In the Shadow of the Gods

by Rachel Dunne

  They knelt on opposite sides of the everflame, and as Kerrus began his prayer, Scal ghosted out from the shadows and knelt between them, ever to Kerrus’s right, hands folded like a practiced penitent. Brennon gave him a startled look, then snapped his eyes shut as Kerrus raised his voice sternly. “Divine Mother, Almighty Father, shapers of the earth and keepers of the flame, we ask you hear our hearts. Gentle Metherra, we offer you our fears and beg you soothe them. Stalwart Patharro, we give our hearts unto your keeping, and beg you keep the darkness at bay. Holy Parents, we give you all that we are, and ask only for your shelter, now and for always. We are the tenders of the flame, and we keep it burning in your honor. Mother preserve us, and Father shield our souls.” He threw a small packet of herbs and kindling into the everflame, sending up a fragrant puff of smoke, and gave one each to Brennon and Scal. The boys, equally solemn, threw in their own packets, Brennon murmuring softly. Kerrus rested a hand on each of their shoulders, adding a silent prayer. Keep them happy, Tender Metherra. Keep them from breaking, Loving Patharro. Let them find some joy in this cold, dark place.

  “Thank you, Parro,” Brennon said quietly, rubbing smoke from his eyes.

  “Any time, lad,” Kerrus said, giving his shoulder a squeeze. “And remember what I said. If you need anything, even just to talk, come to me. And Scal here, too. He’s a fine listener. You’re not alone, Brennon.” He gave the boy a gentle push toward the door. “Best get back to your parents now, lad.”

  At the door Brennon paused, eyes lingering on Scal, and the little Northman stared right back. It had been too long since Kerrus’s childhood, and he couldn’t decipher the look matched in each set of young eyes; not quite a challenge, not exactly unfriendly. Sizing each other up, perhaps. Brennon was the first to turn away, sliding out through the doorway, and Kerrus almost thought he saw a trace of a smile on the boy’s face. Impossible. Aardanel was no place for a smile.

  With a dozen new mouths to feed, Kerrus found himself scouring his root cellar much more often, loading up Scal’s basket with stunted carrots, miniature cabbages, and shrunken onions. The saddest part was that everyone would be grateful for a nibble of any unripe sprout, and likely fall over themselves with joy for a taste of onion broth.

  “Sad state of affairs, my boy,” Kerrus grunted over his shoulder at Scal. “You might have waited to find your way here until spring. Not that the food would be much better, but there’d at least be more of it. Though I daresay there’ll be fewer mouths to feed soon enough.” The mother of three had turned up sobbing at his door early that morning, youngest child clutched in her arms, begging him to save her. He’d bundled the girl up near the everflame, said what prayers he could, but the rattle in her chest when she pulled in each laborious breath told him it wouldn’t be too long.

  Kerrus levered himself to his feet, turned to take the basket from Scal, and found to his great surprise that his shadow was missing. The vegetable basket rocked gently on the ground, no sign of its holder. After a few weeks of Scal’s constant presence, his absence was more than a little disturbing. Kerrus quickly scooped up the basket and hurried out from behind his hut, out into the busy main thoroughfare of Aardanel. Busy being a relative term, of course. A dozen adults at most, hurrying here or there on an errand; perhaps twenty children scattered along the street, alone or in small groups, doing their own little jobs. There was a small knot of children, staring down at something on the ground; suspicious, Kerrus sidled over to the group.

  Two boys were flopping around on the ground, grappling clumsily at each other, fists and feet flailing. Brennon’s face swam up out of a tangle of elbows, and then, to Kerrus’s horror, a shock of blond hair butted into Brennon’s nose. Brennon fell away snorting and coughing blood, and Scal rolled onto his knees; Kerrus drew in a deep breath, but before he could loose his bellow, Brennon began to laugh. “Good hit!” he said, grinning with bloody teeth, and pounced at Scal. And they grappled again, grinning and snarling at the same time, both soon smeared with blood from Brennon’s bleeding nose. A brief glimpse of Scal showed the little Northman’s solemn face split into a wide grin.

  Kerrus stood frowning down at the fighting, smiling boys, and it took him a moment to fit the pieces together. Not fighting. Playing. Playing like normal children. Playing, and smiling, and laughing.

