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She regretted it at once, for she knew what would come next.
Something powerful snatched the rope around Verve’s neck, jerking her away from her mother, forcing her to stand alone. The voice at the rope’s other end snarled words Verve didn’t understand. Her mother snapped a reply, then yelped and stumbled, breathing hard. Verve’s heart thundered and she could not see beyond the thick, black fabric that had swallowed her head.
A n unfamiliar voice called out in the strange kotahi language. Verve strained to listen, and this time understood more of the words — thanks to the other meridians’ magic.
“See before you the heretical Sufani,” the voice called. “The filthy nomads who disgrace our true god, Atal, by refusing to honor His name above any other.”
The crowd hissed their disapproval, but it was their thrum of anger that sent chills up Verve’s spine.
“But our true god is not without mercy,” the voice continued. “For He gives all of His children a chance to recant their misguided, false beliefs and pledge their hearts to Him. So now, Sufani, you have the choice: recant, or travel to your next lives.”
A mixture of hoots, boos, and jeers rose from the crowd. Something whistled through the air, landing with a foul, wet splat against Verve’s toes. She recoiled, only to slam into a set of armored legs. The legs’ owner grunted and kicked her forward, back in line, and her toes squelched into the dung, making her gag. Her mother cried out in fury, but Ruzha’s reward was another blow. The slap of a gloved hand against flesh echoed in Verve’s heart, where seeds of rage took root.
The boots thudded before they came to a halt at the far edge of the platform. “Speak, heretic,” the voice called. “Do you recant your wicked, sinful ways?”
Verve’s father, Koru, answered in the kotahi tongue, his voice clear, ringing. “This is wrong. You know this is wrong.”
A slap. The crowd cheered. The voice spoke again. “Do you forsake your false One god and instead pledge yourself to the mighty Atal?”
“Never,” Koru answered.
No sooner had the word left his lips did more footsteps sound. The crowd hollered as Verve’s father grunted. The platform shivered as if he’d fallen forward on his knees. Verve’s head grew light and her vision spotty.
“Very well,” the voice said. “May you find the truth in your next life.”
Silence, deafening, then the sickening thwack of metal against bone, the iron scent of blood, the cheering crowd, the shrieks of anguish and fury from the Sufani’s throats.
The voice spoke again, this time to Verve’s eldest sister. “You there, the eldest of the litter. What say you?”
Cicely’s voice wavered, but her reply was clear. “Go fuck yourself, kotahi dreg.”
Her end came swiftly too, but with more cheers.
Within her spirit, Celidon and Jocasta’s horror echoed Verve’s. Space-Between-Stars’s spirit, however, swam with disbelief and rage. How could humans do this to one another?
Too easily, Verve managed to reply.
Her brothers, Teo and Anu, were next. Again, she lived through the moment when each member of her family was put to the same question. Again, each one died, defiant. By the time the questioner came to Verve’s mother, Verve recognized the tears in Ruzha’s voice, but her reply was as firm and bright as polished steel. “I hold no other before the One god. Your Atal has no power—”
They beheaded her before she finished speaking.
At last the footsteps paused before Verve, and she braced herself. Someone grabbed her neck and pulled the black cloth away, leaving her blinking, disoriented. It’d been daylight when they’d shoved the hood over her head; now, darkness clung to the world. Beside her, the blood of everyone she’d ever loved painted the platform, their desecrated bodies twisted and still. Bile rose in Verve’s throat and she ducked, gagging, only to shriek as a soldier snatched her head up by her hair and forced her to look at the questioner.
Another sentinel, fitted in the gleaming silver armor of a Legion commander, towered over her. Torchlight glinted off of their gear and danced upon her family’s spilled blood.
“And you, child,” the sentinel sneered. “Will you follow the path of your mother and father, and meet your next life now? Or will you choose the true path, the light of Atal, who shines above us even now?”
The sentinel gestured up to the sphere of the moon, Atal, hanging golden on the horizon. But Verve only briefly cut her eyes to the full moon. All she could see was blood.
“What say you, child?”
Her throat was dry, her heart a runaway horse. She wanted to cry, to reach for her mother, but her mother lay beside her, still and bloodied, that bright spirit extinguished. Her tears were useless.
Be strong, Space-Between-Stars urged.
But Verve was weak. She had always been weak.
She squeezed her eyes shut. I’m sorry, ahmma, apaah, and everyone else. “I choose Atal.”
