Canticle [Historical M/M Romantasy]

It was far from ideal.

He shouldn't have left that part of the planning to Earil. Predictably, nothing was done but the bare minimum: the wards were in place, the walls and the floor and the ceiling appeared, both by sight and smell, to have been scrubbed. And Earil had hauled the bath in from where they'd been hiding it for centuries and placed it in the smaller room, though he'd have to recast the enchantments on it himself once he'd recovered. K'anak was loath to give it up, but he felt the child deserved to have a piece of old K'atc'ayet with him.

That was all K'anak had to work with. No shelves, no sleeping platforms, nothing to hide under or behind. Two rooms, a bath, a low stone ceiling and a polished wood floor. Not even a mat to sit on. Even his own nis'yk hadn't been that minimalistic. K'anak would be caught in those rooms without reprieve for at least two years. That was how long it would take for his magic to fully recover from stealing the child, to be ready to fight once more should an Imperial patrol find where they were hiding.

It was also how long it would take the child to learn his letters.

K'anak stared down at the tiny bundle in his arms. He wasn't certain how best to hold the child. Against your chest, Earil had said. Rock back and forth, like you're dancing. K'anak had never understood the utility of dancing. But Earil, much like his father before him, had always cared for frivolous things. K'anak lifted a hand wrapped from fingertips to wrist in bandages, ignoring the pain, and nudged the blanket hiding the child's face aside. He was a pale, sickly looking thing. But he stared up at him, unblinking, with eyes filmed over black. K'anak pursed his lips in approval. With effort, the child would grow into those eyes.

He doubted he would be getting any stronger himself soon, considering the aching in his ribs and knees and the lack of anything proper to sit on. Or the fact that he'd have to feed the child with his own blood, for lack of a fitting substitute. But K'anak lowered himself slowly into k'ynac position nevertheless, seated on the floor with one leg crossed and the other ready to push himself back to his feet in an instant. He shifted the child to his other arm, reached into his shirt and pulled out the book.

Earil said that his nursemaid had always read him a book called The Diamond Warrior and the Golden Dragon as a child. About a brave Host commander who captured the fiercest dragon in all of Heaven for the glory of the Emperor. The hero, though K'anak hated to apply that word to such a groveling, witless individual, had many conversations with imps and rabbits and toadstools along the way.

Drivel. No wonder Earil was the way he was. He'd found bravery in the story, but he'd also acquired the bad habit of constantly talking. Earil wasn't there, however. Nor would he be, not for several weeks. It was plenty of time to get the child headed in a better direction.

The book K'anak drew from his shirt was small. Cloth bound, with pages worn around the edges despite the care K'anak took with it. It was one thousand, nine hundred, thirteen years old. The book that had been placed in his cradle at birth. The first one he'd memorized. K'anak would have liked to have made the child his own copy, but they'd had only fourteen months to prepare before taking him.

K'anak propped the child up as best he could, opening the book and angling it so it was in front of his face. His eyes were still open. Still unblinking. K'anak slid his bandaged third finger down so that it was poised atop the first sentence. He moved it over the letters as he began to read in the language that, like the rest of old K'atc'ayet, had been lost. But would soon be found again.

All things arise from chaos. To chaos, all things return. Between lies life. And in life lies freedom.

- - -

"This is adequate progress."

Earil elbowed K'anak in the side. K'anak didn't so much as twitch.

"Oh, stop putting on such a serious face all the time," Earil whined, elbowing him again, harder. K'anak had anticipated this, and had centered himself against the pain. His ribs had healed themselves wrong. Earil was supposed to have found a healer for him months ago, but Earil was nothing if not distractible. And K'anak refused to complain about the pain, even to Earil, who knew every part of him that K'anak knew himself. "You're going to make him even more of a weird little gremlin than he already is."

K'anak did not think the child was weird in the slightest. But Earil couldn't know what it was like to be a k'amskec, a chain-breaker, almost nothing but barely-contained chaos. K'anak had not understood himself until he was nearly forty. He'd needed to work for days at a time without rest to try to understand the best way to balance himself once he knew his own nature.

He was determined to set the child up for a better future. K'anak thought that his greatest weaknesses, his tendency toward anger and a degree of passion that disrupted his rationality, would have been banished centuries ago if he'd started training that aligned with his nature when he was a child, before he had felt the draw of his magic.

But emotional balance was not the task he'd set the child to at present. He was practicing his physical balance, his breathing. In both areas, he had progressed rapidly over the past few months. Now he could hold skirc position — centered on one leg, the other held out horizontal to the floor, close to the fully extended range of a side kick — for a full hour, never once drawing breath. And he was only four years, one month old.

K'anak had been worried that the angelic half of the child's parentage would slow his development. But he was maturing as fast as a demon of the Moonlit Land and House Lily should, capable of most physical things now that he was past four. And he was able to read and reason a little, though he still had no magic and was emotionally impulsive. K'anak held the opinion that angelic children could develop their minds more quickly than they customarily did, if only they had less indulgent caretakers. Earil said no one forced him to learn to read on his own until he was nearly twenty.

