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“None of this is simple!” he exclaimed. “How do you think I feel, presiding over the deaths of the wholly innocent? But what else can I do? Who would not choose one life over millions of lives? Areyouso selfish and depraved that you would condemn all those people to death?”
“And are you so omniscient that you know what will happen?” she shot back. “If the blood is withheld. If the lever doesn’t move. You don’t know the consequences.”
“The world is already shaking at its seams!” her father shouted. “We know what comes next!”
“Youthinkyou know.”
“The continent will come apart,” Harlo said. “The mountains will shear away from the midlands, and the islands will break off and return to the sea.”
“That doesn’t sound so terrible to me,” she said.
For the first time, Heloise spoke up. “Then you lack a brain as well as a heart,” she said. “Almost all the water in Marata comes from the Darrish River, which springs from the mountains and crosses the god’s divide. If the continent comes apart, the river rushes to the sea, and Marata becomes a desert.”
Reese answered, his voice so welcome to Madeleine’s ears that she almost wept. “It was a desert before, and people survived.”
“Do you think so? From the records I have seen, very few people populated the midlands until the god turned those barren fields into farms. And now? Hundreds of thousands live upon that land. What happens if it suddenly turns infertile? How many will die of thirst or starvation within a year?”
Madeleine felt her heart twist at that question—how many, indeed?—but Reese answered without hesitation. “If one of them is you, Heloise, I might be willing to make that bargain.”
Tivol turned on him. “Shut up!” he shouted. “Don’t say such things to her!”
Heloise shrugged. “I don’t care what Reese Curval says to me, but he needs to think about his own situation.”
“Ihavea river to water my lands,” he said outrageously.
“Do you?” Heloise answered. “How many crops do you grow in the mountains of Chibain? Don’t you import at least half of your food from Marata? What will you eat if that whole prairie turns to dust?”
He stared at her with no attempt to disguise his disgust. “I’m not killing Madeleine just because I’m afraid to find out.”
“No, and I don’t want to kill her either!” Heloise exclaimed.
“You just want me to bear a dozen children so you can killthem.”
Heloise stared at Madeleine across the room, her dark eyes so cold Madeline could feel the ice. “If the blood of my son could work that device, I would sacrifice him,” she said. “Ifmyblood would be enough, I would sacrifice myself.”
“How do you know it wouldn’t be?” Madeleine retorted. “Maybe we should try that first.”
Tivol uttered her name again, horrified, but she was watching Harlo, who was shaking his head. “You think we haven’t tried that?” he said sadly. “We had willing volunteers—priests and Council members who knew the truth and had no fear of death. But their blood was too mortal. It was not enough to appease the god.”
“So you were back to slaughtering children.”
“There was no choice,” Harlo insisted, his voice barely above a whisper. “The consequences were too dire.”
“The consequences? The world breaks into the patterns it held before Cordelan intervened,” Reese said. “Heloise is right—there will be monumental adjustments. But to continue this barbaric practice—”
Harlo whirled around to face him. “Adjustments!Do you think the land will ease apart gradually, a little at a time, each region drifting peacefully from the others? I tell you, it will roil with avalanche and explode in flame! It will be a parting so violent that it’s possible no one will survive!”
Madeleine felt herself blanch again, but Reese remained cool. “You have no way of knowing that.”
“Of course I do! The ruined lands to the east—theywere first assembled by the god’s hands, andtheycame apart when the proper sacrifices were not made. You wonder why I am so afraid? I have seen that place for myself, and there is almost nothing left but landscapes of melted rock and beaches of salt and ash.”
Reese held Harlo’s gaze. “How do you know that destruction was caused by the god? Maybe the ground shifted of its own accord and had nothing to do with Cordelan’s displeasure.”
Harlo’s voice was weary. “We have papers in the archives. Accounts from hundreds and hundreds of years ago. The god assembled the eastern continent when he assembled ours. But the people of the eastern lands did not take the proper measures, and the continent tore itself to pieces.” Harlo’s hand made an arc in the air. “The eruption was so loud it could be heard in Corcannon. The smoke and cinders were so thick in the air that the sun could barely break through for months. Summer was chilly and the harvest was poor. There was plenty of death in our lands, too, from the resulting famine. But there was annihilation to the east.”
Every word was a dagger in Madeleine’s heart, but Reese remained stubbornly unconvinced. “The god may have assembled the eastern lands, and those lands may have shattered, but my original question remains. How can you be sure of the catalyst for that destruction? It might have had nothing to do with the blood sacrifice you think the god demands.”
Harlo gazed at him somberly. “I know that every decade or so, our land is rocked by powerful quakes. I know that when we appease the god with blood from his descendants, the quakes stop. Can I be sure the devastation will be absolute if we fail to move the lever? No. But can you be sure it won’t be if we don’t?”
