by K. Eason
Rurik said nothing for too many heartbeats, jaw clamped, while his breath steamed out his nose. Looked like the man was boiling. Like he might burst. Dekklis held attention against aching ribs and waited. But it was Istel Rurik looked at, long and hard. Istel, who stood at her shoulder and didn’t flinch from Rurik’s stare.
“I sent you out after Kenjak’s killers. You didn’t come back. Where were you?”
“Storm caught us, sir,” she said, which was true. And then, what she hadn’t told Stratka: “After the Taliri did.”
Rurik forgot to scowl. Raised eyebrows instead. “You were captives?”
“Not long, sir. Escaped.” Swallow and fast, before her nerve cracked: “Lost Second Scouts Teslin and Barkett.”
“We found them. And the rest of the patrol.” Rurik bit the words off. His gaze drifted inward for a heartbeat, took his shoulders and chin along with it. A smaller Rurik, worn down by memory. Then he snapped back to now. Drilled his eyes into Dekklis. “How did you survive?”
She told him, low-voiced: about ambush and chains and ghosts, and a half-blood—
“Godsworn,” she said, “of Tal’Shik. Leading the Taliri. They called her Ehkla.”
The wind pulled hard at the black strands of Rurik’s queue. He blinked, finally, when one of them lodged in an eyelash. Shook his head and rubbed an unsteady hand across his face. “I saw the pole. And the marks carved into it. I thought it was Taliri barbarism, and you’re saying sacrifice? To.” It was bad luck for a man to say her name. Rurik grimaced and spat. “To Tal’Shik?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And that it was ghosts of our soldiers who killed those Taliri.”
“Yes, sir.”
K’Hess Rurik stared at her. Shouts all around them, in the courtyard, and no sound at all in this small circle, as quiet as one of Snow’s conjurings. Then his face closed like Cardik’s gates at dusk. “Did you run from battle, First Scout? Is that what you don’t want to tell me? Is that why these fantastic tales?”
Dekklis ignored the jab. Ignored the heat crawling up her skin and the cold-punch fury in her chest. Losing temper with this man wouldn’t help. “I’m a First Scout. You report these things to the praefecta on my say-so, she’ll call you an idiot. I report it to her around you, and she’ll think you can’t hold a command. In either case, she’ll say what you just did: that I ran, and I’m lying to cover. But you know me, sir.”
“Mm.” Rurik glanced at Istel a second time. Twisted out a grim little smile and brought his stare back to her. “All right. Is there more?”
“Yes.” Carefully, hell, as if she had glass in her mouth: “I think that the Taliri have allies among the Illhari. Here, in Cardik.”
“Allies.”
“Heretics. People who might regret the Purge. In this city. In Illharek, too. I think Davni was a message to those people. And I don’t think the praefecta’s going to believe that.”
“And I will?”
“You saw what happened to Davni. What kind of raiders torch a town and leave the loot? They took nothing, First Spear. You’ll ask why. I don’t think the praefecta will.”
“A message. A sacrifice. So you say.”
“And the survivors? What do they say?”
Foremothers, that was too much. Rurik snapped rigid, eyes blazing hot. Drew breath to blast her insubordination. Stopped, his mouth partway open. Steam leaked from between his teeth. Then he clipped them shut. His nostrils pinched. The blaze in his eyes banked back to embers. “Nothing that the praefecta will believe. As you say, First Scout.”
She blew a breath out. “Yes, sir.”
“You say we have traitors in Cardik. Heretics. We need to find them.”
“Yes, sir. I have a contact in the Warren who can help.”
“A contact.” Suspicious, imagining vice and indiscretion. “Who?”
Hell and damn, treading close to another oath, more lately sworn and no less binding, because it, like her first, served Illharek’s interests. Give up Snow to this man, she’d lose any hope of finding how far the conspiracy went.
Istel saved her. Angled his shoulder in front of her and said, “Mine, sir. A friend from childhood. Dek can’t say who because I haven’t told her.”
Istel’s voice stayed steady. His gaze did, as Rurik looked at him. Unblinking, chin high, eyes locked on his commander’s face like they would never dare lock on to Praefecta Stratka’s.
Or on to mine.
Rurik’s scowl relaxed into something closer to neutral. “All right. See your friend. Find out what you can, and report to me. I’ll deal with the praefecta.”
