“So you decided to pull the rest of the world into your religious war?” Eld asked, heat in his voice. “Because your antics have done just that.”
“It’s the way of religions,” I said. My jaw clenched. “To ensnare and destroy that which they can’t have.”
“Fools,” he hissed. “You still don’t understand. Why do you think we’re here? To save the world!” He pointed up the hill, where the two Shambles carrying Chan Sha had almost reached the top. “You think the Gods came to our world by choice? Who would choose death over immortality? They came because their war destroyed their own worlds.” He swept his arms out. “Imagine all of this … gone. It is enough to make me want to put out my own eyes.”
His chest heaved and the fear he’d kept hidden marched across his features. “That is why I came here and why I am helping a Sin Eater. If Ciris remains incomplete, then it is only a matter of time before she destroys this world trying to win a dead war. Even if she wins, we’re damned.”
“Then why fight her? If there’s no fighting, there’s nothing to destroy,” Eld said.
My eyebrows twitched. “He has a point.”
“Try not to sound surprised,” Eld muttered. I laughed and he made a sound in his chest that made me laugh louder.
“You’re asking for genocide,” the Ghost Captain growled. “Scores upon scores of our priests would die and their thousands of followers. Entire nations worship the Dead Gods. They wouldn’t go quietly into the night and even if they did, it wouldn’t matter; the records are clear on that. Ciris would find another enemy, another reason. She is the last remnant of an entire world and her grief will blot out all reason. Unless she is whole. And even then…” He took a breath and his voice broke.
“It may not be enough, but we must try. If she stops fighting, so will we. We weren’t born into this war and we’ve none of our Gods’ hatred. Or hers. There’s room enough for more than one religion in the world, if it’s peaceful. Chan Sha’s fight … our fight … is for our world.”
“So you are giving her back a piece of herself both as an attempt at a truce and with the hope that this artifact may make her amiable to peace?” I snorted. “Even a faceless man would smell bullshit.”
“I’ll not deny that there were attempts to … use the artifact against her,” the Ghost Captain said finally.
“Weaponize it, you mean.”
“Aye, early on that was a potential strategy,” he admitted. “But when it became clear that it wouldn’t work, we realized this might be the opportunity we’ve been waiting for, but never thought to try. Chan Sha doesn’t believe us, you don’t believe us, but what if it’s so audacious that it actually works?”
“Say we believe you,” I said. And I did believe him … just not the lies he was telling us. “Then what?”
“Then join us,” he whispered. “Help us win or this war will continue for another millennium.”
The Ghost Captain’s offer caught me off guard. I’d spent more than a year planning for this—oh, not this exact situation, but when I read about the Gods and their religions and realized it was all bullshit? That they weren’t our Gods, but foreigners come from the skies to use us for their own purposes, the way the master drives the slaves? When I spent hours studying their motivations and their machinations that plucked the strings of the world, searching for a perfect melody that would bring them what they really desired: Power?
When I read that, I knew I’d have to confront them, Gods or no. But I hadn’t bargained for them to ask for my help. The Ghost Captain’s explanation had a lot of holes in it, sure, but what the Archaeologist had found in that journal filled in some of those holes all too neatly. I closed my eyes and for a moment I saw the land and seas rent with fire and thunder that tore the world apart. The War. Prehistory was necessarily fragmented and contradictory and given to all kinds of flights of fantasy, but all agreed on one point. The Gods’ War had nearly destroyed our world at the dawn of time and now they were awakening again.
The Dead Walker might believe his Gods dead, but if their war continued, it didn’t matter if they met his definition of alive or not. The same with Ciris. I wasn’t sure which was worse: Gods that were dead or one that was alive and insane. To have both together was something I could never have planned for. And yet, here it is. Do I change my plan or hold course? I glanced at Eld, but there was no way to signal him, and besides, I’d whispered to him that we were committed.
“You think this artifact will end the power struggles between your religions?” I asked.
“Aye. It has to,” the Dead Walker said.
