17. Blood and Binding

The darkness was not empty.

Keene had expected emptiness. She had expected a void, a blank space, an absence where the Maw waited in isolation. What she found instead was a landscape. A vast and shifting terrain of memory and grievance, of voices and images, of every injustice that had ever been absorbed into the hunger over three thousand years of existence. The darkness was not a place. It was a tapestry, woven from the suffering of countless souls, stretching in all directions without limit or boundary.

She walked through it, and the darkness walked with her. It pressed against her skin like cold water. It whispered in her ears in a thousand voices, some human, some not. It showed her things—fragments of lives that had been consumed, shards of memory that had been absorbed, echoes of crimes that had been committed and never answered.

A woman in a village in the eastern reaches of Vorlan, watching soldiers load her children onto a train. A man in a courtroom in the Federated States of Caldara, listening to a judge explain that his claim was barred by sovereign immunity. A priest in a temple in the Zyrakh heartland, speaking the words of opening, calling down the hunger upon a tyrant who had escaped earthly justice. A mother in a city on the southern continent, holding the body of a daughter who had been killed by a regime that would never be held accountable.

The images flowed past Keene like water, and she understood that they were not random. The Maw was showing her the scope of its existence. The breadth of its hunger. The endless ledger of debts that had never been paid.

This is what I am, the voice said. It was not the whisper she had heard for the past month. It was louder here, fuller, more present. It was the voice of the Maw in its own domain, and it spoke with the weight of every soul it had ever consumed. This is the injustice of the world. This is the grievance of the ages. This is the debt that can never be settled, the hunger that can never be sated, the door that can never be closed. Do you still think you can destroy me?

Keene kept walking. The landscape shifted around her, the images flowing and reforming, the voices rising and falling. She did not know where she was going. She did not know if there was a destination at all. But Sera Maroth had told her that the sacrifice required her to face the Maw in its own domain, and she was facing it. She was walking into the heart of the hunger, and she would keep walking until she found something worth dying for.

You are looking for my center, the voice said. The place where I am most concentrated. The place where the door first opened, three thousand years ago, when the Zyrakh priests first spoke the words of summoning. You think that if you can reach it, you can destroy me. You think that a single sacrifice can satisfy a hunger that has been building for three millennia.

"That's what Sera Maroth told me."

Sera Maroth told you what the diaspora has always believed. But the diaspora has never sent a vessel into the door. The diaspora has never faced me in my own domain. They have only contained me, generation after generation, binding and passing and binding again. They do not know what I am. They do not know what waits at the center.

"Then show me."

The darkness laughed. It was not a cruel sound, or a mocking one. It was the sound of something vast and ancient that had not been challenged in a very long time, and was curious to see what would happen next.

Very well, the voice said. Come. See what you have come to destroy.

The darkness parted. Keene found herself standing in a chamber—not a physical chamber, but a memory of one. A temple of the Zyrakh, built of stone and torchlight, its walls covered in the angular characters of the funerary texts. In the center of the chamber stood a figure. Not a man. Not a monster. Something in between.

It wore the face of Edric Voss. Then the face of Justice Hahn. Then the face of Justice Harrow, and Justice Cassian, and Justice Relling. Then the face of Keene's daughter. The daughter she had lost. The daughter she had buried on a gray winter morning twelve years ago, while the rain fell and the world went on without noticing.

Hello, Maris, the figure said, and its voice was her daughter's voice. I've been waiting for you.

Keene stopped walking. The cold that had pressed against her skin since the binding intensified, becoming something sharper, more focused. A blade of ice pressed against her heart. The face of her daughter—the face she had not seen outside of photographs and dreams for twelve years—looked at her with eyes that were not her daughter's eyes.

"You're not her," Keene said. "You're the Maw. You're using her face."

I am using her memory. Her grievance. Her unjust death. Do you remember how she died, Maris? Do you remember the man who killed her? The man who was never caught? The man who is still out there, somewhere, living his life while your daughter lies in the ground?

Keene closed her eyes. She remembered. She remembered everything. The call in the middle of the night. The drive to the hospital. The doctor's face, pale and helpless. The funeral. The rain. The detective who had worked the case for two years before it went cold, before the leads dried up, before the file was closed and archived and forgotten. She remembered the man who had killed her daughter—a face in a security camera, a name that might have been an alias, a trail that led nowhere and ended in silence.

I can find him, the voice said. I can bring him to justice. Real justice. Not the pale imitation that the courts dispense. Not the compromise that the law requires. Absolute justice. Perfect balance. His life for hers. That is what you want, isn't it? That is what you've wanted for twelve years.

