It wasn’t far. Three quick strides took him to the numinat, and one swipe of his hand broke the line. The shock of it tore up his arm like lightning, but he welcomed the pain.
Diomen’s momentum carried him face-first into the ground, and he lay without moving. The standing figures began to sway.
Grey had just enough time to leap to Ren’s side before she collapsed.
25
The Mask of Worms
Temple of the Illius Praeteri, Old Island: Canilun 22
One moment, Ren was watching the nameless szorsa and Kaius Sifigno prepare to bind the medallions.
The next, the world shattered around her, and she fell.
All the layers of time collapsed into one: a time in which the Rook was holding her, his voice whispering, “Ren. Ren. Tell me you’re all right.”
Not the Rook. Grey. His hood still cast a deep shadow, but the face within it was recognizable as his own.
She opened her mouth to ask if it had worked, and stopped. Because she could see what Grey wanted: completion of what he’d set out to do, the destruction of the medallions. But only if it could be done with justice.
She could see. She’d never been able to see, when he was cloaked in the Rook.
And the medallion was still in her hands.
“What happened?” she whispered back.
Before he could answer, voices rose up in confused and angry cacophony. Ren got her feet under her in time to see the back of the man who’d been in the Ninat position vanishing down the tunnel; Sostira Novrus wasted no time in following suit. Even Sureggio Extaquium was staggering out, babbling nonsense as he went.
There was no time for explanations. People still held the medallions, and they were getting away.
“Stop them!” She wasn’t sure what accent that came out in, but it was loud and harsh enough to hide such details. Tanaquis went uncertainly to the archway, not fast enough to stop Sureggio, and she wouldn’t be much of a barrier—but Vargo followed her, scooping up the sword from one of the fallen stingers. Even from a distance Ren could see the way his face twisted in pain as he touched the hilt; the other arm hung limply at his side. But whatever his state and his lack of skill, his grim expression made up for it. No one would want to challenge a man who looked like that.
Clearly nothing had gone according to plan—or almost nothing. Diomen was facedown and probably dead. Ghiscolo was unquestionably dead, lying in a pool of his own blood. Sibiliat seemed to still be breathing, but the dart sticking out of her neck said she wasn’t a threat for now.
That left the remaining medallion holders. Six of them, not counting Ren herself.
The Rook—no, Grey; there were so many things she needed to ask about—stood close behind her. Using her as partial cover for his lost anonymity. In her ear, he murmured, “We weren’t able to destroy them. I—” His voice cracked. “I don’t know if we ever will.”
We can. She didn’t know how, and she’d been pulled out of her vision before she saw everything she needed to, but she’d learned one thing.
However the medallions had been bound together, it had involved pattern. Tanaquis was right: Taking them apart would require that, too. But not the ways they’d tried already. Something else.
She didn’t have the faintest clue what that something else might be, though, nor the strength to do it right now. Grey at her back was helping prop her up. And Cibrial and Faella were demanding answers from her, from the Rook, from anybody.
So she would give them some.
“Listen to me!” she shouted over their voices. This time firmly in a Seterin accent, and with authority enough to quiet them briefly. “You all know why you’re here—at least in part.”
She held up the Tricat medallion, thrusting it toward them like an accusation. “Every one of you holds something like this.”
“Not me,” Fadrin blustered.
“Oh, fuck off,” Vargo rasped. “If I have to come over there and strip you naked, I will. Everybody will see the only thing you’ve got to brag about is Quinat.”
“You all have a medallion,” Renata repeated. “Maybe it only came to you recently; maybe it’s been in your family for generations. But do any of you know what it is?”
Beldipassi did, but he was too rattled to speak. The reply came from Utrinzi Simendis, in an unexpectedly calm voice. “A piece of Kaius Rex’s chain of office. One that draws its power from A’ash.”
Of them all, of course he would be the most likely to know. Not simply because he held the religious seat in the Cinquerat, but because he had a reputation as a scholar and a skilled inscriptor.
Nobody else understood. “What the hell is A’ash?” Cibrial snapped.
“The Primordial of desire,” Renata said, and silence strangled the room.