Why? It would have been easy to let the location slip to Sin Eaters. But he didn’t. And I had gambled everything on why he hadn’t. Now it was down to what Chan Sha came back with. A large gamble, but if the two sides hadn’t found peace in thousands of years, what hope was there that today would be any different? None at all.
“How do you know your Eldest didn’t lie to you?” I asked. “You said you haven’t seen these Archives, whatever they are, yourself. So how can you know?”
The Ghost Captain’s brow furrowed and he scratched his chin absently. The bells he’d tied in his scrap of goatee rang against his fingers. “Lie? But why would they lie to one of their order?”
“True,” I said. Fool. Why wouldn’t they lie was the better question. Here was another, so enmeshed in the power structure that he couldn’t take a step back to look at the situation objectively. Even if they were telling the truth, would the world go back to the way it had been before? Put out the fires they created and devolve to a utopia? No. That door had been opened and ending the struggle wouldn’t close it now. Destroying one side completely before the other would only make it that much harder in the end. I eyed the Ghost Captain and nodded, but I was agreeing with myself and not him. I couldn’t trust a fool.
But I can use one.
49
“You make a good point,” I heard myself say.
“She’s there!” The Ghost Captain pushed past Eld and me, pointing toward the wreck on the hill. I followed his arm and saw Chan Sha limping across the deck. She slipped and tumbled forward, arms clawing, and kept sliding until a rock poking up through the deck arrested her fall. Her scream carried down to us. The Ghost Captain cursed and dug into his jacket, pulled his book back out, and began sliding his fingers across it. The pair of large Shambles appeared over the railing at his command and climbed onto the deck.
“I told them to stay with her!” He glanced back at us and shook his head. “They have their uses, but sometimes, I swear they don’t think.”
Eld and I exchanged glances and Eld spun his finger in a circle by his head. I nodded. The man sounded like a father speaking of his children. Exasperated, but loving all the same. Spending all your time with the dead didn’t seem to be good for your mental stability. Who knew?
The larger Shambles in the ripped jacket pulled Chan Sha to her feet, tossed her over his shoulder, and leapt across the open fissure in a single motion that sent another scream echoing down to us. I didn’t fault Chan Sha that one: having a corpse do that to you had to be unnerving. I turned to Eld and saw he had a similar opinion: his mouth hung open and his head was tilted in an odd way. I elbowed him and he straightened with a start.
“Blast that,” he muttered.
“Aye.”
The Shambles landed awkwardly, going to a knee, then set Chan Sha down on the deck hard enough that I thought I heard her knee snap. If it did, she didn’t show it, walking no more awkwardly than she had before. We watched her hobble the length of the deck and seemingly disappear into the cliff where it had swallowed the ship. She reappeared farther toward the edge, pausing before drawing herself up to her full height and entering a door that opened reluctantly, fighting her.
“She made it!” The Ghost Captain glanced at us and his mouth twisted in a tight smile. “That’s the cabin.”
Color leapt from the cabin. Strange patterns of warm blue spread across the dec
k, visible even in the sunlight. It looked as if someone had painted the grey sand-swept deck in the blink of an eye.
“Blood and Bone, she did it!” The tension leeched from his shoulders and he sighed. “She did it.”
A scream rent the air. The warm blues shimmered, faded, and resolved into a darker red that bathed the whole ship in the color of blood. The door slammed open and Chan Sha reeled out, clutching her head and running, even with her broken leg, running. And screaming. A short scream, a long breath, and then a never-ending scream that tore at the world like a God plucking at a scab. And if it tore away, what would pour out?
“No, no, no!” The Ghost Captain shook the book in his hands. “Save her.”
The Shambles that had jumped across with Chan Sha lumbered toward her. She ran right into him, knocking the corpse back a pace. She twisted to run away from him, but her legs buckled, sending her to the deck. The air twisted around her. The second Shambles leapt the fissure and the pair advanced on the writhing Chan Sha.
“Gods, she’s…” Eld began, just as the two Shambles pulled Chan Sha upright and burst into sooty flames. “On fire,” Eld finished.
