by K. Eason
This, Snow thought, was how wild svartjagr hunted together. And that Briel had forgotten the minds touching hers were not svartjagr, well, take that as its own warning. Briel was not a brave creature. But she was angry now, and she knew Veiko was up there. That was a good portion of Briel’s frenzy. Not an inconsiderable part of Snow’s own, well, not frenzy, exactly. Call it focus. Call it bloody focus, with an unhealthy joy attached.
But she didn’t rush ahead. Wasn’t an idiot, to march down a corridor without checking all the doors. There weren’t many. This was a warehouse, with most of its space open and near the back, by the river. The rooms budding off this hall were offices, mostly, populated by desks and crates.
And a guardroom, whose dregs had not yet managed to join whatever trouble Veiko had started. There were three of them coming round the doorway, etched into flat silhouette by the firedog’s backlighting. They damn near ran into her, dodged and broke like water when they got close enough even the shadows couldn’t conceal her.
One behind, two in front. Had they been older, smarter, anything like Dekklis, they’d’ve triangulated and struck as a unit. But Snow had surprised them. And while they gaped—not long, but she did not need much time—she drew the seax and sliced one deep across the belly. Spun partway toward the second, too aware of the one still behind her. Better she offer a shoulder than an unguarded back, fuck and damn, she could hear that woman coming at her.
Logi snarled, quick and savage, and charged.
Then the first one found her breath, screamed as her guts spilled out. The second one struck—quick cut, with a blade just like Snow’s, with a skill that said she knew how to use it. Came in fast, feinted right, sliced her seax across Snow’s forearm. Crippling if it had landed square, yeah, but it didn’t. Scored across healing stitches, fresh cut and fresh blood and fuck. Snow slapped the other’s blade aside and closed the distance. The woman was fast, but she was young: gave ground, trying to bring her seax around for another strike. Unprepared when Snow used her elbow as a weapon, stabbing first to the chest, then the jaw, before she slammed her forearm against the second guard’s throat, all her weight behind it.
She felt that crunch rather than heard it. Stepped clear as the woman buckled and choked. She never even screamed as Snow hacked down with black steel, once and twice.
Nice contrast to the third guard, who was dying badly, loudly, competing with Logi’s snarls for volume. No need to worry about her. Worry about a maybe-fourth lurking in the guardroom, warned by all the noise.
Snow peered inside. Lucky. No guard. There was only a table, and what was clearly Veiko’s gear spread out on it. The axe, the bow, the noidghe drum, his pack untied and half-emptied. She could come back for that, yeah, once she had Veiko. Assuming reinforcements didn’t come up the door at her back and trap them in the warehouse, and then it wouldn’t matter anyway.
Snow coaxed a witchfire out of the black. Twined it among her fingers. Briel and the darkness had gone on ahead. She heard that chaos, shouts and screaming and Briel’s keening. The svartjagr sent only red-tinged darkness. No sign of Veiko.
He was there. Wounded, probably, maybe unconscious—but not dead yet. Not ruined. Not dying.
Tell yourself that.
Snow stepped back into the corridor. The two she’d cut were burbling to a slow death. Logi had been more thorough with his kill. He grinned redly at her. Ears back, tail waving, as if he’d just brought down a rabbit for the stewpot. Snow scraped her hand over his head. Took a handful of scruff. Couldn’t have Logi dashing ahead. Veiko wouldn’t forgive her, she got his second dog killed.
There was one door left, at the end of the corridor, hanging open on its hinges. The screams came from that direction, echoing out of what Snow’s memory told her was the main warehouse. The river smell was stronger now. Old fish. Mildew.
And godmagic, yeah. She smelled that, felt it crawling over her skin like a hundred spiders. Saw the violet flicker swelling against the conjured black.
There was someone on the other side of that doorway. Someone waiting for her.
Lightning flashed across the back of Snow’s eyes. Flash and bang. Then came an un-Briel silence.
Fuck and damn. Snow wiped the seax on her sleeve. Slid it back into its sheath. Let Logi go, too. She needed both hands for conjuring. Might need Tsabrak.
“You hear?” she whispered. “Come in, Laughing God. Your right hand needs you.”
