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

by K. Eason

  A man could not get above tree line, either. The hills here were still rocky, still steep, still treeless in places. But they were not high enough. They were not Wild, in the way that the northern forests were.

  But there was a sky above him. And a sun, and a moon, and the spangled black of night skies. He could hunt in these forests. He could survive here.

  There were small red deer. There were rabbits, and squirrels that were nearly as big as rabbits, and foxes. There were large ground birds that he thought would make good eating, but they were clever creatures. Wary. He had not managed to get close enough to one yet to confirm their edibility. Had not gotten close enough to even draw his bow.

  With two dogs, he might’ve had some chance. The birds did not fly well. But he had only Logi now, and Logi was not at all certain what he should do about a bird whose eyes were level with his own. Helgi would not have minded; Helgi would have worked out how to sneak up on the birds. Helgi would have taught Logi, too, because Helgi was older. Wiser.

  Dead.

  It was foolish to miss Helgi. Foolish to mourn him. Veiko still had both dogs. One of them lived in the ghost roads now, that was all. His guide in that place. And the other—

  “Sst!”

  The other had his nose too close to the cookpot. The dog was getting Briel’s manners, and none of Briel’s wits.

  Veiko pulled the pot off the fire. Balanced it on a rock and stirred the contents with a stick. Soup, made with an unfortunate squirrel and what he thought were local onions. The soup smelled like onions, anyway. He sampled the stick. Tasted like onions.

  With luck, he would not poison himself.

  Logi flopped beside him. Sighed.

  “You had your dinner.”

  A second sigh. Logi flattened his ears. Put his chin on his paws.

  “No.” Veiko left the pot on the rock to cool. Poked the fire down while he waited. A hunter, even one turned noidghe, did not make a habit of sitting downwind of a fire, and the breeze here was fickle. Gusted upslope and down, throwing smoke at him no matter where he tried to settle. It had filled the whole campsite, like the winter fogs that crept across the tundra. Twined among the trees and greyed his world down to fire and dog.

  Every animal for a league would smell it. And two-legged trouble might, too. The soup had cooked long enough, then.

  Veiko stood. Grimaced at the tweak and tightness in his thigh. Better than it was, but not right, and it made him slow getting up, and that might be trouble—

  There was a figure at the edge of the forest, on the very fringe of his vision. Veiko turned toward it, and it disappeared. Nothing but trees and smoke over there. Nothing but his pack, suspended from branches, and his bow.

  A chill crawled under his skin. He was acutely aware of Snow’s absence. Of the naked space at his back, where she should be. Veiko looked at Logi—smoke or no smoke, the dog should have noticed someone that close. But Logi had eyes and ears for the soup, and nothing else.

  And in front of him, there: a woman, standing just beyond Logi, etched against the forest. She wore the same grey as twilight and smoke and held a bow in one hand. There was an axe on her hip, smaller than his and double-headed. One edge was a cutting smile. The other was smaller, longer, thinner, no smile at all.

  He had his own axe in his hand by then.

  She vanished. Just took a single step back, and the smoke swallowed her whole. Veiko made himself kick dirt over the fire like he had a hundred-hundred times before. He would put the fire out and wait for the smoke to clear. If Logi sensed nothing, then there was nothing—

  You know better, noidghe.

  The voice came from his left. He spun toward it. The woman was there, pretending to lean against a tree. This time the chill settled all the way in his bones. She was a ghost. One of the dead. And not one he recognized. His ghosts were all Dvergiri—K’Hess Kenjak, Teslin and Barkett. She was no Dvergir. He could see that much detail in the gloom. Too small for a Dvergir woman, too pale. An Alvir, maybe—

  I am no more Alviri than you are, Veiko Nyrikki. Her features were blurred by smoke, but Veiko thought she was smiling. It was not a kind expression.

  “Who?” he said.

  That is the wrong question.

  Veiko made himself let go of the axe. Made himself smooth his hand over Logi’s head. That was fur under his skin. That was living. And she—that woman who spoke his language, she was—

  Dead. Yes. A ghost, yes. But those are not answers.

  “I have not called you.”