Chan Sha flailed wildly, slipping from the grasp of one Shambles. As the other whipped around due to the living woman’s momentum, their legs twisted together and Chan Sha flew across the deck with the Shambles beneath her. They slammed into the railing and the weathered wood exploded in splinters and bodies and they soared out and fell like stones on the shore side of the cliff. Chan Sha screamed the whole way down, until they hit the rocks at the bottom hard enough that dark ichor exploded like a geyser. For a moment there was silence.
The Shambles on the ship ignited into a fireball. The Ghost Captain cursed and bent over his book and the undead ran across the deck and threw himself over the side even as flames tore at his remaining flesh. The second ball of fire went out with a hiss when it hit the water not far from where Chan Sha had vanished. Oily smoke sinuously slid up from the rocks and then a wave came in and there was nothing.
“Fuck me,” Eld said, gasping.
There was nothing but the sounds of our breathing. Then Chan Sha leapt from behind the rocks with a crackling roar and tore into the ranks of the Shambles that stood motionless on the beach. She disappeared from view for a moment and when she came back up, a blade glittered in each fist she’d ripped free from the Shambles and the dead fell away from her in their haste to escape. She was halfway across the sand in an instant with only a few undead between us and her.
“Do something!” I yelled at the Ghost Captain. My plan was working too well—Eld and I were closer to Chan Sha than the Ghost Captain was and Chan Sha had lost all sense. He shook his head, transfixed, but his fingers leapt over the pages of his book. Too late. The last undead was already down in a shower of ichor. I reached to grab him. “You useless pile of—”
Eld leapt past me at the last instant, his own curved blade in his hand, and stepped between me and Chan Sha. The pirate paused, studying him, but if she recognized him, it didn’t show in the way she twirled her blades and sank down into a waiting crouch. Her face was dark with soot and one eye was milky white. Her clothes hung in tatters and where flesh showed, it was burnt and bloody. But she met Eld’s attack as if she were fresh from a good night’s sleep. They danced on the sands with only the Ghost Captain, me, and the undead as witnesses.
50
I’ve underestimated Eld. Vastly.
His sword flashed like chained lightning, the blade appearing in a dozen places at once as he fought the pair of swords in Chan Sha’s hands. I say fought, but it was more than that. I’ve seen enough sword fights to know that they often don’t last longer than it takes to take a breath and release it. Oh, the buildup can take time, true, but when there’s steel involved, it’s often a matter of slipping past a parry or catching your opponent out and then steel touches flesh, and flesh gives over. A man can take a dozen cuts or even thrusts and still have time to give his lifeblood for revenge. But the actual fighting part? That is over and done with long before the end.
This wasn’t like that.
Eld flowed around Chan Sha, who had settled from her initial rush into a waiting guard. Eld circled and she followed and their swords met between them like a trio of lovers caught in the throes of passion. Sweat poured from Eld’s face and bits of his shirt showed through where steel had cut his jacket. Still he kept up his frenetic attack, though I knew, knew, that he would eventually falter. Flesh can only push so far. I knew that, but I guess Eld didn’t. Because he kept pressing, seeking, and fighting, to the point that I began to wonder if perhaps he wasn’t a Sin Eater himself. Until he proved himself human.
Eld fell with a grunt, half his sleeve torn away and blood turning his shirt and shoulder crimson. Chan Sha glanced past him and her melted lips parted in an ashen smile. So maybe the bitch did remember. She fell with a hoarse scream as Eld hacked at the leg I’d broken earlier, rolled away from him, and came up into a crouch a dozen paces away. Blood soaked one shoulder and the other was twisted strangely, but the blades were steady in her hands. She opened her mouth to speak.
The dead washed over her like high tide and she disappeared in a maelstrom of blood and bone.
“About Godsdamned time,” I told the Ghost Captain.
“Would you want him caught up in that?” he asked. We both watched the dead writhing and tearing in a mass on the sand. A rogue wave washed across them and when it left, the dead were gone and Chan Sha with them. “I thought not,” he said, answering his own question.
“What now?” Eld asked, rejoining us. He was battling with a scrap of his shirtsleeve, so I moved beside him, tearing it and wrapping it around the wound on his shoulder. It wasn’t deep, but it was long and the scrap turned bright red before I finished tying it, so I reached for another.
