That a child of my blood would wish to serve the one who once enslaved all.
That wasn’t Lydie’s thought. It was Scheveningen’s.
Once more, Lydie’s sight became expansive. She saw Amaranth Farms, where a score of mancers had gathered to argue, leaderless and restive. The Abyssumancers and Numenmancers couldn’t help but sense the lord of the Abyss and a high arbiter of the Numen walking the mortal realm; they had called for the meeting, their anxiety demanding it, but now it was the animamancers and necromancers who spoke. Without understanding, they felt Scheveningen stretching in the earth.
“Vanadium says Modigliani has promised us all a place of honor in the new world,” the Abyssumancer Keppel reported, speaking for her Abyssi. “She said Modigliani spoke to Verte, too. What do they mean, new world?”
“Where is Azo?” another mancer asked querulously. “Wasn’t she supposed to be in charge while the Terre is gone?”
“Maybe she didn’t trust us without her brother here.” Keppel grinned, but the expression was clearly forced. She cleared her throat and shook her head. “I told her the same thing I’ve just told you. The next thing I knew, she was gone.”
Modigliani, Scheveningen thought. What does that Abyssi youngling have planned?
Lydie turned her attention to the closer battle.
Sennelier had Cupric pinned; Naples was helping the Abyssi keep his Abyssumancer from joining the fight, which included Numini feathers and Abyssi fur and blood spattered across the room. Modigliani and Quinacridone were locked in battle. Hansa and Umber were defending Dioxazine from—what was that creature? It moved like silver mist, reaching tendrils toward the Numenmancer, but it must have had a solid form somewhere underneath, since it dodged back whenever Hansa or Umber struck at it with their knives.
We called them Judgments, Scheveningen provided. They serve the arbiters. I am ready. Pull me through.
Lydie looked at Verte. In the wash of visions, she had almost forgotten her hand in his chest—how could she forget something like that? The heart in her hand was fluttering, struggling, as his lifeforce drained from him, through Lydie, and into the Gressi.
Lydie ripped her hand out of Verte’s chest, and drove it too deep in the soil. The hand that gripped hers was no longer wasted, but dense and powerful flesh. She sought and found a second hand, and then started to pull the Gressi up through the soil.
The Terre collapsed, gasping, onto his hands and knees, yet he stared in wonder as Lydie pulled Scheveningen from the dirt. A gap opened in the floor, and it emitted a warm, sunny-green light utterly at odds with the battle going on.
Pearl appeared again; Cadmia must have lost hold of her upstairs. Both pounded down the stairs—then stopped, hypnotized, at the Gressi’s rebirth.
The hands that broke the surface, tightly gripping Lydie’s own, were scaled and clawed, but when the head emerged it wore a crest of silver-blue feathers. Dirt fell away from it like water running off an oiled tarp, leaving behind a figure that was neither male nor female, Abyssi or Numini, alive or dead.
Behind her, Lydie heard more footsteps on the wooden stairs to the cellar, but she couldn’t look away from the rising Gressi even when she heard an unfamiliar woman’s voice whisper, “I’m too late. Oh, you fools.”
Verte stepped forward, and the Gressi wrapped its mancer in its arms. It whispered to him, “My child, I am sorry for all you have been through.”
“I’m sorry,” Verte said. “I thought—it seemed like the only—” His eyes, which had been dry through the ritual, now glistened with tears that fell down his cheeks. “When Modiglani spoke to me—” Lydie remembered her glimpse of Amaranth, and what Keppel had said about Modigliani. And suddenly she understood, at the same time that Verte choked out, “Watch out!”
Lydie turned just in time to see Modigliani and Quinacridone pause in their battle with each other.
No, it wasn’t a pause.
It was a truce.
The two Others, Abyssi and Numini, stepped apart as if they had been awaiting a cue. Then they pounced; Lydie felt fire and ice strike her simultaneously, throwing her away from the newly reborn Gressi as Abyssi claws and fair Numini hands rendered Scheveningen’s beautiful form into blood and ozone.
