Lord of Secrets

by Breanna Teintze

  ‘No. You should go.’ She stepped backwards. ‘Gray, there are dead bodies here. There was screaming. You have to go. Makesh will be back any second. I can’t let you get killed because of me.’

  The buzz behind my breastbone was growing stronger again, reminding me that I had a necromancer to find. ‘I’ll probably get killed because of me. Jaern’s out there, and I’ve got to get control of him again. Numyra, the poor idiot, did . . . something. In my head. Whatever hold I had over Jaern is dissolved, at least for the moment.’ I glanced at Numyra’s remains, an idea growing in my head. She’d had paint, hadn’t she?

  ‘Gray, go now.’ Alarm leaped into her voice. She grabbed my shoulders, perhaps with the intention of shoving me away. ‘You have to—’

  ‘I’m not going,’ I said, through my teeth. ‘I won’t be in your debt and I don’t want you on my conscience. We’ll get the shackle off, find Lorican and figure out how we’re going to get out of here without dying. Then we can part.’ I found Numyra’s brush and jar of paint, unburned where she had dropped them. I kneeled in front of Brix, thankful to be able to look at the ground. I should have been able to depend on my anger. I should have been able to leave her there. It was embarrassing to discover how much I still cared what happened to her. Still, just because my emotions wouldn’t obey me didn’t mean that I had to show her how stupid they were. I steadied my voice. ‘Give me your foot. I’ll see if, with your help, I can scribe a metalbreaker without passing out. And then we’ll see what Jaern is doing.’

  She rested her toes against my knee. The next moment the ground trembled, an explosion thudding through the night outside. I looked up at Brix. ‘There he is,’ I said.

  *

  Finding Jaern turned out to be the least difficult thing I had ever done. After I had scribed a spell on each forearm, we stepped out of the yurt to see a giant sphere of orange light spinning over the centre of the camp. Running towards it, on the other hand, had its challenges. Everyone we passed, slave and slave-trader alike, was running away.

  Except Lorican. When I saw the Erranter he was running more or less sideways, looking in every tent he passed. He held a long, thick knife, the kind farmers use to hack down weeds – though I doubt that’s the use the slavers had found for it.

  He was alive. Relief washed over me. I cupped my hands around my mouth. ‘Oi!’

  Lorican’s head came up. He jogged over to me. ‘Thank the Moonmother. I was starting to think you’d been snuffed. What’s happened? The god’s killing every guard he sees and then making them walk.’

  ‘He tricked me. Tricked both of us. I lost my hold over him.’ The buzz in my skull was getting stronger now, moving down my neck and towards my chest. Maybe Jaern’s soul was still attached to me somehow. Maybe it was a matter of closing the door again. ‘Is he killing slaves?’

  ‘Aye. Near as I can tell he’s not distinguishing much between owners and owned.’ Lorican frowned at Brix. ‘What’s she doing here? Did you find the doll?’

  ‘The doll’s in Cor Daddan,’ I said. ‘I’m going to take care of Jaern. And Brix is—’ It was a difficult question to answer. ‘Leaving.’

  ‘The hells I am.’ The forced courage in Brix’s voice didn’t distract me from the nervous way she rubbed her hands against her trousers, as though she couldn’t get them clean. ‘They lied to me, and they’ve still got my sister. I’m going to help you get that doll.’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  Stupid mincing cow.

  I froze, with one foot lifted to take a step. That wasn’t my thought. Not even my worst mental voice sounded like that. In fact, I only knew one person who sounded like that.

  ‘Gray?’ Brix’s voice, worried now.

  I had to get myself together. If the god really was speaking inside my head, I might not have many more minutes of sanity left. I turned to Lorican. ‘Did they hurt you? Do you think you can find some horses?’

  ‘Are you actually considering facing that necromancer by yourself?’ Lorican scowled. ‘You think you’d survive that?’

  ‘I think I need to see him for any of us to have a chance.’ I glanced at Brix. ‘And you should go with Lorican, in case this goes bad.’

  ‘Someone just gave me a speech about not leaving,’ she hissed. ‘No. You’re going to try to do something magical and I can take the toxicity for you, accelerate your spells. I’m the only advantage you have over Jaern, so I’m coming with you. And Lorican has a knife so he’s coming too.’

