Hope and Red (40 page)

“And you thought you could convince them of that?” There was sympathy in Hope's eyes.

“I was a fool.” Brigga Lin's face grew dark. “They called me a heretic. Spit on me. Cut me. I barely escaped with my life.”

“My teacher trained me in secret for eight years,” Hope said quietly. “When his brothers found out what he was doing, they attacked us. He made me swear not to fight them. He said it was the natural consequence for his actions, and he accepted it with peace in his heart.” She put her hand on Brigga Lin's arm. “I am sorry for your suffering. But it was you who were in the wrong, just as I was, by transgressing their rules. And this was your consequence.”

“Transgressing
their
rules?” Brigga Lin's eyes blazed. “It is they who have transgressed the rules of life. When I told them women could become even more powerful biomancers than men, it was not a surprising revelation to them. The council already
knew
. But they would rather forgo that power than let women into the order. The Council of Biomancery is weak and stupid and conscienceless. Surely you know this. You must have seen what they do out there in the world to innocent people, or you would not have sworn vengeance on them. They are a blight on the entire empire.”

“You're just going to kill them all, then?” asked Red. “Every biomancer in the empire?”

“If that is what it takes to change things,” said Brigga Lin. “Adapt or die.
That
is the rule of life.”

“And how in hells do you plan to do it?”

“They are all gathered in the palace as we speak for the annual council meeting. That's why I was here. To present my findings.” She turned to Hope. “The meeting ends tomorrow and they scatter back out into the empire. But if we strike tonight, we have a chance of wiping out every last one of them.”

“Hope, you're not actually listening to this talk, are you?” demanded Red. But he could see it in her eyes. She was listening.

“Centuries ago, Burness Vee and Selk the Brave worked together, biomancer and Vinchen.” Brigga Lin leaned closer to Hope. “They
built
this empire. Together, they were unstoppable. Between us, we have a chance to take the palace. To correct the course of the empire. To make it
better
. Tonight!”

“It's suicide, Hope,” said Red.

“No,” said Brigga Lin. “At best, it is a chance at glory and righteousness. At worst, it is a just and honorable death. And what do you offer? I heard you trying to convince her to relinquish her vows. You would advise acquiescence to their corrupt power? Or cowardly retreat? Those are but the shadows of a life, base and unworthy.”

“Hope…” Red was losing this argument. Against all reason and logic, the most important argument of his life, and he was losing. “Please… I'm begging you. Come away with me. Come back to the ship with me and Sadie and Nettie and all the rest. We love you. Isn't that enough?”

Hope stared at him, and her deep blue pools truly opened. For the first time, he saw just how far down they went.

“Red, I know this is hard for you to understand, because this isn't how it is in the Circle. You talk as though my life were my own. But it has not been mine for many years. I have pledged it to uphold the honor of the empire and the Vinchen order. I must put that honor before my life. Before everything.” She reached out and pressed her hand against his cheek. “And everyone.” She let her hand drop. “I ask you to respect that.”

And that's when he knew for certain that he had lost her. Or maybe he'd never truly had her at all.

“I have always, and will always respect you.” He forced his voice to be quiet and even. “But I can't be chum and larder with you walking purposefully to your own death, no matter how just or noble. I won't.”

He stood up slowly, giving her every possible moment to stop him. To ask him to stay. Or to go with him. But she didn't.

And really, he hadn't expected her to.

30

T
hey stood before the white walls of the palace, which shone luminous in the moonlight.

“Do you wish he came with us?” asked Brigga Lin.

“No.” Hope didn't want to think about Red right now.

“He looked like he would have been helpful.”

“Yes.”

“You care for him that much?”

The question took Hope by surprise. It had been so long since she'd talked to someone who understood her formal code of honor. She'd more or less resigned herself to having her motives opaque to everyone she knew. But Brigga Lin understood. The biomancers seemed to have their own code of honor, twisted and poisonous though it might be. Brigga Lin understood why Hope hadn't asked Red to stay, though she knew he would be a valuable asset in this fight. If she had, and he said no, then she would have lost respect for him. And if she asked him and he said yes, then she would be dooming him to the same dark fate that was in store for her. She would rather reduce her own chances of success than suffer either of those two things.

“Yes, I suppose I do,” she said finally.

They stared at the guards on top of the wall, who were beginning to notice the unusual pair of women looking up at them. One with black hair and dressed all in white, one with nearly white hair and dressed all in black.

“I never asked your name,” said Brigga Lin.

“I don't remember my real name. My village was massacred by a biomancer. When Hurlo the Cunning took me in as his student, he named me after my village, so that I would never forget it, or the fate that befell it.”

“What was the name of your village?”

“Bleak Hope.”

Brigga Lin laughed, a rich, throaty sound that brought even more attention from the guards along the wall. “I realize this is scant comfort, but I cannot think of another living soul I'd rather die with than someone named Bleak Hope.”

