Ruthless Gods

by Emily A Duncan

  Malachiasz frowned.

  “You don’t understand how relentless her orders were. How frequently I was told the very many ways I could—and should—kill you. Everything I ignored, because for some reason, I wanted you alive.”

  “For some reason,” he repeated, voice flat.

  He wasn’t looking at her anymore and she flipped her voryen around and used the hilt to turn his face toward hers.

  “I don’t want you to go. But you betrayed me,” she reminded him. “You are the leader of a cult that has been tormenting my people for generations and I cannot be so foolish as to overlook that a second time.”

  He studied her face, then pushed her knife away and turned on the bench, putting his foot up on it as a barrier between them.

  “If I had killed a god don’t you think you would know by now?” he snapped, voice low. “If I had done anything that would save my country from your peoples’ fanatic torches, don’t you think it would have happened?”

  “No,” she said simply.

  He shot her an incredulous look.

  “You played a long game that led me on a string for months.”

  “To arrive at an end that would help Tranavia survive this blasted war, except Kalyazin has pushed all the way into my country. I played a longer game than even you know and it failed. Nadya, I failed.”

  And even though the evidence of his failure was before her, that he was here at all implied he hadn’t reached the state he thought he would, she could not believe him.

  But what was divinity? What was this power he was trying to reach and was it possible? It wasn’t for her to know the genesis of the gods and yet and yet and yet.

  “What have you done to yourself?” she asked quietly.

  “I haven’t slept in months,” he said, sounding wretched. “I remember some things from when I was…” He trailed off. “Like that. But only pieces. You’re right about other things, too. I am the monster you spoke to in the Salt Mines. There is no me and it. It’s only me. I am the horror you kissed on an altar made of bone. It’s all just me.”

  Nadya flushed horribly, grateful he had said the last part in a whisper so quiet even she had barely heard it.

  “You thought letting your gods into Tranavia would destroy it, I know that. You were willing to do it, no matter how much I tried to show you it wasn’t the way.” His voice was lowering and fear flooded through Nadya.

  “Nadezhda Lapteva, I know so many things.” His hands were tipped with iron claws and he stroked the back of one down her cheek. “The end of the king and the veil wasn’t the end of anything. It was only the beginning. And now your goddess will use you to create a reckoning that will swallow everything.”

  Nadya shook her head slowly. Marzenya was a vengeful goddess, but Nadya had her own will and she didn’t want Tranavia destroyed. Quieted, but not destroyed. Not anymore.

  She shifted slightly, her blade resting a hair from his ribs. His lips quirked to one side in a slight smile.

  “I will not let Tranavia fall,” he said softly. “Not even if I have to go through you to save it.” He studied her face. “You will need magic of your own, magic you are willing to claim, if you hope to continue toying with powers beyond your comprehension.”

  “Why are you still here, Malachiasz?”

  “I am curious. You’ve asked me to help.”

  He was too willing to help, again. But … what if he was making amends? She hated this impossible cycle she had been caught in. He eyed her for another minute before getting up and leaving the room. Nadya set her voryen down onto the table and rested her head in her hands.

  There was no one she could go to for help. She couldn’t trust Malachiasz, but she already knew that. She was uncertain of Marzenya, whose silence had only left her confused about what she had seen in Grazyk.

  She feared what was happening to her. She feared what Malachiasz was planning.

  Claiming the dark well of power terrified her beyond belief. And she was afraid how, despite everything—despite her anger, the frustration—she couldn’t stay away from him; she couldn’t tell him to go. The thought of losing him was devastating. It shouldn’t be. She shouldn’t care.

  But she did.

  Maybe it was worth the risk of another betrayal—maybe it was worth the risk of knowing she was inevitably going to betray him.

  Or maybe she should be forgetting all of this.

  She tried to place the pieces of what she knew together and they didn’t paint a coherent picture. She was still sitting in the refectory when Kostya entered, looking better than she had seen him in days.

