XCVII. "Even If I'm Going to Die?"
"Don't move," said Leander. Transformed by the blizzard, the roof of Potestas Tower where they had saved Ilan's life was more like a winter wilderness than the swanky party space of a downtown corporate headquarters.
For some reason Leander had come out here and waited, taking on snow, as if he knew Cristo would turn up eventually, maybe because he had the fate, destiny, the stars, the universe on his side.
Leander thought to himself about that. He took a deep breath of razor sharp winter air and looked down at the man on his knees in front of him. Cristo's knees must be getting cold, the thin pant legs frozen through.
Eight minutes ago Leander had come outside from the penthouse, walked to the middle of the rooftop patio and stood still there for eight minutes. Snow collected above his ankles. He waited, almost not remembering how he got there and not thinking about it too much. Like in a dream.
As if he were sleepwalking.
There were plenty of sources of light, that which flared pale fire out of the penthouse windows, bounced off a million snowflakes, that cold light from the crack of crescent moon fighting through nimbostratus clouds originating from the sun and paler in its reflection, that white hot glow that came from everything in Invernali at night, and even some starlight-filled spheres levitating outside to light the patio in case of an impromptu party.
It was bright out, it made him think of flood lights on a baseball field if the baseball field was a field of shiny blindingly reflective snow, it was as well-lit as it could be at night, but it was a changing, moving light from varied sources too, almost like highway light posts glowing into the car window at night that passed by in a succession of warm yellow then shadow, yellow then shadow, yellow you could follow, then shadow, but slower. And with an occasional flicker or twinkle from somewhere or other.
The only place the light didn't come from was the stars; starlight didn't make it through the nimbostratus.
It took the eyes time to adjust, and time to adapt to each change. And that wasn't even counting every time the falling snow and clouds above were accompanied by a fork of lightning branching one electric charge and then another in forks second by second, slowly crawling its branches one by one over the sky like a spider web or a tree branch only electric white fire. Out of place in the winter storm, impossible, but right in front of everyone's eyes, lighting up every shadow each time they flashed like a camera.
Leander had been watching the lights play on a blank patch of unbroken snow right when the thunderous crash like six cars colliding in a pileup exploded in his ears and a simultaneous peel of lightning that had to come first almost seemed to come after, and it lit up the pained face of Cristo where he had not been before, before he fell down on all fours. It felt as if he had been delivered straight to Leander, who was ready waiting with a sword in hand as if he knew how to use it.
The sword he had taken from a display case in the atrium as he came outside. Without really knowing why. Like in a dream. Now that he reflected, it did seem more useful than the knife Ilan had given him. Longer. Sharper.
Not that he knew how to use it. Against an unarmed opponent, however, it seemed simple: Stick him with the pointy end.
Cristo frowned and tried to freeze at Leander's command, but it was difficult with the forward momentum from his black leather shoes sliding and pushing through the snow and slipping even as they crunched down on solid snow packed under that pressure.
He reeled toward the gnomon in the chasm in the snow, perhaps long enough to reveal that he needed it, long enough for Leander to feel the need to make the threat cut, sharply. The tip of the sword came down without wavering, but also without slicing, against Cristo's throat.
It felt freezing. Cristo said, "There's no time for this tonight," a phrase he kept repeating so many times in the past hour, which never made anybody listen to it.
"Stand up," said Leander. Cristo stood and was impressed and simultaneously terrified that the blade pressed against his neck steadily through the entire process of getting one foot, then the other under him, and what would have happened if he slipped? He was lucky he wasn't standing on ice. "You need to be touching that wand," said Leander. "Is that right? Without touching it are you defenseless?"
Cristo allowed himself a regretful look at the disturbed microcosm of tundra where the gnomon lay in what might as well have been the bottom of a cavernously deep fissure.
"I'm sorry about that," said Leander. "It might be more fair if you weren't unarmed. But I can't let you have it while all I get is a glorified kitchen knife in comparison. It won't be a fair fight . . ." he trailed off into the drumming of echoing thunder from somewhere far off. "If I had any doubts before that you're causing this . . .
