“One day, some bastard will get me,” said Vargus in a whisper. “Could be a lad on his first day, just about ready to piss himself. Could be some big Vorga bitch, all sharp teeth and claws. But I’ll bleed and die just like any man.” Hargo shifted uncomfortably in his chair but didn’t interrupt. “You saw what happened the other day?”
“Three Drassi blades came straight for you. Went past everyone else on the line.”
“You know why?”
Hargo shrugged, playing ignorant. Vargus waited and eventually he answered. “I can guess. They probably know about the Brotherhood by now, and wanted to get rid of you.”
“Just like they did with the King,” said Vargus. “They think cutting off the head will kill it. So you’ve got to stop using my name. I can’t be tied to the Brotherhood any more. If any new lads ask, then tell them about it, but don’t mention me. It can’t end when I die. I barely stopped those three, and still ended up in hospital. Next time they’ll send ten, or twenty. Even if it’s not them, my luck will fail one day.”
“I’ll tell the others,” said Hargo. “But I still owe you.”
Vargus drained the last of his ale and held out the empty tankard. “Then you can buy me drinks until I pass out and piss myself.”
“Sounds good,” said Hargo with a grin.
The front door banged open and a few men flinched at the noise. Orran came strutting in as if he’d just found out a rich uncle had died and left him a fortune. He sat down at the table and waited until Hargo returned before sharing the joy.
“You found your whore then,” said Hargo, passing them both a drink.
“The Blessed Mother, she was not,” said Orran, slurping at his drink. “I asked her to do something I’d not tried before. Something new.”
“I don’t want to hear it,” said Vargus, turning away.
“If this story ends with her shoving a finger up your arse, I don’t want to know either,” Hargo warned him.
“So I closed my eyes,” continued Orran, ignoring them both. “And all of sudden there was music and this weird tingling.”
Vargus raised an eyebrow at Hargo, who shook his head. “Don’t. Ask.”
Hargo couldn’t resist. “All right. What was it?”
“She had one of my balls in her mouth and was humming a tune,” said Orran. “It was amazing. I came so hard I almost blinded myself.”
“Gahhh, we don’t want to know,” spat Vargus.
“I feel so alive!” Orran drank the rest of his beer in a couple of long gulps and headed back to the bar. “Come on girls, try to keep up,” he called back.
When the door flew open again Vargus didn’t look around until a peculiar silence fell on the room. A haggard man dressed in torn clothes stumbled in, coughing and gasping as if he had the damp lung. His wide eyes were ringed with purple shadows and he was desperately searching the crowd for someone. When he saw Vargus a spasm passed through his body.
“Hey, no beggars in here,” said the owner, nodding to one of his lads with a cosh.
“Wait,” said Vargus, approaching the ragged man. “I’ll take care of him.” The last vestiges of the stranger’s energy drained away and he fell into Vargus’s arms. The man was just skin and bone. Every drop of fat and muscle had been leached off his frame. His cheeks were hollow and his breath was sickly sweet. An unnatural warmth radiated from his body and Vargus knew he was close to death.
The man’s clothes were caked with mud and dust from the road, and there were brown stains down the front of his threadbare shirt. As Vargus helped him into a chair the stranger began to cough so violently his whole body shook with vicious spasms. After a few minutes the coughing subsided and there was blood around his mouth.
“It’s the pox!” shouted someone. “The red pox is back!”
“Maker protect us.”
“Get him out of here,” said the owner. “If he’s sick, I don’t want him in here.”
“Who is he?” asked Hargo. All traces of the drunken act were gone.
Vargus wasn’t sure how to answer. In the end he went for the simplest of truths. “He’s my brother.”
“Then he’s our brother,” said Orran.
“You don’t understand,” said Vargus as the stranger started coughing again. “He’s a… blood relative.”
“I didn’t know you had any,” said Orran.
