Godspeaker

by Tessa Crowley

  “You know as m-m-m-much as I d-do,” I answered, keeping my eyes forward. “He’s angry about s-s-something. He th-thinks we’re ungrateful, as a s-s-species.”

  “He never said anything to you about what he planned to do?”

  I turned around deliberately and met his eyes. “No,” I said to him, firmly. “What d-d-do you think a G-G-Godspeaker is? I’m n-n-n-not his cursed c-c-confidante, Perenor, I’m his s-servant.”

  “But he must have spoken to you.”

  “Of c-c-course he s-spoke to me, b-b-but no, Perenor, he n-n-never brought up th-the fact that he had p-p-p-plans to k-kill the Queen! The m-m-moment I worked it out, I w-w-went straight to G-Greatmother Amira, b-b-but by th-then…”

  Perenor’s head was turned just enough so he could watch me from one eye. Eventually, some combination of reluctant trust and exhaustion took over, and he turned around again, breathing out long and low. It was at that moment that I realized how incredibly shitty he looked. The Craft really had taken a lot out of him.

  “M-m-maybe we sh-should have rested for-for an extra d-d-day,” I said.

  “No time,” Perenor returned. “Besides, apparently you take not insignificant joy in seeing me suffer.”

  “Of c-c-course I do, but only wh-when I know y-y-y-you’ll b-bounce back,” I said. “It’s n-not fun if you’re r-r-really in d-danger.”

  Perenor was so surprised that he looked back at me again, and I hated it.

  “Y-y-you’re my b-brother,” I continued. What more explanation could he possibly need?

  He was silent a moment, slowly turning away. “Oh.” He voice was somewhere between confused and concerned.

  I knew the implication, of course. He didn’t expect me to genuinely care about him because he’d never genuinely cared about me. He didn’t say it out loud, of course – he didn’t need to. A lifetime of resentment had proven it enough.

  I swallowed down all the bitter memories of my lonely adolescence and turned away again. This really was not the time to be reopening old wounds.

  So of course, his next question was, “You didn’t see them get out, did you?”

  It took me a moment to put together who he meant. I turned my head back to him. “Y-y-y-you didn’t?”

  “Mother and Grandmother weren’t with me during the confirmation,” Perenor said. “They were with the rest of the Queenscourt on the terrace. I was down on the street with Father and Grandfather, but I lost them in the chaos. Did you see…?”

  I swallowed hard. “N-n-n-no. D-d-d-d y-you th-think th-th-they’re—?”

  “I don’t know,” Perenor said. “A lot of people were swallowed up by the spring.”

  “A l-l-lot of p-people weren’t.”

  “Yeah,” Perenor agreed, and neither of us felt better.

  I’d never really liked my family – a sentiment mutually shared, of course – but I had certainly loved them, and I never wanted to see them hurt. The idea that they could be dead—

  Of course, the word “dead” barely held any meaning to me at the time. I didn’t quite comprehend the permanence of it, and I didn’t know what to think of my own family being dead, if that was what they were.

  “They’ll find us if they can,” Perenor said.

  I nodded, unwilling to think on it any more closely for fear of where those thoughts might lead.

  “We can’t stay here,” Soya called from up ahead. “Come on; the sooner we get to Oberine, the longer we’ll have to rest.”

  I’d always had some trouble motivating myself with long-term goals, and the idea of standing up again seemed entirely unappealing. Perenor forced himself to his feet before I could protest.

  “I’m fine,” he called back. “Let’s go.”

  And we went.

  By the time we made it to Oberine, the sun had just started to set. We were all three of us sweaty and exhausted, and the little flecks of orange light still dappling over the sand dunes were beacons of hope and long-awaited respite.

  Oberine was not a terribly remarkable city, notable only for being about a day’s travel from Ellorian. Most of his buildings were inns and taverns catering to those travelling the Long Road. It was built on and around a large oasis, a freshwater pond circled by palms.

  We set our sights on the nearest inn, which also happened to be the largest. When we made it inside, it was to a pervasive, disquieted rumble from all corners of the main room.