Chapter 45
Hansa
Despite all he had gone through, Hansa was no expert on sorcery. There were, however, three critical facts he had recently learned that seemed abruptly relevant. As time seemed to freeze, his mind recounted them like a horrific laundry list:
One: An Other—an Abyssi, Numini, or apparently a Gressi—can only be truly killed by another Other.
Two: A mancer cannot survive the total severing of power from his Other.
Three: Scheveningen was the mortal realm.
As the newly-born form Lydie had pulled from the earth exploded in a shower of gore that settled to the ground as frost and ash, Verte staggered. The color drained from his face and he clutched at his chest.
There was no time to see more.
From the other side of the room, there was a blood-curdling growl that made every hair on Hansa’s body lift. Sennelier leapt away from Cupric, took one glance at the changed situation, and said to Hansa, “Release me, or I eat you.”
Hansa nodded. “Go,” he said. He didn’t know how to hold him even if he had wanted to. Of the others, he started to ask, “What do we—?”
“Do?” was lost as the ground trembled and Lydie shrieked, clenching her hands over her ears. She was bleeding from where either Modiglani or Quinacridone had struck her, but that injury didn’t seem to be what had brought her down. What was she hearing?
The next sound was Azo’s warlike cry as she appeared from nowhere and threw herself bodily at Modigliani in a mad attack—one that was met with a seemingly-idle bat of Modigliani’s claw-encumbered paw. Azo flew backward through the air and struck the wall, where she fell, unconscious or dead. Hansa saw Naples look up, and it was as if he forgot everything else; he ran to Azo’s side, leaving Cupric dazed but obviously alive.
Hansa moved to intercept the Abyssumancer, intending to leave Umber to deal with the wraithlike Numen creature they had been fighting—it was smaller now than it had been, and slower—but as he tried to circle the misty form something darker and denser scuttled out of a crack in the ground. Its shelled carapace pushed up against a shelf of wine, until with a heave it knocked the entire rack over with a crash of shattering bottles. The stench of cider and old wine filled the cellar.
Hansa drove his sword at the beast before his mind had even fully processed its soot-gray carapace or far-too-many vivid yellow legs. At first the blade bounced off the hard shell, but then its tip caught between two of the plates, and he bore down hard.
“Quinacridone!” Dioxazine shouted, her voice a dagger of ice. “Heed me!”
Hansa glanced up, stupidly, long enough to see that the Numini did hesitate, for a moment—but only a moment, until Cupric flung himself at Xaz.
And the ground shook again, driving them all off their feet. Hansa fell with his face inches away from the red-and-orange mandibles of the beast, and had to jerk back from its death throes.
“This whole place is going to come down,” Umber shouted. “We have to get aboveground.”
“We have worse things to worry about than the building,” Cadmia pointed out, as another, smaller creature skittered across the floor. In the face of such horrors, Pearl had finally stopped struggling, and was clinging to Cadmia in terror instead.
Like a cross between a scorpion, a spider, and a snake, Hansa recognized this creature as an immature version of one of the lesser demons of the Abyss; they had seen Alizarin fight a full-grown version once. Both beasts could only be heralds of the breach in the planes caused by Scheveningen’s death.
Hansa pushed himself up, pausing only to lever his sword out of the first beast, but as he looked around despair crashed on him.
Dioxazine was down, Azo was down, Modigliani and Quinacridone were working t
ogether, Lydie was holding her head and weeping as if the entire dead plane had collapsed on her at once, and Naples was kneeling by Azo’s side as if the world wasn’t ending—or maybe as if it were.
Because it was.
The earthquake rents in the floor were admitting more of the smaller demons. Others, cut into the walls, were starting to creep with frost.
And Hansa didn’t know what to do.
He went to Umber’s side. The white mist had found other prey, namely a dozen scuttling beetle-like beasts that had emerged from the Abyss, and was hovering over them as they slowly froze solid.
“I don’t know,” Umber said, as if Hansa had asked the question out loud: What do we do?
Naples stood, trembling visibly.
As Quinacridone and Modigliani stepped back from where the Gressi had been just moments before, Naples took one last look at Azo, then snarled. The sound wasn’t human, and neither was the look in Naples’ gaze as he drew a black-bladed sword that must have been sheathed along his spine but which—like all the Abyssumancer’s tools—Hansa hadn’t seen before Naples had drawn it to use. Sword in one hand and a dagger in the other, he let out a snarling cry and slashed at Modigliani.