  CRACK.

  A wave of magic rolled outwards from the centre of the camp. The screams started again.

  I ran towards the sound, already regretting the spells I’d chosen to put on my arms. How had I got to the point where I was trying to get a god tied to me again? All I had wanted to do was get Acarius out of jail.

  Jaern stood on top of a wagon full of sacks of grain, symmetrical and graceful as always. It struck me as odd, remembering how he had looked in my head – how he saw himself. That body was nothing more than an ivory puppet for the rotting soul.

  He seemed quite busy, alternately sending bolts of purple fire snaking after any running person that caught his attention – hitting accurately every time, I noted – and yelling orders at the small crowd of marulaches milling around the wagon wheels, glowing orange.

  Two of the undead held a thrashing, screaming man. His torn linen clothes flapped as he babbled high-pitched nonsense to Jaern.

  As we approached, his voice separated into words: ‘. . . I have some money hidden, lots of money. I’ll give it to you. And my family has connections. What is it you want, a ship? Women? Shan? We can—’

  Makesh. It was Makesh, with his blue silk robes stripped off, in what I recognised, abruptly, as his underthings.

  ‘Hello, Cricket,’ Jaern said, without taking his eyes off the slaver. ‘Saved you one.’

  I took a deep breath and coughed. The stench of death mingled with all the other various odours of that place. ‘You . . . saved me one. After killing twenty or thirty people.’

  Jaern shrugged. ‘Peace offering. Hasn’t this fool been annoying you?’

  I advanced slowly, gathering myself. ‘Get down before you do any more damage. I’m not a fool.’

  And I’m a bloody god.

  Jaern wheeled around to stare at me, nose wrinkled in disgust. Attached to a cripple who’s too cowardly to do what needs done. You hobble me and preach to me, and when I take control of our destiny, I do you a favour, you have the impudence to come prating to me about damage?

  I flinched. The words struck like gongs inside my skull, followed by a seething rush of images, injustices, deaths, vengeance, blood in rivulets splashing around the toes of someone’s boots. Was this the cost of giving him orders, allowing him access to my mind?

  Yes. And now I’m free and here we are.

  ‘I asked you to divine for the doll. I asked you not to kill anyone.’ I had to keep walking. In another six steps or so I would be close enough. ‘The slaves didn’t do anything wrong. Why them?’

  ‘Well, they’re not exactly dead.’ Jaern extended one hand towards the marulaches. ‘They’re undead.’

  And you should’ve been more specific. I did divine for the doll, and I’m taking you to it – just not in the way you expected. I’m not interested in pettifogging ideals. I care about results. Don’t act like my marulaches aren’t the lesser of two evils. Why do you think the Guild wanted my doll, if not to make their own army?

  ‘It had occurred to me that they might also be after a kind of eternal life,’ I said. ‘If you’re going to keep doing that, why speak out loud to me at all?’

  Sometimes, Jaern said, I rather enjoy having an audience – don’t you? Do you think you’re sneaking up on me, infant?

  I halted.

  ‘Make him let me go!’ Makesh shrieked. ‘Wizard, make him let me go!’

  ‘I’m here.’ Brix had kept pace with me. She put her hand on my bare wrist. Healing flooded my veins, a sudden diminishing of pain and
weariness so intense it was almost pleasure. ‘I’ll help you.’

  ‘I’ll help you,’ Jaern mimicked, sing-song. Purple lightning still crackled around one hand, the sigils glowing through his shirt in a ring across his belly. ‘So that’s why you wanted to keep her. Your own private weighted dice, to make that pathetic silence spell you have on your arm worth something. I imagine there are other advantages as well.’ His eyes swept her up and down, appraising. ‘I can’t say I understand. Mud and blondes were never to my taste.’

  ‘This is all just fencing,’ I said.

  Aye, I’m finished. Jaern leaped lightly down from the wagon. The teardrop-shaped black vial that hung around his neck – the thing that had absorbed his toxicity and my crippled knee – flopped against his breastbone. Uneasily, I realised I shouldn’t have forgotten about it. The flesh of his throat glinted blue and green for a moment, iridescent as a butterfly’s scales.

  No. Oh, no.

  ‘What?’ Brix said. ‘What’s wrong?’

