Authors: Tananarive Due
Teka’s voice whispered gently,
DON’T ANGER HER, DAWIT. SHE IS CAUGHT WITH MICHEL WHILE HE SLEEPS, DEEP IN HIS SHADOWS. SHE NEEDS TIME TO GET FREE
.
Time is more precious than oxygen, Teka
.
The tower platform was suddenly crowded with Sanctus Cruor: troops, clerks, and scribes. Dawit had eliminated his most feared power vacuum when he put Stefan to sleep, but Romero was telling his men that Dawit and his party were involved in Michel’s shooting, that Dawit had attacked the Holy Father. Romero might be as bad as Stefan, or worse.
The guns were gone, but the tower gleamed with swords’ blades.
Dawit was unarmed, and his best fighters lay sleeping. Or worse—dead. Michel’s followers would incinerate Berhanu, Teferi, and Fasilidas if Fana didn’t intervene.
She has me, Dawit
, had been Berhanu’s last words to him.
Fana knelt beside Teru over Michel and joined his mother in stroking his hair. Dawit was certain that Fana was restraining Romero, who would have tried to lock him in a furnace by now, but Fana didn’t glance back at him.
Teka helped Dawit flank Jessica and Phoenix in a corner, near the tower railing. Phoenix was the most fragile, afforded a single death. Only four remained? Where was Rami? His gentle Brother had been in the hall outside the tower when the shooting started.
I’LL PROBE FOR HIM
, Teka said.
I DON’T FEEL HIM YET
.
The loss of Berhanu hobbled them, but the grief was worse. Berhanu was the finest warrior Dawit knew.
Berhanu loves you like a daughter, Fana
, Dawit said.
Fana barred his thought, a slap behind his eyes.
Romero bowed to Fana.
“Mia regina,”
he said, awaiting orders from his queen.
“Take my party to my parents’ quarters,” Fana told Romero. “Bring Michel to mine.”
At least Fana would not hold them in a cell.
Caesar was subdued with a rigid restraining leash to wrest him away from Michel. The animal thrashed and howled as if he had been shot, too. Michel’s attendants brought a gurney and draped themselves over Michel, lifting him, their faces streaked with tears.
The bodies of Teferi and Fasilidas were gathered roughly, bound with ropes. “They sleep in service to you!” Dawit called after Fana as she followed Michel’s gurney. “Let Berhanu wake for a trial, Fana. Teferi’s children see you as an aunt. Protect our wounded!”
“The way your filthy jackal protected the Most High?” Romero hissed at him. “He will hang from the lampposts, a piece on every corner. I’ll chop him myself.”
Dawit tried to lunge at Romero, but four men held him and shoved him away, urging him back with jabs from their swords. Fana never looked back, following her new retinue into the palace. Berhanu was lost. What of the others?
SHE CANNOT HEAR YOU
, Teka said sadly.
SHE IS BARELY WITH US, DAWIT
.
Dawit suddenly looked for Jessica, who stood at the tower railing, and for a moment he thought she meant to jump. But Jessica only stared down at the aftermath of the attack.
“Don’t look, Jessica,” he said, but it was too late, so he joined her at her side.
Berhanu’s body was gone, removed. A thin man had died splayed in the fountain, turning its waters dark with his blood. Dozens of others were scattered across the emptying courtyard, most of them encircled by grievers, some left alone. Their blood was vivid against their white clothing. A woman screamed as she held her young daughter’s riddled corpse.
“Oh no,” Phoenix said, joining them at the railing.
“Johnny came to me, Dawit,” Jessica whispered to Dawit. “He wanted to …”
She didn’t need to say the rest.
We think it was Mahmoud
, Dawit told her quietly, but comforting Jessica brought pain. Was Mahmoud the dead sniper? Dawit’s stomach dropped.
Jessica’s face shook. “Dawit, I told Johnny to go to Mahmoud.
I told him
.”
Dawit’s heart trembled. Jessica hated Michel enough to have enlisted Mahmoud? Dawit had underestimated Jessica’s power to keep her own secrets. If only she’d confided in him!
The day was suddenly heavier.
Dawit took Jessica’s shoulders, guiding her eyes away from the slain bystanders below. “You are not responsible, Jessica,” he said, wishing it didn’t sound so much like a lie. “You thought you were protecting our child.”
Jessica sobbed into his chest, joining the chorus of mothers’ wails.
