Combative

Whether I slept or only departed, a jangle of metal broke me awake. Lilac pools on the floor from the stained-glass tinged the bath of lemon dawnlight that slathered every pew, beam, and pebble cheerfully into full presence.

Clank, clonk, chains jostled against chains. I snapped alert and hurried to throne myself on the altar as rehearsed.

Click—the padlock fell away. The face of the priest from last night appeared in the gap of the open door, looked up from the doorknob, saw me, froze, stared, and in a great blast of motion slammed shut the door scrambled to lock it gave up and sprinted away.

Perfection. 10/10, top marks.

I tittered into my fist (the motion though noiseless pulled at old cobwebs), as I hopped down to wander the aisle. My fingers knit behind me, and I grinned up at the icons.

My meditations from last night had sluiced fully out of my brain into their own slop on the floor. A new day, a fresh slate, and so far it’s started wonderfully!

Today, let’s just be sensational! Ahah.

The priest’s soul on my web quickly blinked indistinct then too vague to follow then nothing. I frowned dimly but instructed myself not to grow too deterred. He’d come back.

How’s Hejat? I glanced over.

Still a mad colossus, crackling away. No change in his position or quality had come since last night. Further I frowned. I wouldn’t typically term myself ‘impatient’, but the charity of indolence I’d rotted in hitherto had simply shielded me from experiencing desires strong enough to be impatient about. That anyone deviated from whatever course first most convenienced me, actually, bothered me a lot, and resentment like small grains of granite accumulated as if dripping one-by-one through the neck of an hourglass, then banked away in the back of my mind and the inside of my tongue to later unseal from their vaults as a landslide.

Hey Hejat! I’m awake now, so hurry up and license me flawless. Ah, ridiculous.

And the rest of Rajj? Signals on the web crept more than yesterday. Many civilians kept bunkered at home. Many others chanced to return to their workday routines—well, those would be venerated. The proportion of cautious to bold split at about fifty-fifty; Rajj was neither too lax nor too quailed.

I tilted my head in acceptance and paced airily about the aisle. Ripples of hunger lashed like frayed whipcords whose impacts abated too quick to grasp, into only the long boggy squelch of an ache, then smacked and churned, then rippled again like maggots wriggling through my flesh. Observation: at four days, I was ‘beginning to’ get hungry.

I thumbed my chin.

Two frantic signals blitzed visible outside on the street, in tandem charging up the boulevard as if to drive a spear into the flank of this chapel. That should be my party! I settled again upon the altar, in the farcical attitude of a sphinx boastful with dominion – not hard to fake.

The doors opened. Two palatines, both in middle age, red-faced and sweating under their helmets, marched into the chapel. Each wore on his hip a standard-grade sabre, but one also wielded a spear whose tip glinted wetly—applied with blessed ointment—and the other a crossbow. Its point locked onto my chest, only half as murderous as the man’s glare.

I raised my hands mildly.

Then a wave of apathy struck. I lowered my hands to my lap and looked away, already bored of these palatines.

This dismissal unbalanced them. The more boorish of the two, who wielded the crossbow, stamped forward one step—a combination threat and assertion of presence—only to quaver like a shocked horse with need to restabilise his footing. The stumble was slight, but I saw it.

What... was I doing? I’m supposed to laugh at that, but I’m—not happy, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I—

“Is, it just you?” I muttered toward the transept.

Neither spoke.

The man with the spear, not young but youthful in looks with a sprightly air more typical in poets than soldiers, crinkled his brow, while the boorish man, whose unkept face was defined like a wild crag padded in boar flesh, reaffirmed his grip on the crossbow.

I frowned down at the floor, foot trailing to and fro over the stone.

Chlunk. A flash of motion—a roaring of sparked flint—narrowly I (pwssht) bridled myself from lurching to catch the bolt in my teeth, unprepared for the might of the impulse given the present mildness of the hunger. Shulnk. The bolt landed in my breast instead, directly to pierce the heart.

I fingered its shaft. I had removed my cardiovascular system so as not to bleed on the altar.

