by K. Eason
carve your fucking heart out, feed it to Briel
gathered into a scowl. “I said shut up.”
“Yes, I heard you. But I’d like to get my hood up, yeah? Motherless rain.”
He struck at her again, and she bent out of his way. A step closer to the Left Side, another loop of slack in the rope. She dropped both hood and hands. Gathered the rope between her palms.
“Enough!”
Tsabrak glided into her periphery. Snow watched Right Side flinch at what he saw in Tsabrak’s face. Let her own lips crack into a grin.
“See now? You’ve slowed us all down. Got the boss’s attention.”
Tsabrak didn’t shout. Chip of ice and darkness, and no sign of his hands in the cloak. Soft voice, razor tone. “What’re you playing, Snow?”
“Trying not to get wet. These toadbellies here wouldn’t help with the hood. I asked.”
“Mm.” Tsabrak made a show of pulling her hood up, of settling it over her topknot and smoothing the loose strands out of her face. His breath was sweet and warm on her cheek. “Enough out of you, yeah?”
“Sure. I’m no trouble. You know it.”
He jerked hard at the rope. Pulled the extra out of her hands hard enough to sting. Took up all the excess and delivered it first to Right Side, then Left. Told them both: “You keep this tight, yeah? And keep her close. She’s killed more people than you’ve ever met. Get careless, it’ll be you.”
“Flattery,” she murmured. “And lies, yeah? I haven’t killed that many. Real trouble’s where we’re going. You should tell them what Ehkla does to Alvir—”
“Shut up.” She knew the tone well enough. At the end of his patience. Violence next, if she pushed him.
She didn’t. Dropped her chin again and counted steps to the crossroads. Fifteen steps, left. Angle north, left.
They’d run short of city, they kept this direction. Tsabrak would walk them right into the walls.
Pressure on her wrists. Right Side and Left, pulling carefully, as if she were a particularly aggressive goat. She pretended not to notice. Tilted her face up until the hood threatened to fall back again. Mark that cornice and that roofline. That angle where the streets joined, which looked like a dog’s leg, and the alley slanting off and down. A trail that a svartjagr would recognize, coming in from above.
Veiko might understand what’d happened by now. Had a gift for understanding Briel, yeah, like she never had. Please, Laughing God,
if you want my help, you listen
he packed his gear and left before the storm.
He won’t, yeah? You know that.
No. He wouldn’t. Responsibility for his guest had turned into something else.
Partner.
She couldn’t think about his chance against Tal’Shik, no. Had to worry about her own chances. She could hope for Dekklis to come. Hope for Istel. She had to hope for someone, or she’d lose nerve. Though none of them would do much against Ehkla.
Not their problem, is she? Yours.
Snow planted her feet. Stopped. Waited until Rear Guard found his courage and shoved her, mostly knuckles on her spine. She yielded this time, fell hard, and twisted on her way down. She wrenched Left Side off his balance, earned a burst of profanity, Right and Left snarling at Rear. She landed on aching knees in the
Laughing God, what is this sludge?
street while Right and Left and Rear snapped among themselves.
And then Tsabrak was on her. Took her arm and wrenched her upright. “Next time I’ll have them break a finger. You walk.”
She gave his own smirk back to him. “You tell them no pushing, yeah? Hard to keep balance, with hands tied together. Or you could let me go.”
“No.”
She shrugged. Let him steer her into motion. Made an obvious look at his cloak where it broke on the line of her sword.
Tsabrak followed her gaze. Snorted. “Too late for that,” he said, and laid a hand across the scabbard anyway. “You wanted a fight, you should’ve tried on the Finger. I’m still not sure why you didn’t.”
She showed him teeth. “For you, yeah? Way I reckon it, you drag me in all beat up, she won’t have as much fun killing me, and then she might take it out on you.”
“She isn’t going to kill you.”
“No?”
“No.” Gently, as if he were telling a child not to believe in monsters. “Give her what she wants, she won’t hurt you at all.”
“Toadshit. If you think she’s going to leave me alive, you’re smoking something stronger than jenja. Bets how long it takes me to die?”