“I’ll take care of him,” said Vargus, pulling the stranger to his feet and putting a bony arm across his shoulders. The man was leaning on Vargus with all of his weight, but he barely noticed the difference. “He just needs some rest and a draught from the apothecary. It’s not contagious.”
“Do you want some help?” asked Hargo, holding open the front door.
“We’ll be fine. Go back to your drinks.”
Vargus could feel the others watching, but he didn’t turn around. When they were a few streets away he lowered the stranger to the ground, propping him up against a wall. He was barely conscious and his eyes kept rolling back in his head. Blood dripped from one nostril and the skin at the corners of his mouth was cracked and peeling. Gripping the stranger’s face in one hand Vargus repeatedly slapped him until he came awake.
“Kai? Is that you?”
“Help me, Weaver,” gasped the dying man.
“What happened?”
“They’re gone. All gone,” sobbed Kai. “They burned down every shrine, raped and slaughtered my priests. All my followers were purged. Those who wouldn’t convert were drowned or burned. Some are just playing along, but now they’re being forced to mouth prayers to that Lantern fuck. I’m finished.”
“Where is this happening?”
“Everywhere!” said Kai, grabbing at him with grubby hands. “Help me.”
For a brief moment Vargus considered leaving him to die in the street. No one besides him would know the truth, and Kai wouldn’t last the night without help. Someone would find him in the morning, think him a beggar and that would be the end of it. If their positions were reversed, he knew it’s what Kai would do.
“Just be glad I’m not you,” he said, picking up Kai and putting him over one shoulder with ease.
They received a few curious glances, but no one paid them any real attention. A pair of drunks was not uncommon, especially with warriors on leave in the city. Vargus passed a few groups of warriors in a far worse condition, sleeping or vomiting loudly in back alleys. Units of city militia were already seeing to the worst of them. Scooping up those warriors who had passed out, and herding others who could walk back to their lodgings for the night.
Intimate noises from alleyways caught Vargus’s ears and almost every shadowy doorway and dark corner seemed occupied. The working boys and girls in the city were making a fortune. Nothing fired a man’s passion like walking on a knife edge and courting death, day after day.
The long walk into the Old City became more difficult as they moved uphill. Kai kept drifting in and out of consciousness, muttering to himself and occasionally farting, but Vargus ignored him and kept walking.
Warm light spilled onto the street at regular intervals from taverns, and bursts of laughter and music made Vargus pause in his lonely trek. More than anything he wanted to step inside one of the inns, spend the night enjoying himself and forget about his responsibilities. A few drinks would numb the pain and a dozen more would help him forget his own name. It was tempting and once again he considered putting down his burden.
At the end of the street loomed the Cathedral of the Maker. As was traditional, lanterns and candles burned inside throughout the night. The candlelight shone into the street in a dozen colours through stained glass, painting the damp stones in hues of red, gold, yellow and blue. The huge church was a reminder of what could be accomplished, and how worship could be sustained over the long centuries, even when its deity was absent.
With a sigh he turned off the main street, walked past a large temple devoted to the Blessed Mother, and stopped outside a run-down old building. A dozen people
were waiting outside the shrine, strangers to one another, and yet all of them had been called here by an instinct they didn’t understand. Most of them were locals, but one was a Morrin and two were Drassi women, rich merchants dressed in demure but expensive silk robes.
As Vargus forced open the warped doors and went inside, Kai stirred and then came awake. A small cloud of black specks swirled in the air around him, even though he’d not disturbed any of the rotting food and filth that littered the ground. Once inside the old building, Kai regained a little vigour. Vargus propped him up against the back wall where he managed to stay on his feet unsupported.
The twelve strangers came inside and as one they knelt before the ragged man. Vargus moved to one side. He didn’t belong, but was unwilling to leave just yet.
“Master,” said one of the locals, and the others echoed him.
“My faithful children,” said Kai, wiping the blood from his mouth with the sleeve of his ragged shirt. “I’m glad you’re here. I didn’t want to die alone.”