Without the constant crackle of gunfire, Dawit realized he heard loud buzzing above him. He gazed skyward at the quickly gathering clouds draining light from the sun.
“Sing for her, Phoenix,” Teka told the singer suddenly, urgently. “We have lost Rami—”
“No,”
Phoenix said with a gasp.
Dawit turned to Teka, startled.
RAMI TRIED TO GO TO BERHANU
, Teka explained.
“So you must sing, Phoenix,” Teka finished calmly. “Don’t stop until they’re gone.”
“Until who’s gone?” Phoenix said in a frightened whisper.
Teferi pointed up at the sight that had fooled Dawit’s eyes. They had never been clouds.
“Have mercy on us, Lord,” Jessica said. “We didn’t know.”
WE MUST PREPARE OURSELVES, DAWIT
, Teka said.
IF FANA FAILS
.
The sky was bloated with bees.
H
e stands at the altar beside his prophesied bride, who is as beautiful as her promise. She has chosen him, and he has chosen her. The call of the masses swells to the heavens. He is repeating his vows. And then there is pain, and whiteness, and …
Michel blinks. His vision is washed in crystalline brightness, but he studies the moment before he lets it drift away. Stefan is posted at the pulpit before him in his vestments, beaming with rare approval. Michel expected to see Teka, Fana’s teacher.
“Why do you wait, Michel?” Stefan says. “They are ready to be Cleansed.”
Michel gazes at himself and realizes he is wearing his Cleansing Day vestments that he and Stefan argued about; the crimson robe he had left hanging in its glass case because …
Why?
His highest echelon is here, encircling him: Stefan, Romero, Bocelli, the Four Horsemen. The leaders, the judges, the propagandists, the thieves. All have come to bear witness. The scribes’ pens scribble his every gesture on their parchments. His gold-plated copy of the Letter of the Witness lies open on a stand before him.
His book is turned to the page titled “The Cleansing.”
Michel’s spirits surge. He should have known the Day had come from the sweet smell in the air. When had the Shadows ever been so pure? When had he ever heard such a song?
And his bride is here! Michel blinks, as if he has been dreaming.
Fana waits beside him beneath her Ethiopian scarf, her burnished shoulders bare, and her smile, oh her smile! Has she been here all along? Why are they waiting?
Michel scans the tower once more: Where is his mother? Why won’t Teru come to watch her son fulfill his destiny?
MICHEL, WAKE UP
, Fana’s voice says, distant and desperate.
“I’m ready, Michel,” smiling Fana says, moving her bridal scarf aside. Her brown skin shines at him. Fana’s thoughts don’t match her face. Which Fana is lying?
“For the Cleansing?” he says, to be certain. Hadn’t she said she needed another day to be convinced? He can teach her the necessity. In turn, she is teaching him patience.
“Yes, Michel,” Fana says. “You’ve shown me what needs to be done. I’m ready to stand at your side for the New Days.”
Thousands of faithful outside of the church scream with joy. The morning wakes the sky.
I DON’T WANT TO FIGHT YOU, MICHEL. WAKE UP
.
Fana smells like gardenias. He wants to bury himself in her. She lifts her face toward his, offering the parting petals of her lips.
In the name of the Letter
, he thinks somberly, and leans down to taste his kiss….
But her eyes! Just as her eyes enchant him in his bedroom mural, Fana’s eyes intrigue him with their defiance, their lack of joy. Fana’s essence is in her eyes.
MICHEL, LET ME GO
.
Too late, Michel realizes that Fana’s happy face, not her voice, is lying to him.
What’s happened?
He is standing at the altar …
YOU PROMISED NOT TO TAKE ME TODAY. WAKE UP, MICHEL
.
Michel tries to hurl himself out of his dream, but he has forgotten motion, sensation. He is watching the groom with the masses, from a distant perch. He is watching from the knoll a mile away, near the knotted stand of tescalama trees.
Michel has never been taken. There were times he wished he
hadn’t ridden the Shadows so far, believed he’d gorged for impure reasons, like in Kano. In Puerto Rico. But he has never been paralyzed. Voiceless.
In more than fifty years of life, how has he never contemplated the simple horror of it?
He watches his twin groom cup his palm behind Fana’s neck, holding her. His pleasure sickens him.
Forgive me, Fana
.
Michel weeps as he watches himself take Fana’s long, sweet kiss.