"You know," Earil said, when K'anak refused to respond to his goading, "they have an animal on Earth that stands like that. Flamingos, they're called. All skinny legs. Big curved beak. Really, he looks a lot like one, now that I think about it. Only he's white instead of pink." Earil grinned at him. "Can I call him flamingo?"

"No," K'anak said, flatly. He grinned in disapproval at the way the child's forehead had wrinkled. Earil's chatting was breaking the child's control. K'anak would have to have a discussion with him about how better to balance himself in adverse conditions, how not to respond to goading. K'anak had never been able to master it. At the very least, he could teach the child what hadn't worked for him.

"I can't stand having nothing to call him," Earil said, pouting.

"He is s'ytet."

Earil smacked K'anak in the shoulder that time. "I still can understand your weird ticky-tacky language. I know that's not a name. That just means..." Earil paused for a moment. He'd probably forgotten all the levels to the word. "...child. Wild. Unknown."

"You forgot vibrant."

"Whatever! It's what you call everyone until they're twenty, or some insane age. How are they even supposed to know who you're talking to if you call them all the same thing? You won't even call them boy or girl so they've got half odds."

"Those words do not have any meaningful distinction in c'ayetnak. There is t'ksyn and cys'kat. The child has not settled on his first disposition yet." K'anak was concerned by the way the child had begun to waver, as if a strong wind was passing through the dim, stone rooms. There was no reason for it. Other than Earil's constant babbling.

K'anak changed the pitch of his voice, its intonation, so that the child would understand that he was speaking to him. A difficult thing to do in English, with its hazy levels of meaning, but just as the child needed to learn balance, he needed to learn the language spoken by those who'd usurped K'atc'ayet, who'd renamed it the City of Glass. Whenever he was training, experience in the language was coupled with it. "Focus. You will be surrounded by people like him one day. You must learn to ignore them."

Earil chose that juncture to switch to angelic, much to K'anak's annoyance. Though he tried to balance himself, K'anak felt his grin of disapproval widen as he listened to Earil ramble on. "I mean it, K'anak. Even you weren't raised this way. I was there, the same as you. The teachers in the children's house called everyone that word, but no one else did. Everyone had a nickname. They played games. They climbed, they ran, they sang…look, I understand that he needs to be strong, but no one does anything alone. And if you don't want to end up alone, you have to be at least a little normal. This? This is not normal."

K'anak refused to switch to a language the child didn't have a firm grasp on. But he didn't discount Earil's rambling that time either. K'anak knew every part of Earil that Earil knew himself. And he knew that when Earil's face fell into the flatness that was so typical of angels from noble families, he was upset. "Would you consider the way you were taught to be normal?"

"Not on your life. But at least I got to see a lot, compared to the others. This is just...I don't know. There's no fun in it. People like people who are fun. Even you," he added, some of the life returning to his face as he poked him in the side again, not so hard.

"My disposition has always been a hindrance," K'anak said, his grin unwavering.

"I disagree."

"You are not balanced."

"Neither are you. That's why you're interesting."

The child was wavering again, his own mouth creeping into a grin. K'anak decided to let it go. Earil did have something of a point. But he didn't understand either, not fully. Earil's magic was chaotic, but he had enough light in him to balance it without extreme measures. "It is my opinion that your presence is adequate to train the child in how to tolerate others."

Earil laughed. "Oh? Telling me to come visit more often, laeloe?"

K'anak saw the slight tilt of a question threatening to disturb the level set of the child's head. He must have been studying the old angelic histories more closely than he'd thought, to be wondering over that name. A kind of pudgy, furry flying creature from the Eastern Wastes with leathery wings, much like his own. The Empire had probably killed all of them for their poison sacs by then.

"That is a fitting topic of discussion." K'anak made the gesture for rest at the child, a dip of one knee and a twitch of four fingers on the opposite hand. He sagged a little as he returned to kisrat, to neutral. But he was still growing.

A full hour was considerable. That or Earil was chipping away at K'anak's will, the same as he always did.

K'anak lowered himself into sitting kisrat position, legs out straight in front of himself, to allow for full gestures. His hands empty and upturned on the floor at his sides with fingers spread, the gesture for open debate. The child mirrored him, agreeing to it. Earil, apparently, had seen enough for one day. Though he struggled to get through the wards on the room, he vanished with a flicker of his cold, white magic, leaving a few feathers behind on the floor in his wake.

The wavering cleared from the child's expression, though K'anak could sense by the tenseness in his shoulders that something still troubled him. The feathers. K'anak indulged him that time and destroyed them with a flick of shadows, so that he wouldn't have to struggle so much to focus while they talked. He had never had to train the child much on keeping the rooms clean. In fact, the child often questioned K'anak if he left things askew on purpose when it was time to discuss.

He really was becoming indulgent in his old age. Even toward himself. Especially toward himself.

K'anak set the parameters — impressions and questions, in the old language or gestures. The child agreed. Then K'anak pressed his palms together and waited, to show that he was offering the first round to him. The child closed his eyes and thought for a time. When he responded, he favored gestures over the old language. Like he usually did.

