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

by K. Eason

She stood up too fast. Damn near collided with Soren and the basin of water. Dodged around him. Left him to set it beside Istel and rummaged through her gear. Needle, thread, powders, and tinctures wouldn’t help Istel. But this. She turned, tossed a pouch at him. “That’s mossflower. Chew the leaves if it hurts.” And to Soren, standing wide-eyed: “Wait here. I’ll be back.”

  He was too well bred to grab at her. Made a knot of his hands instead. “Let me come with you.”

  “You don’t know where I’m going.” She added a knife to her left boot, match to the one already living in her right. Thought about hiding more sharp metal in her sleeves and rejected the idea. Long time since she’d done that, and now, right arm stitched and aching, a half-healed broken finger on the left, she’d only just drop the fucking things. She’d never been good at throwing blades. “Stay here. Help Istel.”

  “I’m past that, Snow.” Istel, dry as dust. “You know it.”

  “Shut up.” She wanted to say no one’s dying, but that was toadshit. Istel already knew it. Dead-man smile, dead-man calm. Dead man reaching for the mossflower. He popped a leaf in his mouth. Raised a brow at her. “Take the highborn with you if he wants to help.”

  Fuck and damn. She couldn’t look at him anymore. Drilled Soren instead. “Listen. There will be godsworn where I’m going. Way more dangerous than staying here.”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “They’ve got my partner. Not your fight, highborn.”

  “If it’s her godsworn, then it is my fight. Snowdenaelikk.” He reached for her. Got halfway to her wrist and stopped. “Please.”

  Oh yeah, the God would love this one. “You know anything about how to fight?”

  “I have some skill with stools.”

  “Knives are better.” Snow offered him one of her spares. “Hold the dull end and poke with the sharp one, yeah? And stay behind me.”

  A man did not panic when he woke in the dark, alone and blind and bound and nearly deaf. A man thanked his ancestors he was still breathing, that he had woken at all, that no injury screamed out for his immediate attention. A man took account of the senses he did have and stayed calm.

  Cold metal on his wrists, a collar on his neck, the clink and weight of what must be a shackle between them. Musty smell, like mildew and dust. Coarse weave against his cheek and nose. It had pushed his lips apart, rubbed his teeth and gums dry. A sack. A cloth. Something over his head. His toes and the tops of his feet hurt. His ankles felt stretched and bruised. His arms were sore, and his shoulders. The left side of his face ached. His head thumped like the morning after Winterfest.

  They must have dragged him back, then. He hoped the Dvergiri who’d done it had been small and weak and found him an unpleasant burden. He hoped he’d have a chance later to thank them personally, with something heavy and sharp.

  Veiko flexed his fingers. Dragged his knees under him and knelt and pawed at the sack over his head—which must have held onions once, or fish, or a hundred dead bodies, given the smell of it. Got it off finally and took a breath that was cooler and just as foul.

  Fish. Stagnant water. Rotten things. The floor under his knees was dirt over stone. The wall behind him—he ran his hands across it, because even with the sack off, it was too dark in here for seeing—was a rude brick and mortar. There was a ring bolted into it, and a chain running through that to the crude metal bracelets on his wrists. The collar around his neck was a little better crafted, and looser. He curled his fingers under it until the rough edges threatened to cut him.

  Then he sat, and took deep breaths, and considered.

  Rata could sell him. He might spend his whole life in a collar, for however long that life lasted. Which would not be long, because he would not live as a bondie, would not—

  No. He was more likely to die as a sacrifice to Tal’Shik. Or starve to death down here. Or flop at the end of his chain like a fish while Rata’s people beat him to death.

  As if you’ll just sit there, yeah? Fuck and damn, Veiko.

  He slid the chain between his fingers. Not much length, no, but enough. When they came, they would not find it easy to take him.

  And in the meantime—it was dark in here, yes, and airless, yes, but any room would have a door. A way out. An opportunity. He looked for it. Crawled and crouched, then stood and felt his way across the walls until the chain tightened. Then he went the other way and, using the anchor as a pivot, scraped out the limit of his leash. He could not reach the opposite wall, or a door; but he could, at the farthest point, see a dim grey line in the black. Could imagine he felt a draft on his cheek.

