Empires of Moth (The Moth Saga, Book 2) (12 page)

Hem whimpered at his friend's
side. "And it gets worse. Ferius was shouting about how Elorians
caused the plague, how he must cleanse the land of the disease. He's
organizing an army of masked soldiers with torches. He will lead them
into the hospice himself, he said—to burn everything and everyone
inside."

Koyee felt as if her heart
stopped.

She turned away and faced a
shadowy wall. Her chest constricted.

"Does it end here?"
she whispered. "Do we fall now?"

The Elorians across the cellar
prayed. Some wept. Others called for fighting. Koyee balled her fists
at her sides, looked up through burning eyes, and saw Torin standing
beside her. He gazed at her, eyes inscrutable.

"We will fight from here,"
he said, and she heard the fear in his voice. "We will fight and
hold them back."

She shook her head. "For
how long? How many hours can we resist, only a few defenders, until
the mob breaks in, until they burn and slay us? This is no longer a
war, Torin. This is genocide."

Around her, the people heard her
words and wailed. Children clung to her legs. Elders mumbled prayers.

Koyee raised her voice. "People
of Eloria! Do not despair. As fire burns, your hearts must
strengthen. You are children of the night; you are stronger than
mountains and wind." She raised her chin. "We will flee
into the wilderness. Follow."

As she turned to leave, the tall
Timandrian woman with the two braids—Bailey Berin, her name
was—grabbed her arm. For an instant, the woman's eyes—so dark and
small compared to the eyes of Elorians—blazed.

"The streets are swarming
with soldiers," Bailey said. "We'd be slaughtered if we
step outside."

Koyee narrowed her eyes,
regarding the fair-haired woman. There was fear in Bailey and rage
against the bloodshed, but . . . something else too. Hostility. After
living on the streets of Pahmey, dealing with thieves and spicers,
Koyee knew something of hostility.

This
one holds no love for me,
Bailey thought, tilting her head.
I
must be careful around her.

"That's why we're going to
take a wagon," Koyee said and stifled a shudder. "When the
Sisterhood's wagons of death move across the city, all flee before
them. We will move like a leper through a ball; all will recoil from
us." She grabbed her beaked mask, wide-brimmed hat, and
steel-tipped gloves. "Follow, my friends! I will lead you to
safety."

She began walking toward the
door. The people followed—fifty Elorians and five Timandrians, all
splashed with blood and caked with ash and grime. As Koyee walked,
she placed on her mask, lacing it behind her head. Through the glass
lenses, the world seemed hazy and twisted, a nightmare of shadows and
ghosts. When she pulled on her leather gloves, each finger tipped
with a steel claw, she felt less a woman than a bird, a great night
vulture, a dancer of death. The Sisterhood of Harmony was created to
lead this dance macabre, to escort the departed into the beyond, yet
now Koyee would lead a different procession.

Now
I lead life.

She led them up stairs and along
halls of stone. The hospice seemed strangely deserted; she saw no
other sisters. Her followers walked behind her; the Timandrians
clanked in their armor and held drawn swords, while the fifty
Elorians whispered and mumbled prayers. Their footfalls echoed in
vaulted ceilings.

From outside, screams and chants
rose. Ringing steel and thundering hooves pealed across the city.
When they passed a window, Koyee glimpsed the slaughter; countless
soldiers rushed through the city, smashing doors, slaying all they
could find. Blood covered the streets of Pahmey. Already some
soldiers were advancing across the square toward the hospice; they
held swords and torches, and rage twisted their faces.

"Burn the diseased!"
they shouted, marching forth, not an organized army but a seething
mob. "Burn the twisted creatures who spread the plague."

Behind her, the Elorians she led
whimpered and one wailed aloud. Koyee looked over her shoulder at
them; their faces were flushed, their eyes wide with fear. They
clutched their wounds and pointed at the slaughter outside.

"Hush now," she said.
"Hurry. Quickly." She looked at Torin. "Help them
along, Torin. We must move fast."

They walked beyond the window,
down a narrow corridor, and through a tunnel. Finally they emerged
into the hospice stables, a dusty chamber of exposed brick. Several
bluefeathers—wingless birds the size of horses—stood here, cawing
and scratching the ground with their talons. A wagon stood by the
wall, built of leather stretched over a metal frame.