“Give me a command, Lord, and it shall be done,” said one of the Drassi merchants. She bowed towards Kai, her forehead brushing the filth, but she didn’t seem to notice the dirt or the stench.
“Ask any boon of us,” said someone else, and the others were quick to agree.
“There is little that can be done.” Kai’s smile was sad, and he seemed to have accepted his fate.
“Surely there must be something. We will do anything.”
“Anything, Lord. Just ask.”
A sly look crept across Kai’s features.
“Don’t do it, Kai,” said Vargus. The faithful were shocked at his informal address, but he ignored their disapproving looks. “Go in peace. Leave them alone.”
Kai sneered. “When your end comes, brother, let us see if you’re so accepting.”
“I could stop you,” said Vargus, but they both knew it to be an empty threat. He wouldn’t interfere.
“Command us, Lord,” said one of the faithful.
Using what must have been the last reserves of his strength, Kai stood and held out his hands above his congregation, as if warming himself in front of a fire. “Do you offer yourself to me? All that you are. All that you will be, from this day forward. Heart, body and soul.”
“Yes, Lord,” they said in unison.
“Swear it. Swear it on your immortal souls.”
“We swear it, Lord,” they chanted, without hesitation or a moment’s thought about the consequences.
A cold blue light began to burn behind Kai’s eyes, something ancient and malevolent.
“Do you have any coins?” he asked. One of the Drassi merchants offered him a heavy purse from which he selected a dozen small silver coins. Holding them in both hands Kai held them to his lips and whispered. “This is my body, this is my blood.”
Kai placed a coin on the tongue of each of his followers, repeating the mantra before moving onto the next.
He switched language and began speaking in an ancient tongue that had been dead for centuries, but Vargus could still understand it. Kai’s mouth was moving, but the noises didn’t match the shape of his lips. They were sounds no man had ever made, hissings and clicks interspaced with shrill notes like a bird. The air in the shrine grew heavy and still, as if they’d been plunged deep underwater. Pressure built up against Vargus’s ears and he backed away from the congregation until his shoulders brushed the far wall.
Kai crooked a finger at one of the women. She stood up and eagerly approached. Her face was rapt with ecstasy, as if this were a moment she’d always dreamed about. With trembling hands Kai embraced her like a lover, his arms hugging her close to his chest. The woman melted against him, completely at peace as she rested her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes. As a result she didn’t see the long teeth that began to protrude from Kai’s mouth, or the horrified expressions on the faces of the faithful. The woman managed a faint mewling noise as he bit down into her neck, but that was her only protest. Blood began to jet from the wound, but Kai quickly covered it with his mouth and began to drink from her throat.
Master and servant sunk to the ground as the strength left the woman’s body, flowing into Kai, and when her heart began to slow he started taking bites instead, gobbling down lumps of flesh. His face was already changing, the nose shrinking away and his mouth growing wider and wider. The top lip stretched and tore. The skin peeled back to reveal something orange underneath that started to protrude further and further from his face.
The fire behind Kai’s blue eyes began to grow brighter and the back of his shirt began to ripple as something stirred beneath. A long shadow swelled behind him, a swirling pulsating mass that covered everything in a terrible darkness. Even from where he was standing, Vargus felt a chill against his skin.
The sound of snapping bones echoed around the shrine. Vargus didn’t know if it was Kai’s human shell breaking apart, or the sound of him gnawing lumps out of the woman’s shoulder with his beak. His shirt came apart and six churning dark blue tentacles burst out, swelling and fattening as they stretched across the ground. With a monstrous cry Kai finally pulled away from his feast, his unearthly voice echoing in the night. The skin on his face split in two and his skull burst apart like an egg as it could no longer contain his mass. Two dark red eyes became four, then eight, then more than Vargus could count as fresh tentacles erupted from what was left of Kai’s human body.
Some of the faithful were frozen, others were praying and crying, and the rest were staring in terror at the true form of their ancient Lord and God, the Eater of Souls, the Pestilent Watcher.
