by K. Eason
Fuck and damn, the look on Dek’s face. Made you pity anyone she faced in battle. “Shit.”
“And if the unofficial penalty for pushing Reformist politics is missing sons, then how long do you think those Reforms will last?”
Belaery recoiled into an arms-folded bundle of denial. “The hell. What about the Taliri, then? Why are they even involved, if this is all toadshit Illhari politics?”
A headache built behind Snow’s eyes, thumping and flashing like a spring storm. “I think Tal’Shik’s broken her pattern. I think it doesn’t matter to her anymore who fights for her favor. I think the more she has involved, the better. That’s how it was in Cardik, yeah? Alvir against Dvergir. Toadfucked chaos. All that power, straight to Tal’Shik.”
Dekklis gazed into the empty air between aisles. She looked like she was seeing Cardik again, riot inside and siege outside and the legion caught between. Snow heard that grief in her voice, and the anger. “So Tal’Shik wins. Either the Taliri overrun us, or—what, we take her back? Undo the Purge?”
“If it came to a choice between Tal’Shik and losing Illharek, Dek, which would you pick? Which is the greater treason?”
Bleak stare. “I don’t know.”
“Exactly. And you’ve seen what she’ll do. The rest of them haven’t. Listen.” Snow made a fist of her right hand. Ignored the barbs and hooks that shot up her arm. Conjured up solid quiet and wrapped it around the three of them, so that someone could stand beside them and not overhear. “Tal’Shik’s just a spirit, yeah? That’s all a god is. A spirit. Veiko told me that. And how to deal with her is here, Bel. Dekklis is right about that. The Archives can tell us how the godsworn do what they do. That means we can figure out how to undo it. We can fix it. Give the Senate another option. Dek can make them listen.”
Please.
Dek hadn’t had much luck so far, but none of them had. And Dekklis didn’t say I can’t or not possible. Nodded, as if Snow had asked something simple.
“Godsworn conjuring.” Belaery wrung out a smile. “You’re asking me to reconstruct a dead discipline. That’s its own treason, Snow.”
And a sixth ring if she succeeded, which could mean High Adept. Snow saw that ambition catch and burn in Bel’s eyes.
Blow on those flames. Fan them. “Damn near impossible.”
“Mm.” Bel was already thinking. Drifting away, like Bel did when she fixed on a problem, muttering under her breath and squinting at scrolls. Faintest pop as she passed through Snow’s conjuring, and then her footsteps vanished.
Dekklis leaned so her arm touched Snowdenaelikk’s. “You trust her?”
“Not as much as I trust you.”
Dek choked on a laugh. “I suppose I deserve that.”
“You do. Listen, Dek. If I’m right—if the men disappearing aren’t random—then you’re in the best place to do something about it.”
“How do you reckon that? They’re all spiked somewhere in a deep cave. Veiko’s the one who talks to ghosts.”
“Because you kill all the hostages, you lose all the leverage. Not all the highborn men in Illharek are missing yet, yeah? You said K’Hess wasn’t coming to Senate meetings. That suggests she’s got a live son someplace.”
Dekklis said nothing for a long moment. Then, “I’ll see what I can find out.”
“Do more than see.”
Which earned Snow a grim little smile. “You’re talking more treason.”
“Probably.”
“So, since we trust each other so much, you and I, what will you be doing while you’ve got Belaery and I engaged in illegalities?”
Snow looked at Tsabrak standing there in the corner. At the lines and angles of the shelves she could see through him. She tasted bile and iron. Please, Veiko had found the God.
“Same thing, Szanys. Same thing.”
CHAPTER TEN
“. . . and then Eign and Yrse made it all the way to Cardik—but of course it wasn’t Cardik, then—before Yrse’s mother caught them.”
There was no need to ask what happened next. Even if Dekklis hadn’t heard the story before—and she had, everyone had—she could guess. Yrse was second daughter of Stratka, from the days before the Purge. Eign was a fourth son from a much less important House. It didn’t matter how smart he was, or how gifted with music, or whatever—that part of the story shifted with Sindri’s mood, each retelling. The plain fact was he could never be a Stratka consort. Even now, after the Reforms, that wouldn’t happen. But now, Eign would be whipped and cast out of the House. Then, well.