  I licked my lips, my mouth suddenly dry. ‘Reflection. He has a reflection spell running. If I cast anything targeted at him, it would just bounce back at me, like an echo, or a mirror.’

  ‘He can do that?’ Brix glanced from the necromancer to me.

  ‘He can do all sorts of lovely things.’ Jaern whistled. The marulaches stopped milling, turned and started lumbering towards us.

  ‘Let go, Brix,’ I whispered. I backed up a step. ‘Reflection is supposed to cause severe burns on the man who tries it. I’ve only ever seen it used on an iron door.’

  ‘As has been noted, I’m not precisely a man.’ Jaern smiled. ‘Well, Cricket? Going to shut me up? Or maybe you’ll use that considerable wit of yours for something besides plotting how to get under the girl’s skirt and understand that I’ve just helped you. You’re terrible at realising who your real friends are. The Guild thinks you or your grandfather know how to use that doll. They won’t stop hunting you. Both political power and eternal life, as you pointed out, are potent motivators.’

  The undead made a wall now, between me and him. I glanced over my shoulder, the sick panic thudding harder in my stomach when I saw that Lorican was surrounded by a ring of marulaches.

  ‘I could have my marulaches tear his arms off, if you like,’ Jaern offered. ‘Or her arms off.’

  ‘Let him go,’ I said.

  ‘Absolutely not.’ Jaern’s teeth glinted. ‘He was one of your grandfather’s accomplishments, wasn’t he? I’ve seen into your head, remember, and I know that lovely little story he told you. Saints, I can’t ignore that, can’t go to Cor Daddan without him.’ His eyes rested on Lorican for a moment. ‘I think we’ll break the accomplishment there,’ he murmured, ‘where it will make the correct point.’

  ‘Screw you, spelldog,’ Lorican spat. ‘Screw—’

  ‘Everyone seems to want to,’ Jaern said. He lifted a hand, and the marulaches surged around Lorican. His voice cut off.

  ‘Wait!’ I cried. ‘We don’t have to do it this way.’

  Jaern’s attention came back around to me. ‘Ah, but we entirely do. You won’t come with me. I need to look after my own interests, see to my own vengeance. Marulaches are dull, and slow, but they’re very difficult to defeat entirely.’

  Why not just kill me? Jaern’s mercy only made sense if his soul was still attached to me somehow, and he needed to keep me alive.

  ‘Stop,’ I repeated, and this time I put all my will behind it.

  Please, let it be as simple as this. Please, let me be able to put Jaern’s soul back in its cage.

  Jaern leaned forwards, cupping his non-glowing hand to his mouth as though telling a secret. ‘No,’ he said, in an exaggerated whisper.

  No. No, no, no.

  I couldn’t see Brix anymore, couldn’t see Lorican. There was only Jaern, and the dead.

  ‘You can’t murder your way to the coast,’ I said. ‘You’ll be alone, if you do. You don’t want to be alone. And you need me. Somehow, you still need me.’

  His smirk fell away. His hand went back to the pendant around his neck, caressing.

  ‘I’m not going to murder my way to the coast, Corcoran.’ His voice went soft, almost inaudible. ‘I’m going to murder my way to Cor Daddan. When I get there, I’m going to murder him. For centuries, in that pit where he left me, I promised myself this, and I’m going to keep my promise. I’m going to find him, and I’m going to make him suffer, make him watch me take everything from him the way he took everything from me. When I’ve finished with that, you and I will neither of us ever be alone again.’ A flash of pain rippled across his face, replaced in an instant with false cheer. ‘You’re going to help me.’

  ‘You’re not making any sense,’ I said. ‘You said your apprentice locked you in that temple. He must be long dead.’

  ‘For a splendid mind, you persist in being a dull student. Who do you think I saw in your head?’

  The air suddenly grew too thick. I couldn’t breathe it. ‘You’re lying.’

  It was the wrong thing to say. He flinched.

  ‘I’m lying? So far, I’ve only asked questions.’ Jaern stepped closer, until he was near enough that the faint, sweet tang of rot puffed around me. Magic throbbed around his wrists, lit runes skittering over his skin like insects. He leaned in until his face nearly touched mine, the pendant swinging in the space between us. ‘I’m not the one who needs to lie.’

