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

by K. Eason

  She remembered what Soren had told her, and thought grimly that she might know why these women weren’t worried.

  “Dekklis!” One of the senators detached herself from the group. She came down in a flutter of robes, like the wings of some strange insect. The robes were, Dek noted, too small for her, baring wrists and ankles. Her hair was improperly loose.

  And she should not have been here at all.

  Dekklis waited on the curia floor, with a soldier’s stoicism, for her second oldest sister to cross that bloodstained floor.

  And then she said, in her best soldier voice, “Maja,” before that same sister had come to a stop. “The hell happened out there? Where’s our mother?”

  “Dekklis.” Maja reached for her. Put her hands on Dek’s arms and squeezed. “I’m so glad you’re here. I thought, when they couldn’t find you—”

  Dekklis stared down at the hands on her arm. Slender fingers, delicate, that had never slung metal or dressed wounds. Smooth little hands, highborn fragile. They would break very easily. Dekklis resisted the urge to take them in her own hands and squeeze.

  “Slowly, Maja. Tell me what happened.”

  “The K’Hess third son, what was his name?”

  “First Spear Rurik.”

  “Yes, Rurik. He arrived just after sixteenth mark, came straight to the Senate. He barged through the doors. This is what the Reforms get us! You should have heard him, Dekklis. He spoke to Consul Stratka as if she were his equal!”

  Dekklis had years of exposure to K’Hess Rurik. They had come up together in the Illhari garrison. He’d gone north a half year before she did, marching to join the Sixth, made First Spear in five short years. An Illhari, even a soft-bodied senator, would have to be deaf and blind not to know who he was—third son of K’Hess, brilliant fighter. As good as a woman. Cool under pressure. Logical. Not prone to those rages for which men were famous. If Rurik had indulged some of those masculine passions as he climbed the ranks—if his temper among his troops became legendary—then it was for its volume, and little else. Rurik didn’t lose control. He might get angry, but he wouldn’t just snap. And he’d never forgotten protocol in all the years Dek had known him, on either side of command.

  “Why?” she asked before Maja could say anything else.

  “What?”

  “He had to have a reason if he came up here. He asked for entrance, and someone said no? One of those polished toadshits outside, maybe?”

  “Dekklis!”

  “Hell and damn, Maja.” She wanted to sit down. Her knees hurt. Her shoulders did. Every bit of her. “The man’s fought his way down from Cardik, his people are wrecked, and some overfed gate-guard pulled attitude with him.”

  “You weren’t here,” Maja said mildly. “I can’t see how you’d know what happened.”

  “And you were?”

  “Of course.” Maja folded her arms across her robes. “We all were.”

  “All.”

  “Jikka. Disar. Me. Only you were missing, little sister. We sent for you, but the garrison didn’t know where you were.” Maja raised an eyebrow.

  Dek had never been good at politics, never good at reading people, and her skills hadn’t improved in Cardik. She was missing clues as obvious as the blood on the floor, wasn’t she, clues stamped in Maja’s crooked smile, in her too-bright eyes.

  What Dekklis could tell, clear enough, was that Maja wanted an answer to the question she hadn’t quite asked—

  Where were you?

  —and Dek wasn’t about to tell her. She folded her arms across her chest. Wished, for the hundredth time, for armor and sword. For Istel at her back. For Snowdenaelikk, hell and damn, and tall, grim Veiko. For Briel, if it came to that.

  She swept her eyes around the chamber again. Only a handful of senators up there, most of them looking down now. Damned if she recognized any of them. That wouldn’t be surprising, given the length of her absence, given her political disinterest. But they were all young faces, somewhere in their third or fourth decades. Faces her age. Or Maja’s.

  “Mother,” she said sharply. “Mother wanted to see me.”

  “Senator Szanys wanted to see you,” Maja said. Her crooked smile straightened out. “Yes, she does.”

  “Then where is she?” Growing coldness in her belly, creeping up through chest and throat. “She’s not dead. Maja. Tell me she isn’t.”

  “Dekklis.” Maja moved her hands on Dek’s shoulders. “Listen to me. When K’Hess Rurik arrived, he demanded to address the Senate and the consul. Of course, he was told he could not. He insisted. There was a fight between the Sixth and our loyal guards here.”

