Kamila

“With my hand on the future’s throat,

I push forward because there is nothing else I can do.”

-From the war diary of Hilda Zelenko

At the same time

Kamila was waiting in the watchtower with the hilt of Wallshaker in one hand and a spool of sturdy wire in the other hand when she saw the unexpected approach of Devani, stalking quickly toward the doorway. The older woman’s fists were closed tight at her sides and the door flew open before she even touched it.

She looked between the others gathered there and then back at the spool of wire in her hand. Glanced out at the window. “We ought to get going sooner than later,” she muttered, and walked over to the opposite window.

Lucian pushed off the countertop and swayed lightly on his feet as he stepped forward, hands falling naturally into that ready stance he always held when he didn’t know how quickly he’d need to reach his knives. “What makes you so sure that thing’s going to work?” he asked. “You know we could have just asked Hilda for help, or Sara.”

Kamila shrugged one shoulder. “Didn’t want to.”

Badem leaned on the iron staff he’d picked up that morning, his one hand wrapped around the top. His other hand played with the clasps of the holster at his hip. When he took a small step to the side, the strap of the long-gun hanging over his shoulder shifted heavily with him, counterweighting his movement. “I can’t believe I’m voluntarily doing illegal activities with someone this stupid,” he muttered to himself. The voice of Avishag in his earpiece said something Kamila couldn’t make out, and Badem gave a small, rueful scoff.

“Look,” Kamila snapped, turning around holding the spool of wire, “I want all the best for her but she’s not stable enough for this!”

“And you are?” Lucian raised an eyebrow. “Only reason I’m here is to help Aleks. Don’t think it’s out of loyalty to you.”

Kamila growled low in her throat, reaching for the part of her that wanted to lash out and pushing it back down till it was silent behind the buzz of thoughts and the tapping of feet on the stairway as Devani approached from below.

“I knew that you were far too foolish to serve your proper function but I never dreamed that you were this much of an idiot,” Devani said flatly as she stepped into the room, not even waiting for Lucian or Badem to step into her way before pushing them aside. She snapped out a hand and swung her arm back a hair’s breadth, and at the impact of her knuckles Badem stumbled back. By the time he got his breath back and was standing again, albeit unsteadily, Devani had already grabbed Kamila by the back of the throat and was driving her forward. Devani was a slight woman, seemingly frail in frame – with each passing week it seemed that she lost weight – yet Kamila struggled to keep her knees from buckling under the downward force.

That sharp, angry, age-torn whisper behind her ear: “You’re meddling with things you know nothing about, breaking the pattern – oh but how could I expect any different? You can’t see it. You can’t feel it.” Devani’s breath, unnaturally hot like desert wind, made Kamila cringe. Then she set her jaw, shrugged her shoulders, raised her left arm so that the elbow pointed up and forward, hand set against her ear. She twisted with enough force to grab Devani’s hand under her forearm, pinning it to her own shoulder while she continued to turn. Foot followed foot in a pivot as Kamila finally got a good look at Devani’s face. Her eyes were sunken, her mouth thin and tilted, and sand and mist surrounded her. Kamila lowered her weight, bending her knees and jerking her whole body downward, and felt the snap of bone as she broke Devani’s wrist under her arm.

Devani screamed, and the sound of it rattled Kamila’s bones, resonating through her whole body until the force of it drove her to the ground, even as she tried to rise into an uppercut from the downward twisting motion she’d just completed. Before she could regain her stance she stumbled and fell, only catching herself with the heel of her left hand to prevent her face from hitting the floor. Lucian and Badem, nearby, scrambled to move into place, while behind the howling of wind and the rising heat in the room that turned the very glass to sand and sent it hurtling through the space between spaces and between heartbeats themselves there was the voice of Avishag on the radio in Badem’s ear, shouting but inaudible, until it finally was smothered by the crackling sand. Kamila’s free hand went to Wallshaker’s hilt, and she drew it in time to protect herself from Devani hurtling toward her, thin small mouth suddenly wide open in a scream that begat silence in the midst of the screaming wind, leaving nothing but the ringing in Kamila’s ears for a single second before she raised the sword in a blocking stance and widened her feet to hold fast against the unending pressure bearing down on her – stance of the wild prancing horse, shifting her feet every time she needed to absorb the impact – and Devani’s right arm, with her broken wrist trailing, swept toward Kamila, sharp and talon-like, wispy sharp spikes bursting forth from the flesh and menacing her, and then the arm was sailing off behind Kamila – defensive strike of the mare at the riverbend – and Kamila ducked just in time to be thrown out the window where moments ago glass had been, where now there was only air.

