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

by K. Eason

  Go, she wished Briel. Go ahead. Find Veiko.

  Sentiment, whispered Tsabrak. She could help you.

  “I won’t need help,” Snow whispered. And if she did, Briel wouldn’t be able to do much. Not against who Snow thought might be up there, in that patch of too-dark.

  She picked out the weak smears of lantern light from the passing barges. Drew it toward herself, thread by thread, stretching the glow and forced the shadows aside, so that black became darkwater grey. There were figures standing there, lumped and indistinct. She knew at least one of those shapes herself, and he was no ghost.

  Ari.

  Tsabrak had been a classic Dvergiri beauty, small framed and slender, long bones and big eyes. Ari, however, showed evidence of a Talir or two somewhere in his ancestry. Not close enough to be half-blood, but still. He was taller than average, broader, heavier. Mud-yellow eyes, which a Dvergir might inherit honestly, and walnut-dark hair, which no pure Dvergir would. The Ari Snow remembered had worn his hair long and loose and plain, deliberately undyed, deliberately not in the fashionable queue. The Ari Snow recalled had been a good bit thicker, too, muscle slabbed over bone. This man was lean as a winter wolf, all his vanity cropped to a stubbled dust on his skull. But those were Ari’s eyes, burning with godlit fury. She counted at least a handful of people with him, hinted and half-solid. The shadows inked and ebbed, living darkness, pushing back against her light. Fuck and damn. She’d taught shadow-weaving to anyone who had asked, hadn’t she, and thought herself some kind of rebel.

  Damned stupid, yeah? Arming the enemy. Adepts knew that.

  One conjured witchfire could blast them all into brightness. One conjured witchfire could prompt Ari’s friends to jump her, too. The Ari she remembered was talk-before-violence. Please, that this version was, too, however feral he looked.

  Snow kept her hands loose. Looked Ari over, crown to toes. Raised both eyebrows. Slow drawl, no shake in her voice: “Huh. Thought you were dead, yeah?”

  The shadows rippled as bodies shifted position, came into focus. As knives came out. But Ari raised a hand. Peeled her an unfriendly not-smile. “Disappointed?”

  “Don’t be an idiot.” She matched his not-smile. Showed teeth. “Didn’t reckon Rata was smart enough to do you. Didn’t reckon she was stupid enough to tell me the truth, though.”

  Another shift and eddy in the shadows. Faces drifted into focus, stormy, ugly, violent. Strangers, most of them. Only one she recognized, Hraf, who’d been a boy when she left. Cold fingers moved in her gut. These were Ari’s men, not Tsabrak’s.

  Fuck and damn.

  This time Ari half turned his head before the movement stopped. Only his eyes flicked back toward her. “You been back a while, yeah? Word’s out on the street. Reckoned you’d look for us.”

  “Where should I look? I checked the places I knew.”

  “Not all of them.”

  He meant the shrine. The place she’d been exactly once, and then in Tsabrak’s company. Ari knew very well why a lone woman, conjuror or not, Tsabrak’s right hand or not, wouldn’t walk into that place. She shrugged. Paused, got enough spit in her mouth to keep talking. “I reckoned if you were alive, you’d find me. I’ve been prancing all over the motherless Suburba.”

  Ari let his weight shift back on his heels, just a little. “That you have. Meeting with Rata, too.”

  “Once, to reckon where you were.” She caught movement on her periphery, some motherless toadshit trying to flank her. “Call off that dog, Ari, or I’ll feed him to you.”

  Ari gestured, and the movement stopped.

  “The fuck is she,” came Hraf’s voice from the shadow, “to talk to us like that?”

  Tsabrak would’ve answered she is your better and splashed a little shame onto preexisting resentment, make the dislike really stick. What he’d always done, to keep her from becoming one of them.

  Ari only sucked on his teeth. “This is Snowdenaelikk. There’s a reason she was Tsabrak’s right hand, yeah?”

  “I know the reason.” Hraf had almost grown into his nose since last she’d seen him. It still sounded like his voice had been squeezed through it. “Tsabrak was fucking her.”

  Snow laughed. “We have that in common, yeah? Except Tsabrak wouldn’t take you north with him, no matter how sweet you were in bed.”

