring at Sasha in shock. They made no move to stop her as she stalked up to her mother’s body, crouched over it, and yanked her knives out. She clutched them over the body, hands trembling.

“No, Mother,” she whispered. “They set me free.”

She looked up at the two mages who were still watching horrorstruck. “She lied to you. Bateno and Nehovo’s sacrifices were not willing. Neither was mine. By law, her life was forfeit. She didn’t care. She was never one of us.”

The mages looked at each other. Their fingers flicked, ready to summon magic against her. Fyn shifted his footing, ready to rush them if he had to.

“Believe me or don’t, I don’t care,” Sasha said spitefully, wiping her blades against the floor and getting to her feet. “Zeinaba will testify against her, once I free her too.”

The male mage finally found his voice. “That may be so, Sashsonda, but you’ll need to come with us until — until…”

He faltered, and Fyn could not blame him. Though she betrayed no hint of magic, Sasha’s ferocity was more frightening then when she had been controlled by Death himself.

Sasha turned her back on her clansmen with the poise of a queen and spoke to Fyn and Cassia. “You can’t just bind your own gods. You’ll need to bind ours, too. You saw what they’ve figured out how to do.”

“Of course,” Cassia said. Her face was still rather pale and she was not looking at Iona’s corpse. “All the gods have gone too far.”

“Will you come with us?” Fyn asked her again. “Maybe your gods will listen to another human. Also… that mote kind of isn’t mine to let you keep.”

He winced internally. He was sure Tilana would not have minded him giving it to Sasha temporarily to save their lives and free her, but it occurred to him he probably shouldn’t let it fly off into the sunset.

Sasha looked at him incredulous, then threw her head back and laughed, a true laugh with only a trace of sarcasm. “I can still be grateful for a short-term solution. The gods won’t listen willingly. But I might be able to make them.”

She let darkness play around her fingers, stating her point clear as glass. Then she whirled her daggers around her fingers and slid them back into their sheaths. “Well? Why are we standing around? We’ve got about two minutes before Joen and Imaeko bring company.”

Sure enough, as Sasha jabbed a thumb over her shoulder, Fyn saw that the two mages were disappearing down the hall behind them.

Working together, they righted the crate and piled the shards inside, using Sasha’s cloak to stretch across where the wood had splintered when she fell across it.

Footsteps echoed on the marble floor right as they finished. Fyn looked at Cassia. “Ready to be a flying drake?” he asked. She was now the one with both a mote of Selach and a mote of Mithrinde.

She grinned. “Looks like it’s my turn to carry you.”

“Make sure to concentrate on your clothes,” Fyn told her. “They should absorb with your form, but you’ll have to remember to draw them back out when you change back—”

Before he finished speaking, she changed, swelling to a height of nearly ten feet, tail and neck spilling out into a wave of glossy silver scales, feathered white wings growing and stretching to an enormous wingspan.

“Get on!” Her voice was deeper in drake form and carried a trace of pain.

Fyn realized he was staring. He snapped his mouth shut and climbed on without another word, though the way her scales shimmered in the sunlight lingered in his mind.

Sasha climbed in front of him and threw a leather cord around Cassia’s neck, knotting herself on the way she had done when riding Fyn in Aisen, though she had her own wings now and was in no danger of falling.

It was him who was in danger of falling, Fyn realized as Cassia rose onto her hind legs and grasped the crate of shards awkwardly in her talons. He had to grab Sasha around the waist to keep his seat.

The footsteps in the hallway grew louder, and just as Cassia spread her wings, five mages burst into the hall and stopped dead, staring up at the giant angelic drake.

Cassia laughed, her chest booming underneath Fyn, and leapt into the air.

------

By the time Cassia touched down in the middle of Market Square, Selach’s mote was sending stabbing pains all through her torso and up through her wings, and the novelty of being a drake had completely worn off. She staggered a little as she landed in the open square, bordered on one edge by the Taunby River that ran through the center of Promise. The last time she had been here, with Fyn at the very beginning of their time together, it had been so crowded if she’d taken flight she couldn’t have found a place to land.

Now the square was silent and empty. Banners fluttered in an empty breeze, dulled by the gray sky overhead. Smashed papinyas and spilled wintuns splashed streaks of color across the smooth flagstones.