  I saw it then, floating across the searing loneliness in his eyes. I should have seen it long before, I know. I’ve knocked around everywhere, and I’m not naïve, but until that moment it didn’t seem plausible that an undead god would be interested in a twenty-six-year-old failure with scars.

  He didn’t just want his soul. He wanted me.

  ‘I’ll go,’ I said. ‘If you promise to stop hurting people. I’ll go with you.’

  He laughed. ‘No, you won’t.’

  Then he lifted his lips to touch my forehead. The vial around his neck hummed, and a black bolt of magic surged up his chest, out his mouth and into my skull. My knee buckled under me, but still I hung there, twisted, where the pain and the magic held me pinned to the empty air.

  ‘Jaern, I’ll come with you,’ I said. ‘You don’t need to do this. Let me go.’

  For a second I thought he would. He stared at me. Nine hundred years old, but in that moment he looked so young, like a hurt child.

  Follow me. Gods, Cricket, stop me, if you can.

  He turned on his heel, and was gone.

  Twenty-Two

  I didn’t black out again.

  Gritty earth bit into the palms of my hands as I hit the ground. I couldn’t pay attention to any of the chaos around me – the screams, the dirt in my mouth, the shuffling rumble of marulaches as they followed him away – but I kept my hold on consciousness, dammit, and I got my face out of the mud.

  I knew I should have been afraid. It seemed like a long time that I stayed there on my hands and knees, alone with the pain and stink, convincing my legs to stand up. My body, which had been poisoned, cracked, beaten and now magically injured, refused to humour my mind. Some part of me was vaguely worried about getting trampled. A lot of people seemed to be running past me, some alive, and some not so much. I couldn’t find it in me to be particularly upset. It was a familiar loneliness, and a familiar pain.

  Most of me, though, simply waited. It wasn’t until I felt her hand under my chin that I realised I had known Brix would come for me.

  ‘Gray.’

  ‘I think I give up,’ I said, slowly.

  ‘Get on your feet.’ She tugged at me. ‘We have to go, now.’

  ‘I can’t.’ But I let her shift me backwards, into a sitting position.

  The light failed rapidly around us, decreasing to only the flickering uncertainties of the fires burning where braziers had been overturned. The darkness hummed with noise – screams, footsteps and the crackle of flames. She sat on her haunches in front of me. ‘What did he do to you?’

/>   ‘My knee. He . . . uh, put it back.’ Even to myself that sounded insane.

  Brix frowned for a second and then seemed to decide not to waste time on reasoning with me. ‘We can’t stay here. The Tirnaal slaves will be coming back as soon as it’s light, and so will any of the slavers that managed to stay alive. Either group will have no reason not to kill you. We have to go.’

  ‘I can’t even stand up, Brix,’ I said. ‘I think Jaern took Lorican, if he’s even still alive. I think Jaern’s going to kill everyone at Cor Daddan. He’ll get the doll . . .’ I gritted my teeth. ‘Go without me. It doesn’t matter what happens to me.’

  She deliberately drew her hand back and slapped me, once on each side of my face.

  Hard.

  ‘What—’

  ‘Don’t you ever say that again,’ she said. ‘You think your life only matters to you?’ She stuck her hands under my armpits. ‘Now get on your feet, you selfish little prick.’

  With that, she yanked me upwards.

  I think I screamed. I know that once I had my balance, I leaned heavily on her. Then a wave of pain hit me and I nearly vomited.

  But I was on my feet.

  ‘Not little,’ I murmured.

  ‘Why are you talking instead of moving?’ Brix dragged me forwards.

  ‘Not a selfish little prick,’ I said, and was rewarded by her short, startled burst of laughter. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘To find a horse, or a wagon, or at least a place to hide. Come on. Maybe we can find Lorican.’

  But I was right – Jaern had taken Lorican. By the time we reached the darkness at the outer edge of the camp, Brix was half-carrying me. We managed to stumble blindly forwards for a little longer before my knee gave way irretrievably.

  She let me down to the ground and then sat beside me. Her breath came rapidly, choking, hiccupping gasps. Suddenly she smacked me in the ribs. ‘It’s not fair!’

  ‘Ow.’

  ‘I tried so hard!’ she shouted at me. ‘I tried so hard, and I didn’t save anybody. Not Anka, not you—’

  I reached towards her, hesitant. ‘Brix.’