Elizabeth Hand - Winterlong

“Hold her here.”

He slipped out. A minute later I saw. him weaving through the lazars until he reached the dais. The figure there stepped forward, a small white shape coiling about his legs like a cat. His face was darkened with ash and he had bound back his hair. When he raised his hand to greet Oleander something glimmered there, the faintest lilac.

They spoke softly. I saw Raphael glance back at the alcove and smile. Then Oleander handed him something, a flash of gold in the firelight. Raphael dipped his head and Oleander fastened my necklace about his neck. Then the younger boy stepped back to disappear through a door at one side of the altar.

Raphael stood a little longer, fingering the necklace’s intricate turnings of leaf and flower. He stared back at where I stood hidden by the shadows. The aardman Trey whimpered at that look, and tightened his grip upon me. Then behind Raphael something else took shape in the darkness of the doorway. It remained there where I could not see it clearly. Silence, except for the crackling of the braziers, the hissing of tapers set about the floor, the soft stir of lazars shifting their feet where they watched.

Abruptly Raphael looked away, to another alcove oppo sitemine.

“Bring him here,” he said. “I want to see him.”

From the alcove two aardmen emerged, half-dragging a third figure. When they reached the center of the room the murky firelight touched his hair with a faint cast of gold. The aardmen pushed him forward roughly, so that he fell to his knees in front of the dais. I tried to cry out, the gag cutting my mouth as I fought against Trey and Fury.

“No, lady,” Fury growled softly.

At the foot of the altar Justice crouched, coughing. When he raised his head I saw a gash across his forehead still bleeding slightly. He blinked at the smoke, ran a hand across his eyes, and shook his head, dazed. Then he stumbled to his feet, swaying as though drunk, and looked up.

On the dais stood my brother, clad in torn red tunic, his matted hair pulled back. At his throat shone the necklace Justice had given me. Behind him in the doorway stood the Aviator. Two aardmen supported him, their slanted eyes vivid in the firelight.

“Wendy,” Justice said. He shook his head again, wincing, and looked back at Raphael.

“Yes, Justice,” Raphael called softly. He held out his hands and beckoned Justice toward him. About his wrist glowed a band of violet light.

Justice took a step toward the altar, stopped. At Raphael’s feet the white animal, dog or small Wolvish creature, stared with blazing eyes at my lover. A murmur passed through the chamber; several of the children turned away or covered their eyes. Still no one spoke or tried to warn him. I tried to scream, choking on the cloth in my mouth.

“Do not watch,” croaked Fury. He tried as gently as he could to twist my head from the sight. I kicked at him until he loosened his grip and I could turn to watch.

Very slowly Justice mounted the steps, slowly as someone in a nightmare. I shut my eyes and tried desperately to draw something up, tried to turn his steps as I had those of countless dreamers at HEL . But when I opened them again he had mounted the last step and stood unsteadily before Raphael, his hands open before him.

“Wendy! I was so afraid—”

He took one last step, reaching for Raphael’s hand. As he did so my brother embraced him, pulled him to his breast, and bowed his head so that their hair fell in tangled waves, mingled gold and russet. Raphael caressed him, murmuring. There was an uncanny lavender glow against Justice’s cheek.

My brother stepped away. For a moment Justice stood before him, confused. He touched his throat, as though to ease a bruise there. My twin gazed at him, toying with the gold chain around his neck.

“You are mine now,” he said.

Justice raised his eyes to Raphael and choked out a single word, his knees buckling.

“Miramar—”

He sank to the floor and was still.

Raphael turned to the shadows behind him, raised a shaking fist encircled by a band gone dark and gray. Without looking back he strode across the altar to the sanctuary. The white jackal sniffed at Justice’s body, then turned and darted after Raphael. The Aviator let him pass. He stared out across the nave to where I stood; Fury and Trey pressed close against me. He made a cutting gesture with his hand.

“Ungag her and bring her to the armory,” he called. He turned and followed Raphael.

Fury struggled with my gag. As it fell to the floor I commanded him, “Free me!”

The aardmen stared at me uneasily, tails switching.

“ Free me!”

Trey crouched, growling, then dropped his hold and loped across the room to the sanctuary. Fury stared after him. “Please,” I whispered.

He let go of me. I stood shivering, rubbing my arms. Before me flames darted across the floor, licking at pools of melted tallow and dried grass and ruined cloth. I walked slowly from the alcove to where Justice lay upon the steps. In the shadows the silent lazars watched.

“Justice.”

I knelt beside him, brushing back his long hair to see a tiny mark upon his neck, like an insect’s bite. A drop of blood no larger than a bee’s eye pearled there. I touched it. brought it to my lips not caring if it were poison. Then I bent to kiss him, pulling oh so gently at his jaw still warm in my fingers. My tongue slipped between his teeth, his mouth unyielding now for the first time, the only time, as I kissed him, my Justice, kissed him and found nothing, nothing at all: only my own tears falling upon his lips and throat and he was not there, he was gone, gone past all redeeming. Justice Saint-Alaban whom I had loved was dead. The Gaping One had claimed him.

I drew back, stunned. Dark bruises had begun to erupt on his skin, the beautiful pale skin that had not been a vanity to him. And at the thought of that, of his beauty ravished in death, horror and grief overwhelmed me so that I knotted his hair about my fingers and began to sob Fury crept to the altar to slink warily between the flames, The lazars slipped from the shadows and approached me, murmuring.

I wept then, who had never wept before; while behind me in the crypt I could hear the hiss of the bonfire where they would lay him—my friend and companion, who had led me from HEL and lived only long enough to teach me the beginning of love.

And now I would never know what it was to be human; now all there had been of love in me would burn upon a madman’s pyre. My brain seethed as though it might explode, as inside me I heard the weeping of all the ones I had taken, all those who had gone to feed the Gaping One: Emma and Aidan, Morgan Yates, Melisande, all the others for whom it had been too much, this life, this waking horror that was the world; their voices rising to a shriek, until I shook and my hands dropped from him.

And I screamed, striking at a lazar who had reached to touch Justice’s hair. She fell back, her head striking a marble pillar. She slipped to the floor, a seam of blood like a crack upon her pale face.

“Don’t touch him! Don’t try to hold me!” I shouted. “ None of you can hold me!” Another child slipped and fell in his haste to run from me. I lunged to grab him, held him above me, and hurled him across the chapel. He screamed, and the voices of the other lazars echoed his end.

“The Gaping One, the Gaping One!” they cried. “He wakes, he wakes—‘”

I stood, panting as they cringed in the shadows of the Chapel, weeping and coughing from the bitter smoke. Then someone else limped from the altar, the reflection of firelight scorching his tattered crimson jacket until he seemed another flame approaching me.

“ No!” he shouted, kicking a knot of crouching children so they scattered like a nest of voles before a stoat. “ That is not the Gaping One!”