Page 64 of The Moon Blessed King
Breathing hard against Cat’s back, Elician lets his arms fall to his sides. Cat wills away the last of the flames. He must. If he lets them reach out any further, they will begin to consume the bodies.
And there areso manybodies.
Tears crest in Cat’s eyes. They pool at the edge of his skin, daring to slip free when he finally inhales. Corpses line the way to the door on the inside of the town walls as they make their way inside. They are slumped over themselves, crushed, discarded. The people of Endura tried to flee, and when the doors did not open, it didn’t matter. The bodies closest to the gate were crushed by the people in the back. And once it was obvious what had happened and the crowd dispersed, it did not disperse far. Bodies continue to line the streets, mouths caught in a shocked rigor mortis, pain cascading across their features.
Silently, Cat steps forward.
‘Your Grace—’ Partho says.
‘They didn’t die of the plague either,’ Cat murmurs. Crushed and splattered, these people show no signs of illness. They died in gruesome terror, fleeing from something, but whatever it was is not there with them now. There is nothing there, nothing but the dead wholine the streets and open doors to houses with no one left inside. ‘Can you bringanyof them back?’ Cat asks, looking at the faces ofhispeople, sun-torn and rotting in the heat. He knows the answer. Elician says it anyway.
‘No.’ There is nothing to bring back. Their souls are gone.
And there are too many bodies to bury. Cat knows that with the kind of certainty that made him argue with Elician to begin with. It is what Elician wanted him to see. He had to have felt it. The absence of life. Cat has always been able to tell when people are near. He had known Partho had been alone when he came to them in the woods. He had known when they had approached the Blue Guard. But when they had approached Endura, he had refused to let himself pay attention to that which his mind surely, already, knew. He had never felt a single soul alive in the city.
He had let himself hope that, somehow, he had just not understood the circumstances.
But the truth is, no one is alive. And they haven’t been for a long, long while.
‘This is the closest city to Soleb,’ Cat says slowly.
‘Yes,’ Elician agrees. ‘Can you feel it?’ He doesn’t specify what he means. He doesn’t put it more firmly into words. But he doesn’t need to.
‘Death was here.’
‘The goddess?’ Partho asks behind them.
‘Death did this,’ Cat confirms again. Body after body on the ground, fleeing from one place alone. He had seen Death walking through the Reaper cells time after time. He had seen her when she came to take Fransen’s soul. He had never felt fear when he saw her; he had never feared being welcomed into her domain.
But for all that the people of Alelune believe in change: they believe also in a change on their terms. And none of them were ready.
‘She…killed them all.’
‘A city for a city,’ Elician whispers.
Cat’s heart squeezes tight in his chest. He shakes his head, trying to come to terms with it but seeing only a great swing of a petty god’s hand. Altas was beset by Reapers. Reapers who were forbidden from battle by the gods themselves.
There are consequences to your actions.
And here, the consequences hold true.
Bile boils in his gut. He squeezes his eyes shut, tries to hold it in but fails. He coughs, tears pressing to his eyes. Sinking to his knees in a city that is so quiet and still, he doubts it will ever again host the sound of laughing children or cheery market day.
Death has come, and unlike with Altas, here, her will is absolute and there is no coming back.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Elician
General Leferge approaches the gates of Endura with a mélange of both high-ranking officers and rank-in-files. Partho’s Blue Guard forms a tight group around their sworn liege. Cat has not said much since discovering the totality of Endura. Words alone cannot account for the well of suffering the city must have faced…all at no fault of their own. Elician tries to imagine what it must have been like to see the goddess walking through the streets, then realizing why she had come. From the crushed bodies of the terrorized who tried to flee and the piles of corpses of those who had jumped in an effort to chance relief, he imagines it to have been awful.
Cat’s hand lifts unconsciously towards the blue stone around his neck, fidgeting with the medallion before he forces his closed fist back down. Then, he straightens his back and dares to approach the highest-ranking battlefield commander of the entire Alelunen army. The Blue Guard move in tandem with him, firmly at his back and prepared to defend. Partho has trained them well. And as they all walk to where Leferge has situated herself beyond the quarantine zone of Endura, Elician thinks:He’s more brave than I am.Elician does not know the general well. On holidays, or during whale sightings, she and his uncle Anslian would meet to discuss terms of the temporary truces. Elician would attend, but his presence was unremarkedupon for the most part. She had no interest in negotiating with him, and it was not his place to speak in those meetings.
Cold, humourless and disinterested in engaging in conversation that drifts from her terms, Leferge is nothing if not deeply committed to her responsibilities to Alelune’s crown and her army. A short woman with dark brown hair and fair skin, her most distinguishing feature is an ugly scar that crosses from the bottom corner of her jaw on the left side of her face to spiderweb along her cheek and nose, which lies crooked as a result. Apparently, someone bashed her face in with their shield at some point, and she nearly drowned in her own blood on the battlefield as a result. But she refused to die, and Death let her live long enough to recover.
She meets Elician’s eyes as he walks at Cat’s side, lips twisting down in displeased recognition. He manages to dip his head in polite greeting but offers her no more. It is still not his place to speak or comment. Now, it is Cat’s turn to prove himself to his people. Elician cannot get involved. He will not.
Leferge holds her ground as they approach, her own soldiers not moving or fidgeting despite the theatrics of the presentation. She looks at Cat, squinting at him with the same look of disdain she had always seemed to reserve for Anslian.
