Free Icarus Descending by Elizabeth Hand Page B

brushed across the rows of tiny buttons, finally stopped when they touched one that felt more worn than the rest. He pressed it gently. A moment later a lenitive essence filled the air, an invisible mist that would stimulate neural centers in their minds to release a flood of opiates that would dull any pain. Kalaman took a few shallow breaths and focused on keeping the endorphins from clouding his will. Across from him Ratnayaka did the same. But Sindhi only shut his eyes. His blood traced a pulse point like a fluttering petal on his throat as he turned to Kalaman, his chin tilted so that the number of his birth-cluster could be seen tattooed there. Cluster 401: a brood whose members were as acquiescent as puppies.
    “Thank you, O my brother,” Kalaman whispered as he leaned over Sindhi. With one hand he touched the kris within its worn leather sheath. Sindhi’s eyes fluttered open. He gazed up at Kalaman fearlessly and smiled.
    “My brother,” he whispered, as Kalaman took his head between his huge hands. Kalaman drew Sindhi’s face toward him, as though he would hug it to his breast. Across from him Ratnayaka watched, his single eye slitted to an ebony tear.
    Silently, Kalaman slid the kris from its scabbard. It was not the proper instrument for the harrowing. Its curved blade gave it an ungainly balance. But it would do; had done, many times before.
    He held the kris up. It glowed turquoise, reflecting the false sea lapping nearby. Long ago there had been those among their Ascendant Masters who harrowed their own people as Kalaman had his brothers. The Oracle had told him about them. He had even shown Kalaman cinemafiles of their rites, simulated of course on film, but stirring nonetheless. Kalaman had been entranced: such magnificent people, with their stone pyramids and feathered capes! Since the insurrection Kalaman had read of them in talking books, and seen ’files of their artifacts, among them knives of turquoise stone, no clumsier than his sword. He pressed its tip against Sindhi’s skull, at the soft spot where maxilla and mandible joined beneath his temple. Sindhi grimaced as the point of the weapon punctured his skin. Sweat welled from the corners of his eyes, the ligaments of his face strained until they assumed the same grinning rictus they would show in death. Before fear could halt him, Kalaman drew the kris from jaw to jaw, slicing through Sindhi’s lips and cheeks and then running the blade across the back of his neck where Ratnayaka still held the hair in a taut black sheaf. Blood poured down Sindhi’s jaw, like the yolk from a cracked egg. More blood pattered to the floor, giving the lie to the sun-bleached sand. Kalaman set his hands upon the top of Sindhi’s skull.
    “O my brother!” he cried, and felt Sindhi’s will yielding to his, a clear untrammeled ecstasy bubbling from beneath the pain. Kalaman tightened his grip, his hands trembling from the effort, until he could feel the plates of Sindhi’s skull begin to separate between his fingers. And still Sindhi smiled at his brother, his lips drawn back now to show blood-filled gums above his filed teeth, his ebony eyes bulging. Across from him Kalaman could hear Ratnayaka’s calm breathing and smell the sandalwood essence he wore mingling with the smell of the sea, fainter now as the coppery scent of blood filled the air.
    “Sindhi.”
    Kalaman’s heavy eyelids fluttered shut for a moment as he whispered his brother’s name for the last time. Their Ascendant Masters would have done it differently. They would have invoked a god, gods—finned Chac-Xib-Chac with his ax, the gaping maw of Xibalba, and the jawless head of Tlaloc. But the energumens did not believe in gods. They were gods. Soon those upon the Element would learn to worship them.
    The kris fell, clattering loudly on the tiled floor that lay beneath the hazy vision of golden sand. Kalaman drew his hands to his breast, blood flecking his face with deeper red. He could feel