He made a strangled noise. Squeezed her elbow hard enough to numb her fingers and held on for a pair of hissed-through-teeth breaths. Pushed her away then and stalked back to the front. Maybe she’d hit a nerve somewhere. Wouldn’t call it a conscience. Maybe the remnants of old affection, old loyalty.
Snow closed fingers over her palm. The God’s mark felt warm.
This time she let Left and Right pull her along. Rear crowded up on her heels and muttered unintelligible threats at the back of her head, punctuated with the occasional fingertip shove. She ignored him. Kept count of streets and steps and realized that Tsabrak wasn’t leading them anywhere. Walking around, knotting through the same streets and alleys, pausing and looking up sometimes and doubling back. Trying to get her lost, maybe, for what good it would do him. She had been born in the labyrinth of Illharek’s Suburba. Made the Warren look like neat rows of grain. If he wanted to get her lost, he should’ve hooded her first. Gouged out her eyes and dragged her blind.
There’s a thought. Why don’t you keep it to yourself, yeah? Give him ideas.
Third time past the same ruined, ancient frieze on the same cracked wall, Tsabrak called a halt. He jagged alone into the alley and tapped a pattern onto the door. It snicked back less than a finger’s width. Someone’s breath plumed out hot, or jenja-laced, or both, too far to hear the conversation.
Snow shifted one miserable foot to the other. Raked a cynical stare across the frieze. It was cheap work, old, pre-Republic. Predictable subject: a golden-haired Alvir man—some thegn, probably, some forgotten hero—with his sword hilt deep in a
wurm
very small, very unconvincing black dragon, pinned halfway out of a cave and dribbling fire from its dying jaws. Painted sunlight blazed off the mirror-steel of the thegn’s breastplate. It was a common enough theme, yeah, see some version of it in half the village taverns. Didn’t take an Academy scholar to understand it: some defeat of the Dvergiri, who crawled out of the earth only to die on bright Alviri blades. Guess whose fault, that dragon and Dvergiri were linked in Alviri minds. Something else the Republic owed to Tal’Shik. She wondered if it had been Tsabrak’s idea, or the God’s, to hide Ehkla inside this building, someone’s idea of irony. Either way: the frieze made an easy landmark for Briel.
So she stared hard at it.
“You know,” she muttered, “whoever he is, that man, he’s killing a svartjagr. You ever seen a real dragon, toadbelly? Bet you haven’t, living up here. They’re a lot bigger. No way one soldier can kill one. Especially not some toadbelly man.”
Right Side growled. “Shut up, you b—”
“Bitch, yes, I know. And that armor. Your people stopped wearing all that metal when we killed your horses and you had to march for yourselves. You can thank Tal’Shik’s godsworn for that. That was serious godmagic. Surprised there’s any of you left at all. All that rotting meat, the plagues. Too bad all your fighting skill relied on riding animals. You aren’t much without them.”
Predictably back-knuckled clout to the side of her head. She let her neck roll with the blow. “Way the chronicles tell it, the Taliri were real pissed about the horses. Herded them, didn’t they? Nomads. And there they were, foot-bound and angry. No great wonder they turned on you lot. You know what they say about mercenaries. One day they’re fighting beside you. Next day they’re burning your village and putting people on stakes.”
&nb
sp; This time Right Side punched her hard enough to send sparks across her vision. She squeezed her eyes against reflexive tears. Chuckled out loud. Kept the grin when Tsabrak doubled back and snagged the rope for himself.
“I’ll take her from here,” he said. And added, conversationally, “If Ehkla doesn’t kill you, Snow, I might.”
Better sense said shut up, but better sense could fuck itself. She smiled a promise at him.
“Likewise.”
His anger bled into an unkind amusement. Another crank on the rope, and he pulled her face down and level with his. “I’d be kinder than what he’ll do, yeah?”
Snow flicked a glance past Tsabrak’s shoulder. There was a Talir standing square in the alley, in front of the now-open door. He wore patchwork legion armor, leather and metal stitched over his vital bits. Taller than she was and broad as her and Tsabrak together.
He looked at her like something he’d found floating in the gutter. “Snowdenaelikk.”
“Sorry,” she said brightly. “I don’t think we’ve met. Mind if I call you toadfucker? Because it looks like your mother might have been.”
