None of that explained why she was being asked to join Titus. “I don’t have the powers of your Seven, far less the power to take on an archangel.”
Raphael looked at her in a careful way. “My mother once told me to look at Illium with care if I wanted to see the root of his power—I didn’t understand then, but now I ask myself from whom he inherited his fidelity, his hair, his heart . . . and his speed.”
A stirring in the back of her mind, the creaking of long-buried memories. “That is why Raan called me a hummingbird.” It was a murmur more to herself than to Raphael, aged memories sighing to wakefulness.
So fast you are, my little bird. Sunshine in your eyes, color streaked across your skin, light of feet—and the speed of a hummingbird. I could not ever catch you should you seek to fly away.
She had forgotten the genesis of her other name until this very instant, forgotten that it had been a loving caress from Raan. Forgotten that he’d done a painting of her in flight, her wings and body creating streaks of color in the sky just like the small, jeweled bird.
“Lady Sharine?” Raphael’s voice, interrupting her thoughts, reminding her again of the now, of the here—but without impatience.
The blue-eyed boy’s mother was an Ancient; he understood that memories took time to unfurl within the minds of the very old. Tangled skeins with knots and, in Sharine’s case, many a cut thread, that was the repository of immortal memory.
“I accept the task,” she said with a sense of taking a step into the future. “I will make ready to join Titus.”
5
Titus roared to the starless sky as he dispatched another ravenous monster born of those putrid boils on the history of the world, Lijuan and Charisemnon, turning his head at the last moment so that the fetid blood didn’t hit his face. He’d had more than enough of that—but he could do nothing about the repulsive smell of the blood.
The reborn down, he picked up his conversation with his troop trainer, Tanae. “The rest of the Cadre are sending me the Hummingbird!” It came out a disbelieving shout.
“So you have said. Four times.” Dark red strands of hair stuck to her cheeks by a combination of blood and sweat, Tanae dispatched another reborn, then wiped her blade on the already wet dark of her pants.
Her wings were a horror of blood and brain matter from a half hour past when she’d turned into a spinning dervish to eliminate a nest of reborn. “You are one of the Cadre, sire. You don’t have to accept anything you do not want.”
He glared at her. “The Humming Bird,” he said, deliberately spacing out the two words that made up the name of the greatest living artist in angelkind. “Do you wish me to make enemies of our entire people?”
Everyone loved the Hummingbird. Even Titus loved her—in a distant kind of way. He didn’t know her as a person. He knew of her. That she was a gift to angelkind, that her kindness was legendary, that she had never had an enemy in her life. And of course, that she had given birth to Illium, a young angel Titus greatly liked.
Tanae, who had little relationship with her own son and was not a woman of large emotions, rolled eyes of a pale gray. “She isn’t a warrior and we’re in the midst of an infestation of reborn. No one will be surprised if you—respectfully—reject the offer.”
Titus had to turn and take care of another three rotting reborn before he could respond. “No one else will come,” he grumbled. “I scared all those who might’ve been free to join us, and now no warriors are left.”
“I told you not to yell at the last one,” Tanae said in a steady tone after chopping off a reborn head that featured a crushed eyeball hanging out of its socket. “He was competent.”
“He was lily-livered!” Titus roared. “What warrior runs from a good strong yell? You don’t run.”
“That’s because I’m deaf after all these years at your side.” Glancing around the field and seeing only dissolving bodies, she slid her sword into a thigh sheath.
The dissolving was a new thing that the reborn had begun to do after Lijuan’s death. The resulting gelatinous mess had so disgusting a stench that Titus’s second, Tzadiq, had rounded up a civilian crew whose sole job it was to dig deep holes using large earthmoving machines, then scrape all those dissolving bodies inside.
It was a luxury given all else that was going on, but it was a luxury for which his people thanked him, else their homes would be filled with the odor of decomposing flesh and no one could eat.
And food was a pleasure Titus treasured.
As for whether the gelatinous goo would poison the earth, Titus had plans to one by one cleanse the graves using archangelic power—but he couldn’t do that and fight the reborn at the same time. It’d have to be done at the end. In the interim, the holes were lined with a material created to keep contaminants from escaping into the soil, with his scientists monitoring the situation.
“You show me no respect,” he said to Tanae. “I should banish you.”
“I have a standing offer from three other courts.”
If he didn’t like her so much, he would banish her, he thought with an inward grumble. But if there was one thing Titus knew, it was that having bowing and scraping sycophants around an archangel did nothing but lead to rot. Look at Lijuan—all those fawning courtiers and a once competent leader had turned into a woman who thought death was life.
Tanae might have an edge to her tongue and no time for massaging anyone’s ego, but she was also loyal to the bone. Though he did sometimes wonder how her mate, Tzadiq, dealt with her. A man liked a little softness in his lover.
Not that Titus was getting any of that at present. While he well appreciated pleasures of the flesh, he had no time or inclination to soothe and gentle the pretty and fragile creatures with whom he usually kept company.
“I’ll have to clean up, entertain her.” It came out a groan unbecoming of an archangel but dear glory, the idea of it!
“Perhaps she’ll be more helpful than we believe,” Tanae said with her customary practicality. “She has, by all accounts, done a stellar job in her oversight of Lumia. You cannot argue that your household is in chaos and could do with a firm hand at the helm.”
“That’s because anyone who can lift a sword is out battling reborn, the others are digging holes to bury the resulting goo, and I’ve sent the vulnerable to safe havens.” Those safe havens were mostly islands off the coast of Africa. “She’ll have nothing to do but sit around and take insult at not being pampered like a lady.”
Titus had not expected this of Raphael—after his brutal and exhausting sojourn assisting in Africa, the pup knew very well what Titus needed. He categorically did not need a fragile artist renowned for her existence on a higher plane far from crawling reborn and war and blood.
There was no higher plane here. Just death and decay and devastation.
“Perhaps the others had no choice,” he admitted with a loud sigh. “We’ve lost too many good people.” Thousands of warriors had died in the battles, and though Titus now had control over what remained of Charisemnon’s forces, he couldn’t trust them.
Knowing a resentful fighter could do far more harm than good, he’d offered those troops the choice to leave for another territory if they so wished. Only a minuscule number had taken him up on it and departed Africa: all people who’d been high up in Charisemnon’s court.