The moment Fyn and Sasha slid off Cassia’s back, Cassia released the power she had been straining at to hold her in the drake form. Remembering just in time to concentrate on getting her clothes back, she shrank down to her normal self again, her silver skin smooth and scale-less and her messy, knotted hair — there had been no time for bathing, even — tumbled down her back.

“Where is everyone?” she asked Sasha.

“Inside,” Sasha said as Fyn picked up the crate of shards with a grunt. “They’re holding this area for a perimeter of about three blocks. There was a temporary ceasefire when you arrived. They’re trying to buy time to rally their armies in their countries, and Mother agreed so she could keep experimenting with those damned shards.

“Anyway, they probably saw us coming, so we should—”

‘They’ confirmed Sasha’s assumption before she finished her sentence. Doors around the square flung open simultaneously, and a flood of angels, thunderbeasts, hamadryads, and even a few trolls carrying spears and bucklers poured out. The angels and thunderbeasts took to the sky while the trolls advanced in a line, towering nearly eight feet tall and with skin like stone. The river behind Cassia’s small group suddenly bristled with spikes, only a glimpse of the dark green skin of nereids showing through.

This seemed to Cassia complete overkill, until she saw Sasha spread her new wings and step back, raising her hands in surrender.

“Say something quick, or they’re going to kill me on sight,” Sasha muttered to Cassia. “If they attack, I’m going to defend myself. And they won’t like it.”

Cassia spread her own wings and stepped in front of Sasha. “It’s all right!” she shouted. “She was being controlled by Death, but we fixed it! See her wings?”

The rows of spears did not stand down, but they didn’t advance, either. Cassia faced off with them, the seconds stretching out to eternities, perfectly aware that if they attacked, Sasha would unleash her power over Death again, and any hope of peace would be gone. She and Fyn would be lucky not to get caught in the crossfire.

Then the curtain of hovering angels parted, and a tall, aging angel in fine robes with blazing white hair landed on the flagstones and broke into a run, his arms open wide.

Then Cassia was running too, the market and the legions of godformed and even Fyn and Sasha melting away around her as she and the other angel met in the center of the square and Cassia threw herself into her father’s arms.

He caught her up and held her, his arms stronger than she remembered, his frame full and sturdy instead of drooped and frail. “Oh Cassia,” he murmured. “You should be home, in bed.”

She ignored that, and the pain that stabbed up her arm as Micah’s shoulder pressed against the bandages. “You’re not sick anymore!” she said instead, through the crush of the hug.

“When most of your magic is tied up in maintaining a magical prison, the pre-renewal period is… draining,” Micah murmured.

Cassia drew back. Micah was still holding her upper arms, but he quickly shifted his grip when he saw the bandages.

A hundred things unspoken grew heavy in the air between them. Now that her father was here, standing in front of her, Cassia had no idea where to begin.

“Prison.” She couldn’t keep the note of accusation from her voice, or stop the small prick of gratification when Micah flinched.

“I think you know most of my reasons,” Micah said quietly. “But you deserve to hear them from me. Let’s go inside.”

His gaze shifted to Sasha, taking in her human features and incongruent angel’s wings. His jaw tightened — he clearly recognized her.

“This does not bode well for the war,” he said quietly to Cassia. “She was a pawn of Death this whole time?”

Cassia nodded. “Fyn gave her Tilana’s mote so she could get control back, the same way we kept him out of Selach’s reach. He’s safe too — I have his mote.”

His face was grim, and Cassia wasn’t sure he had fully registered what she said. “And they claim only our gods go too far…” he muttered.

He turned back to the legion of godformed still poised for attack. “Stand down. The Death witch was controlled much like we have been. She’s given up her powers and comes here to help us.”

A lie, but white enough to sidestep the question of if Mithrinde’s mote would be enough, or if Death would eventually regain control of Sasha. Once, Cassia would have thought her father could never speak a deliberate falsehood. Now she knew he had been lying his whole life to keep a thin fiction of peace.

Many of the godformed glanced at each other uneasily, but the angels parted at Micah’s command, and soon afterward the trolls and hamadryads did too.

Cassia beckoned to Fyn and Sasha, who approached warily. Fyn was still carrying the large crate of shards on his shoulder.

