Nothing happened.
Not a singe, not a smolder, not even a blush of warmth. Her hair was all gone – her strength was all gone – and Día was nothing now but a wickless wisp, dwindling to extinction in a pool of cooling wax. Her body was failing, and soon she would die.
But Halfwick wouldn’t. He couldn’t. He was her accidental resurrection, God’s obnoxious miracle. She had made him, however inadvertently – had supplied and abetted him at every turn of his journey. And if that wasn’t just a series of fatal mistakes on her part – if she was going to keep believing that she had acted well and faithfully, that her life had served a worthwhile purpose – then she would have to serve him one more time.
Día sank down to lay her head on her knee. She guided his hand to her temple, every inch an effort for his frozen shoulder. Then she closed her eyes and waited.
“Go on,” she said, her voice almost a whisper. “Do it.”
He was a Northman, after all – one potent enough to freeze the noose around his own neck. But freezing was merely the withdrawal of heat, and some book or rumor or dim, ancestral memory suggested that his kind had used people this way before, back in their harsh winterlands across the sea – that they were a race of pallid heat-thieves, blue-eyed vampires who sustained themselves in extremis by draining the warmth from their thralls, the way her own desert-born ancestors might survive by drinking mare’s blood. And if that was so – if the Northman boy and the Afriti girl truly didn’t belong here, if their two old-world souls were not fit to survive here in this vast, wild other-land – then their only hope was to collapse themselves down into a single, viable self... and Día was fit only to collapse.
“Do it,” she urged him. “T-take it. I wan-WAN’chu to.” Human beings were creatures of earth and fire, after all. He would take her fire, and then she would return to the earth. It was the most natural thing in the world.
Día didn’t let herself wonder what it would feel like. She admitted no fear. Only her toes curled a little as she readied herself for the end.
We move as You have moved us,
We love as You have loved us,
We live as You live in us,
And die in Your grace perf –
The hand on her temple, kept limber by the warmth of her scalp, closed into a fist, its knuckles just brushing her skin. Then it disappeared.
No. No. Damn it, he had to. Didn’t he see that? Día forced herself up, beating back the swirling dark tempest by sheer force of outrage. She’d asked him for one thing. One simple thing! I hate you! she cried – except that it came out as a blurry, half-formed “haychu.”
He didn’t apologize – not even with his eyes. He couldn’t. He just stared straight ahead, one bloodied eye and one jaundiced one fixed in agreement on nothing especially. But he held his arm in place, and from his closed hand, one index finger extended – a morbid compass needle pointing the way up the trail.
“No,” she moaned. “Can’t.” She was so cold, and everything hurt so badly, and she was so, so tired of trying.
Nobody objected. Nobody tried to tell her otherwise. There was nobody to help her now but herself: Halfwick had squandered himself into total uselessness.
“Haychu,” she whimpered, pushing away from him. “Hate you.” She tipped back to a dizzy squat. “I HATE you!” She forced herself up, the frigid dark tides swelling and rolling over her as she staggered to her feet and left him there, one hand clutching the ache in her side, the other hanging limp as she lurched and tottered, step after giddy half-blind step.
Help me, Master. Right foot. Save me, Mother Dog. Left foot. Kalei ne ei’ha, Grandfather. Right foot.
Help me, Master. Save me, Mother. Kalei ne ei’ha, Grandfather.
Help me. Save me. Kalei ne ei’ha.
Help me...
Día went on like that, measuring her progress in steps and seconds and bleary, unanswered prayers. At long last, her foot found a crevice, and the ground rushed up to meet her, and finally, mercifully, she sank beneath the waves.
VUCHAK DIDN’T THINK he had fallen asleep – and yet the tapping at his ankle came as a surprise.
The night was growing old, and the fire had nearly died, but Vuchak didn’t need the glow of the embers to see Ylem crouching before him, patting at his leg with child-like delicacy. “Hcht – Butchak. I go. Time I go.”
Vuchak sat forward, equally bemused by the saddlebag in his arm and the half-man at his feet. By every god, it was freezing. “What?”
