Oh, gods.
32
SEREFIN MELESKI
He lies beneath the waves. Deep water. Dark water. Zvezdan’s twisted hands hold between them an army, should he ever think to look up and listen to the drowned priests calling for his grace.
—The Books of Innokentiy
“You come here, you have the Kalyazi tsarevna in tow, who just happens to hunt Vultures—” Malachiasz leveled an annoyed look at Serefin that said nice try. “—what are you up to, moje kóczk?”
Serefin shuddered at Malachiasz’s biting tone.
Katya had dragged Nadya off and was talking with her intently. Kacper looked like he wanted to kill Malachiasz himself. He was sitting on a fallen tree next to Ostyia, who clearly really wanted to know what Katya and Nadya were talking about, but after a few minutes got up to talk to the Akolan pair.
“What am I up to?” Serefin repeated. “Novel for you of all people to ask me that.”
Malachiasz rolled his eyes.
“Especially when I should be asking the same of you.”
Malachiasz waved vaguely toward where Nadya stood. As Serefin watched, lightly horrified, a cluster of eyes—pitch-black—blinked open across his cheek. Malachiasz didn’t react as his body roiled and shifted. But there was a shiver at his edges that made Serefin think he wasn’t really seeing all of him. He slowly tugged the patch off his eye.
“You’re a mess, aren’t you?” he murmured.
Chaos given form. Malachiasz was hiding what he truly was behind a mask that had grown flimsy. The horror was so much more and with his lost eye he could see everything. Maybe Malachiasz really had managed to become close to godlike. Serefin had vastly underestimated what he was up against.
Malachiasz frowned, puzzled.
“And what have you done with all this power?”
A fracture in Malachiasz’s expression. “I … don’t know.”
Lying, he’s lying.
“Of course he’s lying. He’s built an empire on vulnerability,” Velyos noted.
You know what he is, then?
“Gaining the power of a god and knowing how to use it are two very different things,” Velyos replied.
Serefin tucked that thought away. He tied the patch back over his eye.
“You look abysmal,” he said flatly.
Malachiasz grinned. “So do you. Who’s the god?”
“I don’t want to talk about this with you.”
“I am flattered that you think I’m going to sabotage you.”
Serefin huffed. “What have you spent the last year doing if not sabotaging me?”
Malachiasz’s posture was languid but betrayed by his fingers picking at the skin around his cuticles. Serefin blinked, jarred a little. It was an anxious habit of his mother’s.
He really is my brother, he thought, a sinking feeling pulling him under.
“A question better served for you to answer,” Malachiasz replied. “My memory is foggy at best.”
More lies.
“It’s a long way to Tzanelivki,” Malachiasz continued. “And you’re a long way from home. In whose hands did you leave the throne?”
The needling edge in Malachiasz’s voice raised Serefin’s hackles. How did he know what had happened?
“Right. You didn’t.”
He had left it in his mother’s—blood and bone, their mother’s—hands, but that wasn’t a worthy point to argue here.
“And what would you have done?” Serefin asked.
“Killed Ruminski. Immediately. Take out the leader and the rats will scatter.”
“Haven’t we seen enough death?”
Malachiasz laughed. “We haven’t even gotten started.”
No, they most certainly had not.
“How did you know all of that?”
“I’m the Black Vulture. I still have my order.”
“Do you?”
A flicker. “Well, mostly,” he allowed.
“What did you do with Żaneta?”
“As far as I’m aware, she is in the Salt Mines where she belongs as she is a member of my order.”
Serefin ground his teeth. “You withheld her on purpose.”
“Did you think I’d make things easy for you? After your hand in so thoroughly destroying my plans? I held out something Nadya would want more and she took it.”
“Because she’s so easy to manipulate.”
Again, a crack. “She … cares,” he finally said.
“Not enough to help me keep my throne.”
“Why would you expect her to choose a Tranavian when she can save someone from Kalyazin?” But Malachiasz frowned. “It doesn’t matter. Żaneta took to the changes poorly. It happens. It’s best for her to remain in the Salt Mines until she’s adapted, and she will adapt, she just needs time.”
The admission was surprising and almost sounded like Malachiasz was trying to help.
Serefin had wondered what happened down in the Salt Mines. He didn’t really want the grim details, but this eased his mind. At least now he knew the whole thing had been as doomed from the start as he’d suspected.
He stepped closer to Malachiasz, words leaving his lips unbidden. The other boy blinked, like he wanted to step away, but held his ground. “You know what she’s going to do, don’t you?”
Malachiasz tilted his head. “Why, do you?”
“What does that goddess of hers want, Malachiasz?” Serefin didn’t know what he was saying. What was happening to him? “Did you think she would stop after Grazyk? Or does she want all of Tranavia to kneel?”
Malachiasz scowled, but his face paled.
“What will that precious cleric of yours do at the whim of her goddess?”
Malachiasz swallowed hard, ice in his eyes. “I don’t think it’s that simple.” He stepped away from Serefin. And Serefin, with a shudder, was let go.
