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But this time Rin was in control. She would not squander it.
She had meant to burn Petra alive. When Miragha’s messenger arrived in the palace, Rin had seen an immediate, fantastical vision of Petra screaming and writhing on the floor, begging for mercy as flames corroded her pale white flesh.
But all that now seemed so trite, so easy. Petra deserved no mundane death. Mere bodily torture wouldn’t satisfy. Rin had just been struck by a far better idea, something so deliciously cruel that part of her was astonished, amazed by her own creativity.
“I’m not going to kill you,” she said with as much calm as she could muster. “You don’t deserve that.”
For the first time, fear flickered across Petra’s face.
“Get up,” Rin ordered. “Get on the table.”
Petra remained in her chair, body tensing as if trying to decide whether to run or resist.
“Get on the table.” Rin let the flames around her shoulders jump higher, resembling wings for an instant before they flared out toward Petra. “Or I will char every part of your body. I’ll do it slowly, and I’ll start with your throat so I don’t have to hear you scream.”
Trembling, Petra stood up, climbed onto the examination table, and lay down.
Rin reached over the side of the table for the straps. Her left hand fumbled with the buckles, but she managed to loop them through the metal rings on the sides of the table and yank them tight. Petra lay still all the while. Rin could see the veins protruding from her jaw where she clenched it tight, trying to conceal her fear. But when Rin pulled the straps around Petra’s waist, pinning her arms to her sides, a keening whimper escaped the sister’s throat.
“Calm down.” Rin gave her cheek a patronizing pat. Somehow, that felt better than a slap. “It’ll be over soon.”
A year ago Petra had strapped her naked to a table and lectured her on the inferiority of her mind, the shortcomings of her body, and the genetically determined backwardness of her race. In the months since then, she’d likely done the same to Nezha. She’d probably stood where Rin stood now, watching impassively as lightning arced through his body, taking meticulous notes while her subject contorted in pain. She’d probably lectured him, too, on why this was the Divine Architect’s intention. Why these humiliations and violations were necessary for the slow, holy march toward civilization and order.
Now it was Rin’s turn to proselytize.
“Remember that time you drew my blood?” She smoothed Petra’s hair back with her fingers. “You filled entire jars with it. You didn’t need that much; you told me so yourself. You just wanted to punish me. You were angry because you wanted proof of Chaos, but I couldn’t show you the gods.”
A pungent smell filled the air. Rin glanced down and saw a damp spot spreading through Petra’s robes. She’d soiled herself.
“Don’t be scared.” Rin reached into her back pocket and withdrew a sachet of poppy seeds. “I’m giving you what you want. I’m going to show you the gods.”
She pulled the sachet open with her teeth, tipped it into her palm, and clamped it over Petra’s mouth.
A soldier might have been able to resist—might have held their breath, bit Rin’s palm hard enough to draw blood, or concealed the seeds under their tongue and spat them out the moment they broke free. But Petra didn’t know how to struggle. The Gray Company were untouchable in Hesperia; she’d never had the need. She wriggled pathetically under Rin’s grasp, but couldn’t break free; Rin jammed her stump over her nose, restricting her air flow, until at last she had no choice but to open her mouth and gasp.
Rin saw her throat bob. Then, several long minutes later, she saw her eyes flutter closed as the drug seeped through her bloodstream.
“Good girl.” She removed her palm—empty, good—and wiped it against her pant leg. “Now we wait.”
She wasn’t sure this would work. Petra could not even conceive of the Pantheon’s existence, much less how to get there. And Rin was not Chaghan; she could not flit back and forth between planes, dragging souls along like a shepherd.
But she could call upon the gods, and hers was the god of vengeance.
She dragged a chair next to the table, sat down, and closed her eyes.
The Phoenix answered immediately. It sounded amused. Really, little one?
Bring her to me, Rin thought. And take us to your brethren.
The Phoenix cackled. Whatever you wish.
Darkness rushed in around her. The workroom faded away. She felt herself hurtling into the void, spiraling through the bridge in her mind like an arrow shot straight into the heavens.
“Where are we?” Petra’s presence lashed out, panicked. “What is this?”
Rin could sense her fear like a tidal wave, an ongoing flood of horrified, uprooted alienation. This was the same emotion Rin had felt in the New City dialed to the extreme: the jarring realization that the world was not what she thought it was, that everything she believed, everything she had faith in, was wrong.
Petra wasn’t just scared, she was falling apart.
“It’s divinity,” Rin told her gleefully. “Look around.”
Suddenly the Pantheon was visible, a circle of plinths surrounding them like spectators around a stage. They crept closer, cruel and curious, one and sixty-three entities entranced by the presence of a soul that refused to acknowledge their presence.
“These are the forces that make up our world,” said Rin. “They have no intent. They have no agenda, and they do not tend toward order. They want nothing more than to be what they are. And they don’t care.”
Petra uttered something low and fearful, some repetitive chant in a language that sounded almost like Hesperian but not quite. A curse? A prayer? Whatever it was, the Pantheon did not care, because the Pantheon, unlike the Maker, was real.
“Take me back,” pleaded Petra. She’d lost all dignity; she’d lost all faith. Without her Maker she was stripped to a lost and terrified core, flailing wildly for something to cling to. “Take me—”
The gods pressed in.
Sound did not quite exist in the plane of spirit. What Rin perceived as words were transmitted thoughts, all equal in volume despite distance or intensity. She knew this in abstract. She knew that here, one could not really scream.
But the sheer intensity of Petra’s desperation came close.
“Bring me back down,” Rin told the Phoenix. “I’m finished here.”
She landed back in her body with a jolt. She opened her eyes.
Sister Petra lay still on the table. Her eyes were wide open. Her pupils darted fretfully about, tracking nothing. Rin watched her for a long while, wondering if she might find her way back to her body, but the only movement she made was the occasional tremor in her shoulders. A choked murmur escaped her throat.
Rin prodded Petra’s shoulder. “What was that?”
Drool trickled from the side of her mouth. Petra gurgled something incomprehensible, then fell silent.
“Congratulations.” Rin patted her head. “You’ve finally found religion.”
Chapter 32
Safely ensconced in a heavily guarded house behind the barracks, Rin slept better that night than any night she could remember in years. She didn’t need laudanum to knock herself unconscious. She didn’t wake up multiple times in the night, sweaty and shivering, straining to hear a dirigible attack she’d only imagined. She didn’t see Altan, didn’t see the Cike, didn’t see Speer. The moment she lay down she slid into a deep, dreamless sleep, and didn’t awake until warm rays of sunlight crept over her face.
