Ally: A Dark Fantasy Novel (On the Bones of Gods Book 3)

by K. Eason

  “You think she’ll let you hunt godsworn highborn just because you look like Istel?”

  “I wasn’t going to ask her permission. And I wasn’t going to tell her about the Laughing God, either.”

  Snow flinched. “She has no idea what you are, yeah?”

  Istel grinned, close-lipped and tight. “Neither do I. Reckon we can all find out together.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  There was a new map on the table, fresh paint smell, hide still crisp and pale. It had belonged to an ox, probably, from the size of it. All of the Illhari Republic was inked out between its edges and the metal weights at the corners. Illharek herself, there in the middle of it, circled in cobalt. That meant a city Below. There were smaller city symbols. Little Riku, without a blue circle, nestled in the red humps and crags of the Redstones, with honest masonry walls because the Redstones were too Wild for conjuring. A little farther south and east, there was Vaasyl, half ringed because Vaasyl divided itself between sky and cavern. The Tano stitched aboveground there, spread wide and brown and ran down toward the plains. Illhari traders had followed it, bringing back stories of a wide expanse of water where the Tano ended, and leagues of grassy flatland. But that had been before the Purge. Might be a crop of villages out there now. Might be whole cities.

  Dekklis traced a finger along the roads. There were bloodstone markers on Davni and every other village the Taliri had burned. There was a much larger bloodstone on Cardik’s sigil. Russet and gold, like all the cities, and unringed by blue. The largest city in the Republic, save Illharek, and now it was fallen, dead and empty. Kellehn had reported it unoccupied and abandoned, like Davni. Which meant the bulk of Taliri forces had to be between Cardik and Illharek. A lot of forest there, into which Taliri could vanish in small parties. So ask where the motherless Taliri were. Ask, and wonder, and resist all urges to sweep the map bare out of temper.

  “The problem,” she murmured, “is intelligence. We need some.”

  Now was the time to miss her old friends. Teslin and Barkett, dead before the Taliri ever got to Cardik. That was an old ache. But Istel was like a hole where a tooth had been. Poke and prod at his memory and wince. All she had now was Rurik.

  Rurik might well have understood the joke she’d just made, but the sky would fall before he’d let on. The third son of K’Hess could challenge Veiko for grimness. She had no idea what he did when he wasn’t on duty. She couldn’t picture him playing civilian. She wished, suddenly, that she knew if he’d had a lover in Cardik. Imagined that he might have had some Alvir beauty hidden in the Warren. Dismissed that imagining in the next blink. Deviant Illhari Rurik might be, outspoken and willful. But he was highborn, first and last, and too damn proud for his own good health.

  And what are you, Szanys?

  Much corrupted, if she was having pity on Rurik for his pride and duty. But she’d had Teslin and Barkett and the rest of the scouts to buffer her own experience. She’d had Istel, hell and damn, to teach her better.

  “Indeed,” Rurik said. Solemn blink, solemn blank. “Your heretic’s been gone what, five days?” He jabbed a finger at the map. “She and Veiko will stay off the road. Go overland. The Sixth did, when we came south. And so did you. So, what, ten days to get to Cardik? Assuming they don’t find that army in between.”

  “I’m not sure there is an army. I know what Kellehn said. I know what I said, to the Senate. But any Taliri army should have been here by now. They should have—hell. Done more than pick off the summer caravans and burn villages. There should be some sign of that many people.”

  “Oh, we have plenty of sign. We have refugees,” Rurik said drily. “Remember, though. The Laughing God was involved in Cardik, too. There was some kind of alliance between him and Tal’Shik. And all we have is that half-blood’s word it’s not happening here, again.”

  “Leave it, Rurik. One day you’re promising you’ll help Snow assassinate senators, and the next you’re saying she lied to us.”

  “I think she can do both.”

  “I have one godsworn’s head in a sack, and no reason to think she’s the only casualty of that little Suburban war. Snow’s no friend of Tal’Shik, which means the God isn’t, either. Not anymore. That’s certain.”

  A dozen times Dekklis had argued this same thing with Istel, except then she’d been playing Rurik’s role. Now she was Snow’s defender. She understood the expression on his face, mixed disbelief and disgust, from the inside. Guilt sharpened her voice like a stake. “You agreed with me that she should go north.”