  And except for him and the sack, the room was empty. No bucket. No water. No straw. They didn’t mean to keep him long, or they meant him to die here, forgotten.

  He wondered what had happened to Logi and Istel and Briel. Wondered what they’d done with his gear, and then thought how foolish that was: no point in worrying what he would do without his axe and his kit if he died here. And then he wondered, if he did manage to escape the room, how far he would get before someone cut him down.

  Patience, yeah?

  Tsabrak’s whisper, Tsabrak’s voice, a hand on his shoulder. But it was Snowdenaelikk he smelled, the spice and stale jenja of her, real as a kick in the belly.

  He thought first that it was Briel’s doing, a svartjagr sending to tell him that Snow was on her way. Except it didn’t feel like Briel at all. Briel didn’t feel like anything when he focused on her. Ordinarily she was like breathing, constant but unnoticed until something went wrong. Now she was only a flicker, like a single star on a clear winter night, which meant all her attention was elsewhere.

  She’s coming for you.

  The pair of them together could make short work of whoever waited outside. Snow would pick the locks, drive back the shadows, and together—

  Together they would probably die, however many they took with them.

  Children imagined that things would turn out well simply because of the people involved. Virtue and honor would triumph. Cowards would fail. A man knew better. A man knew that death was inevitable, and the best he could do was meet it without flinching. Veiko expected that if he did not attempt an escape, he would die like Kenjak. And if he did make an attempt, that he would end up dead anyway.

  But he hoped, with one corner of his heart, that his partner would come, and that she’d get there in time.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Dekklis expected to die on the plaza. Expected a sword in her back and her corpse piled with the others. It had been a surprise when they arrested her. She hadn’t recognized the woman in senator’s robes who’d given the order:

  “Put her with the K’Hess whelp.”

  Oh foremothers, she’d damn near stopped breathing. They couldn’t have Soren yet, couldn’t have got to him. But if they had, it didn’t matter what they did to her. If they had Soren, then Illharek was dead, whether or not the Taliri came.

  She realized, after they’d hauled her up and bound her wrists and started marching, that the senator had meant K’Hess Rurik, not Soren. That they meant to take her to where they were holding him.

  Illharek had a shortage of prisons. There was a set of cells in the garrison, for troopers who broke regulations. There had been another set of cells under the old temple, under what was now the Senate chambers, for enemies of Illharek; but that system of tunnels and oubliettes had been destroyed along with the temple. Conjured, filled, bricked over. There was a stone tablet now, over the entrance, with an inscription commemorating the dead.

  Dekklis supposed the new Senate would excavate that prison and fill it with dissenters by summer’s end. But in the meantime, the Senate needed its legion loyal. She could grant them that much wit. And if they had some handpicked officers—young highborn women, like the motherless toadlickers holding her arms—well, that wasn’t everyone in the uniform. The men would rise if they knew about Tal’Shik’s return. So would a good number of the women. So it made sense they wouldn’t take her
back to the garrison. Which left, as possible prisons, this place.

  She blinked, staring up at the gates, and refused to believe it. The Academy had profited from the Purge. They wouldn’t want Tal’Shik back. Would not ally with the Senate in this.

  Believe that.

  She’d been a decade away, and so much of Illharek had rotted away at its core. Maybe the Academy was full of godsworn sympathizers. Sisters, brothers, friends to the new crop of women who called themselves senators.

  No. Damn. Think. If that were true, Belaery would’ve said. There would have been some indication. This must be a convenient allegiance. The Adepts might not mind if a few highborn died, but they would care very much if Illharek fell to Taliri. The Taliri had no word for conjuror, preferring the word witch instead, and they had learned how to handle witches from their former allies, the Alviri.

  But Dvergiri godsworn, now—they had a history of working with the Adepts, because war with them was too expensive. Until the Purge, anyway, when the Academy had sided with popular opinion and the rebel highborn. Tal’Shik would not have forgotten that. And this new breed of Illhari godsworn, already traitors once, wouldn’t twitch at betraying an ally. They’d killed their mothers and elder sisters. Had spilled blood all over the Senate floor. They’d try it here, too, and the Academy would burn. The Adepts had to know that.