  He hesitated when he saw her, but slid onto the bench across from her. He was clean, the bruises on his face from the Salt Mines had finally healed, and his hair had been cut short, Veceslav’s symbol shorn into the side. To see it cheered her. She missed Veceslav.

  “Dozleyena,” she said.

  He gave her a wry glance. But it was so very much like the old Kostya that relief spread through her.

  “How are you holding up?”

  She shrugged. He sighed and after a pause placed both of his hands on the table. She hesitated, then slotted her fingers in his.

  “It’s hard,” he said, “to realize that I couldn’t be there when you needed me and thus you had to make choices no one should ever have to make.”

  “Don’t blame yourself for what I’ve done. I knew what I was throwing myself into.”

  He shook his head slightly. “I was supposed to help you. I wanted to help you. Instead I was locked up in that hellhole with those monsters. I felt useless, weak, and I took my frustration out on you. I apologize.”

  “You have every right to be upset with me. I don’t expect you to understand my decisions.”

  “I hate that Tranavian with everything in me,” Kostya said bluntly. “I hate that you care for him.”

  She looked down at their hands, his tightened on hers.

  “But you’re my best friend. I’m not letting him ruin that.”

  Nadya wasn’t certain she deserved this grace from Kostya. She smiled weakly. He rubbed his thumb over hers.

  “Do you want to go to Mass?” he asked.

  “I really do.”

  Kostya paused. He studied her closer, then stood up and waited for her to follow, and when she did he pulled her into an embrace.

  Struck once more by the way he smelled like home and how near to tears that brought her, she clutched at him for a tremulous moment.

  “I want us to be friends again,” she whispered against his shoulder. “And I’m scared that it’s impossible.”

  He leaned back and cupped the side of her face in his hand. “We never stopped, Nadya.” He gently kissed her forehead. “Come.”

  Kostya would never understand what had changed within her. But he had also changed. He was quieter, no more constant talking and teasing. Solemn and far more pious. She couldn’t begin to fathom what he had suffered in the Salt Mines. And she didn’t begrudge him for trying to kill Malachiasz, the gods knew she’d had the urge often enough. She couldn’t really begrudge him of any of the things he had done. She was in the wrong here. She just didn’t know how to claw her way out of the mess she had made for herself. She couldn’t make her heart stop with its traitorous pull to a monster.

  “It’s nice, isn’t it?” she said, following him out into the courtyard. “Being back in a monastery. I missed it.” She wanted nightly prayer, to mold into the day-to-day schedule of the monastery, a pattern her body longed to return to, as familiar as breathing.

  “It is nice,” Kostya agreed. “You could stay, you know,” he said after the briefest hesitation.

  “You know I can’t,” she said, hooking her arm through his.

  “I don’t, Nadya. It sounds to me like you’ve done everything expected of you.”

  She screwed up her face. Why didn’t it feel like enough, then?

  He cast her a sidelong glance. “You always were one for glory.”

  “I d
on’t know what you’re talking about,” she said primly.

  “My divine calling,” he said in an uncanny mimic of her voice.

  She shoved him, laughing, knocking him off pace. “It’s true, though!”

  “But it doesn’t have to be true forever,” he said, his grin fading to seriousness.

  Nadya wasn’t naive—well, as naive as she used to be. She knew what Kostya was trying to say. But it wasn’t just a matter of saying, Yes, when all this divine nonsense is finished, I’ll find a nice monastery and live quietly ever after. Making that kind of promise was only tempting fate. She had tasted something different outside the monastery walls and she wasn’t ready to give it up yet. She wasn’t ready to leave Parijahan and Rashid. She wasn’t ready to leave her country and that of her enemies to a never-ending war.

  She wasn’t going to make him a promise she couldn’t keep. So she shrugged.

  His expression twisted before he smoothed it out and nodded.