Nothing. Nothing—he might as well have shot into clay. Not only human society, my state opposed even the whole laws of nature, so incorrigibly unhinged, inhuman, unnatural, and filth, this quiet mockery of these palatines was filth, because I am a stain untouched by all scrubbing, a fat effigy wrapped up in burlap, a nightmare too proud to remember its own waking—

“Ah, ahh?” And I was leaning off the altar, and toppled off the side.

The bolt hadn’t hurt. I wasn’t actually injured. What happened, was, the staring palatines expected me, to respond at least somewhat comprehensibly to a vital injury, and I, am just, insane.

Laying on the floor, with a stunning grub-eye view of the altar, I deflated and waited for the pair to discern what they wanted of me next. I would dutifully ferment meanwhile as still here as roadkill. Except, around the embedded bolt the flesh tingled, not by aggravation, but by activity, extending feelers, to tug it in deeper and close and consume it.

No, no! That was theirs, and still usable. I spat the bolt out of me as though unclenching a fist and it clattered to the stone.

Then panic rattled me. My chest had a hole. Let, me explain the extremity of this reaction to you by the reiteration that I am, insane. If—if anyone saw that pock, well, people already make assumptions about scars, it breeds an idea, so many ideas, that a significant event occurred. And oh! Minds leap with knives to dissect that. “Is this a weakness? Did it hurt? Did we do something? What happened to you here?” Nothing. “But—” No, really nothing. “But—!” No. Nothing happened! It was an inconsequential stabbing. You’re grappling the slippery rope of what you can see because it’s all that is there! And I’m sorry, for, misleading you of my vacuity by presenting otherwise.

But, if I fixed it they would see that I fixed it! And—and that was maybe worse! Okay okay no it wasn’t. But they would know that, it bothered me enough, to want to fix it, for one, and for two, they would understand, some level of method within me, of perhaps what I am, what I was, that I could fix it, solidifying a shape in their heads, all that vein of, understanding, exposure—in whole I despised it. Back off!

I was bristling and hissing before I knew. I cupped my hand over the hole, over my cloak, and mended both layers. The clothes concealed whether the underlying wound had been healed. So perfect was this solution it blanked my attention from the palatines. Face-down I grinned at the cobbles.

Shluck! An impact thrust into my skull from above. Then again and again in a mad mutilation, quite like a giant hornet stinging, pounding my forehead on the rock at every stroke, the blessed spear perforated ruthless holes over and over. (That baby-faced poet was a sadist, I discerned, though one humble enough to channel his violence properly into the legal bounds of his job.) Once my head was too mangled to pulp, he lightly diced my back and my flank.

With a sharp exhale, he withdrew.

“This is not dead,” one of them said.

“No,” said the other. (I reeled, with a pull of indignation, to lay even more vigorously deceased. Unbreathing, unbleeding, unmoving, and minced. How could they tell? My intelligence conceded the possum farce stupid, and edged to shrug and surrender it, but at this moment what prevailed was determination to inaction by spite.) “Keveh, of such you are not wise, but in Chedar, I have seen this. Where is the life of a thing, that does not have blood?”

“Is there such a thing?” laughed the poet, Keveh.

“This question well lights the room. It is not in the body, or it goes deep into the skin. In Chedar a blessing divest it.”

“Ptkiar, are you sanctioned to give that?” Keveh asked.

“I can... attempt,” Ptkiar, the boor, answered uncomfortably.

“Do we wait then for the Bishop? This is...” Keveh trailed off.

“Discomforting, by the least word. It is odd.” A pause sat. “Care. Care, Keveh,” he warned.

A force yanked me up by the hair—Keveh’s face filled the world. I flinched at his sudden contact; reflexively, the quality of what he grabbed greased itself too slick to hold, and though my body slipped back to the stone, a shocked Keveh already surged in with a heavy sabre swing onto my neck for decapitation. My cervical vertebrae hardened to iron. The blade sung through the slice with the piercing ‘shing’ of metal on metal, even flecked sparks, and my head did not drop off.

