Mortal Page 23

  He’d never admitted his confusing sentiments for Feyn to anyone. They’d felt like a betrayal at the time, as though love, once given, existed only in finite amount and could never be shared or given to another. But hadn’t he loved Triphon as surely as he’d loved Avra? As he loved Jonathan, with his whole heart?

  As he loved Feyn, still?

  “What you feel for Saric now can’t be love. Just as the blood in your veins isn’t true life.”

  “Isn’t it?” Her brows arched. “Are you so arrogant that you don’t think I feel hope for this reign of mine? For what I might bring the world? You don’t think I want to be remembered fondly? Treated with love? Do you think that I don’t feel the deepest pull of love in my veins this very moment? Who are you to say?”

  “It’s only alchemy! Chemicals, in your blood!”

  “All emotions are caused by chemicals! What is love but the rush of endorphins into your bloodstream?”

  He raked a hand through his hair and turned away.

  “It’s not the same.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “No!” He turned back. “Feyn. Think of Jonathan. Twelve hundred Mortals have come from his veins.”

  “Twelve thousand have come from Saric’s.”

  “Jonathan was born with life in his veins! He didn’t ingest it, wasn’t injected or altered. He was born with it in the line of Sevenths. It’s his destiny, not Saric’s, to build a new kingdom of life, freed from the slavery of death!”

  “Life was taken by altered blood,” she said. “Now you say it can’t return the same way?”

  “Yes! No! But Saric’s life is no life. You feel—I can’t deny that. You believe you have love, perhaps you do truly love somehow… I don’t know. But can’t you see Saric’s intent is to enslave the world? He has no intention of offering freedom to anyone—least of all you.”

  There was so much he wanted to say, all carefully rehearsed in logical sequence. But that had fallen by the way now.

  “Saric stands against every ounce of true life and freedom in Jonathan’s veins! He’s not only a dictator, but the enemy of life itself. He would replace one virus that at least brought peace with another that will give him absolute power. We both know that Saric intends to kill you and reign himself. You must have concluded at least that much!”

  She glared at him and he prepared for her anger. But as her eyes misted, he couldn’t help but gentle his tone.

  “Forgive me, I don’t mean to be crass. The fact is I can’t bear the thought of any harm coming to you. But the law is clear. If you die, Saric is Sovereign. By bringing you back to life, he ensured his own rise to power. It’s only a matter of time before he decides the time has come to seize that power.”

  She didn’t snap back with witty comments or arguments that undermined what had to be patently obvious. A storm was brewing in her mind and Rom meant to feed it.

  “I only seek to protect your life and ensure Jonathan’s destiny. Think with me. You saw the vellum, the prophecy. You believed it. You gave your life for it once; please don’t offer your life to undo it all.”

  “According to you, I was never alive.”

  “Not true. You were for that day. And it’s that part of you that I appeal to now. Tell me, is Jonathan’s life false?”

  “How do you know that there aren’t many ways to life? How egocentric—how ethnocentric—does one need to be to say, ‘Mine is the only way’?”

  “Who’s to say that Saric’s life of bondage should be the way?” he snapped. “He will lead you into death as surely as Jonathan would return you to life!”

  Rom stepped in front of her and took her hands.

  “Feyn,” he said, looking into her eyes. “You and I were united once. You believed in the words of Talus, the Keeper whose account you translated that day in the meadow. Do you remember?”

  “I do,” she said quietly.

  “Everything you translated about the blood and Jonathan was true.”

  Her expression was impassive.

  “You gave your life for it, Feyn. You’re not a woman of rash action, so I understand your struggle now. You were trained to think strategically, methodically, all your life. And yet you knew.”

  She made no effort to argue.

