Outlaw: A Dark Fantasy Novel (On the Bones of Gods Book 2)

by K. Eason

  “Enough,” Snow snapped. She twisted neck and head around, threw words like stones. “Fill the basin. Then go. Leave the broom.” Watched, narrow-eyed, as the boy scrambled to do as she asked.

  Then she said, low-voiced, so that Veiko had to lean closer to hear her, “Highborn alliances are built on no one knowing exactly who sired whom. Dek’s got probably five men who might be her father. That’s five other Houses won’t move against hers. Good planning, yeah? It’s the same law that says I’m legal owner of this place because I’m eldest daughter. It doesn’t matter my mother fucked her skraeling bondie and kept the issue out of sentiment. I am my mother’s daughter, yeah?”

  It was one thing to hear skraeling from villagers and strangers. Quite another to hear Snow spit it out like bad beer. She put a great value on understanding the whys of things. She put great value on having him understand, too, when he would be content knowing only what to do. So he tried, this time, to put himself in her place and figure out the why of her lapse.

  She simply hadn’t noticed. She wasn’t even looking at him now, instead staring blind and quiet at ancestors knew what. Not the people below in the street, who carried on about their noisy business. It was a different cadence of Dvergiri down here than what he’d heard in Cardik. Faster, slurred and liquid. Like Snow had sounded when he first met her. Like she had sounded just now, words spilling out faster than her wits.

  Had been a time Veiko would not have minded her silence. A man’s secrets—or a woman’s—were not his concern. But that had been before he had

  saved my life, yeah?

  interfered in Snow’s business. Before she had returned that favor, time and again, until only a lawspeaker might untangle their debts.

  Veiko took one more step on the ice. “What has you so unhappy?”

  “You mean, besides my sisters and Kaj? Being back in this godsrotted city again? Besides that?”

  “Yes.”

  He watched the temper drain out of her. Watched weariness fill in behind, running deeper than flesh and bone. “I reckoned we might have a little trouble, yeah? That’s why we came down through the Abattoir. The God’s not happy with either of us right now. I wanted to see if he’d passed along the word about you and me. See if Ari came at us.”

  “And if he had?”

  “We’d’ve talked it out. Or fought it out. Settled it, yeah? So we can worry about what’s important.”

  “You might have mentioned this plan sooner.”

  “Didn’t want Dek to hear. She’d appoint herself escort. Spend a day arguing her out of it, yeah? And I’d still be afraid she’d follow us.”

  “I think Istel would be the more likely for that.”

  She looked away. Hunched up like a wet bird. “Best reason of all to keep quiet. Point is: I figured on trouble. Figured we could handle it. But no Ari. Instead we got Gert. She’s Rata’s dog, and that means we need to see Rata. Today. Now. As soon as I deal with this arm. Don’t argue, Veiko. Listen. Sinnike tells me that Stig’s been dead since winter. And Kjotvi.” She showed him the God’s sigil on her palm. “That’s three senior godsworn.”

  “It is a bad season for the God’s people.” Veiko shrugged. “Perhaps Ari had enemies.”

  “Damn sure he did. But he had the God with him, too, yeah? Unless he didn’t. Unless there was some reason the God didn’t get involved to save them.”

  “Perhaps he was displeased with them.” Veiko remembered the last time he’d seen the God, kneeling on the bank of the black river. Remembered the God’s blood on his axe. “Or perhaps he could not help them. Perhaps he lacked the strength.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I’m—sss.”

  The bondie came back with the basin. Snow watched the boy stagger over to the table. Watched him set the basin down, with only a little sloshed over the side. Watched him retreat all the way through the door. Then she moved: crossed and leaned against the door, head cocked. A smile, finally, tight and thin.

  “There. Now he’s down the steps.”

  “You thought he meant to spy.”

  “Kaj doesn’t like not knowing things. The whole household will be watching us, every move.” She crossed back to basin and table. Dipped her finger in the water.

  The air felt suddenly heavy. Blanket warm, summer thick, wrapped and squeezing and—

  Gone. Steam curled off the water.

  Veiko blinked. “That is useful.”