That was dismissal. Rurik spun and resumed his cross-yard stomp, spattering mud and snowmelt.
“Told you,” Istel said, damn near breathless. “Told you, Dek, to let me talk to him.”
“Yeah. You did.”
UnHoused Istel, Cardik-born, who’d never seen Illharek’s vaults and spires, who spoke his Dvergiri with a border accent. He had nothing in common with Rurik except being male, and that was enough to win trust where rank and blood and reputation wouldn’t. Dekklis stared hard at the empty air past Rurik’s shoulder. Would not show her irritation, no, would not scowl at the Snowdenaelikk in her head, who smirked and whispered,
See now, Szanys. Highborn daughter, this is how the Laughing God succeeds.
“He’s a stubborn, motherless—”
“Dek.” Istel shrugged. “His mother’s exactly his problem. And yours. And Stratka’s.”
“Meaning what?”
Istel pretended not to hear.
Snow managed to avoid Tsabrak for nearly a week. Poor luck, surely, that every time she tried Janne’s tavern, he wasn’t there. She knew his patterns, but a man could change those. So she checked, every time. More than once she’d ducked back across Market Bridge, prowling among the stalls, until she was sure Tsabrak had moved on. Then she’d soft-foot up the tavern’s back stairs, examine the traps and locks on her flat’s door. Collect a few belongings. Slink back down again, bundle in hand, and make a public show of looking for Tsabrak. Then she’d leave another message with Janne.
And collect gossip, too, because she was a good tenant, and Janne liked her better than the rest of Tsabrak’s tame rats. Shipments in his storeroom, he told her, crates that were too heavy for Tsabrak’s usual contraband. Weapons, he whispered, and put his beery face next to hers. Tsabrak was sharing his plans with no one—did she know what he was doing?
She didn’t, but she could guess. Citizens had a right to bear arms in the city, but citizen meant Dvergiri and the rare Alvir who’d taken the oaths and inked proof of allegiance into her skin. Rare, because those oaths weren’t cheap. Most residents couldn’t afford them. But weapons, now. Those were affordable.
But for Janne: wide eyes and I don’t know what he’s onto, yeah? You think he tells me? before she skulked away, pretending disappointment and irritation. You see him, you tell him I’m looking, yeah?
She’d gotten most of her belongings down to Still Waters that way, one and two bundles at a time. The herbs and drugs first, because Veiko’s leg was still grinning unpleasantly through its stitches. Clothes next, and her scrolls. The pair of leather-bound books she’d taken on permanent, secret loan from the Academy’s shelves. This would be her last run: for a pair of pots she hadn’t yet missed, having the run of Aneki’s kitchens. That would change, though, and soon. She couldn’t stay in that room with Veiko forever, however much Aneki hinted otherwise. That was a favor that could turn permanent. Already Aneki had Veiko repairing pots and cracked shutters and doors that hung ajar. Cutting wood, too, or hauling it, when Snow wasn’t there to stop it. Ask where he’d gotten the splinters in his hands, yeah, and test his honesty.
Or pretend she didn’t notice, not splinters or the soaked leather of his boots. Pretend, and pack more moss into the wound, and let him feel as if he wasn’t living on kindness, mostly, which was worse for Veiko than any wound rot.
No, she had to see about settli
ng them somewhere else, somewhere other than Aneki’s charity. A flat, maybe, in Still Waters, if she could negotiate a price with Aneki, if Veiko would agree to it. Two levels of unpredictable right there, fuck and damn, a woman needed a plan to deal with that, needed to think two and three moves ahead.
So Snow wasn’t paying attention, not entirely, as she climbed the weatherworn staircase. Didn’t smell the jenja smoke until she got to the top. Her scalp tightened. Prickled counterpoint to the ice-fingers on her spine. Someone was inside her flat—no, not just any someone. Tsabrak, because anyone else would’ve left marks on door and lock and latch. Tsabrak had a toadfucking key.
And still. She hadn’t hit one of the loose boards on the steps. She could turn around and go back the way she’d come, trot across Market and delay a conversation she did not want.
Coward.
Tsabrak wasn’t a danger to her.
Sure of that?
