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

by K. Eason

“No.” The God took Snow’s hand, the godmarked one. “You’ve kept your bargain, Snowdenaelikk. Now I keep mine.”

  He turned the palm open, baring the sigil. Then it was Tsabrak looking at her, Tsabrak’s garnet eyes and Tsabrak’s smirk. Tsabrak’s lips brushing the sigil, burning her skin.

  Really burning, fuck and damn, feel the blistering and the squawk rising up in her throat.

  Before Snow could let it out, the God put his hand on her chest, over her heart, and shoved. She staggered past Dekklis’s wide eyes and over the edge of the little floating platform of land—

  —and into the Jokki’s cold water.

  * * *

  Even one-eyed, a noidghe could see the two worlds. Two rivers. Two terrains. Two wurms, one of whom writhed at the bottom of a great crater beside a black river, a hole full of rocks and sand and the ravenous river-dead. The other thrashed on a battlefield beside another river, in the mud, among the shattered bodies of Illharek’s legion.

  And on both sides, there were two fighters. Veiko had with him the one scout remaining, Salis, and she had already taken the wound that would kill her. In the ghost roads, there was no sign of Snowdenaelikk; but there was Szanys Dekklis, the Laughing God beside her, sliding down the

  crater

  hillside to meet Tal’Shik.

  There was lightning in the ghost roads, and great gouts of godmagic and blood. The remnants of witchfire, too, burning in patches and patterns. Flashier, certainly, than his rain-soaked reality. Dekklis fought as Veiko did, avoiding talons and tail and striking fast, in and out. Hacking with her black Illhari steel that would do no real damage to Tal’Shik, but Dekklis would not know it.

  In the ghost roads, a warrior needed a blade made of songs.

  Veiko sang moonlight to her blade, and the metal bloomed silver, burned white on the edge. Dek’s eyes widened, but she did not drop the weapon. She would not, being Dekklis. Might imagine the God’s intervention, and that was all right.

  The God knew better. He grinned at Veiko. Raised his hand and pointed.

  There, behind you.

  A stray Talir, oh ancestors. Mere flesh-and-blood mortality on the wrong end of a weapon, rushing and slashing and coming to his avatar’s defense. Veiko gritted his teeth and dispatched him, two quick cuts.

  He turned back in time to see Dekklis cleave Tal’Shik with the silver sword. To see Tal’Shik strike out, defying the rule of bone and flesh, to reach past Dek’s defenses with a boneless limb. And he saw Istel step in and take that strike on his cuirass. That blow would have killed a man outright. It sent the God falling back, his armor smoking and cracked.

  In rain-soaked reality, Salis rushed past Veiko, shouting. She had one more javelin, and she ran with it held like a spear, straight at the wurm. A fool’s attack, because the wurm would hear her, and turn, and avoid the thrust. She did all of those things, and whipped her tail around to spear Salis in turn. Veiko caught that tail on its backlash, sheared the blow away from Salis. Wished he could shout warning or wisdom—run, get away, leave this. But he had no breath for that, having spent it on songs to help Dekklis. All he could do to heave that muscled tail away and keep his footing in the mud.

  Dekklis was in similar difficulty in the ghost roads, fighting as much for balance as her own life. They might have touched shoulders, if they had fought on the same side of the world. Might have braced each other up and fought as partners. But Dekklis had the God on her side, and he had—

  A dog. A svartjagr, diving out of the sky. Salis, who knew she was dying, who had that set to her jaw that said not in the mud. She scooped up the javelin, set herself in front of the wurm, drew all that attention onto herself, and cast the weapon.

  The God circled left and struck from behind, leaping up onto Tal’Shik’s back and slicing deep. There was no moonlight on his blade, but the God had his own tricks, his own poison. His blade burned orange, flames hissing as it slid into Tal’Shik’s back, and she pitched forward, sideways, sprawled half on her side.

  Veiko leaped onto the wurm’s ribs, stuck the axe in, and pulled himself higher. Climbed onto her back that way, until he could brace between her broken wings.

  The wurm snapped Salis between her teeth and flung her broken body sidelong, sent it skipping like a stone across the mud. Her head was low, her neck dipped and down.

  Dekklis darted in and cut Tal’Shik a second time. Lightning spidered over her hide and her shape slipped. Hazed. Flickered between wurm and woman.

