This is the thirty-first chapter of Wealthgiver, an alternate history serial romance about nationalism and cave-Thracians. For the back-of-the-book description and an index of chapters, click here. For the beginning, click here. For the previous chapter, click here.
Kori stood at the lip of the abyss, staring downward.
Andrei pulled the cotton bandage tight over his arm and jerked his chin toward the sleeper agent Kori had activated. "Excuse my obtuseness, but why are you upset that it wasn't this one who attacked me?"
"My name is Borislav," said the false priest.
"A pleasure." Andrei ducked his head in an ironic little bow.
Kori wiped the sweat off her forehead. Watching Andrei pass that upholstery needle back and forth through his own flesh had nearly made her vomit. She couldn't imagine how the man could do it to himself and stay conscious. And now he joked!
"Nikolai wants to kill you," she said in a tone that invited him to take the situation more seriously.
Andrei declined her invitation. "And blame the Christians for it, yes, you said. Kick off the Hadean War." He flexed his wrist and elbow and inspected the bandage. "The stitches seem to be holding. Good work, if I say so myself. Now we'll see if your pale moss works as well on people's outsides as it does on their insides."
Perhaps he was in was some kind of shock. A lack of blood to the brain. Or Kori's husband was seeking solace in humor, pulling a blanket up between himself and the darkness.
Kori shook her head, partly to express exasperation and partly to clear the red-soaked shadows from the corners of her vision. She gripped herself tighter. "Nikolai does not seek to begin a war with the Fools. He seeks to burn corruption out of the Good."
"So, before the uprising, a pogrom." Andrei shook his head. "I'd advise him to reverse that order."
"His targets will be the Good who believe you to be the vessel of the Wealthgiver."
Andrei actually laughed. "Sorry," he said when he saw her expression. "I'm thinking what the bishop and the rabbi and the hodja would say. "'How sweet. Your very first schism.'"
Kori slapped her hands onto her thighs. "Be serious!"
The men both looked at her. She ordered away her fear and anger. Like her priests, they did not obey. "I cannot explain the political situation until you are in a state to hear it. Sleep now, if you cannot think."
"Believe me, I plan to." Andrei put his hand to the pile of medical supplies on the divan beside him. His fingers ran over the bottle of disinfecting spirits.
"No," said Kori.
Andrei's eyes met hers and his smile twisted. "Borislav, be a dear and get me some brandy. There's a good sleeper agent."
Now Borislav looked shocked. Did he look appalled as well? Did he look schismatic?
"The Wealthgiver does not drink alcohol." Kori put as much meaning into her tone as she dared. Not enough, apparently.
Andrei's teeth still showed. His lids still half-covered his eyes. "I'm a doctor before I'm a chthonic deity, and my medical opinion is that my general constitution will be much improved by half a liter or so of ethanol."
"Andrei," Kori stood before him, pleading.
"A quarter of a liter."
"You must not drink. Did you understand what the assassin was saying?"
Andrei raised his brows and tilted his head toward Borislav. "Which assassin? Nikolai's or ours?"
"Nikolai's!" Kori shouted. "Andrei, will you stop playing the fool?"
"Only if you—" Andrei took a deep breath. The fingers of his bandaged right arm flexed. "No," he said. "No, I did not understand him, Kori. What did the assassin say?"
"He said…" Koris swallowed a sudden wave of nausea and wiped her hands against each other. "He said the Drunkard has …" She forced herself to finish. "… despoiled the Maiden."
Andrei brought his right hand up as if to massage his temples and winced. He let it fall back in its sling. "'The Drunkard God'? That's Dionysus again, isn't it? Madness and irrationality are evil."
"And Wine," said Kori.
"Sometimes the patient needs to sleep. I don't suppose I could ask Borislav to go find some tincture of opium."
The assassin's face paled.
Kori could see the thought form as if the man's head were made of glass. The Drunkard has despoiled the Maiden!
"No," she said. "Listen to me carefully, Borislav. The Wealthgiver speaks through this man, but he is not this man. This man is a Russian, and until a month ago he didn't know the Good even existed. He craves the Sacred Depths, and he thinks wine will take him there."
Andrei grunted sourly, but said nothing to interfere with Kori's desperate work. "Show him there is a better way," she told the assassin. "That's what we must do now with the Fools, in the new Bessia."
If Borislav took offense at the embedded word 'Bessia,' he didn't show it. If he hated Andrei, he didn't show that, either. He merely bowed. "I will bring the Vessel of Wealthy One some valerian tea." He looked sternly at Kori. "And some paste of pale moss."
Andrei's eyes tracked Borislav as the assassin left and closed the door behind him. "What are the odds you think he'll come back at the head of a mob and kill me?"
Kori smiled. "He is of the Good. He would quietly poison your tea."