  “If all had gone as we planned, you would be waking four days from now—not to Saric’s face, but to mine and Jonathan’s. To Mortals who revere you for the price you paid for them. If you only knew how I anticipated that day, how many times I’ve imagined it…”

  He let go of her hands. She had no idea the number of nights he’d thought of her. The times he had waited for the Keeper’s return from Byzantium to hear that she was intact, protected in stasis. The nights he had halfheartedly entertained the company of the women Roland had sent to him—nights that had invariably ended in their leaving him for more interested game when he had proven unmoved by their advances.

  Feyn glanced down, but not before he saw the tears welling in her eyes.

  “The way it is now—this wasn’t the way it was supposed to be, Feyn. This isn’t what we worked for. What you sacrificed yourself for. You didn’t do it to become Saric’s pawn. You did it because you believed. And you did it knowing I would be here, as long as I was alive, waiting for you.”

  Tears slipped from her eyes and onto her cheeks. She brushed them away with the hand that bore not the ring of office, but only the simple moonstone he remembered from so long ago.

  “And now…” He shook his head. “My hands are tied. Short of a war that will cost far too many lives and send fear rippling throughout Greater Europa, there’s no way to get Jonathan into power. You’re the only one who can fix this now. Please, Feyn. I am asking you.”

  She glanced up at him. “You always seem to be asking me, Rom.”

  “Only because I was asked first.”

  “By whom?”

  “By destiny when the blood first came into my hands! So now I ask you. We will go to war if you refuse, but I beg you first. Please, for love of life.”

  She nodded absently, though not in agreement.

  “I can only give so much, Rom,” she said quietly. “I’ve died once already. Now I find life and power and you ask me to step aside.”

  “Listen to me, Feyn. Think carefully. Can you say that you feel the same now as you did that day with me nine years ago? The day the sun was so hot on your pale skin—remember? We rode a gray stallion out from the royal stables beyond the city. One just like the one you rode here.”

  She was listening, staring off at the horizon.

  “The anemones were in bloom,” he said, more gently. “I sang you a poem, because you asked for it like a gift, and I gave it willingly… You cried.”

  Her lips parted but no words came from her.

  “You asked me to come away with you. To live with you. To bring Avra if I wanted… You laughed then. I’ve never seen you laugh since. But you did, and you were beautiful. Not a Sovereign. Not a Brahmin. But a woman with a heart that loved.”

  He stepped toward her as he said it, the smell of death thick in his nostrils. Her scent had once been beautiful, an exotic and intoxicating perfume, heady as too much wine. Now she smelled of a reek so foul no Mortal except Jonathan could seem to stomach it in close proximity.

  He touched her cheek and she turned her eyes up to him. Dark, fathomless. He was desperate to find her within them.

  His fingers slid along her jaw to the back of her neck.

  “Tell me you remember,” he said.

  He told himself he should not crave the taste of her. The smell of her. What Mortal had ever kissed a Corpse? And yet he brought his lips to hers without reservation.

  He found no sweetness. Gone the smell of her breath, the wet of her tongue, sweet against his, her lips, plush and soft at once.

  Her breath, when she exhaled, was fetid in his nostrils. And still he slid his hand into her hair as her lips parted beneath his, as though in surprise at the response of her body, only now catching up
to her heart.

  Her mouth tasted like rot. But this was Feyn, the woman he had known and loved. It didn’t matter how foul his senses claimed this act to be. He wasn’t there to take, but to give. To help her remember.

  She suddenly pushed herself away, lips parted as though in shock.

  Or stunned realization.

  Any Mortal would find the mere thought of what he had just done repugnant. But it was all he could do not to draw her back again.

  “You’re too bold!”

  “Forgive me. But don’t tell me you don’t remember how life felt that day.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Feyn said. But the determination in her tone had been cut by confusion.

  “What you ask is impossible,” she added, straightening her back. “I’m not some girl that you fool into drinking blood as you did once. Yes. I loved you. But I might have loved anyone who made me feel the way I did that day. Any face that was before me at that moment. Even as I love the face that I saw the moment I came out of stasis.”

  Saric.

  “Surely you can’t mean that.”