The Talir skinned his lips back tight against his teeth. “I will rape you to death for what you did.”
Tsabrak snapped out a fist and popped the Talir in his stolen breastplate, squarely on the Illharek seal. The tension on her rope and wrists never wavered. “No,” he said gently. “You won’t.”
Ask what the Talir saw in Tsabrak’s face. Snow could guess it. Could muster a twinge of reluctant sympathy, as the man crumpled like parchment in a fire, folded sideways, and shuffled aside. Left the doorway behind him gaping and uncontested.
Snow dropped her chin to Tsabrak’s shoulder. Breathed a lungful of oiled, wet wool and old jenja and murmured, “The fuck did I do to him?”
“Not to him. To Ehkla.” Tsabrak turned a profile, mouth twisted weary and tight. “And not you. Your partner.”
“Right. So what did Veiko do?”
“Patience.” Tsabrak pulled her through the doorway, where the shadows seemed unnaturally solid. “You’ll see soon enough.”
Veiko squatted at the edge of the black river and watched his reflection ripple and change. A boy’s face one moment, all the angles rubbed soft. A middle-aged man’s the next, weathered and gaunt. An old man, finally, one-eyed, his braids gone to ropes of grizzled hair. Then a copy of his own face, the one he’d seen this morning in Snow’s silver-glass, winter-pale. Blood bubbled out his mouth, ran out his nose, pooled red on the underside of the water.
Take that as warning or prediction. He might live to be an old man. He might die today.
Guess which, yeah?
“Go,” he bade the reflection. “I don’t want you.”
The river rippled hard, and his face sank back into the depths. Other faces crowded up, washed and rolled like weeds against each other.
Helgi paced impatience into the river’s soft banks, sniffing and growling under his breath. He yipped and laid his ears back when Veiko drew his knife.
“Wait,” Veiko told him. Rubbed his palm down hip and thigh to dry it. Flexed and curled the fingers.
Noidghe bargained. The stories were full of examples: asking the spirits for advice, for power, for help or harm or healing. And always, in the stories, the noidghe gave the spirits back something of equal value. A wolf-spirit might want a rabbit left tethered in the bushes. An elk might ask for a rock leopard’s paw. But he already knew what the river-dead wanted. On this side or that, blood was a ghost’s preferred currency.
He drew the blade across the meat of his hand. Quick and shallow cut that welled up red. He clenched his fist over the river. When the first red struck the black, he spoke.
“K’Hess Kenjak.”
A second drop.
“K’Hess Kenjak.”
Whose face appeared before the third drop fell and caught the drop on open lips. His eyes were cloudy, a corpse’s stare, blind and hungry.
Another drop, and Veiko said, “I call you, K’Hess Kenjak, by blood and your name.”
Blink, and the boy’s eyes cleared. He frowned recognition. Puffed his cheeks round and pushed through the river’s surface. Black water streamed off him, thick as ink. He dragged himself out, hands and knees. Coughed as if he still had lungs, until Veiko thought the ghost might choke himself to a second death.
Veiko offered him no help. Cleaned his knife and sheathed it. He drew his knees up, rested wrists and forearms across them. Waited as Kenjak found whatever breath a dead man needed.
“Skraeling. I thought we were finished. There’s no more I can teach you. You know everything I do about the glyphs on the pole. You can summon her when you’re ready.”
“That is not why I am here.”
“Then why? Wait.” The dead Illhari’s eyes raked over him. “I smell Ehkla on you.”
Unsettling. Veiko resisted the urge to rub his leg. Put his hand on Helgi’s ruff instead. “Yes. That is why I require your—”
Help, he’d meant to say. Changed his mind midbreath. “Your advice again. She is in Cardik. She has Snowdenaelikk.”
Kenjak made a face. Took a fistful of his hair and squeezed. The water dripped and ran into nothing before it ever struck the bank. “You want to know how she’ll kill the half-blood? I’ll tell you that for free. So will half this river.”
“I do not intend to let her kill my partner.”
Long stare, river cold. “And you think my advice will prevent it?”
