Archangel's Sun

34

Kiama’s forehead furrowed as she looked up at the stains. “I can’t say. Whatever it was on the walls was very dry by the time we came here—it could’ve been anything, even food that had been thrown at the wall and left to rot.” She made a face. “Archangel Charisemnon was fastidious about cleanliness when I left his court, but I don’t know if he held to such things by the time of battle.”

Sharine continued on through the space, taking in the artwork—paintings, rugs, sculptures, and more—much of which had survived the violence that appeared to have taken place here. Most of it was local to the territory and it made her wonder if this was the public hall.

Not many archangels allowed their populace open access to them, considering it a waste of time and resources, but Farah had mentioned that Charisemnon opened his doors on a regular basis. “Did Charisemnon continue his tradition of open houses while here at the border?”

“Until the very eve of battle.” Kiama curled her lip. “According to Ozias, the sire’s spymaster, it was more an exercise in vanity than a matter of allowing his people magnanimous access.”

As Charisemnon wouldn’t have done anything private in such a communal space, Sharine didn’t linger.

After exiting the public hall through doors at the back, she found herself with multiple options. Across from her was an archway that led to another courtyard open to the sky, beyond which lay another ornate building. To the left and right flowed staircases. “What would you recommend?” she asked her escort.

“Across the courtyard, then inside,” Kiama said at once. “Ozias’s spies confirmed that to be the archangel’s private area. From what we’ve been able to gather from those of his court that survived, he became increasingly paranoid about allowing anyone but his most trusted people inside in the months leading up to war. It’s also where we found the bodies.”

Abdomen tight, Sharine stepped out into the courtyard littered with dry leaves. When she looked up out of habit, she felt her heart catch at the searing beauty above. The sky was clear but for gossamer clouds of decoration. It filled her heart with hope; this beauty would exist no matter what they did or didn’t do on this earth.

“Why was he not content with this?” Kiama gestured at the sky, and at the stronghold silent and abandoned around them. “Why did he always want more? They call Titus the warrior archangel but in all my time in his court, he never picked the fight—always the aggression came from this side.”

With those words, Kiama stepped forward to cross the courtyard. “I’ll go first, Lady Sharine.”

Sharine didn’t argue. The other woman was the expert here—and Sharine had the power to back her up should danger come out of the darkness. But all that emerged from within the next building was a musty odor that had an undertone of rot.

Kiama coughed into the curve of her elbow to clear her throat. “Unfortunately,” she said afterward, “the only way to maintain security with our limited numbers was to shut things up after the basic clean.”

“I don’t like what I smell below the decay.” Sharine forced herself to take a deep breath in an effort to work out what it was that made her neck prickle and long-forgotten memories struggle to rise to the surface.

She’d scented something like this before.

Pinprick flashes of memory. The clash of swords. Wings crumpled and falling. Fangs in a pale face. Mortal bodies frozen in fear. “A mortal, caught in the crossfire of an archangelic battle—his leg was amputated. He became sick with gangrene.” Vivid memories now, of the crawl of green on his leg, the putrid odor. “Sickness, it is the taint of sickness that colors the air.”

“Why were you with the mortal?” Kiama asked without altering her intense focus on their surroundings.

“I—” Sharine frowned, followed back the thread. “I was a war artist . . . and I thought it was important to make note not just of immortal losses, but also of the other costs of war.” She shook her head. “I was naïve, I think, to believe most immortals would care for a dying mortal.”

Yet Sharine was glad to have done it, her fingers curling in as she remembered holding the feverish man’s hand so he wouldn’t be alone as he slipped away into the finality of death. Going where Raan and her parents had already gone. A place from which there were no return travelers.

“Here, this is where we found the dead.” Kiama stopped at an archway framed in a glittering array of semiprecious gemstones that shimmered and flashed in the sunlight coming from the high windows at either end of the entrance hall.

Beyond it stood a set of heavy double doors.

“There are no functioning windows inside,” the warrior informed her, “but this switch will bring light.” She flicked it with her elbow before using her body to shove open one of the doors.

Sharine could swear she heard a soft pop of sound, a seal breaking.