Then she flung the witchfire through the empty doorway ahead of her. It might draw the godsworn’s attention. Might offer a target. Please, let that work.
It did. Violet godmagic sizzled, slicing where she would have been had she been an idiot and followed too close. She dove through the doorway, rolled and came up. She called up another witchfire, filled her palm with it. Cool blue for half a heartbeat. Then she conjured it to real fire, hot and bright, drawing from air and stone. A moment’s heat on her palm, and then she threw it. The ball unraveled as it flew, spread and swelled like a sunrise, so that the godsworn—snaggle-faced, toadfucking Dvergir woman—had to twist and dodge. The godsworn threw her hands up as if she meant to catch it. Snow had a moment’s hope that it would be that easy, that the fire would fold around the godsworn and burn her whole.
Instead the godsworn caught the fire in both palms, as if it were a child’s toy. The flames shivered, turned traitor and violet.
Laughing God, that woman had an ugly smile.
Snow murdered her witchfire. Used the sudden dark and her memory of the room to cross fast toward the far wall. She slipped on
blood
wet tiles. Had time to realize she was going to fall when the godmagic flared again.
The godsworn had made her own fire. Not witchfire, no, more like a glowing sphere of violet flames trapped behind glass. She lobbed it like a ball, two-handed.
It shattered when it struck the floor. Broke into a dozen burning strands that roped and writhed toward Snow, fast as snakes. She lurched onto her knees, swept her own hands in a push away that sent a fresh witchfire sheeting across the floor. Witchfire wouldn’t stop the godmagic, no, but it might slow it down, tangle it, give her a moment to
what, find a new place to die?
recover.
The godmagic passed through the witchfire and left it curdled, smoking, in bruise-colored puddles. Snow had enough time to be astonished, to think Bel should know about this, and then the godmagic was on her. Coiling around her boots, climbing her like a trellis. Sinking through leather, through her trousers’ rough weave, through her skin. Felt like snakes coiling around her, like worms eating into her. Like threads of fire, a tingling that turned to acid-intolerable so fast it stole her breath. She tasted smoke on the back of her throat, realized she would burn from the inside, that she would be grease and ash before it was over. Her vision tunneled inward, showed her a landscape of violet fire, a whole world of pain and terror. There was a darker-than-black shape amid all the violet that might’ve been a woman, or a dragon, or both.
Tal’Shik. Fuck and damn, waiting for her on the other side. That was enough to make Snow pray for a forever-burning, long death, let it never end—
You don’t mean that, said the darkness, where the godmagic’s glow could not reach. A shadow passed between her and Tal’Shik, there in the ghost roads. The Laughing God raised his hands, and the violet flames flattened and guttered. The dragon-woman rose up and spread wings and made a sound that Snow felt rather than heard. Like the stones themselves were melting from the inside.
And then, that fast, the pain was gone. Cold wet wash that made Snow think that she was back in the black river. She gasped out of reflex, expecting a flood in mouth and lungs. Except she was not wet and was not dead—unless dead meant a bruising fall to hands and knees, which jarred every joint in her body.
That was fast and too close and what the fuck happened? Tsabrak and Tal’Shik going at it, that was obvious. But that was the ghost roads’ battle. On this side, blood and stone, she had a
godsworn out there, with godmagic, and she wasn’t sure she could conjure a clever retort right now. Wouldn’t that be her luck, yeah, saved from Tal’Shik and still dead with a knife in her back. The godsworn had been—where? To the left—get her feet under her and stand up—
She could hear a woman screaming, and rattling steel over stone, and a series of meat-solid thuds, like a blacksmith at an anvil.
Snow swept the darkness aside in one violent gesture. The torches flattened and flared. She swept a blurred glance across everything. Marked the pole, tall and naked. Marked the scattered bodies, no time to count them. Marked a huddled heap of cloth and hair and spreading blood where the snaggle-faced godsworn had been, with a tall shape hunched over her, arm rising and falling. Not a hammer in his hand, no—chains, hanging from the manacles on his wrist.
Veiko, she almost said, but the name shriveled on her tongue.
Bloodmask and witchfire eyes, red-soaked rags of a shirt stuck to pale chest and shoulders. Torn trousers, smeared with blood and Laughing God knew what else. That face turned toward her. Then he was staggering like a three-legged goat, one hand stretched out for balance, the other knotted around a chain too clotted to clank as it slithered across the floor.
