by K. Eason
“What happened, Dek?”
Easier just to say nothing and just get on with her
order
request. Easier, and very Illhari, and hell.
“Someone followed me today. I lost them in the Tiers. She’s from First Cohort,” she added as Istel opened his mouth. “I don’t know her name.”
“Huh.” Istel sat very straight, very still, the cloth and oil forgotten. “You know who sent her?”
“No. But it’s not good.”
“You want me to go with you? Or follow, keep her off you?”
“No. I can shake her. I did once already. I won’t bring her to Snow.”
Istel grunted. He wanted to ask what she and Snow were meeting about, clear as water. And equally clear, he didn’t think she’d tell him.
The less you know, Istel, the safer you’ll be.
“So,” he said after a too-long pause. “This favor of yours. If it’s not helping you deal with this tail, then what is it?”
Dekklis came and sat on the bunk across from him. Leaned her elbows on her knees. “Optio Nezari.”
Istel grimaced. “What about her?”
“She doesn’t like northerners.”
“She’s made that clear enough. Always saying some toadshit whenever she sees me—which you already know.” Istel’s voice sharpened. “It’s just hazing, Dek. I can handle that.”
“I know that. But next time she says something, I want you to take offense. Start a fight. She’ll be in the courtyard at breakfast tomorrow. Make sure you’re there, too. Make sure something happens.”
Istel raised both brows. “The hell?”
“I need enough time to drive a stake into the garrison roof.”
“For what?”
“Istel.”
“Right. Best if I don’t know. Safest. Whatever.” He stared at the barrack wall. His jaw worked, tick and tense and loose again. “This something you and Snow came up with?”
“No. She doesn’t know, either.”
He turned to her, startled. And relaxed, some of the wariness draining out of his features. “Okay. I’ll do it.”
“They might court-martial you. That’s possible. Or put you in the subbasement cells.”
“I said I’d do it, Dek. Nezari’s a toadfucker.”
“If they leave your punishment to me, and they should, I’ll have to strip you of your commission. But only for a few days.” Please, foremothers, she still had enough traction with Dannike. “I’ll recall and reinstate you.”
“I’m still saying yes, Dek. This all helps your credibility, doesn’t it? Highborn Illhari going tough on her northern subordinate. The praefecta might throw you a party once I’m out the gates.” He didn’t quite smile. “You won’t tell me why, though, will you? You trust me to throw my commission away, but not with whatever plans you’ve got.”
If she failed, if they caught her, she might find herself prisoner, locked in a cell in the garrison subbasement, looking down through the window slit at the Jaarvi’s distant black surface. She might face a trial, conviction, maybe even execution: a long fall from the Senate Spire into the Jaarvi, which was how highborn traitors died.
But Istel. He could end up in an indentured’s collar. Branded. Gelded. Plain and simply dead, too, but not quickly. Better living and angry than dead with her.
Hell and damn, Snow would laugh at her.
So little faith in your plans, Szanys? In your partner?
As if Snow herself never had doubts, never hesitated, never sliced Veiko out of her reckoning. He wasn’t sniffing around the Suburba, was he? He was Above, safe from whatever toadshit Snow was into.
“It’s not a matter of trust. Listen. I get caught, they might throw me in prison. But I’ll get a trial. You they’ll execute outright. Savvy that?”
She watched the fight run out of him. Watched him retreat behind a face wiped carefully blank. “Savvy, Dek. I’ll do it. But you go fast, driving your stake into the roof. I don’t promise I’ll let Nezari live once I get started.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“This place is a ruin.” Taru crouched at the river’s edge, peering into the black trickle. “There are almost no spirits in this river. Almost none”—and she waved a hand at the barren earth, bleached rock and sand—“anywhere. What manner of place is this Illharek?”
“The true Illharek does not look like this.” Veiko could see the resemblance, but this cave was smaller, more essential, somehow: a slash of absolute black bleeding out from between two slabs of stone, as if a mountain had collapsed and begun to devour itself. Far quieter than Illharek, far more menacing. Or perhaps it seemed so only because he could remember the Laughing God oozing out of those shadows like living ink.