Ylem gestured to the left, where Hakai sat shivering, feeling over the ground like an infant discovering mud. “Go. Hawkeye makes we go.”
Vuchak got the main idea, but couldn’t find the urgency behind it: if the man was well enough to wake up and move, where was the rush?
Well, maybe there was someone fluent enough to tell him. “Hakai, what are you doing?”
The ihi’ghiva paused at the sound of his name. “Tsi’do o’otna wahne biida.”
Ugh. Just what this party needed: a fourth language. It sounded like one of the builder tongues – Kaia or Maia or one of the Ohoti – but that was as much as Vuchak’s ears understood.
“Hakai,” he said in Marín this time, pitching his voice more sharply. “Explain yourself.”
The slave’s hands came together in a shaking anxious wad, his gaze wandering aimlessly in the dark. “I’m lost,” he said, enunciating as clearly as if he were giving instructions at the bottom of a well. “I need to find the way out.”
“Wígoddago,” Ylem added, having apparently used up all his prepared Marín words. “Hes – hiimaitgit-zík, anthén thurlbi anuter urtquek. Rokzlit. Rox?” His hand reached up into a fist and then came down, as if pulling the earth and trees down on top of his head.
That got Vuchak’s attention.
He reached behind him, never taking his eyes off the half, and slapped at Echep’s arm. “Echep. Echep, wake up.”
“What?” came the groggy voice from behind him. “What do you want?”
Vuchak didn’t look back. “Tell me what he’s saying. – Say again,” he added for the half’s benefit. Echep’s Ardish was far from fluent, but he’d at least made a proper effort to learn.
Then Vuchak pressed himself back against the wall, leaving a clear line of sight for the other two to understand each other, and glanced up at the steeply-sloping rock.
It seemed stable, even ordinary. There were a few pine trees up there, and judging by the white stains running down the stone, it was probably a favorite roost for crows. They might be watching even now.
Watching Vuchak sit idle through the night, leaving one son of Marhuk to ripen in his box, and another to fend for himself a few hundred feet down. Watching a priceless ihi’ghiva drag around a shattered leg and a broken mind, as if he were a toddler to be kept quiet while his mother gossiped. Watching a half-man explain... something.
Echep frowned, and shook his head. “He’s talking nonsense,” he said. “He says that the ihi’ghiva is going to have a taking – a seizing? – and it will make the mountain fall apart.” This, punctuated with an incredulous snort.
A chill prickled up Vuchak’s spine. “How does he know?”
Echep stared at him as if he’d just emptied his nose in the stew. “Are you touched? He’s obviously not –”
“Ask him how he knows!”
That earned him a sour look, but the stress in his voice apparently convinced Echep to play along. Vuchak’s gaze flicked between the atodak and the half-man, studying every gesture and steam-frosted syllable for an understanding that might already be too late.
“He says there have been three already,” Echep began. “And that they started after he found the ihi’ghiva crawling out from under a hill. He says they get bigger each time. He says... hold on. Uat-chumín ‘sichur’?”
Vuchak could only recall one: earlier that day, when he’d found Ylem standing bewildered and filthy in a ring of freshly-fallen stones, with Hakai slung over his shoulder. But whether the ot
hers had been real or merely something of the half’s imagining did nothing to answer the more pertinent question: why was this two-colored fool waited only bringing it up now?
Or rather: what would have happened if Echep hadn’t shut him up when they first made camp here – if Vuchak hadn’t let him?
There was no answer from the half. He had stopped to watch Hakai – who had himself stopped to look at something over his shoulder, his neck turning until it popped.
“Hakai?” Vuchak ventured.
The gray slave twitched.
And as if on cue, everything fell apart.
“MOVE!” the half-man cried – an Ardish word that Vuchak understood perfectly – as he bolted up to his feet and scooped up Hakai. His wide eyes found Vuchak’s; his chin pointed at the coffin. “Do-lay! Git do-lay!”