A dizzying marsh of vomit swilled down my gullet, as I regardless wrenched my humid mouth away from the man’s exposed wrist. He chopped my neck again on reflex then quickly backed off.

I’d never been assaulted before. Probably I had screwed everything up by not exposing myself to the pain of it.

“—on the grace of our Creator that not a hair shall be ruffled and not a cut shall be bled, for He is who holds you through the Night. To the service of His excellence, we will strive to excellence, not of the hand, but of the heart,” hands clasped, weapon forgot, Ptkiar was praying the paeans.

Because, if the beating had hurt, perhaps I’d know how to react. By screaming out, or begging them, like they could set the pace. Instead, I just... do I stop lying here? Do I laugh at them? Do I stutter at them conversation (although about what?), do I punch them? I had to look hideous after that mauling, and to force them to interface with that is contempt, so do I present a talent and fix myself, first, for, for, why, so they’ll assume things? I truly didn’t know what to do.

“—For it is the softness of the heart that perfects the good of the hand, and the good of the spring that sweetens its waters—”

Do I let myself bleed? Do I let myself hurt? They already had ideas about what that’d mean. But even regardless? I don’t want to dirty the floor. Cah, why even bother with these soldiers!? They’re not talented mystics, like the Yeshimar man! But to dismiss them is rude, they’re in front of me...

“—and the spring of all sweet waters is Czjeir’s ardent love. May even a flare lodge in our chest, tended by the oil of faith and of discipline, and no darkness shall oppress lest it be bent to kneel—”

I crossed my forearms over my eyes and pressed my face to the cobbles. As though the floor would submerge me. As though hiding in the dark.

It was what a baby would do. So much good the puerility served me; their presences prickled clear as lightning-rods, and even the aura of their attention drew up fervid static from my core to my skin. Muscles across my back rippled tense, a warning as much as a puffed, yowling serval that I would swipe if provoked.

“—for there is no evil that can stand itself, proud, before His radiance!” the palatine barked, emboldened into crescendo, excited that the recitation was working. “As pitch, villainy is incinerated, as blades, virtue is tempered, for what is only good is only of Czjeir. We take refuge under the wings of Czjeir...”

My shoulders melted loose. I slumped, either at peace or defeated. Regardless of which, (the distinction’s slight to me), we’d apparently agreed we weren’t fighting.

“...that in joyous gratitude and efficacious humility, even the cursed may shuck off their curses and take on warm white raiment of the blessed...” the palatine trailed off. His voice twisted in grief. “Keveh, it is a familiar. A made-witch.”

No, keep going. That’s the conclusion? Well whatever, it’s fair enough, that resolution is clement enough. I unfurled my face from the floor, having fixed the injuries, though too shy to regard directly the pair; still, I glimpsed the tail of Keveh signing himself with the mark of Czjeir, disturbed not at my recovery but at the uttering of the ‘f’ word.

I mean, I know as much as anyone that witches’ slaves get sympathy. It’s why I angled for it, back in Clearwater, for some demented reason, it does declare you as compelled and pathetic. Easily, that’s conflated with innocence. You can imagine, it could happen to anyone. It could happen to you. That’s what scares Keveh. But it’s, generally pretty uncommon, at least I think, that witches ever take a person... just randomly. You have to, be kind of involved, to get on the radar.

Or, be extremely unfortunate, but...

“Then there are circumstances,” Keveh said to Ptkiar, who was by now definitely the chief of the pair.

“Ah.” Ptkiar licked his lip. “...and accept the mansion in paradise, freely offered at His hand, that no scourge, no king, and no evil ever can plunder from His beloved. The favoured, like birds, flock close at His call, each one known by their name, beyond pain and beyond even death... I cannot finish this,” he broke. Both his intelligence and his sympathies must have sliced him more keenly than his rough appearance belied, since his teary red face soon hid itself in his palm.

What an effort. Whatever. Honestly, unanointed, it commendable that he tried.