  A man could imagine that her smile had slipped. Imagine exasperation on blurred features. Hear it clear as a mountain lake, echoing off the inside of his skull.

  No. You did not. You did not call the Dvergir boy, either, the first time he came to you.

  “K’Hess Kenjak.”

  I have no care for his name. She tipped her head sideways. Her braids swung and swayed, caught in a breeze that Veiko could not feel. I have come a long way to find you, and I begin to think you are not worth that effort.

  “What do you want?”

  I just told you. But at least you are learning the questions. Perhaps my journey has not been a total waste. Come. She beckoned. Her edges blurred, until she was only a column of brighter grey against the smoke.

  Veiko glanced at his pack. He had a supply of Snow’s poison in it, for walking the ghost roads. But he had wanted a safe camp first, and some knowledge of the landscape and of possible dangers. It was one thing to travel the lands of the dead while he was safe in Snow’s flat. Quite another to try it alone, in a strange forest.

  The word you want is foolish, said the woman. A noidghe does not need lowlander herbs to walk our path. Come, Veiko.

  A noidghe did not let spirits command him, either. The God and Tal’Shik had both tried and failed.

  No mistaking her expression this time. Disgust. Amusement. Irritation. I am no Dvergir. And I am not a mere ghost. Meet me on the glacier. I will wait.

  She and the smoke vanished together. Clear forest around him, fallen to twilight. Logi watched him, ears canted back and sideways, and all the fur on his back ridged up stiff.

  He could gather his gear and hike back to Illharek before moonrise. The Tano tunnel had a gate, but it was never locked, rarely watched. Snow had told him that. Snow had told him, too: Come and go by darkness, Veiko, it’s safer.

  He had not made a habit of seeking safety, not since he’d put himself between Snowdenaelikk and two Illhari soldiers in the northern forest. That had been an impulse that earned him enemies, both living and dead, and a limp he would have for the rest of his days.

  Veiko touched his pot of soup. It was cold, with a rime of frost that was already melting in the spring warmth. So much for his dinner. He put it on the ground. Called Logi over and sat down beside it. For a moment he watched Logi eat. Red-furred Logi, who had not quite grown into his bones yet, who did not have any hesitation about eating Veiko’s cold dinner straight out of the pot.

  Then Veiko closed his eyes and remembered another dog, larger and grey as old steel. Whispered, “Helgi,” and held out his hand.

  A nose brushed his fingertips. A head followed, and a warm body too broad and too tall to be Logi. Veiko took a handful of fur. Pulled himself up, using Helgi as balance, and left his body slumped beside the dead fire.

  He took one step, then two.

  Veiko dragged a lungful of air that was drier and colder than what he’d find in the Illhari forest. A third step, and he felt the sudden emptiness around him. Smelled the wind coming off the glacier. Felt it slicing past leather and wool.

  He opened his eyes. A herd of takin milled along the edge of the glacier. Helgi stood beside him, ears up, tail curled, staring out onto the ice. Veiko knew what he’d see before he looked.

  The woman was waiting for him, arms folded, wearing a grim lack of expression. She made Veiko feel ten summers old again, and very foolish.

  “Hah,” she said. Her voice came out to meet him, sharp as
broken stone. “Good. You are a fool. And you are proof that luck favors fools. Or children. Which are you?”

  “I am not a child.”

  “No?” She walked up to him, stopping just inside the polite distance for strangers. Not an old woman, but not a young one, either. Hair the color of dead leaves, laced with silver. Lines around her eyes and mouth. “Perhaps not. But you are very young, Nyrikki’s son, and very far from your ancestors. It has been a long journey to find you.”

  Veiko guessed then what she was. “You are an ancestor. My ancestor.”

  “Indeed. And do you know who I am?”

  He did not. She was no one he’d ever met. No one from his village, or the closest neighboring settlements. She was not Jaihnu at all, from the shape of her coat, and the embroidery worked into the leather, and the number of braids on her head.

  “I can see that you are Pohja.” They were tundra dwellers, and lived the whole year above tree line, following their takin herds even in winter. They could not be bothered to farm the land or build permanent dwellings. A wild people. Strange.

  She snorted. “Your grandmother was Pohja. Did she tell you that?”