Earil wished to debate. You did not agree fully. Did I understand?

"Yes," K'anak spoke aloud, in the old language. Sometimes he felt like the child knew it better than he did. The child struggled more with the simplified c'ayetnak that made up the new language, though not as badly as with English. But he forgot enough words in the new language often enough to keep him from mastering the full c'ayetnak script and speech. "Earil still holds some Imperial beliefs. I wish to understand your opinion on it."

An outward twitch of the right leg, before a return to neutral. I'm listening .

"What about Earil disturbs your focus?"

The child didn't hesitate to give his opinions; he didn't have to pause to consider before rattling off his list. Again, in gestures. Too loud. Too bright. Always moving. He mixes gestures.

"I understand. Angels' body senses are not as strong as ours. They compensate with their mind senses. But Earil's orientation makes his mind senses weak. He is loud because of it."

Yes. He is often not the same as the angels in the histories. The child paused to think again. It makes him hard to understand. He is part K'maneda. And part Imperial. And part something I have not read about.

"Do you find me hard to understand?"

Sometimes. The child paused with both hands cupped in his lap for a second, the gesture meant to soften his words. To show warmth. But you always explain. And I am used to you.

K'anak pursed his lips in approval. He had been letting Earil's impressions color his own after all. The child wasn't weird, whatever Earil meant by that. Too sensitive, yes. Too opinionated, to a degree. But he could understand things, if he had the right references. Which the world beyond those eight walls would give him, if trained well enough in observation. K'anak should have trusted his instincts. As treacherous as they could be, at times.

"You are at two days alone now," K'anak said, making the left-hand gesture for continuing on, for closing and starting anew. To signal he was starting his round. "What do you think about it?"

I think you should bring me more books. The child did not make the gesture for joking.

"Have you felt the draw of your magic yet?"

This, the child hesitated especially long over. And when he spoke, he did it aloud, in the old language. "I have felt something."

K'anak made the gesture to explain, an open flick of the right hand.

The child continued on in the old language. "I feel cold sometimes. It comes and goes. On the second day. And it gets darker day by day." A cupped sweep of the left hand toward his chest, to emphasize that the dark was not a bad thing, in his opinion.

"Can you control it?"

"I do not know what to control." A downward flex of both feet from the child. Frustration.

K'anak sighed. A bad habit from Earil. But one that the child understood, since he didn't ask him to explain. "You may have to wait for your magic to come fully to learn control."

The child hesitated for a long time, his limbs and lips twitching, as if he didn't know whether to use the old language or gestures. Which he could explain better in. And his shoulders pressed back, slightly. Caution. "I am afraid," he finally said aloud.

K'anak made the sitting gesture for c'ktac. Neck craned to the left, throat bared. Both hands flat on the floor, palms up, fingers joined. The child returned it. K'anak shifted, drawing his legs up so that he could reach the child. He pressed both his palms flat against the upper outsides of his arms. Instantly, the child's lips pursed and brows raised, and his eyes fell closed. Acceptance, gladness. Comfort, with the added gesture of his hands cupped up at his sides.

"I will help you when it comes."

- - -

He had asked his nis'yk to bring him more books. But he'd been hoping for more t'akakk, not more English books that made his head hurt.

He kept the twenty-third t'akakk at hand while he struggled with the English book and the two dictionaries, to remind himself to be patient. The t'akakk would still be there once he'd finished the English book. He hadn't mastered the t'akakk fully; there were still many words and places and feelings in it he didn't understand. Mostly feelings, but not as many as the twenty-second. That one had some feelings in it that his nis'yk had grinned at him over, his ears going red as he waved his hand in the gesture for later, another time. Grinned in disapproval, not in the strange, noisy way that Earil did, making short breaths out his nose and odd sounds in his throat while he showed his teeth.

This was called laughing in English, if he understood the books correctly. He didn't think he liked it.

That was the only good thing about the English books — the more he read, the more Earil made sense. It was the missing piece that explained the parts of him that weren't Imperial or K'maneda. His nis'yk said that when Earil was not in their rooms, he was in that England place, watching K'atc'ayet from a distance. He must have been watching long enough to have started to adopt English gestures.

The idea of whole rooms full of Earils was almost unbearable. But K'anak said he was getting better at tolerating him. So, even if he wasn't balancing his emotions inside, he was at least balancing his expressions. Progress.

This particular English book talked about progress often, a place where the K'maneda histories and many of the English books overlapped. But the English book was so vague about where that progress started, the path to take, and the final goal, that it made a hot, tense feeling come up in his chest. He closed his eyes and tried to center himself, to make the feeling go away. By the clock on the shelf across from him, it was eighteen hours into the fourth day since his nis'yk had last visited him. He would be returning soon. He needed to be balanced when K'anak came back. In control. This was what he was progressing toward, the path K'anak had asked him to try and that he'd accepted, for now. Clearly laid out, step by step.

Unlike the hik'cek English book.

