Ruthless Gods

by Emily A Duncan

  Parijahan pulled easily out of a rusałka’s grasp, its attention locked on Nadya’s hand.

  Nadya slowly let her hand fall and they all watched it drop. There was a thread of power—one she did not recognize—tying her to the rusałki and she didn’t understand what it meant, but she felt it when it snapped. The second whatever control she had over the monsters broke, they returned to tearing the boat down into the depths.

  She flexed her hand and closed her eyes, an odd stare from Serefin boring into her back. What was this magic? A rusałka’s claws clasped her forearm, tight and painful. The snow had turned to sleet and it struck her skin in thousands of cold slaps. Nadya’s hip slammed into the railing of the boat.

  Not witch magic, not blood magic, not divine magic.

  There was nothing else. There was nothing else.

  So what had she just done? And could she do it again?

  The thread that tied her to Malachiasz shifted—his attention was on her but it didn’t matter, not when these monsters were going to drown them all, and for what? Hanna said they wanted something, but what?

  Urgently she pulled at that thread of power, searching past the darkness. A rusałka dug her claws farther into Nadya’s arms and if she didn’t figure out how to use it she was going to die. They all would.

  There.

  The line pulled taut and with it came a thrilling rush of power. Power she had missed before; the shape was so very different from the magic she knew.

  Nadya threw her will into that power. They would leave. They would not torment this boat. They would not hurt anyone.

  Leave now.

  Everything shuddered around her and Nadya let out a gasping breath, knees giving out and sending her crashing to the decks.

  The silence that followed stretched out for so long she expected them to renew their efforts. Then all the rusałki fled.

  Serefin pushed away from where he had nearly been pulled over and crouched in front of her, moths bursting into the air around him.

  “What was that?” he demanded.

  “I’m fine, thanks for asking,” she managed through gasps.

  He glared, unamused. The only sounds came from the rain pounding against the deck, less violent than before, but all the more freezing.

  Blood and bone. The Tranavian curse came unbidden. Nadya had just used impossible-to-define magic in front of the boat’s captain. She looked up at the woman, who was standing nearby, watching them warily.

  “I’m not going to ask questions,” Hanna said. She took her hat off and wrung it out—even though it was still raining—before slapping it back on over her dark hair. “I don’t want to know. That was too strange for me. The rusałki are quiet creatures, they take their fair share of lives, but they’ve never paid me any mind.” She shook her head. “Something awful in the air today.”

  Not just today. Nadya rubbed her thumb over her scar. The darkness reacted to her touch and she shivered. Parijahan slumped down against the railing, her head in her hands.

  “Are you all right?” Nadya asked, alarmed.

  Parijahan’s breath was coming in fast, panicked gasps. “I could have drowned,” she said, her voice shaking.

  Like her sister. She moved next to Parijahan, careful to keep her distance, but Parijahan immediately rested her head on Nadya’s shoulder. Serefin watched them quietly.

  “Everything is fine,” Nadya murmured, but the lie burned her tongue. She couldn’t stop rubbing at the scar.

  They sat in the rain for a while, already soaked to their skin so there wasn’t much point in moving below decks. It took Parijahan a long time to calm down.

  “What is that?” she asked after watching Nadya trace the spiral on her palm for the thousandth time.

  She still had Velyos’ pendant. She dug it out of her pocket and handed it to Parijahan.

  “It was the only way to get enough power to do what was necessary,” she said slowly. “Using an old god who demands sacrifices of blood. Well, I think Velyos is a god. I don’t actually know. That sounds bad. And worse, I stole some of Malachiasz’s power with it.”

  It was still too close, the weight of his wrist, heavy with compliance, the drag of the blade over his palm, carving out a claim on him that he had to be fighting against even now. Why had he let her?

  Parijahan cast Nadya a furtive glance. Serefin took the pendant from her, turning it over in his fingers, eyebrows tugging down almost imperceptibly.

  Nadya thought about what she’d said, and laughed in a dull, horrified way. “Oh, no,” she whispered.