  “No. Not Rurik. He would not attack his own—”

  “But he did,” Maja said gently. Her eyes did not match her tone. Glittering now, like chips of glass. “Our mother tried to intervene. She was unarmed. I’d like to think it was an accident, what he did to her.”

  She might not be good at politics, but Dekklis knew toadshit when she heard it. She recognized a feint, too, when she saw one. Maja meant to draw her into grief, or rage, or some off-balance place.

  Like a man.

  She settled. Steadied. “You’re saying Rurik killed her.”

  “I’m saying she died in the fighting. Dek.” Maja’s hand rubbed her arm. “I know this is shocking.”

  Shocking had been finding K’Hess Kenjak dead on a pole. Shocking had been walking the ghost roads with Teslin and Barkett. Shocking had been what Soren had told her.

  And all of those things had been true.

  Dekklis closed her eyes. Let her breath hitch around the cold stab of grief. Felt the anger fill in behind it.

  “She wasn’t the only casualty,” Maja was saying. “Rurik went quite mad. It took several of us to subdue him.”

  Us. As if Maja had been anywhere near the fighting.

  “And you’re all that’s left?” Dekklis waved a blind hand. “What about Disar and Jikka?”

  “They’re fine. They went home. Most everyone else has, too. The rest of the Sixth fled.”

  More toadshit. There were only three corpses on the plaza. Rurik’s closest associates, his guards, the ones he’d take as his escort to the Senate. He wouldn’t’ve dragged what was left of the Sixth up here. Not after what was likely a running skirmish all the way from Cardik. Rurik wasn’t an idiot. Wouldn’t bring bloodied troops into Illharek unannounced. Wouldn’t leave the roads undefended, either, from Taliri. He’d have left the Sixth in the forests, outside the gates. Which explained the legion on the Riverwalk. They were there to keep the Sixth out.

  And Maja expected her to believe the toadshit. That, clear as glass on her face. Eyebrows arched, level lips, the perfect image of a concerned daughter. A solicitous sister.

  No. Not daughter. A daughter might weep. A sister might. But a senator maintained decorum.

  Dekklis swallowed and hoped Maja heard grief, and not rage, coming out of her throat. “Those are our mother’s robes.”

  “Yes. Clean ones, obviously. They’re the only Senate robes I have—”

  “Jikka’s the eldest.”

  “Jikka declined the appointment.”

  That wasn’t impossible. Jikka had no particular love for politics. The eldest daughter of Szanys Elia preferred her books. Would have, Dek thought bleakly, gone to the Academy, except that Elia had not allowed it.

  Maja might permit it now. And Jikka might not even be sorry their mother was dead, if it got her a wedge of freedom. Or she might be very sorry and soon to meet with an accident. And so might Dekklis herself if she stepped wrong. Maja didn’t know her well, not anymore. Maja remembered the woman she had been—reckless, defiant, willful. Hell. Maja might even expect her to be pleased about Elia’s death.

  Maja expected something, damn sure. Her strange half smile growing stiff on her lips, eyes turning arrow sharp.

  Dekklis remembered the Archives: dust and mildew, cave-cool and filled with witchfire shadows. Remembered Snow pushing a scroll in front
of her.

  Read it.

  Remembered the archaic, elaborate script that said how the Purge had happened. Mother against daughter, sister against sister, to root out Tal’Shik’s godsworn. This—what Soren had told her, what she saw now in Maja’s cold eyes—was the Purge all over again. Except it was Tal’Shik and her godsworn behind this—don’t call it a Purge, no, call it retreat. Regression.

  The opposite of purge is swallow, Dek.

  That’s what Istel would say, with a flicker-fast quirk of his lips.

  “Dekklis?”

  Pay attention.

  She drew a breath. Let it out slowly. Said, somehow steady, “Senator Szanys,” and managed a perfectly adequate, perfectly polite legion bow.

  “No need for that.” Maja’s smile said otherwise. She liked the deference. “I am still your sister.”

  “Where’s K’Hess?” she asked, and braced herself for dead and floating in the Jokki.

  But Maja said, “K’Hess? I imagine she’s in her house, where she’s been all winter. Why?” And then, a little more softly, “Are you looking for allies, little sister, or enemies?”

