Ela pursed her lips. “Mild concern I can abide, but anything more…” She fanned her face with a hand. “I get hives,” she confided quietly. “Not just on my face, but everywhere.”
“I don’t see any hives,” Ruc said.
“Of course not!” Ela laughed. “I’m having a delightful evening.”
“It might get less delightful if my men on the roof opposite start firing their flatbows.”
“Flatbows,” Ela murmured, leaning into the table once more, her eyes fixed on Ruc’s, as though the snipers concealed on the rooftops were of less than no concern. “How exciting. Who are we hunting?”
“We are not hunting anyone.”
“We are, in fact,” I cut in.
Ruc shook his head. “The men on the roof have their bolts aimed directly at your chest.”
“My chest?” Ela raised one hand, laid a languid finger just above her heart. “Here?” She slid the finger down between her breasts. “Or here?”
“Knock it the fuck off,” I growled. “Both of you. You know as well as I do, Ela, that even twenty-five years’ training on the Islands isn’t going to save you from a flatbow bolt.”
“Oh, I don’t think he’ll actually shoot me,” Ela protested. “We’re just getting to know each other.”
“According to your friend,” Ruc replied, nodding slightly toward Kossal, “that’s not quite right. How much can you know about a woman if she just spent half the night lying to you?”
Ruc studied Ela as he spoke, but that was just a feint. The question’s sharpened edge was directed at me.
I shook my head. “When did you get so ’Kent-kissing twitchy?”
“There was a commander I served under years ago,” Ruc replied, turning slowly to face me, “down in the Waist. Northern guy, pale skin, strange blue eyes. His name was Collum, but everyone called him Cool Collum. Not because he looked cool, I can tell you that. He was a big bastard and sweated by the bucket. We called him Cool Collum because nothing ever rattled him. Nothing spooked him. Nothing made him twitch. Local tribes would be filling our fort with arrows and Collum would stand up on the walls, perfectly exposed, like he didn’t even notice. The man absolutely refused to worry about anything.”
“Sounds familiar,” I said, glancing over at Ela.
She smiled.
“Everyone loved Collum,” Ruc went on. “Everyone admired him. He thought he was unbreakable, and so everyone else thought he was unbreakable, which meant that we thought we were a little more unbreakable, too, just by being near him.”
“I’m starting to suspect from the structure of the narrative,” Ela said, “that he wasn’t actually unbreakable.”
Ruc shook his head. “One hot, foggy morning he was walking the walls, bellowing at us the way he always did, and one of those short little jungle arrows took him through the throat.”
Kossal let out a low curse. At first I thought he was dismayed by Collum’s death—which seemed strange, all things considered—then realized he’d been ignoring the entire conversation, trying instead to coax the dead snake in his quey out through the neck of the bottle. Evidently, he found the lesson of Cool Collum’s demise less than fascinating.
“I get it,” I said, turning back to Ruc. “We’re supposed to be scared of the men you’ve got hiding in the shadows. We’re supposed to be on edge. You’ve made your point.”
“I’m not sure I have,” he said, turning to me. “I don’t care if you’re on edge. I don’t care if you’re merry, or terrified, or drunk. You asked me when I got twitchy: that was when—the moment I saw Cool Collum pitch over the wooden rampart. That was the moment I realized that taking chances might look great, it might make for great stories, but it’s a shit way to run a life, let alone a military force. I took over that unit after Collum died, and we quit taking chances. That’s why Annur put me in charge here. And I’ll tell you something else. Right now, the three of you look like one enormous fucking chance; one I could solve with the wave of a hand.”
The words were so steady, the tone so conversational, that if I’d been distracted—by Kossal prodding at the snake with a long splinter of wood, for instance—I might have missed the extent of the menace. Ruc wasn’t one to boast. He didn’t get in the ring unless he was ready to pound someone to a pulp. If he was showing his hand now, it meant he was absolutely certain he could kill us, but it also meant something else: he didn’t want to.
