“You never change,” he said, and those odd words echoed in my thoughts long after he uttered them.
Batuo even accompanies me, off and on, into battle. The monk fights hand to hand or with a spear, but never with a musket. If possible, he avoids fighting altogether. Where I strike without pause, he shows compassion. We choose different paths, and he says nothing of my choices. On occasion, I catch him watching me too closely, and I sense unspoken words lingering on the tip of his tongue.
“Is your Word satisfied?” he asks one day, back again from an unexplained absence. A recent slaughter has left the battlefield heaped with twisted bodies, piled like driftwood on a deserted beach. “Do these dead men satisfy you? Is this your purpose?”
I march on without responding. My Word has become a splinter in my heart. Pravda. The unity of truth and justice. Though I gorge myself, punishing our enemies in the name of my king—this hunger has only grown. The monk is like a mosquito in my ear, a constant buzzing reminder that I am failing myself.
“The world is large, my friend,” Batuo says, shaking his head. “Can you call yourself alive if you do not learn and grow?”
In this way, the monk lectures. Until one day, our time together ends.
Stopping outside the village of Plassey, the company shelters in a grove of mango trees near the broad muddy bank of the Bhagirathi River. The infantry soldiers are smoking little cigars, telling jokes in shaky voices as others prepare the cannonade. At the edge of the grove, the British sepoy troops prepare their weapons and pray.
It is dawn. Another day of battle. I feel nothing.
In the distance, the low, muted roar of tens of thousands of enemy infantry rises from the great empty plain. Our force numbers perhaps two thousand, better armed and positioned but grossly outmanned. Angry-looking storm clouds are gathering overhead. In this calm moment, the world smells of river water and dirt and sighing trees.
Then, with a hollow thwack, the first pulse of an artillery barrage begins. Our cannonade responds in kind.
To my immortal eyes, indifferent to death, this world is like a fantastical dream.
Enemy artillery shells streak like shooting stars through the tendons of primeval, leaning trees, staining their chattering leaves with flame and showering the ranks below with splinters and shrapnel. A drummer hits a staccato rhythm that mingles with the deep bass of thunder. Under a ghostly haze of smoke, men in red coats and tricorne hats feed shot into dragon-mouthed cannons that vomit hell.
Over the firing, a hushing sound grows as the clouds release their water. Artillerymen rush to cover the cannons and powder with sheets of waxed canvas. During the downpour, no cannon can fire. Muskets are equally useless.
I draw my saber. Through the dense leaves, the plains beyond the grove are swimming with greenish shadows. A horde of enemy infantry, stampeding.
What is the first thing?
Lightning flashes, and I am charging out of the grove, joining our sepoy contingent as they maneuver onto the rain-pricked plain. An inhuman howl rises from thirty thousand throats. The men around me fall into formation with the same inevitability as the falling raindrops. Where they land is just as meaningless.
And I find Batuo beside me, defensively wielding a long spear.
I swing the saber, slashing through flesh and rain. Searing bright roots of lightning anchor the sky and a veil of rain drapes itself over chaos. The guns have gone silent, leaving only the ring of steel weapons and the screams of men in triumph or despair.
Dancing over the mud, a pike catches me in the hip. I slash its owner with my saber. With my free hand, I yank the weapon out and keep swinging. I am screaming now as well, adding my own bellow to the thunder’s, feeling the vibration of both in my chest.
Batuo guards my back as a faceless legion of infantry spreads around us, avoiding our weapons as naturally as a school of fish parting around a shark. Still, there are too many, pouring past us toward the grove. Another blade slides over my shoulder. My left arm stops working correctly.
I drop to a knee, still thrusting with my saber. The mud is becoming heaped with bodies of the fallen, forming a monstrous barricade.
“Peter!” screams Batuo.
The monk stands alone, his long, tasseled spear in both hands. His turban is soaked, face streaked with wet soil. His expression is of despair.
“Why must you do this!? What is wrong with you!?”
