28.6

 

There’s no answer from the mantle, but she feels the approach from the effect of the mantle on her body. She lifts her head as the contraction pulls at her internal organs, her eyes widening with the discomfort. It’s not the agony of period pain, nor the pleasure of an orgasm, but it takes control of the same muscle group and in the absence of erotic re-purposing, pain is the only way her brain knows how to process the sensation. This, she thinks, must be why some people enjoy pain: it stimulates the same nerve endings as pleasure and with the right stimulus, the brain can transmute one into the other.

Either way, she can feel the new imbalance. It’s not fear, like the first, or fury like the one she just dismantled, but something older; something deeper, and it doesn’t originate with the crowd at all. It has a familiar taste to it, this imbalance, and it feels personal. It’s coming to meet her.

Roisin staggers, losing her balance momentarily and falling against the back of someone in the crowd. They look round, sharply, and give her a glare as she mutters an apology for her clumsiness, but she could not describe him if she was offered good money to her description.

It homes in on her instantly, its awareness flaring like a lantern in a storm. This is not human. Even her breath is trembling because she feels it now, not as a ripple or a knot, and not as a cluster of emotion. This is a definite presence; a presence that is not part of the protest. It is not part of the city. It is not even human.

The mantle pulses again but this time the pulse is as cold as a gravedigger’s spade. It has the knowledge she needs for whatever is coming, but the mantle feels trepidation in regard to the coming encounter. And if the mantle feels trepidation, Roisin feels fear envelop her like mustard gas through an Amiens trench. A presence that has felt her intervention and brought his gaze upon her. She feels another pulse, colder than before and this time it does bring pain, though she is braced for it and does not stagger.

The mantle of Knowledge opens, and Roisin sees the shape of the imbalance; the geometry of it — a vast, ancient force shifting its weight, turning its attention toward the square, toward the crowd, toward her. A pressure like a storm front rolling in and a taste of iron in the air, of spilled blood and the smoke from burning corpses. It is a scent the mantle recognises and passes the knowledge through to its host.

A tremor in the emotional field of the crowd, subtle but unmistakable.

Roisin feels the blood run from her face and hide somewhere in the pit of her stomach. “…oh God.”  The mantle sends a pulse of warning and she nods absently, her mouth dry. She’s been the Fifth for less than an hour and already they send this one against her?

It is not a Horseman or its rider, but another angel, this one making the power of the last angel look like a kitten in retrospect. This one is not a shepherd a watcher or a messenger, but Hasmed the executioner; the Angel of Annihilation.

He is not yet fully manifest, but behind the eyes of the speaker on the podium are the eyes if an Ancient one, not yet unleashed but turning away from its crowd and toward her, pinning her with a gaze that feels like needles of molten lava.

But stirring. Turning. Not toward the crowd but toward her.

Roisin’s knees buckle. It knows her. It remembers her. It’s coming for her. She shakes her head in disbelief. “Why? What does it want with me?”

The mantle answers in a pulse of cold clarity and suddenly she knows. Hasmed is not drawn by imbalance; it is not drawn by hunger or fury or despair but by interference; by deviation and anomaly; by something stepping outside its ordained role. By the Fifth. By her.

Roisin takes a deep breath to calm her nerves. She knows what she must do. She has to stand and face the one angel that Heaven sends when it wants something erased from the world, from history.

The crowd shifts uneasily, sensing a pressure they cannot name — a silence rolling toward them like a storm front and Roisin feels it: A presence approaching the square.

On the podium, the speaker’s suit shimmers as a single pair of wings unfold from his back. Ragged and tattered, sublime and magnificent, they stretch from one side of the temporary stage to the other, each feather sharp as the crack of dawn.

Hasmed has come for her.

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