Hope washed through my heart, so hot it almost hurt.
Despite Kossal’s absolute refusal to back my play, Ruc hadn’t given his snipers the order. It was a measure of my desperation that I took the absence of my execution as a promising romantic development. My mind scrambled for purchase on the tricky, shifting situation. After a moment, I rounded on Kossal.
“Tell him what we are.”
The old priest was grimacing. He had the snake impaled on the wooden splinter, but couldn’t manage to draw it out through the neck of the bottle. “And for the love of all that’s holy, why don’t you just drink the rest of the fucking quey if you want the snake so bad?”
“Have to stay mostly sober,” he said, obviously distracted by his task, “in case I have to kill someone.”
Ruc cocked his head to the side. “You have anyone in particular in mind?”
“Plenty of options,” Kossal muttered. He jerked his head toward Ela. “I’m always tempted to start with her, but my god disapproves of offerings made in frustration or anger.”
“Your god?” Ruc asked quietly.
Kossal grunted. “Your god, too. Everyone’s god. Ananshael.”
“You’re telling me you’re Skullsworn,” Ruc said, voice flat.
Ela laughed, a long, joyful sound straight from the belly. I wanted to punch her in the throat.
Kossal just shrugged. He had the snake pinned against the wall of the bottle now, and was drawing it up slowly through the neck.
“We’re Skullsworn,” I said, “who just happen to take a vivid interest in the civic life of Dombâng.”
There was no forcing Kossal’s words back into his mouth, no pretending they hadn’t been spoken. The only hope was to ride them out. If I judged the old priest correctly, he wouldn’t have any more interest in convincing Ruc of the truth than he did in convincing him of my lie. He didn’t seem to give a pile of slippery shit what Ruc thought at all, actually.
“What do you want us to be?” Ela murmured coquettishly, pursing her lips as though tasting the alternatives. “Skullsworn? Or Kettral?”
Ruc looked at the woman a moment, then turned to me.
To my own shock, I found myself laughing, all the tension of the day shaking itself free in great, breathy spasms.
“I’m telling you the truth, Ruc,” I said. “So is Ela. Kossal’s just a cantankerous old bastard who takes military regs about revealing our identities way too seriously.” I shook my head. “But does it matter? There’s something out in the delta. Maybe it’s the Vuo Ton, and maybe it’s something else, but either way, you need to find it, and you need to kill it.”
Kossal had just bitten off the head of the snake, but he paused in his crunching, interested for the first time.
“That’s what I want to talk about.”
Ela glared at Ruc. “We’ve been sitting here half the night, and you didn’t even tell me about your adventures in the delta?”
“Lower your voice,” Ruc growled.
Ela ignored the warning—all the other patrons on the deck were several tables away—and leaned toward Ruc instead. “We’re very good at killing things,” she purred, then glanced at me. “What are we killing?”
“Something capable of ripping the throat out of half a hundred armed legionaries,” I replied. “Something planting violets in the eye sockets of the dead. Something pretending to be a god.”
“It’s not a god,” Ruc said.
Kossal swallowed the snake head into the side of his cheek. “The woman in the shack seemed to think so.”
Ruc turned to s
tudy the old priest. “You followed us into the Weir?”
“We follow her everywhere,” Ela said. “I was there in the bathhouse, for your first reunion.”
Ruc was just about the most unflappable person I’d ever met. I’d seen him take a club to the ribs and barely wince, and yet even Ruc wasn’t used to dealing with the likes of Ela and Kossal. His composure, normally so absolute, was starting to fray, if only in ways so minor that only I would have noticed them.
“And you didn’t even notice me,” Ela said, shaking her head regretfully.
“What were you doing in the bathhouse?”
The priestess spread her hands. “Pyrre’s more than capable when it comes to putting sharp pieces of steel in the softest parts of the enemies of our shining empire, but sometimes,” she winked at him, “you need a woman along who can make your whole world explode.”
