Chương 174: Day One Hundred And Seventy-Two

Dear Diary, It's funny; between Bill, Isnomi, Loki, and Saffron, I've kinda gotten used to being the one to come riding to the rescue. I didn't expect someone to come riding to my rescue. So after five nights and four days, I'd gotten really good at Curing people, as you might imagine. I still couldn't do more than six a minute; when I tried the Cures fell apart.

Some time during night five, I stopped doing Heals on anyone except the folks who had coughed themselves bloody and those who collapsed on their way up the Boulevard. So far I'd had three sandwiches and six bowls of soup. I'm not sure how me, y'know, not eating hasn't set off anybody's 'something not right' alarm bells, but then again, nobody really said anything about me eating enough for a football team and not getting spherical. At a guess?

Most people probably thought 'oh, teenager, probably gonna be sick tonight / tomorrow'. Then think that again and again without really paying attention. People seemed to be pretty good at not noticing things that didn't impact them directly. This morning, just after dawn stopped shining in my eyes, Isnomi toddled out of the Academy. I don't know who did it, but she'd been bundled up until she resembled a sphere with stubby arms and legs sticking out, and a big furry cap with earflaps tied to her shoulders.

When she saw me, she called out a muffled, "Momma! Momma!", then made a beeline for me. I glanced over to make sure she'd got herself bundled up, then shook my head and sighed as her path took her straight through a drift of snow the Maids hadn't swept away.

Anybody with enough Mana to sweep the steps magically had already been pressed into service Curing as many people as they could, so the Maids came out with brooms and swept a path to duBois and McCann's desk, another from that desk to the top of the steps where I stood, and finally a solid ten foot wide section of the steps themselves. I had no idea how they got the ice off the steps with nothing but brooms, but the steps shone because the Maids polished them afterward, not because they had ice on them.

Of course, the Volunteers and Heroes pretty universally wound up forging their own stomped paths down the hill beside the steps. I guess they'd realized if they already had water, snow, or ice on their boots, they couldn't very well move fast on the steps. At least once I'd stepped down and Cured and Healed someone who fell down, only to realize they weren't an Infected victim and their Volunteer escort, but a couple Volunteers heading back out to... do Volunteer stuff.

When Isnomi had plowed her own path through the snow drift straight to me, she held her arms out to me and said, "up!" Without stopping my Curing, I leaned over and scooped her up with my right hand, yoinking her up and catching her so she sat with one leg on either side of my forearm.

"Hey, Menace. Where's Marie?"

"Da Kitchen. Cooking." She watched what I was doing with my left hand, then held out one hand as if copying what I'd been doing. Cure the victim, Cure the Volunteer, wave them to the desk. I jostled her to get her attention. Cure, Cure, wave.

"Careful, Menace. I think you're a little young to be learning to Shape Mana into Spells." She twisted around until she could put one hand on either of my cheeks.

"Momma tired. I help!" I smiled at her.

"I appreciate the offer, Menace, but I don't want you hurting yourself." Cure, Cure, wave. She frowned at me.

"Momma hurt." Cure, Cure, wave. I shrugged. Then noticed something, and mentioned it in an effort to distract her.

"Hey, I just noticed. Are all your teeth in now?" She nodded, and I realized that what I'd thought was a snowball stuck to her hat was actually a bobble. She grinned up at me, showing me all her baby teeth had clearly come in. Cure, Cure, wave.

"See? See? I got all teeths!"

"So you do!" Cure, Cure, wave. I leaned over, careful not to take my eyes off the line for too long.

"So tell me, Menace. Does Marie know you're out here?" I had to stifle my laugh as she looked around frantically, trying not to meet my gaze. Cure, Cure, wave.

"Well? Does she?" Finally she looked up at me, tilting her head down to maximize the puppy dog eyes.

"No. I wanna help!"

"I know you do, Menace." Cure, Cure, wave.

"When you get a little older, a little bigger, I promise I'll let you help."

"Promise?" I nodded. Cure, Cure, wave.

"I promise. But you have to wait until Mom, Marie, or I tell you you're old enough, okay?" She gave me a little side-eye, but couldn't keep it up very long. She turned to the line with a big smile.

"I help!"

