Death's Merchant: Common Among Gods - Book One

by Justan Henner

  “Perhaps…” Cyleste mused. “Perhaps the Whore blocks your connection.”

  “It could be,” Just admitted. “But it doesn’t seem quite like her. If Mother wished to confront me, she would do it openly. She would make it clear that I am not to meddle with her servants.”

  “His name is in the Book of Justice,” the heckler said. “Justice. Ju-” the heckler repeated the word again, elongating the vowels as if that would make his meaning any clearer. “-stice.”

  Just rolled his tongue along the inside of his cheek. He had learned the oath magic from studying the bonds formed between the Fatereader and her victims – he could create the bonds, change them, manipulate them – but he didn’t understand them as well as he should. All they seemed to require was a bargain, a few words of consent, and a signature in his book, but however Fate used her bonds, they did not seem to work quite the same for him. The book for example; for some reason, her bargains did not require the ritual of signing, and he’d never been able to figure out why, or even what the signatures did. Not for the first time, Just wished he knew more about that evil woman.

  Cyleste cleared her throat. “Will you be staying long?”

  Just answered slowly. “No… I came only to make certain the grain barges would be enough for you. I must return to Settin, and I imagine that I will be heading for Trel soon after, to deal with Silt. It may be some time before I return.”

  “Have you made a decision about the queen?”

  Just frowned. “Not yet. I am wont to trust her, but her citizens are another matter. The Butcher’s Cult is stronger here than we suspected, and these Atheists bothersome. I fear one or the other will make trouble for us when they learn of our intentions.”

  “You intend to move forward with them, then?”

  “Yes…” Just considered. “But not yet. Once I return from Settin.”

  With a grim smile, Cyleste nodded.

  Just let his mind wander to other matters. “Have you dealt with your insurrectionist yet?”

  Cyleste shook her head. “Not yet. He… said something to give me pause.”

  Just sighed. “He is an assassin, Cyleste. That is his purpose. You should know better than to allow him any time to sow his seeds. Especially now that we know so much about that boy’s connection to Trask.”

  “I think I should give Bell another chance.”

  Just was growing impatient. “Just kill him, Cyleste, before he kills you.” His tone made it clear the conversation was over. “Speaking of… have you learned anything more of the boy?”

  “Of Jem Trask?”

  “Yes.” Of Just’s newfound brother. A brother who Fate believed that Just had meddled with… why would Fate believe that?

  “Small things, here and there,” Cyleste said. “The boy was sired during the Gableman’s Riots, by a courtesan so I’m told, but none could tell me who. I had thought him living with an adopted father, somewhere in the north… yet… yet suddenly all those discrepancies over the years make much more sense. It is obvious now, that the Deacon Trask must have been alive. They were all scheming against me. All three of them. Taehrn, Trask, and Magistrate Godahn.”

  “What might they want with the boy?”

  “The wealth, I imagine.”

  “The wealth?”

  “The boy testified against his father. It was the evidence which damned Trask. For repayment, the boy was granted all of his father’s holdings, but only when he came of age, and only once he married.”

  “So, they think that if they wed the boy…”

  “Yes, they can steal the wealth, then use it all against us.”

  “Yet the boy is godkind.”

  Cyleste nodded. “So you say. Do you think that he…” Cyleste stopped and looked away.

  Just frowned at her. “Speak your mind, Cyleste.”

  “Do you think he is the assassin?”

  Just considered it… something odd was happening. In Vale, he had found two aspects. One nestled within the boy’s, almost as if someone had attempted to disguise themself as Jem before making that godsforsaken portal. The boy – Just’s brother – had killed Indaht Trask, then nearly killed Trin Cavahl, and now he served as Taehrn Andren’s scribe. It was almost as though someone was guiding the boy toward all the places which would garner Just’s attention. Like someone was manipulating Jem, and for some reason, Fate had believed that someone to be Just. Yet, hadn’t she also said that the boy was part of a bargain between herself and the Mother? And that Jem was blighted, yet now he has the birthright…

  “I…” Just started. “I do not know, Cyleste. Anything is possible. For safety’s sake, keep him far from you until I have decided what to do. For now, I must go.”