There was one way to stop the angry dead, Veiko had told her, but fuck and damn if she wanted to cut off his head.
Then Logi barreled past her, whining in his throat, and Veiko—not a ghost, not dead—folded onto his knees and dropped the chain and wrapped both arms around the dog’s neck.
Relief hurt worse than any stabbing. And behind it, a deeper ache. Briel was somewhere in here, probably crisped and dead, fuck if Snow wanted to look for her. Not yet. Not now. Focus on the ones she could help. It looked like someone had hit Veiko with his own axe; he had a long split across his forehead that stretched into his braids and bled like a heartwound.
Stop the bleeding, that came first, and then—and then what? She looked around, took the time to actually count the bodies. Snow recognized some of them as Rata’s people. But it wasn’t everyone. Wasn’t even Rata herself. And that meant there might be reinforcements coming, at the worst; and at the best, another round of this toadshit in the near future, with her and Veiko
together this time, yeah
in less than perfect shape to deal with it. Without Briel’s eyes and help, too—and she had helped here, that was obvious. There were gashes and cuts on the bodies made by svartjagr tail and claws. Contortions to some of the corpses that meant svartjagr venom.
Snow herself bore no visible marks from the godmagic, no burns. But the echo of pain throbbed in her bones, pressed behind her eyes, flopped in her gut. She was going to have the foremother of all headaches. She bet part of that hurt was Briel’s death, too.
“She is not dead.” On a good day he sounded like gravel and thunder. Now he sounded like sand in a pot.
Snow looked at him. Frowned. She. He must mean the godsworn. They were damned hard to kill. Except what was left of this woman’s face and head suggested Veiko had managed quite nicely.
“Veiko, there’s brains on the tile—”
His eyes were startlingly blue against the red. “Briel,” he said. And repeated, laboriously, “She is not dead. She is hurt.”
How do you know? crowded against her teeth. She kept it there. Veiko had a sense for Briel, a sensitivity that she didn’t. Trust the man. She left him to his dog and his headwound and walked around the room, really looked.
And there: a scrap of black against the wall, which fluttered and hopped toward her.
“Chrrip!”
There might be broken bones in those fragile wings. Snow offered a forearm. Watched with a chirurgeon’s eye as Briel wrapped talons and tail around her.
“Can you fly?”
“Chrrip.” Weak, emphatic, unhappy and happy at once. Briel thought she could. Briel did not want to try. Snow couldn’t blame her. She reckoned Briel had earned a rest and a carry, at least back to Veiko. And after that, well, she might have to fly, because he’d have enough trouble staying upright without a double-arm’s-length of svartjagr draped on his shoulders, and Snow couldn’t balance them both across hers. No doubt Veiko would protest, oh it is nothing—but he’d need help to walk out of here. She might manage a simple conjuring, make sure no one saw them.
And it wouldn’t matter if she didn’t work on him first. He would leave a bloody trail that a child could follow. Logi was trying to help, licking and licking, but Logi would choke before he’d stop the bleeding. Toadfucking headwounds.
“Move,” she told the dog. Elbowed him aside when he wouldn’t. Slapped Briel, too, when the svartjagr poked her nose toward Veiko. “He’s fine, yeah?”
“Fine. Yes. But.” Veiko touched the wound. Looked at his fingers. “It is a bad cut.”
“It’s a fucking river.” Snow probed the edges. A wound that size needed stitches. She had the needle and thread in her pouch, yeah, but that took time, and there were faster ways. She reached up, took a fingerwrap of her topknot. One, two, three, rip.
Briel hissed.
“I know, yeah? It was my head.” Snow rubbed the hair between her fingers. Closed eyes and gritted teeth and twisted a little power out of stone and air and her own overstretched talent.
A tiny flame bloomed between her fingers. The hair began to smoke.
Veiko squinted. His pupils didn’t match. At least half this headache was his, bet on it, coming through Briel.
“What are you doing?”
“Burning hair.”
“Oh. Well. That is—” He made a sound very much like Briel, cold water on hot iron, as she packed the ash and burning fragments of hair into the wound.