  A fracture of Nadya’s soul began to heal during the service. She wasn’t home, but it felt like she was. No matter what happened, the routine liturgy of the Divine Codex would always be the same. Some things would never change, even if she did.

  She wasn’t expecting her goddess to pipe up in the middle of the service.

  “I did not abandon you, child,” Marzenya said.

  Nadya stiffened, heart lifting. Kostya shifted next to her and she ignored him.

  Then what happened?

  “Tainted magic, poison. I have been trying to return to you, but the others cannot, not yet.”

  Nadya frowned. Did she mean Malachiasz’s magic? It would make sense if Marzenya’s absence was his fault, but it didn’t quite explain everything else.

  “You thought the Tranavians were finished with their atrocities? They have only begun.”

  Malachiasz had said this was only the beginning. Nadya shivered. She received another nudge of concern from Kostya.

  What do I do? Continue west?

  “Continue west,” Marzenya confirmed. “This is no longer a matter of Tranavia’s heresy. Something must be done to stop them totally.”

  Nadya pursed her lips, wary. I don’t want them destroyed. I won’t aid in their annihilation.

  “Destroyed? I said nothing of destruction. No,” Marzenya said, a gentle croon in the back of Nadya’s head. “Our tactic must change. We’ll make them see Kalyazi might. We’ll show them why they should lay down their arms.”

  This, Nadya liked the sound of. This could bring an end to the war without the total destruction of a country Nadya had come to appreciate, even as she abhorred their practices.

  What do I need to the west? Nadya asked.

  “A way to reach the others. You cannot do this on your own, my blessed child. You must come to the west, taste of divinity, and show the heretics their time has ended.”

  Nadya’s resolve hardened. The plan wouldn’t have to change. For all Malachiasz would know, she still needed to get to the temple in the west. He would never have to know what she was doing.

  Marzenya was right, what she had accomplished was not enough. Tranavia would keep reaching, keep searching, until they had what Malachiasz wanted—complete and total dominion apart from the gods.

  “We will end this once and for all.”

  Nadya smiled ever so slightly. Once and for all.

  26

  SEREFIN MELESKI

  Svoyatovi Nikolay Ostaltsev: Spoken of only in whispers, fragments of broken text that speak of a boy blessed by Veceslav and ruined by the monstrous Vultures of Tranavia.

  —Vasiliev’s Book of Saints

  Serefin didn’t really sleep anymore. At night, everything he had tucked away for the sake of his own tenuous sanity returned. The stone temple and its massive doors. The many, many hands reaching for him.

  It was easier to stay awake.

  It made it easier to fight the losing battle of the pull to the west.

  One day he was going to wake up and find himself miles away like before. He couldn’t stay here; he had to leave.

  He must have fallen asleep, though, because he woke up halfway down the hall of the inn, to Kacper pulling him back to their rooms, clearly worried.

  “Not again,” Kacper said, and took his hand as he pulled him along.

  Serefin rubbed his free hand over his face. Again? Right. He gently tugged away from Kacper, not wanting it to seem purposeful. There was a strange feeling at the back of his neck, like he was being watched, like whatever it was that was holding on to him was merely waiting to take him.

  “I thought you had stopped fighting. Struck a deal, you and I. Don’t force my hand, I can make things worse for you.”

  Serefin ignored Velyos.

  “It would be a shame, wouldn’t it? Mortals are so fragile. All it would take is one Kalyazi deciding there are too many Tranavians here. And my assurance the Kalyazi blade finds that boy’s heart.”

  No. Serefin had stopped walking and Kacper was looking at him with tired puzzlement. Sleep softened his edges, his shirt hung open, and Serefin wanted to bury his face against Kacper’s neck and hide from all that his cursed eyes were showing him. Serefin covered his left eye instead. Everything was fine. The corners of the world were no longer bleeding. He still had one. But he had lost the other, completely.

  “Do you think you can so easily be rid of me?”

  Serefin couldn’t keep fighting.

  If I do what you ask, will this end?