  For several moments she watched him silently, her eyes studying his face. When she spoke, she had moved on to another topic.

  “While you’re gone, if I need your help…”

  “Then you know how to contact me.”

  “And if I cannot?”

  She spoke of the few times she had tried to contact him, only to find his presence absent. All those in the book had mentioned such occasions at one time or another, and each of them aligned with hours Just had lost. Such topics made him fear that Wilt’s ability to deny his touch might be more serious than it seemed. What would he do if he could no longer contact his followers except in person? Worse, what would that imply?

  Just forced a false calm into his reply. “You pray, Cyleste. You pray.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  The only light that lit Loy’s cabin was sunlight through the lone window. The Whoring thing taunted him, a reminder of his newly acquired incompetence. It infuriated him. Made him tense, made his body shake with hatred.

  He had never had need for anger in his life; dismissal had always been enough to protect him. If Niece Kindrel disagreed? Well then, she was a defiler. If Brother Rain was coming to Newfield? Then it was time to winter in the Minchaw estate. There was never a need for anger, for he had never had the need for confrontation.

  But this was different. There was no hiding from this. No justified dismissal, no excuse to simply walk away because he was better and knew better than his challengers. On the table before him was an unlit candle, the tallow, a light orange, the wick, of red string, and the base, a dish of flattened copper. But there was no Whoring flame; after hours of trying, he could not light it. He had thought the birthright slow in recovering from his ordeals in Dekahn, but now it seemed that it would not recover.

  Prime the nodes. A warmth hummed in his veins. Perceive the goal. He saw the flame behind his eyes. Release the nodes. A trickle. Sparks. An unlit lamp.

  It was his nine hundred and sixteenth attempt. He should have been exhausted, but he refused to give up on this. And yet, each failure made it worse. Each failure drove his fears into the fore, forcing him to confront those thoughts which he had spent all this time fleeing from.

  Prime the nodes. More warmth.

  He wanted to believe that Father Order was a brilliant man. After all, Father was the second son of the world’s creator. Father knew the truths of the world, had copied them down first hand as the Mother dictated them. And when she had lost her faith in the world, she had handed it over to that second son, the only person she could trust to be its steward. Father was the pantheon’s last protector, its savior, its agent of reclamation, and every godling knew that to become a god, one must follow the direction of Order. One must give him or herself fully to Father Order’s divine knowledge.

  Perceive the goal. He imagined the perfect flame.

  Such were the ‘truths’ that Loy had been taught and he had followed them to the letter. He had spent his life denying the defilers who had sought to turn him from Father’s teachings. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, he still wanted to believe in Order, and he had pushed Kindrel’s lies aside for what they were. Loy hadn’t wanted to believe Niece Kindrel, nor Quill, nor any of the genuine truths he had witnessed since coming to this lan
d. He hadn’t wanted to stray from Order’s path. He was dedicated. He had given up his life to those truths. But all that sacrifice had gotten him nowhere, because here he was, a godling without his gift. He was impotent. Blighted.

  Release the birthright. This time, there was not even a flicker. Only the pain, like the sting of a cut bled dry.

  He could feel the birthright, there beneath his flesh, laced through the tiny dots from which the power came, but it simply would not exit. He could not access it, and no matter how many times, nor how many different ways he tried, the candle simply would not light.

  And yet, in desperation, he repeated the mantra time after time; Prime the nodes. Perceive the goal. Release the birthright. But each time, the mantra failed. Each time, there was only a flicker of light, followed by the pain. He could not stop. The fear would not let him.

  Prime the nodes. The singing ecstasy tingled, calling for release, not only eager, but insistent.