“Wait! You stop!” Echep surged up likewise, standing fast to block Ylem’s path.
Vuchak could have told him that was a bad idea. Ylem bulled forward, knocking Echep aside with one mulish shove of his shoulder – just as a precarious piney creak sounded from overhead.
Vuchak looked up as the tree began to topple, its fall announced by a downpour of disturbed earth, a clamor of beating wings, and a white rain of droppings. He grabbed for Echep and dragged him back before the trunk crashed down on top of the remains of their fire, scattering still-glowing coals amidst a bristling cloud of needles.
“An earth-prince,” Echep gasped, fighting off Vuchak’s hands as he scrambled back up to his feet, staring in horror at the half-man backing up on the other side of the fallen tree. “You’ve brought an earth-prince here to ruin us!”
There were half a dozen things Vuchak could have said in reply: that Hakai had no night-marks, that he clearly didn’t have the wits to do anything deliberately, that even a prince of one of the earth-shaping tribes couldn’t do such things spontaneously and alone.
Echep never gave him the chance. He grabbed his bow and Vuchak’s quiver, whipped out an arrow, and took aim at the half – who tightened his grip on Hakai, turned, and bolted up the trail.
“Echep, don’t –”
Vuchak’s hard yank on his collar spoiled Echep’s first shot. The arrow went wide, and for a fleeting moment, Vuchak hoped the other atodak would turn to argue, or even to fight.
But of course, he wasn’t that lucky. In the time it took to curse, Echep vaulted over the tree-trunk, tore off up the trail, and disappeared into the night.
“– do that. Dammit!”
A week ago, Vuchak would have followed him. He might even have led the charge. But now it was as if he were an old man watching the person he had used to be – the ignorant, impatient one, the one so blinded by his own paranoia and first half-guessed impressions that he couldn’t see the truth in anything. By Marhuk’s pinfeathers, how had Weisei ever put up with it?
If only he were present to ask. But Weisei was gone, and Ylem and Hakai too. Vuchak had no one left to vex – and no one to disturb him if he decided to lie back down and hibernate until spring.
That would be the surest way to reassemble them all: just roll his weary bones up in a blanket and sincerely wish to be left alone to rest. They would be pestering him again by morning.
And if Vuchak were young and foolish, or old and helpless, or responsible only for himself, he might have done exactly that. It was viciously tempting.
Unfortunately, somewhere in the last few days, he had sunk into that terrible middle-place of life: old enough to know better, and young enough to do something about it. He sighed, uncountable years escaping in a single steaming breath, and glanced over at his last companion.
“Well, Dulei – I suppose it’s just the two of us now.”
This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. It wasn’t what either of them wanted. Vuchak should have been minding his own marka. Echep should have been carrying Dulei. And Dulei – well, he should have been working his shift at the dice table, annoying but alive.
But as the saying went, you couldn’t fill an empty stomach with excuses. Dulei’s death couldn’t be undone, and it couldn’t be paid for with apologies or protests or cowardice, either. Man for man, life for life, the World That Is had to be brought back to balance – and mercy meant doing it quickly.
So Ylem would die, and his death would pay for Dulei’s. Echep would end himself, if he knew what was good for him: gracefully close a life that no longer served any purpose. And Vuchak…
Vuchak would knot up that harness, lift that leaking coffin onto his back, and do his part to set the world right, just as he always had: one slow and excruciating step at a time.
AND AS THE tree fell and the crows scattered, the largest among them tucked its gleaming black wings and dove for the root of the mountain.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A MAN IMMINENT
AH CHE, A child of twelve winters, cowered in the great alien silence of the galena chamber, and counted the ways he might die.
There was a reason he was down here alone. This place had been an unexpected boon for the company: a rich, ore-bearing natural gap in the rock, found too late to intersect the digging of the galleries above and below, sandwiched too closely between them to risk triggering a collapse by widening it... and yet too tempting to leave unplundered. Nobody had properly explored it, much less made a map. Why bother, when it might split and twist and go on for miles, inaccessible to anything larger than a garter snake? Why trouble, when all those rich minerals were right there for the taking? Far easier to drop a line, bore a hole, and send down a boy who would not cost much to replace if he didn’t come out again.