She grunted when she hit, but rolled back, turning her head over one shoulder and throwing her legs over that way too. Her sword cut a furrow in the ground. Kamila spat out blood and tried to rise. Badem lay nearby, howling as he clutched at his twisted leg. When he caught a glimpse of his own bone jutting from the skin, Badem blinked once and then fell catatonic.

Devani floated to the ground in a wreath of sand, one fist clenched. “I can’t kill you,” she said, in a whisper that Kamila still heard over the storm. “You can’t die yet. It’s not part of the pattern. I can’t break the pattern. But I can’t let you do this. If I just break some of your bones, then…” She smiled, showing long, thin teeth that shuffled about inside her mouth, switching places and dancing around one another. “Yes, that will serve the pattern.”

Kamila straightened, but every inch of her body ached, and her arm felt like it might fall off if she tried to swing her sword again. She left its blade thrust into the ground, leaning against the hilt, running through the memories of its past wielders in case any one of them might contain a secret to her escape from this situation.

None did – she wouldn’t be the first to suffer at the hands of a rampaging Aether-Touched. Kamila saw them all, the boy who’d picked up the sword when running from one Syndicate war straight into another, when the Sahar herded the Desert-maddened souls towards him for the crime of entering their territory unannounced; the old woman with the limp who used it as a walking stick and told the stories she learned from it to her daughter as they crossed the landscape before they were both torn apart by a terrified Naphil fleeing the wrath of its guardian; and a hundred more lives cut short as the sword rambled its way, a symbol of war made forever dull, carried but rarely used, across continents.

Devani bent the knee before Kamila, eyes boring into her skull, sunken deep in her haggard face. Fingers, bent claw-like, reached for Kamila’s throat, and she felt the breath leave her lungs, the heat rise in her head as the tips of those fingernails brushed her neck, ever so lightly, setting her skin to tingling unpleasantly…

And a flash of green struck out between Kamila and Devani, and the latter tore away, backpedaling even as Kamila’s mind, addled by the fall, struggled to keep up with the speed of the motion. She stood again, seeing that the green blur – she could not quite make it out – was darting to and fro, striking out toward Devani and hitting nothing. Nearby, Badem was still unresponsive, staring at his broken leg. Lucian was nowhere to be seen, but when Kamila turned her head to try and look for him, a painful headache echoed through her and she nearly buckled beneath that pain.

She drew Wallshaker, and the rush of memories clarified things for her. Advancing, blade out to test distance, she put one foot slowly in front of the other.

Antonin Voloshko moved like a leaf in a hurricane, lighter than the air itself but bending it to his will. Sand and pieces of stone, kicked up by the battle, went higher up into the air than even the crest of the city walls themselves. He walked with grace among those eddies of air, cutting through flurries of destructive power. Kamila felt only the echoes of flesh-tearing force moving through the air – invisible, deadly – much like the shockwave of an explosion to one who stands distant from it. But still she advanced, sensing in Devani’s madness a pattern.

Kamila’s head hurt almost as though she’d struck it first on the way down, but the adrenaline helped bring things into focus. Made her thoughts somewhat coherent again. When had Devani become Aether-Touched?

She knew, she’d known from the beginning. Ever since that day when the roof fell, maybe even before then. She should have listened to me. You should have listened to me.

Antonin was shouting something over the howling of the wind and the amplified rustling of a million grains of sand, like the rustling of leaves multiplied until it drowns out all else. The whole city must have heard. Kamila took another step forward. Devani shouted something back, a mere few words. Kamila took another step forward. She should have listened.

I was there when it began, after all, wasn’t I? No one on earth suffered from the Aether’s touch before me – it was only those who wandered into its embrace unprotected who had to suffer that fate. Except for me. Karla Enok, the first Aether-Touched of Earth, whether anyone wanted to admit it or not. This unfortunate woman, Devani, understood me well – and I her. But Kamila and I were bound together. My hate could not override my instinct for survival. Kamila took another step forward.

Thoughts and memories – hers, mine, those of a hundred others – coalesced as Kamila’s steps quickened. Antonin stepped into the air – green blur of his sword cutting the Veil’s weave and weft until raw energy spilled out, and his free hand trailed behind, mending and stitching the broken pieces together again. Devani howled, her arm bleeding sand and mist, her eyes leaking blood and wine. She twisted her whole body, stepping with her back foot toward the side in a movement finally comprehensible to Kamila’s eyes. Devani’s hand, warped by her own hate and fear into a talon, closed hard around the middle of Antonin’s arm. She raised that arm – long and twisted on a single tattered leathery wing – and tossed him to the ground.

He flashed again, and turned in the air, and stood next to Devani, his free hand holding her arm, his sword back. “There is still time,” he said quietly, though over the wind even Kamila could hear him. His voice like a whisper from just next to her, no matter what he spoke over. “You can be rescued, but I can’t do it for you.”

