By my own blood, by salt and flame, I invoke thee.

By thy name and title and rank, I invoke thee:

Sammāʾēl the Sun Eater, hear my call;

Sammāʾēl the Blind, heed my call;

Sammāʾēl the Angelus of Destruction, come to me.

- Avitus

☀

13th Day of New Summer’s Moon, 297 AC

The city of Maʿīn trembled in the grip of plague.

Valeria du Champs d'Or, granddaughter of the last Etalan Emperor, stood at her window above the Court of Eagles and let a pair of souls spill into her, like the spider at the center of her web. Each fiery-serpent that flew across the early morning sky was a Tithe, feeding not only her own power, but that of the daemon to whom she was bound.

Until now, it had only been a soul at a time, but this morning two Tithes flew into her Core, shuddering Valeria’s body with burning ecstasy. “The Third Tithe for each of us, since we’ve come to this city,” Agrat commented with satisfaction, purring like a kitten who has just gotten her fill of the cream. “Six in total. It’s always this time of day - the early morning hours = when mortals give up.”

“There are more infected,” Valeria reminded the daemon lounging on her bed, turning away from the window. “The physicians have already declared a quarantine, and the Caliph has announced that he will go out into the Medina to heal the sick.”

“As you predicted,” Agrat acknowledged. “Yes, your latest plan is working so far. “Isrāfīl is the Angelus of Healing, he cannot resist the call of duty. His Exarch will be well protected, however.”

“However many guards the Caliph brings, it will not be as many as there would be inside the palace,” Valeria pointed out. “And the man is not what he once was. He is old. This is our opportunity - the most vulnerable we will find him.”

She turned back to the window. “Should the light of dawn not be visible, by now?”

“The Sun-Eater,” Agrat murmured, almost reverently. “I can feel the power of Sammāʾēl growing, just as it did when Vellatesia fell. Your father must have decided the time for subtlety has passed.”

“All the better,” Valeria decided. “Combined with plague, it will only strike fear into the people of this city. Come; I wish to be at the hospital well before the Caliph and Isrāfīl arrive. Oh, and Agrat? I believe it is time to strengthen that thread to yellow.”

“Well past time,” the Plague Dancer agreed, with a grin. Lithe as a serpent, the daemon rose from the bed and strode to within arm’s reach of her Exarch. Agrat plunged a hand forward into Valeria’s chest, and burning scarlet light, flecked with black spots, exploded out from where their bodies joined. Valeria’s core emitted a blinding flash, enough to make her see spots. Her heart stopped, and her lungs as well, and she fell into Agrat’s waiting arms.

The daemon chuckled softly. “Don’t die yet, girl,” she murmured, rubbing Valeria’s back in slow circles. When the pain finally passed, the Exarch sucked in a breath, blinked until her vision returned, and found her balance again. “How do you feel?”

“Better than I’ve ever felt before,” Valeria said, with a grin. Burning yellow fire pulsed beneath her skin, running through the muscles of her arms and thighs. She strode over to the table next to the bed, and lifted a silver goblet from the tray there, cupping it in her fingers. With a single squeeze, the metal crumpled as easily as a dead autumn leaf.

“I want more of it,” Valeria said.

“We will both have more when we kill Isrāfīl,” Agrat pointed out.

“Let us be on our way, then,” Valeria agreed.

The hospital being used to quarantine those infected with plague was, it turned out, not truly a hospital at all: it was a warehouse which had been commandeered by the Caliph’s guards, so as not to infect other patients.

Valeria moved not through the city streets, but from one rooftop to another, leaping with exuberant glee under the light of the stars. Her legs were as powerful as a wild stallion’s, now, and each jump took her easily over the streets of the city. Below, people gathered in murmuring, frightened groups, too disturbed by the lack of dawn to go on with their business.

Owls spied on the entire route from the palace to the makeshift hospital, acting as Valeria’s eyes and ears to observe the coming of the Caliph’s party. By the time she had reached the roof of the warehouse where her own victims were kept, Rashid ibn Umar had only just left the palace, accompanied by twenty of his personal guards.

The warehouse was large, easily the height of a three-story building, with great doors that could swing open to admit wagons, and a crane in the center which allowed the lifting of goods up to be stored on the second level. There were loft doors, as well, for goods to be thrown or lowered down onto the street, and it was by way of these doors that Valeria gained entrance.

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The lock broke off easily in her hand, and then she swung down from the roof into the second level of the warehouse, where she found herself among great bolts of cloth. Carefully, Valeria drew the loft doors closed behind her, and settled in to wait, with only the moans of the sick to accompany her.

Perhaps half a bell later, she could hear the tromp of booted feet on the street outside. Valeria crept to the loft doors, and placed her ear there so that she could hear.

“I must insist on sending guards inside with you,” a man’s voice came, in strident Nabāṭic.

“Ibrahim, my old friend,” an older man replied. “You know that the power of the Angelus will protect me from this sickness. You know, also, that you have no such protection, nor do your men.”

“You can heal us just as easily as those inside, Caliph,” Ibrahim protested.