  Veiko sang himself steady as he ran up between the wurm’s shoulders on shifting bone and muscle and chopped the base of her neck. The bones shattered under the impact. The wurm shuddered. Flopped, suddenly limp. Unable to do more than roll her eyes at Veiko as he jumped down again and came around in front of her.

  Veiko saw clearly when the wurm in the ghost-roads turned woman again, small and suddenly frail. And he saw Dekklis move forward and thrust moon-blade through Tal’Shik’s chest. Saw Tal’Shik reach her fist into Dekklis. He saw their blood run together, as hand and steel found the other’s heart.

  He saw the Laughing God’s face contort in a shout or a name. And then he reached too, for Tal’Shik’s heart.

  The witchery ended then, and the worlds shuddered back into their borders. There was only one wurm now, who had once been a woman, who had become an avatar. Flesh and bone.

  Veiko split her skull, and that was the end of it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  It wasn’t every day Snow got an invitation to Sandor’s. The restaurant sat on its very own demi-Tier on the edge of the Arch, cordoned off from the rest of Illharek by a set of steel gates and a pair of the biggest women Snow had seen this far south. Ex-legion, obviously, and just as obviously armed. Sandor’s wasn’t a place you went unless you belonged there. Which she didn’t, except by Bel’s invitation.

  Snow had walked past the place dozens of times. But this was her first walk across the delicate, entirely conjured stone bridge to its wrought-iron gate. Fuck and damn, look at it: little stone ropes and knots, texture like worn wooden planks. You had to admire the craft. That was adept-level conjuring in service of highborn vanity. Sandor’s was a favorite among Senators, and the highborn, and, evidently, Adept Uosuk Belaery.

  Dekklis would’ve hated the place. Snow hadn’t ever asked what it was highborn did with themselves when they weren’t running Illharek, but she knew—had known—Szanys Dekklis well enough to know she’d roll her eyes at that little stone bridge.

  Fuck and damn, Dek.

  Dekklis would’ve rolled eyes at Snow’s choice to dress northerner, too, to a place like Sandor’s. Leather trousers, however new and unscarred, drew stares. So did the seax on her hip. Snow wore an Illhari citizen’s ink, and there was no law against citizens carrying weapons, but in the Tiers, it wasn’t the fashion. That custom was a pre-Purge remnant, when the Tiers had been full of godsworn and metal hadn’t been much of a danger.

  Dekklis had never much liked attention. Not before all the titles, certainly not after.

  Snow dragged her gaze along the balcony tables, the people pretending not to see her walking up to the door. Any one of them could be godsworn, yeah. No way Dek’d arrested all of them. But godsworn might be worthless, if Tal’Shik were well and truly dead.

  Someone had to’ve named that day by now. The Battle of Tal’Shik. The Battle of the Taliri. The Battle of Toadshit and Heresy, in Which the Gods Died.

  Belaery would know. Belaery was probably the one who’d name it. Belaery was writing the toadfucking Archive account, which was why Snow reckoned she’d gotten invited to Sandor’s in the first place. Shrugs and one-word answers were fine for Senate reports, yeah, but Bel wanted better than that.

  It was definitely making Sandor’s guards nervous. Snow was almost across the little bridge now, almost to the delicate black iron gates. One of the guards had squared up and dropped her hand to her weapon, a casual grip that didn’t fool Snow at all. Her partner squared up beside her. Maybe they’d a
sk Snow to leave when she got closer. It wasn’t genteel to shout. Or maybe they’d just throw her off the edge of the pretty little bridge.

  Briel didn’t like that idea. Sent a svartjagr’s impression of just how far down was. Briel herself was nearby, circling with the rest of the svartjagr. There’d been an excess of them around since the dragon and the Taliri. They loved battlefields.

  Easy, Snow wished Briel. No one’s throwing me off.

  She cocked a smile at the guards. Held her hands out, empty and open. No threat.

  True, fuck and damn. She’d wrapped the God-kissed burn on her right palm and put a glove over that. Thin black leather, fingerless, to hide the bandage. To look like an affectation, not an injury. A conjuror with a wounded hand was no danger at all.

  The guard in the front opened the gate. Held it, like a bondie for a matron. Tsabrak would’ve choked, seeing this. Dekklis too. Aneki. Almost everyone in her toadfucking acquaintance.