Nadya moved away from Katya, her face drawn. The tsarevna went to speak to a very miserable Milomir—he nodded and disappeared into the trees—and she bounded over, cheerful.
“Enough wasting time?” she asked.
“Where’s he going?” Serefin asked.
“Milomir won’t be traveling with us any farther.”
“This party has four Tranavians,” Kacper pointed out.
“And one cleric,” Katya said brightly.
As if that was a worthy exchange. Nadya shifted uncomfortably. She exchanged a glance with Malachiasz, unspoken words passing between them.
It hadn’t been Serefin who had spoken of Nadya, but the words echoed in his head. What was she doing? He didn’t like that they were going to the same place because now it appeared as though they were being led to the same place, and Serefin could not go where Velyos wished him to go.
But what if it means stopping Nadya? Stopping Malachiasz?
He might not have a choice.
* * *
The itching in Serefin’s head was only getting worse. He didn’t have a great deal of time to make it to Tzanelivki before he lost what little will he had left.
And if he lost that, what would be done with him? He needed more information, and he needed to know what Nadya was planning. But Malachiasz was keeping Nadya away from him whenever he could, and when Malachiasz wasn’t with her, the tsarevna was, and she was just as bad.
So Serefin stuck close to Ostyia and Kacper, ignored how much Ostyia flirted with Katya, and let Kacper do his very best to convince him they were going to get out of this in one piece.
There was some awkwardness that Serefin and Kacper hadn’t figured out how to navigate yet. Something hanging over them that kept them apart. For Serefin, it was the inevitable—he was probably going to die. It didn’t make him feel like he should give in to the shifting spark he had for Kacper, when all he wanted to do was exactly that. He didn’t know what was holding the other boy back, though. Perhaps the same thing from a different angle.
Kalyazi forests were dark, the underbrush thick and hard to navigate. They lost the road not l
ong after they ventured into Dozvlatovya. They still had deeper to go, so much further to fall, and they were always being watched. Serefin could feel it and Malachiasz clearly could too; his hands and arms were constantly bleeding as he held various protection spells in place. Serefin wasn’t entirely sure how he was conscious with that much blood loss.
Nadya was different than she was in Grazyk, but Serefin couldn’t really place how. Was it the same tension that he was feeling? The same heavy inevitability that they were damned hanging over them? That regardless of where they went and what they did, this was so far out of their control that it would only end in disaster. She was constantly bickering with Malachiasz, but only ever about trivialities. Serefin had a feeling they would all know when those two fought about something important.
It took a few days of travel before Serefin was finally able to get Nadya alone. Malachiasz had gone off to find water that they could boil to drink. None of them wanted to risk a fire in the forest, but most nights it meant the difference between survival and a slow death.
Serefin dropped to the ground beside Nadya. She was carefully stringing wooden beads onto a cord, but every so often she would pull them all off and start over. She chewed on her lower lip as she worked.
“He’s lying, you know,” Serefin said.
“I know.” Nadya didn’t look up.
Serefin glanced sidelong at her; she returned the look before going back to her work.
How to explain that he could see things. Things that didn’t make sense, things that couldn’t be real. How did he explain that he just knew every other word out of Malachiasz’s mouth was a lie, even the earnest ones—especially those. How did he explain that he could just tell? Malachiasz remembered every single damn thing since fleeing the cathedral. He absolutely knew what he had done; he simply didn’t want to admit any of it to Nadya. Why bring to light the fact that their relationship balanced on fraying threads?
“He remembers,” Serefin said simply.
Nadya tensed. Her fingers paused in their work. She tugged the beads off the cord, rearranged two, and strung them back on. Strung on a new bead and tied three knots in between that and the next one. She worked in silence for a long time before she spoke.
“You don’t know that,” she said quietly.
“Nadya, I do.”
Her dark eyes were cold. Why did she want to trust him that much? After what he had done to her?
“Say he is lying,” she said, “what does it matter? It’s a fairly safe assumption that everything he says is a lie.”
“So why do you keep him around?”
“I need him to get to Bolagvoy. Neither of us are getting there without him.”
“Do you know that for certain?”
“Serefin, we’re both acting on myth and hope alone. If the stories say that mortals cannot pass through the forest, I’m inclined to believe it. We need someone who is more, and that someone is, unfortunately, him.”
“Could be me,” he murmured, touching the corner of one eye.
She lifted an eyebrow. “Do you want to risk that?”
Risk?
Interesting, how there was a name for that place in Kalyazi and Tranavian and it didn’t mean the same thing in either language. Interesting, how they needed a monster to get anywhere.
“Also,” she said, “nothing has happened.”
“I really don’t think that should be your metric for how harmless you think him. Because I don’t think that’s true at all. There was a massacre at Kartevka,” he said. “A lot of Kalyazi died and a lot of relics were stolen.”
