“We traveled here to offer the Colony’s help,” Priest explains. “We have skills that can mitigate the impact of the Touched, which would force them to think twice before attacking. We can prevent thousands of deaths, yours and theirs.”
“Can everyone do what you just did?” Cullan asks. He glances at his soldiers and raises a hand to those slinking forward.
“No,” Priest replies. “Few of us, in fact. Our Touches vary and at the Colony we won’t use our magic to harm, but that doesn’t mean our power is without influence.”
“Could you have incinerated all my men?”
“Every one.” Priest holds the colonel’s eyes. “I won’t, but there are those beyond your gates with fewer qualms. The Fortress decimated packs, killed families, targeted innocents including children.”
“We’re short a gate,” Cullan mutters, glancing back at the white smoke rising from the ruins. “Mikel didn’t accept your offer because there were conditions,” he speculates. “Let me guess. Welcome the Colony. Open our doors to all People, stop destroying the Touched, no forced assimilation. Am I close?”
“More than I asked for,” Priest admits, “but it would be acceptable.”
“Mikel refused and decided you were subversive,” Cullan concludes. At Priest’s nod, the colonel shakes his head, hands riveted to his hips. “Fuck!” he shouts, kicking at the road. “Fuck, Rimma. Why’d you kill him? Why not talk to someone? Talk to me. I can’t let you go. You murdered the fucking commander. They’re going to fucking hang you.”
“You can’t kill her,” Priest says.
“You think so?” Cullan barks back. “Just watch.”
“Because of Angel.” Priest looks at me as he explains. “I believe she and Rimma are the broken halves of the same woman. If you destroy one you may destroy the other.”
I hardly know who’s more confused by his statement, Cullan, Rimma, or me. As my sister studies me, her gray eyes gleam with the gold of the fields. We’re mirrors, reflecting each other so precisely that none can tell us apart. Except light benders. How could we be one person if there’s a difference? If Priest, Mag and Shy see a difference? It’s impossible.
“Where’s Angel?” Cullan’s eyes sweep back toward the stronghold.
“Here,” Priest says. “Unless you have a refined Touch, you see only one woman at a time. Rimma holds the more powerful presence.”
Shaking his head, the colonel sighs. “You expect me to believe this?”
“Have you ever seen us together?” Rimma asks quietly. “Ever?”
My sister’s acceptance of the possibility frightens me. “We’re not the same, Rimma,” I tell her, though she pretends not to hear. Priest acknowledges me with a reassuring smile, but behind his eyes, I see the pain of his revelation. My mind tumbles backwards, through my brief history, searching for my own childhood memories, those unshared by my sister. We are twins, inseparable as children. Wouldn’t that explain why my recollections could also be hers? Not until the People slaughtered our father at the gates of Heaven do I remember my own separate choices, my individual actions. Tears bloom in my eyes. “No, Rimma, it isn’t possible,” I cry.
Cullan’s straight brows knit together as he answers Rimma’s query, “I don’t…I don’t remember.”
Frantic shouting erupts at the gate, and for a moment, I think it’s the People beginning their attack. “Outriders, Colonel,” a man yells back. Soldiers kick smoking timbers out of the way, enough that the spooked horses can walk through. The men ride through the gate single file, the first outrider frowning at the ruins, the stock of his loaded crossbow resting on a thigh.
When the second rider appears through the smoke, Priest starts pressing toward the gate. Soldiers shout and brandish their weapons, drawn bows trailing him. Cullan follows steps behind, bellowing orders not to shoot. Rimma lets out a shocked cry. On the second horse, his long braids hanging over his chest, head hung, hands bound to the pommel, Tannis rides through the gap in the wall.
“Where’s Chantri?” Priest yells, pushing through the soldiers. “Where is she?”
“Chantri!” Rimma cries when the third man, an outrider breaks through the smoke, bow on his back, a string of horses behind him.
“Tannis, where’s Chantri?” Priest begs the man, taking the reins.
Tannis raises his eyes, confused by the familiar voices calling Chantri’s name, his bruised face wet, mouth hanging open to breathe. Cullan slows, hands lifting to his head as the name worms through his skin. “My cousin?”