"And the odds of that?"
"Low, I think. He believes in me, and I believe in you."
Andrei's eyes went distant. She could hear his thought: and what do I believe in?
Her gut panged.
"You swore to me you would stay. Be my husband. Lead the Good."
His eyes refocused on her, but his gaze was cool and uncomforting. "Will there be any Good for me to lead?" He looked out the window, profile gilded in afternoon light. "We must believe it. Somehow, we succeed."
Heat rose in Kori's chest. "That's not enough. You cannot march us blindly into war, trusting in magic to save us."
Andrei chuckled. "That was Nikolai's job."
He spoke as if to the sparkling dust motes, but Kori felt Andrei's accusation. Faith was Nikolai's job and Nikolai was Kori's job.
"Nikolai is not my fault." She had ruined him. She was about the ruin Andrei as well.
Still smiling, Andrei tipped up his wounded hand, as if to indicate that blame was meaningless.
"Look at me!"
His eyes cocked to hers. "You're still in a state, I see."
"I am not." Her words echoed back at her. "Of course I am. My husband was nearly murdered. My people are being torn in two. The man who saved your life this morning might well have ended it a moment ago because you wouldn't take a hint. I don't know whom I can trust." Least of all myself. Kori took hold of her elbows and tried to breathe.
Andrei leaned back against the wall. "Wasn't I in the same dilemma, down in your caves? I had no reason to trust you. I had no choice but to place my life in your hands."
"Reason," snarled Kori. "You look into the sun and talk about reason. The Sun abandons us every night. There is nothing worth your trust but the darkness." She gripped her elbows harder. "The darkness is cool and slow."
Andrei's good hand rested on her hip. Gently but irresistibly, he pulled her down onto the divan beside him.
"I've seen this before," he said, voice soft. "A young officer leaves his nice, padded map room and gets shot at for the first time."
Kori spoke into the darkness behind her closed eyelids. "If I were the one in danger, this would be so much easier."
"I'm sorry I frightened you." He rubbed circles on her back.
Kori's breath refused to slow. She would not look away from this pit. Something waited for her down there. "Tell me about those young officers on the battlefield," she said.
"These pretty boys on their horses out in the field, their heads are full of stories of glory and honor and…" His fingers drummed on her back. "… I don't know. Pan-Slavism? The heart of the land beating with the red blood of the people. You know the sort of thing. Like Nikolai."
Kori knew it. She'd spoken it, and made others believe.
"They're lying to themselves," Andrei continued, much to her discomfort. "We find out what blood and soil really look like." His voice deepened. "When we wade through them."
Kori had been right. Andrei's wry humor had been a blanket. A shroud. And now it fell away from the oozing truth.
"You said they're lying to themselves."
"We." They both rose and fell with his sigh. "We lied to ourselves, but we couldn't admit it. We were proud, you see. One cannot say, 'what an idiot I've been. What a fool.' So one goes on. We, ah, believed that we believed in the war."
Eyes still closed, Kori peered. Did her echoes reveal anything real?
"I wonder if that's what Nikolai is feeling right now," said Andrei.
Kori clicked in negation. "I don't care what Nikolai is feeling. What about the next time he sends someone to kill you? And the time after that? They—" Kori held herself tighter. Her heart raced. She might not be talking like this now. She might be weeping over a corpse. She was weeping now! She might be—
She imagined she was in her pool in the mountain. Her thoughts were people passing in the corridor. Each going its own way. She let them. They could not hurt her!
"Kori? What's wrong?"
The mask has cracked! Now see what spills forth!
Kori opened her eyes, releasing a pair of tears that tracked down her cheeks. The sun had not set. The darkness was hours away, and yet. "I was given a vision," she said.
"What? Just now?"
Kori did not know how her voice could sound so calm. "The assassin succeeds. He kills you, Andrei. He says something about Jesus Christ. This sets the Muslims, Jews, and Pluto-worshippers against the Christians, who are the ruling powers of the new principalities that surround us. Our reprisals against the Christians cause an invasion, which we fight off, birthing a nation in blood and fire."
"That's not what happened," said Andrei.
Kori's heart pulsed and cold air slowly filled her lungs. Borislav was back with a teapot. She spoke to him as well.
"See the assassin fail. See him point his finger at the father of my child."
"Kori, you're working yourself up." Andrei gripped her shoulders. "Stop this."
"Hear him scream the name of the Drunkard God."
Borislav's teacup rattled.
"The Good look for our ancient enemy, and when we cannot find him, we create him."
"You're raving."
"Raving! Yes!" Kori let the tears run hot down her cheeks as the verse came: When her Master enters death, she will / with traitor's smoke the darkness fill."
Borislav sank to his knees, spilling tea.
Kori could not stop it. The prophesy spewed from her, impossible to control.