  It sent an unexpected stab of warmth through Kerrus’s heart. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen children at play in Aardanel. The children gathered around were smiling, too, quietly cheering one or the other. Children who had been in Aardanel awhile, children who he would have guessed had long since forgotten what play was, forgotten how to smile.

  Quietly, he slipped away from the group, leaving them to their play. He went straight to his chapel and spent an hour kneeling before the everflame, thanking the Parents from the depths of his heart. Let them find some joy, he’d asked of the Parents. Never had they answered his prayers so quickly, or so thoroughly.

  Scal still spent much of his time at Kerrus’s elbow, though whenever the boy ghosted silently away, Kerrus knew he had only to follow the sound of children’s laughter and he would find Scal and Brennon, and as many other children as had flocked around them that particular day. They were fast friends, and though he couldn’t for the life of him understand why, Kerrus couldn’t say he disapproved of it. Brennon was a good boy. What’s more, he proved to be a very devout boy, spending much of his time in the chapel or Kerrus’s hut. As a result, Scal became intensely pious himself, and Kerrus spent more time preaching than he had in the last decade.

  Neither boy could read—or, if Scal could, he certainly wasn’t telling—so Kerrus recited all the old stories, and answered all of Brennon’s unending questions. Scal sat there, seeming to absorb it all, eyes rapt.

  Kerrus was in the middle of his most chilling rendition of the Fall of the Twins when a question brought him sputtering to a halt: “Why?” It wasn’t the question itself that took him so by surprise, for he’d answered it a hundred times before; it was the voice that asked the question, a soft, rough voice that had, without a doubt, come from Scal’s mouth.

  Kerrus saw that Brennon was gaping at the little Northman, realized he was gaping, too, and quickly snapped his hanging jaw shut. “Why?” Kerrus repeated, certain he’d imagined it.

  Scal’s mouth opened, and there was that raspy voice again, in passable Fiateran. “Why did Mother throw her children down?”

  It took Kerrus a moment to get his bearings, and once he did, he stammered like a tongue-tied parro just out of apprenticeship. “Well, you see . . . they were, ah, they didn’t like the way the Twins—the Parents! The Twins didn’t like how the Parents were, ah, running things. How they treated people. The Twins were . . . jealous! Yes, they wanted to have the same power as the Parents. And they tried to steal it . . .” Kerrus’s voice carried on in the familiar recitation, but behind the words his mind was whirling. Two months of living elbow to forehead with the boy, and this the first he’d spoken! “Enough for tonight,” he finished lamely, and Brennon wandered from the hut looking as dazed as Kerrus felt.

  Scal was poking at the hearthfire, and Kerrus’s knees popped as he crouched down next to the boy. The silence settled over them, but different now that they both had a voice. Kerrus finally cleared his throat, needing to say something, but not sure what. “So.” Well, that was a start. “You’ve finally found your voice, eh?” Scal shrugged, still staring into the fire. “Or did I fall asleep in the middle of a story again?” Scal flashed him a smile—a more and more frequent sight since Brennon had been around. A bashful smile, an apologetic smile. “Eh? Was I just dreaming my silent little lad spoke to me?”

  “No.” So quiet it was almost swallowed up by the crackling of the flames. “I talked.”

  “I’m glad, Scal,” Kerrus said, and for some foolish reason his throat went tight, pressure building behind his eyes. Stupid old man, near ready to weep like a woman.

  “I too.”

  802 Years a
fter the Fall

  Even the best dog will bite if given loose rope.

  —Northern Proverb

  CHAPTER 3

  Aro was crying again. Rora put her arms round him, trying to hush him before any of the biggers heard. Showing any weakness in the Canals was like asking for a shiv to the stomach. She hugged him close, but it only made Aro cry harder. “I miss Kala,” he whimpered. It was dark, but Rora didn’t need to see: she could hear the biggers rustling, grumbling. She clapped her hand over Aro’s mouth, making him quiet. She could feel his scared breath wheezing over the back of her hand, but she didn’t let him go until she heard Twist snoring. Twist was the mother for the Blackhands pack, and he hated most of the pups he watched over, but it seemed like he hated Rora and her brother extra just ’cause they were new to the pack and Aro cried too much. Rora didn’t want to give Twist any more reason to hate them.

