by Rachel Dunne
She turned from him, and Keiro’s heart lurched within his chest, a sudden pounding ache to go with her and the plainswalkers who remained, to walk with them wherever their feet would take them and feel the calluses build up on his soles once more, to have the taste of the wind embedded in his nose, to feel the sharp and bracing hunger of the long road. He had been made for walking. “Yaket,” he said to her back, but his voice sounded like scraping rocks. She did not hear him, or she did not choose to. Either way, she did not turn.
She walked from the bone room, putting her people, both ancient and recent, behind her. She took the light with her, leaving Keiro surrounded by the darkness and the dead, and finally he wept.
Part Two
They talk of life being some grand tapestry, but hells below, whoever’s weaving it has had too much to drink.
—Anon.
Chapter Sixteen
The harsh whisper came past Joros’s door like a flash of lightning, there and gone almost before he could register it: “Preachers on the road.”
Joros set aside the old book he’d been reading, and as easily as if it were a part of him, his hand found the scabbard leaning against his chair. The new leather of his shortsword’s hilt felt strange against his palm; one of the knives had rewrapped it not so long ago, and Joros was trying to put some wear on it, to make the leather smooth as that of a sword that saw daily use.
“Everyone helps” was the Dogshead’s rule, and her rabid dog Tare was more than happy to enforce it. As far as Joros was concerned, the two of them and their rule could go hang; but luckily, the long years of his life hadn’t been entirely wasted: among the Fallen, he’d become an expert at seeming to be something he wasn’t. That, if nothing else, was a skill Joros had aplenty. He spent much of his abundant spare time just palming the sword’s hilt, rubbing sweat and oil into the leather, making a show of swinging it around when the knives held their practices in the courtyard. The appearance was the thing that mattered. Oh, he could use the sword well enough if he needed to, but he shouldn’t need to. There were others for that.
Tying the scabbard around his belt, he stepped out into the hall.
The lightning-flash messenger was a girl, hovering on that awkward edge between child and adult, all long limbs and gracelessness. She was already dashing away, but Joros followed her low calls down the hall: “Preachers on the road.” Loud enough to hear, quiet enough not to carry beyond the corridor. “Preachers on the road.” Others joined Joros in the hallway, a motley mix of weapons held ready, every set of feet pointing toward the courtyard.
There were more bodies moving out in the cold night—children dousing torches or scampering toward the cellar, men and women piling more wood within the crumbling walls or moving to their assigned places, one woman holding a burning torch as others shielded its light with their bodies. They knew what they were doing; Joros left them to it and took his place inside the old stables. It was crumbling and rot-smelling, but the building miraculously hadn’t yet fallen entirely to pieces. So long as it kept standing, it was a good enough place to lie in wait. A few others were there already, more trickling in to take their places among the rotting hay piles and warped stalls. Joros ignored them, pulling his sword free in a graceful arc that rattled the scabbard so pleasingly. He’d practiced it, out in the dark fields surrounding the estate.
Outside, the cellar door closed loudly, too loudly, and Joros muttered a curse. Peering through a broken place in the stable wall, he watched the torchbearer thrust the flame deep into the pile of wood, and by the faint glow that swelled, he saw the rest running for their own hiding places, leaving the courtyard empty.
And then it was just waiting. Watching the flames eat the piled wood and hoping they grew fast enough, hoping even if the fire couldn’t be seen over the broken wall that the fire’s light would show the smoke climbing into the night sky . . . hoping the light would bring the shadows.
And they came, of course. Preachers these days couldn’t resist the opportunity to douse any bit of light they saw. There were six of them, only six, all in dark robes—though, when all was darkness, one learned to see the difference in small shadings, and one of the robes was a deep blue instead of black. So very predictable—the preachers hardly went anywhere without a mage to wipe their arses.
Joros flexed his fingers around his blade’s hilt, and glanced at the others in the stable; there were two hulking, bulky fists. He’d let them go first.