“This is the true Illharek.” Taru stood up. Brushed imaginary dust off her leggings. “Have you paid no attention to my lessons? Flesh reflects spirit.”
“Flesh also shapes spirit. I have listened, wise ancestor.”
“Huh. Does your partner-who-refuses-to-be-noidghe say what happened here, with this Illharek? Why it is so barren?”
“I do not think she knows.” Veiko cocked an eye sideways. “I do not think I do.”
“Nor do I.” A long span of quiet, with no sound except boots and paws in the sand, and the whispers of the river-dead. “What does the living Illharek look like?”
“There are forests. Fields. A city inside of a much larger cave.”
“So there should be spirits here, and there are not. Fled or destroyed, I cannot say.”
“That is a rare thing indeed.”
If Taru’s look could draw blood, Veiko thought, he would badly need Snow’s expertise with needle and thread. But her voice was mild:
“Why have we come to this dead place?”
Snowdenaelikk’s need. Snowdenaelikk’s desire.
“I am seeking a spirit.”
Taru snorted. “A spirit. Here.”
“One with whom I am familiar.” Veiko took a step closer to the cave-mouth. Helgi moved with him, with alert ears, nose and attention directed into that darkness.
There was something in there.
“Laughing God!” Veiko called. He drew his belt knife. Heard Taru’s disapproving hiss. He half glanced over his shoulder at her. Then he turned the knife’s point out and stabbed at air and emptiness. He drew the sigil carefully, the way Snow had showed him. A tepid, ill-tempered yellowish flame followed the tip of his blade, lingering in the still air. When he had finished, the God’s mark floated at eye level.
“Laughing God!” he called again.
Helgi growled, very softly, and Veiko moved his free hand toward his axe. But then the sigil guttered and faded, turning to smoke and a fine sifting of ash.
“The spirit you call chooses not to answer you.”
Veiko had grown used to southern customs, where a person’s face announced his feelings. But he was not so out of practice with his people that he did not recognize smug when he saw it, in the barest hint of Taru’s raised brows.
He was certain his own irritation was obvious to her. “I have summoned him by name and sigil. Were he here, he would have to answer.”
“Ha. No. Laughing God is not a name. It is a description. Your spirit was wise enough to keep his name to himself.”
This god was not wise, Veiko was certain. Equally certain he did not want to argue with her about the God’s nature or tell her how he’d come by that knowledge.
“Laughing God is the name by which he is summoned,” Veiko said patiently. “If he had another, he has forgotten it.”
Taru threw him a sharp look. “A spirit who forgets his name—however much power he may have otherwise—can give you no great wisdom. Why are you seeking this one?”
“My partner believes he can help us against Tal’Shik.”
“The spirit who marked you already. The dragon-woman. The one who has a name.”
“All of those things, yes.”
“Your Laughing God will be no help against he
r.”
“My partner thinks otherwise, and so I must find him.”
Taru sighed. “Must. I don’t understand this must. You can spend the rest of the day shouting into that cave if you like. Your Laughing God is under no obligation to answer you if there has been no exchange of power between you.”
“I gave him the edge of my axe.”
“In exchange for a soul’s freedom, which you achieved. That bargain is over.”
Veiko shrugged. He turned the blade around, made as if to grab the metal itself, bare-handed. “I can make a new bargain.”
Taru grabbed his wrist. Her fingers were cold, and surprisingly strong. “You will not use blood. That may call your spirit out if he’s hiding, but it will give too much of yourself away.”
Pity he had not known that earlier, then. Kenjak, Teslin, Barkett . . .
But it would not have mattered. Then, his need had been urgent.
And what is it now?
Snowdenaelikk’s need. And a partner’s promise.
“Perhaps I should go after him.”
