“That’s your pitch?” Zosia looked around for the most intimidating instrument she could find, and settled for a saw. She tried to brandish it at him but it was too heavy for her weak arm and she dropped it back down with a clatter. As she did she noticed more fur embedded in its teeth, her dog’s fur, but there wasn’t a scratch on him … She settled for picking the knife back up and pointing it at Boris. “You don’t get to set the terms here. Spill, or I’ll spill something else.”
“All right,” he said, rising back to his feet. “But pack him up and I’ll tell you on the way out. I wasn’t lying about time being short, neither. If we’re caught it won’t matter who I know or what you do, ’cause we’ll all end up back here together, and—”
“No,” said Zosia. “We’re not leaving this room until I’ve heard everything there is to hear. Every word out of your lips from here until I’m done with you is something I want to hear, and the first time you disappoint me I stick you with this. Now tell me: who’s helping me escape, and why, and how come they care so much about me swearing an oath of peace on a dead devil?”
“Ain’t it obvious?” said Boris, looking uneasily at Choplicker. “They’re not so sure he’s really dead. They’ve tried making sure, I gather, from acid to fire to pitching him into Diadem Gate, but he keeps coming back.”
“Not dead?” Zosia’s heart was in her throat as she stared at the very, very dead dog in front of her. “What do you mean, he keeps coming back?”
“Like that,” said Boris, nodding at the carcass. “Anytime someone doesn’t have their eye on the body it goes missing, but always turns up in the same place. Down in your cell with you. They take it away and it just happens again, even happened after they threw it in the Gate. Even fucking eerier than if it rose from the dead, having the corpse vanish near daily only to turn up in your cell. Everyone’s nervous about it and nobody knows what it means—they thought killing your devil would be the end of the business, but apparently it’s not so easy to get rid of this one.”
“Oh, Chop,” she said softly, petting him but feeling none of the normal disquiet she had before at stroking something she had only ever touched in life and finding it dead. Unexpectedly choked up, she said, “Even harder to get shy of you than I thought.”
Then it hit her.
“They want me swearing an oath on him in case he somehow recovers. They don’t give a damn if my wrinkled old ass tries to make a big scene, they’re worried about what happens if he wakes up.” Seeing Boris glumly nod his assent, she said, “So who is the they here, huh? Let me guess—Eluveitie and the rest of your crew? She decided getting on my bad side was a mistake and is trying to protect herself on the sly?”
“Eluveitie and most of the People’s Pack want you executed for your crimes,” said Boris. “It’s the surviving Chainites that want to get you out of the city in exchange for your oath—the wildborn clergy were the ones who reached out to me. But they assumed if they propositioned you directly instead of working through me you wouldn’t trust them.”
“Back to working with the Chainites, eh, Boris?” Zosia couldn’t believe this shit. “They’re right, I wouldn’t have trusted them if they’d asked directly, and I trust them even less now that I know they orchestrated this stupid fucking plot! Why would the Chain want to help me?”
“I orchestrated this brilliant plot, just to be clear; they just provided me with certain resources,” said Boris, certainly proud as a Chainite of his convoluted machinations. “And while I told the truth about my motives in wanting to free you it’s possible theirs are a bit more realist than idealist, as you’d have it. They’re worried if you die that might finally wake up your devil, to bad result for everyone who crossed you in life. So they want you out of here, taking it with you, and with the bond of your oath that you’ll never come back down on them.”
“All this fuss over one little jackal-dog,” said Zosia, shaking her head at her sidekick who was more intimidating in death than she was in life. “And if I die he wakes up, huh?”
“That’s obviously only a concern to some, otherwise the rest wouldn’t be so keen to flay you,” said Boris. “Guess nobody knows what to make of your monster for sure. Sounds like they’ve caught devils this way before but never had one hang on like he has, and it’s making everybody nervous.”
“Caught devils what way?” asked Zosia, because that right there was the most important question of the age—finding your way out of a trap was damn near impossible if you didn’t know how you’d wandered into it. “What did they do to him? One minute he was fine and the next like this.”