  “You’re very good at telling me what I can and can’t feel, Rom Sebastian. At dictating whether I truly live or not and if the life I bring is real or false. No more.”

  Rom paced away, frantic. He couldn’t allow her to slip away like this. They had come too far. He had seen the tears flow from her eyes!

  He faced her, mind set.

  “Then see him. For my sake, and your own, see him again.”

  “Who?”

  “Jonathan. The boy you gave your life for.”

  “I have seen him. You brought him when you invaded my chamber. And now here you stand beyond the city with me as you did once so many years ago. This time history will not repeat itself. I will give you the statute you want, protecting the Nomads, but its all you can ask and expect to receive from me.”

  “Face the one you’re refusing in person. The one who would be Sovereign if you permitted him to be. The one who carried the life now in my veins. If nothing else, see the Maker of the Mortals at such odds with the world you rule. See if he’s not the true source of life. Talk to him yourself, and then decide.”

  “You ask too much.”

  “I ask only for a few hours of your time.”

  She glanced away. For a moment his heart stopped.

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow night, at our Gathering.”

  She was silent a moment before she said: “Where is this gathering?”

  “In our camp.” Roland would object, Rom was sure. But what was the alternative? They had little choice.

  She gave him a long look. “Only to see the boy.”

  “Yes, of course. And to see the life of Mortals in celebration. Nothing more.”

  “Already you extend your request.”

  He lifted his hands in halfhearted surrender. “No more. I swear it.”

  “I will hold you to that promise.”

  He expelled a breath, considering their course of action. They would take her blindfolded and hold her in a yurt outside the camp, not for her privacy, but because of her scent. No Mortal would tolerate the smell of death within the camp—especially at the Gathering, though in truth Rom no longer cared how it affected the Gathering, what sensibilities her presence offended, or what anyone else might say.

  He only prayed that the boy did not disappoint.

  He whistled at Telvin and the Dark Blood in the distance.

  “Rom…”

  “It will do you no harm to see our way of life. You have nothing to fear.”

  “Rom.”

  He glanced at her. “Yes.”

  “You need to know something.”

  “What is it?” Telvin was coming, bringing Rom’s horse, and Janus, leading both his and Feyn’s.

  “I have to be back in two more days.”

  He felt his brow wrinkle. “Of course.” But the timing of her return depended also on their course of action with Saric… which in turn depended entirely on Feyn’s interaction with Jonathan.

  “I have to be back in two days or I’ll die.”

  “Nonsense. Saric can’t reach you here. He doesn’t know the location of the camp.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I need his blood every three days. I’m dependent on it.”

  He stopped. “What are you saying?”

  “I can’t live without him. He’s engineered the blood in me so that I require more of his or I die. Physically. Permanently.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  READ IT,” Roland said. “I don’t want you to recite it. I want to know the exact words, translated from their original Latin.”

  The Keeper held the ancient vellum in fingers that trembled due to his lack of sleep as much as from the weight of the words in his hands. He’d recited the passage from memory once already—they’d all heard it a hundred times, spoken around the celebration fires late at night. But now reality had conspired to challenge everything they’d assumed from those bold proclamations. They must now know the precise intent of Talus, the first Keeper, who’d written these words nearly five hundred years earlier.

  The old man gazed at the others who’d joined Roland in the temple ruin’s inner sanctum.

  Present: Roland, who’d demanded the meeting. Michael, his second. Seriph, whose views garnered more agreement among the zealots with each passing day. Anthony, a voice of reason and calculation to match Roland’s own.

  At issue: the Keeper’s understanding of Talus’s prophecy. As both the last surviving Keeper and first among the new Keepers the Book’s role as sage remained undisputed. The only way Roland could see to avoid a crippling fracture between the Nomads and the new Keepers, those non-Nomadic Mortals, would be through common understanding and agreement of the first Keeper’s words.

  And so they must turn to the man so appropriately known as “the Book.”