The preachers moved cautiously into the courtyard, heads turning, checking the corners of the old walls, peering at the crumbling buildings as they moved forward with small, careful steps. They weren’t stupid. They never were that.
But all the preachers had grown so very damn cocky.
They stood before the fire, the mage beginning to weave some spell for drowning the flames. That was the only signal they needed.
The burly fists went charging first from the stable, the sort of men one would expect to give bloodcurdling battle cries as they charged, but they moved surprisingly quietly. Joros gave them five steps before he followed, he and the others in the stable, the less bulky bruisers and the sneaks. Joros moved at a run, matching his steps to the knife at his side—not a second slower or faster. All the others broke from their hiding spots as well, the courtyard suddenly full of bodies and all of them converging on the gathered preachers. If one of the preachers hadn’t made a gurgle as a cudgel hit the side of his head, the rest might not have noticed their impending doom at all.
The pack was hungry for vengeance, or possibly just hungry for blood—either way, it was red slaughter. It always was. There were at least three weapons for every preacher; plenty of stabs and slices and thumps to go around, and that didn’t count the leftmost preacher, wide-eyed as he was ringed by daggers and cudgels. They always kept the leftmost preacher. It didn’t count the mage either, who was busy battering herself against the sudden barrier that surrounded her. Joros slowed his steps, came to a stop. His blood didn’t boil with the need to spill other blood, and no matter how careful one was, there was always danger in combat. He watched, and waited.
It was over in minutes, save for the excessive stabbing and bludgeoning that always went on for a while after. It was all so very efficient. Joros sheathed his sword; he’d been seen, had been a part of it all. The appearance was the thing that mattered.
He stood near the center of the massacre, and he gave a small smile. He’d done this. Not directly, of course, he wasn’t an idiot—but the right words said into the right ears, and his will was done. It was a paltry, pathetic comparison, but it was the most power he’d felt since leaving the Fallen.
The Dogshead hobbled out of the house when it was over, as she always did, her eyes taking in everything. The first few times, she’d tried to stop her people from desecrating the recently dead, but she’d given that up; she was smart enough to see it only made them angrier. It was easier to let them take out their rage in a . . . constructive way. Sharra Dogshead, leader of her miserable band of misfits, was no fool.
She was flanked by her constant attendants, who bristled every time Joros called them that: pinch-faced Tare and blank-eyed Aro. Neither of them supported her or even touched her, but both were ready to catch her if she stumbled at all on her gimp leg. They made their rounds, stopping to talk to all those who weren’t busy bludgeoning preachers, and finally making their way to the living preacher and the immobilized mage. Joros went to join them, because questioning their newest prisoners was something he was actually useful for, if the Dogshead was in the mood to prove that Tare didn’t have complete free rein.
Two of the fists held the preacher’s arms, and a third was busy delivering well-placed punches to his abdomen while Sharra watched with crossed arms and an impassive face. Like a well-made machine, the fist stepped aside and Tare took his place. Joros had grown to like her just as much as he hated her—she was a ruthless thing, and driven by anger, which Joros could relate to perfectly well; but she was also
too damned canny and didn’t know her proper place. Joros would have called her an insolent bitch countless times, but she carried five daggers openly and likely had at least that many hidden away.
Tare grabbed the preacher’s chin and forced his head up as he gasped for air. From the fists and knives desecrating corpses, there were still distant wet thumping sounds to underscore the coldness in her eyes as she demanded, “Tell me what you’re doing here.”
To the preacher’s credit, he faced his inevitable and likely slow death without flinching. “The Twins’ holy work,” he wheezed. If he’d still had eyes, they probably would have shone with religious fervor; as it was, his smooth-skinned sockets, and indeed his whole face, glowed with his zealotry.