  “Snowdenaelikk,” said the larger of the two guards, who was almost eye-level and damn near twice as wide. “You’re expected.” She gestured through Sandor’s guts to the distant, private balcony that overlooked the Riverwalk, beside another stretch of conjured stone-rope-and-plank wall.

  Snow grimaced. There she was, Adept Uosuk Belaery, in the bright splash of an adept’s robe, like silver-trimmed blood. Her topknot, black as Briel’s hide, was neat and slick and flawless. Belaery stood up to greet her, which was a courtesy. Which got a lot of looks from surrounding diners, surprise and calculation both.

  Snow threaded through the tables. Walked like she had into Rata’s tavern, last spring, chin up, shoulders back, hand on the seax’s hilt. No Veiko at her back, and that ached; but no way he’d’ve got in here, axe and braids and skraeling fair. Even if they knew he was the dragonbane, even on Belaery’s express invitation.

  “Snowdenaelikk,” said Belaery. She smiled. Gestured at the single empty seat. There was a carafe of something red on the table, some of it already in Belaery’s cup.

  “The doormeat knows my name,” Snow said, and sat, clearing the seax with long practice. Let the sneak-eyed watchers at the next table note that, yeah. Let them wonder. “You passing my description around, Bel?”

  “They wouldn’t let you in otherwise. You’re distinctive, but not in a way that inclines people to let you into respectable establishments.” Belaery poured some of the red into Snow’s cup. “This is another Riku vintage. Twelve years old, yeah? Really excellent. It’s a blend of Jutson and Holopainnen varietals.”

  “Huh.” Snow picked up the cup. Sniffed and sipped and held the liquid in her mouth, pretending to taste whatever people like Bel did in fancy wines. Her palate had its own attunements, and it wasn’t finding anything. She swallowed, finally. The wine burned a little. Hit the empty of her gut and bloomed warm. “It’s, ah, good.”

  Bel shook her head. “You were tasting for poisons, weren’t you? Snow. Fuck and damn.”

  “Didn’t reckon you’d do it. But.” Snow shrugged. “If the help knows I’m coming, then everyone does. And that information could get sold to people who’d like to see me dead.”

  “Dekklis arrested the godsworn. And your friends in the Suburba handled things down there. You’re perfectly safe.” But Belaery was eyeing her own cup now, and frowning. “Is this how it is for you all the time? This paranoia?”

  “Only in Illharek.”

  Belaery snorted. “What, no enemies in the north?”

  “No. And no friends, either, anymore.” Like chewing glass to say that.

  Belaery had the grace to wince and look somewhere else. “I’ve ordered for us. If that’s all right. Although now I’m a little worried about poison.”

  Snow twisted out a smile. “Long as it’s not fish, yeah?”

  “It’s not.” Bel chuckled. Sat back and gazed over the rail, toward Illharek’s mouth. The late afternoon sun slanted in, spangling silver off the river. “You know, the dragon’s still smoking. The corpse, I mean.”

  “So’s the earth. The land’s black to treeline. I think there’s fire underground.”

  Belaery cut her a narrow look. “I didn’t think you’d gone out there since—” She winced again. “Since.”

  Snow shrugged. She took a slow breath, past the jagged stone in her chest, and tilted her tone to Academy-trained neutral. “I wanted to look at the dragon, yeah? Up close. Compare it to what I know about svartjagr. The wings are the same. I reckon the guts have to be different, since the dragon spits venom.”

  “And calls lightning. The heavy infantry took serious losses.”

  “Saw that. The legion’s collecting every corpse with metal melted to its bones. The rest, they’re leaving for the svartjagr and the crows. That’s asking for plague, Bel. You know it.”

  “I do, but I’m not going to fight that particular battle with Acting First Legate K’Hari, just now. You know, Snowdenaelikk, I can get you up close to the dragon corpse, if you want. Tethni’s got a team going over it.”

  “Saw them when I was out there.” Snow plucked a small black fruit off the tray. It was salty. A little sour. “She was arguing with a legion trooper. They’re making a little shrine out by the carcass. Swords, helmets, icons, little bottles of oil. Tethni looked like she wanted them to get rid of it. They didn’t seem inclined. Evidently, everyone thinks Dek died out there killing the dragon. But I reckon Tethni knows the dragon died of an axe-split skull.”

  “She does.” Belaery grimaced. “The adepts on the barge knows Dekklis went into the ghost roads, and that she died in the ghost roads. But the troops think otherwise, and it’s simpler to let them.”

