The Shattered Sun

by Rachel Dunne

  Rora swore and stumbled backward, bumping into Tare, who hadn’t moved yet, didn’t know the danger, didn’t know to run, run, run to the ends of the earth—

  The smoke hit the not-wall, and it didn’t pass through. It pooled on Neira’s side of the barrier, around the corpses, around Neira’s knees, full of restless reaching waves, but it stayed put. When Neira closed her bleeding hand into a fist, the black smoke faded away.

  Rora stopped trying to run out of her own skin and stood still, even though her legs shook with wanting to flee. Close behind her, Tare’d grabbed Rora’s shoulder when she’d tried to run and her hand was still there. It made Rora feel a little steadier, even though Tare let go and stepped a little away.

  “See?” Neira said. That mad smile was still on her face. “I’m powerless here. Safely contained, and at your mercy. There’s no reason we can’t talk like reasonable people.”

  “Or it’s all a witch’s trick,” Tare grumbled, not quietly.

  Neira’s smile slipped a little, her head tilting as her empty eyes turned toward Tare. “I don’t believe I know your name.”

  “No,” Tare said. “You don’t.”

  “Very well.” Neira spread her hands in front of her, not seeming to care that the one was still dripping blood over her dress, over the floor. She was still fixed on Tare when she asked, “Is there anything I can do to make you believe I’m not a threat?”

  “No.”

  “I thought not. Then Rora,” and she turned her head like Tare didn’t matter anymore, like Rora was suddenly all the world, and the weight of those dead eyes made Rora shudder, “I have two favors to ask of you. They do not require you to trust me—they only require you to trust that your friend’s barrier will hold. It will, unless he chooses to drop it or is drained of his power.”

  “Is that how you broke the last one?” Rora asked. Her voice tried to run up higher the same way she’d wanted to, but Rora swallowed it down. No matter what’d happened, she did trust that Anddyr wouldn’t do anything halfway. If he’d put this bubble around Neira, she trusted it’d hold, and that meant she didn’t have to be afraid. Easily said, harder done.

  “Yes,” Neira said without hesitating.

  “So I also have to trust you not to do that again.”

  “It takes time to do. Enough time that you could be safely away before the barrier fell. And I promise not to.”

  Rora and Tare snorted at the same time.

  Neira smiled like she thought it was funny, too. “There are two favors I would ask of you,” she said again. “The first is a fire. A simple wood fire, built down here, on your side of the barrier. I do not need to touch it or interact with it in any way. It need only exist until the end of the second favor, which is that you listen to all the things I wish to tell you.”

  “And what is it you want to tell me?” Rora asked. “What d’you need me to hear so bad?”

  “Oh, I’ll tell you everything. Where the sun went, and how you can save it. Why the mages have been enslaved, and how they can be freed, and how they can be used. How to save your brother. Who I am, and how I can help you.”

  “Is that all?” Tare muttered.

  Rora signed for her to be quiet, and kept her attention on Neira. There were already so many questions burning inside her—why in all the hells would one of the Fallen want to bring the sun back?—but she didn’t ask any of them. All she did ask was, “And after all that? After I make you a fire, and listen to everything you’d tell me. Then what?”

  “Then I leave,” Neira said easily. “If you hear all the answers I’ll give you and you still want me to leave, then I will, and you’ll never see me again. I swear it, by my hands and my heart and my blood.”

  Rora weighed Neira’s words, and she weighed the distrust she could feel radiating off Tare, and she weighed the steady pounding of her own heart. She wasn’t scared. And this time it actually was true.

  “I’ll be back,” Rora said. Promised it. “I’ll need to get some wood for the fire.” When she turned back for the ladder, she saw the unhappy line of Tare’s mouth, the anger in her eyes as she stared at Neira. But Tare didn’t say anything against Rora’s words, and Tare followed her up the ladder, and Tare stayed at her side and showed her where the fists piled up firewood.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Joros had never liked leaders who were too cowardly to actually lead. Leaders who hid behind the guise of fairness, where each delicate opinion mattered and transparency was law and a leader could hide behind any decision by claiming it had been the will of the people.

