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All thoughts of the questions she would ask Anton if given a chance, the reassurance she would seek about her magic, fled her mind at the actual horror of him. He’d been a terrible, murderous man, but the punishment Bastian had wrought was almost worse.
“You.”
It was barely sound, a breath from a dry throat full of leaves and thorns.
But it made Lore’s voice dam in her own throat, made her vision involuntarily focus again, see the man in the mess of bloody flowers.
Anton’s one eye rolled down from the sky, slowly, obscenely. It fixed on her, sharp as the day he’d had her trussed up and drugged in the bowels of the Church. “The deathwitch,” he rasped. “Still alive when you shouldn’t be.”
Lore’s hands balled to fists by her sides, though they shook, and her voice did, too. “You’re one to talk.”
A terrible huffing sound; a laugh, she guessed. “Point taken,” Anton said, rustling the ivy leaves on the vine snaking out of his mouth. “Though this fate is not as awful as you would think. It gives me so much time to commune with the one true god. So much time to speak to Apollius, and know He is listening.” Anton made that rustling laugh sound again, vocal cords rubbing against flower petals. “His plans have changed, deathwitch. He is mutable. Adaptable. All gods are.”
The shivery feeling in her stomach slipped down her spine.
The one whole eye that had rolled down from the sky to regard her had rolled back up again, staring into the punishing summer light. “He grew her a forest,” Anton said, low and hoarse, stirring another rustling of ivy leaves. “He asked all of Them to stay, to help Him hold the power He’d found. But She was the one on whom the isolation grated most, and She was the only one He gave something back to. He asked for Her vow, and She gave Him Her fist.”
A forest. Like the one in her dreams. Lore’s eyes narrowed. She looked to Gabe, searching for explanation. But he shook his head, held a finger briefly to his lips. Quiet.
“He gave Them all the gift of divinity, but that was not enough.” Anton spoke as if entranced, his face tilted toward the sun. But the fingers splayed out on the wall twitched, like he would’ve made fists of them if he could. “And that is why They are not fit to be remembered as gods. Because They threw it all away, They left Him alone. What else could He do?” A tear slipped down his craggy cheek. “He has only ever done the best He can with what He has been given. Changed as He had to.”
Anton fell silent. Lore realized she’d leaned away from the man, her arms clasped tightly over her chest like she could make herself smaller. She slid a look to Gabe.
“The wording changes,” he said quietly, divining her unspoken question. “But the gist is the same. The story about the forest, the betrayal.”
“And you.” Anton’s eye slashed down from the sky again, latched onto Lore. The movement of the muscles tripped something in his ruined face, pumped more viscous fluid from the rose-choked socket of his other eye. “You lived when you should not. You bring about destruction, make more work for Him, and yet still He calls you favored. Because you won’t stop, will you? You will channel and channel, sink yourself into death and darkness, and nothing anyone says will stop you. He wants that, now. A second chance.”
“Where is he getting all that?” Surreptitiously, Lore glanced up, squinting through the vines at the midday light like she might see someone up in the clouds, whispering to the mad holy man.
“The story he’s telling maps loosely onto some of the legends about the gods on the Golden Mount,” Gabe said quietly. “Before the Compendium was written.”
“Back when you were allowed to tell stories about Them,” Lore muttered. In antiquity, when the gods were still alive, there’d been just as many stories about Them as there were Tracts now. Their worship was informal, and They were regarded more like fairy-tale characters than all-powerful deities, remembered both as the people They had been and the gods They’d become. Religion ossified as it aged, allowed less room for interpretation. Most of the stories about the gods that hadn’t made it into the Compendium weren’t written down anywhere, instead told through word of mouth down through generations. Eventually, even those oral traditions died out. The telling of stories about the gods—especially ones that painted Apollius in a less-than-flattering light—wasn’t necessarily outlawed, but it was frowned upon.
An arch look from Gabe, but he nodded, allowing her the point. “I’ve looked through the library, just to confirm. Malcolm helped me locate some old manuscripts—”
“Wait.” It shouldn’t be a surprise, she supposed, but it still hit her like one. “Malcolm knows about Anton? About what he’s been saying?”
Gabe’s lips pulled flat. He nodded. “There was no other way to get ahold of those manuscripts.”
“Have you told Bastian?” The same question he’d asked her earlier, an echo of distrust.
His lips pulled, if possible, even flatter.
Alie, Malcolm, Gabe. All of them subtly positioning themselves in opposition to Bastian—or if not in complete opposition, at least at odds. Distrust grew unless you pulled it out at the root, and Bastian seemed in no hurry to allow himself to be checked.
No Arceneaux rule had ever been challenged, not until August. Maybe they should’ve expected a domino effect after that, one coup leading to another, an endless line of falling Kings.
Gabe read the quicksilver thoughts on her face, the spark of betrayal and understanding that flared and burned out. He sighed, rubbed at the red marks on his temple left by the strap of his eye patch. “Bastian is volatile,” he said quietly. “You’ve known that from the beginning, Lore. He took over violently, and while some of the changes he’s made have been good, you can’t deny that he’s angling down a dangerous path. And he’s taking you with him.” He didn’t look at her ring, but it seemed to sit heavier on her finger, like his invisible regard imbued it with terrible weight. “If he thought Anton was spouting off about Apollius and Nyxara, about channeling bringing about an end that the gods wanted, what do you think he’d do?”
He’d finish what he started. He’d kill his uncle. And though Lore knew that was a mercy, she also knew Gabe would never allow it.
The idea of one more wedge driven between the two of them made her chest hurt.
“The stress of everything is getting to him, and he’s using whatever he can to firm his hold. I understand it.” Gabe said that part begrudgingly. “But he can’t continue ruling as if he has absolute power.”
The part he left unsaid hung around them, thick as cigar smoke in a windowless room. Bastian did have absolute power, but they were all trusting him not to use it. To trust a council, to take other opinions into account.
“I agree,” Lore said slowly. “But what alternative does he have, Gabe? The fields had to be healed if we wanted a harvest. And showing the Kirytheans that we have power they don’t will keep them from invading.” She said these things like she believed them, and she did. Part of her did, at least.