  “Welcome to the Laughing Jackal,” the innkeeper behind the bar said. “Renting a room?”

  “Gods, yes,” Soya said, collapsing onto her elbows over the counter.

  “You’re just in time,” she said. “Only one room left. Huge crowd here tonight, all fleeing the capitol.”

  And here I’d almost pulled down my hood. I stilled my hand and shoved it away, keeping it up. That explained why there were so many people.

  “Are they, indeed,” Soya answered neutrally, reaching into the coin purse tethered to her belt.

  “They say the city broke in two and collapsed into the hot springs,” the innkeeper said. “Were you three there, too?”

  “It was the traitor-god!” slurred a man on the far side of the bar, who sounded a bit drunker than was probably reasonable. “I was there!”

  I pulled my hood down a little further.

  “Is your last room big enough for three?” Soya asked.

  “It should be,” the innkeeper began, but the drunk was talking again, bellowing in the loud and boisterous way that only a drunk can:

  “Our queen!” he caterwauled, swaying in his spot. “Gods’ mercy, our queen – I saw her, with my own eyes, I saw her!”

  “You’re making a scene, Bernan,” the innkeeper said gently.

  “Let me finish,” the drunk, Bernan, insisted too loudly. “I saw her, do you hear? I watched her torn in twain! I saw the traitor-god’s Craft lift her into the sky, saw her body rip—!”

  “Fuck sake, Bernan, shut your mouth!” bellowed a woman in the back. “Do you think anyone here needs reminding? That anyone wants it?”

  “Someone take him to dry out,” the innkeeper said.

  But Bernan only started talking louder, as if hoping to deafen his detractors into silence:

  “The Godspeaker’s body glowed black with the Night Father’s Craft,” he slurred, which had definitely not happened, “and he raised one hand into the sky and – and – and blew everything up!”

  “That’s not how it happened,” one woman said to another.

  “Yes, it was!” Bernan insisted.

  “I was there, too, you prig,” the woman in the back said. “That’s now how it happened, now shut your drunk face about it!”

  “Come on, Bernan,” said a young woman who could only be the assistant innkeeper. “Let’s get you up to your room.”

  “Here’s your key,” the innkeeper said, doing her best to ignore the goings-on behind us (“I don’t want to go to my room, I want to tell the world what happened!”). “Third floor. I’m sorry about him. Once Tasha gets him up to his room, he’ll pass out soon enough.”

  “It’s fine,” Soya answered. “Come on, Si—”

  She stopped halfway through my name, wisely thinking better of using it.

  “Come on,” she finished, and we started for the staircase.

  Bernan was frantically fighting off the assistant innkeeper, as though the veracity of his story was tied directly to how many people could hear him shout it. “It is how it happened!” he said to her, and before I even realized what was happening, I was grabbed by the shoulder and spun around. “You believe me, don’t you—?”

  The force of the spin sent my hood falling back.

  I could tell from the expression on his face alone that he recognized me. It was a reaction that was delayed at first, so for a few moments I was hoping that perhaps he would be too drunk.

  “Come on,” Soya said again. Her voice was edged in panic. I pulled the hood back up.

  Unfortunately, Bernan’s mind caught up with him
before she could pull me away:

  “Sol’s Light!”

  In the same way an infant’s scream is so viscerally different from its crying, so too was Bernan’s sudden terror from his drunken theatrics. It was real and raw and all-consuming, and he went stumbling backward into a nearby table, which promptly capitulated and clattered loudly against the floor.

  The room quieted. All eyes turned to me.

  “It’s you,” Bernan said from the floor. His voice was no longer slurred; perhaps the drunk had been scared out of him. “It’s you! The Godspeaker!”

  It had all happened so quickly that I’d rather forgotten to be frightened, although my body had already tensed, ready for the fight-or-flight. I looked out at the tavern, now deathly quiet.

  Not all of them recognized me, I could tell. Many seemed more confused or concerned. But a few of them – just a few, just one woman in the back, a man to the side – were slowly paling and rising up out of their chairs.

  Just as the fear was starting to creep back into my blood, there was a loud, decisive, echoless crack.