She pulled up her hood so that it shaded her eyes. The guards appeared to be alarmed by that. With the hood up, her flowing gown looked at once like a biomancer's, and yet not at all. One of the guards said something to the others. They lifted their rifles and took aim at the two women.

“Disperse at once!” one of them shouted.

“They're preparing to fire,” said Hope.

“I'll handle it,” said Brigga Lin.

“From so high up? I thought biomancers could only transfer their power through touch.”

“Yes,” said Brigga Lin, a smile flashing beneath her hood. “I remember when that limitation was mine.” She wove her hands in an elegant pattern, the long sleeves swirling almost as if she were dancing.

“This is your last—” began the soldier.

Brigga Lin lifted her arms, splaying her fingers wide, and the rifles exploded. The soldiers screamed as they clutched at their powder-burned faces.

“Gunpowder is so nasty. I wish they wouldn't use it.” Brigga Lin moved smoothly toward the gate. She turned to regard Hope. “Once I take down this door, we will be wading upstream in a river of soldiers. More than I can possibly handle on my own. Are you ready?”

Hope looked up at the soldiers on the wall. They wailed in pain, their faces a mess of burned and smoking flesh. Something flickered within her. Pity, like she'd felt toward Ranking at the end. Victims of a biomancer. This time, a biomancer on her side…

But these men wore the same uniforms as the men who had slaughtered her village. She focused on that, and the pity was drowned out by that old, familiar darkness. So she made the choice she'd always made.

“Yes,” she said. “I am ready.”

“You made the right choice,” said Sadie after she'd let Red cry awhile. As soon as he'd come to the ship, without Hope—his face pale, his glinting cat eyes haunted—she'd shooed everyone else away. Now the two of them sat in the captain's quarters, which Hope still hadn't used. And it sounded like she might not ever.

“It doesn't
feel
like the right choice,” said Red. “It feels like I left my heart back there in that tavern.”

“I know. You're young yet. And you got that soft artistic side that'll never let you be. Can't help that. Nothing for it but some pain, I'm afraid.”

He wrapped his arms around his torso, his shoulders hunched and his head low. “It's never been this bad before. Not even with Nettie.”

“I know, boy. I know.”

They were silent, with only the occasional sniffle from Red. That sound, and being on a boat, brought old memories back to Sadie. Bittersweet thoughts of times gone by. It was surely a sign that she was getting soft in her old age, but she didn't mind. She was just glad her boy was alive. “She made the right choice, too.”

“What?” Red's eyes widened. “She's got a pissing death wish!”

“I mean about not asking you to stay with her. I'm sure she wanted to. If you're going to die, who wouldn't want to do it side by side with your own tom, right?”

“I was never her tom.”

“That so?”

“Yeah. We never tossed.”

“And you think that's what seals it? Wet bits of meat pressing on each other?”

“Well…”

“No molly I ever knew needed to get her cunt stretched to know she was sotted with her tom. Comes from deeper in, that sense of knowing.” She shrugged. “Don't get me wrong, it's sunny. I've bent many a cock in my day, and rarely regretted it. But it ain't necessary to calling something between two people love.”

“No. I suppose not.” His eyes turned to the window like they could pierce through all the buildings between them and the palace.

“If she'd asked, you would have stayed. I know it. She knew it. And when it came down to it, she loved you so much, she let you go.” She patted his back. “That's a special thing, Red, my wag. You best not forget it ever.”

They were silent again. Sadie noticed he wasn't sniffling anymore. Maybe what she said had comforted him. Maybe after years of mostly failing, she was getting good at this parenting thing.

He stood up, his shoulders back, head high. “You're right, Sadie. It's too special to leave behind.”

“Now wait, there, Red, I didn't—”

But he ran out of the cabin, and a moment later she heard his boots hit the dock.

Okay, so maybe she still mostly failed at parenting.

It was difficult to know sometimes if the choices you made were truly right. It was tempting, for example, to see early signs of success as God or the universe (the Vinchen did not differentiate) showing approval by opening the way before you.

That was how Hope felt as she and Brigga Lin made their way through the gate, across the courtyard, and into the palace keep. Soldiers by the score rushed at her, and she struck them down as if they were merely grass in the rolling meadows of Hollow Falls. The Song of Sorrows echoed in the white halls of the palace, and it wasn't long before soldiers shied away from its sound. She'd lost the blood magic on the first strike. She'd felt the sword shudder, and the gentle but persistent tug dissipated. But it hardly mattered now. There was nowhere for Teltho Kan to run.

At her side, Brigga Lin stalked like a vengeful ghost, her hands constantly weaving, her sleeves whirling, as one by one she brought death from afar. One soldier fell to the floor screaming as his rib cage burst from his chest, splaying out like a blooming red, pink, and white flower. Another could not scream at all as his entrails turned inside out and spilled from his mouth onto the floor.