“That I couldn’t tell you, on my honor as a citizen of Diadem I got no notion of how—”
“Shut up,” she said, wondering if it could be that easy? Those guards down in the cell, stiff and vacant but still alive, victims of their own appetite for an illicit puff of something tasty … And what Domingo Hjortt had described happening to his regiment at the Battle of the Lark’s Tongue, going crazy after being anointed with Chainite oil … Devils were all appetite, it was what defined the fiends, and if poison was the favorite trick of the church, perhaps they had fed him something? Sharper than any thought she’d had in memory, the image came to her of Choplicker snapping up some tainted morsel that caught in his craw. “Boris, spread his jaws for me.”
“Do what now?” Boris looked about to mount some protest, and Zosia was ready to shut his ass down, when the double doors on the far side of the chamber rattled. There was no lock on any of the doors in the Office of Answers, for the state had insisted it had nothing to hide, but the doors opened inward to the hall and whoever was on the other side had tried to shove them open instead. “Fuck, I—”
As Boris was telling Zosia he’d told her so the doors yanked inward, a dozen orange-clad guards charging into the chamber with crossbows and polearms in hand. Boris flipped a gurney to put between himself and the guards as he made a break for the hallway leading to the adjoining rooms. Lots of shouting and crossbows twanging, her least favorite sound in all the Star these days, but Zosia didn’t see if Boris made it because she was too busy wriggling her one good arm into her devil’s cold, sharp mouth. Down his cold, rough throat.
Once upon a time in Kypck, a birthing cow had gotten her calf turned the wrong way around and she had watched Leib reach right inside the animal to correct the problem. This was just like that, she told herself. Except … not.
His teeth drew blood from her forearm as she reached deeper into his tight esophagus, his stiff tongue making it an even tighter fit, but then some congealed slime broke free to ease her passage, and her elbow reached his muzzle. Yet there was nothing down here, her questing fingertips finding only the inside of an animal carcass—she’d had this thought of finding something like a poisoned bit of apple caught in the throat of a fairysong princess, the image leaping so clearly to her mind it had felt like divine inspiration … or infernal, as the ballad may be.
“Take her alive!”
Glancing over from her grisly search she saw half the guards gathered around a body on the floor just in front of the hallway to the next room. The other five or six thugs were cautiously approaching her, polearms down and crossbows up.
“Stop … stop that shit!” one of them barked.
Zosia didn’t stop, gagging as she felt Choplicker’s jaw unhinge to accommodate her bicep. There was nothing in his gullet but she followed her desperate hunch all the way down into his stomach, thinking of all the treasures he had swallowed over the years, carrying them around in his gut and then disgorging them for his mistress no worse for the wear. He’d once coughed up a live songbird in the kitchen, which Leib had said was a nice gesture even if the tiny creature was too terrified to chirp and flew straight out the window once Zosia had wiped off its slobbery wings. Now her stretching fingertips pressed down into fermented viscera, everything soft and cold and—
Two of the guards set down their crossbows and came for her then, their nervous compatriots close en
ough to spear her throat or shoot her through the eye if need be. As they lunged at her Zosia’s fingernails scratched something small but solid and distinct that lurked inside her devil’s belly. She clutched at it, and then the guards tackled her. Still stuck in the devil, her shoulder twisted out of its socket as they took her to the ground, the gurney toppling over as Zosia screamed at the top of her lungs, her fucking arm on fucking fire, the heat of the hurt so bright it fried her brain.
By the time the conflagration of pain had cooled enough for her to think straight again she was up on one of their shoulders, being carried from the Office of Answers. Lifting her head, she saw that Boris was still alive, but probably not for long. He was crawling on his stomach, quarrels rising from his back and leg, the guards standing over him taking turns raking him with their polearms. Steeling herself, she tried to twist around and snap the neck of the guard carrying her, but only succeeded in nearly blacking out again from the exertion—her right shoulder was bleeding from the arrow wound she had reopened and her left was dislocated. As she stared down at her useless arms dangling beneath her, she noticed with detached fascination that her numb left hand was still clenched in a fist, and she tried flexing it, just to see if she still had control even though she’d lost all feeling. Her fingers opened, and a small hunk of something pliable fell from her hand—she couldn’t see what.
