Chapter 17: VAIL - The Exodus Begins69Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtPWyiWfQh4
The laboratory burned with a cold, blue light.
Vail stood at the threshold and watched it go—the cages, the wires, the copper siphons, the recording tablets, the half-finished notes still scattered across his desk. Everything he'd built over two years of obsessive, sleepless, unforgivable work. Everything that had killed people. Everything that might yet save them.
Liska was beside him, a clay jar of distilled spirits in each hand. She'd emptied three already, splashing the contents across the stone floor, soaking the parchments, the equipment, the bodies of the caged gods. The crow-warden was already dead—it had stopped breathing an hour after Eira wounded it, its eyes filming over one final time. The cairn-warden was still alive, hunched in its cage, weeping black ichor. The tree-watcher was still alive too, its branches twitching in a wind that didn't exist, its bark splitting along fault lines that oozed something dark. They'd die in the fire. It was a mercy, Vail told himself. They'd been dying anyway.
"This is it, then," Liska said. Her voice was flat, but her hands were shaking—not from fear, he thought, but from the same cold fury that had been building in her since the Council voted. "Two years of work. Up in smoke."
"The work wasn't the point. The knowledge was the point. I've memorised everything that mattered. The rest is just evidence."
"Evidence Aldric would use to hang you."
"Evidence Aldric would use to hang all of us." He took one of the jars from her hands. "You don't have to come. You could stay. Claim you were coerced. Aldric might spare you."
Liska laughed. It was a short, ugly sound, like a blade scraping bone. "Aldric's been trying to have me burned as a witch since before you recruited me. He's not going to spare anyone who worked in this laboratory. You know that. I know that. The only reason I'm not already dead is because you protected me." She met his eyes. "Now I'm protecting you. That's how this works. That's how it's always worked."
"I don't need protection."
"Bullshit. You need more protection than anyone I've ever met. You just won't admit it." She uncorked her remaining jar and threw it into the laboratory. The clay shattered against the stone floor, and the spirits spread in a clear, volatile pool. "Do it. Before the guards notice the smoke."
Vail threw his jar. It landed beside the first, the spirits mingling, the sharp, chemical smell filling the air. He pulled a torch from the wall bracket—one of the ones that burned with a faint blue tinge, the colour of the plague, the colour of Yska—and held it at the threshold for a long moment.
"To knowledge," he said.
"To survival," Liska said.
He dropped the torch.
The fire caught with a sound like a gasp, blue flames leaping across the floor and climbing the walls and swallowing the cages and the wires and the copper siphons. The heat was intense—hotter than any normal fire, hotter than it should have been—and the blue light threw long, twisting shadows across the stone. The tree-watcher screamed as it burned, a high, thin sound that was almost human. The cairn-warden didn't scream. It just crumbled, its stone body cracking and splitting and falling in on itself until there was nothing left but rubble and ash.
Vail watched until the flames reached the ceiling. Then he turned and walked away.
The eastern gate was dark and cold, the torches guttering in a wind that smelled of snow. The others were already there—Eira, her father Eirik, Sersha with her missing ear and her hand on her sword, Torrin the silent rider who hadn't spoken since they'd left the capital, Liska with her surgeon's kit and her portable siphon and her flask of brandy. Six horses, laden with supplies for two weeks. A cart for the equipment. A map of the north road, marked with Sigrid's spirals and angles, copied from the carvings on her thighs.
And Rennic, standing alone by the gate with his grey wolfskin cloak pulled tight around his shoulders and his scarred face set in an expression that was trying very hard to be stoic.
"You're late," Eira said. Her voice was flat, but her eyes were red. She'd been crying, Vail realised. She'd said goodbye to her brother.
"There were things to burn."
"Important things?"
"Everything I'd built. Everything that might have been used against us." He swung onto his horse. The animal was a sturdy mountain gelding, grey as the sky, and it snorted and stamped as he settled into the saddle. "Where's the boy?"
"With Rennic. I told him I'd come back. I told him—" Her voice cracked. She stopped, her jaw tightening, her hands clenching on the reins. "I told him I'd teach him to fish. When this is over. He's never learned. The river was too far from the longhouse, and Mother was always too sick, and then she died, and there was never time."
"You'll teach him," Vail said. "When this is over."