"That's right. You help, but not yet. Not today. You need to be old enough and big enough." Right about then Marie came out the Academy doors, making the same beeline Isnomi had, only where the snow reached to the little one's chest, it barely came up to Marie's knees. When she reached the pair of us, she reached out and did her five point harness thing on the menace, lifting her up, turning her around to look into her little utterly unrepentant eyes, smile and say, "Rascal."

Without breaking eye contact with Isnomi, she reached out with her other hand to give me another black-bread sub sandwich. Cure, Cure, wave.

"Thanks, Marie. Sorry the menace is such an imp lately." She shook her head and said, "De Nada," as if to say she expected Isnomi's antics. Hell, she probably encouraged them. I took a bite of my still warm sandwich to hide my smile. Cure, Cure, wave. Marie gave Isnomi a significant look, then spun her around to face me and hefted her right up to face level.

"Bye, Momma." Cure, Cure, wave, then hug Isnomi to me with one arm while she puts both arms around my neck and presses a kiss into my forehead.

"Can't wait to play with you when I'm done here, Menace." I returned her forehead kiss with one of my own, then bumped foreheads with her, which made her giggle. Cure, Cure, wave, and then they were gone, back into the Academy. Half an hour later, I saw a line of carts come around from behind the Academy and head down the side of the Boulevard that wasn't full of plague victims and Volunteers escorting them.

Not the little carts they pushed around the Academy, but big things you'd expect to see draft horses hooked up to. A few hovered over the snow, but most of them rolled over and through it. A few had teams of draft horses hooked to the front, and Teamsters driving them and riding on the tailgates, but most of them had a pair of Maids forging through the snow in nothing more than their normal uniforms.

The cart leading them all had only one Maid, but had a distinctly Menace shaped figure sitting on the driver's seat, bundled up until she looked like a starfish. She looked up at me and waved. Cure, Cure, wave, and then I waved back to her. Some time after that, I'm not sure how long, but my shadow stretched partway down the steps, I noticed a crowd gathered around the very furthest part of the line I could see. Nobody there had fallen down, and I couldn't hear any screams or anything.

Honestly, with the snow coming down, it was a little hard to see or hear anything at that distance. I decided that unless one of them fell and didn't get back up, I'd wait for them to get to me. Cure, Cure, wave. By the time they hit the end of the Boulevard down at the base of the Academy Steps, I realized that whatever else, they'd added each pair or trio of victim and Volunteers to their number as they moved forward.

I still wasn't able to see them clearly, because over and above the snow, for the past day or so my vision got a little shakier with each successive pair. I'd started out being able to spot people falling at the far end of the Boulevard. Not that it was all that hard; horizontal humans don't have the same profile as vertical ones. All that aside, I still spotted one guy in the back; he had another guy under each shoulder, but it didn't look like they were helping him. Really kind of the reverse.

Good thing, too, because while the guy under his left arm was sorta 'short order cook' stocky, the one under his right looked like a strong wind would blow him away. Cure, Cure, wave. A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation. I could see the front of that big crowd now, though. It had a bunch of people in clothing as weather-inappropriate as The Dress.

Okay, mostly so; some of them had furs and leather, but it looked more like decoration than serious cold weather gear. That covered about a third of them; another third wore dun robes with deep cowls that hid all but the bottoms of their faces. The last third? Straight up togas. Cure, Cure, wave. The crowd seemed to have three parts, too. The front part, a few dozen people, wore the crazy clothes. The next part had people in mostly normal, sensible poor people cold weather clothes.

Y'know, everything they owned that would fit layered over everything else, hopefully with some semi-waterproof layers in there somewhere. The final bit was just the big guy and his two companions. As the crowd reached another victim and Volunteer pair, two of the guys in cowls stepped up to them, went through some really familiar hand motions, then walked them back to the middle crowd, only to line up at the back of the front crowd again.

They weren't quite matching my speed, I don't think, but the mass of people never stopped moving or growing. As the front part of the crowd neared the top of the steps, two things drew my attention so fully that I faltered, nearly failing my second Cure of my Cure, Cure, wave pattern. First, no more than four pairs down the steps from me, I recognized a really familiar face above a set of mustard colored clothes.