“Come on, now,” Tare clucked, “we’re all friends here.” She punched him in the armpit, connecting solidly and precisely with the cluster of nerves there. The preacher screamed; zealotry didn’t provide any sort of shield from pain. Just another reason to avoid that sort of thing. “Let’s have some honesty, friend.”
A bit of the fervor went out of the preacher’s face, but all the punches still hadn’t seemed to teach him that he wasn’t immune. “Fuck you,” he said.
Tare shook her head like she was truly sad. “I tried to be friendly,” she said, and gave his cheek a few sharp pats. “I hope you’ll remember that.” Her eyes roved around the courtyard, the reflected flames of the high-burning fire turning her gaze demonic. “Pedri,” she called, interrupting one of the men who was still busy finding out how many holes he could put into a dead preacher before it didn’t look like a person anymore. But Pedri left off the corpse and ambled over, a smile curving his lips that didn’t come close to touching his dark eyes. He held a dagger, a wicked curved thing, and both the blade and his hand were well soaked with blood.
There weren’t many of them left in Whitedog Pack, but even if there had been a hundred of them, each one would be just as valuable—the soft-footed sneaks, sharp-eared spies, quick-handed assassins. There was a reason they were called knives.
Pedri knew just where to stick his dagger, in and out and in again, the places to draw blood and screams without touching on the edges of death. Tare crouched by the preacher’s head, stroking his hair back from his face in a twisted loverlike way, her questions flowing even and steady under the man’s screams: Where are the others? Where are the Twins? Were you looking for us? Who commands you? Where are the Twins? He sobbed out all the answers he had, few and useless as they were, but Tare kept asking and Pedri kept digging.
Joros, still finding no use for his sword, moved through the watching crowd until he stood at Sharra’s side, in Tare’s empty spot. In the light of the fire, Sharra’s face was smooth and her eyes bright—not the face of an old woman at all. The limp was the confusing thing, each of her steps as careful as if she thought it would break her. He forgot, most of the time, that she was no older than he was.
On her other side, Aro stood tall and straight-backed, his eyes fixed on the preacher, his throat working in spasms. He’d vomited all over the courtyard the first time they’d lured a band of preachers to their deaths, the first time Tare had gone searching for answers with the point of a dagger. Granted, it may have been his madness rather than the violence that had made Aro sick.
Sharra had been so careful in ensuring Joros was never alone with Aro. It seemed his confession that he would have killed the boy to save the world hadn’t sat right with her. Or perhaps she just feared that if given the chance, Aro would leave again. She was so determined to thwart Joros’s planning.
They stood silently watching Pedri and Tare work for a while. “This one doesn’t know anything,” Joros finally said softly to Sharra, not wanting to interrupt the show for any of the crowd. Sharra gave a noncommittal shrug, and after another moment Joros prompted, “The mage?” Aro twitched at the word, but Sharra nodded and the three of them moved through the pack. Everyone stepped aside for limping Sharra, moving and turning as though they were hinges, fixed in place by their eyes on the preacher and Pedri.
The preachers’ mage had curled into a ball on the ground, knees drawn up to her chest, arms wrapped over her head, looking altogether rather pathetic. “I can talk to her,” Joros offered, running his fingers over the hilt of his sword.
“No,” Sharra said, and made one of the signs her people occasionally used to communicate. The other man was already moving forward when she added, “Aro will speak with her.”
Aro knelt down outside the impassable barrier he’d put around her, and with the two of them so close together, it was easy to see that his eyes were hardly less crazed than hers as she peered at him through her arms. Aro reached out, pressing his palm flat against the barrier, fingers splayed. “I know it hurts,” he said softly. “But we can help each other. You can—” His words were swallowed by the preacher’s screaming and blubbering as Pedri kept up his work, but Aro’s lips kept moving, and the mage must have been able to hear him. She sat up slowly, her hands slipping from around her head, and she finally reached out to press her palm against his, the barrier between their skin. As the screaming faded away into ragged sobs, Aro turned his head very slightly, his eyes never leaving the mage’s, and said, “She understands. She’ll stay.”