Rain coursing over my face, I tug my saber across the flesh of another attacker. The punishment and the truth of it are missing from the act. I truly am a damaged machine following its course, the same as these mannequins who are made of meat. I can no longer satisfy pravda—even as I follow its phantom into the depths of death and destruction.
I swing again.
And now Batuo is upon me, fingers laid like stones over my damaged shoulders. He drags me to my knees, his lips against my ear, voice thundering.
“Enough!” he shouts. “This is not who you are!”
Batuo sweeps an arm at the field, crawling with wounded soldiers.
“You cannot fight for a man and call it justice. Your Word transcends humankind,” he shouts.
Shrugging his hands off, I plant a fist in his chest and launch the monk away from me. He falls with a splash, ignoring the war cries and staggering attacks of the final group of soldiers who throttle past.
“What do you know of my Word?” I shout to the mud.
Clutching my saber, I drag myself toward the fallen avtomat.
“I thought you would come back on your own,” says the monk, “if I gave you enough time.”
Batuo lies on his back, eyes open, not resisting. As I approach with my blade out, he betrays no fear on his mud-streaked face, only sadness. The downpour is coming to an end, the main infantry force moving on. Under spitting rain and sunlight, the world is bright and still.
“How do you know me?” I ask, again. “Tell me the truth!”
“The longer our souls are parted from our bodies, the more we forget. And you were lost for such a long time,” he says, sitting up, voice breaking.
“I have never been lost,” I tell him, raising my saber. “Never in my life.”
“What do you know of your life!?” asks Batuo, dragging himself out of the mud and onto his feet. “Peter, we last met thousands of years ago.”
“Impossible,” I say, but my blade is wavering.
“We rode in glory for the Yellow Emperor. You and I shattered the forces of southern Qi and ended their practices of slavery and sacrifice. In service to the mighty Huangdi, we gave the people knowledge and forged the first dynasty of man. I thought…if we fought together again, I prayed you would remember.”
I lower my saber, considering.
“I lost you to her,” continues Batuo. “The mother of silkworms. Wife to our emperor and his equal. Leizu.”
As the name leaves his lips, a flash of recognition ignites in my mind. I remember the hanging in Tyburn.
Leizu.
I sheathe my saber and draw my dagger. Falling forward, I let the point dimple the damp fabric of his robe.
“If you truly know me, then tell me,” I whisper, “what is my true Word?”
Only a handful know this thing. A little girl and a mechanician and a dead tsar. The answer will reveal Batuo as a fraud—and then I can continue to follow my path into oblivion. But the monk only smiles.
“You have no Word,” he says.
“What?”
“Our souls were never written in any language that exists today. When I knew you last, on the banks of the Long River, we called it zhēnxiàng. Roughly, it means—”
Something sparks in my mind, a translation.
“Truth and justice,” I say.
“More or less,” he says, nodding.
The legacy of Favorini is broken. This overwhelming feeling, this urge—the first thing—it is not even called pravda. The first thing is older, more complicated, and harder to know. The ground seems to be crumbling beneat
h my feet. Desperation constricts my chest, an overwhelming fear mingled with another feeling—hope.
A deeper truth exists, waiting to be found.
The muddy plain swirls in my vision, an open field inviting me to go every direction at once, and none. So I choose one and start walking: east, in the direction of British tall ships that will continue to ferry fresh-faced young men to India for as long as rich old men want more.
“Stop, Peter!” calls Batuo, standing on a field of mud that is now baking under the sun. His robes are stained with reddish smears and his fancy sandals are rimed in muck. Batuo’s long spear cants out of the ground beside him, the shaft buried, red tassels streaming from the neck of the blade.
But an irresistible urge has flared in my breast, a bone-shaking need to protect that which I hold most dear. Elena is in England and she is alone; and until this moment I have been blinded by this mad quest for purpose. I thought she would be safe, but the encounter with Leizu was no coincidence. I was a fool. Now, my selfish warring may have cost me everything.
A dark fear is settling over me, a bleak certainty that I have lost her.