"That war might bloom! May rave the Good! / May wine be spilled and drunk as blood."
Surely people listened at the door. The darkness knew itself, but she had to speak this curse, or burn.
"May captive prophetess be kept."
Kori rolled to her feet, still bent over like a hump-backed crone. Her voice harshened, gargling as if on bile.
"To make a pit of Sacred Depths."
Andrei cursed under his breath. "Come here. It's all right."
"It's not." Kori shivered, chilled and terrified when a moment ago she'd been filled with heat and rage. She wished for it back.
***
"The news is bad, Older Brother." Theodoros's voice sank dully into the carpet of Nikolai's cell.
"How bad?" Asked Nikolai. "Andrei is still alive? The pogrom against the Christians wasn't triggered?"
Theodoros grunted as if in pain and Nikolai snapped, "Oh, don't be so superstitious, Younger Brother. You know that Russian doctor isn't some kind of avatar for the Wealthy One."
"If he was in resonance with the Wealthy One—"
"Then he can just as easily be in resonance with the Drunken One," said Nikolai. "If not more easily. The important thing is whether the assassin got his second message out before the Mistress could silence him. I assume it was she who rescued the pig?"
Ragged breathing from Theodoros, and Nikolai's heart rate increased. "Well?"
"My last report was that the sleeper agent we activated is still alive."
Nikolai's ear twitched. He lies.
Nikolai brushed at his shoulder to dislodge the voice of paranoia. No, they were brothers. They were the Good. Lies and betrayals were for Fools.
He paced before his kneeling Younger Brother, measuring possibilities. "His message is released. Has Our Mistress yet officially split with that drunken Christian bastard?"
Theodoros's robes rustled. "You shouldn't say he is drunken."
That was all the warning Nikolai got.
It was all he needed. Holding his breath, the high priest twitched his head to the right, swinging his upper body to present his shoulder to his attacker. Nikolai felt the throwing knife slice the air over his chest.
By the time it pinged off the wall behind him, Nikolai was in motion. His right knee flexed, taking his weight and throwing his body toward the door. The echoes of the knife's ring painted the frame, the walls on either side, the crouching figure. Nikolai slashed out, but his sickle passed through empty air as his enemy rolled deeper into the room.
Nikolai could follow the roll, attack while the rustle of the carpet pointed to his opponent's position. But Theodoros spent more time in the field than Nikolai and knew ways to cast false echoes. Nikolai should dash out of his cell and into the corridor, where he could summon help.
Of course, if their positions were reversed, if Nikolai were attacking Theodoros, he would have filled the corridor with his own men, with orders to slit the throat of anyone who fled the room.
Nikolai jumped backward, away from a jab that came out of an entirely unexpected quarter of the darkness. The tacks on the soles of his slippers left the carpet of his cell and rang off of the stone floor of the corridor.
"Help me!" Nikolai cried. "I'm being attacked!"
"Coward!" Theodoros's voice seemed to come from everywhere at once. Or was that the bat nibbling at his ear?
No! A trick! The traitor must still stand in Nikolai's cell. If he were in the corridor, he would be attacking Nikolai.
The clicks of running feet approached. Brothers? Allies? Friends? No. They thought he didn't belong here. Just like Kori, and the other boys in school, and his uncle. Nikolai had very little time.
He knelt by the door.
"You know what I'm going to do to you?" he whispered into his cell. "I'll question you. I'll torture you. But first, I'll force you to drink alcohol. I'll feed you opium. I'll make you breathe laughing gas. You'll lose control, Theodoros. Your mind will fall to pieces. Then shall I drag you before the conclave, gibbering and pissing yourself—"
Theodoros moved so fast that Nikolai felt the wave of air displaced by his body. The breeze puffed across his hand and wrist, followed by the much heavier impact of Theodoros's stomach impaling itself on Nikolai's upthrust sickle. Then the blood, hot and smelling of riches.
Theodoros bore down on Nikolai, groaning in rage and despair.
Which sound made his throat very easy to find.
Nikolai panted around his bared teeth. He thought he'd dug a place for himself, but the walls were of treacherous sand. Nikolai could never stop digging.
I understand, Master. He did not so much as mouth the words, but he prayed all the same. Thank you for this lesson.
Nikolai straightened as the other priests ran up to him, the clicks of their footsteps turning to plops in the spreading pool of blood.
"What happened?" demanded one, it was Murad.
Nikolai opened his mind, and there he found words of absolute truth. "Theodoros became the vessel of the Drunkard."
"Theo—"
"Beware!" Nikolai's bellow shook the darkness, shivered off the raised faces of the Good. "Beware, my brothers, the worm of dissent! The poison of distrust! Beware, for Madness has come into our Mountain!"
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Next: Chapter 32: The Raving Ones