The lord of the Abyss dodged away, then laughed, a purring, silky sound that made Hansa shudder in the same way grasping the knife had earlier. It was a powerful sound. He tried to block it out as he moved closer, trying to figure out if he could somehow lend strength and help without getting in the way.
Meanwhile, Quinacridone was standing in a growing halo of her own light, face set with concentration and one hand out, as if she was calling to the Numen beasts. Out of the corner of his eye Hansa saw Cadmia gripping Dioxazine’s hands; the Numenmancer had woken enough that she was beginning to speak again, ever so softly but hopefully enough to staunch some of Quinacridone’s power.
Hansa had no idea where Cupric was. Maybe he had fled. Hansa hoped he had been eaten by something.
“You aren’t bound to her anymore,” Modigliani teased Naples, waving one of his nine tails dismissively at Azo’s still form.
“I’ll always be bound to her,” Naples growled. “Even if not with magic.” He lunged toward the Abyssi, who jumped away with a shocked look on his face, as if he had expected Naples to feint.
“What is the point of this?” Modigliani asked, as Naples’ sword drew blood in a wine-violet splash. “You are my mancer. You can’t kill me without it killing yo—”
“I can.”
That soft, ringing voice echoed in Hansa’s head, warning him that Xaz had lost some of her power over the Numini. For a moment his heart seemed to stop, and his body froze, and then the air became cold and fierce.
With a sound like the end of the world, everything stopped.
Then, shattering. The breath-stealing chill of the winter wind.
The lord of the Abyss screamed as his form dimmed, froze, and fractured, and the sound sent everyone in the room who had been standing to their knees.
Then the screaming stopped, and Hansa’s first thought was, Thank Numen.
When he looked up, Modigliani was gone. There was no blood, not even a tuft of black fur to mark where he had been. Instead, all Hansa saw was Naples.
The Abyssumancer collapsed, the power that normally surrounded him like a nebulous halo snuffing out. Hansa struggled to reach him, but his body didn’t obey his wishes fast enough. He ended up stumbling to his knees next to Quinacridone as the Numini caught Naples’ still, limp form.
“I am sorry,” the Numini said to Naples’ still form, “that you had to make this sacrifice. The new world will be partially in thanks to you.” Quinacridone looked up at Hansa and cradled his cheek in her hand. Her touch burned like frostbite. “And you, Viridian . . . I can grant you your heart’s desire, if you would like. You only recently accepted that bond. I can break it. The love you had pledged yourself to is in the divine realm. I can summon her now and you could be with her, as you had once planned.”
Her. She was talking about Ruby.
Hansa opened his mouth to respond, but couldn’t find his voice before another spoke.
“Do you know who I want to see, and have with us again?” Dioxazine asked. Before the Numini could respond, Cadmia’s bone knife was in Xaz’s hand—and then through Quinacridone’s heart. The Numini’s eyes widened in surprise as Xaz whispered, “Alizarin.”
Hansa held his breath as Quinacridone’s hand fell away, her arm going limp. Surely that couldn’t be enough to kill it?
Yet Quinacridone was staring at the blade, which had entered just below her shoulder blade and showed its tip piercing through a breast the color of violets, with horror. Blue-black fire spread from the wound, charring the Numini’s previously-flawless flesh.
The Numini looked up with wide, imploring eyes, holding a hand out to her mancer.
Xaz stumbled and coughed, then reached for Naples’ still form cradled in Quinacridone’s arms—or more importantly, for the long blade still gripped in his hand, the blade that, like many of Naples’ tools, must have been crafted from the bones of the previous lord of the Abyss. Xaz took the sword, turned, and drove it into the Numini so it crossed Alizarin’s knife.
Thunder rolled through the room and ripped Quinacridone apart, leaving only a spray of feathers. And Xaz. And Naples. Hansa’s attempt to catch both of them as they fell with half-numb arms was awkward, but what else could he do?
