Whichever it was, it was how, earlier this evening, after getting an unsettling vibe from Esther, Karou had thought to give the fox chimaera a chance to redeem herself.
They had hoped not to need a shadow soldier here. They had hoped, even as they slipped through the window, fracturing the moonspill not three times but four, that the plan might play out its simplest variant. It hadn’t.
But they weren’t so stupid as to have come unprepared.
“Can we trust her?” the three of them had asked themselves. As Haxaya’s was the only soul in their keeping, she was the only candidate for the job.
“It was personal,” Akiva had repeated Liraz’s words. The Battle of Savvath, and whatever Liraz had done there to take such vicious vengeance in her stride. When it came down to it, they thought that Haxaya would be able to appreciate the gravity of the mission they were on now, and the stakes, and play her part. And so, it seemed, she was—with the exception of scorning the no-blood imperative, though perhaps that was well played. Jael was white and wide-eyed, and his voice shook as he issued the command to his soldiers to lay down their swords.
“Back up,” Akiva instructed them, and they did, parting warily to draw back against the walls of the chamber. It was hard to think of them as individuals, as mindful creatures with souls. Karou made herself look at their faces in turn, to try to see them as real, as citizens of her world who had been made and trained into what they were now and who might—if Akiva could, if Liraz could—unmake themselves, untrain themselves.
She couldn’t see it. Not yet. But she could hope.
Not for Jael. He could be no part of the future they were building. Akiva advanced toward him. Karou, blades drawn, guarded his right side, and Virko his left. They were nearly finished here.
“Listen to me,” Akiva told the soldiers. “The age of wars is over. For those who return and shed no more blood, there will be amnesty.” He spoke as though he had the power to make such promises, and, listening, even knowing the full bleakness of their own uncertainty, Karou believed in him. Did the Dominion? She couldn’t tell. They were silent by training, and Jael was silenced by Haxaya’s knife. Razgut alone was unsilent.
“The age of wars?” he parroted. He was at the edge of the bed, one useless leg dangling over the side, a limp curl of a thing. The eye that Karou had sunk her elbow into was swelling shut, but the other was still incongruously fine, almost pretty. There was madness in it, though. So very black. “And who are you to end an age?” he growled. “Were you chosen of all your people? Did you kneel before the magi and open your anima to their sharp fingers? Have you drowned stars like they were babies in a bath? I ended the First Age, and I’ll end the second, too.”
And with that, he hefted a knife none had seen, and hurled it at Akiva. No one moved. Not in time.
Not Karou, whose hand flew out too late, as though she might catch the knife out of the air or at least deflect it, but it had already passed her by.
Not Virko, who stood on Akiva’s other side.
And not Akiva. Not a hairsbreadth.
And Razgut’s aim was true.
The blade. What Karou saw was peripheral. If her hand couldn’t catch the blade, her head couldn’t turn fast enough to see it enter Akiva’s heart. His heart that she had pressed palm and cheek to, but not yet her own heart, not her own chest to his, or her lips to his, or her life to his, not yet. The heart that moved his blood, and that was the other half of her own. She saw from the corner of her eye, and it was enough. She saw.
The blade entered Akiva’s heart.
63
AT THE EDGE OF A KNIFE
Ice and ending. The instant froze, impossible. Unthinkable. True.
Your entire being can become a scream. At the edge of a hurled knife, that fast. Karou’s did. She wasn’t flesh and blood in that instant but only air rushing in to gather for a scream that might never end.
64
PERSUASION
An angel lay dying in the mist. Once upon a time.
And the devil should have finished him off without a second thought.
But she hadn’t. And if she had? Karou had wondered it a hundred different ways. She’d even wished for it, in her blackest grief at the kasbah, when all she could see was the death that had come of her mercy.
If she’d killed Akiva that day, or even just let him die, the war would have ground on unbroken. Another thousand years? Maybe. But she hadn’t, and it hadn’t. “The age of wars is over,” Akiva had just said, and even as Karou saw what she saw and no possibility of mistake, and even as her whole being gathered itself into a scream, her heart defied it. The age of wars was over, and Akiva would not die like this.
The blade entered his heart.
But Karou’s scream was never born. Another took its place, but first: a sound. A fraction of an instant after the knife sunk into Akiva’s chest… a thunk. It wasn’t a flesh sound. Karou’s head completed its turn and her gaze scribbled a wild pattern, taking in what she saw.
There stood Akiva, unmoved.
No stagger step, no blood, and no knife hilt protruding from his heart. Frantic, Karou blinked, and she wasn’t the only one, though none could experience the same despair she had felt an instant earlier or the joy that overtook her now when she spotted the blade, sunk into the wall beyond Akiva. None could know quite the same flavor of wonder as she did, either, as the truth took shape, but everyone in the chamber tasted some version of it.
Haxaya spoke first. “Invisible to death,” she murmured, because there was no mistaking what had just happened. Akiva hadn’t moved, and the trajectory didn’t lie.
The knife had passed through him.
It was Karou’s gaze he held in that moment, and she saw that he was half-stunned, half-haunted. She wanted to ask him: Had he done this? He must have. No one knew, not even he, what he was capable of.
Razgut had collapsed, wailing and beating his fists to his own brow. Two strides and Karou was to him, yanking him to the floor, checking the bedclothes for more weapons. The Fallen didn’t even seem to register her presence.
The Dominion looked wary but wonderstruck, too, in the presence of Akiva, and Karou didn’t think she needed to worry about any strikes coming from them now. She didn’t relax, though. Akiva’s life had flashed through her peripheral vision in a streak. She was ready to be out of here, and all that remained was persuasion. Her plan, in all its simplicity.
At last they came to it.
Once more, Akiva faced his uncle. Jael was quiet, his face pinched and pale as his horrendous mouth quivered. In the face of such power, he had lost even the courage to sneer.