by K. Eason
Veiko clenched his fist tight to keep it steady. Breathed, no matter the tightness and heat in his chest. “I have seen what you do to your allies.”
The God looked at him. The flames in his sockets stilled completely, so that they looked like paintings of themselves. “She said you wouldn’t care about that.”
“That you believed her speaks poorly of your wisdom.”
The chieftain’s son had worn a similar expression when he’d seen Veiko raise his axe.
The God said only, “Skraeling,” which sounded a lot like idiot.
Veiko turned back to his carving. “You should go now, unless you wish to meet Tal’Shik yourself.”
He did not look to see if the God took his suggestion. But Helgi sat down again, stopped growling.
He was on the last glyph now. Paused at the top of the last stroke. Like balancing on the crest of a mountainside, skis on your feet, knowing that once you begin, you will not stop until the end.
He finished the cut.
The glyphs flared, orange fire to white heat to blinding. Turned liquid and red and ran together, like wax, like blood. He pressed the heel of his hand against his chest. His heart drummed steadily, measured, deliberate.
The sky tore like wet linen, and the wurm came through.
Veiko reached for his axe.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Dekklis had faced a bread riot once, back in Illharek. New armor, new sword, new rank. She remembered the desperation on the citizens’ faces, Dvergiri and Alviri both, and the mob surging against the granary gates. Remembered the black steel sagging inward, the terrible groan of splintering hinges. Remembered her centurion’s shouts to wait, wait, hold your positions you motherless toadshits changing to charge and get them.
That had been slaughter.
Cardik’s Warren in riot was both better and worse. There was no mob fleeing the legion this time. Fewer smashed shop fronts, fewer bodies. The streets were still slick, but it was rain, not blood, and the screams, no less terrified, were fewer. But the people roaming the streets this time had metal, and they were intent on murder.
That, too, was both better and worse. Dekklis did not need to hesitate when she came upon looters. But she had to keep in mind that they, too, were armed, maybe armored, and that unschooled cuts could kill her as easily as a professional thrust.
She remembered that the hard way, when a wild-eyed Alvir woman lunged out of a burning storefront. Dekklis was just finishing the last of a handful of rioters, who had seen her and Istel and charged like Taliri berserkers. More enthusiasm than skill, easy kills—
—Istel’s shout, a sudden shadow on the fire-bright street—
—and she forgot about easy and spun sideways, expecting—
there, your first mistake
—a straight thrust for a gap in her armor, where the thin plates met over mail. She’d caught the flat gleam of a slash coming up, wild and wobbling. Had time to recognize a legion sword in the woman’s hand and wrenched her own up into a block.
Too slow, too late.
Dekklis threw herself sideways. Tensed for the hit and hoped it didn’t take off half her face, please let it be only minor—
And then Teslin was there shouldering Dekklis aside while the sword punched through her still-translucent chest and scythed upward before popping out just below her left ear.
The Alvir screamed something Dekklis understood more by tone than by vocabulary. But she wasn’t a coward, no, came around and stabbed a second time. Better form, but too slow. Teslin shook her head and put her own sword through the woman’s belly. A second scream, wordless, which gurgled to moans as Teslin jerked the ghost-blade loose. A final cut, straight down, and the moaning stopped.
Teslin spat. Tilted a look at Dekklis. You all right?
“Yeah. Stupid. Didn’t see her.” Dekklis waved off Istel’s offered hand and picked herself up. “Didn’t see you, either.”
Not gonna let some toadbelly stick you, Dek. Teslin rolled her neck and grimaced. Weird feeling, that. Doesn’t really hurt, but. Fucking weird.
“Yeah, well. Thanks.” She wanted to ask where
the ghost
Teslin had been, why she and Barkett weren’t staying closer. She drew breath and then choked on it. Teslin wasn’t hers to command. She was Veiko’s now, if anyone’s. Take the
witchery
miracle for what it was, that Teslin had come in time and saved her.
Maybe the dead could hear thoughts. Maybe Teslin was just that good at reading Dekklis after years together. She poked her chin up the street.
Barkett’s following the svartjagr. Figured you needed to keep your eyes on the streets. Figured you might need mine, too. Crazy people out tonight.
