The cathedral loomed over the city, far taller than it had any right to be. If the city’s misproportions reflected Far’s skewed perception of Cislunar, something about the cathedral to Kyrchye must have impressed it. The rest of the mansions that comprised the most expensive quarter of the city had been crowded out by the bale-cathedral’s oversized foundation and widespread flying buttresses.
None of us were very familiar with the building. Michael hated the Imperial Reverence, Lorencz didn’t have time for it, and I ranked several notches below “excommunicate” on the Reverence’s scale of social acceptability — somewhere between “anathema” and “abomination.”
A narrow double door nearly a story high dominated the west face of the structure. Gargoyles leered on either side of the entrance, their long necks stretching over us. Smaller doors had been inset in the larger portal to provide human-scaled access.
“I hope Croix hasn’t baled up his own personal Kyrchye,” I remarked, pushing open one of the smaller doors to reveal an impossibly long, impossibly high nave. Ensconced candles lined the walls, burning bright and clean. No wax, no smoke, no flickering — the flames were as elongated and narrow as the cathedral’s spires. I stepped inside and felt something crunch beneath the soles of my boot. I looked down. Transients covered the floor like a living mosaic. They weren’t moving, so I took another step. More exoskeletons collapsed under my weight.
“Seems safe,” I reported. Michael and Lorencz moved inside, their faces twisted with disgust at the living carpet. Lorencz’s hand twitched toward her heart as she passed through the door, but she jammed it into her pocket. I smirked. Someone had been hauled off to mass as a child.
“Go ahead,” I teased her. “We need all the help we can get.”
She shook her head, tilting her head back to look for a ceiling.
“Kyrchye ain’t fond of sentinels. Or killers.”
“You are such a coward.” I made the sign of sword and sun across my breast, grinning. “If Kyrchye feels like striking someone down, I guarantee it’ll take me first.”
“He.
“It. Kyrchye’s a transient, and transients don’t have sex.” I paused, reconsidering. “As a noun, I mean.”
Lorencz looked at me, opened her mouth to ask, then closed it again, firmly.
“When you were the Hound, did you ever meet Kyrchye?” Michael asked, looking ill at ease as we stood in the echoing hallway.
“No, but I had some memorable battles in cathedrals like this.” I’d laid waste to innumerable chapels and sanctums and cathedrals across the lands my armies had ravaged. My armies had abused and slaughtered holy men and women, destroyed sacred sanctum artefacts, looted jewels and gold looted, desecrated altars—
I caught myself running my fingers over Might’s hilt and snatched my hand away. Blood covered my hands and for a moment I thought I saw heads impaled on the sconces instead of candles.
“Droit…?” Lorencz turned, her eyes wide, and I realized that she and Michael were seeing my visions, too. So much for not having any control over the bale.
“Come on,” I said, angrily. I found it difficult enough to keep a rein on my actions; I wasn’t sure I could control my thoughts, too. The sooner we were on the other side of the Line again, the better. “Let’s find out what the cardinal’s version of Perdition looks like.”
Pincers and antennae and mandibles and claws crunched beneath our boots as we walked, but no balewind blew through the cathedral, and instead of the fetor of blood and decay that hung over the rest of the city, I smelled incense.
The transients grew larger as we drew closer to the altar, forcing us around them rather than over, and the candles glowed brighter. The front of the cathedral was brilliantly lit, and I heard Croix’s voice rising and falling in measured cadences, declaiming in High Empyrian. We slowed, wary of disturbing the mesmerized beings around us. Some of them were twice as large as a man, monsters like the one we had faced earlier that winter. Cardinal Croix had defeated that transient by calling on Kyrchye to close the breach in the Line. I wondered if it was his prayers that were keeping these transients quiet now, and if so, what Yzyrchye thought about that.
We found the cardinal in the sanctuary, kneeling on a prie-dieu and wearing a rippling, blood-red gown. His back was to us as he faced a giant golden sun-disk that covered most of the east wall. Its bright metal reflected the light of a thousand candles arrayed on the floor around him. My eyes narrowed. I’ve always liked the prie-dieu. It seems developed expressly to — I squeezed my eyes shut for a long moment before opening them again. Dammit, I would master both my thoughts and my actions. I was stronger than this.
A gold-bound book laid before the cardinal. He turned a page as we watched, his voice never faltering. Lorencz’s advance abruptly jarred to a halt. She took a step backward, looking puzzled, and reached forward to touch an invisible barrier.