  Vatri was one of those leaders.

  She made Joros petition her, publicly, before all the fools who thought she and Scal were anything special. Well—there was no denying that Scal’s sword was unusual, and if even a quarter of the tales he’d heard about the Nightbreaker were actually true of Scal, then there was something there. But the Northman was attached to Vatri’s teat and wouldn’t so much as blink without her leave, so if Joros hoped to take advantage of the Northman-shaped gift that had fallen into his lap, he needed to convince Vatri.

  A conniving bitch who hated him at least as much as he hated her.

  He’d thought briefly that Aro, who could occasionally demonstrate miraculous social acuity, might be a help in that—until the merra’s spitting and screeching reminded him that Aro’s unexpected revelation as a budding mage was what had made Vatri leave their merry little band in the first place. No help from that quarter.

  No, it was left to Joros alone—as usual—to save them all.

  And so he stood with Aro and Harin and the others at his back, facing Vatri with Scal to one side and some lord’s son named Edro to her other, and all the other followers of the Nightbreaker ranged around them, intrigued.

  Joros began with a sweeping bow. “O kind and blessed merra,” he began in a nasally, bootlicking voice, and he saw Vatri gnash her teeth. If she thought to make a mockery of him, the least he could do was return the favor. “I stand before you, humbled, seeking—”

  “You will speak plainly,” she interrupted, “or you will leave.”

  “As you wish.” Joros bowed again, simply out of spite, though this bow wasn’t as extravagant as the first. “We’ve been traveling in search of help—help in defeating the Fallen, and rebinding the Twins, and returning the sun to its proper place. From all we’ve heard, the aims of the Nightbreaker and his people are the same. There is a logical alliance to be made.”

  Vatri snorted. “Ignoring, for the moment, the fact that nothing in our shared history would make me want to ally with you again—what could you possibly have to contribute to an alliance? What could you provide that equals the power of the Nightbreaker?”

  Joros raised a closed fist, and extended one finger. “I have knowledge of the inner workings of the Fallen. I know how they think, and I can anticipate how they will act and react.” He raised a second finger. “I have seven—excuse me, eight, now—mages loyal to me. The Fallen have many more, but to try to go against them without mages of your own would be sheerest madness.” A third finger, and Joros allowed himself to smile. “And I know a means of finding the Twins.”

  It had been quiet as he spoke, but after those words even the sounds of fidgeting and breathing died. They all waited, and Joros was not ashamed of preening under their undivided attention.

  “Explain,” Vatri said tersely.

  “The sharing of sensitive information is typically reserved for allies . . .”

  Vatri growled—actually growled, like a dog, and it was almost enough to make Joros laugh. “If you aren’t willing to share even the most basic—”

  “Wait.” The man named Edro put a hand on her arm, and she fell silent. “I know there’s . . . a history here. But I would like to hear what he has to say.”

  At least one of the three had something like a brain between his ears.

  Vatri scowled so fiercely he thought it might strip bark from the surrounding trees, but at length she no
dded and ground out, “Continue. Please.”

  “Perhaps,” Joros said delicately, “a conversation of this nature would be better had in private.” He flickered his eyes pointedly to the crowd that surrounded them. “I’m sure you trust all your people, but I don’t have that luxury.”

  “He’s not wrong,” Edro murmured, though it was loud enough that Joros—and, likely, no few others—heard it. Joros liked the man more and more.

  Vatri, though, didn’t particularly seem to like him in that moment. Even so, she could see that he was right. She raised her voice and called out, “Everyone, back to your business. I believe dinner should have been started already, but I don’t smell anything cooking. And doubtless there are some few of you who can spend your time searching in the trees for our friends in black.”