She lingered on that last word, shaping her lips into an O around the vowel.
“You’re in demolitions, too,” Ruc said.
“I prefer to tell people I’m in conflagrations.”
“She’s a priestess,” Kossal cut in irritably. “I’m a priest. She…” he went on, stabbing a finger at me, “is an acolyte of our god. Now,” he rounded on Ruc, “can we discuss what we saw on the transport?”
“Why do you care about the transport,” Ruc asked warily, “if you don’t care about Dombâng?”
“He does care,” I said. “He’s Kettral. He’s been fighting for Annur for the last fifty years, but he inherited the last generation’s rigid, idiotic secrecy protocols, which means he’s never going to tell you he’s Kettral, even if you tie him to a table and light him on fire.”
“Which I, for one, do not recommend,” Ela put in.
“I care what happened on the boat,” Kossal said, as though we’d never spoken, “because anyone ripping the throats out of armed men is a servant of my god, an adept servant, and I am always eager to meet my fellows in the faith.”
Ruc shook his head. “The people who ripped out the throats on the boat worship the old gods of this city: Kem Anh, Hang Loc, Sinn.”
“Ananshael is an old god. These others are imposters.”
“On that we agree,” Ruc said. “But they’re imposters who have proven surprisingly durable. People in this delta have worshipped them for thousands of years, as far back as the records go and further. All the way to Dombâng’s founding during the Csestriim wars, if you believe the city’s myths. Annur outlawed the worship, but all the legions they send can’t seem to kill the old trinity.”
Kossal drummed his fingers on the table, noticed the half of the snake he’d set aside, picked it up, and bit into the scaly hide. “We’re coming,” he announced around the flesh filling his mouth.
“Coming where?” Ruc asked.
“With you into the delta. To see these Vuo Ton.”
Ela laughed again. I half hated her, but a woman could get drunk on that laugh.
“You want to help?” Ruc asked. “If you’re Skullsworn, then what the fuck do you care about the politics of Dombâng?”
“I don’t,” Kossal replied, pausing to pick a bone out from between his teeth with that same wooden splinter. “But I take offense when I hear of things that can’t be killed. In the name of my god, I’m inclined to find them and kill them.”
“A moment ago you wanted to find your fellows in the faith. Now you want to murder immortal imposters. Which is it?”
“Worship,” Kossal replied, “is a coin with two sides: killing, and dying. I’m here to make sure everyone takes a turn at each.”
Ruc just stared at him a moment, then shook his head. “Sweet Intarra’s light,” he muttered, then turned to me, that green gaze of his uncharacteristically open. “Why does it seem like my life would have been so much easier if I’d never met you?”
I frowned. “I’m trying to hear that as a compliment.”
He coughed up a laugh.
“Let’s just say there aren’t too many people who surprise me, but the three of you…” He trailed off, wordless for the first time.
Surprise. I repeated the word to myself. Could surprise grow into love? It sounded possible, at the very least. Maybe more than possible, if I burned down a little more of the city.
“You can always shoot us later,” Ela suggested brightly.
“If I shot you now, I wouldn’t have to watch my back.”
“If you shot us now,” I pointed out, “we wouldn’t be there to help.”
“When did you get the idea I needed help?”
“When I saw your men puking over the rail of that transport,” I replied. “Whatever you’re fighting, the Greenshirts aren’t up to the job.”
“I have the legions.”
“The same legions we burned, then fed to the fish?”
Ruc’s face tightened. “I don’t trust you.”
“Then don’t trust us,” I said. “You already know what you need to know. Skullsworn or Kettral, we’re excellent at killing things.…”
“You are,” he cut in. “All I’ve seen the two of them do is drink and flirt.”
“A woman can’t be cutting throats every moment of every day,” Ela objected.
I met Ruc’s gaze. “You’ve sized up enough fighters.”