“You figured right.” Dek’s shoulder ached where she’d landed on it. She rolled it. Squinted against the glare and fumes coming out of the ruined storefront. The blackly crisp sign over the door gave no hints to its former purpose. Something round. Tankard. Barrel. The smell coming out of it was pure roasting meat. Those might be shrieks spiking up through the fire’s roar or raindrops sizzling into steam as they hit.
Angry dead.
Hell. Angry living.
“What I want to know,” she said, “is why they’re attacking us. The Taliri burned them out, not the legion.”
Toadbellies, said Teslin. Who knows what they think? Rot ’em. But from Istel, quietly:
“The Alviri carry a lot of old grudges, Dek.”
“It’s been two hundred years since they lost that war. The Taliri are staking their relatives now. And these toadshits live here. They’re killing their own.”
Istel shook his head. Turned his face upslope, so that the fireglow kissed red off his profile. Istel’s I won’t argue face, his lips pulled into a knot under that long Dvergiri nose. He had, Dek noticed, picked up the dead woman’s sword and jammed it into his sheath. Held his own sword wet and naked while the rain washed the blood off it.
“What’s the extra metal for?”
He didn’t look at her. “Snow won’t be armed, when we find her. She’ll need a weapon.”
“She might be in no condition—”
“We’re not going after a corpse,” he said. “She’s fine. Briel would say otherwise.”
Teslin pushed between them, arm and shoulder. The fire pinked through, counterbright to the dark cuts of rain. Listen, Dek. Hate to break it up, but the svartjagr’s stopped up there. Perched and hissing.
Dekklis scraped water off her face. Drew a breath. “Then we’d better see what she’s found. Show me.”
Teslin spun on her heel. Slipped ahead of Dekklis and started—not running, no, running came with bootfalls and splashing and creaking armor. This was silent motion, grey, mist taken a familiar shape.
Teslin had never been much of a runner. Ask if she liked it better now when her feet didn’t slip on wet paving, when she wasn’t puffing uphill in mostly full kit. Ask if she wouldn’t rather both of those things than what she was.
Ask nothing, yeah, and save her own breath for running.
Almost to the top of the city by now. Dekklis looked left and there was the Hill, with its streetlamps and warm yellow windows. There was a bonfire up top in the garrison courtyard. The troops were probably swarming like bees. But here, in the Warren, only darkness, except where something or someone was on fire. No candles in the windows, no lamps, all the doors shut and dark on the edges.
Families in there, scared and hiding. Not everyone gone mad in the streets, not everyone looting. But the legion, when they won up this far, wouldn’t care. They would smash into houses and drag their residents out into the street. If they were Dvergiri, they might be all right. But Alviri would bleed for this. All of them, any of them.
Old grudges.
Blood and fire.
Ehkla described what she wanted, with a chirurgeon’s anatomical detail. Reminded Snow of her student days, except their second-year project was always dead first before they cut it.
Made her wonder what Ehkla had done among the Taliri before turning godsworn to Tal’Shik.
Snow turned the knife Ehkla had given her over in her hands. Motherless thing made her skin tingle. Wicked-sharp tip, fine serrations all along the inner curve. Same weapon that killed Helgi, same one that cut Veiko. Maybe he’d see the irony in what she was about to do with it, if she lived to tell him.
“Wurm’s tooth,” she said. And when Ehkla frowned, “Skraeling word for dragon. Way I hear it, these hurt more than metal.”
Ehkla shrugged partway out of her robe. “The skraeling thought so. He screamed.”
“He says you did, too. His axe was plain steel.”
“He surprised me.”
“Yeah? Then I’d hate to have you get surprised this time, too. That big toadshit out there offered to rape me to death already. Be unfortunate if he interrupted this ritual because of your howling.”
“He will not. And I will not.” Ehkla stood up, naked now. Beautiful woman, except for the ruin of her shoulder. “Close the door.”
“You think he’ll stop to knock?”
“You’re a conjuror. Look at the lintel. What do you see?”
Sigils, in a violet one shade off black, danced and writhed on the wood. “Godmagic.”