  They scattered obediently, save for a handful of what Joros guessed to be self-proclaimed bodyguards. Their number included the handsome woman with the longbow as tall as she was, who kept eyeing Joros. True, it was usually with distrust or uncertainty, but she was looking.

  Vatri led them toward the largest tent their meager camp had to offer, which still looked hardly big enough to hold a handful of people. Vatri and Edro and Scal went in, leaving their bodyguards outside, and so Joros left most of his group as well—he brought with him Aro, and included Harin so that they wouldn’t be outnumbered.

  The tent was as small inside as he’d feared, and they had to sit knee to knee in a jagged circle, a ring of frowns—and Aro, who was slowly coming up from his bout of madness and smiling in pleasant confusion at the world.

  “So,” Vatri said. She and Joros had wound up seated next to each other, by some clever machination of . . . it must have been Edro, because Scal wouldn’t care. It meant Joros didn’t have to look at Vatri—instead he was across from Edro, the clever man. And Vatri got to stare at Harin, for whom she had no reason yet to harbor any ill will—though Joros expected that wouldn’t take long. The merra could find fault with a rock, and wouldn’t shy from pointing it out. Though she spoke to Joros, she did it without looking at him, and that suited him just fine. “We have privacy now. Our people are trustworthy, but . . . it is true that there is no harm in keeping delicate information to the fewest ears. So please, speak openly.”

  Over the years, Joros had needed to develop a number of techniques to express his derision inwardly while keeping any sign of it from showing outwardly. His favorite was a sort of mental snort. “Aro and I are one piece of a greater mission,” he told Edro. “The mission, of course, being the defeat of the Twins. To that end, we have been seeking information on the Fallen—their whereabouts, their plans, their doings—while simultaneously collecting their mages and helping them recover from what the Fallen have done to them. In every case, the mages have proved so grateful that they’ve offered their help willingly.”

  From the corner of his eye, he saw Harin frowning. Rora had often had the same internal struggle written on her face, as she tried to parse if she’d understood his words right, and if the blatant lie was something she should call out. Rora, at least, had generally been smart enough to wait to question him until they were out of earshot. He had no such assurances with Harin.

  He went on: “We’ve developed something of a stronghold, a safe place from which we can operate, but there are still too few of us. In order to combat the Fallen—in order to represent a true danger to the Twins—we must be stronger. And so Aro and I have come in search of allies, and when we heard of the Nightbreaker . . .” Joros shrugged. “It seemed the perfect solution. Almost as if the Parents themselves had crafted it.”

  “You do not get to speak of them,” Vatri spat. Joros felt an immense gratification to see horror flicker across Edro’s face at her venom. Let her people see what a snake she was.

  “Forgive me,” Joros said with no contrition. “But you must admit it’s an elegant solution. Two groups seeking the same thing—”

  “There are likely dozens, hundreds such groups across Fiatera. All strong-hearted people of good conscience would seek to destroy the Twins and return the sun.”

  “That may be true. But I would argue that few, if any, of these other groups have the actual power to accomplish those tasks. Mine does. It seems yours does as well. But neither of our groups can succeed alone. There is power in numbers, power in alliances.”

  From his own icy silence, Scal rumbled, “There is danger in being alone.” He frowned as he said the words, face creasing as deeply as Vatri’s fire-scars. He had the look of a man reciting something from a source he could no longer remember.

  “Just so,” Joros agreed.

  Edro leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “I can see the sense in an alliance.” Before Vatri could get out too much spluttering, he raised a hand. “It’s not a decision any of us can make on our own, and I certainly don’t mean to, but the idea has merit. I would hear more.” He pierced Vatri with a stern gaze. “In a fight for the future of our world itself, there is no place for old grudges. You can hate him beneath the light of the sun, and not until then.”

  Oh, but that was nicely handled. Joros turned his head to look at Vatri, intensely curious how she’d react. And her reaction surprised him even more—though there was a tightness in her jaw, she stared down at her folded hands and, at length, gave a single nod of agreement.