"You don't know that."
"No. But I believe it. That's something."
She looked at him, her pale eyes unreadable. Then she nodded, a short, sharp motion, and urged her horse forward.
They rode through the gate and into the dark.
The north road was a grey scar across the snow, lit only by the faint glow of the moon through the clouds. They rode in silence for the first hour, the only sounds the creak of the cart and the muffled thud of hooves on frozen ground. The Citadel shrank behind them, its towers fading into the darkness, its lights dwindling to distant sparks.
Vail rode at the front with Eira beside him. Her father was behind them, his hunting knife visible on his belt, his eyes moving constantly across the treeline. Liska was driving the cart, her flask in her hand, her portable siphon rattling in its crate. Sersha and Torrin brought up the rear, their swords loose in their scabbards.
"How long to the Frostwood?" Eira asked.
"Four days, if the weather holds. Five if it snows. Longer if we encounter resistance."
"What kind of resistance?"
"Aldric's hunters. Yska's puppets. Mad gods. The usual." He glanced at her. "You've faced worse."
"I've faced one god. And I didn't kill it. I just woke it up more."
"You wounded it. That's more than anyone else has done in five hundred years. When we reach the prison, you'll do it again. Differently. Better. With a memory that doesn't just wake Yska up—a memory that hurts it. A memory it can't digest."
"And if I can't?"
"Then I'll give it my mother's death. The cold version. The clinical version. The version that might choke a god that's never tasted emptiness before." He paused. "And if that doesn't work, we'll try something else. Liska has the siphon. We have god-death residue from the caged specimens. We have options."
Eira was quiet for a moment. Her horse plodded on, its breath pluming white. "You really believe we can kill it?"
"I believe we have to try. The alternative is extinction."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only answer I have."
They rode on. The moon climbed higher, and the snow began to fall—light at first, then heavier, fat flakes that clung to the horses' manes and blurred the road ahead. The wind picked up, moaning through the pines, and Vail pulled his cloak tighter. He hadn't slept in days. His hands were steady, but his eyes were burning, and the cold was seeping into his bones in a way that had nothing to do with the weather.
The cold was the first word. And the cold will be the last.
He'd read the phrase a hundred times in the archives. He'd heard it spoken by a dying woman with blood running from her cunt. He'd seen it carved into the walls of the temple ward, written by a god-speaker who'd hollowed herself out and filled the hollow with Yska's voice. He didn't know what it meant—not exactly. But he knew it was a warning. And he knew they were riding toward whatever it was warning them about.
They stopped to rest the horses two hours before dawn. The snow had eased, and the clouds had parted, revealing a sky full of cold, indifferent stars. Liska built a fire while Sersha and Torrin stood watch. Eirik melted snow for water. Eira sat apart from the others, her back against a fallen log, her obsidian knife in her lap. She was staring at the blade, her expression unreadable.
Vail walked over and sat beside her. "You should sleep."
"So should you."
"I don't sleep. We've established this."
"Neither do I. Not anymore. Not since—" She stopped. Her thumb traced the edge of the blade. "Not since I fed the Lament my mother's death. Every time I close my eyes, I see her face. The blood. The midwife's hands. The way my father screamed. I gave it away, and it's still there. It didn't go anywhere. It just burned."
"That's the nature of a true tithe. The memory doesn't leave you. It just becomes something else. A weapon. A wound. Both."
"Which is it for you? Your mother's death."
"A wound. But not the kind that hurts. The kind that's just... empty. Like a hole in my chest where something used to be." He looked at the stars. "I used to think the emptiness was a strength. That it made me rational. Cold. Clinical. Capable of doing things other people couldn't. But it's not a strength. It's just another kind of plague. And I've been feeding it as long as the covenant's been feeding Yska."
Eira was quiet for a long moment. Then she said, "When we reach the prison—when we face Yska—I want you to promise me something."
"What?"
"If it comes down to a choice between saving me and saving the world—save the world. Don't hesitate. Don't try to find another way. Just do it."
"That's not a promise I can make."
"Why not?"
"Because I'm not empty anymore." He turned to look at her. "You said I was frozen. You said the ice could melt. You were right. Something's melting. I don't know what it is yet—I don't have words for it—but it's there. And if I have to choose between you and the world, I'm going to try to save both. That's not a promise. That's just... who I am. Who I'm trying to be."