Michael frowned and felt the barrier, as well, then looked around. The line of transients stopped exactly where Lorencz had stopped.
“Croix’s apparently safer than the rest of us,” Michael muttered as I joined them. I touched the barrier, too. It was smooth but giving.
“I’ve never felt anything like this before,” I said. “Is it bale?”
“No. Bale is translucent and slimy.” Michael pushed against the field. “This is different.”
“It’s holy.” Lorencz pressed both hands on the barrier, testing it. Then, slowly, she let her head fall forward until her forehead rested against it, the streaks of crimson and green and canary yellow in her hair looking ridiculous against the solemn backdrop of the sanctuary. “Shit. The Reverence was right.”
“This barrier is no more real than anything else in the city,” Michael snapped, his voice harsh. “Croix’s mind is shaping everything around us, just like our minds shaped our own hells.”
“No. You said it yourself. This is different. Bale can’t do this. Hell can’t do this.” Lorencz pounded against the barrier with a fist. “This is something beyond the Line. This is something godly.”
“Bullshit.” Michael turned to me for support. I shrugged.
“I’ve never disagreed with Reverence doctrine,” I reminded him.
“You just said that Kyrchye is a transient!”
“It is.”
“Then you can’t agree with the communicants!”
“I agree there are beings that live across the Line that are more powerful than we are and that like to interact with humans. You can call Kyrchye and Yzyrchye and Far gods or demons or transients or whatever you want, and you can choose to interact with them or not — it doesn’t matter. They exist, either way, and one word is as good as the other.”
“If Kyrchye was just a transient, he wouldn’t be able to do this.” Lorencz unclenched her hand and pressing it flat against the barrier again. “This ain’t bale.”
“Just because you can’t shape bale like this doesn’t mean a transient can’t.” I caught myself touching my sword again and drew my hand back, more slowly this time. “I could cut through the barrier, if you want to get to Croix that badly. But I don’t think it would be a good idea to draw Might here, across the Line.”
“Croix! Cardinal!” Lorencz pushed herself away from the barrier and started to shout. “Croix! Can you hear us?”
“Of course I can hear you, Captain Lorencz.” Croix stood and turned, and I saw that the rippling red gown around him wasn’t fabric. It was millions of pulsing threadlike capillaries running from his flesh to the floor around him. A thicker crimson cord ran from the base of the golden sun to his heart.
“Oh, shit!” Lorencz jerked backward, stumbling into a transient, and this time she did make the sign of Kyrchye. Then she froze as she realized what she’d just done.
Michael laughed, a hard, unpleasant sound.
“Is this your hell, Croix?” he asked. “Becoming one with your cathedral?”
“No,” Croix said serenely. “This is my heaven.”
“Shit, shit, shit,” Lorencz muttered, staring at the cardinal with horror.
“Then it’s true — communicants are nothing more than puppets.” Michael crossed his arms over his chest. “You’re no better than Tegeus —a human slave to a transient master.”
“I thought we had a truce, Nobilis Aronson.”
“I’ll be civil to a man, but I’ll be damned if I’ll mince words with a marionette.”
I smiled. For a moment my cousin had sounded exactly like his father.
“The weight of Yzyrchye is growing heavier on you,” Croix said, turning to me. “Can you continue to bear it?”
“For now.” I started toward him and was stopped by the barrier. “Do you know where we are?”
“Across the Line in a simulated Cislunar.”
“Will you help us find Axton and rescue the missing children?”
“I can’t. If I stop monitoring this city, Yzyrchye will shatter it.”
“It’s Far’s construct, not yours.”
“Far created it, but he isn’t strong enough hold it alone against Yzyrchye’s assault. I’m buttressing his effort with Kyrchye’s blessing.” Croix gestured toward the motionless transients. “Why do you think these creatures are here, instead of pursuing you through the streets? You’re all in pain; even I can see that. The transients would be attacking you if Kyrchye and I weren’t holding them still.”
“The world’s going to end without your attention? You’re the one who’s keeping us alive?” Michael paced back and forth in front of the wall, his fists clenched. “You’re suffering from delusions of grandeur, Croix!”
“Who caused you so much heartache, Sentinel?” Croix took a step forward and his venous vestments slid through the floor around him as if the stone didn’t exist. I supposed, technically, it didn’t. “Which communicant betrayed you so badly that you need to take out your resentment on the rest of the Reverence?”