She sensed it before she heard it, the heartbreaking keen initially so high as to be inaudible. The guards must have felt it, too, because the one carrying Zosia stopped and those who were tormenting Boris looked over toward the upended gurney in the back of the room, and through the pain Zosia followed their gaze even as the howl broke loose into the realm of mortals. There had been nothing there a moment ago but here he was, head thrown back, stretching his lungs for the first time in too long as he sat on the edge of the filthy puddle. As his howl trailed off and he lowered his muzzle Zosia saw he was grinning at her. She grinned back.
Then one of the guards said or did something, and that hungry grin was everywhere at once, a black river of mouths exploding out of her devil. The man holding Zosia dropped her but Choplicker caught her from the air in his teeth, cradling her there in his world-devouring muzzle. Through the dizzying maelstrom of molten flesh and needle-sharp fur she watched the guards be eaten alive, some consumed in staccato snaps of slavering jaws and others wolfed down whole. They continued to scream even when she couldn’t see them anymore, the shrieks echoing out of his countless throats, and then a tongue as warm and wide as a blanket curled around Zosia’s limp body and she joined them in the First Dark as Choplicker swallowed her alive.
It didn’t hurt. She had assumed it would. But it didn’t.
CHAPTER
11
One thing Sullen would say for Nemi was the witch never said I told ya so. Maybe it was because they all knew it went without saying, or maybe it was because she was just as down in the mouth as Sullen and Diggelby about the situation. They had really thought they could win over the People’s Pack, convince ’em to lend their aid for the war against Jex Toth. And Count Raven only knew, they well might have, if they’d been able to get an audience with the council that now ruled Diadem. The rub was they hadn’t got to talk to the right people, and the people they had talked to hadn’t even known who the right people were.
The castle built into the natural walls of the city was open to the public, but they hadn’t gotten very far inside before encountering long queues of folk all trying to find the right person to talk to, too. Diggelby’s suggestion that they be allowed to cut in line as their business concerned the very fate of the world did not rank with those who had apparently been waiting for days. The rise of Jex Toth seemed less of an immediate concern in these parts than folks starving or plague breaking out or thugs wearing the orange livery of the new militia causing problems. Brother Rýt volunteered to wait in line on behalf of his companions. If nothing else, the queue must lead to someone who could tell him where a missionary monk home from the heathen front should go to discharge his message, his confession, and his penance.
It was agreed Rýt should be given a letter summarizing the recent global catastrophe and imminent threat, so that once he was reunited with his superiors in the church they might in turn pass it along to the People’s Pack. Not that anyone had any real expectation of this yielding much benefit, even before it became apparent that the only thing they had to write on was the pasha’s rolling papers. Out of options, they left the monk with verbal instructions of which highlights to hit, should he find someone receptive to hearing the biggest news since the Age of Wonders. Diggelby had repeated that phrase several times, loudly, trying to attract the attention they deserved from the guards supervising the cattle call, but it never went anywhere.
After that it was a somber trio who trudged back outside into Diadem’s constant black rain, though noticing how many of the towering ancient buildings were burnt-out husks gave Sullen a brief surge of hope. Maybe Zosia had indeed tried to flood the city with burning oil or devil’s fire, as the Faceless Mistress had warned, only to have someone interrupt her before it went too far, doing Sullen’s job for him. Wouldn’t that be nice?