He sucked air between his teeth, then shook his head. “I feel like Cool fucking Collum strolling along up there on the wall.”
“Would you rather be cowering somewhere?” I demanded.
“Yes,” he said. “I’d rather be cowering.”
The smile bloomed on my face, fierce and certain. “No you wouldn’t.”
I wanted to kiss him again. My whole body ached to lean toward him, to seize his chin in my hand and pull him close.
“You should kiss her,” Ela suggested merrily, nudging Ruc in the shin beneath the table.
“They already spent half the night kissing,” Kossal groused.
“Pyrre!” Ela objected, rounding on me. “You canny little ferret. When were you going to tell me? This is too delicious. Something ripping out throats and a budding romance!” She purred contentedly. “Dombâng really is a city of love.”
By the end of the night none of Ruc’s hidden crossbowmen had shot us, which I took for a good sign; on the other hand, by the time he finally left the deck of Anho’s Dance, Ruc had made no effort to include us in the finer details of his plans.
“Be here,” he said, straightening up from his chair. “I’ll send someone when it’s time.”
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“To get things ready.”
“Want to tell us what things?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“A mission tends to work best,” I pointed out, “when everyone on the team understands the objective, the resources, and tactics.”
“The objective,” Ruc replied, “is to find the Vuo Ton and pry the truth out of them. Chua Two-Net is one resource, and the three of you are the other. Isn’t that what you just spent half the night arguing for?”
“I was hoping for a few more specifics,” I said. “How is it, exactly, that we’re planning to pry the truth out of the Vuo Ton?”
“I love specifics. Unfortunately, since no one aside from Two-Net has ever seen this secret lair of the Vuo Ton, there’s going to have to be a lot of improvising when we get there, a lot of making shit up on the fly.”
Ela beamed. “I love improvisation.”
Ruc ignored her, studying me instead. “That’s what the Kettral are for, right? That’s what you’re good at.”
I nodded at the same time that Kossal, weary or irritated, ran a hand over his eyes. “We’re not Kettral.”
17
For a full day, I watched from the wide deck of Anho’s Dance while Dombâng unraveled. The city, like the canals threading it, looked calm enough on the surface: women and men going about their business and their lives, crowding the bridges and walkways, plying the channels in their narrow boats, obedient to the rhythms of wor
k and commerce, revelry and rest. If you sat long enough, however, staring into that current, you could see past the bright, unblemished surface to the perturbations beneath.
People looked over their shoulders too often, even in the middle of the day. When they spoke, they leaned close, lowered voices, husbanded their words. When we first arrived in the city, most people had been going about their days alone; now they seemed to travel in groups of three or four, even when there was no obvious need. Ruc had outlawed the carrying of swords, but everyone seemed to have a knife, some sheathed in plain sight, others inexpertly hidden beneath the fabric of vests or pants. Emotions were raw. I’d watched two women try to claw each other’s eyes out over a broken crock, a man shove another into the canal for refusing to step aside on the walkway. Children raced in feral knots through the alleys and over the bridges, mocking the cries of their elders, chanting the words to outlawed songs. They couldn’t have understood what was going on, not really, but they could smell the rot in the air.
On the morning of the day after Ruc’s abrupt disappearance, I rose before dawn, bathed, then found my way to the deck, where I sat sipping a mug of bitter ta. Down in the canal, white-finned fish rose through the murk to take flies at the surface, then faded back into the depths like thoughts or memories, something lost or forgotten. The sky sat heavy and bright on the teak roofs, as though it had been stacked there. The day was hot, and going to be hotter.
“Would it have killed you to try to fall in love with someone a little more efficient?”
Kossal, as usual, had approached without my noticing, his bare feet silent on the wooden deck. He dropped into the seat opposite mine.
“He’s efficient,” I replied. “I just wish I knew what he was being efficient at.”
“Gone into the delta without us?”
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