Keene opened her eyes. The figure was still there, still wearing her daughter's face, still speaking with her daughter's voice. But behind the face, behind the voice, she could feel the vast and ancient hunger of the Maw, patient and insatiable, waiting for her answer.

"At what cost?" she asked.

No cost. Only the satisfaction of a debt that has been owed for twelve years. Only the balancing of scales that have been tipped against you since the day your daughter died. I am not your enemy, Maris Keene. I am your ally. I am the instrument of justice that the world has denied you. All you have to do is let me work. Let the door stay open. Let the hunger be fed.

"And everyone else? The innocent people who will be consumed when the door opens fully? What happens to them?"

There are no innocent people. There are only those who have committed injustices and those who have allowed injustices to be committed. The world is full of the guilty. The world is full of those who deserve to pay. You know this. You've spent twenty-two years fighting a system that protects the powerful and punishes the powerless. Why do you want to protect that system now?

Keene stared at the face of her daughter. The face that she had loved more than anything in the world. The face that she had buried on a gray winter morning, while the rain fell and the world went on without noticing. She had spent twelve years wanting justice. Wanting revenge. Wanting to find the man who had taken her daughter and make him pay for what he had done.

But she had also spent twenty-two years as a police officer. She had seen what happened when people took justice into their own hands. She had seen the bodies, the blood, the endless cycle of vengeance that consumed everyone it touched. She had sworn an oath to uphold the law, not because the law was perfect, but because the alternative was worse. Because the alternative was chaos. Because the alternative was the Maw.

"You're right," she said. "I do want justice for my daughter. I've wanted it for twelve years. But I don't want your justice. Your justice is hunger wearing a mask. Your justice is a door that never closes and a debt that is never paid. My daughter is dead. Killing her killer won't bring her back. It won't balance any scales. It will just add another body to the pile, and another grievance to your ledger, and another reason for the door to stay open."

The figure's expression changed. The face of her daughter twisted, flickered, and became something else. Something older. Something that had not been human in a very long time.

You refuse me, the voice said, and it was no longer her daughter's voice. It was the voice of the Maw in its entirety, ancient and vast and utterly without remorse. You stand in my domain and you refuse me. Do you think your will is stronger than three thousand years of hunger? Do you think your sacrifice means anything against the weight of every grievance I have ever absorbed?

"I think it's the only thing I have left to give," Keene said. "I think it's the only thing that matters."

She stepped forward. The chamber shook. The darkness pressed against her from all sides, and the voice of the Maw rose to a howl, and the figure in the center of the chamber began to dissolve, to fragment, to scatter into a thousand shards of memory and grievance that swirled around her like a storm.

You cannot destroy me, the voice howled. I am eternal. I am necessary. I am the shadow that follows every act of cruelty. I am the debt that is never paid. I am the door that can never be closed. If you destroy me, you destroy the very possibility of justice. You leave the world without any mechanism for balancing the scales. You condemn the innocent to suffer without hope of redress.

"Then I'll have to find another way," Keene said. "A human way. A way that doesn't require ancient hungers and open doors and the souls of the dead being used as weapons. The world has courts and laws and systems for a reason. They're imperfect. They fail all the time. But they're better than you."

She stepped into the center of the chamber. The darkness swirled around her, and the voice of the Maw screamed, and the cold that had lived inside her for a month intensified into something that was almost like fire. She felt the hunger pressing against her, trying to find a crack in her resolve, trying to find the doubt or the hesitation or the secret desire to survive that would give it an opening.

But there was no crack. There was no doubt. There was only the steady, unshakeable certainty of a woman who had spent her whole life cleaning up other people's messes, and was ready to clean up one more.

"I offer myself," Keene said. "Freely. Willingly. Without reservation. I offer my life as payment for the debt. I offer my soul as satisfaction for the hunger. I offer everything I am, everything I was, everything I could have been. Take me, and let the door close. Take me, and let the scales balance. Take me, and be satisfied."

The darkness screamed. The chamber collapsed. The world turned inside out, and Keene felt herself falling, falling, falling into a void that was not empty but full—full of voices and memories and grievances and the vast, ancient hunger of the Maw, which reached out to consume her and found, to its astonishment, that she was not afraid.

The last thing Maris Keene saw, before the darkness took her completely, was the face of her daughter. Not the twisted version that the Maw had shown her, but the real face. The face she remembered from twelve years ago, before the rain and the funeral and the gray winter morning. The face that smiled at her now, as if to say: You did it. You finished it. You can rest now.

And then there was nothing.