  He grunted. “Better go than stay here. She’d have us ankle-deep in blood by now.”

  “You believed Kellehn. Hell and damn, K’Hess, you were the one said the Taliri had civil war on their hands. Your advice, to make allies out of them.”

  “Maybe I didn’t think you’d listen to me.”

  “Toadshit.” He was just bad at waiting, that was all, and good at second-guessing himself. Dekklis recognized that trait well enough. Istel had told her a hundred times she worried too much, thought too much.

  Just trust your instincts, Dek.

  It’d been her motherless instinct to send Istel into the Suburba after Snow and see what had happened. A partner lost down there, gone feral. Or, if Snow had told truth—afraid to come back.

  No, Szanys. Afraid of your Illharek, the one you’re making. Think on that.

  “First Legate,” Rurik said, and paused. Cocked his head and frowned.

  “What—” she began to say, and then she heard it, too. A commotion on the stairs, Optio Pyatta’s voice echoing off narrow stone walls:

  “Listen. I don’t care who you are, but the First Legate and the First Tribune are not to be disturbed!”

  And then an accent she had not expected, that made her skin pebble and her stomach tie itself into knots. “They’ll want to see me.”

  “Hell they will. Listen, citizen—”

  Dek darted across the room. Jerked the door open, just as Istel said, with considerably less good humor, “I’m on orders from the First Legate. Ask her, yeah?”

  And then he saw her. His eyebrows rose. Dekklis guessed that she looked different, then. The uniform, maybe. Something. But he looked like Istel. She’d half-expected a ghost-version, all mist and chill, with the wall visible through his outline. But this man was solid and alive. Suburban-dressed. She might’ve passed him on the street and never looked twice, unless he opened his mouth and loosed that Cardik accent.

  Optio Pyatta spun and snapped a salute. “First Legate. This man here claims he’s from the Sixth—”

  “He is.” Rurik appeared at her shoulder. “That is Second Scout Istel.”

  “But he’s not in—” Pyatta crossed stares with Rurik, then snapped her mouth shut. “As you say, First Tribune.”

  “Thank you, Optio.” Rurik made a great show of looking Istel over, while Dekklis found wits and tongue and got the latter in service to the former.

  “Second Scout,” she said. “I expected your report some time ago.”

  “Apologies, First Legate. I was delayed.”

  “Evidently.” She traded glances with Rurik. “I’ll hear your report now, then. —Optio, thank you, that will be all.”

  Nothing for Pyatta to do but bow and retreat down the steps. Rurik went back inside the office. Istel, after a moment, followed him. Dekklis waited alone on the threshold, telling herself she was listening to be sure that Pyatta had gone. Gossip was already thick around the First Legate. No point in adding to it.

  But truth was Dekklis wanted that time—while Pyatta took the steps as if she had gout and five extra decades—to get her own guts under control. Istel in her office. Why now? Ask if Snow had sent him after all, or if he’d come alone.

  Yeah, Dek, why don’t you ask? He’s in there.

  Because he’d caught her off-guard, and she hated that almost as much as she was happy to see him.

  Pyatta was long gone when Dekklis went back inside. There was conspicuous silence in
there, too. Istel was looking at the map with apparent interest. Rurik was watching Istel from across the table with more than his usual suspicion.

  She shut the door. Resisted the urge to put her back against it. She made herself cross the room and stand beside Rurik. Only then did she say Istel’s name, and only then did he look up at her.

  “The hell—” she began, and gave up. “Damn, I’m glad to see you.”

  Half a smile, that passed for a grin from Istel. “Likewise.”

  “I didn’t think you’d come back. I mean, Snow didn’t say you were coming.”

  His face smoothed blank. “Snow knew where I was. And that I was all right. She told you that.”

  Rurik interrupted. “Did she send you?”

  “No.” The smile crawled back like a three-legged toad on a slick rock. “But what you mean, First Tribune, is am I a spy, and no to that, too. I overheard what you said about Cardik. I can promise you this: the God’s people are not allied with Tal’Shik’s. Not anymore, and not ever again. That was a mistake, and one they will not repeat.”

  Ask how the hell he’d heard that, up steps and through a thick wooden door. Dek’s skin prickled again, heat and chill together. Coolly, levelly: “And how do you know that?”