A sharp sob erupts from Tannis’s throat as he reels on the saddle. “They killed her while she washed her face.”
3
1
~Rimma~
“Fuck!” Cullan rocks back, a hand plastered to his jaw as he stares first at Tannis, then at Priest. Angel stands helpless, choking back a sob. She staggers a step forward, wanting to comfort Tannis but without the means, unseen.
My cry for Chantri withers as my stomach curdles, the weight of her death pressing on my chest. I want to wail for my friend, but no tears come. I’m receding, fading into my lurking doom, watching the broken world as if I stand on the rim of a prophetic dream that’s lost its cohesion, that makes no sense. How is she any different from the Touched I’ve slain? How do we weigh the lives we’ve stolen against each other? How do I justify my very existence? I’m one of these soldiers; I’m Cullan, except he’s only now discovering what I’ve known all along…we are all so broken.
Angel’s hands cover her mouth, holding the myriad facets of terror inside. Her invisibility only grinds into her bones the possibility that she doesn’t exist. The broken world pares us both of who we thought ourselves to be; it flays our souls.
The soldiers look at all of us in confusion, unsure what the colonel expects of them. If Mikel were alive, he’d show us no mercy. I, for one, deserve a noose no less than the murderers before me.
“We found them a half day’s ride from here,” the lead outrider explains, though no one’s asked him a question. “Camping in the east ravine beyond Amarion’s and the new ranches. We couldn’t leave them there.”
“So you killed the cripple,” Cullan finishes the thought.
“Had to, Sir,” the man replies. “She could’ve been dangerous.”
“Washing her face?” the colonel shouts.
The outrider balks, confused. “We always kill the cripples. Orders.”
“Fuck!” Cullan bellows, his head back.
“Colonel?” The outrider peers at Priest’s withered arm askance.
“She was my cousin!” Cullan shouts at the blinking man. His chest heaving, he draws his knife, strides up to Tannis and saws through the rope binding his hands to the saddle
.
He pauses, his eyes fixed on the horse rather than the grieving man astride its saddle, his voice falling to a private whisper few are close enough to hear. “You were here with her last time…when I came down to meet her.” He inhales softly. “Were you…?”
“I loved her...” Tannis nods, his face twisting. “She was pregnant.”
“Fuck,” Cullan breathes, dropping his head. He sucks in two slow breaths before he lifts his eyes to the man. “Did you bury her?”
“As best I could. I didn’t have much time.”
“We were in a hurry, Colonel,” the outrider explains.
“Are those your horses?” Cullan asks Priest, indicating several horses on a lead.
“Two of them,” Priest informs him.
“Give them the horses,” he instructs the outriders and faces Priest. “Leave Rimma here and go.”
“I won’t leave her to your justice,” Priest tells the man. Though he speaks of me, his eyes embrace my sister.
“Because of this business with Angel?” Cullan shakes his head in disbelief.
Priest nods, but the colonel fails to notice; something’s caught his eye. He stiffens and pivots toward the stronghold. I follow his gaze. A rider barrels toward us up the old road. Every one of us knows what the messenger heralds.
“We’re under attack,” Cullan shouts, spinning to find his officers. “Gideon, you’re here with your company until Khiry gets back. Hold the gap.” He jogs for his horse, mounts up and glances back at Priest. “I can’t promise anything, but if you use your Touch to prevent a slaughter, I’ll make every effort to grant to your wish.”
“And Rimma?” Priest asks.
“She stays!” The colonel reins his horse in a circle, the creature snorting and skittering, ready to run. “I won’t take any action that harms Angel. That’s the best I can offer,” he shouts. Heeling his horse, he charges down the road toward the stronghold followed by his other mounted men.
“I’m not fighting for them,” Tannis says, no give in his voice, his pain surrendering to an expression of loathing as impenetrable as stone.
“You have other tasks, my friend.” Priest rests his hand on the horse’s neck. “Bury Chantri properly. Then ride for the Colony. Help them prepare for the worst, and we’ll see what comes of this.”
