the apocalypse, after allbut neither was it comfortable. Karou felt the détente to be as insubstantial as it had been on their arrival, and that all of these soldiers would as soon slit one anothers throats as break bread together.
Mik began to play, and the seraphim took notice. Karou watched them, scanning those fierce and beautiful faces one by one, wondering at the soul of each. Gradually, she thought the music began to have an effect on them. The grimness didnt quite go out of their faces, but something softened in the atmosphere. You could almost feel the long, slow, gradual exhale that sapped the tension from several hundred sets of shoulders.
At dawn they would fly back to the human world. What was happening there? she wondered. How had Jael presented himself, and how had he been received? Were they scrambling to provide him with weapons? Even now training him to use them? Or were they skeptical? Some would be, but who would be louder? Who was always louder? The righteous.
The fearful.
Karou, whispered Zuzana. Translation needed.
Karou turned to her friend, who was back to learning Chimaera vocabulary from Virko just as she had at mealtimes at the kasbah. Whats he saying? she asked. I cant figure it out.
Virko repeated the word in question, and Karou translated. Magic.
Oh, said Zuzana. And then, with a furrowed brow: Really? Ask him how he knows?
Karou duly asked.
We all felt it, Virko replied. Tell her. At the same moment.
Karou blinked at him. Instead of translating, she asked, You all felt what at the same moment?
He met her eyes. The end, he said. Simple. Eerie.
A chill went down Karous spine. She knew exactly what he was talking about, but she asked anyway. What do you mean, the end?
What did he say? Zuzana wanted to know, but Karou was fixed on Virko. An understanding was settling in her like something that had been hovering and darting just out of reach and had finally grown too tired to be wary.
Virko looked around at the company, gathered in small and large groups, some with eyes closed listening to the music, some staring into the fire. He said, After it happened, I thought to myself: The angels are lucky. I must be losing my wits. I forgot my sword mid-draw. Just stood there with my mouth hanging open, feeling like my heart had been pulled out through it. Thought I was scraping the bottom of a long life, I did.
He let her process this, and she felt cold and then warm, in waves. But it was the same for everyone, said Virko. It wasnt me, and thats some relief. Something happened to us. Something was done. He paused. I dont know what, but its why were all still alive.
Karou sat back, dazed. How had she not guessed immediately? Nothing like that despair had ever come over her before, not even when she stood ankle-deep in the ashes of Loramendi. And it had come and gone like something passing. A sound wave, or particles of light. Or a burst of magic.
A burst of magic at the precise fulcrum of catastrophe, peeling them back from the edge. And if the White Wolf had risen to his feet and spoken, he had spoken into the silence of its passage, helping to gather them all back to themselves as their souls reeled. But he hadnt done it, hadnt stopped them from killing one another.
Akiva had.
The realization spread through Karou like heat, and before she could even question if she was right, she was sure.
And when Akiva finally did come into the cavern, Karou knew him even from the side of her downcast eyes. Her heart leapt. When she darted a glance to confirm it was him, he wasnt looking her way.
She felt as much as heard the stir in the company around her, though it was a moment before the words came clear.
It was him, she heard. He was the one who saved us.
Had someone else figured out what she had?
She swung around to see who had spoken, and was surprised to see the Dashnag boy, who of course was a boy no longer. Rath was his name, and he could know nothing of the pulse of despair; his soul had been in a thurible then. So what was he talking about? Karou listened.
Id never have lived to reach the Hintermost, he was telling Balieros and the others with whom hed been resurrected. I was moving south with some others. Angels were burning the forest behind us. A whole village of Caprine, and some Dama girls freed from the slavers with me. We were caught in a gully, hiding, and they found us. Two bast He stopped and corrected himself. Two Misbegotten. They were right in front of us. We could hear the aries screaming as they were slaughtered, but the two angels just
looked at us, and they pretended not to see us. They let us go.
Maybe they didnt see you, suggested Balieros.
With respect, Rath replied firmly, They did. And one of them was him. With the jut of his chin, he singled out Akiva. Eyes as orange as a Dashnags. I couldnt mistake them.
And all of this Karou heard with that same feeling that the understanding had been there all along, hovering around and ready to land just as soon as she stopped thrashing it away. Of course it wasnt only Ziri whom Akiva had saved in the Hintermost, but slaves and villagers, too, the same fleeing folk whom the Wolf had left for dead by choosing to kill his enemy instead of aid his people.