  Istel quirked a strange little smile. “I’ve got good authority, yeah?”

  “Whose?” Rurik did not have her patience.

  “The Laughing God’s, as it happens.”

  “Of course. The Laughing God.” Rurik sneered. “Hell and damn. Just say who and rot the games, Second Scout. Was it Snowdenaelikk? Or one of her minions?”

  A pause, while Istel regarded Rurik like a soldier should never look at his superior. Dekklis knew that look. Istel angry, Istel moved straight past sense. Last time he’d looked like that, it had been on her orders, and he’d picked a fight with Optio Nezari and damn near beat her blind. There was no motion to violence, this time, but foremothers, the edge to his tone could cut crystal. “When I say the God spoke, First Tribune, I mean that. He can, and does, wear his godsworn’s skin on occasion.”

  Rurik flinched, more revulsion than fear. “And what about my brother?”

  “K’Hess Soren chooses to stay where he is.”

  Rurik scoffed. “In the motherless Suburba, my brother. What, has he found a woman down there?”

  “He always wanted to be an apothecary. Now he’s getting the chance to learn.”

  That was treading on Rurik’s bruises. Soren was the dutiful highborn second son to House K’Hess, with no choice in what he became: a mother’s property, that was all, meant to serve his House. But K’Hess had let her youngest sons, Rurik and poor dead Kenjak, choose the legions. That was indulgence and scandal, but House K’Hess was old enough and powerful enough to ignore convention. Had Soren been born third, or fourth, he might have been allowed to study at the Academy. But not as the second son. Not even liberal K’Hess would allow that.

  “There are more important things than what Soren wants.”

  Istel grimaced. “You highborn all sound the same. Except Soren. He’s got sense. Besides.” Istel slid his eyes toward Dekklis. “Didn’t reckon you’d want him back in House Stratka. He comes back up here, he’s living in that household again, a consort all legal and binding. And that House is godsworn, First Tribune. All the daughters, not just your brother’s consort. You knew that, yeah?”

  Rurik’s face twisted. “Of course I know. Everyone does, Second Scout, and you would too, if you’d get back to your duties and pull your nose out of the Suburba. You’re still legion. Remember?”

  “The First Legate stripped my commission. Or didn’t she tell you?”

  This was the reason castration had been the custom in the pre-Purge Republic, and why so few men had gotten past a mila’s rank in the legions. Dek slashed the air between them. “Enough. Soren’s better where he is.” Like chewing slivered glass, saying that out loud. Echoes of motherless Snowdenaelikk, rot her anyway. “Leave it, yeah? And you”—to Istel—“what do you have to report?”

  Istel drew himself up. Squared his shoulders. “The God’s cartel is keeping order in the Suburba for the moment. The other cartels are—well. Not friends. But not fighting anymore, either.”

  “And the refugees?”

  Istel looked grim. “It’s a lot like Cardik down there. Too many people with no place to go. Desperation stinks, Dek, worse than rotting fish.”

  That plan again. No surprise. She traded stares with Rurik.

  Who said, “We could send troops down there.”

  “No reason, unless you want to give desperate people a target.” Istel didn’t even bother with sir. “You send a bunch of highborn in uniforms down there, we’ll have blood in the gutters.”

  “Second Scout—”

  “No,” Dekklis said, and drew Rurik’s scowl all to herself. “We had trouble enough with that in Cardik, and the Sixth had experience dealing with—” She almost said toadbellies. The Illhari slur rolled around her mouth, familiar as the cave-damp. She hadn’t used that word once, all the years she’d been north. Hell and damn. “—With citizens,” she said firmly, “who aren’t Dvergiri. Istel’s right. We send troopers down there, we’ll bring the riots that much sooner.”

  Rurik shook his head. “So what, we leave it to heretics to keep order? Will you be delivering more heads in sacks, Second Scout?”

  “You never asked what we did with the rest of Yrse,” Istel said, and the look in his eyes was nothing Dekklis recognized. That was a stranger standing there, with that wire-thin, razor smile.

  “Istel,” she said, and the stranger’s eyes snapped to her. A trick of lantern and firedog, that made his eyes look flame-kissed. A prank of shadows, that carved his face into new planes and angles.