  Edro nodded in return, and fixed Joros with his attention once more. “Now then. You say you have a means of finding the Twins. I understand you not wishing to disclose it yet. I won’t press you for information on it. So instead: let us assume we are able to find the Twins. What then?”

  Another skill Joros had developed was remaining calm in the face of rising panic. His plan was still little more than a few scattered steps in a long stairwell, pieces that might eventually connect, or might spiral off in different directions. There was no plan.

  But there were facts, and there was always a safety in stating facts. “Since they rose, the Twins have only been growing in power. They may be too strong even now for us to truly fight. So they must be made weak before we have a hope of defeating them.” His mind was racing ahead, laying down boards, stringing up ropes, rapidly constructing the skeleton of a staircase even as he stumbled up the shaky steps. “You have the power of the Parents—doubly so, with a sword made of their fire and one of their godmarked. If there’s anything that can weaken them, it’s the Parents’ power.”

  Edro nodded along, his eyes gleaming. “And when they’re weak?”

  “I should think,” Joros said slowly as the last step crystallized above him, shining, “that the power of eight mages and the power of the Parents combined should be enough to bind the Twins once more. Bind them in their mortal bodies, and let them waste away into husks. And if we destroy their true bodies, the ones buried beneath the earth, then they will have no hope of anything else.”

  Grinning, Edro pounded a fist against his knee. “There’s a plan a man can sink his teeth into!”

  Vatri, as usual, did her best to kill any joy before it had the chance to grow. “They were bound once, and freed. If they’re bound again, who’s to say they can’t be freed again? After all, it was the power of the Parents that bound them in the first place, and that proved not enough.”

  Of course there are holes in the plan, viper. Joros spread his hands wide. “I have never claimed my way is the only way.” He hadn’t—but he’d often claimed his was the best way, because the plans of fools were not to be trusted. “You merely asked what I and my group had planned, and I told you. You’ve spent all these months searching for information on where the Twins are—if you’ve also developed some idea of what you’ll do when you find them, please, I would love to hear it.” He would mock it to oblivion, and then steal its best parts to bastardize into his own newly formed plan.

  He watched Vatri and Edro and Scal exchange glances, and knew they had nothing.

  “What is it,” Vatri asked, “exactly, that you would want from us in this . . . alliance?” She s
aid the word like it was a maggot in her mouth.

  “You told me once that when you call on the Parents, they answer. I would have you scream yourself raw calling for them, until they answer with all the power they have. I would have our Northman friend here wielding the Parents’ power to strike fear and death at the Fallen, and at the Twins themselves. I would use your people as a spear cast at the Twins, cleaving a hole through the Fallen so that we may reach the Twins, and destroy them.”

  Vatri nodded. “And what would we get in turn?”

  “The location of the Twins. Mages, to supplement the power of the Parents. My own fighting force to supplement yours. My years of knowledge of how the Fallen operate, and which of their weaknesses we can best exploit. And you get the only plan, so far, that has a hope of defeating them.”

  Vatri stared beyond Joros, at Aro. “The last plan of yours I knew,” she said, “involved using your chosen twins as hosts.”

  Joros felt his lip curl. “If you wish to point out the clear failure—”

  “No. Even the best plans can crumble. I understand that. But I want to know: you spoke of mortal vessels, and fighting the Twins on equal footing. I had a suspicion, then.” She was still staring at Aro, and the boy met her piercing gaze with a wrinkled brow. “If things had gone your way. If Rora and Aro had played host to the Twins. Was it your plan to kill them?”

  Joros shifted his jaw until it popped. She’d turned her attention to him, now, and her eyes said she knew full well what the answer was. She merely wanted to see if he’d admit it, and if he didn’t, she’d have her argument against him and the shaky alliance he offered: How could they trust a man who could not tell an inconsequential truth about something done and gone? He could practically hear her shrill voice making the argument. And much as it pained Joros to admit it, he very badly needed her and her people—he had no willing fighting force, and mages that would only heed him because of the poison that had once run through their veins.