That word was from the ninteenth t'akakk, and though he didn't understand all of its levels, he knew it meant a strong and painful smack on the first level, which was the one he liked and the context the nineteenth t'akakk had used it in. And he liked the sound of the word, how it popped just like landing a sharp blow. But he had decided it would be better not to use it aloud around K'anak and Earil, because it made his nis'yk go so red parts of him went back to white while it made Earil laugh and hold his stomach like it hurt. He repeated hik'cek aloud to himself over and over as he opened his eyes and looked around the big room, to find something to help him balance himself.

He had already taken care of everything that needed to be done to prepare for K'anak's return, aside from himself. He had washed and remade K'anak's sleeping platform, since he'd sat on it yesterday because its end was closer to the corner. He had done the same to his own across the room, even though he'd only laid it in but not slept between the first and the ninth hour of the fourth day. The third t'akakk said that part of balance was keeping things neat, and he was glad that matched with the way all the strange feelings in his body went quiet when he made something neat again.

But there was nothing left to make neat, because the strange feelings had been coming more often lately. He had washed and swept the floor. He'd done the same to the small room, with the bath, even though it had the enchantments that could make it clean itself. He'd dusted the walls, the corners high and low, though he needed to stand on the back of the chair to reach the high ones. And the leather of the footstool and chair — the skin of a dead animal, which had surprised him, because it wasn't like his own skin at all — was polished. The floor mats had been beaten and aired and laid back down. All the books were on their shelves, in order.

Except for the t'akakk and the dictionaries, and the English book he still hadn't finished reading for the first time. The one he still didn't understand at all.

The hot feeling in his chest was starting to go cold. That was fine. He liked cold better than hot, though only on the inside. But it still made him worried that he didn't understand what any of it meant.

He closed his eyes and tried one of the breathing exercises again. He focused on the ticking of the clock to make sure his inside time matched the outside. In. Sixty ticks. Out over thirty. Then nothing for thirty more. Repeat.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

He was so cold on the inside now that it was almost like he could feel it on the outside, around his hands pressed against the edge of the English book. He opened his eyes. It was dark in the rooms, the way he liked it, the magelight above the clock just bright enough to read by. But it was darker still around his hands. And around the four books on the floor, the English book, the two dictionaries, and the t'akakk.

The coldness inside of him got worse. So did the coldness outside, so cold that he felt little flickers of pain on his fingers, like he was scrubbing them hard to make sure they were clean. The darkness curled around the books.

It looked like the way his nis'yk 's magic curled. Only K'anak wasn't there. He was alone.

He didn't know what he felt, whether it was excitement or sadness or anger or any of another half dozen things. It was hot at first, then went right cold again. Stronger than anything he'd ever felt before, making his fingers twitch against the pain like scrubbing. And then he heard something against his ears, like someone was whispering, only no one was there, and then...

...the books were gone.

He knew what he felt then. A t'akakk was precious. All the things a K'maneda had learned during their life, all their spells, all their feelings, all their knowledge and mistakes and opinions. And he'd destroyed it.

He knew what that heat was that turned right away to a cold weight pressing on his chest, making it feel like he couldn't breathe. Fear.

It was an emergency. He needed to control himself. He needed to stay away from the books. K'anak's sleeping platform, in the corner. He'd learned to balance himself well enough to stay out from underneath it since two years and three months ago. He bolted for it, shoved himself underneath into the pitch blackness there.

He tried every lesson he'd learned. He tried to breathe; he tried to count the seconds. The cold was still inside and around him. He pressed his palms flat against the sides of his head; nothing. He wrapped his arms around himself. A little better. And hissing and popping hik'cek again and again made his breathing a little more even too. But it was still so cold. There was wetness on his face and he was still so cold.

"Syk'ca."

The coldness lifted. On the outside, but not on the inside. It wasn't so pitch black anymore under K'anak's sleeping platform. There was enough light in the big room for him to see that there was someone kneeling on the floor nearby.

"Syk'ca, I'm here."

The fear returned, along with the cold outside, until K'anak did something to take the outside coldness away. To calm his magic, even if it didn't help calm him.

He'd destroyed a t'akakk. That was a debt he could never repay.

There was a flash of whiteness — K'anak pressed his hands against the floor, palms up, fingers joined. He slid just close enough to the edge of the platform to see the rest of his nis'yk. Neck craned to the left, throat bared. Lips pursed. But less tight than approval, only warm.

"You can come out."

There was another flare of hot that turned to cold inside of him, but he came out anyway. And when K'anak reached to him to press his palms flat against his arms, he pushed himself closer to him and returned c'ktac best he could. And hissed his way through the only thing he could think of that would make his insides quiet, s'kkrasn.

He hadn't asked for s'kkrasn in a very long time.

Instead of pressing his palms flat against his arms, K'anak pressed them flat against the middle of his back. Pressed all of him close, so that he could hear K'anak's heartbeat better. And he closed his wings in around him, with the soft rustling of skin that was more like the leather on the chair than his own. K'anak didn't throw off cold, not then. His body threw off warmth. And he smelled familiar and clean.