A disposable boy. A compliant boy. A thoughtless, sightless, drug-addled fool of a boy who had been too busy thinking lustful thoughts to pay attention to his work – a boy who had now lost all sense of direction.
Ah Che thought he had not turned. He thought that if he backed up, he would arrive back at the spot where he had been working, or close enough that he could find his way from there. If he was right, he would be out in five minutes. If he was wrong, he might never emerge.
No, that wasn’t true. Ah Che held himself there on hands and knees, spinning assurances to quiet his rigid-limbed terror. He could call out, and someone would hear him. Even if they didn’t, someone would miss him. And even if they didn’t, Wally Hen would notice when he didn’t come home that night, and go back to look for him...
... long after the shift had ended, the miners had emptied out, and all those dozens of powder-crammed fresh holes had been set to blow.
For one lightheaded moment, Ah Che thought he would be sick. Then he thought he would have an accident. Then he reached into his pocket for his sachet of tarré, desperate for anything to numb that dry-mouthed, bowel-purging fear.
No, wait. That was what had gotten him into this mess. Too much easy tranquility – too much cheap chemical comfort. He needed his senses now. He needed to be awake.
Ah Che lay down, pressing his hands and forearms and the left side of his face to the rough grit of the rock, as if more contact would rouse him that much more quickly. He lay still, telling himself that this was only an exercise in self-sufficiency – that if he really had to, he could call out and someone would definitely, definitely hear him – and that he was choosing to prove himself. He lay quiet, asking his breathing to slow and his muscles to relax, coaxing the earth into revealing its contours, or at least its freshest wounds, so that he could find the way out.
Minutes marched by – hours, maybe. Nothing happened.
Was it too late? Had it left him while he wasn’t looking? Ah Che had been using more and more tarré to keep from having to feel pain – his own, or those in the earth – but he’d been doing it for so long and so relentlessly that he wouldn’t have noticed if something had disappeared behind that constant, cloying dullness. What if it wasn’t just temporary? What if he’d permanently destroyed his earth-sense?
What if he’d blinded himself all over again?
Ah Che stared out at nothing, n
o sooner having asked himself the question than rendered mute with horror by the answer. He reached out again, struggling to rekindle his old friendship with soil and stone... but if he had ever been a friend before, that time was over.
Of course it was. He was a paid parasite now, a little brown maggot burrowing ever deeper into the flesh of the earth, his crude grubbing abetted by the infernal genius of all maggot-kind. He was one of the Eaten now – one of those who set fires in the ground, crammed powder into every molested crevice to blow rock more conveniently, pumped groundwater out like malicious surgeons suctioning blood from an ever-widening wound. His kind ate the rock out of the earth, gobbling up gold and silver and shitting the remainders right back into the ground. They allowed themselves to be swallowed, buried alive for the promise of a life, for the dream of something wholesome and real – fleas feeding on leeches feeding on egg-swallowing salamanders, simultaneously eaters and eaten.
Ah Che curled onto his side as the weight of unfathomable tons of stone seemed to press down on him. Bad enough for the Eadans to pillage the world. That was almost expected of them. So much worse for him. Ah Che had trespassed into this holy stone grove, this precious untouched pocket in the earth, and despoiled it. He had ripped out every piece of that galena knowing that it would be refined into silver, which would be cast into bullets, which would be used to wound and kill the gods and children of gods. He had justified it to himself by saying that they were meant for the a’Krah, for the Lovoka, for the old, wild scourges of his own people. He had convinced himself that the foes of the Eadans were foes of the Maia too. He had fancied himself a secret ally, even as he had made an enemy of his oldest ancestral friend.
The air seemed to grow thicker; the heat of his own body was unbearable. Ah Che swallowed his voice, unable to bring himself to test his last, most feeble self-assurance, and struggled to find purchase above the rising tide of his fear.
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