Snort. “They are wards, conjuror. You know that. My wards. Tal’Shik will require more than one life to take physical shape, although she needs only one sacrifice. You will be safe in this room. Any men in the hallway, however, will die.”
“Good to see Tal’Shik’s ethics haven’t changed. I mean, casual slaughter of her worshippers—”
“They’re men. And Alviri. What matter?”
“Your allies,” Snow snapped. “And Tsabrak’s no Alvir.”
“Then let the Laughing God protect him.” Ehkla knelt amid the candles. Tipped forward and caught herself on her good left hand. “I will need your help, Snowdenaelikk. To lie down.”
“Right.” Snow pushed the tooth into her belt. Scrubbed her palms on her thighs. Put her hands on Ehkla’s ribs, on the undamaged part of her right shoulder, and eased her onto the scuffed dirt floor. Helped her straighten her arms out, cruciform, while the mauled shoulder seeped a fresh stream of foul. Ehkla did not scream, although she hissed and gasped and shivered. Lay still, finally, panting, belly and face pressed into the floor.
“Begin,” half prayer, half sob.
Snow knelt beside her. Moved Ehkla’s braid aside. Poked the wurm’s tooth in near her spine where the ribs met the long column. Pushed. Flesh and bone parted easily.
Ehkla groaned.
The glyphs on the walls began to glow.
Ghost Teslin led them on an uphill charge into growing darkness. Thicker shadows, a charcoal sky that offered no illumination. Teslin and Barkett seemed to have some idea where they were going. Maybe they had some special sense she didn’t, to navigate Cardik’s slums. Or maybe, Dekklis thought with some guilt, maybe Teslin and Barkett had grown up in these streets. Maybe she just hadn’t known it. Hadn’t bothered to ask.
Teslin would tell her she was being an idiot, Teslin having little use for guilt. But Istel. Dekklis cut a glance at her partner, who trotted beside her as unconcerned as if ghosts were as common as fleas. A woman got to rely on that kind of steadiness. Take it for granted. Never wonder where it had come from, or what it cost him.
Later, yeah, later she’d buy him a beer and ask what he thought about all this. If seeing Barkett flicker from there into nowhere made his stomach hurt. If he flinched when Teslin came so close that her edges blurred into his. What he thought about rebel Alviri and blood and butchering civilians. She’d ask, and then she’d listen to what he said.
And then they came round the corner, and it didn’t matter what Istel thought or what she did. There: a plain building with typical cracked plaster walls, a roof that wanted repair, some chipped, poorly done fresco on the front that Dekklis could almost make out through Barkett’s midsection. A building exactly like a dozen others, except for the light leaking out at its seams, a violet so deep it hurt her eyes.
Barkett pointed down the alley. There’s an open door that way. Something’s happening inside.
“You reckon?”
Earnest nod that made Dek’s chest hurt. Death hadn’t sharpened Barkett’s wit at all. He pointed again, this time at the roofline. The svartjagr stopped here.
Dekklis followed his hand. Guess that the dead saw better than the living, then, if he could find Briel in that shadow. It was the purple glow, she decided. Didn’t really give off any light, reflected off pale things and turned what was already dark to invisible. Take it on faith that Briel was up there. Faith and the nagging headache and the svartjagr’s fear in her guts.
We’ll take point, said Teslin. Just in case there’s trouble.
“There’s doubt about that?”
Teslin’s mouth quirked. I think trouble will have a harder time killing us than you. Don’t look like that, Dek. It’s all right.
And then Teslin went down the alley and ducked through the door, Barkett crowding her heels. Ask if one ghost could walk through another.
Don’t, yeah?
Dekklis followed them, with Istel hard behind her.
They found the first corpse just inside the doorway. Big Talir, too large for the stolen armor strapped to his limbs. Dekklis toed his cheek, so that his wide, dead eyes looked sideways, up the corridor.
“No marks on him, either. No blood.”
“Maybe conjuring,” Istel murmured. “If Snow’s here. Maybe something else she did.” He added, as Teslin cocked her head, “Snow’s got talent with poisons.”
