“You have to leave her.”
Nuru swallowed rising fear. “No.”
“If the Birds see you with a viper around your neck, they’ll kill us and her. If you love the snake, you have to leave her.”
Nuru darted an angry glare at the scarred girl. What the fuck do you know about love?
Efra was more like the snake. Though, come to think of it, sometimes Nuru felt like Isabis was aware of her beyond being a source of warmth on a cold night. Not that Isabis loved or cared for her, but at least the snake seemed to acknowledge that they existed together, depended on each other somewhat.
Not Efra.
Efra could walk out of here and never look back. A week from now she probably wouldn’t remember Nuru’s name.
You’re being unfair. She saved your life.
And she cried after Chisulo’s death. That meant something, right?
Efra tugged Nuru toward the stairs. “Come on.”
She was, Nuru hated to admit, right. She was always fucking right. Isabis would draw attention. Even if the Birds weren’t specifically looking for them, wandering around with a viper curled around your neck was too much.
Grinding her teeth, eyes stinging, Nuru allowed herself to be pulled up the steps.
“I’ll find you,” she called into the dark. “I’ll come back.”
She swallowed her grief. Isabis was more than a snake. She was the last connection to Nuru’s old life. “Stay safe,” she whispered.
“No one is going to wander into a dark basement and mess with a deadly snake,” said Efra. “We on the other hand are going to get our skulls smashed in by Birds. She’s safer without us.”
She probably meant it to be comforting.
Already Nuru missed Isabis, the cold emotionless solidity of the reptile mind. So like Efra. Kill for a purpose. Kill because you’re annoyed. Both were capable of doing either.
The air grew thick as they reached the ground floor, smoke clawing at their throats, the heavy stench of scorched stone. Heat sucked the moisture from Nuru’s flesh, the air from her lungs. The sky, a bloody wound of cancerous smoke stained red by the occluded sun, clawed at her senses. The world felt wrong. Crushingly wrong.
All my fault.
Growers were forbidden from leaving the ring. It was in the Book. Why did she ever think things could improve?
Nothing ever gets better. Not until you’re dead, was the Grower joke that wasn’t a joke. A cowardly mocking of the nahual claim that if they led good lives, if they were meek and obedient, they’d be reborn closer to the gods. Flakes of ash danced in the air, swaying like drunken Dirts, piled in ankle-deep drifts in the streets. Footprints cut weaving paths. After a lifetime of bare feet on gritty stone, each step felt strangely soft.
Nuru stared at a long mound of ash, mind working at the mystery of what caused it. She realized it was a corpse, still and buried.
A woman, bloodstained thobe torn and filthy, sprinted past. Three men, gaunt and stripped near naked, chased after her, hooting. They reached for her with wrinkled hands, fingers like leather. Hungry eyes, feral. They knew what they wanted.
Nuru made to step out, to stop them, to slow them so the woman might escape.
Efra dragged her back into the shadow of the entrance, clamping a hard hand over her mouth. “Don’t,” she breathed into Nuru’s ear. “I’ll have to kill them.”
She will. She’ll kill them all.
Nuru knew a moment’s hesitation. Fight free. Catch the men’s attention. Let Efra do what Efra did. Make fucking sure they died. But then she remembered the bodies Efra left in the Crafter’s Ring. Choked cold, still as stone. Eyes wide. Blood and bone and brains.
The hesitation cost her the chance, and the men were gone, hooted cries fading away.
“They’re going to—”
“Better her than us,” snapped Efra. “Later, when your blood is thick with whatever it is you need to shred the veil, we can crush them. Now, we have to run.”
Gripping Nuru’s hand tight, Efra pulled her into the street, away from where the men went. Something long and sinuous twisted through the smoke far above. Like an unseen snake parting tall grass, its passing roiled the clouds. As long as ten men lying head to toe and as wide as three, smaller shapes flitted and darted about it. They reminded Nuru of those tiny birds that always harassed hawks.
Impossible, she thought.
With no narcotics in her blood, the veil remained an impenetrable wall. She couldn’t see it, much less thin or reach through it. Was there another sorcerer nearby? She couldn’t imagine what the thing could have been. Not even the largest constrictors were that big. Was it Loa, nahualli, or something else, something from outside?
Through Nuru, Mother Death gained entrance to the Last City. What if other spirits, demons and dead gods, also found some way in?
This is the end.
She remembered thinking that.
The city will fall, everyone will die.
It was all her fault.
Growers ran past, darting terrified glances over their shoulders, eyes wide with terror. Not chasing, but fleeing. More came. Scores. Crammed shoulder to shoulder, they filled the street. A young man stumbled and fell, clawing at those nearest. He went down, disappeared from sight. Without breaking pace, the crowd surged over him.
The Hummingbird Guard followed, tight formations of red leather armour, ebony shields, and blood-spattered cudgels. They smashed bones and joints, caved skulls, and left death in their wake. Where the Growers screamed in rage and fear and fought like cornered animals, the Birds worked in grim silence. Nahual of Father War, The Left Hand, they were priests of Bastion’s God of Terror.
A nightmare of violence in crimson armour, blackened by blood-thickened ash, the Birds did their god proud. The wet slap of wood on flesh, a litany of prayer. The splintering crack of bone, a benediction. The screams of the broken, a song of worship offered in exaltation.
Without warning, Efra dragged Nuru into the street, bulling her way into the mob.
Nuru’s world became the thunder of raw sucking breath, the stench of panic and sweat. Shoulders jostled her, an elbow catching her on the cheekbone. When she staggered, dazed, Efra kept her up, kept her moving. Sodden pulp squishing between her bare toes, sharp stabbing pain in the arch of her foot. Glancing down she caught a glimpse of ruined skull, bent at an odd angle, eyes gaping lifeless wide, as she stepped on the face.
Choking ash and smoke. Too hot to breathe, nostrils clogged shut. Sparks fell from a flaming sky, burnt holes in thobes, left scorched wounds in flesh. A savage crush of gaunt bodies. Each struggling inhalation hurt. It felt like her lungs were filled with silt.
The gods burn the world.
Sin Eater would purify the wayward Growers with fire, cleanse them of their Dirt lives.
Helpless and lost, Nuru allowed Efra to drag her through the crowd. The scarred woman screamed insults and threats at those around them or at Nuru. Sometimes Efra shoved people aside, drove viscous little punches under ribs, jabbed fingers in eyes, or did whatever she deemed necessary to keep moving forward.
Efra kicked a man in the back of the knee. When his leg buckled, she put a hand on his shoulder and used him to propel herself past.
A flash of black caught Nuru’s eye, the rectangle tattooed on the inside of Efra’s right wrist.
Smoking Mirror’s mark.
Father Discord. God of Strife. The Enemy of Both Sides. She was perfect for him, an unstoppable force of chaos.