No. She flexed her fingers. She had no proof he’d sided with Ehkla. All he’d asked was a delivery brought back to him from a new courier who just happened to be half-Talir and godsworn. Ehkla’d been the one who wanted a message delivered. Ruined Davni might mean no deal, or we’ll destroy Illharek without you.
Snow had her own messages. Dek had appeared at Still Waters’ door with Istel at her shoulder and a report of another ruined village, another column of smoke stabbing into the winter sky. But this time the destruction hadn’t been total. A trickle of uncitizen, homeless Alviri had come through Cardik’s gates, across Market Bridge and into the Warren, where there was a sudden new crop of contraband weapons.
Dekklis hadn’t stopped with bad news, no. There are new rumors, Snow. Some say there’s a dragon setting the fires. Dvergiri witchery.
The Alviri didn’t need encouragement to see superstition. The Republic might have imposed its Purge on them, broken their temples and forbidden their festivals, but it took more than a citizen’s sigil to make an Illhari. And most of the Alviri in villages hadn’t bothered with citizenship. Held to their old ways, best they could, and hated the Republic. It wasn’t hard to see why those refugees might want weapons. It was what they’d do with the weapons that worried her. Not likely they’d go marching out and make war on the Taliri. Not with a city full of Illhari right here, and all those old grudges.
She could tell Tsabrak that and check his reaction. She didn’t think he could lie to her. Knew him too well for that, every twitch and tell he owned. Except she hadn’t seen an alliance with Tal’Shik coming.
And he hadn’t fucking told her, either.
Laughing God, she wished for Briel, but Briel was back with Veiko, a warm spot of satisfaction in the corner of Snow’s skull. Briel liked a roof between her and the weather, liked fires in the hearths. Liked Veiko, let’s be honest.
And that was another issue Snow might have with Tsabrak. Veiko had told his own ugly stories, hushed in the bath’s hissing steam. Recounted his spirit-walking, yeah, and scared her cold.
I saw the God in the spirit world. I saw Tal’Shik.
She didn’t like that the God had his attention on Veiko, when Tal’Shik was threat enough. But what Tsabrak would think, what he’d do, if he knew that the God was talking to Veiko, she couldn’t guess.
Ask him, yeah? He’s in there.
She summoned witchfire. Spilled it onto the landing and willed it to flow into the cracks around the door, up the frame, around latch and lock. Then she borrowed the shadows it made, and wrapped herself damn near opaque, and tried the handle.
The door swung on oiled silence, trailing witchfire on its edges. Dark, more shadows and a square of dirty grey as the fading afternoon oozed past the open shutter and through the oiled canvas panes. She drew the witchfire back into her palm and raised it like a lantern. Tsabrak sprawled across her ancient couch like a decadent highborn. Hair loose. Limbs draped just so, so that his hands were never far from his knives. He watched her, unmoving, while she shut the door and latched it.
“I wasn’t sure you’d survived.” Slowly, quietly, as if he’d asked for more wine.
“I left messages. Janne should’ve told you.”
“Janne did. I was beginning to think he was either drunk or lying, how many times he said I’d just missed you.”
“He tell you I’ve got the legion on me?”
“He did. I thought you might hole up somewhere else for a while. But.” Tsabrak waved a hand at mostly bare cupboards and an absence of clutter. “I thought you meant to come back.”
She shrugged. “So did I. Changed my mind.”
She’d taught Tsabrak shadow-weaving in their early days. He was good at it. The shadows dripped and draped and swirled like velvet as he flowed off the couch and glided toward her. Hard to see the man, even with the witchfire cupped and cool in her palm. “I was worried.”
“You know me. Hard to kill.” She shouldered past him, sent his shadows swirling out of her path. Crossed the room to the cold hearth and crouched beside it. She spilled the witchfire onto cold embers and willed it to a blaze. Bright, but cold. Seemed fitting. She took a lungful of dust and cold ash. “You haven’t asked if I found the courier. I’m guessing that means you already know the answer. And I’m guessing that answer has something to do with the crates in Janne’s storeroom. Since when do we steal from the legion? You think no one’s going to notice a crate of swords gone missing?”
“You’re angry.”