Eira stared at him. Her pale eyes were unreadable, but something in her expression shifted—softened, maybe, or cracked. "That's the most human thing you've ever said."
"It's terrifying."
"It's supposed to be. That's what being human is." She sheathed her knife and stood. "Get some sleep, Vail. Even if it's just an hour. You're no good to me exhausted."
"Are you giving me orders now?"
"Someone has to." She walked away, toward the fire, and he watched her go. The stars were very bright, and the snow was very cold, and somewhere to the north, a mountain was kneeling before a door that had been sealed for five centuries.
He didn't sleep. But he closed his eyes, and for a little while, he stopped thinking.
They broke camp at dawn and rode north. The snow had stopped, and the sky was pale and clear, the sun a cold white disc on the horizon. The road climbed into the foothills, and the trees grew thicker—black pines, ancient and tall, their branches heavy with snow. The air smelled of resin and cold and the faint, distant tang of something that might have been smoke.
By midday, they reached the first waystation. It was abandoned—the roof half-collapsed, the walls covered in old carvings, the hearth cold and black. Someone had been here recently; there were fresh ashes in the fire pit, and a discarded bedroll in the corner. But there was no sign of the occupant. No body. No blood. Just the ashes, and the bedroll, and a name scratched into the wall with something sharp.
YSKA.
"She was here," Eira said. She was standing in front of the carving, her hand resting on her knife. "The god-speaker. Sigrid. She came through here."
"How do you know?"
"Because it's the same word she carved into her thighs. The same word the patients chanted in the ward. The same word the Lament spoke to my brother in his dream." She traced the letters with her finger. "She's heading north. Same as us. She's following the map."
"Or Yska is following her," Vail said. "Using her as a compass. A guide. She's been walking for days, barefoot and bleeding, with nothing but a dead god's voice in her head. She's not a woman anymore. She's a vessel. And the thing inside her wants to go home."
"Then we need to find her before she reaches the prison."
"Why?"
"Because she might know something. Something Yska told her. Something useful." Eira turned from the wall. "And because she deserves to be saved. If there's anything left of her to save."
Vail didn't answer. He was looking at the carving on the wall, the four letters scratched into the stone. YSKA. The name that heard. The name that was listening, even now, even here. He could feel it in the back of his skull—a faint pressure, like the moment before a storm. Yska knew they were coming. Yska wanted them to come. And Yska was patient.
"We ride," he said. "We don't stop until we find her. Or until we find the prison. Whichever comes first."
They mounted their horses and rode north, into the pines, into the cold, into the silence. Behind them, the word on the wall seemed to pulse—a faint, blue flicker, like the torches in the laboratory, like the light in the undercroft where Sigrid had nearly drowned. The name that heard. The name that was waking up.
YSKA.
YSKA.
YSKA.
They found the first body an hour before sunset.
It was one of Aldric's hunters—a young man in Council livery, his grey cloak soaked with blood, his throat opened from ear to ear. He was lying in the middle of the road, his sword still in its scabbard, his eyes wide and staring. The snow around him was stained red, already freezing.
Sersha dismounted and knelt beside the body. "This wasn't a blade. Look at the wound—the edges are jagged. Torn. Someone did this with their hands."
"Or their fingernails," Liska said, quietly.
Vail looked at the dead man's face. His eyes were wide, his mouth open, his expression frozen in an expression of utter disbelief. He hadn't expected to die. He'd been tracking them—Aldric's orders, no doubt—and he'd encountered something else. Something that moved faster than he could draw his sword. Something that didn't care about Council livery or hunting orders.
"Sigrid," Eira said. "She killed him."
"Yska killed him," Vail said. "Using Sigrid's body. She's not in control anymore. She hasn't been for days."
"Then we need to move faster."
They rode on, leaving the body in the road for the wolves. The sun sank below the trees, and the shadows grew long, and the cold deepened. Vail could feel it now—a presence at the edge of his awareness, watching, waiting. Yska knew they were close. Yska knew they were coming. And Yska was not afraid.
Neither am I, he thought. His hand went to his chest, where his mother's memory sat like a splinter of ice. The cold version. The empty version. The version that might choke a god.
Neither am I.69Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKGM1q0MW0r
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