"You people are playing with the laws of physics and when you break them you're going to destroy yourselves. Are you crazy, Cristo? You broke through time and now time is breaking." The point of Leander's blade left Cristo's throat, as if Leander were willing to listen. Cristo backed up several steps, but Leander took a step toward him with that naked blade raised to attack, keeping the distance between them short.
"I don't know what would make you think that."
The answer was like a death sentence. "Stephen Potestas told me." Cristo stumbled backward carefully for several more steps.
Over Leander's shoulder over the edge of the balustrade over the edge of Potestas Tower over the horizon it was as if a sheet of lightning burst slowly from the ground instead of the sky and froze there in a pale conflagration; sunrise lit Leander like a halo and its flame grew in slow motion only unrealistically fast.
"That fucking kid," Cristo said. In seconds the sky over Leander's shoulder was blue instead of black and the blinding conflagration was huge. "You want a fair fight? Let me have the gnomon for a second, I'll summon a . . . sword. Let me defend myself."
Words were a better weapon, but what he needed was time. While Leander considered, Cristo searched for more words, blundering forward with them: "I may be causing some . . . side effects, but you have to give me another hour. Then I'll go peacefully."
Behind Cristo's back, three bolts of lightning cracked against the cloudy black night sky simultaneously, each forking again and again until the black background was a tangled flaring web and intense booms deafened his ears.
"In a hundred years, when the empire has long fallen, long beyond any hope of rising again, you're going to regret stopping me."
Leander moved toward him again. "I don't think so. You're destroying the planet. You took too much into your own hands, coming back to kill people, bringing the dead back to life, altering history. You don't get a do-over; what happened happened. You don't get to decide to change it on behalf of everyone else. You have to live with it."
The sword shone dangerously and Cristo was forced out of fear to step back again, further and further from his fallen gnomon. Sweat began to bead on his forehead, and when it fell, it froze like a drop of hail.
"Even if I'm going to die?" He tried not to sound scared he was going to die. "Even if everyone who opposes him will die and he stacks the odds against us for a hundred years, for centuries, so we can never fight back; so we're unarmed." He gestured to the gnomon in the snow, which was now closer to Leander's feet than his own.
"Yes," said Leander, "Even if you're going to die." The sky behind him was bright.
"If you kill me, you'll regret it."
"Are you sure about that? In the future, you know what I think in a hundred years. Do I want you to go back in time and disrupt the natural course of history, or do I try to talk you out of it?"
Cristo swallowed and swallowed his answer.
"I don't think I'm going to regret it, and I think you know that, Cristo. You lie to everyone." His steely eyes looked as if they were steeling themselves to do it, and the seconds ticked by with the sky whitening behind him and turning blue about to meet in a gradient, but with the early dawn came no catastrophe, no other harm, nothing so dangerous as a hypocritical authority snuffing out the life-forces of thousands of immortal people for the benefit of the most powerful. Nothing so sinister as a politician promising, lying, killing, his way to absolute control. It was only the sun rising early and a few wayward static discharges and electrical storms.
Cristo wanted to tell Leander that, but the universe and something beyond what he could possibly understand worked against him. His lungs felt frozen and pumped ice in and out, crackling inside his voiceless throat as Leander stomped in the snow banks at him again. Cristo threw himself backward again and stumbled backward until he fell and pulled himself backward until he reached a cement wall at the edge of the rooftop; Leander, of course, pursued. Looking up at him, over Leander's shoulder, was a blue-approaching-black gradient.
Behind Leander's head a bolt cracked, right in the courtyard, a lightning bolt so bright it burned out Cristo's eyes, so hot it melted instantly the snow and blazed hot on the skin of Cristo's face, and it held in infinite bright heat and power, static electricity as thick as a tree trunk, for seconds.
Then it exploded.
The unbroken jagged white bar burst into a million fist-sized sparks with a clap, burning and splitting eardrums, and Cristo was blind and white hot and deaf as Leander fell on him, as if by accident, as if by the shock of the lightning, as if out of his control, the narrow sharpness of sword blade running right through his chest and pinning him to the snowbank.
The thunder and lightning stopped.
When the last breath of life left Cristo's body, the sun stopped in the sky and stayed exactly where it was for sixteen hours of morning daylight — until quarter to hora prima to be exact — to give the Solari Empire time to catch up to it.
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