"I am in your debt, nis'yk," he said. There was still wetness on his face.

"Why do you owe me a debt, syk'ca?"

"I destroyed a t'akakk."

K'anak sighed. One of Earil's favorite gestures and sounds. He felt the air brush across the top of his head. "Better a t'akakk for your first time than a person."

- - -

He was nine years, ten months old to the day when Earil came and put the book down in front of him. It was a serious situation, he knew, since both Earil and K'anak were sitting in kisrat across from him on the floor mat. Earil never made the K'maneda gestures toward him, only using them when joking with K'anak.

"This is my name book," K'anak explained. In English. It was all English now, except for when K'anak wanted to show warmth toward him. A moment later, K'anak sighed. "In a sense."

The title on the book's cover was in English letters. The Holy Bible. It was referenced often in the English books he had read. But K'anak had said it didn't matter, that it was a collection of moralistic tales that a human religion was based off of that would inevitably fade away before any of them returned to the universal chaos. He tilted his head to the left in question as he looked back up at his nis'yk.

"My true name book has been lost," K'anak said, with a closed-fist sweep to the right to express his regret. "Earil proposed this as an alternative. He has an interest in human culture."

Earil made the laughing noise, showing his teeth in a grin along with it. But it looked different from when Earil usually showed his teeth and laughed, in a way he couldn't describe. "You should try it sometime, laeloe. For all their weakness, the humans do know how to have fun. Besides, if he picks from this one instead of one of your weird little diaries, at least the humans will be able to pronounce his name without sneezing."

The book was very thick. He opened the cover, carefully. It wasn't his nis'yk's true name book, but he still felt the weight of it.

If K'anak was giving him his name book, that meant it was time for him to choose his name from the same pages. It was confusing. He was only nine years, ten months old. Not close at all to having understood all the t'akakk K'anak had brought him, to balancing his magic or his emotions. Or even settling on his first disposition. As his head tilted toward a question again, K'anak made the curt right-hand gesture for patience, an assurance that everything would make sense if he continued.

"He's all the way in the back. Somewhere, somewhere, always somewhere," Earil said in his sing-song voice as he reached forward without warning to flip through the book for him. He grinned in distaste, but didn't move to challenge him. Earil made the coldness grow in him, but he was K'anak's c'aytka . K'anak had to admire him for a reason. And K'anak hadn't moved a hand to stop Earil from flipping through the book either.

"Ah! Here. Have a read, poppet," Earil said, tapping one finger at the top of a long column of densely packed words.

He didn't know what Earil meant when he called him poppet. K'anak said it was because angels disliked not having names for people. And because Earil was frivolous. With a grin of distaste, but a cupped palm to soften the word and the expression. He hoped the book would have better words in it than the word Earil used for him.

He leaned forward, reading the words closely. It was very strange. He only read aloud when the text came to something that was clearly labeled a name. He still had trouble telling English names from English words. "And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon." He tilted his head in confusion. It made it even harder to find the right English words, made him pause instead of speaking smoothly like K'anak and Earil could. "But these…words are not your name. And you are…not an angel."

"He's got wings at least, even if they're all bald," Earil said, still grinning. He reached over and ran a hand along K'anak's nearer wing, without first asking. A common thing between c'aytka, K'anak had explained. Especially when one didn't follow the old ways.

K'anak flicked both wings with a grin of annoyance. But he didn't make the gesture to stop either, for Earil to retreat or face the consequences of his actions. "Earil has explained this to me. In the non-English languages, these words mean one who destroys. Or a place like the Abyss, though the humans don't understand it as we do. Many have no magic."

Though he moved to tilt his head, again K'anak made the gesture for patience. "Human culture is varied. The way they try to understand what they see is complex." Another patience gesture, with the promise of a cup at the end — he would understand in time, with experience.

"And that's what makes it so interesting!" Earil said. "So much more fun than Imperial culture. The Empire's dull, as always."

He stared down at the page, scanning the columns of words. "This will be…my name book."

"This will be your name book," K'anak confirmed.

"Aren't you excited, poppet?" Earil asked, still showing his teeth. In that way that made his eyes bright, that meant he expected something from him. But he'd never been able to tell what it was Earil wanted from him, not unless he explained fully. And no one had ever explained well what excited was supposed to be either. K'anak said it was better to ignore Earil when he was like this.

Again, he read down the words on the page. He didn't know which were names, other than the ones that Earil and K'anak had confirmed. But he tried his best to understand the text, to see the connections. "Am I…locust? I am with you, nis'yk. But you are not my king. Kings…are cayet." A word he had never been able to translate well into English, and that K'anak couldn't either. The closest thing was dishonor, but it still felt wrong.

"Locust," K'anak repeated with a thinking gesture, the tap of two fingers on his right knee. It did have a good sound to it. The closest English had to a click and hiss, right together.