Snow stared into the witchfire. Thought about Veiko’s eyes, and, “You sent me out with an idiot. Drasan damn near got me killed, yeah? The Sixth caught us at Davni, and he wanted to fight. They got him, and now there are soldiers who know what I look like. And your motherless courier was late, and she was sloppy.” She bit off a mouthful of air. “And then I find you moving on new markets that you haven’t told me about. So yes, I’m angry.”
“Snow.” The old board by the hearth creaked. Tsabrak crouched beside her. Flattened his hand against her back. His thumb stroked a line along her shoulder blade. Moved to the back of her neck. He worked at the thong holding her topknot until her hair slipped loose, fell over ears and neck and his hand. He combed his fingers through it. Took a fistful of her hair and pulled, gently, until her face came around to his. The witchfire limned his features, picking out the fine bones, casting the large eyes into shadow. Easy to get lost in that beauty, yeah, to fall in and drown.
“Tell me about Ehkla, Tsabrak.”
He trailed his eyes over her face like fingers. Brow. Nose. Lips. Back to her eyes. “You’re not jealous?”
“Tell me.”
“You are.” Soft laughter. “I didn’t think you’d mind.”
“Which part? That she burns villages? Or that she’s godsworn to Tal’Shik?”
He took his hands off her. “I know what Ehkla is.”
“She spiked the First Spear’s brother. Carved the pole. Sacrificed him to Tal’Shik in the old ways, Tsabrak, like the Purge never happened. The God approves of that toadshit? You do?”
“Don’t ask me to mourn for a highborn.”
“A fourth son, yeah? You think he has much more choice than you did, what his life’s like?”
“Highborn is what she required.”
“Now you do what Tal’Shik says? You switch gods when I wasn’t looking?”
His face settled into stillness, darkness, as deep as any cave. “Enough.”
Pride, anger, swallow them now. Smooth her voice, soften it. Dekklis would sneer at her for it, playing gentle for a man. But Dekklis wasn’t here. Dekklis wouldn’t understand you had to come at Tsabrak some way other than headfirst.
“Tsabrak. What is all this?”
“The God’s plan.”
Tsabrak’s first and last reason for everything, the God. And if she pressed, she’d get the God spoke to me or the God asked it.
“There’s talk among the soldiers that other villages have burned now. That there’s a dragon doing it. The God didn’t do that.”
He didn’t answer. D
idn’t have to. I know in his eyes and the set of his shoulders. So there was her answer.
Smart to get up and walk out, yeah, collect Veiko and go—fuck and damn, anywhere. Away, before whatever connivance Tsabrak was playing at burst like glass in a fire. Except she’d never been smart enough to walk away from Tsabrak, not once, not since he’d staggered out of an alley in Illharek’s Suburba and collapsed at her feet. The first of her wounded things.
Ask if she regretted that now.
“You want a sycophant, fine, I’ll find you one. But I’m not. You didn’t see what she did to that boy. Don’t ask me to like this new friend you’ve got.”
“So you’ve moved across the Bridge and out of the Warren and over to the Street of Silk Curtains in protest.”
“You got a tail on me?” That she hadn’t noticed, fuck and damn, that Briel hadn’t seen either, getting careless and soft and—
“No,” he said, and her stomach dropped back where it should be. “A guess.”
“So I just told you.”
“So you did.” A breath, hissed between clenched teeth and back out again. “Still Waters, yeah? Aneki.”
Tsabrak would eat live coals before he’d admit fear of any woman. Say what he felt for Aneki was loathing, of the sort cats had for water.
She shrugged. “Yeah. It’s safer.”
“Than what? No one’s followed you into the Warren. No one’s followed you across Market the several times you’ve crossed it. The legion doesn’t know where you are. So say what your real reason is.”
It occurred to her then that Tsabrak might’ve had someone down at Still Waters already, whatever he claimed. He knew her habits and haunts as well as she knew his. Could’ve guessed where she’d bolt. Could’ve known where she was this whole time, and about Veiko, and waiting to see if she’d lie.
She met his stare and held it. “All right. Besides the soldiers—I brought someone back with me.”
“Someone.” He forgot his shadows. They dripped away, stripped his face back to bone and skin and beauty. “Who?”
So he hadn’t known. Fuck and damn. “Skraeling.” She damn near choked on the word. “Barely speaks Dvergiri, yeah? He’s the reason I survived out there after Drasan’s spectacular error in judgment. I owe him.”