“Then the Bishop,” said Keveh.

“We do wait for the Bishop,” he agreed, gasping himself clear.

Ceasefire settled over the room. Though both palatines watched me firm as wardens, each with spear and sabre poised to riposte should I attack, neither genuinely expected any hostility. The casual cautiousness fit more the overseeing of a large tamed crocodile, less a supernal monster constructed of pure unholy soul-rending malice. Well, unless they had unfair ideas about crocodiles.

Hah, annoying. Whatever. I hooked my thumb under my hood and drew it over my eyes.

Multiple times these men had alluded to the presence of a Bishop. A second party, including this figure, who would also be the Primarch of Rajj, must be assembling to reinforce this less-prestigious yet more-available vanguard. I cast my attention around my web but no obvious such parties leapt to me; rather, the overwhelming lure of Hejat tickled my focus, and wistful fantasies dripped like dollops of treacle to simply dash out the building and seize him.

“Where is the witch?” Ptkiar called to me.

Still laying on the floor, I clasped my hands and drooped my shaking head as would drolly toll a church bell.

“There is none?” he asked for clarity.

Shuddering out a great stretch I laid my forehead upon my twined fists.

What... exactly was that meant to convey?

The palatine didn’t know either.

He fixed a smile. “You scared us greatly, appearing on the altar.”

My own mouth sickled, as though we were sharing a joke.

“Not many creatures do this unscathed. I would not do it,” he laughed.

Yeah, you have decency. The chuckle died in my throat. Like a vampire hoisting itself out from the grave, I pulled myself up by the rim of the altar. My elbows planted on the thing and my palm swept over its surface, grinning as if revealing a card trick, that dared: hey, look. I’m not burning.

“Yes, as such. Were you much-anointed, then?”

I glanced aside frowning, hand on my cheek, and rapped my fingers over the wood. I’m what, an acolyte now?

“All respect, being so delicate,” Keveh interjected. “I accept, sir, this requires fair wisdom. But this—to entertain it so, it assembles at us more questions, and answers very few.”

Ptkiar chewed his cheek plaintively, then slowly, then puckered sour. “You are right,” he finally said. His head tilted down, like a bull. “You do speak.”

My jaw could’ve squeaked so ungreased it was, and: “S—sshur.” One syllable. A new record choke.

Oh well! If smashing my head apart on the altar won’t sacrifice this putrescent brain one iota I guess we’ll just have to live with it!

Ptkiar stumbled as though the soundwaves of that flub in themselves had slapped him. He pinched his brow to mend himself steady.

“Is there a witch? We must know this.”

“Kk, yeah.” Sometimes the things that come out of my mouth, I swear I’m just spinning a wheel.

“Where is it?” He jolted to his sabre.

“N-no no, don’t, worry, she, sh-sh-she’s dead.” I jumped afoot and spread my hands on the altar. “I-I-I-I killed her! So...”

Though the absence of a witch also harassing the city reassured the palatines, my abrupt liveliness did not. Their breezy zookeeper caution moistened into real unease, with twisted winces, askance glances, yet the undeniable pull of curiosity. Neither knew, exactly, what to make of me.

“It’s, fine. I— Czjeir—” wandering away from the altar, I again considered the ceiling. Dawn’s beams mingled a blushing lilac across the swoop of acacia-wood vaults. It’s funny. Pleasant sights never inspired me to much but cynicism before. (Hope’s a candle lit, so far in the dark, call it a flicker of a promise so boldly here to admire. The sting and the comfort is, no matter how far you reach, you know you’ll never scrape it—what a nightmare.)

I levelled my gaze at the pair, even smiling the trace of a self-humorous grin.

“I’m, just, so hungry.”

“I believe I see,” muttered Keveh.

I shrugged.

“Then do stay here,” urged Ptkiar. “Our Bishop in Rajj is one of great grace, if you as an outsider are moved to come here, doubtless this is by providence. Whatever the curse, it is in him to... reconcile, a lost one, calmly with Czjeir.”

Yet do I need that, from a middle manager?