  Hraf growled, really growled, like Logi. “You told him not to take me.”

  “I told him you were an idiot, yeah? That you don’t know when to shut up. And I was right, clearly.” She raised her right hand, palm out. Conjured a witchfire to run down between her fingers, drip and coil around her wrist. Used its light to push back hard at the shadows so that she could see every one of them.

  She marked their stances, their placement, their weapons. There were six of them, counting Ari and Hraf. Five pairs of eyes flashed to her hand, five pairs rounded out at the dripping witchfire. Only Ari didn’t blink or flinch, like it happened every day that a half-blood called blue fire out of nothing.

  “Hraf, leave off. She’s godmarked,” Ari said. “Just like all of you. And if the God doesn’t mind her, you don’t. Savvy that?”

  That was the Ari she knew. Temper sunk out of sight, eyes gone cool and flat. As likely to put a knife in your back as buy you a drink, yeah, that was Ari. But he hadn’t killed her yet. Hadn’t even tried.

  An idiot might think that meant she was safe. Ari would have his own ideas why she was here, why he thought Tsabrak’s right hand had come south. She could play on that. Gamble on what Ari knew and didn’t, and trust that the God hadn’t passed along any messages, by whatever means gods talked to godsworn.

  “I’m back because Cardik’s gone.” Pause, to let the ripple and murmur rise and fall. “Taliri hit it. Whole army of them.” And to Ari, as if the rest of them weren’t fidgeting like a cage of hungry rats: “They had godsworn with them. Tal’Shik’s.”

  Hraf and two others made warding gestures against the speaking of her name. Dek would call it superstition. Veiko would call it good sense.

  Ari only grimaced. “Fuck and damn. And Tsabrak?”

  Snow glanced around. The ghost had disappeared again. And he’d so loved attention, too.

  “Dead. We were betrayed.” Truth. And a lie: “I wasn’t with him when it happened.”

  “How’d you survive?” Hraf said, sharp and too loud.

  “I ran,” Snow said flatly. “Got out before the siege landed. The Alviri were rioting, yeah? The legion was distracted.”

  Ari frowned. “The Alviri were rioting? Why?”

  Ari could be testing, seeing what she’d tell him. But he seemed genuine. Maybe the God hadn’t included all his godsworn in his plans. Maybe that had been Tsabrak’s special honor, to know that the God had planned treachery and alliance with his worst enemy.

  Didn’t need to see the ghost, or hear him, to know what Tsabrak would think of that. Curled lip, cold eyes.

  Oh, such an honor. See what it cost.

  “Taliri were burning out villages all winter,” she said. “Lot of toadbellies in town without Illhari ink. They weren’t happy with their prospects.”

  Ari said nothing. His brows leveled. His mouth did. “You’ve got your own toadbelly. Some skraeling. He has the street talking.”

  “So?”

  “So Rata’s got coin out for information about him. Lots of eyes looking.” He rolled his, up and back. “She’s paying for help from the Tiers. People like you.”

  “You’re saying Rata’s got coin to pay conjurors to find him?”

  “I’m saying that’s the rumor. What makes him so special?”

  Snow pretended to look past Ari’s head at the dockside, at the lightbleed from lanterns and candles. Honest flame. Candles and oil came in on the river, cheap goods, brought and traded by people who still used the word witchery. The Suburba was a superstitious place. If Rata’d brought her own conjuror down looking for Veiko, that was serious.

  And dangerous. A conjuror wouldn’t be fooled by ir
regular schedules. A conjuror would watch, only watch, and never be noticed. She could do that, and she wasn’t the best watcher coin could buy. She had to warn Veiko. And Ari wouldn’t be inclined to just let her walk away, not now, not easily.

  “This skraeling knows things,” she told Ari. “About godmagic.”

  He rolled eyes at her. Red lines all through the white. “What kind of things?”

  “He’s hurt Tal’Shik once, yeah? Might be able to do it again. That’s why they want him.”

  “Toadshit,” said Hraf.

  Ari ignored him. “Maybe we should talk to him, he’s that important.”

  Oh fuck and damn. Snow moved closer to him. Put her hand on his sleeve. Smelled a man who’d gone too long without washing. Stale sweat. Old dirt. Fear, which she’d never connected with Ari.