  “It’s not possible for you to take his magic,” Serefin said mildly.

  “That’s what Pelageya said, too,” Nadya whispered. “But I did.”

  Serefin shook his head. “Magic doesn’t work like that. There are rules—”

  “Oh, you sound like him.”

  That got him to shut up fast, but not for long.

  “Can you feel it?” Serefin asked, his shock turning into curiosity, also like Malachiasz. She shuddered. Tranavians and their destructive fascination with magic.

  “I always feel it,” she said softly. “Him,” she clarified, voice dropping lower.

  Serefin blinked, startled, but Parijahan appeared concerned.

  Nadya glanced between them, pressing her thumb against the center of her palm. “It didn’t—that didn’t feel like his magic. I don’t know what that was.” I don’t know what’s happening to me.

  “I’m a little more concerned that you’re constantly aware of the Black Vulture’s presence.”

  Nadya shrugged helplessly. “I did what I had to. These are the consequences.”

  “Does that mean it works in reverse?”

  Nadya chewed on her lower lip. She couldn’t bring herself to tell them about the conversations.

  “I don’t know,” she finally said. “I know he’s aware of me. Not who I am, just that I’m here.”

  Parijahan let out a soft breath. Serefin looked ill. He rubbed at his bad eye. Nadya wondered if it was bothering him; this wasn’t the first time she had seen him favoring it.

  “Well,” he said quietly, “this changes things.”

  “Still hell-bent on breaking Żaneta free from the Salt Mines?” Nadya asked dryly.

  “There’s nothing else to do,” he returned, sounding as helpless as she felt.

  “You could start by telling me what happened to you that night. What really happened,” Nadya said. She wasn’t telling him the full truth, and she didn’t expect that courtesy from him, either, but maybe having a better understanding of what happened would help. “I know you died, Serefin. I can see it on you.”

  “Is this the time for that conversation?”

  “When better?”

  He sighed. Kacper and Ostyia were below decks, surprisingly apart from their king. Hanna had long since moved to the stern of the boat, muttering about her “good ladies never acting like this.” He finally sat, crossing his legs underneath him. He opened his hand and the pendant fell from his fingers, bouncing when the string caught on his knuckles.

  He tossed it to her. “I haven’t the faintest idea what happened to me.” He rubbed at his eye, harder this time.

  Nadya smoothed her thumb over the carving. How had Kostya—her mischievous but pious old friend—found it in the first place? Why had it made its way to her?

  When she looked up at Serefin, she watched with horror as his hand turned red with blood. She caught his wrist, pulling his arm away. Serefin made a soft sound of protest, but she shushed him.

  His eye was deep midnight blue, all trace of the pupil gone, flecked with stars constantly changing their constellations, but the white was crimson, as if every vein had burst. There was blood trickling out the corner of his eye.

  His pulse raced under her thumb. She was dimly aware of Parijahan leaving—possibly to fetch the Tranavians, but they couldn’t help here. This was not the fault of blood magic; the bad air in Grazyk wasn’t making him ill.

  “
Nadya?” he said. He sounded small and lost, like a little boy suddenly finding himself alone in the woods. It struck absolute fear into her heart. The moths that trailed him created a frenzied cloud of dust around his head.

  She made a low, soothing sound, pressing her fingers against the skin underneath his eye. It was darkened as if bruised, blood pooling there as well.

  “I can’t close it,” he said, panic threaded through his voice. “It took this one and I can’t control it anymore.”

  “It?”

  Serefin didn’t answer. The pupil of his good eye was blasted out, the ring of ice only a mere sliver, awareness flickering in and out. Sweat beaded at his temples, his breath coming fast.

  “Serefin, what is it?” Nadya asked. She swallowed back her panic.

  A black patch slammed over Serefin’s eye. Kacper caught him when he froze and collapsed in a faint. Kacper’s face was tense and withdrawn and so worried that Nadya’s heart clenched. He tied the patch and smoothed Serefin’s hair before wiping at the blood already starting to seep out from underneath. The gentleness in his touch made Nadya feel like an intruder.