  “That’s showing off. A little patience and a fire would accomplish the same end.” She rummaged among the mess on the table. Plucked a pouch out of the mess, and one bottle. “It’s just I’m not patient, yeah?”

  “I had noticed.”

  “Huh.” A drop from the bottle. A pinch from the pouch. She made eyelock with him. Held it as she eased her sleeve back, bared arm and stitches that pulled tight in her flesh. Lowered her arm into the basin, slow exhale that made its way into her voice.

  “We need a bath and a rest, but that can wait until we’re back from Rata’s. Ah, shit, that hurts.”

  “The water is too hot.”

  “It’s not the water that stings. —Hold it, will you?”

  He steadied the basin as she rolled her arm back and forth. He did not like the color of the water. Did not like the seep from the lips of the wound, or the way her hand shook. Did not like the look she cast at it, most of all. Narrow eyes, thoughtful, not at all pleased. She’d looked at him that way last winter when his leg would not heal.

  Veiko knew better than to tell Snow her business, or ask for a diagnosis, either. She would say fine, and he already had the expression on her face for proof. Were it his arm, she’d have him flat on his back, going nowhere while she brewed potions and changed the dressings herself.

  “I will go with you to see this Rata,” he said, already anticipating the argument. Already marshalling his own. “You cannot—”

  “Of course you will.”

  “What?”

  “I said when we get back, Veiko. You’re coming with me.”

  His wits scattered. He’d prepared for battle, and she’d come from a direction he had not expected. “I thought you would go alone.”

  “Fuck no. Need you at my back. Why? You prefer to stay here?”

  “No. But I do not know the streets.”

  “Best you learn them. Best you memorize every alley.”

  “Snow. It is not wise to go at all. Not with me, not alone. Your friends—”

  “Ha.”

  “—are dead. That is not accident.”

  “Of course it’s not. But I don’t know details yet. And until I do, I need Rata wondering what I’m doing back here, and who you are. I need her worried about me, not the other way. So we’ll go down there, you and I, and I’ll worry her while you make sure no one sticks anything sharp in my back. Then we come back. Be seen, you and me, for a couple days. Public baths. Taverns. Walking up and down the street. And then you disappear.” Her words came fast now, tumbling like water over a cliff. “The hills around Illharek aren’t all farmland, yeah? There’s canyons. Forests. A lot of empty space. I think it might be a good idea if you explore it. Stay up there. Then I go out to find you, stay gone a day or three, maybe bring you back with me. We don’t set a pattern. We don’t settle any one place. We keep them guessing where we are, or if one of us is alone.”

  “And when I am”—he jerked his chin upward—“disappearing. Then where will you be?” Knowing what she’d say.

  “Places I can’t take you. Places Rata won’t follow me. Into the Tiers.” She matched his gesture, chin pointed up. “Don’t worry, yeah? No one will see me unless I want it.”

  She meant conjuring. There would be no backlash in Illharek. No reason she could not conjure as easy as breathing. Except she had a raw wound in her arm, and the beginning of fever turning her eyes flat and bright. Had a broken finger on her other hand, and that might hurt her conjuring in ways Veiko did not understand. A noidghe did not depend on hands or cities for what he did. A noidghe walked
the ghost roads and spoke to ghosts and once led a dead Snowdenaelikk’s spirit back to her body. He did not want to do that a second time. Wasn’t sure that he could.

  He would as soon argue the sun purple as change Snow’s mind once she’d set it. She had some kind of plan. Well. It was her city. Her people. Only a fool told someone else her business. A fool, or a partner.

  He put his own fingers into the water, paying no attention at all to the heat and the color and the stick-to-the-back-of-his-throat fumes coming off it. Took Snow’s wrist and turned it, so that the stitches grinned up out of the water. And drew his fingers across the fine bones of her wrist, onto her palm. Stopped, with his thumb in the solid middle of the God’s sigil.

  “They were godsworn, your Stig, Kjotvi, and Ari, and they are dead.”

  “I’m not either of those things. Godsworn or dead.” She closed her hand over his. Hid the God’s mark under a striping of dark and light fingers. “I thought we’d have trouble from him after Cardik. I think we might have bigger worries.” Her eyebrow arched, mouth drawn tight in one corner, eyes drilling into him. Expecting him to figure it.