"Into that wagon!"
Koyee said, turning toward the Elorians. "Lie upon it and play
dead. The Sisterhood often takes the dead out of the city for
burning. We'll smuggle you out as plague victims."

The people hesitated, staring at
the wagon, and whispered among themselves.

Standing beside her, Torin
grimaced. "Koyee, this wagon . . ." He lowered his voice.
"Does the miasma of disease cling to it? How many dead have lain
here?"

Koyee glared at him. "The
wagon is clean. We scrub it with boiling vinegar after every
delivery. You will be safe. Now move! Pile up! Children on top."

She began ushering them onto the
wagon, tapping her foot, her eyes darting. The sounds of soldiers
rose outside. Chants of "Burn the diseased!" and "Death
to Elorians!" rose louder. Koyee grimaced. Would they even let
her wagon pass, or would they attack her on the streets? She ground
her teeth. She had to take this chance.

"Here, Grandpapa, into the
wagon," she said, helping an elder climb.

They began to pile up, lying one
atop the other. When Hem tried to climb in too, Koyee tugged him
back. "Not you!"

Finally they all filled the
wagon—fifty Elorians stacked together like a pile of diseased
corpses. Their silken robes were already tattered and bloodied, but
they lacked the telltale signs of the curse; they bore no boils,
their fingertips had not rotted, and teeth still filled their mouths.
Koyee rushed to a shelf, grabbed homespun sheets, and pulled them
over the people. She bit her lip. Like this, only limbs emerged from
the under the sheet; the rest of the Elorians were but lumps under
silk. It wouldn't fool a Sister of Harmony, but perhaps it would fool
the enemy.

She tethered four bluefeathers
to the wagon and climbed into the seat. "We move. Timandrians,
you walk alongside. Guard this wagon."

They opened the stable doors and
wheeled out, leaving the hospice, a hive of dying, and entering the
city of Pahmey, a dreamscape of slaughter.

Torin and Bailey led the way,
helms on their heads, swords drawn. Clad in her Sisterhood mask,
Koyee drove the wagon behind them, the bluefeathers clacking, the
refugees hidden under the sheet. Cam and Hem brought up the rear.
Koyee's heart thrashed as they moved down a cobbled backstreet,
narrow buildings at their sides. When they passed through an
intersection, she could see into the square; troops were racing
across it toward the hospice entrance, the place where only hours ago
she had kissed Torin.

Several soldiers burst from
around a corner, laughing, their swords stained with blood. When they
saw the wagon, they froze and their eyes widened. One spat and raised
a torch.

Koyee's heart thudded, and for
an instant she was sure their escape would end here, that they would
die in a shadowy street corner only steps away from the hospice.

Torin raised his voice and
sword. "Stand back! The plague festers in this wagon. We will
burn them outside the city. Make way!"

The soldiers stared, rabid
beasts with bared teeth. Koyee stared back through her mask, sweat
trickling beneath her leather suit. She reached down between her legs
where lay her katana; she was ready to fight and die if she must.

"Go on, move!" shouted
Bailey, taking a step toward the soldiers. "Or do you want to
catch the disease too? Go!"

The soldiers cursed, glanced at
one another, then spun around and fled.

Koyee breathed a shaky breath of
relief. "Walk!" she said and the bluefeathers obeyed,
dragging the wagon forward.

They kept moving through the
city, road by road. Torin and Bailey walked ahead, banging swords
against shields, crying out for all to move aside.

"Death festers!" they
cried out in Ardish. "Plague corpses for burning. Make way!"

As they moved down the
boulevards of Pahmey, all parted before them, scuttling into shadows.
The wagon trundled down streets lined with looted shops, bodies
strewn across the cobblestones. They passed under crystal towers,
their light dimmed, corpses piled up around their bases. They moved
through marketplaces, the stalls smashed, the peddlers slain upon
their wares.

So
many dead,
Koyee thought, eyes stinging behind her lenses. Thousands of Elorians
lay fallen here. Soldiers kept rushing about, rifling through homes
and gutters and attics, seeking more to kill, more blood to fill
their endless appetite. Tears filled Koyee's eyes and her lenses
fogged, but she kept moving her wagon forward. Her city crumbled
around her, but she could save a few. She could carry a flicker of
life through the endless death.