  “What’s happening to him?” he asked, turning to Nadya.

  Nadya shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, you had better find out, and you had better fix it, Kalyazi. Or all his talk of keeping you alive will be worthless because I’ll kill you myself.”

  8

  SEREFIN MELESKI

  Svoyatovi Zakhar Astakhov: Astakhov communed with the voices of the forest—some say Vaclav—some say something much older—some say he spoke with nothing more than the leshy who ultimately took his mind and dragged him into the Tachilvnik Forest to feast on his bones.

  —Vasiliev’s Book of Saints

  He’d recognized the symbol on Nadya’s pendant. Was it a Kalyazi god that had control of his eye? Serefin thought the gods abhorred blood magic—that’s what this entire bloody war was about, wasn’t it?—and his vision had been so much like something that could be reached with blood magic.

  Serefin had returned the eye patch to Ostyia—a little worse for wear—after their last boat had docked and they had sought out new horses. Nadya had inspected his eye and declared it fine, given the circumstances, which he understood to mean she had no idea what was going on, either.

  It hadn’t been the vision that had been terrifying so much as the powerlessness that had gripped him. He couldn’t close his eye, couldn’t stop what he was seeing. He could barely move.

  He was going to lose himself to this thing if he didn’t do something about it. And now he had the added stress of worrying that Nadya’s bizarre connection to Malachiasz was going to compromise everything.

  Żywia had come on her own, which meant Malachiasz was actively plotting to usurp Serefin’s authority, or worse. And unfortunately Serefin couldn’t exactly kill Malachiasz in the Salt Mines—though he wanted to.

  He didn’t really know how to kill a Vulture; they only died under extraordinary circumstances. And he would have to create just that. The Voldah Gorovni might have resurfaced, but Serefin couldn’t exactly go to a group of Kalyazi Vulture hunters and ask best practices for killing the monsters.

  They had long since passed the last village that dared to rest near Kyętri and the dark magic it harbored. The ground was flat here, the trees stunted if alive at all. It was made all the more bleak by the snow falling from the permanently gray sky. Serefin was used to traveling in the cold, but it had been cold without relief for so long that it was growing unbearable.

  “He knows I’m close.” Nadya’s voice startled Serefin as she moved her horse up next to his. She was still wearing that jacket, nearly hidden underneath the second coat she wore. She had a hood up over her hair, the fur collar around her shoulders frosting with ice. Her hands worried the wooden necklace of prayer beads around her neck.

  The others had fallen farther back. Serefin glanced over his shoulder. Kacper looked bored; Ostyia was talking to Rashid, as animated as ever.

  “Just you?” He turned back to Nadya.

  “Yes. He doesn’t know who I am.”

  “Awkward.”

  Nadya’s nose wrinkled. “He’s not particularly coherent.”

  Serefin lifted an eyebrow.

  “I forgot you were unconscious for that bit.”

  “I know what he did.”

  “Yes, but it’s harder to understand if you didn’t see it. What’s your plan?”

  “He has to recognize my authority, regardless…” He trailed off at the expression on Nadya’s face. He sighed, tugging his hat more firmly over his ears.

  “I just told you he’s barely coherent. Appealing to protocol isn’t going to do you any good.”

  “Nadya, what I would dearly like is to put a knife through his chest, get Żaneta out, and be done with it.”

  She flinched.

  “Would it fix…?” She pressed her fingers to her eye.

  He groaned. “I’m losing my mind.”

  She was thoughtful. “Possibly, yes.”

  He frowned. He had been hoping that, what, she would disagree? This girl who spoke to the gods regularly? Stupid.

  A flash of dark forest, the scent of old leaves and damp moss, suddenly filled Serefin’s nose. He shook his head, trying to dispel the scene before it turned into a full hallucination.

  “Do you have a better plan?”