As his body grew and tentacles split and multiplied, some of Kai’s limbs tore apart what remained of the woman, which he gobbled down in a few bites. Even as the last of her was being crunched inside the gaping maw, fresh tentacles pulled two more people forward. They managed a scream, short and shrill before they too were consumed, bones grinding and juices spattering the ground as they were eaten alive. One man’s nerve failed and he ran for the door, wailing in terror and shouting for help. Faster than a striking snake he was pulled from his feet by a tentacle. His mouth was covered with another, and his arms ripped from his torso by two more. A hundred red eyes blinked in unison, seeing everything and all places, as Khai’yegha fed on the last of its faithful.
There were a few more screams, the Morrin briefly begged, and then he too began to shriek as he was torn to pieces and gobbled up. It took only a few more minutes and then there was nothing left, not even a scrap of clothing or a stray shoe. A long pink tongue combed the floor, lapping up the last of the blood, tears, piss and other juices that had spilled out from the faithful as they were consumed. With nothing else to eat, it sighed and the endless eyes closed in a semblance of rest, but the countless arms never stopped moving.
Slowly its body began to unravel, shrinking and wilting away, piece by piece, until eventually a man dressed in rags was all that remained. The pressure against Vargus’s ears lifted and the sounds of the city returned. Somewhere nearby he heard a woman laughing and could just make out the sound of a violin playing a jaunty tune.
“I feel much better,” said Kai.
If Hargo or anyone else in the tavern saw Kai now, they wouldn’t think it was the same person. Here was a man at the peak of physical fitness. His body toned with muscle and his face round from good living. Lines at the corners of his mouth spoke of a happy life full of joy, and the fire behind his eyes was warm and welcoming.
“It won’t last,” warned Vargus, “but then, you already knew that.”
“It was the only way,” said Kai, looking around at the ruins of the shrine. He shook his head sadly and stared up through the gaps in the ceiling at the night sky. “Help me, brother.”
“I think I’ve done enough.”
Kai’s expression was one of reproach. “They would have found me on the street if you hadn’t brought me here. You carry no blame for what happened.”
“What do you want?�
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Kai looked at him with bemusement. “I want to survive. You are one of the oldest. You know how it’s done. I want you to teach me.”
“I don’t have time for that.”
“Yes, you’re caught up in their war.” Kai’s tone implied he was beyond such tedious concerns.
“And so are you,” Vargus reminded him. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”
Kai conceded the point with a nod. “What would you have me do?”
“Nothing. I’m going to put you somewhere safe, but close enough that I can call on you, should I need help before the war is done.”
“And what am I supposed to do while I wait for it to end?” asked Kai, sounding incredibly bored by the idea.
“Nothing. I want you to stay out of trouble. Can you do that?”
Kai’s only response was a grin that showed lots of pointy teeth.
CHAPTER 22
By the time Gunder had descended the steps of the aviary he’d read the latest coded message from Talandra. He paused on the bottom step and considered potential locations to host the covert meetings of the rebellion. Even from down here he could still hear the faint cawing of the ravens.
It would need to be a large space to host a crowd and somewhere easy to get to without it looking suspicious. He had access to several buildings, one of which was a warehouse not far from the docks. The last time he’d been in there had been to interrogate Filbin and set him on his path. This new plan to mount a rebellion would require someone eye-catching and he agreed with Talandra’s assessment. It wouldn’t be difficult for his Gunder identity to disappear and someone more verbose to start a rebellion, but the fat merchant still had a role to play; getting the others on board for starters. Roza was the perfect choice and when she spoke with passion people tended to listen.
He stopped off at a tavern and left a note for Roza behind the bar with another agent, before setting off for The Lord’s Blessing. On the way he passed familiar faces and occasionally a customer, but none of them smiled or waved at him. They made eye contact and there were curt nods, but it went no further. The streets were far quieter than they should have been at this time of night. Given the recent news about the Queen’s abdication, and the uncertainty about what lay ahead, it was not unexpected that her people were subdued.
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