  Dekklis shrugged. “I meant K’Hess Rurik.”

  Maja relaxed. “The traitor awaits execution.”

  “And the rest of the Sixth, once you catch them?”

  Maja’s lips clamped together. “They will be handled.”

  It was the way she said it, handled, as if the Sixth was so much debris. Dek’s temper snapped before she realized it. Suddenly hot, where she’d been cold, all the fatigue washed away.

  “They’re still Above. That’s why our troops are all over the Riverwalk. To keep them out.”

  “There are Taliri on the roads if the traitor spoke true.” Maja shrugged. “Let them find the Sixth first. It may take time to mobilize the Illharek garrison to go to their aid. It may even be that the Sixth will break before we arrive. But the Taliri will be much weaker when we meet them.”

  “You’re saying the Senate will let the Sixth die out there.”

  “They serve Illharek.”

  “And who do you serve?”

  Maja arched her eyebrows. “Illharek, of course.”

  “I don’t see of course here. Elder sister. Senator. You’re Tal’Shik’s, not Illharek’s.”

  She was expecting denial, maybe. Protest. At least some pretense at shame or shock. But Maja only smiled. “I’m Illhari. And Illharek is Tal’Shik’s. The Taliri are a test of our loyalty, that’s all. We are her daughters, but we must prove our worth first. We must take the Republic back from the godless and the men.”

  Snowdenaelikk had warned her. “How many women died here today?”

  “They were no good for Illharek. Dekklis. The consul wasn’t going to act in time to stop the Taliri.”

  “And our mother?”

  Maja’s face might’ve been a summer sky, serene and cloudless. “Our mother would have divided the Senate even further.”

  “You mean, she wouldn’t’ve sold us to heresy and superstition.”

  “We haven’t sold anything. Dekklis. We’ve returned where we belong. The Republic was greatest when we served—”

  “That’s the right word,” Dek snapped. “We were servants. Toadfucking bondies. That’s all we were to Tal’Shik.”

  Maja’s face shifted through a dozen expressions. Settled on something that reminded Dek of their mother. “Is that treason I hear, First Scout?”

  Dekklis gazed steadily into her sister’s face until Maja had to blink. Then, very softly, “I know my oaths.”

  Her biggest regret was that her knife was not a legion sword. But its metal was true Illhari steel, and it had a soldier’s muscle and skill to drive it. Through stolen robes, through flesh and fat and bone.

  Maja stared down at the hilt in her chest. Folded her fingers around Dekklis’s. And then she crumpled. Dekklis let her keep the knife. Turned on her heel and walked back out onto the plaza. There were troopers already gathered. She walked through them, steady march. Did not look back when the shrieks echoed off the stones. When the shouts came to stop her, arrest her, get that woman.

  A trooper knew how to march. Left. Right. Never vary, never flinch, never flag. Distractions did not matter. Distractions: the faces around her, soldiers she’d known now for weeks, who called her name and asked what’d happened. Who were not Rurik, or Istel, or anyone for whom she would stop.

  She made it to the bridge before they caught her.

  A noidghe learns early that the spirit easily forgets its flesh. That he needs time to remember how skin feels, how muscles work, once he returns to his body. A noidghe does not plan to return to a camp with the fire gone out and smoke heavy in the air. The inconveniently full moon bleached part of the campsite white and turned the rest into blackest shadow. Veiko’s eyes could not seize on any solid shape for several precious blinks.

  His kit was where he’d left it, hanging off a branch. But his bow was gone, and the arrows. The axe, too, which brought a moment’s panic before he saw it on the ground between his blanket and the dead fire. Where he had not left it, no, but where a man might roll and grab it easily on the way from supine to standing.

  If that man were not still wobbly as newborn takin, perhaps. If that man’s spirit was not half on the ghost roads, worrying about Taru and the new Laughing God. Worrying about things that would not help him now, that might get him killed.

  Veiko rolled onto his knees. His feet. Logi was with him, loyal and worried. He gripped the dog’s scruff. Istel must be nearby. Briel must. And the attackers, unless Briel and Istel had killed them all already. He listened past the blood-thump in his own ears.