  “I never knew her.”

  “Pity. She was no fool. She would have known me. —What else am I?”

  He would have said noidghe, because she was here. But the noidghe in his village, the only one he had ever met, had not worn braids. That man had been shaved bald as an egg, with tattoos on his skull, and earrings. This woman wore hunter’s braids, more than a dozen, in the Pohja fashion. He could just see the feathered tips of arrows poking over her shoulder. The bow in her hand was short and made of horn instead of wood. A Pohja hunter’s weapon.

  She nodded, as if he had spoken aloud. “You have wandered a long way from your ancestors. It required a hunter to find you. Did you think we could not be both noidghe and hunter? You are.”

  “I did not know.”

  “That is true. There is a great deal you do not know. Best you realize that now.”

  “I do not know your name.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Names have power in this place.”

  “You know mine.”

  “And so I have power over you.”

  “None that I do not grant you.”

  A blink. A near smile. What might have been a flicker of approval in those pale eyes. “So. Good. Call me Taru. That is a fine dog you have.”

  “His name is Helgi,” Veiko said, and felt like a fool again, at the look she gave him.

  “Names have power,” she repeated. “A dog—even one as wise as this one—will answer to his name when a man might not. How do you think your enemies called him away, that first time? Do not give power away lightly. And you should thank your fine grey dog that you have survived long enough for me to find you. You have made some poor decisions, Veiko, and you have made some bad enemies. I am here to teach you better.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Dekklis had never been inside the Senate’s curia chamber. She’d marched past it a hundred times on maneuvers and stood guard outside it during some of the more heated debates. Killed people on its steps, too, during the bread riot of ’06. There had been blood glazing the plaza then, filling the cracks between tiles. She’d gotten her first and only glimpse inside the curia chamber that day, when she’d looked back from the

  slaughter

  riot and seen a handful of faces peering out the great doors. A flash of benches, an impression of a vaulted, open space. And then her foot had slipped, and she’d got back to the business of stopping the riot.

  Riot. Hell. Starving people. Some had been citizens. Some hadn’t. The Senate had, in its magnanimity, granted pardon to the citizens who’d participated in the riots, and allowed Illhari burial for those killed. But the rest of the corpses, bondies and resident noncitizens, had been dropped into Jukkainen’s Gap, one after the other, for the rats.

  And for the svartjagr, who wouldn’t refuse a fresh corpse. Predators when they had to be. Scavengers if the meat was fresh.

  Opportunists, Snow said. Not unlike most people.

  Svartjagr were a constant presence in the High City, circling and swooping between the bridges. Clinging to the buildings around the plaza. Maybe a dozen here already, studding the otherwise smooth flutes and spires. Waiting, Dek reckoned, for the street vendors to set up for the seventh-mark break, when the public hearings began. Then the plaza would fill up like a bucket in rain.

  It was mostly empty right now. There was the usual legion guard, one trio on either side of the big double doors. They might’ve been stone themselves, conjured out of rock and shadow. There were bondies, too, who’d come with the senators, who weren’t allowed in the chamber. Male and female in the mix, all fair-skinned Alviri, clustered together like birds around grain, flitting from one group to another. Every now and then one would come up to the guards and tease them. Try to break that legion discipline that said stare straight ahead and don’t blink. And foremothers defend, what teasing. Dekklis wasn’t sure whether to admire the guards for their control, or wish that they’d take the flat of their swords to the bondies. Teach a little respect.

  But these bondies belonged to senators: you could figure that from the quality of their tunics, the precious metal gleam off their collars. They’d absorbed a little bit of their owners’ arrogance. No fear. And, to be fair, little evident need to fear. Up north, guards on the civic buildings weren’t just for ceremony. These clearly were. Uniforms all polished steel and oiled leather over unfaded red and black. Hell. Dekklis figured that armor hadn’t seen much more wear than a walk from the garrison and back again.

  “Soft,” Istel had muttered when he saw them, and exiled himself to the edge of the plaza. He was there now, elbows on the wall, looking over the edge and down at the Suburba.

  Istel had developed a deep disapproval of the First’s troopers in the past four days he’d had to share quarters with them. Didn’t like their attitudes, or their accents, or the way they handled weapons.