“Can’t have you dripping all over the Suburba. This’ll hold until we have time for stitches.”
“Huh.” He let her help him up. Held on to her with both hands as he looked for his balance.
She’d forgotten how tall he was. Forgotten the weight of him, leaning on her, and the texture of his ribs under her hand. Remembered now, in a rush and shiver. He’d come that close to dead, fuck and damn, and all she’d’ve had would be memories.
His eyes were older than his twenty-odd years. So was the grim little smile he gave her. “I am alive.”
“Wasn’t sure when I first saw you. Thought you were angry dead.”
“I nearly was.” He tilted his head. Looked at her out of both eyes. “So were you. We are both lucky.” He stared down at his wrists. “You can get these off, I hope.”
“Sky’s blue, water’s wet. Veiko. Tsabrak’s become the Laughing God. Said you knew about that.”
“I know. I helped him.”
“Right. Istel found me. Told me what happened.” She left off Istel’s condition at arrival. Veiko didn’t need to carry that, too, right now.
“So he is not with you.”
“No.”
“Then.” Veiko started to wind the chain around wrist and forearm. “We have a guest.”
Snow found her seax drawn and raised before she’d managed to turn. And then she realized why Logi hadn’t bothered to look at all, why Briel hadn’t hissed.
“It’s okay,” she said, for Veiko’s sake. “He’s ours.”
Soren stood in the doorway. He had Veiko’s axe cradled in his arms like a child. A pack hung off his shoulder, its guts trailing. A sleeve. A pot handle. The bow, unstrung, poking out like a dead tree. “Passed a room on the way in. This looked important, like maybe it might belong to your partner. I think I got everything.”
“I thought I told you stay back. Wait outside.”
“You did.” Soren shook his head, thin-lipped. He shifted the axe to one arm. Showed her his knife. It was wet. “You also told me poke with the sharp end.”
“Who’d you get?”
“Don’t know. Some woman running away from here. She looked.” He cast around for the words. “Roughspun and leather. Cartel, I think.”
Veiko cleared his throat. “Who is this?”
Snow
looked sideways at Veiko. Tightened her arm around his ribs. “Veiko. This is K’Hess Soren. Kenjak’s brother. Dek stole him from the Tiers. He knows who all the godsworn are up there. —Soren. This is my partner, Veiko Nyrikki.”
Veiko’s eyebrows pushed their way up his forehead. Ghastly effect, with the blood and ash and dogspit. “K’Hess. Your brother was a brave man.”
Snow let them study each other. It kept them occupied while she reckoned what to do next. It would be safest, in the sense of furthest from trouble, to go back to the shrine, to Ari. But getting there would be the trick, yeah, there was a lot of city between here and there. A lot of people to avoid. A lot of conjuring and a lot of concussed, bloody-faced Veiko, who might collapse on her.
She weighed that against taking refuge at her sister’s house, and the danger she could bring down on the household. If—big gamble—Soren had got the only runner, then Rata might not know what’d happened here until midmorning, maybe later, whenever the godsworn failed to arrive and report Veiko’s death.
And mine.
Dekklis called her assassin, but Dek didn’t know half of it. The God—the old God, anyway—had encouraged permanent solutions. Fires happened sometimes, on the docks. The trick was to keep them burning. Damp was bad enough, yeah, but half the district would turn out to help if there was fire. No one wanted to lose a barge or a warehouse. But let this place go up, let Rata find cooked bodies inside, and Rata might reckon Snow had, yes, come for her partner, and that a conjuror and a godsworn had killed each other and taken the warehouse with them.
Or Rata might think Snow survived. Rata might worry, and wait, and give Snow time to organize Ari and the rest of the God’s people. Then they could start hunting Tal’Shik’s godsworn until the Suburba was clean again. And then they could start on the Tiers.
“Soren.” She shifted Veiko’s arm across her shoulder. “Take him. And careful. He’s heavy. You,” she told Briel, “need to fly. Find Dekklis. Let her know we’re alive, yeah?”
Briel hissed. But she spread her wings when Snow raised her arm, flapped and managed, somehow, to keep from crashing into the floor. One rough circuit, and she was out: through the double doors and over the water.