She let that stretch out for a moment before she went on. “All of you, whether you’ve known it or not, whether you’ve meant to or not, have been drawing on the power of a Primordial. It’s helped you see what other people want. Even get what you want.” She pointed at Ghiscolo’s unmoving body. “He used it to control what people want. And his goal—a goal Sibiliat was helping him with, and Fadrin, and Mezzan—was to remake the Tyrant’s chain of office. So that he could have the Tyrant’s power.”
Now all the heads swiveled toward the two standing Acrenix. “I didn’t know!” Fadrin said, and this time it had the desperate ring of truth. “Nobody tells me shit! Blame Sibiliat; she’s in on everything her father’s up to. He just said, ‘Take these; go stand there.’ It’s their fault, not mine!”
Mezzan said nothing. He’d sagged to his knees, Sessat in hand, looking too broken to speak.
Faella’s voice was cold. “I think there will be more than enough blame to go around.”
“That’s for later,” Renata said, before Faella could start ripping into her enemies. “Right now, what matters is this: You’re corrupted by A’ash. Just as I am. Every one of us has that poison in us—and we can’t get rid of it. The Primordial’s power will only grow as we give in to its urging. If you throw away your medallion, you’ll just wind up cursed by the same power you drew on. And when I say ‘cursed,’ I mean this is what destroyed houses like Adrexa and Contorio. And very nearly Traementis. Not only you, but everyone in your register will be affected.”
In her peripheral vision, she saw Vargo step on Tanaquis’s foot. Good: He could see where she aimed. Now wasn’t the time to tell people they had an escape. Now was the time to scare them so badly, they would do what she needed them to.
She gestured at Grey. “The Rook has been trying for centuries to save Nadežra from this poison. We’re finally on the verge of success. But until that can be done, this is what you will do.
“You will hold on to your medallion. You won’t give it to anyone else, or throw it away. And you won’t use it. Hide it somewhere safe; never carry it on your person. Question every desire you have that relates to your numen. Because remember: You have a Primordial’s rot inside you. Anytime you think about the power that might bring, the benefit you might gain from drawing on it, remember that a Primordial once obliterated an entire Vraszenian clan in eleven days and nights of terror. This could easily obliterate you.”
Beldipassi was nodding his head so hard, it looked like it would come off. Mezzan had shaken off hopelessness and was staring at her with undiluted hate. Cibrial looked dubious and Faella unreadable—but Utrinzi Simendis bowed.
He said quietly, “This is the path I’ve followed for years. I wish nothing more than to keep this power contained.” An ironic smile touched his thin mouth. “Which is, of course, A’ash’s power working within me. Sebat: the numen of purity and seclusion. I cannot escape that merely by being aware of it. But I will continue to do as you say.”
Then he turned his gaze on the others. “As should you. By command of Iridet, if you need more than a personal warning. How Alta Renata learned of all this, I do not know… but if any of you doubt her words, come speak with me. I will tell you al
l I know of Primordials—which will be more than you wish to hear.”
“We’ll see,” Mezzan spat, getting to his feet and moving as though he intended to bull Vargo out of his path.
He was swordsman enough to easily bat away Vargo’s blade and wrest it from his grip, but he stopped his charge when the Rook’s rapier came level with his throat.
“Don’t try me today,” Grey said in a passable imitation of the Rook’s voice. Ren could tell it for an imitation, but she doubted anyone else could. “I’m not feeling my usual reluctance to leave bodies.”
Vargo shot him a worried look, quickly veiled behind a sardonic smile. “For once, we’re in agreement. The rest of you can leave, but I think we need to have a longer conversation with Fadrin and Mezzan.”
“I concur,” Utrinzi said, and gestured at the detritus of the ritual: the broken numinat, Diomen’s and Ghiscolo’s bodies, the unconscious Sibiliat. “By my authority as Iridet, I hereby arrest all members of House Acrenix who committed blasphemies in an attempt to take the lives of members of the Cinquerat.”
Cibrial made a vicious noise of agreement. “I’ll go fetch—No, not the Vigil. Perhaps some of Fulvet’s skiffers. Come, Faella.” She held out her hand to the old woman, and together with Beldipassi, they left.