Serefin had the sudden acute awareness he wasn’t acting wholly on his own. That other presence was suddenly very close. The words were still Serefin’s but there was something else nudging him along. Something that liked it very much when Nadya looked up, a fracture in her calm.
“Not good,” she allowed. “But still nothing at the levels he implied he was capable of, no?”
“You’d sacrifice your people for him?”
“No,” she said shortly. “I’m willing to be pragmatic about him. That’s different.”
Serefin couldn’t really see how it was different at all.
She sighed. “I was never under any assumption that he didn’t commit atrocities during those months. I should have been clearer, Serefin, he has not yet declared war on the gods, which suggests he’s not quite at the capacity he would like.”
“Having the power of a god and knowing what to do with it are two very different things,” Serefin said, quoting Velyos.
Nadya blinked. “What?”
She had not seen what Serefin had of Malachiasz. Serefin had a feeling that even at his worst, Malachiasz was still going to appear human. That had not been what Serefin had seen when he had let his altered vision take in his younger brother.
“What are you implying, Serefin?”
“I’m implying that you’re thinking too simply.” Serefin had been shoved backward, his words no longer his. “You are trapped in a very limited perspective where you trust what is in front of you far too much. You have your gods, but what if they’re simply beings with power that have figured out what to do with all that power?”
She was staring. This was not something he knew anything about, nor had he given her reason to believe he did. He almost certainly sounded completely out of his mind.
“We think about power too simply,” he continued, because he had to, because this wasn’t him speaking. “What if it isn’t only blood magic and whatever your power is—”
“Divine magic,” she said quietly.
“Yes, that. What if there was more to it?”
Her dark eyebrows tugged down. She looked at the half-strung strand of beads and flexed the fingers of her left hand, the skin strangely stained.
“What if the gods you worship aren’t gods at all?” he murmured, quoting Pelageya’s words from a lifetime ago. “What if it all comes down to power?” Serefin—not Serefin—asked.
“Keep going,” she said, but her voice trembled.
“Divine power, blood magic, witch magic, then more, then further. Monsters, beings who have figured out how to use their power to transcend paltry mortal bonds, further still—”
“Gods,” she finished quietly.
“Gods,” he repeated. “So if one has that kind of power, but doesn’t know yet how to use it…” He trailed off. Malachiasz had appeared at the edges of the camp, vaguely frustrated.
Nadya stared at him without blinking.
Serefin had to come back to himself. But he didn’t know how. And he wondered if this was the beginning of the end.
If he lost control so utterly, there would be no bringing himself back. The being—whatever it was—would have him totally.
She turned back, searching his uncovered eye. “Who is the god that has you?”
“Velyos.” And when he went to tell her about the other one, he found he could not. Something forced his hand, kept him from speaking. The words died in his throat.
She didn’t notice his struggle. She nodded once, her expression never changing. “Of course,” she whispered, her voice strangely dispassionate. “Don’t worry about Malachiasz. Soon he won’t be a problem for anyone.”
* * *
There was something primal about the forest they passed through now. It was locked in winter, but this was a forest always locked in winter. Perpetually dim—the trees here had needles, not leaves, and they didn’t give those up for the cold. They created canopies of darkness that they were forced to walk through, even as something lurked at the edges of their awareness. It was lying in wait, the slow build of a creature that had slumbered for millennia waking up.
Serefin’s little band of misfits had been well enough prepared for a journey this long, and he was relieved to find that Nadya knew how to travel through a forest like this.
But knowing that it was normal for it to be so dark all the time didn’t make it less terrifying. Knowing that they were moving int
o a part of the world that was ancient, that still dwelled at the twilight edges of consciousness and was rarely disturbed by mortal steps, didn’t make it less unnerving.
The deeper in they traveled, the older and larger everything grew, the trees that had clustered before looming huge and impenetrable.
“It will be like a flaying of the mind. How will you stop it, young king, young mage? How will you stop from losing everything?”
With every passing day, Serefin fractured a little further. And the other being—that other horrible voice—took a little more of him. And Velyos flayed off a little more of his soul.
Serefin wasn’t going to survive this.
Malachiasz fell into step beside him. As much as Serefin wanted to avoid him completely, it was impossible.
“You must think us all fantastically naive,” Serefin observed, using a stick to poke at the ground as he walked. “As if you’re only here to be good and useful.”
“Do you think there’s any point to holding knives at each other’s backs?” Malachiasz replied mildly. “This forest is going to kill us all long before we get the chance to kill each other.”
Serefin shuddered. Malachiasz dabbed absently at the corner of his mouth, fingers coming away wet with blood. He frowned. His movements were almost imperceptibly shaky, tiny stutters that Serefin sensed were ripples of chaos he was doing everything to hide as he fell apart.
“And we both want what’s best for Tranavia,” Malachiasz continued as if the blood had never happened. How Tranavian.
“Are you offering me a truce?”
“Not in so many words, no.” His voice was delicate with distaste.
Ruthless Gods Page 32