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

by K. Eason

  This climb—which had taken maybe two candlemarks, up a much shorter distance—might just kill her.

  Snowdenaelikk would’ve been better suited to it. Snow would’ve laughed herself inside out if she could see Szanys Dekklis, highborn First Scout of the Sixth, clinging like a spider to the fluted stone columns between the First and Second Tiers.

  Spider, hell. Spiders didn’t need handholds.

  The top Tiers had been shaped pre-Purge, when blood feud and assassination had been both legal and common methods to bettering a House’s political standing. You wanted to stop traffic between them, you cut the bridges or barricaded them. But a blood feud didn’t end on account of lost bridges. An enterprising assassin—or a House trooper, because there hadn’t been a standing legion until after the Purge, when the Senate decided it wanted soldiers loyal to Illharek first, House second—who wanted to get from one Tier to the other cut holds into the stone. Spikes in some places, age-smooth depressions in others.

  She supposed she shouldn’t be surprised that some of the spikes were unrusted steel. Highborn still died

  of bad fish

  out of time and turn, whatever the laws said. Snowdenaelikk had told her as much. But it was Sindri’s endless stories of forbidden lovers climbing across the Tiers that detailed where those handholds actually were.

  In Sindri’s stories, the lovers died by violence. They never died falling down half a league of jagged black stone. Never spread themselves over ten paces of Suburban streets when they hit. And if soft highborn lovers didn’t fall, hell if she would.

  Although it might be kinder. She still had to get down again. Maybe she’d just walk down to the garrison, bold as a rat in a midden. Let the praefecta wonder about it. Dare Dani to confront her as she came through the front gate. At least the cargo she meant to

  kidnap

  liberate wouldn’t take that trip with her. She intended to deliver him to a First Tier destination. She only had to get herself down.

  Shee-oop ricocheted off the stone. A svartjagr’s hunting cry, which sank into bones and nerves.

  Not Briel, hell and damn. Svartjagr, wild ones, whole toadshit pack. They’d spotted her. Sliced past the crease where Dekklis was wedged, keening. She heard the rattle of claws on the stone. The leathery whisper of wings.

  A pair of hot orange eyes peered at her from the edge of the crack. Bigger than Briel, oh sweet foremothers. A second pair of eyes joined the first. She heard the third one scrabbling on the stone, hissing.

  Her palms began to sweat inside her leather gloves.

  Snowdenaelikk said svartjagr didn’t like risk to themselves. Dekklis hoped that she managed to look dangerous, jammed in between rocks like a blister-toad, with her blade pinned uselessly between hip and stone.

  The first svartjagr poked its nose into the crevice. There was a length of neck beyond, Dekklis knew, that could bring that head, and all its teeth, much closer.

  “Sssss!” She did her best Briel imitation. Imagined herself much larger, drawing on memories of that violet outline she’d seen in Cardik, when Tal’Shik tried to take make an avatar out of one of her godsworn.

  The svartjagr squawked, very much like a chicken, and withdrew so fast its claws scored the rock. Shards clicked and tumbled. And then came a great snapping of wings, and another chorus of shee-oops. They were retreating.

  She listened to the inner thump and twist of her heartbeat. Breathed herself calm. The svartjagr didn’t come back. Probably waiting for her up above, right where she was going to come out.

  Which would be a nice trick, since she wasn’t entirely sure where that would be. She had Sindri’s stories for guidance, and her own sense of Illhari geography. She knew she’d come out on the First Tier. But the Tiers weren’t like midtown or the Suburba. The Tiers were a webwork of bridges and catwalks, staircases conjured out of the stone. Houses might jut up three levels, and out another three, like enterprising fungi growing out of the walls. They had grown organically, randomly, sections conjured when a family could afford the additions. And most of the current structures had taken their shapes pre-Purge, when a House needed to worry about its defensibility. First Tier was a small collection of armed, oddly shaped fortresses.

  This high, Dek could even feel air moving through one of the vent passages. Some of those were natural. More still had been conjured, as Illharek grew, so that the city didn’t choke on its own exhalations. Dekklis wondered where that extra stone had gone. Imagined asking Snow, imagined the half-blood’s lazy smile. Probably something stupid-obvious to anyone who could conjure. Motherless mystery to everyone else, something awesome and inexplicable. That was how the Academy held its power. Mystery and theatre.

