by K. Eason
“Not yet. But I will be, after the next vote.” Belaery let herself smile. “I’ll be the youngest elected ever.”
“Well. Congratulations.” Snow raised the glass in a tavern salute. “You earned it.”
“You know I wouldn’t be here without you. And I know it. I owe you. Listen, when I’m Council, I can make sure you get your Academy posting. You earned that.”
“I earned it a dozen years ago. Didn’t matter then. The fuck do I care now?”
“You’re still a chirurgeon.”
“You mean, even with this?” Snow waved the wounded hand. “I might never do really fine work again. Nothing like what I did with Briel’s wings.”
“You can teach.”
“I can’t. I’m toadshit at teaching. But if you want to pay me back, then I have a favor to ask.” Snow leaned across the table. Dropped her voice. “Get K’Hess Soren admitted to the Academy. He’s got some interest in apothecary work. Probably be a good chirurgeon, too.”
“The last K’Hess son.” Belaery stopped chewing. Swallowed like she’d forgotten what it was she was eating. “His mother might object.”
“Then make his appointment a toadfucking official honor so she can’t refuse it. For services rendered to the Academy of Illharek. Or just take him and don’t tell anyone who he is. Get his House sigil changed. Make him look like a freed indentured.”
“That would be illegal. Changing the ink.”
Snow raised both brows. “Belaery. Please. Illegal? Besides. You can interview him, yeah? Get his story for the Archives.”
“Fine, all right. I’ll get him a post. But you should stay, yeah? Help him adjust.”
“Soren’s tough. He doesn’t need me.” Snowdenaelikk slammed back the last of her wine—a crime to drink it like that, see Bel wince, and the appalled stares from neighboring tables. She set the glass down hard. “I’m done with Illharek. I reckon you knew that already.”
“I—hoped otherwise.”
“I think you even mean that.”
“Of course I do. Snow. Where will you go?”
“Don’t know. Doesn’t matter. North, maybe. Veiko needs another dog. The southern types are too small to hunt anything bigger than rats.”
“And you’re going with him.”
“Nothing for me here, yeah? Noidghe don’t belong in Illharek.” Snow leaked a smile, crooked and honest. “Put that in your histories.”
She stood up then. Waited for Bel to join her. Illhari custom said old friends might embrace, but no one here knew that history. They’d only see Adept and half-blood, remark on the intimacy. Someone might remember Bel’s mother was Midtowner. A woman who aspired to be First Adept didn’t need that kind of toadshit.
So Snow forgave Bel’s hesitation and offered her left hand instead. A northerner’s leave-taking. An outlander’s leave-taking.
Bel winced. Then she squeezed Snow’s hand hard enough to make the crooked finger creak. “Give Veiko my regards.”
“I will. You take care, Bel.” Snow hesitated. Then: “Do me one more favor, yeah?”
“What?”
“Stop dyeing your hair.”
* * *
Veiko poked a stick into fire. The puppy, who had not yet earned a name, charged at the sparks, snapping and growling.
Snow caught him by his tail and hauled him back. “Idiot. You’ll fall in, yeah? Or burn your mouth.”
“And he will learn from the mistake.” Veiko stuck a leg out and nudged the puppy back a second time. “Logi made the same error, and he recovered well.”
The older of his dogs—and the wiser, ancestors defend them all—gazed out into the late summer night and pretended not to hear his name. Somewhere overhead, Briel sliced patterns into the warm air and pretended to hunt and mostly kept watch. Animals had come creeping back in the absence of raiders and dragon. Briel was convinced there were wolves.
There were not, Veiko knew. But there were people in the valley again. Illharek had come back to Cardik. The legions swarmed the walls during daylight, armed with hammers, and with more than a few topknotted conjurors among them. There were caravans, too, coming up from Illharek, carpenters and conjurors, enterprising shop owners from the Suburba, looking for opportunity. Settlers in the homesteads, raising timbers for houses and barns, turning the soil in the fields. An open-air market had sprouted up near the front gates, tents and vendors arranged without pattern, stitched together by muddy lanes and layers of smoke. And in that market: three merchants with litters of good northern pups, all at inconvenient distances from each other, each requiring multiple visits, until Snow had suggested they might be grown dogs before Veiko made his choice.
