The Revolution of Painted Birds

by Kayla Bashe

Table of Contents

Table of Contents
parts: 1, 2, 3

conclusion

After taking the fortress, they converted its solarium into a chapel. In all but the rainy season, its heat seems to char skin. Marekath goes to services in full armor, sweat collecting on her scars.

The hall is almost empty, everyone busy with other tasks. She kneels on the stone floor, treasuring the familiar ache in her plates, and turns her eyes to the roiling silhouette at the heart of the sun. His glow is there, his many limbs outstretched in omnipotence, shifting under her focus. She wants to blink; still she keeps her gaze wide, feeling prayer-trance probing around the edges of thought. Then it sinks into her completely, lifting the burden of movement.

Prayer always shores up the cracking places in Marekath’s mind. During her time in the army, starvation and exhaustion addled her vision, making her see things that weren’t happening, that couldn’t be happening.

And yet, after a three-day march, searching an abandoned hut for bandages, she’d seen an unnerving phantom: her commanding officer mercilessly lashing a pregnant young woman as her spouse begged for clemency.

But that hadn’t been real. No one would do things like that; the empire’s army held no needless cruelty, no power-mongers or sadists. They were good because their cause was just. She was just exhausted, imagining things, projecting her own pain onto the scene.

She turned around and began to pray as she walked. By the time she reached the priests’ tent, the sound of screaming had faded into a rustle of palm trees and wind.

After prayer she understood everything. It hadn’t been like that, not really. He was just keeping order, neat and splendid as a sunbeam. No one who hadn’t earned it would feel pain.

At five years old, first-prayer, she’d felt scalded and sun-blind. Shapes she couldn’t interpret swarmed through her vision. Irrational urges pounded through her; she wanted to scream, to claw out his eyes. That was his majesty and glory. Some children couldn’t bear it. They had been taken from the hatchery before they could harm themselves. They were sinners.

But Marekath’s sight soon cleared, and she grew accustomed to regular worship. The trance made everything make sense.

“She only wants to speak to you,” the torturers tell Marekath. “Willingly, she said. If you come to her cell.”

“A story for a story, Marekath,” the Seabird murmurs.

Marekath raises her head. “It’s Commander.”

“Commander Marekath. I’ll even speak first.” Bruises ring her throat and thin her voice. It wouldn’t hurt to fix that. Marekath hands over her own honey-date drink; what harm could she work with a wooden cup?

Drinking, the Seabird sighs in pleasure, touching her bruised throat.

Marekath looks away.

The Seabird wants to hear about Marekath’s childhood in the infant pens, her early scuffles for food and dominance. She doesn’t interrupt, only nods, intent. Her own stories hold lush beauty. Older hands steady hers as she spears her first fish, carves her first boat. Sometimes Marekath teases out information that’s almost useful. The location of a recently-abandoned rebel hideout. Details of a workers’ campaign that has already succeeded.

But even on those evenings, somehow Marekath still feels like she’s lost.

She tells Marekath stories of her lieutenants.

“These can’t be true.”

“Perhaps I hide truth among the lies.”

Khara, the hyena, her smile sharp as a scimitar, her bare throat tattooed with gold. Miri, who fills up doorways, powerful muscles straining when she strings her great bow. Yael, moving as silent as wind, double daggers flashing, cactus needles woven into her thousand braids.

Women like me. But women who are fierce with love, who don’t have to pray to be made good. An intangible snake spits in Marekath’s eyes. She leaves the prisoner without a word.

Marekath dreams of picking and eating persimmons, but they are so full with juice that they burst in her hands, spattering her clothes with battlefield blood. The old scars in her forearms throb as she wakes, and her long-unused wings feel tight.

“They’ve commanded me to tell you that you’re to be executed tomorrow morning.”

“You could let me go.”

“Our system, above all, is fair and consistent. We provide mercy to all... unless they show themselves unworthy and need to be purified. You’ve humiliated us and challenged our rule, encouraged others to shun their rightful place in Sol’s great order.”

When the sun rises, the Seabird will be dead. This magnificent, clever, foolish woman, who even now lounges in chains as if they are a noble’s silk drapes. Marekath kneels at her side; amongst dank stone, her body smells like fresh spring air. “Give up this pointless crusade. You’re a woman from an ancestry of no great renown. Act like what you are. I’ll arrange for you to be given a position in the capital. You can improve the boarding schools, paint the walls in the factories, give away the fall harvest on street corners. Anything, if you recant. If you follow Sol’s rules, he’ll protect you.”

“I’m sorry, Commander,” the Seabird murmurs.

“For what?”

“You really do believe your own lies.”

Anger lances through her. “How dare you call Sol’s words lies!”

The rumble of Marekath’s fury doesn’t seem to startle her. Instead the Seabird sits back on her heels, letting out a slow, deep breath. “Then it’s true what my spies have said, but I couldn’t believe that a whole society could be so hoodwinked. I had to learn for myself... if you lived, and what was left of you.”

“Hoodwinked? What kind of fool do you take me for?”

“I had hoped I could ease you out of it, get you used to what it felt like for your thoughts to be your own.”

“My thoughts are my own. I take orders, but I decide how to fulfill them.”

“Have you ever seen something and decided it couldn’t be real, or heard something that bothered you, and then you prayed and the way you thought about it changed?”

A reply springs to her mouth at once. “Of course. Sol makes sense of the world.”

The seconds stretch into a long pause; something almost like compassion seems to shift through her face. “I’d tell you this isn’t going to hurt. But I don’t tell comforting lies.”

She brings her hand to Marekath’s forehead -

Memories shove into her mind, a jumbled cacophony becoming her own. The weeping of children torn from the arms of their parents and grandmothers. Smack comes the hand or the whip when they dare to whisper their own prayers. The choir of knelt whispering on cold stone floors, voices apologizing for each breath they draw.