  A woman met them just inside the gates. She might be a generation from half-blood, grey-eyed and a little tall for a Dvergir. This conjuror—little more than an apprentice, from her single gold earring—looked them over. Raised both brows.

  “Who is this?” calmly, as if there weren’t two armed guards at Dek’s elbows.

  “Traitor,” said one of them. She sounded terribly young, and a little nervous. “Goes with the other one.”

  The robed woman raked Dekklis with a second, longer look. Eyed the cords on her wrists. Her northerner’s garb. Then she stepped aside and gestured. “All right. Bring her.”

  “I.” Young Voice hesitated. “We were supposed to deliver her this far. That’s all.”

  The robed woman’s lip curled. “If she is so dangerous that you must disarm and bind her—and that you must bring her here—I would think you would not want to leave her with a single, unarmed apprentice.” Her smile fell away. “Now, either escort her yourself, or leave and take her away with you.”

  Oh, Young Voice didn’t like that. Dek watched her hands clench. Felt the anger shiver off her. But she steered Dekklis through the gate without arguing.

  The robed woman left them standing in the corridor and went into a small room beside the gate. Conferred with the other woman in there. And then she came out again and beckoned as if to a bondie. “This way.”

  Which meant inside the second set of doors, across the little cross corridor that led around and down to the Archives. Now they were entering new territory, nowhere Dek had ever intended to go.

  Not her guards, either. Clearly uneasy, the pair of them. They drew so close Dekklis thought she could wear them like a cloak.

  The image amused her. She allowed the smirk onto her face. Allowed the chuckle through her teeth, which got a puzzled look from the apprentice. Which got her a shove from her guards, one and then the other. A muttered “Shut up” from the second.

  Dekklis dubbed that one Raspy and held back long enough to meet her eyes. Yes, another young one. Afraid, and furious because of that, and prone to violence.

  “Save your breath,” the robed woman advised. She let them into a large roundish room with a fountain in the center. Water giggled down off a sculpture of—something. Smooth stone in a shape that made Dek feel nauseous, staring at it. Doorless openings studded the walls at uneven intervals, showing corridors or staircases. The apprentice selected one of them, steps going up. They climbed a coil of stairs for what seemed like forever. The guards thought so. Puffing and wheezing. You could feel sorry for them, wearing all that armor, so unaccustomed to exertion.

  Or laugh at them. “Bet you’re sorry you wore the full kit.”

  “Shut up.” Young Voice sounded more like Raspy now. Maybe Dek would rename her Breathless. Maybe she’d tell Istel he’d been right about Illhari soldiers.

  Oh foremothers, don’t think about Istel. Too much like a knife in her breastbone, a worry so sharp she forgot how to breathe. He could care for himself. He’d found Snowdenaelikk. He wasn’t going to walk into the garrison now. Wouldn’t get himself arrested. He was smarter than she was. He wouldn’t’ve killed

  my sister

  a senator on the floor of the curia in a fit of honor and anger. He’d scout out the situation, keep his head down, stay safe with Snow.

  Which meant, inevitably, he’d come here. Because Snow would. Damn sure, when she found out they had Dekklis in the Academy, she’d come.

  The apprentice stopped finally. They’d passed half a dozen doors already. This one looked like the others. Plain wood, old iron fittings. The stairs continued upward, presumably to other doors. All had big, visible locks. Dek would wager her life and Istel’s that there were—what did Snow call them?—not sigils, no, but wards, that was right, on that door. That this woman, with her single gold apprentice ring, had enough skill to get through those wards, and the lock was performance.

  But it clicked like a real lock when the woman put a key into it. And the door groaned, swinging open a crack.

  “Step back, First Spear,” the robed woman called. “Please. And put your weapon down.”

  There was shuffling from inside. A violent clang that sounded like metal hitting rock and losing the battle.

  “You’re safe,” said K’Hess Rurik in a tone that suggested otherwise. “Do come in.”

  The apprentice looked very much like Snowdenaelikk in that moment. Same crooked smirk that meant another offense added to a long tally of grudges. She turned that smirk toward Dekklis.