In their wake, Tanaquis said, “We should remove one of the medallions from House Acrenix. I can mitigate the consequences of the loss, and clearly the effects of having two conflicting energies flowing through the same register are… not good.”
Utrinzi nodded in agreement. “I would ask you to take one, Tanaquis, but now that you’re in the Traementis register…”
The mental conversation between Vargo and Alsius was brief, but not so brief that Renata couldn’t have stepped in with an alternative suggestion—if only she could think of one. Not Tess, and not Sedge; no sum of money could have persuaded her to risk them like this. The list of people she trusted enough was short, and pretty much only had two other names on it.
“I’ll take one of them,” Vargo said. “My register’s as small as it gets. Fewer people to risk, if something goes wrong.”
She expected Grey to object. He only said, “Quinat or Sessat?”
Vargo made a face like he was being asked whether he’d rather drink piss or eat shit. “I’d prefer Quinat… which is why I’ll take Sessat.”
With the Rook’s sword at his throat, Mezzan had no choice but to hand it over. Vargo grimaced as his hand closed around the circle of steel—then twitched in surprise when the blade moved on to Fadrin.
Grey held out one black-gloved hand. “House Acrenix can’t be trusted with any of this power. They’ve made that abundantly clear. And if I take this, no one else will be affected.”
If Ren hadn’t already suspected something had gone badly wrong with the Rook, that would have made it shriekingly obvious. There was no world in which the Rook would have taken a medallion, not for any reason. That was Grey’s decision, alone.
What happened?
She couldn’t ask, not right now. With Utrinzi and Tanaquis backing the Rook’s demand, Fadrin grudgingly gave him the iron medallion of Quinat.
With Suilis’s help, once Renata freed her from the side room, Utrinzi and Tanaquis were able to drag Sibiliat and the bound captives out of the temple. Vargo lingered, shooting a frown at the bodies of Diomen and Ghiscolo, at the remains of the numinat. And at the hooded figure standing at its edge.
He approached the latter, slow as a man wading upriver. “I wanted to say… thank you. For…” Vargo’s voice broke, and he touched the crook in his immobilized arm, where Peabody nestled in a sling made from the stingers’ armbands. “For saving both of us. If it weren’t for your help, we would have burned.”
Ren cringed at the reference to fire, but there was no way she could have warned Vargo. The Rook’s hood merely dipped in stiff acknowledgment.
With an awkward twitch of a bow, Vargo headed for the tunnel. “I’ll come back with some people to dispose of the bodies and give this place a thorough scrub down. Not just the numinat. We should destroy anything else we find that’s eisar-related. I’m not certain I trust Tanaquis not to keep something for experimentation.”
Pulling Ren to the mouth of the tunnel, he shot another worried look in Grey’s direction and dipped close enough to murmur in her ear. “Are you sure it’s safe to leave you alone with him? He’s… Something’s off. He was willing to let you die to destroy the medallions.”
Ren saw Grey tense. Vargo might have kept his concerns at a whisper, but the temple’s echoing walls defeated that attempt at tact.
“I’ll be fine,” she said, not bothering to lower her voice. “I trust him.”
Temple of the Illius Praeteri, Old Island: Canilun 22
Grey waited only long enough for the echoes of Vargo’s footsteps down the tunnel to fade before ripping off the hood.
The Rook doesn’t kill. No… but he would let people die. Including Ren.
The disguise poured off his body, leaving the fabric of the hood twisted in Grey’s hands. The silence from it mocked him. The heat of the braziers didn’t touch the cold inside as he approached the nearest one and wadded up the hood to rid the world of it forever.
Ren caught his arm before he could. “Grey. Tell me what happened.”
“I made a choice. And now I’m making another.” He pulled against her grip. Not hard. He didn’t want to be stopped, but if she wanted to stop him…
She didn’t let go. Turning, he let the hood fall to the ground and buried his face in Ren’s shoulder. The horror of what had almost happened still didn’t quite seem real. “I was willing to lose myself to the Rook forever, if that was what it took. To save the city, and to save you. But I couldn’t… No mission is worth letting you die.”