“Maybe,” I muttered.

I rounded the altar and leaned back on the top of a pew. Each palatine edged a step away; their weapons to surge in were useless, even if they desired to use them. I flexed out my fingers and aimed a question to the air:

“Do you think there’s anyone who just, deserves to die?”

“Many will fail the judgement,” Keveh said carefully. “Foolish questions bear no asking...”

“All the world has been in heresy. That is the judgement by Shien,” Ptkiar added. “To exit heresy proceeds in a season, we hear it is like a tree growing. An interruption in itself, because a tree is grim and naked in winter, so the man sees it dead and takes to it an axe, yet had it lived bloomed brightly in spring, is a heresy warrant to sever even one beautiful and fully of fruit. Kha, you must know this, else did your town no priests?”

What delicacy was writ in those scriptures. What a perfectly careful distinction this lout hadn’t even realised he’d made. ‘Don’t touch the ugly tree that just looks dead, but one that’s actually dead—psssh, that’s no foul’. Now how about a sick tree, one that’s so sick that it’s terminal? One that no matter what cure you present it, won’t take it, or won’t bloom?

But who on earth could distinguish the state of the trees? Interesting. Interesting.

“It is an infection of Shien’s that addles you to speak of such things,” he concluded. “Be steadfast. It is not long to wait.”

Well, that’s all I ever do. I glanced down at my hand. Moreover, this wasn’t Shien.

Fine!—(My fingers curled in, an echo of a fist)—let’s dispute it with their Bishop. Convince me to stop, and maybe I will. Glorify tar, and perhaps I’ll adore it. Oh how explicable. Oh how cute. He only hates God and rapes children.

Have you never burned with passion? I’m sure you’ll impress him with your grace.

If your grace is a laser, maybe you will.

Like birdsong wafting into the ear, I attended to the web idly. Pedestrian motes, those not today truant, now set out or settled at either the nose or the tail of their morning commute. Classes would begin at eight. It must be seven-thirty. Attendee surprisingly (or really, so much?) was Hejat’s weepy colleague, buoyed to routine in shame, to venture those same corridors, examine those same faces, and surely torment himself over each one. Hejat himself remained housebound, or else living closer, had yet to depart.

As much as a zephyr’s caress carries leaves in the summer, I tilted my head into the breeze.

My ear twitched. A harmony of a familiar song playing sweetly hit one note awry.

“Hoy, back,” Keveh urged, “back.”

His spear lodged in. I grasped the shaft. Stuck me somewhere, into the breast. The other one raised his palms placating why?

Music chimed flowing links but the pitch careened strangely. The doors shone on me very large.

On the crimson surface of a star, a flare birthed and writhed towards the thick dark. Spreading out, such rayed licks of fire: oh penetration! Oh propagation! Further stretch the bounds of its girth. Melody screamed into a harpy’s aria, and the rapturous delight of a feast laid, in a small shape, to ravage.

I bolted. Men’s shouts chorused behind me; the cobbles underfoot—and the shingles of rooftops, as struck, struck, struck, leap by leap footfall by footfall, by the ceaseless report of beaten terracotta. Pigeons swerved out of my heading. A curse echoed in the street; platinum mist shot—slow aim smeared away behind uselessly. Hung at a crest heavenward then below was the house, circled by palatines, emanating the core of it, there I vector set between the rear window and windowsill quickly dove. Now inside a bedroom in my hands was a man who I gripped by the shoulders, and on the bed a young girl, shrieking terror, and I slammed him upside-down at the stone wall. The building quaked and a crack and a scream pealed from him in ghastly good compliment.

Palatine guards frenzied outside to barge in quick enough. By a glance and a flicker of a name, Attija, the room’s opposite window shot open.

“Don’t take daddy,” the girl bawled. Her bedclothes sagged by a button, but only a button.

Man.

Kids don’t know anything.

Boots thumped like charging hooves of wildebeest. With the poached quarry tucked snug under my arm, I slipped out the open window, and just as swiftly departed.