“I’m sorry,” I say to Tannis, “about everything.” I’m unable to approach him, my despair denying me the comfort of shared grief. My lips work to say more, to accept my culpability, to explain how I’ve cleaved deeper rifts in an already broken world and brought us to this place. My fault, my sin, my blame, death’s devil inside me, everything I do warped and twisted into destruction, but I finds no words.
Instead, I address Priest, “I intend to fight… to end this.” My sister faces me, a mingling of confusion, fear, and resignation in her red-rimmed eyes. “Let’s get this over with, Angel.”
With a nod to Priest, Tannis reins his horse around and the soldiers wave him through the gap.
Smoke rises from somewhere on the other side of the stronghold. I witness the dark shadows of his Touch lurking in Priest’s eyes and understand why the soldiers don’t protest as we mount and ride for the lower city and war.
**
The market square by the south gate churns, jammed with men and women, carts clattering over stone pavers, horses rearing in the press, weapons swinging incautiously as soldiers run to and from the walls. On our descent from the stronghold, we pass women and children scurrying for its towering walls. Here in the lower city, Forerunners armed with kitchen knives, pitchforks, hammers, and axes stride off in small gangs while officers shout orders over the din, dispersing soldiers to the wall’s far reaches. Refugees still stumble in through the wicket in the gate, many bloodied, all pressed from behind by their shrieking fellows.
At the edge of the square, a soldier blinks at Priest’s arm, stuttering his surprise but too busy to waylay us for questioning. Doctors and surgeons have commandeered a row of shops, the wounded hauled in through open doors, crying or moaning or deathly silent. The screams from inside curdle my blood. Gore-smeared litter-bearers have enough to do here already, and I wonder what will happen when wagons of injured and dying arrive from farther up the walls. Where will they stack the dead?
The stink of too many people and animals, of piss and shit and opened bellies assaults my nose. Smoke wafts over us from cook-fires set up at the far end of the square. More smoke blows over the wall from the outer city as flames spread into a roaring inferno. Biters wield their Touch, softening us with terror before they break our flesh and bones. Women dump buckets of water into barrels by the gate, hand-pumps flapping metal handles without rest.
Casks of arrows and bolts line the gallows’ platform where Cullan meets with his officers, bent over a makeshift table, a door resting on two barrels. When Cullan sees us, he waves us over. We climb the steps to the gallows, Priest staring at the nooses hanging behind the colonel’s head. Cullan twists, following our eyes, but takes no time to comment.
“We have the other gates covered,” he shouts over the noise. “They’ll burn them, but they’ll find only crops when they come through. We’ve set up perimeters with bowmen. It’s the best we can do until we’ve handled the…Touched.” His eyes flicker up only briefly. “We’ve got scouts on the stronghold who’ll raise the alarm if we see ladders going up or if we need reinforcements at any of the gates. Provided we can see them at all. I need you here, Priest.” He raises his face to the gate and outer city beyond. “The outlying farms are lost, but we need to hold this gate or the Fortress is—”
Cullan’s mouth still moves, but I can’t hear his words. The market is locked in silence, all movement rolling to a bewildered stop as the people gape at each other in terror. Priest spins and the shouting starts, the Touch peeled back. Now we hear the clang of steel, men shouting in the middle of the square behind us. Arrows flick into bodies and crack against walls. A woman screams as a bolt punches through her sternum. Priest clenches his jaw and the air ripples, Biters leaping from invisibility, reflected in the daylight.
“Stay here,” I shout at Angel, and run to the platform’s corner, swinging my bow into my hands. I aim, count, and strike a bowman down, cock, load, and shoot. Priest climbs a ladder to the wall-walk as he keeps the fight fair, everyone visible. A bolt slashes past me, cracking through a soldier’s skull by the wall. I yank the rope, cocking my bow, load, and skewer the Biter with the crossbow who’s trying for me again. Dropping my bow, I jump from the platform, driving my dagger into a man who’s stabbing a litter-bearer. He spins, whipping his blade an inch over my head, expecting a taller opponent. I drive my blade in again, deeper, jabbing until he falls.