  That was likely how the godsworn had risen to power, too. Dek wondered, not for the first time, why the Academy had ever allowed it. Why they hadn’t sent assassins and Adepts the same way she’d come up the spikes to take care of the problem. Because godsworn could die. Ehkla had. Tsabrak, too. Godmagic was a little like armor, yes, but its real power was fear.

  That wisdom, and a half piece of copper, would get her a mug in the tavern. A soldier didn’t need to play philosopher, hell, leave that to the Belaerys and the Majas and everyone else with the leisure for thinking. A soldier needed to kill the enemy. That was all.

  So what are you doing, Dek?

  Climbing. Ignoring the burn in every muscle she had. Hoping that Sindri’s stories were right, and this path went somewhere.

  It did. The crevice didn’t end so much as it passed through a fold between two houses. It was at that point a simple matter for Dek to haul herself clear of it and to stand in what might generously be called an alley. Scarcely a body’s width, wall to wall. But there was evidence here of traffic: a rotten potato, a half-eaten, far-too-green fruit. Smooth patches in the rough stone where hands and shoulders might bump the walls. She guessed that bondies used the alley to pass between houses, to deliver messages, bring food up from the markets, passing unseen in their business of managing highborn lives.

  Dekklis leaned against the wall. Peeled off her climbing gloves while she breathed the ache and exhaustion out of legs and chest. Checked, for the fifteenth time, that she had all her tools, knife and blade and the little ring of metal slivers that she’d hung under her shirt on a leather thong. Lockpicks that no highborn daughter had any business carrying, that no highborn daughter would know the first thing about using.

  But highborn daughters didn’t keep the company she did. Snow hadn’t asked why Dek was suddenly so interested in learning to open locks. She’d only narrowed her eyes and nodded. They’d had three marks of lessons before Snow pronounced her tolerable; and then Snow had given her a set of picks and a knowing, crooked smirk.

  In case you need to practice on your own, yeah?

  Dekklis eased out of the little wedged alley. The passages—you couldn’t say streets, not here—were empty. Too quiet after the garrison’s constant clatter. A House had dozens of servants, and a harem of consorts, and children who wouldn’t get out during the day; and everyone who wasn’t on the Senate plaza was inside, working. Doing whatever it was bondies and servants did. But you’d never know it, from the quiet. Thick walls smeared any interior house sounds to vague thumps and whispers.

  Dek trailed her fingers along the stone. Looked around for some identifying feature in the rock. Yes, there: a glyph that looked burned into the rock, a dark gouge in the slash and double twist of House Qvist’a. Dek let a small breath out. Sindri’s information was good. One of Stratka’s two servant doors was a sharp left past the next junction, at the top of the alley. From there, it was a short walk across the bridge connecting Stratka, Qvist’a, and Tjol to House K’Hess.

  Dekklis took her time. Eased from shadow to shadow. Checked windows and balconies, imagining where an arrow might land, or a spilled pot of oil. She saw places where guards could have been. No one standing there now. Dust and cobwebs. A republic at peace with itself.

  There was no on
e at Stratka’s back door, either. It was an old thing, massive and wooden, braced and reinforced with black steel. There were black streaks on the wood, as if the door had caught fire and reconsidered. Conjuror’s work, bet on that, to prevent the burning. A chill crawled up her neck. Spread over her scalp and tingled. There might still be wards. Her mind spun out images: a fireball bursting out of the lock, spiders flooding out of the shadows, the dark itself eating her whole. Blink, and it was just a door again. Old as Illharek, slumped weary on its hinges.

  If there’s conjuring on the lock, if you even think it, then use this wire, yeah? It’s not a pick, exactly.

  Dek flexed her fingers and reached for the pouch at her belt. Pulled out a pair of gloves, fine and tight, and worked her hands into them. Too fine for climbing, almost like skin, and still she felt clumsy in them. She selected the smallest metal sliver on the ring of picks, the one that looked like plain wire. Uncoiled and slid it into the lock.

  And then what?