Her hand stroked his hair, and the temple echoed with whispered Vraszenian endearments. She didn’t say the obvious: that he’d chosen her above the city. That he’d been selfish. That for the first time since Kolya died, he had someone who didn’t believe he carried bad luck with him wherever he went, and he hadn’t been willing to give that up.
“I ruin whatever I touch,” he whispered into her skin. He’d even managed to break the Rook—something that had lasted two hundred years. Hot tears stung his eyes. “My grandmother was right.”
Ren pulled back enough to look him in the eye, her hands not gripping his shoulders, but cradling them like fragile glass. “You ruin nothing. You have helped me glue the pieces of myself back together, to become stronger than I thought I could be. Grey, the cards I laid for you…”
She gestured around at the temple. The numinat chalked onto the floor, and the ceiling of stone that hid the Point, the wellspring, the site of the ancient labyrinth. “Sleeping Waters. The card of place. When I was in the numinat, I saw… pieces of the past. Kaius Sifigno came here to forge the medallions into a chain. Because of your decision, I live to tell you what I saw. Your good future, Labyrinth’s Heart—it said you must remain still. It is the card of not acting. To avoid The Mask of Bones, the death of myself and all the others.”
“But I poisoned my fate.” Grey’s throat tightened at the memory. “You said so yourself. By moving those cards—I saw how you reacted. Labyrinth’s Heart is stagnation, too, missing the chance to end this at last. And something died anyway.”
The hood lay at his feet, a mute accusation. They could see if the Rook would still answer to Ryvček… but in his soul, Grey knew it wouldn’t. He’d torn that fabric beyond repair.
Ren pressed her lips to his, a kiss of comfort rather than passion. “The threads go on,” she said, fierce and sure. “We are not done. And I will never tell you that you made the wrong choice.”
“No, not the wrong choice.” He tried to find comfort in her kiss, despite the guilty weight of the medallion in his pocket. “But only because there was no right one.”
Owl’s Fields, Upper Bank: Canilun 23
Sostira Novrus had many places she might hide, but she h
adn’t counted on betrayal from within.
“What makes you think I still have that medallion?” she asked when Vargo and Iascat finally tracked her down to a cozy lovers’ nest on the edge of Owl’s Fields. Crickets chirped farewell to the last of autumn’s warmth, the days grown short enough that when the bells of the nearby Ninatium rang first earth, it was to send off a sun balanced atop the horizon. That wash of orange fire gave her a glow of false warmth as she sat by the window, lounging in a pretense of unconcerned elegance. “Perhaps I threw it into the Dežera.”
“And curse the entire Novrus register?” Vargo shook his head. “Not even you are that cold.”
“Nor are you that stupid,” Iascat said. “To give up the only thing of value you have in this negotiation.”
He’d been surprised when Vargo showed up at his door, hands bandaged and arm in a sling, to suggest that now was an ideal time for that house coup… but his surprise had shrunk to insignificance next to the rest of it. When Iascat heard how Ghiscolo had used the Quinat medallion on Vargo, he’d promised to keep this meeting civil. The worst of that impulse might have faded when the medallion got used again on Serrado, but Vargo was still wary—enough so that he let Iascat be the one to stop Sostira when she would have darted for the door.
Iascat shoved her back and said, “Though you are stupid if you think I don’t have house guards waiting outside in case you try to run. Sit down, Aunt Sostira.”
“Why, so he can kill me like he did Ghiscolo?” she spat with a cutting gesture at Vargo. She let Iascat herd her, though, until she dropped onto a small tuffet by the cottage’s hearth. “Kill me, take my medallion, curse my house, leave you weeping. I’ve seen what he wants—and what he doesn’t. If you think he loves you, you’re a fool. I told you before: He’s using you.”
Iascat didn’t so much as blink at her words. “We’re using each other. I once thought you and your wives were the same, but it was different for you, wasn’t it? All this time, you’ve been looking for someone who loves you more than they want anything else. And then casting them aside when that inevitably changes.”
The Liar's Knot Page 65