Was this the right choice? The question popped into Hope's mind as she hacked off one man's head, then disemboweled another. All this horror and death they were sowing? Was it right? In the distance she saw a man try to claw out his own eyes because they had turned to boiling pitch in his head. And she did not know the answer to her question.

But then in her mind's eye, she saw fat white larvae burst from her father's skin. She heard her mother calling out a name that to this day she could not remember. She saw Ontelli from Murgesia, an owl's beak emerging from his mouth, and heard his bones cracking as he became a beast before her eyes. She saw Thorn Billy turn to ice. She saw the people of Paradise Circle turn to dust.

So she hardened her heart and fought on.

Despite Stonepeak's luxuries of cleanliness and underground sewage, there were hardly any gas lamps lit. Compared to New Laven, the streets were eerily empty after sunset. The taverns, though occupied, were not spilling over with the rowdy enthusiasm of Paradise Circle or the passionate expression of Silverback. Everyone seemed subdued. Red wasn't sure if it was like that every night, or only on those nights the biomancer council was in town.

Either way, it freed up the path for him. He thought he had gone fast during the day, but it was nothing compared to his speed now. In the dark, his vision opened even further, allowing him to not only take in everything around him but also to calculate and plan his route several blocks ahead. His eyes seemed to absorb the darkness. He wondered what he must look like to those few people he passed in the street. A red-eyed demon? At the moment, he didn't care. He only cared about getting to Hope before she was killed. Maybe this fight of hers was impossible. But maybe his throwing blades could be the thing that tipped the scales into possible. One thing he was sure of: He couldn't live the rest of his life wondering about it. He would find out tonight, right or wrong. That resolution filled him with burning exuberance, and he ran on.

When he neared the palace wall, he saw that the gate had been broken into pieces. The metal was corroded through with rust that had not been there that afternoon. No doubt Brigga Lin's doing.

The courtyard was strewn with the bodies of soldiers, some horribly disfigured, some hacked to pieces or run through. There was so much to take in, even his new vision had trouble processing it all. So he didn't notice the two soldiers off to one side, still alive and armed with rifles. One of them took aim, but as Red's gaze finally turned toward them, the other soldier's eyes went wide and he knocked the rifle aside, sending the shot into the night sky.

“That's
him
,” said the second soldier. “Look at the
eyes
!”

“Oh, piss!” said the rifleman.

“We survived those two horrors, and you almost got us worse than killed anyway,” said the second.

Red reached for his throwing knives, not sure what was going on. But they both threw down their rifles and raised their hands in the air.

“Spare us, please!” the first one begged. “I've got a little girl at home!”

Red's eyes swept through the piles of bodies in the courtyard again. Whether it was right or wrong, he couldn't add two more, especially unarmed. “Don't follow me.”

“On my honor!” the man said.

Red turned and entered the palace. They'd identified him somehow. There was another plan at work here. He would need to go carefully from this point. Stealth was really more his thing anyway.

When things had been going well, Hope was tempted to see it as a sign that she had made the right choice. Now that things were turning against them, did that mean her choice had been wrong? Did one cancel the other out?

These thoughts flitted through her mind as she and Brigga Lin fought their way up the staircase, level by level, waves of soldiers pressing down on them from above. The soldiers were desperate now, driven by the biomancers, who had finally joined the fray.

They'd come first singly or in pairs, looking flustered and disheveled, as if roused from sleep or meditation. Those first biomancers did little more than add to the chaos, shouting at the soldiers to stand their ground even as Hope cut them down.

But once enough of them had arrived, they organized and formed a plan of sorts. They didn't have Brigga Lin's ability to cast at a distance, and they seemed unwilling to come within range of Hope's blade. Instead they began to change individual soldiers into mindless beastlike people with fangs or claws or pinchers. Those creatures were much harder to put down, continuing to attack even after mortally wounded.

Hope noticed that the beast people didn't seem to care all that much whom they attacked, though. They would bite or slash at whatever was moving in front of them. So rather than fight them, she spun them around and shoved them back up the stairs at the soldiers. It was not precise, but it cleared the way to wet her blade with biomancers. And that was why she'd come, after all.

The two women continued to climb with slow but relentless progress. When they finally reached the tenth level where Brigga Lin said the biomancer council was supposed to be convened, Hope was surprised to see moonlight streaming in through the windows of the vast, open chamber. Was it still the same night they had begun this fight? She was bleeding from at least twenty different wounds, and every muscle in her body screamed. Brigga Lin did not look much better. Her beautiful dress was more red than white. A steady stream of blood leaked from her nose, most likely the constant efforts of her biomancery, and her skin was ghastly pale.