  Cold, burning through the gloves. The smell that came just before lightning. The lock shuddered like a dying thing. Something dark leaked out the keyhole. Ran down like oil, pooled on the stone.

  You’ll know if the ward’s gone, yeah? One way or the other.

  What if they’re better than you, Snow?

  That half-cocked grin. You won’t have time to notice.

  Her heart hurt, it was beating so hard. But the picks were steady in her hand. She checked the lock the way Snow had taught her. Selected one finger of metal and guided it toward the hole. Recalled her lessons and moved the metal, feeling her way around the lock’s guts. There, just so, and the lock clicked open.

  She let her breath out. Took a new lungful. Eased her weight down on the door’s latch.

  What if it’s barred on the back side? What then?

  Then you find another way in, Szanys. There’ll be windows.

  The door swung inward. Swish, whisper, the liquid slide of oil and good care. Good balance, too; it hung where she stopped it, unmoving, while she eeled through the gap. She closed it again just as quietly.

  There was a bar on the inside, raised and hooked on the wall. So that meant either someone was out and expected back, or the bondies in Stratka were careless. Or maybe one of Sindri’s love affairs was going on right now, right here, and the bar had been left up to let someone in.

  Dekklis was most of the way down the hallway, just coming to the stairs Sindri’d said were there, when she remembered the rest of Snow’s advice.

  One question to ask about wards, Szanys, is who put them there. The second one to ask is why.

  There was someone waiting in the shadows by the tunnel gate.

  Snow knew it, felt it. You didn’t run with Tsabrak for as long as she had without getting a sense for when shadows were occupied. She stopped on the dark fringes of the trail. Pulled the shadows more tightly around her and cursed the moon. Fuck and damn, it must be Ari, some of the baby godsworn. They might’ve followed her this far. She could have led them to Veiko.

  She put her hand on the seax hilt, intending to leave a body in the dark after all.

  The shadows moved. Took on familiar dimensions as they drifted closer. That was Tsabrak’s face, Tsabrak’s silhouette—Tsabrak as she’d last seen him, holding her own seax in his fist. Her heart twisted.

  Not me, Snow. You have a visitor.

  Then the ghost shattered, like a mirror struck from behind. Another familiar outline appeared, dusted in moonlight, coming out of the dark of his own accord.

  Fuck and damn.

  “Istel,” she hissed. “Did Dek send you?”

  “Yeah.” He sounded faintly embarrassed. “I think she wants me out of the way.”

  “Why? Where is she?”

  “She’s got her own problems. Says they’re watching her. Says she can’t get out unwatched, but I can.” Istel laughed, a near-soundless clicking in his throat. “Says to tell you, fuck you for being right.”

  That he could come and go, and Dek couldn’t. That no one would bother with a common man. Snow bared her teeth in the dark. “Write it down, Istel.”

  “Can’t write,” he said cheerfully. “Can read a little, though.”

  Her laugh died. Anger filled in behind it, old and comfortable. Tsabrak would’ve recognized this smile.

  Veiko couldn’t read, either, but Veiko wasn’t Illhari. Veiko thought a stylus was for spearing meat from a pot. Istel knew better, but Istel had had no opportunity to learn what it was for. And Dek hadn’t bothered to teach him in all their years in the Sixth.

  Pity Istel and Tsabrak hadn’t met under better circumstances. Istel might’ve joined the God’s side, or at least fallen in with Tsabrak. But instead it was Istel who’d put a legion blade through Tsabrak’s back.

  The darkness convulsed, in the corner of her vision. Tsabrak whispered, The word you want is killed. He killed me, Snow. Say that.

  Trying to save me, yeah? Say that.

  A sudden burst of mirth from the nearest barge on the Tano made her look. Men’s voices, raised in drunken Alviri. The last time she’d heard so much volume in that language, there’d been riot.

  Istel’s flinch said he shared the same memory. For a moment she saw Cardik dying in his eyes, pinprick dots of reflected lantern light. Saw the God in the next breath, those dots turned to licking flames.

  And then it was just Istel again. “Noisy,” he muttered. “The hell they so happy about?”