“Where are you going?” calls Batuo and I ignore him.
Panic pinches at my calves, urging me to break into a run.
The battlefield is strewn with fallen men under a brooding heat. Back at the grove where our forces are concentrated, I hear the chalky bark of revived cannons spewing death into the remaining enemy. Our men covered up the powder stores before the rain could drown them. Now, only one army has weapons, and so yet another slaughter unfolds.
I am being pulled away, to the east.
“Didn’t you hear what I said?” Batuo asks, shadowing me. He tugs on my elbow and I shake it off. “You have a great enemy. Leizu is hunting you. She has been for a long time.”
“I have met this enemy before,” I say. “In London, where I must return.”
“No! Stay here with me, Peter. At the front, in these exotic lands, death and mayhem can shroud our existence. Listen to me, I have survived a very long time.”
I stop, spinning to face Batuo.
“You tell me of a life I don’t remember. Well, there is a life I do remember. And the only thing that matters in it is my sister, in London.”
Batuo locks his hands on my shoulders.
“Then stop and listen to words that could save her life.”
I force myself to wait, legs buzzing with panic.
“There is a war between ancients and we are caught in the middle of it. Leizu, mother of silkworms, is of the progenitor race—known to the First Men—from a time before history. She has passed through all the ages of man, extending her life span by preying on other avtomat. Leizu wears the anima of the vanquished. If she finds you, she will consume your soul.”
A vision washes over my mind. Elena’s innocent face, inches away from mine, her arms tight around my neck. Somewhere, a dragon is roaring, flecks of hot spittle twirling past in yellow clouds. The silhouette of a woman wavers in the haze—death incarnate.
Batuo lets go of my shoulders and steps back, enveloped in earthy smelling clouds of steam rising off hardening mud.
“In London you will be vulnerable to her. It could take her decades, but she will find you. The two of you have…unsettled business.”
“My allegiance is to my sister,” I say, “not to any war.”
I set my eyes on the muddy horizon and walk.
“Peter, the war you speak of—” Batuo calls. “It is a war you started !”
As Batuo’s final words wash over me, I break into a run.
33
SEATTLE, PRESENT
Talus is a hellish sight in the dim candlelight of the buried cathedral—a pale, beautiful man with a disfigured face, wearing black motorcycle armor and standing in a field of disembodied limbs that squirm and clutch their plastic fingers. At his feet, Batuo’s body lies in pieces, silent, eyes still open.
Lifting the bone saw, I jam my thumb into the trigger button.
I don’t even see Talus move, just feel a stab of pain as my wrists are pinned together in one of his hands, the bones grinding. The saw tumbles out of my grip and sprays sparks against the floor, spinning away like a pinwheel firework.
Talus pulls me close to him, turning my body as if we were dancing, staring into my face as I struggle, curious and arrogant. The flat plane of his naked cheekbone nearly brushes mine. He cocks his head, not even bothering to pretend to breathe. Past me, he spots the relic where I left it curled in Peter’s lifeless fingers. He looks disappointed.
“Peter made a poor decision, trusting you,” he says, letting go.
As I take a breath to respond, he plants a gloved fist in my stomach. I fall, flailing backward. My vision erupts with leaf-veined patterns of cathedral ceiling and a streaking star field of candle flame. I land hard on my side, forehead smacking the floor, one arm crumpled under me like a broken wing.
The world flashes, overexposed.
I’m blinking fiercely, trying to clear my eyes, my breathing shallow. The punch was like being hit by a car, impersonal, mechanical. Legs shaking, I drag myself blindly onto all fours, one rib stabbing with pain, my forehead wet and warm.
Through the ringing in my ears, I can hear Talus.
“Are you happy now?” he asks, speaking to Peter’s helpless body. Talus limps around the glimmering rings of the operating table, angrily flexing his fingers in shredded black gloves. On my knees and elbows, I crawl after him.
“Huangdi’s anima was never yours to protect,” Talus says to Peter’s body. “Not in all the centuries you wasted. He always belonged to her.”