  And heard the unmistakable twang of a bowstring, followed by a howl of pain, a stream of Dvergiri invective. Chaos erupted. Bodies crashing in the brush, Briel’s hunting keen, a brace of wordless shouts. The bow sang again and again, moving away now, up the ridge, as Istel retreated.

  Veiko eased a step deeper into the shadows. He might, if he were fortunate, creep undetected away from the campsite. Away from the smoke that any fool with a nose could follow. There was no knowing how many were here. But surely not all of them would follow the arrows. Surely some would come here to investigate the smoke. With luck, he might avoid them, climb the ridge and rejoin Istel. A hunter and a legion scout together might make short work of Illhari who were not used to forests. Unless these were Taliri godsworn. Then the fight would be much more difficult.

  Logi’s growl shivered against his leg. And then the dog was gone, a scuff and whisper in the brush. And then, louder: raised voices, drifting downslope.

  “—up here—”

  “—that’s not—”

  Istel had drawn them away, but Istel would not be able to take them all. Istel was one man.

  Veiko set his teeth together. Abandoned silence and moved upslope, fast as he could manage. Startled a Dvergir woman in the trees, no one he recognized. She had a seax in one hand, held down and sideways—not ready for a battle, no, she was more worried about low-hanging limbs. She stopped when she saw him. Hesitated for one startled moment.

  Veiko did not. Cut crossways and up, one motion, with the axe. He spat her blood out of his mouth and kept moving as she dissolved into shrieks and dying. Bad luck, oh ancestors, that she had not died at once. He might as well set the trees on fire and announce his position.

  But he might draw them off Istel, anyway. Divide them.

  And then what?

  Hope that he and Istel were the better fighters. Hope that Logi and Briel tipped the balance. Hope, and cleave through enemy flesh until they were dead, or he was.

  He met one more in the trees. This woman had two arrows in her already, bubbling blood out of her nose and mouth. She drew metal anyway, swiped at him with a seax just like Snow’s. Gurgled “Here! Here!” before he chopped her quiet. He heard Logi’s sharp yelp, and a louder snarl, and then Veiko broke out of the trees.

  The ridgeline was all rocks and short grass, bleached white i
n the moonlight. Istel knelt at the apex, down on one knee, arrows thrust into the dirt beside his foot for quick draw and fire. One woman, already fallen, writhed and clawed at the shaft through her thigh. A second crossed the remaining open space as Istel nocked another arrow. The woman ducked and rolled as he let fly, and the shaft clattered into the trees. Then the woman came up cutting and launched at Istel.

  There was a blur and flash where steel caught the moonlight. Then Istel was clear again. But that was blood bubbling between his fingers where they pressed against his belly. He dropped the bow. Dragged his trooper’s knife out, left-handed.

  Shee-oop ricocheted off trees and stars. The woman hesitated—looked up, which was instinct and fatal and foolish. Briel’s tail licked across her face, and she toppled backward, shrieking.

  Istel finished her. Wiped the blade on his thigh and bared teeth at Veiko, glad you’re alive and good fight and this hurts, all together. And said, Istel-quiet, “Think that’s all of them? —Oh. Fuck and damn.”

  Veiko took that for question and answer, for a warning. Turned fast and saw the woman standing at the edge of the tree line. Violet fire shimmered in her hands. Godsworn. Oh ancestors.

  Veiko knew what she was, what that meant, what power she could use against him. Knew, and grabbed for the bow anyway, to put a shaft in her eye. He had stopped Tal’Shik that way once. He would stop her godsworn just as well.

  Except the shadows seemed to have grown solid around him. Seemed to have grown weapons and armor. Seemed to be women, yes, too many for the bow. Veiko dropped it. Stepped in front of Istel and swung the axe and felt it bite flesh. Heard Briel’s keening. Heard Istel curse. Heard a woman scream. Saw the flash of moonlight on metal and the godsworn’s violet fire.

  But he did not see the blow that felled him.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Briel wanted Snow’s attention. Pressure on the inside of her skull, bordering on pain. Little fingers of lightning that came at odd moments, blasting her concentration to cinders. Briel liked to share: a stray cat, a good breeze, a dozen different experiences of being Briel. Briel’s insistence, though, her persistence—that was the worry. Snow could imagine a dozen horrors, most of them ending with Veiko dead or bleeding.