“A noidghe might do that,” said Taru. “Hunt a spirit to its lair, challenge it to battle to learn its secrets, and in victory acquire its power. But that is a journey for a noidghe far stronger than you. If you lose the battle, the spirit will instead acquire your power. Further.” She stepped close to him, drilled a finger into his chest. “This is not your quest or your battle. These are not your secrets that you seek. Let your partner look. She is a noidghe herself if she has come back from this place. And she has prior relations with this God.”
Which was precisely the problem. Veiko did not want to explain all of the intricacies of Snow’s relationship with the God to Taru. He really did not want to see the look on Snow’s face when he reported his failure. She would be disappointed, yes, but that was the least of his worries. What she would do next—that was.
“My partner,” he said. “If she were to seek your help, Taru, would you give it to her?”
Taru did not answer at once. Stood beside him, arms crossed, gazing around at the dust and stones and the ribbon of black river. Then, softly: “We did not have much business with Dvergiri when I wore flesh. And what business we did have was purely that. They came in search of wurms, and wurm-parts. But mostly they were busy with the Alviri and the Horse Tribes.”
“They call themselves Taliri now. There are no more horses.”
“So you say. Another Dvergir achievement. Truly, Veiko, you have fallen among barbarians. To destroy every single horse—that is a horror.”
“It was a conjuring,” Veiko said. “And it won them their war.”
“Did it? Is that not your Dvergir woman’s difficulty, that this same war is beginning again? What creatures will they destroy this time? What lands?”
“She is not my woman. She is my partner. And this war will not be the same.”
Taru said nothing. Let her silence speak for her, as bleak and blasted as the land around them. And Veiko was left to the un-peace of his own thoughts, in which he wondered if she might not be right.
Dekklis rested on the garrison roof, flat as she could make herself. Thank all the foremothers that whoever had built the garrison favored level roofs instead of the snow-proof sloped peaks in Cardik. Bad enough she had to creep along to the edge. Far worse if she had to worry about going over before she was ready. There wasn’t anything on the other side of the edge except down. A few bridges along the way to the distant Suburba, smaller arteries mostly left to servants. One of those was a rope-drop from the garrison roof, more or less. If her spike held. If no one saw her.
She eeled to the edge and peered over. Tugged the sweater up over her belly. It had been Teslin’s and so was far too large. Pure undyed Cardik goat’s wool, standard wear in Cardik winters. It had earned her more than one odd look round the barracks, where the cave ambient didn’t rate that kind of warmth and weight.
But a smallish woman could hide a coil of rope underneath that much wool. Same rope that a highborn soldier could liberate from the quartermaster’s stores without a second glance from the mila on duty.
Dekklis shook the rope out. Checked it for kinks. Knotted it round the spike she’d driven into the stone a day earlier while Istel had done her favor. His fight with Optio Nezari had drawn all the sentries out to watch while the garrison officers were locked in their morning meeting.
Dek hadn’t expected him to win. Had worried, as the shouts from the courtyard half drowned out her hammering steel into stone, that Istel might’ve forgotten that he’d do her no good with broken bones. And when she’d gotten down there—roundabout across rooftops so it looked like she’d come from the officer’s wing—hell and damn, there was Istel covered in dust and blood, and Nezari not much better off, and both of them emotional, irrational, and trying to kill each other.
It had taken three troopers to haul Nezari back, on Dekklis’s command. Istel had picked himself up on his own. Spat blood and stood there while Dekklis questioned his parentage and intelligence and wondered aloud whether to stake him out for the svartjagr. Then she had turned on the rest of them, enumerating their faults at such volume that the praefecta herself had come out to see what in all hells was the problem and brought the rest of command as a witness.
Dek had worried then that she might’ve gone too far, that Dani would take charge of both offenders. But Dani had looked over the bloody mess of two soldiers, at the ring of slack-jawed trainees and sentries, and proved—
Illharek’s legion’s gone soft, Dek, bunch of rabbits.
—what Istel had alleged all along.
A word, Optio, she said, that was all, and Nezari had gone off to foremothers knew what discipline. Dani’d left Istel for Dekklis’s discretion. And Dek’s discretion meant another tirade, a tantrum ending in Get out of my sight, public exile from the garrison, and disappointed troopers who’d rather the blood and the beating.