Another tremble ran through the earth, this time accompanied by a timber disconnecting from the ceiling and crashing down. Hansa cradled the dead mancers, whose lives had been given for—for what? Modigliani and Quinacridone were dead, but so was Scheveningen. So was the entire mortal realm.
“We have to get out of here,” Umber said again. He started to reach for Hansa, hesitated, then lifted Naples’ body instead. Hansa followed that, more than anything else. Cadmia lifted Dioxazine, her mind apparently where Hansa’s was: not ready to acknowledge the truth.
Certainly not ready to leave them here.
“Get Lydie and Azo,” Cadmia said.
Hansa turned, prepared to face even more of the dead, but both women were still among the living. Lydie was in no condition to walk; she beat on Hansa’s shoulder as he lifted her, but she was so slight, she was easy to carry. Thankfully, Azo had roused on her own and could walk on her own, though she leaned on Hansa for balance.
“Pearl?” Hansa called.
“Ran upstairs when Quinacridone turned on Modigliani,” Cadmia answered. “We need to do the same.”
Hansa followed the others, but as they fled the building and spilled into the market square—along with much of the population of the Cobalt Hall and other nearby buildings—he couldn’t help but wonder, What’s the point?
The sky was alight with lightning and snow, while pools of the black ichor that made up the Abyssal sea seeped from cracks in the ground. Hansa ducked as a silvery bird dived, snatching up one of the small intruders from the Abyss.
Several bystanders who had fled to the open plaza spotted him and started to run toward him. Hansa could barely hear their cries over the rumbling.
Then the shades began to rise.
Hansa blinked, thinking at first his vision had gone blurry; as the forms became more solid, he raised his sword, expecting more of the Judgements.
Instead, he found himself face-to-face with a familiar figure: Ruby.
She wasn’t alone. All around Hansa, the dead had risen. Their forms were semi-solid and flickered in the wind, but they were clearly visible and recognizable.
Ruby spoke. He saw her lips move, but he couldn’t hear her, could only see in her expression desperation and terrible focus.
The shade seemed to focus Lydie, though, who lifted her head as if she could hear something, and when Hansa put her down on her feet she turned sluggishly toward Ruby’s form.
“What?” Lydie creaked out.
“Hansa!”
He turned at Pearl’s shriek. The girl ran to his side, dodging be
asts of the Abyss and Numen, shades, earthquake rifts, and growing pools of ice and fire. She caught his hand, and declared, “Daddy is here.”
“Who?” Hansa asked.
“Veronese,” Lydie reminded him. Still staring at Ruby, she said, “Veronese says we need to summon Alizarin.”
“What?”
“Yes!” Pearl said.
“Won’t he just eat us all?” Hansa objected, only to then have to scuttle back and kick at some creature that had just lunged at his ankle.
“Veronese says he can control him,” Ruby said. Her voice was like the rustle of leaves on an icy ground, but still unmistakably hers.
“But why?”
“Just do it!” Ruby snapped. Now!”
Hansa looked back to Umber, who had Naples cradled in his arms. He shrugged, and his voice lilted through Hansa’s head: The world is ending. We might as well finish it eaten by friends.
Sheathing his sword, Hansa drew the knife that Naples had given him. He was only vaguely aware of a chorus of cries as a significant portion of the population saw their possible future-President draw blood in the way that only a mancer ever would.
“Alizarin,” he said, pausing to fight back a hysterical giggle, “get your furry blue butt up here.”
He felt the pull of the Abyss, the drag at his energy . . . Was he strong enough for this? Naples had said Hansa didn’t have nearly enough power to open the rift to summon Modigliani and Sennelier, but that had been before the veils had begun to disintegrate.
“Alizarin, come to me,” Hansa said, and at last he felt the rift form. It grew slowly, like a flower unfurling instead of suddenly in a jagged slash, but it appeared.
“Hansa.” He looked away from the rift to see Jenkins, along with a half dozen of the other guards who had died on the day Xaz first summoned Alizarin. “We’re here, Lieutenant Viridian.” They formed a protective ring, driving back infernal beasts that seemed drawn to the rift with spectral steel. Beyond them, living guards formed another, less-coherent ring, as if unsure whom they should be protecting from what.