  For this failure, he blamed the fools around him. After all, Quill’s accusations of pride could not be farther from the truth. It was not pride that had led Loy to his current state. It was faith. It was the security of self-indulgence. Of self-delusion and self-righteousness.

  Perceive the goal. He had enough need for mysticism. He had done the calculations for the alchemy. The flame was inevitable.

  To see Father’s Blessing had strengthened his resolve. To see that it was real, that Father had created a spell of such beauty as to protect an entire city and its people. But then it had crumbled before his eyes, dismantled, no doubt, by the meddling of another god. That had been a blow, but as with all the other contradictions he had seen, it would not have mattered. All of those contradictions would have been fine if not for the loss of his gift, because a god without his birthright was no god at all. And Loy wanted more than anything to become a god. Loy refused to be blighted; he would be a god, even if it required him to become a defiler.

  Release the birthright. He heard a pop, like the crackle of a coal, but nothing else happened. Leaning back to the wall, he closed his eyes and moaned.

  The real truths of existence were finally settling in. Father Order had no truths. He had self-serving delusions, designed to keep his children ignorant of the world’s realities. The man Clerahl, a man who barely understood what it meant to be godkind, had almost killed Loy. That man had never heard the truths of Father Order. He had never been assigned to an aspect. And yet his aura had been distinct. The man had been approaching godhood, if not a god already.

  And the real truth of existence was that Loy had no pride to set aside. He had only foolish notions of custom and tradition, instilled by a conniving liar obsessed with the desire to wash away his failure with grand stories of his own supremacy, that had kept Loy indolent and blind. But even this realization could not help him.

  Prime the nodes. The birthright shimmered. He felt it bubbling, leaping, as if eager for his control. It wanted this release as much as he did.

  Perceive the goal. He saw the molecules he could change to light the flames. He saw the parts that would need releasing. A bonding here, a splitting there, the product is oxidized.

  Release the birthright. But nothing released. The swirling mass waited within its prison, the iron doors flung wide, but the creature suddenly indifferent in the moment that it saw its freedom.

  Shooting to his feet, Loy sent the table and its accursed candle to skitter across the floor. If the defiling thing would not cooperate, then he would find something else. But this is what I always do, he moaned. A little failure, a small rebuke, and I run to hide behind my Orderspawned pride. Behind that false sense of superiority and greatness. Loy’s shoulders slumped as he fell back against the wall and slid down into a crouch. But there is no hiding from this. I am a cripple now, and one cannot hide from such a defect.

  He didn’t know what he was doing. He knew what he wanted, but was afraid to face it. He’d always thought he understood the world, but Father Order’s teachings had never spoken of Fate, or her promises. Was this failure of the birthright his punishment for fleeing from Dekahn?

  A light tap drew his eyes to the door. Rise entered cautiously. She seemed timid, both hands on the door, but the expression on her face was pity. Even the damned mortals knew of his failure, the condescending gnats.

  “What do you want, mortal?” he asked.

  A look of annoyed confusion flickered in her gaze. She and the door shook for a moment, as if she had almost decided to leave and then thought better of it. At last, she stepped fully into the room. She did not fling the door shut as he would. Instead, she turned to it and eased the thing into place with one hand wrapped about the knob and the other laid flat near the top. She seemed so calm, in a time when he was breaking. And her nonchalance infuriated him. If she were a proper mortal, she would be catering to his mood and emulating his depression as if to live it for him. What else were mortals for, but to ease one’s burdens?

  Rise stepped to the candle and glanced at it before righting the table. Without looking at him, she wedged the candle back into the small holster on the copper dish and set it on the tabletop before retrieving a chair to sit across from him. Her eyes stared down at him, patient and somewhat removed, somewhat emotionless, as if she waited for him to open up his heart, to spill his deepest held desires and place them at her mercy.

  “Well?” Loy demanded. He refused that look and its quiet insistence. He refused to answer its unspoken summons. Loy was the godling and she his mortal. It was her duty to accommodate and anticipate him, not the other way around.