  Rurik squared to the table. Slammed both hands down on the edge. The map shivered. “We, is it? Are you a heretic now, Second Scout? Is that what I’m hearing?”

  It was Istel’s face that tilted toward Rurik. Istel’s anger, settling over features Dekklis knew as well as her own. “What you hear,” he said quietly, “isn’t for me to guess, First Tribune. I only know what I said. And you don’t know what we did with her.”

  Rurik puffed up like a cavetoad. Dekklis recalled Teslin’s first words to her, when she’d joined the Sixth.

  Hey. First Spear’s got temper, yeah? Don’t you pull it down on us.

  Teslin had, more than once. Barkett too. Even Dekklis had. But never Istel. He had better sense than any of them, a better grip on his tongue.

  Or had. This Istel had acquired Snowdenaelikk’s manners and a temper to go with them. He might be a match for Rurik. He’d certainly surprised him.

  So let them argue. She let the sounds of male conflict wash past her and collect in the cracks between stones. Let her attention slide to the map and the bloodstone markers. Taliri all through the forests, by Kellehn’s report. Godsworn Taliri, in Tal’Shik’s service. Rurik had scattered white quartz pieces, approximating where they might be.

  But she might as well stack those quartz chips on Illharek’s sigil, too, pile them high as a miser’s treasure. There was the question to keep her up nights—with Tal’Shik’s godsworn firmly in power in the Tiers, laced through the Senate and the Houses like ivy through stone, what need had Tal’Shik of more burning? Why keep the flow of Illhari refugees running into the Suburba? Disruption and riot now would not serve Tal’Shik, if she wanted to regain full control of Illharek. Time would do that for her. Unless—

  “Hell and damn,” she muttered.

  Rurik forgot his quarrel with Istel. “What is it?”

  “We thought it was a competition, Taliri godsworn against Illhari, but we always figured Tal’Shik would want us to win. But what if she doesn’t? What if she wants Illharek to lose? Maybe that’s been the plan all along. It’s revenge. For the Purge. For throwing her off.”

  “Of course it is. Snow told you as much back in Cardik last winter. You just didn’t believe her.” Istel folded his arms. Co
cked his hip. Stood there, oh foremothers, just like Snowdenaelikk. “But if you’re good and treacherous, Tal’Shik might let you win. That’s the way she works. You pay enough, she’ll forgive you. Right now, that payment’s all the Republic. Savvy that, Dek? She wants Illharek back. But she wants to make it bleed first, and then beg. The First Tribune’s right. Troops in the Suburba will keep peace. If you’re willing to kill people. If you’re willing to choke the Jaarvi with bodies.”

  “That’s dramatic.”

  “It’s not. It’s the start of a civil war. It’s what we tried to avoid in Cardik. See how well that worked.” The firelight surged and ebbed across Istel’s face, smearing his features and settling deep in the sockets where his eyes should be. “Before the Purge, that’s what the Senate would’ve done. Proscriptions in the midtowns and the Tiers, arrest and incarceration of the enemies of Illharek. The legions running around and killing on the Senate’s command and keeping order in the Suburba, or some version of order. Only now, the Suburba’s stuffed full of refugees and outlanders. Maybe just miserable people, maybe just normal Illhari who don’t much love you highborn on a good day. All of them rubbing shoulders and whispering. Illharek can’t afford to lose the Suburba. That’s your link with trade, yeah? You can’t afford to lose the docks to fire or riot. Show force, and the whole place will rise up. The only way to deal with the Suburba is quietly.”

  “You mean assassination.” Rurik stared at Istel. “Is that your advice, Second Scout? Let Snow’s cartel keep the peace?”

  “My advice is—stop the godsworn in the Tiers. Enact your own proscriptions. Do it here, and keep the legions out of the Suburba.”

  Rurik threw his hands up. “Now you sound like the half-blood.”

  “That’s because Snow’s right. You know she is. You let the godsworn take root up in the Tiers, you won’t get them out.”

  “She send you up here to say that?”

  “No. She didn’t have to. You think I can’t have an idea of my own? You think everything comes from Snowdenaelikk?” His arrogance dripped away like hot wax. This was her Istel again, whole and entire. “We swore oaths, Dek. Remember? To protect Illharek. What you’re doing here—or not doing—isn’t that.”