  “You think Tal’Shik is responsible.”

  “Some way. Somehow. This smells like her work. Ari. Stig. Kjotvi. That’s pre-Purge stuff. Either that, or the God’s really dead.”

  “I did not hit him that hard.”

  “Tal’Shik might’ve jumped him afterward. What if he is dead?”

  “Then we have one fewer enemy.”

  “Then so does Tal’Shik. The God’s the one thing between her and Illharek, yeah? We need him.”

  As if the God were an honored ancestor. As if Veiko wanted anything more than to finish what he’d started with axe and anger. He recalled that ghost-roads cave, black and gaping. Remembered the God standing sentry, bargaining for Snowdenaelikk’s soul.

  Veiko’s guts knotted around old fury. “The Laughing God will not be your ally.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe he’s decided making nice with Tal’Shik is stupid, too.” Snow untangled her fingers. Pulled her hand, her arm, out of the water. She pretended great interest in the stitches. “I’ve seen Tsabrak, Veiko. Out of the corner of my eye. In shadows. Started in the forest, yeah? Haven’t seen him since we got into the city. Yet.”

  Veiko had been kicked by a takin once, square in the chest. He felt like that now, again. Tsabrak was a dead man’s name. It was not a surprise, no; Snow had the power, same as he did. She had crossed the black river and returned. That made her a noidghe, same as he was. So of course she would see the dead.

  But that particular ghost. The hollow ache in his chest turned bitter. Backed up in his throat. “Has he said anything?”

  She flinched. “His usual toadshit. You were my right hand. Look out, there’s a Talir about to gut you.” She side-eyed him. “Why can’t you see him?”

  Asking him, dear ancestors, as if he held the wisdom. Which he did, by her standards. There were no Illhari noidghe. At least he’d grown up knowing what noidghe did. At least he had ancestors who might’ve walked the spirit roads.

  She might have ancestors, too. Her father was Jaihnu. And only a fool would bring that up now.

  He wished he could reassure her, but, “I don’t know. I have seen ghosts who wish to be seen. Tsabrak would have no reason to speak to me. You were important to him. Perhaps that is why you can see him.”

  “Fantastic. Do I answer him? Ignore him?”

  “Listen if he speaks. But ask no questions and make no deals. The dead always want something.”

  “He might know where the God is. If anyone does, it’d be Tsabrak.” He had seen the range of her moods. Knew what the half-cocked smile meant, which looked reckless and wasn’t. That was fear, which Snow did not manage by running away. No. She ran straight at it. And she was no good at bargains.

  This was stupid. Foolish. But it would give him something to do when she exiled him to the Above and the forests and went about her own errands: “Let me look for the God in the ghost roads. Trust nothing Tsabrak says on the matter. I will find him.”

  Snow blinked. Her mouth flapped like Briel’s wings for a few beats. Then she said, simply, “Thank you.”

  “Do not thank me yet. The Laughing God might be truly dead.”

  “Then we’ll find another way to stop Tal’Shik.”

  Ancestors, that was almost enough to make Veiko wish for the God.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Veiko took some convincing to leave Logi behind and follow her onto the street; it was not the destination that he balked at so much as the journey. She coaxed him onto the balcony, then up the ladder and onto the roof. He did not mind that climb, or soft-footing across the roof tiles. But the second ladder—an erratic tracery of iron rings and spikes jutting out of the bricks, hand- and toeholds most of the way to the street—stopped him cold.

  Might stop her, too. The fucking arm was a problem. Not pain, she had that damped out. But weakness. Muscles and sinews abused past endurance. At the least, she’d pop stitches. Fuck and damn, and no help for it. She lowered herself over. Ground her teeth together and made the fingers lock. She’d never fallen off a wall. Not about to start now.

  “Follow me,” she said. Paused halfway down when he hadn’t. Looked up into Veiko’s whole face gone to ice and stone.

  But then he swung a leg over and let her guide his foot to a place where the brick jutted out. She kept her hand on his leg, held him steady as he found his hold on the wall.

  “There are stairs,” he muttered. “People will notice.”

  “No,” she told him. “No one will even look this way.”