  “After you.” Added, suddenly serious, “He has a temper. Be careful.”

  “I can handle him,” Dekklis said loudly. Shrugged her escorts off, one and the other. Turned and offered her wrists. “Cut me loose.”

  They had no orders to that effect. That was obvious. Sheep-stupid stares, the pair of them. They were tired. A little scared. Not at all sure what to do.

  These, these, were Illharek’s defense. Maybe the Taliri deserved to win.

  Dekklis blew air through her teeth. “You think I’ll break out of here?”

  Raspy sighed. Started to draw her blade.

  “Wait.” The robed woman shouldered between them. Touched Dek’s cords with a fingertip and muttered under her breath. There was a moment’s sharp pain, and the cords burst into flame. Burned to ash and sprinkled to the floor.

  “Don’t let this one near metal, Mila. She could kill you.” The apprentice smiled at Dekklis. “Isn’t that right, Domina?”

  “My title is First Scout, not domina,” Dekklis said, “And yes.”

  She turned her back on both guards. Walked into the room and hardly noticed the door locking shut behind her.

  This place was huge. Spacious. Far more than a room, a cell, someplace to keep a dead man. This was a whole apartment, furnished with couches, a low table, a firedog set in a hearth. There was even a window on one wall, a long slash that ran a tall woman’s height. Illharek’s witchfire ambient glowed through it, blue twilight to compete with the honest yellow coming out of the firedog.

  There had been a metal pitcher and basin on the table. The pitcher was still there. It lay on its side, rolled nearly off the table. Water puddled around it. Gleamed off the floor like a mirror. The basin had been relocated to the floor. It was, Dekklis thought, a little bit out of round.

  But the basin looked better than the candlestick, and it looked better than K’Hess Rurik. He sprawled across one of the couches, arms outspread like a man waiting for his dinner. One eye swollen shut, split lip, blood dried brown on his uniform tunic. They’d taken his armor, his weapons, the laces out of his boots. She guessed at the bruises his clo
thes were hiding. His hair tufted and curled where it’d escaped from its queue.

  Dekklis drew up to attention. Saluted. “First Spear.”

  His mouth creased. He stood up, none too easily, and returned her salute. “First Scout.”

  Dekklis picked up the candlestick with both hands. It was sturdy iron, stuck all over with old wax.

  “You could kill someone with that, sir.” She looked for a candle. Didn’t see one. Set the stick upright.

  “That was the plan.” His face writhed between a man’s relief and a commander’s severity. “Szanys. The hell are you doing here?”

  “Here, this apartment? Or here, Illharek?”

  “Both.”

  “All right. Start with this place. I stabbed my sister on the Senate floor. She killed my mother, also on the Senate floor. Or had her killed. I didn’t ask which.” The words tasted strange. Foreign.

  Rurik blinked. “Oh.”

  She looked at him. “Reckoned something rotten when I saw your guard dead.”

  “You reckoned right.” He shook his head. “I thought you’d died in the riots in Cardik.”

  What happened? in his eyes. Did you run? in the line of his tight-pressed lips.

  “I got caught in the Warren when the riot started. Couldn’t get back to the Sixth. I got out of the city”—

  by the ghost road, in the company of dead soldiers

  —“another way, came south to warn the Senate. Get help, bring it back. They wouldn’t send it, sir. And.” It felt like knives in her chest, like she’d never breathe again. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t’ve left without orders. But Illharek needed the warning. And I thought Cardik was finished.”

  “It is.” Rurik sat down suddenly, as if someone had cut out his knees. “Taliri. Godmagic. Toadfucking dragon. Did you know stone will shatter when it’s hot enough? Just bursts, like a blister. The shards are deadly. You were smart to run, Szanys.” He held up a hand. “I didn’t mean it like that. I would’ve sent you myself if I thought you had a chance of getting through. How did you? They were thick as ants around Cardik. We barely got out, and we paid blood for it. Surprised ’em. The main force of Taliri is maybe a day behind us if they tried to match our pace. But I reckon they stayed in Cardik, to . . . occupy. Motherless raiders dogged us most of the way here, though. They’re all through the forests.” Rurik’s jaw worked. “We abandoned the city. All those people.”