“Perhaps you are right.” Veiko opened his hand again. Cracked the fragile scab, so that fresh red welled up, bright against the half-dry smears. “You can go back to your river, K’Hess Kenjak.”
It seemed to Veiko that the river was rising. Lapping much closer to his boots while Helgi nipped at his sleeve. He retreated, knowing better than to argue with the dog. Definitely rising, yes, the river reaching fingers up the bank to drag back what belonged to it.
Kenjak jumped as the river touched him, and Veiko saw the boy again beneath the ghost. “Wait. Wait, skraeling. You might want more than advice.”
“I might.” Veiko closed his fist again and tried not to notice the way Kenjak watched him. Like Logi watched scraps. “But let us begin with that.”
It was dark inside the building, in this narrow corridor, except for the ghost-glow off plaster walls that might’ve been white once. Dust sifted down from the ceiling. Snow blinked and coughed and blinked again, until she could breathe. Until she could see, too, for what good it did her. The passage ended some ten steps ahead, took a sharp right into a wash of faint light.
And quiet. A long time since Snow had felt real silence, that tangible weight pushing in on her, counterpressure to straining lungs and heart. Hungry quiet that devoured any whisper of boots or breathing. The dust hazed into a backspill of peatfire smoke that suggested a partly blocked chimney nearby. Candles, too, a lot of them, throwing tallow and perfume into the cold, humid air. Under all of it, almost buried, a sweet rot any chirurgeon through her apprenticeship would recognize.
Laughing God, please there wasn’t a corpse already spiked and waiting. Snow had a sudden, irrational conviction that it was Veiko dead around that corner, that Ehkla had breached Still Waters and dragged him up here and killed him.
And Briel didn’t notice? Not likely.
Dekklis, then. Or Istel. Aneki, yeah, Tsabrak would see some amusement in that.
Focus, yeah? No imagining.
Snow locked her jaw against asking. Patience. See soon enough, wouldn’t she?
Tsabrak stopped in front of her, so suddenly she almost stepped on him.
“This is where I stop.”
“And I what, just keep going? On my honor?”
“Oh, let’s not call it honor.” Too dark to see his face, shadows pulled to solid in his hood. His voice hissed like rain on coals. “You’ll go because you have no choice.”
“Always a choice.”
“Always a price.” Imagine fire where his eyes shou
ld be. Imagine the God’s serrated smile. “The only question is, who pays if you don’t?”
“Toadfucker. Surprised you don’t want to watch, yeah? See her take me apart.”
“I wasn’t invited.” He jerked the rope. Trapped her left hand and laced his fingers through hers. Gripped hard, so that the joints creaked. “I warned her. Told her”—hissed mixture of stale jenja and nervous sour—“what you can do. But she insists she sees you alone.”
That was new information. Snow’s thoughts burst down a half dozen paths, running like thieves from the legion. A woman could choke on hope.
No. A woman could get stupid.
Snow made herself look at Tsabrak. Focus on now, on here, on prodding that smirk off his face. “And you do what she tells you. How very proper of you, Tsabrak. Guess the old habits die slowly, yeah?”
“Sometimes I do what she says,” he whispered. “Sometimes not.”
He wrenched his wrist around and down and twisted. Snow had enough time to recognize what he intended, dropped her shoulder and elbow and turned with the movement. Mostly success, mostly, and still not enough: she twisted four of her fingers loose, curled them to safety in her palm, but her smallest finger remained trapped in Tsabrak’s grip. She had a stretched moment to prepare for the inevitable. Held her breath and clenched her jaw.
Audible crack. White flash across her eyes, and then tunneling grey. Briel’s wings beat the borders of her consciousness. Cold flooded in after, glacial stillness, which felt like Veiko. Imagine that, sure, and cling to it, to him, long enough to keep the acid contents of her belly behind her teeth. She swallowed the burn and bitter.
“That wasn’t orders,” said Tsabrak from a very far distance. “That was my idea.”
Then she heard him draw a knife. Felt the sudden slackness in her arms as he cut her loose from her tether and left her wrists bound. Then a swirl of air that said Tsabrak had left her. She leaned against the wall and listened to the retreating murmur of the footfalls on the floorboards through the whole swarm of bees in her head.