“I don’t want to,” Devani said, eyes leaking water and bile. Ribbons of tears lashed out in a dragon’s arc as Kamila took another step forward. “You never listened to me. None of you listened.” Water sharp as knives wrapped around Antonin’s arm and squeezed, and he pulled back, screaming as he did, blood and skin mixing with the sand in the air. A piece of it stuck to Kamila’s face.

Antonin fell to one knee when he made it back out of the reach of Devani’s storm. When he looked up at Kamila, his eyes were opalescent green, without pupils, solid in hue. His free hand, covered in blood, traced in the air the miming of a knitter without needles. “No, Kamila, don’t get any closer to her!”

Kamila took another step forward. She had nothing to do but listen to me, and I wanted nothing more than to embrace this poor creature, twisted by all the pain and hate and abandoned a hundred times till there was nothing to whisper to but the whispering of her own damaged soul, and that soul had nothing to reach out to but the death of the other world itself, nothing to speak to but the history it would rather have forgotten, nothing to know but itself and me – and all of mine – and the souls bound together in the Memory Plague, my inspiration, my love, my only companion on cold days in the Refuge –

Kamila, with Wallshaker in hand, held her arms out, and Devani turned toward her.

“You’re me,” Devani whispered. “But I tried to help you. I tried to save your brother. You wouldn’t listen. You’re too stupid. But now you’re me.” Her lip, ribbon-shape-twisted with a pupil and cornea growing haphazard from the tubercles, quivered. And Devani, at the eye of the storm of dust and sand and stone and skin and blood – whimpered. Her eyes leaked water and wine. “Why are you me?”

Kamila, eyes leaking water and wine, stepped forward, dropping her stance, and hugged Devani around the back. I lowered her head, laid it on Devani’s shoulder. I smiled with Kamila’s lips and Kamila’s teeth. “I am air itself,” I whispered in a half-sob, “and now so are you. We are kin, in spite of everything.”

And Devani began to lower her head too, began to put her arms around me and to let her feet close in on each other, raising her body, dropping her combat stance, and then I was torn away from her by another storm while Devani’s storm suddenly died, and another streak of light and color came into the space between us, and Kamila settled into a combat stance and lowered her center of gravity, preparing Wallshaker for a thrust into our heart, eyes on Devani’s, feet angled toward her target. Hilda Zelenko, her coat trailing along the ground, stepped straight into Devani’s reach, the pole of her glaive through Devani’s body, bisecting her while the force of Hilda’s storm turned opposite to Devani’s own and the wind died, and husks of dead insects rained all around.

Hilda reached out and cradled half of Devani’s blade-split face with the hand that did not hold the glaive. “Don’t worry,” she muttered, not to Devani, not to us, but to Kamila, not me, not me, just that stupid body that ABANDONED me, that will always ABANDON me no matter how addled its brain becomes by a thousand blows to the head on its stupid quest for revenge against the EARTH ITSELF –

Devani’s mouth moved, no longer along the path I would have wished, had I still breathed, could I still move for myself – “You’re going to send me away, aren’t you?” She did not pull away from Hilda’s hand, where the fingertips lay lightly against the side of her head, just behind the hairline. She lowered her hands. “But you didn’t listen.”

“I listened,” Hilda whispered. “I found you.”

“But you didn’t understand.” Devani chuckled. Leaned further into Hilda’s hand, her back bent oddly. Feathers grew from her ears, quilting around and over Hilda’s blood-red hand. “But none of you understand – I don’t want this.” The storm closed in around Reaper and Aether-Touched, until all others were shut away.

At the eye of the storm, Hilda smiled sadly. “I know,” she said.

“No you don’t.” Devani shook her head, tried to pull back, but Hilda’s hand was caught in the woven blanket of feathers, and couldn’t be freed. “I hate the Aether. I hate the influence it still holds in its sway over this torn, fallen world. Everyone bows before a force that is not of us, that is not for us. Everyone scrambles to use it, join with it, to bend it to their will as you do.” Devani raised her hands and set them on Hilda’s head, and Hilda did not pull away even as the feathers grew around her and the sand got into her eyes, stinging. “But it is wrong and it is unwelcome, a broken and breaking thing that makes puppets of us all.”

“It isn’t your fault.” Hilda reached up with her free hand, no longer holding the glaive, and slipped the cap off of her head. Devani’s fingers, sprouting a thousand little feathers, ran through her hair, tickling softly over her scalp.

A tear leaked from the corner of Devani’s eye – the one eye which had not sprouted stone and lichen, the half of her face that was not sealed over. “Don’t let her in again,” she whispered, hoarse, in the silence at the center of the winds. “I don’t want to be an instrument of her madness?”