Earil made a gesture with his eyes, the one that showed the whites of them. "Locust isn't a name. It's a big ugly bug. Here, I'll make it—"

The floor and the ceiling and the walls shook, suddenly. For a moment, he thought he had to be mistaken. That he was losing control over his emotions because of Earil and all the confusing things in the book, locusts and their king and Greek. But it must have been the walls moving, not him. Because both K'anak's and Earil's expressions went hard, guarded. Earil flipped back to the very front of the book, taping at a page that was all single words and numbers. "Here. Try something from this page, poppet. We don't have much time."

"We…do not have time?" he asked K'anak.

K'anak didn't explain. But he did confirm that Earil's statement was true.

He tried to focus on the columns of words. They had no relation to each other that he could understand. A list of chapters or passages instead, if it followed the pattern of most human books. The walls shook again. It made it hard to focus, and so did Earil talking at K'anak, in angelic. Like he was still four or five years and only understood every third word.

"They weren't supposed to get here for another five hours."

"You were supposed to set up a better distraction."

"I'll take Imanael's head for this."

"That's what you said the last time."

"You did too."

A look passed between them that he didn't understand the meaning of. But he refocused on the book, choosing a word by its number in the list. Twenty-five was a good number. He spoke the word aloud. It didn't feel like a name, but few English words did. "Lamentations."

"Little lamb," Earil said, making his own thinking expression, pursed lips that curled up on the ends.

K'anak was too distracted by the shaking to control his expressions. He was grinning fiercely. If there was something in it that K'anak disliked, it was probably not a good choice.

He made the gesture of dismissal, rejection, and tried another word from the list. The fifth. Another good number. That word was so hard to pronounce that he knew he was going to reject it too, even before he'd said it fully. "Deuteronomy."

K'anak's grin stayed, and Earil's expression changed to one that was close to it. A grimace, it was called.

The walls shook harder, that time with a bang, dust falling from the ceiling. Both K'anak and Earil shifted without words into k'ynac position, both ready to rise and fight. The inverse of each other. K'anak's strong leg was his left, and Earil's his right. Balanced in that way, though their disposition was both t'ksyn. First to attack, first to act, firm in conviction and debated best with a strike or a blade. His own was growing closer with every month to cys'kat, no matter how hard he tried to balance himself. First to defend, first to think, conviction in process and debated best with examples. He had always felt like this was a mistake on his part. But K'anak always said it was impossible to fight your nature. It was necessary only to learn to balance it.

So he tried to balance it with acting, with instinct. He read off the very first word on the list instead of struggling to find a number that didn't make the coldness that came too often tickle at his insides. "Genesis."

K'anak's face went neutral. A second passed, and then the grin returned to Earil's face. The hard one. The cold one. Not a grimace, but not quite a smile either, which meant good things to angels. One of his mixed expressions that ran hot and cold. "A new beginning."

K'anak pursed his lips. "Of the end of the Empire."

There was something happening between them that he didn't understand. But it was the first time they had come close to agreeing on something. He had always wanted a name that was like his nis'yk's, snapping and hard. But there was at least a double hiss at the end of that word. Which was better suited to his growing disposition, as much as he disliked that. Finally, he thought he was beginning to understand what K'anak had told him about the balanced fight. Acceptance, but never satisfaction.

All the shaking and louder and louder bangs made him want to go lie under K'anak's sleeping platform like he had when he was younger. But he made himself even his shoulders and take up k'ynac like K'anak and Earil, ready to fight along with them. To show their shared purpose, as he closed the book. "I am Genesis."

For once, Earil did the right gesture along with K'anak. The pressed together palms of the first round, of beginning, with chin lifted to show that the challenge was welcome. "You are Genesis," K'anak agreed.

"Little Genny-penny," Earil said with one of his laughs that was half hot and half cold, like his smile. "But always poppet first."

Before any of them could make another gesture or speak another word, there was another bang. A chunk of stone fell from the ceiling, onto the s'kilat in the corner, breaking it with the discordant sound of snapping wires. Like when he poured frustration into it with no intent to make music, with only the need to feel balanced again, so that he didn't lose hold of his magic and destroy something. Coldness rose up in his chest, but he kept his expression controlled.

He was Genesis. And Genesis would not be afraid. That was what he had been when he was s'ytet.

Earil rose to his feet, made an arcane gesture with both his arms and wings outspread. Armor appeared on his body. Genesis had only read of angelic armor in books before, but it had been described well. Big sheets of white metal that curved around the front of his limbs and that enclosed the chest. But Earil's armor was missing the piece that was supposed to protect his neck from chin to collar. Its absence confused him, until K'anak rose beside him, and without warning, seized Earil by the braids gathered in a thick clump at the base of his skull and pressed his lips to the side of the neck. Once. Firmly. A fitting gesture of admiration and respect between c'aytka.

Of course, rather than returning it in kind, Earil returned it with one his noisy grins and a smacking gesture that pressed lips against lips. Something angels were fond of, despite the risk of disease, K'anak had explained to him the first time he'd seen them exchange the gesture. He'd been alarmed by its forcefulness and the way it had made K'anak growl like he'd been challenged. He'd thought they were bound to fight. But instead, K'anak only returned one of Earil's noisy grins and had given him a firm smack on the wing. With a cupped hand rather than a straight one, to show there was no threat in it.