  Torchlight played across the faces gathered around the altar. Outside, the final preparations for the Gathering sent intermittent laughter rolling through a camp punctuated by the tuning of instruments and the pounding of hammers. But to Roland, the din served only as a constant reminder of the false pretense that hung over them all.

  Their greatest Gathering to date… in celebration of a diminishing Sovereign.

  “Book,” Roland said. “We aren’t enemies here. But we need to know what the intent of the first Keeper was when he wrote these words. And we need to know your best interpretation now.”

  The old man set the ancient vellum on the altar and opened the Book of Mortals. The leather-bound volume contained the names and details of every living Mortal, the last entry being the girl Kaya, whom Jonathan had brought back from the Authority of Passing. Only the latest indication of Jonathan’s failure to understand his role. In addition to their names, the basic precepts by which the Mortals celebrated and ordered their lives filled a dozen pages. In the back of the book: an exact translation of Talus’s vellum, which generations of Keepers had guarded for centuries in anticipation of Jonathan’s coming.

  The wavering flame of a large white candle lit the page as the Keeper lay a weathered finger along the passage in question. He coughed once into his fist, then read aloud in a worn, gravely voice.

  “Bloodlines should converge to produce a child, a male…” He skipped a few words, found the pertinent section, and then read: “Within his blood will be the means to overthrow Legion on the genetic level…” He cleared his throat. “In this child is our hope. It is he who will remember his humanity, who will have the capacity for compassion and love. And it is therefore he who must free us from Order, the very structures of which go up like a prison around the human heart. This boy will be humanity’s only hope.”

  The old man’s eyes lifted. “The only hope,” he said.

  “The question,” Seriph said, “is whether that hope is in the boy or in his blood. Within his blood will be the means to overthrow Legion, as you read. To free us from Order. Mea
ning his blood. Talus was a scientist, was he not? An alchemist?”

  “He was more,” the old man said. “He is the one who prophesied—”

  “You say he has prophesied only because what he predicted has come true. But his findings were made from calculations! There was no evidence of the Maker’s Hand, assuming such a thing exists.”

  “Easy, Seriph,” Roland warned. “We only seek the truth here.”

  “The Maker’s Hand is evident in the boy,” the Keeper said. “He was born in the year prophesied by Talus. Calculation, yes, but guided by the Maker’s Hand.”

  “Either way,” Michael said, “I think Seriph makes a good point. The passage seems to mean that humanity’s only hope will come from the boy because of his blood.”

  “There’s more,” the Keeper said.

  Michael interrupted: “But doesn’t it say—”

  Roland cut her off with a glance. “Read it for us, Book,” he said.

  The old man coughed again, wiped a fleck of spittle from his bottom lip, then read again.

  “I will establish an order of Keepers, and together we will vow to keep this blood and these secrets safe for the day that boy comes. I will teach them to remember what it was to know more than fear, so that our minds will remember even after our bodies have forgotten. Though we will surely die under the curse that is Legion, we wait in hope, having abandoned the Order in anticipation of that day.”

  “And that would include Nomads, I would say,” Seriph said.

  “Let him finish,” Roland snapped.

  The Keeper leveled a gaze at Seriph and continued: “Until then, there is enough blood for five to live for a while… Let the blood ignite the remnant who will find the boy and bring an end to this death. You who find this, you who drink, you are that remnant. Drink and know that all I have written is true. Find the boy. Bring him to power so that the world might be saved, I beg you.”

  He lifted his eyes. “This last was fulfilled by Rom and those who drank the blood and found the boy. Rom, whose presence would be most welcome now.”

  But they all knew why Rom wasn’t with them. It wasn’t only because he was gone, attempting to convince the Sovereign to give up her seat to Jonathan. It was also because they all knew that Rom would undermine an honest discussion as to Jonathan’s purpose. As the firstborn among Mortals, the lover of the first martyr, Avra, and the one who’d found the boy, Rom saw Jonathan as his only purpose for living. His mind—his course—was already sealed.