“Your harvest will be shipped inland.”

“What will we eat?”

“For all I care? Starve.”

The footsteps of an old woman marched towards a driftwood pyre. Unsteady breath as no one dares to move. Priestesses burning. Villages razed. And through it all a young girl’s scream—

Marekath pulls back, knowing the screaming has become her own. It rips her throat raw. She squeezes her hands over her ears, rocking, weeping. Military genius shifts into murderer of innocents. If this pain could grasp her life and rip it out, she’d cry with joy. Acknowledgement floats through the fog: My guilt will not turn back the years.

Even chained, the Seabird could stroke her steel-tensed muscles. Calm her, soothe her. Tell her, “You didn’t know.” But she leaves Marekath to gather strength on her own, and part of her admires the other woman even more for that.

I did not know, Marekath thinks, yet neither did I seek to learn.

When she comes to her senses, the Seabird is holding a knife at her throat. Its sharp, serrated blade chills vulnerable flesh. One more ounce of pressure and she’ll spray blood.

She must have stolen the keys from my belt while I was passed out, Marekath thinks with a dazed shiver.

Other guards run into the room, clearly having heard her screams.

“One move and I slit her throat,” the Seabird warns them.

What else has she taken? Marekath feels at her thighs. Her fingertips brush against a dagger’s hard hilt. In a single movement she could shove the human woman away. Stab her again and again, until blood washed the smears away from her clarity of purpose. Until she was a child once more, living in a world where everything could be explained.

The Seabird marches her through the knot of guards, who move aside to let them pass. Together they walk through the dark hallway; one set of steady footsteps, the other softer, limping.

The wall presses cold into Marekath’s shoulders. If the Seabird orders, she will kneel.

“Did you know there are catacombs down here? You should have explored your fortress more.” Seemingly, she steps through solid stone, vanishing like a breath.

Marekath falls. Not our fortress, she thinks. Yours.

* * *

Several months after General Marekath’s disappearance while on pilgrimage, the general’s remains have finally been found. We can reveal that the late general was not, in fact, a brave warrior-strain, but actually a deformed worker-strain. A woman washing her family’s clothes on the riverbank was confronted by the disturbing sight of the general’s armor-clad skeleton.

Inside the empty tonic bottle was a message drawn in soldiers’ picture-code: I can no longer fight for Sol.

Many years ago, arrow-torn wings removed Marekath from the battlefield. We suspect that her resentment and jealousy grew and festered, eventually forcing her to commit suicide. This is why strain traitors should not be permitted into Sol’s Army, as they are more emotional and prone to such wasteful acts. As always, we encourage all soldiers to prioritize purification and prayer.

— Official Proclamation of the Fourth Priest, Sunfire Citadel (formerly known as the heretic city Elezara, now cleansed by the grace of Sol)

Marekath comes unarmed to the Seabird’s campfire, spreading the skin-and-bone tatters of her wings. Her scarred chest shows through her warcoat’s open folds, and her scarlet skin gleams in the flickering light.

Alarm ricochets through the clearing. Women grab weapons and leap to their feet. She feels the blowdart aimed at her forehead from a treetop, dark eyes glinting in the shimmer of a crescent moon.

There is no woman with gold-inlaid cheekbones, but one has an eye socket covered with a Sol-gold coin; no woman with steel-tipped braids, but the wary scowl that fixes on Marekath is nearly as sharp.

Truth even in lies, just like she said.

“Leave her,” a voice says. The Seabird makes her way forward, and the others draw back. Freedom and power stream from her with each steady step. Clothed in bird-blue scale armor, her features full with health, she seems more vivid than the sky.

Marekath is acutely aware of her own slow breath.

The Seabird looks at her. “And how did you get past my guards?”

“I put my helmet on a bear and sent it running. They may still be chasing its silhouette.”

“An old trick, then.”

Marekath thinks she sees the merest fraction of a smile, and permits her own features to answer in kind. “Your people are full of loyalty and passion, but completely untrained.” She leaves the statement’s edge unspoken: I could train them.

“Why are you here?”

I’ve come because, after they cut me, when fever stole the feeling from my chest and the spit from my mouth, you sat by my side and stroked my horns and sang lullabies in a language I’d spend my whole life pretending to have forgotten. I’ve come to banish death itself from your footsteps. Because I want to help you reorder the sky.

I’m here because I remember what we were, and wonder what we may still become.

Marekath wishes the Seabird could read her longing in a glance. But she’ll make her confirm it in irrevocable words. “I would lead your forces, if you’ll have me.”

The women whisper to each other, exchanging looks. Marekath can tell that they speak of her past. But on this, it seemed, the Seabird will not be swayed, and at last she motions for Marekath to rise.

“My splendid commander.” For one perfect breath, weather-worn fingertips trace across Marekath’s shaved scalp like a cleansing brand.

The bird at her forehead, she tells Marekath, will represent safe travels. The wave is for strength and surefootedness. A seashell means she will not die young.

“And the arrow? What does yours mean?”

The needle held in deft hands pricks Marekath’s leathery skin, a pattern of sand-scrapes and moth footsteps seen rather than felt. When the images set, her very faceplates will proclaim her a heretic.

The Seabird raises her head, exposing the line stretching across her collarbones. “It brings me to what I need.”

“Does it still work, do you think? Even with the goddesses imprisoned.”

Her face is an enigmatic blessing in the firelight. “It brought me to you.”

Marekath closes her eyes. Fingers trace down one side of her face as the needle resumes its work on the other. For a moment, she cannot tell the two sensations apart.