  Perenor had stepped in front of me, and his runed staff, which had up until that point been held unobtrusively at his side, was in full view. The runes carved along the neck were glowing bright silver-blue.

  It was a threat, I could tell. A subtle threat, but a threat all the same. Any sorcerer skilled enough to use a runed weapon was a force to be reckoned with, one that no one was eager to confront.

  “Come on, brother,” he said, overemphasizing the final word. “Let’s go.”

  Soya grabbed my arm again and pulled me away. I stumbled along behind her as we headed up the steps.

  “Shit,” I could hear her mutter. Whispers were breaking out behind us. “Shit, shit, shit. Maybe we should find another inn.”

  “There won’t be anywhere else,” Perenor said. He was looking over his shoulder, down into the main room of the tavern as it passed out of our sight. “You heard the innkeeper – the city is full of refugees. I’ll ward the door with Craft, just in case.”

  I wanted to ask if that was really necessary, but I didn’t, just in case the answer was yes.

  Our room was at the top floor, at the end of a long hallway. As soon as it was unlocked, Soya pulled me inside. Perenor stood for a while just outside, giving the hallway a cursory look before he stepped inside, himself.

  “I suppose this is a risk we should have anticipated,” Soya said once the door shut.

  I licked my lips. The room was plain, but comfortable enough, with a single window open to the Wastes. The wind off the dunes rattled the glass.

  Perenor pressed his open palm to the flat of the door and shut his eyes. I could detect no change in it but for a subtle bluish glow that faded almost before it arrived. “I don’t think it likely that they’ll try anything,” he said. “And if they do, they won’t get through that door.”

  “It’s bad enough that they’ll speculate,” Soya said.

  “They would have speculated anyway.”

  “Yeah, but now they have a pretty good head start on it!”

  “It’s f-f-f-fine,” I said at last. “It’s f-fine. Nevermind it.”

  “Nevermind it?” Soya repeated. “They could start a riot! They could pull you out by the hair—!”

  “And w-w-we’ll deal w-with that as we n-n-need to,” I said. I sat down heavily on the edge of the bed. My knees were trembling from some volatile combination of fatigue and adrenaline. “B-b-but for n-now, we’re as p-p-protected as we c-can be.”

  I hadn’t noticed it at first, but now that things had settled, I realized that, quite without thinking about it, I had thrown myself head-first into Umbrion’s ocean in the corner of my mind. In such a short time, it had become an instinctual reaction to my anxiety.

  Was it wrong for me to be tapping into his Craft like this? Would it make him aware of what I was doing or thinking? Even if it wouldn’t, was there some ethical dilemma in taking comfort from a being that had just killed the Queen and broken my city in half?

  But by those same reasons, what choice did I have? There was no time for my fear; I had to get to Ellorian, and this was the way to do it.

  I shut my eyes and breathed in his ocean, calmed, but not truly comforted.

  After hours of tossing and turning and a startling inability to sleep despite a full day’s worth of walking, I fell into something that was closer to unconsciousness than it was to sleep.

  And despite everything, I dreamt of Umbrion.

  I’d like to say that I felt guilty for the treachery of my sleeping mind, but in the hazy ether of dreaming, I wasn’t thinking of his betrayal or all the death he’d wrought; there was nothing except the cool seduction of the Night Father’s starlight. Without the context my conscious mind brought, it was easy – too easy, perhaps – to let myself slip away in the sensation.

  It ended to the sound of rattling, echoing thumps and a high, thin wailing sound.

  It was hard to say how long we’d been asleep – we’d all allowed ourselves to sleep in as late as possible to make the transition to travelling by night easier – past knowing that however long it had been, it had not been long enough. I wanted almost to the point of desperation to fall back asleep, to sink back into the Night Father’s waiting embrace—

  And then the thumping came again; the wailing growing even louder.

  Beside me, Soya shifted.

  “What…?” she began, fighting away sleep.

  “Open up!” came a voice from the general direction of the door. The wail continued to rise in volume until it rattled my eardrums.