Michael spun to glare at me.
“Cut him free, Tegeus. Get that thing off his heart.”
“I don’t —” Might sent an eager pulse shuddering through my nerves and I envisioned its pale blade slicing through that curtain of capillaries, sending blood spraying in a bright scarlet fountain over the golden sun. I envisioned myself raising my face to the fountain and drinking the bloody essence of this false, impossible city. Saliva flooded my mouth. I wiped my lips with the back of my hand, afraid I might be drooling.
“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” I warned.
“Why not? He’s trapped in his own delusions, just like Lorencz.”
“His belief that Yzyrchye wants in sounds reasonable enough.” I swallowed saliva. “Especially since Might wants out. Remember, it’s Yzyrchye’s tool.”
“I’m glad you acknowledge that,” Croix said. “If you leave the sword here, I might be able to destroy it.”
“You don’t want it for yourself?”
“Yzyrchye’s excesses hold no attraction for me.”
I considered taking him up on the offer. Getting rid of Might would sever the last link between me and the Sovereign of Hell. I’d walked away from Yzyrchye. How hard could it be to walk away from its sword? I dropped a hand to its hilt and felt bale sucking at the sweat on my palm.
Maybe I could.
Maybe I should.
Might screamed.
“Tegeus!” Michael reached forward and grabbed my arm as I staggered under an onslaught of unfiltered hate and lust and loathing. Pithed and possessed, I grabbed Might’s hilt and started to draw, a feral howl rising in my throat. Arms wrapped around me, holding my arms against my side.
“Droit! Dammit, Droit, fight it!” Lorencz’s voice was in my ear. “Keep the fucking sword if you want it that bad, but fight it!”
She felt warm, pressing close behind me, warm and solid. I tore one of my arms free from her bear hug and reached over my head. She tried to jerk away, but she wasn’t fast enough. My clawed fingers tangled in her short, multicolored hair and I pulled her head forward over my shoulder.
Then Michael hit me with something that felt like an iron club, two times, a third, and Might’s searing hatred was overwhelmed by a haze of pain and nausea.
I gagged, pulling my hands back to cover my head. Lorencz released me. I felt flesh hanging loosely from my torn scalp and spongy bone beneath. Blood streamed down the side of my face.
Might pulsed again, offering a mute promise. I yanked it out of its scabbard as Michael swung again. My cousin’s iron candlestick met Might’s pale, slender blade and sheared apart. I counterattacked, sweeping Might across Michael’s chest as he jumped backward. Crimson blossomed across his shirt as Lorencz shouted.
“Droit!”
I twisted in time to stop her thrust. She’d called her own balesword, and her expression was grim.
“Don’t make me kill you, Droit!”
My grin was as fixed as a snarl as we tested each other’s defenses, then backed away looking for an opening.
The blood had already stopped running down my face, and a prickling in my scalp assured me that Might was sealing flesh and bone, protecting its host.
It protected me; I protected it. That was the nature of our pact.
How could I have ever considered breaking it?
Lorencz’s expression changed and I risked a glance away. Michael had joined the attack, holding another balesword. My blow must have only scored flesh. Still, it had been enough to frighten him. He looked nervous. He’d always been more scholar than swordsman. I feinted at Lorencz, then whipped around and swung toward Michael. He jerked back, nearly losing his sword, and riposted with a burst of balefire.
I winced at the first searing touch of flame, but Might absorbed the balefire as eagerly as it absorbed sweat and blood. Soot drifted off my coat and the cold air hurt my flashburnt face and hands. I shifted out of the way of Lorencz’s thrust and slashed at her face. Michael cut low, at my legs. I spun and grasped Might’s hilt with both hands, swinging down.
Might sheared through my cousin’s neck. Blood sprayed over my trouser legs as he collapsed at my feet.
I turned. Lorencz’s face was white as she stared at Michael’s corpse. I laughed and grabbed her collar, pulling her close. If I played carefully, I’d be able to keep her alive for hours.
Then she called a column of balefire down on both of us and I had to run her through in self-defense.
As soon as she died, the fire vanished. I let her corpse slide off my blade. My hands and clothes were slick with blood that steamed in the cold air. The rich scent made me salivate. I looked around for Croix, eager for more.
He was gone.