“This is Fyn, Dad,” Cassia said awkwardly. “The drake I’ve been traveling with. He’s saved my life, several times. So did Sasha.”

Micah shook hands with both of them rather solemnly. A pale blush spread across Fyn’s cheeks. “She saved mine more,” he said quickly.

“I’m here to end this war,” Sasha told Micah bluntly. “Cassia thinks we can by making another Treatise. You helped make the first one. Is she right?”

Micah cast a glance at the crate of shards. Cassia wasn’t sure how much time Tilana had had to tell him the plan.

“I hope so,” was all he would say before putting a hand on Cassia’s good shoulder and steering her, Fyn, and Sasha inside.

“All the Archpriests were pulled here by their gods to command the siege,” Micah told them as they went. “We aren’t sure what our gods are planning. Most of them are still angry at our role in sealing the Treatise year after year and treat us as little more than puppets. They seize control of any legion that gets in a pitched enough battle. We’ve held our positions well, except against Death’s agents. We’ve fought two. You’ve been removed from the field, so that’s one. Are there more?”

They were inside now, in the tall, ancient brass spire that speared upward in the center of Promise, where the Council sat for sessions.

“No,” Sasha said. “And there won’t be. My mother is the leader of the Seekers, the woman who first stole the Treatise. She made us Death’s servants, unwilling, and it took a sacrifice of blood. I killed her when Fyn freed me.”

Micah’s eyes widened. “The general of the human army is dead?”

Sasha nodded. “She claimed she was the agent of the gods, specially chosen to lead the war against the godformed. I didn’t believe her until I saw the power the gods had given her. They want the godformed gone, but now that my mother is dead, they’ll be vulnerable, open to influence.”

She paused, searching for words. “I don’t know how to explain it in your language. The gods… reflect us. All of us. Even you godformed, though you don’t give your loyalty to them. What my mother has done in their name… every elder of the Nikabo could have told you direct intervention is not in their nature, unlike your gods.”

“You think Iona was influencing them more than she should be able to,” Cassia said with sudden understanding.

“I don’t know for sure,” Sasha said curtly. “I’m not an expert on gods. I hardly thought about them before my mother arrived claiming they gave her powers. All I know is, the gods reflect humanity, and there’s no way all you godformed want to annihilate yourselves.”

Micah was silent for a moment. “Did Iona ever say how she got her powers?”

“The way she told it, she visited the Temple of Peace a while after the drakes transferred her to Promise. She was immediately drawn to the Treatise, so she spent the next two years working to get transferred to the Temple itself just so she could get a chance to touch it.” Sasha’s voice was just mocking enough to cast doubt on her mother’s tale.

“The timeline doesn’t add up from what her husband told me about when she was taken from them in Ashbourne. My guess is, she was transferred straight to the Temple and touched it by accident. Either way, she saw Change and he gave her powers and told her she needed to break the Treatise. And, supposedly, that she was destined to lead her people after everyone was free.”

“She said at first that she was tasked to break the Treatise. Not to eliminate the godformed?” Micah checked.

Sasha shrugged. “At first. We would have called her crazy if she’d led with that. By the end, half the tribe was saying she’d gone mad, behind her back. But against her and her mages, what were we going to do?”

“Of course,” Micah said soothingly, though Cassia could have told him Sasha wasn’t likely to appreciate his pity. “And with the gods egging her on, of course her ideas… escalated. It wasn’t your mother, Sasha. Your gods have wanted us dead since my grandmother made the first godformed pact with Mithrinde.”

These last words had an edge of bitterness Cassia had never heard from him before, and for the first time in a long while she noticed how stark the old gray scar across his temple was against his silver skin. Here was the man who had spent his youth fighting, who had watched his parents die to human mages. Here was the man who had dared to imprison gods to win his people peace, knowing what he was stealing from humanity.

Cassia wanted to ask him how he knew the human gods had always wanted the godformed dead, but they had reached a landing about halfway up the tower now. Two hamadryads stood guard outside a heavy oak door, and Micah went to speak with them, ending the conversation.

People were going back and forth up and down the stairs behind them, hardly sparing a glance for the little group - with Sasha wearing Tilana’s wings, it wasn’t obvious from behind that she was not an angel.