Happy thoughts did not last long, however, in this dank and ashy woodpile of a metropolis. It had taken all day and well into the evening before they had finally given up on meeting the People’s Pack or their representatives, exchanging the claustrophobic caves of the castle for the equally confining avenues and alleys. Sullen was usually quite good at orienting himself but was accustomed to at least being able to see the night sky, and here on the tight streets of Diadem he might as well have been lost in a giant antbed, wandering through tunnels laid out according to no order known to mortal minds. Nemi had heard that Diadem insulated its Gate behind guarded cordons and so wanted to reach it before dawn, in case they had to jump a wall to access their infernal road to Othean. Yet the rain was coming down so hard that even with his devilish eyes Sullen could barely make out the lane in front of them. With hardly anyone out on the streets and those who were disinclined to be accosted by three weirdos in need of very detailed directions, they eventually took shelter under a bridge seemingly made of packed-together houses, waiting for the rain to let up before trying again. It had been hours since their dinner of handpies and kebabs, and Sullen immediately pulled out the extra treat Diggelby had bought him for the road, tearing into the flatfish-stuffed bread. It had gotten mushy from the rain and wasn’t much like the food he’d eaten back on the Frozen Savannahs anyway, but it still had more of a Flintland taste than most anything he’d had since leaving home, and he couldn’t get enough of that nutty spice. By the mysterious mug of the Faceless Mistress, if he never ate a sack of foraged weeds again it would be too soon.
“Do you think they’re already there?” Diggelby asked as he squatted in the mud beside the river of rushing black runoff. Sullen leaned against the inner wall of the bridge while Nemi used her cockatrice cage as a stool. “Back in Othean, I mean, after their side trip to Jex Toth.”
“With Hoartrap steering them they are definitely somewhere, let’s just pray it’s somewhere nice,” panted Nemi, taking the handpie Sullen offered her. Her ring-striped fingers were shaking, making him suppose her slow pace hadn’t just been for the benefit of her gut-stuck companion. He hadn’t really gotten a feel for her yet, the witch, even though they’d been traveling together for weeks now and she’d been his barber twice over. There was definitely something up with her, though, some pox or curse that kicked in once the sun went down. She treated her affliction the same way she treated everything.
“You might want to have your egg early, before we set out,” Sullen suggested as she passed the snack to Diggelby. “Seen you leaning on your stick pretty hard, and we might have to strut quick to make it before dawn.”
“Is that your learned opinion as a scholar of medicine, magic, and other marvels?” asked Nemi, a little rattily. “However did I manage to take care of myself day in and day out
before we met?”
“Um … pretty well, I expect?” said Sullen, realizing he’d given offense. “Sorry, was just saying is all, in case you weren’t thinking ’bout it. Know my mind’s been wandering all day, so …”
“Oh! I … I appreciate the concern, but it’s not necessary,” said Nemi, sounding as though maybe she’d misread things a little, too. “As much time as you’ve spent under my care since we’ve met you probably learned the basics of my methods, but masters rarely take kindly to their apprentices volunteering suggestions.”
“Your apprentice, nice,” said Sullen with a smile, because it was a smart burn—he’d definitely put in more hours getting his own pains tended to of late than he had administering aches to others. But Sullen was all right with that, his smile turning to a grimace as he remembered knocking the kid from the Cobalt camp back onto the spear his ma held. The spear he now held, and that held his grandfather. It was a beautiful weapon, but while he’d been hyped to try it out as soon as he saw it, now all he could think about was how he hoped he never stuck it in another person. Far as he could tell Nemi had yet to hurt a soul, be it mortal or devil, and used her hands to slow the flow of blood instead of hastening it.
Maybe he should ask if she would take him on as her apprentice for real. What would that be like, living a life where you didn’t hurt people? Where you didn’t kill kids without even trying? Sullen tried to think of an ancestor who’d done more repairing than reaping and came up dry; even the shaman Ghostbather was a hunter first and a healer second. Murder was Sullen’s legacy, murder and mayhem, not medicine.
“Are you all right, old boy?” Diggelby asked gently, and Sullen realized the rain had slowed enough that they could hear him weeping. Ever since the kid in the tavern he’d been crying a lot, sometimes just out of nowhere.
A War in Crimson Embers Page 36