Chest tight, she walked inside to discover another large gathering area, but the chaos here was magnitudes worse. No rugs softened their footsteps and the walls were almost equally as bare. Scorch marks covered the floor.

When she looked up at where windows should be, she found only boarded-up squares of darkness.

“Boards were in place when we came in,” Kiama said before she could ask the question. “Those bloody marks on there, too.”

Sharine felt a chill in her blood. “An attempt at freedom?”

“Bound to fail. Windows have pretty but strong ironwork on the outside.” The warrior’s lovely eyes held cold reason when they met Sharine’s. “Thanks to Ozias, we know the ironwork was an addition, done some months before battle.”

Charisemnon, Sharine realized, had been building a prison in preparation for his plans to experiment on his own people; this had never been a quick decision. Turning on that chilling realization, her intent to examine the wall behind her, she found herself facing a sprawling painting of a small region in a land now called Mali. It was a place she’d visited an eon ago, Raan by her side.

Shock, a sudden jolt of memory.

She’d been so young and full of hope, happy and in love, and the painting was a riot of joyful yellows, oranges, even hints of pink. It depicted the sun rising over a field in which farmers worked and animals grazed, while two angels stood talking with an elderly human woman.

A simple scene really . . . but one of those angels was Raan, and so this was a piece of her history. The other one was the angel who’d hosted them. A fellow artist, she’d taken them to the nearby mortal settlement to show Raan the origin of a specific cloth dye.

Too full of excitement and happiness to stay still, Sharine had left them to their talking and climbed a nearby hill. It was when she’d looked back down that she’d seen this snapshot of golden-hued life. “I remember being struck by the perfection and harmony of this scene.”

Her fingers wanted to trace the lines of Raan’s face, even though he was recognizable only by the colors of his wings. Thank you, she wanted to say. Thank you for teaching me that love can be gentle and kind. Had he lived, the young woman she’d been might’ve one day flown from his arms, but she would’ve done so with love in her heart.

“It’s an extraordinary work, Lady Sharine.” A touch of unexpected awe in Kiama’s voice. “The sire was so angry when he saw it here; he said Charisemnon had no right to display a work of such beauty and heart in a place he’d turned into a death chamber. The only mercy is that it escaped unscathed from the carnage.”

Sharine looked, could see no signs of staining, or of physical deterioration.

“The sire—we all—wanted to fly it right back to the citadel,” Kiama added, “but we couldn’t take anything out of this room. The risk was too great.”

“It was the only possible decision,” Sharine said, warmth in her heart for the arrogant and blunt archangel who had kissed her with such passionate hunger, and who she already knew would leave a memory she’d never forget. “Charisemnon must’ve had the painting a long time.”

She smiled; nothing could dull her joy in the memories associated with this work. “Raan, the first man I ever loved, asked if he could gift the piece to the friend who hosted us for the visit that inspired it.

“Though I loved this painting, I loved him more.” And so she’d given it to him, to gift to his friend. “She wasn’t a very powerful angel and she now Sleeps, so I can’t ask her to confirm, but I would assume Charisemnon saw it at some point and liked it enough that she gifted it to her sire.”

“Does it cause you pain to see your work in such a place?”

“No. Perhaps there was one here who needed hope and beauty in the darkest time. If so, I’m glad that they could look up and see the sunrise.”

“I should’ve guessed that would be your answer—no one who doesn’t possess a heart could paint with such glory.” She hesitated before blurting out, “One day, I hope to be able to purchase one of your pieces.” It was a thing of sweetness how this honed warrior admitted her dream, with a stifled excitement that had her lifting a little on her toes.

Sharine had lived a long and creative lifetime, but she tended to gravitate toward large canvases such as this one. Some were even bigger, covering entire walls. Her current project—a secret hidden in a light-filled warehouse Tanicia had organized for her on the edges of Lumia—was an image of Raphael, Elena, and their Seven with the gleaming skyscrapers of their city.

She intended to make it a gift to the archangel with eyes of devastating blue, this son of hers that she hadn’t borne. But the scale of it meant it’d take her years to complete. That tended to hold true for the majority of her work. The intricate piece that currently hung in Lumia had taken her a full half century.