“Well, she didn’t kill him for us,” I whispered.
“My fault,” he muttered through clenched teeth.
“No. She might have killed him just now, but she would have killed us getting to him. Hard to steal his book and use it on her if we’re already dead.” I took a breath and forced myself to tell the truth. “You were … Eld, you were magnificent,” I said.
“Magnificent.” He smiled through the pain. “I like the sound of that. It has a ring to it.”
“It can’t be one of my order,” the Ghost Captain said, interrupting us. “Our magic is anathema to Ciris.” He glanced down at his book and some of the undead stopped combing the beach looking for Chan Sha’s corpse and moved back toward us. “We thought it had to be a Sin Eater, but it seems obvious now that they can’t do it either. They’re already bonded to Ciris. Gods’ bones, I wasted months here, when the answer was staring me right in the face.” He flicked the bells in his goatee.
“It really is a pity the dead can’t perform this particular service.” He smiled at us. “It has to be one who hasn’t touched magic. It seems that one who is pure and unmarked can touch the artifact, the same as any initiate can receive the Dead Gods or Ciris. It has to be one of you.” His smile broadened. “The only question left is, who will it be?”
I stopped tying a third bandage around Eld’s arm and looked over my shoulder. “You’re joking. After what we just saw?” He shook his head, smiling that inane smile. “Fuck off.”
He shook his head again, touched the book in his hands, and one of the dead dove for me. Eld shoved me out of the way and caught a wrist and the woman’s bones snapped, but her dead eyes showed no pain. He reached for her other hand and she let him grab it. They were caught like that for a moment and Eld glanced over his shoulder at where I lay sprawled in the sand, started to say something. To apologize.
She lunged forward and sank her rotting teeth into Eld’s good shoulder.
Eld screamed and shoved her back and she let him, absently wiping at the ichor that leaked from her gums, and moved calmly away, joining the rest of her undead brethren. I leapt up and caught Eld as he fell, but his weight bore us bot
h to the ground. Blood ran from the cuff of his shirtsleeve and I could see a blackened tooth caught in the fabric. I started to assure him it was all right, that the wound wasn’t deep, even as Chan Sha’s warning echoed through my mind. The dead are infectious. But then the Ghost Captain took that chance away from me.
“I’m rather fine with you dying,” he said. “The dead carry their disease in the tissues of their body; the ichor that commands them will soon command you. And when you’re dead, then you’ll do whatever I ask of you.”
“You’re dead,” I spat. I climbed to my feet. My knife was in my hands and I could already visualize the steps between me and the Dead Walker. I wouldn’t stop till I sawed his head completely off. “You’re fucking dead.”
“Kill me and I’ll take possession of one of my servants,” he said. He shrugged at the thought. “Unpleasant, but not unprecedented. Or you could go and retrieve the artifact and I’ll remove the taint from Eld.” His mouth twitched. “And all will be well.”
“You fool.” Eld’s laughter turned us both around. He had managed to prop himself up on one arm, but I could see his veins through his skin. They were turning dark beneath his paleness. “You finally made a mistake.” He smiled even as his body shuddered. “You should have had the Shambles bite Buc. I lo—” He coughed. “I am … weak. Too weak to refuse.” He glanced at me and something filled his eyes. What that something was, I couldn’t read.
“I am weak, Buc; I would have gone up.” His gaze hardened on the Ghost Captain. “She is strong where I am not; she sees logic where I see emotion. And there is no logic in giving in to you.
“Not even to save me.”
His words twisted something inside me. Something I felt when my sister was still alive—the last time I really felt anything until I thought I’d murdered Eld. Emotion is strange to me, a language I can’t understand, much less speak. There is one emotion, though, one that everyone recognizes. Even a hollow husk like me. I remembered now. The words I’d tried to speak to Eld when he carried me in his arms from the Harbormaster in Port au’ Sheen. The words I’d thought as I sank beneath the waves. The words I hadn’t been able to contemplate when I thought I’d lost him forever. Love. I’d thought it dead and burned away with my sister, but I’d been wrong.
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