  “Listen. He’s skraeling, yeah? Let me handle him. He’ll bolt, he sees more than me coming. The skraeling was part of Tsabrak’s plan, yeah? Let me settle it. Then I’ll come back. Tonight. Meet me just inside the gate, yeah? Fuck and damn, Ari, I’ve been looking for you. We have work to do.”

  She felt Ari looking at her. Watched the lines mapping his forehead, his eyes, his mouth. Felt his hesitation, and the shift as he reached resolution.

  “We do,” he said after a moment. His gaze wandered over her, face to feet and back. “Never thought I’d say it, Snow. But I’m glad to see you.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Veiko was picking his way over the ridge when Briel found him, just as the sun dropped behind a bank of western clouds. She sent him an image of Snowdenaelikk, waiting at his fire. Not wishful-Briel, no, the hard clarity of things-which-were.

  Veiko watched as Briel crossed the sunset, her wings like smoked glass. Then she passed into shadow. Passed out of his awareness then, as if he’d slammed a door between them. He could push her aside when she was distracted and have the inside of his skull to himself. But she could do the same. There were insects to snap at. Bats to chase, who were nearly as much fun as cats. A whole sky overhead, and trees below, and she had made her report.

  His partner, whom he had not seen in days, was waiting for him. He was glad he had gotten two rabbits, at least. They were not large this early in spring. Not fat. And he had not planned on a guest.

  Veiko was most of the way down the ridge now, circling toward his campsite. Grey skies. Grey air, where the river mist rose up and twined through the trees. He smelled pine and growing things. Smelled the death and blood he carried. Logi oofed, nose up and ears pointed—smelling Snow, no doubt.

  “Go,” Veiko said, and Logi bolted in a scrabbling of leaves and claws. Veiko had some sympathy with the impulse. But he made himself walk at a sane pace, minded where he put his feet and where the branches were. A hunter could not let himself get careless, and Snow would hardly leave before he arrived.

  He took careful steps. Deliberate. While his belly tightened and his heart thumped.

  “Idiot,” drifted through the trees. “Will you sit?”

  A whine, which meant Logi had. He was still sitting when Veiko arrived. Flattened his ears in greeting and shuffled his paws and stayed where he was.

  Veiko suspected witchery, for that sudden and absolute obedience. He could be a little bit jealous. Or he could just be

  happy

  pleased that he would have company for dinner besides Logi’s big-eyed greed.

  That company squatted beside his fire, feeding it sticks.

  “There you are,” she said without looking.

  “I was hunting.”

  “Reckoned.” She turned then and tipped her little half smile into the corner of her mouth. “Ah. Rabbits.”

  “Rabbits are simplest. It is much harder to hunt with only one dog.” He noted the pack beside her, lumped around its meager contents. She had come for a day, maybe two, but she was not packed for long journeys. “Why are you here?”

  “Can’t I be lonely?”

  “Perhaps. But I do not think that you are.”

  “Huh. Fine. Because my sister’s going to drive me mad. Belaery’s busy with some toadshit Adept business. And Dekklis asked me to teach her to pick locks.”

  Veiko snorted. “That seems unlikely.”

  “That seems like trouble. I didn’t ask why. Reckon she wanted me to know, she’d tell me.” Snow snapped a stick in half. Studied the jagged edges. Tossed both pieces into the fire. “Rata’s got people looking for you. Conjuror, maybe. Or godsworn. I was worried they might’ve found you. Obviously they haven’t. Unless you’ve got bodies stashed in the forest somewhere.”

  “No.”

  “Didn’t reckon. I’m leaving Briel with you. She’s another set of eyes, yeah? Besides. She misses you.”

  “No.” An old argument. Comfortable, like worn boots. “You need her more than I do.”

  Snow hesitated, like she wanted to say something. Then she reconsidered, visibly. Cast her gaze around the campsite and jerked her head sideways, at the drum where it sat drying beside the fire.

  “Taken up music, have you?”

  It was a crude thing, a simple cross frame with a skin stretched across it. The frame had taken the most effort, needing several strips of wood and bark and the same glue Veiko used for fletching arrows. Arrows, he had decided, were far simpler.

