Jael’s wingbeats were clipped with fury, anything but smooth as he returned to Eretz. He practically tore his way through the portal, wishing he could damage it, damage something. Akiva.Yes. See the bastard shot full of arrows like an archery-range dummy, dancing from the Westway gibbet for all to come and goggle at.
He looked around uneasily. Damn the bastard, he could be anywhere. Had he preceded Jael through the portal? Would he come behind? By the terms of their agreement, the moment Jael passed back into Eretz, Akiva was free to kill him in any manner otherthan igniting the suppurating handprint on Jael’s chest. That left him a lot of options.
And Jael had just as many. More, because he wasn’t held back by honor, which does shorten a list of ways to kill your enemy.
It was not lost on him that his very survival depended upon his enemy having honor, but this did not in any way oblige him to play by the same rules. On the contrary, it was critical that he draw first blood. He would not be able to rest until the bastard was dead.
Once through the portal, Jael didn’t stay to oversee the tedious return of his army but flew straight on to camp in the center of a phalanx of guards, with archers wide at their flanks in case Akiva should make an appearance.
The landscape here was much the same as the one they’d just left behind: dun-colored mountains and nothing to see. The camp was in the foothills, some half hour distant. In a field of grasses flattened by the wind, rows of tents stood orderly in a rough quadrangle with guard towers at its corners, manned by archers in case of aerial onslaught. It was a skeleton defense. Up here, there was nothing to defend against. The bulk of Jael’s forces were deployed south and east, hunting down the rebels.
And how had they fared? He should know soon enough.
Sooner even than expected.
The camp was scarcely in his sights when saw what awaited him on the piked palisade.
Karou saw it, too, though from a greater distance, and she couldn’t stifle her gasp. From the palisade, billowing in the wind, hung a banner that had been white and was now fouled with blood and ash. She knew it at once. Its slogan was clear, even if the wolf-head emblem in its center was… concealed. Victory and Vengeance, it read, in the chimaera tongue. It was the White Wolf’s gonfalon—not the copy he’d hung at the kasbah but the original, plundered as it must have been from Loramendi after the fall.
But it wasn’t the gonfalon that had made Karou gasp. If the banner alone hung here, it might be interpreted as a sign that the White Wolf had conquered and overtaken this camp. But with what dangled in front of it, obscuring the wolf emblem, no such misconception was possible.
Karou thought that she had managed her hope. She’d believed, flying back through the cut, that she was prepared for the possibility—the likelihood—of bad news.
Delusion.
Sometime since leaving their comrades behind, she had begun to believe, without admitting it to herself, that all would be well. Because it had to be. Didn’t it?
But it wasn’t. All was not well.
Also once white, and white no longer, by a noose around its neck, swung the stained and broken body of Thiago.
And here was the answer, sooner than expected, to the question of what had happened when they left the battle raging in the Adelphas, and made the hard decision to complete their own vital mission before returning.
Did I do enough?Karou had asked herself then, already knowing the answer. Did I do everything I could?
No.
And their comrades had lost. And died.
Akiva caught her and held her, and they didn’t speak but watched, helpless, moving in the air with the steady tide of Akiva’s wingbeats, as Jael landed before the corpse of the White Wolf and laughed.
ABSENCE
Karou went to the body, after Jael was gone. Just for a moment, just in case. Drawing close, she remembered the last time this flesh had bled out. Her own small knife had killed him then, and the neat wound was easily knit back up to prepare the vessel for Ziri’s soul.
This wound was… not neat.
Look away.
This death had not been easy, and Karou’s mind screamed for the brown-eyed orphan who once upon a time had trailed her around Loramendi, shy and gangly as a fawn. Whom she’d kissed once on the forehead, and only remembered it because he’d told her. Blushing.
Ziri.And she knew the feel of his soul from when she’d put it in this body, and hope, hope would just never learn.
Of course his soul would be gone. It could never have survived this long in the open, or such a journey. Of course it had evanesced. But Karou still opened her senses to it, because she couldn’t not try. Did I do everything I could?And still she held her breath, as invisible tears tracked down her invisible cheeks. And still she hoped.
Absence has presence, sometimes, and that was what she felt. Absence like crushed-dead grass where something has been and is no longer. Absence where a thread has been ripped, ragged, from a tapestry, leaving a gap that can never be mended.
That was all she felt.
THE SEVERAL DAYS’ EMPEROR
Mood incrementally improved, Jael bulled his way toward his pavilion, trailing his retinue of guards. The soldiers in the watchtowers had saluted him on approach, and one leapt down to glide up short and stride at his side.
“Report,” Jael barked, removing his helmet and tossing it to him. “The rebels?”
“We trapped them in the Adelphas, sir—”
Jael whirled on him. “ Sir?” he repeated. He didn’t recognize the soldier. “Am I not your emperor as well as your general?”
The soldier bowed his head, flustered. “Eminence?” he ventured. “My lord emperor? We cornered the rebels in the Adelphas. Misbegotten and revenants together, if you can credit it.”
Oh, Jael could credit it. He gave out a hiss of a laugh.
“I’m not lying, sir,” said the soldier, mistaking him. Again, sir.
Jael’s eyes narrowed to slits. “And?”
“They put up a valiant defense,” said the soldier, and Jael read the rest in his smirk. A valiant defense was a doomed defense. It was what he expected, especially after the sight of the White Wolf’s corpse, and it was all he needed to know for now. Jael’s blood was thrumming with pent-up frustration, and his muscles were rage-tense. He’d been meek as a rabbit—a neutered rabbit—for days in that infernal palace, not daring to injure his reputation by answering his own hungers. And all for what? To be chased away like a skulking dog? He hadn’t even dared slay the Fallen for fear of defying the bastard Akiva’s prohibition of bloodshed.
He looked around for his steward. “Where is Mechel?”
“I don’t know, my lord emperor. Can I assist you?”
Jael gave a grudging grunt. “Send me a woman,” he said, and turned to go.
“No need, sir. There’s one already in your tent, waiting for you.” Still that smirk. “A victory celebration.”