  “I certainly won’t have any more use for you.”

  Serefin swallowed. He very carefully lowered his hand, readying for the shift in his terrible vision. It was becoming hard to know what was real.

  He took Kacper’s hand and squeezed before letting go. “I’m fine,” he said, a little too forced.

  Kacper’s eyes searched his. But he simply sighed and returned to his pile of blankets on the floor.

  “They are no longer scattered, you see,” Velyos hissed. “Once they were bound into objects, tucked into tombs. But there were those still faithful. They took the pieces to Tachilvnik. There they wait the touch of someone whose magic can set them free. There they wait for a reckoning.”

  If all you need is a blood mage, Serefin said dryly, you really didn’t have to choose me.

  “I wanted the girl,” Velyos snapped. “Having the girl would have righted so many wrongs. I waited for so long until I was finally in her hands but your infantile father cast that spell and sent out a call I could not ignore. You’ll do. You’re desperate enough, you see. And we’re not alone anymore, you and I.”

  Serefin couldn’t breathe. He needed to get outside. He leaned over the edge of the bed, checking that Kacper had fallen back asleep.

  His heart squeezed painfully. He wanted to smooth the dark curls away from Kacper’s forehead. He wanted to crawl down beside Kacper and tuck his face against Kacper’s shoulder, to feel something.

  He slid back out of bed, careful to be silent. Kacper slept light.

  He shivered. What else would he do while he slept?

  He made his way down to the inn’s common room. Two of Katya’s soldiers sat at the doorway, playing a game using a wide array of differently shaped tiles. One looked up when Serefin approached.

  Serefin lifted his hands. “I’m unarmed and I only want to go outside. I don’t know what orders your tsarevna gave you—”

  “You can leave,” the one said with a shrug. “Can’t guarantee a villager won’t put a blade in your back, though, once you’re out there.”

  He let out a long exhale. Everyone knew, then. Katya’s general lack of interest in taking advantage of having the king of Tranavia held captive would not extend to other Kalyazi. The soldiers looked like they’d like to put a blade in his heart as well.

  Serefin couldn’t even blithely pretend the Tranavian noble they should be mad at was his father. He had done terrible things to their people during this war. He would do them again. He wasn’t here to play nice with Kalyazin. I
t was the Kalyazi’s fault he had their gods rattling around in his head.

  This was the entire reason for this bloody war. Anger coiled deep in Serefin’s core and he pushed through the door to the inn and into the darkness.

  It was the damn Kalyazi and their damn gods and he had been fine before all of this. He had been fine when all that was required of him was victory on the battlefield and slaughtering these backward people. And Tranavia had been so close to victory. They had been so close and then the missive had come from Izak Meleski that ordered Serefin to the Baikkle Mountains because of rumors a cleric was hiding there.

  He should have ignored the missive. Burned it. It wouldn’t have been the first time one of his father’s messages was “lost.” Serefin had turned battles to Tranavia’s favor by ignoring his father’s orders; this war would be over if he had done it that day.

  But he had wanted to see the cleric for himself. He had wanted to know if this girl the Kalyazi clung to as their hope and savior was real.

  And then … disaster.

  This god had wanted her. Could he be convinced to leave Serefin and go torment her instead?

  “It doesn’t work like that, boy. You are always so quick to run from your demons.”

  Oh, is that what you are?

  “That would be too easy.”

  Serefin was careful as he moved away from the inn, the soldier’s warning hitting a little too close. There had to be a way of breaking this connection without destroying himself. He didn’t want to turn to the tsarevna, but if anyone could help it would be the princess with the knowledge of the esoteric.

  The carving on his chest suddenly ached with a pointed fierceness, and he covered his left eye as the world’s distortion grew even darker.

  “No more fighting, child.” Serefin nearly passed out. It was the new presence. The lingering darkness. The one who prowled the edges of a forest scattered with bones. The one Serefin had been desperately hoping would not deign to speak to him.