Second, the big guy at the back scooped up both the guys next to him and charged straight up the hill beside the steps, only stopping when he could set both of the guys down.

"Hey, D. How's it hangin'?" My voice came out a little harsh, and everybody swayed a bit. Dionysus stepped up and pushed the stocky guy toward me, laughing as he bellowed, "Long, strong, and ready to go all night long! Tabitha Diaz, it is my pleasure to introduce to you my newest High Priest, Herbert Schmidt. Herbert Schmidt, this is Tabitha Diaz, Champion and High Priestess of Loki." If Herbert felt any kind of way about me being Loki's High Priest, he hid it really well.

He stepped up, reaching out with his right hand. After a moment of blurry contemplation, I reached out and took his hand, shook it, then let my hand drop back down.

"Good to meet you, Champion Diaz." He had a clipped kind of accent, the kind of thing you expected from, I dunno, Switzerland. Austria. Maybe Germany.

"Good to meet you, and congratulations on your ordination, High Priest Schmidt. Call me Tabitha. Everybody else does. Well, some of them don't, but they're either old enough to be my father or are kinda dickish." I paused a second, shook my head.

"And now I'm rambling. Sorry, been up... for a while now." I looked down the Boulevard and noticed more people filtering in from cross streets or from beyond where the road turned straight east. I shook my head.

"I got maybe, five minutes until they," I nodded down the street, "get here and I've got to get back to it. Who's your other friend there?" I noticed that as Dionysus and I stood there talking, the rest of the 'lead crowd' had fanned out to either side of the top of the steps, and the second crowd, the one made up of victims and Volunteers, had swarmed the Marshall at his desk. Dionysus blinked at me, then barked a single snorting laugh, then hauled his other friend around.

I noticed that unlike Herbert, Dionysus didn't let go of him.

"I present to you, newly ferreted out of his sanctuary in the Temple of the Sun, Phileo City's own High Priest of Apollo, Brendan Callahan." A crackling hiss filled the landing, and Herbert took one long step away from me. I stepped up to Brendan and glared right into his eyes.

"Hi Brendan," I whispered hoarsely.

"High Priest of Apollo?"

"What if I am?" dumb fucker did his best to look down his nose at me. I mean, he had the height, but that's not hard. I'm 'tall for a girl', not 'model tall', 'WNBA tall', or Gwendolyn Christie in pumps. Of course, he looked both kinda short and stick skinny next to Dionysus, who still had one hand wrapped around the back of his neck. Hell, his fingers and thumb almost touched. One clench of his fist and Apollo would be looking for a new High Priest.

"That means you've got a direct line to him, right?" He sneered again.

"I am his High Priest." I nodded.

"So you can just send him what you're seeing, what you're hearing. Smelling, tasting, and feeling, if it comes to that?" He tried to draw himself up even further, but Dionysus' hand didn't budge. That looked kind of painful, really. Not that I gave a shit.

"I will not aid you in bringing harm to my God!" I think I laughed at that. I meant to laugh. The noise that came out? More like the sound crows make.

"I don't need your help for that. Get him on the line. Now." He opened his mouth to say something. I'm not sure exactly what, but something other than, 'yes, ma'am'. A second Mana Blade crackled from my other wrist unbidden. At least I don't think I biddened it. Bidding might have happened and then I forgot. I had to stay focused on this fucker. He shut his mouth, reopened it, and croaked out, "as you wish."

"He on the line?"

"He sees with my eyes, hears with my ears."

"Apollo. You goat fucking vomitous excuse for an Archer. You shitstain pretending to be a God of Healing. I cannot believe you come anywhere near the sun, because flatulence like you would burn away in its fires in an instant. Do I have your full fucking attention, douchebag?"

"He says that through me, he cannot fail to smite you. Prepare for your reckoning!" His threat would have sounded better had his voice not cracked on that last word. Something about trying to wrest his way loose of Dionysus' grip and failing miserably. A smile took its time crawling across my lips. I spread my arms out, taking a step back and waving the others away. Most of them moved. Dionysus, Herbert, and the chick in mustard stayed where they were. Brendan didn't get a choice.