“I am not as strong as I once was,” the caliph returned. “And I will need all my powers for those already ill. Do not increase the weight of my burden. No one inside is a threat to me, and you will prevent anyone else from entering. You have my complete trust.”

Valeria smiled, and crept away from the loft window. A moment later, the physicians opened the warehouse doors.

“You honor us with your presence, great Caliph,” one of the doctors spoke. Valeria moved to the central opening in the floor where the crane was located. Below, the first floor of the warehouse was lit by oil lamps, rather than torches or candles as would have been done in Narvonne.

“I am simply a servant of the Angelus,” Rashid ibn Umar responded, and Valeria got her first look at Nasir’s father. His back had begun to hunch with age, and his white hair was now more wispy than thick, but to her eyes a core of yellow and hot white burned within his chest.

“He stopped fighting his own battles long ago,” Agrat whispered, appearing next to Valeria. “I doubt he has Tithed since his son was born.”

“The moment we strike, his guards will break down the door,” Valeria warned. “We must be quick.” She wrapped her blue veil around her face, and drew a dagger in her right hand.

“We kill both of them,” Agrat agreed. “And everyone else here. Tithe them all.”

Valeria pushed herself off the ledge, falling directly down at where the Exarch of Isrāfīl bent over the bed of a patient. As she dropped, she raised the dagger, then plunged it down into the back of the caliph with all her strength. The force of her blow snapped the dagger off at the hilt, but her clenched fist hit with the force of a battering ram, slamming Rashid down through the sick bed, which shattered, flinging splinters in every direction. The old man’s body hit the floor and cracked it, driven by Valeria’s unholy strength.

“The caliph!” physicians cried. “Guards! Save the caliph!”

Agrat flew in a circuit about the warehouse, wings spread, and knocked over each oil lamp, one after the next, starting with the ones by the door. Glass shattered and oil spilled, and flames leapt up wherever the daemon passed.

Rashid, Exarch of Isrāfīl, rolled away from Valeria, groaning. “Daemon,” he coughed. “How did you escape our notice?”

“It matters not.” Isrāfīl manifested above his injured exarch, spreading six wings that stretched nearly the width of the warehouse. The light of the Angelus was so bright that every mortal eye turned away, lest they be blinded. “This is where they meet an ending.”

“How is that cough, Rashid?” Valeria asked, with a grin. Already, the black marks were beginning to appear on the old man’s skin, spurred on by the power of her Boons.

“Isrāfīl,” Rashid coughed, hacking up blood. “This is no ordinary sickness.” The core within the Caliph pulsed as he called upon one of his Boons, and the flush of health returned to his cheeks as the black sores faded.

Valeria, in the meanwhile, reached down to the dying patient whose bed they had broken, and ripped out his heart. Ribs shattered, blood fountained up into the air, and another curling strand of lightning licked up her arm as she claimed a Tithe for Agrat.

Rashid ibn Umar drew a curved knife from his belt. “Come then,” he said, and dropped into a fighting guard Valeria could not name. Instead of attacking him, she dashed to the next bed, and pulled the head off the woman she found there.

The doors of the warehouse broke open, and guards rushed into the burning building. With a grin, Valeria leapt from one end of the warehouse to the other, landed in their midst, and began slaughtering them.

“No!” Isrāfīl’s voice was thunderous, and shook the building so that clouds of dust fell from the second floor down to the first. The Angelus wheeled toward the battle, but Agrat tackled him, and the two beings tumbled wing over wing back into the recesses of the makeshift hospital.

The distraction gave Valeria time to move among the soldiers. She was faster than any mortal could hope to be now, and stronger than any Exarch of the Angelus. She used that strength in a brutal fashion, ripping limbs from bodies, punching through skulls, even swinging one man into another. With each kill, more Tithes flowed into her.

“Do you understand now?” Valeria growled through gritted teeth, shaking the jellied remnants of a man’s entrails off her fingers as she wheeled to meet the caliph. He swung his blade, and she caught him by the forearm and squeezed, shattering bones beneath her fingers. “Every man you brought to face me only makes me stronger.”

“You are a monster,” Rashid Ibn Umar said, and she punched through his chest and out his back, then threw his body aside into the flames. Every Tithe the Exarch had ever taken rushed into her, and into her daemon.

Isrāfīl roared, throwing Agrat off with a furious shrug of his wings, and charged Valeria. She caught the Angelus by both arms, and held him there, straining against her.

“I’m stronger than you,” Valeria panted. She couldn’t hold him for long, but she didn’t need to. Agrat came in behind the Angelus and ripped into it with her claws, savagely. Golden ichor spilled out across the floor, and Isrāfīl’s screams joined with the wailing of the plague-victims choking on smoke. The Angelus crumpled, seeking now to escape rather than to defeat her.

It gave Valeria the opening she needed to rip his chest open, grasp his core in her hand, and squeeze.

“Did it work?” she asked Agrat, as the patron of Caliphate dissolved into a few swiftly dimming motes of light.

“You did it,” the Plague Dancer confirmed. Agrat caressed Valeria’s core, shaping her plundered Tithes into a new Boon. “Bane of the Angelus.”