“And then they died,” Dek said flatly. “Yrse slit Eign’s throat, then her own, before her mother’s guards could take them.”
“Yes, but.” Sindri rolled onto his back. Folded his fingers together on his belly and stared dreamily at the ceiling. “They died together, Dekklis. She protected him.”
If a knife in the throat counted as protection. Hell and damn. K’Haina Sindri’s only acquaintance with the business end of a blade was cutting meat. Damn sure he had no idea how much blood came out of a body. Yrse would’ve been smarter to jab the knife behind Eign’s jaw, up into the brain. Much neater.
And much less dramatic. Dekklis swallowed the comment. No point in hurting Sindri’s feelings. He’d get enough of that, with Maja.
You’re welcome to him, sister.
Dekklis pushed herself onto an elbow. Twitched a smile at Sindri when he glanced at her. “It’s a good story.”
“It’s the best.” Sindri sat up as she did. “You’re not leaving yet, are you?”
“Not quite yet.”
Sindri flopped back. Reached up and traced the scar on her hip, gift from a dying bandit two winters back. Dekklis controlled the urge to slap his fingers away. There’d been a reason she never wanted a consort. It would’ve been more bearable if that cow-eyed admiration was fake, but Sindri was sincere. She was one of his toadshit heroes, some warrior from the exotic far north, battling bandits and being brave, or whatever it was he imagined legion life looked like.
Not predawn marches, damn sure. Not K’Hess Rurik’s bellowing in his face. Not the actual blood and stink that came with battles. Not ghosts, or godsworn, or young men his own age dying on poles.
She closed her eyes. Let Sindri imagine that his touch was the reason, that she liked him tracing spider-fingers down her leg. Held her breath, and her patience, and waited until his hand trailed off her knee. Then she opened her eyes. Looked at him, unsmiling.
“You think it’s true? Eign and Yrse. That he actually climbed the Tiers to sneak in to see Yrse?”
“It’s true.” Sindri had told her this before, too, but he didn’t mind the retelling. He sat up, put his face level with her. His eyes were huge, dark, wide and earnest. “There’s handholds in the rock between First Tier and Second.”
She knew that was true, having checked that part of Sindri’s story first. Easily verified, with a little help from Briel. But she nodded now, like she’d never heard him say it. “But inside Stratka. Secret doors? Really?”
Sindri nodded again. Leaned closer. Dekklis smelled her own sweat and scent on his breath. Controlled her flinch and grimace as he whispered, “Dasskli Birkir—he’s consort to Stratka—showed me once, before all this stupid curfew. There’s a door in one of the wardrobes that leads to a secret passage. You get in near the back entrance, through a mosaic. You have to press the matron’s eye.”
A smarter man might’ve asked why are you so interested in secret doors? She had a story prepared: that she had a message for K’Hess Soren, consort to Stratka, from his brother. That wasn’t quite as romantic as forbidden lovers, but it was close enough to true. But Sindri hadn’t asked. Sindri just seemed happy that he knew something that interested her.
Please, foremothers, K’Hess Soren was less like this boy and more like his brothers, or she might end up making the same choice Yrse had.
She glanced at the candle. It had burned all the way to fifteenth mark. Still two marks before she was du
e to meet Snowdenaelikk, to learn things no highborn daughter should know about getting past locked doors. But first she had to escape her own house.
Getting away from Sindri was easy enough. He protested, very prettily, and pouted, and extracted promises that she’d come back in two days, thirteenth mark. Dekklis felt a sliver of guilt. In two days, during a special late session of the Senate, she’d be somewhere else entirely, with a completely different highborn man, replaying the more successful parts of Eign and Yrse.
K’Hess had four sons. Two had gone to Cardik, part of the Sixth. Kenjak and Rurik. Her first, Ivar, who’d been consort to M’Hjat, had gone missing. The last K’Hess son left in Illharek was the second born, Soren. And he was a consort to Stratka. Small wonder K’Hess wouldn’t take messages, why she’d refused all meetings. Soren was leverage against her silence.
Don’t you see, Mother, what the consul’s doing?