  Aro hiccuped and nuzzled into her shoulder, finally quiet, maybe even sleeping already. It was good, if he could get some sleep. Rora couldn’t, not with the water lapping, splashing up through the warped boards. She missed Kala, too, mostly for her house’s solid floor. If she’d had anything to give, she would’ve handed it over for a packed-dirt floor to sleep on, far away from the Canals.

  When the sky started to get light, she shook Aro awake and they crept to the edge of the raft, trying not to rock it too much. Aro jumped first, falling on his hands and knees on the canal’s muddy bank. Rora landed next to him and hauled him up, sneaking off before any of the pack woke up and saw them.

  They stopped a ways away, where there weren’t any rafts nearby, and crouched down in the mud. “I don’t want to,” Aro complained, but Rora ignored him, shoving her hands into the mud and running handfuls of the goop through Aro’s hair. Kala had cut it short, so the mud dried fast, leaving his hair sticking up in near-black spikes. It made him smell awful, but it was the only way to stay safe. She smudged more mud on his face, then pulled him to the canal, both of them peering into the murky water.

  It was still like seeing two of herself. Even with her hair long, and Aro’s short and different-colored, their faces were the same. The mud wasn’t that great of a disguise. It just made him look like a dirtier version of Rora. But it was the best she could do. She dunked her head into the water, scrubbing the dirt from her own face and hair with fingertips that weren’t much cleaner. Not that the water was any cleaner’n she was either, but this was as clean as she was going to get with Kala gone.

  They walked along the edges of the canal, Aro holding to the back of Rora’s shirt. With sunlight poking down, there were more Scum out and about now, and they all avoided each other like snarling cats. Rora stayed pressed up hard against the wall, staring at anyone who went by, her eyes daring them to attack two pups, while inside she prayed they wouldn’t. You had to be tough, in the Canals, or at least look tough. It was the only way.

  “Where’re we going today, Rora?” Aro asked, rubbing the back of one filthy hand at his running nose.

  “Sparrow,” she corrected automatically; he always forgot to use the new name. “To the market. It’s fiveday, so there should be plenty of people round. You wanna beg today?”

  “You always get to do the stealing, it’s not fair!”

  “You’re no good at it.”

  “Only ’cause you don’t let me try.”

  “You’re begging,” Rora said firmly.

  The Canals had been built a long time ago to bring in water from Lake Baridi, but they hadn’t been built right. Over the years, the water’d worn down the bottom of the canal, eating away the dirt where the canal makers hadn’t put down stone, and even sneaking under stone in time, the water digging down deeper than it should’ve. The water was down too low for any of the topsiders to know what to do with it, so they’d just decided to ignore all the waterways winding through Mercetta. They’d left the canals to the Scum, who scraped out a living on and around the water. The Scum made paths alongside the new canal bottom with wood planks and pried-up brick and anything sturdier than mud; they’d made the place as livable as they could.

  The canal walls were mostly mud now, with brick starting where the canal bottom had originally been, higher up than Rora was tall. She boosted Aro up, and the boy hauled himself onto the ridge of bricks that the water’d left untouched. She had to jump to do it, but she got her fingers hooked over the edge and planted her feet against the soft mud wall, shimmying up to join her brother.

  There were fewer Scum up on the high paths, since they were closer to topside, but every once in a while they had to sidestep around one of the other Scum, Rora growling curses and shoving Aro ahead of her. They finally got to the West Bridge and found the ladder—little more than holes where bricks had been pried out of the wall. Rora went up first, telling Aro to hang back in case there was any trouble.

  It was a long way up. The people of Mercetta didn’t like having to look at their trash, and the Scum were definitely trash. “Out of sight,” Kala used to say, “out of mind.” A lot of the bricks were crumbling, too, making Rora’s bare feet slip, almost making her scared she was about to fall a few times. As she got closer to the top of the ladder, in the shadow of the West Bridge, she started to hear talking, whispers. There were people, at least a handful of ’em judging by the voices, waiting for her at the top.

  “—waiting a hell of a long time . . .”

  “Shh!”

  “Gotta be close.”

  “Mace’ll shit if we don’ bring ’im more copper.”