“
Stop it
, Michel,” Fana whispered fiercely to her sleeping husband’s bloodstained ear. She could barely make herself look at the mess the sniper’s bullet had made of Michel, but Michel’s face was a gentler mess than his thoughtstreams. The anger of the excited Shadows tugged at her from the tatters that had joined them. The Shadows were spinning a dream to trap them both, strengthened by their fusing.
“Don’t make me kill you,” she said.
What was that twinge? The pain of Michel’s resistance?
As soon as his attendants had lain him on her bed and she’d touched his forehead, whispering for him to wake, a jolt like a fishing lure pulled her under,
deeply
under, before she popped back up for a breath. His touch, but none of his mental markers. Michel was sleeping, but his power was awake. The Shadows had found another way to her.
“Michel, wake up—or I’ll have no choice. I’ll have to stop your heart.”
Would that be enough? Michel was already beyond the dimensions of his damaged brain. What if his thoughtstreams could live without his body?
She might have to drain his Blood. There might not be another way, if she could remember how. She hadn’t done it since she was three, and she’d had help from the Shadows.
Either way, her mind would be savaged without Michel.
The second tug came, sustained pulling. And the smell.
Deafening buzzing sat over Michel’s palace, bees pelting the glass windows like hail.
Michel, you’re asleep. Let me go!
Fana had lost her protection from the blizzard of distractions. She’d programmed Romero with orders to prevent further bloodshed, but she worried for Berhanu. For all of them. If she couldn’t find Michel, or wake him …
The scope of the consequences humbled Fana, her first deep taste of fear.
Had it been a mistake to come to him? To bring her family to him? Should she have tried to kill him right away, the way poor Mom had begged her to?
Fana breathed. She tried to reach Michel’s body through the Rising—to skirt the call of the Shadows. She hoarded a moment of peace the way Teka had taught her, but peace had never been harder to hold. Fana’s thoughts roamed through Michel’s brain matter, searching for the bullet’s damage, trying to remember the lessons she’d learned from Johnny.
And she
had
learned.
She
did
heal Michel faster than he would have healed alone. But that knowledge was closely followed by her certainty that it was somehow too late, that Michel’s sleep would be shorter, but still far too long. The next tug from Michel was so strong that Fana was woozy, holding her bedside table for balance.
I’m sorry, Michel
, she said.
I tried to wake you up
.
Fana found Michel’s heart, wishing she had tried to stop it as soon as he was shot. She should have let Berhanu take him to the furnace. Fana had learned from Johnny; she didn’t fumble. His heart’s slickness squirmed against her. She wrapped herself around it, smothering it, locking herself tight. She tried to still Michel’s heart with all her strength.
Frantic barking boomed outside her locked door, and nails scrabbled against the polished wood. Caesar knew.
Michel let out such a long gasp that Fana thought his eyes had opened, he was awake.
But Michel had a dead man’s face. An inhuman screeching
behind her ears almost made Fana forget herself. Michel’s heart slipped from her, thrusting her aside with its wild beating. Pain erupted in her head, worse than her torn thoughtstreams with Michel. As Fana fought to blink her eyes—the smallest actions at a time—her nose bled right away.
Fana wished she had brought her mother to her room. Mom had been her first guide past the Shadows. The Shadows had pushed Mom away from her.
SWIM WITH THE CURRENT, FANA
, Teka said.
DO NOT FIGHT AGAINST IT. YOU’LL FIND YOUR WAY AGAIN
.
Reminded by her teacher’s voice, Fana inhaled and reached for the peace of the Rising.
To her shock, her body fell from Michel’s bedside to the floor, her limbs jutting in awkward directions, a rag doll. Fana couldn’t blink her own eyes.
His strength with the Shadows was a wonder. He had her already.
We tried so hard, Michel
, Fana thought, but she couldn’t move her mouth.
She had lost her voice, and so had he. They were caught together, married after all.
Fana rose.
She is up to her nose in the Shadows’ muck, breathing the stench in hot bursts. She seals her lips tightly, but she can taste the sweetness teasing her tongue. Her tongue flames for more, but she pinches her lips, a wall.
The murky warm sludge has risen, covering her nose. Her eyes will be next.
A brief flicker. Is Michel telling her he’s sorry? Yes, she is certain he is. She can feel the pulses of his helplessness, trapped in his healing sleep.
When the Shadows rise above her head, tugging her hair down, too, Fana holds her breath and seals her eyes. She listens for Phoenix’s singing, her parents’ voices, but ooze plugs her ears. Fana’s lungs burn to breathe. Hot tears gather behind her eyelids, with nowhere to go.