Elia did. Damn sure. But Elia could not march into Stratka and demand the release of K’Hess’s son from a perfectly legal arrangement. No, Elia had to trade on her House reputation, which was formidable, and argue on the Senate floor. She could raise support by presenting her arguments in front of as many senators as she could muster in a special late session. Elia was a good politician. She had talked Haata back into chambers. Had hosted a dinner with Saarvo and won her back, too. So this session would be full, despite the late hour, the entire plaza jammed with bondies and servants.
Which would leave the First Tier houses skeleton-staffed, and—please, foremothers—mostly unguarded. Because Dekklis had determined that if K’Hess Soren’s presence in House Stratka was a problem, then the simplest solution was get him out.
If Snow could—would—teach her how to pick locks. If she could convince Istel to run a distraction for her. If a thousand other things didn’t go wrong in the interim. Sindri could always run that pretty mouth to someone else. He was lonely and bored. Unhappy with the new curfews and confinement, when he’d been accustomed to afternoon visits in other Houses. A little kindness went a long way. Maja might neglect him, at best. Torment him, at worst. Maja had noticed Dek’s new interest. You’re welcome to him didn’t mean Maja would leave him alone. Hell and damn, Sindri would probably expect a rescue from her, his legion hero, to save him from her sister.
She had to rescue herself first.
Dekklis smelled Maja’s perfume two heartbeats before her sister stepped out of an alcove that shouldn’t’ve held a full-grown woman. Maybe House Szanys had its own secret passages. Or maybe she’d just been too busy thinking about Sindri and not her surroundings.
Getting soft, Dek.
Maja set herself in Dek’s path. Grinned a combination of conspiracy and condescension. “You’re getting predictable. Every other day, seems like you’re in the men’s wing.”
It was a daughter’s privilege. Even a fourth daughter’s. Dekklis shrugged. “Well, you don’t want him. And I don’t have anything else to do.”
“Oh, I don’t mind. But I can’t say I understand it.”
“He’s pretty,” Dek said, which was true.
“Pretty.” Maja’s smile hardened. “That’s all?”
Oh foremothers. She didn’t have time for this toadshit. “And he doesn’t cost money.”
Maja recoiled. “Dekklis! You’ve been to a brothel?”
“Of course I have. Oh, don’t look at me like that. It’s what soldiers do.” Dekklis leaned close. Turned her face down and away, so that Maja would imagine shame. “Just don’t tell Mother, yeah?”
“Of course I won’t. Only,” and Maja leaned close, smiling, and this time she reminded Dekklis of a rock leopard about to leap, “you have to tell me what it’s like.”
“Lots of half-bloods and toadbellies, mostly. It’s Cardik,” she added when Maja pulled a face. “Some of the brothels double as bathhouses. There’s a whole street of them, down by the hot springs. They’re all very professional. And very expensive. You don’t want to hear all the details, do you?”
Maja did, of course she did. Probably gathering blackmail material, or gossip to spread among her friends: the legion little sister, the rebel, going northern in her manners.
So Dekklis told her about Aneki and Still Waters, about the bondies she knew by name. She dredged up Teslin’s stories, too, and Barkett’s, and Istel’s, and filled her sister’s ears with them. And by the time she escaped, she’d lost most of a candlemark to
lies and toadshit
telling Maja exactly what she expected to hear. She didn’t quite jog to the garrison. But she moved at a fast northern march, the sort Rurik enforced whenever they didn’t have real road underfoot. And so she discovered her tail, by luck and accident, as she descended the narrow spiral bridge between First Tier and Second. She was going just a little bit faster than a normal pedestrian’s pace, reached one landing and caught the railing, used her momentum to swing herself around to the next ramp. Motion above caught her eye: someone turning around fast, walking back up the ramp. There was no place for that someone to’ve come onto the bridge, except behind her. And maybe that person had forgotten something, had turned around fast and gone back to get it, except who needed a cloak in Illharek? Who needed a hood?
People like Snowdenaelikk. Trouble.