  “We’ll get more, I’m tellin’ ya.”

  “Shhhh!”

  There were biggers in the packs, too old to be pups but they hadn’t been given any jobs yet, so they had nothing to do but bully pups. They were big, sure, but usually pretty slow and stupid—otherwise they would’ve got a job to do already. All you had to do was be a little faster and a little smarter, and biggers weren’t any kind of problem. Rora tipped her head back and leaned as far away from the wall as she dared, fingers and toes curled tight around the bricks. “Your ambush needs practice,” she called up.

  There was rustling and hushing; one of them murmured, “Feck’s an ambush?” and then a head poked out over the top of the wall. A bigger, sure enough, and he was scraggly-looking but with a thick enough face that he probably ate pretty well. Dirty, but no dirtier’n anyone living in the Canals; he might even have seen a real bath in the last year. Still Scum, though, and you could never trust a bigger.

  “Hullo, girl,” he called down, trying to sound friendly. “Need some help getting up?”

  “That’s so nice of you,” she said, smiling sweetly. “But I think I’m okay.”

  The bigger grinned down at her. He was probably trying to look nice, but it only made him look like an animal about to attack. “No, no, let me help.” He stretched an arm down toward her, fingers wriggling. She was just out of reach. “Gimme your hand, I’ll pull you up.”

  Rora let go of the bricks with one hand and reached up toward him. When their hands were just about a finger apart, she curled her hand into a fist and slammed it into his palm, crushing it against the wall. Not enough force behind it to do any real damage, but enough to make him yelp and pull his hand back up real quick. He disappeared from view and she heard swearing from above, the others trying to figure out what’d happened. She took their moment of distraction to scramble up the last stretch of the ladder and jump onto solid ground. There were seven of ’em, all biggers, all gathered round the one who’d been talking to her. He saw her around the shoulder of one of his friends, and there was murder in his eyes.

  Rora took off running. All she had to do was lead ’em off long enough for Aro to get up topside, then she’d lose the biggers and meet him at their normal spot. She’d done it more times than she could count, and it would’ve worked again if she hadn’t got her foot tangled in something. She went sprawling, scraping her hands, forehead banging against stone, and they caught up to her before she could scramble away.
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br />   One of them stomped on her arm, pinning her in place, and another kicked her in the stomach. Groaning in pain, she curled herself into a ball as the blows rained down, one arm still stretched out with the bigger grinding his foot down. She could feel the bones in her arm shifting, twisting, please, gods, don’t break, don’t break . . . A foot, a boot—what Scum could afford boots?—slammed into the side of her head, rattling her teeth, making spots of light dance behind her squeezed-shut eyes. She tasted blood, cried out as a sharp snap echoed through her skull, hot fire shooting down her arm as the bigger twisted his foot, splinters of bone dancing under her skin.

  “Stop it!”

  The beating faltered, stopped. One of the biggers laughed. “Run back t’ your momma’s tit, brat.”

  “Leave her alone!”

  Rora groaned. There was no mistaking that voice, even high-pitched and full of fear. “Don’t,” she tried to tell him, but the word came out as a cough, blood splattering from her lips, ribs aching with every movement.

  There was more laughter, and the boot tramped down on her arm again. She screamed, and then it was like the world was screaming around her, more voices and terror and pain, and a sound like the world ripping in half. Something heavy fell across her, crushing her against the ground. She whimpered, felt tears sneaking through her eyelids. There was something else running down her cheek, too, running warm and fast and filling her mouth with the taste of iron.

  She could hear sobbing, close by. Her? No, not Rora, but her voice doubled, projected back at her. “I’m so sorry, so sorry, so sorry . . .” The weight lifted off her, and she drew in a shaking breath, not caring that all her ribs bent and twisted and stabbed. She forced her eyes open, though they tried to stick together, red bubbles dancing at the edges of her vision. Aro’s face loomed before her, face streaked with mud and blood, two clean trails carved down his cheeks as he sobbed. She tried to reach out, to comfort him, tell him everything would be okay, but nothing worked. All she could do was make a sharp wheezing noise, and that only made him cry all the harder. “Rora, Rora, I’m so sorry.” He reached for her, and the world tilted and dropped away in a burning crash.