  “The ward…” Perenor muttered on the other side of me. He rolled off the bed and I lifted my head in time to see him padding across the room.

  The doorway now had a thin, lattice-like pattern of silvery-blue threads that pulsed each time it was pounded upon. This thought suddenly raised a rather alarming question—

  “Who—?”

  “Hush,” Perenor answered, before stepping in front of the door. “Who is it?”

  “Misra, the owner,” came the answer from the other side. Her voice was gruff and businesslike, almost too much so, like she was trying to make a concerted effort to sound threatening. “Take down the Craft and come out.”

  Perenor glanced back at us. Soya sat upright and frowned at him. He hesitated a moment before pressing his hand into the door; the blue-silver lines vanished with a thin snap of Craft, and the wailing stopped.

  When he pulled open the door, I could see not one but at least a dozen people crowded in the hallway. At once, Perenor groped for his runed staff.

  “You’re going to have to go,” said the woman – Misra, presumably, the owner – at the front of the pack, folding her arms over her chest. Behind her, the group grunted and nodded and made efforts to appear threatening. “The innkeeper should have never rented a room out to you.”

  Unlike those making up the mob, Perenor did not have to make any particular effort to look threatening. He was plenty threatening enough on his own, with his fearsome runed staff in his hand. He leaned on it and frowned at them. A few drew away, but for the most part they held their ground.

  “Is our money not good here?” he asked, eyeing them.

  “We won’t play host to the mouth and the hands and the will of the Traitor God,” said one in the front. I swallowed and pushed my way out of bed, ducking out of sight and hurriedly dressing. “We know it’s him. Don’t try to lie.”

  “Do you really want to go on record with that? Perenor asked. I shrugged on a tunic and kicked on my boots. “You know he has a direct line to Umbrion, right? The Traitor God may not look too kindly on you if he knows you’re turning him away—”

  “D-d-don’t antagonize them,” I hissed at him.

  “They’re throwing us out!” he answered, glowering at them.

  “We n-n-need to leave anyway, it’s n-nearly nightfall.” I secured my tunic and moved around Perenor. “We d-d-don’t want any t-trouble—”
>
  The moment I came into view, much of the crowd – eight or nine of the dozen or so – scrambled backward and away, gasping at the sight of me.

  I still had not gotten used to the idea that people were afraid of me now. I was hyper-aware of the minutiae of their faces.

  “It’s al-l-l-llright,” I said, “I m-mean you n-n-no harm—”

  “What’s the matter?” Soya asked sharply, barging in in front of me. “Never seen a Godspeaker before?”

  “Soya,” I said.

  “What? They’re gawking,” she said. “It’s rude.”

  “We just want him gone,” said Misra, whose bravado had fallen off significantly since I’d come into view. She was holding up both hands. “We can’t play host to him—”

  “We heard you the first time,” Perenor interjected sharply. “We need to leave anyway.”

  And with that, he slammed the door on her nose and turned around again.

  “The depth of callousness of an Andelish heart never ceases to amaze,” Soya growled. She was still half-dressed, and she pulled at the laces of her tunic like she wanted them to pay for the crimes of the inn’s owner.

  “They’re just protecting their interests,” Perenor muttered, heading over to the bag by the window to grab his clothes and boots.

  She glared at his back. “Silas is no threat.”

  “Isn’t he?”

  Simultaneously, they both looked back to me. I shrunk somewhat under their gazes.

  “He’s got a direct link to a deity,” Perenor said. “I’m not saying I’m going to let that scare me away, I’m just point out that you’d be stupid to think he isn’t dangerous.”

  “You know, Perenor, you’re really shitty at this brother thing,” Soya told him.

  Perenor frowned at her, as though he wasn’t sure how to respond to such an accusation.

  “L-l-l-let’s just g-go,” I said, moving to the dirty window and looking out over the small, rambling city of Oberine.

  “We shouldn’t stay much longer, now that they care enough to want us gone,” Perenor agreed.

  We packed swiftly and in silence. I did everything in my power to ignore the heavy, sinking dread in my stomach as I heard the commotion grow louder downstairs.