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“I am sorry for you I a, and that the Caliph used you for his ends I ah such suffering and foul ic I wish that you had been allowed to stay a tender of wiry goats in the sweet-breathed mountains I wish that we had not heard your story But you do not know Al-a-Nur simply because you once died at its hand That you cannot comprehend the selflessness of Cveti-who-became-Ghyfran, or the pity, the love, she must have felt for you, to administer the last sacrament of her faith to a nonbeliever, tells me no more than that you are not fit to be the lowliest novice, let alone the Papess of our spiritual erie You could never understand e suffer for the sake of that beautiful garden of gods, or ould incur this stain on our souls so that others may live free of sin I aered so eance when all who harmed you are dead, and that you must fail now, before you could see the spires of the Twelve Towers catching the dawn light and spinning it into a fall of crystal Before you could even begin what you must have planned all those years in your little vial But we have sworn, and we are, if nothing else, obedient dogs”
All this while, I and Balthazar had inched towards her, and when our brother stepped back, with tears in my eyes, I leapt and closed my teeth over her throat, but nhild stood suddenly behind Balthazar, and she smiled sweetly, like a little child with a caramel
It seemed to each of us that her face floated before ours in all its frigid beauty It see muzzles, and her breath smelled of bundles of violets clutched to the breasts of dead auze stretched over noble profiles and coins pressed into eye sockets It seemed to us that she kissed our mouths, and our eyes clouded over with red and black, our bellies trembled and boiled in our skin We were maddened, frenzy licked at our brains, we could not breathe for the blood screa inside us
Ragnhild stood utterly still, a pale coluainst each other She inclined her head, ever so gently, towards Barnabas
How can I tell you, little sister? How can I give words to e did? We, ould not eat the slowest fox or hare! We, who loved each other as limbs of one body! How can I confess? How can I speak of it as though it were no h it were not the greatest sin of ue, of my teeth!
At the nod of her head we threw ourselves onto the smallest of us, onto Barnabas, our sweet brother, and devoured hi rich and smoky in our mouths We howled up froer and delight We snapped at each other, quarreling over the choicest bits We were no h the hands that held him and the fists that punished his spine were those of men Our minds fled from us, we exulted in his death
And Ragnhild swept froh her feet did not touch the crystal floor
BAGS SHOOK HIS HEAD MISERABLY
“I can still taste hi breath to his words “Taste his flesh, like ash and lye We will never be clean of this She let us leave the city unmolested—what else could she do to us? She had already ensorcelled us into betraying our faith and our brother, she had already made all our vows, our holy will, useless with a kiss We are lost, and we cannot even say it was for the greater good—she lives, and danger still stalks the City like a cat in the grass”
He held his hands out to me helplessly
“She is co and she will madden us all Poor Barnabas—he sits heavy in my belly and I will never hear hiain”
“She is co, yes And she does not want to destroy Al-a-Nur, she wants to best it She wants to prove to the world that we are all liars and heretics and faithless grotesques That she is holy and we are deo We are her first victory,” Balthazar snapped, his voice bursting fros and me
Bartholomew sidled up to his brother and added in a thick voice: “However wretched her origins, she chose freely to continue her criainst us froive beautiful women, especially when they lay a sorrowful tale before you like a sugar-dusted iveness We must tell Yashna that we have failed and accept punishainst the Apostate, for I do not doubt that she is, as you say, co”
Bags snuffled away his tears and turned his face from his brother Shame radiated fro, he leaned over my shoulder and whispered:
“There is a debt between us If you have a grief that weighs on you, I will take it”