It was all confusing. But the rumbling behind the walls of his rooms, the dust and plaster floating down on top of everything, didn't leave much room in his head to think it all through.

Earil let K'anak go. And like with K'anak, Earil didn't perform c'ktac first or wait for him to accept before touching him, putting a hand flat on the top of his head. He — Genesis — looked up at him.

"Get big and come kill angels with me one day, poppet," he said, with one of his hot and cold smiles. And then he was gone.

He looked to K'anak, not understanding any of it, his head hurting from the confusion and the noise. Instead of summoning his own weapon, or centering himself in preparation to leave and fight, K'anak dropped into t'san position, sitting face to face with him, his legs crossed close to his body. The position for concentration and focus. K'anak gestured for him to do the same, speaking to him in the old language, c'ayetnak. "I have one and a half things for you, Genesis."

Genesis mirrored his position, then twitched his right arm out from the side of his body. I'm listening.

"Hold out your hands."

They both did. K'anak closed his eyes and thought. As another piece of the ceiling fell down with a bang onto his own sleeping platform, across from K'anak's, a book appeared in K'anak's hands. Black and thick and without any title or decoration. K'anak passed it to him. "Your own t'akakk, Genesis. Put it somewhere safe for another time."

The cold rose up sharp in his chest. This wasn't the way things were supposed to happen. He was supposed to take his name from his nis'yk's book — his real name book — after debating it with himself for five days. And he was not supposed to have his own t'akakk until he had understood all those of the other old K'maneda, when he was old and his nis'yk was even older and he had learned enough things to teach his own student, his own syk'ca.

But Genesis felt, as sure as he felt the coldness in his chest, that this was not the time for questions and debate. He gestured his agreement and put the book in the only safe place left, offering it to the shadows that passed into the Abyss. He didn't know what all lived there. But it felt much safer there than in his rooms, the only other place he'd ever known.

"Now, the half," K'anak said. "Hold out your hands again and draw on your magic. All the way, no stopping this time. Let it fill you without restraint."

K'anak had always said he wasn't ready for that. That he wasn't supposed to ever draw on all of his magic, not until he was much older, because he hadn't yet learned to balance himself. But K'anak was asking for him to do it now. And the coldness in his chest, that was curling around him in a darkness close to the kind that was curling around K'anak, agreed with his nis'yk. Genesis closed his eyes and drew on his magic.

The coldness filled him, inside and out. He let himself sink down into it, let himself feel it fully, pulled more of the coldness from the inside to the outside. The more he pulled out, the more it felt like the outside became alive. Breathing. Thinking. Like him, but not him. It made him feel more balanced, more ready. As if he and K'anak had a whole army around them, like the ones the K'maneda had raised before K'atc'ayet had fallen to Heaven. Ranks of thousands, all of infinite variety, just as the chaos held within it infinite possibilities.

"Open your eyes."

Genesis did. Across from him, K'anak's sword had appeared across his nis'yk's outheld hands. He'd seen it before, so many times he'd lost count. As black as the shadows curled around it, sucking in the flickering glow of the magelight and making it go away. Eating it. Destroying it. There was something warm in that, a good balance to the coldness still sitting heavy on his chest. That was the first time he had ever felt warm when thinking about how the shadows wrapped around things and dragged them away, made them disappear. In that way too, Genesis was different from s'ytet.

One moment, there was only darkness above his own hands. Then a second sword appeared.

It should have been heavy. It was as long as he was tall. But it felt as weightless as the shadows still wrapped around it, and just as cold. The light disappeared in it. And died. There was something warm in that too.

"This is mine," Genesis said, staring down into the darkness that shifted across the surface of the blade. He'd only ever used wooden training staves and swords before, and K'anak had always needed to restrain his power so as not to destroy them. It made proper training difficult, made it hard for him to grow stronger, but K'anak said that his weapon, like his magic, would come to him in time. When he was ready.

"It is yours," K'anak said, shifting his hold on his own sword, reaching down with his left hand to grasp its hilt. A practiced, reverent gesture. "Even if they take it, it will always return to you, if you draw hard on your magic. And it will never destroy anything unless you wield it yourself, not while you still live. This is a Destroyer's weapon, not a blade made of metal."

Genesis copied K'anak's gesture, took up his own sword. It didn't feel like the training swords, too long, too heavy, ready to fill his hands with splinters if he wasn't mindful. He tried to wield it with the same confidence K'anak did. But the tip wavered and blurred. He still lacked proper balance, proper control.

And yet, K'anak pressed onward. He made the gesture for consideration, for concentration, as he shifted into k'ynac position, his sword poised at his side and never touching the ground. Genesis mirrored him, then listened.

"We are going to K'atc'ayet," K'anak said. "Your time here is over. We have found a way inside. If neither I nor Earil make it along with you, you will look for a man who has named himself Senkov. He is not an old K'maneda, but he knows enough of the old ways for you to understand him well. You will know him because his magic will not feel like that of the others you will see. Not demon, not angel, not human. Something else."