"Make way!" Torin
cried. "Plague wagon for burning—make way!"

They rolled by the city library,
a domed building lined with columns. When Koyee looked toward its
doors, she grimaced. She was tempted to leap off her wagon, charge up
the marble stairs, and attack.

Ferius stood outside the library
doors, hands raised to the sky. Blood stained his palms and dripped
down his arms. He led a chant to Sailith, a hundred monks chanting
around him, their yellow robes turned red. A hundred Elorian bodies
hung behind them from the library roof, their necks stretched.
Countless more corpses littered the stairway below their feet.

"For the glory of
sunlight!" Ferius called, seeming in rapture. "We have
vengeance. We purify the night. We light the darkness. Slay them
all!"

Without realizing it, Koyee
wheeled the wagon toward the library. Snarling behind her mask, she
reached down and grabbed her sword. Torin had to block the
bluefeathers, stare at Koyee, and direct her away.

"We have to run this time,"
he said, kindness and sadness mixing in his eyes. "We will fight
him, Koyee. I promise you. But not here. Not now. Now we must flee."

His face was pale, and dark bags
hung under his eyes. He seemed so tired to her, so haunted, that she
wanted to embrace him. She nodded. They kept moving, leaving the
library and entering the narrow streets of the dregs. Soon they
rolled down the old market way, heading toward the city gates.

Fifty Timandrian soldiers waited
there, clad from head to toe in steel, pikes in their hands.

Koyee tugged the reins, halting
the wagon. Behind her, she heard one of the Elorian children whimper
under the sheet.

Torin took a step forward toward
the small army. "Make way! Open the gates. We have plague
victims to burn, damn it."

The soldiers would not budge.
Their lord, a burly man in dark steel, stepped forward. The sunburst
of Sailith blazed upon his breastplate, the gold turned red in the
torchlight. He spoke from within his barred visor, his voice
gravelly.

"On orders of Lord Ferius,
none may leave this city." The man pounded his chest with a
gauntleted fist. "I serve Sailith. All will remain within these
walls. All will die."

Koyee leaped off the wagon and
marched forward. Torin tried to hold her back, but she whipped around
him. She stomped up toward the burly soldier—she barely reached his
shoulders—and glared up at him through her mask. He took a step back
and cursed.

"Stand back, Sister of
Harmony." He covered the mouth hole of his visor. "I know
your kind. Diseased birds! Stand back or I'll slay you."

Koyee
would not budge. She raised her beak toward him. "
You
will stand back. I carry fifty bodies rife with the plague. Their
miasma fills this street as we linger. They are already dead. Unless
you want to join them, you will open these gates. Now move!"

A few of the soldiers at the
back shifted, their armor clanking. They glanced at one another and a
few covered their mouths. Koyee leaped back onto the wagon, drove the
bluefeathers a few feet forward, and shouted out.

"Move—now! Move or the
plague will touch you too. Move so we may burn them in the
wilderness."

The beefy lord all but fled
backward, nodded at his soldiers, and the gates creaked open.

The night spread outside.

For the first time in moons,
Koyee saw the Inaro River, a stream of silver in the moonlight. She
saw the rolling black plains that sprawled into the horizon. She
smelled the cold, fresh air, air that did not reek of death. Lips
tight, she drove her wagon onward, her friends walking at her sides.

The wagon bumped over the last
few cobblestones, and they passed under the archway . . . and emerged
into the night.

They kept going. They rolled
across the boardwalk, heading toward the river. The stars shone above
and the river sang, screams rose and echoed, and she could still hear
the chants of the monks. Even though darkness folded around them, she
could still see those hanging corpses, still see the blood on
Ferius's hands, dripping, seeping, blood that would forever fill her
nightmares.

Her eyes stung and the screams
rose behind her, but she kept going. She had to keep leading these
people away, into darkness, into hope, into a cold endless night that
could never drown the fires. She looked over her shoulder only once,
and she saw the city walls behind her. She remembered herself a year
ago, a frightened girl in a fur tunic, seeing this city for the first
time, a hub of light and wonder in the darkness.