Talus leans over Peter, his sharp features bathed in ethereal blue light from the machine. With both hands, he peels the relic out of Peter’s slack hand. When he speaks again, a wrenching sadness pulls at the curve of his blue-tinged lips.
“We sacrificed so much to your stubborn loyalty, Peter. Why couldn’t you see the Yellow God for what he was? Why couldn’t you adapt?”
As I near, Talus’s eyes flick over to me. Expressionless, he watches me crawl to the surgery table. His long blond hair is rippling in its electrical field. The relic seems to smolder in his fingers. Groaning, I hug the base of the control panel pedestal, hauling myself up to my knees, smearing half-dried blood over the hospital-white contours of the machine.
“You are a worm to us—do you know that?” he says from across Peter’s body. “A worm…interfering in a battle between gods.”
I don’t have the breath to speak.
Planting one foot, I push up, fat droplets of blood trickling down my chin. Leaning against the pedestal, I take a deep breath and wince at the pain from my rib. I lean my elbows on the panel, hunching my body over it.
In my peripheral vision, Talus is a thin blue shadow. All I see now—all I can let myself see—are the two brass knuckle–like devices sitting on top of the panel. Talus is reaching for me. Before I can react, he catches a handful of my hair in his fist. Pulling my face up, he looks into my eyes, enjoying my reaction.
“Time for you to go,” he says.
“Not yet,” I say, pulling away.
I’m already raising my hands, stumbling backward, my knuckles ridged with the brass knuckle devices. A gurgling torrent of liquid metal surges into the trough. Shining tendrils are already trickling up.
Our eyes catch. Too late, Talus understands.
“No—” he tries to shout.
With a scream, I bring my hands together in a brutal clap. An implosion of liquid metal leaps up and collapses over Talus’s surprised face.
The impact compresses his skull and flays away part of his scalp. Scouring flesh, the metal courses over his skull and solidifies into a thin, quivering mirrored surface. Talus’s metal-coated mouth opens and closes in mute horror. Staggering backward, he falls sprawling onto his back, droplets of liquid metal spraying in shining arcs.
I toss down the brass knuckle devices and the remaining liquid falls back i
nto the trough around Peter’s sleeping form.
It is quiet now. Just the sound of my harsh breathing as I round the table and Talus’s boots squeaking spastically over marble.
The avtomat rolls over and manages to crawl a few feet, a glittering trail of liquid metal dribbling from his nostrils and ears. His jaw is frozen in a silent scream. Frantically, he rakes fingertips over his cheeks and eyelids. Sightless and silent, his frozen face is strangely beautiful, like a Greek sculpture.
I pick up the relic where it has fallen and slide the chain back over my head. The weight on my chest feels like coming home.
Batuo’s mangled torso is sprawled on the floor. He has been systematically dismembered. Metal bones glint beneath sliced chunks of contoured plastic sheathing. I had so much to learn from him, and now he’s a ruin.
My fear and adrenaline flare into anger.
Following me in secret, sabotaging my research—not only has Talus destroyed my career, but he’s murdered his own kind. An incredible world exists, and he has been snuffing it out.
The damaged machine is on its knees now, in a praying posture, running fingers patiently over the metallic mask melted to its face. Sensing my attention, Talus drops to all fours, sweeping fingers over the ground, searching for his antique sword. I creep a few steps closer to the monster, and kick the gladius away from him.
He lunges, a knife appearing in his hand. Blind and deaf, he misses my thigh by inches. I fall, kicking my legs to scoot away from the still lethal machine.
Crawling to the gladius, I wrap my hands around the hilt.
Behind me, the once angelic-featured man is on his knees again. Now he is sawing at himself with the knife, slicing the flesh around the outside of his metal mask. I stand, dragging the tip of the heavy gladius. Talus drops the knife. Curling his fingers into the wound around his face, he pulls, flexing, prying his own face away from his skull. Just a machine, I remind myself.
I lift the gladius over my head, favoring my bruised rib, blade wavering.