Which meant Istel was limping loose in the Suburba right now, absent with leave, and that Dek had no partner for this liberation of K’Hess Soren. Safer for Istel, anyway. The Senate had enacted severe penalties for kidnap, for assassination, and the half-dozen other events that had been settled, before the Purge, by blood feud. Two, maybe three, of which she intended to try tonight.
Dekklis scrubbed her palms against her sweater. Took a wrap and fist of rope and let herself over the edge of the roof.
There was a lot of shadow gathered along the Tano path. Too much for this time of day. It was burning down to the fifteenth mark Below, which meant late afternoon. There was no pedestrian traffic, just her; but there were barges, still, floating into Illharek. Their crew lit lanterns as they passed out of the daylight, little yellow stars bobbing above the decks. Snow’s own witchfire bobbed at her shoulder, small and discreet, casting blue along the stone path, grey where its light failed.
And its light failed very much, very hard, just ahead. Snow knew there was a side passage there that would let a traveler angle north, bypass Illharek outright, and connect with the road that ran along the Tebir tributary. There was a whole maze of tunnels in between, cut and conjured by the builders for the road crews. Rude hollows, meant for bondies and blankets, meant to be temporary. Some of those had turned into way stations for those travelers who walked along the Tano and the Tebir. Empty most of the time. Foot traffic Below was a matter of economics. If you could afford better, you didn’t walk.
But this maze, closest to Illharek, was occupied. Suburbans called it the Tomb and sneered at it with the lip-curled contempt of the more fortunate to the less, the same look the highborn wore when they looked down into the Suburba’s tangled guts. The only people who lived in the Tomb were the truly destitute, and criminals too desperate or violent for the cartels.
Once, the God’s people had ranked among those kinds of criminals, counted as scavengers, like svartjagr, skulking in the shadows. Tsabrak had changed that. Recruited and organized and trained his people, built a cartel that ran half the Subur
ba and had fingers from Cardik to the Redstones.
We are invisible, he said, because they don’t want to see us. That’s our advantage.
Invisible in part because of tricks she’d taught them. Shadow-weaving, which would make exactly that sort of darkness.
Briel didn’t seem bothered. Probably hadn’t even noticed those shadows, being preoccupied with the narrowness of the passage, the shallowness of the ceiling. Not much room for a svartjagr to fly. She had resorted to crawling the walls, claws gouging into cracks even a rat wouldn’t dare. That had her attention, not a patch of particular black on the path.
If there was reason to worry, Briel would have known it. Would have alerted Snow to it.
The darkness chuckled, cold against her ear.
Maybe Briel’s not as clever as you think, yeah?
Veiko had said Talk to the ghost, yeah, but Veiko didn’t know what a motherless toadfuck Tsabrak could be. Tsabrak hadn’t liked Briel. Had, let’s be honest, been more than a little afraid of her. Maybe a little bit jealous. Ari and Stig and the rest of them hadn’t liked the svartjagr much, either. Or maybe it was a half-blood conjuror they hadn’t liked, Tsabrak’s
woman
ally, whose skills they needed, whose loyalties they’d never been able to reckon. She made a fist of her right hand, where the God’s sigil was. Same ink on her palm they had, but she hadn’t sworn the same oaths.
Snow. Listen to me. The ghost fluttered against her neck. Cold fingers plucking at her collar.
Air and shadow, that’s all he was.
Go away, Tsabrak.
Cold spots on her wrist, like gripping fingers. Listen. Look. I trained you better.
Chill-prickles all over her skin, and nothing to do with the temperature or ghosts. She put her hand out. Clenched her fist, and the witchfire died. Strained her eyes through the sudden darkness. Ghost-Tsabrak might be lying. Live-Tsabrak had often enough.
Briel noticed her hesitation. Paused where she hung on the rock. A moment’s dizzy flash, Briel’s tip-tilted perspective, the air a solid mass of patterns, currents, above the water. That world shifted again as Briel started to turn back.