  Which got her a tight little nod that made his braids swing and bob. And then he came down the wall, quick as he could manage.

  He learned fast. Barely a scuff as he dropped down beside her.

  “Your first wall, yeah?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re wasted as a hunter. We can use a man with your talents in the Suburba.”

  Another witchfire stare. Silence, which meant profound disapproval. Which might mean a little pride, too, mixed in.

  She took a right turn, up the Street of Apothecaries. A decade earlier, Rata had run her gang out of the rotting corpse of a two-story tavern, with moldy, vacant flats on the upper floor and a cellar that wasn’t honest enough to keep beer. So killing Ari should’ve meant a move up. Ari’d run his cartel out of the Abattoir, from a back-alley office that smelled like sweat and old blood. A definite improvement over the tavern. Except Snow had seen Gert up there, Rata’s second—third, maybe—which argued that Rata was exactly where she’d always been, a stone’s throw from the Tano, down on the docks.

  Please, she still was. Snow didn’t think she had a wasted trip’s worth of energy left.

  She let the conjuring drop. Stalked down the middle of the street, with Veiko beside her, like she owned the scuffed stonework.

  But we did own it, Snow. Remember?

  She’d walked on Tsabrak’s right side back then. His tall, pale-haired shadow, his right hand. Now she had her own taller, paler shadow. People needed to see him. To see her. She wanted the word to run like rats before a fire. Hear the muttering. Feel the stares.

  Feel Veiko, too, winding so tight you could hear him creak.

  “This,” he murmured, “is unwise.”

  “Not entirely.”

  Gust of air, which was Veiko’s exasperation. “Do you want a fight?”

  “There won’t be a fight.” She said it with confidence. Had to make Veiko believe it and convince herself, too. There’d been a time Rata wouldn’t dare take on the God’s people.

  Which you aren’t anymore.

  Rata didn’t know that. Rata thought Snowdenaelikk was still Tsabrak’s right hand. Pet conjuror. Pet killer. The God alone knew what rumors were attached to her name. And after that Abattoir encounter, Gert would’ve scuttled back down here with her own report, probably puffed up so that Gert didn’t look like an idiot for running from witch
fire and shadows. Lightning and fireballs, the stone streets melting like ice.

  Tsabrak had encouraged the fantasies. His doing, that half the Suburba thought the half-blood Snowdenaelikk could turn a person’s blood into oil and set her on fire, while the other half thought she could poison the whole Senate before breakfast.

  Dekklis had thought so once. The difference between Dek and the Suburban cartels, though, was Dek wouldn’t let fear slow her down. And Rata—

  Rata might’ve killed Ari. Might’ve killed Stig. So maybe Rata wouldn’t scare so easily, either, these days.

  Well and good. She could manage more than shadows and witchfire, too. Maybe she did want a fight, to cause someone else pain to match the throb in her arm.

  The stone ceiling hung lower, this close to the Tano, bulging and dripping and glistening like a snail in sunlight. Pallid white, brilliant pink, rusty orange all smudged together. The stonecutters said it was different minerals that made the colors.

  Pretty enough, if you liked rocks. If you didn’t mind the dark smears of charcoal and grease from the smoke holes. Or the noise. Everything echoed down here, water-slap and voices and the hundred other sounds of people going on with their lives.

  Veiko looked up exactly once. Hunched his shoulders and looked away fast.

  “It won’t fall.”

  “I know.”

  “Ceiling goes up again soon. Don’t worry.”

  “I am not worried.” Staring straight ahead, eyes on the lakeside, on the boats and the rafts.

  So he did not see what Snow did, looking up: Briel crawling upside down on the rock, wing tips and talons dug deep in cracks only a svartjagr could find. Amazing how fast she could move like that. If you didn’t know where she was, you wouldn’t see her at all. Liquid shadow.

  Well done, Snow sent at her. Got a warm rush of good feelings in return and a glimpse of the world from Briel’s vantage. Upside down, dizzy-quick, a flash of streets and buildings. Then came the second layer, the svartjagr’s deeper impressions, the world sketched in shapes and spaces. Solid stone and buildings, the flexible, treacherous Tano, the freedom of the open air. Briel, like Veiko, would be happier once the cavern opened up again.