And so he had, finally: this one, black and white, blue-eyed, large-pawed. Unafraid of Briel, even when she hissed. Unafraid of Logi. Unafraid of fires, too, evidently. And inclined to follow Snowdenaelikk, which she claimed to hate; but Veiko had noted who it was that picked up the tired, frightened puppy on the hike up the ridgeline to their camp.
They had a good view of the valley from here, the road and the city. Witchfires and torches studded the new walls, marked out the lines of repaired streets trailing up toward the garrison on one end and down to Market Bridge on the other. The Warren was still dark.
A man could not say where his partner was looking, except at Cardik. But a man could guess she was looking where Still Waters had been. That she was looking somewhen else, into memory. Her left hand, with its crooked finger, wound around her right. Squeezing, twisting, the thumb rubbing over and over the shiny burn scars on her palm where the godmark had been.
Veiko reached over and folded her hand between his own and pressed it flat.
He thought she would pull away at first. Then she sighed and made her hand relax in his, and shivered. “You wait, Veiko. They’ll be venerating Dekklis by year’s end. Civic honor first, and then every damn fool with a statue at home, lighting candles to it. Tal’Shik will be back before spring, only she’ll be wearing Dek’s face.”
“She will not be the same if she does return.”
“No.” Snow grimaced. “But the God will be, assuming he survived. And then that toadshit starts again. Tal’Shik and the Laughing God, tearing Illharek apart between them.”
“Istel loved Illharek. And he cared very much for Dekklis. That will alter their balance.”
“You forget who’s in there with him. Tsabrak never loved anyone.”
No, Veiko did not say. Snow had been the Laughing God’s right hand, and he could have—should have, by everything Veiko understood about gods and godsworn and that God in particular—thrown her against Tal’Shik in his own defense. Instead, the Laughing God had dissolved her oath and obligation, burned his mark off her flesh, cast her out of the ghost roads. Risked his victory, perhaps himself, to spare her. He had not taken her hand out of malice. Spirits did not give gifts, that was all. Tsabrak had given her what he could, and taken as little as he could, and then he had let her go. And for Tsabrak, that might count as love.
Veiko held his silence and watched the puppy stalk Logi’s tail, turning his head where he would once have glanced sidelong. Snow had shown him a mirror, let him see the little bald patch the venom had left in his eyebrow, the shiny-slick streak of scar that ran down his cheek. His left eye, grey as the ghost roads.
A hunter could manage one-eyed if he had two dogs and a svartjagr. If he had a partner.
Snow coughed up a laugh’s poor cousin. “If Tal’Shik does come back, we’re in trouble. Three working hands and three working eyes between us.”
Veiko thought it more likely that the chieftain’s hunters would find them than Tal’Shik, but Snow did not need to hear that, and besides: “We have had good luck so far.”
“Only a fool relies on luck, yeah? That’s what you always tell me.”
And he had been a fool, ancestors knew. A wise man did not kill a thieving chieftain’s son or become an outlaw. A wise man would have stayed in his village. Married Kaari’s daughter. Live
d and died a hunter and a herder and never walked on the ghost roads. A wise man would have let a half-blood woman face legion soldiers alone in the snow.
“Then I am lucky to be a fool.”
Firelight kissed her nose and lips, gleamed like stars in her midnight eyes. “See now. I think that’s a wise man’s answer.”
Acknowledgments
Thank you...
to Lisa Rodgers, amazing agent and Woman Who Gets Shit Done...
to Caitlin and Richard, who helped wrangle plot and punctuation...
to Tan and Colleen, my tireless cheerleaders...
and to Loren, because. Because.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
K. Eason started telling tales in her early childhood. After earning two degrees in English literature, she decided to stop writing about everyone else’s stories and get back to writing her own. Now she teaches first-year college students about the zombie apocalypse, Aristotelian ethics, and Beowulf (not all at once). She lives in Southern California with her husband and two black cats, and she powers everything with coffee.
ALSO BY K. EASON
ON THE BONES OF GODS
Enemy
Outlaw
Ally*
*Published in JABberwocky Print and eBook editions.
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