Fyn set the crate of shards down with a heavy thump. It was hard to concentrate with the vast spectrum of power still radiating from it — it was heady and thrilling.

“Is your dad always that cheerful?” Fyn asked Cassia under his breath. “We’re going to have to get the human gods to agree to something, unless we want to try and trick them again. Can we even do that with these?” He tapped the crate with his foot.

“I don’t know,” Cassia said. A stone had dropped into her stomach at Micah’s words. She’d wanted to make peace, to explain how the godformed had been desperate, and the Treatise had been the drakes’ idea, and the rest of the godformed had been tricked too. It wasn’t a good excuse, but it was the only one she had.

And if they wouldn’t agree to peace, they would have to bind them again. Cassia didn’t want to. It was that binding in the first place that had allowed the godformed to win the war against the old human kingdom. Cassia had always known after the war, the godformed had been able to return to their ancestral homes, and she’d been taught that the old human kingdom, which had been stressed to the breaking point already, had simply crumbled and the still-organized godformed had stepped in naturally.

Now that lie was laughably obvious. The godformed had been returning home, but as conquerers. Out of necessity, maybe, and maybe in practice humans and godformed lived equally in places like Aisen and Larisen, but that didn’t make it better in Selachen or Raynen, or right here in Promise, where she had seen how humans were treated anywhere from second class to little more than slaves. Gods knew she didn’t want them to have to go back to that.

But the alternative was standing in front of her people and telling them they would have to fight for their very existence again.

A hot anger licked up the front of her chest. How dare the human gods judge them deserving of death. How dare they tell her that following the goddess she had loved all her life, holding this power she had dreamed of all her life, was somehow wrong.

The surge of anger startled her, and fire flared from the mote of Selach she had so carefully kept quiet. She pressed it down again quickly. Yes, the elemental gods weren’t perfect. Yes, Selach’s cruelty, Mithrinde’s careful lies, and all the gods’ possession of their followers were all examples of the gods taking their power too far. That was what the new Treatise was for. Things had to change, but that didn’t mean losing everything.

“Can you hear me, Duality?” Cassia muttered. She had never tried praying to the human gods, but maybe they would hear her just like Mithrinde did. “I know you’re angry. But we’re human too.”

At that moment, Sasha appeared at Cassia’s shoulder. “Are you ready for this?”

Cassia hesitated. “No,” she admitted.

“Good,” Sasha said without pause. “Maybe I can believe you’re not planning something behind my back.”

Cassia blinked and opened her mouth to assure Sasha she wasn’t, but Sasha cut her off with a laugh.

“I was kidding. Mostly. But there’s something I should warn you about. Though I like you, I’m not on your side. I can’t be.”

She spread her palms in an open gesture.“You don’t want a war where we kill all the godformed. I don’t want a war where a bunch of us humans are forced into power by our gods and then killed in action, and when I’m in a good mood, I don’t want all the godformed dead either. Great. I’m ready to help you parlay for peace with our gods, and if you want to bind your own gods that’s your business. But if you haven’t started thinking about what happens after the new Treatise, or what happens if the human gods don’t agree to peace, then you need to start. ”

Cassia understood. “If they don’t agree, will you help us bind them again? So you can be free?”

Sasha flinched, her fingers brushing the wings on her back, and Cassia immediately regretted her words. Standing there, Cassia did not see a fellow teenager or a friend, but a Nikabo warrior.

“And have everything go back to the way it was before?” Sasha said finally. “I don’t think so. I’ve seen all kinds of puppetmasters, human and godformed. At least these ones are fighting for us. And if I go back to our gods and trade my freedom to liberate my people, it will have been my choice. No one else’s. Whatever happens, Cassia, I am grateful to you and Fyn for giving me that chance.”

Cassia pressed her lips together and nodded tightly. Gods, we can’t afford to mess this up.

She was spared having to answer Sasha when the guards outside the ornate wooden doors slammed their spears against the ground and stood at attention, cutting off Micah’s whispered conversation with them.

A moment later, the doors swung inward and Micah beckoned them all into the chamber to stand before the Council of Councils, the seat of the seven Archpriests of the Orders of the Seven Gods.