  “I go alone.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “I thought you didn’t want to go at all?”

  She was quiet, gazing out over the barren field scattered with dead trees that would eventually lead to a doorway to hell. There was a vulture sitting in a nearby tree and Serefin couldn’t shake the feeling it was watching them, waiting to report back.

  “There’s no reason for all of us to die down there,” she said.

  “How noble,” Serefin said flatly.

  “I am incredibly noble.”

  “Tell me your motive, Nadya.”

  “I don’t have to.”

  He tilted his head back, rolling his neck to look over at her. Her eyes widened.

  “What?” He straightened in his saddle.

  “N-nothing,” she said. “I need Malachiasz for something.”

  “You just told me he was barely coherent and that my going down there would result in disaster.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You implied it. Maybe we should try trusting each other,” he said. At her incredulous scoff, he continued. “Just a bit?”

  She smiled at that.

  “What do we need him for?”

  “It’s complicated and very religious.”

  He didn’t manage to mask his distaste. She laughed.

  “There’s no we. You only want Żaneta as leverage to get your throne back.”

  “Oh, don’t say it like that.”

  “You left her with the Vultures for months and are only going to find her now because she’s of use to you.”

  He swallowed. He couldn’t really argue with her.

  “Tranavians are cruel,” she said.

  If he took her bait she would never tell him what she was planning. He tamped down his rising frustration.

  “What for?” He pressed on mildly, “He committed treason, Nadya, and you’re technically the enemy; I need to know what you’re planning.”

  After a few seconds of petulant silence, she sighed.

  “There’s a place in Kalyazin that myth says is the seat of the gods. I’m going there. Stop looking at me like that; I know what Malachiasz wants to do. It’s surrounded by a forest only the divine can walk through.”

  At Serefin’s confused silence, she continued.

  “The gods don’t talk to me anymore. And you don’t care about that, fine, but this?” She waved to the snow dusting the ground. “And the rusałki attack, the rumors of other things, horrors, emerging from the deep dark where they slept. There’s something coming, Serefin.”

  “Something is stirring. Something is
hungry.”

  He shuddered violently.

  “That implies I’m going to let you go,” he said.

  “Whatever you think about the gods, I don’t care. But something is in the air and I intend to find out what it is and how to stop it. You don’t have to come with me. I’ll get Żaneta for you; you take your throne back, maybe stop this damn war while you are at it. And you will let me go. I need to go home. And I need Malachiasz for this.”

  “So, you think he’s divine?”

  “I think he’s an idiot. But that ritual of your father’s was to become—if not a god, then akin to one and I believe Malachiasz has succeeded at something of the sort. He can take me where I need to go.”

  “Have you told the others?” His voice came out strained.

  Nadya shook her head. “I’ll probably die down there.”

  Serefin didn’t want her to go down there by herself but the prospect of dealing with his brother—the word was still strange and unfamiliar and uncomfortably right to Serefin—was not something Serefin wished to do. He didn’t want to admit how much he wanted to let Nadya deal with this problem.

  “Tell me you have a plan, at the very least.”

  “We’ve been talking, he and I. There’s a crack in his armor.”

  “I’m not hearing a plan.”

  “Because your plans have been so detailed?” She rolled her eyes. “Whatever he did … I don’t think it took him as far as he expected.”

  “You lost me.”

  She laughed, surprising Serefin, who had never heard her laugh quite that way before. It wasn’t derisive, but a gentle, easy sound. “He shattered himself, yes, but if he had the power to dethrone the gods, well, wouldn’t we have seen the results by now?”

  Not if the gods don’t exist, Serefin thought petulantly.

  “Oh, wishful thinking,” the reedy voice chimed.

  He held up a hand and a large, dusky gray moth landed on his index finger, its wings fluttering and catching the fading light.

  “You think he can be saved?” Serefin asked. He was willing to play the long game. It would make Malachiasz easier to kill.

  “Hardly. But perhaps pulled back into a semblance of coherency.”