  Be lucky if they can fight off a kitten, Dek. Look at them.

  It did no good to remind him that she had come out of that garrison, that she was a product of that training. Istel was Sixth Cohort, and the Sixth encouraged that kind of elitism in its troopers.

  No. Be honest. K’Hess Rurik, First Spear, encouraged that elitism. K’Hess Rurik had come out of Illharek’s garrison, like she had. Was highborn, like she was. Was a man, like she wasn’t—which meant he’d never been permitted to stand guard on the Senate plaza. Had he stayed in Illharek, he’d never have risen past centurion. But up north—where the majority population wasn’t even Illhari—there a highborn man might climb all the way to First Spear of his own cohort.

  But he wouldn’t get higher than that. Not in the Illhari Republic, not even after Reforms.

  And Istel—who had scrounged a set of armor from the garrison stores, who’d spent an afternoon creasing and scuffing its newness—Istel was a tanner’s son from Cardik’s Warren. He wouldn’t get higher than he was now, a Second Scout in an irregular unit in a northern cohort. Istel was second to her first, the same way Barkett had been second to Teslin. Neither she nor Istel would’ve minded those facts last spring. Neither one of them would’ve thought about it any more than they thought about the sky’s exact shade of blue.

  Blame Snowdenaelikk for changing that, Snow and her heresy and her motherless—

  “Chrrip!”

  A svartjagr was gliding over the plaza. When Dek looked up, it arrowed and damn near dove at her. Snapped its wings out at the last, leveled out, so that she could see the spidery tracing of scars.

  That was Briel.

  “The hell do you want?” Dekklis muttered. Briel chrripped again and cut a tight circle over Dek’s head. That was Briel’s notion of courtesy. A warning.

  Dekklis braced just as the sending slammed behind her eyes: the Academy’s distinctive silhouette, from what had to be fifty paces above the Arch, high enough that the people down on
the walkways looked like children. A gut-wrenching dive and dip, and Dek-Briel glided past the vendors that lined one of the bridges. Dizzy echoes of cooked meat and baking things, a svartjagr’s sifting and ranking of smells, charred meat and hot bread high on the list, a carnivore’s disinterest in fruit or wine. And there, past the vendors, calmly peeling shells off roast rednuts, was Snowdenaelikk. Who looked up as Briel streaked past, and grinned, and mouthed Dekklis.

  The sending faded. The headache filled in behind it, like mud through an iron grate. Dekklis cracked her eyes open. Foremothers knew if that animal could hear her, but, “Tell her it’s not a good time, yeah? Tell her not now.”

  Dekklis gritted her teeth. She’d talked herself raw, convincing her mother to convene the Senate. But she’d won, and now—when Dek was going to do what Snow had dragged her back here for in the first place—now the motherless half-blood wanted a meeting.

  Hell and damn.

  “Chrrip.” Briel cut a tight circle over her head. “Chrrip?” The sending threatened a second visit, images pushing across Dek’s vision.

  Insistent toadshits. Both of them.

  Dekklis pinched the bridge of her nose. “Fine,” she muttered. “Tell her wait, all right? Savvy that? Wait. I’ll be there.”

  Warm flood of satisfaction, and Briel broke off her circling. Flapped to the far end of the plaza, nearest the bridge, and landed on the short wall beside Istel.

  Dek watched Istel jump, hand to sword. Watched him settle. Hell and damn, watched him reach out a hand to Briel while she kept her wings wide for balance and stretched her nose to his fingers.

  Foremothers defend them. What the bondies hadn’t managed, Istel had: all six guards on the Senate doors were looking at him, visibly and obviously. And that got the bondies to look, too, and then all twelve people in the plaza had eyes on Istel.

  Who was looking over at her. Who beckoned to her, as if she were a servant, to come at his summons.

  Temper, Szanys.

  She turned a shoulder and pretended not to notice. Would not—dared not—walk over there now, with bondies and troopers watching. That tale would be all over the Tiers by nightfall. Bad enough Szanys Dekklis kept company with a man who treated the local wildlife like a stray cat. She didn’t need to add herself to the gossip.