Damn it.
And so it was: Liraz would accompany her instead of Akiva, and it was just as well. The chimaera would have questioned Thiago sending Karou off through the portal with Akiva, and there was still the deception to manage. There was too much to manage, blast it.
At least once she got through the portal, Karou told herself, she wouldnt have the entire chimaera army watching her every move.
Of course, in the absence of Akiva, there would be no moves to worry about them watching.
We all have our parts to play, she told Zuzana and Mik, by way of reminding herself. Getting Jael out is just the beginning. Quick and clean and apocalypse-free. Hopefully. Once hes back in Eretz, he still has to be defeated. And, you know, the odds arent exactly in our favor.
That was putting it mildly.
Do you think they can do it? asked Mik. He was looking at the soldiers coming in to land in the crater, chimaera and seraphim together. Theyd made for an arresting sight in the sky, bat wings mixed with flame ones, all of them moving in the same smooth rhythms of flight.
We , Karou corrected. And yes, I think we can. We have to. We will.
We will defeat Jael. And even that was just a beginning, really. How many damned beginnings did they have to get through before they made it to the dream?
A different sort of life. Harmony between the races.
Peace.
Daughter of my heart, Issa had told her, back at the caves. With the exception of a few, such as Thiago, those of the chimaera who couldnt fly had stayed behind, and, in parting, Issa had recited Brimstones final message for Karou. Twice-daughter, my joy. Your dream is my dream, and your name is true. You are all of our hope.
Your dream is my dream.
Yes, well. Karou imagined that Brimstones vision of harmony between the races probably involved less kissing than hers did.
Stop mooning about kissing. There are worlds at stake. Cake for later; emphasis: later.
It should have happened when shed followed Akiva into the alcovedear gods and stardust, the sight of his bare chest had brought back very warm memoriesbut it hadnt happened, because hed become agitated, insisting there was someone or something there with them, unseen, and had proceeded to search for it with a sword in his hand.
Karou didnt doubt him, but she hadnt sensed anything there herself, and couldnt imagine what it might have been. Air elementals? The ghosts of Kirin dead? The goddess Ellai in a bad mood? Whatever it was, their brief moment alone together had come to an end, and they hadnt been able to say good-bye properly. She thought it might have made parting easier, if they had. But then
she recalled their predawn good-byes in the requiem grove years ago, and how hard it had been, every single time, to fly away from him, and she had to admit that a good-bye kiss doesnt make things any easier.
And so she focused her mind on her task and tried not to look for Akiva, who was somewhere on the opposite side of the cluster of soldiers coming in to land.
This was the plan:
Instead of going through the portal to attack Jael in unfamiliar territory, Thiago and Elyon would take the main force of their combined armies north to the second portal and be there to greet Jael when Karou and Liraz sent him home.
And here things became interesting. They didnt know yet where Jael had his troops staged, and couldnt predict what they would find at the second portal, up in the Veskal Range north of Astrae. They would take it as it came, but they anticipated, of course, a vast force. Ten-to-one ratio if they were lucky, worse if they were not.
So Karou had given them a secret weapon. A pair of them.
There they were, sitting quietly by themselves, apart from and above the mass of soldiers, on the rim of the crater, looking down. As Karou watched, Tangris lifted one graceful panther paw and licked it, and the gesture was purely cat in spite of the fact that the faceand tonguewere human. The sphinxes were alive again.
Karou had given the rebellion the Shadows That Live. She had deeply mixed feelings about it. It had provided a pretext for resurrecting the sphinxes, Tangris and Basheesand Amzallag along with them, since his soul was in the same thurible and she defied anyone to argue with her about itand that was good. But shed always had a horror of their particular specialty, which was to move unseen, in silence, and slay the enemy in their sleep.
Whatever their gift or magic, it transcended silence and slyness. It was as though the sphinxes exuded a soporific to ensure their quarry didnt awaken, no matter what was done to them. They didnt even wake up to die.
Maybe it was naive to hope that a bloodbath could be avoided at this stage, but Karou was naive, and she didnt want to be responsible for any more bloodbaths.
The Dominion are irredeemable, Elyon had told her. Killing them in their sleep is a greater mercy than they deserve.
No one ever learns anything , shed thought. Ever. The same would be said of the Misbegotten by anyone in the Empire. We have to start being better than that. We cant kill everyone .