Huh. Teslin squatted beside the dead man. Traced fingers over his chest, which sank into steel and leather. Well. If she did this guy, she saved me the trouble. He’s one of the ones from the forest. Toadfucker.
The corridor beyond seemed too long for the house, a forever stretch of dim twilight. Had to be a trick of the dimness that everything seemed to pulse and ripple. There was too much shadow in the center while the purple light collected in the creases between wall and floor. It flowed toward the far door like liquid.
Dekklis closed her eyes. Squeezed and reopened and told herself she was tired, that was all, while her heart skipped and thumped. Maybe that was Briel’s doing, Briel’s fear, and without it she’d be brave as Istel.
Who was standing beside her, rigid as bone, whose chest heaved like he’d been running. Maybe not so brave.
The ghosts turned their heads together then, at no sound Dekklis could hear. Teslin brought her blade up. Took a single step up the corridor.
Someone just died, she said. Dek, I think—
The building shuddered.
Out, said Teslin. She caught Istel’s shoulder, spun him, made a grab for Dekklis, and claimed a fistful of wet sleeve. Dragged and pushed them back down the corridor and out into the alley, across the street, until they fetched up on the far side.
Then, only then, did Dekklis turn around, and—hell.
Ehkla kept her word. Didn’t scream, not once, although the sounds that got past her teeth might’ve been worse. Sounded a little like Briel had when Snow had first seen her, pinned and stretched on the worktable. Airless squeaks.
Butchery, chirurgery, vivisection. Snow had seen and done all three. This wasn’t any of them. This was godmagic. Ritual sacrifice. The wurm’s tooth cut bone and flesh like butter, sharper than any weapon should be. And Ehkla’s blood wasn’t right. Oh, there was plenty of it—the expected amounts for deep cuts into the torso—but it flowed away from the wound in neat channels, ran across the floor as if the whole building had tilted. Ran up the fucking walls, to fill the glyphs until they glistened. Snow didn’t want to look at those too closely, didn’t want to vomit herself inside out. She had to remember what the fuck she was doing and what came next.
The end of the Illhari Republic.
Alviri and Taliri allied under the goddess whose cult had led Illharek to smash their alliance the first time
. Alviri and Taliri, under that goddess, destroying the Republic who’d later Purged her worship. You could laugh at that irony. Well. She could. Dekklis wouldn’t think it was funny. Dekklis would take her head off for this. Call it treason, yeah, and Dek wouldn’t be wrong.
And Tsabrak. Fuck and damn. Tsabrak was likely dead already if he had stayed in the building. Stupid to be sorry for that, when he’d delivered her here in the first place. Damn sure he wouldn’t mourn were their places reversed. Damn sure he hadn’t when he’d sent her up the corridor to die.
Except he hadn’t. He’d told her she’d survive if she did whatever Ehkla wanted. And Tsabrak knew enough about conjuring, about what she could do, to know that one broken finger, the littlest on her strong hand, wouldn’t stop her. He’d marked her, yeah, but he hadn’t crippled her. Maybe he’d known after all what the God had wanted her to do. Maybe he was playing his own role in that plan.
Too late for regrets now, in any case. Too late, with one side of Ehkla’s ribs already cut from her spine, with the wurm’s tooth making short work of the other. The biggest danger was pressing too hard, hitting an organ and killing her too soon.
There were rules to this. Steps. Ritual.
The God had rites, too. He favored fingers cut off joint by joint, eyes lanced with hot needles, lips stitched shut with wire. Nothing fatal. The God liked pain better than death, as a sacrifice. But the God wouldn’t thank anyone for binding him into flesh, either. It was one thing for him to wear his godsworn like a pair of boots at his discretion. Quite another to be bound into their skin.
Snow paused, as Ehkla’s writhing threw her next cut into jeopardy. Crouched on the balls of her feet beside Ehkla’s body, with Ehkla’s blood rolling past her feet like rivers. Thought about sticking that knife straight down, pinning lung and heart to the floor. Kill her. Have done.
And hope Tal’Shik didn’t come visit anyway. Or hope she did, so that she didn’t stay in the spirit world and finish Veiko first. If he was even alive now, and how would she know it?