“Who is she?” Hilda asked, though she knew.

“You know.” Devani smiled. “She didn’t want to be hurt by it either. But it twists and grasps and reaches, always reaches, spreading over this earth however the angels may throw a hastily-woven Veil over it, however you may seek to maintain that gift-legacy. Listen to me, Ofer Shvets.”

Hilda jolted at the mention of the name. “That isn’t my name,” she muttered bitterly. “Don’t say that name.”

“Who we are is nothing but the sum of our memories.” Devani’s voice grew strained behind a mask of mud and weaving ribbons of flesh. “Who we are is nothing but the sum of our memories. But we are our own masters, Ofer. Hilda. You. Reaper. Aetheric Angel. The one who listens to me. I know not.” Hilda tightened her fingers around the curve of Devani’s skull, every muscle in her body tense and tight, her mind ready to fire off the Banishment at the first sign of transference of the curse. “But we are our own masters. It has touched me with its mind-construct, yes – but make no mistake, Hilda Zelenko. It is not my master. I am my own master. Remember that.” And Devani smiled.

When Devani vanished, the storm died, and with it the horrible heat of the air.

In the echoing calm afterward, Kamila stood silent while Hilda walked slowly up to her, step by hesitant step, fitting that flat cap back onto her head as before. She only finally sheathed the sword – reaching around her little sister’s back – when Hilda fell into her with a hug.

“I’m sorry,” Hilda muttered. “I didn’t know.”

“Didn’t know what?” Kamila asked, staring numbly at the body of a dragonfly that lay inert on the ground next to her foot. She looked down at Hilda’s head, buried in her shoulder, and brushed a dead fly off of the crease of Hilda’s cap.

“I didn’t know it would get this bad,” Hilda sobbed. And then she pulled away, her hands resting on Kamila’s biceps. “So for that I’m sorry.”

Kamila moved in and wrapped her hands around Hilda. “I’m sorry too,” she said, rebuking me. “I don’t think I ever said it. But I – there’s so much to be sorry for.”

Nearby, Badem stirred, and Lucian approached from over Kamila’s shoulder. Hilda pulled out of Kamila’s arms and stepped toward Lucian, wrapping her arms around him and lowering her head under his shoulder. Over Hilda’s back, Lucian caught Kamila’s eye, and she stared back in confused fury – for half a second. She saw the same confusion, and hurt, looking back at her from Lucian’s eye – and shocked, Lucian looked down at Hilda.

“What did I tell you?” Hilda whispered, and raised her head to smile up at Lucian. Lucian didn’t have the strength to smile back. He just blinked so that he wouldn’t cry, and kept still so he wouldn’t have to let go.

Kamila kept her eyes on Lucian’s for a few seconds, then scoffed under her breath and turned away – and I howled in silent fury as I became jolts of impulse up Kamila’s arms telling her to take up her sword and strike down her sister, and her sister’s toy, mere obstacles in the way of the greater goal we both held –

She went to Badem and knelt down next to him. Antonin, staggering up to his feet nearby, made toward the two of them. “I can hold him stable while the healers are on their way,” Antonin said. “Kamila, if you are able, return to the walls. They need you there. If not – rest a while, then go to join them.”

Her head felt heavy, and though the pain was not much, Kamila’s mind couldn’t help but fixate on it. Her attention was frayed. She turned toward Antonin, teeth gritted. “And then what?” she asked. “Then I let you use up my life the way you’ve used up my brother’s? The way you’ve burned up my sister from inside?” Strands of hair were plastered to her face by her own sweat and by the wet wind of the storm’s aftermath.

Antonin blinked, taken off guard by Kamila’s sudden fury. “No,” he said quietly. “No, I just – if there’s anything I’ve done that you would like to talk about, then I’m sure –“

Kamila stepped close, leaned in, and felt her head grow heavier as she leaned forward. “You turned my sister into a monster,” she hissed. “And my brother might be dead right now for all we know, but if not he’s in mortal danger. You failed to stop that Invictan from taking him. You put these dreams in Hilda’s head of following in mom’s footsteps.”

“It was not so long ago that you wished for nothing in the world more than to follow in your mother’s footsteps, Kamila.” Antonin’s voice was distant, perhaps addled by the pain of his inability to defeat Devani, his unpreparedness for the confrontation.

He was off-balance, shaky. He hadn’t been ready, and that hurt him – and Kamila knew just from looking at him.

He was ashamed of it.

“Everyone has to give up on their childish dreams eventually,” Kamila said, glancing at the spot where Devani had once been, then placing her hand again on the hilt of the blade Devani had given her. “The lucky ones get to. The unlucky get eaten by their dreams.”

She turned, shrugged her shoulders, adjusted the strap holding her crossbow and her sling, and walked to the wall.