This wasn't how things were supposed to happen. And that time, the coldness in his chest kept him from listening and watching and waiting. He asked questions to try to make that coldness go away. "What about the first debt? I will need five offerings. I was not born—"

A grin had come onto K'anak's face, vicious and sharp. His teeth had gone long, in a way Genesis had never seen before. "I will leave you enough heads to make the offering. And if you fall short, they'll be fine enough heads to make up the gap."

It wasn't like K'anak to interrupt him. But his nis'yk made up for it with pursed lips of approval as he looked him up and down, searching him for things that were out of place. K'anak found none. They wore the same black t'sikat, with high neck and no collar and sleeves and legs that could be wrapped for physical fighting or loosed to make summoning magic easier. And now they had the same weapon, though K'anak's sword had more detail than his own. If this was because K'anak had summoned his more often or if it was due to their different dispositions, he didn't know. But that time, Genesis didn't let the coldness press him into asking any questions.

The pieces didn't make sense on their own, but put together, Genesis understood. It was time for them to fight together. As equals, not as nis'yk and syk'ca. Even though he didn't feel at all like he'd balanced himself well enough and had learned enough magic to earn that right.

K'anak rose, into standing kisrat. And he raised his chin, welcoming the challenge.

"I will show you the way, Genesis. It is time for us to go home."

- - -

Everything was pain. But that was easier to ignore than the twisting in his chest, the cold that refused to escape outwards, caught in between by the magic that had been carved into his arms.

And it was easier to ignore than the smell. If this was K'atc'ayet, the stories K'anak and Earil had traded about how it'd been betrayed had to be even worse than they'd made it sound. He could smell three dozen different things at once and none of them were good. The narrow room he found himself in was filthy. He wished K'anak had given him shoes to wear, even though it was hard to fight in them like he could in bare feet.

K'anak. Earil. Pain. Genesis tried to push it all out of mind. Thinking of anything beyond his goal would keep him from progressing. And it'd make the cold stronger, pull him down into its depths until he couldn't find any balance, not in his feet or inside his head. He could think of what had happened later. Now was the time for action, for instinct. To balance his cys'kat disposition. He kept walking down the narrow room, making himself ignore the pain and the dirt beneath his feet.

It was brighter up ahead. The whole room was brighter than he liked, but ahead it was worse. And it was loud in that direction, though the noises were too sharp and irregular for him to tell what they were. There was a bend in the walls of the narrow room, where it turned a corner. Leading into a room with no wall at its end.

Part of him wanted to walk closer, to look out, to understand. But what he saw beyond where the wall should have been stole the breath from his chest.

People. Dozens and dozens of people in clothes he didn't recognize, all speaking and gesturing at one another as they walked past in ways he didn't understand. All of them constantly moving, making noise, fast and slow and in-between with no pattern. As soon as he fixed on one person to study, to try to understand, they were past the walls on either side of him and he could see them no more. But he could still smell them. A stink that was less wet than the dirt on the floor, dry and fleshy, like the few times the meat Earil brought him to eat had gone bad.

Genesis tried to balance himself by looking beyond them, past them, above them. The brightness was coming from above. But there were no magelights, no lamps, nothing he recognized as something that could be responsible for the pink-tinged glow. He narrowed his eyes and the rest of his senses against it. There was something falling from the ceiling. Something that the people all had coverings on their heads to protect against, something that made a constant, low pounding noise that echoed the pounding in the back of his mind, the throbbing in his arms.

Rain. It was rain. And the light, it was from the sky. There was no ceiling beyond the end of the narrow room. Only openness, and dozens of people, all of them talking, all of them moving, their heartbeats and voices a riot of noise and smell and brightness and...

And...

Genesis was not supposed to be afraid. That was what he'd been when he was s'ytet. But Genesis still turned and ran back into the stinking, suffocating darkness of the narrow room he'd fallen from the Abyss into, wetness streaking his face that hadn't come from the sky. Because even the stench and the filth was better than that .

He rounded the corner, limbs and fingers aching, and came up short. There was a light at the end of that room now too. Not from the outside. Worse.

Four angels. One thin and wearing something that was either a dress or a robe, making that same hot and cold expression Earil always did with teeth bared. Beside him was a squarer one, too bright for him to look at close, the only spot of color and dimness on him the blood on the knife he had in hand. Behind the pair were two more, one to either side, both towering walls of metal, their faces hidden by more of it. The one on the left had a snarl of braids in his hand. Long, silver-white, and strung with the multicolored beads Earil had never explained the purpose of and that K'anak could give no logical reason for either. And a single, thicker black one, raw flesh still hanging off one end of it.

Genesis tried to make the coldness inside of him flow to the outside of his body. But his magic stuck, and the angel holding the knife got a little less bright. The slender one with the hot and cold grin made a noise at him. Like clicks, but with no sense to their patterns.

"What an inconvenience," the thin one said. In an angelic that was more even than Earil's, but with the same sharp edge.

"Will it survive coming home?" the one with the knife asked. Softer.

"It'll survive for as long as we order it to."

And then, everything went white.