Dekklis got herself off the bridge at the first opportunity, dodging into a neighborhood of lesser Houses on the Second Tier. She crouched behind a conjured sculpture of svartjagr in flight—ugly thing, amateur, that rendered its subject neither graceful nor menacing—and waited. And yes, there, came that same shrouded someone, moving much faster now. And then that someone turned its head just so, and one of the witchfire streetlights cut through the hood’s shadows and splashed her features into bright relief.
Dek recognized the woman, by face if not the name, from the barracks. She considered, for a brief white-hot moment, coming out of concealment and confronting her. Considered even more briefly just knifing the woman in the back and dumping her over the edge of the bridge. It was a long way down to the Suburba. No one would recognize the corpse once it landed.
Messy, Szanys. Amateur.
Snow would have laughed at her, and then Snow would’ve woven the shadows that much more tightly around herself and gotten off the bridge, off the Tiers, and disappeared into the Suburba. Dekklis, lacking those skills, waited until the woman got tired of looking around and left, which took far too long. Plenty of time to regret she’d never asked Snow to teach her that trick with the shadows. Plenty of time to get angry, really and truly, while she worked out who’d put a tail on her in the first place. She didn’t want to think it was Dani. They’d gone through first training together, she and Praefecta K’Hari Dannike. She expected better of an old friend.
Idiot, Dek, you know that?
Then again, Praefecta K’Hari might follow orders first, friendship second, like a good soldier. Which Dekklis herself had been once. And now she was plotting treason, consorting with heretics. It might not even be Dannike who’d put the tail on her. She’d asked a lot of questions about missing highborn men, hadn’t she? Hell and damn. Could be anyone.
This toadshit was what happened when an honest scout started playing politics.
She wished for Istel at her back, again and always. But Istel had his own work. Her orders, to keep him from outright rebellion. Politics wasn’t a man’s game. Intrigue wasn’t. So she sent him into the Suburba.
Protect Snow, she’d told Istel. She’s got enemies down there.
She watched Istel go, every day, from the walls, conspicuously—so that if anyone wanted to shadow him, she would see it. Let one of Dani’s city-bred, city-trained First Cohort greens follow a scout from the Sixth. Let them try.
But no one ever did follow him. No one bothered. Dek thought that it was because no one thought he could do anything. The First, based in and around Illharek, was made up of women. Highborn, midtown, even some from the Suburba. But women, almost to a body, especially in command. Istel didn’t rate their at
tention—lowborn, northern, male.
Tell me I’m wrong, Szanys. Tell me that this is the best way. Tell me how wise our foremothers were.
She found Istel in the barracks. Alone, because the First was all women and did not practice the Sixth’s habit of mixing sexes or commissions. Istel had the whole room to himself, five other empty bunks. Dekklis’s own quarters lay in the officer’s wing, where Istel could not go without orders or express invitation. Hell if she’d summon him like a damn bondie. Easier to go to him.
He had his gear spread out over two bunks. Weapons stacked neatly on one, bow unstrung, quiver, arrows fanned out beside it. He sat on the second, armor spread out around him in pieces. Scout armor was simple stuff, compared to infantry. Primarily leather, some patches of wool, bits of dark Illhari steel studded strategically across breast and shoulders. Irregular patterns of stitching and textures, the better to blend in with forests. Down here, among polished infantry, Istel had no camouflage. Could not, like she had, borrow a cuirass and march through the Tiers.
He heard her. Of course he did. Stiffened just the littlest bit, across the neck and shoulders, when he heard her come to the doorway and stop. He dipped the corner of a rag into a small tub of mink oil. Started working it into the chest piece he had in his lap.
“Snow went back up to the Tiers.”
“I know. Meeting her in a mark.”
His back got a little stiffer. A little straighter. Wanting to ask her why, wanting to go with her, wanting—hell if she knew what. Things to go back to normal, maybe, which they wouldn’t, couldn’t, in this motherless city.
“I need a favor, Istel.”
He paused midswipe on the leather. Looked at her, frowning. “A favor?”
“I can still ask for one, can’t I?”
“Reckoned it’d be orders.” Softly, flatly, only a trace of bitter. “First Scout.”
“Cut that toadshit.” It came out sharper than she’d intended.
“Sir,” he said, and ducked his chin. But his eyes stayed on hers. Maybe looking for his partner under the legion cuirass. His frown deepened.