  “You heard the toadshit they’re singing in the taverns? Dekklis would be fucking appalled.”

  “That’s what the living do for the dead. Make up songs about them. Truth makes bad history and worse ballads, yeah? Right now, Illharek needs a story and a hero. I need the truth.”

  Snow pushed her cup around, one-handed. “You know that body laying in the Senate, the one they’re saying is Dek’s? It’s a scout named Salis, yeah? From the Sixth. She tried to arrest me once, at Davni, when all of this started. She served with K’Hess Kenjak. Write that in your Archives.”

  Belaery nodded. “I will. Salis. But what I don’t know is—did Dekklis kill Tal’Shik in the ghost roads?”

  “I have no fucking idea.”

  “Does Veiko—”

  “No fucking idea, Belaery. Tal’Shik’s vanished. That could mean anything.”

  “I’m just trying to get the facts right. For the Archives, Snow. It’s important.”

  “For the Archives.” Snow closed her eyes. Took a deep breath and held it. She’d argued with Dek once about the Archives’ importance. That history couldn’t be left to politicians and storytellers or even adepts. Leave it to a half-blood heretic, then.

  “All right. I don’t think anything like Tal’Shik can really die. Not in the sense of gone-for-good, like the dragon out there. Spirits like that leave…marks. Echoes. That’s what Veiko says. There’s an exchange, always. ‘Dek and Tal’Shik killed each other’ sounds poetic, but the truth is, someone’s still there. Which one of them came out stronger—I don’t know. I want to believe it’s Dekklis, but I don’t see how it could be. Unless the God helped her. He had his hand in it, too.”

  Belaery raised an eyebrow. “You mean he helped.”

  “I mean he had his hand in Tal’Shik’s chest, reaching for her heart. Veiko saw that, but not how it ended. So, if you see Istel walking around, might be trouble.” Snow shrugged. “You want more detail, you should go ask Ari.”

  “But not you?”

  “Not me.”

  Belaery sipped her own wine. Eyed Snow over the rim. “I wish you’d tell me what happened.”

  “I did tell you. That’s how we both know it’s toadshit, what they’re saying about Dek. Veiko killed the dragon.”

  “I mean, about your hand.”

  The God burned me. The God let me go. The God s
aved my life.

  And crippled her conjuring, and left her fucking useless.

  Snow closed her ruined right hand. “Fuck and damn, Bel. It’s a battle-wound, yeah? Call it that.”

  “Tethni said it looked like a burn when she pulled you out of the river.”

  “Then ask Tethni about it.”

  “You should at least let someone look at it.”

  “Who, you? I’m the chirurgeon, Bel, what can you do? Or is this for the Archive, too?”

  “I didn’t say I should look at it. And it’s not for the Archive.” Belaery sat back, halfway between indignation and genuine hurt. “I’m worried, that’s all.”

  Because a conjuror needed her hands, because Belaery suspected the injury was that bad. So easy to lie, yeah, Snow had been good at it. But not about this. Not to Bel, who’d see through it. Who could do her own reckoning, what a burn across a whole palm might do to a conjuror.

  “Yeah. Well. I can’t manage witchfire. Yet. I’ll know more when it heals.” Snow swallowed past the knot in her throat. “The God did it, yeah? Before he pushed me out of the ghost-roads. I was his right hand, and now I’m not. That’s why I don’t know if he’s alive or dead. I’m not godsworn anymore.”

  “Snow.” Bel’s eyes were wide. Trying to reckon if she’d asked for it, or if she’d been a victim of the Laughing God’s malice.

  Good fucking question, yeah, but pity was intolerable, and Bel was one blink from saying something Snow wouldn’t forgive.

  The server saved their friendship: a fine-boned barely-man, Dvergir and wearing an indentured’s sigil. Snow looked at it. Fresh, yeah, still raw on the edges. He might’ve been Tsabrak, a dozen years ago. If Tsabrak had been here, putting plates of olives and warm bread and oil on a table, maybe he wouldn’t have found the God. Maybe he wouldn’t have needed him.

  Or maybe even servers at Sandor’s needed the God because of that toadfucking indentured mark that made them someone’s temporary property.

  Fuck and damn, Dek. You died too soon.

  Snow ripped a corner off the bread, dipped it in oil. Made herself chew and swallow. “So what, you’re on the Adept Council now?”