Such was why, though she’d had a steady output for much of her lifetime, her pieces were beyond the reach of ordinary angels. It didn’t help that the passage of time and natural disasters had damaged any number. By the time she completed one piece, two more may have been lost or destroyed or just become brittle and fragile due to age.

“I’ll make sure you have one of mine,” she said to Kiama. “I ask for payment in the form of you sitting for me.”

“My lady—” A sucked-in breath. “I didn’t mean to—”

Sharine squeezed her forearm. “Hush, child. Not only do you have a face and a presence that make me itch to sketch you, I like you and I give my art to those I like.” She’d gifted Raphael a piece on his ascension to the Cadre, and as for Illium and Aodhan, she’d done countless studies of them throughout their childhood, several of which they’d “stolen” with her laughing permission.

She was wealthy, she supposed. Money had never really been the reason she created, but, thanks to Raan, she had a powerful financial support structure that meant she’d never have to seek a patron. That support structure took the form of two old angels who’d withdrawn from life except for what they did for her—not only did they husband her finances with fierce protectiveness, they acted as the conduit through which others might acquire her work.

Sharine had come to realize that they’d stayed awake so very long because she was broken and they were too loyal to Raan to abandon her. She’d decided to go to them as soon as she could, thank them with all her heart, and tell them they could lay down to rest without worry. She was no longer lost; they had more than honored their friend’s memory.

Sharine knew herself well enough to accept that she’d never be the right person to manage her finances or the sale of her art, but she knew how to get good people. All she’d have to do was mention it to Raphael and he’d send five scrupulous and talented candidates to her door.

Kiama yet had a stunned look on her face as they continued on, but she pointed out the spots where they’d found the bodies, her stance always that of a warrior on alert. “The dead included mortals, vampires, and angels,” she said first of all. “From the smell and the extent of the decomposition, they’d been dead for some days before we found them. But the decomposition was . . .”

The other woman frowned, lines carved into her forehead. “There is a way that flesh rots,” she said at last. “The flies come to lay their eggs, then the maggots are born. There is a progression.” She looked around the room again, her eyes intense. “Here, things were just . . . wrong. When touched, it felt as if the flesh had liquefied from within, the decomposition going from the inside out.”

A hard swallow. “I made the mistake of prodding one of the bodies with my sword—I wasn’t doing it to be cruel, but because I thought I saw movement and wanted to ensure I wasn’t setting myself up to be attacked by a reborn.

“I was careful not to push hard but the skin erupted as if it was so taut all it needed was the barest nudge, and liquid flowed out of the body. A greenish slime that got on my boots and caused such a pungent odor that we had to evacuate the room for an hour.”

The soldier’s breathing had turned unsteady. “Before we evacuated, I and the warrior-scholar standing next to me both saw insects swimming in the slime. That was the movement that had caught my eye—a massive nest of insects within the body.” Hand on her stomach, she shuddered.

Sharine couldn’t blame her. Her own skin was crawling.

“We were lucky that the sire was with us. He used his angelfire to cremate the body and reduce the insects to dust.” She indicated one of the scorch marks Sharine had noticed. “I don’t want to know what those insects would’ve done had they been able to burrow into the body of one of our own.”

“Did anyone take samples for further study?”

A hard shake of the head. “It all happened too quickly. We were terrified of the possibility of the insects getting out. We already have a plague of reborn, don’t need anything more. And the insects were moving.”

Sharine couldn’t imagine the horror, knew she’d have made the same call. “Was he the only one so infested?”

“We didn’t attempt to find out. Given the risk of containment failure, the sire made the decision to incinerate all the bodies in situ—he did the same with all the furniture.”

That explained the large burned patches on the floor.

“It was the safest possible option. If the contagion had been contained in this room, we didn’t wish to let it out.” A sad look at the painting. “The sire couldn’t bring himself to destroy it, but I don’t think it’ll ever be permitted out of this place.”

“All things come to an end, child.” And she’d been given an unexpected chance to say good-bye. Poignant sadness entwined with a sense of thankfulness as she turned away to glance up at the walls again; Kiama’s words had triggered another awareness in her mind. “There are seals around the boarded-up windows.”