"C'mon, Lolly boy." The newest batch of victims and Volunteers had made it halfway along the Boulevard.

"Look, if you can't get it up, just say so. I get it, men of a certain age have trouble sometimes. But I'm standing. Right. Here." A horrified whisper crawled out of Brendan's throat.

"Why won't you just die?" I forced the words through my abused throat; I had nothing left but adrenaline and rage, but fuck it, that was most of my life to this point, really.

"That's not the question you wanted to ask, was it? C'mon, Apple Lolly! I'm right here!" I screamed, throwing my arms wide, snow boiling from the blades extending from my wrists. I pulled them back in and shouted, "it's time for your money shot, you sick sack full of shit, HIT ME!" In the sudden silence after my scream, Brendan whispered, "what the hell are you?" The grin crawled onto my face again.

"There it is. There. It. Is. You wanna know what I am? I'm the bitch who took your sister's arms and nose for trying to kill my daughter. I'm the bitch who knows that you're within spitting distance of your sister right now, showing her what a big fucking solar cock you've got, shooting your plague ridden shit over the horizon." I heaved a breath and screamed again, "I'm the bitch who is dealing with the aftermath of you missing something the size of a city by fifty fucking miles! God of archery my lily white ass."

Mana Blades hissing out of my arms, scoring the landing under me as I leapt up nose to nose with Brendan and whispered, "I'm the bitch who, if you do not put your bow down right the fuck now, walk away from it, and never pick it up again, will be ripping you a new asshole and shoving your decapitated head up it in ten."

"T-t-t-ten what?" wheezed Brendan.

"Nine." Panicked laughter crawled out of Brendan's throat.

"You can't be serious."

"Eight." From behind me, I heard a familiar voice.

"She is dead serious, brother."

"Seven."

"You wouldn't dare."

"Six."

"She absolutely would, brother."

"She was one death. You've racked up thousands already. Five." Dionysus finally took a step back, holding Brendan at arm's length.

"Apollo needs to find High Priests with sterner internal fortitude."

"Four."

"Okay, okay, he's dropped the bow! His final arrows will take four more seconds to arrive!"

"Three."

"I swear upon my God, he tells me he has stopped firing!"

"Two." Mustard girl behind me chimed in with, "my lady no longer hears her brother's bow singing."

"One."

"Please!" shrieked Brendan. Something inside tearing as I did, I stepped to Artemis' side. She turned her veiled face from me and screamed, "brother! Run!" I leapt to the promontory she faced, picked up the bow lying there and, tearing myself up again, stepped back to Phileo City.

"Make sure he sees this, Brendan." I looped my leg through the bow and unstrung it. It fought me like a live thing. Maybe it was. Maybe after all the hash marks on all the boards down in the park, across the river near Drivers, up in Newark and New Amsterdam, I just did not give half a shit. I picked up the string with one hand, lowered it inch by inch into the Mana Blade sticking from my left arm. Then I did the same with the bowstave. I let my Mana Blade disperse and turned to Dionysus, my eyes blurring.

"Hey, D, can you make sure he winds up in the stocks down there?"

"Certainly, Tabitha Diaz." I turned to meet the first pair coming up the steps. Mustard girl stepped in front of me.

"The fuck you doin?" Dionysus, two steps down the stairs, let out a bellow of laughter, then stepped back up beside me, throwing his free arm around me.

"What every High Clergyperson in this City should have done long since, what my man Schmidt shamed them into doing. Tending to their congregations in time of dire need." I looked up at him as Mustard Girl shaped a Cure for the plague victim in front of us, then Assessed the Volunteer, shaping another Cure for him a moment later. She then turned and walked to the back of the line of, apparently, Clergy. High Clergy. Wonder if Snoop Dogg had a parallel here, and if he was Clergy.

Sure as shit couldn't be him without being High. I turned to Dionysus.

"So... I can take a break?" He hugged me to him, then set me down on my feet surprisingly gently.

"Yes, Tabitha Diaz. Your relief has arrived. Go. Rest. As your daughter said to me as she and my Champion passed us on the roadway, we've got this."

"Oh. Good." I kinda spun in place a little bit, taking one step toward the doors of the Academy. I tried to take another step, tripped, and went face first into the snow.