PERSUASION
An angel lay dying in the mist. Once upon a time.
And the devil should have finished him off without a second thought.
But she hadn’t. And if she had? Karou had wondered it a hundred different ways. She’d even wished for it, in her blackest grief at the kasbah, when all she could see was the death that had come of her mercy.
If she’d killed Akiva that day, or even just let him die, the war would have ground on unbroken. Another thousand years? Maybe. But she hadn’t, and it hadn’t. “The age of wars is over,” Akiva had just said, and even as Karou saw what she saw and no possibility of mistake, and even as her whole being gathered itself into a scream, her heart defied it. The age of wars was over, and Akiva would not die like this.
The blade entered his heart.
But Karou’s scream was never born. Another took its place, but first: a sound. A fraction of an instant after the knife sunk into Akiva’s chest… a thunk. It wasn’t a flesh sound. Karou’s head completed its turn and her gaze scribbled a wild pattern, taking in what she saw.
There stood Akiva, unmoved.
No stagger step, no blood, and no knife hilt protruding from his heart. Frantic, Karou blinked, and she wasn’t the only one, though none could experience the same despair she had felt an instant earlier or the joy that overtook her now when she spotted the blade, sunk into the wall beyond Akiva. None could know quite the same flavor of wonder as she did, either, as the truth took shape, but everyone in the chamber tasted some version of it.
Haxaya spoke first. “Invisible to death,” she murmured, because there was no mistaking what had just happened. Akiva hadn’t moved, and the trajectory didn’t lie.
The knife had passed through him.
It was Karou’s gaze he held in that moment, and she saw that he was half-stunned, half-haunted. She wanted to ask him: Had he done this? He must have. No one knew, not even he, what he was capable of.
Razgut had collapsed, wailing and beating his fists to his own brow. Two strides and Karou was to him, yanking him to the floor, checking the bedclothes for more weapons. The Fallen didn’t even seem to register her presence.
The Dominion looked wary but wonderstruck, too, in the presence of Akiva, and Karou didn’t think she needed to worry about any strikes coming from them now. She didn’t relax, though. Akiva’s life had flashed through her peripheral vision in a streak. She was ready to be out of here, and all that remained was persuasion. Her plan, in all its simplicity.
At last they came to it.
Once more, Akiva faced his uncle. Jael was quiet, his face pinched and pale as his horrendous mouth quivered. In the face of such power, he had lost even the courage to sneer.
Akiva had never even drawn his swords, and so his hands were free. He reached toward his uncle now and laid one flat upon his chest. The gesture looked almost friendly, and Jael’s eyes were swiveling in their sockets again, trying to grasp what was happening to him. It didn’t take long.
Karou watched Akiva’s hand, and she remembered the moment, in Paris, when she had come to Brimstone’s doorway, out of sorts from dragging elephant tusks across the city, and had seen, for the first time, a handprint scorched into the wood. When she’d traced it with her finger, ash had flaked and fallen. And she remembered Kishmish charred and dying in her hands, his heartbeat slowing from panic into death, and how the wail of fire sirens had peeled her out of her grief—out of that grief and into a greater one, as she had raced from her apartment and through the streets to Brimstone’s door to find it engulfed in flame. Blue fire, infernal, and in its nimbus, the silhouette of wings.
All around the world, at the same moment precisely, dozens of doors, all marked with black handprints, had been devoured by the same unnatural fire.
Akiva had done it. All seraphim were creatures of fire, but igniting the marks from afar was a working of his own, and had made it possible for him to destroy every last one of Brimstone’s doorways in an instant, cutting his enemy off without warning.
When Karou had seen the blistered skin on Ten’s corpse back at the Kirin caves, the mark of Liraz’s hand scorched clearly into her chest, this had been her thought.
Smoke effused from beneath Akiva’s palm. Jael likely smelled it before he felt the heat eating through his clothing, though perhaps not, as he wore not armor but the pageant robes he’d dreamt up to awe humanity. Whatever it was, the heat or the smoke, Karou saw the understanding light his eyes, and the panic as he struggled to get out from under that pressing hand. She hoped Haxaya wouldn’t slit his throat by accident.
His scream was a wavering wail, and Karou watched him as Akiva stepped back. There it was: burned into Jael’s chest, reeking and charred, the black already peeling away to reveal the raw meat beneath. A handprint in flesh.
Persuasion.
“Go home,” said Akiva. “Or I will ignite it. Wherever you are, wherever I am. It doesn’t matter. Unless you do as I say, I will burn you to nothing. There won’t even be ash to show where you stood.”
Haxaya let Jael go and stepped aside. Her knife wasn’t needed any longer, and she wiped the blade clean on the emperor’s own white sleeve. He slumped as if his legs couldn’t hold him, pain and rage and impotence congealing on his countenance. He seemed to be grappling with his situation, trying to understand all that he had lost. “And what then?” he finally burst out. “When I’m back in Eretz wearing your mark? You’ll just burn me then. Why should I do what you want now?”
Akiva’s voice was steady. “I give you my word. Do this. Go home now. Take your army with you and nothing else. Make no chaos. Just go, and I will never ignite the mark. I promise you that.”
Jael gave a disbelieving snort. “You promise. You’ll let me live, just like that.”
Karou watched Akiva as he made his reply. He’d kept calm from the first moment Jael burst into the room, and had managed to conceal the depths of hatred this man stoked in him. “That’s not what I said.”
Was he thinking of Hazael? Of Festival? Of a future they were in the process, even now, of averting, when guns would have reshaped Eretz into something even more brutal than its citizens had yet known?
“I won’t burnyou.” He let his opinion of his uncle show on his face. “That’s my only promise, and it doesn’t mean you get to live.” He let his uncle’s foul imagination do the work. “Maybe you’ll have a chance.” A thin smile. “Maybe you’ll see me coming.” He leaned into the silence and let it lengthen, and then, just like that, he vanished. “But probably not.”
Karou followed his lead and vanished, too. Virko and Haxaya an instant later, as Akiva threw his glamour over the pair of them. Jael and the Dominion saw shadows move toward the window and then those were gone and there was nothing left here but a broken emperor’s raw breathing, a mad monster’s ragged sobbing, and two score soldiers standing quiet, not knowing quite what to do with themselves.
CHOSEN
He was one of twelve in the Long Ago, and glory had been his.
She was chosen one of twelve. Oh, glory.
Out of thousands did they rise, candidates come from every reach of the realm, young and full of hope, full of pride, full of dreams. So beautiful they were, all of them, and strong and of every hue from palest pearl to blackest jet, and reds and creams and browns and even—from the Usko Remarroth, where it was ever twilight— blue. This was what seraphim were then: a world’s richest offering, as jewels shaken out on a tapestry. Some came clad in feathers and others in silk, some in dark metals and some in skins, and they wore gold, and they wore ink, and their hair was braids or it was curls, it was golden, black, or green, or it was scraped to the scalp in a pattern of flame.