  “They’re out here. They’re not us. They’ve got beer and we don’t. Take your pick.” Snow watched the barge glide on the Tano’s current. Shook herself into motion. One foot in front of the other, stay in the shadows. Istel fell into step beside her, faint whisper of leather and cloth. No armor, of course there wouldn’t be. Istel was playing civilian. Istel had done a damn good job of it, too.

  Snow uncurled her fingers and wished up a witchfire. Tiny blue glow in her palm, no tingle of backlash, even though the cave was still a few paces away. She raised her hand. And yes, there, closer than she’d thought, the open gate, propped and rusting on its hinges. That was proof enough of Illhari arrogance. No need to guard this entrance, no need to lock it. Taliri wouldn’t take this route into the caves. Taliri wouldn’t invade Below at all, never had, because they hated the dark and the stone overhead. Even the Alviri, at the height of the war, had never come farther into Illharek than the Riverwalk.

  Small wonder the Senate wasn’t catching Dek’s urgency.

  Snow stepped through the gate. “So who’s watching Dekklis?”

  Istel came through behind her. “Legion. Probably on Senate orders. She doesn’t think it’s her praefecta friend. She caught someone following her, up in the Tiers.”

  A chirurgeon knew very well that a heart didn’t turn into stone and ice. She put one hand on her chest anyway, to check that it still beat. “When?”

  “Couple days ago. She was coming back from her mother’s house.”

  “What about before that?”

  “All her meetings with you? She says she doesn’t think so. Says you’re not in chains yet, that’s a good sign they don’t know about you. Or Veiko.”

  That sounded like Dek. And she was probably right, too, damn her anyway.

  Snow willed the witchfire larger, held it high. The blue light chased

  Tsabrak

  the shadows into the crevices between rocks. Spider lines of darkness, too small for a ghost, too small for anyone to weave into cover.

  Bare stone gleamed back at her. Snow let her breath out. “But she’s worried enough to send you.”

  “That’s her story. Mostly true, yeah? But really, she wants me out of the garrison. Wants me somewhere else. She thinks I don’t know she’s up to something.” Istel shrugged. “She’s toadshit for lying.”

  “She is.” Snow waited the requisite few beats, then asked, pretend afterthought, “Do you know what she’s doing?”

  “No.” Bland-faced neutrality, which Istel only used when he was unhappy
.

  “I don’t know, either,” she told him. “She asked me to teach her to pick locks, last time we met.”

  Istel grunted. “Same day she asked me to fight with Nezari.”

  “Wait, what? Dek wanted you to fight who?”

  Feel his glance splash off the side of her face. “Toadfucking optio.”

  “House?”

  “Minor. S’Haati, I think.”

  “You win?”

  “I think so.”

  “Then you’re lucky they didn’t stripe your back and throw you in a cell.”

  He made a spitting sound, dry air for effect. “Rurik would’ve. Me and Nezari. That lot up there—rabbits, Snow. Fucking soft, all of them. The praefecta just let it go.”

  Maybe it was just as well Tsabrak had never met Istel. Tsabrak had rejoiced in Illharek’s soft troops. Made business that much simpler. But Cardik’s troops weren’t rabbits. And Rurik’s Sixth didn’t break discipline, no matter how provoked.

  “And Dek told you to do it.”

  Istel grunted. “Not like I minded. Nezari needed a beating.”

  “And then she sent you to find me.”

  “I’ve been following you. This is just the first time you caught me doing it. I wouldn’t be coming after you now, except it looked like you were going out to Veiko and I wanted to see where that was. You haven’t gone out in a long time.” He pointed his chin at her pack. “Didn’t reckon I’d meet you on the way back in.”

  “Huh. Two of us.”

  Istel’s eyes caught the light like a cat’s. “Trouble?” And then, before she could answer, “Sorry. Shouldn’t’ve asked.”

  Snow grimaced. “My partner’s fucking stubborn. Nothing new.”

  “Ah,” and wisely, nothing else.

  The ambient air was growing cooler. Heavier. They were getting close to the main cavern. The Tano babbled to itself, water and stone. From where Snow walked, it looked black, like the river on the other side of the ghost roads. She’d walked beside that one, too, with a different Dvergir man. Difference was, she and K’Hess Kenjak had both been dead at the time.