  “It is a noidghe’s drum.” Veiko squatted beside Snow. Laid the rabbits out on the ground and drew his knife.

  She snagged the nearest. Turned it over in her hands. “I’ll get this one. Goes faster with two of us.”

  He had tried to teach her how to skin and gut, last winter. Had taken her hand in his and wrapped her fingers round the hilt.

  It is not like cutting a person, he had told her. Hold it like this.

  She had plucked the knife out of his hands. Slipped it between hide and meat with a skill that made him wonder what exactly chirurgeons learned in their apprenticeship.

  You’re right. Dead things don’t squirm.

  She cut a little slower now than she had then. Her broken finger refused to clamp tight around the knife’s hilt, which made him wonder how the cut on her arm was healing. He eyed her sleeves, which seemed long and thick for the warmth of a late-spring evening.

  Snow caught him looking. Cut him a glance that made him understand why Logi would not move from his place.

  “The arm’s fine, yeah?”

  “You are the chirurgeon.” The Dvergiri word came more easily now. Sounded less like he’d gotten a mouthful of stones.

  “Glad someone noticed. So. Why does a noidghe need a drum?”

  “For beating.”

  “Oh, you’re funny. —Do you want the hides?”

  Before the winter solstice he would have said yes. He had traded furs in the Alviri villages to the north, before Tal’Shik’s Taliri began burning whole settlements, and the legion came out of Cardik. Before Snowdenaelikk.

  He stroked the fur. Sighed. “No. Logi can have them.”

  Motion out the corner of his eye: a dog creeping forward, swinging around the fire on Veiko’s side. Logi stopped when Snow looked at him. Whined and sat.

  “Tell me how you do that.”

  She chuckled. “Same way you get Briel to do whatever you ask when she argues with me.” She tossed a rabbit head across the fire. Logi leapt and caught it, hunched and bit down, hard.

  Snow made a face halfway between grin and grimace. Pitched her voice over the crunching. “Tell me about the drum.”

  Quick cuts, because it did not matter if he nicked the hide. He pulled the skin free. Laid it on the skull. “It is for walking the ghost roads, instead of using the poison.”

  Half a beat of silence. “What, you just woke up one morning and thought, ah, that’s how I make the drum, I don’t need to try and kill myself anymore?”

  “I have gotten a teacher. One of my ancestors found me.”

  Her eyebrows fluttered up. “You mean a ghost.”

  Veiko imagined Taru’s expression, should she hear herself called ghost
. He decided it best that Snow and Taru never meet. “A noidghe must be taught by another noidghe. There are songs to learn, and traditions, and skills. Most often, the teacher is still living. But since I am near no others, my teacher came to me. She is also a hunter, but even so, it took her some time to find me.”

  “She.”

  The look on her face was exactly like Logi’s the first time he’d discovered that kittens have claws. Veiko let the smile creep onto his face this time. “Women can be noidghe. It is a matter of talent, not sex.”

  “Old woman?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Huh.” Snow had reduced her rabbit to its component parts. She wiped the blade on the fur and delivered the edible bits to the cookpot in bloody handfuls. “So how does it work? You beat the drum, you’re in the ghost roads?”

  “An apprentice beats the drum. The noidghe’s spirit leaves his body.”

  “You don’t have an apprentice.”

  “No. But there are skills one learns in the making of a drum that I should have, whether or not I need it to walk the ghost roads.” He sent his own rabbit into the pot after hers. Stared down at his hands. “I have learned many things out of order.”

  “You’ve done all right. Bargained your way past Tal’Shik, yeah? And the God. Hurt them both.”

  “I have been fortunate.”

  “That what your ancestor tells you?”

  You are not untalented, Veiko Nyrikki, but only a fool relies on his luck instead of his skill.

  “Yes. And she is right to say so.”

  Snow’s eyes flashed. A retort moved across her face like thunder before it lodged behind her teeth. Veiko watched her swallow it.

  Her eyes dropped. She was suddenly very busy with her own hands, getting every last smudge of blood off.

  “And have you been fortunate in finding the God?”

  “No,” Veiko said. “I have tried, but there is no answer. Perhaps you should look for him.”

  She pressed her lips in a line. “I can’t call him. Only godsworn can do that, which I am not.”