It had been a stroke of luck for Joros when Harin, all atingle over the pack following the plan even she thought she’d come up with all on her own, had suggested a new aspect to the pack’s preacher-hunting plan: if Joros was already rehabilitating one witch, and if they already had a sure way to confine a witch . . . what harm could it be to add another witch? Joros had made his full support for the plan known, and even the Dogshead hadn’t fought hard against it—everyone knew how useful mages were, even damaged ones. That a weapon was nicked wasn’t cause to throw it away. Sharra, consumed with keeping her doomed family alive as long as possible without actually doing anything proactive about it, thought some extra witches would be just the thing to help them survive the Long Night.
Let her believe what she needed to. So long as she kept a stockpile of mages, Joros could utilize them whenever the time was right.
Standing at Sharra’s side, Joros said, “Your people have gotten good at this.”
“They have.” She didn’t say it with the pride she should have.
“I can only imagine how—”
“No. I won’t tell them to die for you.”
Joros ground his teeth. “You put their lives at risk each time you lure in a group of preachers. They’re already fighting the Twins—why not let them do more?”
“They chose this,” Sharra said, making an expansive motion to the courtyard at large. “I told you, if any of my people choose to help you, I won’t stop them. But I won’t send them to die in another war.”
Joros hadn’t expected any other answer, but he had to keep trying. He was fairly certain persistence was one of the virtues of the Parents. And badgering, at least, made him feel like he was doing something.
He tilted back his head to look up into the sky, the sky that was always night-dark since the sun had vanished months ago. Three months was the general best guess, based on patched-together memories of how full the moon had been after the sun had been stolen away. It was as good a guess as any—and, anyway, time had stopped holding any meaning. Most things had.
Joros knew that somewhere, the risen Twins were consolidating their power, gathering their allies, spreading their sneaking fingers far across the realm—but that seemed to be a slow and tedious process. They’d made no strike, had not even been seen by anyone outside their order, and potentially not even by those within—all a far cry from the sweeping justice that had been promised. He’d been sure that the sun’s fall would herald the end of the world and, more importantly, the end of his life—but both were still spinning on. No apparent end to the Long Night, but no consequences of it beyond a creeping lethargy and slightly more danger beyond secure walls.
On the one hand, it gave him more time to desperately pull toge
ther some kind of defense or offense, and he needed that time based on how poorly it had been going so far. On the other hand, how could he fight something that wasn’t making itself known? How could he fight a shadow, or a whisper?
Joros turned his back to Sharra and roved his eyes over the courtyard—the blazing fire, the three bodies and the blood running between the cobbles, the gathered crowd of Sharra’s people, her pet Aro and his pathetic new friend, the one living preacher and Pedri working very diligently to make him not, and beyond them all the old house still standing against all odds. He paused by the messy remains of the preachers and did what he could in the way of looting the bodies—Sharra’s people, for all that they were scavengers and thieves, were too wrapped up in their anger to ever remember to check pockets first. The preachers each had a seekstone on them, which Joros was careful to hold only with his sleeve wrapped over his fingers before he tucked them into his own pockets. There were a few coins, some worthless trinkets, a piece of paper too blood-soaked to read, and a little jar. The jar was chipped but still sealed and unbroken, and that was worth keeping.
With nothing better to do, Joros returned to the house, to the room he’d claimed and its little desk. He added the new seekstones to the drawer full of them, each a different shade of blue or green or purple. With little enough else to do, he’d had plenty of time to sort and organize them, to figure out who was linked to the stone on the other end. There was the walker, who never stood still, and the sitter, who hadn’t seemed to move an inch in all the time Joros had held the stone. There was the flapper, whose hands were always moving when Joros looked through his eyes, and the director, who owned the partners to at least five of the seekstones Joros had. And there was the boy, or the god, whose seekstone Joros had not touched; that one was too dangerous.