  Her lips did not purse. They did not frown. Her glance did not waver, her breathing did not slow. She simply stared on, silent and uncaring, with her hands in her lap and that obnoxious, friendly smile stretching her lips. It was only her gaze that moved, dancing across his face, considering and thoughtful.

  He could not meet that gaze. It was too expectant. Too knowing. With his arms wrapped around his legs, he buried his face behind his knees. “I do not need your company, mortal.”

  Her laugh was playful. It should have been condescending, that is how he would have laughed at such a statement, but it was not. It sounded somehow concerned. Sincere. Honest.

  “It’s been three days,” she said, “and we haven’t – well, I won’t say we haven’t heard from you…” Her words stopped. A brief halt. “Obviously, you can’t solve this problem yourself, so what’s wrong?”

  To look at her was a struggle. He had to drag his face from his knees and then his eyes from the floor. He hated her, almost as much as he hated Father, because she was the same as Loy’s thoughts; she wanted to make him face his problems, she wanted a resolution, but Loy did not want that. He wanted to believe the same things he had always believed, because he was comfortable with those things, and those beliefs made him happy. Why chance his happiness on new beliefs? The old ones had served just fine. But the world had changed, and Fate and Just had changed it. He couldn’t live any longer in the past.

  He met her glance with barely an inch between his knees and eyes. “You would not understand, mortal.”

  “I’d like to. Why not try?”

  Loy frowned. Her voice was sweet. Sweeter than he could understand. No one cared in Lendal. It was a land of vultures, where members of weak broods were relegated to menial tasks and petty roles. Roles like Tracker…

  “What do you want?” he asked. Everyone wanted something, even mortals.

  Her look was a mixture of shock and amusement. “What?”

  “You and your husband did not follow me for nothing. What do you want from me?”

  For a moment, her glance turned away as her eyelids squinted together. Her bottom lip folded inward at the left corner, her teeth biting her lip. “To thank you,” she stated simply. “We follow you because we wish to thank you. And because we didn’t like where our life was going.”

  Didn’t like where our life was going. The attitude astounded him. “So, you just walked away?” His
chin lifted above his knees.

  “Well,” she said, “it was a difficult choice, but… but Skibs and I kind of realized it was the only one we really had. Or at least… it was the only one we could see ourselves making. He gets too nervous in a bad situation and I’m not much better.”

  “You are running from your problems?” That, at least, was something he could understand.

  She scrunched her brow. “Not running, exactly. We simply knew the consequences of staying and didn’t like them. It might seem cowardly, but to us, it just seemed like sense. We don’t have anything except our lives, and we’re not keen on giving them up for some misunderstanding, you know, because someone else expected us to be what we weren’t.” She shook her head, her gaze staring through him. “Life is too precious to be a martyr for the things someone else values.”

  “But what of your responsibilities, mortal?” Loy asked. “Do you not feel guilty for abandoning them?”

  Her lips did purse then. Her eyes were sad. “A little. Not as much for abandoning the things I was told I should do, as for abandoning the people we chose as friends, but our responsibilities… It didn’t seem fair to let someone else decide what we were responsible for. At least, not without consulting us first. I mean… the Grand had as much as decided our future. Shouldn’t we have had a say in it?”

  “You wished to prove yourself above that which was expected.” Though he spoke it aloud, the statement was more for his own circumstance than hers.

  Rolling up from the floor, her gaze met his own. “Yes, exactly.”

  “And if you got such a chance?”

  She frowned. “Well, then I wouldn’t waste it.”

  “But how?” To his ears, the words were conversational, but in his heart, they seemed desperate.

  Rise glanced to the door. “The same way we did, I suppose. Look for another way. We made the choice that reflected what we wanted, and what we thought was best.” She paused. “I mean… assuming the Grand had given us that option, well, what else would be the point in placing that trust in us, than in the hopes that our insight might offer something she didn’t already have… But I guess she didn’t think we had that, else we wouldn’t be here.”